Last updated, 15 October, 1996
Sorry for any typos - I'm writing this on a train between Preston and London and don't have a lot of elbow room!
This is still pretty much the case. You have been an absolute star at night. I would say that you normally get a feed at some time between ten and eleven at night and then you almost always sleep at least four hours, then have a feed in the early hours of the morning and then sleep for another four hours. A few times you have even slept all the way through - from about midnight to 8am once, I think. We have been hearing horror stories from other mothers about babies that wake up every two hours demanding food. You know that your dad enjoys his sleep and I don't know that I could cope if you did that. Still, I usually manage to sleep pretty well through your feeds anyway.
Although you sleep very well at night, you don't do it in your cot! I think I've already said on these pages that your cot is the one which your mum had when she was a baby. Your grandad sanded it down a bit where your mum's teethmarks were (honest - it seems that she used to stand up and chew it) and painted it a nice minty green. Despite all this, you resolutely refuse to sleep in it, far preferring to lie inbetween the two of us in bed. People keep asking whether there is not a danger of us rolling on you, but natural instincts seem to keep you safe - though we have woken up a few times to find you under the covers! Recently you have taken to wriggling about when you are about to wake up and often you manage to turn yourself through 90 degrees so that you are lying across the bed. Mum and dad end up trying to sleep in pretty contorted positions sometimes.
Your mum has given up on insisting that the cats don't sleep in the same room as us - she got soft and decided that they could come in. George usually sleeps at the bottom of the bed - though he does sometimes try to walk on you when he wakes up. One day we had put you to sleep on the bed and George came and slept next to you. See this picture if you don't believe it!
To be fair, over the past few weeks you have sometimes slept a bit in your cot, usually during the day, but once you slept in there for about four hours at night. You are pretty intrigued by your Magic Roundabout mobile which is on there. The only trouble is that it doesn't play for very long. A few times we have put you in your cot with that going and then gone to do stuff, but as soon as the music stops we hear you over the baby monitor start to cry and we have to come upstairs to start it off again. Still, at least the Magic Roundabout seems fairly wholesome. Have you heard some of these nursery rhymes? All about choppers coming to chop off your head, babies falling out of trees and poor speaking pancakes getting eaten and so on. They all seem very violent and as a vegetarian I can't afford to get into the possibility that pancakes have consciousness.
The pram has a basket underneath it and it is great for putting shopping in. On our first trip back from Asda (a short walk away - what is it about us and living near Asda?) we came back with it full of Guinness and bitter. We got a few funny looks, but hey, who cares.
You seemed to have an uncanny knack of knowing just when was the worst time to have a screaming session. We had a comfortable Friday night routine of sitting down to watch Cybill, Friends and then Frasier - but you were having nothing of it. Scream, scream, scream all the way through. To be fair, we think you were suffering from colic (seemingly a medical term for wind, though I think it's a bit more complicated than that), which supposedly is often worse in the evenings - I don't think the medical literature says it has to be even worse on Friday evenings, though. After some resistance from me - I wasn't keen on giving you any medicines - mum got you some Infacol medicine and that seemed to help you bring your wind up and make you more comfortable. It seems to have worn off now and you are much less screamy (though you still have your moments!).
You used to be terrible for screaming at your grandma (my mum). Every time she got hold of you, you would scream your head off. Once, when we walked round to her house you started screaming when we were about 50 yards away and didn't stop until we left! She has been quite ill ever since you were born and it has finally been diagnosed that she is intolerant to gluten. You have screamed at her a lot less since she has been getting better and I wonder if maybe you knew she wasn't well. She was also very nervous with you - she hasn't had much experience of babies for a few decades - and I think you are happier now that she is more confident.
We are managing to get some stuff done though. You'll often go to sleep when we put you in your baby carrier, so I can get work done sat at the computer with you cuddled to my chest. When Beryl bought us a baby carrier after I had already bought one, I thought that it was a shame, but it has turned out to be a godsend. Your mum and I use one each. Her's doesn't suit me and mine doesn't suit her, so one each is perfect.
The decorating isn't going quite as fast as your mum would like, but we have occasional spurts. We got our bedroom and the upstairs bathroom done before you were born and mum helped me to do the downstairs bathroom when you were in hospital. We've written inspirational messages and so on on the wall since then and dad helped me to put up a toilet roll holder (we were inspired by his speech at Fiona's wedding where he related how he had put up a toilet roll holder that morning while waiting for the bride to arrive). With the help of ladders from your other grandad, we managed to get the hall, stairs and landing decorated a few weeks ago. Your mum has stripped the wallpaper from the dining room so that will be next.
The house looks pretty different now to how it was when you came home, not least because we finally got the "Bushman" to come round and chop down the trees which the building society said might damage the building. We weren't too sad about losing the conifers and they revealed that we had a lot more space than we thought, but it was a shame that the big cherry tree had to go. Still, we have memories of the souffle, and the trunk is still in the shed so that your mum can make coasters and so on out of it!
And, of course, everything which has happened since (especially your move into reusable nappies, which we had to do so that I could in all conscience give a presentation about the environmental dangers of disposable nappies, which is why I am on a train now going to London).