Dear James.... (part 2)

You are now 1, you have started the second year of your life!  I hope for you that it is as fun and full of learning and changes as your first year was.

I thought I would take the opportunity to record some James details and perhaps share some pics from your little birthday party.

You weigh in at just over 9lb or 1 stone 4.  As your Aunty Ali says - quite the arm work out.  As you enjoy to fly through the air either in a  swing or pretend plane or pretend drop by us it really is quite the arm toning session!

Cuddles with Fat Bert

You stand at 72cm tall.  We measured you last night and marked it on a door, a new tradition that your dad and I will do every year around your birthday and subsequent siblings too.  We shall have quite the collection in 20 years time!

You have an amazing 11 teeth, the last 3 all molars have come through in the last 3 weeks. Ouch!  You enjoy brushing your teeth but we have to distract you with another toothbrush so we can actually do the job properly.

You crawl very well now and can get up quite some speed when it suits you.  Your standing and walking get better day by day. You enjoy heading up and down the hallway with your walker and have a great smile on your face as you manoeuvre up and down, though woe betide anything or one that gets in your way as you just ram it or them until it moves or we move you.

You love the bath, in fact you love the bathroom.  To the point that you cry if we remove you.  Soon you will learn that parents need some private time in the bathroom and it is not a spectator sport....!

You understand the words push, arms (when getting dressed), cuddles and up. Cat is probably a favourite word and they have learned - very quickly - how speedy you can be now you are crawling.  Sadly neither have realised there is an escape route open to them, the back door, and for a couple of evenings recently you and Toby have been back and forth up the hall and into the lounge while he thinks he can hide behind the hall curtain and on the lounge windowsill while you follow and see him immediately.  Poor Toby!

We have all enjoyed celebrating your birthday this weekend and you have been blessed with some thoughtful and generous gifts.  You have played with them all and seem to find them all equally interesting, though the bath ones are probably high up on your list.
Your dad and I were overjoyed at all the noisy ones you received and are sad to say that we may not have batteries in the house for the next few, well, years...!

We headed out to The New Forest Wildlife Park on Friday and took a slightly chilly stroll round all the animals, you enjoy watching and chatting to the otters and we managed to stroll round the deer park without one stealing anything from my handbag this time!  Our afternoon and evening were pretty chilled out but we did sing Happy Birthday to you while you wondered why we were making such a fuss!

A homemade James sized cake

Unsure about the candle!

But happy to eat the cake

At the last moment, while doing paper plates and napkin research I decided we'd go for The Hungry Caterpillar theme for your party on Saturday and set too purchasing appropriate plates, cups, napkins...  Having done a little research on Pinterest I decided to theme the food towards the food from the book too.  The end of last week saw me whipping up various batches of cakes and doing a slightly peculiar shop in Sainsburys!  But it was definitely worth it, I was very proud of what I achieved and our guests were very complimentary.  I think that maybe you were impassive to the most but the balloons you did enjoy batting about for most of the weekend.

The table

Our family!

Happy Birthday my love and here's to another wonderful year,

Mumma xx