rock!

we've given michael his first couple of tastes of real food, and it seems to do strange things to him. he gets really possessive of it, and grabs on to your hand to stop you trying to take it away. we didn't give him any of the rock in the picture though. he really liked the colours and the wrapping of it, so i though it would be safe to let him hold it - i was wrong. he's moving around a lot at the moment, and promptly whacked himself off the head with the rock. in the interests of safety, sarah quickly ate both sticks of rock, to make sure neither michael nor myself were further hurt by any of the dangerous rock


We went into London yesterday. Sarah's brother Jamie (still claiming the favourite uncle title) and his girlfriend Roz generously came over to babysit on Friday night. We went around to Gillian (from my work) and Barry's house with Al and Jana Sameulson (and George), which was a lot of fun, and a lot of really good food! Jamie and Roz only had to call us once. I'd been babysitting him and Millie (Tracey Noden's baby) on Thursday. It's worth pointing out that Millie was an angel, and slept all night. Michael had other ideas, and after his bath proceeded to start screaming like I'd never really heard it before - really high pitched and stacatto burts. He seemed genuinly upset, but I think was just sleepy. sarah usually gives him a quick feed before he goes to sleep, and it looks like the bottle was no substitute for the genuine article. I held out as long as I could, but called sarah after an hour, at which point michael almost immediatly fell asleep. Much the same happened with Jamie and Roz. They called and sarah popped round, but michael had dropped off by the time she got there. maybe he just needed to know that sarah was willing to make the sacrifice.

One of the things we did yesterday was to go to the star wars exhibition. i wouldn't consider myself much more than a fan of the films, but even i was close to tears on a couple of occasions. it was really good! sarah was amazed at how many planets and stuff there were in the star wars films. there were people walking about dressed like clone warriors and jedis, and they had a cool jedi school thing, where some jedis came in and trained some kids how to use a light sabre. don't read any further if you're going to go, but at one point darth sidius (the emperor) comes in and tries to tempt the kids over to the dark side. that was scary enough for me, but then the music started, that terrifying leightmotif, and darth vader came in. i had to cling on to sarah for security, as it was genuinly terrifying! the kids that had been trained got to have a light sabre duel with darth vader. i didn't know whether to cry in terror or joy!