The Sword of Doom!

Arthur had Excalibur, Luke his lightsabre and even He-Man (a quick nod to She-Ra as well) got his power from his sword. Following in that fine tradition is Isabelle with her ‘Sword of Doom’ – sounds a tad melodramatic I know but it’s named after a sword from a Scooby Doo episode apparently. She gave it the name not us.

It actual fact it’s technically a sword of Sherwood Forest as it was bought at Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre last New Year. Thankfully she doesn’t carry round on her back (just yet) like Conan or try and ride Missy or Max like Battlecat but she does insist on sleeping with it.

Obviously conversations about crime rates being down had very little impact on Iz, in fact it isn’t even as if she sleeps with it under her pillow she sleeps with it lined up next to her other menagerie of animals. Fittingly perhaps one of those said animals is a Robin Hood bear (from my days at The World of Robin Hood) who is rather battle-scarred as he has no legs, not that Iz is fussed.

Placing them and Anxious in bed are a part of the essential bedtime regime and of course all three end up in ours if she comes in with us.

Over the weekend Iz could be found using some of her unused nappies to dress her animals (or children as she sometimes refers to them) this of course included the Robin Hood bear and (hard to believe I know) her ‘Sword of Doom’, whose style and name was rather cramped I must say by suffering the indignity of having to wear a pink Disney Princess nappy. You certainly don’t get that on Game of Thrones!

The Elephant New-man: Anxious, an elephant never to forget

At the tail end of last summer we went to Cornwall and stayed at Havens, whilst there Isabelle came across a person that has been a part of her life ever since, that person was an elephant and its name was Anxious.

There were other numerous costumed characters that were there to entertain but Iz only had eyes and ears for a giant pink elephant in a blue polka dot dress. She would dash to great the elephant if she saw it on site, queued to have her photo taken with it and inevitably came home with her very own cuddly toy version.

Damn those pesky marketing and merchandise folk! To be fair the only other alternative would have been to have kidnapped the person in their suit and that just wouldn’t have been practical on so many levels, they’d have taken up far too much room in the car for starters.

We might have numerous versions of Peppa and George, they look almost like a troupe of piggy Russian dolls, and even had  a fling with characters from In the Night Garden but as soon as Anxious came into her life, that was pretty much it. It’s like she’s Andy and Anxious is her Woody. in fact I’d probably say the pair are more Thelma and Louise. Put it this way I think we can safely say that it was the best £12 we have ever spent.

Of course they say an elephant never forgets and Iz she never (like ever ever) forgets to ask for her Anxious wherever she is going, whether it be in the car, out in the garden or especially to bed. We’ve had a couple of moments were Anxious has gone AWOL or she’s been left round at Grandma and Granddad’s (thankfully Southend variety, Nottinghamshire versions would have been unimaginable). Cue screaming tyres to quell the potential of screaming child.

It’s been difficult but we’ve had to think the unthinkable, what happens if Anxious is left behind or lost? Shudder. We are seriously looking at getting a Monty’s Double, a doppelgänger, a cuddly Anxious of the same size and stature.

Certainly that day is looming where Anxious Mark I is going to have to have her own bath or trip in the washing machine, despite wearing labels saying surface wash only, as she’s filthy as hell. When she went with us to hospital when Isabelle was last in I’m surprised she wasn’t riddled with MRSA! This week alone she’s rough and tumbled it in the garden, been in numerous beds…including the dog’s and practically been used to clean the floor in our local supermarket when Iz and Anxious tried their own impromptu version of Bolero.

Certainly we really want to have a plan be when her head becomes severed mid-wash or…god forbid…the colours in her dress run. I know this tale all too well as in my dim and dark past I too had my own Anxious but this was no elephant this wasa ghost of the friendly kind, Casper.

I’ve never had the most colour so I don’t know if I took a liking to it because it looked more anemic than me or what but it would go everywhere with me in my pushchair, cue Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid style montage with Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head playng in the background. Until one day, Casper had gone. My mum had told me that Casper had crossed to the other side…crossed to the other side of the supermarket more like! He was lost, never to be seen again.

To be fair I don’t think Iz cares that Anxious is covered in dirt, she’s a toy that she gets great pleasure from and has been through the same scrapes she has. They are best of buds and like Bagpuss to Emily, it doesn’t matter if she gets a bit tired and dog-eared she’ll still love Anxious.

We will keep one in reserve for times of break glass in case of emergency moments but if ‘Imposter Anxious’ (think The Elephant Man Who Haunted Himself) took over I’d kind of feel like we’d lied to Iz and that the pink animal’s eyes she’d been staring into where not the same as those she’d shared some of her first adventures and journeys  with.

They’d been made on the same production line but like the T-800 (in Terminator 2 onwards at least), like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit our Anxious was different, she’s absorbed all of those experiences into her very stuffing. She smells of many things but most of all she smells of Isabelle, even if it’s a mixture of blood, sweat and tears.

She is not simply a stuffed animal, she is the Elephant Newman!

The Great Hatsby

Leonardo DiCaprio and co are hitting screens in the latest adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, sumptuously brought to life by Baz Luhrmann, the stylish Director of Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge.

Set in the 20′s it’s obviously big on style and fashion, channeling the surge of hats inspired by the remake of Gatsby, Isabelle (and friends) donned their own headgear…in a fashion all of their own.

With a startled dog, pink elephant in a dress and Isabelle’s fit of laughter it was certainly more The Great Muppet Caper than The Great Gatsby.

