Book #21 was A Spell of Winter, by Helen Dunmore. Winner of the first Orange Prize, which honours a female author, in 1996. I’ve read a couple of Dunmore’s books, most a couple of years ago when I first moved down here. DH is a big fan and has quite a lot of her back catalogue. Despite this one’s accreditations, it’s not one of my favourites. And it’s not even because of the subject matter (incest). I’ve read V.C. Andrews, I’m not offended or even uncomfortable, necessarily, in reading that sort of thing, if I can understand how it come about. In this case, I really….can’t. Yes, ok, their mother disappeared off to France, their father is placed in a mental asylum and later dies there, and they’re being raised by their grandfather in a huge, draughty old house with mostly the cook and their nanny-servent-type person for company. But I don’t see incest as a natural progression of that. I was actually far more disturbed by the scene in which she goes through with aborting her brothers baby. That, even though it wasn’t written to be in your face revolting descriptive, I still found it uncomfortable to read. Especially when Kate utters the line “oh you’re further along than I suspected” or something to that effect. Anyway after that, the relations between brother and sister stops, the brother and the maid take off for Canada – it’s never quite clear if they’ve taken off together together or just together, they certainly don’t stay together. The First World War breaks out, food is scarce, the men in the village slowly disappear off to war, the brother comes back then goes off to war, doesn’t come back, she goes to France with the older neighbour who was semi-courting her around the time she started sleeping with her brother to meet her mother, the end.

I like Helen Dunmore, I like her writing, but this book was disappointing for me. Maybe it’s just over my head and I missed the true meaning, or the true beauty of this book. Guess it happens to all of us!

2.5/5

Book #20 of the 50 Book Challenge was The Host, by Stephanie Meyer. I’ve read the Twilight series and I liked them even though the massive flaws of poor writing and unhealthy co-dependent relationships should’ve turned me off them. But they do have an addictive quality and I did enjoy most of the series – books 1 and 3 in particular. 2 and 4 were far too “emo” (2) and just….ridiculous (4). I mean….Renesme? Seriously? Anyway, this review is not about them.

The Host is Meyer’s first “Adult” novel and overall, it wasn’t bad. It’s a bit slow, probably took me 150 pages before I really started getting into the storyline. It’s never clear when it’s set, I’m assuming well into the future but I suppose it doesn’t have to be, but Earth has been “invaded” and taken over by these alien beings called Souls who attach themselves to ‘host’ bodies (in this case, humans, but their are many other planets and lifeforms that the Souls have lived on/lived IN mentioned in the book). When a Soul is implanted in a human body, they take over the mind. They acquire all the memories of the human but suppress the actual human….mind? consciousness? into nothingness. Some humans have the ability to ‘stick around’ and the Soul hears them as thoughts in the mind. The main character, who is called the Wanderer due to her having previously lived on 9 planets, is implanted into such a human. The human, Melanie Stryder, is so desperate to return to her lover and brother (both still human, hiding out as rogues from the Souls to avoid being implanted) that she refuses to fade away. She bombards Wanderer with images, memories until Wanderer is as tied to Jared (lover) and Jamie (brother) as Melanie herself is. Wanderer and Melanie make the decision to attempt to find them….and eventually they do. Jared and Jamie are hiding out in caves in the desert with 30+ other humans, including a couple of Melanie’s relatives. The humans are naturally extremely against having Wanderer in their midst and want to kill her straight away, lest she lead others (particularly Seekers) to their compound. But eventually people begin to see that a) Melanie is still inside her head and b) Wanderer is not quite like the other souls. Add in a human who begins to fall for Wanderer and it becomes a love quadrangle.

Overall, it’s a pretty interesting read. I’m not a sci-fi fan at ALL, in fact I really find most things about aliens extremely laughable. But this, probably because it was different from the stereotypical alien type stuff, I found quite an enjoyable story of “Aliens Invade Earth”.  I think it’s better written than the Twilight Series, although you can see some similar threads throughout this book. Love triangles, love quadrangles, dependent relationships, relationships between teenagers and older men. I’m still not sure I’d class it as an Adult novel though. I think it’s definitely going to be more popular with teens and Twilight fans who’ll read it just because it was written by Stephanie Meyer.

