Jessica’s blog.

Another night when Jessica slept through until just before 6am – excellent. She woke up happy, said good morning to Daddy before having a wash and a change and then played nicely while Mum was getting ready before breakfast at 7am. Then I took Jessica for a walk at around 8am during which she soon fell asleep – and amazingly slept a whole hour and a half…! That’s possibly why she’s happy playing on her own at the mo (it’s now just before noon and soon time for her bath) while I’m getting on with checking emails and writing the blog. At the moment she’s emitting lots of happy little sounds and is grabbing her trouser legs and pulling them up at the same time as she lifts both legs in the air and waves them about a bit. She does this a lot, mostly when on the floor but also in her push chair: in the latter, when you’re walking behind pushing her you often see her little feet sticking out in the air on both sides…

When feeding, Jessica’s nowadays well aware that a bottle filled with formula contains her food. She’ll reach for it and suck the lid if she can reach while I carry her and the warmed-up bottle from the kitchen into the living room, where we usually sit on the sofa for a milk feed. If I take the bottle away temporarily during a feed, she will lean forward, as if she’s trying to get out of my lap to fetch it. She’ll also grab our hands when we feed her, to control the feeding as best she can, yanking our hands away from or towards her mouth with varied results… The bottle’s too heavy for her to hold on her own, and when she grabs my hand with a spoonful of puree to steer it towards her mouth or grabs the spoon to try to feed herself, food ends up on her nose or cheek instead… By the way, it tends to be the left hand she uses to grab the spoon – but then this could be because this is the nearest one, as I feed her using my right hand.

Speaking of purees, she’s had her first mix of vegetables now: carrot and sweetcorn, which she seemed to really enjoy. Apart from banana, so far this is the only solid food she’s been upset about there not being more of. I’m probably a bit slow introducing new foods to her – one of the mums from the post-natal group that Jessica and I see once a week is already feeding her little girl things like chicken and pea risotto made with (salt-free) vegetable stock and brown rice, and that baby is only 4 1/2 months…! Part of me thinks, though, that there’s no reason to not go it a bit slow as Jessica’s sleeping through the night most of the time (she has woken up a few times at around 4.15-4.30am, but mainly wanting to play it seems), is healthy and gaining weight – milk is meant to be her main source of nutrition for a few months yet.

At the moment, I’m giving Jessica solids for her 10am and 4pm meals, but I guess we should shift them to make it lunch and dinner (1pm and 7pm) instead – maybe as I introduce a third meal which I then make breakfast… The reason I’ve been hesitating about feeding Jessica solids for dinner is that she tends to get cranky quite suddenly in the evenings before bedtime, sometimes earlier than other times, and I didn’t want her to reject/get frustrated by solids at that point. A couple of times when feeding her during the day she has been too hungry to have the patience for solids. What I have done then is to give her some milk before offering her the puree and then she has been interested again. (Maybe I should do that with the ‘dinner’ feed too…?).

She likes grabbing our faces now – ouch… She’s yanked Ian’s nose really hard, not sure if she tried to twist it, and almost every time now after I’ve bottlefed her and lifted her up over my shoulder as a bit of a signal that the feed is over now, she’ll first start scratching delightedly at the sofa behind me, then ‘discover’ my face and reach out for it with a big happy grin on her face. And then it’s a case of dodging her little fingers trying to grab my nose, pull my bottom lip off or just generally yank the skin on my cheeks…! She reminds me a bit of a lion cub, actually, playing rough with its parents and older siblings the way she clambers on me to ‘claw’ at my face and ‘bite’ my fingers. Just wondering whether we’ll find that she growls and roars rather than speaks one day… (She does make these purring sounds every so often, though.)

Jessica’s not sitting unsupported yet but we’ve borrowed an inflated ring from our friends Phil and Anna that they used to ‘keep’ their baby boy Mark in; the ring is like a big bath ring with a fabric cover, which supports a baby on all sides when put in the middle. Jessica’s still inclined to slide down a bit or topple over but she’s doing better and hopefully the ring will give her opportunity to practise trunk control as well as playing on her own, picking up the toys that she wants to play with.

Just to finish off: she put her right big toe in her mouth this morning! She’s been trying for quite a while now, seemingly tiredlessly (she seems more interested in this than rolling over to try to crawl…), and finally success. No doubt will she keep on trying to perfect the skill, though. (It amazes me how agile little babies are!)

