Video of Benjamin walking

Just a quick post here with a video I took this evening. Benjamin is now walking as far as half way across a room! :) He will stop and re-balance himself before finishing his journey, rather than just falling! So I was pleased to manage to capture a bit of it with my camera. He's so cute, as I'm sure you will all agree! ;) lol

Hope the video works!

Saturday in 10 photos!

I'm not feeling very talkative just now and too tired to think about saying much, so I think this blog post will merely be photos! :) Here is last Saturday, summed up in 10 photos.

We went to the library in the morning & then took Abigail & Benjamin to the park. Gerrit went along with us, as he didn't want to go shopping with Sarah, Josh & Anna! Nearly at the park in the above photo.

Benjamin *loved* the swings! This was his first time on them (his daddy sat him in a swing once before, but he was too small to sit on his own or enjoy it) and it's been too cold and wet all winter for going to the park. Anyway, he had so much fun and even moved his legs back & forth & was swinging himself! :)

Abigail in the sand

Benjamin & Abigail peeking out of the wooden train

Benjamin driving the train!

In the afternoon/evening we (Peter, Josh, Abigail, Benjamin & I) went out for a walk up the hill and down by Tulloch Castle. It was a bit cold, but nice & dry.

Some Snowdrops by a small creek

Peter and the children under an arch near the castle

Sunset as we're heading home

Home at last, I made Vermicelli Cake for dinner (really just a baked spaghetti with mince & tomato sauce and a white sauce with cheese on top). Benjamin has enjoyed his meal and is an absolute mess in this photo above! :) But his face/smile is just adorable - in my opinion anyway!

OK, off to sleep I go. If anyone is still reading my blog, do leave me a comment now & again, please! :)

Colds, birthday, new camera etc

Well, here I am again! Not sure how long it's been since I last posted - possibly only just over a week, tho it feels rather longer! We've all been down with awful colds. Benjamin came down with it on Thursday night last week - woke up about a dozen times in the night with a temp and feeling very miserable. Then Abigail woke up on Friday with it. Peter had actually had it since earlier in the week (assuming it was the same thing). I came down with it on Friday. Not fun looking after two wee ones who are poorly when you're feeling half dead too! I seemed to only get worse as the days went by (went to my chest or something) - felt dizzy and out of balance on Tuesday (which resulted in a dropped glass jar of "Sausage Tonight" when I was shopping in Lidl, splattering my face, head, jacket, skirt etc in the awful red sauce - yuck!) Anyway, I finally started feeling human again on Wednesday, tho I'm still not entirely over it.

My 26th birthday was on Saturday. (I seem to remember a number of birthdays during my childhood that were spent feeling miserable with either the flu or a cold - guess it's just the time of year.) Anyway, seems hard to think I'm 26, when I hardly feel like I'm out of my teens. Not sure why, but I always feel like I'm rather younger than I am - or that I'm sort of stuck in time. Who knows, maybe I'll still feel like this when I'm 60!

I decided to buy myself a new camera with some birthday money! I got a Samsung S85, which is 8.2 mega pixels and has a 5x optical zoom. It seems to have loads of features, which I'm not sure I'll ever learn to use! Though I guess I might need to know some of them to get certain kinds of pics. In any case, I've been taking some photos over the past few days (not with any of the special features - just point & shoot!), so you'll see some pics below - of my dear children, of course! :)

Right now we've got my sisters and brothers (well, the 4 of them that are in Scotland!) staying with us. They came on Wednesday while Dad is in Stornoway and they're here until Monday evening. It's nice to have them and Abigail and Benjamin are having lots of fun with all the attention. Though I think Abigail might be getting a bit overtired with playing/talking to someone *all* day long. She's quite a quiet person and too much excitement/stimulation leaves her rather drained, but even so, she hardly wants to go to bed at night! But I've managed to get her to sleep at around 7:30 all three nights so far, and she dropped off *very* quickly. It's just a matter of pulling her away from Anna (her favourite playmate!) and convincing her that Anna will still be here tomorrow to play with! :)

Benjamin is as sweet as ever and always learning new things. At the moment he loves to clap his hands whenever someone sings "If you're happy and you know it..." and he's got to the point where just hearing the word happy makes him clap his hands! It's so cute. (There's a pic below of him in action - well as much action as you can capture in a photo!) He's also trying to say more words. Today he was standing in his cot holding his teddy bear and I told him "bear - Benjamin has a bear" and he repeated "bear" very clearly after me. Then Peter asked him where the pussy cat was (one of Abigail's cats being in his cot - though he hadn't been playing with it at all) and he bent down and picked it up straight away and held it up! And then he proceeded to say "pu" since he had a pussy cat! :) It was quite exciting to see how well he was interacting with us and understanding it all.

So here are some photos now:

Benjamin when he wasn't feeling very well, with a balloon string dangling over his head!

