Paranoia.........

Recently Meabh has been telling me that she feels a "presence" - as if she is being stalked by something. Personally, i think she's imagining things!

The egg mystery is solved

Phew. More dastardly tactics by the Hull Hens have resulted in a drying up of the egg supply in recent days. Either Meabh has secretly mastered the art of walking and has been collecting and then eating them during the day when I'm not here, or the chickens have been trying to create a little brood by hiding their eggs again. Sharp eyed 24Legs readers will note that a clutch was found (and recovered) by the pond 2 weeks ago, however, they've turned to new corners of the garden. The trouble is there are now about 48 corners in the garden as the nettles and bindweed take over the nether reaches and create stretches of jungle. After 4 days of searching over the weekend, a long period of surveillance yesterday morning (in the rain, in my dressing gown, I might add) eventually detected Bernadette (pictured) skuttling off behind a pile of paving slabs and an old patio door. I had to wait until the rain had stopped to shift all this out the way, but there lay an impressive nest containing seven very shiny well-sat-on eggs. Unfortunately for Bernadette, these were never destined to hatch little chickens and are now in our kitchen.

In other news, Meabh continues to guzzle huge quantities of milk, and has been doing lots smiling. On occasion, and in the right light, she might even have started laughing. She'll certainly need her sense of humour living in this house.

Meanwhile, Naomi claims that the blog has yet to feature a picture of her, so here's a picture of her in our garden a couple of weeks ago (with Chris and Eddie), about to bravely head down to the village hairdressers for a trim. Rather her than me.

Meabh socialises (sort of)

Meabh had the Rimes-Dougalls to visit this weekend, and at last met the last (or first) of her cousins. Here's a picture of Olivia holding her, with Meabh looking a bit uncertain about the whole thing. Her only-slightly-older cousin Alexander showed off by being extremely well-behaved and smiley all weekend, while Meabh decided to see how loudly she could cry on Saturday night. She managed an impressive 1048 decibels, for about 90 minutes, and then decided that she'd demonstrated her mightily impressive lung power for long enough and then had a good long kip. Phew!

Olivia and I battled through the end of the garden and finally found where the chickens had been secretly laying some of their eggs. We then mounted a brave assault on the nest, risking life and limb through the nettles and across the pond, and smuggled three eggs away before they noticed.

Here are some pictures of the Rimes-Dougalls and Meabh...

Lots of visitors!

Sorry we haven't reported on blog duty in a while. Life seems to have become very busy all of a sudden, with me back at work and lots of visitors coming to stay. Meabh's had a very sociable time, with Granny and Grandad Ferguson last weekend, and Granny and Grandad Hull during the week. She's really looking forward to the Rimes-Dougalls coming this weekend, so at last she can meet the final cousin - the oldest one meets the youngest one.

Meabh's been having her passport photo taken this week. Not a straightforward task as she wasn't keen on complying with the government regulations of eyes open and mouth shut. I think we got there in the end. Here's one of the attempted pictures, with Meabh doing a very cool 'black power' salute.

Meanwhile, the other 18 legs continue to thrive, with the cats catching doormice and frogs in the sunshine and the chickens laying eggs like it's going out of fashion. Here's a rare picture of Mr Jelly inside the house, looking a bit grumpy.

The Hulls come for a visit

This time, it was the turn of Meabh's uncle Simon and auntie Lorraine to come for a visit, with Freddie and Romy. Meabh slept for most of the afternoon, and then when we all squeezed on to the sofa for a family picture Meabh cried for just long enough for all the cameras in the house to run out of batteries, and was then completely fine. She seems to have developed an aversion to cameras, just like her Mummy, so here are some pictures of Si (looking like a thirty-something Dennis the Menace), Romy and Freddie. It was great to see them all. It's Romy's birthday tomorrow, so I had spent the morning attempting to cook a big pink birthday cake, complete with hundreds and thousands and twelve candles, only to discover that I hadn't cooked it for long enough. Disaster!

Uncle Tim and auntie Toni are also down for a visit from Edinburgh too, so we'll see if we can extract some pictures from Tim's camera of Meabh.

She's three weeks old today, and has now met three of her four cousins - just Olivia to go and then that's a complete set...

And so, to Morrisons

Bravely, we strapped ourselves in for our first visit to the supermarket with Meabh. Alas, crushing disappointment descended as we realised that all the baby and toddler spaces were full. For years I've wanted to feel smug, pulling into one of those nice wide spaces right next to the door of the shop, as everyone else struggles with the 'normal' spaces 2km away - but it wasn't to be.

So it was that we headed off into one of the spaces for mere mortals, and then discovered why those big wide spaces were invented. After assembling a rope and pulley system with several winches to get Meabh and the pram out of the car, we stared perplexed at the range of 'special' trolleys for babies. They generally look like terrifying torture devices, but after seeing some other babies using them, we might be even braver and try one of those next time...

Down the pub again

People will be gossiping about that Meabh Hull, down the pub again yesterday. This time, with Granny and Grandad Hull for a swift half before dinner. They've been visiting this week and getting to know their latest grandchild (in a long line of at least 432 grandchildren, at last count!). She seems to sleep peacefully at the pub (or in fact anywhere outside the house), and then wakes up nice and refreshed ready for a night of shouting. She wasn't toooo bad last night, although decided that 5am was a perfect time for us all to be up trying to work out why we were all up so early. Having tried all the usual solutions, I resorted to taking her downstairs to help me make a cup of tea. As usual, a nice cupper solves everything and she went to sleep - for another 45 minutes at least.

Anyway, here's a nice picture of Meabh with her Granny, and a close up too. She really seems to have changed over the last week or so. Now that she's got over the traumas of being born, and having rashes and blotches all over the place, she's now turning into a really beautiful wee thing (not that I'm biased...)