The blog...

Coffee please....

Tue, 9 Feb 2010 22:01:57 +0000

Tonight when I came home from work I sat at the dining room table and checked my email. As a joke I said “James, can you please make daddy a cup of coffee” James replied yes and wandered off. Maria told me that I had better watch him as neither of us had any idea what he was doing.

Moments later I was shocked to see through the hole that looks into the kitchen that James had walked into the kitchen on and was turning the kettle on. How cute....

Obviously at this point I had to run in and take over as the last thing I want is for him to play with a hot kettle. But as I made my coffee I explained step by step how to make a cup. It is never too early to understand how to make dad a good cup of coffee!!

The boy is getting clever....

Sun, 7 Feb 2010 21:58:53 +0000

Tonight we asked James a series of questions and were shocked that he understood the question and was able to answer us perfectly. An example of the type of question would be...”What do you call Cheese in Portuguese?” to which he would reply “Queijo”.

We tried this with a series of words and were surprised to discover that not only does he know a vast selection of words in both English and Portuguese but he appears to understand the difference between the two and that they mean the same thing. I can’t believe he understands that there are different languages.....

It is amazing!!

Language update...

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:43:09 +0000

I thought I should post a small video with James speaking. It is not a bad effort, but he does change from day to day. One day he will sing the alphabet perfectly and the next he will skip letters and even make up new ones. But this gives a fairly good idea of his current level.

Alles ist gut!!

The first dental appointment

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:35:14 +0000

For some months we have been trying to get James to brush his teeth. He is actually very enthusiastic about doing so too. The only problem is that his idea of brushing his teeth involves placing the brush against his front teeth and then sucking until all of the toothpaste is removed.

I have found a trick that seems to be working and has allowed me to actually brush every tooth. This has worked for around a week so far. The trick is to get him to say “ah” and then tell him that I have to count his teeth. He doesn’t give me long but I get to brush them all. Lucky he only partly follows what I am saying otherwise he might be disturbed that each night he has a different number of teeth.

Yesterday morning was his first trip to visit the dentist. He sat very patiently on my lap watching what the dentist was doing. For me it was an interesting experience as it is the first time I have been in the room and felt relaxed. James did not like the mirror being in his mouth and only actually allowed the dentist a very brief look in his mouth. This seemed enough for her to tell us that all looked good. He still has two more teeth to come at the top and bottom at the back. So that will be fun!!

She also reassured us that James swallowing toothpaste is not too bad. Apparently children’s toothpaste is actually made with low flouride these days as all kids swallow it, and dentists now actually only recommend you spit the toothpaste out but avoid rinsing as the left over toothpaste helps to strengthen the teeth. So all is good...

One thing that did surprise me, as it was the first visit to the dentist, is the fact that all dental work is free for James in the UK until he is 18. That is not bad. People complain about the NHS (National Health Service) but I think free dental, free doctors and free prescriptions is pretty good. Society should be protecting the future.

The Kiss Army have a new member...

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:30:33 +0000

Maria is aware that in my younger years I was a bit of a kiss fan, and one day when she was out she found the perfect T-Shirt. Here are a few pictures so you can see Kiss Army’s newest member. The next photo you can see James singing along to “Rock and Roll all Night”