Happy Birthday Francis!

I can't quite believe it, but today was Francis's 1st birthday! I have no idea where the time has gone and it is still sinking in that we now have a one-year-old!

We were up at 7:30am and after Francis's feed we went downstairs to open his presents. Francis wasn't that interested in the gifts and I ended up opening most of them myself, but we did manage to pursuade him to tear the paper off one of them. We didn't get him much because he got loads of things at Christmas and we really don't have the space for any more toys. We bought him a toybox, clock, steering wheel for his buggy, a couple of books and a t-shirt.


Once the presents were open and we'd got ourselves organised, we went to the Blue Planet Aquarium for the morning. The place was packed with families and overrun with buggies! Francis was absolutely fascinated by the fish, though he did get a bit bored at one point so we decided to break for lunch. I'm glad I took something along for Francis because the food in the restaurant was worse than McDonalds. After lunch we walked through the underwater tunnel to get a closer look at the sharks - we were glad to get out of there because looking through the distorted glass made Graeme and I feel rather queasy. We then headed outside to look at the otters. I think the otters thought we were going to feed them because they came very close to us and were chattering away! For me they were definitely the highlight of Blue Planet and Francis obviously loved them too!

By this point Francis was pretty tired because he'd only had 15 minutes of sleep all morning, so we left Blue Planet and went to a retail park for a wander about. Francis fell asleep almost as soon as we put him in his pram and didn't wake until we left! Our final stop off was to a cake shop in Liverpool to pick up Francis's birthday cake for his party on Saturday.

Graeme and I are pretty tired because it's been a busy day, but we still have to pack and get organised for another early start tomorrow. We're driving back to South Shields to celebrate Francis's birthday with family, so we're in for another busy couple of days.

I'm not sure what Francis will make of his party as he's too young to understand the whole birthday thing, but there'll be plenty of food which I'm sure he'll appreciate!

Lisa xxx