Breastburgers

I finally got to meet my Uncle Mark from Stoke, and Isabel, and my cousin Anya recently (I already met my cousin Mia a few weeks ago). Here's a picture of me being held by my cousin Anya. She told my mummy that she wanted to take me back home to London with her but mummy said she couldn't as I am addicted to her breast burgers and everyone laughed - I don't know why! Although that very day I do remember that when we went out for a curry nearby (I didn't have any though) with Auntie Amy and cousins Anya and Mia that there was a fast food shop next door that said that it sold breast burgers, and everybody laughed at that. So maybe that's where the joke comes from. Search me, wierdo adult humour! I'm only a very small child so I don't understand.

I really enjoyed meeting my uncle Mark, who came down from Stoke. But he nearly didn't make it as his AA routefinder was broken and he got lost on the M6 and nearly ended up in Lichfield! Silly uncle Mark! Although he did find us in the end and I was very pleased to meet him.

Here's me having fun with my uncle Mark and my cousins and Isabel.

Daddy and Mia also got a guitar out and Mia started singing "You're the one that I want" which is a song by Grease, I think. A very old one, but very catchy. My cousin Mia has a very lovely voice. I think she'll be a famous singer one day. And my daddy used to be a rock star in Russia you know - when I'm older he's going to play me some of the songs he used to sing so that I can learn them too. Maybe I'll be a rock star also, but I won't do it in Russia! Far too cold. My daddy speaks Russian as well. I think that's rather nice, although they have a funny alphabet apparently. My mummy speaks Spanish and Portuguese, which is easier and sounds nicer and she sometimes calls me by my Portuguese footballer name, which is Fico or Fiquinho, which means Fred or Freddie in Portuguese. There isn't a word for Frederick in Russian though, my daddy tells me. I'm happy with the Portuguese one. I'll make sure I start playing football as soon as I can, so that I can use my special name. My daddy supports something called Southampton FC so I may get taken to one of those matches. But I'm not really interested in that just yet.

I'm going to have a breastburger with my mummy now. Cheerio!

Granny's birthday - meeting the rest of her family.

Luckily, my birthday's not too close to Christmas, so I'll still get 2 lots of presents, but granny's birthday's only 3 days after it and daddy says she doesn't like celebrating it very much because it's so close to all the other festive celebrations. Even so, she does have a big family gathering on that day every year and there were 21 people in the house this year, I think.

This meant I got to meet lots of new people and have lots of cuddles with different (great) aunties and uncles, plus mumbee and grandad came down too.

In this picture where grandad's feeding me you can also see my incredibly funky socks, which were much admired by everyone and were made by Roxanne's mum (see 19 December's blog).
It was very exciting to see another baby for the first time. Daddy's cousin Bryony had baby Rosalyn on 7th November, so she's 22 days older than me, but we lay together in my moses basket and the paparazzi gathered round - it was a bit scary, but we recovered from all the flashes ok.

I met all these people for the first time:
Auntie Rowan:

Great Uncle Peter:

 Uncle Matt:

 Great Uncle Jim and Auntie Sara:

 Great Uncle John and Auntie Ilse Jane (not pictured):

 Auntie Bryony:

Great Auntie Lis:

 Auntie Holly:

We had a lovely day and everyone enjoyed some food that I have no idea about; beetroot pizza, salad, samosas and pakoras. I'm sure one day I'll get to try all this and talk to my aunties and uncles about it.

From Holland with Love

On 27th we has a really long walk in the snow through two parks and past the allotment where there were a few vegetables hiding under the snow. It was quite tiring for daddy to carry me that far and I cried a bit when we stopped in a cafe for a cup of tea, but once we got going again I snoozed off as usual when I'm in the sling.
Then, when we got back mummy and daddy's friends Anne and Dave, who live in Amsterdam, came to see us. They gave me lots of lovely cuddles and Anne wanted to take me with them, but mummy and daddy wouldn't let them!

They brought me a lovely book about a cat called Mog, which I'm sure mummy and daddy will enjoy reading to me. I'm building something called a library, according to daddy, which means you have lots of books. That's great and I even have one in Spanish from mummy's friend Christine! I hope I learn a lot from these books and grow up to be a very clever man.

