Sofia's new baby friend

Millie and Sofia 2, originally uploaded by Racmol.

On Saturday we met up with Adam, Angeline and Millie in a big park called Paddington Recreation Ground. Would you believe Millie is eight weeks younger than Sofia?

Sofia's new friend

Sofia's new friend, originally uploaded by Racmol.

A range of pictures of our new garden are now on flickr.

Club Scream and projectile poo

Yesterday Sofia and I went to see The Painted Veil at the Everyman cinema in Hampstead Village with a friend from antenatal class and her little boy. The film was a bit depressing (although beautiful) but it was very funny when a screaming baby on screen set off all the babies in the audience!

Afterwards we had lunch at Giraffe, which was lovely, and all the waiters were captivated by Sofia. I think she was smiling over my shoulder at them. One said I could have a free lunch if he could have her, but I didn't think that was a very good deal...

...Until this morning, that is, when my daughter pooed on me while i was changing her nappy. Somehow I sensed another poo was coming, so i positioned the dirty nappy underneath her in readiness but the poo shot out of her bottom at high speed, arcing over the nappy and the changing mat and landing on my hand and sleeve. No wonder I spend most of my life doing the washing!

Speaking of washing, I guess i'd better do some dishes so we can have tea.

Signed, sealed and exchanged

Brief update: we finally exchanged contracts on the flat on Wednesday morning, to everyone's great relief. Completion is Monday 14 May (i.e. that's the day we get the keys) and the movers are coming on Thursday 17 May.

We are officially very poor, but happy!

All smiles

Smiley girl, originally uploaded by Racmol.

We have a mortgage. Our solicitor has our deposit. We think we have a flat.

Hopefully we can actually exchange contracts tomorrow (Wednesday).

Sofia update - 3.43kg and immunised

Bouncy cradle 2, originally uploaded by Racmol.

According to the growth charts in Sofia's red health record book, our daughter is smaller than 96% of eight-week-old babies. She's also smaller than her brand new friend Millie (Angeline's baby) who weighed 9.5lbs at birth on Tuesday.

However, Sofia's doctor says she's healthy in all other respects, even though he wants her to come back and be weighed again in three weeks time.

You can see why little kids don't like going to the doctor. First you have all your clothes taken off so you can be weighed by the weighing person, then you get dressed again only for the doctor to take off your clothes again and poke you all over, then you get dressed AGAIN and get sent through to the nurse, who takes your trousers off and jabs you with a needle in each thigh...

In other news, we're hoping to exchange contracts on the flat in Queens Park on Tuesday but this all depends on whether I can convince the bank to fax the mortgage offer to our solicitor tomorrow.

The vendors of the house our vendors are buying suddenly announced on Friday that unless we all exchanged contracts on Tuesday, they would be putting their house back on the market. So I had to ring the bank and see why our mortgage offer hadn't arrived yet and it turned out they hadn't even printed it out yet, dsespite saying the previous Tuesday that it had 'gone to offer and would be in the post'. So it's looking like it could be a stressful Monday and Tuesday on the phone at this end.

Here's hoping it all goes through OK, or Sofia and I will be pounding the streets, trying to find a new place to rent before we have to move out of this one. Which should be just about doable in the three weeks available.

We're all a bit stressed - can you tell?

Growing things

Herbs in a tub, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Yesterday I planted out the first of my new herbs for the herb garden and this season's tomatoes (Italian plum tomatoes, this year).

The new tubs and herbs are a present from Sue, who went with me to Homebase on Wednesday to get all the tubs, compost etc. In the end we decided to leave Sofia watching the cricket with Harold and we just took the pushchair without the baby as we thought it would be useful for carrying everything home in.

Well, it was VERY useful but we did get some hard stares from passersby. I'm sure some of them thought we had a baby under the 60L bag of compost!

I'm also going to grow some purple basil and oregano from seed, and plant a tub of mixed salad leaves.

And the great thing is - this year noone will be speculating about whether all these tomatoes mean that my reproductive instincts are kicking in. I think we can say they have well and truly kicked now...

Out and about in southeast England

Family snapshot - Cambridge, originally uploaded by Racmol.

We had lovely weather over Easter and took the opportunity to introduce Sofia to Whitstable, Rochester, Cambridge and Colchester. Nanny and Lolo also went to Stratford on Avon while we had a day off at home.

Here is our first family portrait, taken in the gardens of Clare College, Cambridge.

Sunday morning bath

Bathtime 2, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Sofia gets to grips with Wom

Sofia gets to grips with Wom, originally uploaded by Racmol.

To infinity and beyond!

To infinity and beyond!, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Wom - red-blooded Gooner

Wom - red-blooded Gooner, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Wom says a big thank you to his cousin Airini for the scarf and football.

He feels a lot less neglected now, although in all honesty he's had a hard three weeks of it and it's not going to get better any time soon.

It's a tough life, being a big brother...

Mothering Sunday

Pretty in pink, originally uploaded by Racmol.

