Birthday time again - Seven already

I am really behind on putting up pictures but here are a few from Stella's birthday last week. Firstly the cakes on the actual birthday and then with her friends at a party the day after.

We had lots of fun with party games. The favourite was the detective game where all her friends were detectives and Africa was a robber. As she dashed in the room in fancy dress, everyone had to quickly write down six of the things she was wearing. They loved it! Another favourite was the flour mountain. They took it in turns to scoop flour away from a sweet which was balancing on top of a flour mountain. The first to knock the sweet off had to eat it without using their hands. Very messy and of course, all the children really wanted to knock the sweet off!

Friends in clockwise order from Stella: Africa, Tilly, Lexi, Anousha, Harriet, Alex, Inacio, Winnie and Lilah.

SNOW!

Fantastic snow this week. We were out on Hackney Downs while most of it fell and built a pretty impressive snow man. Later the next day, Fabio and Massimo built an amazingly magical igloo where the girls had their pasta tea.

It's been a busy end of term for Stella. She was a shepherd in the school nativity, which is performed by YR2 every year. I had no idea until I got there that a shepherd is a pivotal role in this production! Stella was fantastic. Remembered all her lines and sang beautifully. The following week there was a school concert as well. Stella now goes to a music school on Saturday mornings and they also had a little choir concert. Very simple songs, with lots of emphasis on timing and volume. It was really lovely. All of these events Stella seemed to be really enjoying herself. Dancing along as she sang.

Stella has worked really hard this term and her reading, writing and maths are all coming along brilliantly. She seems very happy at school, which makes her parents, who naturally worry about these things, very happy too!

Haircuts...

The girls both went for drastic haircuts at grandma's hairdresser while we were in the Lake District this autumn. They both went off with pictures in hand and these were the results.

Halloween

As always, much fun dressing up this Halloween....

Mountaineer

In Grasmere, pointing at Helm Crag

Stella's hill walking really took off this summer. We are delighted by this development and can't wait for Affy to catch up too.

She started by climbing Catbells (451m) with her cousins Joy and Raffy. Then she climbed a similar height to Allcock Tarn, which Affy made too. Then we went up Helm Crag (405m) otherwise known as the Lion and the Lamb, with our friend Jamie. And finally, after all the training, she made it up Harrison Stickle (736m) with Tim. We were so proud of her and hope there will be lots more hill walking fun to come.

By Stickle Tarn, Pointing at Harrison Stickle

With Joy and Raf on Catbells

With mum on Helm Crag

Poolside fun

We had such a fun summer. I'm going to post properly soon, but I was just working on this photo and thought I'd put it up here. Jumping fun at the Cergallina Pool in Italy. xx

More Birthday Celebrations

Saturday was Stella's Party. We had a great time. The 15 children who came were lovely. Most were from Stella's school, but a couple of friends from nursery (Pearl and Mercy) and a friend from around the corner (Harriet) came too. Everyone joined in with the games and seemed to enjoy themselves.

Stella had asked for a party at home with party games. Pass the parcel was as always a favourite, but they enjoyed my home made Pinata, and also games involving string, like ring on a string and spoon on a string... This year Tim made a hedgehog cake, by special request from Stella. This is a Harford family recipe and was appreciated by everyone, especially Stella.

Stella is six!

Hot off the press. More to follow soon, but I thought I'd post this picture while it was still current.

Nearly six

Stella is such a lovely girl at the moment. I find myself looking at her when she's sleeping and wondering how she got to be so big so quickly. It seems like only recently she was a squirming little babe in arms. In her waking hours she constantly amazes me. She generally seems to love school. I'm often worrying, is she learning enough, quickly enough, but I really shouldn't because she seems happy and confident and that's got to be the most important thing. It's so thrilling to see her reading fairly fluently now. She still prefers to be read to, but she can tackle most words and is gaining confidence reading on her own, especially at night time when she should be going to sleep!

