Sunny Saturday

Today we took a walk in the sun along the river to have lunch in the Ebor in Bishopthorpe. Nathaniel greatly enjoyed the scenery:

Actually, he was awake for most of it and enjoyed watching the wind in the trees and all the birds hopping around. After a sumputous lunch of steak (Ian and Nathaniel), scampi (me and Nathaniel), beer (me and ian) and chips (all of us), Nathaniel played on the swing for the first time.
He was so excited! He particularly liked it when the swing went really high - he giggled everytime he was pushed. It must have been pretty exhausting - he slept all the way home.

Camping

This weekend we took Nathaniel camping for the first time. We kept it simple and went up to the edge of the Moors for a night. On the advice of experienced campers we took the travel cot with us - it just about fitted in the tent, but our days of backpacking are definitely over!


We had fun exploring the campsite and setting up camp in the afternoon and then had a barbeque.


Bedtime wasn't too stressful - it took Nathaniel an hour to go to sleep, but he wasn't crying, just interested in everything around him. Then he slept though until 5 in the morning. A bit early, but not too bad considering how bright the sun was!


The next day we took the new carrier on a walk and found that it was a hundred times more comfortable than the sling, and Nathaniel was really happy in it. I predict lots of walks this summer!

Birthday

Thank you everyone for my birthday presents! I will be spending the next week clothes shopping (and trying to decide whether to spend my M&S vouchers on myself or on dungarees for Nathaniel!), and hours in Waterstones. And if I have time left after all that retail therapy, I can start on the pile of books that I was given!

Books, books, books!

Food glorious food

Nathaniel's life revolves around food, so this week's photos (Nimmy says that she needs even more!) are all food related.

Enjoyment of baby corn:


Nathaniel's first yoghurt:


Nathaniel's first weetabix:


A new game - throw food over the side of your highchair and then look at them on the floor very carefully:

Post dementia pregnans

They say that pregnancy and child rearing sends your brain to mush. So far I am not doing badly at proving that that's rubbish. While I was pregnant I was pretty much compus mentis (if you look over the time that I went to Birmingham for a meeting in London!), and I am still much better than multi-tasking than most people I know. Learning spanish whilst simultaneously breastfeeding, planning dinner and considering the best way to teach novice sailors how to gybe is quite a feat!

However, there is no getting round the fact that I managed to get myself locked in the house this morning! Leaving my keys in the buggy, which was in the car, and not mentioning this to Ian before he locked the door on his way out, was not a very well considered plan!

But it did afford the street the opportunity to be amused by my next door neighbour limping along the road in her pyjamas (she forgot to put on her slippers), and ratching through the boot of our car whilst I called helpful instructions through the letter box!

I think I may owe her a favour now!!!

Perks of the job III

Today Esther, Maisie, Nathaniel and I took advantage of the lovely weather and the fact that the babies were generally napping at the same time and went for a walk in the grounds of Castle Howard. It was a wonderfully blustery day and we enjoyed the sun and the clouds skating across the fields. Nathaniel and Maisie enjoyed the animals - shetland ponies, birds, calfs (calves?), cows...

We enjoyed the cows slightly less as they tried to chase us across the field. Anyone know what you are supposed to do when charged at by a giant cow? Pointing the baby strapped to your front at it seems a bit irresponsible!

Pictures to follow.....

Hmmmm

I think we may need to lower the cot mattress.....

This Weekend

There have been several activities in this weekend. The first was the sailing club training course which, Nathaniel helped out at by making helpful excited noises and kicking his legs. Saturday brought a little more wind than was really ideal, so the novices were restricted to practising in a boat on dry land interspersed with crewing up and down a rather choppy river.



Fortunately, we didn't have any serial jib-cleaters or static ballast amongst them and they all took to it very well, which reduced the risk of any ad hoc capsize drills! There was one slightly "interesting" moment though, where a nice gust popped us onto a plane and went tearing off downwind... don't think that's in the RYA Level 1 syllabus.

Nathaniel also enjoyed the cows in the field next to the club. They came over to say hello and received much arm and leg waving in their general direction.



Then there was a continuation of the learning topic known as "taking stuff out of boxes"....



Followed by a spot of gardening in a spare moment...



Then back to another current learning topic: "sort of trying to crawl but in a freestyle way" i.e. not really with any coordination between front and back. This generally results in movement, though the direction of travel is a little chaotic.



The result is nevertheless a very jolly Nathaniel:

The story of our meal

Today we had morrocan lamb burgers, salsa and couscous for supper. Nathaniel had his own burgers, shaped into easy to hold sticks, and grilled peppers and tomato rather than the rather chilli-y salsa:

He always watches very carefully while you lay out and name all the available food:

Then he starts to eat...

and eat.

