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 Cups and Spoons and Pretty Balloons

[There are no balloons actually mentioned in this post but When I wrote "Of cups and spoons" I couldn't bring myself to just stop there or not use a rhyming word!!!]

I didn't update last week because Emily was ill throughout it and very simply, other than tell you about tooth #6 that showed up on the 19th Feb and the several times she was sick, there wasn't much to update about. Any development seemed to be put on hold while we cuddled and worked on getting better :)

Unfortunately the week ended as badly as it started and it involved Emily's first ride in an ambulance (mine too) as Daddy was away and I was in no state to drive her to A&E when her fever spiked and things got ugly. I won't go into it again, it's all here if you want to read about it.



Some pictures from last week...

This was moments before the vomiting began. No one would've guessed it.

I specifically took that pic because that is her latest "oh I'm so cute" thing. If she thinks she's done something cute, she'll laugh and do that, very often with her head slightly cocked to the side too :)


Just hours later, about 5 sleepsuits later, I was trying to show her how to vomit into a bucket.
No harm in trying to reduce the cleaning, right?!

It wasn't very successful, but hey we tried!!


Most of Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22nd Feb looked like this....

Then I decided to risk it and give her a banana, and then we got a smile!

And we had energy to play!

And on Thursday we even stepped out of nightwear!!

Then came Friday and she woke up with fever and you could tell as she was a bit pale and generally looked unwell again...

And here we are in the A&E waiting room, she was still in just a nappy and blanket at this point but fever was finally coming down.

Needless to say, that week of unwellness sent any mealtime progress into a downward spiral. Things are finally getting back to where we left off before she got sick but there's still some way to go.

Her naps have changed too. We are aware of an ongoing growth spurt* - we moved her into size 5 nappies at the start of Feb and she is now in size 6, I didn't even bother with 5+!! - so that would explain a lot of things. Lots of long naps lately but nights have been good and very settled so Mummy & Daddy are happy chappies.

* Look at that very first pic, of her in the pink striped sleepsuit. That sleepsuit no longer fits her.


This week saw her 13 month jabs. Again, another possible contributor to her long naps. At this point, there is just so much overlapping, I don't know what to put down to what. I'm just letting it all do its thing and as long as she's happy, I'm happy. Which she is.



She is being extremely affectionate recently. She will now actively throw kisses and sometimes she'll give a hug when asked, though that's not very consistent yet.

She has just today gotten into a strange licking thing. The sofa, my knees, her feet!!

In fact...

Self-Feeding

You may remember me mentioning 2 weeks ago that she will tentatively hold her own milk bottle. Well any hesitation is now gone. When I put that bottle in front of her every morning, she knows what to do with it and she'll hold it up for the entire 9oz until she's drained it. Clever girl.

She is also now desperate to drink out of an open cup. I had little choice in this one, she kept grabbing at mine, so I decided to let her try her plastic cup. I poured a tiny amount of milk into it and helped her hands around it and held on to the base to ensure she doesn't tip it over.

She does really well too but every now and then forgets/doesn't realise the difference between an open and closed cup and tilts it right up as she would do her beaker and all the milk floods her face.

She will calmly lower the cup, with a slightly perplexed look on her face and tell me "uh-oh!"

:)

She has, this week, fed herself a few small spoonfuls of yoghurt and we are still practising eating with a fork :)



Vocabulary

Now that she'll let me take away her dummy (she only ever uses her dummy to sleep, but when she's unwell she clings to it for comfort, and I don't have a problem with it. It means she's happier and less moany and it all just works), we are once again hearing her voice.

And it seems like she's trying to make up for lost time. LOTS of babbling and seemingly deep conversations with herself!

She is also imitating longer sounds. Both David and I heard her say "go play" this weekend. She is also trying to say "come", "shoe", and "down" (which she knows is the opposite of "up").

"uh-oh" has become a regular expression. She will now purposely drop things just to be able to say it ;)



Future drummer?

I've recently had to give up one of my magazines. She just loves turning the pages and looking at pictures. It's not even in as bad a state as you'd imagine either and she's had it about a week now!

Dreary day today and we now all have colds. Ugh.
But don't you just love her teeny dressing gown? :)

Back next week! xoxo

Of Forks and Bottles, Both Full and Empty

Hi friends. This week has been a fun one. Emily and I went out lots, but we also spent lots of indoor, quiet time together. This is when we see the big leaps. Here's what's been going on this week... It'll be a long one, and quite video-heavy! Consider yourself warned!

