Hot and Squealy

So not much going on this week. Harriet's getting in to the swing of her solids and has tried banana and sweet potato with success. She still has a lot of breastmilk though!

This is what she thought about playing on the grass in Mt Lawley after a walk in the afternoon one day. You would have thought she'd enjoy herself, but no, it was a cranky day that day so I got a few photos of her eating leaves and this one of her not being so happy, but not so many smiling shots from that particular excursion!

It has been really hot in Perth this last week, so we've been going in to the pool in the afternoons. The other day Grandpa and Nana were over (James' parents) and after a hot hard day working on the house, we all jumped in to the pool. Harriet had a grand old time splashing really hard with both her arms, sending water flying. Yay for water fun!

And to finish off, here are a couple of happy shots. She has had a bad day this week because it feels like there may be another tooth coming through on the bottom gum, but otherwise she has decided to turn the corner in her playtime and start playing quietly on her own! Miracle of miracles! She can sit there and entertain herself with blocks or her Gromit or Mr Croak dolls and not need me to come and lift her up or move something around for her. It is absolute bliss I tell you.

She is still the loudest baby on the block though, making other babies cry wherever she goes with her very loud squeals. At swimming last week she made four other babies cry with her squeals. She gets very excited about something, clenches her fists and does a big grunt in trying to get it. When she realises that she can't get it herself, she lets loose with the high pitched scream/squeal. Honestly, I have yet to meet another baby that comes even close to her volume and pitch, she really is in a league of her own.

Speaking of objects of desire, here she is in photos with two of her favourite things at the moment: Gromit and Squeezmo. Poor Squeezmo! Now that she's nearly on the move (no bum wriggling yet, but lots of to-ing and fro-ing), he is starting to get a little scared. Harriet will spot him from her highchair, reach as far down as she can and give the biggest squeal. Squeeze is decidedly jumpier these days. Hee hee!

Gromit, however, deals with it all in his stride. Squeezmo prefers to check it out from a distance.

The Artistic Temperament

Check out this cheeky monkey! She's seen here at her second feed of solids and is obviously having some real issues...like letting us hold the spoon! She even had a feed the other day where she didn't have a drop of rice cereal on her eating jacket but that record didn't last. In fact it was at the very next feed where she was yet again covered in rice cereal, but she's still quite a bit more 'mannered' about it than some other bubs I've seen photos of. We're both surprised with that!

And it looks like it's not just rice cereal that she likes to shove into her mouth - twigs are apparently quite delicious as well. Here she has a big handful of pine needles that she found on the grass at Cottesloe Beach. We had to reach in and grab a few out from the back of her throat too. Crazy baby.

Today it was 40 degrees and Harry decided that sleep was for the weak. So we soldiered on with trying to do entertaining, baby-bewitching activities all day. I am now officially exhausted, although the baby was fine. We decided to take a leaf out of Nell's daycare (see link in right hand window) and try some finger painting. Out came the paper which I taped down to her highchair tray, and some poster paint colours. Harriet needed a little encouragement to realise that the pain came out of the container and on to her hands, rather than pulling the whole container of paint over herself, but once we got on top of that logistical problem, the artist within was unleashed.


Towards the end though, Harry decided that she was having an angst-ridden moment and didn't know whether she would ever make it in the critics' circle. Once I convinced her to continue through the pain of creation, she rewarded us with a final artwork. But rather than post that photo, I thought I'd leave you with this one of her hands which is much more interesting for non-parental types.

This week Harry has had a return to favour with sleep (apart from today that is). Only the usual 3 wakes per night with a quick return to sleep after feeding each time. I've been feeling great! But this blog is about Harriet, so enough about the Mama.

First Solids!

So we got Harriet all prepared for her first solids. Mmm... organic rice cereal, here we come!

First: the eatin' jacket.
Check.

Second: The rice cereal.
Check.

It requires enough breastmilk to make it a runny consistency.

