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Hannah:
"What's that?" I would ask my Mom Mom, but I'm little, I can't talk yet. I watched it move around and bobb it's silly little head up and down as it walked. I wonder why it does that? I don't do that when Mom Mom helps me walk. It doesn't seem to have any arms. I think I'll follow it and see what it does.
"Hannah, you are so cute, are you chasing the birdies?" Mom Mom said
Oh, so it's a birdy. I thought birdies flew. I haven't seen one walking around though, what a silly birdy. I wonder why it's walking in big circles instead of flying. I'll crawl faster and try to catch it so I can ask it. I wonder if it speaks Bubba? Birdy walks too fast for me, I can't catch it! Mom Mom is laughing. I guess she thinks the birdy and it's bobbing head is funny too. What's that?
"No Hannah, you can't eat leaves, you already tried that remember." Oh yeah. Oh, I forgot, I was chasing the birdy. Oh, he can fly! I don't think I can fly. No, I definitely can't fly. I guess he'll get away from me.
Other stuff this week:
Hannah enjoyed her first jumping castle and face painting experience yesterday. She actually stayed relatively still while getting her face painted. So cute! Daddy held her on the edge of the jumping castle and bounced her up and down. She loves bouncing! We couldn't let her crawl around inside as the bigger kids would have unintentionally trampled all over her. Guess she'll have to wait until she's bigger. There were colourful animal balloons that she kept trying to swan dive out of our arms to grab off other kids.
The countdown is on until moving day. Next month! Can't wait....
There was something else I wanted to write about, but I can't remember what it was. Maybe I'll remember next week.
Time since birth: 8 months
"Mum. Mum." I looked down to see Hannah standing, holding on to the chair I was sitting in with a funny look on her face.
"Blleeett." She threw up a little and gave me another funny look.
"BLLLEETT." This time it went all over my pants and the floor.
"What's wrong Sweat Pea." Some times she does little spit ups, but this was not normal behaviour for Hannah. Her little eyes were pleading with me, but I had no idea what she was trying to tell me. She still looked like something wasn't quite right. I patted her back.
Something caught my eye "What's this?" I asked as I reached in her mouth. I grabbed a hold of it and pulled. To my surprise and amazement, and entire unscathed leaf emerged from her mouth. This was no tiny leaf, it was about as long as my forefinger, and as wide as 1.5 of my fingers. Pretty big for a tiny baby mouth.
"Where did you get this from?" We were inside, and as far as we could tell, there was not a leaf in sight. She hadn't been playing outside either, and I hardly took my eyes off of her the whole morning. She hadn't been choking on it, just looked rather uncomfortable as it was in her mouth and down her throat. Cheeky baby.
I think we are living in the apartment of continual disappointment. First there was the mold (that keeps punking us no matter what we do), then the windows that the painters stupidly painted shut (and didn't put the screens back on when they were painting), and the bathroom taps that are so leaky you need super strength to turn them off, the crappy toilet seat that was growing mold under the clear top bit where it was sealed in there and I couldn't ever clean it, the oven that will only work if you set the timer (and I sometimes forget and think it's heating up only to find out it's cold when I go to put dinner in), the fan in the laundry room that sometimes works a tiny bit, but mostly just makes "I'm dying kill me now" noises, the cockroaches that won't go away and poop all over our dishes, the blinds that fell on my head because they weren't put up properly, snails eating all of our mail, noisy old windows that make creepy loud banging noises at the slightest hint of wind, a lawn under our bedroom windows that is supposed to be for our apartment only but other people do loud things like hammering on, and now, to top it all off, we went away for one night, only one night, only to find some sort of maggots crawling all over the ceiling in the kitchen. Not one or two or three, but heaps of them, and moths flying around in the cupboard (so maybe that type of moth comes from maggoty looking things?). It's not like I left food out or dirty dishes in the sink. I did every single dish before we left, and emptied the garbage. I really don't want to know where they came from or why they all of a sudden decided to take over the kitchen. Let's just say there were lots of scared girly noises with flailing arms made by me, and then Aaron walking on the kitchen benches in order to get and kill all of the disgusting little maggoty things. Can't wait to move!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think that babies have go go gadget arms. Things that should be very much out of Hannah's reach seem to always make their way into her inquisitive little hands. She somehow managed to reach all the way up to the tray of her highchair to pull off a magazine. It's only a portable, goes on top of a normal chair high chair, so it's not as high as a normal one, but still, the tray is way above her little head.
