Ruben Patrick Murphy

It’s been a pretty interesting week, this week. After being inspired by our NCT buddies, we decided to get hold of a potty and start getting familiar with it. It’s not serious potty training, but he does manage to do the business every now and then. No pressure. Very clever.

Other cleverness this week included learning to clap hands (yay Ruben!) and the beginnings of a 5th tooth! (Five already?! We are starting to wonder whether we’ll ever get a break from this!)

We’ve been watching a bit of the Olympics this week. It’s been a little cooler (despite still being summer) so Ruben has been able to wear his very first track suit (sent from Australia, thanks Granny!). Very stylin’

He’s still showing very little interest in moving about, but is very interested in sitting up and talking… talking a lot! We’re hearing lots of ‘mama, mama, mama’ that seems to apply to just about anything, however he has said ‘dada, dada, dada’ at times that make you think he knows what he means (that is, when trying to get Mick’s attention). Jacky reckons he has a few Spanish words too, but I suspect that may be wishful thinking. He definitely has spanish ‘sounds’… at any rate, he certainly does like a chat any time of the day or night.

Watching the Opening Ceremony and having lunch from Leisa on Vimeo

Speaking of which, he’s decided that sleeping is for losers, and is not doing a whole lot of it during the night. He very happily goes *to* sleep, but staying asleep is another matter. We’re being big softies about it and just letting him snuggle in bed with us so that we can get a little sleep (and subsequently get up to work the next day!). You’re allowed to say ‘told you so’ when he’s still in bed with us 3yrs later. Can’t do the ‘cry it out’ approach … not yet, anyway.

Ruben’s latest contribution to science from Leisa on Vimeo.

Here’s a little science experiment we did the other day (with some scientists, of course!). It was all about finding out how babies react to different facial expressions and they were tracking his emotional response through all those little things on his head. He did a great job 🙂

Ruben is 7 months old now. Where did all that time go?

Rubes is sitting and talking and eating and being very clever, but showing virtually no inclination towards mobility, which we are all very happy about. No rush. The house isn’t baby proofed yet!

He’s just cut his fourth tooth (two on the top and two on the bottom). This last tooth has been giving him a bit of trouble and he’s not been sleeping so well lately. It makes everyone want afternoon naps, but Ruben is the only one who is lucky enough to get them these days.

We went to the Baby Clinic this week for a weigh in and he’s now 9.5kgs or about 20lbs, and around the 75th centile. So despite the fact that everyone tells us he’s such a big boy (and he’s fitting into clothes that are supposedly designed to fit a 12 month old baby), 25% of babies are bigger than him.

Things we’ve been doing recently include going to Story Time at the Horniman Museum, and a trip into town to participate in a research project which involved Ruben getting a hairnet made of electrodes on his head and looking at pictures of faces on a television to measure his emotional reaction to different facial expressions. Very interesting!

Ruben’s latest contribution to science from Leisa on Vimeo.

OK, so this weekly update thing is gradually crumbling and we should probably move to months… nevermind, here’s a little update.

Mobbed in the New Mosque from Leisa on Vimeo.

As you can probably guess from the video above, Ruben’s been on the go again, getting more stamps in his passport. This time he was off to Istanbul (Turkey) and Rome (Italy) accompanying his Mum who was speaking at a couple of conferences. He helped keep Dad entertained while Mum was busy with work. He also kept quite a portion of the population of Istanbul entertained, as where ever he went people stopped in the street to say hello to him, and wanted to pick him up and give him a cuddle. While we were visiting the Spice Market a young girl even got her mother to take a photo of her with Ruben – what a rockstar 🙂

The weather was warm and he *may* have gotten a scerrick of a suntan, but lots of fanning and water seemed to keep him pretty comfortable. He also seemed to enjoy the local cuisine and tasted a range of yummy dips and sauces in Istanbul and lots of cheese and gelato in Rome (I haven’t uploaded that video yet… )

He also got to go for some swims in the pool at the fancy Hilton hotel we stayed at in Rome (where the conference was being held).

Another thing that Ruben has been doing a lot of lately is eating. He has eaten lots and lots of different types of fruits and vegetables and yoghurt now, and hasn’t found a food he doesn’t like.

