Ahhhh Christmas

Linus rarely lets us take nice pictures any more - mind you I can't really complain, I think I've been like that since his age and still am. With this in mind, here are the 'highlights' of Christmas 2008.

With a nice gentle start to the day at eight-ish Linus discovered that his once-empty stocking on his bed was now stuffed full of lovely things. This included Chocolate:

Click to enlarge.

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Hallowe'en

Today Linus's nursery was very hallowe'eny. The children were invited to come in fancy dress, as mentioned before. I had been working hard all week on Linus's blue dinosaur outfit and it turned out really rather well for a first attempt, and considering I sewed it all by hand!

I was a bit scared that he would refuse to wear it when it came to it, as he had been quite reluctant to try it on for fittings. But no, he couldn't wait. He went into his nursery hallowe'en dungeon with a big RAAAAHHHH at everyone. There were 5 witches, 4 skeletons and 1 dracula when we got there, and only 1 blue dinosaur! so we definitely get points for creativity and originality I think. I am assured that no other children were eaten/maimed whilst playing with the dinosaur.

When I picked him up after lunch he was still wearing the outfit, much to my surprise. One of the staff asked me if I had made his costume as he had been telling everyone who would listen that I had :) Good Boy! His tail was a bit bedraggled from dragging on the floor in the playground, but rather than take it off he had just played whilst holding onto the tail to stop it getting any wetter/dirtier, bless him.

Anyway, here he is in all his blue dinosaury glory:

October update

In the past weeks and months Linus has been going to Nursery three mornings a week. He seems to quite like it. He is rather excited about his nursery being turned into a dungeon for Halloween. He is planning on going as a blue dinosaur. Claire has yet to make it.

At nursery Linus has to find his name badge when he arrives, to place on his coat and bag hook for the day. It seems that he has been recognising the stickers on it (two penguin stickers) rather than his name as he selected the badge belonging to 'Grace' rather than his own. He now looks for penguins and an 'L'.

Concentrating

We took this picture a couple of weeks ago, just catching Linus while he wasn't whinging (which after a trip around the supermarket, you really couldn't blame him).

He is giving careful attention to something he is about to eat.

Goodnight Linus

Linus has always liked to take something to bed with him. When he was little it was just Rabbit and Ninger, as he grew he would take the odd car perhaps, or a train.

Lately though, this habit has become a bit extreme. No longer happy with a book to look at, a soft toy to keep him company or a new train that he just can't bear to be parted with- we now have a bed FULL of things to do and play with.

Trains that get taken to bed need to also have a crane and some track on which to sleep (for sleep read: play with). It has now reached astronomical proportions and we have had to ban various toys, and place limits on the number of items to be allowed in bed at any one time!!!!

So, to honour the end of the "bed full of junk" phase I present to you:

Sleeping Linus and his bed of junk

First day

Today is Linus's first day at school (well, nursery). He had a couple of shorter sessions last week, but for a few days every week he has some full morning sessions.

Today he took is rabbit with him (the only picture I could find of rabbit has him (rabbit) squashed a bit under a present from Christmas 2006 /uploads/linus-2006-christmas-2.jpg (in which he looks soooo little.

Rabbit is in his bag, just to make sure Linus is okay. Apparently rabbit is feeling a little bit funny in his tummy. But he will be okay.

Thomas

Last week we went to Drusillas Park for the day with Aunty Melly. Above is the main reason we went, a lovely ride on Thomas himself! He even pulls Annie and Clarabel (we sat in Annie) and we chuffered around and saw lots of animals, plus Cranky the Crane, James, Bulgy and Diesel.

We had a really great day and Linus shocked us all by going in the paddling pool there as well. The last time we went to a public paddling pool he refused point blank to go anywhere near the water, but this time he was straight in and swimming around. In fact, it was over an hour later when we finally managed to drag him out, with the promise of another ride on Thomas.

