In which Ben and Ab have a night without the baby!

On Friday night Ben left work a bit early and we headed off into the sunset on our long-awaited one night away between feeding Oliver and the next baby!!

I booked us a "deluxe guestroom plus" at a 4* Hilton hotel in the lovely village of Ballater. Ballater is in Royal Deeside, close to Balmoral Estate (owned by the Queen) and most of the shops have royal crests on them because the butcher/baker/outfitters also provides services for the Royal family!! Ooh ahh. It is about 90 minutes from Aberdeen.

We had a lovely time snuggling and went out for a meal in the village on Friday evening (for once in our married life I didn't pick a more expensive meal than Ben, phew!) and after a leisurely lie-in on Saturday morning we got a big buffet breakfast in the restaurant followed by a swim in the hotel pool and a soak in the jacuzzi.

Unfortunately I was having braxton hicks (practise contractions) practically all day on Saturday and leg cramps so that put a bit of a dampener on it, but we turned our planned intrepid walk around nearby Loch Muick into a shorter, still beautiful one around a bit of the Loch. We nearly got blown away by all the wind though!!!! Around the Loch we spotted about 20 deer and later four stags standing quite close to us. They were huge and very majestic looking.

We came back around teatime on Saturday to find Nanny T and Grandpops (Ben's parents!) had spoiled Oliver rotten with his very first pair of shoes... Clarks of course! :) They are the teeniest size they do: 3G and VERY cute, and suedy. He has been impressing us toddling around the house all week and now he is quite the pro, making manouvres, turning corners and going over small bumps.

All in all a wonderful 24 hours away. Ahhhh married life is the best. And so is going home to Oliver. It was lovely for Ben's parents to have some Oliver-time, and we enjoyed seeing them for the rest of the weekend too

Some photos from the weekend:

The two of us ready to go on Friday night

My very intrepid husband (the hood was necessary, we were nearly blown away!)

Me

Intrepid like his Daddy, complete with new shoes!

The Clock Aisle

Oliver and I spend a lot of time in Tescos. Ahh, I have to confess that I do love clubcard points, bung out hunts and living only an EIGHT minute walk away!! The poor boy knows the aisles like the back of his hand.

At the end of one of our latest trips I gave him a treat once we'd finished our shopping: a trip down the clock aisle. Oliver ADORES clocks and talks about them non-stop. There is a special spot in our house where he's worked out he can see two clocks at once, so half an aisle full of clocks was absolute heaven.

Firsts!

I am afraid this is another "I have an amazing baby" post, so stop reading now if you don't want to hear mushy proud-Mummy stuff :)

In the video above Oliver shows off some of his very first steps!! Sometimes it is more like falling with style, but he did steps like those above a few times while we were at the Temple in Preston at the weekend. Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I convinced him to do the same again today but he only managed it once, so we're not quite there yet- but it is still a breakthrough!

So after keeping us waiting for a while, his impressive skills just keep on coming: today, while I was reading him some books and singing to him we got to 'Old Macdonald'- there are pictures in his 'Animal Rhymes' library book of all the farm animals and I often point to them and make the sounds, while he makes no reaction whatsoever. He's had 'quack quack' and 'baa baa' down for a while... but all of a sudden, after I asked "what noise does a dog make?" ... SILENCE (that's normal!) ... then: "oof!"

WOW.

I thought I'd try my luck again: "Oliver, what noise does a cow make?" ... More silence ... then a clear and unmistakeable "Moo!"

Allelulia!! The baby speaks!!!!!!! That makes his intelligible attempts at words to the following slightly random list: Dada, Duck, Back, Quack, Brown, Clock, Up, Baa, Woof and Moo. By the way, no, he can't make the "ck" noise at the end of most of those words, but we're still hoping for a Cambridge graduate, teehee :)

Saturday morning walks

Saturday mornings are the new "family walk" time- I suppose it should traditionally be after church and dinner on a Sunday, but Oliver naps then and it's pretty much dark by the time he wakes up, so Saturday morning it is!

This past Saturday Ben found yet another gorgeous walk close to our house- Scotland is just full of beautiful places. We walked along the coast to some ruins called Slains Castle. It was chilly but very sunny and beautiful. A bit muddy though... and I slipped over a couple of times!!! I was even wearing my walking boots- the route was graded 2/5 for trickiness, but in my not-so-daredevil opinion it sloped IN THE DIRECTION OF THE SEA, and got quite close too. I genuinely felt worried for my life in places :S Luckily all three of us survived it, found the ruins, and ended up enjoying looking at some very remote houses on the edge of a cliff. But their post still gets there!! (See the photographic evidence of the postvan below!)

Messy Play: Paint

Here is our latest Messy Play adventure- hooray, it was messier than flour!! He seemed to really enjoy painting, mostly his leg :)

We did get a few first paintings though- but I'm afraid I can't show you them- they might turn up as birthday cards for Aunties and Uncles at some point...