My dear second child is already suffering from classic second child syndrome... not many photos taken, only gets a passing mention in this blog, lies around waiting (and very occasionally crying) while her mother or father attend to her older sibling before her needs are met.
Poor Thumper. Well this post is just for you...
First, I want you to know that despite the lack of recorded history about your life thus far, you are not neglected and are very much loved. Usually if we get a minute together, I spend it playing with you rather than writing about you or attempting to photograph you. Anyway, attempts to take photos are often thwarted by my poor photography skills or sometimes by your older brother stealing the limelight, or simply demanding attention. Unfortunately he is mobile, so tends to bump into stuff, hurt himself and cry. Soon you will be mobile too, then you can get your own back.
So Thumper, here is your 7 month old report card. it was meant to be a 6 month old report, but I didn't get time to do it and now here we are, a month (and a week!) later, and I am finally writing about your life so far...
Growth and development
Physically, you are long (ie. tall, except you don't stand up yet). When you were measured at 5.5 months of age you were 65 cm in length, only 1.5 cm shorter than your brother was when he was the same age, yet you weighted 6550g, which is 800g less than your brother was at the same age. So tall and skinny, except for your gorgeous, chubby thighs!
You passed all the developmental tests at your last Maternal & Child Health Nurse assessment with flying colours. As she noted in your health record book "development = age". In other words, you are normal. I could have told her that... only need to look at you!
Health
Your health has been excellent - just one minor bout of the snuffles a few months ago, not even serious enough to call it a cold. You contracted this from your brother - he did have a cold and shared the germs with you during one of the many times that he was cuddling and kissing you. Other than that, you still have reflux and we kept you on the medication for it (Losec) until you were 6 months old. Then the bottle ran out and we decided to see how you went without it. After a week, you seemed to be coping fine, so we didn't buy another bottle. You still have the occasional spit-up (sometimes with 'solids' food mixed in with it, which is quite yuck!) and quite often have 'silent reflux' but it doesn't seem to trouble you anymore. However, you still need a good burp after a feed. They are often impressively loud!
Accidents and Bumps
I'm sorry to say that you have suffered a few knocks. BallFiend can be a bit rough at times, not intentionally, but toys get thrown and occasionally connect with your head. Or a round of rather vigorous cuddling see you knocked over or squashed. The scariest time was when you were 18 weeks old (12 January 2010) and BallFiend fell on your neck. It was a hot day and you were lying on the back deck, in the nuddie, having a kick. BallFiend was also galumphing about when he tripped over, his knee landing somewhere on your neck/chest. You were winded for about 10 minutes - making this short, sharp crys. My finger was hovering over the phone ready to dial 000, but after a while you got your breath back and were fine.
Unfortunately you have endured occasional aggression from BallFiend. The first ever time was on xmas day 2009 when he smacked you on the forehead. It was late and we had been out all day at VolubleK's house and he was tired and you were crying (you were tired too). He only hit you because he wanted to talk to me and your crying was distressing him. Since then, you have been hit on no more than 5 occasions - in each case, it has been when BallFiend has been tired and has had trouble controlling his emotions. He is only 3.5 years old after all.
I have to own up to bumping your noggin myself on two occasions - both in the past fortnight: once when getting you into the car, I bumped your head on the car door; and another time when I was picking you up off the floor I bumped your head on the bookshelf! So sorry about that. If it's any consolation, you didn't cry for long and you still seem to be incredibly intelligent! You should also know that the day before I bumped your head on the bookshelf you did the very same thing to yourself when you rolled over.
You first rolled from your tummy onto your back when you were just 15 weeks old (23 December 2009), but that was more an accident than done with intention. You are much better at it now, but it still often happens by accident and you always look very surprised to find yourself staring at the ceiling.
A couple of weeks ago, you rolled from your back onto your tummy for the first time. But you still haven't mastered this trick yet, and have only done it a handful of times since.
