More photos of newborn Samuel as promised

Well these have taken a long while in coming, and in the mean time Samuel has grown older and bigger, and chaos has become thoroughly embedded in our daily lives!

Well these are still photos from Samuel's birthday - his real one! It seemed funny that it was still his first day in a way as we had had a few hours sleep. That's what you get for being born just after midnight though. Rachel thinks it's great that every year on Samuel's birthday when he wakes up he will already properly be that age. :o)

Rebekah was straight to him in the morning, and all of his sisters just couldn't leave him alone.


Sarah was delighted to see him in the morning, and enjoyed her first cuddle.


All of his sisters kept wanting lots of cuddles. It was lovely to see his beautiful dark eyes and calm face as he took them all in.




He seemed especially captivated several times by Rachel's face - finding her and focusing on her as he had been doing with me. It was lovely on his first evening to have him find me above him while Michael changed him on our bed (by following my voice) and focus on my face despite it being above and behind him. Very lovely. :o)

The day passed very quickly, partly because we were so tired I suppose. The midwife came back in the afternoon, and he had a bath after that, which he thoroughly enjoyed until he got in the water! He has loved having baths since then. so maybe it just wasn't as warm as he wanted it. He really relaxes in the warm water, and loves to float all stretched out (with help of course!)







Rebekah and Peter wanted to introduce Samuel to his new bear. Peter actually had a lot more fun playing with the bear with me. "You be the bear Mummy." :o) Samuel did take a good look at it though, which pleased him and Rebekah.



Sarah was very pleased that she was able to rock Samuel to sleep in a warm cuddle when he got tired.

Peter really didn't want to hold, or cuddle, or stroke Samuel - or anything else. He got as far as gently touching his hair with a finger tip for less than a second on the first day. He really just observed Samuel for the first week, asking questions about him and what he was doing, and why he did or didn't like things (he interpreted Samuel's noises as him saying "yes" and "no" to different things). He didn't seem too sure about all the fuss that was being made, and was much more happy to just play with his cars, or do other activities as usual than to spend time with a baby.

That adjustment to having Samuel around took exactly a week, then he happily stroked Samuel's thick hair at the back of his neck to see if it felt soft. He started giggling and said it was tickly and fluffy, and stroked it some more. Within half an hour he was taking pictures of me and Hannah with Samuel and asking each of us to take pictures of him with Samuel (also a first - he hadn't wanted to be in any before that). Then he even said he'd hold him. He's been much more entertained by his little brother since then.