May has now arrived, and as spring fast becomes summer Saskia is continuing to grow and develop as quickly - if not quite as chaotically - as our front garden.
The last month has included both Easter and the first May bank holiday so in a short space of time Sas has been able to see her entire extended family. Over the Easter weekend the Weisses came to stay. This entailed our rather brave trip to Stratford to see King Lear while Naomi held the fort back in Cheltenham, after our months of strategic preparation and stocking up on emergency milk rations. All went well and we came back to a peacefully sleeping babe. If only I’d managed to stay awake all the way through the play it would’ve been an 100% successful evening, but you can’t have everything.
We followed this up with a trip to Hitchin for the Larsen Easter gathering – where we ate outside in the sunshine, roll on global warming etc. – so Saskia could see her other grandparents, Matt, Diana, Tracey, John, James and Ryan all in one go. Sas smiled at everyone merrily and the only downside was that (looking down proudly at our daughter bent double in her carrycot) we came to the rather overdue conclusion that she is getting a bit big for her little shoebox of a cot. Time was when she was dwarfed by it, now though she has graduated to true Weiss pedigree with her feet sticking out the end...
So once we returned home Sas made the transition to the full-size cotbed which has been waiting for her since her birth. And all went remarkably smoothly, with none of our fears of how badly she might take the move realised at all.
A few weeks later Auntie Catherine was over from deepest darkest South America on a conference, so we met up with her and Naomi in Oxford for a lovely picnic in the New College Gardens. Unseasonably warm once again, so we were able to lounge around in the sunshine trying to keep Saskia amused. Her aunties helped out brilliantly on this front as can be seen below.
Come the second bank holiday, the Butchers came to stay again. Saskia and Ryan got to know each other a bit better (Ryan did get his hand back eventually), and James played big brother/cuz to both very well when he wasn't thrashing the pants off his uncle on the Gamecube. OK, OK, so it was a nice excuse to get some gaming in for the first time in months - but hey, I'm just trying to entertain my relatives at the end of the day.
James posed for loads of pictures too, although he was somehow out-gurned in this one by me.
Last but most definitely not least, Sas managed one more feat, or should we say feet!!, this month - discovering how tasty her toes are! This started in the bath but soon she was contorting herself on the changing mat, in her cot and anywhere else it seemed like a fun idea. Amazing stuff - at least if she doesn't become a nuclear scientist she might have a career in the circus.