First spoonful... umm... aren't we supposed to be the ones feeding her? Hee hee, she grabbed the spoon straight away and started directing it towards her mouth.

The act of feeding herself may have been a lot more fun than the initial taste of the rice cereal was though! This is her reaction to the first spoonful.

Quite a few spoonfuls later, there was only about a third of it on the jacket. It seems that the rest of it was quite ok by Harriet's culinary standards. If you look closely you can see that her chin, under her nose, and all over her usual drool patch there is a nice distribution of rice cereal. I think she's going to like this food caper.

Beach Bum Babe

It's 38 degrees. So what would YOU do? That's right! Head to the beach ASAP. With little more than a how-do-you-do, we were off to where the wind hits your hair and the sand blows in your eyes and the fish & chip shop has a line snaking out of it for about a block (no exaggeration). Yep, it's summer in Perth. Proud Papa Jimbo loves to show off the latest addition to the summer line - a cute baby, every fashionista's accesory of choice. The sling is just a bonus.


Getting Harriet ready for the ocean (ie: stripping her down to the birthday suit - cue Club Hoy sing-a-long) I was struck by just how beachy she looks in this pose. Hat on, Bonds singlet hoisted, towel sprawled and white sand framing the photo. It's a tough life being a baby.



Mama Cass (ha ha, yes very funny, especially next to a photo of me in my swimming costume) is shown here enjoying this new, uber-sweet-smoochy baby that we've inherited in the last week. What a peach.

The water ended up being just a little too cold for Harriet (but not for Mama who enjoyed a major swim around and frolicked in the ocean for quite a while on her own...deliciously on her own...gloriously on her OWN!...*ahem* oh how I love my little babe). So she spent the time watching from the sandy shore atop Papa's shoulders where she was found to be contemplating the enormity of Earth and the simultaneous insignificance of her own life as the sun was setting. Or maybe, just maybe, she was sitting up there with a vapid expression on her face staring out aimlessly towards the setting sun. Hmph. Whatever.

But theres nothing just quite as fun as hanging around at home. In her very funky singlet (size 1 thank you very much - we bought it for her to "grow in to" about three weeks ago. *sigh*) that we bought at the markets.

Big Girl's Seat!

So here is Harriet enjoying the pleasures of a rockmelon rind. Mmmm...tasty, huh? Something to really whet the appetite for solids (which we are starting in about 8hrs from now!). The rind is actually great because it has the soft side and the hard side, so she can soothe her upper gums while rasping the bottom one where her teeth are. They've come up at an angle, so it looks like a mountain in there, leading up to a little triangular peak. So cute! Today in the supermarket I wasn't looking but next thing I know there's a bit of a yell and Harry starts crying. I'm pretty sure that she bit down on her own finger, silly babe! Those pesky teeth can really get in the way of sucking your own finger.

The other big news was that on the 14th, Harriet finally got a chance to sit facing forwards in the car! Here she is in her capsule (which by the time of the change-over was beyond a joke for size), giving me the thumbs up to move her across into the big girl seat.

And here she is being slightly trepidatious about the whole experience now that she was finally there. given that the day she had the switch was 38 degrees and she had a few other things to worry about (like keeping her core body temperature slightly below melting), I figure she did really well. And now of ocurse we can swap funny faces whilst driving - she loves it when I turn around at a red light and give her a big raspberry, or do a silly face at her. She gets the giggles on like she's had the best joke ever and then sits there playing happily with some toys (until they're thrown out of the seat or she gets bored again).

But my favourite is how she gets into the position in this photo when she decides she wants to move forward. Uhmm...hello? You need to put those hands into a slightly more useful position for anything to have a chance of moving, Miss Harry. As aerodynamically sound as she may be in that position, it just isn't working for the crawling.

