Dad Goes Back to Work

Dad went back towork today, luckily I didnt start until 13.00 which gave me time to have a lie in and get ready. Nanny Ronnie entertained Curtis for most of the morning which made things a whole lot easier. Also ment that at least for 5 more days Steph isnt left to fend for herself. Was a strange experience going to work after starring almost solely at the little mans face for 2 weeks. However with the amount of questions I had to answer about him once I got to work it didnt really seem like Id left him behind.

Mum and Curtis went outside and braved the cold weather today. Curtis got to try out his cool new woolly hat. He nearly got to see his first snow fall but it didnt quite snow for long enough.

We re back to the use of the passifier again as he seems to get a lot of comfort from it. The only other opion would have been to feed him none stop for 24 hours. But then none of his cool clothes would fit him anymore so dummy it is.

WI FI Curtis meets the World

This morning Curtis entered the world of WI FI and he now operates completely cordlessly...... His withering crusting umbilical cord has finally dropped off. No one was sad to see it go.

In celebration we decided it was time for Curtis to meet the big world outside the front door. So after 3 and a half hours of preparation including 3 nappy changes 2 changes of clothes and 2 feeds we were finally ready to leave the house. That was after we had finally stopped laughing at how ridiculous he looked in his 3 sizes too big snow suit.

All of our careful preparation didnt stop us from being halted at the front gate when it started to rain. Unperturbed we fumble with the prams raingaurd until the little man was fully protected from the rain and off we went.

We went as far as Auntie Lisa s house which isn t very far but good for a first effort.
Curtis's first impressions of the outside world may be rather limited as he slept through the entire journey.

Who made that noise puppy or baby?

In the end 4 puppies was the final total. Nanny Ronnie stayed up right through the night to make sure they all got feed and remained healthy. Made us feel better that someone is getting less sleep than us.



Curtis had a much happier day today. We seemed to have solved yesterdays problems with a mixture of formula feed and a dummy. Experimenting with different things to help him settle.

Curtis had a visit from little Gregor who lives across the street. He brought him a toy spider to play with. Amazingly Curtis managed to sleep through Gregor repeatedly hitting him in the face with it.

Happy Birthday Uncle Jamie........ and the puppies

Busy day today. Curtis spent the day sleeping or crying. Little man couldnt get rid of trapped wind. He s been pretty angry all day but seems to have calmed down a lot in time for bed time.




Besides that we made a Tunisian orange cake to celebrate Jamies Birthday. Congratulations 23 again today.





However from now on Jamie will have to share his birthday with so far 4 of Alices puppies. Alice had been walking around today shaking and staring at the floor even more than usual so we had a feeling today may be the day. Sure enough around 8 o clock she went into labour. So not only has nanny Ronnie been full time cook, cleaner, laundry women and Curtis calmer she is also now doggy midwife. This little puppy looks particularly pleased with his days work.
We have have to wait till morning to hear the final head count.

Uncles Day 2 (The Uncles Weekend)

Uncles day 2 started with a phone call from uncle Roland in Kent. He had his 1st chat with Curtis on the telephone. Followed by a visit from pseudo uncle Stan who came the whole way from Dundee to say hello to the little man. This Completed the involvement of all 5 of Curtis's Uncles in the Uncle weekend festivities.

Stan was hoping Curtis was going to come on the 10th as thats his birthday. The Condition was that if he did, Stan had to appear somewhere in his name. Lucky for Curtis he didnt arrive on the 7th or 12th as he could have ended up being called Valerie or Veronica.
As it happens there is still an outside bet on Stanley appearing in his name. Curtis Aaron Stanley Hughes would give the little man the coolest initials ever. Johnny would be proud.

Also visiting today was the lovely Carolyn. Carolyn shared a flat with stanley and myself whilst we were all at University. But also happens to be our favourite obstetrician and baby expert. Having not seen Carolyn for 6-7 years it was a bit of a random shock when she walked in whilst steph was in labour. But she was great and made the whole process much nicer and easier for us. Big thankyou and also for the flowers she brought today.

Uncle Jamie came to entertain us all again today. Jamie is taking a 4 month sabbatical from work to play with Curtis ( ......I mean finish his Phd) so will probably see more of Curtis than me.



The Uncle weekend was rounded off in style with a strong contender for coolest big clothes. Tim and Lizzie bought this t-shirt before heading off to catch the ferry back to Ireland, and we love it.









As for Curtis.... as you can see he was quite relaxed about the whole affair. Not sure who he takes after.............

Uncles Day

It was uncles day today. Uncle Tim and aunt Lizzie arrived from Ireland to meet Curtis for the first time. Tim is an uncle for the first time and is way excited about it. On arrival Lizzie also found out that her brother in Bristol Has just had a healthy little girl called Alice. Congratulations to them. You wait for so long to become an uncle/aunt then 2 come along at once!!!!


Also today uncle Jamie came to visit. Jamie has official uncle status as he is Stephs bestest friend since forever and cause all Curtis's other uncles live far away in other counties. Jamie is proving his uncle worthiness by racking up the most visiting points of anyone so far. Including a rare visit while Steph and Curtis were in hospital. Not many people got this opportunity as Steph did a runner from the labour ward so quickly.

Curtis was sporting a cool Navy long sleeve t-shirt today sent all the way from uncle Lee, aunt Adrienne and cousins Jarvis and Felix in Sydney.
Lee sent over a box full of cool newborn clothes which have been great. Including a little all blacks woolly hat. Maybe if Curtis supports the all blacks it would solve a few family feuds, with me wanting him to support Ireland Steph wanting him to support England, Tiad and Tim wanting him to support Wales and the little man probably wanting to support Scotland.