Gabriella

As the title of this entry suggests, we’ve finally managed to post photos of Jessica’s first trip to Sweden. Just follow the “Photos” link on the right and you’ll see the link from there.

 Hope you enjoy them!

 Ian.

Yesterday was a Big Day for Jessica and her parents: the day of her naming party! Ian and I had been planning it for what seemed like ages, worrying about the weather (rain, rain, rain seemed to be the order of the day for June and July and we were kind of relying on using our new garden to have enough space for everyone), food and drink, and what type of little ‘ceremony’ we could have to mark the special occasion. When the party finally was underway, with all our expected guests present and conversations as well as drinks flowing, it felt like we’d managed to pull it off after all…! We were a bit sad, of course, that not everyone we would have wanted to be here was able to, but it was good to see so many friends and family still and we had a really good time.

We didn’t want a very big or formal affair and we felt that we managed to strike the right balance. We had a buffet and drinks between 2-6pm and to our great relief the weather was fantastic and all our guests were able to mingle and relax in our garden. At around 4pm – a bit later than we initially planned, but at what felt like the right time on the day – I first held a little bit of a speech, when I welcomed everyone, talked a bit about Jessica Sofia and explained why we had chosen the names that we had for her (three reasons: names that worked both in English and Swedish, names that we both really liked and names that didn’t already belong to any friends or family of ours but to us could be uniquely hers). I had decided to finish off with asking everyone to join me in singing one of Jessica’s favourite songs: Incy Wincy Spider, and was pleased to find that most happily did…! After that, Jessica’s farfar Albert held a speech, which was also about Ian and I as well as Jessica (giving the background to Jessica’s coming into being, of sorts). Jessica’s faster (Swedish for paternal aunt) then read a poem before farfar Albert finished off with proposing a toast to Jessica.

All guests wrote some comments in a book that we passed around, to which we will add photos from the day and our comments – a book which we will keep for Jessica to read in future, as a memento of the day.

Gabriella

Somehow, in the last 2-3 weeks, we seem to have slipped into a regular feeding routine…! Breakfast time has varied a bit, depending on when/if Jessica has woken up and fed during the night, but has more often than not happened at 7am. Then the rest of the day’s meals have taken place at 10am, 1pm, 4pm and the last meal around 7pm at night (the latter depending on how soon Jessica gets tired in the evening – sometimes it’s more like 6.30pm).

As far as the weaning is concerned, I’ve now been giving her bigger portions of the pureed stuff twice a day for 3-4 days now: at her 10 and 4 o’clock meals. I don’t want to give her too much just yet and have estimated the amount is about half a meal’s worth. She gets formula milk straight after to satisfy any remaining hunger. She’s very keen on banana, which obviously is incredibly easy to prepare. Think I now need to move on to some other fruit, like apple and mango.

We think she might be teething – she likes chomping on our fingers and when she does we have felt something hard at the back on both sides of her bottom jaw. It’s apparently unusual that the molars break through first – more commonly the teeth at the front of the mouth are cut first – so perhaps they’re way off yet. But Jessica is dribbling a lot and seems obsessed with chomping on things; in fact, the first thing she’ll do now when she meets someone is to launch an attack against their hand, if she’s close enough, and start chewing away on their fingers.

Jessica doesn’t seem to mind being on the floor too much anymore, which is handy as she otherwise wouldn’t get much practice rolling or crawling… Her second favourite pastime (next after chomping fingers, please see above) at the mo seems to be touching her toes and trying to bring them up to her mouth. She’s not quite there yet but is dedicating so much time to the task that I’m sure it won’t be long.

Gabriella

Another lunch-time get-together with mums and babies from the post-natal group today, in Redhill. Went on the bus again, which Jessica doesn’t seem to mind – she just quietly looks around herself, sometimes sticks her tongue out in a pensive fashion, occasionally falls asleep. She always gets an appreciating look from at least one lady of a certain age. Which leads me to something I’ve been meaning to say before: when we’re out and about in shops, at bus stops or on the train, Jessica will happily look at people and very often single someone out for a friendly and very deliberate stare. She looks them straight in the eye with a big smile on her face. Often her ‘victim’ isn’t sure of where to look but Jessica’s keen interest usually wins them over – even quite stern-looking people have cracked a smile…! There’s a certain lovely innocence about it, of course: Jessica will smile delightedly at women and men of all ages and demographic groups, seemingly without discrimination. Smiling at some strangers can sometimes land you in trouble in the grown-up world, of course, but she’s always safe with one of us and it’s nice to see her friendliness being so infectious.

