Wordless Wednesday – 17/08/2011

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The Not So Speedy Gonzales

After weeks of commando style crawling and simultaneous cleaning of my floorboards with his top and jeans, Baby Boy yesterday started crawling. Our reaction was one of “awwwww” followed by “arggggghhhh!” when he made a beeline straight for the shiny silver coloured fireplace griddle. The hearth is giving him vast amounts of amusement as he smacks his hand on it and then rattles the griddle as if trying to pull it off. Oh crap! I now have two massive floor cushions blocking the entire thing. Thankfully this has either confused him or he’s forgotten. Either way he’s left it alone. For now. (Cue frantic purchasing of fireguard!).

Between yesterday afternoon and this morning (approximately 4 hours of rug time), he’s learned the following new tricks:

– getting stuck in what looks like about 2 inches of space between a wall and tables
– getting stuck under a table
– Pulling or attempting to gnaw laptop charger / iPod charger / wires in general
– Various attempts to ascend the fireplace

He’s not even properly got going yet!
Could someone mop my brow?

Silent Sunday – 14/08/11

Check out the other Silent Sundays this week by clicking the link below!

10 Things You Don’t Know About Me

I always think Meme’s like this must be easy to do. When I got tagged by the lovely TheBoyAndMe it dawned on me it’s a wee bit harder than i thought! Ive dug deep so here goes…

1. I have 2 brothers and no sisters I grew up a bit of a tomboy playing every type of gaming console there was. In fact, I could kick your arse on Street Fighter 2 just with Guy’s sonic boom! I started becoming girlie after about 16.

2. I am one of 21 grandchildren on my mums side. We range from 34 years old to 6! In about 2 weeks we will be having one of our big family gatherings. It’ll be pretty mental, with about 4 dinner sittings.

3. I am of Indian ethnicity, born and bred in Bolton. My parents and grandparents have got around a bit (travel wise!!). My mum is from Kenya, Dad from India, and grandparents from Johannesburg, Madagascar and Burma. I’ve only ever visited India from the above.

4. I got my first car when I was 22 and crashed it on a motorway 10 days later, causing a 3 car accident. The guys I went into the back of had just driven back from France and were on their way to Wales. They were not amused but were perfect gentleman after they saw me wailing how sorry I was. It was a bugger on my insurance for a few years.

5. I met my OH when we were both 18 at university. He is the more sensible ying to my excitable impulsive yang. We got married 2 years ago and have a gorgeous baby boy.

6. I have anger management issues. Not the raging violent type, but more the not-knowing-how-to channel-it-very well-type. I need to learn to express my anger in the moment, rather than take it out on my OH afterwards and think about what I could have said.

7. I was an awful teenager. I think i stropped all the way to 16 and used plenty of “it’s not fair!!”. I was also always forever pushing the limits of my curfew. I once came home at 2am (aged 16) after a night out with my friends. Amazingly, my dad only had a brief chat with me about worrying about my safety after waiting up me for me. I didn’t do it again.

8. I don’t drink (being Muslim) or eat non halal meat. I’m not a great Muslim as such but believe in God, heaven, hell etc. I went to mosque till I was 14 from 4.30 after school till 7pm!! I must have been knackered as a child!

9. I last saw my grandmother on my wedding day. I got caught up in the honeymoon period of my marriage for the next few months. She died 6 months after I got married. Not seeing her more often is a big personal regret.

10. I’ve met Tom Cruise at the premiere of Collateral. I was in Leicester Square by chance and ended up waiting an hour and half to see him. He is lovely!! We chatted chatted for a few minutes and even got the eager crowd to move back and stop squashing me! I was so star struck I forgot to take a picture of him!

There you have it! Now I tag…..

@ThisisMommyhood
@mum2babyinsomniac
@cafebebe
@alysonsblog
@inceywinceymum
@pinkyaks

The Gallery – Water

This week the theme for The Gallery on Tara’s Sticky Fingers Blog is “Water”.

A few years ago, a bunch of us went on a trip to Morrocco.  I imagined a trip mostly wandering through the streets of Marrakech, eating lots of spicy and Frency influenced cuisine and then spending the evenings in the big square Djema-El-Fnaa; which is exactly what we did.

One particular day, however, our lovely Riad owner (Riad’s are like small boutique hotels very common throughout Marrakech, usually very homely looking and typically compromising of an internal courtyard and rooms surrounding it, keeping it all very cool and airy) suggested we may want to vist the Atlas Mountains.

“Umm, no thanks.  It sounds gorgeous but we don’t have any mountain climbing gear with us. Besides, I’d probably slip and crack my head open.”

The friendly Riad owner insisted we could pretty much wander around the “lower levels” (there are 7 in total), and we’d be prefectly safe, yet get to see some of the valleys at least.  After a bit of umming and ahhing we agreed and decided we could soak up the views if nothing else.

So off we went the next day and were allocated 2 guides (who looked suspiciously like local lads!) and drove about 45 minutes to outside Marrakech to the valleys leading to the Atlas range.

The valleys are where the Berber community reside and alot of them live in homes built in and around the valleys and Mountains.   Equipped with our 2 (local lad) guides, we discovered the valleys were filled with flowing streams and found out that the reason there were 7 levels was because there were 7 waterfalls!  I was also surprised to see this was a hotspot for family days out and people came to cool off from the city heat, get a bit of fresh air and have general paddle in the water.

The waterfall at Level 1 was impressive for something, I presume, was the baby of the 7 waterfalls.

Level 1

We only managed up 2 levels before the valley and rocks started looking steeper and not something I would ever be able to climb in a combination of flip flops and trainers I normally used to lounge in!!  Apparently the waterfalls got more and more spectacular as you got to the higher levels, but alas that is something we’ll just have to visit one day.

But my absolute favourite bit….

This is a Berber fridge!  It was a little shop set up halfway through the valley selling cold soft drinks and bottled water.  If you look closely, there is a little sprinkler system over the bottles, powered via a hose pipe directly through the free flowing streams.  This little irrigation system exists, apparently, in some of the homes situated in the valley that may not own an electric fridge.    We were so impressed and ooooh’d and ahhhh’d and then took lots of snaps of it.

(A few seconds after we moved on, I turned around to see another bunch of tourists doing exactly the same thing.  The cynic in me thinks maybe this was a deliberately placed little attraction.  But still.  Impressed me!).