My Lucky Mascot

Wow, so much to write about today. Over the last 6 weeks on the very rare occasion you might catch Joshua pull a smile when he is sleeping - but he probably didn't even know he was doing it. Well now he has started giving the odd smile when awake, usually after feeding. I have to say it is absolutely adorable and just melts your heart. If possible I will try and get a picture soon.

Joshua's hand up against Tina's.

Now that Tina is expressing some breast milk I can volunteer to help out with some of the feeding. This is another real pleasure (especially now that there is a good chance you will get a nice smile out of the little man afterwards). Also as yesterday was the 1st of Dec - that means advent calendars! Since I have a white chocolate milkybar calendar I sucked a small piece of white chocolate and then fed it to Joshua for the first time. He absolutely loved it, so I guess I need to share the rest of it with him now! Anyway here are a few pics of some of his first bottle feeds.
Joshua has also started wearing some of his new clothes from in the week. I call the top he is wearing below his Freddy Krueger shirt as it reminds me of Freddies red and black striped jumper!
So onto the big journey to Southampton yesterday. Well Joshua was an absolute dream all day long. He was all geared up for the day in the gym wearing his new Adidas track suit. He pretty much slept all the way there and back, however we did have the pleasure both ways of feeding and changing his bum in a motorway service station. Unfortunately somewhere on the outward journey he managed to lose one of his Nike trainers (gutted). How in the blue hell does a 6 weeks old who cannot walk, crawl or anything lose a trainer????

When we got to the competition, Joshua was a bit of a superstar. Even though I have been X-training for two years now and know a lot of the people, Joshua was far more popular than his old man and seemed to have a remarkable knack of extracting coos, kisses and cuddles from just about every female there!

My expectation for the day was to just pick up a couple of points to secure my second place in the grand prix. However having Joshua (my new mascot) there cheering me on was obviously lucky for me and spurred me on even more. In the end I managed to come away with 2nd in the male open, 2nd in the teams and 2nd in the grand prix. So 3 trophies collected and as you can see from the pictures below, Joshua was more than happy to help out with the honours.

Daddy and Joshua collecting the 2nd place trophy for the male open.

The "Essex Boys team" from L-R. Me, Joshua, Millie, Nik and Nelson.

And finally me and Joshua collecting 2nd place for the Grand Prix.