First Blood

Well yesterday I had one of my worst experiences since Joshua was born over 7 weeks ago. I was clipping his toe nails before his bath and accidentally nipped his big toe. Joshua was very brave and didn't even cry, but there seemed to be loads of blood. I felt absolutely terrible afterwards, to think I hurt my poor little boy and drew his first blood. Luckily we had some tiny baby plasters to hand. So nail clipping duty is now over to Tina........

Speaking of hands Joshua has started to realise he has hands and often can be seen playing with his hands (as evident in the picture below). Or maybe he is just checking all his fingers are still there in case Dad has accidentally cut any off with the toe nail clippers!

Joshua also now gives off frequent smiles and even the odd laugh (or what appears to be a laugh). I may be biased, but this is just one of the most beautiful things you will ever see - his first smiles (not easy to catch on camera though).

There's no David Copperfield trick photography in this picture. This is Joshua laying with an elephant sitting on him!

Daddy is now trying to teach Joshua to grab and hold things. Today a yellow rattle - tomorrow a dumbbell!

Joshua and Daddy now fight over who gets to power nap on the bean bag (Joshua seems to win!).


Like my hat..........

When I grow up I want to be a race car driver.........

Its been another long tiring day..................time for a nap.

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.

6 Weeks Old Joshua + a 4 day old Chinchilla!

Well firstly Joshua is no longer the youngest baby in the house (he is still the cutest, loudest and lots of other 'est's), but Phoebe gave birth to a little baby chinchilla on Sunday night. So now we have two babies on the house - or 3 if you count me!

Anyway Joshua is now 6 weeks old today and the pile of clothes and shoes which he has outgrown seems to be getting larger by the day - he had some lovely outfits which he's probably only worn 2 or 3 times!. The little dude has pretty much outgrown all of his newborn stuff, but is slightly too small for his 3-6 months stuff (which he has load of). So we have had to stock up on some 0-3 gear to see him through the next 6-8 weeks. Needless to say a trip to Mothercare was needed today to spend some of his vouchers on some much needed clothes (the picture below was the end result of Tina, Joshua, Diane and Mia's shopping trip!).



Last night we took Joshua down to the Dive Club in Chelmsford to show him off for the first time. That means that in the last week he has been to the karate club, the gym and the dive club. Not bad for a 6 week old............

As for me.........I've been ploughing through endless forms to try and claim child benefit, child tax credits, working tax credits etc.etc.

This coming weekend Joshua is going to embark upon his biggest journey to date as him and Tina are coming with me to Hampshire to watch my final X-Training race of the year. Since I am now ranked 2nd in the country they have put me in the final race of the day against the nr.1 ranked guy. Not very clever really when training and sleep have been somewhat disrupted as of late. Still maybe Joshua will bring me luck on the day...........should be lots of photos from the day for the blog. So to end this update here are some pictures of my new number 1 fan in his cute little doggie suit.

Weight Gain

Firstly apologies for the recent lack of blog updates. Me & Tina recently decided that whilst the still pictures are fab, they just don't capture certain things. For example when Joshua has the hiccups, or his grunts as he stretches with one arm up in a superman pose, or his gentle breathing when he is asleep on your should, or even his incestuous farting. So we decided to buy ourselves a video camera as a joint Xmas present and hence I have been playing with that recently and not taking as many still shots. I know what your thinking - it should be a Christmas present. But Joshua has changed so much in 5 weeks already, so to wait another 5 weeks until Xmas would mean we would lose so much of what we want to capture on DVD. So it's an early present. But look on the bright side, once I have enough footage to compile a baby DVD then you can all have a copy!

Anyway the little man is doing very well. And at this point I must give myself a kick and stop calling him a little man. He is far from little. Try carrying him all around town on a Saturday and your biceps soon remind you he is no lightweight. Just to add to that, Joshua went to get weighed today and get this - he is now 10lb 11oz (up from 9lb 9oz two weeks ago). Needless to say he is only 5 weeks old and we already have a stack of clothes which no longer fit him, and we realised last night that he is also nearly too big for his bath as well (I am sure in years to come he will thank me for recording him in the bath with our new camcorder).