Eating (again) from Leisa on Vimeo.
We’ve been too busy doing things like going to the movies to see Wall-E or having lunch with Teresa the Midwife to get to the Baby Clinic to see how big he is these days, but as an indication, a pair of shorts we bought the other day that were supposedly for 6-12 months only just fit him, and another pair that are supposed to be for 12-18 months olds fit perfectly (although, perhaps Baby Gap just size small?) He’s a little big for size zero Bonds gear, but size one is still a little big on him. (We know this because we recently received a package from granny with some new Bonds gear – just in time! Ruben now has his very own track suit, an important milestone in any young mans life, no? Pictures to follow – we have to wait for a nice cool day. Being the middle of summer in London, it won’t be long!)

More soon, we promise!

The most exciting thing about this week was all the food that Ruben’s been eating. We had planned to follow Annabel Karmel’s very helpful meal planner, in which she suggests that for the first week we just do a little lunch and gradually build up to 3 meals a day. Ruben, however, had a different idea, and we’re pretty much doing 3 meals a day already – just one week after he tried his very first taste of baby rice.

Very impressive.

In addition to baby rice, Ruben has added a range of foods to his repertoire including: apple, pear, banana (he likes to chew on it whole, doesn’t like it mashed), honeydew melon (sharing some breakfast with mum before going to see the summer exhibition at the Royal Academy with his buddies Theo and Issac), butternut pumpkin, sweet potato, potato and carrots, potato and pumpkin, straight carrot, and a mix of roast vegetables from our baked dinner the other day (carrots, parsnip and sweet potato). His least favourite is mashed banana and, I think… most favourite was pear with some baby rice for breakfast. It’s hard to tell which is the favourite though because he really does love his food. Clever boy.

Without going into too much detail – nappy changing has become a whole different and sometimes surprising experience for us now. Wow.

As you can see, Ruben is getting really good at sitting up these days. With a bit of concentration, he can sit for as long as he wants to (usually until he gets bored of it or distracted by something more exciting). His two bottom teeth are growing bigger and sharper by the day, and his talking is getting better and better.

We regularly hear things that sound very much like ‘hello’, ‘mamma’ and ‘dad dad dad’ and even one ‘hola’, but it’s not entirely clear that he has a clue what he’s talking about, so we’re not really counting them as ‘first words’ yet… this whole ‘first word’ thing is a lot more complicated than you’d imagine. Perhaps we’ll just make up something funny and tell him later it was his first word. Suggestions?

As mentioned before, this week’s outings included a Friday trip to the Royal Academy to see the Summer Exhibition which was a lovely day out. On Thursday we caught up with most of the NCT crew at Ros’s place for lunch (see video above) which was lots of fun. We brought mini strawberry pavlovas for everyone – we’ve been quite addicted to over the past week or so.  Well, not Ruben, because he’s not allowed to eat strawberries yet…

On Saturday the boys spent the day hanging out together while mum headed into town to a conference where she was speaking – for a bit of change, she was talking not about work stuff, but about Ruben! (Well, mostly about how baby’s brains develop after they’re born and how clever that is, using Ruben as a particularly cute and interesting example).

We also got a new toy – a tiny little video camera that fits perfectly into mum’s handbag so expect more like these in the coming weeks!

Hold the press re: Ruben’s new tooth – as you can see above, we are now no longer working on just one tooth, but a second has emerged to balance up the bottom jaw a little. Very impressive. Rube’s continues to handle teething very well, although sleeping at night has become a little disrupted again meaning poor mum is often pretty sleep deprived for her day of work. This really just goes to show how spoiled we’ve been getting lots of hours of sleep until now thanks to Ruben’s usually excellent nights of sleep.

We have, however, been on the look out also for signs that it might be time for Rube’s to start his hopefully happy relationship with solid food and disrupted nights of sleep are also one of those signs apparently, so it is hard to know what is behind it for certain. We had been waiting to see him show some interest in food – watching us eat, trying to take our food from us – but frankly, unless it came in a crinkly sounding wrapper, he hasn’t been the slightest bit interested… nonetheless, his liquid diet seems to be less and less satisfying, so on Fathers’ Day (15 June) we decided to give him a try with some baby rice, just to see if he’d be interested…

… the results are pretty self evident. I think our boy is ready for food. He did quite a good (albeit messy) job of getting down a few spoonfuls of baby rice and really did seem to enjoy it. So we’ll give him another serve of that and then get down to some serious pureeing and see what be makes of the amazing world of fruit and vegetables!

