Carried Away

Oh, I am sorry.  It's been a long time since we last spoke.  You must be thinking that I had abandoned you.   I promise I haven't...but I've gone back to work now and I'm weaning you a teeny weeny bit.  Every once in a while I will leave you crying in your cot waiting for attention....and if I don't respond straight away, then I can assure you its for our own good in the long run.  I believe it's called "Tough Love" (a phrase I have literally just seen on Supernanny ?!?!) But we're back together again now and I promise you, you won't miss anything!  It has been over a week though, and we have a lot to catch up on.  So hold on to your small, fleecy, slightly-too-big animal print hats - this could be a long one!

I know you're all waiting for piccies....so here 's a cutey to get us rolling:

Missed me?

Before we catch up on what has been happening in the last week, I just want to update you on some unfinished business on the previous post.  Remember when we last spoke the heats had started to find Alice's best friend and we'd managed to petrify our first born with rubber giraffes and pink rabbits significantly larger than her?  Well, competition is really heating up in the form of Hannah's entry:  all kneel before the mighty Musical Seahorse of Light.  It's pink, it's fluffy, it's stomach glows in the dark and it sings the greatest hits of Beethoven when you squeeze it.  The brainchild of what must have been a drug-frenzied ideas session at Fisher Price, this furry little undersea ally is proving as effective as a pinky finger soaked in gin in getting Alice to sleep.  Nicole's Eeyore is up next on the Best Friend challenge, but I fear unless he is flourescent and can play a plinky-plonk version of Robbie Williams' Angels then the Seahorse could well have it!

By day and by night, Alice just loves hanging out with her seahorse

Ok, so what's been happening this week?  Well, the first thing to report is that Alice has been discharged by the midwife and has been declared a healthy bouncing little baby!   I'm not quite sure how the midwife decides when to discharge a baby, but I think that the reason that she may have chosen to discharge Alice so soon is that Alice was in serious danger of breaking the little set of weighing scales that Mary the Midwife brings along with her.  Lord, can this girl eat! It's also interesting to see how the relationship between Ceri and Alice is driven by feeding.  Years ago, I can remember seeing a documentary on TV about a phenomenon called "Feeders".  These were people who liked their partners to be have serious love handles and would demonstrate their affection for them by liquidising KFCs, Twixes, pork scratchings and lard, and pouring this lovingly prepared recipe into the mouths of their beloved in order to ensure that they stayed supersized.  Now, I'm not for a minute saying that Ceri is this way with Alice, but when I phoned her to ask how the midwife appointment went, she replied:

"I'm so proud of her!  Newborns are supposed to put on about 100g a week, and Alice has put on 600g in a week and a half!  She's in the ninety-fifth percentile for weight, which means she is doing really well.  I think she's putting on more weight than any other babies in the area....."

It'll be interesting to see whether or not Ceri and I feel the same way about only five percent of the population being fatter than Alice when she is a teenager.......but for now we are both glowing with parental pride that our little daughter can medically claim to be a porker!!!  Anyway, here's our little heavyweight saying goodbye to Mary the Midwife on her last visit:

Mary the Midwife struggles to lift our little bundle of joy



On Tuesday of last week, I had to go back to work.  Going back to work after two weeks off is never easy; but when you have to say goodbye to your lovely wife and newborn who are sitting smiling in bed, it's a real wrench when you close the front door and head off to the bus-stop.  Before I went back, we made sure that we made the most of my last few days off with some fun times in Dulwich. 

Friday saw us going back to Dulwich park to see if we could show Alice some of the sights while she was awake.  Amazingly, this time Alice managed to keep her eyes open and actually managed to see some ducks, trees, grass etc.  It's incredible to watch babies reacting to their surroundings, and hard to predict what they will respond to and what they will ignore. Despite all of the cool stuff that there is to do in Dulwich park, the thing that seemed to amaze Alice most was the wind.  She looked genuinely surprised when, all of a sudden, the sun went behind a cloud and a gust of wind blew across her face.  It just goes to show, everyone has been so generous with cuddly toys, books, rattles, games and all along Alice would have been happy if we had simply blown on her face.  The simple things, eh???  (it's also nice to know that she regularly returns the favour and blows wind on her mum and dad whenever she can).  Anyway, here are some choice park pics from our family day in the park:

the wind in the park

Cuddles with mummy and daddy

Alice surprised by the wind

Saturday was an "open house" day with the chance for friends to pop over and meet Alice for the first time.  First to show up were Liam and Sadia who are expecting a baby girl in the next three weeks (and managed to escape the photocall).  We tried our best not to scare them too much with stories of the birth, but it's sooo hard not to go into the gory details in way too much detail. Feel free to share the same with us next month guys!  Sacha and Allan, Kara, Dale and Evie and Gareth, Martha and Charlie also popped by.  Looks like the gorgeous gene is strong in East Dulwich and Alice has got some work to do to keep up with Martha, Charlie and Evie on the cute-o-meter!!!

Hey Lady!  Sacha and Alice have a cuddle

Alice meets (another) Gareth and wee Charlie

With Aunty Kara, Uncle Dale and Best-Friend-to-Be Evie

Martha and Charlie decided that Alice didn't look very happy sitting outside in the garden, and that she would prefer to live in a "camp" indoors.  They grabbed some of our bedsheets, made some paintings for the walls and built Alice a den in the corner of our living room.  That is where Alice sleeps to this day!  Martha also remarked when Ceri was breastfeeding that:

"Alice is a very hungry little girl.  She's drinking milk like a goat!"

