Kate found Aiden's discarded clothes and put them on	He's naked, on a motorbike and wearing fluffy ears - do we see a Gay Pride march anywhere?	Kate and Aiden's friend Wil had a dummy so they insisted on one too	Laying on a mattress with gastro	We got Bob the Builder pyjamas!!
Kate looking angelic		A nice hug	Kate's discovered the toilet	Watching the chicks at the farm
Aiden chats with the goat	Meeting the guinea pigs	Trying to find one to step on	The best part was riding a tractor!

Sunday March 14th 2004

Kate and Aiden are now over 2 and a half. They are funny, demanding, bossy, loving, selfish, kind, sharing and difficult, all before breakfast! To say life isn't dull is an understatement. In fact it really is loads of fun and there isn't too much to complain about (well I could live without being a serviette for Aiden to wipe his grubby hands on). It's been a while between updates so I have a lot to report.

The hugest and most amazing news is that .....drumroll...... we have given up bottles. Yes, that's right, gone, no longer, bye bye. It gets even better because now Aiden sleeps through the night, as in from bed time until morning! How did this amazing feat come about? Mummy stepped in and put her foot down. You see Daddy had been running the nighttime escapades for quite a while. Every time Aiden cried Daddy would leap up and give him a bottle. Why? Part laziness and wanting to get Aiden back to sleep quickly and partly because he's a softy. The result of course was months and months of broken sleep. I could see us having a 6 year old still waking throughout the night. You also wouldn't believe how wet his nappy (and cot) would be in the morning. I threw out all of the bottles and we went cold turkey. I won't go into the gory details but it wasn't as bad as we thought and now we are BOTTLE FREE!!

Another event has been the discarding of naps. They were too hit and miss and we had Kate wanting to stay up until 10pm. I cut out naps and now they got to bed at 6:30pm. Now that's some kind of heaven.

Language continues to explode and part of this is the constant "What's that?" A seemingly innocent question but sometimes I am sweating thinking "What on earth IS that??" Like what are the feet part of a helicopter called?? Also what it the little chimney part of a tractor called? Is it a chimney?

You can see from the photo above that Kate toilet trained herself. Clever little kitten that she is!

I love the humour that is developing. For quite a while Aiden had this one joke that he would play. When we would be putting his socks and shoes on he would offer a foot. When we wanted the next foot he would offer the one that had already been done and howl with laughter. Thing is he would do this every time like it was an original joke. Of course he then went through a stage where he refused anything that resembled clothing and there ended his budding career as a stand up comic.

We took them to a farm and got to see lots of cute little baby animals. I was so excited for them to be at one with nature. I imagined all sorts of lovely kleenex moments. We found the guinea pig pen and got in. I spent my time trying to pick them up so Kate and Aiden could pat them. Aiden spent his time trying to chase them around and squash them. We moved on to the chicks. I scooped one up and tenderly carried it to Aiden. He looked lovingly at it, reached out his chubby little hand and tried to squeeze its head off. At home he chases Itchy all day. I heard a scratching sound coming from the kitchen and I went to investigate. There was Aiden holding Itchy's tail as Itchy ran on the spot. There ended my fantasy of us all volunteering to help the RSPCA.