Teething and Pt Walter

On Friday it was time to go off to Pt Walter and meet up with the lovely mums from my online group EB. Here all the babies are lining up for the camera. They were all born in August and I was amazed to see just how much LONGER Harry is than all the other bubs (except Luke of course - he's known as Bam-Bam cos he's so huge! Such a cute baby.). From L-R: Luke, Harriet, Eli, Braedyn, Kobie, Alyssa. Hannah was there with mum Jenny and brother Cam but they left before we thought to get out the cameras. Eli is a day older than Harriet but you can see what monster limbs Harry has in comparison. Everyone was commenting on those legs and arms! She loved her time out on the blankets in the shade of a big old tree, although when I went for my coffee she got a bit unhappy and Jenny looked after her (impressively unperturbed by her screaming too by the way!).


And although today is cold and wet, just last week it was so hot that both Harriet and Squeezmo crashed out on her play area. Squeezmo bagsed the playgym though. Her latest games include making a raspberry sound as you run your finger down her nose (Papa discovered this one just yesterday and it's still a big hit), reading her Baby Einstein 'Cats' book and holding her blanket that Georgia made for her. Well she holds it whilst shoving it with gusto into her mouth and playing with her hands generally. Still no real signs of rolling but she can kick herself almost onto her side. When I help her along and get her right onto her tummy she looks astonished for a few minutes and then cracks it. So cute! The world must really look different from the two positions.



And then the other big news is that she's starting to get her teeth through. Poor little poppet is not very happy about it either. You can feel the nub of her lower left incisor pushing through. And you get to feel it on a number of occasions since her favourite method of controlling the pain is to grab your finger and shove it into her mouth. From there she chomps and chews on it with a rather intense force. If all gums were this powerful then no-one would need dentures.

This photo is from when she was playing at Grandma's house. She was *so* excited when I put my sunglasses on her that she got the giggles and I was able to snap a shot of her giving the big gummy smile.

And finally Papa is back in the good books - she loves to spend time with hin whereas last week every time he went near her she would scream blue murder.

Grandpa gets a Smile

Here's the little cheeky monkey having a laugh with Grandpa on the weekend after the work had been finished on the pergola for the day.

Long and Lean

So the weather's heating up here in Perth (finally!). Harriet has started wearing just her singlet and a nappy some days - luckily we bought a whole pile of size 0 singlets at the Baby & Kids Market a few months back.

Mike and James have started to rip down the old pergola and build the new one this weekend. It already looks a lot better having the other one ripped out (which may tell you something about just how horrible the old one was). Only down side is that the study is going to be pretty warm for the next week before the new tin goes up...but who cares! I'll post some photos when it's all done.
Harriet is making Freud a proud man - she is now at her 'oral' stage. Everything and absolutely everything has to be shoved into the mouth at the moment. Here you can see that not even her good old friend Mr Croak is immune. The scary thing is that she's actually giving him a bit of a tongue-y in that shot...more Freud action.
She's also starting to lose the hair on the sides of her head. She still has the impressively thick mohawk hair that reaches right down to the forehead, but the sides are pretty light on. You can kind of see that in this photo...but really it's just an excuse for me to post a cute photo of her sleeping. She has her dummy in this one. She only uses her dummy for the odd day sleep to calm her down - it normally gets spat out after a few minutes of deep sleep. But she never has it for going down at night. Luckily for us she's in a real routine as far as that's concerned - bedtime is about 7.30/8pm and wake up is around 6-7am.


In this photo Papa gets a chance to stare adoringly at the baby whilst she gets a chance to stare adoringly at her wristband. It make a little rattle sound so can keep her entertained for quite a while.

She has started vocalising quite a bit and although a few of those vocalisations are lovely high-pitched squeals, it is still pretty cute to listen to. She loves to chat to herself, the toys hanging from her playgym, the book I'm reading to her or the fridge. She loves the fridge, mainly because we have a lot of magnets and a dress-up Homer on there. All of it is fascinating to a baby apparently.

