This month, the month of my birthday no less. A month usually associated with long hot afternoons, lounging in the park and the smell of barbecues has been wet. Not your common or garden wet but full-on, fill-your-wellies type of wet. It has been like that pretty much the whole month. Except Sunday!! Yes Sunday was the exception to the rule and it proved a scorcher. As luck would have it this was the day chosen for our barbecue to which we had invited 25 guests. The bad news was that I was suffering with infected tonsils so felt pretty grim. I came close to giving up the ghost and retiring to my bed but I managed to overcome and see it to the end.
DK brought the music rig and Deon kindly manned the barbecue as I don’t think I would have survived if I had been on cooking duties as intended. We blew up the Thomas paddling pool and all the children had fun jumping up and down on poor Thomas’ head while throwing the ballpit balls at whoever was unlucky enough to be in the firing zone :-). Paul Welch came with his wife and new baby Anna-May who is the most chilled-out 8 month old I’ve ever met :-). It was nice to catch up with them before they head back to Vietnam in the next few months.
Mia had fun in her trike as did baby Beatrice. On the subject of Mia, still no walking but she has started to walk holding only one hand. That’s progress isn’t it??? She has started saying a few words. She can say “Hello”, “Ouch” or “Owsh” as she puts it. Yesterday I swore she said “water” while having her bath. More impressively she does an amazing impression of a monkey. Oo-oo-ee-ee etc. Yes, she is amazingly cute at the moment as she marches(not physcially) towards 18 months.
Jake’s reading is amazing. He is on level 6 books now and can read very well. He is getting used to how words are put together and the different sounds the letter pairs make. He has a go at most words. Next week Jake has his operation for adenoids and grommets. Although an operation is far from ideal his hearing is pretty bad at the moment and in the long run it will be good for him. We went to the hospital last week and they showed us around the ward. The lovely nurse went through the procedure with Jake so he at least knew what to expect.