She constantly surprises me with her maturity too. The other day she came out of school saying that they had had a yoga teacher who had given each of them a petal and asked them to make a wish. She didn't want to tell me her wish at first, which was fine. I became an aunt the other day and so said that if I had a wish I would ask for my neice to be well and have a good life, thinking that was a pretty good wish! Stella then said, that actually her wish was that all the poor people in the world had food and clean water and suddenly I felt incredibly selfish!!

She's always coming out with great answers in the children's liturgy at church too. When asked what the best lesson they had ever learnt was, other children said things like learning to ride a bike, to walk etc, Stella piped up "learning to love"! A couple of weeks later when asked what they were doing for lent, other kids were giving up chocolate, or chattering, but Stella said she wanted to pray more. I'm not sure where she gets these answers from within, but she knows how to make a mother proud!!

Christmas Day

Sometimes I can't get over how big Stella is getting. For example, I think she looks particularly grown up in these pictures of her swinging in the Park on Christmas Day. It was a lovely crisp day and we went out before our big lunch after a nice morning of present opening and scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. Stella was most excited about her spotty flamenco dress, pictured here as well. It's great for dancing and swishing around in generally.

I can ride my bike

Actually Stella learnt how to ride her bike in the summer, but I seem to have missed the opportunity to post about it until now. Here Stella is on Christmas Day in Hackney Downs on her bike. Affy also got a new bike for Christmas, and I don't think it'll be too long before she gets the stabilisers off as well.

I've lost my first tooth

It was a very exciting event in the Harford Monks Household. The tooth was wobbly for about a week and then finally, one day in the playground after school, Stella bit into a raw carrot stick and the tooth was left dangling by a thread. She did the rest of the job herself. The tooth fairy heard the news and visited that evening! Now the new tooth is already popping through.

In the dental arena we also had another first...on Christmas eve Stella had her first filling! She was very brave and coped well with having her teeth "put to sleep"! For at least a day she didn't want to eat any chocolate or anything sweet in between meals (oh except for the candy floss and lollypop when Liz took her and Affy to Winterwonderland!) but Christmas seems to have wiped out those intentions. However, she has become a very good tooth brusher.

Nuremburg Nuptuals

We were lucky enough to go to the wedding of some old friends of Tim's in Nuremburg in September. Stella found the whole idea of the wedding very exciting indeed and loved seeing Kat in a white dress. We also really enjoyed the fantastic German playgrounds. Stella did try some of the local food and as you can see from the pictures, the sausages (above) went down somewhat better than the sauerkraut (below)!

The lovely Lakes

Our second holiday of the year :) was in the Lake District in an idyllic cottage by the western shore of Lake Windermere. It was a small place, but it was so lovely to go down to the lake every day and often to swim - in spite of the cold weather!

Stella loved the blackberry picking down the lane, to make blackberry and rhubarb crumble (rhubarb provided from uncle Aidan's garden). It was nice for us to be in the Lake District and to be able to have visitors. Uncle Bren and Auntie Jackie came one day with Ruth and Conor and Grandma and Grandad for a barbeque by the lake. Aidan and Catherine came one evening for dinner and Andrew, Olga, Ananyo and Kat came and visited for a disastrous walk and a nice evening meal.

Another great holiday at Cergallina

This summer we were at Cergallina with Adrian (Tim's Dad) and Liz (Tim's Step mum) and the with Tim and Angela our friends, and their children Tilly and Danny. We had a fantastic holiday and Stella's confidence in the pool came on in leaps and bounds. The food was as usual a big hit - what five year old would complain about pasta and ice cream every day. We did some of the usual day trips, but generally just enjoyed relaxing by the pool, riding Judith's horses and the gardens of Cergallina.

Stella's Fifth Birthday

May 13th was Stella's fifth birthday. She seemed to have a lovely time. We had a party at home a few days before the actual day. She had lots of friend come over and we played party games, with mixed success! Opening the presents was, of course, a highlight. May 13th was actually a school day, but by the time she came home there were so many parcels from her generous extended family that the excitement began all over again. You can see how pleased she was from the pyjama photo above.



