Three Months Old

I know everyone says it, but I honestly have no idea where the last three months went. Sure, at the time some days felt like they would never end, particularly in the first 6 weeks, but overall the last 90 days seem to have flown by.

Daisy is holding her head up for significant periods now, so a couple of days ago we broke out the Bumbo and she loves it.


I found a load of clothes on Sunday in one of the drawers in Daisy's room that I didn't know were there. I thought that drawer was full of 3-6 months clothes but there's quite a lot marked newborn or 0-3 months, so I'm trying to put all the outfits on her over the next few weeks before she's too big for them. It's a good job she's small for her age!

Talking of small, we went to the weigh clinic this morning and she's 10lbs 7oz, which is small but she's roughly following the 5th centile line on the growth chart. That's to be expected for a 3-week-early baby. I actually like the fact that she was small - it means we got to experience her as a tiny baby. I've lost count of the number of babies I've heard of being born in the past three months at 8 or 9lbs - makes me glad Daisy was small; I thought delivering a 6-pound baby was painful enough!

Night times are getting much easier. I bought a blogging app for my iPhone so that I could blog while I was up in the night, but she only usually wakes up once a night now (although when she wakes up for the second time around 7am we go back to bed for a couple of hours) and only then for about half an hour, so by the time I've checked Facebook, Twitter and my RSS Feed there isn't usually time for blogging as well :). For the past few weeks we've got into a routine of bath at 17:30, then a feed, then bed at 18:00 and a bottle at 23:00. This will send her through to anytime from 03:00 to 06:00 - usually closer to 04:30 - then we get into a 3-hour cycle during the day. I'm happy with that; much happier than if she was insisting on being fed every three hours at night. She has got the idea that the day is for being awake and the night is for sleeping, which is great, but she hasn't realised that she still needs to sleep a good portion of the day, and she only really sleeps if she's on the move - in the car, in the buggy or being carried. Unfortunately all of those things require me to be awake, but as I'm getting a lot more sleep at night I rarely need a nap during the day.

Every morning when she gets up I see a load of hairs on the sheets, but I guess that's to be expected. She sleeps on her side, switching from one side to the other each time she feeds, and during the day when I'm not holding her she's on her back, so she's losing hair all around her head. She looks like a monk in reverse ;-).

Another picture? OK. Here she is in her favourite place.

A Matter of Black and White

I had a day off parenting duties on Saturday so Clare and I went to the theatre to see the new touring production of Chess. Clare had never heard of it (born in the 80s, you see) and the only time I saw it was more than 20 years ago so I didn't remember much of it, other than the action revolves around the World Chess Championships in 1979 and 1980 (racy, I know) and its most famous song is I Know Him So Well.

I have good memories of it the first time round, but having seen it again I'm not entirely sure why. I remember the song One Night in Bangkok at the beginning of the second half, but I'm fairly sure that most of the plot must have passed me by the first time I saw it. It relies on a certain amount of understanding of what conditions in Soviet Russia were like at the time, and at least a passing knowledge of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against Soviet-imposed policies. Which obviously we all had before we arrived.

Actually, the reason this particular rendition of this particular show isn't up there among my all-time favourites is precisely because it required a knowledge of those things, and the reason knowledge was a prerequisite was that the singers were, as ever, largely drowned out by the music and it was extremely difficult to hear what they singing. If it weren't for the fact that the female lead was almost always understandable, I would have blamed the sound desk entirely, but as she was much clearer, my conclusion is that the other actors were simply not enunciating. Which was a real shame, because I'm pretty sure we missed a lot of what was going on, and came away feeling a bit underwhelmed.

This production was choreographed by Craig Revel Horwood of Strictly fame, and this side of the performance was very well done. A lot of the instruments were played on-stage by the supporting cast, which was very unusual and worked really well, but all in all, my impressions were that one of the male leads behaved like a spoilt child, the other was totally flaky and it didn't take much to turn his head, and the female lead, whilst a great singer, was just a bit of a cow. I'm sure if I had been able to hear the words being sung I would have come away with a lot more than that...

A Week at Nanna & Grandpa's

Daisy and I just got back from a lovely week at my Mum & Dad's. We left last Thursday and drove to Manchester - the journey was fine; she slept all the way and when she woke up I pulled into the nearest service station and fed her, then we got on our way again - and we spent the afternoon with Grandma & Grandad (aka Rob's Mum & Dad), Auntie Kath and Uncle Tom, then we went round to stay the night with my friends Catherine and Ben, their dog Betsy, cat Chester and as-yet-unnamed 24-week-old foetus. The following day we drove up to Mum & Dad's, and Jen arrived after work for the weekend. Mum had arranged to have people round for a meal that evening before I decided to come, so there were 8 of us for dinner. I got Daisy up at 23:00 for her bottle and everyone cooed over her.

Saturday was my birthday, and I got the best present from Daisy - she didn't wake up till 06:20! Saturday was also the day that my old recorder teacher, Jane, was in town from her home in Peebles with her husband and son. I haven't seen her since her wedding day over 7 years ago so we arranged for them to come round for lunch. We also invited the four girls I used to play in music groups with - first I was in a trio with Lisa and Anna, then Anna and I joined Laura and Louise in a quartet. Lisa and Laura couldn't make it, but Louise and Anna came round with their girls - Anna has Tamsyn and Louise has Eden and Saffron. I haven't seen Anna for 10 years and Louise for 15, since I left for university, but neither of them has changed all that much, except that Louise has done what I've done and ditched the high-maintenance blonde highlights in favour of chocolate brown :).

We made a few attempts to have a group photo, but with 5 kids aged 6, 4, nearly 3, 9 months and 11 weeks, it wasn't all that easy :). This is the best we could do - there's another reasonably good one but Eden is mid-fidget and has come out very blurry ;).

Back: Jane, Timothy, Louise, Saffron
Front: Me, Daisy, Tamsyn, Eden, Anna

Later on my uncle, aunt and cousin arrived from Huddersfield, so there were 7 of us for dinner that night, and again for lunch the following day.

Sunday morning we went to church, thereby killing lots of birds with one stone as we saw quite a few people who wanted to see Daisy. On Sunday evening Mum & Dad babysat while Sarah, Jen and I went to the cinema to see a recording of the 25th Anniversary Concert of Les Miserables, which took place at the beginning of October at the O2 Arena. It was fantastic - Jen bought me the DVD for my birthday but it isn't released for another couple of weeks; can't wait to get it and watch it again!

On Monday my Godmother and Aunt came round for dinner (that's 6 for dinner that day, for those keeping count - Mum did a wonderful job feeding everyone!), on Tuesday morning Suzanne came round, Tuesday afternoon Jen and I went to visit Carlie and her boys (Noah is 2 and Ben is a couple of weeks younger than Daisy), and on Wednesday we went round to see my friend Sue and her son Theo, who's just turned 1. Jen went back home on Wednesday evening as she had to go back to work on Thursday, while Mum, Daisy and I went up to Durham to see Susie, who I worked with last year in Winchester and who is now at the university studying Music. So not exactly a quiet week, but we had a really lovely time and are looking forward to seeing Nanna, Grandpa and Auntie Jen again in a month.

I took this photo while we were there; makes me laugh every time I see it ;).