Gabriella

When on my arm, Jessica likes looking out of windows at passers-by, cars, bikes and branches blowing in the breeze. In our new place we have net curtains – not my style exactly, but they came with the place and we’ll keep them for now – and Jessica seems to really enjoy when I get in underneath it so that we’re in-between the curtain and the window. She strokes the lace fabric with a happy, fascinated look on her face. (And then she grabs it and tries to put it in her mouth, of course.)

Tried broccoli today. As usual I managed to boil it to a mash and then blend it to a pulp – yum… Without any pepper or other seasoning it tastes watery and bland to me but she ate almost all of it – two little florets – and nothing has come up again (so far…). As it’s the second week of tasting solids now, I thought I’d give her that little bit more to see if she’d keep it. She pulled a bit of a face at the first little spoonful but was happy enough to have more when I offered it – she’s not refused anything yet, which is brilliant. She grabbed the spoon again and tried to put it in her mouth but aimed a bit high and ended up giving herself a broccoli moustache instead… Very cute!

I general, Jessica’s gnawing on most things, including our fingers, and dribbling a fair bit: people (including the latest Health Visitor) have mentioned teething. I guess that process might have started but would have thought that actual teeth showing is a bit further down the line still.

Saying that, we’ve just had two nights of Jessica waking up without any particular explanation. Night before last, she woke up after midnight, both chatty and cranky, for 2 1/2 hours! Needless to say, Daddy had to go to work the following day and fled downstairs to try to get some sleep on the living room floor, whereas Mummy bleary-eyed was trying to work out what was going on – nappy check suggested no problems there and initially Jessica wasn’t really interested in food. Eventually (after Mummy had re-phrased her apology to the neighbours whenever she saw them next a hundred times in her head) a bit of formula sent her off to the Land of Nod. Last night was an inexplicable three-hour-interval affair, starting at 9pm, with Jessica waking up with almost nerve-wrecking predictability… But that evening Jessica had been very grizzly to start with and chewing her hand frenetically, so we tried some Calpol (paracetamol syrup) just in case it was teething. Still not sure what it was. Jessica liked the strawberry-flavoured concoction, though – think she was disappointed she could only have one small spoon-full…

Jessica isn’t yet sitting up unaided but she’s slightly less inclined to slowly and gently topple over sideways (to the left) when we let go now. And with a bit of back support she doesn’t slump together completely, so we’re getting there. Will be so handy when she can sit up to play with things on the floor and reach for the toys she likes rather than depending on us to hand them to her.

Gabriella

After an April and May that were almost sweltering, June and July have so far turned out quite cool by comparison. Whatever weather there is at Wimbledon usually comes this way not long after and the tournament was a bit of a wash-out this year. But for the last few days official forecasts have predicted thunderstorms and even hail while the weather has actually turned out quite nice and sunny, although on the breezy side. I keep putting Jessica in a jacket before we go outdoors and I would’ve though the problem would have been to keep her cool enough this time of year…

Last night Jessica slept through until almost 6am, which meant I got 7 (!) hours of uninterrupted sleep – the most I’ve had in absolutely ages…!

Decided to go to the Health Visitor Clinic to weigh Jessica and also to ask about Vitamin A and D drops for her, as my sister told me that they’re recommended for all babies from 4 months of age in Sweden and I hadn’t heard anything regarding adding those vitamins here. Also, even though Jessica got weighed only last Friday (13th), as she’s 5 months on Friday I wanted to get a reading of her weight as near that date as possible. As it happened, Jessica was so busy happily kicking her legs and waving her arms that the scales couldn’t decide what they were supposed to show and after a few minutes I gave up (and decided to put Friday’s weight down as her 5 months one – it really shouldn’t be that different, should it?).

One of the Health Visitors advised me that for babies on formula feed they don’t recommend any added vitamins at all, for breastfed babies they recommend A, C and D from 6 months of age. She suggested that perhaps as there is less sun in Sweden during the winter months there might be greater call for especially Vitamin D there than here in the UK… I’m not sure what to do now – act on Swedish or English advice? I had noticed multi-vitamin drops in one of the pharmacies in town but I’m reluctant to just cram Jessica full of other vitamins unnecessarily, plus the drops I saw contained peanut oil and I’m trying to avoid that for her, at least during her first year.