Giving it 3/5

I know when reading books, you suspend reality. You suspend plausibility. Especially books of this type. But the author spent pages trying to convince us Sami was really just a dopey unlucky bastard, wrong place, wrong time. No idea about crime, no idea about much really. The fact that he then evades capture after his face is plastered all over London TV and declared a terror suspect, really is a bit too hard for me to get. Especially the crazy hostage siege situation! I would’ve been far more into the book if they’d alluded to the fact that Sami had a few skills, a few little contacts, or really anything that could lead me to believe that he could get out the situation he was in without being either a) captured and taken into custody in about 2 minutes, or b) riddled with bullets as the #1 terror suspect. But nope. And the gratuitious sex scene that takes place after the bombing is just there as if to say – hey. He’s awesome! He got away from the cops when they thought he BLEW UP A TRAIN! Girls dig that! In fact this one digs it so much she’s sneaking him a room in the hotel she works at and climbing right on top of him!

Can only give it a 1/5 because I liked a lot of the supporting characters. They get the 1. It wouldn’t surprise me if this book becomes an action movie one day. Some random unknown English bloke as Sami. Keira Knightly as Kate, the woman attracted to bad boys.

Book 19 was The Other Hand by Chris Cleave. I bought this for DH for Christmas last year because he loved Cleave’s other book, Incendiary.  He’s read it, but didn’t say much about it. I’ve read Incendiary too and thought it was a really excellent idea that disintegrated into randomness near the end of the book. And unfortunately, this one went the same way.

It started off so promisingly. Refugees are a touchy issue. Illegal refugees are an even touchier one. The book begins with a narration by Little Bee, a Nigerian illegal immigrant who came to the UK stowed away on a cargo ship. She has since spent 2yrs in a British detention centre and then one day, is released. But with no papers. She later learns that one of the girls she was released with “did some favours” for one of the officials and he “ticked the right box” next to her name and the names of 3 others, so as it wouldn’t look suspicious. One of those random others, is Little Bee. Little Bee has in her worldly possessions, a drivers license and business card of a UK man she met briefly on a beach in Nigeria several years before. She calls him when she is released, telling him she’s coming to see him.

The narrative is then picked up by the man’s wife. Well, his now widow, Sarah. After the phone call (and we find out much later in the book, some other events) the man hangs himself. Little Bee knocks on their door on the day of his funeral and ends up staying with Sarah. Sarah makes noises about talking to Little Bee’s caseworker and getting her papers but that kinda lasts about 2 minutes before it’s shoved to the backburner. There’s no doubt that Little Bee deserves asylum, what she witnessed is horrific and most likely if she’s ever deported back, she’ll be killed in a matter of days for knowing too much. It’s pretty easy to write off the illegals as bludgers, a drain on the economies of the developed world when they arrive by their boatloads. But you have to wonder how many stories there are around the world like Little Bee’s. It might be fictional for the purposes of this book but you can bet there must be hundreds of thousands of real ones. Something most “Westerners” can’t even imagine.

I loved the book up until now. I thought Little Bee was extremely well written. She was endearing, strong, capable and yet still retained a little bit of that teenage girl. She showed an understanding of what she had to do to fit in, to be British, to try and legally live in the country. I found Sarah not quite as likeable, she’s kind of indescribable. After all, how many people take a machete and cut off a finger to save a person they don’t even know? Because of that I’m no surprised she takes on Little Bee but she sure doesn’t go about it the right way. Add in her lover Lawrence, who works for the Home Office and who wants her to report Little Bee to the police, it’s all bound to go pear shaped.

A thoughtless moment by Sarah ensures that Little Bee is arrested and taken into custody in a scene I did find a bit bewildering. From the way I read it, they had no real reason to question her and it seems a bit heavy handed and the all to brief disappearance of Sarah’s son in an enclosed park is a glaring deus ex machina to bring about Little Bee being taken into police custody. From there it pretty much all goes pear shaped. There’s no talk of how she was released from the detention centre without papers. She obviously didn’t escape, yet no one questions how she got out. She’s deported it seems, within days. And weirdly, Sarah and her son Charlie join her on the flight back to Nigeria. Sarah has found a lot of research in her late husband’s office that she thinks was the beginning of a book on the situation in Nigeria. Bored of editing her women’s magazine, Sarah decides to finish the research and write the book herself.

I won’t mention the ending. But I’ll guarantee you’ll read it 2-3 times, skimming and flipping pages and wondering what the hell you missed. Because surely you missed something and that just isn’t… it.

