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.

Ladybirds and lawnmowing

Today you helped your daddy mow the lawn. You were initially quite terrified. To be fair, this was partly because the lawnmower was loud and partly because your daddy was pretending to mow you down. Soon though, you calmed down and really enjoyed it. 

Your favourite part was after we'd finished. You found a ladybird. What we didn't get here was the part where it flew on your face. Your mummy said it would crawl behind your eye and lay eggs on your brain. 

You weren't old enough to understand the terror of this idea yet.

Feeding the geese and swans. Cake.

Every week, you go with Grandma and Grandad to Abbey Park. Today, because the sun was shining, we took you there. We wanted to feed the ducks like you do with the Gees. Thing is, they are all quite big and intimidating. Because you lack any sort of survival instincts or any real fear, you wander up to all of them, even when they look like they have developed some sort of demonic blood lust.

On the way to the park, we remembered that we hadn't brought any bread. So we fed them cake. The swan particularly liked it.

So we all joined in

After your Sling Blade impressions, we thought it might be nice if we just pulled a few faces for the camera. Here are your proud, mental parents.

Your new face.

Noah. The other day, you started making a new face. The funny thing about it is that this is not a face we've done with you yet. What's even funnier is that your daddy used to do the same face when he was about your age. 

That last picture, particularly with the knives reminds us of the movie Sling Blade:

"Mmm Hmmm"

Oh yeah and you did 'Handy' too

Boy wonder

Noah, we can't tell you enough how proud we are of you. Whilst we do spend a lot of time taking the mickey out of you, we want you to know that really, you make us extraordinarily proud every single day. Anyway, our pride reached new heights a couple of days ago when you started showing rudimentary signs that you are recognising letters. Already. There is an app on our iPads that you like to play called Endless Alphabet. It looks like this:

You have liked playing this for a long time. What happens is this: a word comes up on the screen with all the letters jumbled up round it:

Then you slowly but surely

Add letters to their correct places

Until the word is complete

Obviously, being 15 and a half months old, you lacked the cognitive and fine motor skills to move the letters to the right place yourself. You have, up until now, just moved the letters round the screen enjoying the colours and repeating the sounds. Your mummy and daddy then move your hand for you to the right places to complete each word.

Until yesterday, you started doing this:

And, with a bit of help at the start, this:

And even when you clearly just enjoy the sounds of the letters, you get there in the end:

You, my son, are a boy wonder indeed.

Lying down and sneezing

Recently, like an obedient doggy, we have taught you to, 'Go and lie down.' When we say these four magic words to you (as long as you aren't in a pissy mood) you go and find a space to lie down in. Like a dog.

Your mummy managed to get a picture of you voluntarily lying down. Then she got some action shots of you sneezing: hence the troubled looks on your face. Enjoy!

A half baked video of how much you love monkey

You're always dragging monkey around and making us bring him to life for you. Whenever we do, though, you don't listen to him, you just try and kiss him loads.

Heartbeat

Like your biblical counterpart, we believe you to, in fact, be at least 74 years old already. If this sounds equally as unfeasible as biblical Noah almost living to a thousand, I want you to hear my shaky evidence first. Okay. The average obsessive viewer of popular ITV period police show, "Heartbeat," is about 74 years old. You, too, are an obsessive watcher of popular ITV period police show, "Heartbeat," ergo, you are 74 years old.

We don't know why you love the show so much, but every Tuesday and Wednesday morning when we take you over to Dadand's (Grandad's) he puts it on and you both sit and eat marmite on toast and enjoy an episode. You even smile when Nick Berry appears on the screen.

Cartoons you can take or leave, but if you miss an episode of Heartbeat, we don't hear the end of it. 

"Did Greengrass get caught poaching game in this week's episode? I missed it!" for example.

Here's Greengrass, in case you've forgotten what he looks like: