The good luck genie

It has recently come to my attention that when at home during the day pretending to be really busy, Kate actually whiles away the hours by dressing Madeleine up to look daft (pronounced 'daft' and not 'darft', I'm reliably informed).

A case in point is this 'good luck genie' outfit, crafted out of a colourful shawl, and staged for a friend of ours who was starting a new job last week:

Alakazam!

You take your eyes off 'em for one minute...

... and they pick up a pen, take the top off and scribble all over their faces.

Okay, we gave her the pen, but she did the rest.

A vertical view of the world

Yes, Maddie can now officially sit up without props. She can't seem to stay up for any length of time that's particularly worth noting, but we applaud her everytime regardless.

Under the thumb

Kate has just made me change the 'About me' section of this blog to 'About us'.

So I'm preserving my original blurb here for posterity:

My name is Matt Roskill. I'm married to Kate Roskill, sometimes known as Kate Harris (she insists on using her maiden name despite my obvious disgruntlement). We now have a daughter called Madeleine. Madeleine's surname is Roskill (I made sure of it - I registered her birth). This blog is the story of Kate's pregnancy and the first year of Madeleine's young life, largely from my point of view as a first-time dad-to-be. But occasionally Kate hacks into my account and tells it how it really is.

Controlled crying - progress report (2)

Mmmm. I appreciate these stats might look massaged, but it's true. Honest.

Saturday night

Down by: 19.55

Duration of crying: 0 minutes

Slept until: 06.45 (with dream feed at 22.50)

I'm sure we just caught a lucky break.

It's very orange

This is the carrot puree I've just made for one of Maddie's first tastes of 'proper' food.














One of the books recommends sieving it to make sure there are no lumps, but I've got about as much desire to do that as I have to dig out my brain with a blunt spoon. So lumps and a potential choking hazard it is then.

Controlled crying - progress report

We finally bit the bullet last night and, with a free weekend ahead of us, decided we should put Maddie through the saga that is controlled crying.

It obviously filled us with dread, thinking we were going to have to listen to our baby scream for up to 2 hours according to some sources, but we steeled ourselves and prepared for the worst (i.e. we hid in the kitchen with Alicia Keys playing really loudly).

Key stats are as follows:

Friday night

Down by: 19.45

Duration of crying: 25 minutes

Checked in: 20.15

Slept until: 06.30 (with a dream feed at 23.00)

Saturday morning

Down by: 08.50

Duration of crying: 15 minutes

Checked in: 09.10 (awake, but chilling in the cot)

Slept until: 10.00 (forced wake-up as we had to head out)

Fingers crossed tonight continues on this downward path - night 2 can often be worse than night 1, I'm told.

The most ridiculous invention in the world

It's basically a Lazy Susan for babies who don't like being put on their tummies.

(No, we didn't buy it. It was yet another loan from friends concerned Maddie's being brought up in a monochrome environment.)

To be fair to the inventor, Maddie hates being on her front but seems to be enjoying this.

It's a tooth!

Maddie's first tooth poked through today on the bottom left hand side of her mouth.

No photos though as every time we try and contort her mouth into a suitably wide open position, she screams like we're trying to poke her in the eye with a knitting needle. Does she not realise that we're documenting all this for her sake...?

Kate tries out going back to work

Kate's thinking about returning to work in the New Year.

And while she mulls over how many days a week to go back, here's her practising what the Friday of a 4-day week could look like. With Madeleine's help, of course.