Aaron's Blog

Well, Aaron is growing away now! He is constantly hungry and always eating, probably because he never stops! From the minute he gets up in the morning till the second he drops off to sleep, he is on the go (much the same as Ben really).  His speech is coming on really well, and some of the things he comes out with make myself and Kelly giggle and wonder where he has got that from!  At the moment he has a tendency to say ‘What?’ to everything even though he knows he should say ‘pardon’! Now he has started pre-school for 2 hours a week on a Tuesday morning, his speech will probably come on even more.

He is loving going to pre-school and Kelly has said he looks really cute when she has seen him out playing with the other children.  He has had no accidents (toilet wise) and this week he apparently went to the toilet for a wee all on his own! Clever boy!  I think he has made some new friends there, apart from Lucia that he knew already, so he is enjoying it loads. He also likes going to playgroup on a Wednesday with Mummy as they also usually go with Jade and Kian next door, and Emma and Grace down the road.

As mentioned above, Aaron can now take himself to the toilet on his own (apart from wiping his bum!). He has only recently learnt how to balance when sitting on the toilet but he is fine now. He does still need a step to get up on to it though!

He can count to 10 now as well, which is amazing really! We think he has learnt this by listening to Ben and watching the children’s shows on TV. He loves to watch Peppa Pig still (his favourite) but he also really likes Paw Patrol and Bubble Guppies.  He is a big superhero fan as well and had a Superman costume which he wears (will post a picture of him on another post!). He looks great in at and exactly like a little Superhero! 😉

Saying all this, he has been naughty recently! He has started to not listen and do as he is told, then he gets in a strop and throws himself to the floor crying!  Very dramatic indeed! Within minutes though, he is fine again, until the next strop! He is getting a little better going to bed now. He used to be naughty and start singing and talking for ages, but the time doing this is reducing now and he is going off to sleep quicker. Probably worn out a little more due to preschool and playgroup.

He is still very cute though! When he smiles and laughs he is soooo cute! It is a shame he has to grow up. He is a lump now mind! You certainly feel it when you try and carry him very far!

He is also still very into his trains and little cars and gets very mad with Ben if he tries to play with one of them, to the point where he will start shouting at him and pushing him away! Very protective indeed!  He tends to always line his cars and trains up along a wall or a straight line, as if parking them up. He must do this nearly every single day! It is good fun watching him play with them as he does some role-play with it and talks as if he is the car or controlling it. Is very good for his age and I think shows that he is going to be a very clever lad. I have filmed him playing so will add it as a post some point soon.

Tidying up is an issue at the moment, as he makes such a mess tipping everything out (mainly his cars) and then won’t pick them up!  He tends to start playing with them again until we have to tell him off, and then mostly tidy up ourselves! So he has been on the naughty step a few times for this. He had better start learning to tidy up a bit more in the future else there will be trouble! 😉

So that is the latest update about Aaron, so come back soon for some more photos and other updates!

Aaron had been very excited about Christmas from the moment we put the Christmas Tree up, but unfortunately on Christmas Eve, he got ill with croup again.  We had just gone to bed when we started to hear Aaron coughing badly and then crying and wheezing. So we got him out of his bed and brought him in to us and the poor boy started to get get flustered with not being able to breath properly.  It was getting so bad that we almost took him to casualty which would have been an absolute nightmare on Christmas Eve.  Luckily, Kelly managed to calm him down and he came into bed with us for a little while and nodded off until he was calm enough to go back into his bed. Suffice to say, we didn’t sleep much after that as  we were both keeping an ear out to hear him breathing, but he was fine for the rest of the night and slept right through.

On Christmas morning, Ben was the first to get up, with Aaron not far behind but he didn’t look and sound very well. His little voice was all croaky and he looked quite pale. He was excited though when he saw that his stocking was brimming over with presents from Father Christmas! It didn’t take him long to start digging in and opening presents, and even started munching on chocolate that was in his stocking! Thank goodness he was enjoying himself still even after the awful night he had had!

