Life of a yummy baby ... and now there are 2!!!!!

When Lewis first showed me Aberystwyth in the summer, I thought what a wonderful place to live in! It was the place where my husband was born and bred. He grew up in this rustic little coastal town of Mid-Wales where everybody knew everyone, but eventually he left for new pastures. Aberystwyth was the sort of place that was not too touristy but still has a nice sort of buzz. It's a university town with enough shops and pubs. There's the Arts Centre at the top of the campus, often lined up with lots of activities - from theatre to plays, cinema, exhibitions, galleries etc.



Halfway down the campus stands the monumental National Library of Wales with its austere collection of books and manuscripts. In fact Morgan's tad-cu had been a long-serving dedicated member of staff of the library for 37 years and was mainly in charge of the printed books section. Like my own father, it was his first and last job.

As Morgan is becoming more nimble with his motor skills, he has built enough confidence to handle his own fork and spoon independently at every meal. At around this time (of 21 months) he is pretty good at maneuvering his utensils and tools more efficiently. The spoon doesn't quite always go onto his nose most of the time now and the fork is much better at aiming food on his plate. The other thing we haven't got round to do is to let him eat with a pair of chopsticks! Actually we did once when we had guests over .... and all he did was to treat them like a pair of drumsticks - typical boy!

The other fun thing we've tried to speculate was to see if he was more left or right-handed. We were certain that he was definitely more right-handed from the beginning because he seems to reach out for everything with his right hand. Recently we noticed that he has suddenly taking to using his left-hand alot. So we thought ... he might just decide to be left-handed later on, or even ambidexterous! I read that handedness runs in families and since Lewis and I are both right-handed, it seems normal to assume that Morgan would naturally be like us too. But I also know of friends, who are both right-handed, have children born left-handed. Their case being - there are many left-handers in the extended family. So it really is just what's genetically-dominating I suppose. A lot of people in the past tend to 'correct' this handedness due to social pressures to conform and superstition but I suppose it's alot less so these days. My mother was one of them. I was thought to be born more left-handed but she believed that it was more of an inconvenience than anything and made sure I turned out to be right-handed.

Not that I am certain which hand Morgan would give preference to, I wouldn't mind either way. After all in the family, both his aunties are also different - Julie is left-handed and Ann is ambidexterous (i.e has equal facilities of both hands in writing).

For a while, he had been into lining up plastic animals and blocks. This one is of Morgan lining up bottles randomly in our kitchen, while I was trying to make dinner. He probably still hasn't got the concept of counting but will sometimes repeat after you, saying the odd numbers. Colours is another thing. Not that I am expecting him to get the colours right at his age but its funny to know that everything is 'melen' or yellow in Welsh and everything is 蓝色 or blue in Mandarin.

Morgan's latest developments at 21 months:

1. He has a thing for choo-choo trains. Daddy even has to standby a picture of a train at the breakfast table before he could get started on his breakfast. Everything with a train on it drives him wild!

2. His vocabulary has grown tremendously. He calls the baby frog a tadpole or 蝌 蚪 in Mandarin. Honestly I didn't know this one till I went to primary school. Also when we stopped our car outside Ikea today, he shouted 'parcio' ('to park' in Welsh). The funny thing is we don't ever remember saying this but he's obviously heard it from somewhere!

3. He enjoys not just to make mess but clear up as well! One day when he spilt water on the floor, he followed Daddy by wiping it up with a dishcloth, just the way Daddy was doing it!

4. He's starting to explore the boundaries of play. Sometimes a session of what seemed like a fun game of face-pinching and cuddling turned into unnecessary slapping and hitting. We had to stop him and repeat 'no' various times but on few occasions, we had to retaliate just to show him what it feels like to be hit. We rarely do this as we don't want to encourage him in hitting back.

5. He's also contesting his bedtime routine with us. At the moment we have 1 bedtime routine where daddy does the short version and mummy, the long one. It consists of a warm bath, 3 good stories, into sleeping bag and saying goodnight to all his stuffed toys, then lights out. Not a whimper. Max time taken : 10 to 15 mins. With mummy's version it gets stretched for quite a bit ....... bath, 8 to 10 good stories, into sleeping bag and saying goodnight to all his stuffed toys, then lights out - he cries for mummy not to go yet - and mummy feels desperate and would begin to sing along with stuffed toys till he drifts off to sleep, then tip toes out tired and guilty. Max time taken : 45 mins to 1 hour.

I believe everyone who's had children can identify with this. I am just amazed at how soon he is beginning to show all this awareness, assertiveness and control in himself and towards others. He is learning the ways of things around him so quickly that he is already negotiating for his own space and preference. I know I need to work on the bedtime routine and I will keep on at the good routines and habits. In this respect, my hats off to Daddy!

I also found the site PowerToolz quite useful and concise in summing up points to look out for in a child's development at every stage. They are not hard and fast rules but it helps to know what sort of toys and tools could be helpful at each stage of development. I also recommend this UK site called the babycentre which has good content and a pleasing layout for a good read.