Other things we did at Drusillas included:

• milking a pretend cow
• going through the meerkat tunnel
• dying of bat stink in the bat section
• trying to get an egg out of a vending machine by the chickens
• seeing penguins, otters, capybaras and lots of monkeys
• eating ice cream

Holiday

A few weeks ago we all went on holiday to Cornwall where we stayed in a yurt and generally messed-around.

Most of the pictures and yurt related stuff is here: Cornwall Yurt Holiday, although there may be other little bits here.

Sorry

This is a post about where Bob used to live in Littleham which is also near Landcross.

Sorry. This isn't meant to make much sense.

Carry on.

Photography

For some time now Linus has been slightly obsessed with using people's mobiles to take pictures with. Mostly Aunty Melly's. Mostly because she is the only one who lets him.

Anyway, it turns out he can actually take very good pictures, so today he was trusted with my lovely phone and came up with the following

This is Linus's puppy, I can't remember his name

A little yellow socket on the front of our television

The air pump on his garage

Snow

Today was very snowy - I know that this picture doesn't really do the snow justice, but it was really very snow.

Other Crawley snow pictures here.

We made two snowmen today, one little one in our front garden, and another big one in the park (that some bad people knocked-over). They were good. Linus also made a snow-puppy (which sounds like it should mean something else) to go with his smaller snow man.

Linus has been:

• making shadows with his hands using a torch at night in his bedroom (actually he's been doing this for a little while, but I thought that it worth a mention)
• throwing snowballs (not very far)
• sticking boxes and stuff together to make other things.
• sticking stuff to paper.... like pasta, lentils... stuff
• just about remembering how to find the letters for his name on the keyboard

That is all.

Chocolate Egg

Here is Linus tucking into one of his Easter eggs. I was very excited this year as I had planned a proper Easter egg hunt for him seeing as he is now a big number 3 boy. I made a sort of Easter egg treasure hunt, assisted by some yummy chocolate rabbits to accompany each clue. Luckily Linus made a little basket at nursery on the Thursday before Easter, which came in handy for collecting bunnies in. Bob was not in on the clues and so helped Linus with the search.

Unfortunately I slightly over-estimated Linus's ability to solve clues. One of them read "it's where you watch tv, it's soft and blue". We have a big, blue sofa where Linus watches tv.

No Linus, it isn't that blue rattle. Nope, not that blue ball. Nope, it isn't in the tv itself. How about this blue sofa Linus? He takes one look "no, it isn't there" <sigh> the boy definitely takes after his father.

Anyway, he eventually made his way up to his bedroom and discovered some eggs and a clue to the rest of the stash, including gifts people had sent for Gabriel. For the next part he had to follow the coloured arrows back downstairs to the sofa (again). He was very good at this, and most excited that there was an arrow actually ON THE SOFA MUMMY!!!!

I tell him, in my un-religious way that Easter is when Jesus said that we should eat chocolate. "No Mummy!" he replies, "Easter means you have arrows on your stairs". Well, ok then

Here he is enjoying his small milk chocolate splat egg from The Chocolate Alchemist shop in Guildford (www.thechocolatealchemist.co.uk). The bunnies were also from here.

Click to enlarge.

Talking to Nan

When he isn't busy having pretend conversations on his "mobile" Linus rather enjoys being allowed to chat with his Nanpops on the real telephone. I suspect he enjoys these chats a bit more than his Nan who is subjected to half an hour of Linus picking up random objects in his room and singing songs about them that seem to be mostly made up words with things like "monkey" or "Cranky the Crane" interspersed. We sometimes overhear him telling Nan that "no, can't calk a daddy yet". Oh how we laugh. It is possible that we enjoy these phonecalls even more than Linus, or in fact his lovely (and very patient!) Nan.

