Since Sam was born we’ve been trying to find the right time to travel south and introduce him to his Great Grandfather, but for one reason or another we hadn’t been able to until today. Luckily for us the trip down to Portsmouth by train really is quite simple, just one train from East Croydon station will take us all the way there though it does take us a couple of hours to make the journey.

Sam is doing a little better at eating his solid food which is a good thing as I had to give him some yogurt on the train to keep him going until we arrived at my Grandfather’s home. Impressively Sam managed to eat it all with only a little mess which is probably more than I could do on a moving train.

We had a lovely time catching up with my Grandad and also got to eat a very tasty pub lunch during which Sam was much admired by a number of people 🙂 Sam liked his Great Grandad very much and was a very well behaved little man – thanks for having us Grandad!

For the last couple of days we have been enjoying the company of Rich’s parents who made the trip down south to come and visit Sam (and us!) this weekend. Having guests round is always great as it gives me a great excuse to ‘forget’ my diet for a few days while I indulge on the tasty food we have when we have guests.

Rich’s parents also came with gifts – most of which were for Sam but also included a friend’s secondhand sewing machine for me to learn to use… I’m very very excited about this and I can’t wait to get started. Hopefully I’ll be able to start making a few items of clothing for Sam if I get the hang of it quickly enough – he’s growing so quick at the moment that I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to keep up!

We spent Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday morning with Rich’s parents but they sadly had to return to Northland this morning as they have jobs to get back to. Thanks so much for coming all the way down to visit us – we loved seeing you 🙂

After Rich’s parents had left we had a few hours to sort ourselves out before dashing off to meet up with a group of our friends from work in a nearby park before heading off for a meal out together. This was Sam’s first ever time at a restaurant with us and he was started out well by napping while we ate our main course, however he woke up before we ordered dessert and needed a little entertaining while we tried to get some pudding into ourselves. Now we’ve started feeding Sam mashed up food I think he fancies the food on our plates too!

All in all a great weekend was had by the Fuzzy household, though now we are all ready for bed. zzzzzz

Easter seems to have crept in early this year, it came as a real surprise to me when I looked in my diary and noticed that it was only a couple of weeks away. Thanks to everyone who sent the Fuzzy household Easter cards and chocolate – we really appreciated you all thinking of us and can’t wait to start munching our way through our stash  🙂

As an added Easter treat we had a visit from my parents who were very happy to see Sam again. Sam as always enjoyed having guests and was as talkative as ever – I keep thinking he is going to start talking soon…

My parents also came with Easter presents, a lovely looking egg for Rich & me and some very cute Easter decorations for Sam.

After we had all had a few cups of tea and Sam had been cuddled by his Grand parents it was pretty much time for dinner – roast beef with all the trimmings! Yummmm! Sam was good enough to sit and watch us eat our food before deciding that he needed to go and have a nap. So while he was napping we all tucked into some of Rich’s delicious chocolate brownies with ice cream and then declared ourselves full to the brim.

We hope you’ve all had a great Easter too and that you also got pleanty of chocolately goodness.

Well my weekend of rest didn’t quite work out how I had hoped it would… I ended up spending most of Sunday in A&E but thankfully nothing much is really wrong with me so I did get to come back home in the end (I’d been having some nasty stomach cramps which for a while the doctors thought might be appendicitis – very thankfully it wasn’t!).

After my A&E day Cara the magnificent managed to delay her trip back up to Yorkshire until Wednesday so she could spend Monday and Tuesday with Sam and give me some more time to rest. Nick also managed to find some free time to visit Sam on Tuesday as he’s been doing a bit of shift work, he may look pretty alert in this photo but he did spend a lot of his visit dozing on the sofa – awww.

Thank you so much Cara for all your help – it was very, very appreciated! When you and Nick start your own family I think I’m going to owe you lots of babysitting!

It’s been a pretty dire week for me so far, I’ve spent most of it feeling tired and ill – but because of Sam I’ve not been able to curl up into a little ball under the blankets. Why did no one tell me just how hard it is to cope with a little one when you are under the weather? Thankfully though the calvary has arrived in the shape of Cara who has come round today to help me with Sam and give me a chance to get some rest.

Cara went straight into the deep end of baby care and took charge of entertaining / changing / comforting / walking Sam while I got a few chances to have some much needed rest. Cara also made me some delicious soup which I greatly enjoyed and I’m now starting to think that it may not be too hard for me to try and cook some for myself one day. After just one day I can happily say that Cara is now a fully trained Samuel carer and is very welcome to come round and take Sam for the day whenever she should want to 🙂

I’m so very glad that it is now the weekend and with Rich around I should hopefully be able to get a little bit more rest so that I’m in better shape for looking after Sam next week.

It seems like it has been quite a while since we caught up with Thea, Marcus and little Katie so today they came round to Tea Towers to partake of a delicious roast dinner followed by a whole lot of tearing around the local playground.

The food was pretty darn good – and there was plenty of it which is always important with a roast. We also had some very nice chocolate torte for dessert which Katie enjoyed so much she went round all of us trying to get a bit of ours too! Once we had started to feel a little less stuffed we thought it a good idea to wander over to a very exciting playground that Rich and I discovered in our travels recently. Katie loved it and spent most of the time there rushing from one exciting climbing/swinging thing to another with us older kids trailing after her.

Hopefully we’ll get the rest of the photos up in the photo gallery soon as there are some really fun photos of us all reverting to acting like children.

Rich and I are gradually gaining confidence in taking Sam out for longer journeys to visit friends and family. Today we decided to trek off over to Kent to visit Sam’s aunty Thea, uncle Marcus and cousin Katie.

Marcus did us a fantastic Sunday roast dinner (my plate was overflowing with delicious pork, yorkshire puds, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, parsnips, cabbage and succulent carrots) and that was followed by some very tasty pancakes made by my sister. Mmmmmm….

After food we all waddled into the sitting room to try and burn off some of the dinner with a few goes at the surprisingly difficult ‘Guitar hero’ game on the Wii. I was typically bad at the game (but I blame that on forgetting to bring along my glasses) however Rich seemed to do really well even though he was so casual about it. Katie also had a few goes and looked like a very cute rockstar holding the guitar.

Sam enjoyed seeing everyone again and had fun playing with Katie who was very gentle with him and kept tucking him up ‘in bed’.

Sam and I were very happy to receive a visit from our good friend ‘future uncle Nick’ who popped over for lunch with a freshly baked loaf of bread that he had made himself (properly made at that – he did all his dough thumping himself, no use of a bread maker!). We ate Dairylea sandwiches, crisps and carrot cake and drank lots of tasty tea.

Unfortunately Sam got himself into quite a temper for some reason and so wasn’t his usual friendly self for the visit (sorry Nick) so to help calm him down we went off in search of a nearby pond. Because I was the one navigating us to it we wandered around aimlessly and didn’t manage to find it until Nick took control and lead us there (it worries me that my navigation is so bad as to be bested by someone who has no idea where he is going but still manages to find what I’ve been trying to get to). Sam calmed down/slept after his nice walk and by the time daddy came home he was in a much better mood.

Because of his general cuteness this evening we decided it was time for him to have his first go in the big bath (he’s been getting a little large for the bathroom sink) and you can see him pictured here getting into the bathing mood with the help of our bath thermometer duck. Sam doesn’t quite know what to make of the big bath but we think he enjoyed himself in a slightly surprised way.