Goodnight

Lately, we've been trying to push bedtime a little bit later, and we were beginning bathtime around 6.20pm. As a possible result of this, over time, I realised she was getting more and more cranky over bedtime. It eventually got to the point where she'd wail through it, sometimes making me skip her bath. So I decided it was time to go back to basics. Bedtime now begins at 5.45pm, meaning she is asleep around 6.30pm - apparently, the way she wants it!

Most nights, I get a little wave as I slowly leave her room. She snuggles excitedly into her comfy position (face down in the corner, surrounded by not one, but two, muslin cloths), turns around to give me a little wave, then snuggles back in.

It is my very favourite part of bedtime but it's so sweet, it hurts. Part of me is hugely proud of the fact that she is confident enough to be able to go to sleep without me beside her, and another part of me just wants to go back in and snuggle her. But I restrain myself and keep walking out, watching her on the monitor as the snuggling into her muslins continues until she falls asleep.



Mealtimes

After a recent blip, her eating has settled to a more mature pattern which I am thoroughly enjoying. She now has breakfast & milk at around 8am, then lunch around 11:30am, then her nap (yes it seems to have thankfully readjusted), sometimes a snack at around 3pm (only if she asks for one), then dinner at about 5pm.

She is eating lots of different things. She loved my pasta with a spinach, ham and mushroom sauce. She also loved my gingered beef casserole.

(This is what her typical dinner plate looks like, portion-wise.)




And my tuna bake.

It makes me so proud watching her eat. Sometimes with her hands, sometimes off a fork. Depends on what the food is really.

At the start of the week, she began showing signs of wanting to feed herself with a fork. Inevitably it ended in food all over the floor and her in tears of frustration. But, on Thursday, I'd made a mushroom and courgette frittata which was easily cut into little mouthful-sized cubes. So I figured it wouldn't be too much trouble to let her try. Sure enough, she ate her entire meal herself with only the slightest bit of help from me. Impressive doesn't begin to cover it!

She's kind of insisting she eat everything with a fork herself now, which can be a problem, but we're managing it so far!

I did hand her a spoon with some yoghurt on it the other day, which she managed to eat. The spoon went into her mouth upside down (I hadn't put much on it, knowing this would probably be the case) but it did get there!


In other news, little madam has FINALLY worked out how to hold her own drink cup!!

She'll usually work out when she needs to tilt it further to get any water out of it, but if I see that she's forgotten, I'll just say, "hold it up!" and up it goes :)

You may also have noticed that since I last bought her new cup, she's moved on to a new one. This one is an 18 month cup! Big girl!

At a push, she'll even hold her milk bottle now. She only has milk in the morning and at bedtime but they are both very important to her and therefore are met with much enthusiasm. If either one of them is not ready when she decides she wants it, there will be trouble.

So I make her morning bottle while she waits (moans) in the highchair and when it's done, instead of feeding it to her, I now place it on her tray.

After that urgency, you'd think she'd at least try to pick it up, wouldn't you?

No. She looks at it, then looks at me with this very cheeky little grin so as to say, "well? aren't you going to feed it to me?"

So I help her wrap her hands around the bottle and recline the seat and off she goes, guzzling the entire 9oz no problems. She's getting better at that too.



New Words/Signs

She is now saying "up" and I think she signed "home" a few times today!

Other than that, it's been a majorly chatty week. None of it has made much sense, but I'm sure she thinks she's saying something meaningful!



How's that walking going?

See for yourself!



Not 5 minutes earlier, she'd walked all the way from the living room, along the corridor, and into the kitchen. When I ran back to get my phone to capture it, she started crashing into everything and in this above clip, she decided it was time for a water break.

I'll keep trying!





Everything Else

43736 toys and what does she play with.....!

She is, however, loving her new activity table

(especially the cable tie that I chose not to remove so as not to lose the stupidly separate toy!)

See also: Games with Aliens



We went to the swings on Friday. Emily had a quick upside-down read en route.

On our way back, a lady and her son were feeding the seagulls. Emily loves birds. So we stopped to watch.

I think I caught an argument between Gabriella and Emily here!

But all was well in the end :)

Until next weekend! xoxo










Ps