Once the stocking presents had all been opened (and some fully eaten!), we went downstairs and Aaron went a little mad when he saw the huge amount of presents under the tree! He was saying ‘Wow…wee’ quite a lot! I had to stop him from diving straight in and unwrapping the first presents he came to! It took most of the morning to finish opening the presents, and by this time, Aaron was so excited he was being a little naughty! Some of the presents he had included a new Spider-Man ride on bike, Rex from Toy Story, a Spider-Man figure, clothes, chocolate, some nice new books, a new toy bus, Penguin Race game, Robo Fish, lots of little toy cars, Mario Kart Scalextric (joint present from Father Christmas with Ben) and many other items which he loved!   He was so interested in playing with his new toys that he didn’t eat loads for Christmas Dinner, though I guess he wasn’t feeling up to it much due to his croaky croup, although he was fine with chocolate! He spent the rest of they day playing, apart from a few cuddles as he was tired, and showed Nan Nan and Pops and Grandma and Grandpa Tony some of his presents on the web cam before tea time.

In the end, Aaron had a lovely Christmas day and seemed to be much better by bed time. There were no croup attacks that night, thank goodness, and he had a decent sleep which helped a lot!

Here are some photographs of Aaron on Christmas Day.

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Aaron had his first day at pre-school today. Kelly and I decided to pay for him to start early as due to his birthday being in May, he would normally have had 2 terms less than Ben.  So we put him in for an hour this morning at 9am and Kelly rang before 10am to see how he was getting on.  The staff said he had settled in very well and was playing so we left him there until 11am instead. He seemed to enjoy it a lot there, which is a relief!

When we first dropped him off, he was a little clingy (holding on to my hand as we walked in the door), but after he had taken his coat and backpack off, a staff member said he could go in and off he went!  He didn’t even say ‘goodbye’ to us at first, he just toddled on in and sat on a chair next to Charlie (a little boy he knows). We waited at the door for a few minutes at first, to keep an eye on him and make sure he was OK, but he didn’t even really acknowledge us! He did look a little worried though and was fiddling with his fingers, but he also seemed to be taking everything in.  Just before we left, we did go over to him and say ‘goodbye’ at which point he waved at us and carried on concentrating on what was going on!

Whilst he was attending pre-school, I had to go back to work, but by the time Kelly went up to get him at 11am, he was outside playing. He did have to have a complete change of clothes though, as he got wet playing with the water table! Luckily he had some spares in his back pack to change into! He also had a snack there of milk and some apple, which he ate and drank,  as he came out with milk around his mouth! lol

Next week we will put him in for 3 hours and see how he goes, though I am sure he will be fine now. Both Kelly and I are very proud of him!

Here are some photographs of Aaron on his first day at pre-school.

1st Day At Pre-School

1st Day At Preschool

1st Day At Preschool

A couple of weekends before Christmas, Kelly and I booked up a surprise weekend for the boys at Butlins for their Winter/Christmas spectacular. We managed to get a really good deal for the 3 nights so we couldn’t turn it down really! We didn’t say anything to the boys until just before we left on the Friday, so when we told them, they were ecstatic! Ben was jumping around and hugging us and Aaron was following suit, probably because he was too young to understand fully what was happening! 😉

So we got up there on the Friday late afternoon and went to our apartment (no free upgrade this time!) and unloaded our gear. Kelly had made pasties for us so we had those quickly for tea before going over to the Skyline to view the evening shows. We saw a show called ‘Winter Wonderland’ which was basically a Christmas musical, which was great. The boys loved it, as well as the lightsaber toys we got them as all the other kids had something similar from the shop! We then went in the arcade and saw a couple of other shows in the main pavilion. The boys had a great first evening and didn’t go to bed until quite late!

