The boy speaks!!

Oliver has practically doubled his vocabulary the last couple of days!! I am bowled over every other time he opens his mouth! The new words he has come out with since the weekend are: me, chocolate, toe, cheese, ball, bubble, and ow. WOW!! We also just has our first proper conversation (i.e. one in which he has used words and not just me!) It went like this:

Oliver: "Ow!"
Me: "Oh no, what hurts?"
Oliver lifts up his leg and says: "toe"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *Gasp* Very proud motherly moment! :)

Birthday trip to Inverness!

Now I am the ripe old age of 23!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We had a lovely family time of it:

On Friday morning Ben and Oliver got up and made me scrambled eggs in bed- my favourite! Scrummy mango-y juice too, yum! Then I opened my cards and presents in bed (a Pentreath family tradition I definitely wanted to keep!!): a really interesting looking parenting book and a baking book from Ben's family, the autobiography of the CEO of Tesco (for anyone who doesn't know, I LOVE Tesco...!) and £30 to spend at a fabric shop (wowwww!!!!!!) from my family and a set of steamer saucepans and a gorgeous owl doorstop from Ben... (I LOVE owls at the moment and it matches our other owl things... and I need to steam things!) and an IOU because one of the presents was late being delivered!!! It should be here tomorrow... exciting! So that was my exciting haul- I must be becoming an adult! :S But my real present was... a trip to Inverness!! We planned it a bit last minute but as Friday was a flex friday (basically, Ben has it off), in the morning we took off up north. Inverness is about a 2-2.5 hour drive and it was lovely, even though it was a bit drizzly. We stopped enroute at a National trust site: Brodie Castle. As is customary nowadays we spent most of the time at the playarea and it was a particularly good one with zip lines and everything! But our boys were a little more cautious.

Then went on to a ruined castle (Urqhuart) right on the edge of Loch Ness. It was GORGEOUS and the sun even came out!! Very, very lovely. We spent a long time at the Loch and the castle and there were lots of interesting films and exhibitions about the castle under siege etc... but Nessie was nowhere to be seen :( 

Then we headed into the centre for a birthday tea at my favourite restaurant- Pizza Express, yum! We all had pizza- Ben ALWAYS has a pizza with an egg in the middle of it and olives, and I had a pancetta, sundried tomato yummy thing and we gave lots to Oliver (and Zachy was on the milky!) Yum. Then we headed off to the lovely little B and B we'd booked up... and everyone slept okay!!! I was quite dreading Oliver partying all night long as soon as he saw we were sleeping the same room/Zach woke him up when we wanted some milk. But it was all wonderful! What a blessing. Our bed was so snuggly and soft too. Ahhh. A wonderfully large and delicious full cooked breakfast followed on Saturday morning, after which we went off to a place called Chanonry Point because we'd heard that you can often spot dolphins from there. Again we were blessed because there were at least FIVE dolphins swimming very close to shore!!!! Probably closer than about ten metres! They were bobbing up and down, and doing synchronised swimming (genuinely!) and a couple of somersaults, it was incredible!! They were really showing off. We got a few pictures of tails and fins coming out of the water, which was the best I could manage- they were so fast! Fab... 

I'll return one day with a flashy camera and snap some somersaults! 

We ended our amazing Inverness experience with a trip to Culloden Battlefield... another National Trust site with a whopping great visitors centre and lots of hands-on info about a battle with the Scots and the British (Jacobites and Bonny Price Charlie?) Very interesting, although Ben was quite engrossed and I had to run around with the boys quite a bit to keep them both happy. Lots of bobbing and nappy changing ensued! :) Then we headed home. 

What a brilliant, brilliant time! Ooh, and on the way we drove past the Inverness Caledonian Thistle Football Stadium. Hooray!!! I waved and phoned my Dad since we love it for its name :)

So this week it is back to normal and Ben has a full five day week... real life! :) Which I rather love. One more week of loveliness until Ben leaves us for nearly two weeks next Sunday evening :( He is going on a fieldtrip for work to Buxton and Scarborough. Savouring every moment while we are all together.

Backtrack: Ben's family visit!

Ben's Mum, brother and sister visited us here in Aberdeen the first week of June. It wasn't really June-weather (and still isn't!!) but we had a lovely time- bonding with our baby boys and visiting places. Here is some photographic evidence (courtesy of them- they take a lot more photos than I do!! For which I'm very grateful, now that I have none of my own!)

