Summer in London

This last week has been a busy one. Dougal and Jamie spent their days looking around London visiting Lords cricket ground on Monday, and Greenwich park including the Royal Observatory on Tuesday, while I stayed at home. Then Tuesday night they headed off at 8pm for a 10pm bus journey overnight to Paris.

That same night Kate - David's aunt, visited for the day on route home following a holiday in Greece. Kate bought more gifts - including a lovely soft rabbit with a rattle in it's head and a soft unfilled body. It is ideal for Alexa as it is easy to grab and she can shake it back and forth happily making it rattle. We had dinner here for Kate, Mark (David's brother) and Caroline (Mark's girlfriend). Attached are some photos showing an early liking for the good stuff, and a cuddle with Caro.

Alexa is now on a 4 hourly feed and I have started to implement a structure rather than demand feed. This means 4 feeds during the day at 7, 11, 3 + 7pm, then to bed and one nightly feed around 3.30ish. I'm also trying to get her to sleep longer for her daytime naps. I'd like her to sleep 1 1/2 -2 hours twice a day (9-11 and 1-3). So far this has been unsuccessful and instead she ends up sleeping for 45 mins, then either giggling at me from her cot or crying while I pick her up and keep putting her back down for then next hour, all the while yawning and rubbing her eyes. She can't fool her mother! We will keep trying.

The temps in London are very hot at moment, so while it is freezing in NZ with power outages, we have people melting in the tubes where temps have been over 35.9 degrees. This makes it a bit difficult with a little girl who's body acts like a heater. The aim of the game is to hold her for as little as possible as she not only heat you up, but then herself gets over heated. So for those of you shivering in NZ, you can turn up the heat (if you have power) meanwhile we resort to cold showers and sitting under the apple tree.