2.5/5

Although it’s a pretty hefty 500+ pages, it doesn’t really seem like it. The print is small. Anyway, I found myself reading only a few pages of this book per day. I’m not quite sure what it was, but there was something about it that was making me sort of … -blah- to it. It was just not riveting. I did like certain things about it, right from the start. I love the point of view the book is written from. I find it very unique – and I won’t spoil it and say who it is, but I think it was a really fantastic idea. Because it allowed the reader a brief glimpse into so much more (even though the atrocities of WW2 are really just skimmed over) than what is going on with the main character. I liked Liesel, the book theif, and I loved her adopted Papa.

It was probably halfway through the book when I really started to enjoy it. And I read that half yesterday, so once I got rolling with it, I really was into it. I got used to the narration, the little inserts (which I had found distracting previously) and really started to enjoy it.But then…

What I didn’t like (and I ended this book feeling very unsatisfied) is that a catastrophic thing happens to Liesel in the last handful of pages of the book. It’s (probably another, in her short life) life changing, devastating, incredible event and basically the book is kinda like well, this happened, then she went there and then a lot of years later, she died. I was extremely disappointed. I wanted to learn how she dealt with the event. How she grew up. What sort of person she was as an adult. How the people who adopted her shaped and changed her. What her husband was like, her children. Instead I got the last 50+ years of her life wrapped up in about a paragraph. I felt like there was every moment of her life from age 10-13 dealt with in amazing detail and then this terrible, life altering event…and then that’s it. End of story.

It coloured my whole outlook on the book. I feel sort of like I did after finishing Her Fearful Symmetry. Loved the writing. Hated the ending. This was a fascinating story but it just didn’t deal with the aftermath of the terrible event it created. It sucked you in to all these characters and then just left you hanging about what happens afterward. And yes, you know that Liesel survives the war and lives to be a grand old age, but you know nothing of that journey that takes her to Sydney Australia (where she dies), nothing of what makes her that adult. And I’m totally disappointed about that. Maybe I just want to know too much.

2.5/5

Harshly graded… I would’ve given it a 4 up until the end.

After I posted, I read that this book is considered Young Adult/Teen Fiction. I wouldn’t really consider it as such. I think advanced readers in their teens would get through it, but overall, it definitely seems to have the feel of being written for an adult audience. Just my opinion

I was in need of a few new things for winter (which has arrived EARLY where I live, it’s been freezing!) and I also had $150 worth of Target vouchers from my birthday/Flybuys rewards which I’d earmarked for some new underwear. So I thought a day of retail therapy was in order! DH dropped me at the train station and I caught the train as it’s quicker and easier (only takes 10m) and first stopped off at the bank to bank some cheques that my Nan had sent me. I never go to the bank, so they’ve been sitting around in my wallet for about 3 months. So I got that done and then hit Westfields.

I had a bit of a plan. I loathe carrying shopping bags around with me, so firstly, I browsed. I went into every store that took my fancy and perused the racks and mentally stored away items to come back and look at again/try on later. I worked my way around Westfields then went across the road to get a Boost juice and have a bit of a look around there, but I didn’t stay very long. Then I started buying! Target were having a massive sale on underwear, which suited me just fine! The problem was finding things in my size! I’m used to the 10D, or 10DD girls bitching about not being able to find nice bras – usually there’s none at all in that size and if there are any, they’re ugly! I’m a 10B and was surprised at how little was left in that size too! All the pretty ones were 12B’s, C’s, D’s and 14C’s and D’s! Hardly ANY size 10s at all, and if there were, they were kinda blah. But I was persistent! Eventually I accumulated a nice set of 6, most of which were $14-$20, which was good! Well under my voucher amount so I added a few other things, including a really cute little warm onesie in this soft material for Logan. I also had wandered past manchester in my first browsing visit to Target and spotted quilts on sale. We don’t need a new quilt as such – just a new cover – but a couple of the “spare” quilts we have for the kids definitely need to be binned so I thought I’d lay-by us a new one, and cover, and move our old one to the spare pile! So I found a “warmer” quilt (wanted “warm” as DH always bitches that he’s too hot but they had none) and headed over to the covers. There was a really cute one set up on display that I liked so I looked for it but of course they only had King sizes and it was about $170, which didn’t really grab me. I found a similar sort of cover, same colours, just a slightly different pattern, in Queen size and it was about $110 so I thought that’d do and headed off to layby. In the end the quilt itself scanned for half price and the cover scanned at $60. So I got both of them for the $110 I thought that just the cover would cost me! I’d have bought them both outright but I didn’t particularly want to lug them around. So we’ll pick them up next week.