Speaking of Fathers’ Day – Michael had his first this week. Ruben got him a big box of chocolates, a nice green and blue striped polo shirt and some undies. He seemed fairly impressed… with the chocolates at least! Happy Fathers’ Day Mick 🙂

On Friday we went into town and spent the day at the British Museum with our NCT pals Ange and Issac. We had a lovely day, hung out in both the cafes (but not the fancy restaurant), saw some American prints, the Rosetta Stone, and lots of Egyptian mummies. It was a lot of fun, and Ruben was particularly interested in hanging out with Isaac – which is probably the first time that he’s really paid much attention to the fact that there are other babies in the world than him! 🙂

We got some new toys this week including enormous buzzy bee. Buzzy bee (we’ve decided bee’s are Ruben’s favourite animal for now due to the fact that he finds the sound ‘bzzzz’ hysterical) is as tall as Ruben when they are both sitting on the bed together (which Ruben can now do.. eh, I’ll have to get a photo of that for next week). He’s not 100% sitting yet, but very, very close! Rolling or making attempts at crawling are much less interesting to him – he’s happy to roll onto his side for a chat, but doesn’t really see the point of doing full rolls.

He also got some snazzy new outfits this week, including his excellent Australia shirt (below) and his first denim – a pair of overalls/dungarees that I bought in the ‘9 month’ size hoping that he’d grow into them, only to find that the very first time he put them on, they only just fit! Yikes.

Which reminds me – we have taken him back to the baby clinic in the past few weeks (just not when we were updating the blog) to have him weighed and to get his last set of jabs. That was on the 29th May and he weighed 17lbs or 7.75kgs. Phew! He moved up off the ‘average’ mark just a tiny bit, so I can’t imagine what size 90th centile 5 month old babies are wearing! Nevermind – we think he’s quite enormous and growing every day – and getting more clever and handsome and talkative etc. etc.

ok. Enough gushing for one week. Over and out 🙂

Yes, we have been very, very naughty and not updated Ruben’s blog for a long time… don’t despair, I plan to go back and ‘retro fill’ as much of it as I can and we’ll aim for monthly rather than weekly updates going forwards I think. Everyone is just so busy these days!

However, important milestones are piling up so thought it best to give a quick update!

First of all, today, 10 June, Ruben cut his very first tooth with an absolute mimimum of fuss and a maximum of drool… but that’s nothing new as he’s been drooling for *weeks*, perhaps even *months* now! We are all very excited and think he is the cleverest baby ever.

He’s also right on the verge of sitting up by himself – he can manage it for even a minute or two, but only with significant concentration – once he gets bored of concentrating he’s toppling over in every direction!

Rubes is not so interested in mobility, and rolls only when absolutely necessary. Talking is much more his thing and he chat, chat, chatters away morning, noon and night. He’s been through his blowing raspberry phases, onto ‘bub bub bub mum mum mum’ (which we are not getting over excited about and calling his first word… although, personally, I think he’s being saying ‘hello’ for months), another favourite goes something like ‘oiy ya, oiy ya, oiy ya’ and more recently he likes to talk in his high voice, a kind of falsetto. Ruben’s favourite sound is ‘bzzzzzz’ (like a bee) – he laughs and smiles almost every time he hears it (some jokes don’t get old), and when he’s in his cot and thinks that no one is listening, he likes to practice buzzing to himself. V cute.

The other day we spent a full day at the Home Office getting Ruben his Visa so that he can now officially reside in the UK (since they keep trying to deport him when we try to get him back into the country, it seemed like a sensible option). £600 later, he now has yet *another* bit of paperwork and more stuff in his passport. Just as well though as he has trips to Turkey, Italy, Australia and Thailand coming up later in the year. V exciting.

Ruben also got his new high chair the other day which means he can sit at the table with the rest of the family. He’s taken his rightful place at the head of the table and love it there. He’s not actually eating any food yet as we’re waiting for him to show the remotest about of interest in it first. He’s very interested in drinks and will try to take your glass out of your hand at any opportunity (resulting in a bit of a mess if you’re caught unawares!), but not the least bit interested in food just yet. Perhaps now that he has a tooth… 🙂

Ruben is now also sleeping in his very own cot, and doing a splendid job of sleeping. We’ve had a few full night sleeps, and most nights involve a good long chunk of sleep. Some do involve waking up at 4am, but he tends to sensibly go back to sleep not long after. He is brilliant at putting himself to sleep and doesn’t really fuss at all. Touch wood it continues!

