Week 26

19th - 25th June 2005

Emma's Entry

It's a hard life!

Evan is sitting up much better now and he likes to reach out to toys nearby when he is sitting up. This is a good thing because I don't have to have top class reactions times for anticipating when he is going to fall. I tried filming him alone with the camcorder this week and that was a disaster because he wanted to eat it and he was being very playful. I didn't realise how far away I was from him and when he lost his balance sitting up, he started to fall backwards. I threw out my arm but ended up grasping thin air while Evan flopped onto his back - boy his head made a really disturbing thud! I felt really guilty but the good thing about being mummy is that a quick cuddle stops the crying instantly. Evan really likes to sit up and doesn't understand that he lacks the stability. I have to have him sitting up in the bath otherwise he lies there arching his back and fussing. He loves splashing his hands right into the water and grabbing his feet which is cute but he also has the tendency to do it with such force that it sends him toppling forward. Yes... Evan face-butted the water this week, luckily Caroline caught him before he went under but he did manage to get a face full of bubbles!

Evan's friend Alex went to France last week to visit his family and bought us back a toy that every baby in France has. It's a rubber giraffe called Sophie and she squeaks when you squeeze her. He doesn't have any toys of that texture and he really does like it. He will just chew her and she is really easy to hold. He squeaks her easily whether by chewing or whacking her on nearby surfaces but I don't think he realises that it is him doing it. You can just about make her out in the pushchair picture below (She is also in the week 25 picture).

I don't need mummy's support

To help get Evan off to sleep better at night we are also trying to get up at a similar time each day. I didn't want to have an alarm clock set because the beeping may startle Evan so we had just relied on Caroline waking us up with a morning coffee...mmmm yum.... This doesn't really work out all the time because sometimes Caroline likes to have a lie in :). This week I started setting the alarm clock to come on at 7am but with the radio and not the buzzer. This seems to be doing the trick and it wakes Evan up before it does me. I usually get woken up with a rather disturbing kick from Evan! He'll just lie in bed gurgling away and usually playing with his toes until I decide that I am awake enough to get up.

We introduced chocolate pudding, papaya, rusk, potato and swede this week. He really didn't like the swede, he was ill on the days we tried it but I decided that I'd rather feed him foods he really likes because there is enough of them rather than feed him foods that he would take purely because he was hungry. He vomited all the food up whilst he was ill so we had him on a bland diet until he was better of just plain porridge for breakfast and plain baby rice for lunch because he was even struggling to keep the milk down. I have had to increase the quantities this week because one day he ate all of his porridge and was still hungry so I followed that with mashed up rusk, which he ate enthusiastically.

Emma

Caroline's Entry

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Play time on a lazy Sunday morning

Over the last couple of weeks we've been trying to establish more of a routine for Evan - regular feed times, nap times and bed time in the evening. But just lately he's really started to fuss in the evenings. I think he's got to that age where he really knows that if he screams his head off Emma comes running and I think he's playing us good!

At the end of last week we took him round to Emma's mums and we made the mistake of trying him out in the travel cot - boy did he throw a paddy! After that I decided that we had to put a sharp stop to this behaviour before it gets out of hand. I had a read around and I read about a man called Richard Ferber who wrote a famous book about getting babies to sleep. His system is harsh but apparently effective. The idea is to establish a clear night-time routine (like, bath, story, bed) and put the baby down awake. He'll cry but you leave him for a set time and then go and soothe him *without* picking him up. It's very difficult because his cries get worse and worse and each time you leave him longer. We've been trying it for a week and it's extremely tough on Emma to leave him but I think we are making some progress. However he was a bit poorly in the middle of the week which didn't help.

To add to the sleep problems, almost overnight he's just suddenly started rolling over in his cot. At first it was cute, we went in his room and found him on his side with his arm hanging out of the bars! Unfortunately he also rolls completely over and then lays with his face in the mattress which is not safe so of course we keep having to go in there and flip him over which inevitably wakes him up. Bit of a nightmare really. However, I'm determined to stick with it because otherwise I have visions of this little boy throwing tantrums at bed time for years to come and I really don't think I could cope with that!

Gimme dat icecream!

We've had some scorching hot weather over the weekend so we bought a little paddling pool for the garden and rather than go swimming at the local sports centre we've been having some little sessions in the pool in the garden. It was funny at first because earlier in the day the water was still a little too cold for him; we dipped his toes in and he flayed his limbs held his breath and did his little heavy breathing thing that he does just before he cries! By late afternoon the sun had been on the water long enough to make it nice and warm and then we could all get in and have a splash about.

On one of the afternoons we had some Cornetto ice-cream and let Evan have a little then he kept crying. Emma thought he was tired but he wasn't - he just wanted the ice-cream! So she'd give him a little more, take it away and he'd cry again! It was his first ever food and he like's it! It was very cute watching him try to shrove the whole thing in his mouth :-)

At the end of this week (Sunday 26th), Evan will be six months old! Half a year gone by already...Sometimes it feels like six days, other times like six years!

Caroline