Bonding with Uncle Dan:

Daddy, Nanny T, Uncle Dan and Aunty Sarah with Zach and Oliver at Balmoral Castle:

On Newburgh beach (it was SO foggy we couldn't see more than 25m ahead of us!!)

Super! I only wish we had more photos. We also went swimming (Oliver went on the flumes with us...!) to Slain's castle (a ruin right on the edge of a cliff) the Royal town of Ballater, into Aberdeen city centre, to pizza hut!! Fab. Will catch up with them at the end of next month when we are "down south" for our Summer holidays.

Brothers

Olympic Torch in Aberdeen

Emeli Sande- she was good!!

Three guesses what's going on here

Kirsty Williamson!

Bunting!

Guess who is the oil and gas sponsor??

We bumped into some friends!

Zachy baby out and about

We had a lovely few days with Ben's family last week!! Crazily I only took ONE photo (of Ben with a Balmoral postbox?!) so will post about our adventures when I can get some photos from the family. Above are some photos from the Olympic torch celebrations in Aberdeen city centre. The photos don't show how packed it was... bringing the double buggy was an epic fail, we couldn't move!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Diamond Jubilee!

On Saturday I realised that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee was here, we had no TV licence so we couldn't watch any of the BBC coverage of the concert in front of Buckingham Palace or the boats along the Thames or anything! Also I had wanted to have some friends over for 'High Tea at the Twiggers' and it was all a bit last minute now... but I was determined not to let the Jubilee pass by and not do anything (after all, how often does someone stay on the throne for 60 years?? It won't happen again in my lifetime!) so we searched online for things going on around here... not much since we are in Scotland and they generally consider themselves Scottish, not British :'(  But we found an afternoon tea party in Aden Country park with a yummy food, pin the tail on the Corgi (I did it!!) union flag face painting and a great play area for Oliver. I invited friends last minute for a rather chilly Jubilee tea on Monday (a BBQ and way too many scones, some delicious eton mess, trifle and Great British fancy cakes) Fab! The celbreations came to a close with our third celebration yesterday evening- a party up at the church. Even more scones with jam and cream and some yummy scrummy sandwiches with very British fillings. Ben entered the crown making competition with his very tall crown (he wrote KING BEN is capital letters, and 'All hail!' underneath... he didn't win) and Oliver tried out the boucy castle. Zachy Baby was on the milky for the whole thing- good boy!

Some photographic evidence of the festivites (I wish I'd got more):

Two weeks old and we are STILL alive and well!

Hello again!

The past two weeks have flown by and I am in the throes of my first day with the two boys BY MYSELF. I was despairing a little bit yesterday evening as I was about to drop my Mum back at the airport after she came to stay for a few days (Oliver was holding onto her leg whining and Zachy was screaming the place down while we were trying to throw dinner together in five minutes...) but other than that teeny tiny episode the boys have been good to me and let me in gently. At the moment they are both napping at the same time, everyone is fed, watered, we have read books, played with cars, watched some Elmo, I am showered and dressed and we have been for a walk and to Tescos. Fab!

In Zachy Baby news, he contines to sleep pretty well (I rarely get less than 8 hours sleep at night?! WOW) and Oliver is showing more interest in him... he likes to give his head a pat but it's starting to get a bit hard... will carry on watching that one! The biggest thing to happen to Zach this week was our trip back to hospital to have his tongue-tie sorted out. (The bit of membrane at the bottom of his tongue was attached very near the front of his mouth, so he couldn't stick his tongue out and was a bit rubbishy at latching on when feeding) I was there when he was dosed up on sugar (?!) and then the surgeon just snipped it in his office. There was no blood to speak of and he cried when he was being held down- not when the scissors came out- but I was still squirming...! Glad it's all over and it won't affect his speech or anything in later life. He is wiggling his tongue around all the time now.

It was really lovely to have Mum here. She was helpful and an extra pair of hands to handle the boys but even more, just super company :)

Here are some recent photos-

Poor boy- he got sunburnt in his buggy last week!! We felt terrible :(

Haha, looking angelic in his bath!

Baths can be tiring!

Brothers- the friendly looking pat is turning into a bit of a wallop...

Zach and Nanna