Just in case Alex turning one wasn’t exciting enough, we had a much bigger birthday to celebrate last week.  My Great Aunt Jean turned 90!  As we had done a decade ago to mark her 80th, the family gathered in beautiful Criccieth, North Wales.  But this time, we managed to gather absolutely everyone – my American aunt and cousins flew over, and all the Scottish family travelled South – so my dad’s complete living maternal family.  Sad his mother wasn’t alive to be part of it – she’d have enjoyed the party!

Here’s the entire clan:

I still find it hard to believe that we literally had the entire part of my family tree in one room together. Fingers crossed we can do it again for her 100th!  I’m so happy Alex was there to be part of it, even though he won’t remember – particularly since my Great Aunt commented to me a couple of years ago that she was sad she was unlikely to get to meet my children!  Here are four generations of the family together:

It was a fabulous weekend – the weather was sunny and mild, and with Criccieth in such a stunning coastal location, we took the opportunity to let Alex play at the beach.  He ate a lot of sand:

Here are all the pictures from North Wales:

I still can’t quite believe it, but I am the mother of a one-year-old!  Alex turned one on 12 September 2011!  Just a reminder – here he is on 12 September 2010:

One year on, we spent a fun morning opening his many presents and playing with them (and of course, predictably, he mostly enjoyed the boxes, ribbon and wrapping paper)

We then headed down to Herne Hill, stopping off for Alex’s very first haircut!  He was very well behaved, mostly staying still allowing the hairdresser to remove his developing mullet!  After our weekly Gymboree class of singing, softplay and bubbles we headed home for a big pasta lunch!  Alex then gave me the very best gift ever – a two hour nap, for probably only the first or second time in his life!  Such a treat to put my feet up and have a proper lunch!  I rewarded him with a trip to an adventure playground in East Dulwich.  Sadly our trip coincided with the end of the school day, so it was packed.  But he still enjoyed plenty of cruising around the equipment:

Once daddy had come home from work, we had a little birthday cake (it is National Cupcake Week after all) – Alex seemed to enjoy his very first cake 🙂  And probably loved the candle even more!

We’ve continued the celebrations this weekend with visits from Matt’s sister-in-law and nephews this morning, and dad this afternoon.  So Alex was spoiled with even more fabulous presents – a ride on scooter:

And a walker which he’s been using all afternoon (sorry about the dribble!):

I am hoping he quickly learns to turn it because I’m spending a vast amount of time having to turn him around – we don’t have a particularly long house!  I think this wil really help improve his walking.  He’s managing a few steps on his own – but not many, and he’s getting so frustrated and angry at the moment, that I’m hoping he figures it out properly very soon!

In other, non-birthday news – Matt and I had a date afternoon yesterday.  It was our wedding anniversary this week, so we spoiled ourselves with an afternoon off.  Jess came round to play with Alex whilst we headed up to the amazing Southwark Playhouse to see the musical, “Parade“.  The show was incredible – would highly recommend it if you find somewhere doing a run.  We’ve also been contemplating moving house this weekend – have considered it for a while, but spotted a stunning house we’ve fallen in love with after a viewing yesterday, so thinking a bit more realistically now.  Watch this space…

To close – for the picture fans amongst you, here are a few more snaps from Alex’s birthday week:

We spent a few days down in Wiltshire/Somerset last week with our friend Katharine.  Staying at a lovely By the Byre lodge, we were delighted to find a lovely labrador called Jasper living there.  Alex entertainment sorted 🙂 Here are my boys with the lovely Jasper in the background:

The lodges shared a big toy and game room, so Alex had a fabulous time selecting a variety of toys (all with wheels) and ride ons (with bigger wheels)  to play with during our stay.  And Matt and Katharine found a suitably tacky jigsaw and random DVDs to occupy the evenings!

