Daisy Suzanne Allen

Born Sunday 6th March 2011

3¾ to 4 years old

Her life:  Birth ♥ Week 1 ♥ Weeks 2-3 ♥ Weeks 4-7 ♥ Weeks 8-13 ♥ Weeks 14-22 ♥ 5-7 months ♥ 7-8 months ♥ 8-10 months ♥ 1st Christmas ♥ 10-12 months ♥ 1st birthday party ♥ 12-15 months ♥ 15-18 months ♥ 18-21 months ♥ 21-24 months ♥ 2nd birthday ♥ 2-2½  years ♥ 2½-3 years ♥ 3rd birthday ♥ 3-3¼ years ♥ 3¼-3½ years ♥ 3½-3¾ years ♥ 3¾-4 years ♥ 4th birthday

In summary:  Index ♥ From birth to four years old ♥ Four years old onwards

Special features:  Daisy translator ♥ Daisy cookery ♥ Daisy phrases ♥ Golden Bear

We open this phase in early December 2015, with a fairly typical scene from a visit to Waterdale Close: playing on or watching Aunty Katie's smartphone.

This was an emotional scene, with Daisy saying goodbye to Golden Bear (who has his own website).

With Golden Bear put into a secure facility, Daisy parades one of those fancy new hands-free umbrellas for the walk to school.

I can assure you that the bag-on-head pose was all her own doing, but that's not to say that I didn't enjoy the temporary peace and quiet.

This was an impressive drawing by Daisy of a reindeer.

Occasionally, Daisy will talk of wanting to play on the "person game", which is the application on the Wii where you create and play around with the Miis.  That inevitably leads to a request to play on one of the Wii Fit games, including the skiing as pictured here.  She is best at the bubble river game, provided that I control Daisy's balance.

One afternoon in mid-December, I took the afternoon off to go to Daisy's nativity play with Lynne and Gregory.  The nursery class were the ones at the back, all wearing animal face masks and providing the backing singing.  The reception class paraded in front.  The contrast of being at the back of the dark room and with the bright lights on the stage meant that it was impossible for Daisy to make us out (but she was happy to see us at the end), but also that it was difficult to get a decent photo from my iPhone.  You can just about make her out.  Just to the left of the children in green and pink, you can see two rabbit ears (one on particular since it is more visible against the black top behind).  They are Daisy's.

Daisy dressed up in her party gear for the last (half) day of school.  I think it looks a bit 1950s (not that this is a bad thing).

After Christmas, it was of course time to play with all the presents that Daisy had accumulated.  The doll house jigsaw was a present from James and Katy.  Daisy was pleased to pose beside it as she managed to do it all by herself, helped by the colour coded rooms and the chunky-sized pieces.

On New Year's Eve, we had an invite for lunch round at Shereen, John and Hannah's, although it turned out to be an Elsa dress-off, which I wasn't expecting.

On the first Saturday in 2015, Lynne took Daisy to see the latest Tinkerbell film at the Trafford Centre, where she seemed to enjoy a rather large milkshake.

After a buffet curry at the Nawaab restaurant in Levenshulme, Aunty Katie and Nana Sue (not pictured) came back to do some hand puppetry (I think).  I'm pretty sure that Daisy didn't eat her curry in the Elsa dress so it must have been adorned on her return.  It's basically becoming her second skin.

While Lynne was up in Edinburgh for Grandma Avis' birthday weekend, winter got a whole lot more wintry, as an abrupt snow shower covered the lawn with a smattering of white.

Later that day, I had found myself choosing the lesser of two evils when Daisy asked if she could do some gluing.  Refuse and face the wrath, or agree and risk a big mess.  There were ready made precautions to be taken, though, as you can see below.  The main risk was for glitter to get EVERYWHERE.

With the dance class on Saturday mornings proving increasingly unpopular (I had taken her the week before with the result being lots of tears, and I don't think she had gone this Saturday morning), a new favourite was gymnastics, for which she was trying on her outfit.

After the snow teaser earlier in the month, the end of January saw some proper snow arriving, pretty much the first multiple-inch snowfall since Daisy was old enough to appreciate it.  So that is what she did, building a modest-sized snowman with Lynne in the back garden.

I asked her to stay still for a random photo, with the intention of getting her to smile, but instead she fixed me with a stare.  She did give me some shifty smiles afterwards but she was on the move and they are not as good.

With Lynne unwell (I think), I took Daisy to Elliot's 4th birthday party in early February (the parties are coming thick and fast now).  Elliot clearly loves all things marine-based and thus it was a theme running all through his party, including the ingenious banana dolphins.

The entertainment was a middle-aged (I'm being generous) couple.  For one section, they encouraged the children to sit on the chair and sing a song of their choosing.  Daisy, bold as brass, marched up there, announced her name and a determination to sing Humpty Dumpty, which she did with a very strong voice.  She can be shy sometimes but here she demonstrated her skills as a born performer (by which I mean she never shuts up at home).

Mid-February and Daisy had a(nother) fall at school, cracking her head on a shelf after stumbling (which led to a slightly alarming exchanging of phone calls and texts).  She is now a strong favourite to take the school injury report champion 2014/15 having developed a healthy lead.  All this is making her choice of Humpty Dumpty earlier a little self-referential.  Fortunately, whilst they couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again, Daisy is made of granite and thus the shelf probably had more damage done to it.  Her cut here was soon healed.

That weekend we had the girls Allen round for a short while, which prompted mass use of smartphones and tablets.  Gregory is looking at me as if to say "are you going to play with me, 'cos this lot are distracted by technology?".

Later that day, we had visitors from Edinburgh in the form of Daisy's cousin Becky and her mother Louise (Lynne's sister).  They were staying for four nights, leading to rather more chaotic times.  Put it this way: my exits to work in the morning were swift.

Bathtime for three children inevitably throws up some logistical challenges, but having a decent-sized bath does help, since you can chuck them all in (not literally) together.  They all seemed to get on, so that was ok.  Lynne was taking photos at the same time here, which explains why they are not all looking in the same direction, although that is generally a challenge anyway.

After the Rowllings had returned, it was back to more normal bathtimes.  Gregory was getting ever more comfortable in the big bath.  He was starting to manoeuvre himself around more, chasing after toys as they floated away on the waves caused by his movement.

The arrival of a new car seat of course required the box to be converted into something to play with.  Daisy immediately grabbed a black felt-tip pen and draw a steering wheel and seat (not pictured).  We're now hoping we don't have to send the car seat back!

It could also be a base for them, although Gregory looks like he thinks he shouldn't be there.

Towards the end of February we thought we would treat ourselves to a Saturday evening tea at Frankie & Benny's.  Lynne and Daisy shared a banana milkshake thing.

The next day, Vicky & Paul came round for a quick play with the children (and maybe to see us, although that is always less clear cut).  Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of them, but I did get one of Daisy trying the meditation game, sat on the balance board tring not to move.  Vicky and Paul were privileged enough to get their own Miis on the "person game", so that is something.  It is basically their very own place in a not-very-famous hall of fame.

With Gregory getting every stronger and more mobile, Daisy, here rocking the Madonna look, was always on hand to offer moral support, whilst also risking jeopardising whatever Gregory was doing.

At the end of February, Daisy was laid low with a strange bug that left her weak and unwilling to eat or drink anything.  She was a bit better on the Saturday so we went along to Hannah's 4th birthday party (Daisy is off to the right here).

The party was notable for an entertainer with a dry sense of humour and a very impressive cake crafted by Shereen.

And with that we're approaching the end of Daisy's 4th year...

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