Snow

Yesterday we woke up to Ben's first glimpse of snow. Just a slight covering, but snow nontheless. Ben was strategically positioned to give him the best view of this phenomenon, but as always was far more interested in the skylights above his head, a bit of plain wall and - well, anything else really. Debbie took him for a walk to give him first hand experience - but he just slept. Unfortunately, somewhere en route he seems to have picked up a nasty cold, and is now a very snotty little boy. Poor love.

G'day Grandparents

Ben was excited this Sunday to meet his Gran and Grandad Dawson again - it has been seven weeks since he last saw them, before they went off to Australia for Christmas and New Year. He has changed quite a bit since then, now looking quite the little boy in his dungarees. He was very pleased to have yet another opportunity to open some presents, including a genuine Australian kangaroo cuddly toy from Gran and Grandad and a lovely picture of a dolphin from his cousin Robyn. Ben says "Hi" to all his Australian relatives, including Great Uncle John and Great Aunt Jane (bet that makes you feel old!)

Keeping a sense of humour

Life's not been quite so easy in the Dawson home this week. Everyone told us that things would get better at 6 weeks, but Ben has had other ideas. We thought this picture somehow summed it up. What do you do with the boy who has everything and still isn't satisfied? We're holding on to the smiles and moments of adorable cuteness - they are like rays of sunshine breaking through the rain. A bit like the week's weather really.

Smiles

Our baby record book tells us to mark the date of Ben's first smile. We've been struggling with this as he's been teasing us with half smiles - we're never sure whether they're genuine, or just wind! However, this week we've been convinced that he's really smiling at us and responding to us. On Tuesday when Mark came home from work there was a definite smile when Mark tickled his feet. And yesterday we finally managed to capture one of these precious moments on the camera. Aaah!

Happy New Year!

A belated Happy New Year to everyone from the Dawsons! We celebrated the New Year in style this year at our friends Clare and Rich in Kenilworth. They bravely invited two couples with babies over for a top notch dinner party. One of the babies was on model behaviour, and slept the entire evening. The other wasn't quite so prepared to miss out on all the fun, and decided he would sit with us during dinner and join in the midnight celebrations (see above!) Maybe plying him with champagne would have helped on the sleep front...

Oh, and we were right about his chubbiness. Ben weighed in at almost 10lb when he visited the baby clinic on Tuesday. Must be all those mince pies Mummy has been eating. (looking at these photos, Daddy has been doing his fair share of eating too!)