Daisy Suzanne Allen

Born Sunday 6th March 2011

5 to 5½ years old

Her life:  4 to 4¼ years ♥ 4¼ to 4½ years ♥ 4½ to 4¾ years ♥ 4¾ to 5 years ♥ 5th birthday ♥ 5 to 5½ years ♥ 5½ to 6 years ♥ 6th birthday ♥ 6 to 6½ years ♥ 6½ to 7 years ♥ 7th birthday ♥ 7 to 7½ years ♥ 7½ to 8 years ♥ 8th birthday ♥ 8 to 8½ years ♥ 8½ to 9 years ♥ 9th birthday

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

Special features:  Golden Bear (reprise) ♥ More cookery

We start Daisy's sixth year with a wonderful piece of prose, which she was wont to do as she was showing an increasing fondness for writing.  She was still in the phase of writing foe-net-ick-lee hence the odd, often amusing, misspelling (although often it's simply a quirk of the English language that you can only pick up by rote learning many of the bizarre rules).  I particularly like the finishing line of "see you soon", very much encouraging us to come back for the next instalment.

As the wintery months start to take hold (it's November as I write this), it's always a bit strange to look back to the bright, warming hope that was spring.  A relatively mild spell in mid-March enabled an outdoor lunch, which featured the usual cold food selection, such as carrot sticks, bread, cheese and tomatoes.

The barren wasteland of the vegetable patch gives the game away in terms of the time of the year, but we start proceedings off with some hanging baskets.  I seem to remember that this initial enthusiasm soon waned and I was left to finish it all off.

It's not altogether apparent what has taken place here, as Gregory legs it from a very calm, considered Daisy.

The next day (the Sunday) is sufficiently warm for short sleeves, and more vegetable patch rampaging, of course.

For Easter, Daisy pulled together a sterling effort for the Easter bonnet, which she made at home for school.

On Good Friday, we headed to the Chestnut Centre, an owl and wildlife park in Chapel-en-le-Frith, as it was forecast to be the nicest weather of the bank holiday weekend.  They tasked any visiting children with finding all the eggs, which all had letters on leading to you spell a word at the end.  Here is Daisy spotting one of those eggs...

...and climbing trees.  This was taken by Lynne as I was off wandering with Gregory (as in: pulled along by him as he strained at the leash).  She looks very casual here (apart from the hair), but I've no idea how she got up here.

Eggwatch update.  This egg was a present from Aunty Katie.  The intersection of craftwork and chocolate is perhaps the perfect place for Daisy to inhabit.

The design is well on the way.

And here is the finished product.  It's smiling now but that smile will be wiped off its face when it gets smashed up and eaten by a hungry five year old.

For the bank holiday weekend, having promised during her 5th birthday that I would make it some time later (having not done so on the day), I made Daisy's favourite dessert, i.e. lemon tart (a favourite from Christmas).

Cooking it is one thing, but eating it is infinitely better.

Despite Easter weekend being over, the Easter fun still continues, with Daisy messing around by wearing two sets of Easter bunny ears.

Charlie Roberts and Daisy often share a school walk (with their respective mothers) and often, it seems, lark about with road signs.

It's early April now and they are in full make-a-complete-mess-of-the-lounge mode.  And still the rabbit theme continues.

This might have been, if I remember, a birthday present from Aunty Katie.

Here is the result of her labours, although I think she got stressed out and by it all and immediately took it all apart.

Round at Nana Sue's on Waterdale close for Gregory's 2nd birthday party (for more on this, see this page), sometimes it's all too much and you just need to chill out in a comfy chair with your thumb firmly ensconced in your mouth.

Gregory's actual birthday was on the Monday and naturally Daisy was extremely keen to help him with the present opening, sharing in his joy of discovery, or even enjoying it more.

Once the presents were opened, Gregory was lost in playing with them (particularly any vehicular presents, which did make up a fair proportion of them as you might expect).  Meanwhile, Daisy busied herself with the role of reading out the birthday cards.

