So passes the 16th week of Karen's first pregnancy, the week when we attended the Parent's, Baby's and Children's expo.

Nothing quite prepares a man for the shock of walking into a room the size of the Jubilee Pavilion full of pregnant women and babies for the first time. The sight of isle after isle of baby products was one of those less than gentle reminders about the slippery slope to parenthood that I find myself on these days.

Once the culture shock subsided, it was a lot of fun. I wore a t-shirt that Karen bought me for Christmas bearing the motif "I'm the Daddy!" which proved to be a massive hit with the ladies. I am not exaggerating, more than 15 women came up to me to ask about it. I am sure the manufacturers of said shirt intended it to be an overtly misogynist reference to the phrase "who's yo daddy?" but who am I to tell people how to interpret what's on my chest?

As you can imagine, there was all manner of products, from the sublime to the ridiculous, and yet, unbelievably, only one manufacturer of breast feeding aids used the pun "simply the breast" in their marketing literature. We managed to pick up a fair swag of free stuff, and my t shirt probably played a small part in the fact that we got a couple of free dummies, bibs and packs of baby wipes.

Karen bought herself on of these handy gadgets, and after much research, we put a down payment on a pram - the Valco Runabout DELUXE. Mag wheels, electric blue and featuring the Dura-glide (tm) swivel system, it's everything you could want in a pram and more!

We also attended a couple of parties on Saturday night that are worth mentioning. The first was to celebrate Karen's cousin Matthew's engagement to the lovely Kristy. It was an outdoor gig, and was a remarkably cold night for mid February in Adelaide.

Long ago in a past life, I had an engagement party around the same time of year and on a night featuring around the same chilly temperature. I won't say too much more, but let's hope that Matthew and Kristy's engagement works out better than that one did. I predict from this photo though they won't have too much bother.



The other party we found ourselves at was Heather's boot party. Steve pretty much covered the event on his blog, but I would like to also submit the following photos as evidence.


Here's to Heather, she's true blue.....


One half of my wedding party plus one heckling