Spinning, goddammit

You love to spin.

Who doesn't?

(Daddy doesn't.)

You at the park

Here are some lovely photos of you at the park. Mummy took you there. Pictures of her and you do exist but mummy is not particularly happy about how she looks in the pictures so she has only included pictures of you here, 

I don't know why. 

I've seen the pictures and she looks lovely. 'Like a princess.'

I put those last three words in quotation marks because you said them. Only you didn't say them about mummy. You said them about yourself whilst rolling around on the floor.

Finger food

Noah, as I write this, your mummy and me are in tired and in bed. It is not late, but it's been a long day. This morning we took you for a long walk with a view to wearing you out so you'd have a nap in the afternoon (you are having these naps less and less recently). After we go back home, I thought I'd prepare us some lunch. Tuna, pasta salad. So I began chopping ingredients. First I sharpened the knife. Really lovely and razor sharp. Then I began making light work of the spring onions, some peppers, tomato and then the tip of my finger.

As I cut into it, I knew it was bad, However, my dilemma was that you were playing with the water in the sink and I didn't want you to become distressed, so I grabbed some tissue and held the tip on my finger whilst calling up the stairs for your mum. This little scenario was later played out to your grandma, grandad, Harvey and Oscar by your mummy only in her version I was a quivering wreck. Everyone laughed.

We chucked everything in the car and went over to grandma and grandad's to drop you off before going to the LRI. I won't go through the details but whilst we were there, my hand in a tea towel, there was an old man with a dislocated ankle and a woman in so much pain that she passed out in front of mummy. Whilst I tried to get a nurse, your mummy didn't want to touch her for fear of contracting whatever awful illness she had. Instead, she tried to wake her up by politely saying, "Hello? Hello? Wake up!"

Eventually I was seen. I was told it was a 'skin flap' rather than a 'laceration.' This meant that the overworked nurse lady needed to pop the cap off the top of my finger like a toothpaste, scrub it clean with an alcohol wipe and then pop it back on. I was elated with that news. Your mummy looked just as pleased. Now I've got to wear a stupid bandage for a week.

By the time we came to collect you, you were a little delirious and kept calling everyone an idiot.

A note

I wanted to get this out there. Your mummy found a Buzzfeed article entitled, "22 cringeworthy ways to announce your pregnancy." It was beyond cringeworthy. Exactly what it said on the tin.

Our favourite on the list however, your mummy and daddy both agreed is not cringeworthy at all.

In fact, it was the one we perhaps planned on using! Do not mistake that last exclamation mark for flippancy or jokiness. We are serious. Though I'm not sure the person who did it in the first place would share our idea of irony.

Anyway, here it is:

Amazing.

A monster. An absolute monster.

This is the cake that Caz and Grandma made for your birthday. You were bursting with excitement when you saw it. When everyone's back was turned, you grabbed hold of the yellow dinosaur on the right and ate his face off. Then you ate a leaf and chewed on a tree. You playing god, nonchalantly destroying the Jurassic period and all its inhabitants.

My god do you love cake. Sugar. You love sugar.

Looking at animals

Your birthday this year was on a Wednesday. Your mummy doesn't work on a Wednesday so she took you to Twycross Zoo. This is a blog of you looking at animals with your newly two year old eyes.

And one lizard looking back at you.

Dum-dum-duuuummm!

Birthday gifts from next door

You struggled here to understand that the neighbours who dropped your presents over were not in the house. For such a bright boy, you  really are easily stumped at times.

Your birthday party morning (more of it)

On the morning of your birthday party (not your actual birthday), Alex, Charisse and Adelaide came over to see you. They were unable to make it in the afternoon when everyone else came over. You got your first personalised clothing from them! You are now the proud owner of a hoody with your name on the front. You love it. The best part, however, was your book that detailed a baby panda suckling a mouthful of fresh milk from its mother's breast.

Nom, indeed.

Birthday morning (very first thing)

Going into your bedroom in the morning is such a delight. You make a point of being armed with something to say, Sometimes it's simple like, "Need more milk mummy, that's a good idea."

Other times it's something altogether more poetic. Like it was on your birthday (it's very dark at first. Hold your horses):

"Eugh, don't use that picture. Everyone looks terrible."

That's what mummy said when I said that I liked this picture of us all. 

I asked mummy, "Why?"

She responded by saying: "Noah's face is a real mess and my eyes look like they've been burned with chemicals."

This was day 1 of Movember 2014, by the way. Moustaches aren't daddy's facial hair of choice.

