bubbles and pools and cake, ecstasy

It's great how happy you can make a toddler, how easily: 

A couple of bubbles and a friend, and they are ecstatic. Or maybe not?

I think maybe the streamer (note to self: streamers are not the same as ribbons. One is made of paper, and rips at the drop of a hat) broke off the balloon.

But not all was lost. We still had one of these: 

It was a hit. She's still talking about it, two weeks later. Oreos for wheels, little candies for head- and tail-lights, cookies with icing on them for windows, and white chocolate buttons with fair trade chocolate hazelnut stuff for people ... it was fun. One of our guests commented that chocolate sponge is rarely a material used in large vehicle construction, when I pointed out its structural weaknesses. 

Since then, well, we've changed the bedtime routine (again!). "Mummy say night night. Mummy say last book. Mummy sing a song. Mummy say night night". We have high hopes that eventually this will lead to a short, simple, conflict-free reliably-timed bedtime, reducing the number of long and somewhat awkward interactions with our fantastic teenage babysitters in which we ask them what they are doing lately and try to explain why we can't get our child to sleep reliably by 8:30. My explanations are ... weak.  As usual with these things, we're a few days in, and it appears to be working. So far. Jinx.

Is there anything else interesting? Nina can walk down the street listing things she likes: "I like buses, I like planes, I like puppies, I like bees, I like buses, I DO like SWINGS! I like slides" ... She can use "might", in the context of "we MIGHT see another bus, wait see". She still loves the pool. We went again, now that summer has disappeared. When I said that I hoped our nice weather would last, an English colleague told me that it HAS lasted, that if it ends now we'll have had a really great summer. Hmph. After a week of 20+ (C) weather several English people tell me that they just "can't abide this heat". Heat? 

But at the pool Nina jumps in, she paddles about in her little Konfidence jacket, she is absolutely overcome with joy when I announce that we are going there. She recognises it when we are about 2 blocks away, though we haven't been for months.