Tadpoles, Seedlings and Tired

This post would have been written a lot earlier this week except for the fact that Harriet has decided that sleep is for the weak. She has resumed her midnight wakings and plays and had no day sleeps for two days. Luckily she had one today so I had a little reprieve. actually I had a big one because Jan came down to see Miss Harry and I got a luxurious baby-free lunch. But the blog is about Harriet not me, so back to the task at hand.



On the weekend we had some tadpoles as I mentioned in the last post. This was/is pretty exciting! We went out for a trip to buy some gravel and water 'aging' solution and proceeded to have a very domestic Saturday afternoon. Firstly we got the pebbles in the container for the tadpoles and washed it out a few times. Harry loved getting sleeves up and right into 'slooshing' the water all through the rocks and cleaning them out. Only thing was that she didn't like how the little pebbles stuck to her hand afterwards.

Erm, yes, you can see her displeasure in this photo. So we created a lovely new home for the tadpoles after reading up on how to care for them on the wonderful resource known as the intertron. They are flourishing so far (fingers crossed!) and love nothing more, it seems, than to sit on the lettuce we've carefully boiled for them until it is just a lignin skeleton. I have to admit that it seems we are rather more fascinated by it than Harriet. Sure she likes to ask "Look!" but I'm still sitting there watching them nibble and float and swim long after she's moved on to Playdough.

Our other big adventure on Saturday was to plant some seeds that the lovely Kelli gave us as a housewarming gift. This involved more pouring, which of course thrilled Harriet. We were all engaged in her favourite activity! So she poured the potting mix into the seedling pots, and Papa and I placed the seeds.

And, can you believe it, brown thumbs that we are, today I noticed lots of gorgeous little sprouts in the lettuce pots! How exciting! You will no doubt be kept up to date with the progress of the plants and I hope to post a photo showing our first salad with the spinach and lettuce leaves in the near future (*cough*ambitious*cough*).


On Sunday morning I had a photo 'shoot' with a friend's ten week old baby (who Harriet is obssessed with!). I was so depressed after the shoot at how hopeless the photos were that I...wait for it...didn't pick up the camera again until Monday afternoon! *shock* I think Harry was so delighted with the reprieve that she hammed it up big time for the camera when I got it out. In this photo she's just finished putting on sunscreen and I announced that we were finished with it. Then she pinched her fingers together and hunched over like this and asked "Little More?". Cheeky monkey!



But despite all of her non-sleeping issues over the past few days, amazingly she is in fine spirits (whilst all around her wilt). She basically just repeats everything that you say, and her previous word count that I posted here is now completely obsolete. Her current word count is probably about double that! She honestly just says everything. Tonight in the bath we were talking about her day and she said very clearly "Nana went park". I was so happy that she used the past tense verb correctly that I almost forgot to be happy that she said a sentence.



She's growing up so quickly! I kind of don't like this photo because she looks a little worldly-wise here and she's not at all. I'm not too sure where this smile came from. But damn she's cute!

Anyway, if you are interested, the parenting discussion is still going on in the 'comments' section of the post below this one called 'Parenting Beliefs'. Thanks so much for all of your comments, it's great to be able to engage in an open discourse about what we think and what we're doing. But really, let's face it, I just love talking about Harriet.