1st England Cap

Another lovely spring Saturday which saw us heading over to South Weald park after the boys finished lunch today. As soon as we had parked up both boys headed straight over to the deers and were pretty fascinated by them.

Do you like Brandon's new England baseball cap - all ready for the World Cup!

After the deers it was down to the lake to feed the ducks and swans. As usual Joshua was throwing the birds the bread, and Brandon, well as usual he was eating the bread!

Joshua got fed up feeding the birds and started feeding his little brother instead!

Both boys enjoyed a good kick around with the football, particularly Brandon. The little guy absolutely loved it and walked for what seemed miles today - and most of the time he was kicking the ball along as well.

Is this a future England superstar in the making?

Curl it like Beckham.

Joshua getting to grips with nature and exploring some of the cavities in the big old trees.

And when he wasn't trying to get inside the tree, he was trying to climb the tree. A proper little boy!

Can you see a face in this tree?

And after all that running around and football it was time to have a bit of chill time.

Art Attack

No words needed - the title of this blog update and the pictures speak for themselves!

Tell Tale Signs

Want to know a few tell tale signs that you are a full hands on Dad:

• You used to cycle to work humming the cool rifts of the likes of Korn, Metallica or Limp Bizkit. Nowadays more often than not the soundtrack to Fireman Sam is constantly stuck in your head.
• You have forgotten what the middle part of a garlic baguette tastes like as you cut all the nice fleshy bits out for the boys and only get to eat the crusty outside bit yourself!
• You start putting on the pounds as you would rather eat the boys left over's as opposed to throwing away good food!
• You have read the pop-up dinosaur and Fireman Sam books so many times that at night time when you read the boys their night time story you can read through the books with your eyes closed and know each page word for word.
• Poo, wee, snot, bogies, dribble, sick.............it really doesn't matter anymore. Over the years you have seen and cleaned up so much that you are hardened to whatever the children throw at you (or throw-up on you!).
• 6.30am is a lay-in!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh to have a night with 8 hours uninterrupted sleep would be like heaven.
• A good weekend used to be judged by how much you got completed around the house and then the intensity of training sessions down the gym. Nowadays it is judged on quality time spent with the boys, heading over parks, out on the bikes, finding ice cream vans, playing in the garden, teaching them painting/drawing etc.etc.etc.
• When ever you walk into Tesco's / Sainsbury's you always check out the children's clothes, toys and children's book isles!!!
• Road rage now involves calling the driver who just cut you up a "monkey" instead of using swear words.
• Your garage which once housed a pristine classic American car now stores multiple children's bikes and accessories, push chairs along with box loads of baby clothes which are all too small now.

Picnic Sunday

Well continuing on with the beautiful weather we are having this weekend, today was a perfect day for a spring/summer picnic. So once Joshua had finished at his football club we loaded up the car and headed over to Maldon Promenade. Once we got there the boys had about an hour or so playing in the sand and on the big pirate ship play ground.

And yes both Brandon and Joshua are wearing my hats today. Not only has Joshua claimed my blue diving hat as his own. but we couldn't find Brandon's hat in the car and so I had to give up my New York Giants cap to the little guy. OK so it is a bit big, but at least it kept the sun off the little dude.

Joshua is getting very confident and brave with his climbing this days as shown in this picture.

And the reward for climbing the top was to captain the ship.

Brandon enjoyed playing in the sand and seemed to bring half the sand pit home in his shoes, trousers, nappy and just about everywhere else.

After playtime it was off for Brandon's first ever picnic. He sat in his chair very well and as usual ate everything in site.

Once Brandon had his fill of food it was pretty hard to keep him contained to the picnic area as he was off running around and playing football. He even managed to hijack a smaller ball from another lady playing in the park.

Now tell me this is not an adorable picture. Both boys laying in the back of the car drinking their milk!

Joshua off exploring a bit of nature. He was fascinated by the tree dangling over into the water.

Later in the day we found another sand pit and therefore ended up buying yet more buckets and spades. We really must starting leaving some in the car!!!!

Independance Day

I regularly receive e-mail updates from the babycentre website which gives really good guidance about your child's development along with activities to try, recipes to cook etc.etc. This weeks e-mail had a really interesting paragraph about your child's growing Independence and their needs to do things on their own for fulfillment. This could not be truer about Joshua. Within the last week we have really noticed and increased level of Independence. For example of a morning now he is getting up on his own, going to a wee, tipping the potty down the toilet, wiping his potty clean and then washing his hands on his own! Often when he wants a wee or poo now he will tell you to stay where you are and he will do it on his own! So Independence Day comes early........

