Unreasonable expectations, me? Never...

Mum and I had a lovely time continuing with making curtains yesterday and Mabel was fairly grizzly and continued her habit of not sleeping particularly well during the day. However, Mum thought she was reasonably well behaved for a newborn, which got me thinking. Perhaps, suprisingI know, I actually am expecting a little too much from her too soon (how much will I say that in the future I wonder). It is probably easy to say this now since she has been a dream the last few days (and don't get me wrong the crying didn't cease for long on Mon /Tue) but admittedly it is probably asking too much to hope that a newborn won't cry for periods during a day so I need to keep that in mind on the bad days!

And last night she had a wonderful sleep giving me a block of 5, yes thats right 5, hours. Bliss! I am going to make a huge effort not to complain about her grizzlyness and embrace the challenge.

We've had another couple of milestones today. Whilst in the shower this morning I laid her on a playmat in the bathroom so that she could still hear me and propped up next to her the lovely terrier which Fee and Al bought her for Christmas (see below, cute!?!)

We were talking about how pretty said dog was (I was explaining that money can't buy good taste but that luckily she had been born with good genes in that respect, hopefully) when suddenly she made a noise which was neither a cry a hiccup or a burp. It was a lovely ooh noise. A really sweet 'trying out my voice' noise which we've never had before.

Then this afternoon whilst being winded on my knee I finally got the first smile. Mum reckons that she got one yesterday when picking her up when she arrived but there were no witnesses so it doesn't count. For days now I have been putting in serious time on the smile front. I've taught her the words to a bit of Eric Clapton (Layla), danced her round the room to Mamas and Papas and generally made my face concort into every position possible. Nothing. Then today, I asked if she wanted her nappy changed and there it was. The smallest things. Al was next to me to witness, no wind, just a slightly sleepy but definite smile. Hooray! Well done baby.
I also dwelt today (on my 2.5 hr journey home from Manchester - nice) on the the fact that motherhood has actually given me some key skills that will last for life. They are as follows:
- The ability to literally whip round a room which is absoutely trashed and get it into a reasonable state again in about 5 minutes
- Same skill as above with eating (you just never know how long you've got)
- The ability to carry a million things downstairs in one go (Fee tells me this skill only improves and that in time I'll be able to add a toddler and a baby onto the list of things I will get under one arm)
- The ability to deal with apocalyptic poos in a swift and orderly fashion (yes we had another one last night which resulted in a full bath)

And finally, I have to admit something. This morning I ate shreddies over Mabel's head whilst in bed breastfeeding and accidentally, whilst shovelling them down, spilt some milk on her...

And I just rubbed it in to her babygrow....

Awful, truly awful!