Bubbles

Here's Naomi enjoying some bubbles. I quite like the little jump she does every time there's another burst of them :)

Also, a bit of an update on the food front. On Wednesday we tried some mashed up apple, and this seemed to go down pretty well. She seemed to wince every time more came but we're putting that down to eating being rather new - otherwise she seemed quite keen to take it...

Unfortunately, this wasn't so much the case yesterday or this morning. Yesterday that seems to have been partly because she was one tired baby, hopefully she'll manage to have some more today.

London

This weekend we also went to London to visit my sister Heather and her family. Cue some very nice cuddles and other stuff with her children Steven and Holly, who quite like having a baby to impress. In addition, Uncle Theo has been bolstering Naomi's football player knowledge, already begun by Uncle Ian...

Alas, Naomi didn't sleep very well on Saturday night, and both parents have flt suitably tired since. This even extended to my missing church on Sunday afternoon while I had a bit of a rest (though it did give me some proper time to concentrate on preparing for last night's Bible overview course).

Naomi has also been practicing her "being on tummy" skills, and this leads to some great picture opportunities. Here she is enjoying our sofa.

I like this one enough that it now features on my desk at work :)

Weaning

So, as we told you about here Naomi is going to be weaning early as part of a study looking at food allergies in babies.  As such, she had her first ever experience of "solid" food tonight.

So that Sandy could be here we did it after he came home from work, although I wonder if she was a bit tired for new things, although she didn't seem to hate the experience of being given mashed sweet potato too much at all

Daddy has the pot of sweet potato ready

 

 

 

Naomi wait in her bouncy chair with a new bib on

in we go with the first spoonfull

Naomi shows us that she is at least interested!

A look of pleasure about the experience

Mummy has a go

but when all you've ever eaten is milk. eventually it all becomes too much!

Remembering with fondness

Every morning (or sometimes middle of the night) when Naomi has her first feed of the day her tummy makes this very cool gurgling noise as the milk travels down her digestive system.  While that may (or may not) be worth a blog post in itself, it always reminds me of a very happy childhood memory.

Every year my Auntie Maimie (after whom Naomi is named by way of one her middle names) would go to a conference for missionary type people, she often spoke at the conference about her experiences in The Congo and afterwards my Dad and I would travel down to pick her up and take her back to Keig for a week or so.  I loved these times, there would often be picnics or trips to castles but one of my favourite times was first thing in the morning when I would get out of my bed and go to her room next door and snuggle up to her in bed.

Often my Dad would bring a cup of tea and some biscuits on a tray for my Auntie Maimie to enjoy before getting up, as I recall there was often a wee vase of flowers, the tea was always in a pot though!  Anyway, to get to the point, Auntie Maimie would start drinking the tea and almost without fail there would be a terrible gurgling noise from the depths of her digestive system, not unlike that that Naomi's tummy now makes with her first drink of milk of the day.

Every day on hearing that noise I am transported in my mind to a terrible happy and contented place and I remember a woman who I loved deeply and miss terribly.  It makes me sad to think that Auntie Maimie will have to wait till we are altogether in Heaven to meet Naomi and more to the point that Naomi will have to wait till we are altogether in Heaven to meet Auntie Maimie.  I know that there would have been many wonderful discussions about Jesus and all the reasons Naomi should love Him, and yet they will need to wait.

So, till the next time Naomi's tummy gurgles and I remember, again, those lovely cuddles as a child, I will work on helping Naomi grow up to be someone of whom Auntie Maimie would have been proud.

Scotland

Here's a nice picture from our last visit to Scotland - a bit of education for Naomi on her homeland! This is the front garden at Jay's parents' house, where she grew up.

"Napping"

Today Naomi thought she could persuade me she was napping by being quiet but hidden

here she is

she was not napping at all!

An Interesting Day

I think I/we have mentioned to a few of you that Naomi and I are to be part of a Study looking at food allergies in babies, how they develop and more importantly how to stop them from developing at all!

The main criteria for the study is that the babies are exclusively breastfed and once there you are randomly placed into one of two groups, the control group who wean at about 6 months as per the current recommendations and then the "early introduction" group who begin weaning at around 4 months and are introduced to potential allergens (peanut, sesame, fish, egg, wheat and cow's milk) over around a month and then keep eating these foods regularly till at least 3 years of age.

