You can really go off people...

Joshua's going through a moany couple of days. A lack of sleep is the most likely cause, though he sadly doesn't believe me on this, and thinks that 6ish is the right sort of time to get up. This makes for a grumpy daddy... It is also coupled with him being annoying (I know, this from the cutest boy in the world does seem unlikely, but there you have it...). Yesterday it was this:
I'd started one of those 'photo mosaic' puzzles. It's Homer Simpson and I'd got as far as doing the edge and his face and both arms. Can you tell? No, that would be might sweet son 'helping'. Mind you, it's difficult to stay cross when within half an hour, it's all gone quiet and you find said son thus:
How can you be cross with that?
We've had a bit of snow recently. I have to emphasise a bit. A tiny amount has settled, not nearly as much as most of the rest of the country has had. Much to our disappointment. Anyway, it was enough to build a snowman.
Joshua, somewhat unnervingly, kept referring to him as 'little brother'. (I wouldn't say there was that much family resemblance myself). Particularly disturbing when he was blithely saying that, when it got hotter, little brother would melt. Odd boy.
If you're wondering about the scale of this snowman (which you probably weren't, but hey), then this next photo will give you a fair idea.
His eyes were raisins. Oh, and this is a shot of 'little brother' as his head fell off.

A few favourites.

Well, he's been coming out with them thick and fast recently, so here are a few comments from the last couple of days that I particularly enjoyed.

"Night night Henrietta", as we were locking the ride-on mower safely into the metal container it lives in. I was a bit confused about the name, as he'd christened the mower Bessie the day before. This afternoon, as we went out to do some more gardening, Joshua said, "we've got to be quiet, because Bessie is tired and will be sleeping."

"This is the best game I've played ever." Sounds very sweet, but considering he was, at the time, sat on the hall floor playing with the multiswitch for the Christmas lights, it was actually a little bit sad. In fact, when we had to go out, he reassured himself by saying, "yes, I can finish this game later."

"Daddy, daddy, daddy (shouted in a sort of emergency-related tone) there are THREE on." He was referring to the number of episodes of Bob the Builder that were on the telly. "There were two, and now another one has come on, so there are three on Daddy." Wow, I wish I could get so excited about such things. As it happens, I think he'd counted incorrectly, but I won't mention it...

Chores.

I figure that 3 is plenty old enough to start doing a few little jobs around the place. This week, we started with laying the table. Seemed, pretty straightforward to me. However, it's obviously not as easy as it appears ...
So, having established that table-laying wasn't really something that featured in his skills matrix (as they say), I thought maybe something a little more outdoorsy would be more fitting.Three problems spring to mind though:
1) He can't reach the brake (is that a problem? well, given his steering, yes)
2) He can't reach the lever to engage the mower blade
3) When the mower blade is engaged, he isn't actually heavy enough to be 'registered' by the seat, and so the power cuts off (it's a safety feature - blades engaged + driver off seat = powercut) I guess the bright spark who designed the cutoff feature figured that people driving would be over the age of three.
In all seriousness, we had a fantastic time mowing today. He's a bit nervous of the mower, which, frankly, isn't something I altogether discourage (though he clearly doesn't take after his father) because I reckon that a dose of anxiety may be useful in protecting him from doing silly things as a general rule (living in hope!). That said, he was more than happy to sit on my lap as we chuntered up and down the orchard hoovering up the leaves along the way. The aim wasn't actually cutting the grass, just clearing the leaves. Today was the first time in a while that it's been anywhere close to dry enough for such a task - I tried a couple of days ago and the leaves were glued to the ground with all the moisture (combo of rain and fog) we've had recently.

Have I mentioned that the boy is REALLY into taking photos at the moment. I could merrily set up another blog dedicated to photos he takes. But maybe four blogs is quite enough. For now, I'll just slip the odd one in here.
Unfortunately, he goes for the element of surprise, rather than taking time to compose his shot. This generally results in a picture that is less than flattering of the victim it features.

Funny fitness.

Ok, this was the funniest thing I've seen from him in a while. Fine, I missed it on camera, and here he's just stood there with hands on hips. But let me explain anyway. You can probably tell that the room he's standing outside is a gym. He wandered up to the window, saw what everyone inside was doing and started running on the spot, and looking through the window. It was absolutely priceless. I have no idea if anyone inside actually spotted the three-year-old outside copying them, but it was certainly amusing from my angle!

Those photos I mentioned.

Let's see if we have more luck this morning...
Oh ... hang on. I've just remembered these are off the 'new' camera. And therefore huge. Maybe I was just been uncharitable about the slowness of the computer...
Quick resize operation ... back in a minute...
Now some from the garden.

Outdoor activities...

Well, it was Sale of Work weekend, which made for a wild 24 hours...
I think about £9000 was raised by the event as a whole this weekend, so that's good stuff. We got to 96 apple crumbles, though they haven't yet all been sold, so are back in our fridge and freezer...
I really feel I should make 4 more, as it seems silly to do 96, and then stop, but given we haven't sold them all, perhaps I should call it a day. That then gives us a target for next year!
Anyways, it's pretty much all over now (apart from the sale of the last few crumbles ... maybe I should go around the neighbours and just give them away!
But the main reason for this post is to catch up with some photos... First, a couple from today, starting with Joshua doing his Cossack thing:Then some more from the garden (yes, there really are that many leaves on the lawn!)

Well, I say more from the garden, but my computer's just decided to stop letting me upload pictures...
Will post and then try again later.