Evie ate her first solid food today. It was rice cereal. It took about 8 seconds to make, and you know what? I tasted it—not bad at all! I can imagine Emma going out of town for the weekend, with Evie and me living on nothing but rice cereal for a few days. We’d get by.

Evie was convinced she’d missed some, so she went to town on her hands and arms.

There were still lots of leftovers clinging to her, so the next stop was the bath. When I tried to hoist her out of her Bumbo chair, her chubby little legs were bigger than the leg slots, so the chair came with her. I had to hold the Bumbo chair down with my foot and pull her up with both arms for a few seconds until she popped out. (We have what is known in polite circles as a “hungry baby.”)

We went down to Brighton on the last day of this trip to England. Em & Lo were filming some outdoor segments for the TV show, so Joey and I came along to take care of the little ones.

Here’s Evie, missing some of England’s finest countryside on our 90-minute train ride from London. I was thinking, if we’d missed our flight to England altogether and camped out in the parking lot at Newark International Airport for the past three weeks, as far as she’s concerned there would’ve been no difference at all.

As for Brighton, my expectation of the English seaside was that it would be overcast and chilly, with piles of rocks here and there along the beach. I was close, but instead of there being piles of rocks, the beach was actually just that: rocks. Here I am running my fingers through the sand.

It was a stark and beautiful setting, though. I enjoyed the gloominess and desolation of the place.

Fortunately, it wasn’t entirely desolate. Em & Lo were able to convince a few brave beachgoers to take part in their show.

A gaggle of French teens stopped throwing rocks at seagulls for a few minutes, and looked on as a two of their classmates took part in the shenanigans. I’m not allowed to reveal too much before the show airs, but the shenanigans involved a French maid outfit (or perhaps in this case, as it was worn by a Frenchwoman, it might simply be called a maid outfit—I’m not sure.)

I maintained a safe distance, as there’s nothing like a baby crying in the background to make a sound man go apeshit.

After a few successful hours on the rocks, the TV crew moved inland to a great little café district. Here there was a much steadier stream of willing participants. This part of Brighton reminded me of some combination of Key West and the East Village. (Note the three successive organic cafés in the first shot.)

By all accounts, the shooting in Brighton was a great success.

I’ve skipped over some significant moments, though, where early in the morning I forgot Evie’s bottles and all of the breast milk in the car on the way to the London train station, then bought the wrong kind of bottle (twice) at the pharmacy in Brighton, and subsequently dealt with a hungry, exhausted, hysterical Evie, who screamed for several hours straight. I kept wanting to move cafés to start fresh with a new batch of fellow patrons, but it was no use. The worm had turned, as Emma says, and as the cameras rolled outside, Evie was inside, shrieking holy hell while people sipped their organic soups.

At last, Evie gave me a short break, by which point I was in a mood. Joey found the whole affair incredibly amusing, as his little girl Elliette was an absolute dream for the entire day. (Then again, he didn’t leave all of her bottles and milk behind in London.) Here’s me with a tiny Winston Churchill popping up at the bottom of the frame.

So, Evie won’t remember any of Brighton, but she tried her best to see that Brighton will remember her.

We went back to Poet’s Walk yesterday for the first time since Evie’s arrival, taking advantage of this short time I have off of work and trying to get at least a little bit of time outdoors before today’s snowstorm.

Evie came along in a sling zipped inside my jacket, snoozing peacefully for the entire ride. I’m almost certain I saw her eyes in REM action at one point yesterday, which surprised me, as a psychologist friend once told me that newborns lack the visual language to dream.

Not being sure of this, I looked it up online (where if it’s written, it has to be true), and found this article, that mentions a 1966 study finding that newborns, do in fact dream:

The startling discovery was, not only do newborns dream — even on the first day of life — they actually dream more than the college students in the original studies (Science, 1966; 152:604).

This study has been repeated several times, confirming and expanding our knowledge. We dream more in the first 2 weeks of life than at any other time. The visual part of the brain is more active during newborn REM sleep than during adult sleep. They seem to have more vivid visual dreams.

Emma and I have both had stress dreams in these first few days—dreams about leaving Evie somewhere accidentally, forgetting to feed her, or in some other way failing to meet our new parental responsibilities. But there’s little time for good or bad dreams in our 90-120 minute sleep segments. Upon waking to her cries, something clicks into place, and we drowsily remember what to do.