Noah at 15 months - "Garden" and other words...

The time since Noah's 1st birthday has flown by and it feels like his development has sped up 100%! He's nearly 15 months and he now says a few words. So far his favourite word is "Garden". He has loved being out in the garden all summer and now I fear that he will be fed up of being cooped up inside during the colder months. The mere mention of the word "Garden" and he's off to pick up his shoes, pointing at the back door repeatedly saying "garden"! So much so that we were outside in the back garden in the rain one Sunday morning. I couldn't say no to him and I love how the rain makes no difference to him. He's not conditioned yet to want to stay in when the skies are grey and wet. Hmm, might not love this so much as the winter kicks in.... 

He has progressed from saying Dadda to Daddee, Mummee, Nanee and he says "Isla" all the time. Other words he says: "ball", "bubble", "cup", "cat" and "up" when he wants to go upstairs. He does so many animal sounds in response to seeing pictures, oinks like a pig, roars like a lion, even bigger roar for Dinosaur etc - he loves the Peekaboo Barn app on my phone and I've found it such a useful tool for getting his nappy changed without wrestling with him. He also says 'Bi, ed, us' - which is his way of singing the song Big Red Bus.

He loves music still. Dances immediately on hearing it. This fits in nicely with Isla's current love of musical chairs and musical bumps! He joins in, not quite understanding why he has to sit down suddenly or why he's getting pushed off a chair. He also enjoys nursery rhymes, particularly 'Row, row, row your boat". To be honest, he dances even if there's no music on if you ask him to.

He LOVES anything Thomas the Tank Engine! He now has so many Thomas t-shirts/ PJ's that I'm worried he might not wear anything else. The minute he saw some Thomas tracksuit bottoms my mum bought him from Sainsburys yesterday he started stripping off the trousers he had on! The Thomas thing even goes so far as yogurt - he loves the pots with the characters and is visibly disappointed if we don't have those ones.

We're still regularly waking in the night (read 'regularly' as EVERY BLOODY NIGHT!).  This does get me and the OH down actually. And he does want a bottle to get back to sleep. It's really tricky as Isla and Noah share a room now, so what the hell are we meant to do when he's screaming the house down other than give in to what he wants? So most nights he has a bedtime bottle and then he will wake anytime between 11.30pm and 3am and need milk. He then goes back to sleep and either sleeps until between 5am and 6.30am depending on the time he has woken up initially and if it's the earlier time then he gets another bottle and gets put back down again - we've manged to get him out of the habit of rising for the day at 5.30am (touching lots of wood while I write this). I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel to be honest with the nightly waking. He eats enough food during the day so it has definitely become a habit and if he was our only child then I think we would leave him to cry himself back to sleep but because Isla gets disturbed we can't do that really.

Back to happier things, he adores Bobcat and is actually really gentle with him when he strokes him. Although his excitement does get the better of him sometimes he does screech a bit when he sees him which freaks Bobby out a bit.

Cars and trains are his current favourite things, he will zoom around the floor with them for ages, making car and train noises as he does it. I can watch him play for ages, he finds it so easy to do it on his own, he doesn't need to be accompanied while he plays. He is also an avid Lego Duplo fan, he can build for ages. We also play hide and seek so often with Isla that when he hears people counting for any other reason he covers his eyes like we're having a game of hide and seek.

I feel so much love for my little boy, I feel such pride when I see him growing and changing but a tiny part of me mourns him not being a baby anymore. Which feels odd to me as I found it quite hard when he was a little baby!

White

As a relatively new blogger I've only just come across Tara Cain's Sticky Fingers blog and 'The Gallery'. The idea is that Tara will give a prompt (can be a word, phrase, object etc) and then people respond by posting a photo that captures that prompt for them. This is my first time having a go at The Gallery, but when I saw the word was 'White' the only thing that came into my mind was our cat, Bobcat. Here he is:

He is our big, beautiful, white fluffball, I like to think of him as the Liberace of cats! We've had him for nearly 3 years since a good friend of mine moved flats and no longer had a garden. He has settled in and really has a big place in our affections - see previous blog post 'Nocturnal Awakenings' for proof of just how much he gets away with. He has dealt with having a new baby (now toddler) in the house very well, although he spends a bit more time under the bath than he used to! He's found this week a little bit trying with the snow, only ventured out once, for 30 seconds and the scuttled back pronto. This caused havoc with his daily ablutions - he's very modest and doesn't like an audience when he's in the litter tray....
Isla adores him but the feeling isn't reciprocated - he's not so keen on her shrieking "Bobbeeee, Bobbeeee". My favourite picture of them together is this one:

And speak of the devil, he's just hopped up on the sofa to keep me company now. We love you Bobcat!

Nocturnal Awakenings!

Just lately I've not been sleeping.... There are 3 reasons for this and all 3 of them live in this house with me!! First things first...

Generally I'm not a night owl, I've always been an up with the larks kind of person - well that was until I had a baby and realised that actually 8am isn't early, 7am is normal and 6am isn't unheard of. So in light of the enforced wake up time i skip off to bed about 10pm every night, whether it's a school night or a weekend, I need my sleep. However other beings have other ideas!

So, I creep up our stairs at the bedtime hour. It's worth saying that it's virtually impossible to creep up our stairs, even our cat sounds like a hippo when he hops up them. I don't think they've been replaced since 1901 when the house was built and my size 8's aren't going to sound dainty. I get to the landing and that's when Isla rouses. "Gummee, gummeee, gummee". So then instead of hopping into bed I'm replacing her dummy and perhaps shushing her back off to sleep. Job done, into bed, bliss.

Well only for about an hour because then the snoring has started. I like to get a head start on the sleeping business because I know sooner or later I will have the husband next to me snoring like a goodun, and I'll have to shove him on his side and hiss at him to STOP SNORING! Ok, so that's him dealt with, back to sleep.....

*BOOOOF!!!* That's Bobcat just jumped on my chest, a little sniff in my face and then settling down for a kip on my legs. Some nights I am so comatose that I don't feel him jump on me but in my dreams I get this weighty sensation that wakes me up to him sitting right on top of me. I love Bobcat to bits and because I feel guilty that he gets a bit less attention in our house since Isla's arrival I let him sleep wherever he likes. However some nights he doesn't just stay asleep. Sometimes he likes to leap all over the bedside tables, run up and down the stairs and Meeeeeoooww as loudly as he can. You see, we don't have a cat flap, so he's reliant on us to let him out and this is how he gets our attention.

So, there's a few good reasons that I'm not sleeping so good at the moment, but none of them are going anywhere and for that I'm glad! :-)