Who’s Normal Anyway?

Wednesday

was L’s first birthday. We’d planned to go to the dinosaur park for the day as A had the day off, but M was still coughing loads and not up to it. So we got up and opened L’s birthday presents and he tried out his slide and played with his vehicles.

Then we packed a picnic and beach stuff and went to Hunstanton and played on the beach for a couple of hours.

When we got home we had tea and sang “happy birthday” over L’s birthday cake. I’m glad we made the effort to do something to mark the day.

Thursday

is baby signing class day so we went to that first thing, then to Tesco for a few bits afterwards. We were going to have lunch there but their cafe is really rubbish (much prefer Morrisons now) so we came home. In the evening it was M’s last Beavers before the summer holidays.

Friday

hmm, what did we do on Friday?

Saturday

M woke A up about 5am by thrusting an arm under A’s nose and saying “Look, I’ve got a rash and I’ve got spots on my back too”. Instead of cricket we took him to the doctors and he’s allergic to penicillin. Afterwards we went into town shopping and got him some new black shoes, proper Start Rite ones, for £15. We also bought A’s replacement laptop (we’d been waiting ages on the insurance company but got the cheque through on Saturday morning at last) but had to arrange to collect it from a shop in Yorkshire because they had none locally. On the plus side it had gone down again in price.

Sunday

was the day we drove up to Yorkshire to visit family. We went to my Grandma’s after picking up the laptop just up the road from her house. Had a pleasant couple of hours catching up a bit with my grandma, dad and his sister’s family. Then we went to A’s parents’ house for tea and then off to a Travelodge to spend the night so we could leave A’s parents in peace. It was so hot!

Monday

was the day we caught up with my mum and sister properly. They gave L musical toys for his birthday so he played with those quite a bit and M caught up on his gaming on my mum’s laptop.

In the evening we went out for an Italian meal and we found L loved the sauce in my pasta LOL.

Tuesday

was spent at A’s parents’ for a little while having breakfast and L played with his new pushalong in the garden.

Then I took the boys off to T’s house for the afternoon and spent a lovely few hours catching up there. It was terribly hot so we stayed in the house hiding from the sun and were mean mummies and banned the kids from having more than 10 mins outside at a time. In the evening we went out to Jumbo for an all you can eat Chinese - it was gorgeous food as ever and L tried his first prawn crackers.

Today

we spent the morning with A’s parents again and then had lunch at my mum’s before driving back down to Norfolk in 33C heat - thank goodness for the car’s air con.

We’ve been away for a few days and just got back, so I may get around to blogging about L’s first birthday and our time away shortly. I want to take a few minutes to keep track of how L has changed in the last couple of weeks though, he’s blossoming into an almost toddler who can do so much more all at once.

He’s been so close to walking for several weeks. He has gradually gone from being confident standing to walking around barely hanging on to our finger tips and is now at that almost there stage of taking the tiniest step on his own and then wobbling and falling onto his bottom. I know all babies just learn to walk, but I love watching the process unfold.

L plays with toys really differently than I remember M doing. I guess it could be that he gets left to get on with it much more being the second, but some if it is temperament. He is figuring out how to manipulate toys fast and at the moment is into trying to post shapes into shape sorters and how to operate flaps in flap books.

He also has a thing for buttons. I think it started with our old printer’s on and off button (I think the constant on and off was what finished off the print heads) which lit up when it was turned on. He also loves turning radio on and off and jigs to the music. He makes a beeline for anything with pressable buttons. I keep the phone out of his way otherwise I can see him managing to dial 999.

He’s sussed climbing the stairs and is so fast! We keep the downstairs doors shut so he can’t get into the hall because there’s nowhere to fasten a stair gate, though in some ways I also want him to learn to climb well rather than rely on a gate. He seems to have figured out that trying to sit down half way up is not a good idea, but he’s not figured out how to come down yet.

At bedtime L loves to climb up onto the train set box in front of M’s bedroom window and look out into the street to watch people. He stands there and bangs on the window.

We have plenty of mischief in the bath now, with L trying to put toys over the side and giggling at me. He thinks it’s hilarious. He worked out how to squirt water out of the plastic duck’s bottom and he and M have water squirting games.

L is just beginning to be able to make some signs now. He has begun clapping in the last couple of weeks and can make the potty sign (but hasn’t used it when he needs to go so far) and the other day looked straight at our fish tank, looked at me and signed fish. Not that he’s done it again, but I have hopes he might get into more signs when he’s trying to tell us something.