The Princess Chair

A giant box arrived at 19 Sandwell Mansions the other day and excitingly it was addressed to none other than yours truly, Beatrice Rose Olins. A present from my Uncle Luca and Auntie Marida in Italy. I delegated the job of opening it to Mummy, who found inside what can only be described as a Princess Chair, proportioned to my size (or thereabouts) and befitting my near-regal status.

As you can see, I have very much taken to my new pink chair.

Sleeping

Being Baby Bea is, let me tell you, an exhausting experience. The whirlwind of gallery openings, international conferences, high minded debate and dodging the paparazzi can certainly take its toll. For that reason Baby Bea likes to take the opportunity, when she can, to power nap. To power nap with a vengeance.

Beatrice discovers the world

Hello world, Baby Bea would like to inform you of a remarkable discovery that she has uncovered. Results are still being analysed, but early indications suggest that she is in possession of a couple of unusual appendages at the end of her arms.

Currently it appears that these strange shaped objects have little use apart from being rather pleasing to stuff in one's mouth, but Baby Bea will keep you posted.....

Grandma and Poppa's wedding anniversary

In preparation for her Grandma and Nonna's ruby wedding anniversary, Baby Bea just wanted to post this wonderful photo of them. One day she hopes she can be even a quarter as beautiful as her grandma was on this day!

One month old!!

Baby Bea was one month old a couple of days ago. Yes, I can't believe it either. A month on this planet and I've only just got started on the Israel - Palestine peace accord (looking to get a stable two state solution by the time I start teething).

I was treated so well on my special day, Mummy and Daddy gave me lots of attention, but best of all was that I got to meet my final grandparent......Nonno Franco from Italy!!

Nonno was great fun and made a great fuss of me. He's brought even more Italian food into our house, including a chicken he had killed only that day......which I can only imagine must be some kind of sacrifice in my honour. Seemingly the bringing of food is some kind of Italian custom, I must remember this for future reference.

Managing a stables and stud farm mean a couple of things for Nonno, one is that doesn't get to take holidays as the horses need constant attention (this was only his second in 20 years....wow) and the other is that when he met me the first thing he did was check my teeth and my coat, and then start measuring me in hands.

Nonno had a great time visiting London for the first time and meeting his first grandchild, so much so that I believe another holiday might soon be on the cards! Steady on, Nonno.

Daddy time!

I got to spend lots of time with Daddy this weekend as he looked after me while Mummy and Nonna went out for some well-earned breaks.

I particularly enjoyed my first outing in the sling with him. Daddy also enjoyed it too as he kept getting stopped by groups of women who wanted to coo over me. He did complain however over the "injustice of this happening precisely 10 years too late to be of any use" though.

Wonder what he could have meant?

Another new birth!

Baby Bea is very excited to be able to announce another new birth to the world, not another baby this time (thank goodness, as I'm frankly uneasy with competition) but that of a company called Inforum Group which has been set up by her fabulous Auntie Jenny in Australia (seen here with Grandma).

Now I've not met Auntie Jenny yet, but she does sound like a woman very much after my own heart and I am positive that when we do meet, there will be veritable thunder-flashes as our like-minds collide. Inforum Group is designed to educate and enlighten women in the workplace to enable them to be the 'best of the best'. A goal that frankly Baby Bea has been aspiring to for some time in her blog.

I'm not planning to sue of course for abuse of copyright and intellectual property (though clearly the law would be very much on my side), but if Jen was looking for a London-based addition to her roster of captivating speakers, she knows my number and I'll be waiting her call....

Official Bea

Baby Bea is now an official person. Recognised already for her inestimable style and grace amongst the cognoscenti, her very existence has now been recorded by Her Majesty's Government. Although this ostensibly was a result of Daddy taking various documents down to the Camden Registrar's Office and filling out a number of forms, Bea knows that there is a deeper significance in her new status.

She has been accepted as a citizen of the United Kingdom, with all the rights and responsibilities that this entails, all of which Baby Bea takes very seriously indeed. In fact, she is glad to now be able to do her bit for her country in these times of economic depression and potential industrial strife. She is thinking maybe of setting up a design collective or potentially lending her diplomatic skills and knowledge of world affairs to the United Nations. Mummy has suggested however that my talents might be better deployed in sleeping more than 4 hours overnight and feeding at times which are slightly more convenient to her.

Daddy, however, has proposed that now I am an official person I could get out into the workplace and start paying my way for the family. Oh Daddy, you have so very much to learn.....money only goes in one direction when it comes to daughters.

