Looks like he's finally started taking notice of toys!
For the last few days he's been chatting away to MrTurtle, today he
was giggling along with Pinky, and just now he's managed (if only by
accident) to make one of his musical doggies sing! (activated by
hitting them, or in this case, random arm waving)
Not long till we can start on the football training then ...
A day of mega-naps (9-10, 11-12.30, 3-4.30, ...).
Grandma picked us up at 12.15 for lunch at her house, where I joined
in the nappiness. Feel a lot better for it now, thankyouverymuch.
Then he went to bed around 9, got woken up by his daddy at 9.10, then
again at 9.40, ...
Benjamin went to see the froggies in Grandma's pond. Very nice day
today, all sunny and blue-skied. The first frogspawn appeared this
morning.
Think he may finally be starting to take notice of his toys, if only
a little. Maybe now when Mr Turtle sits on his head he'll do more
than just lick him.
Started using babywash on him in the shower on Saturday, which is the
first not-just-water stuff he's used. And today his grandma used a
pampers wipe thingy rather than cotton wool and water. Hope he isn't
going to get a bad reaction to any of these things. Especially now
that my nan has washed his playmat and he has stopped getting a rash
from it.
The Christening photos are up. I won't say for how long I battled with Paint Shop Pro 8 just to produce a set of 640x480s and a set of thumbnails. The Compression of jpgs on that in batch method totally sucks, and is counter-intuitive to boot.
He was behaving a little strangely yesterday, as reported by vicky and seen by me. He was happy and giggling and dancing, and then he'd just start crying, for now apparent reason. Now when this happens normally, we (well vicky, obviously) feed him and he's all happy again. But this time he wasn't interested, he'd just been changed, and it wasn't his bedtime. After a while he calmed down, but its slightly concerning, most often we know what's up with him and can sort him accordingly.
But oh well, babies, eh !!
So, we're all done now, Benjamin has been 'welcomed' to the church and God now knows his name. He's got 4 lovely God parents, James (vicky's cousin), (uncle) Tom, Tim (my uncle) and Liz (vicky's college friend).
It was a very nice ceremony and not at all scarey. Vicky was a bit nervous at the start, but I know she enjoyed herself in the end. I thought we'd have to stand up separately and make our promises, but in the end all of us, both families, stood up and said "I Do" together, at the appropriate times. But as expected Canon Roy told us we weren't loud enough and to do it again. We didn't mind though, he was very friendly and jovial. He even sang a song as part of his sermon which made the service for a lot of people I think.
Benjamin was silent almost all the way though, he gave a bit of a cry after being held by one of the parishoners for a little while; but it was much better than in the morning when he cried so much he had to be taken out and be fed. In all fairness though, he had been woken up and 'dragged' to church at 8am, without any breakfast, so I was almost crying with him :-).
I think we all had a pretty good time really. Benjamin was mostly good for the rest of the day, while being passed round so many people that his white baby grow was quite grubby looking by the end of the day. He cried a few times, but he only really wanted feeding.
As well as the church itself, it was apparent he was being welcomed into the, impressively sized, Conlan family (vicky's side). His presents were many and varied, from a case of port put down by Julian and Helen (vicky's friends), a fat money cow money box (piggy bank) by Liz and Malcolm, a brilliant illustrated children's bible from uncle Tom, to a lovely colorful (but random) dragon from Chris and Vicky (mine and vicky's friends form work); odd, but its ok, they're canadian :-).
So the rest of the afternoon was taken up with eating a spread fit for a Benjamin, and drinking, lobbing benajmin from relative to friend to relative stranger. Which is one of the funny things really, this weekend he's been going to sleep with one person in one house and waking up in another town with a random person looking at him saying isn't he cute. Some of us should be so lucky :-0.
Talking of food he got a great cake, it was a sponge, with white icing and a model of him in a moses basket, his name, some building blocks and a little teddy bear, all made of icing. Only down side was that it has marzipan under the icing...
He's also becoming more mobile, trying to turn over today by bringing his legs up and trying the frop them back down with the right over the left to turn himself onto his front. And he was very animated on his play mat this evening, belting the hell out of Mr Whale, Mr Octopus and trying to slap the shrimp wil it sang at him again. On top of all this we think he may be teething, so all in all a really quite good day.
As part of the whole Christening thing we're having people turn up tonight to stay over, well they've come a long way, and Kev (Grumpy) has been very keen to 'wet the baby's head' (aka drink, for those that miss the refernce). Then we'll be having a lunch after the Christening too.
So we've bought food upon food, cake after cake and gallons of brain melty juices. There's loads of people turning up, but unfortunately I've just leant my mum can't come because she's got a bad flu or something, which is a real shame because we bought a bottle of plymouth Gin specially [;-)].
I also went through and sorted out tiny's gallery up til now to be all on sensibly coded pages, but slightly suprious in design, something with hanging edges and overlaps makes it go like steps rathen than one big shocolate bar, see for yourself http://www.cight.com/benjamin/gallery/baby/.
We had a visit from the chap who arranges the baptism last night, Ron Jones. Apparently we're getting the canon of Chester, Roy Lawrenson, so that's impressive. All sounds a bit scarey to me, but we were assured that we shouldn't worry and it would all go smoothly.
We were told all sorts about promises and God-parents, parishes and 'Alpha' courses... and we get a nice candle and a wooden fish shaped holder that one of the parishioners made (which is nice).
We were talking about the service where there's someone else getting their little girl 'welcomed' too. Apparently the service is at 11, but we need to be there for 10:45, but apparently the sooner we get there the better seats we get. Just having done a count we think we've got about 55 people coming to the church and others turning up after, so he's a popular little boy :-).
Apparently Roy (/father lawreson?) is about 70 and likes to keep to the older style of service, he does his bit from the pulpit, which apparently is good cos it means we dont have to stand through the whole thing. There's supposidley some questions to which we have to answer some questions (loud enough so everyone will hear or he'll tell us off, apparently), about the fact we're going to bring his up in a Christian way.
Then he takes Benjamin off us, gets him wet (as you would expect) and then wanders off down the aisle with him and gives him to one of the regulars at the church, which symbolises him being accepted into the family (lets hope he doesn't make any funny noises while this is all going on).
While we're not allowed to take any flash photography during the service, apparently after people are happy to pose with the baby. Non-flash photos can be taken, but dad, if you're reading this, you're not allowed to hang from the rafters to get a good angle, even if it does mean you get good lighting or better framing of the photo. I'm sure there will be lots of photos taken and some of which will turn up on here quite shortly.
So, Little'un is up north now with his Nanna (vicky's mum) and Grumpy (vicky's dad). Plans are for a christening on sunday at 11am, St James's Church, New Brighton.
He's getting along well with the whole growth thing, being about 14 lbs now (guess). And he's got hair (as you might expect) and 4-5 quite long (1") random hairs by his crown.