Hannah has turned into quite the little chatter box, mostly when we're in the car. She usually says Mum repeatedly, but can also say: Dad, bum, bubba, and what sounds remarkably like hi, but isn't quite.
"Achoo!" Aaron called me from the bedroom "Boo, you have to come see this!" I went in and looked at Hannah. A giant snot bubble was coming out of her nose. Poor baby. At the same time though, I had a little laugh, and got out the camera. I had to document her first grossly hilarious snot bubble. Hannah has been a bit sick since last Saturday. She got a cold, probably from one of the kids in creche. I took her to the doctor last Saturday just to make sure it wasn't an ear infection or anything (I can never be too careful with my little baby!), as she also had a fever. They said it was just a cold. She woke up numerous times every night since her poor little nose was blocked. Babies only breathe through their noses, so they get quite distressed when it's blocked. Needless to say, I'm in a state of zombie-ness. I didn't write last week, due to said zombie-ness, and well, I really couldn't be bothered. Hannah gave me, Aaron, Grandma, and The Jess her cold, so when she was sleeping, I was sleeping. Blogging just seemed like entirely too much effort. She still has her cold. I think it's getting better though. She doesn't seem to be coughing as much, and I haven't had to wipe her nose all the time. We borrowed a vapouriser from someone at Church (thank you Beth!!!!!!), which really really helped her night sleeping. The first night, she only woke to feed once, which was a vast improvement on the 5+ times she had been waking due to a blocked nose. I think I need to invest in one of those. So worth it!
I was supposed to take Hannah to Tresillian (place to get help with baby sleeping problems http://www.tresillian.net/) on my birthday (hey, I wasn't about to turn down the earliest appointment they had, even if it was for my birthday), but they called one morning and asked if I could come in. Sure I had to hurry and shower, get Hannah ready, get our lunches ready, nappy bag, toys, sleeping stuff, etc., but I wanted to nip this non napping crisis in the bud asap, so I said yes. I won't lie, it was really hard. The whole idea is controlled crying; teaching Hannah to put herself to bed. Sometimes she does the "I'm gonna die" cry (where it certainly sounds like if I don't come in right then, she will die), which rips my heart out. They told me that if that is what gets me in there, then that is what she has learned gets me in there. She isn't hungry, hot, cold, wet, etc when she does it, so it's not anything to worry about. The plan consisted of first waiting 15-20 minutes after I put her down for her nap to let her try to put herself to sleep (even if she is crying, I don't go in), then if she is crying, go in, lay her down (she is usually standing), pat her back (she sleeps on her tummy) and settle her down, and stay for a while, then go, and come back every 5 minutes or so. It took her 35 minutes to sleep the first time, and she slept for 1 hour. Much better then the 15 minutes she was doing before. Oh, and I can't feed her to sleep anymore. Ok, this time, I really won't give in, I will not feed her to sleep anymore. For her second nap of the day, she didn't nap at all. We tried for an hour and a half, but got nothing except ear piercing cries. Poor Bubba.
I also had to make a bedtime routine, and stick to it every single time. Our new routine is: put sleeping bag on, give her a cuddle, sit her in her cot, read her a story, lay her down, put the blinds down and turn the sleepy music on, stroke her hair and say "sleepy time," turn the light off and exit the room. The first couple of days were pretty hard, but they are supposed to be. Now for her naps, I'm happy to report that she goes to sleep within 5 minutes, but usually within 1, and if she cries, it's only a weak little protest cry, then she is out. Sigh of relief. Nights aren't going so well, but I'm pretty sure that is just because of her cold. It has been taking an hour or more to get her to sleep at night then she has been waking and waking (except for the last few nights when we borrowed the vapouriser). As I said though, I'm pretty sure that is just her nose giving her grief. Why is it that when you have a cold, the stuffy nose seems way worse at night??