Joshua had a fairly eventful weekend as he met loads of new faces. Firstly we took him down the karate club on Saturday to show him off for the first time (this was after his Dad and Uncle Michael had finished their 2nd Dan grading). Then after that we took him down the David Lloyd for the first time to meet a load of people from the gym - he even went up in the gym for a brief period (might as well start getting the dude used to the gym environment!!!).

Hey, he almost looks like a little snowman.
Anyone for a game of poker, I'm the short stack!

Joshua stealing some R&R on Daddies bean bag.......

Playtime.........

Joshua is Registered

Firstly happy birthday to Leyla Grace who was one month old yesterday. Leyla is Joshua's third cousin who was born the day after Joshua weighing 9lb 2oz. So another big baby in the family.....

As for Joshua, well his name is now official. Yes today we took the little man to Billericay to register him officially and obtain his birth certificate. The only glitch was numb nuts Dad not knowing whether he was born in Romford or Rushgreen (apparently there's a difference as one comes under Dagenham/Barking and one under Romford). Joshua wasn't happy with Mummy and Daddy doing all the talking in the registrars and decided to have a little shout himself (I think he just wanted to draw attention to himself so everyone admired him and his posh Nike shoes!).

Joshua also had his first experience in he big bath today and lasted a full 10 min before starting to cry. Another big step forward towards our ultimate aim of getting him in a swimming pool and then one day diving!!

Here is a picture of the little man exhausted from his swim in the big bath, but still able to pose next to his new certificate of birth.

1 Month Old Today

Yep at 2.17am this morning Joshua was 1 month old. The last couple of days have been really good with Joshua. He is really starting to enjoy his bath time now and has a real good splash around. We broke new records on Friday with a 7 min long bath. Then we also experimented with his first expressed bottle milk on Friday night. This was a major success and at 2.30 in the morning it was a real pleasure to feed my little boy for the first time and to watch him gazing into my eyes as he sucked away on the bottle.

Anyway having successfully bottle fed Joshua we was all ready for our first meal out since his birth. We went out to Outbacks last night to celebrate Tina's uncles 50th birthday - so armed we two 4oz bottles of expressed milk, a bib, a muslin and a changing bag, we were as ready as ever. Joshua slept through the starter and but then woke up crying just as the main courses were being served. So my dinner went back under the hot lights and I was left to feed the little man before I could tuck into my own grub. This is another new first as its not often you will find me prioritising something or someone else before my own food!

Anyway some more pictures for your viewing. One thing the pictures don't really show is just how long Joahua's hair is getting and often he wakes up with little tufty bits sticking up. So its time to start brushing and combing already. My brother still thinks he takes after me with a receding hairline!

Mummy got Joshua these rather cute little slippers to keep his pinkies warm over the cold winter months.


Fortunately Dad offset the cute slippers with Joshua's first trainers - some cool Nike Total 90's. There were supposed to be an Xmas present, but he is so big we have had to let him have them early as it is likely he will only get a few weeks use out of them!

Surfer dude outfit - just chilling on his changing mat.

Mum and Dad are determined Joshua will be a diver. He even has fish hanging over his changing mat.

Playtime........

Joshua claiming his spot on the sofa with his toys.

All dressed up and no place to go............PS nice hat Josh

Spot the baby............

And finally.............yes he is damn cute

Happy Birthday - 4 weeks old today

Yep Josh is already 4 weeks old today. He can now hold is head up fairly comfortably on his own and his eyes can focus on objects and follow them around. When he was born my work mates made lots of comments like "was he born with rippling muscles", or " how long until you have him in the gym or karate" etc.etc. Well I am pleased to report that at under 4 weeks old Joshua can already complete unaided double leg raises (see picture below). That's my boy.......

Here's Joshua getting used to spending some time in his big cot.

Our Little Pumpkin

Today Joshua had another trip to see the health visitor. The great news is that the little man now weighs more than when we was born. At just 3.5 weeks old he weighed in at a whopping 9lb 9oz - so much for my concerns about whether he is gaining weight! Anyway some more pictures for you to enjoy.

The art of the power nap (father and son style).

No its not sleep time Daddy!
Mummy stealing another kiss from Josh.
Our little pumpkin.........
Rumour has it that there is a baby in this picture somewhere.......
Pretty in pink.

And I thought you dressed me up stupid...............

A pumpkin carving of baby Joshua...

And another one................