Christmas in (Oxford and) Wales 2009

The week before Christmas, Sally-Anne and Rob came to visit us in Oxford for a Miller Christmas lunch. Although Andrew was in the middle of working nights (and so was only awake to join us for a couple of hours) we had a lovely time, including some Christmas pudding (Grannie Olive's recipe, of course!). Perhaps I should crop out the Roos footy to make this pic a little nicer, but then I'd also lose the poinsettia.


Just one pic from Christmas day - the Christmas cake that Richard brought over with him from Brussels - very professional, and very yummy!


Although it didn't snow on Christmas day in Gilwern (so wasn't 'officially' a white Christmas) there was snow about, and William had a super time throwing snowballs and Grandad, making snow men, sliding on the ice and sledging. We walked along the frozen canal - he was very cute when holding hands with Zoe ( his second cousin). I reckon Andrew looks more scared than William in this pic though!





I also wanted to add a pic of William taken during this evenings bath - he decided (and stated repeatedly) that these bath crayons were "fantastic!". THANK YOU to Aunty Alice, Uncle Ian and their bump for a great pressie.

Crocodile shortbread

We thought that perhaps if William turns out to be a cook one day in the future, he could open a shop with this name...?

Daddy and William let mummy sleep in this morning (ah, thank you!) and they made some shortbread cookies while I slept. They are very yummy! William enjoyed making them very much - helping with measuring out the ingrediants, putting it all into the blender, rolling and cutting out the shapes. He ate the first one, after they had cooled down on a wire rack.



We are getting in to the festive spirit here - poinsettia plants were on sale at Sainsbury's for three quid. William likes his baby chinnos (an idea that we've brought back with us from Melbourne - a baby cappucinno - just a cup of frothy milk). He looked very grown up sipping away.

I've had these sitting on the desk top for a while...

...just tidying them up.

A few random pics of William and a short video.

On a steam train in Wales

Umbrella (note the image on the umbrella - they are macrophages!!)

William and Andrew in a treehouse together - in the New Forest.
Having a swing with Aunty Jenny and Grandad:

Oct-Nov update

There is lots of news that I want to update you with. But for the minute I'll be brief, and give you a few milestones: William can now sing the whole of Ba Ba Black Sheep and the ABC Song by himself. His favourite shape is the rectangle. And he has started saying "What is that?"

He now likes to give us his opinion on what he'd like to wear each day (usually his top with Thomas (the Tank Engine) on it. Daddy cut some beetroot (it in season at the moment - we have so much beetroot!) into a hexagon last week, and William ate his first ever hexagon.


I've been having worse morning sickness than I had with my first pregnancy with the current one (I'm about 20 weeks now), and Andrew has been a wonderful help - looking after William for me, and doing his bath every night (see the outcome of this, below) and reading him his bedtime stories. The old wives tale says that the worse the morning sickness, the more likely it is to be a girl....or twins. The scan shows there is only one baby inside me (PHEW!!!) and we'll have to wait until April to find out whether the other part might be true.

We like to go for outdoor walks on the weekends. William is often a brave adventurer, setting off across paddocks with his net, ready to catch things, and explore.....and throw his raisins on the ground.

Autumn is well and truly here. It is squash season in the UK, and we have stocked up on some different varieties. I've been making pumpkin soup, pumpkin risotto and stuffed pumpkins.....any more pumpkin recipe ideas??

Daddy made a wizards hat for William to wear to nursery for Halloween. William tested it out the night before, to see how he looked. I think that he liked it.

One recent weekend we took a lovely walk through Headington Hill park together. We found mushrooms, picked an apple off one of the trees (William ate it!), chased squirrels and balanced on tree branches. It was lovely.

