Castle Espie Wetland Trust

This week Curtis has been refusing to eat anything from a spoon or eat food that is chosen for him. Offered a raspberry, he'll reach out and get a breadstick for himself, offered a piece of carrot he'll refuse it and point at a chip, offered a piece of toast, he'll find himself some raisins. Healthy home cooked foods are out the window again this week in favour of his 2 new favourite snacks - chips and prawn crackers!! So much for the healthy organic only diet we'd intended for him. Sure it's just another wee phases that will pass.

Worried that he hadn't eaten a whole meal in a while we recruited his cousin Dylan in to help and made them both a picnic of tuna sandwiches, burgers, fruit and cheese hoping that Curtis would copy Dylan when they ate. Some fun was had crawling about in the picnic tent but Curtis didnt play along when it came to eating. Oh well, it was a lovely sunny day however so we decided to pop down to a nearby Waterfowl Trust centre Castle Espie to feed the ducks. What a fantastic centre; baby ducks, a multitude of coloured ducks, geese and swans, woodland walks, playgrounds, bird watching look outs and a coffee shop with delicioius cake.

Sunday drive with Biggles

These past 2 mornings Taid and Curtis have been making the most of the good weather; driving off to the duck pond for their morning walk with Molly, with the roof down. Curtis waves like a lord to passers by as they pose along the streets of Newtonards, and with Curtis's new found love of wearing goggles it's not problem if the wind picks up as Taid lends him his old flying goggles. Chocks away! To further nuture this interest in flying attire, Taid bought Curtis a biggles style bear, who also wears goggles as well as full flying leathers. Hmmmm...where could this all be leading? A trip to the airfield perhaps!!

Down on the Farm

Yesterday Curtis had a lovely day out with his Nanna, Auntie Sandra, Auntie Doris and his 2 cousins Dylan and Josh when they went to visit Streamvale Open Dairy farm in County Down. Curtis is a huge fan of farm animals with his favourite DVD being Baby Einsteins Old Macdonald, and he is slowly mastering some animals sounds too with moo moos here, a woof woof there and anytime he sees a fish it's a blob-a-lob-a-lob-a-lob here and there. So, he was very excited to be seeing lots of animals for real anad spending time with his family in Ireland.

Mummy stayed at home and got some work done during the day and got to see some video clips of the days events when everyone came home. Thanks so much to Sandra for taking those....if we can manage to download some we'll add some on here.

The open dairy farm sounded like it was very well set up, with lots of space to accommodate the Easter week crowds and lots of hands on activities for everyone. Curtis was a little scared of the bigger animals and stayed close to Nanna, but was brave enough to stroke one of the baby chicks and took a real shine to the bunnies, even showing off his signing by indictaing bunny ears with his fingers when he saw them. Curtis watched Dylan and Josh giving milk to the lambs and decided at this point he wanted a bottle of his own! His highlight of the day however was sitting on Nannas knee as they went for a ride on the farm train. Whilst most other kids rebelled at wearing safety goggles for the journey, he happily wore his and enjoyed the ride so much he boo-hooed when they had to get off. After seeing cows, sows, bunnies, lambs, chicks, puppies, hens, ducks and cockerels, goats, reindeer, ponies, deer, mice and fish it was time to head home.

Photos from the farms website:-http://www.streamvale.com/thingsToSee.html

Belated thank yous!

Curtis received money from several people for his birthday and/or Christmas and I'm very sorry that it's taken me this long to report back to those people to say what we bought him and to provide some photographs! As you know we've been busy getting our flat all tidied up ready to sell as we make our plans to move to Dunfermline this summer.

Auntie Doris in Ireland sent Curtis a cheque for his birthday and I tried to buy something in keeping with her own interests, so a big thank you to Doris as Curtis now has his very first art box filled with chunky crayons, chubby hand held coloured markers in the shapes of dog, frog and rabbit which he loves, lots of scribbling and painting paper, some mini canvases for his 1st works of art, a big shower curtain to put on the floor when the young master is at work, some paints and some fantastic mini paint rollers for him to use. Watch this space for Curtis and his abstract paintings coming soon!! Thanks Doris x

Auntie Eunice and Uncle Jim in Ireland also gave Curtis some money and with this we bought Curtis a great set of rescue vehicles from the early learning centre; an ambulance, a fire truck and a police car all with appropriate siren sounds which he loves to copy. We also bought Curtis a picture for his room. It looks like a Japanese classic - but look closely, it has a modern, furry twist! Thank you Eunice and Jim, it's very much appreciated. x

Curti's childminder Tracey also gave Curtis some money for his birthday and we added this to some that Nanna and Taid had left for him one weekend to buy him his very first trike. And what a great trike it is too, already tried and tested by his little pal Milli, this trike has a parent handle so we can steer him about until his big and skillful enough to reach the pedals. Thanks to Tracey, Nanna and Taid x

Nanny Ronny and Grandad Stevo also sent Curtis a cheque for his birthday and we used this to get Curtis some toys for the garden...he now has a little tent, a tunnel for crawling through and a fire truck ride on which he loves scooting about on (even if he can only go backwards!). We also bought him Elvis No.1 Hits Cd which he loves. I must get a video of his face when we play it...Hard Headed Woman being one of hsi favourite tracks! I think cos it's one of the fastest ones. So, thanks also to Grandad Stevo and Nanny Ronny and apologies to all for being so slow in posting this message.