She had her 3 month check on Friday and is now 65cms long and 6.5kgs. So long and lean, like we thought. her weight is still in the top percentile bracket but she is just growing too long for her to deposit any real fat stores! Plus the nurse said at this age they tend to get so excited by everything going on around them because they're becoming so alert and they can become distracted whilst feeding and need to be kept quiet during feeding to make sure they have a full one.

They also love to give you a whole pile of pamphlets: 'The Three Month Old' (ideas on how to stimulate and play with your baby), 'Immunisation Days' (turns out she will have hers a little early, on 8th Dec), 'A Baby 3-6 Months' (social changes in your baby), 'Baby's First Foods' (not to be started until 6mths) and we also got a new booklet for her health and immunisation details. We were just 2wks early with her birth to get it and we got the old style book which is yellow and poorly laid out and really awkward to carry around. The new one is pretty spiffy and has a purple cover which makes it extra spunky - our nures said we could have it so yay! Weird the things that make you happy (we're such dorks).

Quizzical Times

Last Friday night we all went out to a quiz night for a local sporting team (haha!! - beware, in joke). Harriet was well prepared, almost falling asleep on the way there and being generally ready to crash for the night. Unfortunately those attending the quiz night didn't care so much for Harriet's sleep routine - we were sitting right in front of a table that seated a bunch of young 'uns who looked like their mums had allowed them to drink that night. Their whole table was covered in beer bottles by about half way through - they were having a grand old time and good on 'em. Only thing was that they were really loud so Harriet couldn't get to sleep. Eventually she crashed against my chest by about 10.30pm when I covered her ears with my arms (in a very uncomfortable position - my muscles were cramping!). By the time we got home she had woekn up again and although she was awesome at the club by just sitting there and being very cute, she flatly refused to go to bed when we got home. She was obviously *so* overstimulated and cried for about 2hrs before falling into a heavy sleep.

For those of you curious about the whole event, Jimbo had written the questions and I was on a team with Nick, Sylvia, Rory and Lottie. Nick and Sylvia left half-way through the rounds so we soldiered on with only three on our team...and ended up coming fourth! Not bad considering we got a grand total of 1/10 in the final sports round.

This is Harry wearing my FAVOURITE outfit that she owns - a cute singlet with a little kitten on the front made from the material that the matching bloomers are in. So cute! Unfortunately she fitted in this singlet for a grand total of two wears. Thank god I snapped a photo of her wearing it. Is it just me or does she look like a kewpie doll in this shot?

She is now wearing size 0 clothes which are supposed to fit babies over 6mths. On Friday she has her visit with the community nurse, so we can get some new measurements to share on here - but let me assure you that she is pretty big. More long than really 'big'.
As you can see it's not all cute smiles and sleeping - she does like to cry every now and then. Here I'm finding the whole thing very funny.

And finally here's a photo of Grandma with Harry. She is sucking her thumb like crazy (Harry, not Grandma). Grandma was being naughty and encouraging her!

The Chiropractor

Well, how could I forgot Harriet's most exciting news from the week? We had been noticing for a few weeks now that she isn't turning her head to the right. If you put toys on her right side she won't play with them and she didn't like to turn her neck. I was worried about proprioceptive deficits and after hearing some really positive reports from the girls on EB (see link on the right hand bar of this site) we decided to pack her off to the chiropractor.

Not knowing any chiropractors, anyone in Perth NOR that's been to one or ever having been to one myself, I had no idea of where to start looking for one. What the hell do you look for / ask about? Thank god for the Yellow Pages. I know it sounds like a totally dodgy way to find a practitioner for any kind of problem but I saw that there was a clinic in Leederville, which is a suburb relatively close to where we live. They had a website and when I looked it over I really liked the photo of the guy on it. This sounds strange but I just didn't want to take Harriet along to a clinic where the chiropractor came out to get us and I just didn't like the look of him/her and wouldn't trust them touching Harriet.

