Mental development and/or narcolepsy

Rosemary fell asleep in my arms on Saturday night. A quietly remarkable event. We had been playing, she went silent, looked up at me and closed her eyes. So unexpected, I wondered why she was closing her eyes until, realising that she hadn't opened them again, I finally grasped that she had in fact dozed off.

This was, in its way, a momentous development even if it's not up there with walking, talking or writing a three-volume SF epic. It's definitely the first time she's done that with me, and additionally when Tasha has gotten her to sleep there's generally been feeding involved in some way, even if she's not feeding at the precise moment she nods off. This development open a whole new vista of possibility - namely, the possibility of me getting up at 2am to try to get her back to sleep while Tasha continues to snore her head off.

It did make me wonder, am I really going to be shocked when she does all the other things that she has a 100% chance of doing. I hope so.

Pictures and physical development

Sitting in the living room with daddy





Sitting on the floor with mummy





'Look no hands!'





'And now I'll play with my rattle, I think'





'I'll be crawling soon!'





'Or maybe I'll walk instead.'






See all the photos uploaded this morning and taken yesterday.

Physical development

As you can see, Rosemary is close to sitting up completely unsupported. She's correcting herself when she topples a bit in any direction and can easily pull herself back up from leaning forward. She can also pull herself up using my legs from an almost horizontal position.

She's very strong on her feet, and likes standing up with our help. She'll quite often pull herself straight into a standing position when presented with our hands.

She's much happier to spend some time on her tummy, and will do a fair bit of exploring in that position if there's something of interest. She also knows how to roll onto her back and will do so if she gets bothered. She's moved around while on her tummy to reach different things, though not yet moved forward or backward.

(Sorry for the monotone post - Chris is the witty one in this family; for the moment at least.)

Pictures, lots of them (sorry if you're on dial-up!)

Breakfast

Playing in her bouncy chair

Sitting up (except you can't really tell!)

Rosemary with her daddy

Rosemary's first snow day (sorry, she's not actually in most of these!)

She's talking...

... it's just, we have no idea what she's saying.

Seriously folks, in the last few days Rosemary's burbling has, on occasion, begun to sound very much like she's making actual words rather than just trying out different sounds. Tasha is convinced that she's trying to say 'mummy'.

What. A. Surprise.

I personally have no idea what she's trying to say and yet I'm convinced that she is saying something. How odd. It's something in the way she says it, the look in her eyes, that tells me that this is communication, not just random grunting and groaning.

In other news, puréeists may be pleased to know that, as Tasha has been eating vegetable stew the last couple of days*, so Rosemary has been getting mushed up vegetables - sweet potato, potato, courgette, parsnip and beetroot. Her response to this, and to solid(ish) food in general recently, has been very enthusiatic. Like Pavarotti and an all-you-can-eat-chicken-wing buffet, her shouts of FEED ME!!!!!** in between getting another mouthful are quite terrifying.


*My own dinners very definitely not suitable for translation to BLW.

**I'm translating, obviously. It's a sort of primeval, atavistic growlyelp. I think she may have learned it from the dog.

As night follows day

So dinner follows breakfast. There may have been snacking inbetween but not of the sort that you would want to video, unless you had very specialised tastes.



It snowed here last night (photos later). Quite heavy and not melting. Rosemary was interested in it, to an extent, the same way she is in anything new, and noticed it, reached out and touched it, and tasted it. But obviously she didn't have a real ooohhhhhh reaction like we did (I woke Tasha in the middle of the night to show her, in case it would all be melted by dawn) because as far as she knows, this is what happens on this day. Everything goes white. She may be disappointed next year.

The modern husband

So yeah, nowadays in addition to fixing the plumbing, changing nappies, killing spiders and scaring burglars the 21st century man must also be prepared to roll up his sleeves, place a clothespeg on his nose and get on with updating the blog. I know, I know, it seems like women's work, and I admit I feel slightly emasculated whenever I edit HTML, but what's a guy to do?

Seriously, just as the first six months can be a bit, well... boring for dad because sleeping and eating is pretty much it for the baby (although we had enough drama in the first few hours, never mind the first couple of weeks, to last for a long, lonnnnnnng time) so describing this from an external point of view would be even more boring. And logging on as a separate entity just to post pics wouldn't really work for me. I have to make my little comments, as you'll notice in any video that I've shot. But now... six months seems the right time to start contributing more.

And lo, I have actual content. Rosemary eating breakfast...



[Further video to come once I can get it uploaded]

Apparently babies will keep food in their mouths, like hamsters, for up to 30 minutes or so (sometimes apple-cheeked isn't just figurative), and that's what can cause the occasional choking cough. It's not so much that they're having trouble with one piece of food, more that they're in such a rush to taste all before them that they're trying to eat the main course without first swallowing the apertif. Something that my own father is familiar with.

Couple of technical things to get out of the way (things are going to be different around here). The number of posts on the main page has been reduced from 10 to 5 to avoid having to load so many pictures, and captcha has been turned on for the comments. And can I take this opportunity to suggest to anybody - by which I chiefly mean Rosemary's grandparents - that leaving a brief comment is not only acceptable but desirable.

Grandad's birthday and shelves

Here are a few photos of Rosemary with her Grandad on his birthday.













And here's a non-Rosemary-related photo of the bookshelves I put up, with lots of books on them. Mmm, books!

Puschairs and food

Getting ready to go out in her pushchair!




Getting ready to go out in her pushchair some more



(This one has nothing to do with Rosemary, but doesn't it look yummy?!)



Playing in her high-chair



Having breakfast



Having breakfast some more



And some more




For those who want to know, breakfast consisted of a piece of banana, a piece of kiwi fruit, a piece of pear, four slices of toast, two with Philadelphia on and two with pear and apple spread (pure fruit, no added sugar, but very very sweet!). Most of it went onto the chair seat, but she did seem to have some of the banana and she licked a lot of the Philadelphia and pear and apple spread off the toast, seemingly preferring the pear and apple spread (hmm, what a surprise, she's inherited her mum's sweet tooth!).

Pictures, lots of them

Well, I've found a way to easily get the HTML, so pictures will hopefully be added more regularly now. (Firefox extensions are great!) In the meantime, here are the latest photos, which I didn't have time to put in the last post...