Aston's first plane ride

Well as I'm sure everyone to have ever done it already knows, it's pretty hard work going long haul with a 3 month old, Aston was good as gold on the plane given it was all so new for him, and even managed a few catnaps, but has taken a while to get used to the time difference. He missed a lot of sleep in the first 48 hours of landing with so many changes (especially where he sleeps) that I was a little worried for the poor tike. Needless to say I was so relieved when we were able to help him to get longer and more frequent sleeps making a huge change to his temperment.

We now have our happy little boy back which further reinforces my feeling that a well rested child is a happy child and we like our boy to be happy as much as he can.

We didn't manage to get a seat with a bassinet on the plane which worked out for the best as it was like Central Station on Xmas Eve in that area ... instead we were in a quieter section of the plane with a spare seat to ourselves and Aston took a few naps during the flight. The air pressure didn't seem to bother him and he was fine with being fed on takeoff and landing.

Tiger strife

Well I thought he looked gorgeous in his little tiger all-in-one parka that Brenda bought him but as anyone to travel in the car with Aston well knows, he doesn't like to feel constricted. He lasted all of 3 mins in the Tiger outfit and we had to resort to other solutions for keeping him warm outdoors. Mainly 3 layers of clothes and about 4 woolly wraps.

Aston's first Christmas

Fortunately the weather has been pretty mild for an English Xmas though I did catch a cold on the plane coming out and now Aston has it as well. He's got so much mucus in his little head that it's running out his nose and giving him a sticky eye.

He did enjoy his first Christmas and here's a selection of pictures from the day for you to enjoy

A colourful Aston

I bought this colourful number from H&M Baby as it's pretty warm and I thought it would be good for the UK. Rob's not so sure on the design. We won't however lose him in a busy Heathrow airport with this all in one will we.

Given it's Aston's third outfit today we can't guarantee that the outfit he leaves Dubai in will be the one he lands in London with ....

Guest Post from Rob.............

Aston watching is our main hobby these days. Here he keeps himself amused for 15 minutes as he pick ups and examine this little toy, which obvously ends up in his mouth.

He is now really exploring everything around him and even will reach out and touch our faces or pull my finger into his mouth to suck.........

Our amazing little boy is growing and developing very quickley..........he can even now even just about roll himself, which will no doubt be the subject of a future blog

How much of my fist can I get in my mouth

One of the first things I noticed about Aston in those first hours after he was born was the width of his hands .... they are very large hands and I should have known from this that the boy was going to be a little bruiser right from the start.

He loves trying to shove his whole fist in his mouth - both fists if possible and with a finger up the nose. His hands are so big that he really tests his gag reflex out pretty often these days and I have gotten used to the sound of it and no longer freak each time he does it.

According to t\THE BOOK this is the way babies start to explore their world, sucking their hands and fists, then putting stuff they can grab into their mouth's. And as with the above post, he''s already progressing down this path. It's funny to think my god what's he doing, then read THE BOOK and find out that it is exactly what he is supposed to be doing.

As an aside, the other thing I noticed about him in those first minutes after he was born was 1. His Quiff which I love, 2. His mullet at the back of the head which I'm not so keen on and 3. his beautiful skin and lovely little face.

Another Aston moment

3 month update

Hail Aston turns 3 months old at midnight tonight. We can hardly believe it, where has the time gone.

He's a regular largish little baby now and no longer a newborn. It's hard to remember how small he was just 3 months ago. The fact that he's grown out of more than 80% of his wardrobe however gives us a good idea.

So we've noticed loads of changes in the last month which we'll share with you.

1. Most impressively Aston is now using his hands to intentionally reach out and grab at things - mainly Rob and my face, our shirts, a rattle if you hold it near him, pooh bear's nose which he likes to grab onto.

2. He likes to have a conversation while feeding now days, obviously an animated conversation as he's always starting and stopping the feed while looking up and laughing and giggling at me. It's hilarious, albeit a little tedious to get the full feed finished.

