Book of the Week: Ladbird Favourite Fairytales

I'm attempting to resurrect my much neglected Book of the Week series.

This week's seal of approval goes to the Ladybird versions of classic fairytales.* Little E received "Little Red Hen", "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," "The Three Little Pigs" and "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" for her second birthday and has been having a great time with them. They would be good for early readers to practice on, but they are also fun to read aloud. I am really enjoying her enjoyment of such familiar stories.

They are straightforward renditions of the classic tales, with a bit of rhyme and humour. The illustrations are bright and simple. Most pages involve the characters making a comment in speech bubbles which is lost on Little E but which I think would be appealing to a child learning to read. The books themselves are hardcover but with paper pages (ie, not board books) and they are cute easy-to-hold squares.

E is particularly enthusiastic about The Three Little Pigs. Her "rest" yesterday consisted of her going to bed with a pile of books and yelling "little pig little pig let me in" at the top of her voice for 20 minutes.

I was initially a little apprehensive that E would be frightened or upset by some of the more gruesome aspects of fairytales but it hasn't bothered her so far, quite possibly because she doesn't understand it. The demise of the first two pigs is phrased as something like "and that was the end of the first little pig." When D paused his recital of the story to ask E what she thought happened to the pig, she said "he ran home to his mummy."

Needless to say, all four of these books get big thumbs-up from us.

 *This is not a sponsored post.

Hip hip hurrah! The crowd went wild!

The crowd consisting of me, and 20 plastic animals, that is.

The reason? A wee in the potty. A "need potty please" wee in the potty.

That was around lunch time and there have been two more since then.

In between, I rushed out and bought a couple of sheets of stickers to be handed out every time a wee or poo lands in an appropriate destination.

I'm sure there will be set backs, but the beginning of the end of nappies is very, very exciting.
 

And now we wait

Before (from about July 2011):

First step: get enormous pallet of limestone delivered. These are actually the leftovers, photographed to be advertised on Gumtree. Fortunately a nice man came and gave us $30 for them shortly afterwards.

Second step: wait a good two months or so for Perth to decide that it wasn't necessary to turn on temperatures of 30 degrees plus every day such that the thought of hefting around 65kg blocks wasn't completely ridiculous.

Third step: enlist a few helpers and convince them to spend two mornings of the Easter weekend doing some seriously heavy lifting:

Thanks Craig! Thanks Cillian!

Not all "helpers" were as helpful as each other.
That plastic crocodile (the beloved Tom) you can just see in E's hand?
He definitely didn't pull his weight ... ha ha.

And ...

... voila! 

We have a wall! Compare the first photo to this one and see how crazily the passionfruit vine has taken off between last June and now:

Then we got a huge load of dirt delivered, managed to get it into the new garden bed with just a wheelbarrow and shovels, and just in time. That night was the wettest weekend we've had since last winter.

And look what we've done since!

The seeds are from Eden Seeds. From the shed onwards they are: broad beans at the back and dwarf sugar snap peas at the front; in the next section, pak choi and red Russian kale; in the third section, rocket and rainbow silverbeet; in the fourth section, nothing yet but plans for carrots, potatoes and radishes. About half the seeds are protected with the miniature greenhouses that worked so well last year - the rest will be as soon as we drink up enough soda water to make some more! 

I am very excited at the prospect of having our own veggies in a few months time. I am even hopeful that we have planted enough that D and I might get to eat a few - one of E's favourite games over summer has been "finding 'matoes" and needless to say D and I barely got to taste one!

Left to her own devices ...

... E decided to wear her hat inside and show her toys a good time.