Happy 5-month birthday to me!

The little monkey turned 5 months old today!  We had to take a few photos of him to celebrate this landmark:

In other news - Daddy took over all pre-bedtime duties tonight, just to make sure that George wouldn't flip out when the time came to leave him with his nanny.  So, I got his bottle ready, ran his bath, stripped him of his (verrrrry cute) clothes, gave him a bit of a wipe down, bathed him (including shampoo time), then dried him off, moisturised him, tolerated a few very potent baby farts, dressed him for bed, and then gave him a bottle.  All went completely according to plan, and after a nice big man-burp, he quickly nodded off to sleep. And is still sleeping.

Mission successful.

Making new friends, taking a dip

Uncle Ash and Aunty Zoe just left us, and although George was sad to see them go, he was very pleased to make some new friends.  He'll see them again in August when they come back, which is cool. A chilled out few days for the little man - he had plenty of time getting to know his new friends, and then this afternoon they accompanied him and his mummy down to the pool for a leisurely splash. To top off their whirlwind trip, Zoe gave Rachel a hand with George's bathtime, taking over the hairwashing duties from his daddy.

There are quite a few photos, so I've uploaded them as a little slideshow thingy.  Check out George's hip new BabyBanz sunglasses...

[svgallery name="ashzoe"]

Odds and ends

Ash and Zoe are staying with us at the moment, and I think they took a load of photos of George this morning.  I'll see if they mind me pilfering a few tomorrow morning. I have a few of the G-monster, both taken on my phone:

And some random photos - a special treat for Father's Day... do you think George is too young to come along to this with me?  I mean, George shakes a pretty mean rattle.  Anyway, it's being advertised in the elevators at work:

And this is just evidence that I kicked Rachel's ass at Trivial Pursuit on Sunday:

An afternoon in Discovery Bay

Had a lovely afternoon with Sue, Steve, Hermione and Phoebe in Discovery Bay today.  Lovely food, a few glasses of wine in the sun, and easy conversation - a perfect way to spend Sunday afternoon.  While he was sleeping, George assumed a position that I couldn't resist photographing:

If that looks familiar...

Also from this afternoon, Steve with Sue - and an intruder on the left (Hermione):

A strategically placed shampoo bottle for the preservation of modesty

George graduated to the big person's bath yesterday - of late, George's bathtimes have usually ended up with more water on the floor than anywhere else. So we popped his little bath seat in the bath and filled the bath to a height of about 6 or 7 cm.  George was pretty laid back about the new bath approach, and seemed to enjoy having water tipped on him with a little cup - it also made things a bit easier for his mummy, as she didn't need to juggle his torso while cleaning his babyvomit-filled crevices.  We took a few photos of the little monster enjoying his business class bath, and you'll note that his mummy preserved his modesty using a cleverly placed shampoo bottle. Which George naturally wanted to play with.

We also had Team Binnington over for a few hours for brunch and a quick swim yesterday and I snapped off a few photos of Sam and Mark:

 

Note that clicking no longer leads to a big version - I installed a standard bug-fix "upgrade" to the software that runs this website, and the newest version of the website software won't let the lovely big picture viewing plugin work.  Oh the irony.

Finally, Rachel has insisted that I mention that on George's playdate on Friday, a half-Brazilian girl literally tried to get her leg over George (from his mummy's potentially embellished recollection of events, it sounds like she actually tried to roll on top of him).  He's such a stud... 

I am looking in wonder (at my awesome Daddy)

A few random photos

One of the little monster sitting in his bouncy chair and grinning away, and one from yesterday - oblivious to Ben, George reclines in his business class beanbag (which Daddy feels might need to lose a few beans...) As promised, I think I've fixed the pictures - if you click on one, it should enlarge using very pretty animation, and there should be arrows on the photo so that you can scroll to the next one in the post.  Let me know if it pops a fufu valve on you:

Recognising Daddy

Tonight when I got home, George was sitting on his mother's lap as she surfed the internet, and when I walked through the door I got the biggest grin from the little man.  It would appear that he has started to recognise me, which is pretty cool (he spends all day with Rachel, so I think he recognises her already). I mean, he's always been happy playing with me and hanging out with me, but you could tell tonight that he actually knew that I was someone he saw often, and I got a great big grin out of it.  Very sweet.  To celebrate, I took a few Daddy + George photos while Mummy ran the bath:

No other photos of kiddo, but I was experimenting with panoramic photos on my iphone, and took this one a few hours ago from the balcony (click on the photo to see it large):

By complete fluke I've worked out how to make the pictures "clickable" so you can see them with a nice black background - from tomorrow, clicking on photos should reveal nice and big sizes for you to look at.

I know you're trying to hide and take a sneaky photo, but I can actually see you Daddy

Sunday freakout

Poor little George had his first public meltdown today - Sam and Mary kindly invited us to dim sum at City Hall, and so we jumped in the KKmobile and headed down there just after 1pm.  The first hour or so was ok - George played nicely with Mary... but then tiredness took over, and the little man completely flipped out. He was completely overtired but couldn't get to sleep, and the poor little man had a complete freakout in the restaurant (thankfully it was one of those super large restaurants where a few hundred people were busy feeding their faces.  Sam and Mary were totally understanding about it (esp as we had no cash and needed to leave midway through the meal - so they paid for us), and the other tablemates were also really nice about it. We beat a hasty retreat to the car and then after a bit of lane confusion found ourselves going via the longer (but probably faster) way to Pokfulam - through the Aberdeen tunnel.  We had a few moments of silence in the car, but it wasn't until he was tucked up in his cot that he actually decided that he'd get some sleep and stop screaming. Poor wee kid.

Here are a few photos that obviously weren't taken during said meltdown:

Meanwhile, life goes on for our feline flatmates - here is a moment of slumber from this afternoon. Seriously, I don't know how Poppy sleeps like this: