Oh, it’s you

I left Rose in Delwyn’s care this afternoon for a couple of reasons. Rose needs to get start getting used to Delwyn, because from next February she’ll be looking after her for a day a week. It was also a great opportunity to get some stuff done around the house without Rose here, like vacuuming. Rose’s bedroom hasn’t been vacuumed for two weeks because she’s either awake and I’m taking care of her, or she’s asleep in her room.

So it was a big moment for me. She has hardly been out of my sight for months, and even then it was when Chris was looking after her. So as I left I said earnestly, “Mum’s going away right now but she’ll be back soon”. Rose glanced at me, then looked back at the toy she was playing with.

After the hour was up I went to pick her up. Delwyn had taken her down to the pool room so that her own child, C, could go swimming. Rose looked very happy and content sitting in Delwyn’s arms, watching C jump and dance around in the water. Rose acknowledged my presence, but only with a look that said, “Oh, it’s you.” How weird that she cries when Chris or I go out of the room, but no problem whatsoever when a near stranger looks after her? Shrug.

Anyway, not much else to add, other than I’m keeping a tally of the number of times Rose has fallen asleep with her foot in her hand. That total is now two.

Rose’s many faces

Rose has become a lot more expressive lately. She’s really good at letting us know when she’s okay and when she’s not, and when she wants something. She’s also looking so mature these days, we keep thinking of her as a little girl rather than a baby. Here’s some photos from today:

(I can’t believe I managed to capture two scrunchy smiles in two days!)

We’ve all been getting a lot more sleep lately, which is fantastic. Last night Rose slept from 7pm until 5am, then had a quick feed, and went back down for more sleep. Chris woke up at 7.50am, and when he went to check on her found her playing with her feet. Who knows how long she’d been awake? How nice of her to give us a sleep-in!

She’s also been sleeping a lot better during the day. She usually has a long sleep of an hour and a half to two hours in the morning, plus two more sleeps of varying lengths in the afternoon.

The solids are going great. She loves her solid food. The only issue is that she definitely prefers fruit to vegetables, so we have to give her veggies first to make sure she eats them. Sometimes I have to sneak veggies in with fruit in order to get her to eat them. She loves peas and parsnip, though. As well as fruit and vegetables, she’s also eaten rice, oats, quinoa, hummus, and lentils!

Smile

For the last month or so, Rose has been doing a weird scrunchy smile. It’s become a bit of a game to try to catch her screwed-up, squinty-eyed munchkin-grin on camera.

I started keeping the camera in the living room, always within reach. I hid behind pot plants and furniture. I did silly dances and sang silly songs. She would do the funny smile, then I’d grab the camera, and it’d vanish. I basically metamorphosed into a wildlife photographer, waiting with cramped arms and shoulders, sweat running down my back, my camera poised.

Finally, today, I won.

It was worth it, don’t you think?

No more spare bedroom

We’ve moved. Into the spare bedroom, that is. We’ve known for some time that we’ve all needed our own space, and that time has come. We’d been putting it off because of our travelling and also the hassle involved in moving everything around, but Rose’s sleeping problems forced the issue. No more waking up every time she snuffles and then resettles herself. No more lying awake wondering if her noises mean she’s awake or asleep. Now we only wake up when she’s full-on crying. Rose has been sleeping a little better, but we’ve been sleeping a lot better.

Some of you may be wondering why we moved out of our room rather than putting her in the spare room? It’s to do with the configuration of our apartment. The room that Chris and I have moved into has sliding doors and we decided that it was too unsafe to let her sleep there. It’s so hot in Sydney – you have to sleep with the door open in Summer and we just wouldn’t be able to rest at night worrying about her.

So yesterday was spent moving beds and furniture. It was quite a hassle while looking after Rose – generally one of us had to take care of her, while the other moved stuff. But we got it all done pretty quickly.

Also, I have a couple of new developments to report on. Yesterday morning Rose started saying, “mamamamamamamama.” We’re pretty sure she doesn’t know what it means; the first time she said it when Chris was reading her books. Generally she’s used it to express a wail of complaint. Hopefully one day she’ll learn that it’s my name as well!

Also, today she showed the first sign of separation anxiety. At breakfast Chris got his shoes on to go out and get the newspaper, and Rose started crying and wailing (more “mamamamammama”). She kept arching her back and carrying on until he came back, about two minutes later. Interesting times.

Developmental Report Card

Just lately Rose’s vocalisations have become a lot more complex. She makes noises that sound very similar to speech. In fact, they’re so similar that sometimes I swear she’s saying, “Blah, blah, blah,” to which Chris and I often respond, “Yes, Rose, I couldn’t agree more.” Sometimes it sounds like she wants to join in on the conversation so we stop and look at her when she’s talking, and then wait for her to stop before we start saying something in reply.

