Talking Nonsense

This is Harriet about to 'pen' her latest post. I had to inform her that we're now in the digital age and that pens are no longer required. All she has to do is bash a few keys on the keyboard and communication can happen across the globe! After all that discussion she just looked at me, looked down at the rug and started eating some leaves, so maybe the information superhighway discussion was a little premature.





A week or so ago Scott came over to Perth for business and managed to squeeze in a little Jimbo, Cass and Harriet time. We went down to the Barrack St Jetty where there is a gorgeous vegetarian Indian buffet restaurant where you pay what you can (yep, you read that correctly!). It was a lovely day outside and Harriet was in fine form, having her own special lunch (mmm... prunes with natural yoghurt). We snapped some cute photos of her with us but failed to hand her over to Uncle Scott for a photo with him! We are either truly hopeless parents or just greedy and like to have her all to ourselves.

In other news, Harriet has had a shocking couple of nights sleep. The other day she wouldn't be off me for about 36hrs. I had to try and sleep sitting up because everytime I went to lay her down she screamed. And I don't just mean she cried out loudly, I mean she absolutely screamed bloody murder. We even rang the chiro on Anzac Day to come out and check that she was ok after her adjustment (she was). Then yesterday she didn't sleep for 12hrs and was totally hysterical. We went out to get our heads clear and try to calm her down, which seemed to work. She's such a smile tramp, each store/cafe we went in to she grinned like crazy at anyone who looked her way. Except for us of course, we were banished from smileland.


But one thing we did notice was that she was practising moving her mouth around in a strange manner all day, and was obviously watching the way that we were moving our mouths when we talked (she has ample opportunity to watch me do that, I know). She has been babbling heaps the past three days and then this morning we were all playing in bed. James leant over and looked at her and said 'Papa'. She looked him straight back and said, in the same cadence 'Papa'! It wasn't quite that clear and sounded a little more like 'Baba', but it was directed straight at James and said in the exact same manner as he had just spoken to her. Pretty cool hey! Then James and Harriet left the room and she said 'Mama' when I was no longer in sight. Now I didn;t see this one but I can assure you that the next time she says something like that to me I will be a blubbering mess. SHUT UP! I'm allowed to be mushy if I want to, ok?

Standing, Smiles, Buddha and Babes

Well what to report about Harriet?

Food (in the form of solids) has been continuing. She has eaten zucchini, tofu, green beans, baked beans, broccoli, tomato, bread, Vegemite, rusks, apple, pear, natural yoghurt, avocado. I can't think of all of the stuff she's had just now, but that's most of it. Her faves have definitely been the pears and yoghurt, although grilled tomato was such a hit that we had to grill about three tomatoes one morning just to keep up with her!

Play lately involves a whole lot of turning things over. We're not too sure what it is about this girl, but whenever she's given a toy (or any object really) she immediately wants to turn it upside down to play with it! Weirdo. Her favourite toy is definitely the 'croc' and the activity board that Grandma got her for Christmas. She also is fascinated by tags - any toy that has a tag on it has its immediate use waylaid whilst she plays with the tag for hours on end.

Milestones - well she is standing with support (albeit minimal) all the time, in fact she gets mighty cranky if there's time when she's not standing! There's also a lot of rocking whilst propped up on all fours, so she may be moving on the ground sometime soon, although we have been thinking that for a while now. Her top tooth on the right has popped through the gum too, so she's going to have an interesting 'fang' look for a while - I'm hoping to get some pretty good photos of that smile while it lasts.




We went to the baby & kids market the other week and bought a cool toy that turns, makes noise and basically encompasses everything a baby could need. Here she is enjoying it with Papa Jimbo - check out that look of amazement!

And here she is looking cute as ever when we went to the Buddha Birthday celebrations in downtown Perth. It was boiling hot and in typical Perth manner there was not a skerrick of shade to be found anywhere on the grounds. Harriet was fine though until the guy talking over the loudspeaker talked just a little TOO loudly, making her jump out of her skin and start wailing, just as everyone was lining up in a solemn manner. *grin*


And just in case anyone out there doubted her standing ability, this is a shot of her in typical stand up mode - trying to look into/over whatever it is she's holding onto. Weirdo.

Gotta run, we are running late for her next chiro appointment. See you later!

Winners are Grinners!

Yesterday we went to the local primary school fete. It rocked! There were camel rides, laser games for the kiddywinks, and a whole pile of stuff. I entered the raffle for the baby goods and I won!

It was pretty funny because the phone rang at 3.20pm and I said to James "I bet that was the lady from the raffle". And it was! I just knew that I was going to win this basket for some reason. Two people pushed in front of me to write their entries down and it didn't bother me cos I just knew I was going to have the winning ticket. Yay for me!


One of the coolest things about the prize was that the basket was so darn big that Harriet could sit in there and play in it. And just like everyone says, she was much more interested in the wrapping than in the cool toys she scored.


Although we did finally get her to pay some attention to the toys. She also watched the baby dvd that was in there and she got WAY too overstimulated and started screaming at the tv. It would have been pretty funny if it wasn't for the fact that she'd only had about 15mins sleep all day and had been pretty squealy anyway. *sigh*

But all hail me - the 2006 RAFFLE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD!

Deborah Conway gig

A couple of weekends ago Deborah Conway was playing a free gig down by the river in South Perth, supported by The Bank Holidays. We went down with a few little picnic things and had an absolutely gorgeous evening. The weather was perfect, Harriet loved the music and lights, and Jimbo was relieved not to have to work on the house for the first weekend in about two years.


