Western Picnics and Vegan Lunches

With yet more incredibly gorgeous weather gracing our path, Saturday was picnic day! We went out to the wild (north)west to visit Michelle and Erik and Rachel came along as well on her groovy new motorbike.

We all went and sat across the road where the local high school has a cow and a sheep fenced up. Harriet didn't seem too taken with the rural livestock, but boy, give this girl a nipple ball and she's in heaven! In fact, give her the option of two nipple balls and she doesn't quite know what to do with herself. Freud would have had a field day on this picnic because not only was she playing with two large balls covered in nipples, she was also quite fond of holding aloft the large foam rocket that Jimbo took to play with. Hmmm...large foam phallus between two balls anyone?

And again with the drum. Oh boy, the drum is great fun. This photo was more to show the mayhem lying in her wake behind her here. The recycling box regularly gets upturned and thrown around a lot. You'd think that would make us empty it frequently wouldn't you? Well sure, you keep thinking that. Meanwhile Harriet will enjoy picking up large empty 2L bottles of soda water and seeing how far she can carry them down the house with her. What's the fascination with carrying things that can't be comfortably carried I wonder?

The next day held more food wonderment - we met with Scott and Damien at Bodhi, a vegan yum cha place in Hyde Park in the city. For those in Perth yum cha = dim sum. And I can hear the meat eaters exclaiming about how horrible a vegan yum cha must be but people, people, calm down. This place has incredible food - it is packed out on the weekends with vegans and vegetarians and meat eaters alike. Harriet ate like a champion, chowing down into some greens and dumplings nad red bean buns but I think she loved the sticky rice the most. There was a little plastic ride on car that another child had there and it took everything in our power to try and steer her clear of riding away with this child's car at every opportunity. She also enjoyed sipping my water so much that I asked James to go and ask for a straw so that she could sip some easily. Yeah well, things are nice in theory. The straw incident left me with a puddle underneath my seat that caused James to remark "Hey Cass, you've wet yourself". Yeah, thanks for that.

Her other favourite activity for the afternoon was trying to talk to Scott and give him the occasional half-eaten morsel she had, or her little Swedish man (aka Mr Orgen Borgen). She was actually rather smitten with Scott (well, who isn't) and we have a few very cute photos of her looking up adoringly at him,

Oh and speaking of adorable photos, here's one of her giving her monkey grin. It's where she flicks her lower jaw over to one side and grins away - I love it!

Share and Share Alike

Sorry about not doing a Monday update as normal - Harriet decided yesterday that sleeping is a chump's game and not for her! She was awake from 6am to 6pm with only a 40min sleep in the morning to show for it.

Anyway, her latest game is 'sharing'. As in this photo, she'll be holding something (doll, block, thrice-chewed piece of bread) and then offer it out to you with a real insistence that you take it. But she'll only actually give it up about 70% of the time! Unfortauntely the giving it up times do tend to be with the 'gifts' of soggy, warm food straight from her mouth. Mmmm...tasty. I tend to want to give most things right back to her which is a relief since I think that's just what Harriet wants as well.

And apparently there aren't enough photos of me on the blog - well people, it's a little hard when you're the photographer! Plus this is a blog about Harriet not me (yes, hard to believe but there are actually other things going on in my life as well that don't make it on to the blog!). But to keep the complainers happy, I took this one of Harry and I looking at photos of her on the computer - a favourite pasttime. I love the big stain of avocado on her rugby jersey in this shot. And you can tell just how much she loves looking at herself because the phone is sitting just in front of her hand and she isn't staring fixedly at it, pressing the buttons with fascination and determination to make something happen.

As for adventures, Jennie finally got a chance to pull her arm out of a cow's bum (literally) and make it into Sydney to see Harry. Harriet was very impressed with Jennie's purple hair! Mmhmm, yep, purple hair. It actually looks kind of tame in this photo and doesn't do justice to the true vivacity of the colour. Harriet is giving it a good going over though, so you'll just have to trust her for interpretation. Harriet was fascinated by Jennie and kept trying to crawl onto the lounge and on to her - maybe she knew about her regular blog comments?

