Dear baby - Month #11

Dear baby,

This is the last time I get to write to you before you turn one. And then I guess you're not technically my baby anymore, although you'll always be my baby. I'll be spitting on my finger and rubbing your face and you'll be telling me off because your employees are looking at me funny, but you'll be my baby and it will all be okay.

This has been your biggest month in many ways - you started crawling, and then you started doing it a lot. You pulled yourself up using the coffee table, and then you started doing it on anything you can, including trouser legs and the big dog. You started sitting up on your knees and doing a lot of bouncing and singing. You stopped breastfeeding and started taking occasional small sips of milk. You slept through every night (I love you!) and worked out how to open sliding doors. You started spending more time away from me as your daddy started taking full responsibility for you on a Friday when he is home from work, and as I had two days back at work. You got baptised and you started saying 'Nan' and 'Gr' (for Grace the dog) (obviously these two aren't related).

I spent equal time marvelling at how much you're growing and trying to ignore it. It's a constant balance, slightly affected by seeing other babies at your age - some seem so much older, and some do seem so much younger. But either way, I managed to get a decent hug this morning when you were ready for a nap earlier than I expected, so my silly hug and baby rocking was actually really really nice.

You are pretty easy care these days - you're always happy when you wake, and you help me as much as you can when we change and dress you by not trying to roll off the change table (at least not fully), by straightening your arms and bending them, and by helping when I ask to you to put your hands up so we can pull your singlet over your head. You're eating all of your breakfast, you knock over a full banana without any problems, and you're up to two pieces of cheese/mushroom/ham/capsicum toast for lunch - although you always manage to get a few pieces to the dogs, shaking your head 'no' when I tell you off, then grinning at me such that I can't help but grin back...

I'm trying to take you out each day that we're home alone, to make sure you get out and see things and hear things. When we're home, we spend a lot of time listening and singing to music - I do sometimes worry that when you learn to speak properly, you'll sing. You do have a real singing voice though, we can usually hear it in the car, just quiet high notes as the car stereo plays. Maybe you'll be a singer when you grow up, and you can honestly say you were singing before you were even a year old.

You're a dancer too - even when you hear break music in a podcast or the radio on at mothers group, you start to wiggle. If you're standing up, you do the thruster that one of your uncles is particularly well known for. If you're sitting up, you bounce on the spot, lifting your butt off the ground. If you're in your highchair, you shift around so that your chair scoots along the tiles. If you're on the floor, you drop to your belly and do  your own kind of 'worm' that always makes people laugh. We only have to say "Dance! Dance! Dance!" and you're off, with a big smile and proud look.

You're an entertainer and you love attention. When you're sitting with us at a family dinner and the attention isn't all turned to you, you'll be sure to let us know you're still there with a big yell. You're not shrill, or even overly loud or shrieky, but just enough to let us know that you need to have all the attention.

You're starting to point, so I'm trying to make sure I up my talking and explaining to encourage this behaviour. I want you to know what things are and to know that curiosity is great and to not be afraid to talk and ask and question. I also want you to work out your place in the world - get an understanding of what's going on around you and how you fit in.

You're also displaying your emotions more. You reach out for who you want to hold you, but quite often it just ends up in a game of 'pass the baby' as you want to be moved from person to person. You're very amorous and have started giving kisses to more of the family, as well as the highchair table and all sorts of random things. You still hold your mouth open to the dogs, and I think it is for kisses.

You are the best of friends with the dogs, even the little dog is getting better with you. I did see him snap the other day when he was cranky, but he wasn't going to get you (I was right there), and I know if he did he wouldn't actually 'get' you. He likes to pretend play with you to make you laugh, he loves to dart past with a sneaky lick (or a more serious one if I'm not right there), and this afternoon he ran straight to the sliding door near your room when you started to cry from your cot. The big dog continues to be your ever faithful companion - she follows you and you follow her. You still grab her collar, but now it's to pull her head towards yours... although you've been doing it less often.

You're a good fit in size zero clothes, although a lot of the winter stuff I bought you are ones so that you can grow in over winter. Your hair is growing and is a light mousy brown, with tufts at the top and mullety feathering at the back. Your eyes are still big and blue and get you lots of comments from strangers, but they are taking on a greenish-grey tint. While you're definitely slimmer than you used to be, you still have a fold in each forearm and multiple rolls and folds in your thighs. You have nubbly little fingers, chubby little toes and roly-poly feet. You still have your seven teeth, with your bottom left one still peeking through the gum but not moving. You have a delightful pudgy butt made for playful smacks when your nappy is changed, when you roll over in the bath, when you're crawling away.

You start dinner at 6pm and have become really good at picking up those little microwaved veggies. You can work your way through a piece of steak without much hassle. You still love your bath, although you're trying your best to make it hard for me to wash you because you want to get straight to the point where you just get to sit and roll around and play with the floating toys. You like to reach for the pages in the book, but you mainly like to open and close the front cover. We can usually only just make it through one book before you get cranky, but I don't want to muck up your schedule by switching things our or earlier.  By the time I've gone back in the bathroom to put away your bath stuff, your room is quiet until the next morning.

