Month: October 2011

Today we are on a train to Pamplona heading to the start of the Camino de Santiago. One of the members of team is bringing her own bodyweight in personal gear, refusing to carry any of it, and insisting on being carried every step of the way.

There won’t be many blog posts over the next two weeks. We will update you all when we get back.

We’ve been doing some hiking over the past weekends in preparation for a big hike beginning this weekend. Piglet likes to get out into nature, au naturel, and show off her bacon.

It’s very unusual to see a moon rise in the middle of the day, but sometimes there’s a sliver of a cresent coming up…

On this day we were lucky to experience the rise of the full moon, in all its white, luminous glory…

Hey, Piglet, as well as the moon, I think I can see Uranus from here.

Her daddy took her out to the woods and gave her a stern talking to about what Disney tells us about being a woman.

Now she’s more like Donald Duck.

The colour orange, that is.

Her look of surprise is second only to her mama’s when she found out that there is peliroja in the Kennedy blood.

Can you figure out what this is?

It’s Piglet in a hammock at our friends Sergi and Andi’s apartment. They’re having a tough time right now; we’re thinking of them.

The little Catalan is, of course, a Barça baby. Our friend Liz Palcic (AKA Elizabeth Benbow) knitted us this very cool blau (blue) and grana (deep red) football on her travels.

Liz is a baby-nut herself. On her blog she talks about how it’s knitted – it’s ‘Knit Picks Shine Worsted’ knitting fans. It’s all here on Liz’s blog.

‘Go on, my son, on me ‘ed.’

Right before bedtime for the little bonzo, there’s bathtime.

Most of the time she likes thrashing around in the water, which is a great relief for a pair of kayaking parents. In a month or so she’s going to be joining mother-and-baby swimming classes. With luck that will cover defensive swimming, crossing eddy fences, and how to catch a throwbag.

In the mornings Piglet is as happy as a piglet in muck. She’s full of chat and all smiles before I head off to work.

Don’t know where she gets that from; I’m demanding a paternity test, and Bex wants a maternity test.

Piglet’s granddad send over a play centre, a term with which nobody seems to be familiar. It’s essentially a smorgasbord of sensory delights for a baby – a play mat bristling with toy and textures, sounds and sights, colours and contrasts for a piglet’s ever-burgeoning brain.

As always with new things in her life, now a whopping ten weeks, there is first a period of quizzical engagement, usually signalled by a slightly bemused, stand-off posture while she sizes it up:

Then there follows a time of happy interaction with the new object, during which her little piggy face relaxes:

Inevitably, though, her mind wanders off to affairs of the day, thoughts of the dinner menu, perhaps sleeping, and when her focus returns to the object at hand, there’s a startled intimation of non-recognition…

“Aargh, what is this thing in which I find myself? Why the danging yokies? I feel one of my self-awareness fugues coming upon me.” She cries out, in a remarkably quiet voice – “NURSE – THE VAPOURS!”

Today was vaccination day for the pobrecita, as you can see from the plasters on her legs.

I’d like to say she was a brave little soldier when the needles went in, but no, she cried like a little baby.

Like a stuck pig…