Sorry to start with such a shocking image this week, but Owens had a haircut!

Dad did it to him in the kitchen, I couldn’t believe the amount of hair on the floor, if I’d had made that sort of mess I would have been in trouble.
Mum and Dad had got me a top notch fancy dress outfit for the forthcoming Christmas festivities:

A Rudolph outfit, complete with a little padded belly with bells on.
Kimi came round to play last week, we had a great time playing with my toys:

We also went to the park and we both fell asleep in the fresh air.
I didn’t, I made Mum feel sick spinning her round on the spinny pole, Dad had to help her off in the end.
Friday we went to get ourselves a Christmas tree at long last…everyone else has had theirs for ages (it’s Dad’s fault we had to wait soooo long). First off was a dance with Dancing Santa:

It was really cold so I was happy to take the first one we found which was lucky because Mum wanted the first one she picked up. Dad felt a little short changed I think and was well up for dragging every tree there out of it’s bay for perusal.

I was fascinated by the tree bagging machine and loved watching the trees getting shoved through and coming out the other end in a funny sort of sock thing. We tied it to the top of the car, this worried me a little and I kept asking if it had fallen off every half a mile or so. I’m glad to say it survived the journey intact. We had no time to decorate though as we were off to Max and Leo’s for the weekend again!
We played, we ate, we danced, we sang, we fell out, we were friends again.

We played hockey, I had my own special little stick and everything, I really enjoyed it.
I sat and drank with Dad while all this energetic stuff was going on:

Saturday night we had a Christmas dinner with crackers and everything:

And then to top it all of nicely I got another finger caught in another door….it bled a lot and I cried my eyes out. After a kip on mums lap and a plaster I was back on it though, bundling with Max while the grown ups tried to watch the football.


Not quite so close up as usual, but pretty close all the same. I also got my usual semi-clothed cuddle:

No nursery Monday so we had a bit of a lay in and then set about actually putting the tree up at long last:

Dad wedged it in a bucket and then I snipped off the bag to reveal it’s full glory. Dad was pretty pleased that it only just cleard the ceiling:

I was even allowed to decorate it this year, although most of the decorations ended up in one low corner of the tree.
It was pretty good when they’d all finished hanging stuff on it I suppose but I can’t really understand why they’ve got a tree in the house. Still, this is my first Christmas so I’m sure I’ll see plenty of weird and wonderful things before it’s over.

It was fancy dress day at nursery today, I wore my reindeer outfit and all the other children had all made an effort. There were pirates, clowns, fairies and everything and we even had a roast turkey dinner. Santa came in to see us too, Mum and Dad came in as to see him as well, I don’t know why though as he only had presents for the children. It was really exciting to see him up close though. I asked plenty of difficult questions like where were his reindeer. Apparently they were parked on the roof? After that we went into Mum’s shop with me still in my outfit and I drew plenty of admiring glances.
So did I, even though I was asleep for the most part…..
Oh yeah, you can add rusks the the ever increasing list of real food I don't like as well this week.
Here, have your Christmas treat by clicking this link:
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1190556454

Okay then, I was a little naughty at nursery last week. Me and one of the others decided we would shove our fingers up the taps in the toilet to make the water spray everywhere. It was really good fun, although we got caught and had to get changed into our spare dry clothes. Maybe I should have left it there, but we decided to have another turn…..but this time I didn’t have any spare clothes:

So I had to borrow this rather fetching pink top from nursery! I don’t think I was that naughty really though, I’m sure Mum was trying not to laugh when she told Dad what had happened.
The fairy has still been making regular visits, she leaves our goodies in this truck (well, Ned’s goodies anyway. I’m sure I’ll get in on it next year).

Thursday was pantomime day at nursery. We all went to see Beauty and The Beast at the Corn Exchange and I took mum along too.