Apart from rolling, you are becoming increasingly mobile -- not crawling as such, but wriggling across the floor by several methods. The first way you started to move, when you were about 23 weeks old, was lying on your back and using your heels to pull yourself across the floor. Here's what I posted on Facebook on 22 February 2010:
Thumper is slowly creeping across the floor whilst lying on her back, using her feet to pull her body along. She is now half-way under the coffee table!
Then you learned how to spin 180 degrees whilst on your tummy. By combining rolling, spinning and wriggling, you could really move around a bit - often travelling about 60 cms in half an hour. Then you learned how to move backwards when lying on your tummy by pushing with your arms. This is a recent trick and you still don't seem to be able to do it intentionally. You get very cross when a toy that is just out of reach gets further and further away as you creep backwards, when I can see in your mind you feel like you should be moving forwards. Sometimes you get stuck, backed up against a couch or table and then you alert us that you need rescuing with a loud, grumpy wail. It always give us a bit of a laugh!
Eating
You started eating 'solids' (ie. food other than breastmilk) when you were nearly 6 months old. We are using the '
baby-led solids' method and since you were about 4 months old,
DeepSpice and I had been sitting you on our laps whilst we ate so you could join in the meal. When you were 23 weeks old (14 February 2010), you grabbed a floret of broccoli from one of our plates and chomped away like a pro! And you have never looked back. You love joining in at meal times, sitting up in the high chair and grinning away whilst you shove food into your mouth, much of it gets swallowed too (we see the evidence in your nappies!). It is clear from the look on your face that you feel that you are very grown up when you join in family meals.
Overall, it is great that you are so happy to feed yourself - I really appreciate that I don't have to sit around and spoon-feed you all the time. We tried baby-led solids with BallFiend too, but he wanted to be waited upon, hand and foot, and would only eat when spoon-fed - very time consuming! The only down-side to letting you feed yourself is the enormous mess!
Things you eat include:
- porridge for breakfast (we usually do spoon-feed you this, as it's a bit hard to pick up with your hands)
- bread or rice crackers with avocado or cream cheese spread on them
- whatever we all eat for dinner - last night was steak, steamed vegies and mashed potato. Other times, you have had trevally or salmon, stir-fried vegies, roasted vegies (you love sweet potato and pumpkin!)
- sticks of cucumber (these seem to be your favourite at the moment - perhaps because you are teething? Although there is no sign of teeth yet)
- fresh fruit - banana, nectarine, apple, peach, pear, etc.
Talking
You make all sorts of interesting sounds these days, not just crying anymore. At about 4 months you went through the typical stage of 'crowing' and occasionally you still make these noises. You have a funny laugh made by rapidly inhaling and exhaling. A different funny laugh made by a sharp inhale of breath that sounds like 'Eeeeee!" BallFiend loves to mimic this in an effort to get you to do it again. Sometimes you screw up your nose and snort, again inhaling and exhaling for greater effect. You have also started to do a more child/adult type of laugh - of the 'ha ha ha' kind.
Another favourite sound is blowing raspberries, which you learned to do from watching your big brother. Usually you just make raspberries using your lips and tongue, but you have also learned to blow them on the back of your hand, after watching BallFiend blow raspberries on his arm. You are a great copy-cat!
DeepSpice and I have been doing baby sign language with you since you were about 5 months old (just as we did with BallFiend), and to our great delight, you started signing back almost straight away! At about 6 months of age, you signed "mum" and "eat" on the same day, a week or so later you signed "drink". BallFiend didn't sign back till about 9 - 10 months of age. His first sign was 'milk" closely followed by "ball", no surprises there!
Sleeping and waking
Your day (often!) goes something like this...
