With the Wiggles (Guest post written by Daddy)

I took Rose to the Wiggles on Thursday. For non-Australasians, the Wiggles are a four-man band justifiably loved by children in these parts. They are fun, enthusiastic, thoughtful, and make kids ecstatically happy without pandering or being false in any way. I think it reflects creditably on Australia that they are the nation’s highest-earning entertainers. They were certainly the best show I’ve seen at that venue since Ryan Adams.

We bought the tickets about two months ago, when Rose was still firmly in two-sleeps-a-day mode. As Thursday approached, I was a bit apprehensive about the logistics: chances were that I would have to wake Rose up and rush her through an early lunch if we were to have any chance of getting to the theatre by 12:30. The fact that the theatre, being more a Ryan Adams kind of place than a kids’ band kind of place, does not have a stroller parking lot meant that I was going to have to drive, park nearby, and carry Rose in my arms. Though the pre-automobile back streets of Newtown were clogged with hundreds of other parents doing the same thing, it worked out fine. I’d had to wake Rose up, which felt wrong; she wolfed down her lunch and was very cooperative in the car.

And she loved the show. She was entitled to own seat but she ended up sitting on my lap: the theatre has foldout seats and, heavy though Rose feels to me, she isn’t heavy enough to depress a folding seat. I sat her down and the bottom of the chair bounced back up and she looked like someone stuck in a sofabed that had sprung like a mousetrap. I expected her to try to crawl away, or at least wiggle, but she sat there intently watching the show. Then, in the second half, she began clapping wildly, and grinning away. I don’t think she grasped what was going on when all the older toddlers yelled ‘Wake up, Geoff!’ on cue when one of the Wiggles fell asleep on stage, as is his habit, but she loved the hubbub. She enjoyed the songs and the dancing, and loved the other characters who joined the Wiggles onstage – none more so than Henry the Octopus. Rose was enchanted and I felt very privileged.

She slept very soundly on Thursday night.

Teeth

During a particularly hearty laugh this afternoon I got to peer into Rose’s mouth and count her teeth. She has four front incisor teeth in the top and bottom, and four first molars. In other words, she has twelve teeth! By my counting, she only has another eight to go.

Collapsible Tunnel

I bought Rose a collapsible tunnel yesterday and she loves it. She’s been crawling in and out, jumping on top of it, and just generally having a ball.

If you’re wondering how her walking is going, it’s going great. Every morning the first thing she wants to do is practice. It makes us wonder if she’s been thinking about it all night! She hasn’t done as well as her first day (when she took 6 steps), generally she stumbles at around 2 or 3 steps. The biggest stumbling block is that she doesn’t know to slow down and be cautious. She leans forward, pushes off, then usually falls flat on her face. The funny thing is that she still has to hold the umbrella to do it. It’s great watching her focus and concentrate on the task, and she’s just adorable as usual.

First steps

Rose has been trying to walk all day! The most she has done is about five steps. The funniest thing is that she seems to only be able to do it when she’s carrying an umbrella. Maybe it’s for balance? Anyway, I wasn’t able to catch her best attempts at walking, but I do have this video to share (taken over at Stephen and Delwyn’s place):

Going low

I own about 700 CDs* which are stored in bookcase-style shelving in our living room. (You can see what they look like from this Christmas photo). Rose has remained largely ignorant of the delights of this media because we’ve successfully barricaded the collection with a chair, fan, and small side table. For ages she didn’t seem to know that there was anything actually behind all that stuff. Lately, however, Rose has discovered how to crawl, army-style, under objects. And her first port of call was the CD shelves.

The good thing is she keeps handing me CDs I haven’t heard or thought about for years (“The Cure’s Disintegration? Wow, I haven’t heard that in ages“) so I’m rediscovering my music collection all over.

The bad thing is that she’s discovered how to get into the cases and see the pretty shiny disks inside. And I’m spending hours each week re-shelving CDs.

* I realise that owning CDs is a hallmark of a quaint, bygone era, and consequently I’m outing myself as being at least 35.

Yoddler Tears

I just read my friend Laura’s blog about how her 22-month old daughter Kate is being very erratic: one day everything’s great, then other days… the wheels come off. I could’ve written her last two posts myself!