3. He has decided he definately HATES his carseat but has taken to the big stroller like a little trooper and is happy to sit up and watch the world go by for hours (compared to the 7 minutes we get in the capsule) I see this as a major improvement to my quality of life ... if only now we could drive somewhere interesting for him to look at.

4. We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, sometimes 3 times a day on the days we stay home and Aston now reaches out and touches the pictures and I've convinced myself he has also tried to turn the pages on two occassions now. True I swear

5. He has successfully located his thumb and sucks it furiously but it is not self soothing enough yet to get him to put himself to sleep ... We've decided we don't care if he becomes a thumb sucker if it helps him to go to sleep and will deal with it in a few years time when we can say big boys don't suck their thumbs.

6. Wé have implemented the bath, feed, bed routine during this month which has also greatly improved the quality of our lives. He has his bath when Rob gets home (in fact Rob bath's him), he has a feed, then he goes into the cot AWAKE and puts himself to sleep, sometimes this takes 10 minutes, sometimes it takes over an hour, but he is no longer rocked to sleep on a feed.

7. On many occassions he's slept 6-7 hours at night in one stretch - this without food I hear you all scream. I know I know. The only problem is the long stretch goes from around 8pm to between 2-3am which mean's I"m still getting up once in the night for a feed. We've tried giving the dream feed around 11pm when he's still asleep in the hope the full stomach pushes him through to 6am, but he still wakes at 3am anyway ... it says this in the book.\

For those that don't know THE BOOK, Maxine, kind soul lent me the best guide to caring for a newborn ever published, and in lieu of any regular weekly check-ups with health clinic's has become the household Bible/Koran. Maxine has also been instrumental in filling the gaps which we hugely appreciate.

8. He's alot stronger these days and gives a good kick or a punch if you happen to get in the way. He loves the bath and pushes off the sides with so much force, finding it incredibly amusing each time he does it.

What he's not doing:

1. Taking the bottle

2. Using the bathroom, prefering to wee all over us instead

3. Talking

4. Working or saving money

Two of my favourite photos

Here's two of my favourite photo's from the past few weeks ... he's such a sweet boy and gets funnier and funnier every day. Check out the 3 month update for latest Aston tricks.

And Raylee don't panic we are working on more photo's with me in them but you know I'm not really very photogenic and they have to be well perfect so he can look back and say ... '"well my mom's alright then!"

One for the family

Check out the buddha

Aston working out he''s been a little jipped

The photo's say it all really

Friday Brunch

On Friday just gone we headed to the Fairmont to celebrate Xmas with Glen, Cheri, Jenny and Brian. Rob and I worked hard to ensure Aston's 2 hour sleep in the middle of the day kicked off exactly at 12noon when brunch started. And as expected he woke up at exactly 2pm whereby he met a new friend from Helsinki. Here's hoping the next family wedding is in Finland we say.

Aston had an enjoyable time bouncing around everyone's laps, as you can see from the photo's .. but was not so good on the bottle AGAIN, unfortunately. As my big outing for the week it was a great day. I had prawns five different ways, sushi and a lobster tail ... Rob had all of the same plus Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding and one bite from about 12 different deserts.

So who''s head's bigger then

I put my money on Aston but he was pretty confident it would be Poo Bear''s. And guess what, as you can see from this photo, Aston was right!

Old orange eyes

Aston conked out with his fist in his mouth after his trip to the eye doctor on Thursday. Understandable as he missed his morning sleep in order to be awake (and sleepy so the full effect of the droopy eyelid could be seen) by the Dr.

Result of consultation is that the eyelid is a cosmetic problem only and is not obscuring or affecting his vision and won't have a negative effect on his vision development.

It has improved alot in the last month as he starts to hold his head straigher and the Dr thinks it will continue to improve. If not it's a minor cosmetic op at about 5 years.

Of more immediate concern is the blocked tear duct in the same eye - hence the orange eyes as he used a fluro solution to test the eye drainage.