I’d mentally worked out a list of what I aimed to buy clothes wise: new black skinny jeans, a couple of cute winter dresses to wear over tights with boots, a couple of long sleeved plain tops to use as a base layer under the dresses, or under vests or cute cardi’s, and a new pair of boots if I saw anything I liked. At the end of the day I walked out with: 4 long-sleeved tops for the layering, new black skinny jeans, 2 winter dresses, new long leggings to wear under them, 2 sleeveless cardi’s, 2 actual cardi’s, a little lace-backed bolero and a really lovely green and silver scarf. And new boots! Black ankle boots from Dotti. So overall I was pretty happy with myself when I made my way back to the train station.

I caught the 3.33 train back, which was -busy-. I knew that even before I got there, but otherwise, the 100 people on the platform was a pretty good clue. I got a seat but as is my way, in a train with approximately half the people not sitting next to anyone, a guy sat down next to me. I was texting J, as I had been all day and immediately he leans over (really obviously) and starts trying to read my messages! I turn the phone from him slightly (he leans further!) to finish sending the text and then put it back in my bag as I don’t particularly want randoms reading my texts over my shoulder. I look out the window, as he looks like the type who will try and talk to me. Unfortunately, that doesn’t deter him.

“We’ll be in Melb 30mins!” he says happily. “30mins.”

I nod, even though I’m not going to Melb, and look out the window again. I’ll be off this train in 11mins, so I attempt to ignore him, but he’s not really going to let me. He keeps talking to me. Asking me questions about if I live in Melbourne (I say no). He’s Asian, with an accent (relevant only because I have trouble understanding what  he’s asking me). He starts asking me where I live, if I live alone. I flash my rings, hoping he’ll get the point and leave me alone. He asks me if I have children, I tell him a son. He asks if all the bags are for him, I say no, for me. He asks why I need so much stuff? I’m tempted to ask why it’s any of his business what I need but I smile and say it’s for the cold weather coming. He asks if it was hard to find a fiance, I say no. He says these days it’s hard unless you grow up next door to someone and marry them, or meet them in school. I don’t really know what to say to this so I just kinda smile and nod and look at the window again. He keeps talking about how hard it is to find someone to marry and asks if I went to school with my fiance. I say no. He asks if he was my boss and “called me back for special things”. It’s my stop. I get up and he half moves sideways so that I have to climb over him. It’s not easy, and I end up smacking some poor innocent guy in the head with my bags in my haste to get the hell out of there!

I hop off the train and look for Z. As my train pulls in at 3.44, his (the corresponding service, heading back to where I’ve just come from) should be arriving in the next minute or so, but he’s no where to be seen. He’s either down the other end of the platform, or inside out of the cold. Knowing Z and his habit of turning up to our place in a shirt and shorts when it’s 10 degrees (and oddly, tracksuit pants and a jumper in summer), he’s probably inside.  I try to make it across the line before his train comes, but the dinging sound tells me I’ve failed there and I’m caught in between both platforms as his train pulls in.

I’m super happy and what makes me 3 million times more happy is when I spot DH and head over to the car, I open the door and immediately Hunter says “Aaah! Mumma!” and gives me a huge smile. As lovely as it is to have a tiny break from my little man, it’s even lovelier to come home to him! I got lots of cuddles and kisses and pats on my face as if to say “you’ve been gone. i’ve missed you and i’m glad you’re back!” when we got home and it was beautiful.

I might need a day to myself every 6 months or so – just to appreciate what I have all the more.

4/5

She decided to come back for the day, just a visit. She isn’t sure she’s ready to come and stay here the weekend yet which is fine – she doesn’t ever need to come back for the scheduled kids weekend if she doesn’t want to. She can come for day visits, or spend a different night at our house if she wants to come when it’s quieter. We’ve been out to see her several times since she had bub, and taken her out to lunch and this was the first time she’d wanted to come back to ours, which was really really nice! We’ve missed having her around and I’ve missed our little girly chats (bitches!).

