Playing catch up!!

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged in so long, feel a bit terrible really! But I have had a really busy summer and Amelia’s first birthday and numerous other rubbish excuses that don’t make the cut but I’m here now to catch you all up!

• So…Amelia is now 1!!! It was her first birthday on the 15th August so just over a month ago, it was such a lovely few days, we had a big family/friends garden party where I fully embraced the crazy party host and Amelia was thoroughly spoilt by everyone. Having a one year old hasn’t made too much difference as babies are constantly changing anyway but she definitely looks older.

• I go back to University in a couple of weeks (ahhhh) which is exciting/daunting. After having just a year out of learning I think it will be quite a shock to my system but I am excited to get back into the flow of things and get my degree!

• Whilst I’m at University Amelia will be going to nursery *cries*. I am pretty sad about that, but can’t exactly have her sat next to me whilst I’m in a lecture and it will be really good for her to be around other babies and people without me there. She is quite confident most of the time and happy to be without me so I’m sure she will get on fine. A huge bonus of the nursery she is going to is that it is on university site so if there ever was a problem I am only a few minutes away and that will probably be quite comforting knowing how close we are. The fact that we are both going to the same place should also make it a bit easier rather than having to drop her off somewhere then head off to Uni. I can simply drive there, drop her off, go to my lectures, pick her up and go home.

• Still have a crawler. Amelia is more than happy to pull up on things, cruise along the furniture, walk with her walker and push things along she just isn’t confident enough to gain her balance standing unaided. Think she knows that she’s a pretty speedy crawler and that’ll do for now.

• Currently Amelia has been super poorly with tonsillitis. Last week her temperature hit over 39degrees which was scary and she was so out of character she literally spent a day laying on the floor doing nothing, which is really unlike her. We ended up at the out of hours clinic at the hospital and found out she has tonsillitis. She’s been put on antibiotics for the first time ever! But they are seeming to work although getting her to take them is so difficult as she hates the taste and 1 year olds are stronger than you think when they don’t want to do something. Now all that we have left is a bit of a cough and snotty nose, bless her and a ruined sleep pattern. She was waking at around 10:30pm most nights at the end of last week to have medicine and a drink and now she thinks that’s what happens every night…not ideal but at least she is getting better. Its actually really horrible when your baby has a temperature and seeing them so out of sorts, so I am super pleased that she is on the up. Also for my sanity…we have pretty much spent a week in quarantine, house bound. I’ve not wanted to make her any worse or give it to any of her little friends so apart from the odd walk down to the park we pretty much haven’t left the house in 6 days.

Bar all the little things I think that is mostly all the interesting things I have to fill you in on! I’m thinking I will do a belated birthday party post so you can see the decorations and food we had and maybe do a post on Amelia’s Autumn/Winter wardrobe as she got given a lot of lovely bits and obviously I’ve been shopping and put up some pictures of some of our fun summer days out!

I promise I won’t leave it so long next time…here’s what we look like in case you forgot.

Thanks so much for reading!!xxx

10 Month Update!

Today is the 15th June which means that Amelia is ten months old!! This is crazy!! I cannot believe she is ten months meaning that she is very nearly one; I say this every time but time is just going too fast.

A lot has changed since her 8 month update.

Amelia & I just this week (June2014)

She was previously in a pavlik harness after being diagnosed with shallow hips at 6 weeks old. Amelia completed the 16 week program in the harness, having physiotherapy and ultrasounds and is now just an outpatient. She had her second outpatient appointment at the beginning of May consisting of an x-ray and a consultant check. As I suspected seeing as she is moving around (still not quite crawling) and baring weight she is still all fine which is a relief. We now don’t have an appointment for 6 months! Movement wise like I mentioned she isn’t crawling but she can definitely move. A combination of rolling, bum shuffling and pulling along the floor and Amelia can definitely get to where she wants to. She is still slightly frustrated with not moving as quick as she would like but I feel like it will happen soon. She absolutely loves being stood up; leaning on the sofa or up against things, she can very nearly pull herself up and once she is up she does not want to be sat back down…tears usually follow!

On the topic of tears with the last few months her personality has continued to grow. She has really become her own little person and can go from being the cutest angel to screaming because she can’t quite reach something or doesn’t want to be sat there. She still spends a lot of her day smiling and chatting away but she really lets me know if she isn’t happy about something!

In the last couple of months Amelia has got teeth!! She now has three. The bottom right followed by the bottom left cut through about 2 weeks ago and just this week the top right has cut soon to be followed by the top left I think. Teething really has not been our friend and you can read all about the nightmare few weeks we had here. Quite exciting that she has got some though as I was beginning to think she didn’t have any!

Food is going really well. We have recently moved to having sandwiches for lunch which she absolutely loves! She also looks mega cute eating a mini sandwich. I think she was ready to move away from being spoon fed for all three meals as she used to get quite stroppy and shake her head a lot. She likes feeding herself so she has more finger foods and bits she can eat herself. Amelia eats quite a few of the meals we as a family have for dinner just cooked a little different and then I still freeze it up as obviously there ends up being extra.  Amelia will mostly drink water if she wants it but since the weather has gotten hotter I have started carrying her beaker around wherever we go offering it to her more. She will happily drink quite a lot which is really good and a relief to make sure she is hydrated in the heat.

This lovely weather we have had recently we have really made the most of! Lots of garden activities and fun in the paddling pool. Amelia loves splashing in the pool and playing with her toys and is a great way to cool her off. With the nice weather however often brings a sweaty baby!! Trying to keep a hat on Amelia’s head has been great fun the last couple of weeks; it manages to last a maximum of 5 minutes and then it just becomes a repetitive game of throwing it onto the floor which is not good from a sun safety point of view. Amelia is not a huge fan of the hot, humid nights and has taken longer to settle for naps often waking up with wet sweaty hair (eww) and for her big bed-time sleep. We have been really making the most of sunny days as you never know when they might disappear (fingers crossed they don’t!).