It's expected that the blocked duct should also clear up before he's 12 months old but if not he''ll need a small op to unblock the duct... so all in all -Good News

Come on then - give us a hug

Not the best angles as it's a juggle to hold Aston, position the bear and take the shot all by myself but needed something amusing to help fill my day and the end result is not too bad.

A few extra pics for good measure

You can see from these pics how much he enjoys that wiley old capsule, regardless of how nice we try and make it for him .. dummy, bumble bee .. cute outfit

What we've been up to

Yesterday we went to the Mother's Group again, and again I had dozens of comments about how big and active Aston is compared to the other mom's babies. We have the only boy in the group of babies his age and there are about 7 girls born within a few weeks either side of Aston's birthday. The little girls are largely all very petite / alien looking and sit quietly on their mother's laps and stare around. Aston, the animated little buddha bounces around on my lap with arms and legs waving everywhere and looks like he's about to go 10 rounds with Mohammad Ali.

Lots of soon to be mom's also attend this group and these ladies all tell me that our beautiful boy is the cutest of all the babies attending the group - I tend to agree of course.

Now when people comment on how big he is I tend to say, yes he is very healthy and a big strong boy which is what you want in a man ... he won't be bullied in the playground will he! It forces them to say - oh yes it's better that he's a strong boy isn't it.

Though depending on the nationality of the person in question I do sometimes tell a fib when people ask me how old he is. Indians and Phillipino's tend to have very small babies so when I say 2.5 months - they scream 2 half monz misses - berry big boy - then promptly reach over and grab his chubba cheeks for a squeeze. So I tell them he's over 3 months and instead they just say Oh- big boy misses (without the scream) ... have I already told this story?

New things Aston is doing.

1. Last week he found his hands, well he's known about them for a while because they're always in his mouth but last week he started looking at them with intense interest and continues to stare at them all the time. It's pretty cute when he wakes up in the stroller he'll sit there and play with his hands for a few mins while waking.

2. This week he's started to reach out and touch stuff, the Elephant, Pooh Bear, my tops when he's feeding.

3. He's also now able to grab one of the rattles that Franzi gave us with a thin handle. He doesn't know he's got it, and doesn't realise when he drops it.... but can hold it nonetheless

Short but sweet

the longer videos are timing out when we try and load them so we will need to keep them short but sweet. Here's one of Aston enjoying his bouncy chair.

Our beautiful baby boy

UAE National Day

Today is UAE National Day and Rob has a day off for the public holiday. His first day off from very long days in over 5 months and he HAS A COLD. Excellent.

So No1. he's not allowed to breath on Aston and No2. he's terrible when he's sick.

We took Aston to the Jumeirah Beach Hotel to get some pics with the Burj in the background but by the time we got Aston calm enough to drive in the capsule and get there it was a little dark. Then by the time we got him calm enough to drive home, it was a little late and past his bedtime .. however here's a few pic's of Rob and Aston checking out the Burj ...

In my own time eh!

Here's Aston excelling at tummy time - all in his own time ... I've noticed this week that he seems more up for it so have been giving him more time on his tummy each day - as soon as he hits the pillow he whips his head up and checks out the world from this new perspective and really seems to enjoy it.

Why was I stressing over those last few weeks where he'd last about 10 seconds before screaming. In his own good time he's shown his interest and is holding his beanhead up very well.

A day with Aston

Today I took Aston down to Bur Juman or BurgerMan as we like to call it. I was able to get him to put himself to sleep in the stroller before we left and he stayed asleep for the 10 min drive and long enough for me to look in 2 shops ... he then woke and screamed the mall down ... I had to give a comfort feed and wait for him to put himself to sleep again before daring to drive home ... needless to say I wasn't really able to get much shopping done. How am I going to spend all Rob's money if he doesn't get the hang of shopping?

He does however love being cuddled, held, rocked, and to have you be interactive with him ... it's the only time he smiles, laughs and giggles. He now lasts about 15 mins on the mat or bouncy chair amusing himself then starts screaming ... if you go and have a talk to him though he switches immediately to a giggle ...