Now most of the others were scared witless by the beast but not me. I’d been asking Mum about the beast all week so I knew what to expect. Shame she didn’t bring me any sweets like the other Mum’s did though We boo-ed, we cheered, we sang along and we danced in the aisles (well, those of us that didn’t leave in tears did anyway). It was such good fun I didn’t stop talking about it for days afterwards.
I spent the morning playing with Kimi and Rach and had a lovely time, thanks to you both!
As if that wasn’t enough, we went to the pasty shop afterwards with Dad and Ellis.

I didn’t have a pasty, I had milk.

They try and get me to eat some proper food every now and again but I really can’t be doing with it, yoghurts were the latest in a long line of non-starters.
We went round to see Grandma, and as luck would have it she was supervising the Christmas decorations in their big room:

I made sure I got involved in the decorating and the biscuit tin on their tea trolley.

I sat with Grandma while Ned and Dad blew up balloons and then let them go zooming across the room which they found ridiculously funny for some reason.
Andy came round for tea on Friday night, it was my choice as well on the menu. Chicken nugget and chips! Mum and Dad went out after tea but didn’t get dressed up or anything…most odd. I wonder what they were up to at this time of year?
I was good for Andy and drank loads of milk before I went to bed. He was even the only one who has been brave enough to put me to bed in my sleeping bag, good work Andy, I was lovely and cosy.
How wet was it at the weekend? Rubbish. We stayed in pretty much all day playing on the Wii and then betting on the horse racing that was on telly. Dad and I did quite well and won all the money, poor old Mum and Ellis got taken to the cleaners.
Sunday we went to uncle Alan’s for dinner with Grandad and Anne as well.

Alan did a good job of cooking, supplying drinks and chasing me around the house even though a little bird tells me he was up very late the night before and was probably a little worse for wear.

Grandad decided to put the envelope from his birthday card on my head…apparently he likes to do that sort of thing. Oh well, I didn’t mind I got my own back by having a milky sneeze on his jumper.
Yesterday was baking day at Auntie Christine’s, Hooray!!! I was so excited all morning at nursery I wouldn’t even eat my dinner as I was saving myself for the main event. It’s the level of detail that’s so impressive, from the Christmas chefs hat, apron and cake tin, through to my own mini rolling pin and even Christmas plasters for my poorly thumb nail (that has now come off completely….eeewww!). We baked, we sang, we even made paper chains for my bedroom and Laura popped round to see us as well, I think she has some sort of Ned seeking device built in as she always manages to appear at some point when I’m there. Every one should have an Auntie Christine……
I went to town wih Mum and Dad, we did some shopping and then went to have coffe, how very sophisticated we are when Ned isn't around.
So today we went off to the woods to find some puddles. What we hadn’t bargained on was that some of the puddles would be iced over!

They made a brilliant crunching sound as we walked through them and I did really well not to fall over I reckon.
Dad held up some sheets of ice for Mum and us to do some Kung Fu on as well, it smashed really well.
I didn’t even go too deep for my wellies until nearly the end when I followed Dad out into deep, open water. So it was wellies off, tip out the water, remove socks and trousers and get put in the push chair wrapped up in a nice fleece blanket and Mums coat until we got back to the car.
The fool, I stayed in my nice warm buggy and tried to sleep despite the constant bumping over three roots and stoney paths:

Okay then, that’s about all, except for Ellis’ close up of the week:

We know how to live, last week instead of going to Tesco Mum decided we should go to Asda in Basingstoke. How about that then globe trotters?
One of my favourite recent tricks has been to remove my trousers and pants and then hanging my bare bum out of Poppy’s cat flap. I bet Dad would like a go but he’s got no chance with a bum that big.
I’ve been for a weigh and put on half a pound in a week, a good performance by all accounts. The health visitor also said I could give up on solid food for a bit, that’s a result. That slop was inedible!
Friday and everything started turning a bit Christmassy….hooray! Auntie Trish came round with a Christmas Mr Man book and a book with a special kit for sending letters to santa in it.