Abigail making a funny face

Clapping his hands :)

Abigail - clapping and probably singing along to Benjamin!

Hmmm, a little boy up to mischief! lol His favourite activity - if he can get the chance! He likes to pull the string of beads off the bottom of the vertical blinds. I think someone should invent some baby-proof blinds!

Him and the string of beads again - I just had to snap a few pics of him looking cute before I put the blinds back together again.

Abigail & Benjamin looking at the camera and both looking a bit funny!

Abigail in her pyjamas

Walking along pushing Abigail's shopping trolley

I think everyone is in bed, that is everyone but Peter & me - so I shall publish this post and get some sleep - until one of my lovely children wakes up! :)

Snow etc

In my last post I was saying that the snow wasn't sticking and just melted. However, when we woke up on Saturday morning, we had *loads* of snow! OK - loads to me - someone from down south in USA, where flakes of snow hardly ever fall! :) Abigail woke up early that morning (around 6:30am) so I got her and myself dressed and we went outside while it was still dark (leaving Peter and Benjamin in their respective beds! lol) The snow was a bit powdery, so I didn't manage to make a snowman (never made one in my life, so maybe it's just that I don't know how to make one!). In any case, Abigail had lots of fun & was very excited to finally see proper snow! Here are a few photos of her enjoying the white stuff:

In the dark in our back garden

Back garden again, can't see the path to the back door at all!

Abigail and her Daddy went outside later in the day on Saturday and built an igloo, using ice cream tubs to make blocks from the snow. It was formed around a tree though, so didn't get finished anymore than seen in above pic.

Abigail and her igloo again

Benjamin in his pjs this morning (making a bit of a funny face)

Benjamin trying to pull off Abigail's nose, or mouth, or maybe both! lol

Hmm, not sure there's anything much else that's been happening! Peter's got a cold at the moment and not sure if Benjamin is possibly coming down with it as well. He seemed a bit sniffly today, but can't always tell if it's a cold or just from teething.

I've been reading one of D. M. Lloyd-Jones books recently, Life in the Spirit: In Marriage, Home & Work (an exposition of Ephesians 5:18 to 6:9), mainly the section on the home, which had some good points about child rearing etc. I came across a very good paragraph which I wanted to share here. He was speaking about boarding schools (which evangelical Christians were sending their children to at the time), but it's clear that the principles would apply to any form of education and what he says is very important:

"The teaching of the Scripture is that the child's welfare, the child's soul, should always be the primary consideration; and all matters of prestige - not to use any other term - and all matters of ambition should be put severely aside. Anything that militates against the child's soul, and its knowledge of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, should be rejected. The first consideration invariably should be the soul and its relationship to God. However good the education offered by a boarding school may be, if it militates against the welfare of the soul it must be put on one side. To promote that welfare is the essential element in 'the nurture and admonition of the Lord', and it forms the primary task and duty of the parents."

Well, must get myself to bed now! Goodnight. :)

More ramblings

Appears I haven't posted anything yet this week, so here goes! :)

Abigail seems to have hit the inquisitive/adventurous twos! (No, I don't approve of the term "terrible twos"! I'm not saying children are perfect, but the word terrible sounds a very negative attitude towards children. And afterall, a lot of what 2yos get up to is just normal curiosity and requires lots of patience! :-) Anyway, rant over!) She's coming up with all kids of ideas, such as going off wandering and says "Bye Mummy! Bye Daddy! I'm going on holiday", or sometimes it's "I'm going to Ullapool" (ever since the other week when Peter took his parents to the dentist in Ullapool). On Tuesday we were at Tesco and I left her with Peter to put the shopping up at the checkout while I went (w/ Benjamin in sling) to get something I'd forgotten from the next aisle over. I came back and only saw Peter. It turned out she'd gotten one of the hand baskets from beneath the till and went down the cereal aisle (immediately opposite the till Peter was at) and had put 3-4 boxes of Grape Nuts into her basket. (She'd already talked me into buying a big 750g box of corn flakes, which she walked all over the store hugging at first!) Anyway, she wasn't very impressed when I put the contents of her basket back on the shelf - she thought she was really shopping! :) So, lots of fun as she explores new things and does lots of climbing too! Still managing to get her to bed early - between 7 and 7:30pm most nights. And usually nights aren't too bad, with 1-3 wakings from then till morning. But having said that, the past 2 nights weren't quite so good, as she woke up at 4-5am and didn't go to sleep again very quickly. This morning it was nearly 5 and after I gave her a dry nappy, she immediately asked for breakfast. So we went downstairs and sat on the couch while she ate a bowl of Cheerios. She chats a lot (even in the "middle of the night"), but it was a bit hilarious when she came out with "Adiós Amigo", and then a few minutes later "Guten Tag" (German for hello, or literally "good day"). She's got this little language pal thing, electronic toy that Leah got for her when we were in Texas and it has about 6 different languages with about a half dozen or so common phrases/greetings, as well as counting. So, already learning foreign languages! She'll soon pass me up! lol

