A Morning Like This

There's something wrong with the picture above: It's not morning yet. It's about midnight, and the two kids flanking me (me being represented by the mid-sized gap between them) are gearing up for a party. I'm not too happy about it. Understatment.
But then morning comes. Before I even open my eyes, Tara has heard her daddy somewhere else in the house and has climbed out of bed to get some post-party nutrition in. And by the time I do open my eyes, the little man is still by my side, all warm, cuddly, contented and smiling. And fascinated by the camera.


We chat and we cuddle and we take our time with this morning. Every second of it is perfect. Just Leo and mummy, mummy and Leo. I'm endlessly in love with my little boy. If I had to hand-pick just a few moments to live over and over, groundhog day style, this is one of them. My mummy and Leo moment.

And then Tara skips back up the stairs and hops back into bed with us for extended cuddles. There's so much love to go around.


On a morning like this, how happy can a mama be? Or, for that matter, a big sister of a divine little fellow?


This is your morning Leo and you are making us ever so happy. Boy, how much we love you!

Eggstra Special Weekend: Festivities (III of III)

Eggs dangling from trees

Last year the chickenpox got in our way of the perfect (to my mind) easter egg hunt. This year I blame the baby for Mummy Bunny's lack of organisation. Or maybe the English - where oh where are any green nests, green grass or indeed any Easter sweets that are not chocolate to be had? Maybe I should blame the miserable little garden too that leaves little room for hiding?
Oh well - I'm making mental notes for improvement for years to come: Buy a nice house with a lovely garden, order green essentials from Germany, and give Leo the chickenpox significantly before or after Easter 2011. At any rate, it does not matter much, Tara has (two weeks later) fond memories. Of having her friend Sophie and sister Amy over and finding Choc eggs and jelly beans (sorry, Tante Claudia, only half a tub left for you now) in the garden the day before
Easter. And on Easter, of finding more! Here, there and everywhere - mostly just lying about on the grass. Mum and dad helped her find them (yes, despite them just lying on the grass, somehow white and brown chocolate just isn't enough of a contrast). ... And thus we learn that, different from what we thought, Tara doesn't even like white chocolate, and that Alex, different from what I though, will actually eat any chocolate when pressed, even white.

Tara bags it - Mummy eats it

In due course (i.e. much later) we are all dressed and ready to go on a little excursion: The park it is! The boys look after each other and Kuschelbaby, and I get to follow Tara around, up the climbing frame, down the slide, and hiding under them, buying and selling imaginary ice cream, Tara's true passion (and chocolate only if all other varieties are sold out). Wheeee!


It's a special park too - the Eatsre bunny has been and left a few things, and Tara gets to find them.
Mummy: "Whooaaa, you are such a lucky girl! So many children in the park and only you see the treats!"
Tara, telling the neighbour later: "I'm such a lucky girl! The other children didn't see the eggs! Only I did find them!"
Naaa, despite the lack of basket, fake grass and sweets she actually cares to eat, our Tara likes her Easter 2010.

And tomorrow we are starting our Easter holidays. Nine full working days of just me and the kids, a first (and second, third... and ninth) for all three of us. Bit anxious, I am. It'll take a bit more than just a few pieces of chocolate to make that work!

Eggstra Special Weekend: Family (II of III)

Pizza, pizza, and more pizza... I can't let anyone go on believing that that's all we eat in this house (much as Tara would like it!). VISITORS! But of course. Visitors arrive from Spain, and we stop cooking and go out, out again, and out some more, and in between we have pizza and ice cream, and other than kind volunteers washing the dishes, nobody works around the kitchen for three days.

Tara introducing her Special Visitors to her Spacial Programme

(Oh yes, and of course we go for coffee, plenty. See left.)

They arrive late at night, and Leo is a bit scared at first when, recently awoken, he is thrust straight into his fabled Titi Isa's embrace, but it's nothing that a second go the next morning can't fix. Once the sun is back out, Leo's smiles roll readily - just Tara, who's been talking about this visit for weeks, goes inexplicably shy and speechless for a bit. But she, too, recovers soon enough over an educational session of Gavin and Stacey, and at the next given opportunity is

chatty enough again to insult the friendly neighbour over it. "You can't come to my house. I already have special visitors," she tells Leah, otherwise her bestfriend and someone she demands to see on a daily basis.

What else is there to say? This pair puts smiles on the kids' faces, so much so that Tara is unwilling to let them go. At all, ever again. When they sit behin on the sofa, behind the table, Tara finds an assortment of bulky toys to lock them in with, and as if that was not enough, next produces blu-tack to 'glue' said objects together, and to the table, building an insurmountable wall.

But only until there is a call for food from the kitchen. Probably pizza.

Tara's Special Visitors locked in.

Off to the kitchen. Food beckons. Pizza, I bet.

Titi Isa and Tito Juande with Leo...

...with a tasty ice cream (and Tara)...

...and with Jose, two hats of Jose's and too much sunshine for Tara's liking!

Wheeee!

Eggstra Special Weekend: Food (I of III)

There is no ignoring it: This baby wants food. Mummy's food, Daddy's food, Tara's food. At dinner, he will sit on whichever lap he is assigned and thrust his hand into whatever presents itself on a plate. Lentils, salad, pasta and sauce, chocolate cake - you name it, he's had his hands in and on it in the last month. Even when we take a 'dinner for all' approach and hang him on a boob he will suckle away with his free hand blindly patting the table behind him.
We'd already moved the intended introduction of solids forward to a vague "ok - before he's 6 months then" but really, the baby got to the food before we got it to him, in a kind of self-propelled autonomous bread-grabbing incident. Bread: The ideal first finger food, kind to aching gums, fine to hold for little hands, and of unoffensive enough a flavour. Bread: The kind of food to have lenient parents say, "Ok - he's not 6, nor 5 months yet, be he so wants to eat, let's let him have a go!"
Except, the bread happened to be pizza.

The first taste of real food: PIZZA

One day later, and as fate would have it, having dinner at Pizza Express. Here we are again with a tired baby that's had all the boob he would take, has aching gums and is eyeing up and groping for the food. We let him have a crust, he happily licks off all the sauce, tickels the dough with his little tongue into mushy softness, has little bits of it and cries bitterly when we take it away from him.

The second taste of real food: Ahem. PIZZA again.

The next day he has a desperately sore bum, and we can't wean him on pizza alone, so Tara volunteers and lovingly mashes him his first bit of banana, and helps feed it him with a pink hand-me-down baby spoon until I remember that first foods are introduced by finger. (They say with baby number two you don't read any books any more? Goodness how true that is!) Leo licks and licks and chews and swallows happily and eventually takes the spoon himself to lick some more. Hello food, here comes Leo!

Third time lucky: Soma banana at last

Some baby rice or porridge tomorrow. The little man wants it, and where I'm concerned, he can have it. Baby-led weaning, here we come. Actually, here we are. And he's five months tomorrow.