(Again?)

Tilly saw the tunnel, she saw Dom go through the tunnel, she went through the tunnel. Just like that. (Shaving weeks off the junior wassock record in the process).

Loving being outside on the 'superior' trike during what may turn out to have been this year's summer.

At home, she is very good at the word "cheese", which is handy for about 65% of our family meals. For the remaining 35% she is very good at letting us now whether the offering is acceptable or otherwise by very definite nodding and shaking of the head, plus a good bit of Grandad Steve-style pointing. Should be good for when we go to Spain.

Tilly's keen not to miss out on any newly ironed £20 notes Auntie Jo may have about her person, and to that end has (almost) mastered her name, shouting, "Djoe! Djoe!" when she sees her. This extends to looking hopefully around me towards the lounge door whenever her name is mentioned whilst we are eating, in case she happens to be coming in.

We went to the Nursery Parents evening earlier this week. Tilly is obviously doing great and loves her time there. The staff were telling us how she loves the little settee they have - there are lots of photos in her file with her sitting on this settee, looking at books. Apparently she loves it so much, she edges other kids off it so she can reclaim her territory! Feisty little madam.

The warm spring sunshine yesterday evening saw Tilly exploring the garden and, as far as we can remember, having her first go on the slide that Nan bought for Dom and any/all future kids we may or may not have. She absolutely loved it, which I think might come across in the above pictures. It also reminds me of one of my favourite photos of the little man.

(I just read this out loud to Helen who's busy breadmaking again, and she thought I meant this picture)

On a whim, I pulled out the indoor trike for Tilly to have a go on this morning whilst Dom was at church with his Mum. Like a duck to water, within ten minutes she was mounting/dismounting unaided, tooting the horn and slowly scooting herself along. Best of all, when Dom returned and had a go she got behind him and pushed because that's what you do. Wheeeeee!

Sprung The snap above is Tilly loving her first off-road toddling. Having been walking a little over a month and equipped with brand new big girl shoes, she took advantage of yesterday’s beautiful weather to trot around on the admittedly somewhat unkempt backgarden lawn. She loved it.

Vowels By accident we’ve been discovering the nursery rhymes that Tilly’s been enjoying at nursery. Sing Grand Old Duke of York and she’ll throw her hands up in the air (when she was up, she was up). Twinkle twinkle little star sees her twinkling her little fingers and attempting to make a diamond shape. Best of all, Old Macdonald sees her randomly shouting “E! I! O!” at you for the rest of the day.

A nice cup of milk and a sit down Old before her time, Tilly has become increasingly fond of having somewhere to perch to look through her picture books. At her granddads she’s tried getting comfy sitting atop one of his speakers and here she would plonk herself on the book-basket wedged between the fireguard and the TV cabinet. Dom kindly let her have his little wooden desk-chair from his room and it’s hard to imagine how she could be more pleased.

Her next trick follows on from this. Having supplied you with all her books she will then clamber onto to the sofa and slide down into the corner ready to be read to. The unaided dismount is still a little heart-stopping, as is the lurch over the arm for a look, but it is pretty cute. (And reminds me of her big brother).

Her vocabulary has expanded a little – we’ve gone from ‘Hiya!’ and ‘Hullo!’ to ‘Cheers!’, ‘Buh-bye!’, ‘Yeh!’, ‘RoRo’ (when she wants to play Row, row your boat)‘Daddah’ (could be me or DomDom that one) and from looking out the window at nursery, ‘Trattah’ (Tractor). On the Bremner front, she does dinosaurs (Roarrrr), rabbits (a lip smacking noise) and a rapid mouth opening and shutting which can stand for either fish or chicken. She also does a fab-macca-thumbsaloft which never fails to make us smile.

She loves music and will respond to the oddest snatches of rhythm with a dance that’s somewhere halfway between the birdy dance and the electric boogaloo. Best of all, she’ll sing along to the “Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh!” chorus of Vampire Weekends’s A – Punk. She is great.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you secret wassocks™ (name subject to change/ inspiration). I’m using Vox which is free and, much like Flickr, lets me control exactly who gets to see each of my posts and photos. Email me (jim@wassocks·com) or leave a comment on this post if you want an invite (to either). To be clear, everyone who has ever intentionally read this blog is welcome to join us over there, it’s just the googlebots and people stumbling upon wassocks accidentally that I’m trying to hide Dom from. Business will continue here as normal, but it will be all Tilly all the time from now on.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Dom and his Mum, and a snippit of a conversation he had with his Aunty Jobley the other weekend

Dom (pointing at the chocolate he’d got on his wrists whilst making cornflake buns):

Jobley, I’ve got stuff on my arm ankles

See you over there.

Also, I've been sprucing up the site a little - about page, images page.

The joy of this is in the tiny shrug of Dom's shoulders, the sparkle in his eye and how quickly his attention moves on to one of the other cracker gifts.