Yesterday, in a sleep deprived haze, we walked down to the Post Office to send a parcel. Unfortunately our journey was fraught with hazards. Firstly the pile of dog poo someone (somedog?) has kindly left just outside our garden. We managed to sidestep this, which is lucky because our dog-poo-off-shoes-cleaner (Grandma) is out of action right now. We then met with a nasty step that threw Linus off of it and onto the pavement. He was holding a letter which meant that he saved himself on his knuckles which came up covered in bits of gravel. It turned out that he had also "ouched" his knee, and needed to go to "hofftital" which was a bit annoying really seeing as we hadn't even managed to get 2 minutes down the road at that point. I decided to take a stand and fix the knee myself with the promise of a Kinder Egg. This thankfully worked and we got to the Post Office in record time, despite someone shouting "OUCH" with ever step he took (clue: it wasn't me or Gabriel). It was here that I discovered that we had in fact forgotten to bring the parcel to post. And oddly our Post Office has no post box for Linus to put his letter in either. We could of course have handed it over to the post office lady, but I sensed an impending tantrum had the letter not been placed in a red post box by Linus himself. So, we set off again to find a post box. Unfortunately on the way the "ouched" knee got worse and worse, despite the chocolate and a toy treatment. We managed to make it home all in one piece, avoiding being eaten by a scary looking dog and remembering not to walk in the dog poo again. You'll be glad to know that there was no lasting damage to the knee, it recovered well with playing and watching CBeebies.

Other things Linus has done this week:

• Looked after Grandma, who has a new knee.
• Drawn his first ever picture of a person (Aunty Melly. Awwwww!)
• Made me a Mothers' Day present at nursery which I don't know about yet.
• Been shopping with Daddy this morning "for no reason"!
• Been tricked into eating a bowl of soup by our clever use of reverse psychology

At the park

This afternoon we had a scoot (on our Christmas scooter) to the park.

Today, Linus has been :

• pinching
• shouting
• headbutting
• banging

Despite all the above, it's been a nice day.

Click to enlarge.

(monster resolution original to appease Nan-n-Pops)

Linus is Three

Linus,

Today wasn't your birthday. You may have had cake, a party, all your presents and cards, but actually your birthday is tomorrow.

For various logistical reasons your party was today. And you can't have a party without cake and, possibly some presents.

I am going to be away tomorrow - and won't be back until Friday, so rather than attempting to make you wait for presents until later we have let you open then tonight - right before bed. In hindsight that seems rather cruel, but you were very tired and it seems to be okay.

Spiky Hair

Thankfully I have decided to include this picture as a little thumbnail that you can then click on and enlarge. Otherwise this would have TAKEN OVER YOUR SCREEN WITH ALL THE LINUS-IN-THE-BATH LOVELINESS.

Click to enlarge.

Recently, Linus has been :

• Starting nursury / pre-school. Which he rather likes.
• Eating yoghurt without making too much mess.
• Making-up (stupid) games (including "being a Pez(TM) dispenser")
• Still sleeping naked!
• Playing his game (Cosmic Family) on the Wii and being quite very good at it.
• Being mostly very good at taking himself off for a wee / poo and only occasionally forgetting.

That is all.

New site

This is Linus's new website. I have been fighting with the ISP that was hosting it, as well as hosting part of my site for MONTHS (since October last year) to fix some things, and finally, after many, many calls and paying some form of ransom I have moved it to somewhere that I can better control. For more on this rant please see uklinux sucks http://www.bob-o-rama.com/uklinux-sucks .

You will notice that the design/theme isn't quite there yet, but I think the stars are quite nice, so they'll probably stay.

Right now there is no message board, or way for people to post feedback/comments. This is partially due to the fact that the one on the old site was getting spammed to bits - which isn't too hard to solve in itself, but I'd rather like to do something properly, so you may have to wait a little while.

There have been some negative comments (grandma!) regarding the 'high-def' width of Gabriel's site - I have used the same width here, as the pictures do look lovely at the bigger size - but I will see if I can create some way to make it fit smaller screens when necessary.

Meantime, I need to post all of the old content (by hand) from the old site.

Today Linus has mostly been eating dumplings.