After some rain last week Mitchy finally got a chance to play outside this week. Firstly on the deck
Then in the park
Sometimes the planets align (or perhaps it was the earth/moon/sun) and you get some photos which are gems. Meeks got these two today
We made Mitchy his first cubby house on Saturday.
I always loved making cubby houses when I was little, especially when it was unpleasant outside. I guess Mitchy is not quite ready for cubbies yet, he looked in but wasn't really too interested!
Oh well, maybe he's a bit older.
A few photos of Mitch feeding himself some beef stew. He's doing it right-handed in these photos and has a reasonable grip on the spoon. Good boy Mitchy!
Mitchy has decided he's had enough of mummy and daddy feeding him and from now one he wants to do it for himself. So the speed at which meals are eaten has slowed down substantially as Mitch learns to scoop food up and put it in his mouth. He's doing it left handed and kind of holding on to the very end of the spoon so he doesn't have the best control, but as long as the food is fairly sticky, most of it makes it into his mouth. I'm sure he'll get better over time, but for now it's a slow and messy process.
Previously I wrote about Mitch's dislike for fruit. Fortunately that has changed in the matter of strawberries. He loves them ... sometimes. Once he starts eating them he'll get through 4 or 5 big fat strawberries and be wanting more, but then other times he'll take one bite and not want anything to do with them. Very odd! Strawberries can be a bit it and miss. Sometimes you have delicious sweet fruit, and other times they are plain or bitter.
He doesn't do so well for other fruits, but hopefully he'll grow to like new fruits over time.
In other news we were in Bunnings over the weekend and Mitch just loved it. He was running up and down the aisles and as he walked down the aisles he'd walk over and touch one thing and then walk over and touch something else. Obviously this would be a concern if he was in the poisons aisle or the power tools section, but he was just in the gardening bit touching pots and things. We walked past the aisle with the bathroom stuff (tile adhesive, grout, etc) and it gave me the shudders a bit after our bathroom renovation experience. It's hard to believe it is almost a year since we started on the bathroom. We wont be doing it again in a hurry. On the positive side it all still works and it looks okay, so that is a positive :)
We had dinner for my Dad's birthday at Mike and Mandy and Lilly's place on Sunday night. Mitch and Lilly enjoyed the chance to play together.
First there was drawing together
Then there was reading a book with Meeks
Then there was reading a book with Uncle Mike before Lilly went to bed.
Dad loves his Morgan. If you don't know what a Morgan is, have a look here. Given his love of his car we thought we'd make an appropriate cake.
Once again, Meeks' genius shone through in icing the cake.
In other news, the flower on the now identified camelia has opened. It's very pretty!
Every garden has one of those bits you don't quite know what to do with. Our garden unfortunately has a few of them. Today we went to the nursery to buy some plants to fix one of those areas. After we'd been to the nursery we came home and Meeks did some gardening and I did some "yard work". For those of you who are unclear, men do "yard work" and women do "gardening".
The end result was this little garden bed
The ones in the front are low growing gardenias and at the back are lillipillis. We want the gardenias to spread out and cover the ground and the lillipillis to grow up a bit and cover the front of the porch.
We also got some of Meeks' new favourite plants called leucadendrons. There are heaps of varieties. We got one which looks like this
Not a bad photo even if I do say so myself!
There is also this random plant in our garden which we have no idea what it is but it has just started to flower. It looks like this
Anyone have any idea what it is?
Update: The consensus is that it is a camelia. It has opened up nicely now, I'll try and get a photo of it tomorrow.
Later on Meeks had a nap and Mitch and I did a bit of playing outside
I finally got around to uploading all our photos of Mitch. I only ever put a few on the blog, but there are heaps more, so I have put them all on our Flickr site. For the link for 100+ photos.
No photos today, but a few bits and pieces of news. Firstly Mitchy has his first eye tooth coming through. This is meant to happen from around 16 months, so he is a tiny bit ahead. He has been a bit of a pain, not wanting to eat his food and dribbling a lot, and as usual his teeth are the problem.
Some of Mitch's favourite things!
He loves playing chasings, but only really runs from the sofa in the lounge room to the arm chair in his room. It is very cute. He loves being outside too, and he can be outside a bit more now that the weather is a bit warmer. In the park next door there is quite a slope which he likes to "run" down. "Run" in the sense that he starts walking, but gradually gets faster until it is obvious he is out of control and is going to stack any moment.
He loves bark and dirt. He will eat dirt quite happily (perhaps he thinks it is chocolate initially, but why take a second mouthful?) and loves to pick up bark and move it to another place and drop it there. He'd quite happily do it all day if you let him!
He loves trucks and trains. He will stop and watch them when they go past the park or our house (trains don't go past our house fortunately, but when he is near a train line he watches them). He has two picture books with trucks in them which he "reads" (that is he brings them to us to read) over and over. After we have read them to him, he will go through the book by himself pointing and saying things.
His talking is coming along too. Some things he says the actual word for (e.g. duck, bath, ball, car, etc) but other things he will say the noise the animal makes. For instance "oof, oof" for dog, "grrrr" or "roar" for lions, tigers and even kittens (they are all related after all), and elephant noises for elephant. He also makes fire engine noises.
Anyway, that is enough news for now.
Mitch and I had some fun in the park this morning. This park is on Jersey St in Hornsby and it is across the road from the train lines. Every time a train came past Mitch would pause to stop and watch the train.
How cute is this one? He does this little hands behind the back thing sometimes ...
Next was on to the slippery dip. Despite what the pictures show, I did actually help Mitch down the slide, but he climbed the steps and got himself into position.
There is this spin around thing too which he enjoys but you have to keep an eye on him because he likes to let go while he's spinning around.
