Her Sole Intention is Learning To Crawl

I came home last night to find we'd hit another milestone, Sophie had worked out how to crawl.

Well, not exactly how to crawl, but she had an idea about how a baby might be able to move across a rug. Like a jigsaw puzzle, she has all the parts and it's only a mattter of time before she puts them together in the right order.

One arm forward.
Then the other arm.
Or was it the leg?
No, pretty sure it was the arm.
Or both arms?
Oh dear, that doesn't feel right.
Splat.
etc.

It's so hard to watch, she knows all the individual parts of crawling, but just can't link them together. And (being a man) all I want to do is to solve her problem, to explain how it all goes together, to take over completely and do it for her. But that's not going to help - I know this because I tried.

I tried demonstrating by crawling across the lawn. I tried sitting down and talking her through the process. I tried encouragement. I moved her arms and legs for her. Then my wife tried to make me realise there can be few things more pitiful than the attempts of a man of 35 trying to teach a six month old baby how to crawl.

So, in spite of my efforts, for the moment we're safe. But the kiddie locks for the cupboards will be taken out of their packaging this weekend and anything mouth sized or "push overable" will be taken off the floor. Six months on, the realisation of what I've done is still finding new ways to hit me.

Feeding time at the London zoo

I think Sophie knew something was up as she was carried to her brand new, sparkling white Ikea highchair.

It was a suspicious look she gave me, but as she sat there banging her spoon I was optimistic that there might be a chance of her trading in Mum's breast for pureed carrot, sweet potato or parsnip. Not the smartest of trades, not one I would have made, but then she was only a baby, and who knows how they think. Maybe my wife and my combined 70 odd years of experience could outwit her six months of baby cunning.

It started well - the picking up, the strapping into the chair and giving her the spoon. But from there, things got a bit harder.

With a lot of experience under my belt I don't usually have a problem finding my mouth and swallowing whatever is deposited, but trying to explain the process is not that easy. The part about putting the spoon in the mouth was fine, My wife and I could mime it and Sophie got the idea pretty quick.

The problem came with what to do once it was in the mouth. Six months of life experience and she had the theory and practice of sucking pretty well sorted. With a breast, pusing the tongue up works perfectly to seal off the mouth and provide the suction. This doesn't work quite so well with a spoon - when you have a spoon in your mouth, pushing up the tongue propels food out of the mouth and down the chin.

mmm

And again

mmm

Fifteen minutes later and we had emptied the container of sweet potato. There was some on Sophie's chin, some on her bib, quite a bit on her highchair, a few small puddles on the floor, a sprinkling on Mum and Dad and possibly some inside Sophie.

Still, she at least she seemed to enjoy the process, and even better was the reward - a good session on mother's breast. I'm not convinced the appropriate reward for eating is more eating (look what it's done to me), but round two awaits us tomorrow.

Sleep Training (Part One)

With the six month mark having passed us by and our travel calendar (consisting of a six-month best of two weekends away in a row) now cleared, my wife and I made the decision to train young Sophie in the art of sleeping by herself.

Up until now, her sleeping cycle has consisted of being rocked and jiggled to sleep over 2-3 hours in about every room of the house as we worked on the principle that she liked moving around - after all, falling asleep in the pushchair was never a problem.

However, all the books said the best way was to put her in her cot and let her fight her way to sleep. The theory behind this is that they need to learn to fall asleep by themselves and the longer they take to learn the more parents have to put up with.

But boy can she scream.

And flip herself on her stomach.

And scream.

And flip over on her back again.

And scream.

And (it seems like magic) she can go to sleep.

There's a transition that only takes a few seconds between being one of the angriest young women on the planet, hating her cot and the uncaring parents who are just stood there watching her struggle and the change to blissing out, mouth open, arms outstretched, and gently snoring.

It's been two nights so far, averaging about two hours each time. We're betting everything on two hours being all she can manage as it's about our limit too.

Perhaps the worst part, though, is that living in London it's not just us who are suffering. I hope the neighbours have as high a tolerence as us right now, if not, we have a bottle of wine and a set of ear plugs for any neighbours who come knocking at the door.

Weekend in Sweden

Last weekend it was Yorkshire, this weekend we've come back from a plane trip to visit friends in Sweden - from not having left the house for the last couple of months, we've turned into social animals.

But it was a different type of social.

