28 months!

More random phrases from the Leophone....

Mummy’s feet dirty (they always are, too)

Leo hurt head, kiss it better (shows where) And there! (shows another bit so I can kiss that too)

Kick and paddle, kick and paddle. (Goes swimming with Ben on Saturday mornings) Nice go swim Daddy.

Wear backpack!

Wear Mummy’s dress! (As the weather gets warmer I’ve worn a long skirt a couple of days. Leo is fascinated by the fact that I’m wearing a skirt not trousers and wants to get in on the act. Very into dresses and spinning at the mo, as you’ll see on the web album)

Go down that alleyway

Says “Hit” (reading the screen at the end of Thomas DVDs)

Oh, oh, oh NO! Oh dear me! Thomas stuck!

James pulling Thomas

Hat on, be sunny

Take hat off inside

Ready, let’s go

1,2,3 GO!

Harad says blah blah blah She actually does say ‘blaaa blaaa blaaa’ and Leo like the helpful bro that he is, likes to converse with her in her own language

Leo hold phone! Aunty Jenny/ Nana/ Anna on phone? Go park Will? (pronounced Wiw)

People coming in park? (they pass the entrance and keep walking) Not people coming in park.

Standing on the train platform, says random sequence of numbers to self… then Ben looks at poster in front of them and realises Leo is reading aloud the telephone number off the bottom of it!

Oh, where 'pider gone? (upon going into Angharad’s room, which she’s recently been sharing with 2 Huntsmen – one massive, one little – and not being able to see either of them. One has gone outside now and the other one has moved into the hall).

(Seeing spider in hall the next day as we’re going out) Oh, THERE 'pider! Bye bye 'pider, see you later.

What you doing Mummy?

Look Mummy, leaves fall off tree down there (pointing at leaves on the pavement where someone’s been pruning their bushes)

Gondor has 4. (I wondered what he was talking about. 4 wheels?) Gondor has 4 on. Aha! He means Gordon’s number is 4. Then out of interest we asked him, ‘what number is Toby? What number is Henry?’ and discovered that he knows the numbers of Thomas, Edward, Percy, Gordon, Toby, James and Henry –just from memory because there was nothing around when we asked him. Trainspotter).

Nice go in sea. Leo fall down in sea (We were paddling in the waves and he got knocked over by an extra-large wave… didn’t deter him from staying in though, brave boy)

Go on 3 trains ‘Long (he and Ben went to Geelong on the train, which involved 2 changes of train)

Look at rainbow!

Oh miss train, get next train. Get off Westgarf.

The L-ster is 2 and a quarter!

Am pushed for time so am going to do a 5 minute stream-of-consciousness brain dump for this month's Leo update.... here goes.... beautiful soft hair getting curlier again as the weather warms up. Has had stinky green cold this week and is good at having his nose blown but also wipes it on things (the sofa, my trousers) and tells me he's doing it! "WIpe nose on sofa.." "What Leo? Oops too late." Using appropriate phrases and unprompted, not just echoing. Eg "Mind head!" (getting into car seat), "Hold on tight" (on swings), "Thank you Mummy nice day" at bedtime etc. Is very good with his sister, generally, but knows (of course) that a never-fail way to get our attention is to give her a quick biff or lie on her, so does that from time to time - very rarely hurts her though. Can almost count to 20 but misses a couple of the teens out often. Walks more than he uses the pram now, and is in charge of gate opening and closing when we go out - holds it open while I push the pram through and then closes it. Helpful little darling!

The last few Saturdays Ben has taken him to the pool and he loves swimming with Daddy, keeps talking about it - knows Saturday is when Ben doesn't go to work and they go swimming. Also talks about today and yesterday. Enjoys cooking, especially mixing - we have made a cake, bread and pizza together this week and the day after the cake he asked Ben if he could have "cake Leo made" for breakfast! When we made bread he kept saying "Put in oven now OK?" at every stage of the proceedings. Has a scooter from the Toy Library and can scoot down the hall "Leo Cooting"! Is climbing like a monkey - can do rope nets at the park, quite high - scares the pants off me, also has done a runner in the park twice this month, and the second time when I caught him up and told him he mustn't run away because it's dangerous (was heading towards a road) he looked at me gravely and said "Road busy, cars coming" little bugger ! Brrrrring! Time's up. And that was 10 minutes not 5! Web album here

26 months

Leo is now 26 mnths old and such a lad. He is taller every time I look at him and a strong, solid boy. You couldn’t call him chubby any more – has changed shape massively over the past year as can be seen if you look back at pics of the visit to England last August.

