eighteen months

A couple of weeks ago,  the littlest love of my life turned 18 months old. I look at him and I can't believe that he is the tiny baby I held in my arms yesterday. Or, clearly not yesterday but seriously, I know it's been said time and time again but where does the time go? And why can't I pause it?!

I feel like I don't talk about Levi enough on here, so if you don't know him, let me fill you in on a few things!

My boy loved to cuddle. As long as he has his muslin and his dummy, he is all yours! He will lay his head on your shoulder and it is just the most amazing feeling.

He has a temper. If he doesn't get his own way, you know about it. He likes to scream and headbutt the floor so he pretty much always has a bruise on his head :(.

He is a charmer. He says hi to everyone and will wave to them. He just loves people and loves it even more when he can see how well they respond to him.

He has a love / hate relationship with Caleb. They are brothers, so they fight over toys, etc. and he gets pushed around a lot, being the little brother. However, he will also randomly go up to Caleb and give him cuddles and kisses.

He is the instigator. Do not even think about being the one to offer the cuddle or the hand to hold. He likes things to be on his terms and if you are going to get a cuddle from him, then he has to want to give it to you.

He loves music, singing and dancing. We always listen to music in the car and he sings along to the songs. He only has to hear music before he is dancing away!

He knows he is cute and I think that already he tries to use it to his advantage. I'm hoping that he grows out of that! Not the cuteness, but playing on it.

Levi is a Daddy's boy. If Seth is there, I do not even get a look in. He will choose Seth, all the way.

He gives my Mum more cuddles than he gives to anyone else. Just like Caleb, he absolutely adores his Grandma and isn't afraid to show it.

He likes to make people laugh. He knows when he does funny things and he will keep doing it to get the laughs.

He blesses the food. He folds his arms, mumbles something and then says amen. It is adorable!

There are so many more things about him which are adorable, loveable, infuriating, exhausting and so, so cute but I thought I would save you from a 10,000 word essay on it. Let's just say that I am pretty much in love with him and I am so glad that this little man is a part of our little tribe.

He has finished!

Last week, Caleb finished preschool! It is such a weird feeling, I can't believe how quickly the year has gone by!

I remember taking him to preschool on the first day. Although he looked a bit nervous as he waited to go in, he was actually so excited about it all and was really looking forward to it. He would always come home talking about his little friends there, in particular the girls?! I don't know what to make of that, the little ladies man, ha ha! He settled so quickly while for the first couple of weeks, quite a lot of the other children cried when they were dropped off for preschool. I can remember the staff telling me that although he is fine going in at the moment, he may regress as a lot of them do once they realise that they will be there for a few hours. I think I can count on one hand the amount of times that Caleb had cried going into preschool. In fact, I know that there has only been three times!

He loved preparing for his Christmas preschool play. He knew all of the words and actions to all of the songs and he sang them all the time at home from December through to March :). He was the cutest little innkeeper I ever did see!

He has enjoyed being there so much and since September, I think he has developed and progressed so much. He has always been pretty confident talking to adults but he was never quite so confident around people his own age. Since being at preschool he has got so much more confident with other children to the point of sometimes being pretty boisterous and I have to tell him to reign it in! He will now readily chat with any children that he meets. He always sings songs that he has learnt at preschool and often likes to play "preschools" at home. He gets pretty annoyed with Levi when he won't sit still for the register :). Bless him!

I honestly can't praise the staff from the preschool enough. They have been so good with Caleb and have helped him to develop so much. Needless to say, Levi's name is already on the list to go there when he turns 3, even though it's not the closest one to our house and we have to drive there.

Almost every morning since he started preschool, he would run to the window so that he could wave to me and blow me kisses. It was the cutest thing, especially as Levi would then wave and blow kisses back to Caleb. I'm not going to lie, I may have teared up a little as we did this ritual for the last time....

When Caleb starts school in September, he isn't going to know any of the children in his class. I knew this would be the case as the preschool isn't in the catchment area for the school. Whilst this would possibly cause a lot of parents some concern and angst, I am feeling completely fine about it and that's because I know he will be fine. He is so happy and ready to go to school that even though I am in denial about my baby growing up, I know that he will be absolutely fine.

Who wants to be a fireman?

A few weeks ago, our local fire station was hosting an Open Day where you could go and have a look around the station. We always drive past it on the way to Caleb's preschool and he has pointed it out every.single.morning on the journey. He also says each time, "that's where Peter works!" as our friend is a fireman. Caleb thinks it's really cool that he actually knows someone who is a fireman!

We went along to the Open Day and that place was packed. There were families everywhere, which was lovely to see. Caleb was so excited to be there, he is all boy in that he loves buses, trains, fire engines, etc. so this was like a dream come true for him. He got to climb onto an old school fire engine and ring the bell.

We waited in line for a long time for him to get to use the fire hose and he was so excited about it, he was literally bouncing up and down! His face when it was his turn was a picture, he was in his element! Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of it because I was too busy filming it.

He also got to sit inside a fire engine and pretend to drive it. I'm glad that he actually did it as we have seen fire engines in town a few times and when he has stopped to have a look, the firemen have always asked him if he had wanted to sit inside but he was a bit too freaked out about it so it's nice that he did it.

Caleb dressed up like a fireman too, he thought he was pretty cool and let's be honest, does he not look adorable?!