A visit to the market

Yesterday we had a great adventure, we went to Hampstead to visit the market that had been set up there. It was great fun and I particularly enjoyed going to Petit Bateau (or as I call it, 'the big house of baby fashion') where I got to look at lots of lovely clothes and accessories.

It was also fun as we met another family with a 3 month old baby called Finlay. When Mummy found out that he had doubled in weight in the last 14 weeks and sleeps from 7:30pm to 6:30am every night she made a funny face and stared into the middle distance for a while.

How strange.....

Sleeping beauties

When Daddy came into the bedroom to find me and Mummy fast asleep together, it's fair to say that his heart melted quite a bit.

English lessons / Lezione Italiani

Baby Bea modestly sees herself as an inspiration and muse for those around her. She likes to think that she inspires amongst her family and ever-widening group of friends not only deep artistic and creative thoughts and deeds, but also a contemplation on wider socio-political issues. Indeed she notes that she is able to arouse deep feelings in the bosom of her own mother, from utter joy to total despair and all the emotions in between......normally in the space of only a few minutes (generally enough time for me to fill a nappy).

Baby Bea is also proud to note that she has been able to imbue in her Grandmothers a passion for a higher learning. In this case to teach each other their mother tongues. They chose for this task that classic of the linguistic genre, 'Elmer's friends', (otherwise known as 'Gli amici di Elmer') an epic work of fraternity, intertwined destinies and the mystery of identity all contained within its eight, card-backed, brightly coloured pages.

As you can see by these photos they delighted in the joys of learning, it was an experience beautiful to behold and not at all like, what Daddy rather cruelly remarked later, "the blind leading the bloody blind".

All quiet on the Western Front

Baby Bea is very sorry that she has not been posting as much this week as before, she likes to be able to bang out a couple of thousand words a day between nappy changes and dribbling down her front, but unfortunately Daddy, otherwise known as Chief Word-processor, has decided to neglect his critical Baby Bea-based duties and go to somewhere called 'work'.

Now I am not too sure what this place is, but it seems to leave Daddy tired and stressed, and seemingly not in a mood to frantically type out my every thought and musing late into the night while I recline on the chaise-lounge popping freshly peeled grapes into my mouth and barking orders to him.

Selfish Daddy...

Pockets

Daddy and Nonna were discussing today what Baby Bea keeps in the pockets of her babygrow. They remarked that it was a little strange that almost all my newborn baby clothes seem to have them - what kind of important miscellany would I keep within, they pondered deeply.

Obviously, this is generally pretty privileged information. It's a girl's prerogative to keep some things private. But, in the interests of openness and, as they have been pretty good to me over the last couple of weeks...or as Daddy affectionately says 'waiting on her majesty hand and foot'...I am happy to at least share the basics.

Lipstick, (obviously), hand cream, tissues, perfume, note pad (for important numbers and scribbling lines of poetry), spare muslin and babywipes (in case Mummy and Daddy forget) cotton buds, spare change, soft toy, mobile phone (Steve Jobs sent me a prototype iPhone 5 to test) business cards and credit cards. Just the basics really...

Baby massage

These are some photos of Mummy giving me a massage. Thanks Mummy!

Tomorrow, it'll be a mani-pedi and a facial.

My occupation

When people ask me what I do, I say that I am 'in fruit'.

Dancing to Louis Prima

Even though Baby Bea is rather early in her motor development, she likes to get her groove on to some classic swing tunes.

Comments!

Baby Bea is a social networked, open-sourced, web 2.0 kind of a gal. She believes in the great power of the crowd, chattering to each other across the globe to change the world in ways which are both large in scale and tiny in detail. So it was to her abject horror that she found out from her new friend, Lisa Crosato, this evening how difficult it was to leave comments on her blog. Baby Bea could talk to the world, but the world could not talk to Baby Bea.

Rank has been pulled, words have been mentioned, friends in high places have been notified and a favour has been asked of a Sicilian gentleman on the day of his daughter's wedding....the upshot of all this is that this little local difficulty has now been rectified to Baby Bea's satisfaction. Comments can now been left, I am at your disposal.

p.s. Lisa, remember, when your little boy does pop out.....he's mine!!

A walk in the park

As it was sunny I kindly took everyone to the park the other day for a walk....aren't I nice?

Scary monster....

There is nothing that Baby Bea likes more than to be told a fairy story....the fair princesses, the dashing heroes, the kindly godmothers and the evil, toady, nefarious, pernicious monsters.

Or should I say 'monster' in its singular form as the same brute turns up in every story when they are told to me by Mummy or Nonna.

