March 2007 Archives

Emily has been off fruit for some time now, which is very annoying. Its so hard when all you want is for your child to have the best possible diet because you know how much good it is doing them. I suppose this is one of the battles of parenthood. So I decided to try the fruity face approach and did us both a plate with only a few pieces of different fruit to try and encourage her to eat it. We had raspberry hair, blueberry eyes, banana nose, grape smile and apple ears.

At first she wouldn't eat it so I then had to get creative and start to doing the 'Bud taste test' (for anyone who doesn't get this, there is a show on Cbeebies called Nina & The Neurons which is all about the senses and bud is a character for taste). So she finally ate a few bits and pieces, with me also telling her that the blueberries made her clever and strong.

Anyway yesterday in the car, she made some comment, I can't remember what it was but it resulted in me telling her how clever she was. She then said "Yes mommy, I am clever. Thats because I ate a blueberry. It also makes me strong like daddy so I can lift a sofa!"

That's my girl! :)

Well I had been giving Harrison baby rice for a few days and just didn't feel too happy with it as I thought it might have been making him constipated. So yesterday I thought I would try him with a carrot puree instead. This wasn't that successful and most of it came back out again!

I was almost going to give up but I thought I would try him with carrot again today and although a lot got spat out, he did seem to take more of it. So now I am feeling a lot more happier to persevere and keep on trying. In fact I was feeling that positive that I did up a big batch, got the old ice-cube trays out and filled them up ready for the week ahead. You know, I can hardly remember doing this for Emily, it seems so long ago.

After a hard day of constant feeding and unsettledness yesterday, I decided to try Harrison with some baby rice. The consensus now is to wait until 6 months, but he has always been very hungry and we are approaching 6 months so I feel fine about it.

So he had a couple of teaspoons of baby rice. Not overly exciting but its a big step for us, moving him onto his next stage. Its funny because I don't feel half as confident in my knowledge this time around as I did with Emily. But maybe thats because I don't have the time to read everything there is to know about the developmental stages and everything I do in the day is so rushed.

But he seemed happy enough with it and smiled away, so I will keep up the baby rice for a week or so I think before trying anything else.

On another note he is such an unbelievable wriggler and we really can't take our eyes off him. He was in his bouncy chair this morning and I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and when I came back he was half out with his legs dangling in mid air!

Look at what Emily drew yesterday! Its a hedgehog! I managed to take a photo of it before she rubbed it out. For some reason she keeps drawing great things with her sketcher thing, which I obviously can't keep and yet she won't draw like that with paper and pencils. Its very strange. She thinks she can't draw with paper and ends up scribbling everywhere. She has two of these sketchers and we keep one in the car and its in the back of the car that she produces her masterpieces. Maybe she is just more relaxed and better when she doesn't have me sitting beside her coaching her.

For those of you that don't know (and I am sure thats nobody now!) I also post about Emily's crafty endeavours over at Noodles & Doodles, my other blog. So you can check over there for more pics and other stuff that we get up to. You should see the dog that Emily and Warren made today its just FAB!

Harrison is certainly getting very big and is now wearing 6-9 month clothes, his baby bath has been packed away and put into the loft and we are already contemplating moving over from the pram to the buggy, just so he has a bit more room! I know Em sprouted pretty quickly but I'm not sure if it was this fast.

He has now started joining Emily in her bath, which they both absolutely love. Emily loves to help bath him and Harrison just giggles away when we swish him around in the water. It'll be great whenever he can sit up by himself.

We think he is also teething as he is constantly gnawing away at his fists and has been pretty unsettled in the day, unless he is been fed or cuddled he has been quite whingy. We will just have to see I suppose.

As I have said before I am a bit behind on blogging and everything else for that matter, so here's a pic for now and I will update the photo section soon. Don't forget to keep your eye on our ever changing moblog pic on the left too!

Today has been a lovely day full of very endearing moments from Emily. I had a lie in this morning, after I gave Harrison his morning feed, which was just great. When I got up Emily was so cute and said 'Happy Mothers Day' to me and gave me a big box of chocolates (I am a chocoholic at the moment). She also gave me a card from them both which she had written in. I was so impressed at how she had managed to copy some words, when I get a moment I will have to scan the card in so you can see. She then made yummy pancakes with bacon and maple syrup with Warren for out lunch. We also ended up having an impromptu dinner round at Warrens moms which meant, no cooking or washing up for us to do at home.

I honestly don't know where the time goes sometimes. I have so many things to post about and I am not posting enough at the moment. I will have to try and allocate myself some time at least once a week where I can review everything that has been going on. Its so hard to keep up with everything.

Well Harrison is still sleeping through the night (apart from if I have a night out!) but unfortunately Emily is not. The past couple of days have been an improvement but generally, 9 times out of ten she is up in the night.

She has got this down to a fine art now as the other morning I woke up and she had managed to sneak into our bed without us noticing. We have caught her a couple of times crawling along the bottom of the bed and round to my side (I think I am the soft touch in the middle of the night, when my resistance is so low I give into her demands!). It is always the same reasons, which is that she wants 'lie down snuggles'. This works either if she gets in her bed or we have to go into her bed and quite often I fall asleep and wake up in the early hours still in her bed.

I know we really need to nip this in the bud and its not good for any of us, but it is really hard. She has never had any problem with the arrival of Harrison and she is a brilliant big sister, but I think the night is when her insecurities are surfacing, especially when she says she doesn't want to sleep on her own. Hopefully things will get a little better when Harrison moves into his own room.

I am so sensitive to Emily's feelings at the moment because it is very hard to juggle her and Harrison. I do try and do things with her but I can't remember the last time it was just us on our own, like it used to be. I think this is what is missing and if Emily is aware of it then so am I. We really need to have some time together on our own, I think that would help us a lot. I know it will be easier when Harrison has moved onto a bottle and I am the freedom to take Emily out for the day without worrying about him.

Last night was the first night Warren and I have been out in a very very long time. In fact I don't think I can remember the last time we went out on our own. It was my friends wedding and we were invited to the wedding reception (not many more of those to go to!).

We had a really great night, drank lots of beer and danced to cheesy wedding disco music. We weren't sure exactly when we were expected back - Judith was babysitting for us - but we figured we were ok to let our hair down and stay till past midnight. When we got home Harrison was up and apparently had been up since about 10, has been unsettled and crying. She had bravely tried to give him a bottle, but of course he refused and had tried to call us just after midnight (we got back about 1am). Unfortunately there was no signal on our phones at the venue and we didn't even get the missed call message until after 2am! Typical.

I was out on Thursday night too, at the Amy Winehouse concert and the same thing happened, only Warren was here so it didn't matter so much. We can hardly believe that he sleeps through without a peep every night and has been for the last couple of months, then on the only two nights out I have had he has been up looking for food! Its as if he knows I am out of the house and is trying to get me back! hehe.