I don’t think we’re the only ones who can hardly believe that it’s almost been an entire month since Ruben arrived – time continues to fly by and Ruben continues to get cuter and cleverer and more fun to hang out with.
He’s rapidly growing into his Bonds Wondersuits – some of them now have a fit that wouldn’t be out of place in Saturday Night Fever now… he’s going to be out of 000s and into 00s in the very near future. (He is very happy that the majority of his wardrobe is made up of Bonds gear, despite the fact that you can’t buy it in London. Many thanks to Jane and Belinda and the family for keeping us well stocked).
Ruben’s sleeping a little less throughout the day now, although he’s not yet making up for it at night. Some days he hardly sleeps at all, rather we spend the day hanging out and chatting and generally not getting very much done. Come the night time he’s currently on roughly a two hour rotation – hopping up at 12am, 2am, 4am and 6am for a feed. On the up-side, he’s settling back to sleep much more quickly now, so although we’re waking up fairly often, we can turn around a feed, a nappy change and getting back to sleep in about half an hour, which is not too bad at all (considering it used to take up to two hours to achieve all this!).
His repertoire of noises is becoming more extensive and more expressive. Particularly expressive is the soundtrack to passing wind (at both ends) which is a surprisingly dramatic and regular occurrence.
We’ve been out and about a bit this week. Highlights included Ruben’s first ever movie at the Big Scream session at the Ritzy cinema in Brixton. We went and saw Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd. Making it out for an 11am start was a big of a challenge but we achieved it with relative ease in the end (although, we did wake up quite a bit later than planned… I think they actually started the movie a little late, and we did have popcorn for breakfast as there wasn’t time for porridge before we left home). I’m not sure how much Ruben appreciated the film as he spent the majority of it asleep, but it was great to get out and we’ll definitely be back on a regular basis. (Cloverfield is on this week coming… we’re looking forward to that one!).
After the movie we came home for a brief rest, then headed out for our regular Friday afternoon in the pub with the NCT crew – our numbers were up to three this week as Ang & Isaac made it out to join Ros & Josie and Ruben and I. With any luck we’ll have more and more join us as the weeks go by – it’s certainly an outing we look forward to each week.
We also took the stroller/pushchair out for it’s first run this week. Usually we take Ruben everywhere in one of his collection of slings, which works very well. We were heading up to the local pub for a meal though so thought it would be good for him to have something to sit/sleep in while we ate. He was happy enough on the way up and slept all the way through dinner, but wasn’t such a fan of the pushchair on the way home. I think we’re definitely a sling family.
Ruben had lots of swims this week as it was the last week that we had the birth pool at home. He continues to love swimming and we’re looking into some swimming classes that he can start in the next couple of weeks so that he can continue to enjoy the water. We’ve also been doing regular google searches for hot tubs with vague thoughts of doing something to replace the birth pool… not sure how feasible this is though. In the meanwhile, we’re making do with the bathtub which is fine for as long as he’s this size.
Ruben also met his Health Visitor from the NHS this week, got his red book for all his weight and vaccination records and found out about the baby clinic up the road where we’ll go once we say goodbye to Teresa and Annie *sob*.
Our final mission for this week was to register Ruben’s birth and make him officially a Murphy (at the moment he’s still ‘Baby Reichelt’ as far as the UK Government is concerned!). We had a 9am appointment at Lambeth Registry which we *just* missed (because the train was so full that we couldn’t get on and had to wait for the next one), but when we did eventually see the Registrar we discovered that we were actually in the wrong place and had to trek over to Southwark Registry where they’d said they’d squeeze us in, but once we got their, they decided they wouldn’t see us. It was a long morning trekking all over South London on buses – fortunately it was only Mum who was getting grumpy as Ruben, again, was an absolute gem in the sling and slept and gurgled his way through the whole debacle. We’re heading back out on Friday to try and get him registered again – fingers crossed!
We didn’t quite make it to Baby Yoga this week, so that’s something to look forward to for next week. We didn’t manage to get weighed this week either, so it will be very interesting to see how heavy he is when he gets a weigh in next week – feel free to venture a guess. Those cheeks have got to weigh a good few pounds each.