The twelve days of christmas...

what really happened.... http://www.kraftmstr.com/christmas/humor/12days-h.html

it's really funny.

It's Christmas Eve! Time's flown past... we're waiting for my cousin Jill and Tom to arrive, and G's having his nap. It's quiet and peaceful. Dan's made the turkey gravy (yums!) courtesy of a Jamie Oliver recipe, and he's also just made the Jamie Oliver Killer Chocolate Mousse so it'll be a yummy christmas.

Just weighed G last night after a long time not weighing him because the weighing machine's battery died, and he's 12.7kg..which equates to him being somewhere between the 50-75 percentile - excellent stuff. Now we need to measure his height and I'll be happy. It sounds like he's putting on more weight now (he was always hovering around the 50%ile or just below), which is not surprising since he's been eating quite a lot recently (whether that's a growth spurt or whatever...I don't know).

He's taken to eating Olives whole (!?) and spicy food too. he's even had wasabi peas! I think we're pretty blessed to have a toddler who seems to like his food.

Happy Christmas!!

p x

working from home...

today.

It's such a lovely thing to do - don't get me wrong; we still work up at the same time, George still went to nursery at the same time - but the joy of not having to go into work is unbelievably sweet. After dropping the little one off, I went off to the supermarket and did some food shopping, nappy shopping. got home, unpacked the stuff, went and did some washing, and then started to work.

Attacked the emails first, replied to those that I had to, sent out emails to those that needed some attention. Then sat down and decided to blog - ahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... no really.

I figured I've done alot of overtime lately. Was in London last thursday for an MBA gala evening which resulted in me coming home at 1am (and G not being too impressed given that he cried his face off, threw up and then cried himself to sleep - first time in a very long time). And also working every saturday in the last few weeks. So I think I can take 10 minutes off to blog.

Work's been quite hectic - as usual. Just finished a week of intensive MBA teaching which went really well - we'd revamped things, so it was more fun - but always intensive.

George's doing a danceathon in aid of Cystic Fibrosis Trust. If you wish to sponsor him for this activity next Thursday 26th Nov, please sponsor him at www.justgiving.com/Georgesdanceathon

ok - gotta get back to work now..!
xx

the name is Allen...

George Allen! :)

This picture of G is most priceless. Looking quite debonaire don't you think? :)

G's all dressed up because we had a wedding to attend at the Ritz in London and well, we had to dress up. We ended up staying over at this serviced apartments (got a really good deal) and so we didn't really have to rush about. The wedding was absolutely beautiful and my speech on behalf of the groom went down well I think!

Sunday, we met up with Ange and had lovely dim sum at Lido - good service, good food, reasonable prices. What more do you want?! (didn't realise this but having just googled Lido, it turns out that alot of other people think the dimsum at Lido's lovely too!)

We went home pretty happy...!

Singapore...

We've come back from Singapore 3 weeks now (which means I've been back at work 3 weeks now! boo hoo!)...

George had a whale of a time back home, with grandparents spoiling him to bits, meeting so many children and having so many to play with (the neighbours' kids, the kids from the neighbourhood, kids whilst we were on holiday and of course, his own cousins)..! It was amazing. He wasn't so much interested in kids younger than him (apart from his own cousin!) but he absolutely loved being with the older kids, following them around on his trike, going swimming and hanging out at the zoo!

We went to the zoo (with Dawn and her parents), and had a lovely time at the kidzworld water park (definitely recommend it!). We also went to Bintan (again!) and had a fantastic massage/facial and George absolutely loved the pool (and enjoyed socialising with the kids there). We celebrated dad's 70th birthday party with a huge party at Furama hotel (who were very professional) and as dad jokingly said to G, 'you stole gong-gong's limelight!!'...

Amongst the food G ate, he had chapatti and curry, chilli crab, chwee kway, macaroni chicken soup, coconut juice, lots of other juices, lots of fruit (watermelon, honeydew, apples, grapes - ate them whole, to my dad's dismay), chicken rice (loved that), udon, sushi and loads more. yums!

Some photos...

"George, where's your..."

Metatarsal?"

And G will point to his foot. :) Cool huh?? lol. In case we're in any doubt where our metatarsus is, click on the word.