Today was probably the best day so far this year in terms of weather. One thing that comes with good weather is Ice Cream Vans. Unfortunately Joshua knows the sound all too well and often it is just too much like hard work to say no to him. So today we gave in and it was a round of 99's. Joshua pretty much ate all his ice cream, then looked at mine and sore I still had loads left so he swapped his cone with mine. That seems to have been a common theme today as he also claimed my pannini at lunch, my banana, my cap when we went outside and my juice with dinner!

Anyway here is Josh sitting in the garden tucking into his first ice cream.

He found it quite amusing to dip his nose into the cold ice cream, lovely!

After Brandon's afternoon nap we went over to one of the local parks just to let the boys have a run around and kick some footballs. Here is a picture of Joshua in a climbing frame aeroplane (and yes that is my cap he is wearing!).

Brandon was enjoying kicking a ball around as usual. This is the first time he has had to wear a hat due to the sun and was pretty good at keeping it on.

Joshua on one of the climbing frames.

And it wasn't too long before Brandon built up the confidence to climb the frame.

Brandon's communication skills are going from strength to strength. In fact his Czech language is now about as proficient as mine. You see other than "dobry den" and "pivo" the extent of my Czech language evolves around pointing with the universally recognised finger and making funny grunting noises. Well that is pretty much what Brandon does now whenever he sees something he wants, be it his cloth, dinner, juice, a ride on the bike, a magazine etc.etc.

Little Tiger

A bit of a mish mash of blog updates today with no real theme. Just some random, nice pictures of the two boys which were taken over the last week or so.

To start with look at my eldest sitting in a restaurant, all grown up and drinking from a tea cup on his Daddies birthday.

Both boys seem to enjoy helping Daddy with the hoovering. Up until recently they used this most annoying duck toy as a hoover and made a humming noise to accompany it. Well finally we got around to buying them a proper toy hoover and so the duck is history (I hope). Anyway here is Brandon cleaning up some of his mess.

One thing about Brandon is that he is all about food and is getting to a stage where he knows exactly what he wants. Below is his "GIVE ME THAT FOOD NOW" face.

Once he has the food it is in his mouth instantly.

Sometimes the food gets chewed. Often just swallowed and then you are back to stage 1 with "the face"!

And when meal time is over and you have a satisfied little boy - evident by the beautiful little smile with his glittering eyes and pearly white teethy pegs.

So why was this blog update called "Little Tiger". Well a few posts ago I mentioned about a cheap £1.25 golf set we picked up for Brandon but did not show any pictures of him playing with it. Well he has taken to golf like a fish in water and seemed to instantly know that you hit the ball with the club. OK so he isn't holding the club with two hands, but he still manages to get a good old whack on the ball. If I am brutally honest he has had a few hits which have gone further than Uncle Michael's and Uncles David's drives (but then that is not saying much really!!!).

The cheeky little boy has also been caught smacking his bigger brother over the head with a golf club. Naughty step time...............

Fun Fair 2010

Yesterday we treated the boys to an afternoon down the Fun Fair. The weather was gorgeous and it was a really enjoyable afternoon. Unfortunately Brandon is still a bit on the small side and only got to go on a couple of rides. Joshua went on loads which was great for him, and bad for me as they no longer offer the wrists bands and so the individual ride prices soon start mounting up.

Anyway after an initial baptism of fire on the Runaway train which was by far the largest ride Joshua has ever been on, he chilled out on the boats. As you can see his face was still a bit unsure at this stage..........

To settle the little guy down he went on the small Thomas Train with Mummy and Brandon. Both boys seemed to enjoy this and were ringing the bell and looking out of the window.

Next was one of my favourites - the bumper cars. I can't wait until the day Brandon is old enough to go on these as I think the boys will have an absolute blast crashing into each other.

We all know Joshua likes his planes and I have previously made references to "Little Biggles". So of course he found a plane ride - the main surprise here was that he did not go on the yellow plane. Yellow is by far his favourite colour.

Next it was time for Brandon to get some action as a Yorkie eating trucker!!! Big brother was on hand to keep an eye on him, although it didn't help much as Brandon slipped from the seat and vanished below the steering wheel!!

I think Brandon needs a booster seat!

There was no stopping Joshua on the bouncy slide. Amazingly he managed to climb all the way to the top without any help (obviously all the trips to Party Man have paid off). Once he reached the summit though it was difficult to get him to slide down as he seemed to enjoy just running from side to side across the top.

Now that the boys have a trampoline at home then Joshua was old hat at this.

And that was about all Dad and Mummy's wallet had time for! Bring back the wrist band idea - much better value for money when you have little ones.