Look at how beautiful she is!
That's to make up for all that negative stuff in the previous post. I took it today and even though she's in pain with her tooth and all, she can still manage to be totally gorgeous with absolutely no trouble whatsoever.
I'm posting these photos in a vain effort to try and remember the Harriet that I knew and loved. For that old Harriet has forsaken me; left me alone and aghast at this new, foreign Harriet who now inhabits our domain.
Our story begins with a rather broken night's sleep. In fact it was broken every hour by the sound of a rather anguished baby crying out. Nothing would console her except the boob, so I spent most of the night awake with one breast rather attractively slung out to the side like a badly holstered gun. Needless to say, the following day I was rather tired and thought Harry was just pretty tired as well, because she was moderately more squealy and upset than usual. No problem though, after one bad night's sleep (which we haven't had for a long time mind you) she usually does well the next night to compensate. No such luck. The second night she woke every hour again, except this time she woke screaming on a few occasions and at 2am decided to wake and have a little babble about the world to anyone who'd care to listen. I can tell you, I didn't care to listen much but had no real choice given that my anatomy was laid out in such a way that forced my wakefulness.
Then on the third day, she spent the whole day SQUEALING and SCREAMING. Did I mention that she spent the whole day SCREAMING and SQUEALING? Just wanted to make sure. So by about 2pm I am ready to kill, and make a beeline for the outdoors, hoping against hope that Harriet will actually go to sleep finally. And she does. But by the time we get close to home, she awakens and the screaming this time is hysterical. When we get to the front door of the house and I have the opportunity to take her out to give her some cuddling (as opposed to in-pram cuddling which is quite inferior), I have her face less than an inch from my own and on the next scream realise that I can see a tooth, like, the whole tooth, dentine and all, sitting in the gum.
Well poor Harriet won't know what to do with herself - her favourite great-Grandma has taken to the skies and left her high and dry. 
Who will she turn to for her happy lap sitting duties? Who will lavish attention on her at almost the same level as her Mama? Who will build photo shrines to her? Well, we hope Great-Grandma can still continue to do some of those via distance , but for the most part, Harriet will miss her Great Grandma a lot. As will I. 
So we thought we'd better post a photo of her enjoying her highchair - check out the pose, would you! She's wearing the last suit in the drawer on washing day in these shots. It's just a little too pink for our liking.
And this shot in the boomerang pillow was when she still needed a little support to sit up. But I love it, even though it's blurry (stoopid camera) cos she's so obviously stoked to be sitting up at all. She still is, she loves it!
Ok, so this is how we start out at breakfast.
Step 3.) In the process of avoiding lunging arm from baby, manage to avoid my mouth altogether. As the spoon misses my mouth, it goes somewhere in the zone of Harriet's flying arms. The spoon nearly goes flying, however its contents are not so stationary. Smellie enters the picture lower right corner.
Step 4.) Now have lessened public area in which to try and extend arm for breakfast to get to mouth now that Smellie is trying to eat the missed contents from the spoon. Harriet is now focused intently on the spoon coming towards my mouth. Repeat Steps 1 - 4. Physically remove baby from vicinity if coffee (decaffeinated, unfortunately) is ever to make it to my mouth without major burns to anyone involved.
And look at how beautiful she is when she's not trying to grab everything within sight. She looks particularly gorgeous in white.
And as promised, I finally managed to get a photo of the number '2' on her left eyelid. I told you it was there! I just forgot to photograph it for a while and then today I was watching her sleep (*ahem* uhmm, I was, err...worried about her breathing...and...oh shut up) and finally remembered to take a photo of it while she slept.
Sorry, but you cannot tell me that we don't have the cutest little babe around. Check out that grin, would you! She was in full smile-a-rama mode in this shot. Unbelievably the day was 40 degrees and we had three other mums and their babies around for a little lunch. We had the fan outside, fruit, cold water, you name it. Seems like a lifetime ago since I'm sitting here watching rain pour down outside and Harriet is safely tucked up in a warm blanket for her day sleep.
She's generally been a very happy baby lately, although having said that yesterday she was a bit grumpy. But looking at these photos you wouldn't know it and really, by grumpy I mean she just doesn't settle like she normally does. Although her latest trick is waking up at 4am almost on the dot and lying back chuckling, talking to herself and playing with her feet. Sure, it's cute. But most of the time Papa Jimbo and I can barely keep our eyes open enough to watch her, let alone join in and play.
As for mobility issues, the past few days have seen Harriet do a worm-like 'crawl' across the bed on her tummy. She also loves lifting herself right up on her full arms and then gets tired two seconds later and flops down to resting on her forearms. As for potential crawling, that too is on the way. When she is on her belly she is now pushing her bum right up in the air and wriggling her little knees to get them under. Oh and the cats should beware - she has started to seek them out. Well kind of anyway; this morning when she was worming her way across the bed she made a beeline for where Squeezmo was lying and plunged her little hand down into his plush fur. Squeeze didn't seem to mind so much, he just casually stretched out, moved to a slow stand and strolled away. I think it's going to progress to a quick trot in direct proportion to Harriet's mobility.
For some unfathomable reason, Harriet's favourite, favourite toy in the whole world (of course her whole world is comprised of the house and the car, but there you go), is this little helium foil balloon that came from some friends along with the flowers to congratulate us on her birth (Hi TVR-ers!). She LOVES this thing and stares longingly at it when we're changing her. If we have the time it comes down for a play and here you can see Harriet doing a little weights work with it. She smashes it up to her mouth, pushes it up into the air, runs her fingers along it, you name it, she does it. What is it about this balloon?
In this photo she's having a grand old time hanging out with Aunty Greta. We've been pretty social lately and Harriet has taken it all in her stride. Leos hey, who would have thought it? /sarcasm
Harriet had her first visit to the beach the other night - can you believe that it has been so mild in Perth that it's taken until now for us to even venture down there? And even when we got there it was so windy and no-one was swimming, so I just popped Harry's feet in the water and watched Greta go crashing through the waves to emerge shivering but invigorated. Harriet seemed rather nonplussed by the image of supposedly neverending horizon, the spray of salt water hitting her face and the way her little feet kept plunging further below into the soft sand. Mind you we weren't down by the water for very long and resorted to sitting on the grass pretty quickly so there wasn't much of a chance to take it all in.
This photo shows you just exactly what Harry should have been doing on NYE. Instead she decided to be at her most contentious - staying awake from 8pm until 4am! She hasn't been like that since she was a proper little baby, so it was a shock to the system. Papa drove her around for an hour and kept up the care whilst I had a sleep since I had to work the next morning. She obviously wants to party on down but with old stick-in-the-muds like us for parents (read: over the festive season) she didn't get much of an option and had to resort to watching people try to get away with driving drunk after midnight.
The other big news in the house of HD is the foot. Move over fist because the foot is making big news. Everytime she's placed on her back now she'll start rocking her feet up towards her mouth until they can get as wedged in there as they can. It's pretty funny to watch and helps with taking nappies off but a bit of an impediment to trying to put one back on!