Playing with the dolphins

In order to help further develop your imagination, we have been playing a lot of imaginative games.

For example, on one set of your pyjamas, there are lots of monsters eating cars. Tonight before going to bed, we made you one of the monsters and were picking the cars and trucks and buses off your clothes and feeding them to you.

"That one tastes nice," you said.

"Delicious," you said.

Another favourite is playing with the dolphins.

This is what you say as you pass us something you want us to play with:

"Here we go, mummy. Here we go, daddy."

We also play a game at the minute where we say something horrible you like to eat. It started one day about a month ago. I was changing you and you'd done a particularly offensive little bundle in your nappy. As I changed you, you said: "Daddy, you eat the poo!" Then you laughed.

This evolved to us telling you that you eat crocodile's feet and smelly socks. You told us that we eat cats and dogs.

Touche.

Your 2nd birthday (morning)

You are on the brink of understanding what your birthday is but not quite. This made it a nice surprise for you, I think. 

By the end of the day, you really enjoyed seeing another present. Mostly because you enjoyed ripping the paper.

The baby due date

You will be a brother not longer after daddy turns 31.

My birthday is 24th May. The baby's due date is 29th May.

That's the same as JFK.

JFK was assassinated.

He was shot once in the throat, once in the upper back and once in the head.

So.

Lord knows where this guy will be by the time you can read this.

An amazing image.

It has been made public and official: you are going to be an older brother

This is news you have known for three and a half months actually. It still doesn't mean it is something you have come to terms with. You are still in denial.

Whenever we ask you if you are looking forward to having a baby in the house (we did say another baby, but you refused to be referred to as a 'baby') you always answer the same way: "No thank you, Mummy."

You are polite about it.

The scan itself was hilarious. Your mummy was asked nicely by the sonographer to stop laughing, in fact. The reason she was laughing was this: the new baby was bouncing around inside mummy's tummy like QWOP. On the screen, the baby looked like it was bouncing around like a crazy thing.

This is QWOP:

That's what the baby was doing all over the screen.

Here is another picture:

It's not a picture of our baby. Who cares though? They all look the same at this point.

"What a waste of £4" said daddy when he paid for the picture, "Google images is free!"

A lack of blogging. A lack of a public blog.

A number of ferocious mothers got hold of our blog and twisted what we had said in it out of all proportion and perspective, Noah,

These same people spread the word of our blog to their ferocious friends who, too, twisted what we had said until it was unrecognisable.

Then they spread the word of our blog and on and on.

Anyway, because of an increasing amount of views and horrible comments about your mum and I being terrible parents, blah blah blah.

So for now we are no longer public. Which is a shame. This will change though, don't worry.

Some things you are doing right now include:

• Being a right little madam, crying and whining if you don't get your own way. Don't worry, Noah, we make sure you don't get away with being such a petty boy. We know it's a just a phase so we are staying strong and not allowing you to run the home.
• Saying, "That's a good idea, mummy!" No matter what we say. Or you will come up with an idea and proceed to tell us how good an idea it is. Example: "Watch the fireworks daddy? That's a good idea!"
• You have some dolphins that you love playing with in the bath. You also have a dinosaur. You have a lovely little roleplay where the dinosaur scares the bajeezus out of the dolphins. It gets tiresome for your mummy and I to play along, but you never tire of it.
• You are continuing to learn the countries of the world.
• Yesterday morning, you dropped one of your toys and, looking a bit annoyed, you said, "Oh, dammit!" To which we burst out laughing.

You are making us all laugh a lot recently. 

The importance of nuance

Noah, I want you to know that the world is awash with misunderstanding and misinterpretation. By the time you come to read this, I am fully sure that you will already know this to be a stone cold fact. You, unfortunately, will be intelligent and literate enough to know the truth in what I say here.

You can't move in the the news for vapid news stories that are sensationalised beyond any kind of recognition. You will see that the nation loses their minds when, say, there is a royal baby being born or a young pop star pees into a bucket, but any real news, any real issues that require some real thought don't generate any traction. Something real like the burial of hundreds of live women and children in a remote city in Iraq, people don't give a flying fuck about. Ignorance is everywhere.

We wrote a blog a couple of months ago about a leaflet we got through the post. It was about a very serious subject - the tragic deaths of babies by suffocation on nappy sacks - but it was badly put together. This dichotomy was funny to us so we wrote a blog about it. You can find it if you like.

