Due to Henry's fast paced lifestyle and the stresses of everyday baby life, Tiff has been taking him to massage classes for the last few weeks. Massaging tiny bodies isn't as simple as it may sound; for one thing it helps if the massagee keeps still for the duration which tends to complicate proceedings. Nonetheless, Henry enjoys his massages and finds them very relaxing.

The past week has seen Henry reach the five month milestone. His weight is now 7.35kg, with a height of 64cm. We have started him on basic solids (rice cereal) and will begin to add pureed fruit and vegetables over the coming weeks. It didn't take him long to learn to open his mouth and swallow when presented with his food on a spoon. He now trys to grab the spoon with both hands and brings it to his mouth on his own. Sometimes he gets the spoon in his mouth, the other times he gets his cheek. A lot of messy fun.

On the subject of grabbing he now grabs and reaches for everything. In particular he loves trying to grab for his mobile and all the dangling things on his playgym. He also loves grabbing Tiff's hair and face, as well as sticking his fingers in her mouth. Sometimes he is gentle, other times over excited - as a result Tiff has a few scratches.

Henry practices an important life skill - looking busy.

Winter Fun

Another month has passed us by and we've been as busy as ever trying to keep on top of things with young Henry (I mean really... like it's a chore or something).
We have just come back from a great week at the snow down in Thredbo, where Henry got his first taste of the white stuff. From shorter trips we had taken we were somewhat concerned as to how he would take being in the car for around 6 hours at a time, but as it turned out we were both quite envious of him as he managed to sleep just about the entire way there and back again. Whilst there Henry managed to settle into his new surroundings and seemed to enjoy the change of scenery, and a good dump of snow mid way through the week meant a good session of play before we left. Mum and Dad managed to get some snowboarding in during the week, swapping shifts with Moz and Dave who were there with their daughter Allegra.



The snow trip also managed to coincide with our first case of family sickness, with all of us succumbing to cold and flu for the best part of the last few weeks. Lots of sniffles and snorts, and even less sleep than normal, but we're all on the mend finally.

Last Sunday was also fathers day here in the land of Oz, which is when the picture below of a very tired looking dad was taken. He's feeling a bit more awake now, thanks to the sugar content in the truckload of chocolate that Henry kindly bought for him. The other picture is Henry with Allegra, also taken on the same day.

Happy to be

Henry had his first sleep over last weekend at Jackie's (Nanoo) house. The occasion was Nanoo's birthday, combined with a Christmas in July. Here he is the morning after the festivities enjoying a puppet show courtesy of uncle Corin. This was a trial run in some ways for a longer trip we will be taking in a few weeks, when we take Henry with us down to Thredbo for some snowboarding.





Here, is a demonstration of what happens when Henry is excited. Firstly we get a few smiles and a bit of a giggle. After that, the occasional vomit (refer to wet patch on dad's leg). And then back to the smiling / giggles.

Counting down to 3 months !

Strange to think we will be reaching this milestone in the next few days - the mythical 3 month stage, where babies suddenly stop waking you through the night, only want feeding at normal meal times, change themselves etc... and parents lose their grip on reality altogether apparently.

Henry is doing well, and so are we to be honest as he has been pretty easy on us to this point. Taking into account all those indescribable parental joys and we're feeling like we're way ahead.

But before we descend too far into the sickly sweet, here's some um.... cute baby pictures. Enjoy.


Henry and lady friend Allegra.

Henry is quite the conversationalist, with a rich vocabulary of ooh's, aah's, eeh's, and grunts. He has discovered his hands and likes to put his fist in his mouth to suck. He has also just begun to grab. His eyes light up when he sees us first thing in the morning, and they follow us around the room as we move about. 

Our little man is now two months old. He has grown to 61cm in length, weighs just over 5.5kgs, and his head is still quite bald. His size 000/0-3mths clothes are now less baggy as he begins to fill them out. He is quite a placid baby who is just happy to look around and take in people's faces and his surroundings.
 

Mother and child. I'm quite pleased I'm not looking too tired in this picture. All in all, I am managing to get sleep (I'm just getting two hours here and there, instead of eight hours in one hit). Henry is truly a delight. He is becoming more alert and playful each week. He loves getting out in the fresh air and we regularly head down to Manly to walk along the beach front. 

