Baby bouncers

Aimee in July 2006 and Dylan in May 2008. We've actually found something that both kids seem to have enjoyed...the door hanging bouncer. Aimee liked to spin round and around but did didn't do too much actual bouncing. Dylan likes to bounce but also to take giant steps forward, only to swing back in frustration. At least it keeps him amused for about ten minutes, a minor miracle given that he screams if you let go of him for even a minute.

Mumbles

The Family Yanguns just spent a weekend in Wales to see some old friends and to attend their party. It was our first trip away from home as a four piece. But Boy! If I knew what a torture the journey it was in advance, I may have decided against it. On a good day, it takes about 4.5 to 5 hours to go from London to Swansea. We took a more leisurely 6.5 hours and pretty much every single waking minute of it, Dylan screamed all the way. Aimee sometimes protested, but mainly because Dylan was upsetting her. With regular pitstops at service stations to break up the torture, we finally made our destination (Mumbles) somewhat frazzled and stressed.

That evening, we spent our time at my friend's house party. Aimee found her idol in the girly pinkness that is Olivia, my friend's daughter. Olivia is the very epitome of pinkishness and Aimee saw her bedroom as a treasure trove. She couldn't contain herself and wore hundreds of necklaces, bracelets, hair adornments and millions of spangly, pinkyish, glittery things. She loved it. After we got back to out hotel, the tactical error of all sleeping in one room became apparent as none of us got any sleep. Dylan woke up screaming, which woke up Aimee, whihc woke up Cat then me, after settling all back dopwn, it kicked off again and the pattern repeated. It was hell.

The next day was spent walking around Mumbles in a zombie like daze.

But the big party that next night was actually brilliant. I caught up with loads of old friends and faces. aimee partyed hard until midnight and even Dylan took it all in his stride.

That night, everyone slept well.

Sadly, the journey back was even worse, as Dylan screamed ALL the way without sleeping. Aimee vomited and started screaming as well and me and Cat were on the verge of exploding. It was 6 hours of unimaginable torture.

So, although the mini-holiday was fun overall, the journey was just too much to ever bear doing again in the near future.

In other news, Dylan is still not putting on enough weight according to the health experts, but we are finding that regular doses of Gaviscon, a anti-acid for kids, is allowing DJ to eat and drink for longer without his usual awful symptoms of pain and discomfort that have plagued him since birth. But we must monitor his weight weekly now.

Having said all that, DJ appears to be in rude health and is exploring the world with his increasingly improving crawling skills. He can now take about three paces forward, and spin a complete 360 on his knees. He is still his usual very curious, nosey parker self, and will always crane his neck to check out the latest noise, or event.

Aimee's language skills are improving beyond recognition. She is uttering completely new sentances every day, most of which she has independently constructed, rather than leart like a parrot. I am always amazed at this.

Manbaby

I've just discovered this awesome fun website called Manbaby, in which, for no reason other than pure joy, people manipulate photos and swap baby heads for daddy heads. Here's my first attempt.
The thing is, Dylan looks ok in the photo, but I look weird.

Sunny

I get a lot of comments saying Aimee bears a strong resemblence to my sister Sylvie.
By the look of this photo, why they could be twins, albeit separated by more than three decades.

Well, summer is finally here. Temperatures in our part of the world are hitting the mid twenties and as usual, the Brits go crazy in the Sun and start walking around as if it was Rio de Janiro, wearing skimpy outfits, loud colours and badly burned skin.
But for us, it means we get to road test our garden. And what a great joy the British garden is to us little islanders. Aimee can run around with wild abandon, and we can sit outside and enjoy the fine weather in private.
We too also went a bit 'summer', mad and blew all our months budget on fun summer garden toys for Aimee. Like the sandpit Hippo and the push-along tricycle. Ah well, the sun only ever shines a few weeks in the year, might as well enjoy it while it lasts!

Sweet Little Lies

Aimee is now at a level where we have to use bribes, coercion, gentle persuasion and downright force sometimes to get her to do what we think is right. Food is a very big issue. But today, something (we think) remarkable happened. We told a white lie. Normally, when we introduce a new food, Aimee says: Wot dat?
And we tell her the name. Which falls into her trap, and inevitably, she says: No, don't want [insert food name].
Today, I cooked oven chips and had some left over. I know full well Aimee would reject them (as she has in the past) but today, I just put them in a bowl and said to her: Hey, Aimee, look.
Right on cue, she asks me what they were, and I said: Biscuits.
Ok, not a white lie, a COMPLETE LIE.
I did qualify that they were 'potato biscuits'.
I should explain that Aimee loves biscuits. she eats them by the truck load and would eat them exclusively if she had the choice.
So by labelling them biscuits, she accepted them and ate them all, then asked for more!

Now, this trick won't work for everything (try spinach omelette for example). Since the item has to pass some resemblence to a biscuit. Since chips look like finger biscuits, I guess she just thought they were those.
An awesome result to a tiring but fun day. As it was sunny all weekend, the garden and park was used a lot, much to Daddy's exhaustion.

Some Dylan news, in response to our health visitor insisting we should dose DJ up on more protein, we now know that Dylan loves chicken. We tried him with creamy chicken straight out of a Heinz baby jar (bang goes our organic cook at home credentials) and he got so hyper with excitement, he kept blowing raspberries for ages and giggling, in a slightly demented fashion. So gathering that he digged chicken, I made a big batch of same thing, but home made (Annabel Karmel's Easy One Pot Chicken) and pureed it with formula milk (oh yeah, we're throwing everything at him). He loved it, sort of. He was also very tired and grumpy so picked at it. But I'm sure he'll be more enthusiastic tomorrow. If not, then it's a lot of chicken soup for us over the coming week! Or, we could always tell him it was biscuit (pureed).