And now on to one of our favoutire games - Pull Down! Harriet plays DVD Pull Down, Book Pull Down and CD Pull Down very well. In fact her proficiency at this sport is unrivalled and if it were an Olympic sport she'd be in full training without a problem. We've conceded to at least not bother about putting any of the Pull Down items from her favourite shelves back up in their normal alphabetical and chronological order - which, as those who know me well can imagine - is a little difficult for me to handle but I'm in therapy now and doing quite well. I only have a slight twitch when walking past the shelves now.

And sure, you may look at this photo and wonder what crazy woman gives her baby some very chunky minestrone soup to eat/play with. But I look at this photo and see a baby who is finally clapping spontaneously! She has known how to clap for ages and ages but like a few skills it was one she demonstarted once or twice and then never did again. But this week she has taken to clapping like a Harriet to water and just loves giving most things a round of applause. Things like throwing all of the bath toys into the bath - round of applause. Sitting on the side of the pool - round of applause. Out and about in her car at the shopping centre - round of applause. We've been wondering if she's going to be a critic who loves everything. Or maybe a percussionist considering her drum history as well. Whatever it is, we'll be sure to be there, giving her a round of applause ourselves.

It's Sunny!

I can barely believe it myself - a sunny day! Well with that kind of weather shenanigans on the cards, I thought I might do something crazy...something wild. I HUNG the clothes out to dry! *shock* Well Harriet decided she wanted to come out and see what was going on too, and Squeezmo always wants to have a play, so all three of us traipsed down into the garden for a little play and a little work.
Harriet didn't do as much crawling and exploration as I thought she might, but she did find the clothesline and mmm....the delicious rusty handle of said clothesline. Hanging out the clothes wasn't that exciting but watching Squeezmo was wonderful fun. Poor Squeezmo, persecuted no matter what the weather.

And then it was time to go back indoors. I'm such an evil Mama.

Little Drummer Girl

The toy library is the great untapped resource of modern childhood. When you have a baby this whole new world of stuff opens up to you - things like toy libraries, community nurses, playgroups, mothers' groups, storytimes...I mean a whole heap of stuff. It's kinda weird and definitely a 'secret world'. We were initiated into the toy library experience in a big way up at the Maroubra branch of the Randwick library. They have a huge area where the children can run riot trying out all the toys and it's cleverly surrounded by soundproof glass.

You may remember the red & yellow car she enjoyed at Playgroup the other week? Well they have those at the library too and since I know Harry loves it, I stood her up next to one of those cars and turned around to get the camera out of my bag (I know, shocking that it wasn't alreayd out and ready to go). Well when I turned around, there she was, practically running across the floor pushing this car! I had to scramble to catch up with her! So after quite a few rounds of walking with this car, I put it aside to take home with us and pleased that she finally was confident to take some steps on her own.

The next toy I pulled out for her to examine was a bag containing a tambourine and some maracas. They were pretty fun until...out of the corner of my eye I spotted. The big cahuna. The floor tom! When I placed this in front of Harriet, well she just went OFF. She was picking up the drumstick and bashing the skin of that tom like she was auditioning for Metallica. Houston, we have a percussionist. When we took it home you can see that the passion hasn't subsided. Here she is sitting in her cute manner of crossing her ankles and letting rip with a massive BOOM. It truly is great. In fact it is such a hit and one that will obviously continue to be a good toy through the years that we're going to buy one for her to have (rather than only having it for the occasional 2wk period from the library). The great thing about it is that it is actually a real drum, not just a double sided plastic thing like other drums she has played with (and not been interested in).

Here she's showing us "Look guys - no hands!".

Umm, a particularly quiet method of playing the drums.

