A Life of Leisure?

So, I've gone and turned down a job already. A management position at Oxford Brookes Univeristty looked good on paper (and would have been very cool), but it conflicted with Anna's time with her dad. Or, perhaps, Dad's time with Anna. Regardless, negotiating for a later start was not on and I need to have a real go at this staying-at-home-with-Anna thing. It isn't as easy as one might think and you might as well be as good at bringing up a decent kid as rolling out a website, right? It might be ideal if one were better at bringing up a kid, I suppose.

Rationalizing things aside, Anna and I are keeping busy. We've joined the local library, we coffee daily, we've explored central Reading and we're even making progress on the potty. Jacqui Ferguson has arrived from Spain and will be spending a week or so with us before returning to Canada. Heather Arvidson is coming through next week for a day on here way to... well, somewhere other than here. Mum is talking of joining us for a week or so in November. Clearly, anything other than being available for friends and family isn't going to work for us this fall!

The strangest thing! Anna has taken to speakng pidgeon. Whenever she gets excited about seeing a dog or a bird, she does these crazy breathing noises. It sounds so much like pidgeon noises that Ange mistook the pidgeons outside the kitchen for Anna having woken up. In the included photo, she wasn't speaking pidgeon. People will note, however, why I had previously given up on using the term 'pants' for trousers...