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At the risk of being annoyingly vague, it’s been a really terrible few weeks for a couple of people close to us. So, if you’re reading this, this is just a moment for me to mark and remember before moving on with less important things. 💛

For us, the highlight of January was Randi’s mum Beth – Bubbe! – coming to stay with us for a 10 day stretch. On a previous visit we had accidentally gotten Bubbe and Zayde completely addicted to Jet Lag, so much so that they had promptly gone home and binge-watched every season so far. As a consequence, Randi and I were obliged to prepare for Beth’s visit by speeding through Tag Eur It: All Stars (an extremely good season!) in order to be up-to-date enough to watch Hide + Seek: UK together with her. (No, I hadn’t anticipated that this blog would turn into a Jet Lag fanzine either.)

It was obviously very exciting to see the team speed around a familiar landscape, and although I was disappointed we didn’t get any London-based rounds, Britain’s railway system held up much better overall than Germany’s Deutsche Bahn. It’s just clear to me that in a few years we’ll need to get ourselves a copy of the home game and organise a family event!

Aside from watching competitive YouTube travel shows, we also had a delicious evening at Nonna Maria, enjoyed a great afternoon and walk around the neighbourhood with Great Aunt Carolyn, and hosted Sam, Reema and Esther one evening at ours after work. Randi and Beth cooked many things for this, but the most exciting – even though they didn’t turn out quite as desired! – were the extremely moreish potato knishes. Thank you!

We also completed the first batch of pages of our first family photo album, which Randi and I have decided to do in a deliberately retro 90s style complete with fiddly adhesive paper, handwritten captions and that plastic film which you can never smooth out 100% correctly. But it’s nice to be forced to curate hundreds of digital photos into a more manageable story, and it feels very grown-up to have a big physical album on the shelf.

In January I also felt dutifully civic by doing some local litter-picking (thanks to Kate and Lucy for organising!) and very much enjoyed watching the 13 minute comedy Govan Fair Queen. This Scottish short film was recommended by Katie, who I think has realised that the chances of me watching a feature-length movie are now even lower than usual. Randi and I also had a lovely afternoon at Frankie and Kirst’s baby shower.

Talking of Scotland: last weekend, our son made it north of the border for the first time on a long weekend to Edinburgh. Our first stop was to see Katie and James’s new house in person, which has a wonderfully cosy vibe, and we’re excited about appropriating it as our Scottish base of operations for years to come. Then we had a quick turnaround in order to make it to a Labour Party Burns supper.

I’ve never been to a Burns Night before, but the haggis-centric menu is obviously excellent, and I appreciated the brief but intense performance of Burns’s poetry. Sadly, we weren’t able to stay late enough for the ‘Toast to the Lassies’ and their subsequent reply, but we were able to hand over our baby to Anas Sarwar for safekeeping for a little bit, and I can confirm that the leader of Scottish Labour is also a natural with children. So, that’s one photo for the album! The next day we also had a wonderful afternoon at Kirsty and Roger’s, although I accidentally ate the last mini cupcake and still feel quite guilty about it.

For Secret Santa this year Randi and I had been given tickets to Edinburgh’s Barnton Quarry Nuclear Bunker, and so on Sunday afternoon the five of us set off for a fascinating tour around this newly-restored Cold War era facility.

Originally an RAF base to detect and deter Soviet attacks by air, this underground complex was transformed into a civilian command centre during the height of the Cold War once it was recognised that the nuclear threat had shifted permanently from planes to missiles. Now that there was no chance of actually preventing armageddon if an attack was launched, the government’s focus shifted to trying to prepare to govern in its aftermath, and so the bunker includes a BBC radio studio to broadcast instructions to the public (they play a rather chilling test announcement on the tour) and facilities for officials to try to maintain some semblance of law and order.

In retrospect, it turns out that thanks to aerial photographs the Soviets had always known the exact location of Scotland’s prospective ‘regional seat of government’, so they probably could have wiped it out completely if they’d wanted to. And (spoiler alert!) thankfully the world never actually descended into all-out nuclear war, so the preparations were moot.

