Euan has started to do proper crawling now. He climbs onto furniture and crawls around/slides on his bum all the time.

I feel like I have to monitor him every waking minute. He opens cupboards and drawers and takes everything out. Looks like this has become his main aim lately! It makes me very tired.

He's so funny though. He's started to learn animal noises and loves the sound the chicken makes best: cluck cluck. Whenever he hears me say the word chicken he makes the noise which makes me laugh every time.

11th of August was Euan's birthday! We tried to make it special for him. We went to the swings as he loves them and in the evening we prepared a big cake for him.

Mum and I made an Elmo cake - you remember the red character from Sesame Street? Euan loves him. However, the icing colour didn't quite work out and we ended up with a pink Elmo! When we put the cake in front of Euan (hoping that he tastes it and eats from it) he was scared and started crying. Good thing a friend of mine got him a little birthday cake.

At the weekend we organized a little birthday party and made 'quccija' for him. This is a Maltese tradition where you place things on a tray in front of the child. Each item on the tray has a connection with a profession. The first thing the child grabs will be his/her profession. On the tray we had a computer mouse - computer expert, DVD - actor/singer, thermometer - doctor; credit card - banker, money - accountant, pen - professional, rosary beads - religious person, vegetable - farmer, measuring tape - tailor, brush - painter and kitchen utensil - cook. Euan grabbed a DVD first followed by a computer mouse and finally a vegetable. From the guests we learned that apparently there are similar traditions in China too.

We then cut the cake which was a Nutella covered chocolate cake this time round. He ate so much cake and enjoyed it!

Elmo cake	Chocolate cake

I will be hearing it for the rest of my life but the first time Euan called me "Mammaa" this week I was so happy :) He also calls Steve "Papa" and says "nanna". He's growing so fast, still trying to crawl around and opens cupboards and drawers.

The re-decorating of the room is still progressing very slowly. I got some other items off the internet but I'll tell you about these later when they arrive and I put them in place.

Last week we tried out HiPP Organic Carrot & Pumpkin Rice Cakes. They are very practical when we're out and Euan wants a snack. They're brilliant as Euan can feed himself and keep himself busy while I'm doing the shopping! They leave an orange colour on the face and hands (no added artificial colourings, no added salt, no added sugar) and they are not sticky (unlike other brands). Other handy snacks are the Hipp Organic Elephant Biscuits which are also great to chew on the go. Euan likes these too and they are also good when he's teething as they are slightly hard and he can chew on them. The shape of these biscuits makes it easy for tiny hands to hold. I would have preferred these to be individually packed in small bags or boxes cause I had to put them in a small bowl to take out with me since the box is quite big to carry around. These biscuits have added salt and sugar so you shouldn't give them to kids often. They taste great though, Steve and I enjoyed them too ;)

Euan had Hipp Organic Scrumptious Cottage Pie With Herbs for lunch. He enjoyed it very much. It was not very chunky but it had some texture. It smells nice too. We also had the HiPP Organic Vegetables with Noodles and Chicken for lunch. This was a big hit - Euan couldn't have enough of it. I didn't quite like the taste of this though (it didn't taste as home-made as the other meals) but as long as Euan enjoyed it - it's good.