De Silva Family Blog

One milestone I've been really looking forward to is teaching my boys to ride a bike and today we achieved it, much sooner than expected! We attended a session at Barleyfields Children's Centre in Woolmer Green aimed at helping parents teach their kids to ride.  Having just woken up in a strop Ollie stomped off to mope on the sidelines, but Leo was riding all by himself within 15 minutes!  Seeing this, Ollie decided to try and, sure enough, he was also riding around before too long! Well done boys, Mummy and I are so proud of you both!

Ollie seemed to take an unusual degree of satisfaction from battering my poor cuddly gorilla, "Harriette," with his sword this afternoon... Yet despite this streak of gratuitous violence, our little boy has a gentler side too...

Too much Gummy Berry Juice!!!

From all your boys. Love Ni, Leo & Ollie xxx

Ollie has seemed on the verge of walking for the last two months now. Admittedly, we haven't really encouraged him as he's already getting himself into enough trouble on all fours (he's a fearless climber). However it seems the lazy little boy has been having us on as he seems to prefer being cuddled and carried around. He was caught on CCTV standing unaided at his party a fortnight ago and today he took his first two steps (public) towards Grampa Clive. As soon as he realised his mistake he flopped to the floor, but not before he'd been seen. He grinned sheepishly at all the applause and cheering and then asked to be carried!

As a chunky little lad, Ollie is clearly thriving on breast milk. Nevertheless, he is very interested in food and always trying to grab our dinners. Whilst at a barbecue with the Bounds family this weekend, we thought he could try a little bit of Eleanor's grub. The greedy monkey ate the lot!

Ollie has recently become very communicative. Unfortunately he talks in " Shyriiwook ", the native language of Wookiees from Star Wars. Here's a translation...

To celebrate my last day on paternity leave I decided to have a little male bonding time with my new baby. We had a little skin-on-skin cuddles whilst watching "Enter The Dragon" with Bruce Lee. It clearly had an influence on the little ninja...

After a few days in hospital, we welcomed Ollie home for the first time on wednesday afternoon. Leo was delighted to show him around the house. He was even more delighted when he found out that Ollie had bought him a slide as a homecoming present. Leo's very proud of his new slide and keen to show everyone his prowess, as Nana found out in the following clip. As our little lion cub, Leo is naturally fond of other cats. Unfortunately those feelings are not mutual!

Two years ago, we demolished our walk-in wardrobe to replace it with our own cutom made one. Shortly aftwerwards work stalled following the birth of our son and we've been using propped up rails covered with a blanket ever since. Mary had almost given up hope when a little boy in disguise offered a helping hand. Before she knew it, she'd hired the L Team!

How do you call your mummy? Come here, mummy. And if she doesn't answer? Oh mummy... And if she still doesn't answer? I simply say... ...MISSUS!!!

Looks like Leo takes after Daddy on the dancefloor!

Leo was very taken by Aunt Cathy when she came to visit today and I think it's safe to say that she was besotted with his cherub-cheeks. They had a wonderful time playing together bouncing on the trampoline, playing in the sand and learning to fly, but in the end a tired boy just needs his mama...

Move over Ronaldo, here comes Leo!

Our little boy has been speaking Leoish for months and whilst he's currently learning English he continues to speak his native tongue much of the time. One of those words is "manaa," which means "give me" and when he wants something badly (which is most of the time) he says it twice. We previously thought Leoish was a unique language, conceived by the boy himself, but it turns out that it is actually a derivative of ancient Muppet - once popular in the previous century. This video is the last known recording of that wonderful language, but as Leo has never seen it until this morning it proves that the transfer of knowledge is possible through DNA.

Watch the master at work. One for the Tate methinks.

We thought Leo might like to do a little cookery today so we thought we'd make some chocolate rice krispy cakes. Being a messy puppy, he loved it - measuring out the ingredients, tasting each one personally, mixing them up and best of all, putting the M&M's on top. However our little boy is a sneaky little thing as at soon as we turned our back he snatched an M&M and put it straight in his mouth! He then had the audacity to pretend it wasn't him. Luckily, we caught him red handed on CCTV.

Although Leo has been walking hesitantly for about a month now, he's really improved in the last day or two. This is the first time we've caught him on camera. Enjoy!