Roryworld

(On special request from Great-Granny, this pic is a bit bigger and hopefully a bit easier to see!)

Tentatively, we can report positive movement on Rory's sleeping. Don't want to jinx it... but he's been pretty well sleeping through the night this week. By which we mean: bedtime at between 7.30 and 8.30; being woken up for another feed before we go to bed; and then, apart from occasionally half waking up and having to be shushed back to sleep, that's him asleep till a feed at about 5 and getting up between 6.30 and 7.30.

This is all very exciting, though, perversely, the extra sleep has left us very tired - probably our bodies trying to catch up on a bit of a backlog...

He's also taking a fairly predictable 3 naps a day - also a new development! Hooray!

But let's not get too excited. If past experience is anything to go by, it's going to be a case of two steps forward, one step back - a good week of sleeping is normally followed by one or two dodgy ones. Still, though - it's all moving in the right sort of direction.

On Thursday the boy also got the hang of rolling onto his tummy, and he's clearly pretty pleased with himself. Once he's there, he's stuck, right enough - uh oh! - so a minute or two of cheerful peering around is normally quickly replaced by a slightly panicked expression. It's easily fixed by rolling him back onto his back, though.

Spent Saturday daytime with one set of grandparents, his uncle Matthew and auntie Susan, and his new cousin-to-be who is currently a really enormous bump. Due date tomorrow (Monday 31st)! Everyone's on red alert. Especially Susan, it probably goes without saying. Rory had a good old stomp on the top of the bump - as the baby's head is now engaged, he was essentially booting the baby up the rear end. Won't be the last time, we predict.

Final bit of weekend update - Rory can sit unsupported for maybe two or three seconds before he topples over. He looks roundly furious every time this happens - how unjust everything is! Anyway it's given us the opportunity to trial his new, very groovy, high chair - loving that Scandanavian design. He can sit up the table with us like quite the big boy... for two seconds at least until... floppo...

Rory got his new baby gym today. Talk about putting the mental back into developmental..



It's a major bit of real estate, innit? Luxuriously appointed with spinning, shiny distracting things. And inflatable to boot. Kids these days.. don't know they're born.. All we had to play with was a lump of coal and a tuppeny veruca lance...

...just these photos. Rory made big splashes with his hands today at bath time - on purpose. It was kinda fun.




























Thanks to Susan for the towel with ears!

The boy is making himself heard. Here's some of Rory's four and a half month old language...

(Bottom lip petted, brow furrowed) "Mwoo" = I'm sad.
"Bwwoo" = this is worse.
"Mwoo bwoo" = call social services, these idiots clearly can't be my real parents.

"Mum" = probably just the product of Alison's fond imagination (but I'm telling you, he said it!).

(Eyes and mouth wide open) "Ah! Ah! Ah!" = FLYING IN THE AIR IS THE BEST THING THAT'S EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

(Softly) "Urgh... Urgh..." = due warning, I'm about to get pissed off being left here in my cot.
(Loudly) "A-A-URGH!" = I told you so.

Any or all of licking lips/ wide eyes staring at Alison's chest/ pawing at her t-shirt = not so subtle hints of hunger.

(Satisfied) "Hum." = I have captured my little lion and it's not getting away this time. I'm gonna eat your head.

(Beaming) "Heuww..." = good morning, world!

Cough, cough, splutter = I am so going to vom all down you in a minute... just let me get into position here at the neck of your t-shirt... bomb doors open... that's the hit of the whole vom...

Looking up and not making eye contact, apparently doing really hard sums or something = something really bad landing in the nappy in about two minutes.

Rory rolled over onto his front today a couple of times while lying on the sofa - much to his surprise and mine. The sofa's a bit squishy and bouncy, though, which definitely helped - next step will be for him to do it on a flat surface. He tried until red in the face while in his baby gym but no banana.

(PS - Stephen wishes to say that the title of this posting is designed as a direct pronunciation challenge to Tanith Muller... tee hee)

Hot house.. Hot baby..

