Gwen: Lucky number seven
Gwen, you’re seven months old at last.
We’re in full swing preparing for our trip to the US. You’re still growing and changing at a fast pace, and you may even start crawling when we’re overseas!
This month we went to see the local Plunket karitane nurse again, who had much to say on the subject of chunky textures and finger foods. As a result I’ve been giving you some new and wonderful foods like baked beans, rice, carrot sticks, and cheese. You’re eating everything I give you and still wanting more! This has been especially apparent in the last week since you recovered from your first cold.
line cook (on Flickr)
I was surprised you hadn’t gotten a cold before now, because it seems like every other family in all of our coffee groups has had at least one. Perhaps you’ve inherited my stalwart immune system. You were a little congested and whistly for several days, but you seem to be feeling healthy now. I think you really appreciate this, since you’re happier than ever before.
laughing on the rocking horse (on Flickr)
After several weeks where you demonstrated your mastery of rolling all over the house, your physical development is starting to explode again. All of the sudden, you started to sit by yourself without support. You can’t get *into* a sitting position yet, but once put there you’ll stay happily for hours. You’re not far away from crawling…you’re hard at work making smooth transitions between sitting and lying on your stomach/back.
sitting pretty (on Flickr)
When held in a standing position, you love to bounce up and down with your knees! Your legs are never still. We borrowed a Jolly Jumper from Bex, and you think it’s the greatest toy!
I can’t wait to see what you’ll do while we’re visiting your grandparents. At least we’ll have a few extra sets of hands around to keep you occupied! When we get back in nearly a month, there is some work to be done on giving up the dreamfeed…but let’s enjoy the peaceful times while they last.
Today in bullet points
From Gwen:
- Highchair straps taste better than baked beans.
- My socks DO belong in my mouth.
- I sit well by myself.
- I cry when my mummy leaves the room.
- I like watching that funny Grandma on the webcam.
- Mummy said something about having a good day and writing 70 emails. I don’t know what an email is, or how many 70 are, but she was pretty happy. I’m happy when she’s happy, except when I’m unhappy.
- Nana brought me cute blue shoes!
- Daddy is sick and says it’s my fault. I’m sick too, but I cry about it more than he does.
- Mummy says I have a cold, but I don’t feel cold! Most of the time I’m rolling around in front of the gas heater, that pretty colored thing behind the great wiry screen which I love to grab.
- I also love kitty Sam, but he runs away from me. I don’t get it; I squeal with glee, but he just leaves. Mummy pats him anyway.
Gwen: six months
Gwen, you’re six months old!
This month’s newsletter is very late – you’re closer to seven months than to six. The biggest news for this month is our upcoming trip to visit your grandparents in Arizona in a few weeks. It’ll just be you and me, kid, and your father will stay at home to hold down the fort and keep Sam company.
baby's first USB cable
You’re maturing steadily. I predicted last month that you’d be doing all new things by the time you reached six months, and I was definitely right. You’re not crawling yet, but you’re close – rolling continuously all over the floor and doing a “Gwen shuffle” forward while on your stomach. Sometimes you’re even able to sit upright on your own for a minute at a time.
I like Auntie Laurel's shoelaces
Your two bottom teeth arrived! They’re only a few mm tall, but they continue to slowly push upward. You eat three real meals a day (plus breastmilk) of a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and meat. While you’re still having late-evening dreamfeeds with your dad, these have changed from expressed breastmilk to formula. I couldn’t keep up with you any longer!
You have so much energy that your dad and I can scarcely believe you are the same baby who used to stay put. You are responsive, happy, settled, and communicative. You’re turning into a real little person, and it’s so fun to watch.
One of those days
Kiddie spit-up/vomit has appeared on three of my four sweatshirts within the past 16 hours. No wonder I seem to be doing laundry every day!
One of those days
I ran out of toilet paper in not one, but both bathrooms on the same day.
Five months
Gwen, you’re five months old!
Actually, you’ve been five months old for nearly a whole week, and I still didn’t start your newsletter early no matter how many reminders I left for myself. The blame for this is squarely on the new Mac Mini and the open source media center programs Boxee and Plex. These have been great time wasters sinks, and things I’m sure you will take for granted years from now when you are old enough to know what they are.
You are now old enough to be 100% cute. Just this evening you finished your pre-bedtime breastfeed and spent a good 5 minutes staring at my face, poking my lip, and being entertained by my bra. I’m glad to know that those Hotmilk wonders are as good for you as they are for me.
