October - Kitty the bat

In October, Kitty won best Halloween costume in her class. Mummy worked hard into the night for four nights to make it. For just a couple of pounds you can buy any number of ready made witch, pumpkin, batman or skeleton costumes but for me that's not what a competition is about - who can buy the best. It's a creative effort, and anyway Kitty REALLY wanted to be a bat and Sainsbury's don't do bat. She makes such a cute bat don't you think?

We all went to Alison, O'Neil and the kid's Halloween party. Here, the competition for best costume was much stronger!

Coco the baby bear from nursery came to stay with us for the weekend. I think we showed her a good time. Kitty and I had to write a diary about what we all got up to.

September

At the beginning of September, Grandma Pih took us all on a trip to the Zoo. It was freezing but we had a nice time. Kitty liked seeing the animals and spending time with grandma, but I must admit I find zoo's pretty depressing places. However much money they spend on the animal enclosures, the animals just look so out of place and miserable. The elephants and big cats looked particularly sad.

Kitty doing an impression of a miserable lizard.

Kitty and daddy playing in a viewing tunnel.

A bit of culture, as Kitty experienced the Tate Liverpool for the first time.

Mummy and Kitty look confused - is it art, or is it sticky tape on the floor???

Naughty Kitty trying to pull the installation off the wall.

August - a first birthday party

In August, Kitty was 1. We had a little party for her in the back garden with friends, family and lost of animals. Luckily the weather stayed nice and we had a lovely day. We had lots of nice veggie food and our friend Fran took charge of a BBQ for the meat eaters. Daddy made his speciality mini pink meringues (which are actually a Valentine Warner speciality) and great cousin Claire made Kitty one of her brilliant cakes. It was great to see lots of kids running around the place, playing together and enjoying being outside. Most of them went home good and dirty, a few scraped knees and plenty of nettle stings. Just as it should be!

Beautiful Kitty, captured in black and white by Uncle Darren's amazing Lumix LX3.

Lucky Kitty had a second party at nursery the following Monday. She took in homemade goodie

bags for her friends, a pass the parcel and the head from her birthday cake. Kitty especially enjoyed wearing the 'birthday girl' hat and dancing.

Later in the month we headed to Nottingham for little Cassian's naming ceremony. We took Cas a plant - Pennisetum Cassian's Choice (fountain grass).

It was a lovely day and Kitty enjoyed bossing Cas around! We stayed over with mama and grandad Simpson. By this time Kitty was well on her feet and enjoyed running around in great mama Kitty's massive garden.

Picking apples with grandad.

July - working mummy

The 'work life balance' seems not to exist in our world. With work hours peaking in July and weekends necessary, Mummy has to start taking Kitty to work with her on Saturdays for exhibitions. This is not ideal, but better than extra day-care surely? She seemed to enjoy it and so did the customers. Not sure about my boss though!

How lucky are those Mummies who get to forget about work for a couple of years while they take care of their little ones. I see them strolling past my office window everyday. Generally they look quite bored with it all. I feel like shouting out of the window and reminding them how lucky they are and to bloody well cheer up and enjoy the luxury of time they have to kill with their babes.

Kitty developed a new passion for chalk in July.

First real steps. First little shoes. Startrites bought with some money from great Mama Kitty. Thank you!

We found a piece of ginger that looks like Iggle

piggle.

Looking cute eating a peach.

May

Daddy played his gig at the Wychwood festival. All went well, and everyone seemed to like it. Next year Kitty should be big enough to go and see Daddy play.

April

Around April -May, Kitty's progress went mad as she suddenly worked out how to get up and with the help of toys and furniture, started cruizing around the place.

Not blogging

Since going back to work full time in February, it's been difficult to find the time to even brush my hair, let alone boot up a computer, download photos and type a load of non-essential ramblings for pure enjoyment - so alas blogging went out of the window completely. I did however continue to incessantly document Kitty's and our escapades in the world with my little camera. Over the last eight months she has grown and developed massively and I regret not keeping up with this blog (if only for my own delight to look back on), so I have decided to make the effort while I am on holiday to backdate these pages over the next few days and to make it my New Years resolution to try and keep it up as Kitty enters the adventure of 2010 and beyond!

pictured: my beautiful Kitty, 27 December 2009, by Grandad Pih