Three important lessons

I learned three important lessons today. The first is that it is very difficult, if not to say life threatening, to use a space hopper whilst wearing suit trousers. As one shiny surface meets another, it is very difficult to maintain control at high speed, some distance from the ground. The second one is that offering a four year old the choice of either a sticky bun OR jelly and ice cream doesn't work: once she has had one, denying her the other while we all happily chomp away on our green jelly was too much for her to bear.The third lesson is that we need to blog more. Oisin is two today (hence the jelly, and the space hopper). Here's a collection of pictures of our very proud little boy with a range of (largely vehicular) presents. I've lost count of the number of small cars he now has, but expect more reports of near-threatening-accidents as I fail to spot them on the carpet and hurtle towards the inflatable dinosaur in the lounge.

Our little girl has also graduated from playschool, involving a proper grown up ceremony round at the Inverbrenna Hall, complete with gown and mortar board. She sang excellent renditions of twinkle twinkle little star, and something about a banana and pyjamas

In other news, here are some snaps of the splendid Jayne Trimble (and her ramshackle looking band) in action on Saturday. If I haven't yet managed to persuade you to buy it yet, go and get her EP on iTunes immediately.

Lazy bloggers

Well, it's been well over a year since our last blog post - officially rubbish, especially without any sort of valid excuse really. I'm not sure what we've been doing all this time, apart from running round after our two small children as they grow bigger. Oh yes, and we moved to Strangford too and have been trying to do up the house - actually, Marie-Claire has been doing up the house while Dan regularly fails to drill the holes he's supposed to drill for curtain rails, pictures and shelves. I can't think why 150 year old houses with walls about three feet thick don't like having holes drilled in them? Anyway, another of my beautifully erected curtain rails fell down this morning, although I'd like to blame the weighty-three-year-old who was hanging off said curtain at the time.

So here we are in the run up to Christmas. The playschool Christmas Fair this afternoon seemed to go as predicted - chaotic, but we won a small fluffy monkey and a rabbit dressed as a carrot on the tombola. Sadly, the many and varied hampers on offer via the raffle seemed to slip through our fingers, in spite of the 18 tickets we had bought (or rather failed to sell so we got stuck with them).

In our attempt to be a bit less rubbish about recording our children's rapidly changing lives as they grow, we had some pictures taken and here are some of them. Our friend Anna seemed to quietly take most of them without us (and especially Meabh) noticing, which is why they look lovely. She seems to have a knack of making things look as you'd probably like them to look, rather than as they look in real life.

In other news, the double bass has made its way back from Newcastle, and Dan has decided to get his ar*e in gear (finally) and get a band sorted out before he gets full-blown arthritis in his stumpy fingers and can't play any bass lines apart from ones consisting of three notes or less. Marie-Claire's hats seem to be going down a storm, and Dan has proved himself as inept at growing vegetables as he was in Cawood, but at least he's consistent. It's a good job that supermarkets still exist otherwise we'd all be starving or eating seaweed by now.

More soon, we promise.

Josephine's christening

And then there were four

After a month of unpacking boxes, starting jobs and generally finding out where stuff is, we were were just in time for our little son to arrive - two days early, as it turns out (he clearly doesn't take after either of us). After reluctantly agreeing to forgo the lovely Chinese take-away that Dan had had bought for him, we sped an hour up the road to Belfast, and discovered we were only just in time for action stations. Dan bravely sat on a chair and fetched cups of water while Marie-Claire did the easy bit for four hours. At 2.34am on Saturday, our little man arrived safe and sound.

All is well with Mum and baby, apart from the lack of a name for the latter. However, progress has been made in that we've tried out a name for him over the past 24 hours and it seems to 'fit'. Meabh wasn't initially super-impressed with her new little brother, trying her best to ignore him at every opportunity. Having brought him home on Sunday afternoon though, she seems to have warmed to him a bit, and had her first 'hold' yesterday. This morning, she can't stop kissing him and seems besotted.

In case anyone is concerned, Dan did get to eat his (reheated) take-away the next day - phew.

In other news, Meabh has started nursery (and seems to like it), Dan's started his new job (and also seems to like it), and Marie-Claire's started organising in earnest. Lots of domestic tasks lined up for Dan this afternoon like moving (yet more) boxes and putting up mirrors and pictures.

This blog sometimes seems like a register of births, marriages and deaths. And so it goes on. Last week Squirrel (our rabbit) died. I'm not sure whether the Guinness Book of Records has been contacted, but I'm sure she was the world's oldest rabbit. She's been buried in the garden (that, and the insertion of some squash plants, has been the only activity in the garden so far).

Meanwhile, Mr Jelly continues to thrive, and has discovered that next door has a special 'cat shed' for their moggies, equipped with a cat flap, an old armchair and plenty of food. He's not daft.

So that means we've gone from 24 legs down to 12 now. Six new chickens would redress the balance nicely :)

Over the water

Well, a number of momentous events have happened in the last week. The greatest of these is that the 24Legs blog has been re-started - back by popular(?) demand.

