January

Theo was 4 this month. It doesn't seem four years since he was born! He's so very typically four, though: full of questions, songs and opinions. He's continuously challenging the boundaries of my knowledge - last week, he asked, "is symbiosis good, mom?" I had to check the dictionary to make sure I remembered what symbiosis even was! He loves numbers - to the point of obsession. He carries a calculator or a stopwatch with him at all times and counts everything. He was very happy to be new number on his birthday!

He's also crazy about Octonauts - a book and TV series about a team of adventuring animals who live under the sea and "explore! Rescue! Protect!". I'm fairly certain that the TV show is where he heard about symbiosis! So, I made him an Octonauts cake for his birthday.

In keeping with the aquatic and animal theme, I'm hoping to take him to an aquarium or zoo next week, for a belated birthday gift. 

Theo's great-aunt has her birthday the day before his. This year, I made her flowerpot cakes since she loves gardening. I've been waiting since before Christmas to try these out, and although they were incredibly time-consuming (in preparing the terracotta pots for baking), they worked really well. Everybody believed they were real potted plants!

And to top off a pretty great start to 2012, we were able to see the Northern Lights in Northern England! Since I inadvertently missed them last September when they were visible from my house, I've been looking at reports of solar activity, CME alerts, magnetometer graphs, and KP indices daily in an attempt to anticipate their next showing. Most of it is far beyond my comprehension, but what little I did know allowed me to anticipate and see the Northern Lights for a good four or five hours hours about a week or two ago. It was amazing - for the first few hours, you could see the auroral oval stretching over quite a large expanse of sea, island and land. Perhaps to the uneducated eye, it would have looked like nothing more than a bright glow (the glow of a full moon, except it was a new moon night!), but if you looked closely, you could definitely see green and pink tones to the glow. At around 10.30pm, the lights started dancing and it was absolutely breathtaking!

The photos I took (from my bedroom window - I did take some from outside but it was too cold and the wind was strong enough to keep shaking the camera tripod) didn't come out amazingly well, but I am just so happy to have seen the Lights at all, let alone have a few photos to remember them by. If I were to have a 'bucket list' of any kind, seeing the Aurora would definitely be near the top, so now I can mentally tick it off!