The Mischevious Adventures of Jean (by sarah)

Jean has been up to lots of things 🙂

For a start thanks to our visit to a wiggly of babies she now says shoosh and points to her shoes, or as shes taking them off! We where in the car and she started repeating it over and over agian, Al said, 'Jeans talking about her shoes then,' just as there was a sound of velcro and the thud of the shoe hitting the floor!

She also knows that shes not allowed to throw her food on the floor so what does she do? She looks at you grinning mischeviously whilst slowely moving her hand containing food out over the edge of th highchair. She also says no and shakes her head if you say its bed time and she doesnt want to go!

I'm afraid she is a bit fluffy blonde girly - she cries when you take her shoes off her for bed and if you take them of to change her she screams the house down unless shes allowed to hug them (or at least she does when its daddy changing her but then I cuaght him giving in and putting her to bed in her shoes!!!).

Having to do the eye treatment on both Alaric and Jean has prooven interesting to! I did Jeans treatment first which she really really hates then I made the mistake of putting her on the floor to play and moving straight on to do Daddys eyes. She saw what I was doing and went mental - she hit me and everything whilst crying and saying da da da repeatedly. She got really distressed - got up onto his lap and wouldnt let go of him - I was definatly bad perant - not only had I annoyed her by doing her eyes but here I was trying to do the same to Daddy! Al explained he was there volunteerally but she still looked at me darkly.

Still its sweet (especially if your Alaric and not Sarah).

She has also definatly got an imagination these days - she talks to her toys, she hugs her cuddlies lots and lots and has favourites - she also hates dolls with a vengence - even though she has now started calling them baba. She is either scared or angry at them or both - either way she throws them away violently if you put one in a confined space with her - otherwise she just cries and looks at them suspicously but only whislt being securely hugged by a trusted adult. Bizar reaction really :/

Appart from that she loves the wooden toys best it seems she is currently shunning everything other than wooden toys or cuddlies!?

Still I am quiet proud of her - she typed mum and sent it to a freind of mine on MSN - dont beleive me? Well I've copied and pasted it in!

.//../.....l/],,k.kjkj[ll.l hkb n o o ,l k jmmjjhjmjm j jhii8hmj9u9 s s nhjjjbsjhssssjhjhhjgumum.,.l/,kjlliklk,nnnmmjnnnn

See! ok ok so its in the middle but we know what she ment!

She also had Ella confussed with algabra!

3W1±W3± MV,

Ella thought she was still talking to me for a good ten minuts - I was hoovering at the time and had stupidly left the laptop on the chair!

Our Visit to Essex (by sarah)

Last week we wnet to Essex for a couple of days - apologes for not contacting peeps like I said I would for Birthday drinks but things went a bit arie!

First off we where originally supposed to be going for a week but with Al being ill over Christmas and New Year he a) had to catch up on work and b) couldnt drive. We probably wouldnt have come up at all but Mums just been diagnosed with cellulitis and we where worried about her!

Once in Essex we thought about doing my drinks but one of our servers broke 🙁 Which in someways was fortunate as it resides in the Docklands which is a lot easier to get to from Essex than from Gloucestershire! However this did basically eat up any time we had spare so I priortiesed and just saw some of the family - didnt even get to see all of them!!!

Still it was fun and it ment we had a whole lot of presants waiting for us there so it was sort of a second christmas - only this time Al could see! didnt seen to stop him perversly guessing presants by smell and taste!!!!

e-zine (by sarah)

We are going to be launching our e-zine in April - it will come out monthly and we are looking for submissions!

Now I do not want to post our mission statement until we are up and running but if any one is interested then please contact me - deadlines for the first issue is March the 1st! We regret that we can not give people money for material at the moment but we can offer free advertising space and back payments should the 'zine take off!

Hope too hear from peeps!

Xen (by alaric)

I'm seriously considering becoming a big user of Xen. As in, making all of my servers run Xen (with NetBSD as the host OS), with everything of import then running in Xen "domains" (virtual servers) beneath.

There's a number of advantages to this. Read more »

Epiphany – Jean maybe young but she’s an Actress! (by sarah)

today was the villages epithany celebration thingy - now I've never been to one of these - its marks Twelth Night and the coming of the Wise Men to visit the baby Jesus in Egypt or somewhere.

We were asked as a family to play Mary, Joseph and Jesus - especially as Jean is about the right age. We agreed and found ourselves in a drafty barn wrapped in some hastily made costums. I wore one of our large lavender table cloths with on the small purple cheque table cloths on my head and Al wore a red table cloth with our brown strippy table cloth for some authentic looking arms - again a purple cheque table cloth for his head - complete with purple head band. I was a bit worried that it was a bit disrestectable to the people whos country Jesus was supposed to have been from etc... but remninded myself it was just a little play and crossed my fingers!

Jean was to play Jesus but she is way too wriggly to be wrapped in a sheet! My solution?

I got the blue and white table cloth that belonged to one of my nans - it is very holy cough I mean wholey and is only used as a last minute back up blanket for Jean. It is small and the has the right sort of patterning on it. So I folded it in half and cut the corner off to make a head hole when the cloth was opened out again. I then tacked some sleeves in and it fitted really well!

Unfortunatly when sorting the costums out I had failed to think - hang on we are going to be in a freezing cold barn! And therefore they had to go on over Jeans coat! Complete with pink fluffy triming!

It must be the first time Jesus was portrayed as a hoodi!

Still it was a lot of fun and the smell of the straw in the barn and the baa of sheeps made me nostalgic for Wales.

The only alarming bit was how well Jean did in her role - including desiding that her music instrament would be better employed as a halo and the expression on her face as people bowed which said - yeah I could get used to this!

Seriously though she did very well she sat quietly next to us and smiled at the right times and things! She even tried to take the gifts of the wise men! (all of whom appeared to be under five).

We then had a great time chatting to the other villagers over coffee and Christmas cake.

Jean was so good at being Jesus that many people reverted to the idea that we have a son!