In the absence of anything interesting to write

Here's some photos!

Lia dressed up for Pirate day at school:

Connor and Daddy bonding!

Connor practising to be a Rock God

Six weeks

So here we are at six weeks already! I've been signed off officially by my Consultant so that's great news.

Connor is growing well and he now sleeps in his cot all night - he's such a noisy sleeper that we get a much better nights sleep with him just that bit further away! He has his 10pm feed from Daddy and generally wakes me between 3 and 4 am so I'm hoping it won't be too long before he's sleeping through - he just needs to get a bit bigger so he can have a bit more milk in his tummy.

He's also happier spending time in his swinging chair - not long though, five or ten mins at a time, but it makes all the difference to be able to put him down and know he won't squawk straight away. In the last couple of days he's found his fist to suck too.

Lia's still loving him, she's being great and helpful and doing well at school so I really can't ask for anything more.

We've also booked our summer holiday to Greece. Almost three weeks! We fly to Athens and stay in a hotel for three nights then fly to Kavala where we have a house to stay for two weeks then it's back to Athens for three more nights and home in time for Lia to go back to school. Before we've always staying at my inlaws but there's just not enough room for us any more hence the hotel. DH is a feeling a bit weird about the hotel thing - it'll be the first time he's been home and not stayed at home - but a friend of ours works in a hotel chain and has got us a great deal on a fantastic hotel so hopefully that'll make up for it.

While we're there FIL will be 70 and DH will have his name day so there'll be lots of celebrations. Also SIL has just had a baby girl so there'll be plenty of baby showing off. That is absolutely the last baby of our generation in both families barring accidents! We've got a ratio of four girls to three boys so it's pretty even and the age range is 5 days to 5 years so they're all pretty close.

I'm really looking forward to this holiday - we've pushed the boat out a bit spending wise but it's likely to be the last time we manage such a great holiday for a LONG time as once I'm back to work and Connor is in nursery there won't be much spare cash or spare holiday time...

Five weeks

Can it really be five weeks already?

We're doing okay here. Connor is growing well - last weigh in he was 9lb 11oz which puts him exactly on the 50th centile of the weight charts and well up on his 8lb 7oz birth weight. He's still sleeping well at night and not much during the day and feeding has slowed down a bit. Week 2 - 3 he had a complete feeding frenzy but he's slowly but surely settling down to more of a four hour routine now. He's having two bottle feeds now - the evening feed and the night feed - as breast milk was just not getting him through a decent chunk of sleep time at night, I'd feed him for an hour or so and he'd be up for more in under two hours.

Day feeds are all from me though and that's going just fine so we're now in the routine we're likely to continue with until six months when I'll slowly give up the breast feeding.

Sleep wise he goes down about 7pm and DH wakes him at 10 for a bottle then Connor wakes me around 2am for his next feed. Most mornings he's then back awake aroun 5.30 - 6am for his breakfast.

Apologies if this is a little tedious to read but I want to write it down to remember! I started this blog just before Lia was born and I was back reading the early posts today in a bid to see how things were with her compared to how Connor is. It was quite a revelation as I remember her being hard to get to sleep but I didn't remember quite how hard it was!

She also didn't sleep during the day and at around 7 weeks I started sleeping her on her stomach for day time naps which made all the difference - she instantly went from not sleeping at all to sleeping for 3 hours at a time! Admittedly for the first couple of days I was totally paranoid she was going to die as I was going against all 'official' advice but when I was a baby my Mum was advised never to put us on our backs, we should always be put on our tummies. Oh and in Greece they advise sleeping the baby on it's side so my choice is to sleep the baby however works.

The difference with Lia is that she didn't sleep much at night either so it was awful. I can cope with Connor not sleeping during the day as I'm not so tired I can't see straight. I will, however, try him on his stomach in a couple of weeks or so to see if that helps during the day. I remember that we didn't put Lia on her stomach at nights until she was four months old (we were in Greece the first time) by which time she was able to roll over anyway.

So that's about it when it comes to Connor really. He's not doing much other than eating, sleeping and crying still but he has made his place in the family totally clear:

I am still missing stitching though. I got the last part of Bent Creek's Big Round Zipper through this week and I am so keen to get started on the design (I've not even started part 1 yet) I keep picking it up and looking at it. I know that it won't be long before I can get started again but it's torture being surrounded by all my stash and not having the energy or time to dive in...