Chocolate fondue

This is what happens when you feed emma some chocolate fondue. Note how michael seems to be coping with it well, but emma looks like something from a horror film.

Merry Christmas 2010

We hope that this special 2010 round up blog entry will make up for our 'de-prioritising' of christmas card distribution this year!

2010 has been a better year for us.

In January we were blessed with a beautiful baby girl, Emma. Despite inheriting a few less desirable genes from the Black side of the family (tongue-tie, inability to sleep, love for macaroni cheese), she is adjusting well to life with us. She loves her brother, CBeebies, music and biting her Mummy (perhaps not in that order!).

Michael turned 3 this year and started nursery, which he says he 'loves a little bit'. He's enjoyed our travels this year which include his second transatlantic trip to the US for another uncle's wedding, his holiday to 'Crispie' on the west coast of Scotland and Butlins with the Adam family. He's also loved spending time at Grandad Black's house every weekend they'll have him! We've slowly managed to wean him off his addiction to the Wii, but he still enjoys playing Mario with his Daddy whenever he gets the chance.

Martin is still feeling the effects of chronic fatigue but has had no major relapses this year. He's enjoyed some improvement over the past few months, so we're hoping that this will continue into the new year. He's now adopted his own sofa in the living room, from which he is still able to competently perform his duties at technical consultant to the family.

Sarah is working hard to keep her kids clean, house tidy and husband in clothing combinations that aren't too offensive to the eye. She is extremely grateful for all the help and support she's received from friends and family over the past year.

We hope that you all have a happy and relaxing Christmas, and wish you all the best for 2011.

Here are some of our favourite family photos from this year - enjoy! (some are courtesy of our personal photographer - thanks Colette!)

The Long Run-up to Christmas

Emma reading with Sarah's Granny, who's referred to as big-granny by Michael (he doesn't get the whole great-granny concept)

Emma showing where the food goes. This is actually her standard photo-pose at the moment

Michael with his bizarre christmas headwear for the Nursery Christmas Singalong

We're all a bit sick at the moment. There's some kind of bug kicking about the family. Luckily it's not had too much of an effect on me, but Sarah's tired, we're all coughing a lot, and michael has got what can only politely be described as an upset tummy.

Sarah took the Christmas Singalong videos at Michael's Christmas Nursery Singalong on Friday. I wish I could have gone, as it looked like a lot of fun. Sarah said that Michael wasn't singing with his usual enthusiasm, but he was quite tired at the time.

Snow Fun

Michael admires some of uncle lee's shoes

emma asleep at lee and clair's

Emma sharing the table with baby Abby (Reid)

Mummy and Emma in the snow

Emma and I

Michael preparing a snowball

Mummy and baby

bunches! (Note the hairclip in the mouth)

Emma relaxing

the ghost baby!

me with evil-eyes emma

This is how sarah found michael one night in bed

It's been a while, and Michael and Emma have been very busy.

Emma's been learning how to do lots of new things like cruising (walking around using sofas, walls etc for support). Michael's started telling jokes. I know I should be proud as a father, but they're pretty terrible.

We've had a ton of snow over the past couple of weeks. In the Central Belt of Scotland, it's safe to say that it's caused chaos on the roads. My mum and dad were snowed in in Glenrothes. Michael's nursery was closed quite a lot. I think there was a stretch where Sarah, Michael and Emma didn't leave the house for a couple of days. It's always nice to get home from work to see Sarah still in her pyjamas asleep with emma on the couch.

I've been feeling a bit better, and certainly more consistent, which has been great. Maybe there's something to be said for this whole baselining theory after all.

Louise and Colin Reid popped by. They were on holiday in Alloa! It was good to see them. Once again though, we totally forgot to take any photos.

Emma and Michael still aren't sleeping well. Emma typically gets up three or four times in the night, and michael usually goes on a wander at some point. Sarah and I saw a quick clip on the tv last night of the Prime Minister saying that he usually watches Newsnight whilst feeding his baby (probably about 6 months) and the baby sleeps through usually until about 7am. Sarah and I will never vote for him, possibly just out of sheer jealousy!

Green eggs and ham

Sometimes, sarah can be a bit cruel. Making emma look like someone from a dr suess book this morning was one of those occasions.

Draughts

I'm playing draughts with michael here. It's using a star wars chess set. If you look closely you can see that jango fett is actually on a sports car. Michael was insistent.

Bunches

Sarah's managed to get Emma's hair into bunches. When she first say it, she thought it was so cute she'd get up earlier every morning to do it. Needless to say that hasn't happened.

Recent Videos of Emma

Emma's mastered the art of cruising - where a baby walks by supporting itself on furniture, walls etc. Between that and her crazy dragging-her-leg crawl, she's able to get about. What's strange to me though, is that whereas Michael was desperate to get into everything as soon as he was in any way mobile, emma doesn't seem too bothered about moving about the place.




