Christmas

We can hardly belive that our Christmas and New Year have come and gone so quickly. We've had a lovely time with family and friends - celebrating Christmas in Suffolk with Mark's family, and then playing host to Debbie's family for a few days.

Early on Christmas Day, Santa brought some presents for Ben. Rudolf was having a well-earned rest for this part of their gruelling night and so some Suffolk Punch horses stood in for the Hollesley leg.

Ben had a mixed Christmas Day. He loved the horses, but was a little overwhelmed by all the presents and the attention. He managed to open a few presents in the morning before retiring to his cot and then resurfaced to have some turkey dinner (well to throw it on the floor anyway). We did manage to capture him smiling with a cracker and he perked up a bit in the afternoon when he got to open some more of his presents. On Boxing Day he finished opening his presents, and thrilled us all by quite clearly asking for "cheese" (his first "proper" word?) which he had spied on the table while we were eating lunch.

Back home in Kenilworth after a relaxing few days being looked after by Mark's parents, we welcomed first Debbie's parents and then Val, Pete, Rob and Louise to visit. Ben had plenty more presents to open and sometimes just had to sit and rest from all the excitement!

He seems to have been going through another period of rapid development and his walking gets stronger every day, as you can see from the picture of him at Kenilworth castle with his Nan and Grandad. He's just about begun to stand by himself for a few seconds before he falls over, and he has also started saying more and more words in the last week or two - he points at the Christmas tree and says "tree", much to the amusement of his proud parents - again, again!