Wood

This year the group of people who organise Truck musical festival started a new one called Wood. It is quite near Oxford and baby friendly (one of my other Oxford mum's knows the couple organising it and they have one year old). We went last weekend. As its whole ethos was very eco-friendly we took the bus there. It was a very releaxed, small acoustic music festival. We heard a local Oxford band play called Stornoway who I liked. They played one song called The Good Fish Guide, in which the lyrics are a list of all the fish that we shouldn't be eating because of overfishing and depleted stocks, followed by the second verse listing all the ones we should be eating. One tent was showing short films and was only powered by bicycle - Andrew was peddling to keep the power going so that William and I could watch the film! William enjoyed the African drumming workshop and we enjoyed some local cider.


A guy had a giant gong that he gave 'holistic gong showers' with, where you sat with your back to the gong while he played it for 5 minutes, sending the vibrations through your body. William wore his cool festival clothes and I wore my pixie ears.

I hope we'll be back next year, and stay for longer. With just this in mind we bought a family-sized tent this weekend. William loved helping us put it up in the backyard (for practice) so hopefully this is a good sign that he'll like camping. Bring on the Summer and more festivals! I guess that we'll need to buy some of these 'ear defenders' for William. They are *the* festival accessory for the under fives!

May 2008

I just tried making my first little movie (of William, of course) using iMovie.

Here it is so that you guys can have a little look. It has involved a lot of reading of forums on the internet to try and work out what (free) software I needed so that I could convert the movie files I have into a format that I could import into iMovie. But I think I finally might have it sorted so that I can import movies from my digital camera and play with them. Now I need to sort out how to do it from the digital video camera.... next time I have a spare few hours....

Here is a little 3 minute summary of what William has been up to in the warm weather over the last couple of weeks.

William enjoys Spring

Last weekend we went for a walk in Wytham Woods, just on the outskirts of Oxford, and enjoyed the carpets of bluebells. William must have been hungry, and thought that blue food was going to quench his appetite.


Pulling yourself to standing up and sitting up from lying down isn't that easy when you are on a lumpy bed, but William is getting better every day. Caution, some "top half" nudity of Andrew in this clip!


Here is William playing with a balloon on the bed. His eyes were bit puffy on this morning and we ended up going to the GP later that day, poor little thing.

A few little videos

Again, taken with my photo camera, not a proper video camera, but they capture a couple of little William moments. Firstly, with a super hairstyle, happily playing in the bath.


Secondly, showing off his new trick of waving, while Angela holds him in windy Southern France.


Finally, William holding on the edge of the table while we were having lunch at a cafe on the beach. I was lucky to capture another one of his new tricks - the raspberry!


More pics from our holiday will come when I have a moment to process them.

William's new trick

These movies were taken on my digital camera when William was 37 weeks old (ie. last week). Mobility is such a strong motivation to gain new skills. William can now pull him self up from sitting to standing, when we put him in his cot. The bars are easy for him to hold on to, but I'm sure that before long he'll be able to do the same thing using the edge of a table....


Ah, yes, I'll try to remember to hold the camera the right way around from now on also...


Here is a little snap shot of him sitting on the couch, annoyed at my hat on his head. :) Oh, and another new trick that he learnt last week was waving. It is quite cute as he isn't completely sure when to wave, so when he wakes up in the morning, he often waves at the window, or his toys.

Snow in Oxford

This is what we woke up to this morning! A few inches of snow. How exciting! Who would have thought we'd get the first proper snow of Winter in April?!?! We had just planted some seedlings out in the back garden the day before - oops. William was fairly nonplussed by it all. Perhaps if it snows next year he'll realise the potential for sledging.




We took him to South Parks to check out the action where we found some people who were rolling a snowball from the top of the park. We helped them when it got too large for them to push by themselves. Then it became too large for four adults to push, so we recruited more volunteers, and kept pushing it down the hill until 6 adults could no longer budge it. It was a sphere of 6 foot diameter - the biggest in the whole park! Check it out:

Lots of firsts

William was pretty pleased with his first trip around the supermarket sitting in the seat on the trolley last week. He kept looking around, at the items on the shelf, down to the wheels and the ground as he explored the shop from a whole new perspective.


On the way cycling home from nursery last week (by the way, this is his outfit for the cycle home below.....) we stopped at the playground at the top of South Parks and explored the roundabout and swings for the first time. As the evening get longer and lighter, I imagine we'll be stopping on a regular basis. He also loves wearing his new stripy trousers, sent over from Melbourne by Aunty Alice.