More updates soon, we promise!

Ruben had a very exciting 12th week, he spent it in San Diego with his mum and Aunty Vanks. The official purpose of the visit was for mum to speak at a conference, for Ruben (and Aunty Vanks) it was mostly a big adventure and a bit of a holiday. Dad, unfortunately, was stuck at home, working hard.

In order to get away, we had to procure a passport for Master Murphy, which, as it turns out, is no mean feat and required making him an Australian citizen then getting his passport.

It was about 19hrs in transit – from home to hotel, including an 8ish hour flight from Gatwick to Minneapolis, and another three and a bit on to San Diego. Ruben was in fine form pretty much all the way and charmed the people who initially looked at us in terror as we approached them on the plane carrying a 12 week old baby.

The weather in San Diego was warm and sunny and gave Ruben the opportunity to get dressed up in short sleeves and show a bit of leg for the first time outdoors. He looked pretty gorgeous and very handsome. It was the first time that we ever had to worry about not getting him sunburned – which required investing in a hat and borrowing some SPF30 from Aunty Vanks, but was successfully achieved.

Although we mostly stayed pretty close by our hotel (the Marriott on Coronado Island) we did do a day trip into town and went to the San Diego zoo where Ruben got his sun hat and a v cute panda bib (a present from Aunty Vanks). We saw lots of primates, but Ruben wasn’t keen to queue to see the pandas so we missed seeing them.

One night we went out with all the other conference speakers to a fancy restaurant for dinner. Ruben fell asleep in the water taxi on the way over and didn’t stir until we were all the way home again.

He continued the sleeping theme on the way home – we were wondering if he could possibly be as good on the way home as he was on the way over… in fact, he was even better. After a snack as the plane took off, he was off to sleep, and pretty much stayed that way all through the flight home to London, and then again on the Gatwick Express for good measure.

Oh, but just as we were thinking we’d gotten all of the paperwork out of the way with citizenship and passports etc. we were held up at immigration on the way back into London – because Ruben doesn’t have a visa to stay here. They gave him a 2 month temporary visa (telling us that they were being *very* generous… seriously, what were they going to do? deport him? granny would have been thrilled if that had happened!) and now we have a whole bunch more paperwork to fill out, more passport photos to send off (thank goodness I got extra ones to start off with, this will be six that we’ve used up already!) and a whacking great £400 fee to pay so that he is legally entitled to live here. Eh, and to think we had thought it would be as simple as applying for a UK passport.

ps. yes, there are a couple of weeks missing… Ruben has been a little slack with updating his website. Don’t worry – we’re going to go back and get those done very soon! And put in some more photos.

pps. thanks to Aunty Vanks for the great photos (above). We haven’t gotten ours off the video camera yet!

An ever bigger and beautifuller Ruben continued his swimming lessons this week, this time swimming with mum (who takes turns with dad so that they both know how to take him swimming for the future), and even did a couple of underwater dives this week. Ruben was completely fine with the underwater dives, his mum – on the other hand – was pretty scared. Putting your baby underwater isn’t exactly the most natural thing in the world to do! As usual, after swimming, Ruben was starving hungry and ready for a big, big sleep.

Ruben’s favourite outfit of the moment is this pirate shirt and his spunky green trousers. He likes to wear them all the time, which is just as well because he is rapidly growing out of both of them!

Granny & Poppy were here for their third and final week of this visit and were very busy helping out around the house – Poppy doing lots and lots of gardening, in particular some pretty intense dad-pruning, and mum making lots of yummy dinners, cuddling Ruben and cleaning stuff. We all spent lots of time admiring the many birds who visit our garden and setting up the ‘peachy hotel’ – a bird feeder into which we put some food that supposedly is attractive to the robins, who we call ‘peachies’. This has been very successful, to the point that they actually fly up and grab a snack while we’re still out there putting the food on their table!

The week did have it’s traumatic moments though, including a visit to our medical centre for Ruben’s first set of jabs (immunisations) which weren’t really very pleasant at all. Ruben yelled quite a bit and we’re glad to have it over and done with, except that we have to go back in again for another set in just a months time. Yukky!

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Much more pleasant was our Friday morning at the movies. Poppy came with us this time and we saw a funny British film called The Baker. Although, as usual, Ruben didn’t see much of it and pretty much slept the entire time.