He enjoys it all which makes him very smiley

He particularly enjoys tomato:

He hasn't learnt to finish his mouthful before giggling

All finished!

Being a family

There are some unexpected pitfalls of having a Nathaniel. One is that you suddenly have lots of family-stuff. Like the tremendously uncool "dad" car. Also, you can't camp with a compact and trendy tent that you have to crawl into because its hard to crawl with a baby on your front.

So as from today we have an uncool family tent!


Its pretty good - there is space to "live" in the main area where you can stand up and play if it is raining, and the sleeping section can be divided into too and is not so high, so there is less air that you have to warm up. It has many mod-cons like a built in ground sheet with funky lift up edges to stop the rain getting in and a terribly useful (!) zip up access point for your electric hook up!!

More picnics

Bank holiday weekends call for picnics, so we went to the park with a rug, some food and an ice cream van. Mikey and Vicky tried to teach Nathaniel how to crawl, but managed to evade Ian's efforts to take photos of their demonstrations!

A more traditional pose

Then we lay around while Nathaniel did important and complicated things with stacking cups.

Gleba

Nathaniel is making loads of noise now and experimenting with lots of different sounds. Today his favourite is a ffff sound which sometimes comes with a good slobbery raspberry. He is also enjoying a "b" noise and occasionally a "d". However, he's not keen on showing off and only exhibits his full range of consonants to me and Ian!

Nimmy has demanded more photos, so here are a couple of nice ones from this week.

Sun again

This weekend was sunny - perfect weather for the sailing club open day and a visit from Sue and Drew. We spent a happy Saturday morning in the garden playing:




The open day went well - sun and wind - a perfect combination for persuading people that sailing on the river is worth the effort. It was pretty busy in the morning, and so we were stuck on the shore talking to people and didn't get much sailing in. We might have over prepared on the gear side of things:

Eating out

I'm not a great fan of chain bars, but sometimes they are very useful. Particularly when you are looking for somewhere for some lunch and are sure that your 7 month old is going to want to share and is therefore going to make a mess!

So the three of us had lunch today at the Slug and Lettuce who insist that they are child/baby friendly. They proved themselves to be just that. We all ate Mexican burgers - burger, bun, cheese, guacamole, chili, chips and gerkins (not ian). Nathaniel enjoyed chips the most, but tried everything, and even ate the gerkin! I wish I had taken a photo.....!

Evidence

Not only does Nathaniel have one tooth appearing, the second one is now cutting through the gum! He's not enjoying it terribly, but it is enabling him to tackle whole apples which were rather beyond him before. He doesn't really get anywhere, but I think he finds it satisfying to slowly gnaw at them.

You can just see the teeth if you look hard

Hole of Horcum

Its spring, so its time to go on walks on the Moors. We haven't really done much walking with Nathaniel, so we decided to do something short that we've done before so that he was the only unknown variable! So we poddled out to Levisham and walked to and around the Hole of Horcum. Its a good walk because its got lots of good bits; a bit skirting the edge of a valley in a pretty wood, a bit in a bouncy grassy valley, a bit where the amazing view keeps appearing as you turn the corner and a bit of high moor with lots of heather. Ian decided to be a cave man and see whether he collapsed with exhaustion if he carried Nathaniel all the way round, which was great, coz I got to skip up the hills carrying nothing but some water and our food!

Nathaniel was full of cold, but he seemed to really enjoy himself. Most of the time he was being really interested and looking around and smiling. Except here:


It was really sunny and warm and generally summer like which was just as well. NB If you don't find new parents' obsession with bodily functions palatable, skip to the next paragraph now! We thought we had packed lots of nappies, but when we stopped for lunch we found we only had one with us. This would have been fine except about 2 mins after we put it on, the inevitable happened! The idea of keeping him in it for the rest of the walk was pretty gross, but fortunately we had our lateral thinking brains on! We took out the old wet nappy and removed the wet inner sections (yuck), then we hung up the fast drying outer nappy in the sun and when it was dry, filled it up with muslin squares! It worked brilliantly! Apart from the fact that they are a bit bulky, I can't work out why we've spent so much on fancy nappy inners!

Anyway, here are some photos of us being all smiley and enjoying being out in the fresh air.

Fun in the woods

The Hole is just around the corner

A spot of elevenses

Raaaaahhhhhh!

Lunch in the Hole. This doesn't do it justice!


To round the day off, we ate dinner in the garden in the sun. Here is Nathaniel enjoying the perfect post-walk food: sausages, potato wedges, brocolli and peas.