Leading up to Six Month Birthday

Things Harriet Can Do
* Blow raspberries - along with very complicated drool routines, this skill is unsurpassed amongst her peers. She loves to blow a raspberry, watch for your reaction, then blow another forceful one (usually covering your face in drool too) when you're watching her.

*Sit Up - she has been doing this since the 27th of December (so 5mths, 10d old). She started off being able to sit up when supported around the bum and then slowly sliding down to lie on her side with a big grin on her face. Within about two weeks that progressed to her sitting up without any support for extended periods but with the occasional period of 'dropsy'. Since about the end of Jan 06 she has been a fully self-supporting, sitting up machine. The problem with this is that it's ALL she wants to do and now trying to settle her to sleep is difficult because all she wants to do is strain to sit up!

* Grab Stuff - for a little baby she's been quite dextrous for a while. But since Christmas she has become a grabbing monster, leaving little untouched in her wake. Glasses cannot stay on faces, spoons cannot stay in hands, tails cannot stay on cats. All manner of items must enter the drool-infested mouthing cavern that is Harriet. At Christmas she couldn't really work out how to grab the Roll-a-Rounds (little balls) that we bought her, but we just noticed a couple of weeks ago that she now grabs them easily and passes them from hand to hand (and then sends them smashing onto the floor!).

* Make Choices - this probably sound skind of naff, but it's actually very cool. Harriet can make decisions about what she likes or doesn't like, what she wants to do and (very definitely) what she doesn't want to do. Usually we know about the not-want-to-do things, because she'll start screaming when she does them (screaming when we put her in the highchair when in fact she wants to be on us; playing with blocks when she'd rather play with Gromit; playing with the activity board instead of reading a book), but the cool bit is when she reaches out to play with the thing that she isn't holding on to.

* Almost Crawl – and when I mean almost, I mean not quite much at all. She loves to get on to her belly by forward face-planting from a sitting position, rolling over to her side and then on to her front. From there she lifts her bum in the air, does a supermodel wriggle, and…and…umm…well from there she sticks her arms out behind her like she’s about to take off into the air and starts getting upset that she’s not going anywhere! Hahahahaha!!! It’s pretty funny to watch, poor bewildered baby.

* Throw Things – more specifically, from her highchair. On to the ground. With force. We usually hear the *thud* of the items as they make contact with the kitchen floor, but lately she doesn’t yell out when she doesn’t have anything left on her tray. Instead, she just starts banging her open palms against the tray like a prisoner demanding their next meal. A lot of our mornings are now taken up with bending over to pick up toys from the floor, which we don't expect to end anytime soon.

* Interact with Anyone and Everyone – it’s so much fun now. When we turn around to look at her in the car she makes a raspberry or some sort of noise and when we respond she gets a massive grin/giggle. She knows that when I say “1…2…la,la,la,I’m not too interested in playing anymore…ooohh..THREE!” she knows as soon as I pause too long after 2 that I’m playing and starts to get the chuckles on in anticipation of what I’m going to do. She loves playing active games like being thrown in the air, or spun around in circles really fast, or doing what I call ‘muck arounds’, where we just roll around on the bed and she gets thrown in the air/rolled around on the quilt/belly berries etc.

Random Things About Harriet

* She is wearing size 0 and some size 1 clothing. Yes, she is a monster.
* About 10 days ago she was over 9kgs.
* We have no idea how long she is anymore. We just say "very".
* Yes, her eyes are gorgeous.
* Her chuckles can melt hearts the world over (or at the very least the household over).
* She has only really cried-cried (ie: been really upset) a handful of times. Not even that, maybe two or three. The rest of the time she just grizzles.
* When on the change table, she gets so excited, she thrashes her legs and arms around so that they bang against the hard plastic and I worry that she's hurting herself! She doesn't seem to mind.
* In the past couple of days she has started the separation anxiety stage of affairs - if I'm not within eyesight, anxious cries will ensue.
* It can take anywhere from ten minutes to an hour to put her to sleep of an evening, but day sleeps are fine.
* The other day she was playing with her food (ie: squeezing my nipple for her own enjoyment) when a spurt came out and splashed all over her face! Papa Jimbo killed himself laughing.

