what happened to november?

"I turned two!"

November was my least bloggy month of all time, probably less bloggy than some months before I even had a blog!  There wasn't any sinister reason behind it.  As well as various internet/computer problems and going back to work, we were just pretty busy.  Dulcie had her second birthday and we went on holiday to France to celebrate it with her cousins and auntie and uncle.

Here we are with my niece Elsie who is just about the same age as Dulcie.  We had to witness this sad face a lot while we were there as another feature of November was Dulcie's brief obsession with hair-pulling.  It got to the stage where poor Elsie cried every time Dulcie entered the room.  That's not why she was crying here, actually, but you get the idea.

My sister has chickens in her garden and Dulcie LOVED them.  She is still talking about the chicken who bit her finger and how she dropped one of their eggs and it broke.  She spent quite a lot of her holiday chasing them around the place.

If only we had a usable garden.  Dulcie was so happy to be outside.

On the day of Dulcie's birthday we stayed in and had a wee family party for her.  This is a rare family shot for us.

It was so nice for Dulcie to have her cousins there to celebrate her special day with her... and nice for her cousins too, I think.

My sister put on this amazing birthday spread.  Yum!

I made Dulcie this crazy chocolate hedgehog cake.  It was delicious (so chocolatey!) but looks-wise was a bit, er, creepy, but probably only because the icing was so full of chocolate, so maybe it was worth it.  My sister found the wooden ring round the cake in a charity shop.  It has 16 spaces for 16 little wooden people, each one with a different outfit.  We think the idea is that each year you remove one wooden person and add one more candle, so by the time the person turns 16, they have 16 candles and no people.  It's such a nice idea and we got to take this home with us so we'll be able to use it for Dulcie's cake for the next 14 years.

Here she is blowing out her candles, probably her favourite thing about the whole day.

The cake was a real hit with everyone.  Yum.

Other than birthday celebrations and hanging out in the garden, we had a reasonably quiet holiday.  Of course, we had a day of charity shopping, but we also made a day trip to a zoo, which had a pleasingly '70s-looking cafe...

...with a tiger right outside the window!  Here are Dulcie and Kim's reactions to spotting it.  Dulcie was very excited to have tea with a tiger like Sophie did.

The zoo was up in the Swiss mountains and was FREEZING!  Here's Dulcie, with her cousin Angus, wearing three hats in an attempt to warm up.  I love this picture.  What a couple of sweethearts :)

And here's a group shot with one of the tigers as it took a break indoors for a while.

I made this pink rabbit-eared hat for my niece Ruth's Christmas three years ago and it's still a little on the large side for her (oh, my shoddy knitting skillz...) but well worn and well loved nonetheless.  It was getting passed around between everybody.  So cold...

So, all in all, a lovely holiday.  Dulcie thoroughly enjoyed everything about it, including the plane journey - most exciting!  This was my first time flying since I had my pacemaker/defibrillator put in.  I was a bit stressed about it, but it all went OK.  The staff on the way back weren't exactly sympathetic (couldn't see any problem in sending Dulcie wandering through the security gate on her own with nobody to meet her at the other side - sheesh...) but it all turned out fine.  I always used to get frisked at the airport anyway for some reason (I must look suspicious) so it didn't make much difference.

Hmmm.  What else happened in November?  Well, we had a rare family get-together as my cousin's baby was being christened and that meant a flying visit from Dulcie's great-granny, the Cailleach, which was obviously a very good thing.

Other than that, I spent a fair part of my free time that month making my decorations for the handmade decoration swap, but I will wait a while to share them here, just in case some of them haven't reached their further-afield destinations yet.  And I temporarily felt quite well and happy for a while with some hope for the future.  Now I'm back to being a sickly and depressed curmudgeon, naturally, but hey, it was nice while it lasted!

Well, I think that is my blog all up to date really.  I do think of this as a diary of sorts, so I didn't like to leave a big gap like that, especially when something quite momentous and noteworthy had happened in Dulcie's life.  I will try not to disappear again, I promise.