Monday, January 29, 2007

So you call this thing a thumb? Yummy!!

Towards the end of last week, Matilda discovered her thumbs, I think mainly her left thumb for now. We have caught her sucking on her thumb - which is a bit of change to sucking on most of her fingers at once. She can cram up to six fingers in her mouth at any one time. We went for a walk yesterday afternoon, and M had both index and middle fingers in her mouth ... if only she was able to blow, she'd be whistling!
We've converted M's pram from the basinette/carry cot over to the regular seat. M's head is so strong, and she's so interested in looking around, I think the confines of the basinette were bothering her. This is great for me, because now it's much easier to reach the storage space underneath, and I don't always have to have the nappy bag on my back (it's a backpack).

Thursday, January 25, 2007

New photos

Some new photos to share with y'all:

Matilda in her fruit/watermelon outfit from Miss Mary
(Still have to get a photo of her from behind in this outfit - there's a slice of watermelon on her butt!)

Tickles with Daddy after a bath

Hanging out with Daddy on the deck on a relaxed Sat morning

Finally, a few photos where Matilda doesn't look completely cross-eyed. :) We see the paedeatric opthamologist about her eyes on Feb 1, hopefully there's nothing serious wrong with them and she'll just have to do exercises to fix whatever's going on.
Sleep continues to be a fun issue. Just this morning, M was showing signs of being tired very shortly after her 6:30am feed. As she was being a grizzle bum, I put her to bed ... mistake. An hour later, she was still cooing and gurgling in her cot, moving herself around and generally not being asleep. At least she was happy! Generally, getting M to sleep is a lot easier than it was in the early days. Although we went on an excursion to the new Ikea store on Monday, hoping that M would fall asleep in the pram ... another mistake. I'm sure there's a photo of us somewhere at Ikea now saying "Do not allow this mother and baby into the store". M cried the store down, all because she was tired, and would not fall asleep in the pram or in my arms, or even in the car on the way home! She did eventually sleep very well that night, but the screaming session was not worth it to get that long sleep.
Matilda is rarely sleeping through the night now. The little stage of sleeping through when she was younger is well and truly over (and I think that was because she wasn't feeding enough, and didn't have enough energy to wake up during the night). If I'm lucky, M might sleep through one night and then wake up the next. But we're now going on almost a full week of not sleeping through ... we do a dream feed, so I'm not sure what else we can do to encourage her to sleep longer at night ... but I guess if she's hungry, she's hungry. Speaking of hungry ... she's calling now!!

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Laughing and Rolling

We've had a couple of exciting firsts this week - first laugh and first proper roll! While I was washing Matilda on Thursday night, and she was happily looking up at her favourite light, she laughed! She's got a gorgeous little giggle, and I can't wait to hear it more often. At the moment, lying on the change mat being washed, and particularly having her face washed, is her favourite place to laugh. Big smiles are happening more frequently now, and if I get into her room quickly enough after Matilda wakes up, I get some very big "Hello Mummy" smiles. :)
Then yesterday, Matilda was having some tummy time on the floor. I've been a bit slack about tummy time, partly because I forget and partly because Matilda's had a super strong neck from the very beginning. Anyway, she was really keeping her head up and even her shoulders well off the floor. All of a sudden, she was rolling, and on her back! Matilda repeated the performance when I was talking to her Grandma Richie on the phone to let her know about Matilda's latest developments. We tried for a repeat performance for Daddy last night after her bath, but Matilda just wanted to show off her neck and shoulder strength. She was also checking out Mythbusters on TV, so it might have been too interesting to be interrupted with a roll.
Matilda is now very much in the oral stage of development (as diagnosed by Aunties Petie and Jenny, and me, thanks to grade 9 RE at St Rita's). If she can, she shoves both hands in her mouth at the same time, otherwise it's any possible combination of fingers, toy, or outfit. Dresses look very cute, but at the moment are becoming quite sodden and aren't really being used to cover her tummy ... that's so boring! Matilda's slobbering a lot, so there's possibly some teeth action happening - I don't think they're coming through yet, but apparently teeth can move up and down a bit before they come through. Or perhaps her salivary glands are just working overtime.