It’s amazing how much a small two month old child can change your world.

From a change of car from Mercedes SLK to Jeep, travelling with small, overnight Italian luggage to Moses basket, pram, car seat, your clothes, his clothes, changing bag and rucksack of toys, milk bottles….

I took a day off work today to get ready for Amanda and Ben’s first stay here. The morning spent deciding on food, shopping and preperation. The afternoon clearing all those odd jobs which have been hanging around for ages and getting belated birthday wishes from Rachel and H.

It’s been a while since Amanda was here last and that was just before Ben “appeared” so we both had a lot of catching up to do, including my Christmas presents and our birthday presents.

Martin, Fhai, Richard and Joanne joined us to see Amanda, meet Ben and come to share food and drink with us. We managed to avoid the dough fight when Richard and Joanne made pizza and we moderated the drinking so no one was out watching stars at 4:00am. Thanks to Jamie Oliver we enjoyed chicken breast stuffed with mushrooms in puff pasty with a wine, cream and mustard sauce, roasted squash and baked new potatoes. Fig, mozzarella and parma ham salad and chocolate torte to finish.

Amanda looks so well, happy and settled. Ben was happy and quiet despite being passed from person to person. Joanne spent the evening following Amanda around helping to look after Ben where she could. Richard sat in the front room playing video games from the 70’s with Amanda in some never ending Pac Man competition.

It’s nice to have some happy noise in this house. True it’s a little crowded with all the additional things for Ben but on balance we’re all happy Amanda left the days of the small Parada bag behind.