One crisp wintery Saturday, we had our usual lazy-day roam around Malvern town. There was a certain calm and quiet about town mainly because it was just after the new year. We didn't feel like doing much that morning; no grocery or errand-running, no planning to buy DIY stuff, no rushing for post-christmas/new year sales, blah blah. It was nice to have a weekend not to think of doing anything at all. We had real coffee at the local tearoom, roamed around the charity and bookshops and had lunch at the local cafeteria called Henry's. It was simple delight.

When we were at one of the bookshops, Morgan immediately found a little cosy corner and spent a long time browsing through the children's section on his own. All the time he was talking to himself and looking at pictures with great wonder, which attracted a few people's attention behind the many rows of bookshelves. At the same time he was maintaining this very quiet atmosphere like somebody who's totally lost in his own thoughts. While we observed him sitting there totally engrossed, we thought - never would he have guessed that his great-grandfather was a headmaster ... whom he might incidentally share his passion for knowledge and books! That's my little man for you -- looking so little yet behaving like a grown-up, or so it seems!

Just in case Morgan's aunty Wency thought that I had forgotten all about her ... here's one to say - we were so delighted to receive our very first Christmas present which arrived through the post early last December. It was nicely packed, totally organic and complete with a hand-tied cinnammon stick which does nicely for keeping Morgan's wardrobe smelling fresh. Sorry we did not manage Christmas greetings soon enough but we had been thinking of you both over Christmas and hope you had a nice time with Aunty May.

(Just a quick note - we got your house-warming present ready to post but it will be abit late arriving because haven't got my act together ... I promise we won't be long now!!!!)

Last year we'd been to the Gower in South Wales for new year and thought we could head up north to the Welsh mountains this time. The original last-minute plan was to take a ferry crossing to Dublin from Holyhead but we changed our course when we realised we haven't got our passports with us. Typical!! So we drove to the village of Betws-y-coed and decided we could go walking on Snowdon the next day weather permitting.

On the way we thought we'd stop at Llangollen to show Morgan a real steam train. The train was named 'minced pies special' which led me to wonder if minced pies were specially delivered on this train over Christmas.














Day 1
We stayed in the Churchhill hotel in the middle of town for the first night. It was a spacious private family suite with 2 separate bedrooms complete with attached shower rooms and all but was quite expensive too, about £75 a night full breakfast provided. As I was worried about leaving Morgan on his own in a strange room, I decided to put him in our room on a mattress next to our bed. That night was a nightmare. He went to bed late after 9pm, wasn't too happy to sleep, and kept waking up intermittently in the night screaming his head off. So I put him in our bed and still ... it wasn't any good because; we didn't get much sleep with him turning and tossing and he wasn't happier with the situation. By the time we all tried to get some sleep it was already 6am in the morning. Oh well!

Day 2
The weather wasn't great - it was misty and quite cold but we were well-equipped. After a big breakfast, we went up to Snowdon to do some serious walking.

About to trek up Snowdon - which is in the background in the clouds.














Stumbling on the hill sideways ... and just checking that we are still uhmm ... on the map I hope?










Going along a precarious stone bridge. I was told some of the stones around here were from pre-historic times which means that no fossil was found on the stones here.










Signs of past civillisation ....



















Our walk ended around 4pm with a sleeping baby on daddy's backpack. We only made it halfway up Snowdon but had to trek down quickly before it got too dark.





On this night we stayed in a youth hostel next to the Swallow Hotel, 4 miles outside Betws-y-coed. We managed to get a 6-bed-sharing accommodation but rented the whole room to ourselves at half the price of what cost us last night. As it was also self-catering, we found ourselves amidst families with children of varying ages which was really nice for Morgan as he was happily mingling with the other children in the common room. The best bit was he had no trouble at all getting into bed that night. He went down in one of the bunker beds that daddy prepared for him, and slept like an angel for the rest of the night. Probably all that fresh air from the walk had properly tired him out!

Day 3 (new year's eve)

Lewis would have liked to carry on trekking around Snowdon 3 times if not for the bad weather, phew! I wouldn't mind a bit of adventure but I would much prefer to drive along to our next adventure. So we headed for an unplanned visit to Uncle Hywel further north towards Conwy. Uncle Hywel is Lewis's mum's cousin and a retired headmaster who lives in a big house overlooking the Conwy Valley. According to his daughters Anna Jane and Mair who were house-sitting at the time, he had gone skiing with his grandchildren in Switzerland but without insurance. I was well impressed by Uncle Hywel's great sense of adventure at 77!











By Conwy Bay and a walk along the castle walls surrounding the pretty town of Conwy....













The front view from the house ... and Morgan at the breakfast table ....











and I was really excited when I spotted some real retro gems including a red chic coffee-grinder and some really cool toy trucks from the 50s.




Those trucks kept Morgan entertained for hours!!!