sunny aberdeen!

michael shows he can still look tough despite the bunny-bike


look mummy - this is how you reverse park!


michael shows sarah where the white circle goes


scott and vicky with michael and the (somewhat nervous) chess set

we all went up to aberdeen at the weekend. Michael didn't sleep until we hit stonehaven on the way up, so there were many verses of "Old MacDonald had a farm" to help calm him down. By the end, Old MacDonald had the following animals, which you may not immediatley associate with a farm
- panther
- tiger
- monkey
- lion
- elephant
-crocodile

michael is a lot more confident at sarah's mum and dad's house. he seems to have grown out of his need to make a break for the stairs at every opportunity, and is a little more gentle around baxter (the dog). he did take a nosedive off of the fireplace onto one of his toys, which looked a little sore, but he seemed to be fine.

He ate lots of nice new foods up there, and got some new toys to play with. He got to go to the duthie park (I've got many fond memories of going there as a kid), but didn't make too much of the winter gardens there. He was more interested in going for balls. Sarah spotted this a week ago. Michael cannot deal with someone else having a football or any other kind of ball, and just wants to take it off of the rightful holder of the ball. Hopefully it'll show in his future football skills, although it could be worrying from a team-player point of view.

We bumped into my auntie helen, uncle alan at the park with callum (who's three). As usual i totally forgot to get a photo for the blog. They were also playing on the swings, but callum seemed a little more adept than michael at getting around. Helen's pregnant, so it was good to talk to her about preparing for a second baby. Sarah and I will have to cross that bridge at some point (hopefully). We popped by to visit my granny on Monday, and michael managed to pretty-much behave himself there too, but he did keep making a mad dash for the phone.

We spent some time looking for shoes and toys for michael on saturday. One shoe shop said that michael immediatley needed new shoes, and the other said he still had 4 weeks in the ones he currently has. You can guess who i believed. We didn't actually buy him the big red car thing, but couldn't get him out of it. His wee legs aren't big enough for the flintstone-power the car needs, but he wouldn't get out!

We took him to aberdeen beach on monday. he was keen to get in the sea, but needs to learn not to be deceived by the sunshine in aberdeen - the water is still seriously cold.

We stopped by to visit Scott and Vicky Stronach on the way home. I hadn't seen their new place in dundee. Michael was strangely shy (as he was on Friday when I quickly showed him around my work), but soon warmed up when he saw a glass chess set that looked reasonably destructable.