Rose has had an up-and-down week, some days taking one sleep of 2 hours, another day having two hour-long naps, and yet another day sleeping for 40 minutes max and refusing subsequent naps. I find all this erraticness perplexing and frustrating. The biggest impact is that you have to be super flexible when you’re planning activities. But there is an up-side: she copes with less daytime sleep better than she used to, so even on days when she hasn’t slept much it doesn’t usually have a big impact on her behaviour. And she still sleeps well out at night.

She’s also been throwing some major tantrums this week. One day she tried to follow me into the bathroom (where we don’t allow her to go). I shut the door so she couldn’t go in. She became apoplectic with rage, her little arms pumping up and down and thrashing around. I actually wondered if she was having a fit at first. The terrible thing is that I felt like laughing at her, she looked so comical.

But you just can’t predict her behaviour – at other times you take a forbidden item off her and she doesn’t even blink. So far we’re dealing with her tantrums matter-of-factly: briefly explaining the situation, not backing down, but giving hugs if she needs support. But I fear that this is the start of all that tough parenting stuff – the subject of thousands of self-help books – the Toddler Years.

Three hours, still going strong

There’s definitely some baby weirdness going on in Rose’s world. Lately she’s started taking one really long sleep in the mornings – 2 hours, sometimes 2 1/2 hours. Right now she’s freaking us out completely – she’s been asleep for just over 3 hours, without a peep!

However, the trade off seems to be some irregularity in her night time sleeping. Lately she’s been waking up once or twice after bedtime in the early evening. Usually we don’t intervene, and she goes back to sleep. But there have been times when her crying has got urgent and panicky, and we’ve gone in reassure her and give her a few pats. We had an unusually bad night last night – she woke up at 3.30pm, crying hysterically. We tried to tough it out, but she really sounded distressed. She wouldn’t resettle for ages, so in the end we fell back on the last trick in a parents book: pain relief. Did we have any physical symptoms to suggest illness? No. But cut us a break, we were desperate.

I suspect that she’s going through one of the developmental seismic shifts when her behaviour and habits change. However, it could also be teething. She’s been growing teeth like crazy – she now has two molars fully through and a couple more poking through in the bottom. My friend Dave also says that when babies have a rough night all they can do is cry – whereas us adults can get up and watch TV or read a book. Whatever the reason, three hour daytime naps? Madness.

Da’

Dad left today, and we’re all feeling a bit sad this evening. We had a great visit. He spent a lot of time with Rose, taking her out to the playground, on some longish walks, and lots of monkeying around in the apartment. He gave me some much-needed breaks during the week and unflappably helped us deal with the workmen (who’ve been here most of the week as well). He kept telling us what a happy, content girl Rose is. I guess we’ve thought that all along, but now she’s a toddler and her personality is coming out really strongly, it’s becoming more obvious.

The amusing thing is that Rose really took a shine to him – she smiled and made funny faces, busted out dance moves to catch his eye, coquettishly turned her head sideways to snatch glances at him, and giggled and laughed as they played. She learned a couple of new “skills”, too, like doing downward-facing dog (a yoga pose) while looking at you between her legs.

She wasn’t shy around Dad at all, unlike some other visits. The funny thing we noticed is that she said, “Da’!” every time she saw him, even though he kept trying to teach her “Grandad”.

On one of the days Dad was here he took Rose to the nearby playground. They passed a woman on the street who kept looking at Rose. She came over and said, “Is that little Rose?” Dad replied, “Yes, I’m her Grandad.” She then explained that her kid when to the same school as Delwyn’s (Rose’s caregiver on Fridays). It struck me as being so strange that Rosie knows some people that neither Chris nor myself know!

Grandad’s visit

We’re having a lot of fun with Grandad on this visit! I’ve uploaded some new photos so that you can see what we’ve been up to.

Happy Mothers Day!

Happy Mothers Day to all the mums out there! I’ve had a great day, starting with a lie in until 9am. Then I got flowers from Chris (irises), rocky road and soft-eating licorice from Rosie, and my Dad (who’s staying with us at the moment) gave me some dukkah.

Personal highlight of the day? Dancing around and playing “air drums” to Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” with my dad, while Rosie looked at us like we were mad. I think it was my first time making Rose embarrassed. I love being a mum!