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.

Kindness and gifts

This week I've had a few surprise gifts, not least of all a bag of lovely knitted cardigans and waistcoats from a friend of mummy's at the baby group. She gave them to us while we were listening to the baby weaning talk at the surestart centre. It sounds like I'm not going to be getting any food until I'm at least 6 months old as advised by the World Health Organisation, which is fine by me because I prefer mummy's milk to mushed up carrot any day of the week!

Modelling my new waistcoat (in the 60s via clever editing!)

After the weaning talk, we went to the White Swan centre to sing our nursery songs. Good times were had, and this week I even made some sounds along with the singing (in tune of course).
When we got back, we found another present in the post - a lovely special card from Chloe with our names on the front and everything! She said she read our blog so BIG SHOUT TO CHLOE!! WE LOVE YOU!! XXX

Why walk when you have a car? Stupid mum.

Wednesday was baby massage, but as it was tummys and I needed a feed, I sat it out until the legs part. It's such a hard life being a baby! Then as part of my health spa day, mummy took me on a walk up to Sainsburys. As you can see by the photo, I wasn't exactly in favour but I did eventually succumb to sleep on the way up there after some distress calls half way.

Daddy took some great footage of me and mummy having a sing song in the evening but for some reason it's not uploading right now so we'll have to try another day.
Carys and Steve came to tea on Wednesday and they played boring Conservative grown up scrabble while I watched and learned. I had a few great eight letter words but no one could understand what I was saying sadly.

Festival della Pizza Lunedi

Ciao tutti!!

Today started early as Mummy and I had to drive daddy to work (long story which involved daddy trying to jump over a barbed wire fence in the dark at work!).

After that, I had a play with some new toys and books mummy had bought for me and which I like very much. I got rather excited and found that they really helped with my hand eye coordination, especially the crackly noise they make when I touch them.

Me showing off my legs for everyone

In the afternoon we went to see the other babies at the mother and baby group. We played lots of games like a big piece of material over all the babies as a peekaboo game. I didn't like it much but I didn't cry like the other babies (wimps!). I decided to pretend I wanted a feed to get out of having to play for too long at that and rejoined the fun for the nursery rhymes. We sang 'It's raining it's pouring' at mummy's request, because it was.

Pepperoni and olive pizza - Che Buono!

After playgroup, mum and I went to Morrisons for some ingredients for tea, and when we came back we made pizza dough (or mum did while I slept). I oversaw the toppings later on from the superior position of my sling facing outwards for the first time. Daddy seemed to like talking to me eye to eye and we worked through topping the pizza together.