Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Bits and bobs around the place
Tenth month, 9 February - 9 March, 2010

It's hot, and this nappy is annoying me. I'll just take it off and leave it here. Hello Mummy... what? What nappy? I don't see any nappy. I'm looking at this other stuff.

The Mama Green mums having a backyard catchup. We chat about all the issues we've been facing trying to get green or stay green. One lady had all kinds of issues trying to get someone reputable to do her insulation. The lady whose house it is left her parents in charge of watering her garden while she was away, and they insisted on watering every day through the heat of summer because "water restrictions aren't really as important as they say they are". So we commiserate with each other on things like that, make suggestions if we've got any, and try to re-enthuse each other. I took Sparrow onto the unusually-lush lawn so she could have some playing on the grass time, figuring that it was there, we might as well use it and she doesn't get to explore grass very often. In fact, this was the first time she'd have got to crawl on it that I knew of. But she was pretty much oblivious to it being grass, and only wanted to play with a plastic water bottle top that was left there.

She is getting pretty good at holding and using a cup herself, if it's one of the ones her size. But it does depend on motivation. If she's thirsty she drinks it all very well and neatly. If she's not so thirsty then gargling is much more fun. And chewing on the bottom of the cup is always excellent. There's also a tendency to drink half of it, then start waving the cup violently back and forth in sheer joy while singing loudly about how good water is. She'd make a good Viking or Valkyrie.

Going for a walk together one lovely sunny summer afternoon. All wearing our hats. We have to have the hat rule for everyone now, it helps a lot with that rule being implemented at all daycare places. So every time we go out for a walk we have to all wear our hats. I don't know how old she will get before she realises that Daddy is somewhat non-compliant with the spirit of the law if not the letter, but hopefully a while. At the moment, she can't link purpose or consequence with action terribly well, so all that matters is that he has a hat on. And if (when she does work it out) she tells him to wear a better hat, he probably will.

That puppet has taken such a pounding. She has worked out how to get it from the music stand where it's quietly hung for months, so now doesn't bother waiting for me to remember to pick it up and play with it. She can do that herself. The strings are permanently tangled, and it just keeps on grinning like a maniac. She does like things of this colour. The dress is one of our new ones, nice for summer.

Off to the Sustainable Living Expo. James and I were both pretty tired and it was a hot day, so it was a short trip and our only excursion for the weekend. But it was interesting as always and we picked up a few interesting ideas here and there.

We listened to a talk on how to pick sustainable fish when you're at the fish counter. Basically, choose Australian (our fishery management is pretty good now but other countries' may or may not be); don't choose shark, ray or any deep sea fish (they tend to be long-lived, slow-growing and breed late); and diversify your choice (don't always choose the same kind of fish). It was a fun talk, and their data on what happens to the default kind of fish served in fish-and-chip shops was fascinating (in short, they get wiped out). I think they talked about a lot more, but Sparrow decided she'd had enough so she and I went and sat on a bench nearby, had some food and she got to chase the seagulls for as long as my nerves would let her given that nice big drop there. She is oblivious to edges and often will crawl straight out into thin air without pausing. I've spent a bit of time this month trying to train her to turn around and go feet first when she hits a drop or step, but her uptake of the idea is erratic.

Train ride home - one tired baby, one tired Daddy.

A hot day. It's nice now that she's mobile enough to breastfeed from whatever position we're in. It also means that she can be opportunistic. And she is. That's mostly good, but it means that I spend hot days wearing more clothes than I would otherwise so that she's not constantly distracting herself with little tiny feeds every time she sees my breasts. It's especially important now that I'm trying to keep her on a more spaced out schedule during the day to match the daycare routine.

Time to pass out. Ahhhhhh. She has gotten a lot better at sleeping this month, has gone back to being able to sleep in a range of places, is asking to go to sleep at a reasonable time now and can usually fall asleep within ten or fifteen minutes. She does do a lot of tummy sleeping now, but I don't worry about it because she can move herself in and out of position at will without even waking up.

Here she was so ready to fall asleep that when I laid her down in her cot, she started to roll over to get up, picked up the blanket to look at and fell asleep a couple of seconds later. She didn't even get as far as letting go of it. I was quite happy with this. It's nice now that she consistently has longer sleeps, too - usually between one and two hours. I get a much better break. It's also good because I've been working on getting her to go to sleep in her cot, and she's got pretty good at that. It still helps if one of us is there to stop her crawling and standing, and that'll be the next step in the training - to get her to go to sleep in the cot on her own without us interfering. The side of the cot will have to be right up, though - she can get over it at this height now. It's only onto our bed, but then there's another drop. And this month she crawled off the edge of the bed for the first time. She didn't enjoy it, but she tried it again almost immediately.

Sparrow and I took a walk to our closest playground for the first time. She's still not really into playgrounds. We had a nice time watching all the old men playing bocce at the Maltese Community Centre next door, and we had a little swing, and a little bounce on one of the bouncy-rider-things. I thought she might find the impact padding under the swings an interesting texture to crawl on - it's that recycled tyre stuff - but she just made her way straight to the woodchips and started chewing. I thought I took them all off her, but she must have secreted some somewhere and managed to get them home as I kept finding her chewing on them for the next day or two.

Trying out the dino suit. One week in Melbourne it's roasting hot and I'm pulling out the fan, the next it's seriously cold and I'm starting to think about the heater. I'd wondered if it would get cold enough to wear this suit while she still fit it, but hey, it's Melbourne, of course it did. I like this suit, though it's really my colours rather than hers. She's lying on the shawl-scarf that Maggie gave me for Christmas, the one that its maker christened "Finding Joy at the Heart of the Garden". Sparrow loves the textures, and plays with it a bit. I like having different textures and colours on the floor for her to explore.

Of course, she doesn't stay lying down for long anymore. ThingamyBob no longer has respite - she can get to him any time she chooses. And she chooses fairly regularly. Still not good at pulling the string on her own, but it doesn't work that well so there's not the same motivation to try. I will have to hang up the bee for a while (which I know she can pull, even if she mostly doesn't) and see if she starts making that one play music. The dino suit is odd because it has feet - last winter we enjoyed suits with feet, but now they're a bit of a hazard for one little baby trying to stand up at every opportunity. We're mostly putting her in it for sleeping, and trying to stick to footless and legless clothes for her very active daytimes.

Mother and daughter, heading out for a walk. She likes to pull her hat off, but is better at keeping it on if I'm wearing mine too. We're heading out to do some more letter-dropping for the Sharehood, a community link-with-your-neighbours project that sounds like it would be fun to be part of. It uses the Internet to link you up with your neighbours within a five-minute-walk's radius (as opposed to the usual one minute that most people form). So I like it for the social networking and environmental friendliness, James likes it because he can do it through his laptop. We are beginning by doing a letterdrop to all the houses in our immediate neighbourhood - about 600 or so - and seeing who will sign up. Our immediate area is not very full of the best demographic for such a project so I'm expecting a slow start before it gets rolling. It has been a good excuse to go for lots of walks though.