Logan is beautiful. A beautiful, beautiful little man. Such big blue eyes (which I’m pretty sure he’s going to keep) and lovely olive skin. The best of his gorgeous mother, it looks like. He’s such a noisy little fella! Forever grunting and snorting and snuffling and waking himself up with these noises! He’s not the best sleeper in the world atm – he wakes the second you put him down in the bassinette or his cradle at home. He likes being cuddled, and will sleep in your arms, but even then he just catnaps! He wakes constantly, shuffling and stretching and grunting and groaning and all of a sudden, you have wide owl-like blue eyes staring at you. And the whole process of getting  him off to sleep begins again! Makes me realise just how much a freak of a baby Hunter was! He slept in 3-4hr shifts every time from about the 2nd or 3rd day home from hospital, day and night. He also did 98% of his sleeping in his bassinette, and then after about 6wks, he had day sleeps in his cot. It makes me very apprehensive for what #2 will be like, because the more I see of other babies, the more I notice that Hunter’s sleeping habits were awesome from the very beginning!

While Rob and Z were betting on Golden Slipper Day, J, Logan and I went into our bedroom to a) try and get Logan to have a bit of a nap! and b) have a good catch up session. We text every day (thank god we both have unlimited texts included in our mobile phone plans because we send each other up to 700 texts a month!) but it’s not the same as actually sitting down in the same room and being able to have a really good chat. It’s been about 5wks since J was last at our house, so we had a little bit to cover!  Logan had a few of his little catnaps in our arms and on our bed and I took a stack of photos of him! I’d been wanting to do a photo shoot with him for ages and today was the first chance I really had to get some pics of him just chilling, laying on our bed and just looking at the world around him.

After about 2hrs we went out into the lounge room and Rob got his turn cuddling and spoiling his grandson. One of J’s friends dropped around to see her – it’s amazing how some of them have made so much effort to see her regularly. Some have dropped off, but the really close friends have been out to see her (1/2hr drive for most of them) multiple times. And these are guys and girls. She’s very lucky to have lots of supportive friends. He stayed until dinner (panchetta and pea risotto, cooked by Rob!). J and I had Logan in shifts over dinner…She held him first while I ate and then when I’d finished I took him so that she could have her dinner. Rob took them home around 8pm, after Logan had a feed. Was the most awesome day having her back, and Logan here as well! Hopefully it’ll be a regular thing.

Today is Easter Sunday and we are off to my mother-in-laws for dinner. The whole extended family is going to be there, so it’s going to be massive, as always! We are taking Hunter, Z and E and J’s mother is driving her, Logan and Rochelle down, as it looks like A is going to be still camping with friends. It’s really good that J, Logan and Rochelle get to go too! Will be taking the camera again.

Some pics from yesterday with Logan:

It was a nice, different way to spend part of a Saturday night. Even though the Swans were playing, I didn’t really have high hopes for them!  And I was right, when we put the tv back on, I got to watch them lose. Although I wasn’t unhappy with how they played! They’re a team rebuilding after losing some key players and playing St Kilda and their protected species Nick Riewoldt is hard! They had some harsh decisions go against them, we were all screaming at the umpires at one stage. And I’m the only one in the house that goes for them!

This beautiful little man is 19 months old TODAY! I cannot believe it! It has gone so fast and soon he will be 2. It’s almost like a lot of his babyhood was a blur, with how fast it’s traveled. I look back sometimes and try to remember what we were doing when he was 2, 4, 6 even 12 months old.

At 19 months, Hunter can:

Say

Mumma, Dadda, Nana, Pa, Jorja, Zuhhh (Zak – he has problems with K sounds and S sounds), Jah (Nickname for DH’s son), Buhhh (Bus – can be anything over the size of a normal car, like a van or 4wd right up to an actual bus, which he can identify when he sees), Truhhh (Truck, as with the bus, can be anything larger than a car, but he reserves his major excitement for the big tankers and B-doubles), Lana, Narnar (banana – what he eats for lunch each day), Bott-Bott (bottle – can be the actual bottle, the milk in the container, the microwave beeping or all of the above), Hey-lo (hello), B’bye, Ta (Thank you, which he says whenever you give him anything, or whenever he gives you anything and repetitively until he’s holding the actual thing you’re giving him), Love, Ball, Door, Nooooo, Moon, Puppah (puppies, referring to our 2 greyhounds usually, but often the greyhounds on tv, or any random dog he sees), Bubba, Bath.

