wow, really, that long huh

Yep, it's been a long time between posts. no excuses. Well a lot of excuses. It all seemed a bit too much for a while but I miss having a record of all the crazy things our little girl is doing. Like today, she told us "potty, potty", so I took her to her potty and she did a poo in it. Woohoo, good onya mate.
So what has the little one been up to.
We left the little one at about eight months old and boy a lot has happened since then. In the words of Sir Cliff, "I got myself a crying talking sleeping walking little girl".
Lets get the milestones out of the way: Teeth were acquired along the way and she enjoys her food and feeding herself, the first photo was taken in Gemma's ninth month and her toofy grin can be seen in her tenth month. The little one stood at around ten months and took her first tentative steps by herself at 11 and a half months. So the clever little girl was able to walk by her first birthday.
Her birthday had an Alice in Wonderland - Mad Hatters theme, 'cause I do sometimes feel like I've fallen down the rabbit hole. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Her first proper repeatable word was "bird", maybe a future 'twitcher' on our hands. She loves her birds still, she knows quite a few, with peacocks being her favourite. Again getting ahead of myself. Back to ten months.
Well it's pretty obvious she was enjoying hommus, and playing with dirt. Dirt, no señor I do not know anything of this dirt that you speak of...


She also enjoyed hanging out in the garden in her eleventh month. Which is really her mum's dreams coming true, her daughter picking food straight from the plant. And as you can see she enjoys playing in water - size doesn't matter. Next post I will fill you in on the 12 month till now.

Baby yoga

One of the nicest things my mums group does is yoga. We all shuffle along to Land of Yoga and restore our serenity, thanks Toby. Gemma is pretty interested in all this and the mum who took this photo assures me that she had the movements all down.

(Things are a little bit more complicated now as she has discovered crawling - as of two days ago! She now wants to go find other babies in the room, claw at their eyes and nibble on their plump little hands. So Mum has to have one eye on her inner chakras and the other on the crawling, chewing child)

Long time between drinks

Ok, yes, it has been too long since my last post. Who would have thought that one day a week of work could make me so busy. Yes, as of about four or five weeks ago I started back at work one day a week. Which is great! I am lucky in that I work with a great bunch of people and it is good to catch up with everyone again. It is not without it's downside however; as I am only working one day a week I am still breastfeeding and therefore express a couple of times on the day I am at work. At least they have a room set up for this sort of thing, but I still find it pretty darn unpleasant. Oh well, not too much longer.

On my day at work her dad looks after her. Which was a bit stressfull the first day, there was laughter there were tears (but only for a second I am assured), but I think they are both getting used to it now. Rico is enjoying time with his little girl (especially last Tuesday when apparently there was a lot of happy squealing) and she gets to hang with her daddy.

We love solids!

Food, glorious food. In no time at all it will be pizza and popcorn in front of the tv, but for now she is joining most of the world's population in enjoying rice. Rice cereal with breast milk, seems to be her breakfast of choice/ only choice. She has also discovered the delights of mushy pumpkin, carrots, and cauliflower. Yum!

Mum was a lot happier too as Gemma started sleeping longer after a period of waking up more frequently in the night - a sign perhaps that she was ready for a bit more than just the boob. So after solids her last feed has gone to around 7.30, giving mum a relaxing evening and early to bed. However, last night we were back to the old 10.30 feed. Darn it.

Fathers' day

We had plans of walks in the pram, visits to creperies and lots of other fun activities, basking in the warm glow of happy family life, like a hallmark card come to life. But all that went down the proverbial loo when our little one got her first cold! It all started with a sniff, then a sob then a sniff sniff sniff, sob sob sob, and it was all downhill from there. I must say though that the girl was a little trooper. Even through her snotty nose and red runny eyes she could still muster a smile. And really she could have been a lot more sooky than she actually was. So after a frantic, "what do we do?", tilting the bed, sucking out her snot and a run to the chemist for a humidifier, we settled in to wait it out. We are still waiting...

Gemma's first look

Gemma: "Wow, I'm ridiculously good-looking, perhaps I could do that for a career...be professionally good-looking". I better practice my best look, I like to call it Blue Steel. Ha Ha, just kidding!

Happy as a persimmon in poo

People that know me know that I happen to have an affection for fruit trees, the more I can manage to cram in, the happier I am. This can sometimes cause problems between Rico "I just want some space to hit the cricket ball" and myself. But sometimes our wishes can coincide. See, Rico loves eating persimmons and I love planting persimmons, so yay, compromise time. So on the afore-posted trip, I loaded up the back of the car with some quality, aged cow poo (bloody cheap at 2 bucks a bag!) and was able to get away with causing a somwhat ripe smell in the car for a few days, because "it was all for the persimmon!". (Oh, all those other bags, well I need some for the other trees, my tomatoes, my roses....but mainly for the persimmon)

Anyway, we had a fun time planting the new (non-astringent) persimmon with little Gemma. So hopefully when she's big enough to pick 'em, the tree will be big enough to produce 'em. (Got to get her on my side - fruit trees are ace! - early).