Last time we caught up with them, the talk was about old friends and drinking. This time, the conversation was kids, kids, kids. Our friends have a 12 month old, so we got to see first hand some of what is coming, and for the most part it was good, especially in Sweden, where the rights parents get are incredible.

Some of the things I am looking forward to:

• Sophie learning to walk
• eating solids
  

Some of the things I'm not looking forward to

• Sophie learning to walk
• eating solids
• personality continuing to emerge
  

I think each of these deserve a post of their own, but to state the obvious, the best and the worst are the same things.

While Sophie can cause a mess at 6 months, the damage a twelve month old can do is on a different scale all together. Not only can they move heavier objects and do it more quickly, they have the added danger of being mobile.

At the moment, Sophie is sitting happily and can roll over, but she hasn't go the hang of crawling. It's great to have her stay basically where she's put. Once walking is a posibillty, it only takes seconds for them to disappear, or empty a cupboard or basically destroy a room.

Eating is the same story. I smiled when I saw the plastic raincoat in the baby shop, "knowing" that while Sophie can dribble a lot, apart from the odd baby barf, she's never maanged to cover herself in food completely. With out friend's young son this weekend I saw it was possible - not only possible, but probable.

But gosh, he's got a real personality. He knows what he likes and is starting to resist any attempt to tell him what he should like. At the same time, he's a real copycat, whenever his Dad touches something on the stereo, he does too, whenever his Dad grabs a beer from the fridge, he tries to as well and even when his Dad picks something up, he does the same (unless it's a toy to tidy up by putting it back in the basket!).

All these things to come. Six months have gone by and our bundle of joy is now eight kilos of fast growing baby. I get the feeling tat whatever happens next is going to happen too fast and not fast enough ...

A Yorkshire Solution to Teething

We've just got back from three days in Yorkshire visiting my sister in law, three of the wettest summer (or winter) days I've had in a long time. Arriving in the station, it was about 30 seconds before I had someone call me "duck". I think the ducks were more in their element that us - they have waterproof feathers, we had to dig out the raincoats.

We felt sure the time was right to leave London, Wimbledon had been fairly dry and tradition said it was due for a drenching, but instead we seemed to take most of the weather north with us. The rain ruled out most of our ideas for walking through gardens and all the outdoor things we had planned so the search was on for other pursuits.

Ever since seeing it on the TV ad (for double glazing, I think) one of my goals was to visit the Tan Hill Inn - the highest pub in Britain. So with a lot of sweet talking and promises to get up and rock the baby, to change nappies on demand and all sorts of other things I'm hoping won't be remembered, we set out on a miserable day to drive through the moors to drink a pint on top of the world.

Yorkshire is an amazing place, there must be hundreds of small villages, all perfect pictures with stone houses and stone walls and flowers everywhere. It's like the locals in every village had put on some kind of special decoration for us tourists whizzing through on our cars.

It was our first time in a car for a long while, and Sophie loved it. There's something about cars and babies that just puts them right to sleep and all her toothing troubles were forgotten as we sped along. It was just a pity we did have to stop every now and again, becuase she had some sort of 6th sense that woke her up the second we stopped.

Not sure whether it was teething or being in a new place, she just doesn't like anything at the moment. But there was one other time she quietened down, and I should know by now that's she's becoming one of those children that when it's quiet, you have to worry.

I was sitting there enjoying my pint and watching the driving rain against the (new double glazed!) windows when I spied the above picture out of the corner of my eye. Cold is meant to make gums feel better, so I guess whether it comes from an official, specially designed toy that you put in the freezer or a bottle the landlord puts in the fridge, the principle is the same.

So it's a moral dilemma. On the plus side, it keeps her quiet, and it keeps Dad busy making sure there are enough cold empty bottles to keep her happy. On the negative side, there are some people who might take this the wrong way, and the government is coming up with more drinking restrictions and proclamations (though this might be more of a reason to go ahead with my new solution).

Yep, it's a tricky situation, I think I'll have another pint while I think about it ...

Back on the Blog

I've just looked at the last blog entry and it's been over a month since I last wrote something, so it's time to get back on the horse.

I'm starting to realise again that life goes on regardless and that I need to take some time out occasionally to note some of the funny things that are constantly happening as my daughter grows up.

At the time, they're "just one of those things" but over the months (and maybe even the years if my typing finger stands up to it) I'm going to try and make them build up to something special.