Twice today she fell asleep over my shoulder while I was jiggling her up and down – dare I say it: could this be a trick I can use to get her to nap daytime…?! I’ve given up on the putting her in her cot and waiting for her to go to sleep on her own accord during the day – I think she’s one of those babies that are just never going to let that happen. When she falls asleep downstairs I now just put her on a blanket on the living room floor rather than trotting upstairs to the cot. She’s safe on the floor and I can keep an eye on her there, it’s fairly soft underneath (thick carpet and padded blanket) and she doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

Jessica had some mashed parsnip between her mid-morning and lunch-time milk. She grinned badly at the first taster but was still keen to have more. I tried some of it too. I’m usually a fan but it was a bit bland to be fair – a bit watery, as I guess it would come when boiled a bit too much and mashed…

Today I also bathed Jessica for the second time on my own. It went pretty well and she laughed several times – especially when kicking with her legs and splashing me – so she must have been enjoying it. She even got a bit of playtime in: apart from the splashing about, she grabbed the sponge I was washing her with (alas, not for the purpose of cleaning herself…) and the thermometer shaped like a yellow bath duck (which has ceased to function properly as a thermometer and now we’re just guessing the temperature, which seems to work just as well) waved them about and put them in her mouth.

We spent best part of the afternoon out in the garden, Jessica in the shade of a tree while I took some washing down and put some new up. And then we went for a little stroll around the garden, looking at the trees blowing in the breeze, the roses down the end of the garden and the sunflowers Ian planted about a week ago.

Gabriella

It was very warm and stuffy last night and Jessica (and subsequently her Mum and Dad…) didn’t sleep very well for it. She was late to go to sleep, not wanting to settle for ages (mainly chatting and creaking), and stirred just before midnight, around 2am and after 3am. Every time she went back to sleep again fairly soon (at 3am after a feed) and finally woke up for the day about fifteen minutes before Ian’s alarm. I brought her over to our bed and we had her beam at us, chomp our fingers and pull our hair for a bit before we couldn’t delay getting up any longer.

Jessica and I had a good day still in spite of the broken night’s sleep. A group of mums from the post natal group Jessica and I went to has been meeting up regularly and, after our holiday and move, Jessica and I were finally able to join them for lunch at one of the mums’ house in Reigate. I spent a lovely afternoon chatting to the other mums, while Jessica giggled at and excitedly rolled around on a big playmat with a few of the other babies. She actually kept rolling back and forth so energetically, gradually working her way around clockwise, that I had to get up and shunt her back a few times, to save her from hitting another baby with her feet… At around 3pm she got tired and a bit cranky, so I took her out from the busy and noisy living room into the slightly calmer garden, where she fell asleep over my shoulder.

Breaking news!! Jessica has rolled, from her back to her tummy, and I got to see it! I’m sure it was purely accidental: she was rolling up on her side to touch her knees and shins and then back again a few times while I was taking pictures of her and then suddenly she was toppling over. Got a couple of pictures of how she landed, anyway – with her arms down her sides, making her a bit stuck. She didn’t seem to know what to do with herself and started to cry, but stopped soon after I eased her arms into a better position. I bet she won’t repeat the maneuver in a hurry – a lot of first-time things seem to happen early on, more or less coincidental, with any deliberate, regular behaviour coming much later…

Gabriella

Still very much unpacking in-between work and baby-care, which unfortunately has made the blog suffer. Jessica seems to have settled in well at our new home though – for three nights in a row now she has slept through until 4.30/5am and after a feed she’s gone back to sleep again for another hour or two.

Have a few bits of news since last. When put on her tummy this week, we noticed that Jessica’s started to lift her bottom up and bending her legs to try to get forward. She doesn’t seem to be able to hold her head up much while doing this, so we’re guessing her arms aren’t strong enough just yet, or maybe she hasn’t quite got the hang of what to do with them. (Alas, we have not seen her do a full roll yet, though she still enjoys rolling over on her side when having her nappy changed, which sometimes complicates things slightly. We probably should put her on her back more often than we do, to give her enough opportunity and motivation to try to roll over and ‘escape’…)

A few days ago when on her tummy she reached out and grabbed a bundle of plastic teething rings that I’d put just within reach and started chomping on them, so I guess we can now say that she’s ‘played’ on her tummy. But the really good news is that this morning she managed to ‘shuffle’ her way forward on her tummy to reach and grab a toy that Ian had put just that little bit out of reach – so even if she certainly isn’t crawling yet, she’s getting the hang of moving herself forward!

