Roryworld

No effin' photos, mate




Also - here's Rory with baby Madelaine, whom he loves to hug in Mother and Baby group. He really does. Note the conversational approach he's taking here.

Rory has again been receiving guests from around the globe. Or the British Isles at least. A couple of weekends ago it was James - up from London. He was quickly pressed into service as a punkah wallah...

Also - the eagle eyed amongst you will notice Sarah poking in the shot. That's her and Martin's actual canal boat. No bad eh?






Then - this weeek - the giddy social whirl continued with a diplomatic mission from Ireland. And that meant another battle of the babies with Rory this time taking on Meabh (sorry blogger doesn't do Irish punctuation type accent things - would an umlaut do?..)

Turns out baby equation goes:

(Blond Viking descendent Pete (and he can prove it with his freaky finger!)) + (black haired Irish person (whose surname actually means black haired stranger or something to that effect) Una) = sweet little ginger baby. Ain't genetics grand?

Rory's been expanding his range of hobbies and interests this week.

On Mondays we're going to Baby Music. Lots of cushions, seven or eight mums (occasionally a dad too - right on!), and a lady with a guitar. Could have been very twee but, actually, it's rather good fun. The guitar lady is lovely, and there's substantial amounts of bouncing the babies around, swinging them in the air and dancing - all of which Rory finds highly entertaining. This week he particularly enjoyed pretending to be a kicking donkey, and a choo choo. Oh, and "playing in a band"... (hitting self in face with rattle and then eating it). Lovely!

(STEPHEN SAYS - Ali told me that there was a chap with a beard at the class and Rory was v excited and kept waving at him - obviously thinking it might be me. Which is interesting given that the chap was also black. So anyone doing a PHD on developmental psychology might be interested to know that for a 5 and a bit month old baby beard sits above skin colour in the hierarchy of identifying features. Of course the Woo-man could just have been being friendly...)

Not only that but, in the spirit of baby education, we've also just started at Baby Swimming at the Commonwealth Pool (the local monument to the hosting of expensive sporting events in the eighties). My thoughts about this before going were largely concerned with the difficulty of disguising post-baby tums in swimsuits... but all was swiftly forgotten in the nice warm baby pool (it's like a huge bath!) when we started to SWOOSH the babies and SPLASH the babies and OOOH BABIES UP IN THE AIR and BABY ARMBANDS went on... what a giggle. Best moment: towards the end we blew in the babies' faces and then DUNKED THEM UNDER THE WATER! Rory came up looking shocked and then splutteringly outraged - poor bub, but it was fairly funny.

Talking of hobbies and interests - we've always been impressed by the fact that one fo those dating agencies that advertises in magazines has "smoking" as a potential hobby... that's a hobby? Not, say, a slightly antisocial addiction, no?

Now - some time ago we promised you maximum aaawww factor. This was linked to the birth of Rory's new cousin, Niamh. Now - as regular readers will recall - hospital policy kept the babies apart. But today we can - in a web exclusive - bring you the first pictures of them together.

Eat your liver out Hello magazine. On a digressive note - what ever happened to the Tartan version, Hiya? I suppose there's only so many times you can interview Lorraine Kelly about Carol Smillie. And vice versa.

In other cousin news, Rory has been on a mini-break up north. As well as quality grandparental and great-grandparental time, he's been socialising with a couple of other babies - oh yes, he's quite the social butterfly these days. To illustrate, here's Ali's mum (on the right, with Rory) with Ali's auntie Judith, cousin Catherine and Catherine's boy John.

And last but certainly not least in this comprehensive baby round-up... Rory and his lovely, mellow, baby cousin Isla. They're much the same age but, wow, she's really quite a bit bigger than him. In fact, is it my imagination or does he look a bit alarmed here? She appears to be flinging out her arms in an effort to force him off her playmat. A taste of things to come in their future relationship, perhaps. (Sorry this is the wrong way round. Technical problems...)

While he's having a nap, here's a quick update on Rory's weight and length as measured on Thursday 10 August:

Weight - 7.02kg (15.07 lbs)

Length - 64cm

Point to note: Rory was 7lb 11oz at birth so I do believe he's doubled his birth weight! Hooray! Meaning he's officially the size of two Niamhs. And about 0.8 Islas, but that's another story.

His weight may in fact be more than that by now, as he's possibly having another of those infernal growth spurts. Something's clearly bothering him, as for the last week he's been waking up yelling at night. A lot. Seems we spoke too soon about the sleeping being sorted... If it's not growing, it may be teething... who knows? No further comment except argh!!!.

Here's a thing we know today that we didn't know yesterday: Stephen says that the park is "very quiet indeed" at 5am (the point this morning at which he headed out with the baby as a last resort)... we didn't know that, but, hmm, did we want to? Rory, however, reportedly found the park"very interesting" - sad to say, the early morning walk of desperation didn't in any way send him to sleep.

That's all for now from sleep deprivation central...

Tonight Rory is modelling some of the fantastic creations given to him over the last few months. The stripy collared jump suit is apparently all the rage in Canada - so thanks to Stephen's Aunt Anne for that. It comes with its own little soft plane to play with!

The darling little white button up romper is fresh from the Paris collections via Stephen's Mum.

And the blue hoodie (so urban, sweetie..) was knitted - yes knitted - by Pat - a Magee family friend.

This presents us with an opportunity... to say thank you to everyone who was so generous, when Rory was born, with gifts of clothes, books and toys. We recently had to buy him some clothes for the first time - it came as a bit of a shock to the system. Prior to this he's had a full Spring/Summer collection to work through, and that's not even getting onto the amazing range of animals with crinkly bits and little bells he's got to play with.

So this is Rory's brand new cousin Niamh. She was born on Friday in Glasgow. We were hoping to bring you a web exclusive - the first pictures of her and Rory together. But technical difficulties ( Rory is apparently unclean and not allowed on the baby ward..) mean you'll have to wait. Nevertheless - we have posted a couple of shots of Niamh and her proud Mum.

Altogether now... aaawww....

Now, in the eerie stakes this is quite high. She weighed 7lbs 11oz - EXACTLY the same as Rory did when he was born. Spooky.

Onyways - this now means that Rory has 2 female cousins. So we can expect him to be dressed up as a princess, made to sit through tea parties and generally bullied for the rest of his puff. Resistance is useless....

And given this is Rory's blog - here is a previously unseen photo of him too. Can't have his girl cousins stealing all the limelight..

Rory is now working on an exercise video including his patented press ups.. Witness..

Apparently this is a developmental milestone - tho given that neither of his parents can do press-ups at all, I'm not sure what it says about their progress to maturity..





In other news - Rory is continuing to be a v flirty baby - today charming the socks off the wifey in the baby dept at John Lewis. And let's face it - she sees a lot of babies. His wee sleep breakthrough (see blogs passim) is (whisper it..) continuing..

TEASE TEASE TEASE TEASE

ALSO - no promies - but tune in later this week for what may prove to be some v cute and fairly momentous photos.. Say no more.. nudge nudge etc..