Later on Gregory's birthday, we headed down to Tatton Park to see some of the Roald Dahl-themed activities.  Here we ventured into Dairy Wood Way to see the Enormous Crocodile.

Daisy was tasked with spotting the crocodile footsteps.

There is another photo with Gregory on the other side, but this looks funnier.

She was genuinely without company here, as she was having a bit of a sulk over something.

I don't recall if this telescope actually worked.  It was at a good height for Daisy, anyway.

Gregory seems a mixture of nonplussed and concerned with Daisy's commandeering of this small green car.

Daisy loves a good obstacle course, walking across tyres...

...and squeezing through, er, decapitated trees.

But the ultimate in challenges is the maze, which Daisy seems to be memorising the layout for.

She certainly relished the prospect of founding her way through it.

Sure enough, Daisy managed to locate the middle of the maze.

A visit to the ice cream farm later in the week (it was the Easter school holidays) saw Daisy commandeer Chuggy the Tractor.

You can't come to an ice cream farm without having a ruddy great ice cream.  Daisy is enjoying hers, but not as much as her friend Charlotte is.

At the weekend, we were hosting an Allens games night at ours.  We invited them round early to have tea with the kids.

This is the kidn of thing that can happen if you leave your phone lying around whilst you are cooking tea.  A lesson to us all.  (Although it says "remote session" so maybe this is something that Matt later sent me.  But let's not ruin the story.)

As it approached bedtime, the three kids snuggled under a blanket with varying degrees of enjoyment.

The next day, with the weather set fair, it was time for a game of Run Around The Tree.

In what seems to be a crazy flurry of action, we later went to Alice's birthday party, which had (I barely need to point out) a Frozen theme.  I can see three Annas (and a Gregory).

At the end of the singing and story-telling, it was time for a group stare-at-different-cameras photo shoot.

Skipping forward a couple of weeks, it's time for Matt's birthday meal in Oldham (although Daisy only just features in this one).

She does feature here, though, grabbing her little brother with big sisterly love.

The angst of a five-year old girl ("all my life is being ruined, stupid, I hate my life").  Lynne was suitably concerned about this to text it to me and ask if we should be worried.  She does have these moments.

More to come.

And we're back, for the time of the year when we're full of hope, before the disappointing yields of some crops, the eternal battle against weeds, and the dead leaf invasion. I'm not actually sure what we were planting here, if anything, but that is where potatoes went at some point.  We're currently in early May.

A fairly rare treat of a picnic (complete with individual lunch bags) in the lounge sat on the sofa watching TV.  Lynne would surely bemoan the crumbs but I'm a bit more relaxed on such things.

Signs that you've almost outgrown your slide include being nearly able to touch the floor when sat at the top.  The last three photos are all from the same day - what fun we were having.

This is from the next day and given the wearing of hats in both these photos (not for Gregory, obviously, since he point blank refuses - stubborn, that one... where does he get it from? etc), it would seem to be fairly glorious weather for the time of year that we're experiencing.

And here is the ultimate sign of good weather: the paddling pool.  This is largely because the ability to have the water at any other than ruddy cold is difficult (several kettles of boiling water do little to counteract the chill of the outside water supply), so there has to be a reasonable element of warmth in the air to even consider it.

But then again, you can always wrap up warm in hooded towels afterwards so perhaps it doesn't matter too much.

They had sufficiently regained warmth to attack some ice lollies, one of which dangerously hovers over Kitty, surely ready to unleash a number of tiny orange bombs.  Not sure why they can't look at me, though.

Probably the first barbecue of the year and fire safety officer Daisy Allen (gloved, hatted, booted and, er, shaded up to the max) is on hand lest anything goes wrong, while Gregory aims for a trendy catalogue pose.

Posing with pigtails and a thoughtful Gregory, as well as a cheeky look on her face.

Next weekend it was my birthday weekend, for which I decided that we should go to the local curry house for tea.  Again the weather was set fair and, to work up an appetite, Daisy scooted around the back garden and Gregory engaging in some basketball, with Aunty Katie looking on all the while.

