Rather good

Asa is still being quite good - here he is asleep for the last time in his lovely rocking crib.

The upgrade to the proper cot is prompted by all the raising up on the hands and the rolling over.

Smiley

Asa might just be the smiling-est baby I ever met! He is very cuddle, very squishy and very, very smiley. This may just be an evolutionary thing to prevent his older siblings eating him or something. Whenever Linus talks to him he just beams and Linus goes all silly and just swoons over him! It's really quite bizarre. Gabriel also loves Asa rather a lot, enough to actually remove his dummy and give him a kiss- unprompted!

It's all rather strange given the otherwise lack of brotherly love in this house, but Asa does seem to have this effect on people. You just can't help but squish him and cuddle him and kiss him. And boy does he like it.

We got the bumbo chair out so he could look around a bit better and also to help protect him a bit more from boisterous older siblings (he gets squashed when lying on the playmat, and tipped out of his swing). He does like having a look around, but gets a bit tired of having to hold his own head up after a bit so he only goes in for a short time.

Today he spent quite a lot of time in the sling on my back while I made dinner, as he was suffering from a bad case of not-wanting-to-be-put-down. Poor little thing.

Growing

The past few weeks have been pretty busy for Asa. Mostly he has been busy sleeping and eating. He's been managing to fit a few more night feeds in because he was a bit disappointed at only having gained 3lb since he was born.

We had the routine 6 week check a couple of weeks back which is where we discovered that he is off the top of the chart for height and just below it for weight. We don't take too much notice of the weight one because it is plotted on a chart based on formula fed babies, but we know for sure that he's tall! Actually, I didn't really need a trip to the GP to find that out. The fact that he's bursting out of most of his 0-3 month clothing kind of gave the game away.

He has been spending more time in his bouncy chair of late, watching his brothers and picking up tips on how to really, really, really irritate Mummy. It is slightly hazardous in the chair due to certain brothers "accidentally" kicking him in the face, or bouncing him a little too hard. Turns out that he is growing out of the bouncy chair too:

July 2009

Well, it's still rather hectic in our household right now. Actually I rather suspect that isn't ever going to change from now on. Asa is very lucky to have 2 big brothers who rather like him. Gabriel likes him ever so very much and likes to snuggle him and lay on him and stroke him and just everything him. He's still a bit young to be trusted not to accidently hurt him though so it's lucky that Linus is just about trustworthy enough that he can be asked to keep an eye on Asa while I am out of the room.

The other day Asa was having a nice lie down on the sofa, probably worn out from doing some being alive or something. I had to go to the kitchen for an urgent tea mission and so left Linus in charge of the baby. A couple of moments passed and then Linus's head pokes round and says "Mummy, I've hidden Asa". "hmmm", I think, "that could be very bad". I come back into the sitting room to find this:

After he was done hiding, we went off on a lovely holiday (Asa's very first holiday in fact) down to Devon to visit Nan and Grandpop. I am not sure that Asa really noticed he was on holiday, most things in his life stayed the same- same annoying brothers, same daddy who makes him cry, same booby that makes him not cry... and so on. We did, however, manage a trip out to the gnome reserve where he was transformed into a lovely little pixie-like creature:

1 Month

So, it would appear that in just under 7 hours time Asa will be a whole 4 weeks old! Which is like, virtually, a whole month. Give or take a couple of days.

In his four weeks he has mostly slept, eaten, pooed and cried. Possibly in that order. He is getting much better at his feeding during the night, he kindly allows me to fall asleep and then snacks carefully, being sure not to wake me. I think this is very kind of him

He is becoming much more alert and awake during the day now, which is quite nice, although he appears rather reluctant to be put down ever if he is awake and so at various points throughout the day I have a little velcro boy who must never, ever, not never be parted from his Mama. Awww I hear you all say. And, I suppose it is quite cute when you think about it, I just happen to think it's a bit suspicious that he only wakes and needs to be held when I am either changing the stinking nappy of death (courtesy of Gabriel), making breakfast/lunch/dinner or trying to help Linus make a beautiful necklace for when you're riding on a horse and cart.

(More about the nappy and the necklace on the relevant websites at some point in the near-ish future)

Anyway, all in all we've had a lovely month of Asa-ness. His brothers both love him to bits. His arrival has prompted Gabriel to learn the word "baby" and Linus to admit that he likes other people. Not a bad start in life eh?

Oh and for the photo-philes (is there a proper word for that?):

Still sleeping

It seems that you are, or so it seems so far, going to be a nice baby. You rather like sleeping, you sleep nicely in the day without constant screaming (Gabriel, I'm looking at you) and sleep mostly at the right times during the night.

Click to enlarge.

First Light

My name is Asa Nicholas Stephens-Mitchell and I was born at home at 0338h on the 12th June 2009.