We went up north to visit his other grandparents over a long weekend, and fantastically, G got on really well with everyone. He even went to the shops with his grandad, without me or D coming along! Grandad was on his way to the shops when I suggested that G might want to go along, and G said 'shoe' (and we put them on him) and he went off with Grandad, hand in hand, without turning back! That was great. He also played really well with all his cousins and they absolutely loved him.

Think he cottoned on really quickly that these people were people he could trust, and so settled down really quickly. I hope he'll be the same with the Singapore family when we see them in 3 weeks!

G says...

'bless you'! :) it's funny... we've always said 'bless you' when ever someone sneezes. And now, so does G. he shouts it across the room too, if he happens to hear a sneeze. It sounds suspiciously like ''sue' (tissue) which is about right too!

I celebrated my 36th birthday yesterday... OMG - how time flies.

The weekend started off well, with D and G going off to the supermarket to do the weekly shop whilst I stayed at home and hung about (read a few pages of my book, and basically did the laundry!)... Then we went to BlueWater shopping mall (big big place) and I managed to get some clothes (just as the shops were closing really) and had nice food - 'Leon's http://www.leonrestaurants.co.uk/ and spanish tapas in the evening http://www.latasca.co.uk/

Then on sunday, we went to church but were slightly late as D and G were busy baking a birthday cake for me! It's hilarious - will post some pics up here soon. Turned out ok though after alittle bit of a boo boo (daddy turning on the grill rather than the oven!). Hurried to church (G loves sticking his hand in the holy water and crossing himself - he sometimes drenches himself!), and then had lunch at Wagamama's where he finished quite a significant amount of my fried rice and some of Dan's curry!

Off to the park where he played in the labyrinth and the slides, and then back home where he crashed out (as did I) and Dan got on with decorating my cake. We then headed off to a surprise dinner where my friends gathered (Paola, Jesse, Victor, Chris, Nat, Chris, Lorraine and Euan) at a new chinese restaurant! It was yums and everyone agreed it was good food.

I received an acupuncture treatment from D and G, a lovely top and earrings (which I need to locate!) from PJV, and two pampering sets from CN and CLE. thank you everyone! :)

G's hair cut...

official first hair cut, took place last friday, 26th June 2009. His fringe is no more!!! will post photos soon. He was very good though, sat quietly in his own seat (boosted) and let Jodi get on with cutting his hair. ... He looks like a little boy now, and not my baby!

Prata...

G had 1 whole roti prata (well, except for maybe 2 bites?) for breakfast yesterday morning. Talk about big appetite! :) He also likes chicken rice, pasta with corguette and pancetta, tortellini, yoghurt, , shreddies/cheerios/rice crispies, juice (diluted with water!), ice cream, and chocolate. He also eats grapes by the punnet, blueberries (at one point he was finishing a whole punnet by himself), cherries and rice cakes. He loves fish (absolutely loves grilled salmon with oyster sauce and garlic), cod fish and chips (doesn't quite like the chips), mixed vege of carrots, brocolli, corn, peas. He's had onion bahji, toast.

Typical day:
Breakfast: Shreddies/cheerios/rice crispies/weetabix with milk. Sometimes with Toast.
Mid-morning snack: rice cakes, fruit, biscuits
Lunch: Pasta (tuna pasta bake, or pasta with corguette and pancetta, tortellini), fish and chips, chicken with rice and vege. + yoghurt, ice cream, cookie.
Mid-afternoon snack: rice cakes, fruit, biscuits.
Dinner: the same as lunch or anything else really.

Is that a diet for a 16 month old?!?! I think he'll have a bit of feast when we go back to Singapore for our summer hols!

More words...

George is a rather chatty toddler - except when he's confronted by the phone (and that's when he gets stage fright and doesn't speak - but still waves and blows kisses). Some of his words include "what's that?" (wahh zat), "hiya", "no... nono", "yes", oh doh", "duck", "dog" (woof woof) and the cutest one..."WOW WOW!" (when he's shown/given something he desperately wants).