Each day this week I’ve also given her a few small teaspoons of pureed vegetables – carrot for three days and then sweet potato. (Very clever of me to choose orange – we’ve got some very interestingly coloured muslin squares about the place now, as ‘recycled’ orange-fleshed root veg stains apparently don’t really go out in the normal wash…) Jessica’s been very keen, frowning initially but happily trying another mouthful. She’s been watching us eat our food more and more intently in the last couple of weeks, so I guess she wants to find out what all the fuss is about. She seemed quite interested in the spoon itself too and wanted to grab it off me to try and feed herself (although, at this stage, I’m assuming that it was more a result of her interest in putting objects in her mouth, rather than her thinking she could feed herself). I let her take the spoon and the results were a bit messy – Ian discovered some carrot in her eyebrows still that afternoon…!

We had our first visit from a Horley Health Visitor last Friday (13 July). She told me about a new approach to weaning, which it seems NHS are recently introducing, called ‘baby-led’ weaning. Apparently the general gist of it is that you give your baby finger foods – such as pieces of carrot, broccoli, etc. – that they can grab, touch and put in their mouth to explore to their hearts content. As they develop the ability to chew and swallow, one will notice more and more bits of those foods in their poo as they gradually start to eat. The theory is that babies can find parent-controlled weaning very frustrating – from having themselves decided how much food they’re having when breastfeeding (might be worth remembering here that the NHS also promotes the ‘feed on demand’ approach rather than structured, time-tabled feeding…), suddenly they’re allotted specific amounts from someone else with a spoon. According to the Health Visitor, links have been found between traditional weaning and speech problems… Well, can’t imagine there could be any harm in letting Jessica play around with a few carrot sticks, for example (as long as she doesn’t poke an eye out or chokes on them, of course).

Speaking of food, I have now stopped breastfeeding. We’d thought before that I would do that as we started to wean Jessica. I guess as we’ve already used formula to ‘top her up’ in the evenings and as an ’emergency’ food when out and about, she hasn’t seemed to mind going over to a formula-only diet. I’ve done it gradually over a couple of weeks, both for my own sake and for hers. The Health Visitor had brought scales with her Friday and as we’d not been able to weigh Jessica since before our holiday in Sweden we checked her weight then. She’s now 8.6 kilos (19 lbs), which in fact is on the next curve up on the centile chart. The Health Visitor advised me that it’s fairly common that babies put on a bit extra as they’re changing over from breastmilk to formula milk – as milk tends to flow more easily from a teat, they gulp as eagerly as before and end up eating more. This should, however, sort itself out after a while as Jessica’s getting used to exclusively bottle-feeding and the Health Visitor said not to do anything to try to control Jessica’s feeding at this stage.

Jessica really enjoyed playing with a ‘control panel’-style, battery-driven toy of Isac’s when we were in Sweden, so Ian and I found what we thought looked like a similar toy for her. As she’s got bored with her baby gym now – presumably because she has to lie flat on her back to use it and she can’t even grab the toys properly as they’re attached – she can now play with this one whilst sitting in her baby bouncer. She seems to quite enjoy it but sometimes when she’s tired it can get a bit too much for her – when she whacks one of the buttons which are the easiest to reach, it plays a whole tune, rather than just a sound, which we would have thought maybe would have been more suitable. A bit to intense for her when she’s not feeling too energetic…

Our garden is pretty ‘basic’ – a long and narrow bit of grass with a few rose bushes and other shrubs on the sides and a shed down the far end. Jessica still seems fascinated with it. We’ve taken her for a stroll around the garden on a more or less daily basis (some days actually more than once) and can spend a good 45 minutes there walking around and stopping every so often to look a bit closer at a few leaves or a flower. She likes to reach out and touch things and most of the time tries to put them in her mouth too – I guess it’s quite handy that as she grabs things she very often turns her hand around so that what actually goes into her mouth is the back of her hand or fingers rather than whatever she’s holding…

View of our ‘new’ house and garden from the shed:

Gabriella

Jessica’s first trip to IKEA today. Felt like we were a very Swedish little family – going there in our Saab, Jessica and me wearing H&M clothes and her being carried in a Baby Björn… We needed to pick up a few bits and pieces for our new place: laundry basket, lamp shades, door mat, low energy light bulbs and have a look at and discussion around some new pieces of furniture (book cases, sofa, bits for bathroom…). We won’t get them all just yet as we want to wait a bit first and see what we feel suits our house the best, but we did pick up a Billy oak veneer book case for Jessica’s room, as it wasn’t too big and cumbersome and it gave us a nice sense of achievement to bring it home.

The stacks of boxes are going down a bit now, and we’re hoping that Jessica’s finding her feet a bit again. Both the trip to Sweden over Midsummer and the move unsettled her a bit, with her sleeping patterns being all over the place. Ian and I think that the bright nights in Sweden probably confused the issue a bit – it never got completely dark so little Jessica, when waking up at midnight, 2am, 4pm, etc., probably thought it was morning already…! Some nights in Sweden and back in England after the move I only got around 3 hours sleep but the last three nights she’s only woken up once, around 4/5am, for a feed and then slept through for an hour or two longer, so not quite so bad. (Her bedtime has changed until a fair bit later though – she now falls asleep around 8pm.) Though Jessica also seems ready for weaning now. Because of the move it’s had to wait, but I did feed her some banana porridge again yesterday and she was very keen. I wanted to cook and puree some carrots for her today (mid-morning is supposed to be the best time to introduce new foods) but the trip to IKEA happened instead. So I’ll start Monday – when Ian’s back at work again as ‘normal’ – and we’ll take it from there.

In some ways it’s almost like she’s a new little Jessica since coming back from Sweden. She’s expanded her range of sounds quite extensively, with lots of soft d’s, b’s and l’s included and a bit of raspberry blowing and spitting as a result. It’s hard to imagine that she’ll actually be able to speak proper words and sentences one day in the not too distance future, but it’s really exciting to see her progress.

She’s become a little bit ‘wilder’ too, laughing and shrieking louder when she’s excited, wanting to see more and touch more and prefers being carried around to sitting down. She reaches out to touch doors, plant leaves, plastic bags and people with the palm of her hand. Sometimes when we hold her up on our shoulder and she’s fed and happy she’ll excitedly dive in towards our shoulder and burrow down with a happy shriek. She also likes to turn her head back and forth to look both ways, often quickly and without warning, so we’re often chasing her face with a muslin, trying to catch the seemingly inevitable bounced milk, not always succeeding…

She holds her head higher for longer when we put her on her front on the floor, and very often starts to chat happily while she’s there, moving her arms and legs as if she wants to move forward. When on the nappy changing mat – one of the very few occasions when she enjoys being on the floor, the location tends to bore her otherwise – she rolls over to her side and seems to prefer lying that way, craning her neck a bit and stretching her legs out in front of her, chatting and giggling, touching her knees and chins and, actually, yesterday, looking at and touching her toes for the first time.

The trip to Sweden felt like it worked even better than we hoped. Jessica seemed to enjoy so much of it, even just sitting at Gatwick airport watching the world go by seemed incredibly exciting. It was thrilling to see the cousins Jessica and Isac meet for the first time – they both seemed fascinated by each other! Isac kept clambering to touch Jessica and Jessica kept watching him, smiling and giggling. Ian and I were thinking that perhaps Jessica would get a few ideas from her cousin – Isac is a very mobile little lad, an expert at crawling and already walking some, plus very apt at pulling himself up to standing using chairs, tables, people’s legs, etc. Jessica doesn’t really have many ‘baby role models’ – most other babies she’s met are the same age or younger, and while she might not easily compare herself to toddlers or grown-ups, seeing someone only 3 months older than herself might be just about right to ‘inspire’ her.

On Midsummer’s Day my sister Malin kindly hosted a party for Jessica and my little nephew and Jessica was in her element! When people started arriving she was a bit grizzly and Ian and I started to get apprehensive about the whole thing. But then we thought we’d just bite the bullet and bring her downstairs – we could always make our excuses and whisk her away upstairs to our room again should she be really grumpy. But as soon as she saw all the guests she lit up and really didn’t stop smiling: there were lots of people, including other babies, that she could talk to! When she got tired after a couple of hours she didn’t grumble, just fell asleep quietly on my shoulder. We took loads of pictures during the holiday and will publish some on our ‘main’ site as soon as we can – please bear with us a little bit longer…!
On the whole we think Jessica enjoyed her first holiday abroad. But it also seemed to take a lot out of her, so moving house just after we got back perhaps wasn’t the best idea we’ve ever had from that point of view… We’ll probably try to let her settle into a routine here in our new home for a while now before staying anywhere new overnight or introducing any bigger changes.

By the way, Jessica sat with me at the keyboard and helped me with the blog this time, so please excuse any enthusiastic contribution of hers that may have managed to escape proofing…!

Gabriella