Hannah would like everyone to know that she is a little Aussie (for those Americans reading this, that is pronounced Ozzy, like Ozzy Osbourne) girl. Aaron was eating vegemite toast one morning when, as usual, Hannah crawled over and looked at him with those "Daddy, you know you want to give me what ever it is that you are eating" eyes. I said she could try some vegemite toast. I thought for sure she'd absolutely hate it, but to my surprise (and bewilderment), she loved it. I think she would have eaten Daddy's entire toast if he let her.
There is one thing that all moms can't wait to hear - when your little one says Mum, Mama, Mum Mum, or the like, for the very first time. I was feeding Hannah her lunch when out of the blue, she said Mum. clear as day, not a "what did you just say" kind of thing, there was no question that she said Mum. I don't know if she knows what it means (I would like to delude myself to say that she does), but she certainly knows it gets my attention. If I'm in the kitchen and she is in the living room, she will crawl over to the makeshift barricade I made (two blown up thermarest mattresses across the doorway, one side held in place by the couch, the other with a vacuum cleaner, reinforced with a chair in the middle of the door way to prevent the bust ins that were happening), stand up, look at me, and yell "Mum!" How can I not give her a cuddle or a smile or play with her when she does that? Every time she says Mum I'm pretty sure my smile gets a little wider. I better watch out or I will end up looking like a demented clown or something. She also said bum this morning. I suppose that was bound to happen when she says Bubba and Mum all the time. Put them together, and what do you get? Bum. Hahahaha, bum is so much funnier when it's a baby saying it!
And yes, it is my birthday this week. Happy birthday to me. I'm getting old.
To finish off, here is a little rant, as it annoys me every time.
Dear newspaper publishers: Why must you put staples in your newspapers? Do you like to unnecessarily contribute to depleting the worlds steel supply? I can't figure out the purpose to using staples to bind together your newspapers which already stay together as they have a nice fold right down the centre. Do you like to spend money unnecessarily on staples? Pay for unnecessary machines to put said useless staples in your newspapers? "Can I read the sports section?" someone asked me. "Sure," I wasn't reading it, and sharing is caring. "Oh wait, sorry, I can't pull out the sports section because this silly newspaper is STAPLED TOGETHER." Why don't I just pull the section off? I would, but you use unnecessarily large staples which fail to free sections of paper when you pull at them. Instead, half of the page is torn away, the other half still sticking unnecessarily to the big stupid unnecessary staple. Why don't I just pull the staple off? Sounds easy enough, but we're not talking about normal easy to pull off normal sized staples, we are talking about unnecessarily large nail breaking, finger poking, don't want to unbend staples. "Hey, want to put some newspaper through the shredder to make some guinea pig bedding?" "Great idea. Oh wait, we can't, it will kill the shredder because it's STAPLED TOGETHER!" What were you thinking newspaper publishers?
I was just being lazy, trying to get the job done in the shortest time possible. I sort of had to though as Bubba was getting into everything when she started crawling. I moved everything just out of her reach. Now she's started pulling herself up on anything and everything she can find (the coffee table, couch, shelves, tv unit, our knees, even the vacuum cleaner), which means everything I moved before is no in her reach again. We're running out of places to put things. Can't put anything on the coffee table or it will be pushed, pulled, or thrown off, then eaten, bashed or chewed on. I have to follow her around the house making sure she doesn't fall over when she attempts to "cruise" (pulling self up and then moving sideways along whatever furniture it was she pulled herself up on). She also seems to have this crazy notion in her head that she actually has balance and then lets go of whatever she is holding on to. FYI, she does not yet have balance. Luckily for her we are always there to catch her (hmm... maybe that is why she does it, she does love being scared, if peekaboo is anything to go by). I guess she can balance a little, she can hold on to stuff with just one hand and stay up just fine. She's just a little dare-devil!
