Elly in action

A video from one of her happier (and quieter) moments...

Elly and a squeaky friend

Almost 2 weeks old

And still so tiny...

Day 5 - relaxing

This is Elly in one of her more peaceful moments. I could easily waste an entire day looking at her, if we weren't so flat out looking after her.

Preparing to hit the town

Zzzzzz....

It is amazing how long it takes to get her organised for a day out. After the clothes selection, packing, nappy changing, feeding, cleaning up the sick, extra packing, another nappy change, the list goes on and on. While she gets exactly what she wants.

In the end we got as far as our local Mothercare store before the excitement all got too much for her. So Bridie wheeled her home, and I was left holding the shopping list.

Day 3 in the big world

This is Eleanor doing her standard "I surrender" pose.

She came out with fantastically sharp fingernails. So the mittens are there to protect her little face, keep her hands warm and prevent her from gouging a hole out of her loving parents who get too close.

This is probably one of few photos where Eleanor is not wriggling around... much

Day 1. Eleanor Rose Bauer arrives

I'm not going to go into the gory details of the birth. But let's just cover a few points:
- I was exhausted and I was just the support crew
- Baby's are cute - a friend recently remarked that that really is their survival tactic.
- nothing prepares you for meconium
- birth plans are just that - plans. Anything could happen and for us it mostly did. About half of ours was trashed as events unfolded.
- Your midwife is crucial. We got a very good one and are very very thankful for it.

Anyway... we'll tell you the details some time.

Fruit predictions

This tomato grew in our garden last week. The product of random events seems to have created a boy tomato. Specifically a boy tomato that is happy to see us.

Now we didn't know the sex of our new baby, and I sorta believed this was a sign of what was coming. That and Bridie kept dreaming about having a son. It seemed that the pointers to the future were pointers ... if you get my drift.

But it turns out that you can't trust fruit in these matters. I think the best place for this tomato is in a sandwich.

Thames Barrier

Ian and I headed into London to check out the Thames Barrier on the weekend. It's big, shiny and stops flooding.

Now I have been damming small rivers since I was a kid, with rocks, sticks and mud. I could spend hours trying to halt the flow, with only temporary success. Sometimes Bridie even thought I was a beaver.

But this takes it to new levels. They can block the entire Thames in case of a super high tide and prevent all of London flooding. And, with any luck, they will be more successful than I was.