Settling In.

It took me all of 2 days to realise that Millie has extra special powers ; I swear she knows the second I go near the PC or touch the keyboard or mouse.She can be in the deepest sleep and still seems to sense when I am trying to sneak in a quick mail or,woe betide me,do some blogging.So that is why I haven't been able to blog for so long and have so many mails to write.And needless to say,she is stirring right now but I have her on my knees so am ready to shove my breast in her mouth if she tries to sabotage my attempts to get up to date here yet again.Crafty little minx.

The last few weeks have whizzed past and I can hardly believe that Millie is nearly 6 weeks old.We have had the usual ups and downs of newborn life plus a few other unforeseen events including Annie sick with a high fever again the day Millie and I came home from the clinic and Millie nearly hospitalised due to a bout of diarrhoea.Lots of fun as you can well imagine as well as the battle to keep breast feeding,the usual sleepless nights and coping with visitors popping in at odd hours(and more often than not when we were having our afternoon naps) and trying to keep ourselves fed,dressed and sane.But we managed and it was mostly due to Kenichi doing everything and anything and friends who took Annie for a few hours,made food for us and even did the cleaning on a couple of occasions.

But now we are settling in and I am out and about now that the first month has passed.Here in Japan,one is strongly encouraged to stay in the home for the first month of the baby's life.I am not going to argue the pros and cons of this but just to say that living in the sticks,these traditions are not taken lightly and yes,I could ignore this one but it is not worth the hassle and the backlash.So indeed,I stayed at home for the month although did have a few trips to the hospital and the clinic,and to a friends house on the way back from the clinic which doesn't count;).

So we are officially allowed out again and it is really nice but we don't do much or go far as yet as I am concentrating on breast feeding and Millie feeds every 2 hours so that limits the amount we can do .And she is rather vocal baby and makes herself heard when she is not happy which is rather embarrassing when we are shopping at the local supermarket.

Millie is a real snuggler and wants to be held all the time and,as I said,very vocal,She is also a smiler and I had my first proper smile on day she reached 4 weeks old.She also "talks" a lot and com-plains a lot already.She adores Annie and Annie is totally in love with her; she tells me every day that Millie is the best baby in the whole wide world and gets terrible worried if anyone apart from Kenichi and me try to touch her.She loves giving Millie bottles which is so useful and is a great help during nappy changes as well and it wont be long before she is doing the nappies all by herself.We sleep together in the "girls" bed and Kenichi has moved into one of our tatami rooms for the time being which suits us all well as he gets uninterrupted sleep so can get up early to walk the dog,put the wash on,clean,make breakfast etc and Annie,Millie and I get a big bed to ourselves.As we co-sleep,Millie rarely cries as I am there to see to her every need at once, and Annie sleeps through it all anyway.

And finally,a bit of video that I took to send to my mum but it was too heavy to send as an attachment,so I am adding it here.Annie was telling Millie a story(which doesn't make much sense) and they looked so sweet together!