Of Perfect Pouts and the Discovery of Eyelashes

We've been busy enjoying the sun. And time is just flying too fast so here I am, a few weeks late!

I've noticed some big changes in Emily this week. She seems generally more communicative. She's very obviously trying to TELL me things now, and she is actually making herself understood to a certain degree. I do need to guess at most of it, but judging from her response, I think I might be getting a lot of it right!

This morning, she woke us up by lying in her cot screaming "COME!" This is the sort of thing I mean. There was no mistaking what she meant there (LOL)



She has begun to grasp that blocks are not just for throwing everywhere and hiding under the sofa. Now, she builds. She doesn't yet know to push blocks down on each other but the concept is very much there. This was her very first ever construction:

She is currently very passionate about dental hygiene. Not that she knows it, but I've managed to turn brushing our teeth into a game and she's walked right into it.

One needs lots of concentration when brushing one's teeth.

Having said that, she now seems to think that her toothbrush can be used to clean not just teeth. So we now scrub our bath toys too.

I think I may need to invest in a new toothbrush sooner than planned...



After the way she hugged Gabriella's doll one day at the park, I bought her her own doll. This was the introduction:

You can tell she was pleased!

Baby Doll gets lots of hugs, but mostly she gets her hands and feet bitten, and especially she gets her eyes poked. Baby Doll (no we have not named her!) has introduced Emily to eyelashes. Thanks to her doll, she now knows she has eyelashes and she knows I have eyelashes, and she loves nothing less than to feel and pull them. This was the last thing I expected or even thought of when I chose that doll and I'm sure she'll get over it soon, but I hope she doesn't lose too many more eyelashes before then!



I have enjoyed this beautiful weather we've had recently even if just because of these cute toes...

<3

For a few weeks recently (about three), she woke up looking like this almost every day:

I didn't think much of it at first but well into the second week, I wasn't happy that it wasn't getting any better. We took her to the optician, to the GP, no one had any answers. On a whim, I switched her bath foam to a different type and that was the last we saw of the swollen eye. It wasn't even a new bubble bath we'd been using, I have no idea why it suddenly had that reaction, but safe to say I'm not switching back anytime soon! :)



Will you check out that pout?!

Gabriella also has the same sunglasses, they are a couple of divas!!

At the park with Daddy :)

...while mummy has a rest on the bench.



She is really loving animals at the moment. She LOVED the chickens at the city farm we took her to in London a few weeks ago and she met the Palm Sunday donkey, which she wanted to pet and giggled every time she did. It was very cute!

She also really loves watching the neighbour's cat walking past the kitchen window. She has now also learnt the sign for cat. *proud*



Speaking of animals, we have a zebra in the living room. This had been our birthday present to her but she wasn't quite ready for it back in January. She is now and she is having lots of fun getting on and off it. Not so much spending time ON it, but as long as she's happy...!

Her eating amazes even me. She will eat anything and she is so good with it. And she eats loads. However she does have funny little habits. She's good with veg, but certain veg (like frozen veg that you quickly heat up) doesn't always go down too well. Sometimes she'll eat it, but often she won't. Today, I tried to smuggle some sweetcorn and a pea into a mouthful of fishcake. She looked at the fork suspiciously, picked off the sweetcorn and the pea and only then did she eat the rest. I guess I can't get much past her!!

Other than that though, she is great with food and I can't think of anything other than tomato sauce that she doesn't like... and even that, she'll eat if it's not too runny.



Here is a clip of Emily just being Emily...



Today, she crawled all the way down the corridor holding her cloth. But she kept stopping to shriek at it for getting stuck - because she was kneeling on it. But she cloth got an earful every few steps. I was in fits by the time she got to the other end of the corridor.

Another time, a few weeks ago, we were playing with her blocks when she decided she didn't want me touching them any longer. So the pushed all the blocks that were on the floor behind her, and took the tower I was building and KNELT ON IT while she played with something else.

She is just so hilarious. Cheeky, but hilarious...!!

Also, check this out: She really loves that ball! (video)



Her latest words are "come" and "nanna" - which is all four grandparents. Nannas are Nanna and Nannus are Nanna too. Sorry, guys!! ;) And she enjoys skyping with them all so much that the last three days have seen her screaming NANNA at me every time I so much as touch the ipad. So today, I've just given up on it, put it away and it's been calmer. Thank God for that!!!

Her signing has come on in leaps and bounds. I have actually, at this point, lost track of the signs she knows. She signs "sorry", "more", "home", "music", "fun" is her latest one. Sometimes she completely surprises me with one I had no idea she knew at all. It's just such an amazing side to the communication process, I'm so glad we went to signing classes.

xoxo

Of Ooks and Gras and Quiet Reading

The weeks are really flying by. Two weeks until Emily's one. Crazy!

And when you ask her how old she is, this is what she does...