In the 1980s, the site was decommissioned and lay abandoned, becoming a great spot for illegal raves. (And to be fair, walking around it did feel like the ideal ambience you might want for an illegal rave you had to organise.) Indeed, my favourite fact on the whole tour was that trespassers originally used the ventilation shafts to break in, and given that this is a trope used in every single sci-fi TV show ever made it was very exciting to see giant, human-sized air vents in real life which could actually be used for such a purpose. In the 1990s the whole thing was destroyed by fire, but since 2011 teams of volunteers have been working to restore the site and it’s only recently now open for visitors.

In summary – a highly recommended tour!

Back at Katie and James’s we watched two more short films from the BBC Comedy Short Films series: neither as good as Govan Fair Queen, but a sweet enough short about two Bradford kids imagining themselves into space in Rocket Fuel and the rather dark 7 Minutes. We also got a chance for a quick classic Doctor Who two-parter with The King’s Demons, which is by no means a highlight of the genre (and doesn’t even include any trespassing through air vents!) but was nonetheless an unexpected bonus of the trip. Finally, we all played Dominion together! (Randi would want me to include that she won.)

This week Randi returned to work part-time, and so we were especially grateful to Granny G for coming to stay with us for a couple of days of childcare duties. She also rustled up a pair of scrumptious fish pies, and joined us for Friday night drinks at the Perry Hill pub to celebrate the weekend. Finally, yesterday we also reached the exciting milestone of baby’s first swim! Despite probably being a bit cold (a full-length swimsuit is now in the post) he seemed to enjoy it, and I’m very much looking forward to more follow-up sessions soon. I used to love swimming as a kid, and all of the fun stuff (like floats!) brought it all flowing back.

Hello from Chicago! I’ll write about this trip once we’re home again, but for now I’m taking advantage of still having my hands free (despite also having a sleeping baby on me) to bring this blog up to date with our Chrismukkah back home.

My first Christmas outing was to listen to carols and general festive songs at our beloved local pub, The Perry Hill, along with a baked camembert, a pie and a pint. (Truly, it’s hard to think of a better combination of things for an evening.) I also enjoyed some seasonal post-work drinks one night with Lee and Paul to bid farewell to the year. The following night, after wrapping up at work, my family descended on Tash and Cormac’s for a very special Hanukkah celebration together.

The last few days in the run-up to Christmas were a little hectic, with us juggling a second round of baby vaccines, a madcap dash to collect his passport from the US Embassy in time for travel, and my grandmother’s funeral on Christmas Eve. A few days before that, the extended family gathered at her flat to say goodbye and – of course – compete in a brilliantly-organised quiz. (My team lost badly, and I still feel bad about my contribution to this defeat. Otherwise, it was the perfect send-off.)

In amongst this we also managed to see Matt, Laura and their kids for a morning at ours, and also spent a lovely afternoon with Reema and my mum. This included an amazing moment at a café in Sydenham where, after Randi and Reema had been discussing the plot of the novel which their mutual friend has just casually written in her spare time, we were interrupted by the man on the next table asking for the title so that he could buy a copy!

After all of these comings and goings, we ended up on Christmas Eve with my mum, Tash and Katie hunkered down at ours, ready for our first family Christmas of the next generation. We had such an incredible time filled with many generous presents, some water-based tummy time, several rounds of mutual psychological analysis with the ‘Preferences’ game, Katie’s special Christmas mull, the WILTY Boxing Day special, a sunny afternoon walk up Blythe Hill and – of course – lots and lots of filling Christmas food. Special thanks to Tash for proposing the excellent Christmas ham with Coca Cola recipe, which was delicious!

Before I begin: yesterday my Grandma died overnight at the age of 93. She was my last surviving grandparent, which is quite something given that I first wrote this type of post back in 2008.

My earliest memories of Grandma are hazy, but in a good way, as she helped to look after me when I was very young. I’m pretty confident that egg and toast soldiers on the little table in the kitchen were involved, though. Later, armed with my incredible portable tape recorder, I remember going with her to church and recording the service, which she was disappointed to discover sounded “mostly like people standing up and sitting down again”.

My siblings, cousins and I can all thank her for a huge number of family outings, and for bringing a packet of Fruit Pastilles to pass along the row during any theatre trips in case we got hungry between the start and the interval. At home, she hosted many family gatherings – both big and small – and was the central figure around whom the rest of the family orbited.

I’m incredibly glad that she got to meet her fourth great-grandchild before she died, and that she approved of him too!

We are now hurtling towards Christmas, and after carefully measuring the ceiling height of our new house, we were kindly joined by my mum on pram-pushing duties so that Randi and I could continue our tradition of carrying home the largest possible Christmas tree. It’s a beauty!