And then we start again.

You'll always be my baby, and I'll always be loving you that much more each day.

Sick days

The husband stayed home from work again today - though not to 'babysit', but to deal with his (googled) case of gastro. Ew.

It did raise an interesting point though - he slept in until after 1 (the baby and I went to mothers group) and then he sat on the couch and watched tv. He was hesitant (understandably) to do much with the baby as he doesn't want to make her sick. That said, I had swimming lessons tonight, so he had to do her dinner/bath/bed.

But what would or will happen if/when I get sick? Would he take a day off work to look after her while I'm also at home? Is it reasonable to expect it?

On the one hand, at it's most basic level, there is a sick adult and a well adult to look after the baby (and the sick adult).

But on the other, it's pretty much 'part' of being a mother that you (get to?) do the whole martyr thing...

Stay tuned on this one - the husband commented that she didn't each much dinner, so we might find out sooner than we had hoped to...

More on work

Another day down, another day of win!

All yesterday I had people asking me how I was feeling, how was I going, how was I coping, how hard must it be. In fact, the only hard thing was thinking that I should feel worse.

I have (almost) always enjoyed my job. I have been at the same organisation for almost 10 years now, and I have worked in a few different areas. We've been going through quite a bit of change, so the last 2-3 years have been particularly eventful, and have also let me work to my strengths and learn a lot. I worked hard, and it was always appreciated - in fact, even when I wasn't working that hard, I would still get a lot of positive feedback. That's not to say that there weren't bad days, or days when I stuffed up, but overall I have found work to be very fulfilling.

Leading up to the birth of the baby, I knew it would be hard to be at home. I knew how much of a people person I was, how much I enjoyed working with the people I did, and how much I needed (?) the validation and positive feedback. I was a do-er and I had a great reputation and I gave it my all.

Then all of a sudden I was at home and being yelled at by a tiny human that needed me for everything. All day. Every day.

The baby is in a great place. She sleeps more than 12 hours a night. She only gets a bit whingy on the slide towards dinner time. She eats well. She laughs. She can entertain herself and she can play silly little games. She is happy and fairly easy to cart around. She is a lovely and delightful little bundle of love.

But I've been away from work for over 12 months now, and I know I am ready to come back.

Training day win

I had absolutely nothing to worry about.

I slept terribly - partly because I didn't know what to expect, but also our heater was playing up and at 2:30 in the morning it was set to a balmy 21 degrees.

I was ready to leave before she even woke up, so when she did she was wooshed out of her pyjamas, in to some warm clothes and in to the car for a day with the husbands mum.

She. had. a. ball.

As soon as we got there, she had her arms out for nanna cuddles. And when I walked in the door at the end of the day, I didn't even get a smile or a second glance! That said, I did hear some whinging when I left the room to pack up her things, so she may have missed me a little.

I think a big part of it was knowing that she was in good hands. I knew that even if she got upset, she wouldn't be upset for long. I knew she would have 100% undivided attention and lots of fun and giggles.

And I had a great day back at work!

Training day

Tomorrow I start my gradual return to work.

Following a succesful application process earlier this year, I start a new job when I return to work in August, so I need to do 7 days of training to actually have the qualifications to do the job.

It was hard enough to get my brain in to gear to write the application, heaven help us for actually doing work.

I'm sure it will be fine. I'm sure I'll be okay to get up on time and get dressed and get her fed and then get her to the husband's mum for the day. I'm sure she'll be happy as ever as she gets totally doted on.

But I have no doubt it's going to be an interesting and interesting day....

Donk eye

Oops.

The baby's fascination for drawers continues - there's almost no point us having put velcro on the drawers to keep them closed, as she's worked out how to use velcro (my new strategy is having the less dangerous stuff in the lower drawers).

Last night as I was drying her hair after her bath, she was very insistently rifling through the bottom drawer in the bathroom. I haven't yet gone through and restorted these drawers, so heaven knows what is in there. It took me until today  to realise that when I sit and dry her I can just jam my foot against it to keep it closed, so she was the victim of her own persistence - as she was fighting to get her head away from the towel and see in to the drawer, she threw her head at it and donked her head.

I got to sleep in this morning, so I had a guilty looking husband ask if I had seen her black eye - while he was sitting with her on the couch yesterday afternoon she had rolled and donked her head on the arm of the couch.

It's not a black eye, but she has a little mark there. And I told him that it was likely from the drawer, as I hadn't seen exactly where she donked her head last night. And I told him she wouldn't be our daughter if she wasn't looking neglected (she has a noticeable bruise on her forearm that I have no idea where it came from).

Moving quickly

It's only just been a fortnight since the baby first crawled.

Last Wednesday when we were playing in the husbands parents loungeroom, the baby would only do a few 'crawls' a time. I remember the husbands sisters partner commenting on it as she started - it was a pretty rough crawl.

Cue forward one week, same room in the same house - she is crawling everywhere.

Having her in the same place one week later really demonstrated how quickly she is learning and developing,

She's already shown she can do a short sprint too, so we definitely need to keep a close eye on her.