His favourite books are 'The Gruffalo', 'The Gruffalo's Child', 'Going on a Bear Hunt' and any other book he can get his hands on. He loves books. When asked to show us where the X is, he knows where they are. He points to the Gruffalo, the mouse, the bear, the dog.. the monkey, the giraffe...

I'm sure he says other words too, but I can't remember them. But we sure do understand him...!

this brought tears...

to my eyes...

Sent to me by my old old friend since we were 4 years old.
She writes...
"What struck me was the mom knew about the Trisomy 18 diagnosis before baby was born and he attitude was:

"We knew from day to day that we had that day," Ginny says. "I would tell Matt a lot: 'I'll be sad later. I'm going to enjoy every second now.' So even though his diagnosis never changed, we just decided we were going to enjoy every second that we had."
http://www.oprah.com/media/20081001_tows_99balloons

Building Lego...

apparently G loves building with his lego/duplo blocks. Which is great. We've got photos of G doing that in nursery. His nursery teacher Paula thinks it's fab. We think so too... Paula then said, "aren't you impressed?"... we said.."sure"... she said, "no, you should be very impressed... building towers of more than 3/5 (I can't remember) is something babies of 30-50 months old do!"...

cogs starting moving... "oh really??!".. and G, bless him, is only 16 months old! hehehe...

Dan thinks G builder-meister of construction now - and of course, G got them building genes from him!

OMG...

this is such a sad story.... if you can help, do so... go to http://ourfeistyprincess.blogspot.com - I tried linking it on my sidebar, but I'm not good at such things so it may not appear. Go look... now.

G's nursery's been taken over...

by a Singaporean company!! OMG...

we got a letter a few days back saying that Busy Bees (used to be owned by ABC learning centres - an Australian co?) has been bought out by Knowledge Universe which is a Singaporean company! wow - apparently the Australians were in some financial trouble and had to hive off Busy Bees and they finally found this company to buy them out. Curious to know who/what Knowledge Universe is, I googled them (what did we do before Google?! - a question asked by one of my MBA students) and found out that they also run Pat's Schoolhouse!

Now, I hold Pat's Schoolhouse in great esteem as I know at least one of my friend's children is enrolled there, so I'm quite pleased that it's the same company with hopefully similar high standards..

well well, Singapore isn't all that small after all! Or maybe Singapore is physically a small island, but hey, its reach is far greater! Let's hope they don't change things too much, or if they do, they'll be for the better! Maybe they'll introduce Mandarin as one of their languages... hehehe

The future Liverpool star....

is born....! Ange and family got him a football lesson with Socatots as part of his Christmas present...we must thank them for supporting future Liverpool stars....:)

G's first parents evening...

at the nursery! It was held on Wed 3rd June, and we were the first ones to meet Paula, his keyworker.

It went well, heard that G was a placid baby (I was horrified at first, then realised that she meant 'serenely free of interruption or disturbance' - from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, as opposed to 'complacent/'sian-ji-puah'!! ), who was quite happy to get on with things. That he enjoys listening to stories - that he actually sits and listens now as oppose to wandering off after a few minutes. That he loves to eat (oh, we know that!). That he was very happy getting his nappy changed (WHAT?! that's never been the case at home!). That he was quite happy going off to sleep by himself on the mat (again, WHAT?!?! That's never happened at home!).

Oh well... Good to hear that he's very happy and contented at nursery, and that he's progressing very well too. We got to see his folder that they keep all about him, and there were a couple of 'developments' that indicated that he was beyond his age group (my child, gifted?!! lol...). Nah, we're just happy that he's happy there.

Well done G on a very good parents evening report!

Flights to Singapore...

have been booked! woo hoo...we're going back for nearly 3 weeks! :) I nearly gave up home the idea of going back to Singapore for a holiday in August (and also for Dad's birthday) as the flights were costing absolutely too much. I even thought to fly on BA (which isn't a problem per se, except for potential strikes and lost baggages...) but we're now booked on SQ, through ebookers.com (so if anyone wants to fly, perhpas they should consider going through ebookers first) and it's cheaper than booking through the SQ website (tsk tsk!).

we are flying 16th Aug-3Sept. Arriving just in time for dad's birthday. yay.