Healthy Ego

Umm, the title and this photo say it all!

Happy Harriet

Just a few more photos because Great- Grandma was worried Harriet was looking a little solemn in some photos I sent her.

Here she's working out the intricacies of her latest game - blocks. I say "inside" and throw a block in the yellow container. For maybe every two or so that I throw in there Harriet will relinquish one from her mouth and throw it on in as well. You can see her scoping out the yellow container with quite a studied face in this shot! She loves the triangles and by loving them I mean let's-shove-them-into-the-mouth love, not any sort of sophisticated this-shape-is-cool love.

These photos were taken just today, so obviously the two teeth are not so much of a problem now. In fact this evening she has been chuckling away heartily, even though we were out at a friend's house. The chuckles were accomapnied by much pinching, pulling and general grabbing of my face though. OUCH! But, you know, worth it. Man, those chuckles melt me every time. What a darn sucker I am.

I so wish the flash didn't go off in this shot because she is just midway through a massive grin. Cheeky monkey (said in Ross Noble style).








And here she is just grinning away. Lately she has taken to deliberately leaning right forward so that she falls down after sitting up. Then she sort of half rolls on to her side, and starts jigging her legs all over the place. I suppose in a few weeks that might mean she's getting mobile, but for now I'm happy to have my stationary little munchkin.

Funny Face

In the weeks leading up to her 6 month birthday, Harriet doesn't have that much news to report really. So in lieu of actual events, I'm posting some cute photos of her pulling funny faces.

Lately she's taken to sucking in her bottom lip to produce this very funny little 'frog face' appearance - apparently it's common in babies around this age, which is kinda weird in itself!


And look at this tongue, would you! She's sticking it out all over the place, I think it's because yesterday her other tooth broke through the gum as well and she's feling the tips of her teeth against the underside of her tongue. Either that or she doesn't think much of either Mama or Papa at the moment. But the good news is that when her second tooth came through we haven't had any of the dramas from last week. Lucky for me, because last week was the first time I really felt like I was a bit over the whole 'baby thing' - usually after the fourth hour in a row of high-pitched, high-volume squealing very close to my ear. Acatually it is so common now that it doesn't really start to register until my head starts to throb and it's going on for more than a couple of hours straight.

I tell you what, I'll be glad when this teething business decides to take a back seat.

And what on earth, may you ask, is that thing in her mouth? Good question! Since the 'Great Tooth Week' that was last week, Harry loves to chew on down. I was in the drawer taking out a spatula or something when I noticed this cane holder for chopsticks sitting in the drawer. It's weird how your mind starts working with a baby. Normally, I'd see a chopstick holder. On this day, I saw a chomping stick! We call it her 'rusk' and she *loves* to take this with her wherever she goes for some mighty chomping action.

Actually this photo has a little story to it. We were at a friend's party where we didn't know anyone and we saw some babies about Harriet's size all sitting around playing on a blanket. So we head over and sit her down and start chatting with the other parents. Turns out the other babies are 10 and 11 months old - TWICE Harriet's age but the same size! Plus they were all freaked out by the fact that I just sat her up and let her play with some toys - apparentl sitting up and playing with things is pretty good going for a 5.5mth old. Who would have thought? I was genuinely surprised, especially since she's now been sitting up well and truly on her own now for about 3 weeks.

And finally to say goodbye with, this is Harriet's eye-rubbing, sleepy-eyed face that is immediately followed by me quickly swooping her up and placing her on the bed, ready for her sleep. It's very cute: with an upturned palm she rubs her eyes for a bit, then sweeps her fingertips against her cheek.

What's not so cute at all is the usual squealing that accompanies a tired Harry. But then she's sleeping so I forget all about it and fall in love with her...for another few hours until it happens all over again.