Getting stoned

Just before we left the zoo, you sat on the stones and played with them for ages and ages. You loved the stones. And we loved to watch you. These pictures seem to really tell a story.

Some choice pictures from the zoo

Your mummy is quite upset as I type this because she mentioned how few of the following pictures (that were taken at the zoo as part of mother's day) actually contain you and your mummy. There are zero.

There is good reason for this, though. Of your parents, your mummy is the one with an eye for a good photograph. Daddy, not so much. So unless she does a selfie, she doesn't really appear. Daddy will make a similar promise as he has done before and try harder to take more pictures of you two together.

First of all, here is a picture from NoahCam:

Here is an elephant looking in a mirror:

Your eyes seeing a tortoise for the first time:

You carefully explaining to me the reasons why you think Jurassic Park could never happen in real life:

Daddy hatching an evil plan:

And Daddy being a good parent, letting you wander away. You were gone for about 40 minutes.

A trip to Twycross

The weather at the weekend was lovely so you decided that a good way to celebrate mother's day would be for us all to go to the zoo. You had a good time and it was a good opportunity for you to consolidate your knowledge of the animals you have been learning. Which you did:

However, after a relatively short time, you became rather bored at looking at the animals and instead, insisted on pushing your pushchair round the park and jumping in puddles for a laugh. It was pretty funny though, to be fair:

Then we stood and watched you do a poo. It was like watching a baby orangutan.

Amazing spelling ablities

A is for...

Hewwo

You love picking up anything phone-shaped: calculators, remote controls, phones, putting them to your ear and saying, "Hewwooo." You also have an uncanny ability to change a million settings on any phone within a matter of seconds.

Happy, like you, is growing up.

And, like you, he loves his sleep.

Melonie

Food can double as budget toys.

Don't believe us? 

Meet Melonie. Noah loves her.

Casual, literary baking

Your daddy was in a competition at his work against the other teachers to make a cake after school over two days. It had to taste nice and be creatively presented. It also had to link in with his subject.

He made Yorick's skull. It was by his gravestone, complete with a rose and soil.

He got second place (out of ten). Apparently the judges were really split between the skull and someone's earth complete with tectonic plates.

He was so proud that he wrote this blog in the third person.

A midnight bath

The other day, for whatever reason, your sleeping pattern was shot to shit. You were asleep (and had been since 4pm) and, because we didn't want you waking up at some ungodly hour asking for food, we woke you up and fed you. We also bathed you by candlelight. This meant, when mummy took pictures of you , using the flash, you looked ever so slightly different. I just realised that everything I just typed here is so impossibly boring. And, let's be honest, if it's boring for me, it's bound to be boring for anyone else who happens to be reading. 

I'm sorry about that.

More monkey madness

You love monkey. We have already mentioned this, but this video is video is further proof.

You flippin' love monkey.

Driving

You love driving. You don't really understand that we are parked and that you don't really have true control over the car. It's quite funny because when we park up, you put out your hand as if you are begging for something and then keep repeating, "Car, car, car, car, car" and when that doesn't work, you try, "Please, please, please, please, please." This is your rudimentary way of asking permission to drive the car. 

As you can see here, your daddy had to gaffer tape up the wing mirror because some moron ran into it with their car.

Self feeding: done.

You can use cutlery too, but these pictures are so much more interesting.

This blog is called, 'Happy, Noah and the doomed Ladybird.'

A very ticklish boy

Shortly after filming this, you got sick of being tickled and said to your daddy, "Tickle me again, you wrinkly moron and I'll cut your teeth out."

You're always saying funny jokes to your daddy.

Monkey madness

Today you laughed more than we had ever heard you laugh - and you laugh a hell of a lot. Your mummy got monkey and started making him eat things, spit things out and sneeze. We had a great time listening to your laughing. After about five minutes, we wanted to get it on camera but your hysteria had already begun to subside. Even then, daddy hadn't recorded the video properly. Hence why, at the start of this one, you can hear me say something about not getting it. 

The laughter you do here was a tenth of what you'd done previously. It's still good though.

Happy's great adventure

We aren't ready to let Happy out yet. He's not had his balls chopped off and we haven't had the chip put into his neck. These things will be happening soon because Happy is really showing his natural instincts to want to go outside and explore. Your mummy bought a cat lead so we can walk him out in the garden to get him used to it. He loved it so much that we had to get a video.

Developmental milestones

Today we read all about the developmental milestones that you should be achieving at the different ages of your early childhood. Bear in mind the fact that you are not quite 16 months old. The results were staggering. When it came to listing your skills, you had all of the 12-18 months ones down. You have done for a while.

In fact, when we looked at the milestones for 18-24 months, you had nearly all of those, too (including having far surpassed a large number of them). It would be just plain showing off to list all the ways you are outdoing your milestones here. Child development, after all, is not a 'one size fits all' thing. However, with regards to your language, it really is worthy of note for the sake of us potentially misremembering your skills in the future. It says that, at 18-24 months (potentially up to 8 months ahead of where you currently are) you should have, "At least 20 words." So we thought we'd do a rough count of your words. Generally, you have been a pretty brilliant mimic for a while and, obviously, it would be wrong of us to use words that you can just parrot back to us so we only listed words that you would say entirely on your own.

That list was upwards of 70 words. Seventy!

This was without consulting Grandma and Grandad or the nursery, where we are sure you would have a number of other words. In fact, when we mentioned this to your Grandma, she asked us if 'blueberries' were on the list. This was right after you'd said 'elephant' when we showed you a picture of one. I think the true number would be closer to 100.

We are proud enough to make a song and dance about it on this blog.

Noah and the football

Obviously, in your daddy's mind, you will grow up to have the brains of Einstein and the looks and footballing skills of David Beckham (you may need to Google him if we are in the future (the verb "to Google", by the way, means to use a search engine on the internet)). However, so far, you you just keep on insisting on picking the ball up, much to your dad's frustration. You still have a lovely time though.

Some choice photos from Abbey Park

Probably my favourite thing is that the way the last two photographs have been taken looks as though on the penultimate one, I am throwing you down and the last one, I have walked away.