He now speaks fluent English (!) and pretty much doesn’t stop talking when he’s awake and hanging out with the family, although can be shy and quiet around others. Around the time Angharad was born, I started making a list of words he could say. I haven’t updated it for ages and it’s now pointless doing so because he now knows too many to list and learns them far quicker than I can keep up. He can speak, basically, and comes out with several new words every day and often new concepts / sentence constructions too. He is also parroting things that we say, including his first profanity which was an immediate echo of his potty-mouthed mother. It hasn’t been repeated and I’m being much more careful about what I say….

He’s started being more interested in clothes, sometimes insisting on wearing certain things like his cycle helmet which he wore all afternoon the other day (without going anywhere near a bike) and Big Socks pulled up to his knees. It’s a good look, you’ll surely agree.

Cracking sense of humour, now makes jokes like “Oooh, tiger!” When you say “Tiger? Where?” he shrugs and then wets himself laughing at the confused look on your face. Also does funny voices, and thinks saying "belly button" in different ways is the funniest thing ever (whispering, high pitched, growling). Very good value at the mo – it’s such a fun age.

Extracts from the non-stop chattergram …

“Nice today. Nice on train Mummy.”

“In park Leo, in park Mummy, in park Hadad.”

“Throw stones in water.”

“oooh, BIG splash!”

“Banjo on table / up tree/ Bonzo asleep now”

“Banjo GET DOWN”

“Hadad done BIG poo”

“Leo’s turn!” (evidently it’s always Leo’s turn, and never anyone elses’)

“Mummy Leo fall down”

“Leo running FAST”

(on the train) “Next stop Mummy”

[oh dear, we’ve missed the train] “Next train Mummy”

“Helicopter in sky. White helicopter. Helicopter FAST”

“No poo, just fart”

“Watch Thomas on telly? One more….” (holds 1 finger up for emphasis!!)

“Leo go on naughty cushion now?”

[why are you on the cushion?] “Hit Hadad. Sorry Hadad.”

“Go on train Daddy swim?”

“Red light”

“Click clack” (when doing anything up – seatbelt, chin strap on cycle helmet etc)

"Another tram - 2 trams!"

"Leo crossing road!"

Have done a web album for this month to avoid cluttering up the blog. Seems to be a lot of food featured in it… well he is his mothers’ son in that respect :-)

25 months

L is 25 months old now, and a real boy - noisy, physical and can be a thug at times! he is also talking LOADS, has lots of linking words like "here" "now" "soon" "is" "gone" which means he can construct some meaningful and interesting sentences. Such as "Daddy work now, on train city." And "Angharad asleep / awake / sick now." A couple of days ago I bought him a cuddly monkey backpack with a strap I can hold onto, and when we put it on he says "click clack" and this morning when we put it on he said "Hold Mummy's hand, road busy, cars coming," so he's got the message about why he wears it! More soon when Picasa is behaving itself.

2 years old

Nothing like getting your hands dirty

"Kick de bawwwl" is a very over-used phrase in this house

Poorly boy - had mystery infection for 48 hours, temp over 39 and very out-of-sorts poor thing. But doc couldn't see an obvious infection, ears throat etc all OK and no snot, so suspected a urinary infection and cheerily asked us to get a urine sample to check.. hah! Leo was better before we'd managed it. We had his nappy off for a few hours and he straddled the potty a couple of times but nothing came out - the one time he did it I was holding Angharad and not quick enough with the jar, so the carpet got a sprinkle but no sample. Anyway he's all better now.

Alfresco artwork. Banjo had pink flanks for a week after this. Matched his nose.

"Ruuuunnnnnnninng!"

