Ready for camping

Did a bit more sewing today and made sleeping bags for mini crusoe and Fridays special friends :) 

With thanks to Its always autumn for the pattern which I adapted for the smaller toys :) http://www.itsalwaysautumn.com/2012/7/16/make-a-sleeping-bag-for-a-stuffed-animal.html 

iPhone photography - first attempts

Inspired by the work of Andrew Whyte and his 'legography' charting the adventures of a little Lego man over the course of the year using an iPhone for the photographs. 

Www.longexposures.co.uk 

I decided to have a go myself, thought it might be fun to keep track of some of Mini Crusoe and Friday's adventures from a slightly different perspective.

So I need to practice....

 This was my first attempt 'dinner' 

Then this morning:

Tried to capture the dew on the webs ...

Crusoe and the Dog Door

Sounds ominous already eh!

Crusoe, Mum and I had gone to visit Nana and Meggie the dog. 

We are obviously still quite little and to us Meggie dog is quite big. We were a little unsure about her at first as she is quite wiggly and quite wet too (especially her tongue, which seems an awful lot bigger than ours!) Now we like seeing her and she makes us chuckle as her tail tickles us. 

I just tend to let her come and say hello when she is passing, however Crusoe often wanders off in to the kitchen to see where she is and if she wants to play. Nana says Meggie dog sometimes gets a little bit fed up of us playing and likes to go outside so she has a special door in the back door so that she can go out whenever she likes.

Well on this particular day, I was playing with Mum in the lounge and Crusoe was doing whatever he does when he is not crashing over me. 

Then it went quiet. 

Then a chuckle. 

Mum and Nana got up with surprising speed and hurried toward Crusoe. I toddled along behind as I thought this amount of movement might be worth investigation!

We found Crusoe by Meggie's special door, where he was just sitting looking out - it is see-through so he could see Meggie laying down outside; the reason for his chuckling. He put his hand on the door to steady himself and it moved! I'm not sure who was more surprised, him, or me at his expression! A few tentative pats later and Crusoe has discovered how to make it open completely. A cautious head poked through, saw Meggie and that was it, arms through, body wiggle, wiggle, legs up, bit more wiggling, and he was gone!!! FLAP, FLAP! The door closed! Where had Crusoe gone? 

Mum and Nana were making very funny noises - I think it might have been laughing? Then Mum opened the big door and there was Crusoe, on the step outside looking extremely pleased with himself. 

Mum brought him back in and we both headed back to Meggie's door and to our immense disappointment, discovered Nana had been extremely sneaky and locked it. 

One to remember for our next visit to Nana's....

Crusoe's Climbing

Crusoe likes to climb.

Everything.


I think he is going to be an adventurer when he is bigger as he certainly likes climbing and clambering over everything now.

We both like climbing the stairs and most days race to get to the top. Sometimes I win (Crusoe gets distracted by the lights on the way), sometimes he wins (usually he has stood on me so I have rightly protested). But other than that, I leave the climbing to him.

Crusoe is actually quite clever (don't tell him I said so) and has worked out that he can climb better if he has 'steps' to help. Sometimes these steps aren't too happy about being used (like my head) but usually he finds something to help. I don't think Mum is too pleased about this as things that can be steps keep disappearing from our room.

The bouncy chair in our room is great!  If you sit on it and rock or jump up and down it moves and it's like one of the rides at the park. The only problem is that it is quite high and neither of us can climb up on our own. One day Crusoe worked out a brilliant way to get up there:

We have a box full of bricks that we like to build with. You might already know that Crusoe is quite good at tidying away, well he is also quite good at emptying. He tipped the box out but wasn't too sure what to do next so threw it to one side. As he did this, it turned upside down. BINGO!!! A step!

I must admit, the next thought he had was quite ingenious. He pushed the 'step' across the room until it was under the chair. Up he climbed on the step and easily on to the chair. YAY!!

Next time we played with the blocks, the box was nowhere to be seen....

Friday's Favourite Game

When we wake up in the morning, we usually have to amuse ourselves for a while whilst Mum gets on doing what ever it is she does!

I tend to spend the time throwing Pooh bear (my best friend) out of my cot and then stretching to get him back again, or I like wrestling with my sleeping bag - It is a bit long and I get in all sorts of tangles as I wiggle in the night so I aim to release myself before Mum comes in!

Anyway, enough about me, this was supposed to be about Friday's favourite game.

