It was a big day for the Littl'Un today as he left the hospital and made his first foray into the Big Wide World. He took his debut journey in a car, saw snow for the first time, explored his new home and met his cousins (via Skype). Their verdict: 'He's a big wriggly' and 'He looks like a dog'. They won't be saying that in years to come when their younger cousin stands a foot and a half taller than them.
We arrived home to find a number of birthday and Christmas cards awaiting our return, including one with seasonal greetings from my Church in London. It was a beautiful card entitled 'Unto Us a Child is Born', which I thought most apt - and almost as appropriate as the flyer inside offering a day of 'Healing from the Inside Out'. Given that I can hardly sit down at the moment, I am pretty tempted to sign up immediately.
It is wonderful to be home and enjoying our first few days together as a family - particularly as it is quite wintry outside here now, so it is lovely to be snuggled up inside in the warm. We seem to be doing fine so far, I think largely because Simon is taking care of everything other than feeding. It turns out that I am the Wayne Rooney of the Shercliff family (not a sentence I ever imagined myself writing) and, although I'm not sure I will be permitted to make it to the ten day mark, Simon seems pretty happy with the arrangement thus far, allowing him as it does a chance to use his relevant skills and experience. Apparently, he is good at 'judging people's hydration levels by their urine colour in the snow', a technique he is now employing to monitor Alex's milk intake. Luckily, he has not yet made his son go outside to wee, satisfying himself with frequent close nappy inspections instead.
In fact, the only thing that has phased Simon so far was opening Alex's chest of drawers to be confronted by hundreds of white babygrows. The man who has crossed the Patagonian ice cap on foot, survived a 900 mile cycle ride to Indiana, scaled several 6000m mountains and witnessed an episiotomy has finally been felled by the sight of 'so many different piles of different sorts of babygrows'.
Several people have asked us about Alex's name. His full name is Alexander Francis George Shercliff - but we will call him Alex (unless of course we are in the presence of Persian friends in which case he will be referred to exclusively as Alexander). We actually named him after our wonderful Tanzanian friend, Alex. Francis is a name from the Shercliff side of the family (who coincidentally hail from Fressingfield, where Em went to primary school) and George is a Cole family name. So there you have it. It is a big responsibility naming a child, but Alex seems pretty happy with his name so far and we think it suits him perfectly. Although I still think that Simon Jr. would have been a better choice.