As they tell it, the horrific Berlusconi is a dreadful beast, half man, half hair transplant, who preys on young girls, controls a terrifying media empire and hides in his fetid, 'Bunga Bunga' lair on the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia.

I have to say that Baby Bea is a little terrified of this fiend, but she does like it how every single story that is told to her, even ones where he doesn't seem to have any connection to the actual narrative, ends in his slow, painful demise! Boo boo Silvio...

NHS

In the week or so in which she has been kicking around, Baby Bea has not quite had the time to make a fully formed decision on her political preferences. What with all that eating, sleeping and generally gurgling upwards into space, she hasn't yet had the time to put in the required reading to decide whether she is a socially progressive democrat or a free-market liberal. While she wanted to squeeze in a couple of meetings with Scottish and Welsh nationalists to validate her views on devolution and to have discussed the European Charter of Human Rights with key members of the judiciary, she has been just too busy filling her nappies with poo.

There is one thing that Baby Bea is pretty clear on however and that is that the NHS is a good thing. From the exciting home birth that she inflicted on her parents, to her time in the Royal Free as a result of her eagerness for the Atkins diet and the many home visits by midwives, health visitors and breast feeding advisors, they have looked after her and Mummy excellently.

Baby Bea will be examining the proposed NHS reforms in minute detail. If she sees any potential diminution of service there will be hell to pay!

Cor blimey bella sheila...

Even though she has never been outside of a 1.5m radius of her parents' home, Baby Bea sees herself as very much an international jetsetter (indeed, if there is any other kind of jetsetter).

As such, Bea knows that she will one day be the proud possessor of not one, but two, passports and nationalities, Italian and British. She is however, quite excited about the prospect of adding another to her collection.......a blue passport. An Australian passport!!

You see, Daddy, despite what his accent and sporting allegiances might suggest, is actually as Australian as Paul Hogan, Banjo Patterson, Dame Edna Everage and Steve 'Crocodile Hunter' Irwin. This is all due to his own Mummy, who was born in the exotically named Wagga Wagga, which Daddy tells me is on the Murrumbidgee River near to Wadonga and Wangaratta. I have absolutely no idea what all of this means, but wow, how great are those words!!

Now the Australians are a picky lot and apparently even Baby Bea needs to jump through a few hoops before they will grant her citizenship, in this case as Daddy himself got his Australian nationality through descent, he needs to prove that he has spent at least 2 years of his life in the country of surf, stubbies and BBQs.

Luckily Daddy himself went to Australia a lot when he was a child and then went for extended visits when he was a little older, so Daddy and Poppa are going to gather together all his old passports to work out whether he meets this 2 year target.

If he doesn't he has until I am sixteen to build this up. So Daddy, pack up your surfboard, let's go down under!

The whirlwind..

In addition to yours truly, it seems another whirlwind has hit my parents' lives and that is in the shape of my Nonna. I now understand where Mummy gets her 'active' genes from as she is veritably a force of nature. She seems to have decided that her mission is to organise their apartment to 'boutique hotel' standards of cleanliness and order.

Seemingly, if an object isn't physically nailed to the floor, Nonna will wash it, polish it, iron it, reorganise it or carefully hide it away (this final category goes for most of Daddy's belongings!).

Cultural Bea

I went to my first art gallery yesterday! We walked to the Camden Arts Centre, to see a contemporary exhibition called 'Necklace of Fake Teeth' by the French artist Mathilde Rosier, which was made up of paintings, sculptural assemblages and film. I liked her eclecticism, her use of materials and thought her specially constructed environment evoked the journey between conscious and unconscious realms, with the motif of the bed representing a threshold to buried psychic state.

I have to say though that Mummy and Nonna were not quite as impressed as I was, as they seemed interested, but only in polite, passing manner. Luckily Daddy seemed more taken by the art as he commented as we left that "it looks like something that Bea would be able to knock up herself in a few years time".

High praise indeed for this up and coming artist!

Sleepy...

It's hard work being a baby.

One week old today!

Baby Bea has reached her first major milestone. I am one week old today! And what a week it has been, I have learnt how to manage most of my major functions; breathing, eating, digesting, excreting (sometimes used to powerful effect) crying and moving. I have found things I like; breast feeding from Mummy, sleeping on Daddy, the NHS, equal rights for women and clothes that fit me, and I have found things I don't......mainly being woken up in the middle of the night to be force-fed formula milk.

