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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!

Update on moving house: we did it!

Well, I say ‘we’, but most of the actual moving credit should go to the amazing people at Finest Van, who also came and packed everything the day before. They really do go above and beyond and are highly recommended if you are looking for a moving service in London.

We’re also very grateful to Sienna for coming to stay with us that week! Not only did she give us lots of practical help during the move (including cooking a giant curry and helping us figure out where to hang everything in the new place) but we also had such a lovely evening together on the final night. We have five years of amazing memories from a flat which we truly loved, so it was really nice to just sit together around the staircase – all the furniture having been packed already – and reminisce.

Our new house is very exciting but also feels absurdly large for just the two of us. I’ve been assured that it won’t take long for us to feel differently. In the meantime, we’ve just been desperately trying to work through our top priority list before the baby arrives: unpacking all of the boxes (tick), getting the whole house recarpeted with something soft (tick), acquiring a cooker so we can cook food again (tick). And last night, Ewa and Mario came round with a drill to hang everything on the walls downstairs – including the famous railway departure board! – so now it’s really starting to feel like home. (Thanks! You guys are the best!)

Unsurprisingly we haven’t been out and about all that much recently, although we did enjoy a really fun evening with the rest of our NCT class at the Perry Hill pub, and as a Friday night surprise Randi also took me to a new (and delicious) Polish restaurant which she discovered has opened in Crystal Palace. I also had a great night out with my uncle Andy after work, the two of us entirely unaffected by the Tube strike thanks to the growing list of Tube-like things which aren’t-technically-the-Tube.

And for the purposes of making sure she gets into the blog, I’m just going to pre-emptively guess that Randi and I enjoy having Reema over this afternoon for a big shakshuka lunch! (If it turns out to be awful, I guess I’ll just have to come back and add a postscript.)

Last but certainly not least: last weekend was Ellie and Michael’s wedding up in Lutterworth! Randi was understandably not up for travelling, so I hopped on the train from St Pancras to Market Harborough solo. Apparently the big crowd I passed heading in the other direction was a group of far-right supporters on their way to enjoy their Big Nazi Day Out in central London, but I was running late so just assumed it was some sporting thing.

We’d already booked a room at the hotel where the wedding was taking place, so after imploring one of Ellie’s cousins who I’d never met to tie my tie for me (thanks!) I checked-in and then headed downstairs to third-wheel with Simon and Fleur.

Hanging out together over the course of the wedding was super fun, combined with helpful doses of baby talk and life advice, and although Simon was upset at me for sending back Randi’s starter and main course at dinner I tried to redeem myself by hanging on to her crumble at the end to share. All of the food, much like the rest of the wedding, was fantastic.

I’ve only met Michael once – and haven’t seen Ellie in a while, either – so it was really nice to learn more about him from the excellent wedding speeches, and from the rest of our table which turned out to consist of Michael’s semi-professional quiz team. They seemed very nice and intimidatingly knowledgeable. Plus, there’s clearly some air of mystery attached to this group, because later on in the night we were approached by a drunken man with a slightly wild look in his eyes, who asked:

“Hey, are you guys on Michael’s quiz team?”
“Oh, no no no…”
“But… you were sitting on their table!”
“Oh, yes, but we were just interlopers. We’re not quizzers.”
“Hmm… OK” he said, clearly still suspicious, before storming off again – presumably still on the hunt. I have no idea what this was all about, but I’m just glad I verified that the quiz team was alive and well on the dancefloor later, or I worry I would have become a side-character in an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

After a very hearty English breakfast the next morning, Simon and Fleur kindly dropped me off back in Market Harborough where I hung around in a café for a bit, confirmed that Randi hadn’t unexpectedly gone into labour overnight and then headed home. Our new home! (In which, incidentally, a succession of cats are now taking it in turns to watch intently from the garden. It’s as if they’re on duty…)