Down the gee gee's

Hello once again, another action packed week to report.
We went to the races on Saturday. Dad forgot the camera so there’s no photo evidence of the day at all. The weather was lovely and things got off to a good start with dad picking the winner on the first race. Sadly it was the only one of the day. Mum didn’t pick any winners either, rubbish! Ben seemed to be doing okay though!
I especially loved sitting right on the rails watching the horses go past to the start and the ‘copters taking off and landing from the field. I also had my first go on a bouncy castle. It was brilliant and I got to bounce around with all the bigger children, I soon got the hang of it. I kicked up a proper sink when I had to get off though….We saw Laura nad James there too, nice shoes Laura!
Saturday night the usual suspects came round for a barbecue. It looked pretty hot to me once it had got going, I made sure I told everyone. There were all manner of garden fun and games going on and I had a great time. Look how tall I am:

Sunday was a nice lay in followed by a trip to Grandad’s for lunch. I had a late birthday present due to duplicated lawnmowers which was a car transporter lorry with six cars on the back. It’s brilliant and the cars zoomed really well across his smooth wood floor. We also got to look at some of Grandad’s really smart books on trains. There’s no stories to water them down, just pictures of trains and hard hitting technical detail, just how I like it. I pointed out Thomas and Percy and Grandad showed me a picture of the real life Spencer. After lunch we went out for a walk around their village. Dad always says things are a bit odd over Swindon way and now I can see why, it was the village scarecrow hunt. This seemed to involve scarecrows dressed up to represent films or characters from films being placed in peoples front gardens while families wandered around all afternoon looking at them and trying to decipher what was what. Dad was pretty good at it really, the only one I recoginsed was the Andy look-a-like Shrek.
Nursery news and my bestest friend in the whole world Jude has gone up a room (he’s six months older than me). I do sometimes get to see him when I have a sneaky visit into the other room and I’m sure we’ll be re-united soon when I go up as well. I’ve coped with it all pretty well though.
In the mornings I now have to tell mum that it’s time for her to go by shouting ‘Mummy, Door, Work’ at her if she gets a bit too settled playing with all the toys and some days I even wake up properly when Dad comes to pick me up so I don’t have to be carried out crying at my rude awakening.

Happy Birthday to me

So then, 2 years old! How about that?
Mum had my Thursday (my birthday) off work. While dad was at work in the morning mum and I made a cake! She let me help and everything which is more than dad ever does while he’s cooking. It actually came out really well for a couple of amateurs, although the icing left a bit to be desired…

When dad came home we got on with the presents. They had got me a really smart bike, it is a little on the big side but I can still get on it okay.

The best bit was probably the cards though, I love opening them!

In the evening I saw Uncle Alan and Andy which was good.
Friday and no one went to work because it was a bank holiday or something? Mum and dad were pretty busy in the morning doing stuff around the house so I fell asleep on the floor of the front room. When I woke up the house was full of people and I seemed to be in the middle of my own party!

The weather cleared up and we got out in the garden with the bubble machine, it was great fun.
We had loads of lovely food (especially all the cakes) and I had loads more presents. Really good presents. Thanks everyone I loved them all.

Here I am in my tunnel/tent complex which provided plenty of laughs for everyone.
This was a strange one, I’m always warned to stay away from hot things and then they go and shove a flaming cake in my face and start singing?

I wasn’t having any of that.
Here I am having a late night cuddle with uncle Slim:

Speaking of late nights it was 11pm before I finally turned in, I had a great party, thanks everyone.
I must give a special mention to Chard and Kaz who sent me a scratch and sniff Banana card all the way from Australia, how cool is that?
Saturday mum was at work. Dad woke me up at 11:15 so we could go and meet her for lunch...I think I deserved a lie in.
As if the birthday wasn’t enough excitement for one boy, it was Easter too! Chocolate time. Mum had this crazy idea of hiding some chocolate eggs around the house and handing me a bucket to put them in….I think not. I found one and then scoffed it, she carried the bucket.

We went out for a bit of a walk in the afternoon and we went to feed the ducks (and Swans) in the park. It was quite funny as they were really greedy. We saw some boats on the pond and had a play on the swings and all the rest of it.
Monday came and they still didn’t go to work. We went to Bucklebury Farm park instead. Now this was my kind of place. Animals (proper ones too, none of these fancy Tigers and the like) Tractors and Playgrounds.

Here we are feeding the sheep. It was really funny getting mum to feed the donkeys from her hand, she squealed and shrieked as she didn’t like their wet old tongues. Ha ha, Dad didn’t seem to mind as much. We also saw some ponies, lambs, goats, piglets and cows. They had tractors you could sit on:

We even went for a ride on a tractor and trailer into a field with lots of deer in it, when we stopped they came up to us for some food and we got to see them really close up. I wasn’t fussed though, I just wanted more bumpy tractor action across the field. They also had a really big slide in one of the barns:

Dad and I came down together really fast and the bumps were good too. We had a good few goes before the poor old man was worn out….
What a great weekend!

