Alice clapping

Alice just started clapping her hands today, then there was no stopping her.

She is also reaching for everything at the moment, however, has no fear. She doesn't realise that if she's on the chair and mummy's laces are on the floor, you can't just reach down for them without some sort of consequence, e.g hurting yourself. But mummy is always there to keep a hold of her. Well, nearly always.

UCB in the North East

Found out by rescanning our digital radio this weekend that United Christian Broadcasters are now broadcasting via DAB in the north east.
http://www.ucb.co.uk/index.cfm?itemid=4857
A bit twee and cheesy in places, but still real Christian radio in the north east!

St James' Park

St. James' Park in all it's glory this afternoon. Not hugely interesting; except the white things on the pitch. These were delivering artificial sunlight to the pitch! Simply, not enough sunlight gets to the pitch in the autumn/winter. What they need is to get rid of all these seats....

Smile at the camera!!

Alice has learned that if you turn on the camera and point it in her general direction, she just smiles and you will take copious pictures and laugh a lot. So that's now what she does. She will stop what you're trying to take a picture of her doing and just sit and some might say pose, but of course we just say smile. With each passing day she feels less and less like a baby. Today when the doorbell rang, she stopped what she was doing, starting waving her arms with excitement, smiled and as I got up with her to go to the door, she giggled. She even waved off the parcel delivery bloke as he left.


This one is just a funny picture of her on the swing.

Alice and Petit Filous

As you know we are doing the baby-led weaning. We had to stop for three weeks as Alice had a tummy bug and was pooing for Britain for about two weeks afterwards. Anyway, started back a couple of weeks ago and had to start from square one. Her favourite food seems to be petit filous. I put a dollop on her tray and as you can see she just either licks the tray or scoops it up with her fingers and licks it off. I think she was holding off on the other food I was giving her until she had her petit filous. So I've stopped giving it to her until she is more established with other foods.

It does take a long time for babies to learn to mush the food and then swallow it. There is a lot of gagging (not choking) and spitting stuff out. She likes courgette and today has had avocado for the first time and it seemed to be a hit. She had mash and peas last week and that seemed to go down well too. She's not too keen on bananas or sweet potatoes. When she does eat, it is very small amounts, but she is getting there. This form of weaning does take a lot of patience. But it is very enjoyable because I get to eat my lunch and breakfast at the same time as Alice and I'm not having a bite of mine and then spooning food into her and so on.

Chilli and Chocolate

Found this in the supermarket yesterday. I have been known to purchase odd food before (I do go shopping whilst hungry; always a mistake). A particularly memorable purchase was beetroot juice (http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-local/frameset/detail/546801.html). According to that website, "A glass of beetroot juice is a delicious way towards your daily portion of fruit and vegetables.". Delicious, it is not; healthy maybe. It did make me gag, I must say. I poured most of the bottle away.

Back to the chocolate then. This was a good impulse purchase. You can't smell the chilli; neither can you taste it initially. After a while though, you notice a distinct and delicious difference to the taste. The experience ends with a hot chilli tang. I would thoroughly recommend! Find it at http://www.lindt.com/1610/3429/3497/3852/4510.asp and a supermarket near you.

Holy Trinity, Gateshead

Yesterday Stuart was at the first event to happen in the new church that has just been built in Gateshead as an off-shoot from our current church. It was an exciting day and was great to see how God enabled the finances and the build; all ready for a bunch of "preview" services before Christmas.

It all started two years ago when a plot of land became available south of the river, with ready planning permission for a new church.

This was the plot back then, with all of us standing whilst Jonathan explains the vision for the new building. Since then there has been much praying, planning and building to produce this new church.


That's the main entrance, with the main meeting room behind.

Then, the main meeting room itself at yesterday's church conference.

Stuart spent Thursday last week putting the finishing touches to the PA system (sound system!) ahead of the event on Saturday. The first event that's open to the public is next Sunday (21st). The idea is that between now and Christmas, a series of preview services will introduce the church to those living in the locality. They will all be receiving an invite and obviously will receive a warm welcome if they come along!

We've decided to keep attending our current church and not move to Holy Trinity and therefore Gateshead. Stuart's involvement is limited to helping the PA get up and running. Despite that, yesterday was very exiting. We are all looking forward to see how God is going to bless this area through this new building.

Alice standing

Alice is a very clever girl and can now stand holding onto someone's hands. Doesn't she look tiny though? Thankfully she's not quite on the move. However, she can roll over and can roll around the room, but not crawling or walking...yet!!

Alice on the Swing

We think this is very funny. We reckon she's a wee ballet dancer in the making. However, Pauline would like her to take tap in the future and then Alice can teach her all her moves. Notice how her tongue is hanging out most of the time, not sure what that's all about.

Alice Cooing

We put this on as a link to our website a while ago, but now you can add video to the blog, here 'tis. Haven't put many photos on because we've been taking more video recently.

Very cute indeed.

T-shirt

What a t-shirt. Shipped from USA, no less. She seems so happy in it that I think it shows she's got an innate grasp of mathematics. I reckon we have a wee statistician on our hands here. If only she can make it through all those drama classes.....
(get more statistician branded goods at http://www.cafepress.com/buy/statistician)

SOLIDS!!!!!

A big day in the life and advancement of Alice. Her high chair arrived today. I tried her on a wee bit of banana, if you click on the pic itself you'll see a wee bit ended up on her nose.
We're going to be doing something new called baby-led weaning. This is where you go straight from milk to finger foods. You cut out purees completely and don't feed them, they feed themselves. So she had a chunk of banana and seemed to quite enjoy it. She won't actually eat any just yet, but will eventually. The first wee while is her tasting the food and exploring the new textures. She did really well at picking it up and putting it straight into her mouth. As you can see she's really proud of herself. I'm being supported by the Health Visitor (who did this with her own children and guided parents through in her old job) and the nursery nurse. They would like me to do a talk to other parents in our area as I'm the first one to give it a go. So we'll see how we get on, loads of pictures and videos in the mean time.

Will let you know how we get on. We're going to start in earnest on Monday, once we've bought the shower curtain to go on to the carpet.