Meeks' Birthday

Wednesday was Meeks' Birthday. It was Meeks' first birthday as a mummy. Mitch doesn't get any pocket money yet, so he just gave her the best thing he could think of which was photos of him and lots of cuddles. Meeks opened her presents in bed and we had a reasonably relaxed breakfast before I had to run off to work.

Meeks' mum babysat Mitch in the evening and Meeks and I went out to dinner at a lovely restaurant called Cucina Sevardi in Beecroft. The food was delicious, I highly recommend it for a special occasion.

Overall a very nice day. Happy Birthday Meeks!

Mitch stands unsupported! (Updated)

I have some pictures of it at home, but not with me. Mitch was reaching into one of his toy boxes and pulled out a toy and then stood unsupported for about 20-30 seconds whilst playing with it. He did it a few times including one time where he pressed few buttons on his toy mobile phone and then sort of put it to his ear like he had seen mummy and daddy doing. It was very cute.

And some photos finally, they're not great quality as they're taken off the video camera and it was kind of dark:


Mitch adopts a nice wide base of support as he plays with his blocks.

So Mitch has passed another milestone. He still can't get up without help from something, but once he is up he can stand for a little while by himself. He'd done it before for a few seconds, but never for this long. What a clever boy!

This comes at the end of a very trying week for Meeks and I. For most of last week Mitch was a real handful. He was waking up crying during the night (at 11pm and 5am which he generally never does) and grizzling a lot and crying when we put him down for sleeps during the day and then he'd only have really short sleeps and generally wasn't a happy little boy. Then on Friday night he slept through the night, and woke up happy on Saturday morning and went down for his sleeps on time and even slept in on Sunday morning and also this morning. It's like he's a different boy! We don't know if he was teething last week (we can't see or feel any new teeth) or if he was going through a growth spurt, but either way he's returned to his normal happy self and we are very relieved!

Mitch at the Kindi-Farm

One of the local Primary Schools had a fete over the weekend so we walked over and decided to have a look. There were lots of rides and kids running everywhere. The high light for Mitch was a little kindi-farm with a few sheep, some goats, a piglet, and some ducks and things. Mitch was very quiet and tentative as you can see from the photos, but he spent a long time looking at all the animals.



Can you believe Mitch is 11 months old today? He is growing up so fast. He'll be a one year old soon. Our lives have changed so much in the last year, but it has been such a joy to have him as part of it.

More room to play

Now that Mitch is more mobile he needs more room to play. We quite often find him sitting at the back door looking outside or sitting at the front window looking outside. So we have explanded his play area to include the back deck. We would have done it earlier but were worried about him falling down the back stairs.

So after spending Saturday morning cleaning up the back deck including the mess from the accursed date palms (a piece of advice from someone who inherited a lot of them when we moved in - don't plant them. They just drop branches and crap everywhere and attract masses of bees when they are producing dates - and the "fruit" when it ripens falls on the ground and stinks up the place) we went and bought a little fence which is user adjustable to cover the stairs.

So now Mitch has room to crawl around and explore his new environment

Obviously the cover is over the spa and it is locked up!

Mitch went to the creche at church for the first time on Sunday morning. Normally Meeks and I go to the evening service and there is no creche, but this week we had to go to the morning service so took advantage of the creche. It was weird sitting in the service without him and being able to listen to the sermon properly without one of us having to go to the crying room or play room with him. Apparently he was a good boy, but it felt very strange leaving him in the hands of relative (although capable) strangers.

Mitch is thankfully over his cold which is great. After Mitch had it, Meeks got it and then I thought I was getting it. Fortunately it seems to have gone away and we are all mostly healthy again.