Thankfully we went on excursions during the day – including finally making it to Longleat (those of you reading the blog back in March will remember my disappointment at it being closed when we were on our disastrous holiday to Dorset!).  It was worth the wait – we had a truly fabulous day.  It isn’t cheap to get in – but I found it worth every penny.  The safari drive was incredible – Alex was engrossed in the close encounters with wild animals and loved the monkeys climbing on the car (we all loved them until they started pulling apart our windscreen wipers!).  Here’s Alex checking out the Giraffes:

We spent the afternoon exploring the rest of the park – seeking out some smaller animals including meerkats and anteaters.  Matt and Katharine braved the massive maze and we all enjoyed the huge kid’s play area.  Alex loved exploring the grounds:

A really excellent day out – and highly recommended!  Our second day was considerably wetter, so slightly less fun!  We visited a softplay (no holiday is now complete without one), had a delicious pub lunch at The Mill at Rode and then resorted to wandering the damp streets of Bath.  We toured the beautiful Abbey and checked out the Pump Rooms – but I must admit, we were glad to make it back to the snug lodge for the evening

Back in London for the weekend, we popped along to the Horniman Museum Aquarium yesterday for the afternoon.  We’d taken Alex before, but he hadn’t been that interested.  This trip was quite the opposite – he was beside himself with excitement at the tropical fish tank – here’s a video of him making friends with the fish:

We’ve had a quiet August Bank Holiday today – we spent a couple of hours walking around the city which is always fun when the offices are closed and the streets empty, and then met some friends for a chat in Dulwich Park.  I’m now busy packing as I’m off to Manchester for a couple of days to a work conference – my first nights away from Alex.  Eeek – very nervous!

If you want to see more from Longleat – here are all our snaps from our quick trip West:

We made it home from the Borders just in time for Matt to have a couple of crazy weekends volunteering for two of the London 2012 Olympic test events.  He spent an incredible amount of time over the weekend of 6/7 August in Hyde Park helping with the triathlon, and spent much of the following weekend in training or standing on a traffic island in Richmond Park waiting for the road race to speed past!

This meant that I had quite a lot of time to fill with Alex on my own!  Thankfully he was in pretty good form, the weather was good and I had some visitors for part of the time – so that made things easier!  The first weekend we were back, Alex and I braved a trip up to Regents Park on our own to go to the Lollibop Festival – an event entirely focused on little people!  It was pretty pricey to get in (luckily Alex was free!) – but it was worth it.  Alex had a blast playing in the softplay and tinyplay tents – and when I could drag him away we did a Gymboree class. We even got to see Cerrie from CBeebies, and danced to ZingZillas and Rastamouse performances.  Hilarious stuff – and a great way to pass a day together.  Here he is playing with some WOW toys – I literally had to drag him away from this table:

The next day we stayed local and went out for breakfast together at the Brockwell Park Lido Cafe which was scrummy.  We also went to play with Phoebe and Henry (children of our good friends Charlie & Catherine!).

The following week, we had a final visit from my parents who were about to head back to Michigan.  We enjoyed a pub lunch at The Florence and plenty of time pushing Alex around the park on his trike.  When my parents were visiting, Alex discovered a joy for plane spotting!  We’re under the Heathrow and City Airport flight paths, and Alex now delights in scouring the skies or listening carefully for any hint of a plane – he then points and shouts at it, before waving as the plane passes overhead.  This new hobby is passing the time most days now – what a geek!  Here he is cuddling Grandma before she flies home (not sure if he spotted her plane…)

We had visitors last weekend, with Katharine joining us for a key event – a trip to see In the Night Garden Live in Richmond!  Watching In the Night Garden is a regular part of Alex’s bedtime routine – and I think it blew his mind seeing the life size characters :-). The performance was incredibly well done and the set up was perfect for tiny children – Alex could crawl around wherever he wanted and there was so much going on, he didn’t get bored.  And if that wasn’t exciting enough for him – Richmond is so close to Heathrow that the plane spotting was incredible 😉  Here he is looking skywards:

Our childminder is on holiday at the moment, so we had our babysitter Jess looking after Alex this week while we’ve been working.  She did a fabulous job entertaining him for the week even though he was a bit under the weather. For nearly 10 days, he went completely off his food (which is unusual for Alex!) – poor Jess spent her week trying to persuade him to eat some toast or pasta.  He’s refusing to be spoonfed – he seems to think he’s grownup enough to feed himself!  Thankfully, he suddenly remembed he was hungry on Friday and is back to eating massive portions of food and making a huge mess.  Here he is looking proud after feeding himself dinner:

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The hunger strike seems to have made no difference to his growth – we took him to get weighed today and he’s still on the 98th centile, weighing in at nearly 12kg.