Do

Throw a ball, understand simple instructions like “go and get your ball” or “shut the door for mum/dad”, brush his own teeth, climb up onto the coffee table, climb up onto the dining chairs and then onto the table from that (not a fan of this particular skill!), unlock the keypad on both DH’s Nokia and my iPhone (not loving this one either!), play independently for periods with his toys, watch and follow a children’s show on Nick Jr, give kisses, give cuddles, take an object to someone when directed (“ta for mum/dad”), head out to the car when told (“going ta-ta’s”), wave hello/goodbye, blow kisses, attempt to give the thumbs up (looks more like he’s making a gun with his thumb and forefinger), say “two” after anyone says “one”, dance to music no matter what it is.

Eat

3 meals a day, plus snacks and 2 bottles. Brekky is 2 pieces of toast, lunch is usually fruit or yoghurt. He has a bottle at 1pm when he goes for his nap. Throughout the day he might have a small snack or two – sometimes a sugarfree lolly or a rice cracker or a low-sugar biscuit. Occasionally a very small chocolate. Dinner is rice, or pasta, or baked potatoes – he loves baked potatoes. Also likes chicken and anything made with mince, like meatballs or hamburger patties. He likes anything where he can feed himself – Mr Independent doesn’t really like to have someone else feed him! He then has a 2nd bottle just before bed between 8-8.30. I was told to have him weaned off these by 1yr but I haven’t really bothered as I like him to drink them before a sleep and tends to play with drinks in a sipper cup atm. He has water all day out of his sipper cup and can drink out of a proper glass if someone else is holding it. I’ll start to wean out the bottles, dropping the day one entirely and replacing the bedtime one with a drink of milk after dinner at 2-ish I guess. He doesn’t have a dummy (has never taken to one, used to nearly choke and gag on it as a newborn) and a bottle is his comfort and a part of his routine. He’s a fantastic sleeper and I don’t particularly want to disrupt that. Nor do I think allowing him to have a bottle at his age is a tremendous sin to commit as a parent, lol.

Likes

Most things. He’s a friendly kid who will warm up to strangers/people he doesn’t know very quickly and engage with them. He has a couple of favoured toys, namely Monkey, a bright yellow Paul Frank sock monkey of which we are now onto #2.  Monkey #1 is still in residence but he’s not so much yellow anymore as kind of…grey…and several of his limbs are hanging on by a thread. He also likes his “Dora-ball”, a very large yellow ball with some pics of Dora the Explorer on it, which he spotted in Target one day, pointing to it and I gave it to him to keep him occupied in the pram. We ended up buying it as he loved it so much and watching him sit with this ball, that was bigger than he was, on his lap in the pram was hilarious. He likes animals, trains, trucks and buses. He loves the water – baths and showers have been a huge part of his routine from day #1 and he’s partial to both. He also likes swimming with me or DH. Must get him into some learn to swim toddler lessons soon! He likes things like phones, remotes, laptops a little too much. He loves eye contact – sometimes he’ll climb up onto the couch and stand beside me and stare into my eyes and gently pat my cheek. It’s gorgeous. He likes kisses – ask for one and you’ll almost always get one. Mostly you’ll get them whether you ask or not. Sometimes you get many, many, many kisses. I think the most I counted was 30 in the space of a minute, minute and a half. He likes helping – he’ll follow you around all day “assisting” with household chores. If you’re busy, he’s not bored. Unfortunately, he’s more often a hindrance than a help but it sure is cute to see him trying! He loves swings at the park. He loves food.

Dislikes

Anything related to being told what not to do mostly! He’s very stubborn and doesn’t really like to be told ‘No!’ or ‘Don’t touch!’. He doesn’t like being cradled – never has. He prefers to be held upright. He’s not a very snuggly kid – won’t sit on your lap for longer than a few minutes and doesn’t do things like lay down and cuddle. If I’m laying on the floor watching tv, he might come and lay beside me for a minute, then he’s off and gone. He also won’t cuddle when he doesn’t want to. He’ll squirm out of your arms like nobody’s business. But when he does want to cuddle and smother you with kisses, there’s no getting away, lol. He doesn’t like being confined in the pram or the car seat for too long, especially the pram. When he’s in the car there’s usually enough trucks (or what he thinks are trucks) to keep him occupied. But he’s developed a real intolerance for the pram, hates sitting still. He’d much rather be on the go.

He is growing up much too fast. I look him and I see a little boy. And I don’t know where my little baby went!