G's latest weigh in

He's now 15 months and 10 days old, and he weighs in at 10.72kg and 83.5 cm. That puts him exactly on the 50th percentile for his weight, and 98th percentile for his height.... great stuff..! :) It's good to know that at least he's growing!

laundry...

G taking the washing out...

G putting washing in the dryer...

chicken rice...

yum!! :) I made chicken rice yesterday. Courtesy of Prima Deli's pack but hey, it was really authentic, and frankly, because it took 1 hour to make, hey, I think I deserve some 'well done' here! hahahhaha.... I thank God the day Prima Deli decided to export their stuff overseas, and I think their stuff's probably at the very top of authentic Singapore fare. We fed Chris and Nat the chicken rice (it was all motivated by an article in the Sunday Times about Singapore food) and they both agreed it was yums. Chris thought that it might be abit bland at first ('boiled chicken'?!!)... but he was converted.

G had some too and we'll have some left overs tonight. feeling abit stressed at the moment - Singapore Airlines decided to practically double their airfares over night (from something like 500 quid, to 971!!! )... I've now changed my dates, and hopefully at 700 pounds, it's a better compromise. Will check with D and then hopefully book them soon.

pam x

kiwi fruit...

has been eaten! :) Was pleasantly surprised that G ate kiwi fruit! yum yum!

eating and sleeping...

is happening again! yay! well, mostly good sleeping, and very good eating.

Tonight's dinner was fusilli pasta with salami, brocolli and cherry tomatoes (we all had it) and he loved it. Ate loads of it, and that was good. Plus blueberries and 2 pots of yoghurt/fromage frais. Let's hope he stays asleep till the morning. And some milk before he drifted off to bed - both boob and bottle.

He's had this chesty cough for the longest time which has been waking him up in the night, which isn't great news for any of us. I'm not sure whether to take him to the dr's - the last time we did this, dr looked at us as if we were mad coz apparently his chest was clear, therefore this cough is fine and there's nothing they can do for us. hmm. And acc to the dept of health, we can't give children under 2 years any cough mixtures. So we gotta battle it through. oh well.

I'm now 1/3rd through exam marking... bring it on!

p x

ps: G's 15 months old now, and just over 11 kg I think. Think I'll make an app with the health visitor next thursday for a weigh in. We've not been since his first birthday!

teething...

again. This time, his molars are peeking through. He had a big of a high temperature and had been dribbling for some time (with red cheeks). We saw some white bits poking through his lower gums and figured they were his new teeth - he's got 8 at the moment (4 top and 4 bottom). He wasn't feeling too good on Tuesday so he didn't go into nursery and I had to stay home with him. He was also on hunger strike from Monday - till about Friday actually, which was rather worrying. But no fear, his appetite's back, and with a vengeance! He's in a much better mood, and has been eating loads since this (Saturday) lunch time.

For lunch, he had a pot of mush (we thought he might prefer mush if his teeth/gums were hurting - his fav Plum cheddar and lentil), and fish fingers, and a whole side order of peas. Plus a chocolate for 'dessert'.

He was in an incredibly good mood after that, and we spent about 40 minutes after that playing in the park with the swings and slides. He was also watching adults play footie!

We then went to B&Q to look at new kitchens and bathrooms (we have finally bought our house as of yesterday! but we're not sure when we get to move as those people have to move out). The kitchen and bathroom needs replacing pretty urgently, so we looked around B&Q and made an app with the designer person for 30th of May. That'll give us some time to get floor plans and measurements done.

G had a lovely time opening and closing the kitchen cupboards and going into the shower trays! I think B&Q might want to think about hiring G as their tester of doors - 'How robust are they?' you might ask. 'Well, they've been G-tested and approved!!'

Had a nap of about an hour and a bit when we got home and then wolfed down a whole bowl of pasta with chicken, peppers. Half a small punnet of grapes (really) and a pot of yoghurt. :) Long may this last...and hopefully this means he'll sleep better tonight!

*fingers tightly crossed* - mummy and daddy need a good night sleep G!!

Piglet flu...

Saw this on a friend's blog and thought it was hilarious...

First day at Tulips...

G's moved up rooms now, to the bigger babies room, Tulips (his first room was Buttercups) - 20th April 2009. Tulips has children from roughly 1 year to just over 2 years old. He loves it there, but had some teething problems (which lasted about a week - not bad at all)...!

