So I guess we are his real parents

He has his daddy's ears, down to the finest detail. And one tiny circular indentation on the top of each ear, just like me.

Why I love my son's nursery

Apart from all the practical stuff like it being in the grounds of where I work, reasonable fees, great staff etc etc etc...

I dropped him off one day last week and opened the door to the 'baby room' (3-18 months) to find all the older babies sitting in little chairs in little rows with a big alphabet chart in front of them, and the staff singing the alphabet song. The kids all had shakers or bells or noisemakers of one kind or another and were having a ball.

I wish I'd had my camera. Even though I would have to get the permission of about a zillion parents to post it here, you need to see how adorable a tiny little class of tiny little students is!

Because not much has happened since I last posted

except:

• I went back to work 3 days a week at the end of October (will be 4 days from April)
• I have had chronic ideopathic urticaria since a couple of weeks before that (i.e. hives for which no obvious reason can be found) and they persist! This is my fourth bout since I was 16 and every other time they've just gone away after about a year, so, fingers crossed.
• Speaking of which, Matteo just worked out he can cross his fingers. No photos of that, but plenty of others. Weirdly, I took no photos in November, only videos.
  

October 2009

December 2009

January 2010

(good look, that dribbly chin)

February 2010

(he had his ankles crossed in utero, too)

March 2010

Life is good.

And my husband thought I took too many photos of my nephew...

Maybe he's a little bit more than 50% Italian?

(he's certainly some percentage of psycho ham when it comes to having his photo taken)

Suddenly...

... it all became terrifyingly clear:
his social life was completely dictated by his mother.

The darkness

You know how babies generally like to pull hair?

Well, the baby who lives in our house likes to pull my hair right out by the roots and then examine the strands caught around his tiny fingers. Pleasant.

I'm not proud of this, but the other day I was so desperate to get a few more minutes rest after a mutual nap while he played on the bed (read, pulled on my hair) that I yanked some strands out myself, rolled them into a more or less cohesive clump and gave them to him to play with. Some days I gross even myself out.

I'm thinking of getting him some kind of doll or doll head with long hair, to save my own.

Really?

I can have my own blog when I grow up?

Boy

Time to confess that not only did I want my baby to be a boy due to my adoration of my amazing nephew Harry*, but also because of Fussy and Finslippy. Before I even wanted to have a baby, I'd read about Jackson and Henry and be floored by the cute and the funny and the impossibly articulate.

That's kind of shallow, right? Oh well, he'd be just as awesome as a girl.

Only pinker.

(* I now have another amazing nephew (and godson), Matthew, but I don't know him that well yet.)

The strawberry - a cautionary tale

o.m.g.

I just found the notes I kept soon after Matteo's birth of when he fed, for how long, from which side etc (that only lasted a few weeks). How in anyone's name did I manage to wield a pen, let alone make coherent notes when I was obviously in the deepest depths of sleep deprivation hell?

Not planning on choosing that scenario ever again.

Tough life

Before the fall

'What, I have to stay like this now?'

He has the pissed off, poor me look down pat

'Where the hell are my cot and my blue bunny? Can't you see I need to sleep, woman?!'

Could this be summer on its way?

(Fingers crossed)

He must know he's part-Australian

Matteo doesn't usually hold on to me when I carry him around (after all, it's mummy's job not to drop him!), but today he fell asleep in the stroller on the way home from Waitrose, at about the time when he'd normally have his longest nap of the day. Usually I just leave him in the stroller til he wakes up. However, since he's been napping in his cot rather than his bouncy chair or on his playmat (and he seems to be over the toys dangling from the arches now too), he sleeps so much better and longer. So I unstrapped and carried him, half-asleep, upstairs to his cot.

He clung to me like a little koala.

Placeholder

I guess I'm not blogging much anymore, huh.

I do have a pretty crazy 'mummy' social life now though. Coffee dates, lunch dates, Rhymetime at the library, Magic Music Box, just hanging out with the little guy... Five more months of this until I go back to work three days a week. I could get used to it.

Hmm. I'm liking this tie-dying a bit too much.

Here comes the soppiness

But truly, I have never felt more privileged than I have today when Matteo, grumping and overtired, fell deeply asleep in my arms. To soothe him into that state, and be a safe place for him, even though I know babies can pretty much sleep anywhere, felt like such an honour.

And then, because I'm pretty tired myself from a cold, I took him, still sleeping, up to our bedroom and lay dozing with him for an hour. He woke up for one final bottle before bed and is now all tucked up in his sleeping bag with his bedtime bear. Asleep again and, if experience is anything to go by, we won't hear from him until around 6am tomorrow.

There is a lot to like about this mother stuff.

Didn't you know?

All the cool babies are sleeping with bunnies on their faces these days.