Stella is still loving school and really enjoying learning how to write. Whenever she can she loves to draw and write at the moment. It makes entertainment very cheap and easy.

We're also just back from a lovely week in the Lake District with my parents. Stella and Affy loved playing in the garden. We had some beautiful little walks and even some paddling in lake Windermere (swimming for mummy!). It was just the break we needed from Clapton.

Chasing the sheep in Wales

It seems to hard to get around to posting anything on the blog these days! Ever since Stella started school, life has seemed busier than ever. It's amazing how quickly 3.30 comes around and I'm off to pick her up from school. The weekends are over in a flash. Anyway, it's now the Easter holidays and Stella and Affy have gone for a day out with Liz, their nanny. I was just looking at photos from our recent holiday in Wales and thought that it was time for a post.

Stella has settled into school really well. She seems to have made quite a few friends. Lila, Winnie and Anouscha are the ones who she talks about most at the moment. She happily sets off for school in the morning and they seem to do lots of fun activities which keep her interested. Sometimes she has school lunches, depending on what the menu of the day is, but often she likes to have packed lunches. She's coped really well with the whole transition into big school although she did get lost with her friend Anouscha on the second day of school. "It's the first time I've ever been lost mummy" she proudly told me when she came home that day. "We cried a bit for our mummies and then we went up and down stairs a bit and found a teacher!" is how she recounted the adventure.

She's had friends over to play after school a few times - Anouscha, Lila and Alex at different times - but it's quite tough for them as they're tired after a day at school and I often find that I have to be referee!

Stella is very enthusiastic about colouring at the moment. She spends lots of her time colouring in anything she can get her hands on, and drawing too. Which is great. Her reading and writing are starting to come along. She can blend three letters and can write most of them, with an occasional hint. I was surprised to find other friends' children of the same age who can already read and write, but Stella's school isn't pressurising them into it at the moment and focusses a lot of play. I think that's fine for now.

Stella loves her teachers Rachel and Farrer and they seem to be very good and caring.

Swimming is coming along a treat. We go for lessons every week and now Stella can swim on her back very confidently and does a good doggie paddle on her front. She's happy to jump in from the side of the pool and will put her head under water too. At the end of term she also had her first ballet exam! It was much more serious than we expected. She had to wear white tights and have her hair pinned back in a bun. Also, she was supposed to have learnt a dance, but we didn't realise this, so I'll be amazed if she passes. I think we might try something other than ballet next term for a change!

Our big girl starts school!

Stella started school last Monday at Millfields Community School around the corner. It was a snowy and cold day so there wasn't much opportunity to take photos.

It seems to be a very nice school, if a lot bigger than either Tim's or my primary school, with about 650 students. Stella's teachers are Rachel and Farrar and she is in blue class. She seems to have settled in very well and on Friday she said goodbye to me before going into the school (on previous mornings Tim or I had gone into the classroom with her). She already got herself a gold smiley face for doing something good - we're not sure what, and so is suitably proud. She also seems to be making friends already and enjoying playing in the playground. She was delighted to come home and tell us on Wednesday that she had got lost for the first time in her life on the journey from the school dinner hall to the playground at lunchtime! Fortunately she was with another little girl, Anouscha, and she said they both cried for their mummies a little bit and then went and found someone who told them where to go. All quite an adventure I think. Unfortunately, school has been closed for the last two days because they have no water, so Stella has gone back to her nursery! Hopefully she will be happy to go to school again when it reopens.

With the family

It's a time of change for Stella. This week she leaves her nursery after three happy years and heads off for big school. Stella is really excited about this change in her life, but not without a little sadness to be leaving Jocelyn, Christine and Valerie behind. She says she's particularly going to miss Jocelyn. But at nursery, the children her age have long moved on to big school and so I think Stella will be delighted to have some new peers to play with.