A Peacock in a Christmas Tree

We had Xmas at Granny and Grandpa's this year with uncle Rob. I don't really understand about presents yet, but I think they gave each other a some presents, which were under a tree with a Peacock on the top and lots of sparkly things and lights. You can just see it in this photo taken from a few days after Christmas with my great Auntie Lis next to it, but mummy and daddy were rubbish and didn't take any photos on Christmas day at all!

They all ate loads of food and drank champagne, so I guess they just forgot about the camera. I've had so many presents that it was nice to see other people getting them too.

I went to a pub for the first time before xmas dinner and then mummy and daddy took me for a snowy walk in the park with granny. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of that to show you either :-(

The day after xmas was something about boxing? Anyway, we were supposed to go to see my great grandparents, but couldn't because our car was broken and there wasn't room in granny's car for all of us. Hope we'll see them soon, though, as it's a tradition to see them at Christmas.

Eve

Apparently, if I'd been a girl, I'd have been called Eve, but it's a different Eve today - something about Christmas and if we had a chimney, some large beardy man in a red suit might come down it to leave me some presents. No, doesn't make sense to me either.

At least Christmas does bring something good, though. My uncle Rob arrived from Japan earlier this week and I met him for the first time.

 We'll be spending more time with him at granny and grandpa's when we go there later today.

The snow has been fun so far, but yesterday it started melting and causing us a problem because water was coming through the ceiling in the living room. daddy had to try and fix it, but it was dripping into a bucket all day. Here's a picture of daddy with a big icicle he took off the roof:

Looks dangerous, doesn't it?
Last weekend we listened  to some very strange music at grandpa's house. It was called Captain Beefheart and we put his album on in tribute, because he'd left the building. Rather different to all the Christmas music I've been hearing recently, anyway.

Moving, More Visits and Broken Car

My first ever car is no more. Mummy's car that she's had for nearly 7 years and which brought me home from the hospital broke down the other day (luckily I wasn't in it at the time, only daddy) and they say it can't be fixed, so we now have no car.

Mummy and daddy are now talking about whether they should buy a new one or not. I think it's a bit cold and dangerous to take me on a bicycle at the moment, but daddy says cars are very expensive, so it would be cheaper to take taxis or rent cars when we need them. It's so snowy now that we wouldn't drive our car if we had it anyway - very slippery roads but nice for walking and looking at!

These are photos taken from the computer room at granny and grandpa's house where I'm writing this blog now. We came here yesterday and stayed the night, but I didn't sleep very much again at night, because that's when I like being awake.

Mummy's oldest friends from Stoke came to visit on Thursday. They didn't stay too long because they were worried about getting back in the snow, but it was nice to meet Emma and Ann.

There are going to be lots of changes in our life soon as next year we're moving to the 'burbs. Mummy has a house out on the edge of Birmingham, where we can go for nice walks and have a garden, so we're leaving the house we live in now. Our friend Roxanne came round to see us on Friday and she says she'd like to live in our house, which is great - good to keep it with friends! Here she is with me and also Ben who came round with her, too. 

He was a bit worried about holding me to start with, but soon got the hang of it and looks quite happy here. Roxanne's mum knitted me some socks, which are great, so I'll post a photo of me wearing them later.

Despite lots of things going wrong, like the car breaking down and England forgetting how to play cricket I think we're going to have another nice day at granny and grandpa's and daddy says there's a new political movement growing against nasty business people who don't pay taxes, which might start saving people's jobs, so that sounds great!

Off to sleep now it's day time.

Out of Birmingham

Yesterday my mummy and daddy took me out of town for the first time. We went out into the countryside where there weren't lots of buildings and people, just lots of trees and fields.

Out there live my great granny and great grandpa in a little village called Priors Hardwick. Daddy says they used to live in a house on the hill (called Hill House) - glad they don't live there now with all the snow coming back again as we would have found it much harder to get there.

It was lovely to meet them though and to find out that my great granny had a grandpa called Frederick, too! Mummy and daddy had tea and scones and I got to sit around in their cosy bungalow having lots of cuddles - it was great.

I hope we go out there again when the weather's better and we can have a nice walk too!