Not so festive season

So, today is the final day of the holidays and another festive season draws to a close. We’ve certainly had an interesting, although not entirely optimal, couple of weeks…

The build up to Christmas was lots of fun. Alex spent his days with Jacqui at various Christmas parties and even met Santa Claus for the first time! He enjoyed helping us choosing and decorating our Christmas tree (strategically chosen to sit on top of a table so Alex couldn’t reach all the decorations!). A highlight of every day is the switching on of our lights!!

We finally found a hat that would stay on his head – although I think it makes him look Mongolian!

It does come in handy when we’re taking him out and about! Matt took him to his very first sports class – trying out “Baby Booters”, a football club for toddlers! I’m very proud to say that Alex scored a goal in his very first session. Here he is forgetting that he isn’t supposed to handle the ball (I’m sure he’s a rugby player at heart…)

We spent a lovely family Christmas Eve chilling out at home, watching festive movies and sorting out presents, Alex ending up with an outrageously massive pile of gifts! We also packed up our overnight bags and wrapped all the presents we have for family as we were due to spend Christmas Day and Boxing Day with family in Surrey and Berkshire. Here’s Alex and his Christmas tree:

Sadly, Alex woke up on Christmas Day sick as a parrot! So we ended up spending most of the Christmas week stuck in Herne Hill, doing lots of laundry and trying to entertain a surprisingly active sick child! He got some fabulous presents (thanks everyone), so we spend plenty of time playing with Alex’s new duplo, brio railway, various musical instruments and many different vehicles!! Thanks everyone!

As we’d been due to be away, we didn’t have food in the house, so Matt and I enjoyed beans on toast for Christmas lunch – and I’m sad to say we haven’t had any turkey at all this year. For four days we restricted excursions to the park across the road and some thrilling trips to Sainsbury’s, but thankfully Alex recovered relatively quickly and we were able to do what we’d intended and see some of London.

We had a great trip to the Aquarium on the Southbank. It was incredibly busy, but we were really impressed with how much is on show. Alex particularly liked the glass tunnel through the shark tank, although his very favourite thing in the place was the plastic igloo tunnel which played Christmas music and was filled with twinkly little lights. Took us a lot of persuading to coax him out of that!!

Whilst on the Southbank, Alex went on his very first merry-go-round with Matt, and ate South American food for lunch. All in all, a pretty adventurous day!!

We also enjoyed visits from our friends Jo P and Katharine – and went on a group trip to London Zoo where Alex enjoyed all the monkeys and we loved seeing the lions and their gorgeous cubs! I’d never been before, and it was a fabulous place – so compact and accessible, and fabulous for children. I think Alex will love it in a few months, so we’ll definitely be back in the Summer. We also took the opportunity of stopping by the incredible lego Christmas tree at St Pancras station – so amazing. Made me want to be a lego builder!!

On New Year’s Day, we had a bit of a disastrous excursion to Dulwich Woods for a family walk. We were completely unprepared for the huge amount of mud and steep terrain, so the “walk” lasted about 5 minutes and involved tantrums from all three of us! But Alex did get to wear his new red wellies for the first time, although he wasn’t that keen.

Yesterday was more successful as we revisited one of Alex’s favourite places – the Science Museum where he went crazy pointing out all the trains in the industry galleries before going wild in the basement kids area! Here are a couple of pictures we took yesterday of a particularly happy Alex – so cute and smiley!