Yesterday wasn’t just the first chance for Grandparents to meet Holly but also Evan.  Evan’s been saying for months that he wants a girl baby (lucky eh).  He’s given ‘baby’ a kiss most days and has been holding on to baby’s bunny.  Just how the first meeting would go was going to be interesting.  The GPs (grandparents) dropped Evan by and let us have a few minutes, just the four of us.  Evan was a bit bewildered.  Just sort of walked in, made eye contact and then stopped dead.  He just didn’t know what to make of her.  He slowly moved around her cot.   I asked him, “do you want to hold Holly?”.  “No”.  I picked her up and he got a little closer.  I put her back in the cot and then he decided it was time.  “Can I stroke her?”.  After a few minutes I asked again and this time he was happy to hold her.  He’s not quite up to the whole floppy head thing yet.  You could almost tell that holding her was something that he knew we wanted him to do.  He would look at her, look at me, look out the window.  Eventually he said “I’m your big brother” (or should I say bruvvah, even though he lives on the Hants, Surrey, Sussex border the whole Portsmouth accent seems to be taking hold) “My name is Evan”.  After that it was back to normal and eventually he was more interested in the toys in the family room and the fact he was meeting his cousin for dinner later.  Later he said to me “I will be good with Holly.  I won’t throw things at her”.  Well…that’s a relief

So far, so good.  We’re probably coming home today.  Just depends on Nicola…ta for now!

So yes, the astute amongst you…the Sherlock Holmes if you will…have probably deduced that Nicola gave birth to a 7lb 6oz girl last night which we have named Holly Louise.  In the spirit of keeping names in the family Louise is Nicola’s middle name.

To say that labour was quick would be a profound understatement.  We were hiking our way up to a sledging hill at 4:00pm.  We dropped Evan off at his grandparents at 5:20.  We left for the hospital just before 7.  In fact Nicola asked me the time as we were turning out of the village and I replied “three minutes to 7″.  Ten minutes to Petersfield, five minute slow walk (with multiple contractions) to the ward and at 7:48 Holly arrived.  For those of you with unsharp mask eyes (200, 2.8, 0) you might be able to work out that she was born in the pool.

That’s about all I have time for now.  Evan meets his baby sister later this morning.  So there will be more later this week.  For now here’s a few snaps.