spy the harriet

Hi Guys

Here are some photos of Harriet that have been cluttering up my computer. Goddamn if she isn't the cutest baby ever.






In this one you can see how much she takes after her Papa! She's playing on the playmat that the girls from work bought for me as a leaving present. Harriet *loves* it and usually has a play on there in between feeds. Since she turned 4wks old she has become very adept at batting the toys that hang down - she's very proud of herself.








This photo was taken last night. She started off sleeping on Papa's chest and gradually slid down...down...down until finally she ended up sitting beside him like this! She didn't even wake up to our loud laughter!

























This is a highly attractive photo of Harriet just out from the bath. She's wearing this cute towel hood that Lou sent her in a parcel and it has a gorgeous embroidered giraffe on it. I think she looks like she's been out on the town in this photo.





Doesn't she look peaceful in this photo? It was taken when I was on my way home from a power walk down to Mt Lawley (neighbouring suburb). I'd taken along a book cos I thought it was such a beautiful day that I would sit in the park on the way home and enjoy the sunshine. This is what she looked like when I stopped the pram.
























This photo was taken about half a minute after the previous one. I thought to myself "Aww, what a cutie, she is having a little yawn". I took this photo and then opened my book (in case anyone is interested I'm attempting to read Wild Swans but it is a very stop-start process at the moment as I'm sure you can imagine!).



















Of course I don't know what needs to happen before I finally learn. I mean, come on, as if she was going to look that cute for that long! The yawn morphed immediately into a full-bellowed cry and I had to race home with a screaming baby. Horrible, incompetent mother that I am.









So there are some photos of our little chubby-cheeked monkey. People keep asking us whether she is a 'good' baby'. I'm not too sure what that means, but as far as sleep goes we've been so lucky. She's had a couple of bad days where she won't settle and in week 2 she had a number of nights where she didn't really know whether it was day or night so had to be settled all night and would then sleep all day (*sigh*!!). But her idea of a routine is to go to sleep at 10pm after a feed, fall asleep and wake for her feeds at about 1am, 3am and 5am. She falls asleep straight after these and so do I! During the day she enjoys walks out with her Mama, playing on the playmat and with any of her number of toys. Aunty Bernadette sent her a very cool 'Mr Croak' toy that she has just become aware of and she stares at his drunken face for ages.

As for me, I wrote up my birth story but it ended up being (gulp) 8.5 A4 pages in Word, so I figured that no-one would want to read that epic. Will have to write up an abridged version for the blog (and without too many gory details for those faint at heart). Suffice to say in short that the labour was actually really empowering and I, bizarrely enough, found the whole experience fantastic! I laboured at home for 9hrs (12am to 9am) and when I arrived at the hospital I was fully dilated and the delivery occured at 10.02am. I was the talk of the midwives because they couldn't remember the last time someone waited until they were fully dilated to come into the hospital. So I only used the TENS machine and some gas during the pushing part and that was it, no other drugs. Yay for me, just like I wanted!

The freakiest thing about having a baby is definitely the language associated with it. Seriously. You prepare yourself for most other stuff when you're pregnant but then suddenly one day you have to ring up the paediatrician to book in your check up and you find yourself for the first time saying the words "my daughter, Harriet Ryder" out loud. WOH! That really and truly freaked me out. I was almost as freaked out as when Jimbo said to me "One day I'd really like to have a baby". Plus people start referring to you as 'the mother'. A total spin out I tell you.

The cats are just slowly coming around to the change in the house. Smellie took a bit longer than Squeezmo, but the other night I got to give Smell-Smell heaps of love on the lounge and she has since come into the bedroom and slept at the foot of the bed in her normal position which is great.

Other details that people may be interested in - I'm exclusively breastfeeding and will express once I'm back at work. I go back to work in about 4wks (when she is 8wks old) for a Thursday and every second Sunday shift. Jan (James' mum) will look after her on the weekday and Jimbo will obviously look after her on the Sunday. We can differentiate between Harriet's major cries now which is a relief - about to do a poo or fart is my fave one, she starts kicking those legs like crazy and has a really whingy sort of cry, not very loud. Afterwards she does the best grunts. This girl is a major snorer/grunter! So cute.

Any other questions? Just leave a comment!