Ballboy

Searching the library catalogue, perhaps for "T-R-A-I-N-S"

"To: ginger@stripytail.com Same time tomorrow night? I'll bring the milk. L"

Below are just a tiny fraction of the photos we have documenting the current obsession - TRAINS. This includes "big train" which is the real one, with endless requests for "on train" wen you ask him what he wants to do today. As you approach the station he says "ticket!" and when he has it in his paw, puts it through the machine before shouting "but-ton" and runs off to press the green button which tells you when the next train is coming. If we're by the level crossing he shouts "train coming! Car baiting [waiting]!" In the picture below you can see him re-enacting this scenario with the model cars waiting at the level crossing and he's carrying out a running commentary, telling them to wait. (He also says ding ding as he puts the gates down, and when the train's passed he tells his cars "bye train, train gone, GO!"

He likes to "make train" and it's (yawn) the first thing he wants to do in the morning, which is about 6.30 am at present. "Mummy, make train!" He builds tracks himself but needs help to get them to loop properly. He constantly wants to "play train." This masseef track going all round the table was built by Daddy. Check it.
The usual dawn session.


He is talking absolutely loads and it's delightful - he's also getting very into his numbers. He recognises numbers 0 - 9 and points them out on gateposts, at the railway station etc. He counts to 10 (to himself, just for the fun of it) and understands the concepts of 2 and 4. (The first time we realised this was recently when I offered him a biscuit and he said "2 bickick!" Since then he'll point things out and say "2 train" etc etc). Understanding 4 really surprised me because we were looking at a page in a book with loads of different farm animals and I asked him what he could see and he thought for a minute and said, "4 duck." This blew me away as there were indeed 4 ducks, but spread all over the page, mixed in with other animals - I guess they stood out because they were bright yellow against the browns of the other animals. Earlier in the same book there was a page with 4 flowers (no number 4 ) and he pointed at it and said "Four" , but I wasn't sure if he was saying "four" or "flower." But then a couple of pages later he saw the 4 ducks so there was no doubt that's what he was saying. This is such a fun time - there's something new every day. He is GORGEOUS.

Less blogs, more labels

We're realising, possibly much later than everyone else, that we've got too many blimmin' blogs.

We started the bLeog when we had much more non-family posts, to let readers go straight to the baby pics, and I automatically did the same for Angharad. However, these days we're struggling to work out which of the four blogs to post to.

So, despite just having started Angharad's blog, we're going to retire both it and the bLeog, leaving them there for posterity but making all new updates to Board Acres. (I'm going to keep the Galleries blog because it is so self indulgent and of niche interest.)

You may have noticed at the top of the green set of panels just to the right of the posts, a new panel titled 'Read about...'. In future we'll be labelling our posts, so if you want to filter just the post of Bonzo, find that window and click his ginger name. The size of each word in the panel reflects the number of posts with that label. I've labelled the more recent posts as a kick-off.

If anyone disagrees violently, or has any other suggestions, comment away...

Play School addict

We've already mentioned that Leo is a Play School junkie. These pictures show him using. Some viewers may find them disturbing.

trains, double decker, my drum kit

Meanwhile, Leo plays with his trains

Leo's had a train set out from the toy library.


Banjo risks the tip of his massive tail.

"Cowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww."

Mid-air piece of track not quite in shot.


Incidentally, the reason we've been using Web Albums more than in-line blog pictures is due to an apparent problem in Picasa which, to cut a long and embarrassing story short, is now remedied (user error, thanks Chris K and Fernando @ Google!). We've back in business now.

Aerial Leo

Leo's been doing a lot of jumping and dancing just recently. (Pre-Angharad photos.)

21 months

Probably Leo's last monthly update as an only child so I'd better make the most of having a leisurely nap time to write this!

In the past week he has become a Play School junkie. I got a couple of DVDs out of the library for the first time (the Aussie version, identical in format and ethos to the British), and he is absolutely mesmerised by Play School Nursery Rhymes . He is already doing actions to songs on it, his favourites are Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear Turn Around and Rock-a-bye Your Bear (the actions are things like 'take a bow,' 'turn around,' 'touch the ground,' 'sssh sssh sssh' with finger on lips. Very cute to watch). Anyway he now has an unhealthy obsession with Play School - when it finishes he says "Mummy? Mummy? More? More?" and when we say "Bye Bye" to it he says "Noooo" and there are sometimes tears... it is the bribe of choice if we need him to sit still for 5 minutes. I'm thinking it'll come in handy when I'm feeding number 2. He still loves old favourite rhymes like Hickory Dickory & Twinkle Twinkle; does the mouse running down the clock (fingers running down other forearm) and now uses his fingertips to make the diamond in the sky (he's been twinkling for months). Oh and Humpty Dumpty has now been taken to a new performance level where he becomes Humpty using the back of the sofa as the wall, and has a dramatic tumble off at the appropriate point before bouncing back up again saying "Again? Again?" (well his version of "Again" is "Aga? Aga?") He loves performing and if we're not both watching he shouts "Mummy! Mummy!" (he calls Ben Mummy as well) until he has the full attention of the room.