Henry has been treating us to a few genuine smiles lately. By this I don't mean that he was faking it before just to humour us, but I think that previously it was often a case of him putting all his facial expressions on a quick rotation and us sitting there picking them out as they flew by.... "yep there's one..!!, that was one... wasn't it ?"
More often than not though this was actually due to him being deep in concentration, umm... to put it politely, filling out an order for a new nappy.
With some perseverance, and several dud shots either side of this one I did just manage to capture a bit of a grin here, and there'll be more to come later. 

Another "action" shot of someone sleeping. I'd include similar pictures of the parents as well to prove it does happen, but then who'd take them ? Plus there's enough kooky stuff on the internet without including us into the mix, and it's not exactly why you're here is it... 

Here we have Jackie demonstrating the fine art of extreme burping. The reason it's extreme is due to the lack of safety equipment being used by the burper (or is that burpee ?). As you might notice there is nothing to catch anything that might decide to venture out of Henry's mouth, except for Jackies freshly washed cardigan, and I can assure you she isn't carrying any spares. Hats off to you Jackie, who did come away from this encounter completely unscathed. I think. The truth is we have been pretty lucky with Henry not really being into the whole vomiting thing. He seems to have already adopted a policy of "waste not want not" as far as his food goes, and our clothes thank him for this. 

A freshly bathed and sqeaky clean Henry, at age 1 month and 1 day - May 21. The day previous to this Tiff and Henry made their way to the early childhood centre for weighing and measuring. Since birth he has grown 4cm (now 55cm long), and has put on about 1 1/2 pounds (now 4.8 kg - 10.6 lb).  

In case anyone is wondering why so many baby photos are taken whilst the baby is alseep, it's generally for two reasons. 1 - It's usually the only time you've got two spare hands to take a photo. 2 - Cuteness, of course. What you are seeing in this picture is the equivalent of the 50 cent piece shown in photos of small objects to give an idea of scale. Where Henry lies on the scale of adorability is given perspective, by comparing him with the big ugly mug in the background. 

I would like to say I took this picture as it's one of the best we have of him, thanks to Tina who came to visit and captured this. I'll keep snapping away in my usual haphazard fashion, knowing I'll get lucky every now and then. Thanks to digital cameras I can thankfully do this without wasting roll upon roll of film. 

This photo was taken on May 14, as we were on our way to attend Dot and Max's wedding. Henry stayed at home in the capable hands of Tiff's mum Jackie. This was an interesting time as it was our first evening without him, and although we did have a great time seeing our friends and having a couple of drinks we did miss him. 

After we had been home about a week, we had a visit from the early childhood centre to make sure we were progressing well. After determining that we were keeping sane and rested (these terms are of course relative to the situation, and starting points) Henry was put on the scales, and we found that he had put on the weight he had lost during his hospital stay - only around 40 grams or so. In addition to this he had also gained 250 brand new grams so he's up to around 9 1/2 pounds. Like his parents he eats like there's a job to be done, so no doubt we will see him carry on in this direction for a little while yet. He seems to have lost some slight chubbiness from the cheeks, but is still doing pretty well in that department regardless. 

David and Lyndal's car capsule being put to use here.. very handy things these the way they double as a carrier. You could probably stick wheels on them and remove the need for a stroller, but then that would mean we wouldn't get to pick him up quite as often so we won't be trying for that any time soon (and by the time he is too big to pick up he'll be out of the capsule anyway). 

After a few days at home trying the various methods, locations, and positions that Henry likes to spend his time prior to falling asleep (as these would sometimes change with alarming regularity) , we glanced into the corner of the flat that contains a small mountain of items on loan from various friends who have previously ventured into this life of parenting, and spotted "the rocker".
Mim and Phil, we thank you for this. Although only Henry fits within, it has provided all three of us with many hours of sleep. 

Post feed - Henry doing an impression of a small grub curled up with Tiff. 

Apologies for the lack of updates in the past few days, however I will endeavour to make up for this in the next day or so. Here is one of Henry on his first day back home. Note that he still has his identification tags on for some reason. Perhaps mum and dad wanted to make sure he looked as good at home as he did in the shop in case we needed to return him....
I think we can count that as embarressing dad joke #1... hundreds more to come I'm sure.