The three kids, big, not as big and little, joined hands for the walk to the restaurant.

It was more or less meant to be that Daisy should have this dessert.  It's not a popular course in a curry house but when you have children then afters become somewhat obligatory.

A quick shot of one of Daisy's hair dos for school, always done by Lynne and not me (as you might expect).  I certainly wouldn't be capable of doing this elaborate plaiting.

One of Daisy's creative efforts.  Probably a tiger.

This is the magical golden sweatshirt that each child in the class gets at least once during the year, in each year of the school, for a whole week.  It is absolutely not a random allocation but is instead based on something of merit.  She's clearly happy with it here and poses multiple times with Gregory, with varying degrees of success.  This, I think, is the second time with the golden sweatshirt in her first year.

With the sun out and the Whitsun holiday in full flow, Lynne clearly got more creative when finding things for the children to do, here giving them free rein to show their artistic painting skills on a long roll of paper.  That ended badly when my mum did it for Matt and me as we decided it would be more fun to involve the wall too.  That did not, it turned out, go down well.

Still May (just about) and yet more sunny weather, so outside we go once more, this time for a spot of lunch.

Later that week, Lynne took them to the Greater Manchester Police Museum, where Daisy tried on a police hat.  The strawberry pink coat is non-standard issue, however.

Still at the museum, Daisy crouches down to pose with the, er, fire dog...

...and in front of a fire engine.  It's not a career she has mentioned, but you never know.

Later that day, I harvested a good deal of rhubarb from the vegetable patch and so Daisy and I made some rhubarb and strawberry crumble.  (From memory, I don't Daisy really liked it that much - the crumble was nice, obviously, but the cooked fruit is a bit tart for many tastes, including mine.)

Daisy's creativity knew little bounds.  I was particularly impressed with this design of opticians, complete with window flaps and a chimney.  The whole thing opened to show a sight test going on with a rack of glasses well-placed near by.

A typical paddling pool scene: Daisy loves to hurtle and leap into the water while Gregory loves to fill it up...

...and then SPLASH DOWN!

This is good posing for the camera: a fixed smile with a hint of crazy.

The next day of a warm early June and more of the same really.  Given it's barely above freezing as I right this, it looks like a completely different world altogether.

For some reason, the frog tent has two small, child's head-shaped holes for them to peer into.

We then went to Center Parcs [link eventually to appear here] for a few days, before we reverted back to what is a familiar morning scene, particularly at the weekend.  Daisy plays on her tablet and Gregory, rather than necessarily playing on his, prefers to watch over her shoulder.

This is probably a fair reflection of where Daisy's view of the film Frozen had evolved to at this point, with (probably) Anna asking Elsa not to sing that blasted song.

A couple of days later and this is a more typical evening scene, as they both sit in the toy, er, sack-thing, ready for bed.

Towards the end of June, I had spent a long weekend away cycling in the Alps (which is as hard as it sounds [link eventually to appear here, maybe]), which including being away for father's day.  On my return, I was greeted with a card from Daisy, welcoming me back.

This is another of Daisy's particularly impressive constructions, featuring a number of attached pieces to form an almost life-sized person.

It's 9am on a Sunday in early July and things haven't quite got going yet.  We'd spent the day before at the Barlows', for their almost annual kids' day [link to appear here, maybe] and so were probably taking it easy.  Daisy had at least managed to get dressed and ready, but Gregory was still in his pyjamas and we hadn't even opened the back curtain.  It was probably too bright outside.

Lynne had headed out to see Nic and Suze for lunch and cinema, so we decamped to the back garden for the obligatory outside picnic lunch.

Daisy was very proud of her Duplo construction.

With Daisy off school for one Friday in July, seemingly for an inset day, they headed to Tatton Park to see the Roahl Dahl exhibitions (with some of those having been closed when we visited as a family).  Accompanying Daisy are Gregory (of course, with lots of hair here) and Lucie, one of Daisy's friends from school.  And possibly a sheep.

