Amelia Poppy and Oliver James Steele

By a bizarre quirk of fate Amelia Poppy and Anne Patricia have the same initials separated by ummm let’s be kind and say “a few decades”

Grandma Steele comes to babysit Amelia on Mondays [ when she's not holidaying ] whilst Daddy tries to get some work done.  This picture was taken after grandma had her sailing induced [ see here ] siesta hence her chipper appearance.

In the background is the dismantled fire that I’ve tried and failed twice to burn.  The problem is it’s all Hawthorn trees and there is too much air inside the fire.  So I’m now slowly lopping all the branches into more manageable pieces which will be set alight soon.

Glad to see that my little angel is getting the idea about what her duties in life will involve.  Lots of moving stuff around the garden whilst wearing what looks suspiciously like a stripey jumper with a pink kipper tie.  On the day of Yves Saint Laurent’s death my little girl starts a new fashion in garden attire.

This is Amelia giving Daddy a hand to move the chicken food from the boot of the car to the shed at the end of the garden.  I did try to get her to push the wheelbarrow along but her little arms and legs just weren’t strong enough. 

So we lined the filthy wheelbarrow with cardboard, loaded it up with chicken food and children and off we went on our mission of mercy to feed the six, yes SIX, remaining chickens.  More on the "Disappearance of Doris" later.

In celebration of me finally working out this new fangled youtube thing, which will never catch on by the way, I thought we could have another video. This time it’s Amelia playing in her swing and Daddy stress testing the other swing which is supposed to have a weight limit of 50kg. That’ll be about one of my legs then

The first ever post on the brand new blog of all things Steele related and I dedicated it to my nephew Charlie and my daughter Amelia. “What a caring and loving Uncle/Father is he” rejoiced the world. This is the two children in my life taking a test run on the swing set we bought for Christmas that will eventually have towers and slides and rocket launchers and internet cafes built onto the side.

It was a bit of a nerve wracking moment taking this picture as I’m not entirely sure I’ve connected the frame to the ground properly and Charlie was, as you can see, being his usual nutter-self and seeing how high he could go.

In the background is my shed, that possibly has more square footage than the apartment that Emma, my wife, and I used to live in whilst in Altrincham.