We read all the stories and I listened really intently. Once we had a good old read we headed off to town to see Santa turn on the Christmas lights. We stopped by Auntie Christine’s shop and got pretend snow thrown over us (it’s still in my car seat) and she gave me a pair of fluffy reindeer antlers to wear:

We were having such a good time in the shop we nearly missed Santa go by and Dad had to run up the street with me to catch up. Did I mention it was raining…hard!!! We hung about in the market place for a bit in the rain before the lights went on and then we tried to find Santa again but he had gone…disappeared! What a shame, and my reindeer antlers got pretty soggy as well.
I slept through all the excitement, and rain.
When we got home Auntie Christine and Owen came round, they had a special present for Ellis and I that Nanny had sorted out for us a little while back. It was a big lorry with 24 little drawers in the back, all numbered. Now apparently a special Christmas fairy makes a visit once a day to leave us a little something in the drawer. Yeah right…..
So Saturday was party day, I was so excited I probably could have burst. But first of all there was the advent calendar to open, how exciting (for Mum). We always have to guess what will be behind the door. Now i'm still pretty new to this Christmas lark so i'm not so good with the guessing as Mum and Dad with their years of advent calendar experience. Finally it was time to go to Judes party, we got to the racecourse early but the party had already kicked off. There was a bouncy castle, a load of sports equipment, some slides and a load of other things to play with, but best of all there was a face painter. I started off as Ned but soon became a scary tiger:

I was in character too, chasing my prey around the hall and roaring as loud as I could. It lasted a little while, until I got a bit of a bump on the bouncy castle, had a cry and rubbed my eyes….
Jude, Alistair, Hugo and I were definitely the party animals, our finest scheme was using the skipping ropes to drag each other around the floor and attempting to remove each others heads with them, in the end the man came and put them away!

After we had worked up an appetite it was off to another room for some food. As if that wasn’t good enough we had a great view of the horse racing too and every time a group of horses charged past the window I led the cheering. Once the food was done and dusted we played pass the parcel.

We got a bit bored without anything to unwrap for ages but we all got a go in the end.

Even if I had heard enough of the terrible music (Dad says it was Shakira). It was the best party ever, even the party bags were ace, they had model aeroplane gliders in them which gave dad and I hours of fun target practice with Ellis at home.
The low point of the whole event was when one of Neds friends, I think it was Edward pointed out that I had a bogey attached to my nose starting a chorus of bo-gey! bo-gey! bo-gey! By all the rest of them. In the evening Andy,Ben, Rach and Kimi came round and I performed my party piece. It involves being put onmy back in a distant part of the room and then rolling over onto my tummy, then my back, then my tummy again, over and over until I have covered several feet accross the floor. To be honest, i've given it up again now though, it's too much effort. If I sit and look a little bit dejected and distant someone will come and get me anyway.
Fairy update: She must have come while I was at the party, she left me a santa chocolate!!! Maybe they were telling the truth?
Is it time for my close up yet:

So after the highs of Saturday we were back down to earth with a bump on Sunday, shopping….urrrgh!!! Dad, Ellis and I did manage to have a bit of laugh as we rode around in the trolley though. Once we got home it was time to watch Shrek. I can’t believe they kept it from me for so long, I loved it. It has made me ask lots and lots of questions though, I think I may need to see it again.
Fairy update: She left a snow man chocolate during Shrek, I must have been really engrossed in the film as I didn’t see a thing!
Back to nursery on Monday and Roses (our ‘teacher’) had also really got the Christmas bug, we had santa suits to wear and she had done a makeover on the home corner to make it look more christmassy, we’ll be whipped up into a frenzy!! Owen came round in the afternoon, he helped Dad cook curry for tea…..I had fishcakes instead!
Fairy update: She must have come during dinner, there was nothing in the truck before tea when I checked but by the time we were finished there was another Santa chocolate. I don’t know how she does it……

Okay, first off an apology, we haven’t been doing much this last week and as a consequence pictures are pretty thin on the ground.
First of all, I was weighed last week and my graph showed a bit of a dip! Oh dear I’d actually lost weight. I blame Ned for bringing home every tummy bug, sniffle and sneeze going. I was told I’d have to eat more real food such as advocado’s (horrible), Cheesey creamy mash potato (horrible), Bananas (horrible), pears (horrible) and carrots (the best of a bad bunch).




I’ll stick to my sandwiches!

Actually, I’ve been pretty good lately and have been eating almost everything put in front of me…or hiding in the cupboard!
We went boring shopping in boring Newbury last week, but Santa had taken up residence in the Kennet Centre, how exciting. This year I wasn’t even scared of his moving polar bears either, Nanny would be so proud of me. I kept sidling up to Santa trying to stay un-noticed but he saw me every time, I really think he can see everything.
Oh yeah, guess what…I’ve got another tooth already! Still, I’m not going to use it to eat anything anytime soon, i'll just use it to bite Mum's fingers when she's silly enough to let them go near my mouth..
Saturday Dad went out on his bike all day long so Mum was stuck in the house with us without the car or anything. We were going to make jam tarts but didn’t have the proper ingredients so we thought we’d make a chocolate cake instead. We didn’t have the right things for that either so we made scones. They were lovely and Mum and I had a great time making a massive amount of mess, it’s a good job Dad was out.
We went to Grandad and Anne’s on Sunday for an impromptu visit. We would have had some nice pictures of us playing in the park if Dad had remembered to put the battery in the camera.
I made Grandad show me his model railway a few times, we watched black beauty (I was agog!) and we went for a walk to see the horses. Sadly they were fenced off from us so we put a pear that Anne had found and a cabbage leaf that I found in a nearby field where Anne assured me that the horses would eventually find them. I hope they enjoyed them. We also got to stay for tea and I had my favourite…SAUSAGES!!!! and then chocolate brownies AND trifle, what a great afternoon out.
We sat and looked at the baby scan pictures of Ellis and I when we were in mum’s tummy on the computer the other day, we looked like little aliens in there! I asked whether Ellis used to walk around in there...........
Today was swimming day, I was much more up for it than last time when all I did was puke up all the time. Ned splashed me loads and I found it really funny even though Mum and Dad tried to stop him. I had a lovely ‘upright’ float around in my inflatable seat that I normally flop around in before having a poolside cuddle with Mum while the boys carried on playing.
Yeah, I dragged Dad out to the deep water and pushed him over, that’ll teach him for splashing me!
I told mum that I had something to tell her tonight when she’d tucked me up in bed. After she had got down on the floor and placed her ear within whispering range I told her that ‘Racing cars are fast’ She seemed really pleased that I’d let her in on this little secret of mine.
Okay that’s about it I think other than to say that I’m really looking forward to going to Jude’s birthday party this Saturday.
As a final treat for you, here’s a few pictures of us after our bath the other night :

This weeks big news……I’ve got a tooth. It’s only little, but it’s there! In line with this I’ve had renewed interest in solid foods, well baby rice anyway. They’ve even got the high chair out for me at the table now, that’s a bit more dignified than being dumped in a Bumbo on the table. I also had a really good go at crawling tonight on my play mat so things are coming along pretty nicely really all round.
We went on a visit around a school for me last week, two children showed us round and told us all about it. They had a great playground so that’s me sold. After that we had grandma round for tea. I pulled all the cushions off the sofa and made a running and jumping track to show her my skills, she was impressed.
My new favourite words are ‘Quality’ as in ‘this slide is quality’ and ‘delicious’ in regard to anything nice to eat (such as shrek spaghetti, or beans as I call it).
Okay then, onto the weekend….we went off to see Max and Leo (and Emma and Dean) with Andy. I talked to Andy all the way through the Friday night traffic before we arrived and was served sausage and mash and beans for tea…how great is that? Max and I had a great time and didn’t make each other cry once!
I loved it too, I sat in my chair and watched the three boys going about their business, picking up a few tips on how to make the grown ups agitated (switching off the sky+ box seemed to be the most effective, good work Leo).

We went out for a walk in the leaves and collected enough sticks to make a raft capable of crossing the atlantic.

We fed the ducks, and ate some of the bread ourselves, even though Emma told us it was special ‘Duck’ bread and we’d start to grow feathers and quack.