Luckily Lee was as lovely and gentle in real life as his photo suggested on the site. The clinic is very pretty and funky and Lee demonstrated on my wrist just what Harry would be feeling whilst he did an 'adjustment'. For those of you who, like me, had never been to a chiropractor before, what they do is gently (or forcibly, depending on your age and severity of the problem) apply blunt but focussed force onto the lateral process of the spine. He had a feel of Harriet's neck and said she had a lateral deviation at C2. He then demonstrated this by touching her gently in just a way on her neck that made her shy away - poor baby! He laid her down and made the adjustment - we had one session on Wednesday morning and another one today (Friday morning). She needs another one in 10days adn then she's right as rain. Apparently the best times to get babies adjusted are at birth, when they learn to sit and then when they learn to walk. During the whole thing she was lying there on the table looking up at Lee smiling and cooing away. He said today that if she carries on like this then she's going to have men wrapped around her finger!


Then yesterday when she wouldn't sleep during the day, no matter what I tried, I decided that we may as well have a little photo session. So she laid outside on her deliciously gorgeous blanket that Aunty Jennie made for her and snapped away. She has a great drool bubble collection in this close up photo - if you click on this and see it enlarged you can really appreciate the drool collection going on there.

In this photo though Jimbo reckons she looks like an alien. Charming! Well...she does look a little funny. I have a gorgeous photo of her close up but there's a blasted fly sitting on her arm! Is there anyone out there who will volunteer to photoshop the fly out of the picture for me? Go on, airbrushing babies is what this century is all about.

Tummy Time and other Things to Cry About

Well I'm a bit late in posting this week's update in the life of Harriet, sorry about that. She's had a fairly even week, no big news to speak of.
Last week we went to my Pilates instructor's house because her normal room at the hospital was booked out. This meant that the babies were all in a small room together and the mums were out doing the class in the outdoors. Now normally in Pilates Harry just sleeps the hour away and is none the wiser. Unfortunately the new arrangement meant that all of the babies were a lot closer to each other in their prams, which meant they started setting each other off. Once one started to cry, then another went and another. We could hear them from where we were but there are babysitters who are paid to look after them so unless it's really bad you don't have to get up during the class.

Well Harriet is known as the angel child there because she has yet to cry at a class. But I just *knew* that her first time would be a doozy! I heard her break into her insane "I-won't-settle-for-anyone" cry whilst trying to keep a neutral spine during a leg lift. Everyone was saying "Wow, someone's a bit upset in there". I knew it was Harry, went into the room and every single baby was crying and there's Harry being held by one of the old ladies who babysit. I took her, settled her down, and ended up bringing her out to watch me finish off the class. Turns out that every single other baby had cracked it. Harriet slowly woke up finally, sat there looking around her for a few seconds, scrunched up her face and just let rip with the most terrified cry - the babysitters said they nearly died when they heard it! Hee hee, gotta love it. She looked more like this last photo than the previous one. ;o)
In other news I have finally got a baby that will tolerate some tummy time - yay! For those of you not in the baby way right now, there are recommendations that you place your baby on their belly for a few times each day. This is because now that SIDS say that you should have babies on their back all the time they tend to have fairly puny upper body strength (like a few people I know). I was at Grandma's house telling her all about this and described how whenever I put Harriet on her belly she would immediately start *screaming* like an insane woman.

I decided to demonstrate such behaviour to Grandma and of course as soon as I put her on her belly there, she just laid there cooing and smiling at me. Rascal!

So since then she has been getting a little bit of tummy time each day. She has managed to lift her head off a little but most of the time it's just way too much fun to lie there, sucking her fist and gazing around at the world. Since in that position her world involves my bookcase full of vet books and miscellaneous cds I can only surmise that she's interested in becoming a vet or she's a little simple. I think the latter pays better.

Harriet has also starting grabbing everything brushing past her hand...including blankets (ooohhh), toys (cute) and hair (OW!). The dog hanging down in the last couple of photos is from one of the grooming and training girls at work. It normally hangs above her change table but she is SO fixated with this thing that I decided to bring it in to her play area.


Although she was momentarily interested in what I was doing there, she quickly turned her attentions back on to the dog. It has a couple of legs that rattle but in this last photo it looks like she's just given it a bit of an slap up the head to keep the thing quiet. Maybe I should start taking parenting tips from her treatment of the toys.