To summarise since our last blog post, Meabh has turned one, and then two, another baby is on the way (the stork circling overhead as we speak), Sister Bernadette (she of the great double-yolkers) has passed to the big nunnery-chicken coop in the sky, and Orra and Clementine have joined us. Jamjar, alas, decided to run away last month never, it would seem, to return - hopefully she's managed to board a ferry and has returned to her native Norwegian forests.

More recently, after four happy years at the CBA I decided to quit in favour of a job in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and we've sold our house (nearly), packed up all our worldly goods, and are busy settling into lovely Newcastle, County Down. The chickens have been packed off to a green hillside in Helperby (courtesy of Geoff), but Squirrel and Mr Jelly bravely headed over the water with us. They're looking a bit giddy, but are finding their feet.

I'm currently sitting in a half-set up office surrounded by at last 40 boxes listening to Blue Moon of Kentucky - the Best of Bill Munroe. The sea front (15 paces away to my right) beckons shortly and the sun is shining.


Depicted are Meabh and I packing up our lovely cast iron bath for the road (and having one last go in it on the patio), Meabh leaving her home in Cawood for the last time, then us hunting for crabs in sunny Carlingford Lough at low tide, and Newcastle beach yesterday evening.

Meabh's first Christmas

Well, it's been a while since the last blog, but we couldn't let Meabh's Christmas go by without another edition of 24Legs. We were over in Ireland (Newcastle, Co Down) for Christmas itself, after a bumpy ferry crossing from Liverpool. Great Grandad waved us off and we soon corralled some seats near the bar and settled in for the eight hour crossing. Unfortunately, eight hours allowed plenty of time for Meabh to contract some kind of nasty stomach virus and spent most of Christmas having her nappy and/or complete outfit changed. She was distracted for a while by the huge pile of Ferguson presents on Christmas Day, but soon resumed her alternating rounds of sickness and diarrhea. On the plus side, it did mean that Mum and Dad caught up on some TV classics apparently only shown at 3am, Huckleberry Finn being a notable highlight. Unbeknown to her, Meabh slept through some great long walks along the beach with crashing waves and winking lighthouses.

After an otherwise great five days in Ireland, we spent another bouncy and eventful journey back to England. Meabh was zoomed off to Selby hospital to check she wasn't dehydrating and have some samples taken, and Mum and Dad continued to battle away, washing at least 12 baby grows a day and wondering whether she would ever get her previously phenomenal appetite back. After three days at home she finally started to look a bit better so we headed down to Peterborough to see the Hulls. Luckily, she continued to get better and had yet another huge mound of presents to get to grips with. We all spent a great new year sipping away at the bubbly and waiting for Jools Holland, then a distinctly quiet next day watching the Thunderbirds.

I'm beginning to learn about toys. Apparently, you can get singing crabs that dance sideways and swivel their eyes, pull-along telephones that squeak, Noah's Arks complete with most of the known mammal species, and music centres with hi-hats, bass drums and a flashing keyboard. She also got a tiny drum kit and a push-along dinosaur, a singing Dumbo and two tambourines. I'd never previously heard of 'activity socks', but Meabh loves them and has had them on every day since she got them (miraculously dodging the flowing quantities of poo). She's suddenly gone from a set of toys that were largely fluffy, quiet and innocuous to a huge moving mass of flashing, singing, moving and jingling objects that seem to move around of their own accord when we're out of the room.

Sadly, one of the chickens died over Christmas, in spite of heroic attempts to revive it by Guy. We've buried it by the apple tree and will get a couple more in the spring to keep the other two company.

Meabh's christening!

At long last we managed to get the Hulls (well, most of them), the Fergusons, some godparents (most of them) a priest, another priest and a church all in the same place at the same time. On September 13th Rosa Meabh was christened (or baptised, or, from Meabh's point of view, held awkwardly over a bath while 4 pints of cold water were poured over her head).

Meabh seemed to enjoy getting dressed up in her fineries, and the wonders of the sat nav miraculously guided everyone to the church on time. Father Gerry did a grand job of explaining what the whole thing was all about, even managing to bring over an impressively large picture of Jesus which he'd borrowed from a friendly parishioner's house in Ireland to explain what we were all there for. His slight mishap with the sharp candlestick was resolved by Mum's ever-resourceful handbag and some plasters. Although Meabh didn't exactly 'enjoy' the experience, after a mere 1 hour 48 minutes all was well, and we all emerged into the daylight again ready for some lunch.


Huge mountains of food and far too much bubbly then ensued, and everybody seemed to have a good time (especially Marie-Claire's Uncle Paul who snuck off to the pub to catch the second half of Liverpool beating Man Utd 2-1).

Here are some pictures of the day, including some great ones of Meabh in her super-hero cape, and one of the three us (with a very tired-looking Mummy and Daddy!) at the end of the day.