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall...

... had a great fall!

We are starting to go out without the pram for short distances, (like from car to supermarket, or just up to our local shops around the corner) he's a pro at pedestrian crossings and you don't have to hold his hand (although of course being ever ready to grab him if necessary) - he pushes the button, stands and waits for the green man and then runs across when the beeps go (saying "GO GO!" He also says "GO GO", if we're getting ready to go out and I say "Let's go!") He absolutely loves crossing the road and often just gets to the other side and wants to push the button and do it all again. So he's getting more stamina for walking, but still has a tendency to run out of steam and want to be carried when you're just at the furthest point from home and have bought 4 litres of milk and really don't need to be holding 15 kilos of boy in addition to his little sister and your shopping bag....so I am v glad of the new pram built for 2!

It was a sickly Easter break for us as Leo had his first ever contagious childhood illness... Hand Foot and Mouth. This lasted for about a week, and confused the hell out of us as he was also visibly cutting 3 teeth on his bottom jaw (2 canines and an incisor) so we put the symptoms down to teething (endless dribbling, night waking, not wanting to eat anything except yogurt and milk, terrible nappy rash with blisters on his bum). He's never had these sorts of problems before with teething and in the end I decided that it must be something more and rang the NHS Direct-thing and then took him to the doctor who diagnosed HF & M. The poor thing had ulcers down both sides of his tongue and possibly on his throat as well, so no wonder he'd been so miserable it must have been agonising. All better now.

Significantly he is starting to push boundaries and explore what happens if we say No and he does it anyway.... yesterday I disciplined him for the first time ever and sent him to his room for 2 minutes. There were tears, (almost from me as well) and that was a big threshold I guess, but he's definitely starting to test us and I'm sure will do so even more once his sister arrives, so we have to deal with it. He is the Prince of Tinkers.

He's starting to know his colours and loves felt tip pens, especially the black one ("Ba! Ba!") and is on a mission to find out whether there is anywhere other than paper that he's allowed to colour.... luckily the pens are washable, and so far a damp cloth has removed scribble from the TV screen and wall without leaving a mark...

As well as throwing himself off the furniture his other hobby at the moment is 2-footed jumping, off kerbs, steps or just on the spot. In the last couple of days this has evolved into a full-on seat drop, Big Daddy style. This is very amusing when he does it on the carpet, but the problem is that he keeps trying to sit on Banjo, who at the moment hasn't quite developed the healthy fear of Leo that makes Bonzo keep his distance (and his skeleton intact). Banjo and Leo are going to be great mates in the future, Banjo has let Leo pick him up a couple of times and doesn't run away until Leo is actively doing something painful, but we are having to keep a close eye on the L's rough and tumble to make sure he doesn't hurt our lovely little kitling and learns to be a bit gentle.

Busy mums out for a stroll

Playing ball with Will and James

Attack of the giant Milky Bar monster

Looks so innocent and sweet...grievous pigeon chasing followed very soon after this was taken

Another Sunday, another sheep-slapping session... in Williamstown this time

Directing events from behind his cuppa

Urggggggggghhhhhhhh....

Behind the wheel

Uh-oh...
Sorry Madam...I'm going to need your address and insurance details.

Translation for non-lipreaders: "CAR!"

Garage ramming

Lllllleaping Llllllleos! (And penmanship)

Leo's new trick - climbing up on the sofa arm, standing up, and hurling himself theatrically onto the sofa cushions. A broken limb is only a matter of time. Also, he's starting to use a pen with a grown-up grip, rather than a fist.

Left hand...

...or right?

Either way, somewhere along the line he's decided to hold his pen like this, and we certainly didn't show him.

Leo in mid self-sling...

...with which he is rightly very satisfied.