The greatest knight that ever lived

William's hoodie makes him look a little bit like he is wearing 'woollen' chain mail, which is appropriate given that in the background of this picture is one of the castles belonging to the famous knight, William Marshall. It is Goodrich Castle. We hadn't realised when we named our little William that possibly the most famous knight in English history was also named William Marshall (born 1146). But we were alerted to the fact by Grahame, a history teacher at the same school where Andrew's dad works, and a month ago, we saw a whole program on telly devoted to (the famous) William Marshall! Cool, William will be able to do school projects on his namesake. Apparently, the famous William Marshall was called 'greedy guts' when he was little, due to his appetite.... hmmm, some coincidence there already. The famous WM rose from having no land or money, to become a great knight and politician (was Earl of Pembroke, Baron and Regent of England!) with masses of land, wealth and castles all over the country (as well as in Ireland)! He has a Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Marshal,_1st_Earl_of_Pembroke
We hope to visit more of WM's castles as William gets older.


This week we bought a bike seat and helmet for William. Although biased, we think he looks pretty cute in it. But that is a slightly pointless thing to say, as we think he looks cute most of the time. Here he is, on his new stead:

And if I didn't show you the next photo, you'd go to sleep happily tonight thinking that he loved his new helmet and bike seat. But it isn't always the case, as the following grumpy face shows!


William in national Welsh costume, for 1st March, St. David's Day. This picture may make an appearance at William's 21st, seeing as he is wearing the hat of the GIRL's Welsh costume! He he heeeee....


We watched some little lambs frolicking.

William, entertaining Angela and Marjorie by waving an empty food packet up and down.

And one more for good measure:


This weeks update: William is enjoying nursery very much which is great news. When I drop him off, he starts smiling and playing with the toys straight away, which makes it so much easier for me to leave him there and to concentrate while I am at work. The ladies who work there give me a little summary of his day when I collect him, something like:
On 4/3/08 William ate dinner well (sweet potato and carrot), he had 7 oz milk at 2.30pm, slept from 2.45-3.40pm and had a wet nappy changed at 3.45pm and a soiled one at 5pm.

I find this quite reassuring, as even though I'm not with him all day, I can monitor his health, well-being etc. May happiness at nursery continue! I shall put up some more of his art work soon. Today they showed me pictures of William "colouring in" (to be taken in the lightest way possible) an elephant and a giraffe, which we'll get to take home, along with said elephant and giraffe, next week. From the pictures they showed me it looked like he was mostly eating the paint.