Helping Taid wash the car

Uncle Thomas brings Roary the Racing car to visit......vroooooom

As to be expected of a young Mr Hughes, Curtis is very excited by red sporty cars such as Roary on CBeebies....so imagine his delight when Uncle Thomas turned up this Easter in the real thing.....vroom vrooom. Curtis was keen to get in the driving seat himself as you can see belwo (photos coming soon) and 'helped' by resetting and moving all the mirrors and dials before Uncle Thomas drove away home!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! Curtis, Gareth and I popped over to Belfast to spend some time off from work with G's family. Sadly Gareth only had 2 days off and had to go back to work yesterday, but Curtis and I are staying for an extended break so that Curtis can spend time with his grandparents and Uncle Tim and I can get some work done.

photos and further up-dates coming soon.....

On Easter Sunday we went for a trip to Bangor to collect Daddys previous car where it had been given some TLC at the bodyshop. Daddy got to drive in the sun with the roof off and has maybe now come to terms with saying goodbye to his beloved black VW beetle....whether Taid is yet ready to part with it is another story all together!

The sun was shining on Bangor so we all went for a stroll along the harbour to see the boats, the really big swans and lots of little dogs out walking.

Lovely weekend in Glasgow

There was nothing so special about this weekend; Curtis and I (Steph) just did what we usually do when Gareth is working; busying ourselves with trips out, catching up with friends and playing silly games around the house. This weekend was a bit more chilled than usual however as Curtis has had a fever for a couple of days, (possibly just an extreme reaction to teething) tho' he is ok now.

Saturday we had to miss our early morning music class and post class brunch and runaround at the Tramway as Curtis had slept in and was a bit under the weather, so instead we took out time to get up and watched one of C's favourite Baby Einstein DVD's 'Old MacDonald'. At lunchtime Jamie and Milli came to visit followed by Dan, then in the afternoon I took Curtis out on his trike to do the recycling and to visit the local shops before spending some time playing nin the front gardenh and catchign up with neighbours as gthey passed by.

On Sunday we went for an early lunch at The Tramway and even managed to sit outside as it was just about warm enough. There we met some lovely little ones who were also out to play in the Hidden Gardens, noteably Jack who aged only 3 seemed to have the warmth and maturity of a far older child; when Curtis cried as I'd removed a dirty napkin he'd found on the floor from his hands, Jack came running over and gave Curtis a wee car and said 'it's okay you can have this...come and play with me'. How sweet! Once Curtis was fed and suitably tired we drove into town and I transfered sleeping boy from car to pushchair and went off to Borders - ah bliss. Once Curtis awoke we went out to Buchanan Street to watch the street entertainers; first was 5 piece Scottish drumming and piping band Clanadonia, who were as their website proclaims 'keeping it Tribal'. I videoed a wee bit but as I dont know hwo to upload (and that my mum would love to see a clip) here is a clip of them from youtube.

Next stop was watching some younger, less sweaty looking pipers further along Buchanan Street (video coming soon), popping up to the Merchant City to check out the art stalls and then off to Princes Square (Glasgows indoor'designer' shopping mall) which has a large mosiac centred ground floor which is used by any under 5's in the area to dart about and play in whilst their parents sit about on the surrounding steps or the coffee shops resting their legs. It's such a friendly place and again all the kids were very friendly, older kids watching not to run into the little ones and several kids politely returning Curtis's toy ambulance whenever it was borrowed for a quick 'broom' broom' on the flooor or wheh Curtis had left it lying about. The whole weekend represents whats so lovely about this city, it's full of things to do and friendlt people.

Photos and videos coming as soon as I work out how to download them from my phone.

Je dis le non!

Yesterday at Jamies house, his dog Milli followed Curtis around the garden as he walked about with a gingerbread biscuit. At one point Curtis stopped still and spent a whole minute looking thoughtfully, and very seriously between the biscuit he had in one hand and Milli's drooling lips. Then in one decisive move he moved the biscuit towards Milli who took it very gently and gobbled it up. Curtis then stared at the space where the biscuit had been before bursting into sobs of tears. We realised later that although Curtis has been pretend feeding us all, including his toys, TV presenters and the occasional inanimate object such as the light or refrigerator for some months, we usually just pretent to eat the food.

Later when Mili came up to Curtis as he held onto a packet of crisps he held on tight to the packet and for the 1st time, and quite clearly said 'No'. Funny thing was the intonation in his voice was perfectly whiney and disgruntled!

Then today when Jamie, Dan and Milli left our house after a brief lunchtime visit Curtis burst into tears (which is now very common when anyone leaves) then as their car drove away he said in what sounded like a cute French accent to me 'non, non'.