The Great Outdoors

Busy old week again this week.
Wednesday afternoon we went up the woods with Emma and Max.

It was a nice day but it had been raining so there were plenty of puddles for us to go fishing in with our sticks. I caused hysteria on a narrow bridge when a bee landed on my welly, Emma, Max and Dad almost all ended up in the water.

We played a bit of ball on the field before having a mighty picnic comprising of one small packet of chocolate buttons, a small bag of minstrels and one bottle of ‘looking for Nemo’ water, what a treat for the tastebuds.
Thursday night we went to Rach and Ben’s. They had some cool furniture for me to bounce on and didn’t seem to mind me boinging about and throwing their cat’s ball around. Andy then showed up and then Nick and Carol. Ben had organised a sweepstake on the Grand National, and I was in charge of drawing the horses and names from the hats. I enjoyed my position of power but soon started to abuse it by pulling handfuls from the hat at a time before actually donning the hats themselves. I did look cool in them though.
Friday was Mum’s birthday, she was really pleased with the card I made her at nursery (Dad wasn’t, when they gave it to him to bring home the glue was still wet).
Once Dad had got home from work and they had discussed what we were actually going to do for an hour or two we headed off to Toys R Us. I rampaged through the bike and pedal car aisles before reaching the playhouse section, it was great fun. After that we went into the Oracle and had tea at Chili’s. I bellowed ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ to everyone who passed our table.
On Saturday the weather was nice so we played in the garden. Well I did, Mum and Dad were on a tidying mission or something. Dad cleared up the conservatory and Mum and I cleared all the dead leaves from the drains. I stuffed a handful of leaves down my top for good measure which wasn’t such a good move as they were pretty scratchy by the time they had got into my nappy. Ouch. I fell asleep in the afternoon on the sofa, and only caught the last half of the biggest horse race of the year! Dad won a fiver for having last horse home the loser. Ben and Rach came round for tea on Saturday night so I got to show just how many raspberries I could eat.
On Sunday, Number 23 in an occasional series ‘Dad takes us out for a walk in woods he wants to sus out as a potential biking destination’ took us to West Woods near Marlborough.

Here I am examining some horse footprints in the soft ground. I had great fun pushing my own pushchair about (except I kept running it into the gulley’s at the sides of the track). We got a good way from the car when the sky turned quite dark. It started to rain so I took refuge under my rain cover in the buggy leaving the fools to get wet outside. Except it wasn’t rain, it was small white blobs of something or another, they called it hail? Whatever it was it made a good noise on my cover although it did drip onto my head eventually (Dad, fix my buggy skylight please).
Monday afternoon Dad told me we were going out on the bike but then put me in the car. I was not happy. I hadn’t noticed him loading the bike onto the back. We went to Greenham common and rode all the way around the outside fence in the lovely sunshine and saw cows, birds and rabbits, as well as lots of cars. I liked the cars.
That’s all for this week, I don’t know what’s lined up for the next seven days although there has been lots of whispering and suspicious packages being secreted about the place, I’ll let you know if anything comes of it….

Scarborough!

Get yourself comfy, here comes the holiday update!
Now then what happened….they loaded the car up Friday lunchtime strapped me in and said we were going on holiday! Smart I thought, off to see Max in Somerset. So I started shouting MAX MAX MAX! But we went north. We never go north, sometimes South, Sometimes East, mostly West but never North. And north we went, and went and went. For a solid seven hours. The traffic was pretty bad but Mum and Dad remained surprisingly calm up front. I enjoyed the trip really. I had a lovely long kip, played spot the lorry out of the window and got fed at regular intervals. When we got to the place we were staying it was really foggy and dark, I had no idea where we were although I didn’t really care as it has a lovely comfy sofa to slouch about on while they got all my stuff in from the car.
Next morning this was where we were:

Lebberston, just outside Scarborough. We were staying in the old farm building but sadly the cattle had moved out. The drawer under the telly had Thomas the Tank engine DVD’s and there was also a special house just for me in the courtyard:

It was really good and I held several tea parties which went down a storm.
We were soon out and about and went to Cayton bay:

Here’s me and Dad chucking stones in the sea before running for it when the waves came in. The waves looked really good out the back and there were a fair few surfers out there, I decided that it must be Andy as he is the only one I know silly enough to go in the North Sea in March. I shouted ‘Andy’ at all of them. After that we went into Scarborough itself. The waves were crashing into the sea wall and sending spray right up into the air, it was really funny and I loved watching it and shouting splash!
They had a fair and everything, I had a go in this car amongst other things:

Sunday was an early start as we were going on the North Yorkshire Moors steam railway, we still only just got there in time. I loved going on the train and got a nice seat to myself right by the window. Dad taught me a new word, river as we crossed the bridge. It didn’t take me long to spot a group of young German ladies just down the carriage and start woo-ing them with a game of peep-bo. They loved it. We got off the train at Pickering and went for a walk round, it was pretty boring on a Sunday there to be honest so we soon headed back to the station. We got really close to the engine when it pulled in, I shouted ‘HOT’ each time it puffed out some steam in case anyone was in any doubt.