You can tell by the previous post with me feeding her straight from the yoghurt container that there are few eating rules in our house. This photo proves just how far some people are prepared to take that statement. Yep, here is Harriet feeding herself lunch from the floor. It was a really healthy lunch of wholemeal pasta, peas and kidney beans with a dash of dust on the side. This week she has started eating much greater volumes of solids than before. She normally only picks out a few pieces of pasta and the odd pea/bean, but on this occasion she actually ate all of the pasta which surprised me and quite a few of the beans. So maybe floor food is the baby preferred method of consumption?

It definitely wasn't the case when we went out to see Nana and Grandpa at Chinatown on Saturday night. Harry ate heaps of fried rice, and had no problem with pulling our bowls away from our hands and helping herelf to the delicacies that lay within. She even ate the Ma Po Tofu dish with enthusiasm (when it finally arrived). There was a little baby walking around in the mall who had those squeaky shoes - with every step he took they let out a loud 'squng' - helpful for his parents to find him, annoying for diners to listen to. Well it wasn't until James pointed it out to us all that we really started to get annoyed by it!

And here's Harriet looking pensively of into the distance at Playgroup. She's remembering those carefree days of being a stationary baby because as of last night, Harriet is now a CRAWLER and a CRUISER! Yee-ha! Actually it was on Friday afternoon when a friend was over with her two girls. I had only just finished talking about how Harry just wasn't into crawling although I was sure she could do it, when she looked up and saw I was in the other room. Well, she just hoisted up those knees, plonked one palm in front of another and crawled halfway across the loungeroom to me! Then last night with Nana here she started walking all around the coffee table supporting herself (this is called furniture cruising). Cool stuff!

Also she's staretd doing things like when you say "Where are Tubs' toes?" She points to the toes on her doll. And when I say a line from one of her books she crawls over to her books and grabs that book. So things are getting a whole lot more fun lately! We all went for breakfast with Max and Nell and their parental types Don and Tania yesterday morning but all attempts by me to get a photo of both girls looking in my general direction failed miserably, so that event will have to remain unphotographed on the blog. Bummer!

Forgot to Mention...

When we were at Watsons Bay, Harriet started a new phase in her play. She was putting things into the camera bag and taking them out again. Normally we put them in and she takes them out, but now she finds something (eg: lid of her food bowl, film cannister, etc.) and 'hides' it in the container and then 'finds' it again. She had a ball playing like this.


And, when good food goes bad. Here she is being fed some natural yoghurt (straight from the container too, no ceremony in this house). A great chance to start some artistic musings via the medium of the coffee table. Those hands were an absolute delight to clean off I can tell you.


And, aw shucks, just one of her being mega sweet in her car seat just because I can.

Papa's Last Week at Home

This is what the lounge room looked like after Harry had been awake for about half an hour! And yes, that's shredded tissue all around her feet. If I had managed to grab a front-on photo you would have also seen some tissue hanging out of her mouth. This may be the new phase after moving on from wipes perhaps?

Well the weather was a bit up and down this week so we all alternated between basking in the sunshine or huddling up inside around the heater. On one of our sunshine days we decided to go for a potter around to the old Fox Studios. Harry's newfound love of birds came into force, with her trying to race after the ibises - unfortunately they kept frustratingly just out of arm's length for her. They've obviously met her kind before.

Her favourite toy at the moment is her Peek-a-boo book (actually all books are her favourite toy, she'll sit there flicking through one on her own for quite a while, it's very cute especially how she turns the page and then turns the whole book upside down and then back again each time). Well with the Peek-a-boo book we brought it with us (of course) and it suffered the most ignoble injury a Peek-a-boo book could. It lost the page that hides the baby! Yes, it was a sad moment for all and when I can wrestle the thing back from her I'm going to perform some literary DIY (you know, sticky tape and scissors).

We also went for a little visit to Watsons Bay yesterday, and although it was a bit windy it was still delightful sitting there in the sun with the city skyline across the water. But don't forget the lovely 'HOOTERS' sprawled across the skyline. Sometimes Sydney is just all class.

