Morecambe and Meabh

I got soaked today coming home and York was plunged into chaos with roads closed and mini flash floods springing up all over the place. To cheer everybody (and me) up, here's another video of Meabh enjoying the bouncer (taken at more or less the same time yesterday, lest you all think we dress her in the same clothes everyday -tempting though it is). In this one, she gets a good jig going with the feet, or maybe she's tap dancing? It must be all those Morecambe and Wise videos we watch.

As we speak, Meabh is going back in her bouncer as she refuses to sleep so we thought we'd experiment in wearing her out. We'll let you know the results... The next step will be one of those perspex hamster rollers.

24Legs...Relaunched (and bouncy)

24Legs are back - relaunched, reloaded and, er, refreshed from our little break from blogging. The last two months seem to have been a blur of bottles and babygrows, and in the meantime at least two of our legs seem to have grown bigger and longer. Meabh's insatiable appetite seems to be getting her somewhere and she's growing up super fast.

Last weekend, we collected a baby bouncer from Granny and Grandad Hull and have then spent much of the last two days laughing at our funny daughter working out how to bounce up and down. I'm sure we should be looking on admiringly, but frankly she's just funny. After bouncing for about 10 minutes she then gets bored and frustrated and the more she gets restless the more she bounces, and the more she gets frustrated - endless hours of fun for us! Here's a new-fangled video of her bouncing, and a good ol' fashioned snap.

Meabh is now exactly two feet long, and according to the latest measurement weighs in at a hefty 14lb 9oz. Hopefully the baby bouncer (and the doorframe it's attached to) will survive the onslaught a bit longer...

In other news, Mr Jelly and Jamjar have taken to sleeping out all night now - dirty stop-outs. I'm not sure what they get up to but they come in starving in the morning and covered in vegetation that doesn't seem to be evident in our garden anywhere.

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...