11 months

My poor little poppet....
You spend a great deal of this month absolutely miserable. You picked up a virus which really knocked you around. You had a temperature for a week, which was helped only a little by panadol drops. You hardly ate a thing, and I really had to work hard to even get enough fluids into you. All you wanted was to be cuddled. You cried every time you were put down, and I don’t think we saw your precious smile, or heard your sweet laughter for nearly a week. It has taken two and a half weeks for you to get back to your normal self. It was heartbreaking to see you so miserable and be able to do so little to comfort you. You would start crying and clamp your mouth shut as soon as you saw the panadol syringe – you were so sick of taking medicine.

Thankfully the last few days you have been back to your cheeky little self. Laughing at everything and nothing, playing peek-a-boo under the table, continuing your ongoing discovery expedition of each and every room of our home. Even though you have free run of the family area, your bedroom and the playroom, we have to remember to shut the doors to the toilets, bedrooms and office or you find your way in and the exploring begins! You have even worked out that sometimes the boys bedroom door doesn’t latch properly, so even when it looks closed you still crawl over and give it a push just to check. If it swings open you take that as an open invitation. Your brothers are pretty good at keeping little stuff off their floor, but you love to be right there with them as they play, which sometimes becomes quite frustrating for them. They pick you up and take you out to your toy corner, but you manage to find them again in no time at all. If the door is closed you sit there calling to them. During the past two weks of school holidays we have been putting the safety gate in the door of their room. At this stage that is keeping everyone happy. You can see them, they can see and talk to you, continue their play, and have their personal space respected as well.

Your understanding of the world around you is expanding beyond belief. I think I had forgotten what a steep learning curve little babies go through in their first couple of years.
You love to play a little game where I hold your hands and say up…down…up…down… when I say up you stand up tall, and when I say down you squat down. Its too cute.
You just melted my heart yesterday. I was laying on the lounge,watching you crawling around the room when our eyes met, you gave me the biggest smile. I said come and give mum mum a kiss, I didnt really expect any reaction from you, it was just part of the daily chatter that we share. Your eyes lit up, and you crawled straight over to me, pulled yourself to stand at the chair and landed the biggest sloppiest kisses right on my lips. I picked you up and hugged you so hard sweetie. I love you so much. I must, cause you dont care if your face is dirty or your nose is running, when you want a kiss there is no stopping you. Mouth wide open, dribble going everywhere. And you insist on planting it straight on my lips. Its probably a kiss only a mummy could appreciate! You even think that me wiping all the dribble off and saying eewwww is hilarious....so you give me another one.

We have started to hear dad dad dad occasionally too – much to Daddys delight. You are so excited when Daddy gets home from work nowadays. You are becoming a lot more social, and are getting to be quite a little daddys boy, when he is around. You love the silly songs he sings, and the funny noises he makes. You love sitting in his arms and getting to look at the tin animals way up high on top of the meatsafe. You love tickles and peek-a-boo, giddy up horsey and hanging upside down. You love just spending time hanging out with your daddy.

You have nearly mastered the art of waving goodbye, although this skill seems to come and go at your whim. We are also working on clapping hands. You have managed to do it a couple of times, but I suspect the meeting of your hands was more of a fluke than good planning! Surely after the amount of times we have sung ‘if your happy and you know it clap your hands’ to you, you will want to master this really soon just to stop all of us singing and clapping. You do love us to sing to you though. Your favourite songs are ‘twinkle little star’, if your happy and you know it shout horray’, ‘hey diddle diddle’ & ‘hush little baby’. I wouldnt be surprised though, if the first words you sing are “I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair” this song is so stuck in mummies head that I walk around singing it all day…even your brothers know the words and sing along with me now.

We have also moved on to the excitement of finger foods. Mummy is not good at the whole messy eating thing, but in an attempt to get you eating something (anything) during your recovery I tried lots of things. You took to finger foods like a duck to water. Ravioli, steamed vegetable fingers, wholemeal crumpets, bread, pears, bananas you devour it all. Today you even managed to eat dried apple rings – how you manage that with only eight front teeth I will never know. One thing you havn’t had much successs with is your sipper cup. Slowly you seem to be getting the idea but its taking a while for you to work out you have to tip it up to get anything out. Too many willing little helpers to do it for you I think!

You had your first real accident last week. You were having a wondeful time in the little clam shell pool under the pergola. I was sitting right next to you paddling my toes (also very funny apparently) when you decided to stand up and topple head first onto the pavers. You banged your head, and skun your nose and lip. With a runny nose its taken a while to heal as well. I think that the little pool might need to go on the grass from now on - although with water restrictions tightening we wont be filling it very often. { This past year has been one of the warmest and driest in a long long time. I sometimes worry what the world will be like as you grow up. I fear some of the things we take for granted today will become much harder to come by. We live in such a lucky country, but unless we learn to respect and conserve our natural resources it is going to be alot harsher and cruler than I have ever known}


AND… the last week and a half you have been sleeping through the night!!! Im not sure if it’s the after effects of the virus, but Im loving it, and I hope we have finally turned a corner in regards to your sleeping.

I cant wait, in four more weeks we will be celebrating your first birthday. There are invitations to make & presents to choose. It will be such fun to plan a special day just for you.

I Love you forever my sweet little angel.

Mummy xxx