approached with cautions

One child approaching at a time seemed to be okay... when more than one of them was in his immediate vicinity (and all three cousins were present) they seemed to kick into standard sibling-rivalry mode by attempting to outdo each other in what they had noticed about him, worrying when they started reporting how soft his skin on his head was. As he was mostly sleeping there was little that could be announced and (although I will admit to extreme anxiousness and subsequent hawklike observation of the movements of all temporary house-guests) a certain amount of what looked extremely like fingers that were getting ready to do a bit of poking and waking so that they could be the next to proudly announce that he had opened his eyes, farted, sneezed or started wailing in fear and consternation. You can only tell three, six and eight-year-olds not to lean on the side of a crib so many times before it becomes obvious that they're ignoring the instruction, likewise that they should cover their mouths when sneezing (generally a polite thing to do anyway, but in this case especially when leaning over a nine-day old child) and similarly when they're ignoring the close presence of the same nine-day old child when fighting between themselves for control of the gliding-chair they were al doing their best to break. Luckily they became bored pretty quickly (after it turned out that Nicky wasn't exaggerating when she patiently explained that newborns generally sleep for five-sixths of the day, that our garden contained nothing of brightly-coloured plastic interest and after a subtle request to turn on the television was subtly but flatly refused) and started insisting on going down to the swing park, whither they were swiftly taken by the grandmother and from where wingpiglet's fontanelle could not be harmed.

Whilst the washable nappy system we went for (first used today now that we have a functional washing machine and a vague idea of what we're doing) is supposed to be adjustable from newborniness to non-nappyable age there's a definite element of grow-into-them visible at the moment even with all the adjustable poppers set to minimum. Operational advantages over the (allegedly decomposible) disposables we'd been using for the first week (though it occurred to me that anything chucked into a clinical waste bin at the hospital can't biodegrade very much before it gets incinerated) are that the velcro tabs won't stick to the skin in the same way that the disposable's sticky tags could and are less inclined to re-fold themselves after being opened out ready for application. Possible disadvantages see to be a distinct starts-crying-immediately-upon-defecation-or-urination thing happening today which suggests that it'll take a few more washes to get things to their optimal absorbancy, though why anyone would coat nappies with the sort of stuff they coat office-shirts with to make them crease less easily and repel liquids is beyond me. Perhaps we've been lucky over the past couple of days by somehow getting the wingpiglet to wee over the changing-mat mid-change, whereas today there have been a few merely-wet nappies which begat immediate uncomfortable squeaking. Equally possible is that the flush-or-chuck disposable liner sheet (protecting the nappy and the absorbent pad in the pocket from being stained bright orange) isn't letting the absorbent pad absorb enough, keeping his effluences unpleasantly close to his skin. Further experimentation shall resume tomorrow.