Twenty Weeks - A Post By Daddy

Daddy here this time. I foolishly suggested that seeing as I was primary care giver for the long weekend I should do the post... then I proceeded to fluff around putting it off but here it is.

Not sure if Liz has mentioned but started off with a pop in to Plunket for a weigh late last week and recorded a whopping 7.4kg (for our British viewers that's... well I'm not sure how many pounds*, you should be bloody metric anyway).

Speaking of Plunket, how staunch is Seb trying to look in front of his lady friend Charlotte in this photo. "Hey, I could lay on my tummy ALL day if I wanted... you should see me do chin-ups."



Saturday saw us on a wine tasting adventure and as you can see in the photo this is another thing that Seb takes very seriously "You CANNOT be serious! The hints of honeyed botrytis characters give that Reisling a fruit purity and balance that is UNSURPASSED!" It was a fun excursion. A winery down the road was having a major sell-off and Seb and I walked down. Luckily thanks to a fairly extended tasting session I barely noticed the fact that the stroller was about 20kg heavier for the walk home. Great-Cousin-Uncle-Once-Removed David would have been very impressed with the $10 Pinot. Speaking of David, I asked Liz to pass on my congrats via Paula for Fulham's recent tremendous Juventus result. Not sure that she did. I enjoyed it greatly but not nearly as much as I'm sure he did!



Sunday was dominated by the the Brightwater School fair. Its handiness (straight over the road) led to 3 trips over for me and Seb. Best buys were a silent auction grocery voucher for $60 which I got for $31 (how big a no brainer was that!). And a "popping back at packing up time" trip over which scored us a shopping bag full of books for 50c.

Well that is probably enough from me. Will finish up with a couple of videos. The first being Sebs first go with his Nuby nibbler. It was certainly a winner. While on the subject of food: we have decided after a couple of very fragrent and chunky nappies and the appearance of his first spotty bum episode to ease back a bit on the food variations for a while.



And finally never drop a baby... unless it makes him giggle in which case do it over and over again.



*(16.3 lbs says Liz)

Not a baby picture

In the spirit of this post... thanks right back atcha, Fufkin! I love this hat to bits and it is totally Nelson. I love having such a clever, clever, generous knitter in the fam!



Mwuh!

Oh bugger it, here's a baby picture anyway. Cuddles before camp:

George Best Mark II

Check out my little athlete in training... there might be hope for a co-ordinated Jinks descendant yet!!



Daddy would like to put his favourite George Best quote here: "I spent 90% of my money on women and drink. The rest I wasted." Go for it, Sebbo!

Nineteen Weeks Old: Road Trip!

What an exciting weekend Sebby had!

We set off on Friday afternoon, picking up Vikki from school and heading over the Whangamoas. Sebby should've been asleep, but it was too exciting in the backseat with the girls; he had a brief nap, but not enough, as became painfully evident when we stopped at Lydia and Mike's and he was perfectly grumpy and horrid to his Chief Admirer. At that point I was a bit nervous for the outcome of the weekend... but no, that was his low point.

(Also, the Second Great Canvastown Forest Fire came perilously close to their house; they lay out back on the trampoline all night, watching the hills around them burn. Scary stuff!)

Friday night we stayed with Mark and Mary and Vikki and James. Sebby stayed with his Mama and Papa out in the sleepout and was a very good little sleeping boy. Next day he went for a 'splore round his old neighbourhood (hey, it was his neighbourhood for several days after conception).



Then it was on to the Parkers' new place in Blenheim, a completely delightful wee home with darlingness galore: fantastically retro lino (I can't explain how cool it is) and huge built-in bookshelves and old railway lockers as cupboards, all that sort of coolness. He used Ali as a living high chair:



And had a bath in the handbasin, which he JUST fitted into:



And had cuddles with beautiful Alex, when he got up in the morning from another very good night's sleep. (Thanks for your bedroom, Thandi!)



Then it was on to Fred and Anne and Jules and Hugo's place. We had a nice leisurely walk to the Farmers' Market for fruit ice creams, and bought yummy breads and cheeses for lunch; then back to Fred and Anne's, where Shelagh and Keith also came round. Out on the deck in the sunshine, with a view over the ranges, a whole salmon cooked to perfection, and delicious barbecued tidbits, and a glorious selection of cheeses... ooh, food heaven!



Seb lay next to his sister under a tree, on a blankie, staring up at the sunlight coming through the leaves; occasionally he came up for cuddles with his hosts.





Best boy traveller ever, he absolutely takes after his sister and I know we're going to love going anywhere with these two wonderful, sociable, charming, adaptable children. Seb, just like Molly, you are our sunshine.

Hard Work and St Pat's Day Celebration

So yesterday was St Patrick's Day. (Happy Birthday, Julia!)

As a good 1/4 Oirish boy, Sebby mixed up the day with a bunch of hard work, and then letting loose. This is "hard work" Sebby-style: helping Mummy and Daddy with their job search.



And being forced to do hard labour tummy time.



And then we took him down to the Sprig & Fern for a celebratory pint of stout. This is his drunkface.



Ah, that's my little mick.

Bring on the steak!