Harriet proved yet again (as if we needed more confirmation) about her love of water, running up to the water's edge and relishing the tide rushing in up to her knees (and yes she had full length pants on!). We are now playing the 'walking game' with her to try and progress her walking a little since we're both tired of having to support her all the time. We sit only about two metres away from each other and encourage her to walk across without using our hands for support, we just keep our hands on her waist every now and then. She does it with a massive grin on her face, but STILL no closer to saving our backs from permanent damage from bending over to hold her hands! As we keep saying, if only she'd crawl she wouldn't need us 24-7, because sometimes there is the odd thing that we have to do (you know, small stuff like clean up or make food).

Oh and yes, that *is* her sucking the nose of Buddha. We don't think he'd mind.

We Lost the Camera!

As absolutely incredible as this may seem, this week is a little light on photos because we lost the camera for four whole days! I was at a complete loss and slightly panicked. However calm was restored when it was found in the bag of goodies we bought at Target to keep prying walking baby fingers out of cupboards. No, don't get excited, she's not walking solo yet but better to have those things in the house so that Operation Lockdown can commence at any moment when the time does arrive.

Well this week Harry has been a little scamp of a thing. She's been having really good, long day sleeps but her night sleeping has been up and down. That's provoked us into trying a new sleep routine which we're still trying to work around the logistics of.

It was thrown out of balance with the arrival of Nana and Grandpa for the weekend. We took them to the pool to see Harry's delight at swimming, however it was pretty busy down there and as we found out, her love of swimming is not as great as her love for other babies. She did love to hang on to Nana whilst in the pool though, leaving Papa and Mama to enjoy some baby-free time. Cool! We finally remembered to take her 'noodle' (long piece of foam for floating) and her nipple ball with us but she wasn't interested in either of them, preferring instead to hang off Nana staring out some other children that were playing nearby. We also met another almost-11mth-old baby, but she was crap. Of course. Cos Harry rocks.

The latest craze this week (and last but I forgot to write about it) is pointing. Harriet will point at anything taking her fancy, turn to you to see if you're just as amazed as she is, and then go right back to watching her subject avidly. Problem is she often forgets to take her pointing finger down. Pretty cute. Here she's pointing at some seagulls when Nana, Grandpa and the three of us went down to La Perouse for lunch on Saturday. Also the tongue out thing is making a comeback. When I looked in her mouth this morning (through no choice of my own, she was hanging upside down with her mouth wide open...oh yeah, she's a keeper) there was a visible upper premolar threatening to poke down soon, replete with a little line of blood where it's cutting the gum. Ouch! Probably helps to explain the tonuge thing. Poor sweet crazy monkey baby.

Then today Papa went to Playgroup with us since it's the last chance he has before starting his new job next week. It was a pretty impressive effort since yesterday we all went and had a delicious brunch at Mal & Mark's place, then came home for a sleep and the guys then came over to ours for afternoon tea. With the tea were biscuits. Those biscuits happened to be sitting on the coffee table. There's a baby in the house who is just the right height to attack all items on the coffee table. Result = baby eating choc chip biscuit. Result of that? Baby that is still hyper at ONE AM! After driving around for a while she fell asleep (but not after we'd both lost our cool) and Jimbo then got *back* up to watch the World Cup Final just a couple of hours later. We immediately went and checked the bottle of Dimetapp to see if there was any sugar in that stuff (see previous post) but no. But it definitely supports my strong 'no added sugar' policy on Harriet's diet!

Anyway, so that little story was to prove just what a gallant effort he made in order to go to Playgroup at 10am. And not only did he do that, he also drove to the pool at 8.30am and managed to bag the last weekend slot for Harriet's swimming classes. Super Papa!
At Playgroup he had a heap of fun driving Harriet around in the big red car, playing Peekaboo with her through the wooden slats of the fort and throwing sand around in the sandpit.

So all-in-all not much to write about but with a lost camera for four days out of seven I think we managed to do ok with this post.

