All In A Days Work

Now is it Wilgo Freight or Wil"ga" Freight..............either way they certainly start their staff training programmes at a very young age. Here's Steve teaching Joshua the in's and out's of operating a fork lift. "Tell that Jan in there to put the kettle on for a cuppa - hot milk that is!"

Happy Birthday Cousin Mia-Rose

Today Joshua spent some time with his cousin Mia who is now 2 years old. Here is a picture of the two of them sitting in Mia's new garden chair set (pink definitely isn't Joshie's colour!).

Surf Dude Camper

Here is Joshua in his first garden toy which his Nan got for him. As you can see its a cool camper van with twin surf boards. Joshua seems to really enjoy playing with the balls inside the camper. For indoor use the surf boards can be used to pad the base out, for outdoor use they provide a very nice sun shade as shown below. Enjoy the pictures............

More teeth coming........

Sorry for the lack of updates lately folks - only this week has been a bit tough with the little guy. He seems to have gone off his food somewhat and for the first time ever has actually lost weight (only an ounce). As if that wasn't enough he also has his top two front teeth coming through and has picked up another cold from somewhere. So loads of bonjela and calpol again!!! He is only snacking on small amounts of toast or bread sticks at the moment - that seems to be the only thing he wants to eat (other than white chocolate buttons of course!).

Despite the lack of eating Joshua is full of "beans" lately and is very vocal making lots of new sounds and blowing raspberries all the time. He will quite happily sit upright, unsupported for long periods of time playing with his toys. He cannot crawl still, but when he is on his belly he now shuffles around and makes ground backwards and sideways.

Can you believe that Joshua is now over 7 months old. His first full day at nursery is now booked for July 14th - who wants to start placing bets as to who will find this transition the hardest out of Tina and Joshua???? Luckily his nursery is only a 5 minute walk from my work place, so I dare say that I will nip down there lunchtimes to check on the little man.

Finally I have got around to making the DVD of Joshua's first holiday to Center Parcs (its no Spielberg classic but does the job) - so if anyone wants a copy then just let me know.

And lastely some new pictures - you are never too young to start practising your light sabre skills!

Anyone for some grass!

In the early part of last week our UK summer finally arrived. Since I had managed to get out and cut the grass one evening, I decided to give Joshua his first experience rolling around in the grass. At first he did not like laying on the grass, but once he was sat upright and could feel and see the grass he was much happier. How cool is this to finish a days work and then go out into the garden and play with your son. Roll on more summer days...............

Do we have a little crocodile hunter in the making?

Walkies round the garden................

Looks like it is time to start going shopping for some garden toys!

Before & After

Who recalls the picture posted on this blog back in Jan 08 with Joshua wearing his Ferrari red race suit that we purchased from Brands Hatch before he was even born? This is one of my favourite pics and we have a large 20x30 print in our living room. Unfortunately Joshua has long out grown this outfit and so at this years A1 Grand Prix we managed to get a 10-12 month version in blue. So here are the before and after snaps with 4 months difference between them.

And here is another nice picture of Joshua mimicking Uncle David with his silly hat (of course now we all know that Dave wears the hat because of his little bald spot!). Haha.

Tea & Toast

Well just lately this blog has contained endless pictures of Joshua at various locations and doing various activities - but very little on his development. So for today I will focus more on his progress towards recent changes in his growth and development. Firstly Joshua's weight is still steadily increasing, at his last weigh in he was 17lb 4oz up from 16lb 3oz 3 weeks ago. This can probably be attributed to the way he is eating lately. He seems to love his chicken and now also eats salmon, lamb, turkey and just every type of veg and fruit etc. Of a morning he is even tucking into a bit of toast which is great for his fine motor skills and his hand to eye co-ordination with feeding himself. The only food we have found that he does not seem to like is banana.

Joshua tucking into a slice of toast.............

After a good feed up of minted lamb, it is time for a nap in the high chair!