Maestro in the making

Firstly, some more pictures from our holiday in Wales. Yes, that is a nudey bum you see there on the left (below). William really wanted to go in, after seeing Stephen and Andrew go swimming. Once he was in himself though, he felt the temperature of the water and decided that a quick dip was all that he needed. Back to playing in the sand with all his new spades and buckets, flying kites with daddy, and helping to build sand cars and sand boats to 'zoom' about it.



William and Evelyn playing on the beach. The day we were here, the emergency helicopter came and landed on the beach (with smoke flares to guide the way) - all the kids thought it was VERY exciting.

By the way, Williams' favourite word at the moment is 'lots!'. It is the answer to most questions we ask him. This morning he ate more porridge than Andrew did for breakfast.

Finally, what I think is a pretty cute video.

Churchdoors beach, Manobier, Wales, UK

Mid August, mid-Summer.

Hop little rabbits, hop, hop, hop

This is taken on the green, opposite The Lamb pub in Nomansland, in the New Forest. All the kids know the actions to this song. I think that Andrew could just keep singing the second verse again and again, and perhaps they'd all calmly continue to lie on the ground...or am I dreaming?

Pembrokeshire holiday

First, the brief version of the holiday (entertaining for people NOT living in the UK). We went to a lot of lovely beaches during this holiday. But, in a bit of a typical UK Summer theme, we were rained off,
not once....

Not twice.....

But THREE times!!

I went for a lovely, refreshing, swim at this last beach - so good for the soul.

Weekend in the New Forest with friends

We camped for 3 nights with two other family friends, both with kids (Beatrice, and Maeve) the same age as William. It was loads of fun, if not the usual exhausting experience of life with two year olds. William really enjoyed sleeping in our tent.

"I do it"

William can now string three words together. We are getting to hear a lot of his new favourite phrase as he demands to do things himself now, rather than have us do them for him, or even help him.

I have a few pictures to update you with.
1. William at Millets Farm near Abingdon.


2. William and Daddy made ice lollies last week.

3. This is how William often sleeps at night these days – cuddling teddy and penguin. This photo was taken at midnight on 29th July. He usually has an arm around each toy as he goes to sleep, so we were pretty impressed that penguin was still getting cuddled a few hours later.

4. I’ve been having a domestic month, making raspberry jam, beetroot chuntney and 3 fruits marmalade.

5. We spent a weekend in Wales last weekend. There was a fete at Marjorie's nursing home, which had a bouncy castle that W loved playing on. W also had a lovely walk in a bog. We should have anticipated that William would sit down in the wet mud right at the beginning of the walk.....ah, muddy bottoms.

William and Andrew out in the meadow, exploring

William's birthday dinner

Clare and Jen came over to celebrate William's and Clare's joint birthday at our house on Friday night. William was happy to perform his favourite trick of the month for the camera.

William's 2nd birthday present from Aunty Alice and Uncle Ian

Perhaps William is speaking French: 'deux' is two in French.....

William playing the piano this evening

Does he look like an uber nerd, or what??

Two, two, two!

William is two! We celebrated his birthday on Friday with Clare (they are birthday buddies with their birthdays on the same day!), on Saturday with Nana and Grandad (and a lovely walk with the butterflies in the meadow) and on Sunday with a few friends who live in our street - Daniel (22 months), Oscar (28 months), Zoe (about 3 years old) and Rodrigo (8 months). By the end of the weekend he was quite adept at blowing out candles and opening presents. I'll try and link some videos taken on my little camera.





Altogether it was a busy weekend. In addition to all the birthday celebrations, William went to a swimming lesson with Daddy. William loves swimming in the pool, and with the help of his new bathing suit that has floaties inserted into it, can swim/bob/paddle 8ft across the pool!
We also accidentally re-challenged William's possible egg allergy with this positive result as shown below - collagen lips! We had a few moments on edge as he got hives, swollen lips and itchy skin, but luckily it went down with some oral anti-histamine solution. I think we'll need to see the GP this week, and avoid all egg from now on.

This one is from this evening - hot off the press! William the underwater explorer......leaning out the window.