Curly

  

This is Julian after his bath, with very, very curly hair. His vocabulary is increasing all the time. Yesterday I gave him one of his favourite books to read while I was driving. He startled me by coming out with the back page in its entirety as he flicked through it: "I went walking. What did you see? I saw a lot of animals following me." It was amazing. Today he saw an engagement photo of us, and said, "Mummy, daddy, laughing, ha ha ha." It was the ha ha ha bit that really killed me. Also, in the past couple of weeks I have graduated from mama to "mummy." I prefer mummy, but I miss the mama. Yesterday I told him he was going to his Nana Minnie's house, and he responded with one apt word. "Lucky." Sometimes one apt word is all you need, even if you're older than two.

Lawnmower

 

Julian's two favourite toys are his broom (see below) and his lawnmower. He is extremely thorough with the broom, reaching nooks and crannies that my housecleaner wouldn't dare to touch. The lawnmower is part of an elaborate ritual in which he puts on his "earmuffs" (or just talks about it), and then proceeds to talk about the "hedge", "grass", "leaves" and "Ken", our gardener. He is not satisfied until the whole house has been "mowed" several times. In addition, as if the toy is not noisy enough on its own (you can imagine), he insists on accompanying it with a "Vroom vroom sssszzzzzhhhh" kind of noise. It scares the hell out of the dog, but for Julian, that's half the fun too. 

Broom 2

  

Broom