Birthday Boy

It was Robert's 9th Birthday on 11th October.

No, I know it doesn't seem 9 years ago he was born, but 9 he is.

I was on a trade union course at MANCAT. We'd just started the afternoon session when the pager I'd borrowed off Sara Barker went off. "they are injuicing me, come now" it said, the BT operator who sent the message clearly not having the best grasp of spelling. I got up and announced to the class, 'Sorry I've got to go, my wife's in labour'. I got lots of best wishes, a few pats on the back and several predictions that ' that's it now, life will never be the same again'. I got in a taxi outside and I think made the drivers day by giving him an excuse to drive significantly faster than he should have done to St Mary's, via some city centre back streets I never knew existed.

Robert was 4lb 14oz when he was born. You can see from the photo he's had a bit of a growing spurt since being here, and we're always trying to get him to eat more, as he's pretty skinny. He's developed a strong Australian Questioning Inflection, and calls water 'warder' and butter 'Budder'. This is as opposed to Owen, who seems to be more Manc (specifically, Levenshulme) than ever.

They've both settled really well here. They miss people of course, and talk nostalgically about St Andrews, but they enjoy their schools and have made loads of friends, both at school and church. It was them settling in here I was most worried about before we left, so it's been great to watch them get stuck into it, sometimes better than us.