This month is packed with parties of little babies turning one. We've had lots of fun choosing gifts for the birthday boys and outfits for Emily.

This week has mostly been about more words and newfound mobility (don't get too excited), with some new games and a huge amount of understanding thrown in. I will elaborate on all points.



The day after my last post, she worked out how to pull herself up into a standing position using furniture. ON HER OWN. The pride on her face the first time she cracked it was amazingly clear. She still looks around for cheer and applause every time she does it now but that first time was something else (and Lord knows she did get that applause!!). She can also now sit herself up easily. She makes it look like she's done it all her life and not struggled with it at all. (hah!)

There was one morning we woke up to find her waiting patiently stood by the side of her cot. It was a lovely little moment when we walked in and she clocked us and waited for the "good girl!" cheer. (It's not as great when she tries to do it in the middle of the night because 'yay I'm awake so I may as well practice my standing up'.)

Her sense of balance is improving every day. The living room is now a series of challenging obstacles rather than furniture. Which led to the introduction of corner guards...

I am told life will never be the same again.



Another reason life will never be the same is her discovery of a narrow hiding place underneath the sofa. We've already lost a teether to it and I have saved several books, toys and muslin cloths from being forgotten in what is sure to become a dusty resting place for several toys.

Sure, I'll move the sofa one day and recover them all but it might be a while.



Now that she is on the move, I have bought her a pair of slippers in an attempt to
1. keep her feet warm
2. reduce the risk of slipping on the wooden floors

She seems to like wearing her mocc ons and hasn't once so far attempted to pull them off. They do an excellent job in keeping her from slipping too.



She has suddenly become very sensitive to being told "no" - however she has a selection of reactions.

One reaction is the shaking of her head back at you. She will usually do this as she's trying to do whatever you've just told her not to do again. It's not an easy one to keep a straight face through.

Another reaction (usually when she's sitting in the high chair) is to burst out crying. I am talking full blast, need-to-get-her-out-of-the-chair-to-comfort-her, crying. It will generally start again once you try to put her back in the highchair. Not great when it's half way through a meal.

The other one is where she will get really angry at being told she can't do something. She will hit and shout at me so as to say "how dare you tell me I can't do that, I want to do it and who do you think you are to think you can come in here and tell me not to?!" Strangely enough that is the one that seems to be followed by obedience. Or distraction.



If I want to make her smile quickly though, all I need to do is mention a duck. I'm not quite sure she knows what a duck is but she does love the idea of it!

She also thinks she is making the sign for "duck" but she is actually making a "milk" sign (following our Sing & Sign classes). Still, I know she means "duck" because she makes the sign very specifically when I mention a duck or say "quack".

She loves "quack" and I am convinced she is trying to say it but hasn't quite gotten there yet.

She also loves it when I say "moo" (though nowhere near as much as she loves "quack"), although she is terrified of a book she has about a cow that makes a "moo" sound. Every time she presses the "moo" button, she cries and comes quickly towards me. I shall be donating the book to charity shortly.



Her mealtimes finally seem to have settled into some sort of pattern. She mostly snacks through the day and has a big meal around 4.30pm or 5pm.

One of her favourite snacks are these Plum Baby cheesey rings. I put one on her finger and she bites it off. She thinks it's a hilarious game.

In the morning, we bring her into our bed for some chill-out time. She's begun a new game this week. She'll sit between us and turn to me and press my nose and then turn to Daddy and press his nose. What she is doing is making our noses honk, supposedly. Of course our noses don't in fact honk (did I need to tell you that?) so we make our own sounds and she LOVES it. The more imaginative the sound, the better. She will do this to us in turn for a long while!

Then I'll do it back to her and her big smile will become a laugh.



I finally got round to weighing her before her bath the other day. At 49 weeks old, she now weighs 9.4kg and is 77cm long.

When I just think of that 3kg, 52cm long baby I gave birth to almost a year ago, I can barely believe this is the same child.

Speaking of bathtime, great things are happening in that bathtub. I was reading her Baby Vogue to her (no, it's not really Baby Vogue, it's the Boots Baby Bath Time Book - the same one that features the walrus that lends it's name to this blog), and she took great interest in the crab.

"Gra," she told me (proudly).

"Yes, crab!"

"Gra."

She leafed through the book some more, then put it aside. I asked "Emily, where is the crab?"

She looked for the book, turned the pages until she found it, then pointed at the crab. "Gra."


Oh and for the record, the picture of the "gra" was in the "ook" (book).

Leaps and bounds, I tell ya!



Now that she is no longer limited to ground-level, she has access to things that are slightly higher up. Like her bookshelf. Until yesterday, she kept going for the old photo albums and heavy books that are on the lower shelf (because they're big heavy books).

