Molly on Valentines Day demonstrating some new dance moves she has been working on 

The Sendall women 

Tony Helen and Molly 

Molly & Helen both pass their 6 week test

Molly is 7 weeks old today and she and Helen had their '6 week' check up. They both passed with flying colours and Helen has been certified as fit to drive, a considerable relief to me.

Helen still has to see a specialist about her wobbly teeth caused by Molly stealing all her calcium to build her bones during pregnancy. Apparently, she may require surgery to keep them intact. It's a funny old game having babies eh ?

The pushchair is back in working order after a series of punctures . It is a Rolls Royce of a puschair but its Achilles heel seems to be the presence of hawthorn twigs on the paths around Beaconsfield. Its wheels seem to attract them and the tyres are not thick enough to withstand their spikes. I did try the boy scout approach by applying patches to the punctured inner tube. Having located the two large holes that seemed to be the problem, I patched them and wrestled the inner tube back into the tyre and the tyre onto the wheel, suffering only one or two blood blisters and engaging in only one short informal walkabout (with hand pressed firmly between my thighs and tears streaming down my cheeks) in doing so. However, it rapidly transpired that there were more holes in the tyre than I had anticipated or had patches to fix, so I took a trip to Halfords. We had bought the pushchair from Halfords, but the recently post-pubescent, educationally-challenged, carbon-based life-form that I asked for assistance, looked at me as though I has asked him to produce a thesis on plate tectonics. His second reaction when I explained the predicament of there only being two wheels on my waggon and a host of pursuing Cherokees which necessitated the immediate repair of the said means of transport as the apparent meanness of their demeanour suggested trouble, was to deny that they sold replacement inner tubes and suggested that I tried puncture repair patches. I then addressed with him, in terms I was sure he would understand (but falling short of actual physical violence), the obvious illogicality of selling puschairs with vulnerable tyres and then not selling the replacement tubes. He seemed to get the point and directed me to the bicycle section where, in due course, a replacement inner tube was found. I bought two and with an air of obvious pessimism, two more packs of self adhesive puncture repair patches. I left 'singing a happy song' with the Cherokees once more (metaphorically at least) in my rear view mirror.

That was the week that was...

Wow, where did the last week go ? I seem to have achieved very little. A tiny amount of work and I did deliver a short talk to some students for UCL who are thinking of becoming barristers, but not much else. I did manage to put a new fascia on the dishwasher, which I have been meaning to do for ages and wish I had done sometime ago. Apart from that, the week has been dominated by satisfying Molly's needs, which are narrow in scope, but challenging in frequency.

Molly is having her belated 6 week check up tomorrow. She weighed in at almost 11lb last week, so it will be interesting to see how much she weighs now. Hopefully, Helen will be cleared to drive too. Being the sole driver for the last 7 weeks has been logistically awkward at times.

The lawn doctor turned up early to complete the winter treatment of the lawns last week. I was acutely embarrassed to take him out into the back garden which resembled a scene from the Somme. The dogs have been spending too much time on their own in the garden, which is strewn with toys, sticks, bits of cardboard, plastic and indeed anything else that they have been able to scavenge from the house and/or the bins. They have also established a number of race tracks (muddier than your average scrambling circuit) around the larger shrubs and have churned up the grass to such an extent that the lawn doctor opined that at least it did not need to be scarified. However, it is in need of some urgent application of grass seed as the lawn now mostly consists of moss and mud. I am not sure we need a lawn doctor, a lawn transplant surgeon perhaps or maybe a block paving specialist.

We are back to having three cars in the drive as the Outlaws have now gone to Brisbane, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur until mid-March. So far this year they have spent just 2 weeks in the UK. Alright for some eh ?

Work ? I don't thinks so, thanks

I am still struggling with the idea of getting back to work. It may seem odd to many, but although I get a kick out of being in court that is practically obscene, faced with a choice between changing a shitty nappy and writing an advice on disability discrimination, the shitty nappy wins every time. Sadly, changing shitty nappies and clearing up sick does not pay the mortgage and ultimately would mean that we would not have enough money to buy the nappies that Molly could...,well you get the point.

And that reminds me of another odd thing about parenting. Remember at school when someone else in the class was sick and even the thought of it, let alone the sight of it made you retch too ?The idea of having to clean up your own, let alone someone else's sick was at a stage beyond an anathema. However, within a few days of becoming a parent, even the most squeamish person is capable of making a flying leap across a crowded room to catch their child's projectile vomit in the palm of their hand. Odd eh ?

Molly is still snuffling her way through a miserable cold and both Helen and I have sore throats and are generally bunged up - a side effect of sleep deprivation no doubt.

We took Molly to my sister's 40th birthday party on Saturday night where she was cooed over and mauled by the serried ranks of mostly '30 something' and '40 something' guests. Portsmouth Pete became so broody that it is widely anticipated that he will make an appointment this morning to have his vasectomy reversed. Molly also 'witnessed' her first firework display at the party, in the sense that she was at least present when the fireworks went off. However she appeared to sleep unflinchingly through the whole thing, despite the fact that they were impressively noisy. But then she managed to sleep through the band that was playing in the house too. She was awake when a rather drunk Charlotte persuaded the band to let her play a couple of songs (Green Day songs obviously), but her reaction to those was hard to gauge. I have to confess to being rather impressed with Charlotte's performance. It was the first time she had played an electric guitar and the first time that she had sung and played at the same time in front of an audience. Looks like the electric guitar for her next birthday is going to be hard to avoid.

