the extended family

there have been two new additions to the family in the last week and a half. on 8 December Arlo Dolan Jarman made an unexpected early arrival (due 31 Dec). he is very cute and has a head of dark hair. despite being early he is coming along nicely and other than a spot of jaundice is fine. Otto is a very proud big brother as you can see in the photos.

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the other addition is the furry black beast known as Hank – a schnauzer poodle cross that i have adopted. i have been hankering (ha ha) for a dog for a while now and i think that he is a most excellent member of the family. he was very hairy when we bought him – now i have sheared him as he was getting prickles and poo and wee in his hair. my grooming skills are somewhat amatuer but i am not going to get him professionally groomed and have him looking even sillier as a result.

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Its mildly amusing listening to M attempting to discipline Hank when he nips at heels and ankles as all pups do. it starts out with a ‘no’ which is then repeated with an escalating degree of consternated hysteria in the voice as Hank continues. Ant likes him and giggles when Hank runs around like a psycho puppy.

today Ant and i went to visit his Babcia at Semaphore and we went down to the beach and played in the sand under the jetty.

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Consequently, Ant has flaked out and is now snoozing away (hopefully until morning). yesterday Ant skipped childcare and went to the zoo with his cousins Otto and Arlo. the Siamangs sang, and tapirs wandered – it was all very exciting and caused a great deal of pointing and saying that! that! that!

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whilst Ant is still not walking (which is doing no end of havoc to my back) he is starting to speak. his vocabulary is as follows:

1. that
2. there
3. Ant
4.hello
5. mum
6. dad
7. cat
8. glasses (only once so far but he was pointing at glasses at the time)
9. Zebra (I think – he was pointing to a picture of one and I am sure that he copied me when I said it)

He also visited his Baba the other day to look at the ducks in her yard.

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He is also mastering a spoon and corn cobs.

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bedtime stories + a recommendation

all is well around these parts. Antony is fine (we took him down to the chemists the other day to weigh him and he has put on weight again so we are happy) and we are getting used to the routine a bit more (still very tiring).

one of the routine things is the bedtime stories. what i am not so sure about is when J comes into the nursery to listen in while i read to Ant whether she is laughing at the stories or at me getting tongue-tied reading them… either way the boy seems to like them and we are making good use of the library we have started with all the books he was given by everybody.

unrelated to the books is a recommendation to any prospective parents out there. one of our best investments has been the Angelcare Captiva nappy disposal unit. this is not an ad but seriously this thing lives up to it’s promise of being smell free – no small feat.

more news later – the boy is down and time for me to go to bed too and try and get a couple of hours kip before he next stirs.

starting a library

well today we had our baby shower (which went very well) .

thank you to all who could be there and contribute. being a couple of book lovin’ nerds we asked if anyone would like to bring a book to kick-start the kid’s library.

and we got an excellent collection of fantastic books that will be read many a time i am sure. amazingly enough there no duplicates amongst the fine fine selection. it was good to hear all the stories of people’s favourite books from their own childhood and that of their children as well. we are very pleased and happy and are sure that we and the baby will get much enjoyment out of them.

special thanks also to Claire and Ben for doing such a great job of organising / arranging / hosting etc etc