Busy busy times...

Well, it's been a busy few weeks. We've had the usual hectic lead up to Christmas plus a few extra special events. First there was Dad's 60th birthday party. Then we had the arrival of some very excited grandparents all the way from Ireland. Christmas came a few day's later and now we are on the eve of another new year. The camera has been getting a good ole workout in the midst of all this activity. Where do we start?

The arrival of Granny & Grandad was met with much anticipation. Derrick slept restlessly the night before their arrival & actually heard Maeghan's baby noises through the night. After an early departure for the airport, I was a little surprised to get a phone call from Peter at the airport looking for Derrick. Apparently there is more than one arrival gate and typical that the one that Derrick was waiting at, was not the right one. They obviously found each other and despite the shaky start, they made it back to the house in once piece.

The greeting that Granny gave Maeghan was fantastic and nearly brought me to tears. We had much to catch-up on and while Annete & myself caught up on all the gos, Derrick & his Dad were out checking out the mini. I think that the mini got a run around the block within the first hour of arriving from the airport!

Anyway, after struggling through the jetlag on the first day, there was no time to waste, it was into the city for a bit of shopping and a refresher on the city's highlights. On the sunday, we spent the day perusing through the Rock's markets followed by a trip up the Bridge's south tower for view of the city.

So far everything has been going according to script. The weather has been perfect.. not too hot, but the sun has been out giving everyone the prerequest red noses and strap marks to prove to everyone back home what they are missing out on in the depths of an Irish winter. Maeghan has been on her best behaviour and has been sleeping right through the night, smiling on cue and generally winning the hearts of her favourite Irish grandparents.

8 weeks today

Hard to believe that 8 weeks have passed already since Maeghan came into the world. We've seen lots of the usual progress in babies of this age. Can't really say that we've got a child genius on our hands, but she generally seems to be a happy little baby.

The main things we've noticed lately is that Maeghan is starting to 'talk' back to us, she is much more responsive to our voice and smiling back at us as we talk to her. She is definitely getting much stronger and can pretty much hold her head up most of the time, though it still has it's floppy moments. The other cool thing is that she's learning that her arms & legs do 'stuff'. They are flailling around a lot more and randomly hitting toys that I put in her general direction. Won't be long before she's hitting things with a little bit more intent.

As I said once before, these videos aren't all that action packed, but I have fun playing with them so anyone else that may interested can take 30 sec out of their day to see my little baby fling her arms around. You can almost see the brain ticking over as she works out that her arms might actually come in handy for something.

Our first Santa experience

There's going to be a lot of firsts for little Maeghan over the next few years, but one of them had to be our first Santa photo. I'd say this might be the easiest Santa photo we'll have to worry about for the next few years, after this one, Santa might just be an old scary man in a red suit.

Of course Mum wanted a Santa photo taken with all the grandkids & by chance we happened to be out shopping with all the kids in coordinating outfits. So much for easing the kids into the whole Santa concept, first week that Santa appears in the shops, we had to have the photos taken. Elissa was a bit apprehensive but we told her that Maeghan needed her to hold her hand so she wouldn't be scared. At least she didn't have to sit on the scary man's lap. Isaac was not keen at all. You would barely notice that he's sitting on Susanne's lap, which is covered in a red blanket. Oh well, this is the first of many Santa photo's.