It is now after 9.30 am and I have steafastly avoided doing any work yet and I have to take Emily to Stansted this afternoon so that she can have a week of skiing in Austria with my sister and her family and I have to attend a managemewnt meeting this afternoon in Chambers. So not much fear of me doing too much paid work today.

Grandparents whisked away by big white bird...

Gareth & Diane went home this morning, so there is much doom and gloom here. We get to spend so little time with them, which is a real shame. However, they have agreed to come to Tuscany with us in the summer - yey !

Molly has been feeling a little sorry for herself for the last couple of days as she has a cold and seems to have a bit of a tummy ache. She was awake until about 2am and then slept fitfully in my arms until about 4am when I finally managed to get her into the crib. Charlotte woke us all up at 6.30am to start her preparations for a big fry up breakfast to see Nana and Grandad off. There was so much food it nearly saw me off too. Especially at that time of the morning. There should be a law against breakfasting before 9am. So, stuffed with sausages, eggs, bacon, black pudding, hash browns, tomatoes, mushrooms and toast we rolled Nana and Grandad out of the car at Terminal 3 at Heathrow at about 10am. The queue at check-in was so short that we had plenty of time for a coffee before they departed. Helen and Diane (who admittedly had eaten less breakfast than the rest of us) bought a muffin each to have with their coffee. Although the time was more civilised, the mere thought of more food made me queasy.

I have been into London this afternoon for an audition to play the lead in a short film called "Happy Larry" which, oddly enough, is about a man who persistently attempts to commit suicide with a remarkably poor success rate. But it does have an interesting sting in the tail. I am not very optimistic about being offered the part, but the audition was fun. I am filming some pick-ups tomorrow for a BBC3 programme that I was involved in during January. Apparently they just want to film my hands - you have probably all noticed what beautifully photogenic hands I have ! I might get around to doing some proper barristering work sometime soon - boo hiss !

Don't mention the rugby

Luckily, I am not a huge rugby fan. Otherwise, I fear I would not have been able to have avoided gloating this afternoon as England gave Wales a bit of a beating. Gareth who is not only Welsh, but was part of the the Welsh Rugby team in the 1960s sat and watched the game slowly crushing a can of Abbot Ale in his hand as the game gradually slipped through their grasp. To be fair, he did predict that England would win, but I imagine he would have preferred a rather narrower margin of defeat.

In any event, gloating would be unwise.Not only is he very large, I may have to endure his reaction to the Norwich -v- Ipswich derby game tomorrow.

As you can see from the pictures below, I have been busy with my camera again terrorising the family with a barrage of photo requests. I still have not managed to procure a picture of the whole family nor one of the Sendall girls together. However, watch this space...

Helen and Molly

Smile for the camera 

I love you mummy 

Molly looking up to her mummy 

Tony and Molly

Tony and Molly talking in tongues

Lucy with her cousins 

Helen and Molly with Diane and Gareth 1

Helen and Molly with Diane and Gareth 2

Gareth and Molly sharing a joke 

Gareth and Molly 

Slapdash Bodgeit & Co.

After the previously trailed trip to Homebase as well as an extra trip to B&Q, Gareth and I have been hard at work assembling and putting up bathroom cabinets, hanging pictures, hanging an antique overmantle, picking up the picture that we knocked off the wall when we were hammering on the other side of it, plastering our wounds as well as the cracks in the walls and generally making a bit of a mess. I bought a new thingy to fix the loo handle which, having dismantled the old one in a way that would make a trained plumber weep, I discovered did not fit. At least I can now see that the old handle was broken anyway (well that is my story and I am sticking to it). Tools are strewn everywhere along with small bits of rawlplug, brick dust and other detritus and somewhere a dessert bowl full of Polyfilla is going hard - I was sure I put it on the window sill in the bathroom. In short we have been having a lot of fun.

Helen and her mum have been keeping a low profile as the swearing intensified, but periodically we could hear the low hum of the hoover as Helen's mum surreptitiously cleared up some of the carnage we had left behind as we moved from room to room.

Gareth has also turned his excellent restoration skills to repairing three broken sculptures, in one case building two new ears for a soapstone cat from jam and spit or a mixture of Polyfilla and Araldite anyway.

Tomorrow, after we have done the shelves in Emily's room we are going to sit down and solve the crisis in the Middle East.

Molly ? Oh she's fine.

OK, it was a fluke...

Molly has not repeated her sleep through performance over the last two days. However, she is still sleeping quite well and our sleep debt is slightly more under control than our financial debt. She has also started smiling and has become much more vocal.

Grandad Gareth is here. At his request we have drawn up a list of DIY jobs and he has already rolled up his sleeves, gathered the tools together and begun to attack the many little jobs that we never seem to get around to doing. I feel an expensive trip to Homebase coming on to gather bits and pieces to finish the list.

I spent this afternoon scouring the internet for traces of Helen's grandad. He is a rather mystical figure having returned to the US when the war ended, so Helen's mum never really knew her father. I managed to find out his date of birth and death, his social security number and have applied for disclosure of his US Army records on behalf of Helen's mum, but he seems to have left very few other footprints in any searchable records. We now know that he lived in Bergen which is in New York State near the Canadian border when he enlisted in 1942 and that he died in Georgia, but the rest of his life seems to be a bit of a mystery with only a few hazy details known. It would be nice to be able to fill in some of the gaps in Molly's (and Helen's) family tree as we have so much more detail for Emily and Charlotte.