Time flies

The weeks are whizzing by and Oscar is growing and changing every single day. He is far more alert than last time I wrote - and spends more hours awake - hence the lack of time for blogging recently.
As for his parents, Neil and I are learning to read the little scrap's moods and cries with varying degrees of success. Like the age-old cliché goes, babies really should come with a manual and an instrument panel with 'hungry', 'windy' and 'bored' indicator lights. We're adapting to new sleep patterns well (4-6 hours of broken kip is sufficient now), although we do have some spectacularly grouchy moments.
Oscar and I have been on lots of long walks, negotiated public transport in rush hour, and visited the osteopath (who has got Neil and I hanging the baby upside down from his ankles on a daily basis - which apparently helps to stretch his spine and muscles out following his journey down the birth canal. He seems remarkably composed in that position, and looks like a funny little long-necked alien.)
His now nine-pound body belies the volume he's capable of producing both in terms of filling his nappy and filling the room with blood-curdling screaming when he's got wind. Our neighbours claim they haven't heard him, but I suspect they're being polite. We've started to put him to bed at around seven or eight each day (in the vain hope of eating a meal with two hands) but this has resulted in spending all our evenings trying to console an inconsolable baby and dreaming up new schemes to get him to sleep (the lastest favourite is putting the hairdryer on next to the cot - the white noise sometimes seems to calm him down). I am slowly developing a new skill - patience! I fully expect to be drifting serenely through life with the selfless air of a nun on Prozac by the time he's school age.
Oscar continues to be the most photographed baby on the planet, with his mother sticking a zoom lens up his nostrils at every opportunity, and he's even been snapped by our friend Stephen Swain, a professional photographer, who came to visit him last weekend.
We have been rewarded for our almost-24-hour baby caring efforts this week with some faint glimmers of acknowledgement from Oscar - and I'm absolutely convinced the charming little smiles we get some mornings are nothing to do with wind!

Small Faces

Oscar has been displaying the most mind-boggling array of facial expressions (most of which, I suspect, are caused by trapped wind). He also seems to be very good at impressions of famous people. So far Neil and I have spotted Chairman Mao, Yoda, Paul Daniels, Charles Clarke and of course the obligatory Winston Churchill (all newborns look like Winston). I must point though out that inbetween gurning sessions he is absolutely beautiful.