Never work with...

Cat and I had been wanting to get nice studio portraits done of us as a family for ages. I initially suggested hiring a professional but Cat baulked at the idea and said we should do it ourselves.
Well, when our friends Jennifer and Tony mentioned wanting nice studio pictures done with their son Luke, we decided to teamed up and spent all day with the little rascals running riot and me and Cat trying to work some photographic magic. Out of about 300 shots, I think there are a good dozen. But it was hard work!

Gibberish & rocking chairs

Aimee in the nursery garden (23.1.07)


After a brief hiatus suffering from an MMR induced illness (high fever,
loss of appetite, general unhappiness), Aimee is back to full health and
raring to go everywhere. Currently, she seems to have a fixation on the
musical rocking chair that she first used a very tiny newborn.
We stopped using this chair when Aimee was about 9 months old and
packed it away. But Aimee saw it one day under the table and
screamed that we erect it again. So there it now sits, in her bedroom
and every so often, she will decide to sit down and just 'chill out'. With
the ambient music and twinkling lights, she really loves it.
Unfortunately, it is not designed for a baby of her size and weight. So
we hope it doesn't snap and break.

Aimee is getting a bit more dextrous with her 'talking'. She comes out
with a large variety of chatty sounds. At some points in the day, she
gets so caught up in her utterances that she sound like a Marrakeshi
market stall holder giving it the finest bartering gibberish.

We have been systematically turning the house upside down trying to
find the red vaccine book and finally, Cat found it had fallen
underneath the set of drawers in our living room. Phew! Now it
confirmed that we were wrong, Aimee has not has her PCV jab so
we'd better get that pronto.

I finally got round to buying the next installment of the series of baby manuals. So far I bought the 'What to expect' books 1 (pregnancy) and 2 (first Year), and I thought I ought to see what new things I should be paranoid about in book 3 (The toddler years). Haven't actually read it properly yet, but according to chapter one, Aimee should be doing her GCSE's by now and if not, then I am a bad parent.

Typical Aimee behaviour

More cheeky behaviour from Aimee. Here, she can't flip shut the litle SD card slot on Mum's video recorder so grab Dad's finger to do the job.

Mmmm Arrrgh!

Poor little mite just had her MMR jab. This time, it was me on vaccine duty so I trotted off to the health clinic. Previously it was always Cat who had to deal with the jabs and I was spared the ear-piercing howl of Aimee’s cries when she is injected. Actually, it wasn’t too bad. I think Aimee had a better inkling though as she kept looking nervously at the syringe-wielding nurse.
There was a hitch however. Due to our rather scant (read: non-existent) personal filing system, both Cat and I cannot find the red book of vaccine records – a vital booklet logging each jab and weight measurement. This meant a dispute with the health staff who say she did not get a pneumococcal jab last time and me and Cat thinking she did. We better find that book damn soon.

At least my trip to the clinic was accompanied by a gaggle of other mums in the waiting room all commenting on how lovely Aimee is. Unfortunately, jealousy can be a bitter pill and as one nice young mum went to pick up Aimee for a friendly cuddle, her own toddler screamed in hysterics and then, after he got his way, walked over to a confused Aimee and blatantly pushed her over. Luckily, Aimee landed on her bum, not her head (like last time in the bookshop when an evil boy pushed Aimee over and she banged her head real hard). Kids can be really nasty sometimes. It reminds me of a story my friend Volker told me of his toddler daughter happily playing one day in the nursery sandpit and one toddler boy (it’s always a boy isn’t it?) threw a fistful of sand into her eyes. It took hours of saline washes to clear the grit and weeks of eye drops to clear the resulting infection. Talk about dangerous pit bulls, there should be a law banning dangerous toddlers!

Mind you, Daddy here is not free of blame from Aimee knocks - they say accidents happen in three's and last night, I was looking after Aimee and let her run around with a plastic binder spine in her mouth. The inevitable happened and she walked into a wall so the long spine impaled into her upper palate. Cue: a bit of bleeding, lots of crying and a very guilty Dad. Later that evening, I was bathing her, as I normally do, and stuck a toy sucker frog to the wall of the bath. As Aimee pulled hard to get the frog, she smacked her forehead on the bath enamel. Cue - same scenario. Then, finally, before bed, a slightly befuddled Aimee was tearing around the hallway as she normally does, but then simply ran into the wall head first...BANG! Cue: oh you know the rest.
Despite all this, Aimee is actually ok although her red marked forehead does look suspiciously nasty. Oops. Bad Dad.

Walking in an Aimee Wonderland

Taking Aimee out shopping in the supermarket is a fun experience. Where most babies and young kids you see in ASDA are screaming their lungs off or have a face stuffed full of E-number chocolates and sweets, Aimee is content to play flirtatious smiles at every passer by. It got to a stage at one point where I was accosted by two women practically on their knees with cooing and gushing praise at how smiley and beautiful Aimee was. All this of course only encourages the little one and she will actively seek out about shopper to smile at and then, bizarrely, roll her eyes at (Aimee’s weird new trick).