William LOVES playing with plugs. When he sees one (across the room) he points at it and says a loud "Ooooohh", then toddles over and tries to unplug whatever is in it. After catching him a few times chewing the cords, we've tried to 'de-plug' the house and now they are almost all out of site and reach. So, his favourite toy has been denied him. Ever inventive and ingenious, he has come up with a new favourite toy - CDs. In an attempt to save most of our CDs from grubby fingers we have given him 3 of his own to play with. These three get put in and out of plastic pockets for tens of minutes on end. Then he'll poke his finger through the hole in the middle. Then put them back in a plastic pocket again.
Another new trick this week is opening his mouth wide when it is full of food and 'showing' you what he is eating. I guess he picked it up at nursery. We are trying not to react (or laugh). Here is a picture taken the week before he started this new trick, so is more uvulartastic than a food visual. He is being particularly cute these days though, so it is such fun to play with him. I've been a bad blogger recently. Although not updating the blog regularly, I have been writing down notes and milestones on a scrap of paper...which I now can't find. Sorry. I'll be back when I find it.
Note the great scarf knitted by Aunty Alice! And the cute wellies with dinosaurs from Nana and Grandad.
Here is some Christmas spirit! This is a recent picture (taken last weekend by a friend of ours, Aaron). We had a lovely lunch with friends (Dawn, Aaron, and little Violet, Clare and Jen) a The Fishes Pub. They gave us all Santa Hats - William loved all the comments that he received when he put his on.
Auntie Alice arrived safely in Oxford this morning, after a long journey. She and William met for the first time, and had fun playing together. Auntie Alice helped William add windows with curtains to the 'house' he has, which is made from cardboard boxes.
Here are some pics, the first one must have been taken in the Summer, as it is of William and I in the Botanic Gardens at Oxford. All three of us when for a picnic there one day. William was in a pretty good mood, playing on a rug while we listened to some live music - and was even happy for a little cuddle, which Andrew captured here.
Then, for contrast, some of William taken a rainy Autumn day, when we were scrumping apples (mentioned in an earlier blog).
And, for contrast - this is another face that we are beginning to see more of - here come the terrible twos! I'm just sitting at the computer planning the logstics of the first ever Christmas lunch that I shall cook tomorrow. I'm gaining appreciation for the 35 Christmas meals that I've eaten to date, without having this pressure of actually cooking it all! How long do I need to cook a 5kg (=11lbs) duck for???? Does anyone know?
I just want to quickly put up some movies from the last couple of months. They aren't very good (going in and out of focus alot) and haven't been edited either, but they show William doing some of the ordinary things that he does each day. Firstly, taken in August I think, is a short piece showing how well William can feed himself.
Next, is a little movie of William on the swing at the local park.
He continues to do lots of new things every week. In October he said his first word "Uh-oh" and in the last week of November, he said his second "car". I'm not sure why he decided to choose "car" as his second word, as we don't take him in the car much (he rides on the bike to nursery each day) and he only has one toy car. Andrew thinks that he may have said his third word just today, which was "cat", but I haven't heard that one yet - I guess that we'll be visitng every cat we know to see whether he uses it again! He is also getting better and better at his overarm throwing, so will probably be bowling for the Australian cricket team in the next Ashes series.
We've been doing some DIY and recently put up a new coat rack in the hallway: I got my act into gear last month and made some Plum Puddings, using the same recipe that I use every single year (because it is the best!), from my Grannie Olive. I made a couple of big ones and lots of little ones, that I plan to give away as gifts:
In November Andrew, William and I took a long weekend off work and stayed in a Landmark Trust house near Cambridge, in a little village called Clare. I have been wanting to stay in a Landmark Trust house for the last 6 years, and it was great to finally do it - the excuse being our second wedding anniversary. The house had loads of character, including a huge fireplace and lots of sloaping floors. The drop in height across the bathroom, for example, was over a foot! I like the carved plasterwork on the front of the house (see pic below) - pretty impressive. We tootled about Clare and visited some local attractions, including a minature steam railway that William loved.
I recently spent a happy half hour putting together a new window box for the Winter. It has silver thyme and heather in it, which smell lovely and will survive the cold weather.
These days William won't tollerate being taken somewhere he doesn't to be. He lets us know very clearly if we ever, accidently, remove him from a location or task where he is happily occupied. Actually, it isn't just us, when I collected him from nursery this evening the ladies there told me they had great difficulty today getting him away from the sandpit for a nappy change.
This week is the culmination of a month long warm up of climbing into boxes. Andrew received a cardboard box with beer packed in foam for his birthday last month and since then William has learnt how to climb in and out by himself. Every single day he spends some time in one of the few boxes that now scatter the house. There is the upstairs box, which has the foam. When in this box it is fun to drop foam pieces out onto the floor accompianied by an "Uh-oh". The downstairs box in the kitchen is shared between William and various pieces of plasticware. His teddy has a box too, that he is taken in and out of. Anything that looks like a box is worth trying to climb into. Yesterday he tried to climb into the mini eski (mini, ie. just the size for a 6 pack of beer)(for the Northern hemisphere readers, eski = coolbox in Australia).
More William-related news in brief: - he ate brie for the first time yesterday and seemed to like it - he is improving with his block-stacking skills; the new record is a stack 8 blocks high, completely independent of any help from us - he is confident to crawl under things, eg. under a chair to pick up a piece of bread-stick, and is getting much better at not bumping his head - the new skills we are practising together are kicking and throwing balls. So far William seems to think it is funny to pick up a ball and then drop it backwards over his left shoulder. We'll work on convincing him that this is not 'throwing'.
It never stops - William keeps learning new things! This week he has mastered clipping the buckles on our bike helmets together, putting plugs in sockets, turning our bike lights on and off and the sign language for 'eat'. The last one he picked up as nursery, as we didn't even know what it was before he started doing it and we looked it up! I guess that we'll have to check that our bike lights are turned off at the end of each day now, or we'll be using a lot of batteries.
Last weekend I took William to an indoor play centre, which has trampolines, slides, tunnels, toy cars to drive and ball pits! William just loved exploring it all and climbing over and under everything. As Andrew is working nights this weekend, we're going to go there again on Sunday so that he can get some sleep during the day. If William chose to speak, I'm sure he'd say "Yay!!".
I want to publically remind my sister, Alice, that she agreed to send me more pictures of her, so that I don't feel so far away and that I'm missing out on her life. We'll Alice - show me the pictures!! You should not be allowed to look at The Baban Draig website any more until you send me some pics of you!!!!