On the Saturday, we got up a decent time and went swimming. We had a good hour or so in there and the boys enjoyed going around the ‘river’ section where the current pulls you along. Was freezing when we got out though!! We then nipped home for showers and then went to the pub for lunch. It was very good this time and pretty quick, which was a relief as the pub was pants when we last visited Butlins in July. We then spent the afternoon in and out of shows (inc Superslam Wrestling where Ben and I got some autographs and Ben hi-fived a wrestler!), and also stopped in the arcade occasionally. All the shows we saw were great and good fun to watch. The highlight of the day was the ‘Skyline Snowstorm’ which started off with a few songs from the Skyline Gang, and then a countdown until the snow commenced.  It wasn’t actual snow mind, but small bits of silver glittering paper fired into the air via some very strong fan units. The effect was great though and was just like a snowstorm. The boys loved it and were ages playing with the glittering paper by picking handfuls up and throwing over myself and Kelly. Very good fun! We then had to go off to see Father Christmas at 18:45 as this was the timeslot we had been given. We first had to walk through the pouring rain to the front of the building and to the entrance of the winter wonderland, and then through a very well done walk that included Christmas ornaments and settings, until we got to an Elf who let us in to the queue to see Father Christmas.  There was a bit of a wait which included meeting the Gingerbread Man (and a photo) and counting how many present images were hidden around the area.  When the boys met Father Christmas, he was asking them questions and Ben was answering nicely and then they posed for photographs by myself and a redcoat guy, and then they each got a box of chocolates. We then made our way out through the rest of the Wonderland and back outside. It was very good and very well put together!  The evening actually got even better when, later on, I won a large Minion soft toy on my first go on the grabber machine in the arcade! I was so excited I was shaking as I hadn’t won anything on those machines all year! 😉 Ben then went and claimed it though! Cheek!

On the Sunday, we went to Bob The Builders Yard where we spent hours last time as the boys went around all of the children’s rides. For some reason this time, Aaron didn’t like half the rides which was a shame! He started crying on several of them so we had to have them stopped to take him off! We saw several more shows during the day, with the best one being the Pantomime ‘Beauty and the Beast’ which a lot of the entertainers from the other shows acted in (inc Skyline Gang members). The Pantomime was great and very funny! Aaron slept nearly all the way through it, but we enjoyed it very much even though we weren’t in the most ideal of places! We also went to a craft workshop afterwards where the boys made a cracker each. Ben got in a mood in this as he didn’t want Kelly to help! So she had to ask for a new one to start again and then let Ben do it all on his own! Tut! Aaron also had to dash to the toilet there as well which was typical, but luckily there was a little toilet in the craft area! We saw other shows, including the Snowstorm again, which were all very enjoyable and had some more time in the arcade and Ben went in the soft play area next to the arcade. We won several little toys on the 2p machines (we were addicted!) and had great fun, although by this point, we were quite tired and couldn’t quite believe it was Sunday evening already! The boys also got a large Christmas balloon each during the afternoon – Father Christmas for Ben and a Snowman for Aaron.

Sunday night was a bit of a nightmare as Ben woke up crying lots and wouldn’t go to sleep as he said he had earache and his cough started up badly again. Kelly ended up having to sit up with him for half the night, which was not good seeing as we had to pack our things and drive home on Monday. I was a little worried about the lack of sleep and having to drive for a couple of hours, but we managed it OK. We quickly went back to Bob The Builders Yard during the morning and had a last wonder around again (and packed the car in the rain!), before leaving Butlins and parking in the car park at the sea front (across the road) to have a bite to eat before setting off home.

We had had another great time at Butlins and enjoyed every minute of it (apart from losing Aaron for 5 minutes on the Sunday night!) and would love to go back again sometime soon.

Here are some photographs of the holiday. 😉

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The Saturday before Halloween, we all went to the local Halloween Party at the Woolwell Centre for the second year running. It was good fun again and the boys (and Mummy) both dressed up although Aaron did his best not to dress up! We met a couple of Kelly’s friends up there who have children that the boys know so they all played together in the room with the bouncy castle and colouring books, etc. They had a great time and Ben, like last year, was sweating buckets each time he came back to the table for a drink! Here are some pictures of the party.

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The following Thursday (on Halloween), we held a little tea party for Ben’s friend (and family) from when he was at pre-school (and who just live down the road), so they came over and had a play and some party food. Kelly had made some Halloween buns as well which were great, and we put a few decorations up for the occasion. We then all went out trick or treating and the boys dressed up in their costumes and got loads and loads of sweets! I can’t tell you how many sweets they had, but their buckets were brimming over with them! The boys had great fun and had to dive into their sweets as soon as we got home! Lucky the weather was dry this year for when we were out and about.