Well, today Naomi and I went to London to meet the team and find out which group we would be in, it turns out we are going to be in the early introduction group.  I am quite pleased about this, as Naomi has been showing an increasing interest in food and I didn't like the idea of having to keep her on only breast milk for another two months!  We won't be doing any solids for at least another 10 days, as they did a blood test today to make sure she doesn't have any allergies already, so we need to wait for the results of that test.  (We also had some skin prick tests done today, which all came back negative, no allergies in my little girl!)

Naomi was a complete trooper through the whole day, although I don't think she liked having her height measured and I can say with certainty she didn't like having the skin prick test done, or her blood test (although that all seems fair enough to me!).

I wasn't looking forward to the train home, as last time we went to London she cried incessantly for the whole journey.  This time though she was amazing, hardly any crying at all and lots of making friends with anyone she could lay her eyes on!  She even charmed the drinks trolley man into giving me a free bottle of diet coke when I said that I didn't have any cash and he didn't have a card machine!

Here is Naomi sitting in a chair on her own!

So, weaning will begin soon, we will let you know how we get on!

Spoon

Further to the food earlier allergy study post, we're quite glad that Naomi's going to be getting food soon, as she's clearly wanting it. Last night while Jay and I were eating dinner we were continuously peered at, her eyes following every forkful...

We got her a spoon so she could get used to such things before we start putting food on one. She certainly knows what to do with it...

Jay also spent a while last week sorting out baby clothes, already far too many of them are too small! While this was happening Naomi seemed to be having a great time just being on the floor. As far as we can tell there was nothing particularly funny to look at, this is just her having fun...

Oddness

Anyone familiar with Blogger will know that there were some "issues" over the weekend. Consequently, weird things happened to the blog and although most things seem to be back to normal it's quite possible some stuff was lost. So if you posted a comment and it's disappeared, it's not because we dislike you [at least that's not the only reason... :-P ].

Caption Competition

If you win your prize is being funnier than anyone else!

Pregnancy and Birth

So, as you may remember, I went to London for the day to have a photo shoot for the magazine "Pregnancy and Birth" - well, my article is in this month's edition and I have scanned it in for those who are unable to buy an copy, I hope you can read it alright, but the photo is the best bit anyway! ;-)  If you click on the pictures, you *should* get a bigger version of it, which would make it easier to read.

Enjoy

Laughter

Who wants to see a baby laughing? (and a dad making moronic noises...)

Jay claims she's never going out for the day again in case she misses anything else.

Election

So we're now back in England again. At some point we'll remember to post some pictures from our holiday - it was good to see everyone again and we hope you liked meeting Naomi (of course you did!). Today's something of a daddy-daughter day as Jay's doing some stuff with the women from our church. Of course, coinciding with this was another set of jabs for Naomi so she's a bit out of sorts today - here she is "napping"...

Otherwise the day is going well :) Something else that happening is that she's starting to take an interest in food, watching intently when Jay and I are eating. This also takes the form of putting everything into her mouth, including clothes, hands, mummy's hair, and toys...

Finally, on a non-baby related note - this was the first time I've been eligible to vote and not been in Scotland to do it. We did have local council elections here, but instead of the usual rainbow of parties to choose from in Aberdeen it was either tory or labour. A resounding win for the "meh" vote there (though I did choose one of them in the end). As to the results - obviously as a Scottish nationalist I'm very happy that the SNP have done so well. It's great to see places that have long voted Labour trying something new, and although I'm biased, given the performance over the last four years and positive campaign they did deserve to win. Over my time as a debater I met a number of the newly elected MSPs and on the whole they are good people that will do a great job. I am sorry to see a number of good people lose their seats from the other parties though, and it's a shame the greens and socialists didn't do better as having a wider range of views makes the parliament a better place. The AV referendum result disappoints me, but more because both sides made such a terrible case, and it's now set back PR for years. Of more relevance to most of you, as there's now likely to a be a referendum on Scottish independence I've got a target for moving back to Scotland so I can vote in it!