We had a big day on Sunday too, when we caught the train down to Canterbury to take in some lunch and the evensong service at the Canterbury Cathedral with Granny & Poppy.

Ruben’s eighth week was a particularly busy and exciting one, the highlight of which was being able to meet and spend time with his maternal grandparents and Aunty Anna.

The week included a visit to the Horniman Museum which is not far from where Ruben lives. This was Ruben’s first visit and he thought there were lots of excellent things to look at, including the Walrus. We expect to make many more visits in the future.

This week was also the last week of visits from midwife, Teresa. It was lovely to see Teresa, but also quite sad that we won’t be graced with her visits every week anymore. Teresa has played a big role in Ruben’s life so far and we are very thankful for all the help and insight she’s given us in this time. We’re going to miss her! While she was here, Teresa was also kind enough to sign the paperwork for Ruben’s passport, which we are applying for in preparation for his upcoming trip to San Diego.

Ruben had a final weigh-in with Teresa and tipped the scales at 5kg or 11lbs. Quite impressive – although it is incredible to think that some babies are born at that weight! Ruben has put on 1.5kgs in his eight weeks which we are very happy with.

On Saturday Ruben had his first every swimming lesson, which went very well except that he got a little hungry in the middle of the lesson and had to stop for a quick snack, during which he missed the underwater swimming. He seemed to enjoy what he did though and we’re looking forward to more lessons each Saturday – and his first underwater swim next week.

After the swimming lesson we caught up with Granny and Poppy and Aunty Anna and had a tour of the project that Dad/Mick is working on at the moment, before walking back from Piccadilly to Victoria via Buckingham Palace.

On Sunday Ruben was baptised at St Stephens, West Dulwich. It was a lovely little service after the main Sunday service and Ruben slept through the whole thing – not a peep, even when his head was being wet. Not even when Poppy took to the pipe organ and we sung a little hymn (Stand Up, Stand Up). Ruben’s godparents are Aunty Anna (Leisa’s sister) and Uncle Daniel (Michael’s brother) and his baptism bible verse is Genesis 28:15 ‘Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go’. Ruben wore a lovely christening shawl that was made by his great grandmother (maternal) and worn by his mum, Aunty Anna, Uncle Aaron and Uncle Lloyd when they were baptised many moons ago.

After the service was over we headed off to the Dolphin Hotel in Sydenham for a Sunday Roast to celebrate.

Ruben spent lots of time with Aunty Anna, who read him books, let him sleep on her for hours, and accompanied us to the Big Scream to see a pretty average film called Blueberry Nights on Friday. Ruben was particularly taken with Anna’s very expressive reading style.

We had quite a few days out, including Ruben’s first every shopping trip to Oxford Street and lunch at John Lewis (or, as Poppy calls it ‘Little Johns’), but also lots of quality time at home, playing with toys like Bob the Dog, and enjoying having lots of different people to give him cuddles and a mum who actually got to have a shower every day! Unfortunately, we have to let Aunty Anna head back to Australia after just one week, but we have two more weeks of quality time with the grandparents to enjoy!

This week opened with an exciting trip to the Tate Modern with Ale and Tomas. We caught the train into Victoria then took Ruben’s first ever tube ride (District line from Victoria to Embankment for the record), stopped for a pasta lunch on South Bank then off to see some art. We didn’t see much and had to head up to the members room for coffee, cake and other snacks before long, then headed home in the icy weather! Just as we were starting to think that Ruben was getting big, seeing him next to Tomas (who has about three months on him) made him look tiny and newborn again!

On Friday it was off to the Big Scream as usual, this time we caught up with some of the NCT crew, including Ruben’s friends Isaac, Oliver, Josie and Theo and we saw Atonement. As usual, Ruben woke only briefly for a snack and didn’t catch much of the movie.

Friday evening saw us headed over to the Plough for a quiet G&T with Ruben’s friend Sylvia and her mum & dad.

Ruben had a very hungry week this week and spent much of it eating, eating and eating. Perhaps a little too quickly as he seemed to have a bit of a tummy ache and was quite unsettled in the later parts of this week. We had a pretty quiet weekend mostly eating and sleeping and looking forward to the arrival of the grandparents (Leisa’s mum and dad) and Aunty Anna who arrived early on Tuesday morning.

We also finally got around to doing a photoshoot for Ruben’s passport photo and sent it off so that we could apply for his passport in time for his upcoming trip to San Diego at the end of March.