Benjamin is still teething and yet only has the 2 original teeth to show for it! Poor little guy. I think 2 more teeth have just about broke through the gums, but I'm not sure yet. He gets quite fussy at times with the sore mouth. And what makes matters worse is that he's trying to walk, but hasn't yet mastered it, and that means he has frequently falls and bumps his mouth on things. His sleeping is also rather disturbed - less naps or very difficult to get him down for naps, and also restless sleep at night, unless he's snuggled up against his mummy! :) And even then, he seems to stir a lot. I do hope the teething calms down soon. He's trying to talk too! He's had "da da" for a long time now, and when he's really desperate, he'll say "ma ma". But now he's saying "book" (well, a b sounding word that is quite close), as well as "fire" (said very close to the real word whenever he sees the fire in the wood burning stove), "fish" (well a good attempt at it whenever he sees the fish), and if you say dog to him, he replies with "woof woof"! I think there are other "words" he's working on too, but can't think of them at the moment. He's such a sweet little boy! :) I can't believe it's only 1.5 months until his first birthday.

Hmm, wonder what else has been happening! Peter's computer decided to crash this week! I think it was Windows XP that got corrupted. But as it happened, his hard drive was nearly full, so he decided to get a big 160GB hard drive and not worry about repairing the old installation. It's just a good thing our computers didn't decide to go out both at the same time! But still funny that they both "died" within about 10 days.

Guess I really better get in bed. Here are some photos, tho not of very great quality.



Abigail and Benjamin playing at the bath tub before they got in & had a bath ... oh yeah another of Benjamin's words: "baa" for bath! He gets really excited about it and starts tugging at his clothes. He likes to splash and I get really soaked! :)

Abigail sitting in Daddy's chair at his computer. She said "I'm going to do some work. I'll catalouge this book" (and grabbed one of her board books!).

A cute smile! Looking at some Pringles before eating them.

Benjamin and a little ball

Smiling at his mummy :)

Looking out the front window upstairs, into the square. The "blizzard" we had today - tho, unfortunately, it didn't stick and just melted quite quickly!

Our bare back garden, with snow blowing everywhere! I really must attempt to do some gardening whenever spring comes and get the garden in order! I'd just had Benjamin when "spring" arrived last year (and was busy with work while Peter was studying), so the garden was pretty neglected last year. Hopefully once it warms up, and Benjamin is able to walk around, we'll have lots of fun outside! But until then, there's fierce winds and snow blowing everywhere! Brrr! Just the thought of going outside makes me feel cold!

OK, goodnight!

Yay!! I have my computer back!

Anyone missed me? ;-) Probably no one even realised I wasn't here! In any case, my laptop crashed and I was without my computer for over a week & a half. We bought a new hard drive but couldn't use the recovery disk to reinstall Windows XP because the Toshiba disk was a DVD and my laptop's DVD drive has been broken for years! We tried *endless* things to bring my computer back to life but nothing worked. Finally yesterday we got a XP cd from a friend and succeeded in installing it and got the license key registered etc and I'm back online!

I've been trying to post this blog for hours this evening, but Benjamin makes it nearly impossible! He's computer crazy and wants to pound all the keys, or if not allowed to do that, he gets hyper and crawls all over the bed and tries to scare me by nearly diving off head first!! I haven't yet (thankfully!) found out if he'll just crash off the bed, but he crawls with such speed to the far side of the bed and is giggling so much that you never know what he'll do. I think he gets rather bored in the evenings with Abigail going to bed early.

Here are a few photos that I took last Saturday. We went for a walk up the hill that's above our house, though we took a long way round so it wasn't so steep going up. I'm hoping to try and get some more exercise now that I've got (2!) 3 wheeled off-road buggies. No, not that I need 2 of them to go for a walk (as one is a double). I had been thinking of getting an old 3 wheel all terrain pushchair for muddy walks and I found someone giving a single one away for free. So I arranged to have a courier pick it up from the lady. And then I was searching on Google to see if anyone was looking for a double (tandem) pushchair, so I could sell my old Graco Stadium Duo. And while searching I happened to find an ad, posted only hours previously, on a local London meetup board where someone was giving away a Kidz Kargo tandem 3 wheel pushchair - *just* what I was looking for! I emailed the lady and she was happy to pack it up, so I arranged it to be picked up by a courier. So, two days or so later, I have DHL arrive at my house with *2* 3 wheel pushchairs! Not every day you find 2 free three-wheel buggies in the same week! :) So, for one day, I had a total of 8 pushchairs in my small house (3 tandems and 5 singles)! I managed to sell my Graco one and had it picked up by Parcel Force the next day, so now I'm down to a managable 7 pushchairs. I presume there isn't anyone else reading this blog who "collects" pushchairs?! ;-) I try to rationalize it by saying that most women "collect" shoes or handbags, but I do neither (don't even carry a handbag/purse!), so I like to have a selection of pushchairs! They are all different, so you need different ones for different outings! :) OK, enough about my pushchair hobby. Here are some photos & then I must get to bed!

