More scenes and snapshots.

This post is just a mix of old-ish pics, snapshots, and moments - I've said before, I think, that this blog is just a collections of moments, each frozen by the camera.   But our lives are made up of these little moments, like a digital picture is made up of single pixels or dots.  And if you have enough of the dots, the big picture becomes clear.  So, here are some more dots.  :)

It's getting warmer in the mornings, but it's still cold leaving the house at 6am, especially when (like me) you're wearing nylon swimming trunks and a teeshirt!  But there are consolations.  The sky can be beautiful.  This is the view up the street in our compound.

The hardest part of my day is at about 6.05am - I'll be sat in the Rec Centre car-park, the car's heaters will have warmed up, and I'll have to pluck up the courage to get out of the car into the morning air for the brief run to the pool!  It's harder to do that than to get into the pool 2mins later!  I'm swimming about half a mile now in the mornings, that's about 800m, but I'm slow - it takes me about 25mins, and that's all I have time for before getting ready for work.  (I like to think that I could do more if I had time.  Good job I don't have more time, eh?)  And then I'm showered, dressed, and the sky has changed, and the day has started.  (The moon is in the middle of that pics, somewhere...)

I grabbed all the pics from one of our cameras the other day, and found these!  Lalaine does a wonderful job of looking after the two.  Well, she actually does a pretty good job looking after the four of us, really!  But if Milly's having a snooze (after a hard night Lion-wrangling) and Louis is not at nursery, then she has her hands full.  Sometimes she'll make sure that Louis has his morning nap downstairs so that she can keep an eye on him.  Here he is getting ready, with E.

And enjoying a snooze.  Lucky Monkey.

We've got so many clothes for E, especially!  We've been so lucky with the things we've been given, gifts from friends, family.  We've enough clothes to start an orphanage!  Some are already too small, some are Louis old things, so we'll keep, and others we'll either give away to other new parents, or sell. Here's E in a lovely dress and cardie - Milly could tell me who gave this to us, but I can't, sorry.  But if it was you, then thank you!

But I know that this cardie was knitted by Aunty Jean - thanks for taking the time!  

Here's the cardie out on a trip last Saturday morning.  Louis loves diggers.  I mean, he loves them - 'digger' was his first proper two syllable word!  (We didn't teach him - I think he must have picked it up at nursery, where there's some construction work just across the road.  Of course there is - this is Doha!)

So Saturday morning, he grabs my hand, 'Digger!', very insistent, so off we go to find some diggers.  He's still wearing his jimmies in this pic!

Lost my chronology here, but never mind.  Thursday night I too Milly out for her birthday to The Belgian Bar.  It's a bit smokey, and a bit loud, but it does a good impression of not being in Doha - lots of beers on tap, good food, steak-frites.  We had a good night, although we were shouting at each other by the end of the night!  (Just re-reading this, and proof reading, that sounds wrong - we didn't have a fight!  I mean that it was noise, and we had to shout to be heard!  That's all!  I really had to get out of the bar to get quiet enough to call a taxi!)

They do a nice pint of Leffe.  Three of those and I'm pretty relaxed!

(You can just see M's Christmas pressie in these two pics, but I'll take a better shot of it, and talk about it in a future post, I think!)

We don't let Louis watch too much TV (I hope) but he does like a bit of Jungle Junction.  (It took Alan B. about a week here in Qatar before he was saying, 'Louis!  It's Jungle Junction!')  And The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  Oh, and Bob the Builder, and the American version Handy Manny.  And Thomas The Tank Engine.  OK, maybe he does watch too much!  When Milly's with him, he tends to sit with her, but otherwise, he bellys up to the footstool, and gives it his full attention.  

Took E to be weighed again on Friday - we've not been as regimented with our weighing as we were with Louis, I guess our lives are a little more complicated this time round!  But here she is at about seven weeks, and a healthy 5.1kg.  (11lbs 4oz in old money.)

And finally, we have a routine, Louis and I, when we go to LuLus.  In through the door, straight to the Health Centre, through the door, hello to the nurses.  (That's my boy, into nurses already.)  Then to the Tiny Tikes play set, run about all over it shrieking with laughter.  Then down the slide, into a trolley, up the lifts, say hi to everyone and out to flirt with Joy at the Coffee Shop.  But that routine has recently been interrupted as he's noticed the kitchen set under the escalator.  He's a very domestic Monkey.

That's all for today, another set of dots, some more pixels soon.

(A quick edit to say that this has been the blog's 250th post!)