Family Christmas No. 5

Our fifth and final Christmas gathering (boo!) was on Boxing Day. We travelled back up to Ipswich in the morning to have lunch with Granny Jan, Grandad, Auntie Holly, honorary Uncle Jonathan and second cousin Hannah. This was our first turkey meal of the festive season, and the first time I’ve had turkey for 13 years! For those of you I’ve not spoken to recently, I’m no longer a vegetarian. Mark likes to take the credit for turning me into a carnivore, but it’s mainly because I was anaemic during my pregnancy and needed to eat more than just vegetables for the sake of Amelia’s well being! Strangely, as soon as I had Amelia, my anaemia was cured. Anyway, I loved the turkey and can’t believe I’ve lived without it for so long!

Amelia wore her first 3-6 month outfit, which was a little big, but I know it won’t be long before she fills it. She also fits into the cardigan that Great Grandma June knitted her:

Great Grandma June knitted a matching bonnet too, but Amelia’s head is still a little small for it!

After some dancing and singing with Auntie Holly, Amelia soon wanted to play with her special toy again:

In the evening we were joined by Great Uncle Jonathan, who lives in the Bahamas. Amelia had already gone to bed, but luckily Great Uncle Jonathan got to meet her when she woke up with a burp!

The festivities are still continuing in Ipswich, so I'm sure there will be lots more news and photos before the year's up.

Family Christmas No. 4

Our fourth Christmas gathering was on Christmas Day. We spent the day at Auntie Becca’s new flat in Southampton. She and honorary Uncle RJ cooked a lovely roast and made lots of delicious sweet things. Here’s Auntie Becca’s amazing gingerbread house:

I felt a bit bad eating it! RJ also made some mince pies, which I don’t normally like, but his ones were really tasty.

Amelia was pleased to see Seaside Grandma too, who she hasn’t seen since she was two weeks old:

Amelia still fights sleep during the day, and so by the afternoon is usually quite grouchy. She’s sometimes happy to sleep in my dressing gown on the sofa though, which means that some days I get 15 minutes to do some housework. Hooray! Here are some photos of her all wrapped up:

and Mark trying to get her to sleep:

Amelia still doesn’t realise that her hands are hers and she’ll only grab your hand if you hold it out to her, but today she held a toy for the first time! Unfortunately, it happened to be a very phallic toy, and she wouldn’t let go:

We’ve said we’ll keep those photos to embarrass her with at her 16^th birthday party!

With her new found clasp technique, Amelia also tried to open her own presents:

We had a lovely day and were all very spoiled with food and presents.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Family Christmas No. 3

Our third Christmas gathering was with the Rudge family in Ipswich on Sunday 23 December. I still can't believe Granny Jan, Grandad and Auntie Holly cooked for 20 people! Poor Grandad spent hours the night before peeling and cutting up over 30 potatoes. Here'a a photo of Amelia in her reindeer outfit before she was sick all over it and we had to put it in the wash:

Luckily, we had a very smart Ralph Lauren babygro to hand (thank you Cherie!):

We all spent the day eating - including Amelia - and beached out on the sofa in the evening:

It was a hectic and tiring day though:

A Rudge family Christmas tradition is the compulsory distribution of 'Shelf Factory Presents'. These are joke presents that are passed from family member to family member every year, most of which originated in my Grandad's dodgy shed. My favourite ones this year included:

a Willy Warmer
a Bum Care Kit
a lazy person easy weight loss solution - a knife and fork that doubled up as weights (guess who received this!)
a Glamper toilet
an oxometer (or a broken spirit level), which measures the amount of bull**** in the air

Amelia's still struggling to sleep anywhere other than on me during the day, so spends a lot of the time crying because she's tired, but she was very well behaved and happy today. She likes being fussed over I think!

Family Christmas No. 2

Our second Christmas gathering was with Grandad Rudge, Granny Jan, Grandad Carey, Nanny Glo and Great Grandad Derek on Sunday 16 December. We met at Great Grandad Derek's home in Maldon, Essex, where Nanny Glo cooked us a lovely meal. We ate lots of chocolate and Nanny Glo's special Neenish Tarts, then played Balderdash. I'm not very good at Balderdash, but it's still one of my favourite games! Here's a photo of Amelia getting into the Christmas spirit:

Family Christmas No. 1

Although our family and friends all live a little way from us, it's meant we've got lots of different Christmas gatherings lined up. We hosted the first of five on Sunday 25 November in our newly decorated living room and conservatory! Mark was very manly and spent most of the morning cooking pizza from scratch and other nice things, while I looked after Amelia. My sister-in-law and her partner joined us in the afternoon, and Amelia also met Dartford Great Grandma, Great Auntie Wendy, Great Uncle John and second cousin Jake for the first time.

