It’s been a much quieter week in the Agar household. It took Alex a few days to get back into routine after the Manchester trip, but thankfully he’s beginning to sleep a bit better, only waking once last night between 7.30pm and 7am which was quite a treat! We’ve spent our days doing our usual activities – power pramming, long walks (including an excitingly sunny walk where I just wore a tshirt – here comes Spring!) and lunch with my NCT buddies.

Alex enjoyed an afternoon hanging out with his daddy whilst I popped into work for a meeting about my return (5 April – yikes, it’s coming quickly!). And we had a fun visit from Auntie Katharine at the weekend. We all visited Borough Market – such a great place to take Alex as there’s so much to see, although I do regularly feel bad as I used to tut people who took prams to the market on a Saturday!

Alex is currently perfecting his raspberry blowing (which he often does when eating, spraying me with swedes and courgettes – nice!). And his rolling over is getting much more proficient, with occasional success at rolling back at last. He’s starting to make crawling attempts when he’s on his tummy. I suspect he’s a long way off mastering that, but it’s fun to watch him begin to learn how.

Scariest development is the appearance of a little bit of tooth – he’s been teething lots over the past couple of weeks, and his very first bottom tooth is just beginning to break through. I still can’t quite believe it – he’s growing so quickly!

And the biggest challenge at the moment is his complete refusal to take a bottle or cup. He starts settling in with our new childminder in less than 3 weeks, so he’s going to get quite a shock when he suddenly finds he has no access to me! At least he’s almost 6 months old now, when breastfeeding becomes less important and food takes priority.

Coming soon…. Alex’s first swimming lesson!

It’s been a challenging couple of weeks with Alex getting his first proper cold and experiencing serious teething pains.  Poor wee man – and thank goodness for Calpol and baby bonjela!

Looking frazzled in Manchester!

We took our first family trip – a weekend in Manchester to watch the World Track Championships – or at least that was the plan. Alex had other ideas though – so I spent most of the weekend comforting an unhappy baby!  And with Matt and I sharing a room with him for the first time in a couple of months, we didn’t get much sleep!  Hopefully our trip to Dorset next month will be more successful.  Matt and our friend Jo certainly enjoyed the cycling, and I’m glad I at least managed to see the Team GB men’s pursuit team being brilliant 🙂

His appetite seemed to be affected by his cold. -but now he’s feeling better, he’s tried courgette and sweet potato. I’m a little bit offended that despite me preparing organic, steamed purees for him, he seems to prefer shop bought purees (which I only bought for ease for our weekend away!). Oh well – I’ll keep trying to get him to like my cooking, otherwise things will get expensive!

Highlights in the past couple of weeks include:

• Taking baby massage classes with my NCT friends.  The babies love being naked and massaged, and, when not dodging al fresco peeing, it’s fun for us to have something to do with them to get them nice and relaxed.  Alex loves it – but tends to get the giggles quite a bit, or wriggles and wriggles trying to improve his rolling over skills!
• Alex finally managed to roll all the way over – giving me hope that I will no longer have to spend much of my day helping him onto his back!  Sadly, he only seemed to perfect this skill for one day, and hasn’t repeated it since!



• Alex meeting his Great Auntie Elaine, who dropped by for a couple of days on a whistlestop tour of the UK from Washington DC
• Hanging out at Kew Gardens with his little friend Sasha (and our bigger friends John and Sladana) – we were so lucky with the weather, so Alex had a great tour of the grounds and got to see all the gorgeous crocuses that are blooming.  Such a stunning place.
• Trying out a door bouncer – and absolutely loving it!
• Screaming so loudly with excitement that he set of the window intruder alarms!!  His scream pitch must be exactly the same frequency – will make a singer of him yet!
• More power pramming!

He starts swimming lessons next weekend – more on that soon!

It’s been a busy week for Family Agar as February gets underway and Spring begins to feel a little bit closer.  Alex and I started the week at the incredibly sad wake following the funeral of a friend’s baby girl – made me want to hug little Alex tight and not let him go.  I’m thinking of my friend every day and sending her all our love.

The weather earlier in the week matched the mood – and so Alex and I stayed tucked up in the warm on Tuesday.  The major excitment of the day was introducing Alex to pears.

He’d been doing very well with baby rice and so, following Gina Ford’s weaning guidelines (!), we moved on to some fruit.  His face was a picture when he first tasted pears – but he very quickly decided he liked it and munched it down without pause.

On Wednesday, the rain had gone, so I met an NCT friend, Bryony, and we marched our little boys around Dulwich Park whilst we had a good gossip.  We then undid all our good exercise with fish finger sandwiches in the pub in the village – yum!

We were back in Dulwich Park early on Thursday morning for our first “Power Pramming” class.  I thought this would involve a slightly faster walk around the park, but it was actually an hour of pretty intense exercise!  Having done very little for the past 18 months, it was quite a shock to the system running round the park pushing Alex and doing lots of exercises whilst the babies watched from their prams!  It was certainly an excellent workout – although my thighs are seriously objecting right now – and I’ll be back next week.  Alex wasn’t entirely sure whether to sleep or cry throughout the class – I’m hoping in future he decides to sleep!

Alex and I ended the week with a much more standard maternity leave day – a leisurely morning followed by lunch out in London with a friend and an afternoon of playing at home! We also met the childminder we’ve chosen for him again to plan his settling in period – we start with her in only 5 weeks time, with a gradual increase of hours until he’s ready to spend the entire day there.  I can’t believe how quickly that’s approaching – but I’m confident we’ve found a great lady to look after him and it’s still 8 weeks until I return to Imperial (3 days per week).

Despite the sad start, it’s been a pretty good week.  It’s been fun introducing Alex to solid food – and he’s been gradually sleeping better – still a ways from going through the night, but far fewer wakings.  Long may that continue.

I’ll finish this post with another video – this time of Alex having a good kickaround on his playmat!  More soon.