Settling In

Esther has been with us for over four weeks now - really! - and the time is flying by. Everyone is having a lot of fun getting to know her.

Ewan the Dream Sheep keeps Esther company. He really is The Business. 

I'M A BIG SISTER

ME TOO!

Our long-serving Moses basket has finally bitten the dust. When I brought it down from the loft it literally* fell to pieces.

(*Yes, I literally mean "literally". You may look up the word in my metaphorical "grammatical gripes" list if you're unsure.)

As a replacement for the Moses basket, we got the SnuzPod. This would have been most welcome during Lydia's phase of sleeping in our bed - and has already proven its worth.

This caption intentionally superfluous.

The older girls have been receiving presents to celebrate Big Sisterdom. Lydia loves her bubbles!

It's a hard life.

But there is still plenty to smile about!

Irony.

Additional unnecessary caption.

Lydia has learnt well how to be a big sister. She loves getting things for Esther, and providing her with entertainment.

Laughter

More Lydia developmental fun. Who'd like to see her laughing?

Smile!

Lydia is now smiling, which is just lovely. She also makes some happy-sounding noises which is all very good.

Unfortunately, between slow-reaction camera phones, bright flashes and a possible aversion to cameras, it's proving quite hard to capture. Here are our attempts so far...

"What's that you've got there?"

Tee hee!

Too sleepy!

Too bright!

Feelin' fine!

Cheeky...

I mock your attempts to photograph me.

Really, what ARE you doing my good fellow?

If I move fast, your poor quality shutter speed will foil your endeavours.

What's that thing up there? It looks so ceiling-y.

Oooh, sly.

You're not going to do it!

Oh, this is hard work. I'm either going to fall asleep or sneeze. Or both.

There, a good sleepy sneeze does the trick.

You're still not going to do this!

Nah nah!

Okay, I'm fed up with you trying. Milk please. NOW.

Emotions II

When Naomi was a couple of months old we did this post about all her emerging emotions.  Unfortunately we are at a slight disadvantage for making a similar post for Miriam, perhaps these photos will explain why...

Happy looking at Mummy

Happy playing with toys 

Happy Having drunk some milk

Happy despite being strangled

Happy while bouncing

Still happy bouncing

Happy on the floor

Happy having a cuddle

Happy having woken up

Happy looking beautiful

However, just to prove that we do occasionally see other expressions I would like to share with you these two

Coy

And we seem to be in no doubt that she is unhappy if you wipe her nose

But as you can see, the other emotions are hard to capture on film as she spends the majority of her time smiling and being happy.  What a blessing to be parent to such a happy baby!

Mummy

Miriam was in a delightful mood last night, and I just love this picture!

Sunshine

So,it's been jolly warm here the past week or so, and we've had a lot of fun outside enjoying it. On the down side, our house has been something of an oven, which has meant sleep hasn't been so good (for Naomi in particular). Anyway, part of the fun has been with a water table that Naomi has, and here's a clip of a few minutes with her having a good old play. It's quite nice to watch her having a lot of fun! I quite like that she makes puddles to splash in by herself :)

At the weekend there was a barbecue at the shared house some members of our church live in. During this we gave Naomi an ice lolly, and though she really enjoyed it, she was a bit too enthusiastic, taking big bites of it, leading repeatedly to this expression:

I also thought you might enjoy this "classic" child picture of someone really enjoying their dinner...

Smile!

I just had to share this picture; this was at breakfast yesterday morning :)

Hugs

Here is the scene as I was about to leave this morning...

It seems Naomi has figured out the art of hugs - or at least something like it! Sometimes it's more of a "clawing". She also gets pretty upset when either Jay or I leave the room (though with Jay it seems to be bad news whenever she does anything that isn't giving Naomi total attention all the time - something I at least get allowed some time off from).

She does know how to make us feel appreciated though :)

Oh - I've recently started showing her the pictures I've been taking of her straight after they're taken. I'm not sure if this has allowed her to work out what's going on, but at the moment she no longer seems so adverse to having her picture taken...

Bababath

Naomi's been starting to do proper baby-babble for the last few days. Mostly sounds like babababa and mumumumum, and it's all very cute. We've tried recording it several times, but she's very good at spotting the camera and going silent straight away. Last night during bath time I got a successful capture of some of it, plus as a bonus we can see her enjoying her baths once again... (the really talkative bit is about 2/3 the way through)

She also gets bouts of laughter from time to time for no apparent reason. Here, the mere sight of mummy was enough to launch into hysterics that last 5 full minutes...

Finally, we are more than a little disturbed at the fun she gets from one of her new-found toys. She even points it in the right direction! At least the TV stays off quite a bit just now so she doesn't get used to it being always on in the background.

Travel

We're on holiday in Scotland - more posts to come but here's the first bit of catching up :)

Travel in the car is always fun, but more so on the long trip to Scotland. We thought Naomi looked particularly comfortable during a rest stop at Coldstream (on the border)...

Here we are enjoying being back in Scotland...

Finally, she seems to be really getting the hang of when a photo is being taken. Rather than always smiling or otherwise, she just changes from whatever she was doing as soon as the camera comes out. This is why it's proving hard to get a video of her being desperate for broccoli! Anyway, here she is in the midst of being grumpy...