Week 24

5th - 11th June 2005

Emma's Entry

"Yes... the grass tickles my toes!"

This week we tried some new foods with Evan and also introduced breakfast. We tried Evan on sweet potato and pear, both of which he really liked. We started to do combination meals as well like carrot and sweet potato followed by pear and baby rice for dessert. I have been taken my time with new foods to make sure that Evan doesn't get overloaded with new flavours. I didn't want to try something new everyday but give Evan a couple of days to get used to a new flavour. We've been trying to film all the new tastes on the camcorder but this weekend at Caroline's mums house we mashed up a little melon that we were eating for lunch to see if he would like it. It's a shame we didn't have the camcorder because he pulled this really cute face and didn't seem to like it. We've not really given him the raw flavours on their own as they can be quite overpowering. Instead we have been mixing them with baby rice and milk so this could be one of the reasons why he didn't like the melon, it was cold and all on its own. We'll try him on it again in a few weeks and probably with something else so that the taste is not so strong.

We didn't get on very well with breakfast this week. Evan gets rather hungry in the morning and it usually takes us around 1 hour to get washed and dressed. When Evan is hungry he hates to be put down so I found it very difficult to make porridge. In the end I had to put him in his swing whilst I made it and he just screamed the house down. I was a little distressed hearing Evan cry and I wasn't really sure of the quantities and at first I tried adding a little formula with the porridge and water to make it taste milky but I added far too much and it tasted fowl. This just prolonged Evans wait as I had to bin that attempt and start again. When I had finally made the porridge to a reasonable standard Evan was extremely traumatised. I couldn't get him to eat it because he was crying and he just ended up crying with a mouth full of porridge that he then spat out every time he cried spraying me with soggy porridge! I kept having to place him on the boob to console him and then attempted to feed the porridge to him sitting on my leg. It was a disaster, he kept turning toward me looking for boob and smearing porridge all over me and in the end I just gave him boob for breakfast, though I should have let him swallow the porridge he already had in his mouth!

Evan sharing a big cuddle with Grandma

We went to our final Wednesday lunch this week with the mums that I have met at the "new mums weigh-in group". Rachel is relocating to Bath and Esther is returning to work. It has been really nice to share experiences with people in the same situation as me as talking babies can become quite boring for friends who don't have babies. We decided to do a group photo of all the babies on Rachel's. Evan is such a sensitive little boy when it comes to noises (yes, this is the boy that cried when he first heard someone clap their hands together). Esther was shaking this noisy toy to get the babies attention and they all looked up curiously apart from Evan who looked horrified and cried throughout the whole photo shoot! Ah bless....

I plan to make the most of my maternity leave just in case I do have to return to work in January so Evan and I are out and about most days and like to visit people as often as we can because he really does love seeing different faces. This week we went to see my mum because we don't really get to see her much and it is a shame. I nearly went out and bought a new stroller but my laziness was more powering than my desire to actually go out to the shops, Caroline will be pleased :). I thought we would spend the whole evening there at one point because we left to go home only to find the main road out of my mums village closed due to an accident. It was funny when I arrived back at my mums shortly after leaving... The thought of sitting in a traffic jam for hours with an unhappy baby would not have been my idea of fun.

Emma

Caroline's Entry

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Evan with my best friend Mel

We had an exciting time this week when we took Evan swimming for the very first time! The local sports centre has a baby pool so we took him there. Emma was very anxious about the whole thing and she held him tightly and just sat in the corner of the pool. At first Evan seemed quite oblivious to the water. He just sat there in her arms chewing his fist and looking around as usual. We were quite surprised because of his antics in the bath.

So with a little persuasion I was able to convince Emma to let me move around with him a bit more. At first we tried him on his back and supported his underside but this didn't work because he curled his legs up which made his bottom sink into the water. So then we tried him on his front. This was trickier as we had to support his chest and try to stop his face going in the water. This position worked much better and he naturally started to kick his legs about and flap his arms around.

After a few minutes of this he really started to get into it. Emma picked him up into a sitting position on her knee and he started to splash us both wildly with his arms laughing and giggling :) Our session came to a rather abrupt end after 20 minutes or so when he managed to face-butt the water and get it all up his nose which made him cry :( It was a lot of fun though and we're going to make it a regular event.

Evan asleep on Vicky's shoulder

This weekend just gone we went to Southend to visit my mum who we haven't seen since before my Exams which I think was about two months ago. She was astounded at how heavy he had become and almost dropped him when she took him for a cuddle! He always seems to love having visitors and seeing new people. My brother came round who Evan hadn't seen since he was very little. My brother isn't exactly a baby person and despite his best efforts to shoot Evan stern faces Evan still managed to giggle at him.

Later in the evening we went around to too see my best friend Mel. I thought I already had a photo of her on the site but we couldn't find it when we looked through so I've uploaded one this time! Vicky, a friend of both Mel and I who lives near Mel came around to visit too which was lovely as we hadn't seen her in about three years. She has 3 young children of her own and she's great with kids and boy did it show! She was wonderful with Evan and made him giggle lots. Later on in the evening he was getting tired and she managed to rock him to sleep on her shoulder and he stayed asleep in her arms for about half an hour!

I love going round to see my friends and wished we lived nearer so we could see them more often. Maybe next time we'll manage to get a photo of Uncle James :) We luv you! *floppy wave* :D

Caroline