Dear Max and Oli,

I'm finding my blogging feet with this, or more accurately dipping my toe in for the first time...so here's the first of my letters to you to tell you about your life while you are small and so helter skelter hectic and keeping me so busy. Oli, you are now 6 weeks old and, I'm touching wood as I write this, being a total angel - especially at night. After the 10pm 'dream feed' you are waking just once around 2 or 3am and then sleeping through til 6 or even 7am. One of the benefits, I suppose, of producing a 9lb 6oz baby. Max, you've had your moments in the last month or so but to be fair, you are being very sweet with Oli. I'm sure I saw you whispering something to him while he was cocooned in his stroller yesterday. And when we were reading a book earlier you stroked Oli's rabbit soft hair and insisted he should turn the pages; 'No, Oli do it!' I think Oli smiled a little as you touched his head. I hope all this bodes well for your future together.
Talking of Oli's hair, I'm afraid he is moulting. His mohecan is now bordered by baldness at the sides. It's not a great look but seems to be a rite of passage in this household as Max was just the same, only he also had the delightful coiffure cocktail of having mullet at the back. I have to admit, the look is a little unnerving and somehow makes the skull seem to bulge in the wrong places...but the doctor measured Oli's head circumference only last Friday so I'm sure all is well with our beautiful boy.
We seem drawn to compare Max and Oli. I think it is partly because with your first baby, it's hard to imagine how your little one could be anything different, D+E=M. But Oli provides living proof that D+E can also equal O. Somehow, by making comparisons, the identities or characteristics of both seem clearer. But it's early days...Now I think about it I'm not sure Max smiled for the first 3 months. In the hospital I think Max was quite genuinely cross that he was in the hands of such an amateur. I remember struggling for the fifteenth time to swaddle my newborn, but like a wailing octopus his limbs kept wriggling out at every attempt. A matronly nurse appeared and took one look at my flailing, noisy child and gave the swaddle an authoritative tuck, binding him up like a parcel ready for posting. Max immediately calmed down, relieved that at least someone knew what they were doing. Needless to say, I've abandoned the swaddling early on with Oli, recognising that I was more stressed trying to achieve it, than he would be soothed by it. But luckily Oli seems happier from the start. Not to say he's in any better hands, but he has a wry little smile at the corner of his mouth which looks rather knowing. Perhaps I do know what I'm doing.