We are a cousin

Such much news. Alice has a cousin, Emilia Kitty Grace Partington (Milly), who was born on Sunday 7th September. Milly weighed just the same as Alice (7lb 6oz/3.34 kg) but seems already to have more hair, so that will be adding a couple of grams to her body weight. Alice is very excited to meet her beautiful cousin - though goodness knows when that will be.

Milly shared her birthday with Alice's first Fathers Day. Unfortunately Alice's father was to be found dancing on the shoulders of some beefy men in Vietnam, to the tune of "I love you baby", (recreating the scene from "The Deerhunter" ) rather than celebrating with Alice. He also took the camera with him so I couldn't capture Alice's little face, alone on the day of paternal celebration, nor her joy at waking on Monday morning to hear the news of Milly.

Fortunately Father Stu made it back from 'Nam relatively unscathed and was a big help for the 60 minutes he spent in the house while Alice was awake before he jetted off to deepest WA to inspect a pipeline. Because he knows so much about them. Roll on the end to single parent family-dom at the weekend. It's been a tough couple of weeks (of which more later).

So Alice is on her way to catching up with my cousin tally of 20+. Auntie Deborah and Uncle Andrew, not to mention the Leigh-on-Sea Aunties will need to get busy if she wants to overtake me.

In other news, Alice's fairy god-sister Megan started school this week. It's been a momentous time indeed.