Lee put a big welcome to Curtis on Jarvis's Blog today which was sweet and appropriate for Uncles day. There's a link to both Jarvis and Felix at the top of the page.

Welcome to the Jungle

Curtis maybe have found his new favourite thing today. A little jungle playmat with lots of bright colours and dangley things to play. They all make noises and play tunes which frightened him a bit at first but he was soon very excited about the whole thing.



He s had a funny day today, very restless. He s hardly slept all day and all the things that have worked to calm him down previously just haven t been working.
We think we may have traced the problem to a touch of nappy rash so we re hoping some nappy cream will persuade him to catch up on all the sleep he missed out on today by sleeping right through the night.........

Alison from across the road called in today to meet the little man and brought him a prezzie and everything. We've been so shocked at how nice our neighbours on this street are. From the day we moved in everybody has been really kind and friendly but we didnt expect so may people to come over with presents and offer to go food shopping for us!!!!



Steph has come up with an absolutely ingenious idea which has turned changing time from an all out screaming match to Curtis's favourite time of the day. This cot/pram lining book placed over the top of him totally fascinates him. He ll just stare at it for ages and takes no notice of being washed and changed.

Milky Joe.

Little man has been called milky Joe today due to his huge milky appetite. (Steph is mightily impressed by his amazing breast feeding skills). But also due to the huge quantity of milky smelly poo being produced and small quantity of milky smelling sick.

Good news tho, amongst the milky sick was a fair amount of mucus which we had to clear up off Stephs chest and he seems now to have totally lost the mucusy snuffleiness he had when he was born. Looking back today at pictures from last week his face has filled out and become rounder and his skin is so much clearer.

Paul and Pete may be winning the coolest baby grow competition so far with this dude top and rockstar hat. He ll have to wait a few months to fit in them tho.

1 Week Old Today

Blimey! 1 Week old, how did that happen. Half way through my 2 weeks paternity leave. Already we re finding some of his clothes don t fit him anymore.
Its not that he's got that much bigger, its that he's got really long legs. No idea who he gets that from??? So his baby grows fit his body and arms fime but his legs are all scrunched up in them. Nanny Ronnie to the rescue with a big pair of scissors and cut the feet off them all.





Luckily, Auntie Lisa came round to visit today and brought some amazing hand made prezzies including the coolest socks, made by her mum Elenor. Perfect for keeping the little mans feet warm and they look made to measure. Also Lisa painstakingly hand made a "funky as" blanket and bib.

Learning lessions

Lesion learnt last night. The night before the little man had a really big feed which totally knocked him out for 5 hours giving us a great nights sleep. Last night he kept falling asleep after a little feed but waking up again 30 mins to an hour later. So at 6 o'clock we gave him another huge feed and didnt wake up until 12 in the afternoon! Steph got up early expecting him to wake up but it was a big lie in for the boys.

Already he is doing things today that he couldnt do yesterday like pushing with his hands and feet and lifting his head by himself. A quick learner!

Our friend Claire came round to visit today before her big trip. She leaving tomorrow to go traveling and wont be back for 3 to 4 months. Good luck to Claire and we're glad she got to meet Curtis before she left.

Lession number 2 for the day - Beware of the un-nappied baby. He looked so sweet wrapped in his towel after being bathed. We were all too busy standing around saying ahhhh and hadnt put his nappy back on. Moments after this picture was taken Nanny Ronnie (who made the school boy error of standing at the danger end) got covered in projectile shit from 2 foot away. What missed Nanny Ronnie landed on the floor over a metre away. While we then busied ourselves by rolling around the floor in creases of laughter the little man proceeded to piss all up the wall and over the nice pictures we had set out for him to look at.

Lession number 3 for the day - laughing so hard that tears are coming from your eyes has a whole new meaning if you have just had major abdominal surgery such as a cessarian section less than 1 week ago. Watching steph using her hypno-birthing techniques to try and stop the laughter and the pain only made the situation a whole lot funnier.

settling In

Little Curtis is getting used to his new surroundings now. He's been quite calm the last few days and has even let us get a reasonable night sleep last night. He slept from about 12 ish, through till about 4 and then from about 5.30 till about 9 when we actually had to wake him up cause the midwife came to check him over. She had to take a blood sample from him which involved her stabbing him in the foot 3 or 4 times!!! It was so horrible to watch and not surprisingly Curtis didnt like it much. Good news though, he's back up to his birth weight already after dipping down to 6lb 13 at last measurement.

We ve already discovered 1 of his favourite things. Pretending to be a little treefrog. Its by far his favourite position to be in and he falls asleep straight away.

My 0 th Birthday

Curtis Aaron Hughes was born on 16th Janurary 2008 to proud parents Gareth and Stephanie. He was born at 22.51 and weighed 7lb 5.
He was born in the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow where all the staff were amazing and trully made this a fantastic experience for us.

Stephanie and curtis returned home at 12.00 on Friday to be greeted by 3 delighted grandparents Ronnie Valerie and John who have all promised to spoil him even against our wishes.

Since then the little man has been busy entertaining all his admiring visitors including uncle Jamie and uncle Dan, Pete and Paul, Siobhan, Anne from next door and Nicola from across the street.

Nanny Ronnie has very kindly come to stay for the whole of Janurary and has been fantastic cooking all the lovely food and doing all the washing Ironing etc. So big thaks to her and to Grandad Steve back in Norwich for having to fend for himself for a whole month without her. And must also mention Alice the little fox terrior whos birthday it is today. Alice has come with Ronnie to help out.