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!

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.