Autumn is here

Oxford is in full Autumn swing. The trees are ablaze, the light is golden and going for walks along the river, with the colours reflecting in the water is just the thing. During the last couple of weekends we've made sure to take a walk outdoors and see what we can see. It is also nice to end the exploration with a local real ale in a pub over which we can discuss the findings. Last Sunday we investigated Sidlings Copse, which is on the Eastern side of Oxford and has quite a variety of different habitats (woodland, heather, marsh). It is an ancient woodland and with its broad-leafed trees was good for mushrooming. Andrew collected quite a few varieties, some of which he dried and others are currently getting spore prints for identification.


A few weekends ago we went to a local gathering to pick apples and make fresh apple juice. We live just off Morrell Avenue, and as we learnt, there are some remaining trees from Morrell's Cider and Perry Orchard nearby. They are on common land, so free for anyone to harvest - and there are some good varieties, including Russet's which make delicious eating. Someone brought an apple scratter and a press. Here are some pictures of us first chopping up the apples in the scratter, which hacks apart the apples as you turn a handle, dropping the pieces into a bucket below:

Then we pressed them. After all the juice has been squished out, the top and sides of the press are removed, leaving what looks like a giant cheese made of apple pieces:

...and from here we all took a few bottles of fresh apple juice home. As it was made from a mixture of cooking and eating apples, it had a great twang too it - absolutely delicious. Even though it was drizzly all day, we still had great fun. William was a great help, throwing apples into the scratter.

Talking of whom, the purpose of this entry is to update you on all the new things he's done recently. There is almost something new every day. Some of the things he has mastered in the last month include walking backwards, saying "Uh-oh" and learning to point to parts of the face (nose, eye, ears etc).

Lip smacking good!

What do dummies and sheep have in common?

WILLIAM!

Each weekday when we pick up William from nursery, the ladies there tell us how his day has been - how long he slept, whether he ate well and what he played with. Last week when Andrew collected William, they told him that one of his favourite things to do is to pick up dummies that other children have dropped and give them back, to the right child! I am impressed. I almost don't believe that he knows which dummy goes with which child, but that is what they said. One day, apparently, he saw the father of a child, who was there to pick up his daughter, and William strongly insisted on giving him his daughter's dummy, which was on the floor.

Amazing.




A couple of weeks ago, on a trip to Wales, William met his first sheep. She (the sheep) is a Herdwick. Herdwick sheep are the most hardy of all Britain’s breeds of hill sheep and live on the highest of The UK's mountains. Their wool is very thick and hard wearing, so is often made into carpet, but William was given an organically tanned Herdwick sheepskin when he was born and it is as soft as anything. He used to lie on it when he was very little, then sit on it and now he still often goes and sits down on it to play with something. So, we went and visited Maggie and Jamie Battson, who have a herd of Herdwicks and gave William his lovely sheepskin. He was a little unsure of the sheep at first, but then had a go at patting her and watching her eat. It probabaly says something about us being very city-fied, that William met his first live sheep (and chickens and ducks) at the age of 13 months.

Each morning William likes to taste our breakfast cereal.....little monkey. Here he is checking that daddy's shreddies are ok.

New Shoes

I am so very far behind in this blog now. Life seems to be overtaking us a bit. That said, with Andrew working his new job in psychiatry, we seem to have more relaxed mornings together, while we all have breakfast and get ready to head off to work/nursery.

I think I’ll just summarise the gap of the past few months by saying five things:
1. William has progressed with his piano playing from whole hand bashing of the keyboard to now using single fingers occasionally to tap individual keys (usually repetitively).
2. We visited Gloucester Cathedral with Angela and Stephen in August and I was mightily impressed. It is now one of my favourite cathedrals in the UK. I am looking forward to hearing some music in there one day. Others looked slightly less impressed.

3. On our way home from the Peak District, (where we went camping with Matt, Rachel, Anne and Evelyn) we stopped in and visited Jodrell Bank, where the third largest radio telescope in the world is to be found. That is a big radio telescope! We saw it slowly moving about on its very large base. I was impressed.

4. William officially started walking independently on 14th Aug 2008, at the age of 13 months. He is steadily improving, and last weekend walked 5 metres unaided. To stop endless wet and muddy socks we’ve bought him his first pair of shoes. I find baby shoes very cute indeed, so really enjoyed buying them. Even the little tiny shoe box is cute itself!

5. William has also had his first haircut in the last month. It was a bit of a home made job, after a bath while his hair was wet. It is okay, I think. At least the hair is now out of his eyes. I saved the first curls to be cut off......they might be useful for makeing a voodoo doll some time in the future. Perhaps once he starts having full on rigid-back, flat-on-the floor, screaming-blue-muder tantrums, I'll find a use for said voodoo doll????

Okay, onto the new and latest stuff! We are just back from long weekend camping at the Towersey Folk Festival. William loved it. He walked about watching all the entertainment, had a great appetite, and enjoyed playing with Beatrice, the other toddler his age, who came with us (along with her parents, who we met through antenatal classes). We took him to a ceilidh (he even joined in for a dance being held in our arms), watched medieval puppet shows and Morris dancing, and listened to lots of great music. He even slept through one of the evening gigs, tucked up in his pram, which was great and allowed us to get out and made us feel very free.

God parents

“earthparents”
“non-godparents”
“honorary parents”
“spirit-sponsors”
“the B-Team”

There are many different names out there for what most people know as “god-parents”. We’ve chosen some of our very good friends to take a vested interest in William’s upbringing and personal development. William enjoyed celebrating his first birthday with an outdoor meal with some of our friends and his new godparents. Here are some pictures. William is proud to have Simon, Clare and Jen as his godparents. Aaron made him a chocolate chip carrot cake, that was truely the best carrot cake I've ever had! In what we hope is a sign of future generosity, William had a couple of mouthfulls of cake himself and then fed the rest, small handful by small handful, to Andrew.

Paris

William pointing the way to his distracted parents. "Mummy, Daddy, look at that!"

We had fun week in Paris with William, on holiday with my mum and dad this month. We stayed in an apartment, in which you can see William demonstrating one of the many exciting things you can do with a see-through plastic chair....

We didn't see that many tourist attarctions, but managed to go to Sainte Chappelle, Sacre Coeur, Isle St Louis and the Medical History Museum - where William loved walking around the main room, and only afterwards did we realise how dirty the floor was!

This picture is of William and Andrew at Sacre Coeur (while I checked out the fabulous fabric shops nearby.... they are wonderful! I bought myself some treats, including a few pieces of Liberty fabric. The shops in Paris had a better range of Liberty fabric than the Liberty shop in London!

We went to the Jardin de Luxembourg and to other parks almost every day, and just relaxed in the warm, sunny weather. Our local park was right near a school and so full of young kids every afternoon. William enjoyed feeding stale baguette to the pigeons and watching the other kids have water fights. Hanging upside down in a park is obviously a lot of fun. Check out his top teeth; he now has seven in total. He also practised his walking and can now take 3-5 steps before falling forward. Perhaps by his first birthday he'll be walking....?

Caving baby

William decended into the top of the Eglys Faen cave near Gilwern on the weekend. He seemed to like it (or at least that is the way his father interpreted his babble!