First picture, on his way to nursery!!! Second picture, just outside nursery. His key worker's Paula, who's also the room leader (rumour has it that room leaders get to choose which children they want to take care of... yay, go George!! )..:)

With his god-brother...

in similar outfits, bought by his godma..!

(the first pic, G was trying to 'borrow' V's toy car - don't think V was very keen to lend it..).

More photos...

from Singapore Day 2009. Held last saturday 25th April, at Hampton Court Palace.

Who would have thought we'd be able to take a photo at the ERP gantry...!! hahahah....

and a picture with R - gorgeous little toddler, 3 weeks younger than George... also of the same mixed heritage! :)

Some photos..!

Some belated photos from our Athens trip (Mar19-24, 2009) where I was teaching our MBA students and D and G came along for a holiday.

On leave...

and enjoying it!! :)

Finally... after what seems like a hectic 6 months with work, illnesses, work, illnesses... you get the picture, I've finally found a week's slot to take some time off. Today's the first day of my leave and G's in the nursery for half a day. It's not 11 yet, and I've already put in a load of washing, took G to the nursery, had some breakfast, gone to the car wash, dropped the dry cleaning off, hung the clothes out to dry, packed away G's old clothes and cooked Rendang...:) ! I don't think that's too bad for half a morning's work.

Since the last post, G's recovered from his bout of sickness and diahrea over Easter break (which we spent up north with his other Grandparents) and I came down with the same when we returned - resulting in me taking some sick leave. Another round of German MBAs turned up this time for 10 days and it was a hectic 1.5 weeks. Feedback was again very positive, which is great.

In between that, we attended Singapore Day 09 at Hampton Court Palace (https://app.singaporeday.gov.sg/index.html) and it was very pleasant. The weather was great, catching up with Em and family and Adrian and Shien was fun and of course, the food was fab (even though we had to queue and queue!). The portions were small but adequate, given that we were queuing and re-queuing for different types of food. G had his first taste of 'chwee quay' - loved it, and we also had mee siam, katong laksa, chilli crab, chay tow kway and satay. There were other stalls with chicken rice, prata etc but we didn't get round to them in time.

Came away with lots of free goodies...! I've yet to go through them but I will, in this week off. Will update with more photos soon. Gotta go tend to my rendang!

Haven't had the time to update the blog - sorry!! Lots of things have been happening.

I had a bunch of German MBA students here in the first week of March, followed by a visit from an American Professor whom I'm collaborating with on a research project who did a presentation. Followed by a week in Athens where I taught the MBA course, and D and G came along for a holiday...!

Returned on the 24th of March, and came down with what I thought was flu, but turned to be possibly Glandular fever - which isn't nice. I've just recovered from that, finished marking a stack of essays, and then G's down with a viral infection (his first of the year I think). He got sent home from nursery yesterday afternoon after vomiting. He then slept at my workplace for an hour (whilst I marked), and then proceeded to vomit 2x in the car!! Brought him home, had a bath, he felt better then brought him to the doctor, who diagnosed him with a viral infection and gave him some antibiotics. I've had to ibuprofen and paracetamol him too as he's got quite a high temperature.

Poor baby - I think it's all the new bugs he's catching from going to the Toddlers group in nursery! He's moving up next week (I think)... a whole new world out there G...!! :)

George and daddy lookalike

Bought D a new jacket for valentine's... surprisingly (or not!) it was quite identical to G's....

Thank you for the angpows!

Courtesy of his aunty Jill, George finally received his angpows!! Thank you everyone in Singapore! :)

More birthday photos...

Birthday cake 1 and 2 - George attacking his cake...

George on his new trike (from Grandparents)

Birthday Party no 1

G turns one on 18th Feb 2009. We decided to celebrate his birthday, and we ended up with 2 birthday parties on the Valentines weeekend of the 14th and 15th! Birthday one was mostly family and close friends; birthday 2 was mostly baby friends (we met during our NCT classes). fab...:)

First shoes...

have been worn! We went into Clarkes yesterday to get G his first pair of proper shoes (well, cruising shoes, which are softer). They are so sweet! And he is a size 4F.

