Pasqua in Italia

Buongiorno Italia!
What an exciting week! I have achieved a lot of firsts this week!
It all began in Ossett on a grey and foggy day.

 We were up and out of the house by 7am and began our journey down to London. When we arrived, I took my first trip on a bus:

followed in quick succession by my first plane journey:

I was very well behaved except for the first 5 minutes when we were boarding and it was too busy. Mummy and daddy kept trying to get me to look out of the window but I was far too interested in the geometric patterns on the chair in front!

When we arrived in Nice, I took my first trip on the train, and finally we arrived in Arma di Taggia to be greeted by a very excited Nonno e Nonna!

I was given a bath in a bowl and this triggered my first little giggle. Nonno took me to see my first ever lemon tree and a trip with daddy followed the next morning:

On Sunday, we took a bus to San Remo to see the famous flower festival. Mum took lots of photos

 but Nonno was thankfully there to take me somewhere quieter for a walk because I didn't like the carnival noise very much.

However, I did take a moment to enjoy the majorettes with daddy!

In the afternoon, I took my first visit to the beach with daddy. Nonna made me wear a funny hat to protect my little head. I also learnt my first Italian phrase from Nonna: "Copri la pancia!".

On Sunday night, Daddy had to leave us and fly back for work, but Nonno has been giving me double the cuddles to make up for it!

On Monday, we took a long walk in the morning along the beach

and in the afternoon, we explored the first part of the "pista cyclabile" toward San Remo. I slept very well in my pram, but mummy and Nonna had to run home with me because I had started to cry when I was starving hungry!
The next day we went for a look at the fishermen stalls by the port. I liked the little fisherman's friend!

Then we walked to Riva Ligure and bought some nice bread. Nonna had tired me out with a long pram ride

In the afternoon, we visited Bussana to see the ruins of the earthquake there. It is an interesting story so I will be looking into this in England with mummy on the computer.

On Wednesday, we visited San Remo and while I had a nap in the car, Mummy and Nonna bought the fish for dinner. They were so fresh that they were still alive!

In the afternoon, after some sleep and lots of poos, we visited Zia Lina in the hills of Molini di Triora. Zia Lina already had my photo framed and seemed to like me a lot despite my grumpy mood. As you can see, there is definitely a family resemblance!

So much fun and so much more to come, so I'll leave you with a lovely picture of me with the flowers:

Musical Maestro!

This one's for Sheena!

Mothers Day and lots lots more!

You may have noticed a significant lack of blogging for the last week, but let me tell you I've tried several times and it isn't playing ball so we'll have to come back to that one later. Just in case it never mends itself, a big thank you to SHEENA for my All Blacks baby grow and Kiwis fridge magnet. I have video footage of me looking over the moon by it all, but as I say the blog won't let me show you that. Or Steve and Cary's new puppy video. Or my musical showcase on the piano (I am a dissonant Maestro). Or me looking very cute when I wake up from my peaceful slumber.
So we'll have to make do with pictures today folks, but I have lots for you!
Let's start with my friends from baby massage which has now finished. We really improved our twisting and turning skills in that class, as well as being treated to a spectacular and psychedelic light show on the last week!

We also met Steve and Carys' puppy Bella last week - she's so cute but not as cute as me (well this is my blog after all!). I'll let you decide for yourself:

At the weekend, Auntie Colette and Uncle Simon came to visit bearing gifts (chocolate cake!) and beer for St. Patrick's Day. Auntie Colette was very excited to see me and did a lot of holding and smiling! I obliged her by giving her my best and brightest smiles back. Including an actual shout/giggle. We made pizza and went to the beach on Mothers Day!

Lock, Stocks and two smoking barrels

I have being continuing to show signs of fast development this week. First of all on Wednesday at baby massage I showed a really good attempt to flip from my back onto my front while pursuing a feather. The baby massage teacher Karen told me to 'dig deep' for some energy to make it happen - she was a lot tougher on me than mummy ever is but it did get the best out of me!!

I've also been showing my musical flair by starting to press the keys on my electric piano. I have figured out that when I press it, it makes different noises which is brilliant. It has quickly become a favourite toy although sometimes I get cross when it doesn't work fast enough!

Today, to keep my education going (and because mummy and daddy like going out) we visited a farmer's market in Hexham. We bought some fresh bread, some primroses which daddy planted in the front lawn this afternoon, raspberry plants and some strawberries. We had a walk around Hexham abbey which is very pretty and I had a sleep in my pram. We then had a Greggs lunch in a pretty park:

After lunch we took a look around the oldest purpose built prison in Britain. It was interesting and we also learnt about the border people who had a prtty hard time between the Scots and English fighting and raiding each others' land. Here we are in the museum with some funny looking people and a stuffed cat! My first museum visit!

And then mum and dad had to do something really cringeworthy to embarrass me so I pretended to be asleep in my pram...

10 Weeks tomorrow!

Ok people, let's start with a crowd pleaser - a photo of me looking cute as always!!

Tomorrow I will be 10 weeks old which seems pretty old if you ask me! To mark my grand old age of 10 weeks I've been doing lots more physical stuff, like trying to sit up on my own, trying to dance along with songs, looking at other babies and children around me, and most of all trying to bat/press/grab things around me. Especially mummy's hair and daddy's chest hair!!

A great example of this was on Monday this week when I tried to hit all the beautiful mirror things that were attached to what looked like a kitchen roll holder. It was so pretty I just had to bash it:

The other thing I've been doing is sucking on anything I can find. On Sunday while mummy and daddy went for a coffee, that just so happened to be daddy's arm. Note the live Shadows music in the background Grandad!!

While we were having that coffee we bumped into an old friend of mum and dad's from work, John. He had some of the best funny faces I have ever seen so we spent quite a while teaching each other a few tricks - he showed me how to gurn, I showed him how to stare people out.




On Monday mummy made pizza dough and let daddy do the topping. Mummy is the dough woman and daddy has the artistic pizza spark. She thought you might like to see his creation as it was made, step by step. No idea why.

Step 1 - the sauce

Step 2 - the olives and chorizo

Jamie Oliver eat your heart out!

St David's Day

Happy St David's day everyone!

A host of golden daffoldils...

Today was such a beautiful day that mummy and I decided to spend it outside as much as possible. Actually mummy was much more in favour of this than I was. Being a December baby, I'm the human equivalent of  a barn egg at the moment - not particularly adapted for life outdoor and free-range, but mummy is working hard to change that! So first thing we went for a walk up to the coffee bar where mummy had a coffee and read the Guardian and I had a milk and a sleep. In honour of St David's day, we also did some daffodil spotting:

Big boy in my big pram!

This was also day two in the bigger part of my pram which we plan to take to Italy. It is much better than my carry cot because I can see the world and today I even cried to tell mummy I wanted to face outwards instead of looking at her silly face all the time. This was much more fun as I could nosey around and see what was coming up, instead of getting frustrated about why mummy wasn't picking me up when she was right there in front of me.