Seems even four year olds have picked up on Alice's eating habits.  That's a worry!!!  Here are the kids in their den:

Martha, Charlie and their pet goat

And a picture of Evie, coz she's cute

On Sunday, Ceri and I went for lunch in the new Italian, Rocca, in Dulwich Village.  I'm not sure if we went there because Ceri was desperate to get back on the seafood pasta she has missed so much during pregnancy or because we had been there for ice cream two days before and the entire Italian waiting staff had said what a "bella" baby Alice was.  Either way, we had a lovely meal there.  Before we went, Charlotte and Richard dropped in to worship at the shrine of Alice.  Here are the snaps:

Charlotte and Richard make the pilgrimge to East Dulwich

It was an amibition of mine, before I went back to work, to give Alice a bath.  I love baths.  They are up there among my three favourite things in life and the other two I am not publishing on a family website.  Given that Alice bears no genetic resemblance to her dad (people always comment how she has Ceri's eyes, nose, weird big toes, figure - ok, I made up the last one), I was keen to see if she at least shared my fondness for chilling out in the tub of an evening.  So, we got out the Johnson's baby bath, the frog towel that Grandma and Grandpa bought and set the water temperature to "luke warm". I really feel like a dad now that I am dipping my elbow into bath water.  Truth is, I have no idea how warm or cold the water is supposed to feel on my elbow, but you feel like a very responsible and caring parent just going through the motions of doing this.  Anyway, we got the water to the perfect temperature and guess what, dear reader, we put Alice in the tub and she.......loved it!!!  That's my girl!!!  I'm so proud she is a Shepherd after all!!!

bath time!!!



Taking Alice up for her bath made me think just how odd it must be being a baby.  One minute you are sitting there relaxing in your bouncer, and the next minute this happens:

Daddy:  "Do you think Alice needs a bath mummy?"
Mummy:   "Oh, that might be nice, but we did "top and tail" her earlier"
Daddy:  "But I want to prove she is genetically related to me"
Mummy:  "Ok, I'll start the water running"

And the next thing you know you are being picked up out of the chair, where you were very happy, being stripped naked, and dumped in a bowl of luke-warm water.  Weird.  If you did that to an adult without permission, you would end up in prison! Poor little Alice has no choice in where she goes and it's up to Ceri and I to decide whether she "likes it" or not where she is.  We could pop her on top of a wardrobe and she wouldn't be able to do anything about it.  Here are the pics........(oh, come on!  we're not that cruel!!). 

It did make me think, though, that the nearest living being to Alice that I know is my family's pet tortoise - Timmie.   She can be quite happily munching cucumber in the garden only to be picked up by me as a kid (or now my nephews) to come and watch us play badminton on the front lawn.  It must be one of the best things about growing up as a human/not being a tortoise...the freedom not to be picked up and plonked somewhere that you don't want to be.   I wonder if Alice we get revenge on me one day and plonk me in a room with reruns of Sex in the City running on an endless loop.

The other thing I noticed when we bathed Alice is that, in front of the baby, Ceri has started calling me Daddy and I have started calling Ceri Mummy.  That's weird too.  I must make a mental note to know when to call Ceri mummy, and when not to!  So much to think about being a parent!

On Tuesday, Daddy, I mean "I", went back to work and Nanny and Grandcha arrived for a visit along with some more lovely clothes from the Ty Croeso sweat shop.  I'm not sure what mayhem went on while I was in the office but the socialising continued with Helen, Katy and baby Sophia coming to visit.  Here are a couple of pics:

Nanny and Alice

cuddles for Katy

Helen gets the "Sunday Lunch Face"

Sophia and Alice

I'm not sure if it makes me a bad dad to admit this, but I am genuinely not sure which baby is which in the photo above.  I would need to check their big toes to be 100% sure which is my Alice.

The highlight of the working week for me was Ceri, Nanny Lyn and, of course, Alice, coming to visit me in my office.  It's a very proud moment in a chap's life to introduce your newborn daughter to your workmates.  It's also hilarious to see blokes in an office feigning interest in a newborn baby and ensuring that they stay at a "safe distance" -  which means that they are close enough to see the child (just) but are in no danger whatsoever of being offered a hug.  There are no pictures of the GMI visit I am afraid as the work we do is top secret.... perhaps something we will be able to rectify the next time she pops up to see me. The GMI verdict on Alice???

"she looks like her mum.....but then, you look like you wife, Matt.....so, I guess you could say Alice looks like you!"

Well, time is ticking by and by my reckoning its bathtime again.  I know you are all logging in to see Ceri's 30th birthday party pics, but in the spirit of the Eastenders style "duh......duh duh.....duh duh duh duh duh" ending, I am saving those as a cliffhanger for next time......

Thanks again for sticking with the blog, dear reader.  As ever you've been very well behaved and, as well as deserving pudding after your dinner, you have also well and truly earned your five plus one:

The Shepherds

afternoon nap

ooohhhh!

Seahorse slumbers

my girls

Daddy and Alice

And just coz I'm a softy and I love you guys, here's a sneak peek of the Sheps on Ceri's 30th.  You'll have to wait until next time to see the party frock that Nanny Lyn made for Alice. 

Take care all and see you in a week for Father's Day!!!

Matt xx

Happy 30th Ceri/Mummy!!!