This doesn't get much less freaky the more you look at it, but is presumably some kind of re-enactment of Fantastic Mr Fox and approximately the last time that Gregory agreed to get dressed up.  Daisy is going for it fully, of course.

This is also, I understand, from the Fantastic Mr Fox bit.

In the Matilda mansion, it was time to play schools (you know, on their one random day off school).

Lynne asserts that this must have been some sort of competition set by Daisy in which she (Daisy) was the winner.  Coming second out of two is of course also a great achievement, rewarded by the trophy you can see below.

On one particularly fraught morning, or perhaps after a fraught evening, Daisy felt compelled to write a card for Lynne noting that I had shouted at her and how much she loves her mummy.  If you've lost one ally, shore up the other.  That's diplomacy.

A little light reading in the guest bedroom, during a period in which they delighted in repeatedly emptying our bookshelves.

On Lynne's birthday, Daisy had a school assembly, hosted by the reception classes, to which the parents were invited.  The stage was set, with Oscar the monkey taking centre stage.

One part of the show featured each child telling everyone what they liked to do best at school.  I think Daisy's was playing at the art table or something like that.

In the evening, to celebrate the passing of another year of Lynne on this planet, we headed to Chiquitos for some Mexican food.  Daisy certainly relished the opportunity.

On the Sunday, we headed to Tatton Park for the Foodies' festival.  We got there quite early, before it started to get too busy (or indeed too warm as it was a hot, sunny day.  One of Daisy's first acts was to get her face painted.

She had also signed up for a junior cookery class, as here we see her carefully chopping tomato and slicing pepper (or perhaps slicing tomato and chopping pepper, it's hard to tell).  It all went into a cous cous concoction.

A trip to the local park next weekend and a brief pause in the activities to chill out on one of the benches, having happened upon someone from school.

It's the last day of school and, apparently replicating another photo from the end of the year before (Reception), we have (left to right, obviously) Charlie Hughes, Connor, Lucie, Charlie Roberts, Jessica and Daisy.

It had been the end of school term day, after which Daisy went to Annabel's birthday party and got her face painted (again!).  This cat is too cool for school.

At the end of July, after a couple of weeks of a wobbly front tooth (or two), moving at impossible angles at the dinner table, one of them finally came out.  It had started.  (And the other bottom front tooth would follow not long after.)  No sign of the new top front tooth, though, which had been missing for quite some time.

This is what happens when you leave your phone lying around.  Daisy likes to play the game Land Sliders, which evidently gives you the opportunity to take your own photo as you capture the moment that you perished (in this case, it looks like she went off the edge of the cliff).

In August, after our holiday in Paignton and with much of the school holiday still remaining, Lynne went to Lyme Park with Jo and her children Eva (pictured) and Finley (not pictured).

There was evidently a Charlie and Lola thing on.

A colourful, evocative drawing from the budding artist.

We're now well into August and it's worth recapping on Daisy's first year at school, in the reception year.  She got two writing certificates (one for "excellent sound talk to write words", which sounds like mild gibberish, and "writing exciting stories", which I can well believe), and completed 8 good behaviour charts (each requiring 9 acts of good behaviour) - 72 pieces of good behaviour is quite a lot.  Could do with some of that at home!

On the Sunday, Lynne and Daisy went to the Home cinema in Manchester to watch a Matilda scratch and sniff viewing.

After a hard afternoon's playing in the sandpit in the sunshine, it's time for some rehydration.

This seems to be from our trip to Haddington, while I was out on a bike ride with Paul Rowllings.  Daisy has gone high for her!  Very brave...

The end of August saw Daisy picked up by her grandparents and having a few days in Haddington without the rest of us.  We then gradually all joined her for a long bank holiday weekend [link eventually to appear here].  And before we knew it, it was September, she was five and a half, and she was ready to start Year 1 at school.  More on this here.

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