slinky is no more...

Our neighbour called round tonight to tell us that Slinky died on Monday morning. Apparently, he just lay in his basket, made a few mewling noises and died.  We hadn't seen him for a few days, and were beginning to wonder if something had happened to him.  It's very sad, but oddly not as sad as I thought it would be.  I think I am quite pleased that he died the way he did, relatively quickly, at home, in his basket.  He was 17 years old, which is pretty good going for a pedigree cat.  I think he had a good life. Slinky shall be sorely missed.

she is growing up so fast

Cupcake, who is now 8 months has finally, after weeks of struggle, cut her first tooth. Of course, she is a stroppy git and will not allow us to feel it.

polaroid pogo

I have been trying hard not to buy any technology while Mrs McMuffin has been on maternity leave.  She went back to work last week and I couldn't resist getting myself a Polaroid Pogo portable printer.  Boots are selling them for £77, which seemed like to good a bargain for me to pass up.  You can also get them in John Lewis for £78, by the way.  I love it.  The 3"x2" self adhesive prints are great and I have been printing and sticking like mad since I got it.  It has Bluetooth and connects easily to my Macbook, and will connect to a mobile phone too, just not my wonderful iPhone, of course.  Apparently, a fully charged machine is good for about 15 prints, which may come in handy one day.  I just wanted one.

happy birthday to babycake

It's hard to believe, but Babycake is three years old today.  It seems like only yesterday that the midwives left us alone with our new baby, and the panic started to descend on us.  It has sometimes seemed as if we would never get to this point.  It certainly never occured to us that when Babycake was three he would also have a little sister.  We have been a little mean to him today because we haven't really made a point of telling him that it's his birthday.  We decided to wait until the weekend to celebrate it with him.  He has a list of people he wants to invite to his "party".  Sadly it doesn't include his favourite aunt, Ms Gypsy Tart.  He has become very unhappy with her over the last couple of weeks as he has come to realise that she is pregnant and will soon give birth to another little girl.

weaning cupcake

Mrs McMuffin returned to work a couple of weeks ago and I have taken over the daytime care of our two lovely children.  Boy, is it hard work.  Fortunately as time passes it seems to be getting a little bit easier.  However, Cupcake is determined to make things as difficult as possible for us.  We are trying to wean her onto solid food and formula during the day.  For her part, she has decided that she wants nothing to do with anything that we might want to put in her mouth.  She absolutely refuses to drink formula milk or to suck from a bottle.  I've tried several different kinds of milk and a couple of different bottles but all to no avail.  It gets better though because she absolutely refuses to eat anything that comes on a spoon.  The upshot is that she will only eat what she can feed herself.  As you can imagine this makes mealtimes a very lengthy and messy affair.  The good news is that she seems willing to eat practically anything.  For the last couple of weeks, Mrs McMuffin has had to return home from work at lunchtime to feed her, and it means that she has been going four or five hours between feeds.  Today, for the first time, she actually drank some water from a bottle which she seemed to enjoy.  It's hard not to become anxious for her, but she is doing really well and when I took her to the baby clinic last week she was on the 91 centile for weight and height.  We have made another giant baby by the looks of things.  The feeding stuff comes as such a surprise for us because we just assumed that she would take to the bottle and solids like Babycake did.  My memory, which may not be quite accurate, was that he took to the bottle immediately and began stuffing himself on lentils after only a couple of days of offering it to him.  He certainly has never looked back.  

She is very lovely though!