She’s become very dexterous with her hands. She can now pass an object from one hand to the next. She can also turn objects around in her hand. She loves this little yellow ball we have with a smiling face on it and a jingle object inside. She turns it around and around, possibly looking for where the sound comes from, possibly just marveling at it. We bought a couple of cool toys in San Francisco; one is a set of stacking cups which you can either use as cups, or clip together as a ball with objects inside, or stack them in a tower. I’ve been putting small objects in the cups and she loves taking them out, and then picking up two cups and banging them together. The other toy is a fishbowl with small soft fishes that squeak and jingle. We play at taking them out of the fishbowl and putting them back in. Dave and Laura gave Rose this awesome gadget called a “Mozart cube”. It plays different mozart tunes, and you can turn on and off different instruments to hear different parts of the song. You can also play all the instruments together. One day it will teach Rose about how instruments combine to create music, but for now she loves the flashing lights and the songs.

She isn’t crawling yet, but she’s definitely mobile. She gets up onto her hands and knees and rocks back and forth, but can’t quite work out how to use her hands and legs in combination to move forward. She also loves sitting up and playing with toys upright. You still have to monitor her quite closely, however, as she sometimes ambitiously grabs for something and overbalances, and topples over.

Books are still her favorite activity. She loves Poppy Cat, Busy Airport, and a new book “Baby Talk” which has pictures of baby faces, and flaps you can open. I find it a bit odd, to be honest, but she loves looking at the pictures of other babies.

She has temper tantrums, but not very often. One memorable day she wanted a breastfeed right after I’d pumped some milk, so there wasn’t much milk left in my breasts. She was clearly annoyed by how hard it was to get a decent feed, so she started pulling off, grunting angrily, and swinging at me with her little fists. She was annoyed!

At the moment our favorite nick-names for her are Rosie Roo, Figgy Pudding, Carrot-y Peas, Fartacus, and Pretty Girl.

Two front teeth

Yawn

Rose is feeling a lot better, no more high temperatures. But there’s still no improvement on the sleeping front. Last night she got up three times, and then finally settled on a 5.45am final wake up. Yawn.

She had a check up with the pediatrician yesterday, and he reported that all was well. No need for any thyroid tests; she has no sign of thyroid dysfunction. I discussed the sleeping issue and he said that jetlag can last a few weeks in babies. In other words, we have to hang in there for a bit longer and hopefully she’ll settle back down to a better routine. I’ve also come to the conclusion that we have to start sleeping in separate rooms. We’re going to try to move into our spare room on the weekend.

I reckon I’d give someone a good $150 right now for a sleep lasting longer than a couple of hours.

She makes me smile…

I just went in to check on Rose (we’d put her down to sleep 30 minutes ago) and found that she’d fallen asleep holding her foot. I tried to take a photo, but it was difficult given the darkness of the room:

I wish that the middle-of-the-night didn’t exist

Rose woke us up last night at 2am, crying. We listened to her for five, maybe ten minutes, and then when I picked her up I knew right away she had a high temperature. It wasn’t too bad – around 37.6 (100oF) – but it was warm enough. So we got her up, measured out the Baby Panadol (Tylenol) and squirted it down her throat. She then proceeded to spit most of it back up, so we then had that whole “guesstimate how much she’d spit up” thing and then gave her another squirt for good measure.

She wouldn’t go back to sleep, so I had to intervene a couple of times with some calming breastfeeds, then finally she dropped off. (Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking, this is terrible practice. She’s never going to learn to self-settle if I keep doing that. Well, last night we were desperate, okay?) Later on her temperature had gone back to normal. I say “later on” because the rest of the night was hazy, I have no idea if I got up five times or one. Nights with a baby are often like this; your mind can’t cope with being woken up so it sends your body out to do stuff without your mind really engaging. I’ve never woken up with the house strangely clean, but I live in hope.

Anyway, Rose is perfectly fine this morning, if a little cranky. She has a welt on her leg from the vaccination shot, so I’m guessing that her leg is sore. But the high temp has disappeared.

I am tired. Chris is managing to look and sound chipper, though. I think it’s funny that we manage to tag-team optimism so well. When I’m tired, grumpy and discouraged, Chris tags in with cheery optimism. I’m glad it works like that.

Jabs

Rose had her six month shots today, a month and 15 days after she was supposed to get them. So far she seems unaffected. In fact, she didn’t cry at all for the first jab, and only a little for the second one. The doctor was amazed.

Fortunately her sleeping has improved. Last night she slept through until 4am, then after a quick feed, she went back down until 7.30am. We think that part of her problem is adjusting to the heat and humidity here. We’re all in shock, having come from the colder temps of the northern hemisphere. So we’ve started dressing Rose in only a cotton vest and her nappy, and she seems much happier.

Also, I went into work today to sort out my return-to-work arrangements. My boss has unofficially approved me to go back to work next year for two days per week. The idea is that our friend and neighbour Delwyn will look after Rose for one day and Chris will look after her for the other day I’m at work. Chris has a flexible schedule next year because he won’t be teaching until the middle of the year. He’ll still have research and administrative work to do, though. I think the arrangement will work out really well for everyone: I’m looking forward to having colleagues again, it’ll be great for Rose to have a bit of variety in caregivers, and Rose and I will still have three fun days together!