Nanny, Nanny

Along with TV, our best hope of survival is Gemma, the boys' lovely nanny, who, appropriately, also works as a children's TV presenter. Gemma took over when Kathryn went to America at Easter time. The boys love Gemma, though Eddie has hardly forgotten Kathryn. He was telling Val last week that she was coming to London soon, and said the other day "I like Kathryn, normally she lives in London."

In May, a month or so after she'd left for Texas, Eddie had a disturbed night, and I went in to comfort him. He was worrying about Dinosaurs, and consoling himself that there weren't any dinosaurs in the house, just the plastic dinosaur. I said Mummy and Daddy would look after him. He said "Mummy and Daddy and Kathryn, actually".

New Profile image

Our blog profile was missing not one, but two children. This tells you something about how fast time moves with kids. Here's all 5 of us.

TV

The older two boys are next door watching TV in a dark room. The song is "we're gonna have fun fun fun in the sun sun sun". The previous number was an exercise routine. Despite the incongruity, we love the TV nearly as much as the boys.


They've been watching it a while, ever since Usain Bolt(ed) to his amazing 100 meter win, and we moved off "Daddy's TV". But they do get a bit of outdoor activity, this is Eddie's bike, you'll notice it doesnt have any pedals, but doesnt lack as much for this as you'd expect, he races around on it.

Reuben Gabriel Jones

After 1 month and 1 day, we wet the new baby's head with some Moet, and celebrated the birth of Reuben Gabriel Jones.

Eddie is adamant that while he is a baby, we can still also call him bubby, and I have no problem with that. If we do have any more children, it will I expect be predominantly to relive the joys of an elongated naming process.

Language

Sebastian is now just starting to get into his words (see the video). Eddie very precise and polite with his language, he sometimes uses this to take contrarian positions. Discussing whether 2pm is in the afternoon, or in the morning he says "some people call it morning, and some people call it afternoon". As far as I can tell, he's the only one who calls it morning.
I guess kids pick up a lot of things and miss a lot of other things, different to adults. On the weekend we went for a walk the 4 men, Daddy, Grandpa, U Sam and Eddie. It was drizzling when we headed off, and Eddie asked when it would stop. I said, perhaps it would rain all day. He didn't think so. Later on though, when it was raining again, he said "maybe you were right, Dad, maybe it will rain all day". Happily, it didn't.