Yesterday she discovered her shelf. She spent a quiet 5 or so minutes on her knees, exploring her bookshelf. Until now, it's always been me who's chosen what books we read. Now she has a say. She didn't make a big mess like I thought she would. She just chose a few books, pulled them down to the ground and got comfy while looking at them. And after a short while, she got up again to get some more.

...That was until she came across the cow/moo book I mentioned earlier and that was the end of quiet reading time. Mummy and her cuddles to the rescue.

xoxo

Of Perfect Sleeping Faces

Happy New Year to all you Emily fans out there!

We spent a lovely week in Malta after Christmas so Emily had a good dose of family which she absolutely adored and was quite hard to keep entertained upon our return. If the look on her face could be translated, it would have said: "What? It's just you? How do you expect me to have fun like this?!"

Cue lots of time spent with Gabriella (which always subdues Emily because I secretly suspect she's quite terrified of her as Gabs shouts at her and steals her toys LOL - she'll get her own back one day!). We are all loving having Aunty Nese living so close by.

But for a quick recap... Christmas was fabulous and Emily enjoyed it far more than I expected her to. She loved opening her gifts and it wasn't mostly the paper she was interested in after all!

  

   

Yes there's lots more I could say about Christmas but most of the people reading know it already so I am moving on. If I'm honest, I left this post very late so it will probably not be as fulfilling as the last but I promise to procrastinate less next week.

(Procrastinate!!?! I've been blinking busy!!) 

The tree has come down. I have yet to get round to taking down all the other decorations but that tree had to go. It was all Emily could think about and I got tired of playing that game. I stuck her in the playpen while I took it down and she was NOT impressed to say the least. She sat and watched me with a semi-panicked, semi-furious look on her face. And she shrieked at me through most of it. 

Then once I was done, I got her out and she very forlornly looked at the closed boxes of things before getting on with her playing.

   

Her playing, having said that, is not what it was. It now mostly involves practicing crawling. And as of Friday it also involves using furniture to try to pull herself up to stand. She hasn't quite managed it yet, keeps slipping back down and then shouting in frustration until I help her back up and onto her feet at which point she looks at me, proud as punch, as if she did it all herself.

   

She's going to be a handful, this one.

Have I ever mentioned how much I adore her, though?

   

When I'm pottering around in her room, sorting things out, putting clothes away, etc, she chills out on the floor and plays. Sometimes just watches me. This was Thursday:

   

Earlier that day, she'd spent an hour helping me organise the kitchen (It was one of those mad winter-cleaning days!!). 

I popped her in the walker and, as she hadn't been in it for a few weeks, she was more than happy to oblige, excitedly walking around (look! no hands!) and trying to open every cupboard in sight unsuccessfully of course because the walker itself was in the way. 

In the end she busied herself playing quietly with apron strings, mostly just inspecting them. She did that for ages, every now and again looking back at me to check I was still there, with a little smile... then back to the apron.

There are two aprons - that are never actually used - hanging off the kitchen door, which she has always loved. Her eyes lit up at the sight of one of them in particular from a very early age. Each time we pass them, she must touch them. So having them to herself for a whole hour must have been a little bit of heaven for her.

   

You may have noticed I've added a few new words to her vocabulary list during my absence: baby, tickle, and there. 

Baby first paired up with pretty to make pretty baby (mostly said when she looked at herself in the mirror). But I've noticed that over the last couple of days, she is saying pretty a lot less! (Noooo!!!!) There is some confusion as she is using baby for both babies and things she likes... Often instead of pretty. So there's a bit of confusion between those two words at the moment, but I'm sure she'll work it out soon enough. 

She said tickle a lot while we were in Malta, simply put because there were lots of tickles! She'll now put her finger up in "tickle" mode and say it. Also, when we tell her we're going to tickle her, she'll try and tickle herself and have a giggle over it. Here is a picture of her doing it on Christmas morning!

   

There is her latest. She says it when she wants to go somewhere. If she spots a toy across the room, she'll start moving towards it while saying "there" over and over. She also uses it when she wants to go to someone, again we heard a lot of that in Malta as there were so many people around. 

We also think she may be saying girl, but that has yet to be proven! Milk hasn't been said in a few days (becoming less and less important to her), and she does still say happy every now and then but again, not consistently.

   

Oh did I mention she now has FOUR teeth? Yes, sirree! Tooth #4 showed up on Christmas morning! She now has all central incisors and we are pretty certain her top lateral incisors are on their way next, if her drenched muslin cloth and desperate finger-chewing is anything to go by.

   

Can you see? 

(That was after her last bath of 2011!)

   

When 2011 became 2012, she was sleeping on a makeshift bed on the floor of Uncle Daniel's bedroom. We checked on her every 20 minutes or so and most times, she looked so peaceful, it was hard to walk back out. One time, I laid down near her just to be able to get a good look at her perfect, sleeping face. It's been a long time since there hasn't been a cot barrier keeping me away from doing that! x