The 3rd Christmas is the sweetest

Bambi will be 2 1/2 this Christmas. It's his 3rd one, technically but will be his first proper one. The first one he can anticipate, the first time he knows who Father Christmas is, the first time he'll have to buy present for people and keep them a surprise.

His first Christmas he was only 6 months old. I spent the day predominantly worrying about whether we could alter his life-consuming nap schedule to correlate with his other baby cousins' naps for us all to have dinner together. (We did but dinner lasted approximately 10 minutes due to 2 babies and a 2 year old whose naps were all out of whack!)

His second Christmas was about as special a Christmas as you could ever have, in retrospect. At the time it was a bizarre kind of dream. He was 18 months old and had been whisked away at bedtime 2 nights before Christmas to Granny's house, where he spent 2 days with cousins and uncles and aunts, being spoiled rotten. On Christmas morning he opened one present with his cousins before getting in the car to come home. He walked into our house to find a brand new, tiny, sleeping baby brother in a Moses basket surrounded by other presents. It makes me weep to think about their first meeting on the Christmas morning but of course he won't remember it, and wouldn't have understood the significance of the moment anyway. 

Everything fun when you're nearly one

Duck is one in a couple of weeks. Poor Duck, not only is he our neglected second born but we also landed him with the terrible affliction of a Christmas birthday. Despite these trials he is the cutest, happiest, loveliest little person I know.

I think nearly one year olds are my favourite age of baby. They still snuggle up with you at nap times and bedtime, and in my case they still breastfeed, but not so often that it's annoying! You get all the lovely warm fuzzy feelings of holding your baby while they still (just about) fit in your arms, but they are also growing in confidence and independence every day which makes entertaining them less intense and exhausting.

My favourite thing about nearly one year olds is how easily pleased they are! 

Duck's face still lights up when you sing action songs, or make clip clip horse noises. You can have him in fits of giggles with an elaborate sneeze and the old classic peekaboo still gets a great reaction. He finds me and Daddy pretty funny but his giggling turns right up to 11 when Bambi 'does a turn'.

Here's some of the things Duck LOVES to do when he's not being sung to or entertained by his trio of clowns. You can tell he loves them by his massive grin, hand clapping and general happy noises or by his amazing infectious laugh.

Perfect play date!

Sometimes when you arrange a play date out of town the journeys are stressful, the timings don't work with your kids' naps, the children are grumpy, badly behaved or embarassing and you just wish you hadn't bothered.

But increasingly now that is not the case! Today's out of town play date was perfection!

The traffic was a bit heavy on the way but it turned out to be JUST bad enough for Duck to have a satisfactory nap and us to arrive bang on time. The journey home was like clockwork too, a sleeping baby and a chilled out chatty Bambi made the M4 almost a pleasure and I arrived home with two happy, rested little souls.