Joshua's sleeping is getting very good. Most nights he has had dinner, a story, a wash/bath, cleaned his teeth, a bottle feed and then into bed by 7pm. Generally he will then have a top up milk feed anywhere around 11pm and after this he sleeps right through to 6am nearly every night. The little guy is desperately trying to get mobile at the moment and is very close to crawling. He can quite happily roll from front to back and then back to front and manages to shift himself around on the floor in order to reach toys. The only slight problem with him gaining this kind of mobility is that he no longer stays in the recommended sleeping position in his cot and we often wake up finding him upside down or sideways etc (see picture below).

As you would expect Joshua will happily sit upright now completely unsupported. He cannot quite sit-up on his own from a lying position but he is desperately trying, It must be such a frustrating time for him because he just does not want to lay in one place and wants to be up and about. The problem is he does not yet have the ability.

No more new teeth just yet, still only his bottom two which seem to be getting plenty of use with breaking down toast and white chocolate!

Holiday Part V

Well a bit late - but here is the final holiday update. Despite the bad weather on occasions we still managed a round of crazy golf. I was playing one handed holding an umbrella with Joshua strapped to me in his harness. And get this............even with all these handicaps Tina still only beat us by 1 point.

Mother and baby................Duck and ducklings.

How about this for a swing?

A spot of bowling - Joshua wasn't impressed with this.

Well that's all until the next holiday..............

Holiday Part IV

Day 4 of the holiday started off with Joshua getting Dad trained in the fine art of baby massage. This involved a 45 min session with the little man chilling out to soothing music on a big cushion while Dad was instructed on how to massage a baby.

Having chilled out and then polished off another bottle of milk it was time for a play in the Treasure Cove part of the swimming pool which is for babies and young children. Joshua loved sitting on the dolphins below which spurted water out of the top. It was hilarious watching him trying to grab at the water, then he would kick his foot across the water beam and splash his face etc.

After the dolphin ride it was time for a bit of baby surfing on the back of a ladybird!

After the body boarding it was time for a bit of water football.
Then time to learn how to steer a ship................
After all that fun we managed to get our one and only family picture of all 3 of us on holiday.
And after all that activity it is time for a shower and dry off. Check out the new shark towel/robe. Now tell me this isn't a Jedi pose from Star Wars? May the force be with you Dad..........

Holiday Part III

On day 3 of the holiday we took Joshua back to the main pool for a baby dolphin session which is where they allow parents to take young babies into the pool before it open to the masses. This was a great time for us to play with all the toys in the pool, sing some children's songs and for him to be with all the other babies.

We also booked Joshua into a 45 min play session in a creche type of area which was full of fun toys for the babies to play with. The session finished with all the parents and babies gathering around for a sing song (by this stage Joshua was asleep after his earlier swim!). PS Since when did "row row row your boat" include a line about "if you see an alligator, don't forget to scream!"?

During the play session we also found this little quad bike thing. Joshua seemed to love being whizzed around on this (at the expense of Dad's back and knees).

A1 Grand Prix - Brands Hatch

For today's blog update I am interrupting the holiday updates for a special feature from yesterday. As you can see from the pictures we took Joshua to Brands Hatch to watch the finale to season 2007/8 of the A1 Grand Prix. The racing was awesome and team GBR did extremely well with Robbie Kerr winning the sprint race and then coming second in the feature event. This result gave team GBR 3rd place in the overall series.

The A1 cars are pretty impressive beasts as you can see on the right. They are currently made by Lola, but next season Ferrari will build the cars and engines.

It looks like blinging Joshua's high chair with a steering wheel prepared the boy well as you can see he was very keen to jump into the red race car!

For anyone that has ever been to a Formula 1 event then you will know just how loud these beasts of cars can be. For that reason it was imperative that we bought Joshua some ear protectors. Clearly they did the job very well as he fell asleep through half of the sprint race and all of the feature race! But doesn't the little guy look just adorable wearing them.........

As you can see below when Joshua was awake he was fixated on the race and extremely curious as to where the noise was coming from.

After watching the racing Joshua got a bit big for his boots and fancied lining his buggy up against one of the race cars. Joshua blamed me for the loss for not having slick tyres fitted to his pram!
After all that excitement the little guy was pretty exhausted. So it was time for a quick pick-me-up - Red Bull gives you wings (PS Before anyway reports me for child abuse, no I did not let him drink the red bull - he was merely playing with the can, but it made for a good photo!).