Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Fun things from her sixth month, 9 October - 9 November, 2009

The tambourine is still one of her favourite toys. She hasn't worked out how to make it rattle herself, but she can pick it up and hold it for quite some time. I think every bit of it has now been chewed on. She likes to try waving it around but shaking is something that only happens accidentally, and banging it against something isn't done deliberately yet either. She does end up wearing it as a hat often enough.

I have put a lot of time this month into setting up the garden for summer, reconditioning soil and boxes and mulching with hay. She enjoys garden time with me, though I still do the heaviest and dirtiest stuff while she's asleep. The new potato plants are well on their way so I thought I'd get another photo of her with them. She has grown a lot since the first photo I took of her lying in this box. She's not looking at the potatoes, though, she's eyeing off the mizuna - one of the flowers that she's allowed to suck on and which I don't stop her picking.

Sparrow likes to play with Thingamybob. She has worked out how to grab his dangly bit and pull, though can't figure out how to pull hard enough to make the music start. It doesn't help that his voicebox is a little erratic in its winding so it doesn't give consistent results. But she sometimes manages to get the whole toy off its hook, and then it's fair game for taste-testing. She has managed to get music at least once out of the bee that Maggie gave her as it has a lighter pull-mechanism so doesn't need quite as much force, but it's still not quite clicked with her how to do it.

Sparrow is helping me sort pillowcases. The manchester has all been in a big pile in the desk room since before she was born, waiting to be sorted and stored properly. Now it's all in nice neat boxes under the bed or in the bathroom where it's supposed to be, and that was good timing since some kittens came to live in the desk room this month. Sparrow likes playing with the sheets and pillowcases. If I fluff a sheet over her head and drape it over her this is lots of fun and can produce giggles. We also have a game where I put a pillowcase or sheet over her face and say "Where's Sparrow?" and she pulls it off and smiles at me. That always gets kisses. It took her a couple of goes to get the hang of the game, but now that she has the idea of how to grab a blanket and pull it off her face it's just lots of fun.

What's that you've got there, sweetie? It's the pantaloon-dress that Clara gave you. Sparrow always reaches for this dress when it is out, and will play with it quite happily. Which sometimes makes it hard to actually put it *on* her, but you get that. The sleeping bag she's in in this photo is the one that I made, and she has almost outgrown it. We had to stop putting her in it this month because it got too warm anyway.

This is what the dress looks like on. Isn't she adorable? (I say that a lot.) I have tried to make sure a lot of the brand tags get taken off her toys and clothes, so that little label on the front isn't there anymore. It's scary how everything for kids now has the brand label front and centre so you know exactly which upmarket brand a mother has put their child in. The worst was her sleeping elephant, which had a tag sewn on its back, a tag sewn on its head AND a big label across its belly with no purpose other than to say "I am an XXX product". I removed the belly one completely. I would rather she learnt to recognise letters from things other than brand flags - my child is not a source of free advertising and product promotion. Besides, when I was a kid people wore their tags on the *inside*.

I went to the Pregnancy and Baby expo. I know, it's a monument to making money off people who feel it's their duty to buy everything for their child, but it really was fascinating. Sparrow was very good and patient for all of it, sleeping when she felt like it and looking around the rest of the time. They had a little petting zoo / animal farm for children, but we didn't go in. I did however lean on the fence so that Sparrow could see a cow. I think she looked, but then went back to studying the Exhibition Centre ceiling.

I ignored all the stalls that were tacky, like bronzing baby feet and suchlike, but did pick up some good information and ideas (like the details on meningococcal disease, a clever kind of icecube tray that lets you get the food out easily, details on taking babies on bicycles and a bath thermometer from the Fire Brigade). And I got to have a good look at all the varieties of cloth nappy that are out now and think about what I wanted to try. Then I went back the next day with James and we bought a bunch of stuff. This is where I found the flushable and compostable nappies and this little black dragon cloth nappy, and where we got the Baby Sign Language pack and her high chair. I also wanted to get the realistic Australian animal stuffed toys, but didn't. Maybe later - I am tempted to get her a wombat for her first birthday. But only tempted. I like this nappy - it is a "one piece" so it includes both waterproof cover and absorbent centre in its design, and it fits all sizes so she should be able to wear it until she's toilet trained. It has a polar fleece surface on the inside which means it does tend to stay feeling dry even when she's soaked it through, and that has advantages and disadvantages. But it is nice and soft so it makes a good night nappy. She's been staying in one nappy all night quite a few nights - I get up and take her to the change mat to do a wee when she needs to, and then the nappy stays dry so I can put it back on again. This has been working reasonably well - she gets to be in a soft dry nappy for up to ten hours. She doesn't complain too much about this.

I just thought the colour harmony at this moment was wonderful - the orange nappy, the green suit, the orange and green links. It's a little bit 70s, but manages to be reasonably harmonious. She has a lot of fun playing with the links - they are so easy for her to pick up and turn around in her hands. Though I sometimes wish for good chew toys that aren't plastic. She has outgrown this green suit now - in the legs, of all places. It's the first time she's outgrown an outfit while it still fits over her bottom. The legs just seem to have suddenly started getting longer.

That meant it was time to dip into the rest of the 00 box and start looking through the 0-size box to see what might fit. Here are a pair of overalls that Clara gave us. They are a little big still, but I like the colour. They are footless and loose so should last a while once she grows into them a little better.