Back to what we’re up to, with Jess, Alex went to a new music class and even did some painting – I now have Alex’s footprints in paint which is so cute!  And Alex has finally discovered our piano – here he is looking quite serious about his new toy:

Matt and I are on leave this week, so we’re off on a short break to Somerset on Wednesday – more on that next week.  I think a trip to Longleat is in order! And I’m sure we’ll find another softplay to visit…

Sorry the blog’s been so quiet recently – it’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks!  As mentioned in my last post, we had a major family celebration to enjoy.  My grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in July, so the rest of the family surprised them with a week in the incredible St Cuthbert’s Farmhouse near Coldstream in the Borders (much to my disappointment, the house itself wasn’t in Scotland, but we could see over the Tweed from the house, so we were pretty close!).

We broke the long journey up North with a couple of days in Newcastle visiting our friend Jo who very proudly hosted us in her fabulous new house.  Alex took great pleasure in trying to eat the gravel in her garden, her recycling and all her medical books.  We enjoyed a trip to the seaside just North of Newcastle, a pub lunch and trip to her local excellent playground where Alex found a new love of crawling through tunnels.  Here are my boys on the windswept beach:

The excitment of the beach was too much for Alex, who promptly fell asleep (I think soothed by the white noise of the waves and wind!)

The visit with Jo passed all too quickly, and we were back on the road for the short hop North to the borders.  We stopped on the way at Cragside, a beautiful National Trust estate in Northumberland.  Whereas a year ago, Matt and I would have enjoyed trekking along some of the miles of paths there, we instead headed to the adventure playground for some more tunnel fun:

After our little excursion we arrived in Coldstream at the farmhouse.  It was quite a family trip – with Alex getting to spend nearly a week with his parents (obviously!), grandparents, great-grandparents, aunt & uncle and great aunt!  Here is everyone posing together on the last night – still amazed we got Alex to look at the camera:

The house was beautiful, and to celebrate the big anniversary we had a special (and completely delicious) dinner catered by a local chef. We even had The Queen’s official card to my grandparents on display in the hall for the week!  Highlights of the week were:

• Alex getting his first trike – an early birthday present from his grandparents.  He loves being pushed along really quickly, especially on bumpy ground
• Alex’s first trip into Scotland – a monumentus occasion (and I really should have remembered to pop him in his Scotland rugby shirt for the moment!)
• Visiting a local farm with Alex – he loved stroking the goats and sheep, and particularly enjoyed playing on the toy tractors and having a first go on a bouncy castle
• The amazing amount of fun Alex can have on a staircase – playing peekaboo through the bannister
• Checking out the local softplay (no holiday is without that now) – Alnwick had a great softplay centre (as well as a well timed International Music Festival which we all enjoyed)
• Matt getting to go mountain biking in Peebles – nothing to do with Alex, but something he’s been raving about for days!

Of course, the week wasn’t without challenges (when is travelling with a baby relaxing!).  Alex developed the worst timed separation anxiety ever – so my cunning ploy to leave him at his grandparent’s door at 7am each morning to play with them whilst enjoying a lie in myself was foiled.  It took a few days, but he gradually got used to everyone and ended up having a blast!  He also, very annoyingly, lost his ability to sleep through the night – I guess sleeping in an en suite bathroom (albeit a very large and swanky one) just isn’t good enough!

Here he is enjoying his trike (which now gets used daily!):

And just in case that wasn’t enough photography, here’s a slideshow from the week with lots more pics:

It’s been a quiet couple of weeks – but thought I should post a few photos as a brief update.  In the past few days, Alex has mastered the art of climbing our stairs and opening cupboards – so the stairgates and cupboard locks are coming into their own!

He’s also been having great fun with his childminder.  Because it’s the end of term, all of the clubs and groups she takes the children to have been holding summer parties.  Here’s baby Alex doing the Hokey Cokey with grown up Alex (the daughter of his childminer Jacqui who helps look after the babies every day!):

We’ve mostly been hanging around in Herne Hill – as you saw from the last video post, it was the social event of the local calendar this month – the Lambeth Country Fair!  We went both days because we love it so much and despite the horrendous weather, had a fabulous time!  Alex was treated to a selection of rare breed sheep and pigs, some samba drumming, horse displays, a fun fair to look at and lots more.  And he got to enjoy it with his friend Henry:

Here’s Henry’s big sister, Phoebe, giving Alex a good tickle:

We spent a lovely Sunday afternoon last weekend enjoying the company of friends (and a delicious roast lamb and chocolate cheesecake!) in Blackheath.  Alex enjoyed playing with Emmett’s toys – here they are with Matt:

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To close – here’s a comedy pair of photos for the week – it’s Alex successfully feeding himself with a spoon.