4.30 am - 5.30 am -- wake for a breastfeed and then go back to sleep (usually in bed with mum and dad)
7.00 - 8.00 am -- wake up, breastfeed
8.00 am -- breakfast (usually porridge), play
9.30 am -- usually a quick breastfeed, then back to bed for a morning nap
12.00 pm -- breastfeed then lunch, play
1.30 pm -- back to bed for an afternoon nap
3.30 or 4.00 pm -- wake, breastfeed, play
5.00 pm -- short nap before dinner
6.00 pm -- breastfeed then dinner, play
7.30 pm -- into pyjamas, ready for bed, breastfeed
8.00 - 8.30 pm -- off to bed.
Of course, often your preferred sleep times are messed up because we have to go out to drop BallFiend off at or pick him up from creche, kindergarten, kinder circus, or because we are going out to playgroup or shopping.
You are an incredibly resilient little thing, even when you are tired out from missing your naps, you don't scream and wail, you just nap in the car or pram as much as you can, then power on... even if you only get a 15 - 30 minute nap. It never ceases to amaze me, because when BallFiend was your age, my life revolved around settling him off to sleep, tiptoeing around so as not to wake him and scheduling all our activities around his sleep times. Since birth you have always had the ability to self-settle off to sleep and all I can say is that this is wonderful! Both you and I are better rested because of it.
However, it is not all roses... throughout your short life you have had many bouts of waking during the night. This is fair enough until you are 12 - 16 weeks - all little babies need to wake for a feed. In fact, you surprised us greatly when you slept through the night (9 hours!) when you were only a week or two old. Since then you have often slept through (at first 9.00 pm to 5.00 am, then as you got older from 8.00 pm to 7.00 am). But you also keep us on our toes. Just when we get used to full nights of sleep, you go through a period of waking at 4.00 am every night, or 12.00 am, or 2.00 am. No idea why. Sometimes you are hungry but often not... sometimes you just wake up. A week ago, you went through a stage of crying out loudly in your sleep but not actually waking up. One night you screamed at 11.30 pm, 12.00 am, 2.00 am, and 5.00 am, all without ever actually waking up. If only your dad and I could have slept through it too! The next morning we were utterly exhausted and having BallFiend wake at 6.30 am didn't help!
Still, overall, we are getting a lot more sleep than we were expecting.
Interests
As is typical of a baby your age, you are interested in everything! Most things are explored by your mouth. Your current favourite things to gum are the foam puzzle-shaped floor mats and shoes. I wonder if you are going to have a major shoe obsession? Whenever you see a new shoe, you try and chew on it! Lucky for you, you have been given a lot of hand-me-down clothes from LittleMissL, LittleMissP and PetitAmi, including bags and bags of shoes!!
Another major interest is watching BallFiend. You never seem to tire of watching him jump and run about, and I can see from the glint in your eye and the grin on your face that you are desperate to be able to move so you can go with him. Watching the two of you interact is sheer delight. BallFiend makes a silly face, or nuzzles your tummy with his nose, plays with a toy in front of you or even just laughs and in response you laugh like crazy too. It is gorgeous to watch. I never expected that BallFiend would enjoy playing with you so much. I thought the age difference would mean he would have little interest in you. I can only hope that your close relationship continues as both of you grow older.
You love to have songs sung to you - your favourite seems to be "Humpty Dumpty". You also seem to enjoy it when I sing "The Grand Old Duke Of York" and lift you up and down in time with the lyrics. In fact any time you get picked up and whizzed around in the air makes you giggle like crazy.
You also like to kick - whether lying on the floor or sitting in your high chair, your little legs are constantly kicking. If you are in the high chair all we see above the table top is your body jiggling about; but a glance under the table and we see you chubby little legs kicking away.
Another favourite game is 'peekaboo' - it always gets an up-roarious laugh out of you. Both BallFiend and I play this with you.
Anyway, that's probably enough of my waffling on for now. Keep up with the good work, but please don't grow up too quickly!
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There's a story that my great aunt used to tell, that StompyDad loves to retell to the point of annoyance: that my mother "could eat out of an eggcup at 6 months" (or sometimes 7 or 8 months depending on the mood of the storyteller).
