Emily is back on a predictable two nap a day schedule, breaking her days into three easily digestible pieces. Here’s how I spent this weekend:

Saturday morning: Woke up with Emily and played in the living room while Jan had a much-deserved lie-in. We hid out in Emily’s new tent, read through some fascinating books about colors and animals, and built a scale model representation of modern-day Tokyo. Emily can build a skyscraper five blocks tall all by herself and then likes to assume the role of Godzilla.

Saturday afternoon: Went down to the park with Emily and left Jan to relax on the sofa with E.R. and The IT Crowd. We must assume that Emily loves the swings because she protests if you take her off before 10 minutes have passed even though she doesn’t so much as crack a smile while swinging. She rode the big girl swing all by herself today. Good grip, that girl. We also spent a significant amount of time on the slide. Totally independent, Emily climbs up the stairs and then sits before hurling herself down the slide – sometimes sitting up but usually on her belly. We made a delightful pit stop on the way home to smell some lovely orange flowers. Emily was very gentle and managed to restrain from plucking any.

Saturday evening: After overwhelming anticipation on my part, I finally sat down with Jan’s new laptop (which I pilfered from work!) and installed Gutsy Gibbon. The installation itself only took about 15 minutes but I spent a couple of hours pimping it out. Having never used Linux before, Jan had absolutely no problems finding her way around when I finally let her have a go. I’m totally jealous now and can’t wait until next weekend when I upgrade my Feisty Fawn!!

Saturday night: Parky came by to babysit while Jan and I went out for a raucous night on the town with ex-Barcelona Welsh boy Dave and all his rowdy mates from England. Dave’s getting married in two months and chose Barcelona for his stag night/bachelor party. We started off with some absolutely amazing Galician food and some dodgy red wine, and moved on to The Black Horse for beer, the Borne for massive mojitos, and then Plaza Reial for more beer. I called it quits early and headed home around 3am. I think I smelled Jan get home at around 6. Good times.

Sunday morning: Once again, I spent a lovely morning with Emily, Cookie Monster, Elmo, and Baby Einstein. Jan and Sarah soon joined us and we all spent a quiet Sunday morning lounging on the sofa. I took the opportunity to reorganize my movie collection – now each film in its own plastic sleeve for easy alphabetizing. Emily couldn’t leave the discs alone and I had to stop somewhere between the L’s and N’s for fear of having my collection destroyed. Good grip, that girl.

Sunday afternoon: We went to the park to join Sasha in celebrating his fourth birthday. Lots of kids, baseball, sword fighting, face painting, and egg on spoon races. Emily was in awe at the big kids but got right into the mix.

Sunday evening: I guess she was feeling particularly inspired today because Emily decided to put on a show for us, the likes of which we had never seen. Dancing, jumping, singing, pirouetting, pointing, playing, and laughing – she whipped out every trick in the book. I wanted to get just a few minutes on video but I couldn’t stop recording and, before I knew it, I had nearly a half an hour of Emily footage. I wish I could post it here now but I don’t have the time or energy to edit and upload the video. I’ll work on it and try to post something later this week.