They were bought for his birthday... speaking of which, we're celebrating his birthday this weekend with 2 birthday parties, and on his actual day on the 18th, the nursery will be celebrating it! So, my son, at age 1, will have had 3 birthday celebrations!! wowow!

p x

Get your own Family Sticker Maker & MySpace Layouts.

Trip to the hospital...

on Chinese New Year's Eve.

So...G completed his last round of antibiotics on Friday (2days ago). Whilst on it, his ear infection cleared up, but he developed a cough... which subsequently got worse... and worse, and on Friday night he started to wheeze (or was it Thursday?). It tends to get worse at night, and so last night (sat night), he got worse and worse and had a rather bad night's sleep. I finally rang NHS direct, and spoke to a really nice nurse Pauline, who decided, after listening to G's rather laboured breathing over the phone, to get in touch with our out-of-hours doctor's practice at the Hospital. I spoke to her at about 5.30am, and by 6.30am, she's rung me back a couple of times and the doctor himself rang back too. And told us to get to the hospital. And so we did.

G ended up being diagnosed with something called Viral-induced Wheezing... which sounds quite lame (!?)... and got given some steriod tablets (For a couple of days) and salbutomol inhaler (which is exactly the same as the one I use for my asthma!). Together with a ventilator thing (2 big plastic cups that connect together, with a plastic mask over his face) we're supposed to use that whenever he's got difficulty breathing. After pumping in 10 puffs into the ventilator and with G screaming his face off (it must be really scary - poor baby!), he started to breathe really better... :)

Doctor said that he was otherwise fine as his cough didn't sound like it'd reached his chest, so we decided (after consulting with the dr!) to go do London for some Singaporean food.

G was very well behaved on the train, and fell asleep on the boob (Again). We had lunch at Rasa Sayang which is primarily a Malaysian outlet (and how did we know that? the numerous malaysian flags gave it away, perhaps?!) which produced rather authentic food...to my relief! I had char kway teow, D had nasi lemak, and G had roti canai!!(well, we didn't quite order it for him but he ended up stealing about 1 whole roti by himself!).

We also went to Hamley's to buy his birthday presents - got him a growth chart (really cool one) and some alpha blocks. We'll also be splashing out on 2 birthday cakes, and 2 birthday parties, so I think that'll do for now! We need to save a little money for the house move - whenever we get round to that!

Happy Niu Year!! :)

mum? ma-ma?

did he say it?!?!

I'm not sure. Both of us thought we heard it... so perhaps he did.. if he did, the date was 22nd January 2009, Thursday, when he's 11 months 4 days old! :)

He's since not said it again. hmph.

Gong xi gong xi...

it's the year of the ox on monday (26th Jan 09) and in preparation for that occasion, we dressed G up in his chinese outfit which grandpa bought for him when we were in Singapore...! We threw in some oranges for good measure - so gong xi gong xi, and Happy Chinese New Year!!

Washing up...

George decided also, after tonight's dinner, that he'd help with the washing up. So strapped onto daddy, he took his sponge and went to work...hehe!

George's food diary

So far, he's had a wide variety of food... He's had fruit scones, chocolate cake (he's abit of a choco addict if I allow him!!), and onion bahji - which we watched in trepedition when he snatched it off my fingers and promptly stuck it straight into his mouth. He loved it.

Here's a picture of him eating a prawn cracker, which we got given as we ordered a chinese take-away. I know, very unhealthy... but lovely picture! :)

Blueberries...

make George's poo really black!! :) We were in town on the weekend and came across a market stall which was selling fruit - so we bought a punnet of blueberries. George had never had blueberries (not that we know anyway). So we thought we'd try him on some.

He had some on saturday, practically half the punnet on sunday and finished them all today (Monday). Today, he went to nursery, and this evening when we picked him up, his key worker Jade said (in panicked voice), 'I've kept a sample of his nappy to show you - it's black! He might have an iron deficiency!!'

We looked at her confused, then said 'ah... he had a whole load of blueberries!!' - her face relaxed....... considerably. It was funny.

Tonight when we changed him for his bath, his nappy was poo-ey again...and it was black. like tar! gross.