She seems to enjoy doing this on the wooden flooring we've got in our hall and the piano room




Emma seems to do a primitive form of moshing, where she waves her head from side to side. Her hair makes her look like a bit of a rock goddess when she's doing it. This is me singing the passenger by iggy pop - really badly. Sounds like some kind of Buddhist mantra.

Emma's not been sleeping too well recently. As a result of which, she's often a bit sleepy at dinnertime - as demonstrated here where she's almost falling asleep eating corn on the cob.

Texting

They start earlier and earlier.

The Birkie

The Birthday girl with Emma

Emma happy that she'd finally got her hands on Aunti Sandi's necklace (apparently from Tiffany's, so Emma wasn't allowed to chew it)

Uncle Lee struggles to hide his mirth at something from Clair

Michael, Isla and I

It was Auntie Clair's birthday at the weekend, so we went up to Dundee to celebrate with her.

We went out for a quiet meal at the Birkie. For those who've not had the pleasure, it's a lovely pub style restaurant just outside Dundee.

After many people talking about how good the Steak Pie was, I felt that I had to give it a go. Although it's not necessarily something I would normally go for on a menu, I have to confess that it was very good.

Michael was upset when his pizza came with carrots, brussel sprouts and chips. He was expecting just pizza. It seems to be a very common theme with him that he's not happy when something's not as he expected it to be. Granddad Black looked a bit reluctant to share his adult-sized-version-of-the-kids-meal macaroni cheese with Emma, but gave her some chips, some veg, and a wee bit of macaroni (and some ice cream).

Michael seemed to enjoy playing Crash Bandicoot on the Playstation in the wee play room that they have there.

We went back to Clair's afterwards. Michael went over to the Megabowl with Clair, Isla, Scott and Granddad. It was very noisy so Granddad came back (thank goodness I didn't go - I was out cold by that time). Michael had signs for strikes and spares, and would even show how many pins were left by holding up his fingers. He was a little miffed that he didn't get any strikes though, unlike uncle scott.

Who wants to crawl anyway?

Emma's showing little interest in crawling. She's loving standing up though. She can kind of crawl, which involves dragging one of her legs behind her. She can walk with very little help.

Emma's Blessing

Emma smiling - I might photoshop this and take out the socks!

Michael looking smart, but showing the consequences of the face paint

Seems like emma's the only one who can work out where the camera is

Emma looks to be enjoying grandma's scarf

Granddad Adam, Grandma and Emma

Auntie Alyson things about eating Emma, and Alan looks on like a victorian villan

Emma with Uncle Neil and Auntie Maggie

Emma and Elmo (no relation to either the blacks or the adams)

Granny, Isla and Sandra

Emma with Granddad and Scott

Emma at the end of a long day with Maggie

After much tooing and froing going back to April this year, we've finally held Emma's blessing. We'd continually put it off to give me time to recover and other things, but eventually just chose a date and went with it.

Sarah had picked out a nice outfit for emma, which included matching gold shoes. She even attempted to control Emma's hair, and was pretty successful.

There were actually 3 baby blessings at church in Alloa on Sunday, which is the first time I've ever seen that many in a day. Ella Blyth and Joel Guscott were also blessed.

For those not familiar with the Latter-Day Saint practice of baby blessings, it's roughly equivalent to a christening. There's no godfather/mother, as we don't baptise children until they are 8. The blessing is really just an opportunity to name the child and speak a blessing as you feel it's appropriate. Michael screamed all the way through his one, but emma was very well behaved. Not a peep! Given, she's the oldest baby getting blessed that I've ever seen (it's usually done on the first sunday of the month following the child's birth and emma's 9 months old), but I was still pretty impressed. Uncles Neil, Lee and Alan helped out, as did both Granddads.

We got to go first so that I had as little time as possible to get tired by being at church. My highlight of the day was George Stewart saying "We'd like to ask those blessing the black baby to go first". Makes me chuckle just thinking about it.

Emma spent most of the remainder of sacrament meeting with Clair and Lee, who had to shoot off after church back to Dundee.

Everyone else piled back to our house, where there was some great food available. It was almost as if we were of italian descent, as the food was mostly pizza, macaroni and lasagne.

Michael had a bit of a rash on his face from the day before. He'd had his face painted at Liahona and Rebekah's birthday party. It seems he had a bit of an allergic reaction to the face paint.

Crazy babygro

I came upstairs at bedtime and was greeted by the incredible sight of emma in a crazy outfit. I think it looks like some crazy wallpaper from the 70s.

butlins videos

Here's a load of videos from the recent excursion to butlins.

A couple of them were taken when the camera was held sideways, and are consequently a little hard to watch.

Halloween

Michael and Emma dressed for Halloween

Our front door

Michael and Emma beside their pumpkins

The pumpkins alight!

Michael trying to put the eyes back in his pumpkin

A rare sighting of the lesser-spotted-daddy, working on the jack o'lanterns

Emma giving her normal tongue salute