Here's Dartford Great Grandma with Amelia:

New rings!

Well, not exactly... My hands and feet swelled up so much during pregnancy, that I had to go ringless for the last three months. I still can't get my engagement ring on, but I managed to squeeze my wedding ring on a few weeks back. However, one night when we were staying in Ipswich, I woke up with an itchy hand, and when I turned the light on, my ring finger had doubled in size! I put ice on it for a while, but my ring just wouldn't budge, so I ended up having to go to the hospital at 6am to have it cut off. It was all very exciting! So, while I wait for my hands to return to their normal size, I've got some temporary plastic and very tacky rings...

Amelia is still adorable:

Recent happenings

Amelia's asleep in her crib at the moment - not on me. Hooray! I'm grateful that the sun's been shining all week in Farnborough. It's still very cold though!

Our walks have been getting shorter each day, but thankfully Granny Jan's found another way to get Amelia to sleep: bobbing her up and down to Rita Ora's How We Do. Phew!

While the two of us have been staying with my parents this weekend, we've also discovered that Amelia likes AC/DC. Grandad showed her a clip of one of their live performances and she was entranced! We've introduced her to Midsomer Murders too, of course:

 

There's a prize for anyone who can name this episode.

Granny Jan, Auntie Holly and I took Amelia to church for the first time on Sunday. It was nice to go back to our family's church and see some old faces. Amelia managed to sleep through the whole service!

On Monday night, something very strange happened. I was watching the television with Mum and Dad, itching the scab on my knee, when I noticed what looked like a loop of wire under my skin. Naturally, I pulled at it, and it turned out to be a five inch stitch left in from the operation I had nearly 18 months ago! Gross. Here's a photo for novelty value:

And some more of Amelia, as she's much more interesting than my knee:

Music, music, music

I doubt I'll be able to make this a daily habit, but Amelia's exhausted herself this afternoon and will probably be asleep for a while now! We just got back from a lovely walk in the snow and sun. We didn't go anywhere special - just to the local shops to buy Daddy a bag of Haribo. I use our walks to get Amelia to sleep when she gets grouchy, but she was too busy looking around today to sleep!

We've also been listening to a lot of Joe Stilgoe today. I'm not sure if it's the dancing around the room that settles Amelia or Joe! At least I've found something that calms her down when she's crying though. We're going to try to listen to a different piece of music every day. Any suggestions are welcome! So far, we've listened to:

The Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling
Mahler - Symphony No. 9, Movement 4, which Amelia fell asleep to
Mozart - Clarinet Concerto in A major
Tchaikovsky - 1812 Overture, which she seemed to enjoy
Tchaikovsky - Romeo and Juliet Overture, which she mostly cried through

We think she'll either be a pianist because of her really long fingers:

a singer because of her already well trained diaphragm:

or, of course, a flautist like her parents!

Hello!

Welcome to the Careys’ blog! I’m new to blogging, so please excuse any dodgy formatting or upside down photos. I thought I’d start keeping a blog for three reasons: 1. Amelia is growing up so fast and I’d like to remember as much of these special times as possible, 2. Most of our family and friends live over an hour away, so this'll be a good way for everyone to hear and see Amelia’s news, and 3. Amelia’s going through a phase of not napping anywhere other than on me, so this is something I can be doing while I’m restricted to the sofa!

Amelia's very hard work, but obviously worth it.  She’s a cute baby:

She started smiling in her third week, but we all put it down to wind at first. Sorry Amelia!

We’ve had lots of visitors and Amelia’s been very spoilt.  She’s met nearly all our family now and most of our friends.  She even has one baby friend of her own:

It was sad when Mark went back to work after a lovely two weeks together, but Amelia and I find lots of fun things to do while we wait for Daddy to come home.  We go for walks most days, listen to different music and talk lots.  Obviously I do most of the chatting though!

In other news, the bungalow renovations are going well.  Our move was timed pretty poorly and we ended up moving into our new home a few days before Amelia was born.  To make it worse, every single room needed de-tarring and decorating due to the previous owner being a heavy smoker, the boiler needed replacing and the whole bungalow had to be rewired.  Thanks to our parents and siblings though, the nursery, living room, kitchen, conservatory and garden are now looking good.

I have to go now as Amelia’s starting to stir, but next time I’ll upload some before and after photos of the bungalow!