Christmas already

A couple of months since your Birthday and it's Christmas already. There should have been a couple of posts here, but there haven't. So there.

Anyway. This Christmas should have been the first one that you could really appreciate, but it's been a little broken by your lurgy from Christmas Eve, through the night and into Christmas Day. This left you all tired and pointless for the day itself. Subsequently you've perked-up a bit (despite a messy relapse earlier today)

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Happy Birthday!

Well, on Sunday the 26th October Gabriel turned one. The year has just flown by and sadly I can't say that it's because we were in a drunken stupor, or just sleeping. No, life with Gabriel has been interesting. Hard work, demanding, and full of energy and there is no sign of it stopping anywhen soon!

Gabriel was very excited about his birthday, but not as much as Linus was. He has been desperate to give Gabriel the "baby till" he bought him some months ago and so it was a blessed relief for all of us to get the day finally under way.

Sadly we have no pictures of Gabriel opening said till because we lost the charger for the camera. Oh yes, and because he didn't really get to open many of his presents himself due to having a big brother who likes to "help"

Despite many tantrums and a few cases of toy theft, Gabriel did get to play with his new toys and he loves them all. It's amazing to see him sit down with the till and press the buttons and push the scales down and make it do all its noises, it's something that Linus never really did as a baby and the differences between the two of them still astound us.

We had a little party in the afternoon with all our favourite people. Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Adam, Aunty Melly and Chris, and un-Godfather Mark. A lovely time was had by all, especially when the cake came out!

Here are a few of our favourite snaps of the day:

All smart, waiting for his guests

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October update

Gabriel now mostly walks everywhere, he enjoys getting into places, opening doors and draws and then wandering around with things that he finds.

If asked nicely, he claps on demand. This has no obvious use.

As of a few weeks ago, his cot has been moved into his bedroom with Linus - who has been very good with the whole thing. We have to get up a few times in the night to settle him, but only having one feed.

Unfortunately he does like waking-up quite early, somewhere between six and half-past. This is just so that he can go downstairs and have a walk about.

Walking (and some climbing)

So, it turns out Gabriel can walk. A bit. He does quite a lot of trying to walk, and quite a lot of falling over after a few steps. So far his record is 10 steps, which was to try and get my fake ice cream. I mean, if you're going to walk you might as well have a good goal right??

It also turns out that Gabriel is rather better at climbing than he is at walking. And, as he's quite good at walking then you can just go ahead and use your imagination as to how brilliant he is at climbing!

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Standing

Gabriel has been so very busy over the past few weeks.

He had his naming day, where there were lots of people - we have pictures, but these are the only couple that we have managed to post.

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Crawling

Over the past week Gabriel had started to crawl properly - he gets his legs under him most of the time and is sometimes found some way from where he was last left.

In order to prevent Bad Things happening we have assembled the big baby cage by the window. He is starting to pull himself up, and we found him yesterday holding the bars in the traditional 'prisoner' position.

THIS is how you use it

I left Gabriel playing "nicely" on his playgym the other day while I was busy doing something/nothing with Linus. The playgym is supposed to be a nice padded mat, with soft bars that arc over it and have toys dangling off for him to grab at and play with.

Gabriel doesn't like to play with toys in the usual way though apparently. I looked over and found this:

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Rolling-over

On Saturday evening I suggested that Gabriel would be rolling-over soon. Seconds later he rolled-over..... Now, I know that being able to roll-over is a very important developmental milestone and deserves lots of praise and attention... but I predicted the future dammit!

Anyway - here is this week's picture :

Saturday Rusk

Gabriel is feeling a little better - he had been poorly for a few days, causing what seemed like hours of screaming/whinging from about four AM every morning.

I have been told that actually it was only a few minutes, perhaps every hour or so and that I just fell asleep in-between and it only felt like it was non-stop.

Gabriel, you are rubbish at keeping hold of things, but when you can hold on to your rusk, you quite like it.

... until you drop it again and start complaining.

Easter Chocolate

Click to enlarge.

Grinning and dribbling

This week Gabriel has mostly been his usual Jekyll and Hyde self. I think the following photo gives a glimpse into his character of late. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether he is mostly cute grinning baby, or slightly crazy, dribbling baby.

Although Gabriel is nowhere near as miserable as he was for his first few weeks of life he still has his moments. He is able to switch from smiling, cooing baby into a bright red screaming ball of fury in just a few seconds. We are still not entirely sure what prompts his crying fits, though it is often solved by booby milk, doing a big poo or having a sleep. All in all he is a typical man.

He also does this really funny thing where he wakes up and cries every hour during the night. I just can't get enough of it quite frankly. The best bit is how he has filled up on so much food during the night that in the morning when I have to be awake he can sleep for 3 hours. Hmm. Something isn't quite right here, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Unfortunately the lack of sleep turns me into a dribbling fool as well. Yesterday we (that is Linus, myself and Gabriel) decided we would go for a lovely walk to the Post Office and post our parcel, hoping that somewhere along the way Gabriel would fall asleep and give us some respite from the whingeing and crying. We walked all the way to the shop only to discover when we got there that I had in fact left the parcel at home. That's what sleeping in 45 min stretches does to you. They let me look after 2 babies too! Scary

Brief quiet

Gabriel is getting better at being good. Sometimes he can go ages without feeling the need to scream/cry/whinge.

There is a great danger that he will soon be able to roll-over onto his front - just as soon as his arm will get out of the way.

Here he is - laying on his playmat thing, not yet interested in the toys hanging above him.

Click to enlarge.

Smiling and Sucking

Today Gabriel is THREE months old. In the past month he has started to smile properly - he likes having his cheeks and chin tickled, but when nobody is around to do that he is satisfied with sucking his own hand/fist/fingers.

Please don't turn into a freaky finger sucking baby.

He has also started being a little more happy generally - although he is still prone to fairly frequent (but shorter) bouts of screaming for no apparent reason.