Back in November, I also had my celebrated first mulled wine of the season at The Free Press in Cambridge, during a family trip for lunch with Peter Mandler. (Yes, this means our child has now crossed over the London boundary for the first time… and his father has successfully changed a nappy on the freshly-mopped floor of a Greater Anglia toilet!)

We’ve also enjoyed a lovely afternoon visit from Andrew and Bonnie, and also made it up to Kingsbury for a long-awaited first meeting with Josh, Anna and family. This was an incredibly special moment as Josh and I did always plan to have kids at roughly the same time so as to unlock the possibility of joint walks across Hampstead Heath later on. That’s still in the future, but in the meantime I was very amused to receive Economics for babies as a gift. “It was her favourite book!”

In other news, I was very, very happy to finally give blood again successfully after my ban for failing the iron test expired. It’s good to donate blood, of course, but the main motivation (other than keeping myself in the race with my sisters) was that I could legitimately pick up one of those adorable ‘my dad gave blood today!’ stickers which I have wanted forever.

I was also very chuffed to be chosen, alongside my colleague Patrick, to attend the 2025 Travolution Awards. My company, eviivo, had been shortlisted in several categories but we had no idea we were actually going to clinch ‘Best Technology Product’. Huge congratulations to all of my colleagues at eviivo who work so hard to build something amazing!

Finally, yesterday turned out to be an extremely strange day. After waking up to the news of my Grandma, Randi and I turned our attention to welcoming the rest of our NCT class to ours for a holiday get-together. (It turned into a real feast after everyone arrived with lots of delicious food, but as a backup we were also ready with an array of premium biscuits: Grandma would have been proud.)

Martina and Will were the first to arrive, and while chatting over the frying of latkes, Randi and Michaela discovered that for a year they had actually gone to the same high school, only one year apart. This is all the more impressive given that Michaela is from the Czech Republic.

Those latkes, by the way, were hands down the best latkes I have ever had. It’s going to be nail-biting on Randi’s next batch to see if she can replicate them.

In the evening we also popped over to Angela’s for her 50th birthday drinks, although we didn’t join the trip to go clubbing in Balham afterwards. (Actually, I’m not sure we were really invited to go clubbing in Balham. My 50th is going to be a lot more pedestrian.)

Tonight is also the first night of Hanukkah, so we’ll also be experimenting with baby’s first candles!

Time for a few more of baby’s first…

• …trains! Appropriately enough, his first outing was on our local Windrush line as we made our way to Maria’s 70th birthday party (and north of the river!) via Overground. Awkwardly, some unexpected delays on the way back led to the antique Bakerloo line becoming his inaugural Tube journey, which Josh will be gleeful about. He’s also ticked off the Mildmay, Jubilee, District, Central and Southern trains in the course of a very special visit to his great-grandmother and an amazing lunch hosted by Tash & Cormac in Leyton.

• …pub! Allegedly, young people are turning against pubs, so we’ve tried to buck the trend by having dinner in the very family-friendly Perry Hill pub nearby. (I mean, it’s so family-friendly that there were also tables of older children doing some organised pumpkin carving for Halloween.) Together with Randi’s family, we also discovered another lovely pub just off Peckham Rye Park after a long weekend walk.

• …Halloween! Randi got into the festive spirit by buying him two separate pumpkin-themed outfits, which were very cute during their brief outings before he needed changing again. Meanwhile, I discovered that buying Jaffa Cakes is an absolute winning formula for trick-or-treaters. “I really want to take them even though I can’t eat them!”, said one girl. So this is basically a mental note for next year to buy more Jaffa Cakes.

Over the last month we’ve continued to have a stream of visitors, which has been really nice. Our son has now officially met all of his aunts and uncles, plus:

• Randi’s colleague Dan and his family (who came a long way for a short visit!)
• Kira, who empathises with a newborn’s existential questions
• Kirsty and Roger and the enormous picnic of dreams
• The Three As for brunch and a stroll around Mayow Park
• Cat and Brian, who were happily in the country on a work trip and made a flying visit to see us!

We also had our NCT group over at ours one Sunday morning, which was lots of fun (especially when our instructor forced us to line up all the babies on the sofa for a photo) and also a great excuse to start eating the incredible inscribed macaroons which Troy sent us. Thank you!