Some More Photos

Ok, so this is the standing thingo that I was describing in the previous post. The two white arms stretch out and have all sorts of activities on either side of them. Harry thinks it's pretty cool.



This is just a cute shot of her I took this afternoon when she was sitting at the back door. I took a little video of her opening and closing the door too which was pretty funny.

Amazingly enough, as you can see in this shot, she was actually near Squeezmo the whole time and didn't try to lunge after him. Maybe it's part of a greater plan to lull him into a false sense of security.


Oh and this is Harriet this afternoon eating her pasta and beans. I told you she had a lot of fun with her lunch today!


And finally a photo of her doing her one-handed walking down at Playgroup this morning. That's a pan in her other hand, she'd been playing with it in the sandpit.

Food, Glorious Food

Well after Playgroup last week Harriet came down with her first cold. Poor mite, she was pretty grizzly and had a nose like a tap. We went to the pharmacy and got her some Infant Dimetapp on Thursday. On Friday night we gave her a dose at about 11pm and since it causes drowsiness, well, it seemed like a bonus for the night.

WRONG!

Not long after she had the Dimetapp, this little munchkin started running around the house like a terror, playing with one toy then quickly discarding it for another. It was like she was on drugs, and not the kind that make you drowsy. So after reading the Dimetapp info on the web, we found out that it can cause hyperexcitability in infants if they have any number of a range of endocrinopathies or even cardiac conditions. *sigh* So off we went to Sydney Childrens' Hospital at 12am. There were two other children ahead of us and by 3am we were still there. If you ran a vet hospital like that you'd be in trouble. We went in to see the doctor and she did the grand total of performing a rudimentary physical exam (checked eyes/ears/mouth/chest), brought in the registrar who did the same. The registrar then told us this is an extremely rare reaction to the medication, not to give her any more, and sent us on our way. Hmmm...what fun. I'll be making an appointment for her to go somewhere to have blood tests performed by people that might actually consider the issue a little more.

This meant that the next day we were all feeling VERY under the weather. So what do you do when you feel like that? Go out for breakfast of course! Harriet enjoyed my baked beans and also loved receiving a big smile from Mr Tim Rogers Esq. who picked up a takeaway coffee from the cafe we were eating at. You can see Harry enjoyed sopping up her baked bean juice with some of my toast.

Her latest favourite toy is the broom. Yep, the broom. Don't know why, in fact we are surprised she knows we have one at all since it rarely comes out of its cupboard, but there you have it. The other night she managed to traipse all the way up from the kitchen to the front door. She reached the front door, paused, then turned around and headed right back down to the kitchen with it. Maybe she felt like the broom just needed to feel like it was part of the family or something.


Today we went back to Playgroup and Harriet loved playing with Evie. Poor Evie was having a bit of a bad day, she fell over and hit her head a grand total of FIVE times, which was rather unfortunate. Harriet is probably heading that way soon since she has just started to take some leaps and bound with her walking. Since Thursday she has been confident in only taking one hand from us as she hoons the hallways here, and then this afternoon I had my arms around her but not touching and she walked about two metres! The psychological importance of the hands from Mama and Papa is nearing its end we think, and she may start becoming a little more independent very soon. We're going out tomorrow to buy door safety latches in anticipation.

And even though she had some fruit today at Playgroup, Harry still wanted that cherry tomato fix, so I obliged. After Playgroup she had lunch and you can see her in the photo above enjoying it. I thought she'd like to continue her love affair with the baked bean (blergh), so she had some wholemeal pasta spirals with baked beans. YUCK! But to Harry, well, she thought it was delicious! SHe was being very cute and grinning like crazy and swinging her legs around. Since she went to the hospital she's actually been such a happy camper that Jimbo sugested we have one night a week where no-one sleeps. He was just upset that he was awake and still missed the football.

Today we also went to the library and picked up some toys which she's very excited about. One of them is this freestanding tripod thing which she is quite confident in walking all around, so maybe she'll be walking solo sooner rather than later? Only time will tell I spose!

Look at those lips!