Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Sparrow's third month - time at home, 9 July - 9 August, 2009

Here is our little lady, between two and three months old. Isn't she adorable? Oma made these overalls, and they are just delightful.

It's always fun playing with Daddy on the change table. Daddy's voice is very cool, and he has this big smile that's so good to copy! I used a photo from this group to make James's Father's Day card when September came (I am very behind in writing up these photos...).

She is supposed to have regular tummy time, but she doesn't like it at all and we get crying in fairly short order. This month she also learnt to grizzle, so now we get grizzles too. The best time for tummy time is just after a bath, when our little nakkidei has no clothes and is feeling great. It's also good for her bottom - the saltwater washes helped a lot, but we still have to make sure the skin dries out. So, tummy time it is. This time she completely gave up on any thought of exercising her muscles and just went to sleep. It's the only time I've ever seen her sleep on her tummy.

I'd been using this wrap to carry her for a while. It was very effective for just walking her around and settling her, and it seemed to fit me and her better than the Ergo at this age. Some of that was her being a big chubby infant, and some of it was me being short-torsoed and rather curvy, and some of it was me still being very tired and limited in movement so having a lot of trouble getting the Ergo on when I was on my own. James though was reluctant to use the wrap because it was pink. However, her changing size and strength meant that the wrap started being notably better than the Ergo for a while even for him, and here he is, proving that he is (in his words) "man enough to wear pink". It's good, because she sits very securely in this without needing to be held, so he can wear her and rock her to sleep while he plays his new computer game on the Wii. Nothing like modern parenting in the digital age.

The flying paper that I'd started putting up last month? Started gaining more pieces. It's wonderful how it glows in the morning sunlight. The extra pieces on the long string are good too - a bigger colour range, plus they now hang where the heater can blow them around a bit. She loves to watch them.

She was rapidly outgrowing the clothes we had for her, so I stopped in at a secondhand shop one day and had a look to see if I could pick up a couple more items. Among others, this spring-suit really took my fancy. It's a bit cold for July wear, but will be good in September if she still fits it (which isn't very likely, but you never know). The top I'm wearing was one I also picked up from the opshop that visit. Opens down the front, pretty colour, wonderful for breastfeeding, but whoever thought that putting lots of hooks and eyes next to all that loose beading-on-a-string was a good design idea should be kicked around the studio a bit. I had to cut all the hooks off in order to keep the beading from self-destructing whenever I moved.

Her daytime sleeping had been pretty informal, and I thought maybe I should make sure she had some naps in her actual bed during the day as well as at night. So here she is, fast asleep in bed instead of just on the floor or cushions in the book room or wherever we are. This is quite nice, actually - I know where she is, and can wander around cleaning things up in the rest of the house. She doesn't have a lot of strong habitualised sleeping patterns yet, because I keep making sure she is OK at sleeping in all kinds of different situations.

She was being cute and funny, and I had to take photos. This happens a lot. The duck suit is another one that I bought in that same update-shopping trip, but it was too small so I put the white pants on to cover her legs. I couldn't help laughing at the result. One day I will be one of those mothers who dresses their child in something totally and hilariously inappropriate and sends them off to school that way... Well, OK, I won't be, because that would be mean. But I'd be tempted often enough.

We wrer starting to have enough stuff for her - and going through it often enough - that we really needed something more accessible than my row of cardboard boxes. A little study of eBay later, and we have a shelf. The books are organised in approximate age/usefulness from bottom to top. She's not yet ready to have longer stories read to her, indeed is barely interested in hearing stories much yet at all. Her favourite books are still the ones with big colourful pictures. So it was nice to have all those plus her current toys and her currently-fitting clothes all in easy reach. Much quicker for us to grab things. She is lying on the round mat that Coral crocheted.

By the end of the month she was really too big to be in the little box. There just wasn't enough room for her to stretch out her arms. But we did like having the barrier to rolling in the bed, and also the extra protection from getting covered by our blankets. So we turned the box around. It's working just fine. This is a morning where she really didn't want to wake up, and I was awake, so I left her sleeping next to Daddy to both their delight.

Well, sort of. I did mention she likes being able to fling her arms out.

I learnt an important lesson at this nappy change. See those wildly waving feet, just above a randomly aimed bottom? Next time, I took the socks off...

Right at the end of the month we gained a part-time addition to our household. She is probably around nine or ten months old, very affectionate and clearly a much-cuddled people and lap cat. We're not sure if she belongs to someone nearby and is just temporarily adopting us because our house smells like roast chicken from the delicatessen downstairs, or if she's a Christmas cat that's been abandoned. I've been scouring the "lost cat" posters with no luck. We like her, but she's definitely not baby-trained - always wants the lap where the cuddles are happening, or the warm soft spot where everyone is looking, and those are always the places where the baby is. So I have a new challenge of sorts.