How is it that babies wake up for garbage trucks, people who talk too loud, noisy kookaburra's, a loud fart, the front door opening, etc, but when there is a loud thunderstorm with cracking lighting overhead, nothing? Not even a little peep. I don't understand baby sleep even a little bit.
I'm going to be sore tomorrow. I used muscles today that I forgot ever existed. That happens every time I start doing tae kwon do again. Ok, so I haven't done it much since I was a kid, but a few years ago The Jess and I went for a while at the uni. I could hardly walk the next day. I'm sure I had a bit of a swagger, and goodness, did my body feel a bit special! I know I'll be feeling exactly like that tomorrow. It was fun though, and a really good work out. I really miss doing tae kwon do. I did it from 4th to 9th grade when I was a kid, then stopped. Everyone thought it was because I lost interest, but really (sure, I'll set the record straight even though it's embarrassing) it was because I started my women troubles and was petrified that it would leak through to my white tae kwon do pants. I saw it happen to one of the other girls, and I did NOT want it to happen to me. What if after sitting on the mat stretching, I got up, only to find I had leaked all over myself and the mat? How would I ever show my face there again? I know, silly, but this is what a 14 year old girl thinks about. So, when aunt flow was paying me an unwelcome visit, I would tell my dad that I didn't want to go, but I didn't say why, he thought I wasn't interested anymore (after this happened for a week straight for a couple of months), I was too embarrassed to tell him the real reason (you don't really talk to your dad about such things), he didn't want to pay for something I wasn't interested in, and that was that, we didn't go anymore. I always missed it though. You're laughing aren't you Dad? There is a place within walking distance to us that even has a women's class on a weekday morning. Apparently you can even bring your baby/child as all the ladies do. Can't go every week though, it costs too much. I'm very excited to get back into it though, even if I do look like I swallowed a giant coat hanger tomorrow.
Uh-oh, I could hear Hannah stirring. She had only been alseep for 20 minutes. She grizzled for a while, then all was silent. Success, she put herself back to sleep. Or so I thought.... After another half an hour, she was making protests, so I went to her room. She hadn't gone back to sleep at all. Instead, she had been plotting how to grab anything and everything, pull it into her cot, and then play with it until she got bored. And to think I thought I moved everything far enough away from her sticky little grip. Clearly I underestimated my cheeky little monkey. When I opened her door, there she was, sitting in her cot surrounded by her loot. Cheeky little monkey!
Time since birth: 7 months
I think I should be grape scented. I wear purple all the time (my favourite!), my hair is purple, my earrings are often purple. Someone actually asked me why I have purple the other day why my hair is purple. I said because I like purple. I think it looks nice, but I'm sure a little purple haired Mommy looks a little funny (except that I don't care, if other people want to judge me by my crazy hair then I don't want to know them anyway). Apart from that one question though, no one has said anything about my hair at all.
Hannah crawled over and sat near my feet (I was on the couch). She looked at my yogurt. "Eh!!"
I looked at Grandma "I think she wants some yogurt."
I got up to go get her a bubba spoon. "Eh!!!Eh!!" She didn't like me going away. I suppose she thinks I carry spoons around in my pockets. Or maybe that they are just part of me and I can just whip them out whenever needed.
I sat on the floor and gave her some of the yogurt. She ate half and then crawled away quite happy and pleased with herself. Wow, she is learning to communicate better. She is amazing.
Last week I took Hannah to the Early Childhood Health Clinic to address her napping problem. They gave me a referral to Tresillian (a place that helps with sleeping problems with day stays, home visits, and if it's really bad, week stays), and told me that I need to stop feeding her to sleep. Oh that will be hard. She has always REFUSED to have booby unless it's right before nap/sleep time. I have tried and tried and tried, but she always refuses the booby until right before a sleep. They told me that at this point, her napping is more important then that milk as she is eating solids and has an over night feed. I took her home and put her to bed - without booby. To my amazement, she slept. And slept. She slept for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Turns out it was a fluke though. Sometimes she takes 1.5 hours to get herself to sleep (I'm also supposed to not go in there for a pat before 20 minutes), then she only sleeps for 15 to 30 min. Crazy baby, you'd think she'd be absolutely buggered from all that crawling, and then conk out for like 2 hours. She just seems to be a little bundle of infinite energy. She still won't have any booby when she wakes up, except for in the afternoon, so I have been pumping and putting it in her breakfast and letting her drink it out of a sippy cup while she eats her solids. I'm still waiting for Tresillian to call me and let me know when I can come in for a day stay.