Cos of how Rory has our genes he is not evolved for hot weather. So the last few days he's been a bit troubled by all this heat. What is cool (no pun intended..) is how breast-feeding has allowed him to get through it. He's adapted by taking lots of short feeds - just the fore milk - through the day. Then when it cools off at night he puts the hammer down and fats up on the good stuff.

Which is apparently what babies do in India...

Which is in Asia...

Where it is hot

Do you see?

Also today Alison ordered a Tripp Trapp.. Which is not an Austrian pastry - but a posh high-chair. It is coming from Lewis' (Never knowingly undersold - cos of how they never go out I assume cos everything there is like it's priced in feckin Lira..) This was bought with vouchers given to her by her workmates when she left. So ta v much...

Here is the website for said posh chairs. Being Scandewegian it is a little severe and worthy... But there are pictures of babies on it..

http://www.stokke.com/

These are a few of the photos that Anna Dickie, the photographer, took of Rory and us the other day. The photos are awfully slow to upload so we can't post too many at once (so none of the nice black and white ones are here, for example), but we might put others of them on the blog from time to time over the next wee while. Or get in touch and we can always burn you a disc with them all on it (including the slideshow which is cracking!).

Anna did these ones in return for a donation to charity - but would of course also be happy to hear from anyone who wanted photos done in return for, you know, a more conventional financial arrangement... ! She can be contacted on madick@supanet.com.

Rory's been all about faces the last couple of days. He can quite deliberately swipe my specs off my face (super!), twines his hand round and round in my hair, and has just figured out that we both have noses... which he either tries to screw off our faces, or just puts his fingers up our nostrils. It's actually very funny, if a bit painful...

Rory's baby-gym has four cute (if odd) animals dangling above his head - a blue elephant, a green lion, a purple hippo with a mirror for a tummy (that is really weird) and a relatively normal-looking yellow giraffe (cf. previous comment about prevalance of giraffe-related toys for babies).

They're attached with velcro and, though he's previously managed to pull down the elephant and giraffe, today, for the first time, he managed to pull down all four at once. And he then did the same thing three times in a row!

Here he is a couple of months ago, at about a month old - playing with his uncle Matthew in said baby gym. (Aw - I used to love that cow-print baby-gro Rory's wearing - but it was teeny tiny newborn size.)

He has grown just a bit since then..

Rory, that is - not Uncle Matthew..

NOW as you can see - he has defeated all the animals.. Mwawawahahahahaha...

First nice weekend thing: Alison's Granny - Rory's Great-Granny - sent him some nice new shorts and a t-shirt yesterday, which came as a nice surprise. We liked the cute little car on the t-shirt... it's almost as cute as GG's wee blue car, which now lives outside our house and takes us on weekend trips!



Second: Anna (Dickie) came to take some photos of Rory. She'd donated a photoshoot to Anna (Donald) and co's fundraising auction for Macmillan... we didn't manage to place the winning bid, actually, but in return for a donation she very kindly did it anyway! Fab! Saw the first one today and it's B&W, slightly grainy and really nice. Rory's snoozing sweetly. Looking forward to seeing the rest.

And finally: A viewing of Katherine's Bump... 28 weeks and counting... awww! Much baby-related blethers, and then scones. What could be nicer...

In Rory news, today he picked up in both hands the rattle that Ali's cousin Catherine gave him - good co-ordination that boy.

We were in the Botanics today, and Rory nearly got to see the Queen. We left just before she got there. Anyway, on hearing the news of the royal visit, Rory cried uncontrollably until we left. Clearly a pocket-sized republican... here's one good reason to be...





Also we visited Rosslyn Chapel, which is a lot smaller and more full of Eurokids on language holidays, lounging around in a miasma of teeny hormones and illicit cigarette smoke, than I'd remembered. And it now costs £7 to get in! Pshaw. Rory slept soundly through the entire (non) event. Again, fair comment by the boy.

Tomorrow we see if he'll do the triple when we take him fox-hunting with the young Tories.. here's hoping he pukes (sorry, "possets") in their punch-bowl...

Went to baby clinic today and at age 16 weeks he is 6.6kg (14.09lb). This means he's still hovering around the 50th percentile - which makes him nice and average (or possibly mean, or median, or one of those. I forget which. Don't write in).

