Happy Birthday! Aidan is one year old today, July 7, 2004! He had his first first birthday party on Saturday 3rd, his second (well, the party for the big people) will be tonight, and his third (for family) will be on Saturday 10th in the Lake District.

Over the last couple of weeks Aidan has spent a lot of time crawling around outside - there's nowhere quite as exciting as Outside at the moment! He has taken a few more unaided steps, but obviously still prefers crawling :-( . His stair-climbing technique has advanced - it goes something like this: he puts his right knee up onto the step, brings his left foot up, then stands up fully, and repeats. This is a 25% saving on the previous policy, which involved both knees.

His seventh tooth appeared on Thursday - we're all very grateful because it was obviously very painful. Aidan's new favourite word is "no" - he doesn't always use it with intent, but we're sure it won't be long!

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Image 0028-4666 Canon PowerShot S45 1/499 sec., f/2.8 2004:06:25 10:18:37 UTC

Showing the twins the swings. Catherine and Emily hadn't been on the swings before, so Aidan took them (and their mummy and daddy) to his favourite park so they could have a go... They certainly seemed to enjoy it! (Sadly Catherine and Emily couldn't come to the party, so they came to visit a week earlier).

Aidan standing by the car - take me somewhere exciting Mummy and Daddy!

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Crawling in the driveway with his irresistible toothy grin. Aidan certainly knows how to look cute! If you look really closely, you should just be able to make out tooth number seven peeking through on his bottom left as you look at the screen.

My First Birthday Party! I had five of my friends round to play on Saturday (3rd July) - there was a 3 year old, a 2 year old, a 1.5 year old, a 1 year old, me, and a 10 day old! It was so much fun showing everyone how my toys worked, and we even got to play in my bouncy castle (in between rain showers!). Can we do it again next weekend Mummy?

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Me at my birthday party, playing on my bouncy castle. This picture was on the front page of Aidan's birthday website, for two weeks of July 2004.

After the party... the photograph says it all!

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The Birthday Boy, aged one! On my actual birthday on Wednesday (7th July), I opened my presents from both sets of grandparents first thing in the morning - here I am showing some of them off! I opened the rest of my wonderful presents that evening.