Prince George’s grumpy face is the best thing in the entire world. That had to be said first thing, now let’s begin. Kate and William, along with George, attended a meet-and-greet with ten sets of parents and their children—all born within a few weeks of George’s birth last year on July 22—at Government House in Wellington, organized by the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society. Plunket is a non-profit organization that helps babies born in New Zealand with free childcare advice, home visits and other services. Kate and William talked to the parents and George played with the children.
This whole appearance was basically all about George. A way to introduce him to the world, I guess. He really is a cute baby, and, like I said, that grumpy face is amazing. His eyes are totally brown, though. I’m not sure how he got those; given both his parents have recessive eye colors. Things that make you go “hm…” Now, while George is adorable, he is kind of a brat. He kept stealing everyone else’s toys. No one seemed fazed by this at all. I would nip that in the bud if I were Will and Kate. George is already going to grow up so spoiled with huge entitlement issues—just like his father—and the toy stealing is early evidence of it. Now, I’m not a parent, and I’m going to guess that parents will tell me this action is normal, but given George’s status and the family history of arrogance and self-entitlement, this action is not okay. In fact, it’s not okay for anyone, learn to share!
We got some sound bites from parents regarding George and second-hand quotes from Will and Kate. George is, according to the parents, “strong”, “advanced”, “intrepid”, a “bruiser” (whatever that means; seriously, someone explain what that means in terms of babies), and “no one was going to stand in his way”. He was “bubbly, quite feisty and took control. He crawled to the center of the room and owned the place. He honed in on certain toys and took the ones he wanted.” Also, George is sleeping through the night, is now eating solids, and has about four or five teeth coming in. Kate said William bathes George and gives him a bottle every night before bed (see, William does stuff too you guys, he’s such a hands-on father).
As far as fashion goes, Kate wore a Tory Burch black and white patterned dress ($450), the Cartier watch she previously wore to the Place2Be visit ($6,000), and Annoushka pearl drop earrings she’s worn before (£295/$495). Kate looked nice, I guess. The cut of the dress and the length and the sleeves are all nice but I’m not sure I really liked the pattern—I’m just not big on all-over patterns like that. At one point George was pulling on Kate’s hair and putting it in his mouth. A ponytail might have been nice since she was playing with babies and bending down and getting on the floor. Her eye makeup is too dark for a day event, though. You know, I know I get nit-picky about Kate’s outfits, and sometimes it may seem like nothing she ever wears will please me, but I really want Kate to come out and wow us, and get everything right and have an amazing outfit, I really do. I nit-pick because I care, I want her to get better.
By the way, this is their only appearance for the day. I’m not sure how long they were there, but it seems a bit light for their “grueling” tour schedule. I guess they’re easing into their “grueling” schedule. I want to talk about something, though. So before this trip, when it still wasn’t confirmed that George was going, I (and I’m sure many others) said it would be stupid and a wasted opportunity if they didn’t bring him and of course they were going to bring him because he’s a great PR boost that the Cambs so desperately need… well, that’s happened. After this outing, pretty much every article is covered with Prince George–he was even trending on twitter for a while. It seems everyone is cooing over George and has forgotten about Kate’s stupidity (her skirt flying up for the 7th time) and Will just in general (seriously, I saw only a handful of photos with Will actually in the picture). Like I said, of course they were going to bring George because he’s their PR baby and they wanted this exact type of attention. Now we’ll see if they can actually hold the attention without the kid, because we won’t see George again for a while.
Below is a video of Kate chatting to some parents. You can view other videos of George interacting with the children here and here.
Links: Mirror article with more quotes from parents. Daily Mail article. Express article. BBC article. Popsugar article.
Photo credits: First photo from Clarence House twitter. Second photo from British royals twitter. Third and fourth photos from Governor-General of NZ twitter.
Kate got a lot of criticism from various mothering groups so Prince George unfortunately is being used to help with that. I call his grumpy “Blue Steel”, it totally reminds me of Zoolander. His eyes are unusually dark but genetically it does happen. I have the darkest eyes of anyone in my family, although my mother to this day is adamant we never had a milkman and I remember him with perfect clarity. My Mom has gray eyes, my Dad has hazel eyes, but his are predominately green with blue and just a fleck of coppery-gold whereas mine are darker green with copper and brown and my brother has bright sapphire blue eyes so go figure. But being descended from royalty, our family tree has a lot less branches so I guess I’m lucky my mutation is eyes that are a little darker and I didn’t get a tail or a third arm.
Lol, Blue Steel for sure. I would never claim to be an expert in genetics, but the brown eyes were surprising at least, but I’m sure it’s possible.
I am always underwhelmed by Kate’s sartorial choices also.
And maybe I’m being nitpicky here but it always seems to me that Kate holds George like a prop, not like a son. If they want the public to believe that Will really handle his son at home feeding and bathing him, he needs to make the effort to interact more with him in public. Every single public photo and photo op has Kate holding the baby, not Will (except for the photo with George, Will, Charles, and the Queen, which Kate couldn’t elbow her way into). It always seems like Will doesn’t really want to hold him while Kate is more than happy to hold him as long as it assures the spot light is on her.
Yeah, for some reason William doesn’t seem to invested in the kid. He may be a hands-on father at home, but it doesn’t seem like it from our point of view.
I agree about the way Kate holds George…it seems as if she’s detached, cold. I know I should stop comparing her to Diana, but I can’t. In photos of Diana and her sons she seems radiant and joyful. I don’t perceive this with Kate. In the photo of Kate holding George and someone is showing him a blue teddy bear, William looking on…what is the expression on William’s face? It almost looks to me as if he is envious of the attention given to George? In the U.S., “bruiser” means “chunky”, it’s definitely not an insult when it’s used to describe a baby boy.
Oh, okay. I’ve never heard anyone use the term “bruiser” before.
If Will is anything like the egomaniac I think he is, and anything like his father, then Will is most probably a bit envious of the attention given to George, and to Kate for that matter, at least a little bit. I think he definitely uses both of them to hide from the press so he can go do whatever he wants without being bothered, but it has to hurt his pride to know that people don’t really care that much about him. He’s an egomaniac, so when Will wants the attention and he’s not getting it, then that’s a problem for him. It’s just that he wants the attention only on his terms, not the press’s.
George at the Plunket baby group – Cute baby! Surprised that Kate had her hair in the way for him to play with and pull. Most Mums would put their hand back or have a shorter cut with a kid of George’s age. Maybe she doesn’t pick him up much so her hair is a new thing to investigate? Kiwi slang translation – hmm – George is a bruiser? That can mean he is a big baby, and a bit of an alpha baby too?
Oh, okay. I’ve never heard the term “bruiser” before, and it seemed like an off descriptor.
I agree with the hair thing. I don’t know why she left it down when she knew she’d be near babies, and bending down and all that.
kate wants to keep the baby by her side all the time to distract everyone of her lack of work ethic, (what a cunning woman ) and its working!
Yes, the baby is totally a prop to distract the public, and it seems to be working (for now).