Playdate

We had a trip up the road to Aberdeen last week, so G could see a couple of friends, including her first meeting with a baby boy over from Australia. It's a long drive even without a recently-potty-trained toddler in the back, so I was prepared for a lengthy and miserable journey. But G's new-found love of Thomas The Tank Engine helped no end.

After a bit of a snooze on the way up, she managed to use the potty at a service station then spent a couple of hours quietly watching Thomas chuff his way about Sodor (the DVD I'd brought was mostly from the Ringo Starr era, obviously). So no trouble at all.

The return journey on Friday evening was even more successful. I hoped a night-time drive would help her sleep, and sure enough she dozed off in front of the DVD before we'd even reached Dundee, not waking up again until we were passing Lancaster. "Where's Thomas?" was the first thing she said, rubbing her eyes, as I'd unplugged it as soon as I'd realised she was asleep. So she got an extra half an hour or so of train-based fun before we finally made it home.

You might consider all this TV to be a bad thing, and I suppose it is, but it's infinitely better than a long drive on your own with a whining toddler. And for that reason, the portable DVD player remains one of the great inventions of mankind.

Our actual stay in Aberdeen, cold and surprisingly snowy even though it's only October, was well worth the trip. G is a couple of years older than the little ones we went to see, but she managed to play nicely and share the toys without too much persuasion. However, as the photo shows, she preferred to get me to join in with even more ludicrous games of hide-and-seek.

Down By The Water

I've got a mix CD in the car which has Down By The Water by The Decemberists as the first track. Over the last couple of weeks, every time we've got in the car, G has insisted I play it over and over again while she sings along. Whenever it finishes, she gives herself a cheer then says "Down by water song! Down by water song!" until I put it on again. At least it's a suitably good and trendy record for her to like. Thankfully, we've mostly been doing short journeys, otherwise I'd probably have got thoroughly fed up of it by now.

Obviously, G usually does the Gillian Welch part while I do my best Colin Meloy impression. I've spared you my singing on this video though. It was taken by Mrs J on our way back from the shops earlier, in case you were wondering how I was able to drive and film at the same time.

Smiler!

So here it is, the long-awaited photo of G smiling. We've been getting smiles off her for a few weeks already, but they've usually been too fleeting to catch on film. And besides, who wants to start scrabbling around for a camera when your daughter's smiling at you? If the smile follows minutes or even hours of crying, it's better to savour it than worry about trying to capture a Hallmark moment. However, she smiled so much during this week's trip to see my mum, uncle and aunt in Washington (that's this Washington, not that one) that we couldn't fail to get a few smiley pictures.

We drove up on Monday, just after she'd had another couple of injections. We'd been warned that she might not take the jabs too well, so we both went down to the surgery expecting to spend the whole journey north doling out Calpol and trying to soothe a grouchy G. But happily for both her and us, the injections didn't seem to bother her, and she slept more or less the whole way.

Her good mood continued during the two days we were in Washington. There was hardly any crying, and lots of smiling, gurgling and (possibly best of all) sleeping. I've heard lots of people say that they wished their babies could have stayed at a particular age forever, and never grown up. I always thought that sounded ridiculous, but G's been on such adorable form this week I now see what they mean. I still want her to grow up though. I need to be able to embarrass her with the contents of this blog.

The Other Side Of The Pennines

We took G for her first trip over the Pennines today. I'd softened our little Lancastrian girl up for this culture shock by baking some Yorkshire parkin last night, and she didn't show any anxiety during the drive on the M62. Admittedly, this probably had nothing to do with the gingery smell of traditional Yorkshire baked goods and everything to do with the fact she always sleeps during car journeys, but whatever.

We were visiting some friends in Leeds who are about to leave for France to run a chalet business for the winter season. They're going to be doing the catering and, having tried some of their food this lunchtime, I can say it'll be worth staying there for that alone, never mind the skiing.

Typically, G chose the middle of lunch to present us with her latest epic nappy. She'd seemed a bit unsettled and, as it was almost feeding time, I took her into our friends' bathroom for what I hoped would be a quick change. Imagine my delight on discovering that she'd managed to overflow her nappy again, even though it was a size bigger than the one she destroyed last week. This led to lots of wailing, screaming and wriggling, as I tried to get her dirty clothes off, clean everything up and then get some new clothes on. G hasn't yet realised that the more thrashing about she does in these situations, the longer the whole unpleasant business takes. I'm hoping it's a lesson she'll learn soon.

Eventually I managed to make her presentable again and after she'd been fed she calmed right down again. Calm enough in fact to get passed around everyone without crying, as the photo at the top shows. But then she's usually a little angel whenever she knows that anyone else is watching. It's the rest of the time we need to sort out.

Boss Of Me

We're back from G's longest road trip yet, all the way from Manchester to my hometown of Aberdeen and back again. The first thing to say is that people who go on about how having a baby makes everything take longer are on to something. On a good day, with no traffic and some boy racer driving, I've done the journey in five hours. But in wet weather with some roadworks, a couple of long feeding stops for G and plenty of sensible daddy driving, it took nearer eight hours each way. The motion of the car kept G asleep just about all the way there and back though, so it could've been a lot worse than it was.

One of the reasons for going such a long way with G still just a few weeks old was to introduce her to my granny and grandad, her great-grandparents. As you'd expect they were delighted to see her. I was reminded of how my granny, who's 92, was born during a First World War Zeppelin raid, which put G's own troublesome birth into some perspective. As we all sat round and cooed over G, who was at her angelic best, my granny said: "No doubt she's the boss of your household now." There's no fooling her.

As you might be able to tell from the photo, we'd put G into a pink dress for the occasion, but that didn't stop some people at the old folks' home congratulating us on our beautiful little boy. Lots of people with baby girls say they dress them in pink purely so people can tell straight away which sex the little one is. If that's what happens when we put G in pink, maybe we should start stocking up on blue baby clothes.