Coffee groups continue to keep us busy and keep me from getting cabin fever. This week we’ll have three: our regular comfy group of ladies from work, at which you are one of the older kids; the local Plunket coffee group, which is a nice cross-section of mums including some with older kids, smaller kids, larger kids, spitty ones, ones with clicky hips, food allergies, and the like; and a small group of us who have been catching up ever since our PEPE (parenting education) course ended a few months ago. This is a typical full-on week and tends to make me much happier than the weeks where I stay at home and do nothing but run through the. housework cycle. Up to this week I would have said that you didn’t care much about these groups, but in the last two days you’ve been so active, happy, and interactive that I now think you are starting to appreciate the kiddie company.
patting Keziah's head at today's coffee group
I suspect your increased activity is due to the solid food you’ve been eating for the last two weeks. I started you perhaps a week or two early (you still haven’t doubled your birthweight, but you were seeming hungry and I thought you’d lost that extrusion reflex), but you love solid food – especially runny fruit! Pears are a big hit. You are definitely moving around more – and making happy noises more – now that you are eating solid food. Hooray!
first day in the new highchair
You roll everywhere now, though not continuously. You mastered rolling from your back to your stomach in an eyeblink, and you’re starting to be able to roll purposefully over to a toy or a structure. Watch out! You’ll be underfoot soon.
I don’t say a whole lot about you at our coffee groups because you are such an angel baby – placid, tolerant, happy, and at ease with a structured routine. Listening to the other mums vent about the things that have gone wrong for them, or the vast number of times they have to get up in the middle of the night, makes me thankful that you sleep from 7pm-7am with only the occasional gurgle or pacifier cry. Last month you adapted to the Baby Whisperer’s 4-hour cycle in about three days, and you are fantastic every day, even on the days where I wish I could get a break from the constant demands of being your mum.
Your father and I continue to try to do occasional things out with each other. This week we went to see Star Trek at the local cinema, and we missed you, but we really needed the time out by ourselves (and science fiction just isn’t your thing). Our marriage, just like any partnership which includes a young baby, has been strained but definitely isn’t stressed. I can’t imagine how much harder life with you would be if your father wasn’t here, or if we weren’t so committed to each other. I know you appreciate this, too, because you have the most fun in your entire day when he gives you a bath.
splashing Dad in the big bath
Keep up the good work, kid, and by next month you’ll be wowing us in new and exciting ways.
Awesome video
We saw it last night on the Stratos channel, a local community channel on which we’ve been watching some very weird short film collections late at night.
Once you’ve seen that video, and been blown away by it, try this one next.
I’ve not been up to much recently. Gwen is behaving well, and we are considering solid food soon. She still doesn’t have any teeth. I have been getting quite frustrated by small things lately and have been very busy with at least four coffee groups of new mums who want to meet on the same three days every week. I am venting out some frustrations by blogging anonymously elsewhere, and the good things in my life mostly involve Gwen, so I don’t want to belabor them here so it doesn’t turn into a “mommy blog”.
If you want a better idea of what I’ve been up to, check out my Friendfeed at this link or in the sidebar on the right. It’s a compilation of my web activity.
Gwen: Four months
Gwen, you’re four months old!
four months old
Since I see you every day, I don’t always appreciate how you are changing all the time. You’re now firmly into the 3-6 month clothes size, and you’re definitely getting heavier! Earlier this month we visited a Plunket karitane nurse, a special kind of nurse who is trained in baby care and flexibility of routines. She said you should generally be able to push yourself up on your arms when on your tummy, and to hold your head up for a good long while. At the time, you weren’t doing that, but it was only a few days before you got the idea. Now you seem to love tummy time (until you get tired; then you hate it!).
tummy time in your flowery non-pink outfit from Sam
With your ease on your tummy, you’ve started to roll over onto your back. You’ve done this a couple of times, but now you seem to stubbornly refuse to do it. Maybe you’ll be back to it in another week or two.
You’re sleeping through the night terribly well! After we put you to bed, and you get the dreamfeed from your father around 10:30, you sleep until about 7:00. This has been blissful. Last week you woke up around 5:30 and talked to yourself for a good 10 minutes until you fell back to sleep. Your father and I listened along sleepily and giggled at how funny you sounded.
sucking your thumb already
You’re still full of smiles for anyone you meet, but especially for us. A particular pleasure is the first glimpse of us when you wake up in the morning; I have never seen such beaming smiles on anyone!
We were hard at work earlier this week beginning your transition to a four-hour feeding routine, something the Baby Whisperer says you’ll need to be able to keep sleeping well. You adjusted within three days with a minimum of fuss, and now you are down to five feeds and three naps in a day. You’re a placid girl who is happy to go with the flow, and never seems to have any gripes related to food.
Last month I couldn’t imagine how I could go back to work. This month, I spent a couple of hours at work for meetings and to collect blood samples. I really enjoyed myself at work, especially the interaction with my past and future colleagues, and now I can start to see how well being a scientist will fit with being a mum. I still can’t quite get enough done in a day to satisfy me, though.
We did something very special with you this month: we went to Kerikeri for a friend’s wedding. This town is a four hour drive north of Auckland. You did so well, sleeping in the car nearly the entire time, and playing and sleeping well at our charming B&B and at the wedding. It was our first car trip as a family, and it went so much better than we had hoped. Thanks for being such a seasoned traveler already.
takeaway food in Russell
You’re hungry enough now that I’m sure solid food will not be too far away, and you’re making a steadily increasing set of amazing coos and gurgles of glee. I can’t wait to see what else you’ll start doing in the next month.