Yes, I did have to wear a hat, no I’m not adding the pics.

Loving Rossi’s Iz-cream

After building up an appetite going bonkers on the beach Iz was rewarded with her first Rossi’s ice-cream of the year. She made a meal of it alright, then a drink of it and then a dogs dinner of it, sharing it with Missy.

We hit the beach tag-team style as one of us had to stay with Missy (sorry Miss, so close yet so very far and all you wanted to do was join in with Iz) and the pushchair.

When the sun was out it was rather glorious, ruddy windy mind but rather nice all the same, until the sun shot behind a white cloud to catch its breath.

Not that Iz was arsed or that she paused for breath, she was all for going into the water but I managed to disuede her of sorts by saying that we didn’t have any towels with us. Far more logical to a 2.5 year old than saying the sea of Southend-on will be very fricking cold.

And of course where Isabelle went Anxious the elephant wasn’t far behind, when she wasn’t being dropped or left to rise in the pushchair. When Iz stormed the beach with her it was like she was saving her like a character from Baywatch.

I’m actually surprised that half the stone-filled beach isn’t here after being brought home in Iz’s pockets, she has brought bits of it back every other beach she has been on. She did do plenty of picking stones up though so she was obviously contemplating it.

Alas they weren’t the skimming kind, it’s a dad thing that has to be normally done with your son or daughter on the beach, it’s the law, but Iz and Sarah did go exploring, all of which filled Missy with increasingly paniced bark as they got further and further away.

They of course returned, posing here for a rather nice mother and daughter pic on the steps down to the beach.

Play it again Newman!

Or think Piano Newman. Whether it’s dancing in front of the TV, singing in the car or playing her musical instruments in the bath – her flute playing could even put Anchorman to shame – Iz has also had something of a musical streak.

I don’t know if she’s ever encountered a piano in real life before as such but she certainly knew what it was and what to do with it when she spied it in a village hall recently. It was like one of those ones you always got in schools and she could soon be found tinkling on the ivories and I thought she sounded quite tuneful, even though she was playing nothing in particular.

As Eric Morecambe once said, she was playing all the right notes but not necercerally in the right order.

Little Miss Sunshine

Donning one of her multiple pairs of sunglasses and her swimming costume Iz hit her Grandma and Grandad’s back garden and she owned it, lazing with her feet dangling in her paddling pool like a Hollywood star.

We were there for the first BBQ of the year and Iz was doubly excited as her cousins, Jamie and Amelia, were also in attedance. She followed Amelia round as if she was her shadow, following her wherever she went, playing catch, eating together and Iz hanging on and laughing at her every word. There was some serious heroine worship going on.

With not enough sun-soaked hours in the day Iz had to combine activities to cram them all in, such as eating and trampolining, a shoe in to be an Olympic sport surely…plus any time saved obviously meant more able to be spent with Amelia.

All this hero worship and its accompanying running around was clearly thirsty work and Iz obviously looks up to Amelia, in more ways than one.

Of course all good things must come to an end and inevitably people had to go home and tears were had but the memories and fun had during the sunny day will long linger.

Come whatever the weather, rain or shine, I think that Isabelle’s future’s so bright she’s going to have to wear shades…on top of her head optional of course!

Calendar Girl

Well, here we are, blog entry 300…

Sarah’s been to see The Full Monty on stage which reminded me of Calendar Girls which in turn made this entry spring to mind and I thought it a fitting one being the 300th, a milestone of sorts.

For the last couple of years Sarah and I have put together The Official Isabelle Newman calendars for ourselves and our mums and dads. Anyone that knows me will know that we certainly aren’t short of Isabelle photography to pick from but it is always a challenge.

Sure, it may not prove as popular as the, er, Cliff Richard calendar but I know which I’d rather have hanging in my hallway. Besides it’s nice to have her greet you at the top of the stairs everytime you come in after a long day at work, which to be fair she pretty much does in person as well.

The trick, for me, was picking images even taken in that month or images that represented that particular month. Some, like October with Halloween, and August, the month of her birthday were easier than others. It was also about trying to chart her progress over that previous year so trying to capture her changing look and growing personality as well…not something that probably will bother the makers of The Official Justin Bieber calendar 2014.

Each year you almost set the bar higher than the last as well, especially if xyz month last year hard a particularly strong image to go with it, the other thing is you don’t want to go for a straight rehash of what featured for that month last year either. Who’d have thought selecting 12 images, 13 counting the cover, was so difficult!

It’s kind of fun to know that part of the images that will be forming next year’s calendar probably haven’t even been taken yet, so it almost acts as a fun retrospective of the year gone by when we start looking through the photographic runners and riders at the end of November onwards

Even though we’d picked the pictures it was quite something else to see them actually printed and in their calendar form. As the year progresses its nice to be surprised at the next smiling picture of Isabelle and the memories that they evoke, especially as for the most part its been me who was pressing the shutter to capture that month’s moment.

Various companies and stores to such calendars where you design the layout online and even the font used on the cover and right down to the paper finish. We’ve used Printerpix each time and I’ve always been impressed with both the design process and the finished article. It helps biding your time on when you are getting them done as if you wait for the rrp with multiple prints and delivery it can work out rather costly but they are always doing offers, especially on the run up to Christmas.

As the calendars become out of date we are saving them in a nice little box as a visual record for Iz when she is older. Quite what she’ll make of them is anyones guess but I can promise you this much future Iz, we won’t do a bedspread or curtains…Sarah does have you as her iPhone cover mind!