An exciting day for Seb today; he got his first square meal!

Well, it was kind of blob-shaped really. But MAN, that was a hungry boy, as you'll be able to tell from his enraged bellowing. And this, mind, was 20 minutes after a feed.



We stopped at that point and I fed him yet again, which calmed him down enough to kind of enjoy the rest:



Isn't he the bestest?

He's also the bestest because he was good for his sister on Saturday night when... she babysat him for the first time. How cool is that? Daddy and I went on a date and left the kids all safe with one another. Awww. I thought I might feel nervous, but there's no-one in the world I would've trusted more. I knew that Seb would be completely safe with her.

A boy, some toys, and the best sister ever; eighteen weeks old

So, I've been attending TRAINING for the last three days, which has its pluses and minuses, shall we say. Really nice people; chance to get out of the house and think about different things for a change; some really interesting bits. On the other hand, a tutor whose verbal tics and repetition ("Okay, so, as we say... okay? Okay? Okay? Or, as we say...") reduce me to sitting in the back of the class doing ever more baroque doodles and eventually becoming desperate enough to write haiku to exorcise my frustration, viz.:

Okay? This lady
is driving me (as we say)
up the ****ing wall.

Unfortunately Molly found this one in my notebook and there weren't any nice polite stars in it either.

Luckily, at least I don't have to worry about Sebster, happy at home with his Daddy and his sister. He's such a good boy, and such an angel with alternative feeding arrangements.



He's also chewing madly on everything in sight. This is Thumper, who was a Gerald Present from Europe last year. He's now known as "NippleNose".



On Saturday, Daddy took "the kids" to the park. They played together very nicely.







Good swing for a littlie, eh? Although he did try to chew his way through the restraints and had to be side-tracked with yet another favourite chomping-aid, the lovely Doug.



Okay, it was so lovely to get home every day to my darlings. They're all so very very (as we say) beautiful.

Gigglebot

Started to teach Seb to drum this afternoon. He found it madly amusing -- so amusing that I just had to record that lovely little grunty chuckle of his!



SO cute, Sebbo.

Four Months Old

Darling Seb,

today you are four months old -- a third of a year already! In honour of which, I took plenty of photos yesterday so that I could document a day in your life, and you'd know just how you spent your time; because it changes so fast, and I know that in a few months' time it'll all be so different, and we'll have quite forgotten how it was.

So, to start off with: you slept all night, you good boy, and woke up at about sevenish. Daddy went and changed you and brought you up to me, and you had a huge breakfast. After which we had a play in our bed, and you squealed like a crazed marine mammal, leading to your current nickname, "Dolphin Boy".



After your morning nap your big sister finally arose from her teenaged bed, and after much groaning she managed a shower, before having a bit of a play with you. She adores you. The other day she said to me, "Before he was born I thought it would be a bit of a pain having him around, but I love him so much!"



Later, Daddy took Molls and some friends to the movies. You and I stayed home and you came up to the studio with me to help me out with some painting. You were very patient and good, until you lost it and were a grumpy weasel for a couple of hours, but that's not typical you, so it doesn't really matter.



When Molls returned, her friend Ashleigh came too, to stay the night. You liked Ashleigh very much, and didn't bother to hide your feelings, but gazed at her with rapt adoration. You're right, she's very pretty.



After another nap it was time for SUPERSEB the flying baby to come to the rescue of anyone who was in need of some slobbering or squealing like a dolphin. You slobbered me good. I felt much better for it.



And if you think SUPERSEB is brave you should see his daddy, who is afraid of NOTHING. They should give out the Purple Heart for this sort of behaviour:



You were nice to him though, and refrained from peeing all over him. You love him far too much for that. Look at you guys! You're so handsome. So you had a nice bath, and were tucked up in bed by seven thirty, and we didn't hear a peep from you till quarter to eight this morning. Best boy ever.



Of course, you'd spent loads of the day with me, but there were no pictures of that. Instead, Daddy photographed you and me together this morning. You were deeply unhelpful, and kept turning away from the camera; so I'd turn round so you were facing it again, and SCHWINGGGGG, you'd turn your head away again. I'd turn. SCHWINGGGG, you'd turn. I'd turn. SCHWINGGG... you get the picture. But we got you in the end.



Finally, no diary of your current life is accurate without a Drool Shot and this one's really a cracker.



Sebby, you're divine. We love you to bits!

XXXXXXX

What a difference a day(cade) makes

Liam made a great find in the weekend: our old camcorder, complete with several tapes. We promptly rigged them up to the TV and have been watching our first tiny baby, agape with wonder.

She was SO FREAKING CUTE. Her little squeaky voice! Her huge round eyes!

So excuse the quality of these -- they're just photographed off the telly -- but I had to share my erstwhile five-year-old. The plan is to get the tapes digitised if we can find somewhere reasonable to do it, and then I can put short sections up, but for now this will have to do.

After a long spa bath with Mummy in a motel in Thames:



At the gold battery, in Thames again:



And with her bestie Hannah, doing an endless play about little girls, witches, frogs and princesses, a play so long it had all four parents begging for mercy:



Super, super, supercute. Now I can't wait to have a five-year-old again!