Now I have had milestones before, but previously they were generally counting down to my birth (2 months to go, 1 month to go etc), but now they are counting away from it. One week ago today, my parents had what I can confidently say was their biggest shock of their lives as I popped into existence two weeks early and definitely more quickly than expected. It has been a good week so far; visitors, presents, bunches of flowers being delivered to the door, regular supplies of delicious cake (see my birthday cakes in the photo) sleeping for 18 hours a day, constant silver service meeting my every need. I don't want to worry my parents, but having set the bar this high I expect that the next 18 years to be of an equally high standard. If not, there will be hell to pay....

Postscript - Daddy received an email today from someone called Auntie Amanda. Now I am not too sure who this is and due to my lack of object permanence I cannot even conceive of something existing if it I can't see actually see it or touch it, but somehow she knew that it was my one week birthday today! I asked Daddy how this could be and he helpfully explained that my Auntie Amanda is like one of those complex Victorian adding machines, a thousand cogs, chains and wheels spinning in intricate motions, tracking the birthdays, anniversaries and other important information of almost everyone she knows. She sounds amazing, I get to meet her tomorrow...exciting!!

Revenge is sweet

And so the wheel has turned......and how .

After Daddy's victory in 'Wake a sleeping baby' the other night, I have been plotting my reprisal with intricate care and attention. I decided that it would not be enough to just win, I must win with glory!

My chosen event was 'Poo with the nappy off', a contest at which I knew he was already weak, having beaten him at it only the previous day. I decided also to pick my timing to maximise my advantage, that being 4:30am, when he would be bleary eyed and in which his coordination and skill could well be fundamentally undermined. I also decided to up the ante and throw in a special move that I have been planning for a while now, the 'Unexpected pee'.

And so it transpired, my execution was perfect and Daddy had made the fatal error of changing me away from my mat and the normal baby wipes and cotton wool that he generally arms himself with. "How", he exclaimed as he looked at the mess that had unfolded in front of him, " can a baby that wears a nappy for 99.9% of the day, possibly excrete so much in the 2 minutes it takes to change her?"

Glory goes to Baby Bea. I have stamped my authority over all future games. Only a fool would challenge me now!!

Visitors!

Over the last couple of days, even though Mummy and Daddy are trying to keep things quite quiet, I have had lots and lots of lovely visitors, all coming to pay homage to my birth and bring me gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

It was great to meet my Auntie Alice and Uncle Toby, who brought me gifts galore, including my first dolly - Polly Pullen. I also met Onno and Lilly, who are very kindly producing a half-Italian boy baby for me to play with in a month's time and Ulrika Herson with her two boys, one of which gave me my first compliment...how I blushed. Grandma and Poppa also came again, plus an endless stream of midwives, health visitors and supermarket delivery men.

In the photos above, I have pictures of me with my cousin Charlotte, who I like because she clearly shares my passion for the colour pink and seems equally comfortable in the presence of paparazzi.

My name

Baby Bea is very proud of her name, Beatrice Rose; she likes how it sounds elegant, but also sweet, she likes how the names go together and how they make her think of some Victorian garden, replete with lily covered ponds, hidden glades and crumbling statues.

The thing Baby Bea likes most is why she was given her names in the first place. Although there was much discussion of her name prior to her grand entrance (and even wild rumours that this may have continued for at least another two days afterwards) apparently Mummy had fallen in love with the name Beatrice when she was 15 years old after studying Dante's 'Divine Comedy' in school.

In this famous Italian epic poem, Dante, who had found himself in the middle of his life lost in a dark wood, travels first down through the nine circles of hell, then through purgatory and finally into paradise. While in the first two parts he is accompanied by his guide, the poet Virgil, he is led into paradise by Beatrice, the representation of beatific love, who was inspired by a real life Beatrice, who Dante was deeply in love with and who served as the primary inspiration for his work.

I am pleased that my parents haven't set unrealistic expectations for me then!

The other thing that is worth knowing about my first name is that it is pronounced slightly differently in Italian than in English. The best way to describe how my name works in Italian is to imagine the unlikely scenario that you are suggesting to a friend of yours, Chay, that his suggested route in life as a human is not working out that well and that he should ideally think about being something more leaf and trunk-orientated. In this situation you would say to him "Be a tree, Chay"....and in doing so you would be giving a pretty good go at pronouncing my name. In fact, this works for all names that end with an 'ice', so that to pronounce my Auntie Alice's name, you would have to imagine that Chay is actually this chap's surname and his first name is Ali.....he would therefore be Ali Chay.

And you might well ask why my second name is Rose, well, apart from being a beautiful name, it is also the name of my maternal great-grandmother, a woman who had six children. So no ridiculous expectations there either...