35+2

Today is quite an important day, Sunday 27th November. It's the first sunday in Advent so I can officially start eating my own bodyweight in mince pies (and since having the Sprogs thats gone up quite considerably), I can also start the official countdown to being able to watch the Santa Clause films (always wait until after 1 Dec for those). But most importantly, at least to us, today Edward and Harriet are 35 weeks and 2 days old. Why is that important? Because they were born at 35 weeks and 2 days gestation, so today they have been outside for the same amount of time as they were inside! And I think thats important.

8 short months ago (short in some respects, tediously long in others) E&H came into our lives as bawling tiny pink and squidgy little creatures. Now they are huge bawling pink and podgy creatures. Both have fully mastered the art of sitting up unaided, although Harriet much prefers to lounge in her large V pillow and watch the world go by (she's going to be big in the sport of people watching I think). Edward has been desperately trying to crawl for about a month, he gets around rather quickly doing a caterpillar-meets-Action Man crawl, although as Im typing he is actually properly crawling across the floor to attack the changing bag!! Clever boy :-) No crawling signs from Harriet, we are fairly sure she will just train Edward up to fetch things for her. They are getting very talkative now as well; standard baby ramblings mostly, dadada, bababa, mumumumum (wow thats made my eyes go funny) but also the occasional waggawaggawagga and quackquack from Harriet. Maybe she was a duck in a former life?

At the moment we are gearing up for their first Christmas, not by going overboard on presents but with shiny sparkly lights and decorations! They were both mesmerised by the giant foil snowflakes in Sainsburys, even though a) the snowflakes were 3' wide and red and b) E&H have never seen a snowflake before. Maybe thats why they were so fascinated? Because of their reaction we have decided to get some foil decorations to hang around the place :-) Im hoping we will be going Christmas tree shopping in the next 10 days or so too, then we will have to construct the playpen to go around it.. Im looking forward to Christmas this year, not that I dont every year, but to have 2 little'uns around marvelling at everything and playing in mounds of paper, ignoring their presents will be great fun. And they will able to join us in sampling all the food goodies too, well most of them. Not sure how well Edward will do as he hasnt got any teeth yet, but there are still 4wks until the big day. Harriet on the other hand is busy perfecting her chewing skills with her pearly whites; the first came through on 11.11.11 and the second appeared rather aptly when we were at the BBC Good Food Show 13 days later. She's putting them to good use, her scrambled eggs didnt stand a chance this morning.

Right Im off to enjoy a rare moment of peace while they are napping and to make and drink a hot cup of tea. I know, outrageously rock and roll isnt it!