Six weeks old

Marcus is six weeks old today. We've just been to two weddings in a row with him.  At 4 weeks old we drove him up to St Mary's for Joe and Jill's wedding, and stayed away two nights. We left his bottles on the bench at the house where we stayed in Launceston, didnt realise until we arrived in St Marys with a very hungry baby, no time to go back for them. Bought all the bottles available in St Marys and some more formula. Thanks to Patsy for access to her kitchen while she was trying to make horses doovers for 80 people. Marcus was very calm throughout and accepted adoration and compliments graciously.  The day after the wedding we headed for St Andrews Inn for Easter Sunday lunch with our parents, who had travelled from Turners Beach and Canberra to see the little bean. Marcus threw a big tanty on the way out of St Mary's and we had a stressful half hour by the side of the road trying to sort out what was wrong. In these situations you feed, change, burp, massage, take off a layer of clothes, burp again - sometimes you just have to wait. He calmed down in time for us arrive at St Andrews on the dot, and for all grandparents to agree he is the bees knees. Five days later, we were on a plane to Melbourne, en route to another wedding, Verity and Glenn's, in the woolly wheaty western district of Victoria. Marcus was exemplary on the plane and in the car, and impressed all at the wedding with his cuteness and good behaviour. Elf has a theory that he deals with stresses such as crowds by just going to sleep. On this trip Marcus gave us his first genuine smiles, as he was spending more waking time than ever before happy, content and playing. Its a lot more enjoyable for us for waking time to be play time, rather than just feeding followed by a stroppy digesting period that ends when he is finally wrestled into the cot. And never even a smile for your trouble. I have to be mushy and say that the smile, when it comes, makes a lot of the tough early weeks seem worthwile. We spent a few days after the wedding cruising around western Victoria with Elf's brother Fred, sister Imogen, her partner Ed and their baby Karri. Karri is about 14 months old, and 4 times the weight of Marcus. It was a sobering education to see first hand over 5 days, how much work we will be in for in one year's time.