Abigail & Benjamin

Peter with the children

Me and my lovely children :) (Benjamin smiling & Abigail looking the other way)

Going up the hill and looking out towards The Black Isle

Up the hill with a view of our town
Smiling Benjamin in the window

Abigail & Bejamin playing with Daddy's tape measure (I think she was trying to measure him, but looks like he has one end of it now)

A bleary eyed Benjamin, on his computer as soon as he woke up in the morning! lol It's his favourite toy at the moment, though he prefers to use a real one!

Abigail pushing Benjamin - trying out a new pushchair (No, not one of the off-road ones! This is a tiny, lightweight one for fitting in our tiny car. A neat design, found on eBay from a Austrian company - now I just want to buy a second one, so we have one for each of them to ride in, though with the handles all the way down, it's perfect height for Abigail to push!)

Last, but certainly not least, here is our lovely little girl with a great big smile!

A few lines from a sleepy me

I never got round to posting anything last week, so I thought I should begin this week with at least a few photos, if nothing else.

Had a couple of sleepless nights at the beginning of last week (Tues & Wed I think). Mainly because Abigail was waking up at around 10-11pm (after having been asleep since 7ish) and then she was awake till about 1-2am. I think it was bad dreams that were waking her up, judging by the confused sentences that she was coming out with initially, and also one night she was really upset. I think Thursday was OK, but she woke up at 5am asking for something to eat. Peter took her downstairs and gave her a bowl of cereal and I think she went to sleep again fairly easily - thankfully! I think the rest of the week wasn't too bad as far as nighttime sleeping is concerned. But I'm still feeling rather sleep-deprived. Probably mainly my fault, since I never like going to bed early.

Anyway, in addition to the above, for the past two days Benjamin has decided he wants to be like Abigail and not have any naps during the day! :-S I must admit that's it's tiring enough to have a 2yo awake all day (struggling through the sleepy afternoon stages and dinner time, etc), so really I need the 2-4 hours a day that Benjamin spends napping! But the past few days, every time I put him to sleep, as long as he's snuggled in my arms he's nicely asleep & relaxed. But as soon as I try to put him down, he raises his head, smiles at me, and sits/stand up looking as refreshed as ever! :-) But this is usually after only 10 minutes of sleeping and it's not long before he's rather fussy and exhuasted again. He finally went to sleep at 5:30 this evening and slept through me cooking dinner and eating it, but that's about all. Abigail decided she didn't want to go to sleep at her usual 7:30 bedtime and only finally went to sleep after 10:30 tonight! And Benjamin is now finally asleep too (nearly midnight). So, only now after 11:30pm, a few seconds of quiet to catch my breath today! Oh well. The joys of being a mother! :) Perhaps I should rename by blog something about being a sleep/nap diary since it seems that's all I'm always talking about! Oops - sorry!

Still not had any snow really this winter. Wonder if we'll get any at all. I've been wishing for some so Abigail can have fun and play in it, and she's wanting some too. But never know, might just have the frost/ice and no snow at all. Though we did have a sprinkle of snow in March last year, so all hope isn't gone yet!

Oh nearly forgot to say, Benjamin took a step or two on his own yesterday - twice! :) Yay! I stood him up and let go and he must have stood there for what seemed 20-30 seconds. So I turned him around and stood him up again where he could see the stairs in front of him (a favourite of his!) and he put one foot forward and then another before getting too excited with giggling and dropping to his bottom. I repeated the same again and he did it again, one foot and then the other, all on his own! Abigail thought it was really exciting too, so the three of us were all giggling and it meant he stopped concentrating and didn't get any further on that occasion. But I'm sure he'll be a walking little boy soon. He can cross the room quite easily just holding on to my finger. It will be interesting to have such a young baby mobile. He'll be 10 months on Friday but Abigail was a full year and 4 months before she walked on her own!

Here are a few photos, as always!

Benjamin in his Daddy's lap

Drinking his cup of water ... and probably spitting it out down his shirt too! He's such a messy (and cute!) little boy. :)

Abigail didn't want her photo taken so she was making a bit of a sour face!

Abigail showing off her batch of cupcakes with Thomas the Tank Engine decorations - she loves to help with baking!

Benjamin with a few bits of his diner either on his clothes, face, or tray!

Peter and Benjamin :)

Well, it's gone midnight, so I must get some sleep while my children are asleep!