His length was 60-something cm but they didn't write it down and, oops, I can't remember. He seems pretty long to me so I bet he's at least average for that, too.

Otherwise, he's now venturing the occasional real chuckle - very cute - and is grabbing things and holding on to them for longer than before. For example, he's been cuddling with an air of some determination his little blanky with a giraffe on it. Also, he's giving his feet hard looks and occasionally a wee hand is heading towards a foot - only a matter of time till it's foot-grabbing time.

But this hot weather is winding him up something rotten... possibly cos it was snowing heavily when he was born, and so he's not used to it. Also his colouring is, shall we say, quite typically Scottish. (Pinky skin, "strawberry blond" hair).

The latest in a short line of useless observations about parenthood. (Following hard on the heels of the sock thing..) Most everything has a pigging giraffe or a penguin on it. Now when I were a lad it were bunnies and bears and maybe - in extremis - a dogggie. Now the Boy will be expecting to go to the park and see critters of the savannah and ice-cap. Well he can make do with lame pigeons and fat ducks.. in my day it were all fields.. don't policemen look young.. nurse, where's my pills....

Now, this is a joint blog so references to "me" should be taken to potentially mean Ali, Stephen or even both of us... but in this case, for avoidance of doubt, it's Ali writing. The references to my pregnancy are likely to have given it away here, I guess.

Rory is three and a half months old at the moment and this seemed as good a point as any to sketch in the story of his wee life so far...

He was born on Tuesday, 14 March 2006 at 3.01am - some 13 days overdue (we were expecting him on the 1st of March!). He weighed 7lb 11oz (3.49kg in new money) and was 53cm long. Longer than your workaday ruler at school, then, but probably not the size of the big ruler you might have used in Technical Drawing class.

He was born by emergency C-section, due to possible foetal distress (he turned out to have been absolutely fine). This, and having to be induced, was the only hassle of an otherwise pretty nice pregnancy.

Actually, the anniversary of us finding out I was pregnant has just passed and it's amazing to think that it was over a year ago - the thrill of it is really fresh in my mind. I had just come back from a trip to Aberdeen with work - it was our first consultative event on the National Transport Strategy, since you ask (!), and very useful it was too, so there - and on the train on the way back I was tired beyond and in a different way to anything I could remember feeling. Highly suspicious. The next morning we did the test and it was positive. That was a happy day.

After he was born, Rory wasn't called Rory until he was a couple of days old. We weren't sure what his name was, at first. He had been going to be Innes, perhaps, but didn't seem to suit the name when he was born. He was a very self-possessed little bundle with big blue eyes and a steady gaze. And an understandable focus on drinking as much milk as much as he could possibly stuff in his mouth. This is still very much a big part of his life.

Quite a few of our friends are having babies at the moment, which is lovely. But he's particularly blessed I think because he also has a beautiful, dark-haired baby cousin in Isla - born this year on my birthday, 2 April, and the best birthday present a doting auntie ever had - and will have another one soon when Matthew and Susan have their little one in about four weeks. So looking forward to it. Aren't babies brilliant?

Our entire joint collected wisdom thus far (and we stole it from Anna anyway)... get baby socks from Baby Gap. They're the only ones that stay on. Here's Ali looking wisely at a sock to illustrate this point.

And get a tumble drier. Turns out babies create a lot of laundry.

Er, that's it. If you're looking for stuff about eating, sleeping or crying - try someone who knows...

Gross self-indulgence. These are what we think the five cutest things about him just now are...

1 He's just learned to suck his thumb and is loving it.














2 When he's asleep he pumps his cheeks as if he's feeding. Milky Dreams.

3 Sometimes he smiles at you and then hides his face with his hands. Flirty.

4 When he thinks something is really funny - being held up and pretending to dance, or playing Humpty Dumpty - he has this deep full-throated sort of laugh. "Huh! Huh! Huh!" Not quite a giggle yet but he's getting there.

5 He likes to look athis hands. As if they're someone else's. What are these again????

This is a blog about Rory... for those who don't get to see him too often.