Grrr!

All within 10 minutes of arriving home from kindergarten, BallFiend has managed to:

• tip the sand out of his shoes all over the floor;
• tip the sand out of his pockets(!) all over the floor;
• throw many, many, cupfuls of water all over the bathroom (whilst supposedly washing his hands after going to the toilet); 
• have a tantrum about being told off for the above offence; and
• bumped Thumper on the head (probably not intentionally), causing her to cry.

And now he is in the process of emptying the entire contents of a toy box by throwing each item to a different corner of the room.

Looking forward to the day when he moves out of home and I can go over to his place and return the compliment.
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Artist in residence

Unusually for BallFiend, he decided to do some drawing and colouring in today. Thumper got incredibly excited and wanted to join in. So I sat her up in the high chair and gave her some paper and a crayon.  

This masterpiece is Thumper's first ever drawing (not the 'W' in the middle - I just did that to give her the idea, but the rest is all her original work):

10 October 2010 - Thumper's first drawing. Crayon on paper.

Not bad for a 13 month old baby who has never held a crayon before. Her only previous drawing-type experience has been BallFiend's magentic drawing pad.

4 September 2010 - Thumper's first scribble.

Maybe we are going to end up with a sporty/science-y one and an art-y one.
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Just cruisy

Thumper has started cruising. No, not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter. I am referring to that tried-and-true method of transportation, popularised by toddlers around the globe. She wobbles along, holding onto the couch or from the bookshelf to coffee table. A few days ago she got very confident at pulling herself up to standing whilst holding onto furniture. Then this morning, she started moving along whilst holding on for support. The only problem is that she hasn't worked out how to sit down again. So after a while I hear screams of annoyance tinged with fear and that's my cue to help her sit down again so she can crawl off to her next destination.

It's cute but somehow I don't think crawling is going to cut it for much longer. And that means I have to take baby-proofing up to the next level. I'm running out of up-high shelves!
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Dust bunnies

Thumper is obsessed with eating fibres freshly plucked off my clothing. She usually does her harvesting during a breastfeed or just when I am carrying her from here to there. My blue alpaca wool cardigan is her favourite, but any jumper or cardie with fibres that can be easily extracted will do.

When my clothing isn't available, any dust bunny foolish enough to be lurking in her reach will do. Once she has finished sampling the detritus off the floor, she crawls over to me, plonks down on her nappy-padded bottom and looks at me as her chubby fingers repeatedly go to her mouth in a futile attempt to extract the hair or other fluff that has got stuck in her mouth.

It's really quite disgusting... seems like she might be well-suited to a career as a forensic pathologist.
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