Otherwise, we’ve also been doing… lots of paperwork. We had to wait a while for Lambeth’s next available slot to get his birth certificate, which was the critical piece of paper needed to unlock all of the others. But props to the lovely woman who registered him in a surprisingly pleasant civic building, who also provided a cute “Born in Lambeth” lamb-themed pun-tastic baby vest (free when you purchase 4 certificates!) and a superb piece of British socialisation:

“Do you need to see our marriage certificate?” I asked, because fathers are only allowed to register a birth solo if they are married to the mother.
“No, it’s OK!”
“Oh… I just wasn’t sure how you’d actually know we were married…?”
“Well, you can’t lie to the government!”
“But I’m pretty sure people do though?”
“Well yes… but that’s a crime!”

It also makes me chuckle that my place of birth is listed as ‘Westminster’ (per my own birth certificate) whereas Randi is simply put down as ‘United States of America’.

In non-baby news, we’ve also resumed our quest to work through the entire Jet Lag back catalogue – just one more season to go now! – and, in possibly one of the sadder moments of our lives, decided we’d watched too many episodes of Location Location Location and so pushed the boat out by trying Location Location Location Australia. (Not quite as good, but still very compelling. And you get to see those famous on-the-street house auctions which Kim told us about!)

Shortly after going back to work our department also had a series of in-person meetings, which meant I finally got to meet our teammate Bala after six years of working together! There was also a delicious evening at Inca London, which I’m mostly writing down so that I remember to return here for Peruvian food with Randi someday. Assuming we can find a babysitter, of course…

It makes me very, very happy to say that our baby son was born at 3.03am on Wednesday 1st October. He’s perfect.

That could probably be the whole post, to be honest! But I also wanted to throw a few more memories into the time capsule from our two-week cocoon at home, as a brand new family, with neither of us working. Because, honestly, I’ve just been surprised at how blissful this all feels. It’s more work for Randi, of course, especially with the overnight feeding… plus our unwelcome discovery that this also needs to be followed by 20 minutes of overnight-being-held-upright-to-avoid-reflux. But right now we also all have time for each other: time for slow morning starts, followed by gentle migrations downstairs and maybe an afternoon walk along the river if we’re feeling up to it.

I know that all of this will get harder, in many different ways. But I think I was so prepared for it to be so tough from the beginning, I didn’t quite realise how wonderful this time could be. I mean, even changing his nappy is so strangely enjoyable… just to know that he’s working properly, and that I can help him when he needs me. It’s lovely.

Randi kept a diary of the birth itself, so we both have something to help us remember the details in 10/20/30 years if our child ever asks about it. Suffice to say, we made two attempts to get into King’s College Hospital that night, and I felt intense relief in the triage room on the second try when the midwife confirmed that Randi was now sufficiently dilated to be admitted. This was already after midnight, so it really wasn’t very long before he was actually born, but in those critical hours I can’t imagine a more incredible team of midwives looking after us. You’re all so amazing. Thank you.

And then, once he arrived, we were lucky enough to get everything we’d been promised from the ‘Golden Hour’ and then some: just hours and hours together in that private room, before anyone in the outside world even knew he existed, relishing our first skin-to-skin contact with our new baby. Plus that magical tray of tea and yoghurt with a giant stack of golden buttered toast! (Is that toast universal? Would recommend.)

In short, I feel very grateful both for the amazing care we received, and that we didn’t need anything out of the ordinary. But, if we had, I know that we were in the right place. 💙

And yes, obviously we have tons of photos… and he is very cute! I’ll resist turning this blog into a feed of baby pictures, though, and just thank everyone who has sent cards, gifts, meals, love and general well wishes into our bubble. Also a massive shout-out to the community midwife who visited us the morning after our first (terrifying) night of sleep at home, and then sat on our bedroom floor for an hour and a half to answer all of our questions and do observations without us even needing to get dressed.

We’ve also had wonderful visits from Granny G and Aunty Tash from my side of the family, and from Bubbe, Zayde and Uncle Alex on the other. Oh, and on day 5 we’ve even had Baby’s First Trip to A&E – don’t worry, everything is fine – which is just a reminder that we’re about to be hit by so many more firsts in quick succession, whether we’re ready or not.

Am I nervous and scared? Of course. But I’m also so excited. He’s finally here, and we’re doing this!