She, unlike me, tends to keep Monkey (her best friend) in the cot so she can chat (loudly I might add) to him when she wakes up, and is supposedly a 'good girl' for not wrestling her sleeping bag. Hmmm.

Instead, she manages to pull herself up to standing (easier for her, she has a smaller bag) and does this very funny sideways shuffle all the way along the length of her cot, holding on tightly as she goes until she gets to the window. Friday's cot has a much better position than mine in that she can reach things I can't. There is a metal fence which is there for us to pull back and forth very hard so it makes a great banging noise against the radiator! It is really loud and is best when you do it very fast.

However, the thing she can reach that helps with her game, is the curtains. These are shut at night so we can sleep but Friday can reach and pull the end over her cot. She then is really good at pulling the curtain in front of her face and then quickly whisking it away, BOO!! She does it over and over again, chuckling at me which makes me smile and laugh back. It is a great game and she even sometimes does it for Mum when she comes in.

I tried my own version with my bib over my head at lunchtime. Bit messy...

Friday and the Toybox

Friday is little.

Well she is smaller than me, so that makes her little in my book.

This usually is not a problem, there are plenty of people around to help when she can't reach things, sometimes me, sometimes she just shouts. She is actually very loud when she shouts!

There was one time however, when being little, got Friday in to a spot of bother with the toy box.

Our toy box is currently a brown square basket with handles on both sides. It is fairly solid (although we have made the sides a bit bendy, oops) and has lots of our favourite toys in like stacking cups, balls and Happyland people.

Both Friday and I like carrying the Happyland people around with us as we go about the serious business of playing. One of my favourite games at the moment, is putting things away. I know, I'm such a good boy, aren't I? Well, on this particular occasion, I put away lots of things in the toy box, including a Happyland person that Friday was holding (she didn't protest...much). With things all tidy, I continued crawling around looking for something to cause mischief  play with.

Meanwhile, Friday decided she would like her person back so had crawled over to the toy box. Now, any sensible baby knows that if you want a toy out of the box, you just pull and pull until, crash! the box falls over and everything spills out. Easy! Friday was not a sensible baby that day. She leaned over the top of the box and had a little rummage around. Nope, couldn't find the person. A few cups and balls sailed over my head as I watched her endeavours. A few wiggles later, Friday had leant further over the box and more rummaging sounds came from within. Squeak, moan, wiggle, WAAAHHHHH!! Suddenly, a pair of legs were wiggling like mad over the top of the box, and Friday had disappeared! The legs continued to wiggle and the wahs increased.

I was helpless and could only chuckle at the wiggly legs as I wondered where Friday had gone...

Tissues

Ah Tissues! Bless you!

Tissues are something we love and hate at the same time. Why?

Hate because they mean we need to have our noses wiped! What's wrong with sleeves, hands, each other, people's clothes?

Love because they are so much fun. Here's a little story......

One day, Crusoe and I were happily playing in our room whilst Mum was making us lunch. She was gone for ages and we became a little fed up so Crusoe decided to take a look at what was on the chest of drawers. Now, the chest of drawers is a thing of wonder to us - it has so many exciting uses. We can open the drawers and slam them shut, try to climb on the handles, but best of all, take out all the clothes and throw them around the room. Anyway, that's a story for another day!

On this particular day, there was an inviting box of tissues, tantalisingly perched near the end of the drawers. Crusoe is taller than me so he was nominated to attempt the retrieval. He stood on tiptoes and streeeeeeetched as hard as he could but could only get fingertips on the box. He is undoubtedly very determined and wouldn't give up and eventually nudged the box closer and closer until he managed to knock it to the floor. Exhausted after his exertions, he sat for a while, sucking his fingers and watched my grand plans develop....

At first, I pulled out one tissue and waved it around chuckling as Crusoe followed it with his eyes. We both soon bored of this. Next, followed a few seconds of frantic pulling of tissue after tissue out of the box until I was surrounded by piles of white. I ran out of tissues - end of that game. There must be something more exciting to do I thought to myself and picked up a tissue absentmindedly pulling at one side. RIIIIIIPPPPP! ooooh! Yes!! Let's make tissue snow. Crusoe realised this was a game he had to be part of and we soon made the room look beautiful with tissue snow mounding up around us and fluttering down as we ripped each one.

Thump! Thump! Thump! Here comes Mum up the stairs - she will be so impressed with the beautiful snow we have made. I sat proudly amidst the wintery scene with a smile on my face and waited for her exclamations of delight. She exclaimed. I don't think it was delight though.....