We’re off on holiday this weekend (can’t divulge where as it’s a surprise for some of the other holidaymakers…) – but there will be plenty of photos and stories to follow!

So we rarely record videos of Alex, often because we forget, but probably mostly because I hate being in films (ironic given I manage video production in my job!).  But we’ve recorded a few little snippets of Alex recently, so I thought I’d dedicate a post to them.

As I mentioned last week, Alex is standing and starting to cruise – here’s video evidence of his early cruising steps:

And here he is enjoying some splashing in the bath – we’ve had to restrict splashing this week as we’re having our bathroom retiled!

We’ve been trying to get him to drink water from a sippy cup, and yesterday he finally managed to do it himself.  Here I am attempting to get him to do it on camera, without great success:

And finally, and most embarrassingly for me, here he is today at the Lambeth Country Fair dancing with me to some zumba:

Just in case you can’t see those embedded into the blog page, you can also see them on YouTube.

Sorry the blog’s been a bit quiet – it’s been quite a busy couple of weeks!  Alex is now well and truly on the move, so life is even more exhausting :-).  He’s crawling at high speeds around the house, pulling himself up to standing and just about starting to cruise around furniture.  It’s hard to believe that a month ago we were encouraging him to crawl.

So life is certainly more interesting now!  After going to music class with him every week for the past five months, with Alex showing marginal interest in the group, he is suddenly interested in everything there – crawling after the teacher throughout the class, and trying to climb up her legs as she’s singing.  Poor woman.  All the other babies in the class sit with their mummies in a nice semi circle – but here’s Alex up at the front having a great time!

And sleeping is more interesting.  Instead of falling asleep where we put him, Alex now crawls all around his cot and sleeps in ridiculous positions.  And regularly we go in in the morning to find him standing up with a big grin on his face – like this:

He’s enjoying our massive television quite a bit – watching “In The Night Garden” from about 20cm away – can’t be good for him!  Here he is praying that Murray wins at Wimbledon (sadly this point in the match was where it started going wrong):

Alex’s new found mobility means he’s having even more fun with his childminder.  He had been getting frustrated that he couldn’t keep up with the other children, but now he’s more independent he’s much happier.  Yesterday she took her charges to a local softplay which Alex loved:

And, with the sunny weather last week, Alex could really enjoy all the toys in Jacqui’s garden (check out the dribble!):

Besides the huge breakthroughs this past fortnight in Alex’s mobility, Matt and I made a big step forward of our own – we went away for an afternoon and evening all by ourselves!  For the first time, we left Alex with someone else for dinner, bathtime and bedtime so we could enjoy a Foo Fighters gig in Milton Keynes.  We’ve found a lovely local Australian girl called Jess who’s doing some babysitting for Alex – he loves her and she’s doing a great job of learning his routine so we can get out and about a bit more.  It felt very strange leaving him at 4pm, but it all went smoothly so we’re looking forward to some more dates!

That’s not to say we’re not enjoying spending time with Alex of course!  We’ve had some lovely weekends.  Last weekend we visited Leeds Castle and enjoyed the bird of prey show, the aviary and the adventure playground.  And we spend a glorious Sunday having a leisurely picnic in Dulwich Park with some of our NCT friends and their babies.  It was hilarious watching all the babies stealing each others toys and snacks – they are still a bit too young to really play together so they tend to just crawl over each other.

As I type, we’re halfway through a lovely weekend.  We’ve had Katharine visiting for a couple of days so Alex has enjoyed even more cuddles and playtime – here they are reading together:

So all in all, life is good and busy!  Work is mad so I’m looking forward to a family holiday in three weeks – almost counting down the days!

Well, we reached another milestone this week.  Alex is making huge progress with crawling – he’s pulling himself up into a standing position and beginning to attempt to climb.  Unfortunately, his physical developments aren’t matched with good sense – and, after climbing a little concrete step in Jacqui’s garden on Friday, he suddenly turned around to go back, lost his balance and landed on his head!  Thankfully it was a tiny step, and he didn’t hit hard, but he has his very first graze and bruise – right on his forehead.