Since I had to change the nap time routine to not include booby, I now give her some quiet time (put her in her cot while I do my daily bible reading out loud to her), put her in her sleeping bag, give her a cuddle, tell her it's nap time, turn on the sleepy music, then leave the room. The other day I was reading to her when I looked up and got a bit of a shock. Giving me a cheeky "look what I can do" grin, Hannah was standing there in her cot, holding on to the rail. Now every time I read to her, she immediately stands up, and remains standing the entire time, looking very pleased with herself, and giving me the biggest whole face grin whenever I look at her. She's so cute!!!
I finally did it- I told the people next door to shut up. At 10pm someone was playing acoustic guitar and singing. That wasn't a problem though, the songs were soft and actually lulled me to sleep. Then came the bongo (or similar) drums. They invaded my sleep and woke me from my wonderful slumber. Enough was enough. I pulled the blinds up and stuck my head as far out the window as I could, to see where the noise was coming from. On and on the badly played bongos went. Without thinking, I yelled. "SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Wow, I can't believe I actually finally did it. To my surprise, they actually did. They shut up almost immediately. But then I felt bad. I should have been a little nicer about it. I should have maybe said "could you please quiet down, I'm trying to sleep." Of course that might not have been so effective. Ahhh, I could go back to sleep. Or could I? Probable drunk and or high people had just been yelled at to shut up. Hmmm...would they try to do anything to me? I felt extremely glad at that moment that there are bars on all of our windows. I suppose they probably didn't even know from which apartment complex, let alone unit, the shut up came from, but that is not what you think about at 11pm after being woken from your deep slumber to the sound of horribly played bongo drums, possibly by psychopaths. This time I really would have called the cops to make a noise complaint. loud tv and or music (the recorded kind, not badly played live kind) is one thing, but bongo drums?
How do you tell a 6 (almost 7) month old that they can't sleep sitting up? Hannah will only breastfeed before she goes to sleep or has a nap. I know it's not ideal, but she usually falls asleep while I feed her (I have tried many many times to feed her other times, but she is a stubborn determined little thing, and will ONLY breastfeed before bed no matter what I do), then I put her in the cot, she rolls over onto her tummy, and that is how she sleeps. Now though, after about 2 minutes, she wakes up. I'm sure she always has, but then she just repositions herself and goes back to sleep. But now she can get to the sitting position all by herself, so what does she do? She wakes after 2 minutes and then sits of course. The sitting then gets her all awake again, she gets over tired, she cries, I go in, lay her down, pat her back, she sits back up immediately, I lay her down, etc. I've tried staying in there while she plays around in her cot to get herself all tuckered out again. She will get tired again, but of course, the whole process repeats. I've tried letting her cry for 10 minutes initially, go in, pat for 1 minute, leave her for 3, pat for 1, etc. Nope, that doesn't work either. As soon as I lay her down, pop! she's back up. I don't think she realises that she is only 6 months old. According to baby books, this whole sitting up from laying, crawling, etc. thing, is not supposed to happen until about 10 months. Needless to say, it's been a long, tired few days, with mommy (sorry, I mean me. Once you have a baby, you start automatically referring to yourself as "Mommy" in the third person in hopes that sometime soon, baby will call you that too) going a little insane. She did get to 15 minutes this morning before she woke up. I guess we're making some progress.
I'm glad Hannah doesn't yet have top teeth, otherwise I would probably be missing a nipple right now. I tried to resettle her with booby (I know, bad habit, but I was desperate, the patting/sitting up cycle had been going on for an hour with no progress), but she wanted none of it. Instead of sucking, she decided to clamp down and not let go. Once I pried my nipple out of her cheeky little mouth, I could see teeth marks. That is something one never ever wants to see on their nipple. Ever. Lucky for her she hasn't bitten me again. If she starts biting me regularly, or if she draws blood, I'm withdrawing booby from her permanently. I'm not totally cruel though, I'd still express and give it to her in a sippy cup. She would hate it though. She probably would refuse to drink it, and then after not eating anything for a while, I'd give in and she'd get booby again. Stubborn little thing (but oh so cute).
