Family

Cute Little Things on the Line!

Miranda is 10 weeks old now! Unbelievable. She is now sleeping through the night, (almost!), has full control of her neck, has grown out of all her newborn clothes and best of all, she has started smiling, gurgling and giggling! She is soooo beautiful and I love it when she starts talking to me in Miri-speak. She is also capable of registering her disgust when necessary:

"We are not amused."

I haven't updated this blog for a while because everything has been completely hectic for the past few weeks. We dared to Go Out without her once; it was our eleventh anniversary and we left Miri in the capable hands of Auntie Jo and Uncle Graeme. I armed them with the Miranda Dictionary (see below) and they did a great job - and I resisted the urge to ring them every five minutes to check on her! Mum asked the other day if all my friends are going to be Honorary Aunts and Uncles. I still have Honourary Auntie Cathy - Mum's best friend, so I see no reason why not. Sadly Miranda will have no aunts or uncles on my side of the family, although Mum and one other friend with a good memory have commented on the fact that Miri, on occasion, looks a little bit like Uncle Rohan. Something about the gumpy grin, and her expression sometimes. I don't know if mine are genuine memories of how Rohan looked, or whether my imagination and wishful thinking are filling in the gaps... Despite my sad lack of siblings now though,  I have a lot of wonderful friends who I hope will be around to see her grow up. I've been Auntie Bel to little Ione since she was born so I'll return the favour!

At five weeks old, I had to take Miri to the photographers to get her passport photo done. Yep, even tiny babies are now expected to have their own passports, complete with straight-on-white-background-eyes-open-head-shot-photograph. It's hard enough getting the photo right in the first place, but I pity the customs people who have to tell the difference between month-old babies. Even more stupidly, she'll have this passport until she is five years old. She doesn't look the same a month later, let alone four years later....

Anyway, Miri has to have a passport so we can go to South Africa to show her off to her only real aunt, Carl's sister, and her paternal grandad in Johannesburg. Carl has a neice who also has two children and one more on the way - these are the nearest Miranda has to cousins. So even more reason to appoint friends as adopted family - my friends are people she will actually see regularly! Even so, I am really looking forward to Miri's first adventure abroad, seeing the in-laws again, and meeting my latest great-nephew!

Speaking of cousins though, my second cousin is most definitely Uncle Ol. He has a very very distant blood-relationship to Miri, but no matter how tentative the connection, he seems to absolutely adore her. It's really sweet, and this makes me smile a lot. I love my baby being admired! :) Ol came up last week under guise of helping me out with our Doctor Coffee stall - but really just to see Miranda, obviously. Miri is a fantastic advert for the business; so many people come up to see the cute baby and we waved coffee under their nose appropriately.

"I said I wanted a skinny three-shot caramelatte you fool!"

She is sitting on Granny's knee in that photo. The (grand-)parents came up for a few days last week as well, complaining that they hadn't seen Miranda in over a month! Could well be because they live 200 miles away.... Anyway, it was good to see them and of course they spoiled Miri rotten. It was difficult to prize her away from them; Dad must have taken hundreds of photos, Mum wouldn't let me push the pushchair at all the entire time they were up, and they even moaned when she was asleep! If it wasn't for the fact they couldn't feed her, I don't think we would have got her back at all, she would have been kidnapped and taken to the Welsh wilderness forever more.

Saltburn pier- one of the rare occasions I was allowed to hold my own daughter

 It does concern me that I am morphing in to my Mother, as the above photo demonstrates. Miranda's future will probably be decided pear-shaped! Having my parents around is reassuring in a strange way. Being Their Daughter makes me feel more like Me - I am used to that role. Being Miranda's Mummy is still a very new and unnerving concept. I've got to be All Growed Up, responsible, an Adult. I don't feel like it sometimes. It is all so scary still. I am so careful of Miranda, I just want to protect her from everything and I honestly couldn't bear it if anything hurt her! It's entirely irrational I know, but I just feel completely over-protective of her and at the same time, completely incapable and unprepared.

However, it is comforting that she seems to be such a happy little soul. The grins and the beginnings of little giggles make my heart melt. It is not just me and Carl now, we've gone from being a couple to being a family, and I think we're doing pretty well at it so far!

Our beautiful, happy little girl