Any fair-minded reading of this entry will see that we were finding humour in the ill-thought out, badly worded leaflet. At no point did we even begin to suggest that these tragedies are, themselves, inherently funny. Any proper reading of this will see that fact in its abundance.

Sadly, not everyone is capable of recognising this nuance, Noah. Just read the silly comments that people have written for the sad proof of the world we are living in.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-crisis-islamic-militants-buried-alive-yazidi-women-and-children-in-attack-that-killed-500-9659695.html

Lorry and Noah

We got you a shitty lorry from a second hand shop for 75p about a month ago. It is the best thing we have ever bought for you. You insisted on taking it on holiday. You took it everywhere. Here is the proof:

You and Dandand (and the rest of us) in Portugal

Grandma and Grandad came with us on this holiday to Portugal for us to thank them in a small way for all the babysitting they do for us; sometimes with very short notice indeed. We didn't get many pictures on the holiday. We spent most of the time relaxing in the sun (shade).

A natural phenomenon that will leave no reader unchanged

There are some aspects of nature that are simply breathtaking. Others are mind-boggling and awe-inspiring. Some are so rare that you feel you are part of something extraordinarily special just for having witnessed it.

What follows is one of those moments:

Just look at Dandand's legs! Have they ever before been viewed by human eyes?! We are by no means believers but what we see here is one of god's miracles!

And it's pretty cool that the butterfly landed on your head, Noah. Whatever.

The order of events is out the window

So, in a slightly earlier post, where we completely overstated your brush with death, we mentioned your first time in the pool in Portugal. Well here is the moment you first got in.

It comes not long after daddy first got in...

A beautiful picture. By Mummy.

This was where you, "nearly died of hypothermia."

More specifically, this was the view from our villa. On the top balcony, you spent a lot of time fizzing with excitement about the sea and the pool and the sound of the cicadas.It was funny watching you be so excited about something. We had obviously seen you excited before, but, for the first time, it seemed that you were excited about something less tangible than something like an ice-cream. It's difficult to explain, but you just wouldn't stop talking to yourself and saying all of the things you could see. When we were inside, you would come in an encourage anyone who would listen to hold your hand and walk around with you.

One of the things we were most excited about was the concept of having our own pool. You, too, were excited. This was a close up picture of the pool:

On the first day, you couldn't get in there fast enough. It was very cold, but after swimming around for a short time, our bodies adjusted to it and we warmed up. Not yours though. You remained excited but seemed to get colder and colder and colder until you finally said, through chattering teeth, "Want a towel, daddy."

We got you a towel and went inside. You continued to shiver and be goosebumpy.

We ate some food and put you in some clothes. Still you continued to shiver. I got your mummy to take you in the shower for a bit. After the shower, you continued to shiver and we continued to eat. I got fed up with you being cold and so ran you a hot bath.

By now, I was panicking like a madman. "Oh great," I said, "we've gone and given him hypothermia." I looked on Google and you were presenting with two of the many possible symptoms. I then read the line, "If you put them into a hot bath, you could cause their internal organs to shut down, which could be fatal."

Daddy shit himself. Overreacting to the extreme,

You were fine after the bath.

But we could not get you to voluntarily go into the pool again for the remainder of the holiday.

That was sad.

On the way to Portugal

A while ago, your mummy and daddy booked a holiday to Portugal. It was designed to be a nice break during the half term to enjoy some sun at the end of the summer. It was to be the third foreign country you were to set foot on. 

During this flight, you were certainly more aware than the flight to Germany but essentially you were nonplussed by the fact that we were in amongst the clouds and so on. You were so well behaved on the way there and on the way home despite being horribly tired on both occasions. You certainly enjoyed charming all of the people around you.

"Hiya man...Hiya lady" etc.

I love you

Since the filming of this video, you've begun using, "I love you," to get what you want out of any grown ups that happen to be in the room. It's too difficult to not be melted by it. 

And you know it.

Sleeping in the car, age nearly two

Daddy simply cannot take a picture

Your mummy takes the pictures. She is not a trained photographer in any way, by by golly does she have a good eye for a photo. Now, your daddy also likes to think he has an eye for a photo. The truth is, Noah, I just don't.

So a few weeks ago, when you were playing in the garden with Surenne (Grandad's spelling, apologies if it is wrong...) and Adelaide, I grabbed the camera and thought I would show everyone what I was made of. The opportunity for some fantastic shots was ripe. Three tremendously cute children all playing together? This is gold!

The following are some of the best photos I took.

They were all genuinely awful. Your mummy laughed when she went through them.