Here’s Harriet showing her appreciation for Deb Conway.

And here she is sharing a joke with Papa. I love this photo!


The next morning we had to get out of the house so that our agent, Jeff, could show a potential buyer through. So what better opportunity to go to the café for breakfast? Harriet could feel the tension in the air though, and stared pensively into the distance in hope that an offer would be made. And it was! YAY!

Old Off-line Post 1

So the internet is down. Our home phone is off, and still I find myself sitting here, writing up blog entries. What a nerd I hear you exclaim! Well, yeah. But it’s been two weeks now and I don’t want to forget all the stuff that Harry has been up to, so I thought I’d write it down here and post it later when I can. You can get the Harriet Retrospective.

Well we met up with the girls from EB the other week down at Kings Park which was fun. Harry is here in the car, ready to take off. You can see in this photo our innovative intravehicular infant entertainment system – a set of links permanently linked to the headrest of the passenger seat. This way she always has something to keep her occupied while she’s in the car. And how she loves those links! They get a chewin’, a fiddlin’, a yellin’ and essentially a whole lot of lovin’. Who ever thought that plastic rings could be so darn exciting?

When we got to the park the other babies were soon alerted to Harriet’s presence by her well-practised roar /yell /squeal of excitement at seeing other little people around her. I think she only made two of the babies cry, so she’s getting better! Poor Elias made the mistake of getting stuck next to Harriet and you can see here that Harry thought his head made a great new toy. *sigh* You just can’t take this girl anywhere.


The other major item on the agenda at our place lately has been the renovations on the house prior to putting it on the market. Harry came out to give us all a supervisory glance the other morning. We had to start work at 7am to avoid the ridiculous heat of the day, so she thought “Why bother with this clothing you speak of?”. Well, it’s a nice thought if you’re in the pram, but not so nice a thought if you’re kneeling down in the dirt. Ewww…. Enough said of that. In this photo she was laughing at Nanna, but Gromit (whose ear can just be glimpsed in the bottom left of the photo) is never far behind for a laugh either.

And who thinks she’s an awesome baby now? A few weeks ago she graduated from the reclined baby seat in the trolley to sitting up big girl style. Wow! I had her in the sling to start off with, but she was squirming around and trying to grab everything off the shelves if she got within eyesight of even the most revolting products (making a grab for the Spam tin does not bode well for this vegetarian household). So into the trolley she went – and she was quite pleased with herself as you can see. And can I just mention that next time you see someone taking a photo of her baby in a trolley, there’s no need to think it’s hilarious and start sniggering/openly mocking her. I mean really people, these things are momentous events that need, nay, MUST be captured for posterity.

Mike and Jan had their friends Marion and Sally over from England for two weeks. And what do the English like to do as soon as they step foot on Australian soil? Burn themselves to a crisp of course. So it was straight off to the beach to meet up with them and for a few oohs and aahhs over the gorgeous Harriet. She went for her first dip in the ocean (that is, a proper swim rather than just dabbling her feet) and loved it. She had a little incident with her long fingernails and forehead from the night before as you can see in the photo. One of the problems with cutting her nails is that she just won’t let me cut them! She starts grabbing for the nail trimmer and screams like a crazy woman if she can’t grasp it straight away. So I get maybe a ten second grace period before I have to relinquish the trimmers to her grubby little hand. In that time I tend to manage a couple of fingernails (I’m getting pretty quick) but there’s no way I can manage the whole hand. So every now and then she has the odd scratch on her face – just adds character I say. A whole lot better than being dropped face first on to an open bar heater when you’re six months old.

Old, Off-line Post 2

And she still loves her blocks. Here she’s just about to shove that piece of red plastic as far in to her mouth as is humanly possible. Go Harry! We’re just so proud of her. What a genteel lass.








And I’m not too sure what it is about me with the painting and the really really hot days but they do seem to coincide. Here it was a lot easier to just strip her off and let her go for it with the paint. And you can see that Harry lost no time whatsoever in getting straight into it. Another masterpiece ensued.

Here Harriet is just being cute. I may or may not have mentioned prior to this just how unbiased I am. *cough*

And as usual, a big laughing face is never out of the question. See all that stuff on her singlet? And in her mouth? Well…just imagine that it was everywhere else as well. In fact just produce the mental image of a water balloon chock-a-block full of soggy bread being exploded inside your kitchen and you’ll know why Jimbo and I both sing the praises of baby wipes. That lethal instrument in her hand is a rusk (aka weapon of mass grossness).


As you may remember from posts past, I did go to my local mothers’ group. Now it’s not as scary and Stepford-sounding as you may think. This is the Gang of Four that the group produced. From L-R: Claire & Mia, Cass & Harriet, Olivia & Anjelique and Jodie& Xavier. This was taken down at our local café when Jodie and Xavier were flying out of Perth to go and stay in Hobart for a few months. Xavier was Harry’s boyfriend, they tended to reach a lot of similar milestones together (except for teeth and hair! Jodie called her little boy ‘gummy and bald’) and they had similar temperaments (ie: hyperactive).

A Picture

Here's a picture that Cass just sent me of Harry playing in the park. It was taken with her mobile so it's not the greatest quality, but, since the blog has been starved of photos of late I'm sure it's better than nothing!

Telstra: Yet More Evil

Just letting you know that we're still waiting on Telstra to fix the phone. I spoke to them this morning and they claimed it will be today or tomorrow. That's yet to be seen, of course. As soon as the connection comes back on, I'm sure Cass will post a proper update.