Last week we went to school to meet her teacher Rachel and her nursery assistant Farrer. They both seemed lovely and very committed teachers. I feel happy that she will be in good hands. It's a very big school though with about 650 pupils, so I'm nervous too.

The photo is of the four of us from the birthday party of Stella's cousin Martha who was eighteen at the beginning of December.

Halloween!

A busy few months

It’s been a busy few months since I last wrote. We had summer holidays in Cornwall and Italy. Stella and I went to Berlin together to see our good friends Aino, Hubert, Alvar and Ingmar and we’ve all had a couple of trips to the Lake District.

Stella absolutely loved staying in a caravan in St Ives, even though it rained every day. She especially liked the fact that she could see out of her bedroom window!! She loved playing in the sea and bravely came swimming with me one day in an unheated lido in Penzance, which was really quite chilly.

Italy was much warmer and Stella learnt how to swim in the Cergallina pool. This seemed like a really big milestone and was very exciting for all of us. She also really enjoyed just spending time in the garden in her own little world. Most fun of all was playing with cousins Rafael and Joy for the first few days and then Molly for another few days. She also had some time playing with Fabio and Massimo and their cousin Luca, who she loves!

Stella is now the biggest girl at nursery as the final few of her friends of her age went to school. She still seems happy enough but she is looking forward to school immensely. I’m much more nervous about the big city school Millfields which she’s going to which has 650 pupils! Quite different from my own school experience in Poulton-le-Fylde. I’ve met a couple of the children who will be starting in January and heard of a few more. They all seem nice so hopefully it will be fine. For now I’m enjoying the fact that Stella is home on Wednesdays and Fridays to do lots of fun things together that will be much more difficult once we’re tied to school holidays.

We’ve been visiting a lovely farm in Essex which only takes about 35 minutes to get to. And we’ve been doing a few nice walks. Last weekend we went to Epping Forest, also in Essex. Also taking the opportunity to visit friends outside London. Stella seems keen to play with almost anyone whose house we turn up at, which makes it very easy for me to go and see old friends. Flying to Berlin just the two of us was a real treat though and Stella was just brilliant. It was so easy to travel with her and I look forward to more of that in the future.

Here are a few photos from the last few months as it’s taken me so long to get around to blogging:

Stella is four!

Tomorrow Stella will be a big four! She started the celebrations tonight with a pre birthday tea with the family. Tomorrow all her friends from nursery are coming over in the afternoon and on Saturday she's having a party with her non-nursery friends.

She's such a big girl these days. This weekend was Tim and my fifth wedding anniversary and we went away for the night while Stella and Affy stayed with Aunty Carina and Uncle Mark. Stella had such a lovely time playing with cousin Molly that she really didn't want to leave when it came to Sunday evening.

She's very excited about starting school but has to wait until January for the pleasure. She's got a place waiting for her then at the local primary school Millfields. She's really enjoying her swimming lessons at the moment and last week surprised me by saying, watch this mummy, and swimming a few strokes without her floats. This was a first! She's also enjoying ballet classes on Saturday mornings especially now her friend Mercy has started coming along too.

Her favourite pastime is still without doubt reading books. She also spends hours telling little stories to herself with figurines.

Easter Fun

This is Stella relaxing on the sofa at her friend Abbie's house. Abbie has a brother Joseph who's just the same age as Affy so we like going over there to play. Stella loves playing with Abbie's dolls house and Abbie's dad, Ben, is always good at organising the girls to do art projects when we're there, so that Abbie's mum, Natascha, and I can chat and have a cup of tea!!

Yesterday we had a lovely day after visiting Abbie we went kite flying with Fabio and Massimo on Hackney Marshes. The boys and Stella all went on their bikes. Stella's getting really good at balancing on her Likabike now, and hopefully she'll be able to move onto a proper bicycle soon. Kite flying was a bit crazy because it was so windy. Tim said it was the first time he'd flown a kite too. We must do it more often as it was lots of fun.

This is Stella and Abbie


This is Stella and Massimo and Stella and Tim kite flying: