First biscuits

Today Harry made his first batch of biscuits! Well I made the dough during his nap so he had a head start. First we cut out the biscuits.

Then we put on the icing and decorated them. It took him a while to get the hang of it, there were supposed to be four chocolate buttons on the biscuits but only two made it past his mouth. And once he discovered that the icing tasted nice, not so much went on the biscuits.

And here are the finished products! Yum yum!

Back again!

You may have noticed a lack of updates and photos lately. This was due to an unfortunate incident involving the camera and the toilet. However, having thoroughly dried out the camera, it now seems to be working fine! So here is a picture of the cheeky monkey responsible:

Next time we shall ensure that portable expensive electronic equipment is kept safely out of reach, and not used to prop doors open with.

Harry has been expressing his creative side lately with lots of glue and collage. Here is a lovely piece which he made at toddler group this morning. It's called "Star".

Fast asleep

Ahhh, bless!

Holiday

We've just got back from a lovely mid-week at Center Parcs. This was our third trip with Harry, and he gets more out of it every time we go. Now that he is walking it's all much more interesting for him. He was able to enjoy all the playgrounds properly and choose where he wanted to go.

Here he is on a tractor and on the swings. Unfortunately the swings were always quite busy so we had to wait which didn't go down well.

He really liked the train that you could climb in.

But the best bit was watching the ducks outside our window. He has a new habit of grabbing us by the hands and dragging us over to what he wants to see or do, so he was constantly dragging us over to the patio door shouting "du" "du". However most mornings he was awake before the ducks so we had to go out for a walk and find some. He liked the squirrels too, although seemed to think that they were also ducks.

Unfortunately he came down with a cold at the beginning of the week which he is still getting over (he's a bit of a grumpy thing at the moment), so he needs lots of looking after.

Still here!

Sorry it's all gone a bit quiet from me! We have been very busy lately! We are all fine and Harry is doing well, he is adding several words a day to his vocabulary. Yesterday was 'man', 'finger' and 'cheese'. Well they are a bit vague but I know what he means.

We managed to squeeze in another trip to Legoland and this time Harry was patient enough to queue up for the boat ride which he really enjoyed.

And today it was his turn to inherit the family wellies! I've been keeping them for ages and now they have someone to wear them again. We're off to Center Parcs next week so they will be coming along for tramping about in the mud.

We love Legoland!

We were up early and it was a lovely sunny day, so we decided to make a return visit to Legoland. Last time we went Harry had just started walking and didn't want to walk about, even though he did enjoy it. It was amazing how much he has changed since then, he was loving running about. His stamina has improved too, we were there for hours and we all had a great time.

It was quite busy but we did manage to go on a few rides. But the great thing about Legoland is that even without going on rides there is still loads to see. There are lots of cars to look at, big and small.

To our surprise, Harry was enthralled by the puppet show and sat still for fifteen minutes!

Notice how Ram is so interested in the models he fails to spot Harry eating the railing (although, to be fair, I only noticed when looking through the photos).

We ate our lunch next to the mini railway track and watched the train going past. Again and again, with renewed fascination each time.

Harry is in Happyland!

We have bought Harry a massive collection of Happyland toys and he loves them! Although we've been mean and packed most of it away to save for special occasions when we need to occupy him! He likes putting the people in and out of the cars, and waving the cats around and going ca ca ca.

An experiment

I have it on excellent authority that some babies will just sit and play happily in their cots while one gets on with household chores. So we gave it a go...

So far so good! He has been in there for about twenty seconds.

Uh-oh, starting to get a bit cross...

That's enough of that thank you very much! And that was well under five minutes...

Another action packed weekend with lots of chasing around!

We know how to make the most of our weekends! On Thursday night we all drove up to Warwick to spend the weekend with Ram's family. On Friday Ram and I spent the day at Alton Towers which was brilliant. Harry had a lovely day too and was very well looked after.

On Saturday we took Harry to Warwick Castle. Out of all the places that we've taken him, this was definitely his favourite! He was fascinated by the suits of armour in the great hall and kept pointing at them and saying his word "ah" which means "look, something interesting". Then we went round the State Rooms, he had a great time running about while we chased him.

Then it was his turn to do the chasing when we took him into the Peacock Garden. He says "duck" now (well "du...") while signing it like mad with his hands.

On Sunday on the way back we stopped at Chessington. It was another lovely sunny day and the park wasn't too busy. Harry's favourite bit was the children's zoo and there were a few more animals out today. He chased a pig about...

...and then the chickens. We also went on a few of the rides, although he wasn't very impressed with having to queue.

Learning to eat from a bowl

First we empty out the Shreddies


Then we look around...

In goes the car!

Weekend away and cats to chase

Jen and Harry spent a lovely weekend with Grandma and Grandad Cox up in Horsham. On Saturday we went to visit Uncle Tom and Auntie Kate and their three cats.



Initially the new musical car was enough of a distraction.

But what's that?

Nearly caught it that time!

Fun in the garden

There is always a lot of work to do in the garden, everything seems to grow so quickly. Harry is getting more and more confident outside, he loves running about on the grass.

Here he is helping Ram with the digging. Hopefully it won't be long before he is helping us properly! Note the funky dungarees, a present from Canada.

Feeling sorry for himself

Poor little Harry has not been very well. We suspect chicken pox, although this will only be confirmed if his little friend goes down with it in two weeks time (we didn't know Harry was infectious when we went visiting!). He had a very high temperature for two days, but luckily that has gone down now and he is just left feeling grumpy. He's got lots of spots, but they aren't very big or itchy and don't seem to be bothering him. Now I'm struggling to entertain him, as we can't do the things that we usually do, like going to the library or swimming, and he won't sit still in front of the television and be ill.


Since he was ill, Giraffe has featured more prominently in his little world. I'd always wanted to keep Giraffe for the cot only, but we relaxed this a bit when he was ill, and now he goes to the cot and fetches Giraffe (or screams if he can't reach him) and carries him about. When he wants to hold something else in his hands, Giraffe is carried in the mouth. Giraffe is becoming very smelly. I really don't want Giraffe to come everywhere with us, I don't think that I can handle the trauma if he gets lost.

Sunny again!

Our camera takes much better pictures when it's sunny outside. This morning we went for our usual walk over to Tesco. I try to encourage Harry to walk a little bit outside, but he's not keen. He's only interested when there is a bus going past, but he still wants to cling on to the pushchair.

I'm hoping that he'll continue to enjoy books like his Mum! Not sure why he likes this uncomfortable spot in the corner next to the television, possibly he's acting innocent and waiting for me to leave the room so that he can press buttons and pull cables. The Gruffalo is his favourite book and also favourite television programme. He can identify a Gruffalo better than most other farmyard animals.

The conservatory gets more use when the weather is warmer too. You can just see the back of Beowulf's head through the window. Beowulf the statue was found hidden in the flowerbed when we moved in, and he makes everything in our garden grow (he's a bit too good at it, it gets a bit overgrown). Harry likes to go and visit him, they are just about the same size.

Harry won't sit still in this chair anymore, but he still likes to play with it. We saw a real cat yesterday and it was the most exciting thing that he'd ever seen! He chased it about, pointing and laughing.

Chessington World of Adventures

Harry is such a busy baby! Today we took him to Chessington World of Adventures. I haven't been for years and it has changed a lot, although a lot of the older rides are still there, just with new names! First we went on some of the rides, here we are on a little roundabout. It had a dragon in the middle with a long tail which Harry confused with a snake - "sssssss"!


It was very busy today, we've been to the zoo during the winter and it was almost empty. This time it was nice because Harry was able to walk about a bit. Here he is being confused by a pig, it wasn't nice and pink like the ones that he recognises. Whenever he sees Daddy he points and gives a big smile.

He really enjoyed meeting the goat.

Another easy way to make him smile is to give him a biscuit!

Legoland!

I've always wanted to go to Legoland and it's only now that we have an excuse to go! We all had a great time. We went on a few of the rides - Harry's first boat trip and train rides, as well as his first (3D) cinema experience. Harry's favourite area though was the room full of big Lego blocks.


Harry delighted Mummy by eating something that she had cooked - chewy cereal bars. It kept him busy in the pushchair long enough for us to look around the entire display of Lego models.

When he was flagging towards the end of the day, it was the giant Lego bricks that perked him up. What a great place, we're hoping to go again soon.