Alice's hair

Poor wee Alice, she has hairy ears and the hair on the top of her head is starting to grow back in again after it all fell out. Only the hair on the top of her head though, the hair on the back of her head is still there and a different colour to the new growth. She's going to be such a hit with the boys in the future. In fact with the amount of babies being born at our church at the moment, she's already met a few potential husbands-to-be. She'll be wanting to spend her child trust fund money on electrolysis when she turns 18. Not sure it's a good use of the money or not. Anyway, have blethered on enough.

If you click on the picture itself you get a slightly larger version, worth it to see the hair on the back of her ears. Stuart is convinced I was inseminated by aliens!! He takes this whole Dr Who thing a step too far sometimes, not quite sure where TV ends and real life starts. He'll kill me when he reads this!!

Alice cooing

A particularly cute video here! Alice has been cooing for a couple of weeks now, but yesterday we managed to capture it on video. She's just been doing a few sounds here and there, but yesterday evening, she was obviously feeling particularly talkative.

www.sandpgrant.myby.co.uk/adhoc/video/Alice_cooing_21May2007_web.wmv (this one is broadband size - 2Mb)
www.sandpgrant.myby.co.uk/adhoc/video/Alice_cooing_21May2007_lowqual.wmv (this one is dial up size - just a few minutes download)

We'll keep this on the website for a few weeks, so if you get dead links then I'm afraid that we've deleted these vids for other things.

Enjoy the video, must go and get lunch before she wakes.

Daddy and Daughter

Thought you might like to see this rather sweet picture of Stuart and Alice.

Countries I've visited.

Here are the countries I've visited; more than I realised actually. Will definitely be taking Alice to Canada one day, unless we're banned from taking any form of air travel by then. Would also love to go to Alaska and other cold countries. We must take a trip to Norway at some stage, given that the ferry departs a few miles away from us, it would be silly not to take advantage of that some day. I think for the next few years though it'll be loads of holidays in this country. If we're going to do a one off holiday to somewhere different we might as well wait until Alice is old enough to have her own memories of it.

There's a lot of the world I've yet to see.

No doubt more pictures of Alice soon.

Byesie.

Pauline



create your own visited country map
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Alice lifts her head!

This was captured by Auntie Catie this very evening. Alice is not only lifting her head up really well, but even seems to be enjoying it! Or, perhaps, she's enjoying looking at Auntie Catie? She's developing so fast, who knows where she'll be next week? Next stop differential equations?

Alice - two new friends

Managed to get Alice interested in Elephant for the fist time today. We've waved Elephant in front of Alice a few times, but I think that it's always been a bit grey and uninteresting. (Babies tend to be interested in high contrast things apparently; hence, Alice is far more interested in looking at the night light than going off to sleep in the evening. Sneaky Mummy and Daddy now turn it off until she's asleep. Can make it tricky to get the dummy in her mouth though. A dummy up the nose is not known for it's soothing effect). In a bit of playtime today, Stuart got her to engage with Elephant for a few seconds and snapped this photo.

Later on though she met an even more interesting friend. No doubt, one who will be with her for the whole of her life.

Stuart took Alice to the supermarket in the pram this morning. Not very exciting for either of them, but was a pleasant walk out in the sun.

Ear pain when flying

This is a bit of a departure from Alice pictures, but I wanted to share my experience to help others.

I don't know if anyone else suffers from terrible ear pain when they fly. I can tell you I do!!!!!! It's not very pleasant at all. The take-off isn't too bad, but the landing part is terrible when the pressure in the plane changes. The pressure in my ears builds up and has no-where to escape, so causes pain. I also can't hear anything for the rest of that day until the pressure in my ears releases. Normally to relieve it I take ibuprofen and decongestants as I get on the plane (or if the flight is a lot longer, 45 mins before landing), then eat extra strong mints during the flight. In my single days I used to use these as a chat up line if I was sitting next to a handsome man. If he accepted a mint when offered, then I knew we would have a good chat and if he declined, then he wouldn't chat and I would be bored the rest of the flight. Worked every time. Try it!!

Why am I telling you all this? Well last year when we went to Canada I couldn't take any of the medication as we were trying for a little Alice. Instead I found something called "earplanes". They are little plastic ear plugs which helps to release the pressure in your ears. I used them on the flight to Belfast and they were fantastic. For the first time, the pressure didn't build up and I wasn't in pain and also I could hear perfectly when I took them out at the end of the flight. Hurrah!!!! So I've used them on every flight since. Have worked each time. They are fantastic. If you suffer like I do, then suffer no more.

You can get them in Boots, they also have their own brand, which works too. You don't have them in for the whole flight, just take off and as you can feel the pressure change on the descent.

Hope this helps someone out there get rid of the pain of flying.

No doubt there'll be more Alice pictures soon.

Even More Alice

Alice started smiling on Friday and her Nana caught a smile the other day on camera. She's started smiling more often now and is quite a bit more alert too. She seems to enjoy lying on her play mat and sitting in her bouncey chair, as long as someone is entertaining her. Sorry I'm in the picture to spoil it, but it was the best one of her smiling.

More Alice

More pictures. This is Alice's Sunday outfit (well, for last weekend anyway). She was the best dressed three week old in church. She's starting to be a bit more alert during the day. She's not alert just at the moment though. P has just woken her for an afternoon feed. Sadly, Alice is having other ideas and is trying to continue sleeping.

Just to make all you parents of non-sleeping three year olds jealous, Alice slept from 10pm until 7.30am last night. I woke at about 6am and wondered if I'd slept through her crying for half the night; or worse, that I'd done a feed and forgotten all about it. P confirmed, however, that she simply hadn't woken. Long may it continue.

Bath - without crying (much)

We went to church on Sunday. We felt this was quite an achievement. Fortunately, Alice played along pretty well, she didn't call us out of the service to the baby crèche. She was, on this occasion at least, the youngest one there. We dressed her up for the big bad outside as you can see in the pic. As you'll recall though, the weekend was the beginning of summer. So, it all soon came off again.

Alice is also starting to get a more healthy attitude to bathing. She managed to have a bath (with Daddy in charge) yesterday with only a small amount of crying. Pics below of the clean Alice, not crying!

Incidentally, you can add a comment to each of these posts for the world to see! Simply click on the word "comments" at the bottom of the relevant post. Enter your comment in the top box; copy the squiggly letters in to the next box; then either choose "other" or "anonymous" in the next box to comment without having a Google login; finally, click "Publish your comment". The comment will then form part of the post for others to read and comment on too!

Also, you can view bigger versions of the pictures by clicking on them. They are just the right size for a normal screen.

Doctor Who

In the midst of all these baby posts, here is something else very exciting! I received this David Tennant autograph in the mail from some of Pauline's University friends, who live in Cardiff. They got it when the Doctor Who team came to film at their house. They even had the TARDIS parked outside.

Incidently, I get annoyed by all those people (BBC included) who talk about the current Doctor Who series as "series 3". Forgive me for being a bit pedantic, but Doctor Who has been running for a substantial number of years before 2005. It began in 1963, no less. It ran every year until 1989. So, you could call this Doctor Who run "series 30". I prefer that.

David Tennant is the tenth "Doctor". Did you know that in the original series, Time Lords were limited to twelve regenerations. I wonder if they will find a way around that...

(Is this sounding a bit sad??)

Anyway, a few baby photos to finish up.

Good crier now

She was a bit quiet on day one, but a few minutes of nappy changing yesterday proved very unpopular. Not the first time she'd really cried but a good photo example.