We have to find a new place asap. Hannah is getting into everything. She crawls all over the house, ripping everything off shelves, opening drawers and cupboards (and squishing her little fingers in drawers a few times. She is too fast, I'm right next to her, so I can see as soon as it's going to happen, but by the time I get my hand between the drawer and it's frame, she's already shut her fingers in it), trying to climb the dishwasher when I'm unloading it, trying to open doors that I've shut so she can't go in other rooms. The list is endless!! She much prefers random household things to her toys these days. At least she is easily entertained (even though it means I'm following her around the house, trying to make sure she doesn't get into too much mischief!). Oh, and she is still being super cheeky at meal time too, giving me food showers and/or refusing to eat. Oh the cheekiness... (but we wouldn't swap her for the world!).
"Ok Bubba, time for a nappy change." I put her on her back on the change mat. I took her nappy off, deflected wandering hands, and turned to get a new nappy. I turned back to find Bubba crawling away. She then sat just out of reach on her bare little bottom. That's right, she can now crawl, and go from crawling to sitting and sitting to crawling. Today she followed me in to the kitchen a few times and then sat on the floor and watched me do the dishes. Sometimes when she cries after I put her to bed, I go in there to pat her only to find her sitting up in her cot. Lay her back down and she just sits up again. Ok, in all fairness, that was only one day, and she was teething and in pain. After I gave her some baby panadol, and a cuddle, she went to sleep. She won't let me look at them, but I caught a glimpse once when I opened her mouth with my finger and then pushed her tongue back with my other hand, and saw her little tooth. Next to it was a crooked little tooth about to come through. I'm just glad that she (so far...) doesn't bite me. I really don't want a bloodied nipple. I read that some babies go off their food when they're teething. I'm glad there is a reason why she hasn't been eating her food properly. Hopefully she will return to her eager eating glory asap.
The three of us went away for the Australia day long weekend (which actually wasn't a long weekend as the day off was Tuesday, but we made it one anyway). We went to the Abercrombie caves with friends. We went for a couple of long bush walks (3 hours) which Hannah absolutely loved. She was attached to Daddy by the baby bjorn, kicking her little legs, babbling away. The second day, we went to see the caves. I brought my camera to snap away, and hopefully get some good pics of the caves. As soon as we got to the entrance, the battery died. Unfortunately I didn't bring the spare batteries on the hike, so I had to rely on the point and shoot and hope that Friend 2 got some good photos with his film SLR. As it turned out, he forgot to bring spare batteries for his flash, so I guess we all had to rely on the point and shoot. Clearly we are all awesome.
When we arrived, it was dark out, so we didn't really see any of our surroundings. I heard some rustling when I woke up and went to the kitchen. I looked out the window and was surprised to see a huge hill right outside. I could have touched the hill if I could pry the screen off the window. There on the hill was a herd of wild goats, having their morning graze. The next morning we saw a family of Kangaroos on the hill, including a joey. Even the little joey was sticking his little head out of his mothers pouch grazing with his mum. We even saw a wombat run across the road in front of us (we were on foot) one night.
I bought a bottle of fake baileys (I was going to get the small $10 bottle of baileys but then saw the fake baileys large bottle for $10 and thought it was a no brainer) to have a couple of nice tasting drinks after Bubba went to bed, only to find it tasted horrible. I thought maybe my tastes changed after not drinking for so long. I took a sip, made a face, waited a while, thought I must be imagining it, took a sip, made a face. The others looked at me funny. Friend 1 tried it. "No, it's not just you, this if off." Friend 2 tried it. "yeah, this is off." Glad to know it wasn't just me. I only bought it the day before, so don't you worry, that bottle-o will be hearing from me.
