Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Seventh month, 9 November - 9 December, 2009

One of the problems we had this month was communication about food. She'd gained enough deliberate control of her limbs that all her former food signs were masked or sublimated. I was starting to introduce the BabyHands / Auslan signs for food and drink, but they were very new and she doesn't have the coordination to do those yet. Nor really the understanding of what sign language is. So she no longer had a non-grizzle food signal, and unsurprisingly we started getting lots of grizzling. I wasn't too keen on this! If we were paying attention though we could continue to spot and encourage what you see here. She is cutesing it up at Mummy. Very deliberately turning the charm on me, and me specifically. Every inch of her is saying "You want to pick me up". Once I'm holding her, she can start to grab or nuzzle for the breast with face and hands, and that makes it pretty obvious. But first she has to get into my arms. And goshdarnit, isn't she cute?

She can hold onto her feet, bring them to her mouth and eat them now. She finds sucking on her toes fascinating. At the time this photo was taken it didn't happen too often, but it's pretty common on the change mat now.

Another favourite toy this month has been the piano. Around the end of her last month I rearranged this loungeroom space to be baby friendly for the council mothers' group meeting. After they'd been I looked at it and realised I'd made a perfect-height bench for my digital piano. Sparrow loves it - she can thump it to her heart's content and get all kinds of noises out of it, and happily sings along. She will also request to play the piano with various pointed stares, attempted reaches and "want" motions. In theory I might also start doing regular practice again now that it is out and front and centre, and that would be nice. I like the idea of there being regular music-making in the house, and I think Sparrow will respond to that very well now that she is starting to gain the ability to work objects. Naturally it will be predominantly percussion for the next many months...

At the sustainability mothers' group - this is Sophia and Louise conversing with Sparrow. Those of us who went to the Mama Green workshop are occasionally meeting up to talk sustainability and environmentally-friendly family-raising. Sophia (the small one) is singing Sparrow a song.

The two of us lying on the grass that morning while us ladies converse about the Transition Towns initiative. I don't often get photos of me just hanging out with Sparrow. She was very much enjoying all the flowers on the ground and the trees above her. The child definitely likes gardens.

And trampolines. This was her first encounter with a trampoline, and that's a pretty good giggle going on there.

This is Sam, who lives down the alley from us and who (along with partner Blagowa) are looking after the cat and kittens while we go away. They are enviro-green-hippie types and are starting a business making and selling dried fruit.

They gave us a little bag of dried fruit including some dried banana sticks that are just the right size for Sparrow to hold onto and a really good texture to gum on. I think we have a winner... though it is an awfully sticky thing to clean up afterwards.

The Spud and I are spending a lot of time in the garden now as the weather is so nice, plus I had plenty of work to do to set things up before we went away. Most of it I'd done across the early half of spring and the results were starting to show - a healthy, thriving small jungle. She finds it fascinating and can keep herself distracted out there for quite some time. So here's what the garden looks like from her point of view:

Quite a different look, it is, to have things towering above you so. I think this is where my own fascination with gardens started as well - with pea plants and corn stalks that I could lose myself in, and bushes that were filled with magically-appearing food. Sparrow wants to try to eat everything, and thankfully most of it is perfectly edible so I mostly let her grab at will.

A quiet mother-daughter moment. She was starting to sit quite well, if supported in enough places, so could quite happily sit on the couch with me like this. That was really cool. It meant we could hang out together in other parts of the house and she could distract herself while I tried to gain a little strength back. I needed that: there was another photo taken at the same time as this that shows my face, complete with the huge bags under the eyes and totally emotionally exhausted look that I wore for most of what I like to think of as "Mummy's Monster PMS Week". I was very glad that James is such a strong and resilient man, I leaned on him a lot just to get through the week. Sparrow mostly coped fine, and even laughed at me when I got angry because I was just so funny. There's nothing like your daughter looking at you in eager fascination and signing "Do it again!" to make you feel taken down a peg.

Maggie sent us a package of new clothes that she'd knitted, hoping that we'd get to wear them before the heat kicked in. Melbourne being Melbourne, it went from extreme heat to seriously cold within a few days, and we got to try this whole outfit - the green knitted pants, this wonderful colourful jumper and the bright red shirt that I'd just bought. Very festive, and very comfortable.

We went to visit the Werribee Open Plains Zoo, and took the safari bus trip. Being a busy Sunday they had air-conditioned buses as well as their normal ones, so we rode quite comfortably in one of those. This is crossing the Werribee River to get to the open paddocks where the animals graze.

Quick, Sparrow, catch that giraffe! She thought the giraffes were quite cool, and they were *very* close to the window. She didn't understand why the rest of us were grinning when the two boy giraffes started tongue-kissing though.

Off the bus and around on the main walk trail, and the hippos decided to emerge from their mud bath. Look, Sparrow, it's the most dangerous animal on the savannah. We'll just stay over here, shall we?

While at the zoo I bought an animal-print nappy cover that's designed to go over disposable nappies, figuring she'd get some wear out of it during our Christmas trip and across summer. Along with the shirt that Lex gave her, she looks quite the big game hunter - and she played it, too. This is a brief pause to smile at the camera before she goes back to carefully stalking NormanTed. She can't move forward to him, but she can reach and strain and stretch...

During this month she got quite good at independent play - give her a toy and she can explore it and play with it for five minutes at a time quite happily without you having to be involved. Unfortunately, that also means toys start to get boring or too familiar. I change them around a bit, but it was definitely time to dip into the toybox and see what we had to introduce. And here was a gift from Stuart: the classic shape-ball, that he and I both remember clearly from our childhoods. Perfectly suited to bring in now - she can play with the pieces and chew on them, but the idea of matching shapes and putting things in and out of containers is still well to come and will be a fascinating discovery within the next several months. I'm not too concerned about whether she learns to categorise the shapes, but it will be interesting to see how she approaches the concept of matching them.

The last major development at the end of the month was this. This is one unhappy, frustrated baby. Why? Because she can get herself up on her hands and knees and start to move - and goes backwards. She started right over at the dolls clothes on the right there. So the more she wants something, the further away it gets. It's such a hard life being a little baby.