A walk in the park ...

... and a play on the swings, happily being pushed by Big Bro Al. Lovely Autumn morning.

Gareth and Emma's wedding

Al and Annie loved the wedding ... Al enjoyed showing off his first suit while Annie just enjoyed being cuddled by various family members all weekend. She wore her best dresses - one on Saturday for the wedding and one on Sunday for breakfast in the hotel with everyone.

Here's Annie and Al at the dinner, and then Annie showing off her Sunday best dress.

Gran's 90th Birthday

Grandma's birthday

I've been riding on my bike

We're all going on a summer holiday

Checking out the fish with Pat

First folk festival

We'd tackled the folk festival twice already with just Al but I was a bit dubious about managing the full 4 days with 2 small children, and actually enjoying any of it! So we agreed we would just get one-day tickets for the day when most of the bands we were interested in hearing would appear. Hmmm, this got trickier when we discovered that Uncle Billy would be playing two nights. So Daddy went ahead and booked full festival tickets anyway ... and we did really well in how much we actually got to stay for. We have to slip in a little mention here for the Imagined Village who were mummy's favourites. Annie had fun with lots of cuddles from Sophie and everyone else. She also got to sample some of the festival food - bits of Al's pasta and pancake.

Annie's first wedding

Annie attended her first wedding ... Abi and Benj got married in Cambridge and she wore her little summer suit (Annie, not Abi). The whole event was very joyful.

Getting to grips with food

Annie is finding her way around solid food (if you can call it that) and in true Petry style has shown a strong liking for cheese. She often doesn't eat very much which surprises people given that she is a little chubby baby (in the most beautiful sense of the word, of course). Being a baby, she is firmly of the opinion that food is meant to be a whole body experience.

Gratuitous cute photos

These photos are worth blogging just because Mummy loves them! The first is Al and Annie sitting on our windowseat interacting. This was 2 minutes after Al had thrown a wobbler on the floor. Mummy had to leave the room for a moment while he calmed down - when she got back in Al had got up onto the window seat where Annie was sitting and the two of them were having a lovely time together, all calm and peaceful.

The second is Annie's first dip in a paddling pool, at Thomas' house. Pure joy in her sparkly swimsuit.

Daddy's girl

Think this picture is worth a blog entry of its own. Annie is definitely a daddy's girl and this photo pretty much sums that up.

1st trip up north to Grandma and Grandad's

We celebrated Father's Day up in Yorkshire. Annie was introduced to Mummy's relatives ... here she is having a cuddle with Uncle Gareth and Auntie Emma.


And here's Annie testing out the highchair when we went out to celebrate Father's Day.

Having a cuddle with the Dobson ladies

Here's Annie with Linda and Becky who is also known as Annie's real mum! Becky was pretty up for adopting Annie in the early days so long as she didn't have to do sleepless nights or dirty bottoms.

Bouncing

Annie loves bouncing in the door bouncer, and Al loves bouncing Annie in the door bouncer, although Annie is less keen on being bounced. She is, however, keen on being read to while in the bouncer, even if the person reading is Al and at this point can barely make a sentence let alone read a book. Here's Al reading his favourite book of bedtime Bible stories to his little sister.

Posing with Big Nanny

All the grandparents came over for Al's birthday. We got a couple of nice photos of Big Nanny with the littlies.

Annie and Don (Uncle Shrek)

When Al was still a baby Mummy fulfilled an ambtion and got a photo of Al on Don's knee. We had to give Don the opportunity to demonstrate fairness so here is a photo of him holding Annie - the second baby he has held in 70 years!

Annie the party animal

We celebrated Al and Joanna's 2nd birthday with a party in our garden. Annie slept through most of the festivities far away on the window seat. She did wake up for some of it though and entertained us all with her high fashion headwear.

A new friend

We were really pleased to welcome Ernie the milkman into the world. His big brothers Harry and Johnny are friends with Annie's big brother and now Annie has a little friend up the road too. As you can see in this picture they are delighted to see each other.