Amelia is actually pretty funny for a 10month old baby. When she does something that is clever/good and hears people cheering, clapping and getting exciting she screams with excitement and mimics the noises she hears. If she makes people laugh she repeats what she has just done knowing it will get a reaction and this can go on for a while! Her talking is really developing; she has finally said “mama muma” which as you can imagine was a really exciting day. And she refers to the dog as “woo woo” whenever he comes into the room which is really cute. She points at him gets so overexcited and just shouts “woo woo, wooo wooo”.  Amelia has also started waving which is another thing that seriously adds to cuteness!!

The last couple of months we have had a few activities and trips. We went to the oceanarium for the afternoon which Amelia really loved seeing all the fish and sea animals as it was something she had never seen before. We had one of her little friend’s first birthday which was super fun and I dressed Amelia up like a princess! Obviously she looked uber cute. We have done some messy play, been out for some walks and had a couple of trips to the park.

Amelia’s next update will be here 12 months update; so when she is 1! That sounds absolutely mad but I have already started mentally planning her birthday party already.

Thanks for reading! xx

Amelia’s 8 month update!

It’s the 15^th April which means that today Amelia is 8 months old!! That is just absolutely mad! Cannot believe how fast the time is going (however cliché that is to say). This post will just be updating you on what Amelia is up to.

Getting a little bit heavy for this now Amelia!

Amelia had her 8 month check couple of weeks ago so before she turned 8 months but hey ho! The health visitor came over just to see how she was getting on. She checked through her red book to see if her immunisations were all up to date, Amelia was weighed and measured. She is now just over 17lb and is 69cm. She is following on the 50^th centile and has followed this line since she was born. She also wanted to see if she had reached all the milestones that she should of by 8 months and she had!

For the last month Amelia’s vocabulary has really developed. She’s obviously not reciting Shakespeare but she experiments more with the different sounds her mouth can make. Recently there has been a lot of “bob” “baba” and “blub”. She still says a lot of the “a” sound with “lala” and “rara”. It is quite funny when she makes a new noise/sound as she seems to repeat that then for the next few days. On the same lines as speech she is just sooooo noisy!! From the minute she wakes up to the minute she goes to bed she does not stop jibbering, singing and chatting away. It is so cute but she is actually really loud. There have been a few times when she actually drowns me out of the conversation because I can’t hear what other people are saying or she is making noises over me.

Amelia has also learnt this high pitched scream. It is horrible!! Sounds like she is in pain but she does it and has learned that it gets a very quick reaction from anyone who is around. It is usually attention seeking or used when she doesn’t want to do something. Sometimes when going into her car seat or when she is bored playing with a particular toy.

Amelia does a lot more “playing” now. Rather than just chewing everything (still 70% of the time) and bashing it she actually concentrates on taking the rings off the cone and if we are really concentrating she can stack them back on. This only happens very occasionally and is done with a lot of dribble and a very serious face. She has some plastic spoons which she loves to play with and to hit them onto her stacking cups. Amelia loves looking at the detail of things; spinning a wheel on a toy car or poking at the little buttons on things. This has really become noticeable in the last month. She recently got a toy drum from Nana which makes a drum noise when you bang it and the music button plays a fast forward version of the Macarena (which is a bit weird). She can only do that for a little before she wants to tip it over and look underneath and fiddle with the legs.

She is not yet crawling but does a lot more rolling now and is looking more and more like she is ready to move by the day. She reaches for things and quite often does a bit of a head first action into the floor but isn’t quite strong enough to be on all fours yet!

Trying to crawl is too much!

Food wise we are experimenting more and more as time goes on and the lumpiness of the food is increasing. She had roast beef the other day and tried salmon for the first time; both of which she really enjoyed. She is getting better with finger foods but gets quite distracted by the dog and enjoys dropping food on the floor for him. So finger food can be a little bit of a nightmare. At around 7 months she started having 3 meals a day and enjoys having water with lunch and dinner which I am really pleased with. She can now hold her own milk bottle but isn’t quite there with the water cup!

Sleeping is still very successful most nights. Amelia will go down about 7:30pm and mostly sleep through until between 7-8am then she has a bottle first thing and goes straight back to sleep for anything as little as half an hour to two hours! But like most babies there are some nights with early morning wake-ups for no reason.

This was one of those nights…

We have a few friends with babies of similar ages and a month or two older that we see quite a lot of and she enjoys playing with their toys and spending time with them. Plus it is great for me to have made some friends with babies! Very soon it will be the beginnings of first birthday parties!

Playing with her friend Amber.

Her personality is just developing constantly and I cannot believe how much of a little person she is at just 8 months! Amelia is getting better at recognising people but is very serious with people that she doesn’t know, if you’re lucky you might get a smile! She knows when she is being cheeky and she definitely knows when she is doing something she shouldn’t (I can’t believe they learnt this so quickly!?)

Being a pirate for a treasure hunt!

With the nice weather we have been outside a lot more on walks which Amelia loves. She is so nosey so enjoys peeping her head out the side of the pram to see what’s going on. Most of the girls I went to school with are back for Easter at the moment and soon it will be the summer holidays so I am really looking forward to some days at the beach and picnics in the park. Some of them haven’t seen Amelia for a little while so she will basically be a giant to them! Plus Amelia’s wardrobe is ready for some warmer weather; pretty summer dresses with little socks and sunhats!

That is probably about it….oh other than it is possible she is getting cuter as the months go on!

Would love to know what your little ones were up to by 8 months.

Loving a bedtime story.

Thanks for reading xx