Levi was actually there too, in case you were wondering! It was so busy there that we kept him in his pram for most of the time but we did let him out for a little while when it started to calm down a bit, plus he got to walk back to the car holding Daddy's hand so the boy was in his element, little Daddy's boy that he is!

We were only there for an hour or so but it was definitely worth going there, especially as it was something that Caleb enjoyed so much and it was so lovely to see him so excited by it all! He left there saying that he wanted to be a fireman when he grows up so who knows?!

No, it isn't just like riding a bike!

And what, do you ask, isn't just like riding a bike? Riding a bike. You do forget how to do it. Or at least I seemed to have done! I haven't ridden a bike in 22 years and I didn't think it would be that hard to do again, so when Seth had the day off and suggested that we hire bikes and ride through the forest I thought, why not?!

To be honest, I've completely made it sound like I hated it but it was so much fun! We went to a place called Bedgebury Pinetum about half an hour away from us where you can hire the bikes and cycle on various different trails through the forest. The orignal plan was that I would have Levi in a buggy behind me and Seth would have Caleb on a tug bike behind him. Caleb was a bit too small for the tug bike though so both the boys went in the buggy which was attached to Seth's bike. The boys looked so cute together in the buggy although neither of them were too convinced, ha!

Once we were all sorted, off we went! I nearly died when I nearly fell off the bike about 5 times within the space of 5 minutes! Seriously, how hard can it be to ride a bike?! Surely anyone could do it?! I was blaming my rubbish biking ability on the fact that the day before, I had started a new workout - the Kayla Itsines BBG for anyone who had heard of it, and I had done the leg workout. I could not walk afterwards! Well, I could but my leg kept doing weird things every time I tried to take a step. My thighs were killing somewhat, but it was so much fun cycling along and trying to keep up with Seth who, despite the buggy, managed to get quite some speed up, especially going down hill! Uphills were quite fun...... yeah, I got off the bike and walked up a couple of the steeper ones, I'm not gonna lie! 

The boys weren't loving life that much, bless them! Levi was crying for most of the time and Caleb was trying to sing to him to get him to stop crying. I think towards the end of it, they started to enjoy it a little more...?! 

I think Caleb will enjoy it more when he is a bit taller and can have the tug bike. I would definitely go again though, it was so much fun to have that day with the boys doing something a bit different!

Liverpool fun

Hello? Is anyone there? Anyone still reading my blog? It has been a couple of months since I last blogged. Things have been happening but I just haven't been blogging about it, which is shocking, I know, as I am sure that you are all waiting with bated breath (I still don't really know what that actually means....) to know what has been going on in my life. So I am going to backpedal a couple of months and start from there, just because I hate doing things out of order.

At the beginning of April (see? I told you I was going back a bit!), the boys and I had a mini break in Liverpool to visit Laura. She got the train down to us just so that she could keep us company on the drive up, how good is she?! On that almost five hour trip it was actually a huge help! I also thought she might need to do some of the driving because the night before, I knocked a can of carpet cleaner from a high up shelf onto my foot and did this:

Pretty ugly, right?! (By the way, it was April, still enclosed shoes weather, hence the unpainted toenails, don't judge!) I thought that I might have broken it but alas, it was fine, I was just in a fair bit of pain! I managed to do all of the driving, so that was good!

Caleb and Levi loved being in Laura's apartment! It is so spacious, Caleb was just crawling around from room to room non-stop for about an hour when we arrived and Caleb was obsessed with looking out of the window and watching everything that was happening outside. In the mornings while Levi had his nap, Laura and Caleb played a LOT of snakes and ladders, raced cars and played the guitar together. He loves being with her and playing with her.

Laura had been promising Caleb for ages that when he came to Liverpool, she would buy him an ice cream and he was so excited about it, he kept talking about it. On the day that he had the ice cream, it was SO cold and windy, it was ridiculous, you literally had to lean into the wind to walk. Caleb was scared of the noise of the wind because it was so loud and Laura was carrying him around for most of the time but he still wanted the ice cream! He was so cute, sitting on a bench shivering away and eating it. At one point, it even started to rain but he carried on regardless, ha ha!

We went and visited the Museum of Liverpool, which is exactly what it says it is - a museum all about the history, people, city and culture of Liverpool. It's a great museum and it's so interactive so Caleb was loving it. During our time in Liverpool we also went to the World Museum. Caleb actually loves going to museums so he was more than happy! There was an interactive display all about colour and I'm pretty sure we spent about 2 hours there alone! Levi took his first four steps while we were there as well which was pretty cool and we just about managed to capture it on camera.

Anyone who knows Caleb knows that he is a typical boy and likes all forms of vehicles so he was really excited when we went on the Mersey ferry. I think he liked being on the ferry but didn't like the sound of the engine vibrating and kept saying, "I want to go back to Liverpool!", meaning, Laura's apartment! Levi, on the other hand was crawling around like a mad thing and wanting to explore everywhere on the ferry, ha! We had our hands pretty full!

We had such a lovely time being in Liverpool with Laura and exploring the city. Even being in her apartment was fun. Caleb loved standing on Laura's mat and pretending that he was wakeboarding while she pulled him around the lounge! He also enjoyed pretending to surf while standing on Laura's surfboard shaped bathmat :). The boy is destined for the water, it would seem! It was a great few days.