Learning to sit up like a big girl

We dug out Al's baby nest for Annie to sit in, then we dug Al out of the baby nest where he was reminiscing or something, and finally Annie got to have a go in it. She's very happy in it and nicely contained (not that she's at all interested in being mobile yet!).

First family holiday

Annie's first family holiday was to Norfolk where she did at least wake up while we were on the beach, and seemed to like the sand.

I think most of the trips and activities we did on holiday passed her by but she very much enjoyed lots of time with Daddy all week. Such a shame that work gets in the way of family life normally.

Little cutie

Couple of gratuitous photos of our pinks looking good. First in her bumbo, generously bought by Mummy's colleagues and tested out by big brother before Annie was strong enough to hold her head up high.

Then a pic just to show off her lovely blue eyes!

Church weekend away at The Pleasaunce

On our church weekend away Annie got to visit the beach for the first time, an experience which clearly moved her.

All four of us shared one room for the weekend, but fortunately not one bed ... despite this photo of our big tinks and pink tinks on our bed.

1st weekend at Big Nanny's

We took Annie over to Bristol for her first stay at Big Nanny's house. Annie had a big cuddle with Mary and lots of cuddles with Nanny. We all went to Horseworld but this pretty much passed Annie by. No doubt in the future when we take her she will have a My Little Pony in her hand and be asking for a horse for Christmas ...

Some family photos

We got a family photo of the four of us taken when Grandma came down, and also a photo of the four generations of women on Mummy's side, for posterity.



Al is always up for posing with "baby Nanny" so we could fill the blog with pictures of the two littlies together but here's a couple of our favourite pics for now.

So much pink

We quickly spotted the difference between having a boy baby and having a girl baby ... the house has turned into a den of pink. So many pink clothes, toys, muslins ... We're secretly enjoying the girlieness of the dresses and little tights and fluffy things. Note in this pic Annie is still demonstrating the little sparrow legs pre-fattening up.

Following in the footsteps of big brother

Here's Annie flexing her muscles in the baby gym just like her big brother used to. Unfortunately on seeing it again her big brother would like to use it and tries to lie on the mat even if Annie is already lying there, so we have to hide it behind the sofa and just get it out when he is asleep or at Sarah's.

More traditions / indoctrination!

Another family tradition is the wearing of the Billy Bragg t-shirt while listening to the Bard of Barking himself. Here is Annie modelling her 1st BB t-shirt which we had made for Daddy's birthday so Daddy, Al and Annie could all dress the same. In case you can't see very clearly, the picture on the t-shirt is Daddy and BB together for real, in real life!

Petry traditions

Once home Annie had to be introduced to certain family traditions. The first of these was the Petry windowseat where an entire generation of Petry children (all 1 of them before Annie) have napped and had their bottoms changed.

Here she is post-bath and then again just relaxing in a top that Daddy rather likes.

Meeting the grandparents

Annie then had to meet her Grandma, Grandad, Great Gran and Nanny (now known as Big Nanny, to distinguish her from our baby, Lickle Nanny). Everyone was quite enamoured with her, not surprisingly.

Like mother like daughter

The whole birth experience was just a little bit tiring for both mummy and Annie, who needed a big rest to recover from it all. Not the most flattering photo but cute nevertheless.





There's quite a family likeness between the brother and his new sister too, but you can't really tell in this photo!

Meeting the rest of the family

Al was really excited to meet his baby sister. He greeted her with shrill little shrieks and smiles and was desperate to touch her.

Daddy was pretty excited to meet his baby girl too!

She's here!

After keeping us waiting a week Annie arrived in a quiet but dramatic way at 5am on Wednesday 23rd January 2008, weighing 7lb8. She was all beautiful and snuggly. We felt really well looked after - we had a surprise c-section performed by Daddy's friend Ali, who came in on her day off when she heard we'd gone into hospital. And before we even left home the cavalry arrived in the shape of Dawn, who came to look after Al, and Shirley who came to drive us to hospital with Mummy gasping and panting in the back of the car.

Mummy and Annie having an early cuddle a few hours after the birth.