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 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