Here’s the picture Jacqui sent me to warn me what I would be picking up after work!

Doesn’t he look like he’s been in a fight!?  Thankfully, he was absolutely fine and was full of smiles on Saturday morning as he prepared for his swimming lesson!

Alex didn’t let his bruises ruin the weekend, and we had a lovely time enjoying the sudden heatwave.  We spent this morning playing in lovely Dulwich Park, and this afternoon having fun in the garden.

A mostly photographic post tonight to remember a very family focused weekend back in Berkshire.  We spent Saturday afternoon celebrating Matt’s step mum’s birthday in Crowthorne.  Despite the alarming weather forecast, and massive storms in the morning, the sun mostly shone and we enjoyed a huge barbecue with most of the Agar clan.  Nine out of ten of Alex’s cousins were there and all the children had a fabulous time running round the garden and playing with each others toys.  Alex spent most of the time watching the older children having fun – and delighted in crawling around the garden after them and their toy trains and lego.

Here’s Alex trying to join in with the boys giant jenga (without success – although he did enjoy gnawing the wooden blocks!):

After we’d eaten more than we thought humanly possible, we drove over to Reading to spend the night with my brother and sister-in-law, David & Sarah.  Alex settled down quickly in his travel cot, to allow us grown ups to catch up and explore their beautiful new home.  After a long, uninterrupted night of sleep (thank you, Alex!), we headed to their local park.  David and Matt certainly had a lot of fun:

But most of the time, we focused on Alex having fun.  Here he is enjoying his favourite thing – swings:

He even had a go at climbing for the first time!  We did encourage him to maintain three points of contact at all times – but he seemed to think that included his mouth!

Here’s a comedy shot on the slide (don’t worry, we were ready to catch him!)

And finally, our favourite photo of the day, Alex exploring a tunnel!

Check out our Flickr pictures for more fun in the park.  David and Sarah are lucky to have such a great playground so close to their house!

And to close – a couple of pictures for the Cameron/Michael family – Alex in his Scotland rugby kit!

Well, Alex has been out longer than he was in – he turned 9 months old today!

We’ve had a lovely weekend down in the New Forest visiting Katharine with our friends Kate and Mike.  Despite the dreadful weather, we managed to enjoy a proper cream tea in Lyndhurst and a little bit of lazing in the garden, before the weather drove us into the house for scrummy food, bubbly and much gossip.  Alex was fabulous, sleeping for 12 hours straight in his travel cot – hoooray!

He got to make another four legged friend – a cat this time rather than a dog.  He was fascinated with Max, watching him every time he crept into the room we were in.  Max was a little more cautious of Alex, prefering to keep his distance!

I think Alex had a great weekend – there were so many people to play with him.  Here’s a pic of Alex playing with Mike:

We marked Alex turning 9 months old by lowering his cot – as he is getting dangerously close to pulling himself up to a standing position when playing in there!  And he graduated to a new car seat – finally facing forward, which he seems to prefer.  We were surprised (and alarmed) when Alex woke half way through the journey back to London from Southampton, but he seemed perfectly content to look out of the window, play with his toys and chat to himself for over an hour!  Phew!

We took a few pictures of Alex this evening before bedtime – they’re not great, but here are a few of my favourites.  Matt’s annoyed he’s wearing a silly pink tshirt covered in dribble, but never mind – I think he looks cute!

Very quick post to share a couple of milestones this week:

• Alex is crawling at last – very slowly, and backwards a lot of the time – but he is certainly mobile now. Matt and I are looking around our house with a long list of child-proofing to do! Will post a video of Alex on the move soon.
• He’s getting close to waving and clapping (or at least copying us when we do it!) – fun!
• I took him to get weighed at the health visitor clinic this week for the first time in a couple of months. Since he was born, he’s been generally following the 75th centile line – but this week he was close to the 98th centile! What a porker – I guess this means he’s taken to solid food pretty well!

And just to share a picture of the week – it appears that Alex LOVES dogs. He spent last week in Wales doting on the Golden Retriever staying in the cottage next door. Every time he was a bit cranky, we’d take him outside to find Molly who would obligingly plod over to lick his toes and get patted. He just loved her. And of course, the highlight of our journey home for him was visiting the Agar dogs in Crowthorne. Here he is doting on them!