Leo and I just sat and chilled out a bit, until we got to the playground and Leo made a good attempt at becoming the worlds dirtiest boy, while the other two terrorised the place:

Mum helped me on some of the bigger stuff:

We had some lunch sat outside even though it was the coldest day ever and then went for a walk around the animal section, where there some really lovely baby piggies!

There were loads of other animals too, some of them we even saw as Max and I ran around the place at 130mph.

As always the toys are ace, we played for hours upstairs on our own with no grown ups or babies to spoil anything.
Sunday we went to the RAF museum at Hendon:

I even woke up for this one, even though I didn’t know what we were really looking at.
Max and I continued our 130mph visiting theme by running around the place like a pair of loonies, we did stop a bit more often though as there were a few things you could climb into.

So that was another mad hectic weekend in the city and I didn’t want to come home Sunday night at all. Even when I got up Monday morning I wanted to go back and see Max again, but had to make do with having the morning off from nursery and staying home with Mum.

Well I thought I’d get in on the spewing act this week after Ned’s outburst last week. Mum took me to the doctors as I was looking proper sorry for myself and everything. As soon as we got to the doctors though I perked up and gave him a lovely smile. He gave me a good old check over and decided I was pretty much okay. I haven’t had much appetite for milk or any of the more solid stuff they’ve been trying me on though, sorry Mum I’ll get there in the end.

I’ve felt much better this week thank you.
Saturday morning we went to JJ’s in Basingstoke. We hadn’t been for ages and I had a really good time playing in there. I am still a little bit delicate so I made sure I enlisted Mum or Dad to help me explore the ball pools and slides, even though Dad put his back out chasing after me. I think he’s getting too old for it really but I have to humour him I suppose. Saturday afternoon we got word that Uncle Slim and Uncle Den had gone fishing!

They had wrigglers, which I was intrigued with. They were really soft and, well, wriggly! Den had the upper hand with the fishing and poor old Slim had been having a pretty torrid time of it by all accounts, never mind, there’s always next time!!

I had a quick go but didn’t catch anything….except a wriggler!
We were supposed to be going to the fireworks on Saturday night, but then Mum decided to start being sick as well,,,,what a downer. We watched them from the window in Ellis’ bedroom, we had an excellent view but I made sure Dad shut the window just in case one came in through the window at us.
Sunday we had a rather quiet day in, until Alan came round to babysit for us! He gets all the really good baby sitting jobs, Sunday Nights or the really late ones, he’s good like that. We had a game of cars and then Sonia came round in time for our bedtime story. On behalf of Ellis and myself I’d like to thank them for a bumper session with 3 whole Mr Man books (that’s a record, the most if ever got before is 2), you can come again!
Monday was swimming day, we haven’t been for a while and quite honestly I couldn’t be bothered with it all. I’m not one to complain rally so I kept quiet while I had a little splash about but I soon decided to spice things up by throwing small milky little sicks out. It was great fun making mum take me out of the pool, clean me up and bring me back again only to do it all over again. Best of all though was making Dad try and clear me up, he took me to the toilet and tried to clean me up with some toilet roll on his sopping wet hands. It completely disintegrated and we both ended up covered in it.
I loved it, splashing about, going down the slides backwards, throwing armbands into the water and all the rest of it. I even walked up all the steps to the flume slides on my own twice. I think Dad’s arms will return to their real length inside the next couple of years or so.
Dad had a day off today, so we went to Monkey World!

Here’s a family of four after the keepers had decided to feed them.

I shared my cheesy wotsits with the monkeys.

I climbed like a monkey.

I slept like a sleepy monkey (even though Dad reckoned I look like an Orang-utang with my long straggly hair).

We played on this massive swing thing, although I decided it was actually a horsey.

I nearly nodded off on a swing with Mum.

We even saw some monkeys! They were great actually. The Gibbons made a really funny noise and one of them had a great game with me where he would hide at the back of his cage, before leaping down to the window and give it a bang. Every time he did it, it made me jump, so he did it again and again and I kept on jumping.