To celebrate my first ever Mother's Day, Sofia took me out to brunch at Hugo's, which I thought was very generous for one so young. Yet again, she slept through the whole outing.

Jules and I seem to have survived his first week back at work, although we're both more tired than we were when we were both at home. We're going to take turns with her last feed before bed, so that at least one of us can go to bed early.

On Thursday night, Jules went to bed at 9 pm and when I took Sofia up to bed there was only a tuft of hair visible above the duvet! He must have really needed the extra sleep, poor lad. On the plus side, he did report being less tired on Friday.

Sofia is doing well - she passed her hearing test on Wednesday and weighed in at 2.6 kg on Thursday. On Friday I took her up Kilburn High Road to have her passport photos taken. You guessed it - she slept through that as well. Luckily babies don't have to have their eyes open in passport photos or it would have taken much longer...

Actively awake

Sofia, actively awake 2, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Sofia is not a big fan of being swaddled, as there is nothing she enjoys more than waving both arms.

Highlights of day one as a true SAHM (Jules went back to work yesterday):

* Sofia regained her birth weight

* the (loud and excited) reaction of a woman from my antenatal yoga class (who we met in the O2 centre carpark) when she saw me sans bump and avec pushchair

* the weather - 18 degrees

Sofia models Grandma's cardigan

Sofia models Grandma's cardigan, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Grandma's card said 'The little cardigan I'm sending is so small - it seems a waste of time and effort...'

Hopefully this picture, with the rolled-up sleeves, will provide some reassurance that the cardigan will get plenty of wear this spring. Sofia is in no danger of growing out of any of her clothes, even the 5lb size ones.

Yesterday the midwife came and weighed her on some flash electronic scales. She still weighs 2.4 kg, the same as Monday, and 100g below her birth weight.

This is just the sort of thing that panics her worrywart parents so the main activity for the weekend will be feeding her, in the hope of a better result at the next visit on Monday. Apparently it can take 2 to 4 weeks to regain your birth weight, but we'd feel a lot better about it if her birth weight hadn't been so low in the first place.

Now we're just waiting for Dad to surface and make the promised buckwheat pancakes...

Anniversary pudding

A Jules and his pudding, originally uploaded by Racmol.

In honour of our 14th wedding anniversary, Jules made a chocolate bread and butter pudding with apricot and orange glaze - delish!

We also went to Hugo's at Queens Park for brunch. Sofia slept through it all in her pushchair and only woke up as we turned into our street on the way home.

Officially a person...

Sofia tries out the bouncy cradle, originally uploaded by Racmol.

We took Sofia out in the pushchair today, all the way to the Camden Town Hall near Kings Cross. We took the Thameslink train there, which was an interesting experience. Lucky there were two of us to carry the pushchair up and down all the stairs inside the stations at either end.

Registering Sofia's birth was a painless exercise - we got shown into the registrar's office and she filled in all the details for the birth certificate on her computer and printed us out several copies, as requested.

So now we have everything we need to apply for Sofia's flash red passport - everything except her passport photo, which I'm not sure how we're going to get. You can do it in a photo booth apparently, so long as your hands are not showing. So she may need to learn to hold her head up first!

Childbirth is not all bad

Mother and daughter 2, originally uploaded by Racmol.

This was taken soon after the birth, proving that childbirth is not always as horrific as everyone says. Or perhaps it is horrific, but once you're holding your child you forget. It's hard to tell afterwards!

Meant to be a Heath...

Meant to be a Heath, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Sofia Madeline Matheson Heath was born at the Heath Birth Centre, Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, London.

Panicky parents

We took Sofia out for her first outing in her huge, all-terrain New Zealand made pushchair yesterday. She was wearing her merino hat and blanket that her Grandma gave her and then another fleece blanket on top of that. It was about 12 degrees and cloudy outside.

We walked over to Finchley Road, about a twenty-minute walk. When we were almost there we had to stop to check she was still breathing under all those layers. She was lying very still but eventually she screwed up her face when we poked her gently.

Then we went to a kitchen shop to buy a big container to sterilise the breast pump in. That took about five minutes. From there I went into Boots and Jules walked her around the block.

After that, I suggested we go to Homebase and get another vase, as I knew we had some more flowers from my work arriving that day. (The card came separately and said 'flowers to be delivered on Friday'.) Jules refused, as he was starting to panic that Sofia wasn't warm enough. So I quickly bought a vase in Wilton & Noble, a very posh gift shop, and then we scurried home. Sofia started to cry about five minutes away from home, and our main reaction was of relief that she was ok.

So anyway, she doesn't have a cold and she doesn't seem to have suffered any ill effects from her outing but her parents were a nervous wreck by the time we all got home.

Today she has basically spent the day in bed. She's always been able to sleep anywhere and through anything so I don't think we can say that she's particularly tired after her day out.

Anyway she will have to wake up soon, as the midwife is coming to do a heel prick test. That will be the second needle she's has to deal with in her first week of life. I just hope she's tougher than she looks!