Mum bought me a lovely Thomas the Tank Engine book from the shop at the station before we got back on the train to go home. We sat opposite another family on the way back and since mum and dad didn’t seem to be too interested in me pointing out the river every time we crossed it, I told this other lot time and time again. They must have liked it as they gave me a lovely posh chocolate biscuit.
Onto Monday and we went to the Sea Life Centre. I wasn’t really that bothered about it initially and just ran through it all as quick as I could en-route to the café and play area which I played on for ages. We had another look round and I started to get into it a bit more. I saw some Sea Lions, a big Turtle, jellyfish and some sharks which were all okay but best of all was the Seahorses (just like a normal horse but with no legs, a pot belly like Dad’s, really small and live underwater….what ever next?) and a real life Nemo. After that we went to Filey. On the way Dad thought he could smell the country side, but it wasn’t the countryside, it was the contents of my nappy. Very runny they were too. Oh dear, Filey aborted and back to camp for a change of clothes and a bath.
Tuesday came and we had a brilliant game of hide and seek in the cottage before we went off to Whitby, even further north. It was pretty nice there, we saw loads of boats and a parked up fire engine that we had a good look around. Best of all though was the arcade:

Here I am having a few laps. Mum played against Dad, so I helped mum by sitting on her lap and wrenching the steering wheel away from her when I fancied it. She still set the fastest lap time though, I think I’m glad dad does most of the real driving. There was a big old moving horse thing in the window that I had several goes on. It was really high up so Mum had to hold on even though I had a firm grip on the reigns. I also got a taste for feeding the penny falls machines. You get some coins off of Mum or Dad and then shove them in the slot and watch them get pushed about. On the edge of the piled up coins were some small toys, Mum quite fancied seeing if she could get an aeroplane to fall down for me. Dad dismissed it as impossible and said he’d never seen it happen. About £395 later the plane duly dropped into the tray down below, although mum and I missed the great event. Mum then spotted a car also teetering on the edge of oblivion and started shoving coins in again….it didn’t show much chance of shifting so mum and I wandered off leaving Dad on a mission. Another £276 later and I had a car to go with my aeroplane and Dad had a new ‘Proudest achievement’ to put on his CV.

We went on to Robin Hoods bay:

The tide was in so we couldn’t get on the beach. I did have the pleasure of an extreme push chair ride up and down the steepest hill I’ve ever been on though. I’m glad dad was pushing.
On Wednesday we went into Scarborough again, on the way in we saw a man leading four ‘Donkeys’ (looked like Horses to me) down the road towards the beach. Mum told me I could go on one which lead me to repeat the word Donkey every 30 seconds or so for the next few hours, interspersed with the occasional ee-aw.

When we finally got to the beach the Donkeys were on lunch break for an hour! I was devastated, we went for a walk up the beach but I soon nodded off:

Once I woke up, the Donkeys were working again, fully refreshed and up for it! Here I am riding one of the beasts:

I was a natural, although I did have to stretch my legs a long way to sit down. Mum didn’t even really need to hold me.
We went to the Lifeboat station and Dad got me some boats for the bath, mum got herself a fishing game and I charmed the two old ladies in the shop.
After all the Donkey excitement and old lady pleasing we had another go at Filey. The tide was in so we couldn’t go on the beach again. We had a walk along the prom though:

Thursday we went to York. We parked the car and then got on a bus. I found this hugely exciting and shouted ‘BUS’ every 50 yards or so. I also pointed out houses, cars and lorries for the benefit of anyone within earshot. We just went in loads of shops so nothing to report really. Although I did get marched out of Pizza Hut for being naughty, Ooops.
So Friday we packed up and came home, but not until I’d thrown one last tea party and had a last scoot around the courtyard in their little car. I had a really good week but was really tired. Roll on the next one. The journey home was much quicker and we got home in time to pop round and see Nanny who I’d been pining for since Monday.
Saturday we had a quick trip out on the bike as I’d missed it on holiday before Grandad and Anne came round to look after me in the evening. They had got me a really smart Monster Truck from Florida. It’s brilliant and I’ve tried to take it to bed every night since. I even filled the back of it up with soggy Rice Crispies on Sunday morning. Great Grandma came round for lunch on Sunday as it was her birthday so that was nice. She sat next to me at dinner and let me have loads of pudding, she can come again.
So then it was back to nursery and back to normal. When Dad came to get me on Monday I had a great big Orange splodge of paint on my bum where I’d fallen over ‘foot’ painting, he said he was glad I got all this out of my system on someone elses carpet…..
Thanks for getting this far, it's been a monster this week.