Surrounded by several favourite toys. She can now pick up the tumbling ball one that she's reaching for, but I count it as one of the "difficult" toys and only put it out for her to play with when she's not too tired or when she's sitting up (propped). Otherwise she tends to get tired hands and then drop it on her head, and it does hurt. The red and orange and yellow ball is her second kusudama, the one I made as a replacement, and it's lasting as well as it can but not terribly long. She is getting quite destructive to paper toys now. The subtleties of how hard you can pull on paper as compared to plastic or wood, or what happens to different things when you drool and suck on them, are a long way off. She is getting lessons in the properties of materials though, I guess.

Slightly more my kind of baby market: ReUse It Baby, a second-hand market they held in Altona. People signed up to have a stall to get rid of their unwanted / outgrown kids stuff. We found a couple of good hats for her and some nice pieces of clothing amongst the sometimes beautiful, sometimes bizarre items other people had for some reason purchased for their kids. James was taken by these little sunglasses, though they are still too big for her. He and I differ a lot of our sense of what is "cute" sometimes -smile-.

Here's one of the pieces of clothing. I like her in brown. Brown and blue just seem to look good. I also think that these are proof that clothes don't have to be pink to be distinctly "girl".

This little sundress caught my eye as well. Very elegant and pretty, she just looks well dressed in it. I took a lot of photos of her wearing this dress this month because it always made such a good picture. I am not inflicting them all on you.

We went on an afternoon jaunt to Bacchus Marsh and the pick-your-own-strawberries farm, with a stop in the bakery for lunch first. They were a little slow bringing James' food so he is holding Sparrow and they are drumming to the music while I eat. Sparrow liked the strawberry farm - what we were doing didn't make a lot of sense to her, but the look on her face when I held a strawberry for her to suck on was just priceless. There was a surprised pause, then a definite "More, more, mine" reaction. Fresh-picked strawberries really are so good. This is the last time she wore the blue suit - it's just gotten a little small now because of the way it does up - it's hard to get her into it. And the weather's warmed up too much for it now too.

Some more time playing with favourite toys. The blue monster that she is chewing on arrived in a package with the rug underneath her. coral crocheted it, and I quite like the colours - they work very well together. Sparrow is not that big on stuffed toys yet - the monster has been popular because its arms are the right size to chew on. She likes playing a "kiss" game with Yama (in the top right), but the toy holds little interest for her at the moment once that game is over. The little blue and yellow hand is a clapper that someone gave us free as a promotion at the big baby expo. It has been wonderful - she thinks the noise is amazing. She hasn't worked out how to clap it herself, and I think I'm glad of that, but it makes a wonderful distraction when she's restless. Plus she can chew on it. This is the standard by which all toys are currently measured, I think.

A mother's group meeting in the park at Altona, on a lovely day. The park was full of people as the Year 12s were all out resting between exams, and quite a few others took advantage of one of our first really nice days to hang out near the beach. Here are Bev and Mali, Tracy and Ila, Kit and Hannah, Ruth and Willow, Rachel and Ruby and Alex and Lily. Mali is the little girl who's physically the furthest ahead, she's very strong. A couple of weeks ago she was the only one able to move close enough to try and take another baby's toy. However...

Lily has now worked it out too and is on a raid... luckily, Sparrow doesn't tend to hold on to any toy for very long yet, so if another baby picks it up when she drops it she barely notices. She much prefers watching the people. And this is not the first time this rattle has made the rounds - for some reason it appears to be highly desirable, but in a non-possessive way so it always comes back.

Out and about on a short shopping trip - visiting the supermarket, butcher and post office downstairs. Unusual because it's a trip with Daddy - usually it's just Sparrow and me on our own. I am often grateful for the convenience of having the shops so close, it makes it very easy to go out and get things if I need to. And Sparrow loves watching the people - if she's having a grumbly morning, we can go sit downstairs on a bench by the passing parade and she will cheer right up. All the shopkeepers say hello to her and ask how she is whenever I go in. The butcher here got his apprentice to show me pictures of his own sons of a similar age, and the newsagent lady has three boys, the youngest of which is five months older than Sparrow. The post office couple are grandparents as are several of the Italian and Maltese ladies in the fruit shop, so there's an instant rapport there.

Oma sent us some new jumpers and pants in the hopes they'd arrive before the hot weather did. And they did, by about a week. When I took them out of the package they were an instant hit. I love the bright colours, and apparently so does Sparrow.

Another shopping trip - I am chronically short of pants that fit and that I haven't worn holes in. You can see Sparrow's opinion of clothes shopping here, and it's about the same as her father's - best slept through. And her mother's opinion too, come to think of it. I always do my best to get in and get out as quickly as possible, but I can't take the "guy" option of picking the first thing in the right size and buying that because women's fashion varies so much in how it fits and what it covers.

We had some hot days right at the end of the month, so Sparrow got to hang out in less clothes and we started spending time in the main loungeroom area. That room is always too cold in winter, but it's lovely in summer. I've rearranged and tidied as you see here (partly inspired by the mothers' group coming to visit one week) and finally worked out where to put the piano. So now it's a containable safe space for a little baby who is just starting to think about rolling, and the piano is at a height where she and I can both play it when it so takes us. Our next lot of visitors will be sleeping in the book room where we used to put people, I think. It depends on who and when.