I use a footrest when I’m breastfeeding, and Nathan loves to stand on it. About a week ago he realised he could get onto the couch using it as a step up. We got some video footage of him climbing onto the couch tonight. I now have to remember to move the footrest away from the couch when I finish feeding. 🙂
We also took some footage of his speedy crawling.
The kitchen cupboards at ground level now all have magnetic locks on them. They require a magnet, as a kind of key, to be in the right place before the cupboard doors can be opened. The kitchen drawers still need something to keep them shut because they are just so much fun to open but not so much fun when little fingers get caught in the closing drawer. We have also rearranged the bedroom so that the bed is now against two walls and I no longer worry about Nathan falling out of bed when Andrew isn’t there. Yes, well, Nathan fell out of bed about a week ago because I had fed him back to sleep in bed and fallen asleep myself, but Andrew hadn’t gone to bed yet. A loud thud woke me up, and it was quickly followed by screaming. So we are slowly making the flat a safer place for an active baby to be in. Our next job is to relocate the computer and its attached items (which has mostly been done tonight).
Nathan is getting better and better at standing unaided. I don’t think he is ready for walking because his feet don’t look like they are ready, they are still sort of angled wrong and he still tries to grip the ground with his toes. 🙂 He looks for aeroplanes when he hears them going past our loungeroom window, he looks intently at birds, and Alice is sure that he is trying to say ‘dog’ when he sees dogs.
The elimination communication is going quite well. When I am at home I generally only miss 1 or 2 wees a day, and some days I don’t miss any (the rest are caught in an appropriate receptacle). Alice was excited yesterday to report that she had caught another poo….I think she could be a convert to infant pottying! Nathan is still doing all his poos in the toilet, which I think is wonderful. We went to the Parents’ room at Westfield on the weekend and a lady commented to me on how much the room smelt. Not surprising when the bins are filled with wet and pooey nappies! At least I knew that my son wasn’t contributing to the stench! I’m even getting used to the weird looks I get when I take Nathan into the toilet. I definately think that he is learning to hold on until he is offered the toilet (within reason) and I am wondering whether Nathan does occasionally try to let me know that he needs a wee. We have been hitting the potty whenever I sit Nathan on it, and twice in the last few days he has patted the potty where I thought it might be communication rather than simply playing with the potty. Both times he did a wee as soon as I put him on it. And there have been occasions during the night when he is really grizzly and just won’t go back to sleep, but wees when I offer the potty and then basically just rolls over and goes to sleep when I put him back on the bed.
He also loves reaching up as high as he can, and loves turning dials and pushing buttons….
Climbing so he can reach higher, and playing with balls….
being pushed around on his tiger, and stealing stuff out of the shopping bags (I think he’s looking for mushrooms!).
Nathan went through a really bad patch of night sleeps that had me exhausted. He would wake around midnight and then not go back to sleep for the next 2 – 4.5 hours. I was getting very frustrated, but finally discovered that bouncing him in the hammock was the only way to get him to sleep in this situation. Since that find I’ve had much better sleeps and am feeling much better….still tired, but not dead tired. 😀
And I nearly forgot to mention that Nathan now has 6 teeth! The 2 bottom and 4 top teeth.
My (old) bicycle is 18 years old, has done tens of thousands of kilometres, the gears don’t work well and the handlebars give me shoulder cramps when I ride a long distance. I have tried to fix many of her age-related problems and the shoulder cramp problem, but I came to the conclusion long ago that my best option would be to buy a new bike. Then I moved to Sydney and stopped riding so much.
A few months ago Andrew’s bike was stolen from outside our cage (it was locked to our cage at the time, my bike was apparently not good enough to be stolen since it was locked by the same chain that was cut). Since then we have talked about buying ourselves a new bike each, so last Saturday found us bicycle shopping at Woolys Wheels in Paddington. We took a bicycle for a test ride (road bike with flat handlebars) and we both liked it, so we were fitted out for new bikes, a bike rack that goes on the tow bar of the car, and a baby seat. Today we picked up the bikes, got a helmet for Nathan, and lashed out on bicycle shoes and cleat pedals because I wanted to try them instead of getting toe clips (I can’t possibly ride without something like that these days, it feels like something is missing if I don’t have my feet attached to the pedals). The handy thing about the pedals is that they are normal pedals on one side and cleats on the other, so you don’t need to wear the special bicycle shoes to ride the bike.
Anyway, I’m very excited to have a bicycle that is quite light, and a baby seat so that Nathan and I can pop to the park or the shops without having to get out the car. My old bicycle is going to be donated to some place that does up old bikes for a good cause. I’ll be sad to see the end of Ten Tonne Tessy because I’ve had a lot of fun on her even though I also suffered through terribly painful shoulders as a result of bicycle touring on her. I’m going to have to come up with a nickname for my new bike….I don’t have any ideas yet, but maybe something will become obvious as I get to know her better. 🙂
We were in Melbourne two weekends ago for a friend’s wedding (one of Andrew’s hockey mates) and we got to visit Oma twice in that time. The first time my parents were also there, and the second time it was just Andrew, Nathan and I. The second visit was not expected by Oma, and she was so happy she didn’t stop smiling the entire time we were there. She is so happy to be a great grandmother, and Nathan was a lot more interactive with Oma than the first time, so it was a really nice afternoon.
I know that Oma tells me that she’ll never see me again after most visits, but I had a sense of it being true this time, probably because I think she really believes it. As we were leaving she told me she loved me, and it sounded so final. She is 95 years old (or will be in just over a month), has cancer and was having problems breathing. I cried as we drove away. Somehow you never seem to appreciate fully what you have until it is being taken from you.
It has been getting harder and harder to work out what to write for these half monthly updates. Everything is just a gradual improvement, with Nathan getting better at the skills he is practising, rather than him obtaining new skills. He is still standing at every opportunity and every day he is straighter and reaching higher (to pull down whatever he can reach). He still occasionally lets go of what he’s holding onto and standing on his own for a few seconds at a time. He has started waving and although Andrew has tried and tried to teach him how to clap, it is still beyond him. When he wants something, he reaches with one arm/hand towards the thing he wants. It isn’t always something that is close, so sometimes it’s hard to work out what he wants.
Nathan knows who people are, and if you say to him “where’s Daddy?” or “where’s Mummy?” or “where’s Sophie?” (his toy elephant) or “where’s Arthur?” (his bear) then Nathan will turn his head to look at the person/object. Thismorning when Andrew was still in bed I asked Nathan where Daddy was, and he crawled into the bedroom and started playing with the mirrored wardrobe doors, so I’m not sure if he was heading in there because Daddy was there or if it was a coincidence. He loves playing peekaboo, and even puts his own head down and looks up in his own version of the game. We also think he is trying to repeat what we say, because the syllables are often right and sometimes it even sounds like what we were saying, but mostly his chatter is still baby babble.
Nathan also knows that when I get my pump and handbag and computer ready for work then it means I’m leaving him, and he tends to cry quite a lot. I’m hoping that as he gets used to Alice (our nanny) that he will be happier more quickly.
Food-wise Nathan is a complete guts and has a belly to prove it. He will literally eat anything we give him. He has even tried to eat an apple that I am eating by scraping his bottom teeth along the flesh of the apple. Oh, talking about teeth, he has 3 of his top teeth coming through at the moment. He still hasn’t eaten nuts, but he’s had just about every other food that is well known for causing allergies, so all seems well from that point of view.
Our boy is three quarters of a year old. Time has simply flown!!
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