His fever (previous blog entry) turned out to be an ear infection. I took him to the dr's on friday who diagnosed an ear infection (red right ear, pink left ear) and promptly dispensed antibiotics, again. sigh. But he seems to have bounced back quite quickly. He's still on antibiotics - will keep him on it for a week, but he appears pretty normal now.

The dr who rang me back on friday was really nice. Usually over here, our surgery's quite good anyway, by giving us an appointment on the day itself (compared to other surgeries around the country which might give you an appointment within the week!). On friday though, after I'd described his symptoms of being very feverish and lethargic (very much not himself), she suggested I took him in to the surgery. However he was sleeping when she called, and so I didn't really want to commit to a time and miss the appointment. She then said, 'bring him in when he wakes up - hopefully before 12noon and we'll squeeze him in!'... and lo and behold, that's what I did, and that's what happened!

Most impressed....

p x

Weigh in at nearly 11 months...

he's now 9.34kg (20 pounds 9 oz, 15th January 2009) and is 79cm (which puts him back in the 98th percentile). His weight puts him at just under 50th percentile again, which is great, since last month's weight put him down at 25th.

I think he's teething again... today he was really whingey, and clingy and has a rather high temperature too. There's nothing wrong with him (none that I can see anyway - no cold, slight cough but nothing that would cause a high fever), so I think it's to do with his teeth. Or perhaps to do with the rather bad weather. It's now 8degC, which is WARM compared to what we had last week, when it was -8, and we had to go to work (and nursery). hm.

A new word...

G has a new word in his vocabulary - 'uh-oh'. He says it everytime he drops something. And recently he's taken to saying it BEFORE he drops something. hm.

Other than this word, he says 'dadada'. Nothing else. But he tells us when he wants something by pointing and shouting!! lol. Or when he's awake and wants us to wake up too, he'll say 'uh'... and 'uh' again. Untill we awake.

Am desperate for him to say 'mamama'...I guess it'll come in time!

p x

Georgie...

the snowman!

We bought him a wooden Noah's Ark for christmas and I forgot that being rather OCD-esque, losing an animal (or either Mr or Mrs Noah) is quite a nightmare for me. So, every night (or rather, every time) he takes apart or overturns the ark, I end up lining the animals up and counting them (as you do, of course). A friend commented that perhaps these kits should come with spare animals - well, it might help, but if one of the spare animals got lost, I'd go mad too! oh well.

George walking...

with his walker up and down the house!

We went to the post-christmas sales and bought this little walker for about 40% off! Great stuff. He loves it and has this look of determination everytime he's on it! Gotta make sure he 'drives straight' though!! lol.

Videos...

George climbing the stairs at home! So, he's been climbing the stairs for a little while now (since about 9.5 months old)... but we only just got round to recording it - for posterity (and daddy only just got round to loading it up to the computer..!). Since the recording, D's also got round to putting up the stair gate downstairs because G's got very good at climbing up to the bend (3 steps up) in a stealth mode, very quietly and sneakily! Note to self: remember to shut the stair gate when we're downstairs!
I guess next thing on the to do list is to put up the stair gate upstairs!

Merry Christmas and Happy 2009!

Had a quiet and lovely Chrismas with my cousin coming down to stay with us for a few days and cooking christmas dinner! (turkey, stuffing, veg and all!).

George had his first turkey dinner and his first brussel sprout (in his christmas pudding bib, of course). hmm - the jury's still out on that - he looked like he liked the sprout! He also has a new favourite food - corn. Was slightly apprehensive when we first gave it to him as I thought he might choke on it (small pieces and everything) but he took to it and loved it. So much so that when we went to Wagamama's on the weekend, we ordered him a child's meal of chicken noodle, and he ate all the corn! (and chicken and some noodles!). Very impressed.

This lovely photo was taken at his nursery by his teachers and formed part of his christmas present to us (how sweet). We also got paintings of a reindeer and an angel made with prints from his hands and feet - very cute, and a salt dough imprint of his hand. We need to find more walls to hang these things up!

Wish for 2009 - that we can sell our house at a reasonable price and find a larger house (for a reasonable price!) so that we can get on with family life!

p x