Babyproofing!

Naomi is getting more and more mobile these days, she is quite the adventurer too, getting into everything by climbing, crawling, standing, crying till you pick her up, whatever seems to work best at the time! And so the babyproofing commences!

All over our house you will now find those things for plugs that stop little fingers from mixing with electricity and we have a fair few of those rubbery things you stick on corners (corner cushions as my good friend Sarah called them, what exactly is different about a cushion for a corner? I was thinking for at least 5 minutes one day!) and we also now have a stair gate.

Ironically the stair gate isn't on the stairs, the layout of the house and positioning of doors is such that we don't need any there but we have now put one between the kitchen and the rest of the house. It was deemed necessary after Naomi pulled a casserole dish onto herself and it broke!

The thing is, she quite likes the stair gate, it is good for helping one stand up and it is good for climbing on, I'm sure she would consider it good for swinging on too, but thankfully she is unable to open it!

Here she is using the gate for standing purposes

Apparently it is good to be able to see Mummy even if we can't quite get to her!

Don't worry though, I'll work out how to get through this thing!

One of my favourite sights

I love sunshine and I love drying my washing outside, so this is one of my favourite things to see!

Flying Solo

Sandy has had to go back to work, which means Naomi and I are taking on the daytimes together!  We knew this day would come but it makes us sad, we like having Daddy at home, however we tackled it for the first time yesterday and it went quite well.

It so happened that our first appointment with the health visitor was also yesterday, she seems like a nice enough lady and I was very pleased when she told us that Naomi has now regained the weight she lost from birth (this is perfectly normal) but weighs 3oz more than when she was born, so she is now 7lb 8oz and obviously the fact that she is gaining weight is all good news :-)

After the health visitor had been we went to meet Daddy at his work and had some lunch, Naomi loves being in her buggy so she enjoyed the walk there and back very much and even the detour to the post office to pick up a missed parcel!

By the time Sandy got home we were pleased to see him and he was pleased to see us, he had found it somewhat strange to be away from Naomi all day having been around so much up until that point on top of which, returning to work after 2 weeks off is always tiring even if the reason you were off doesn't keep you up at night!! (Although, she is still, by baby standards, an incredible sleeper, she isn't all that great compared to 2 adults!!)

I guess you are all wondering why I haven't cut to the chase and shown you some more pictures, so here goes!!

We are still working out exactly how to tie it but this is a very useful new sling we were bought by my big sister!!

Holiday

In a shameful display of effort it's taken me quite some time to get round to writing up our Christmas holidays. Things are getting a little busy at work at the moment as I've got a paper to write which is due on the same day as the baby! So I'm trying to get it out of the way now in case we have an early arrival.

It was really great to be back up in Scotland among our friends and family again. It was a little surreal being there knowing it was just a visit. It was a good couple of weeks - though a little tiring darting all over the place to catch up with everyone :) We also got a experience some proper winter weather in place of the tame stuff we've been getting used to of late.

First stop on the way up was a quick check on our house, including a drop off of some things that were taken by accident in the rush of the move. My parents and brother kindly helped finish off the decorating once we'd gone and it was nice to see the results of their hard work. (especially knowing that we've now got a likely taker for the place)

As I said, we spent much of our time visiting folks and apologies to those we missed - we will try to see you when we come up again, which won't be long. You'll also be most welcome to come to us, it's only 8 or so hours' drive though it's a bit of a squeeze in our house.

As a mark of how good the weather was, about halfway through the holiday I helped my brother and brother-in-law to build an igloo in the garden for Steven and Holly (my nephew and niece). Here's the result:



How better to pass the time than racing some wind-up royals?

On hogmanay we went to the ceilidh that the church in New Deer have been holding for the last few years. Always a good time, though accompanied by the obligatory embarrassing birthday recognition for me. Also Jay didn't get to dance as much as usual for obvious reasons, though she did mime nappy changing in one of the games (yes, there were games).

Finally, on the recommendation of Mr. Joe McGarry I have recently been listening to Slagsmalsklubben-den Svenske Disko - which has provided some enjoyable diversity when interspersed with the 50s Rock and Roll I've had on for much of the past couple of days. It's essentially a generic version of 80s arcade game sountracks and well worth a listen if you like kind of thing. (just try not to bounce too much if you're in an office within sight of others)