Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Clothes and the Easter Ducket, 9 March - 9 April, 2010

The liquorice allsorts outfit fits! And the weather has cooled enough to try wearing it. So she and I are heading out for a walk. She still loves being in the carrier and being cuddled. You can see one bootie poking out just above the stripes in her hat. She loves the hat and booties, but tends to play with them rather than wear them so they come off pretty quickly.

The usual chaos in the book/play room. Sparrow has found something she really wants to do...

...chewing on the allsorts beanie. She was quite persistent about it, too - putting one of the allsorts in her mouth and then crawling around and playing with other stuff while constantly chewing and dragging that hat behind her. She had a go at reading Blueberry Girl but doesn't particularly like it much yet. Her mother enjoys reading it but she may be the only one. I still think it's a great book for adults and mums-to-be, but it's not quite small-child-of-this-age.

Yep, she'll take those booties anywhere. They're very much all-day chewers. It's a testimony to the skill they were crafted with that only one of the allsorts has come off so far despite the punishment they got. We ended up using a different shot from this sequence to make the invitations for her birthday party. Can you believe it's only another six weeks til she's a year old?

These trousers have a little plastic thing at the bottom to tighten the elastic. I never use it (why do you need your pant ankles elasticised anyway?), but she loves chewing on it. I did quite a few jobs this month while standing without moving one leg so that she could continue holding onto me. I kept feeling like if I moved she'd manage to get the elastic to spring back at her and hit her in the face with it. Or hit me in the leg with it, one of the two.

"Oh. Huh. Well, I guess that's that then. Now pick me up, I'm cute." I get this look a lot. Especially on the days where she wants to do her own stuff as long as it can be right next to me and possibly holding onto me at the same time.

Off to the pool for a swim. She's in bathers and sun hat and ready to go. Because I always take so much longer to get ready she's had to distract herself. Up on the table there is one of her current favourite objects - the pencil sharpener. It's been her favourite teething object this month. Thankfully the sharpener bit is safely inside and she can't get the top off yet. But it is round, hard, has some rough edgy bits that are good to rub against - she goes straight for it if it's around. I've got it and the water-colour pencils out because I'm preparing some drawings as a (belated) wedding gift both for Frank and Luisa and for Sam and Blagowa, both of whom we saw and celebrated with this month.

Oma has sent us a box for Easter which is in a couple of weeks time. Let's look to see what's inside.

Shredded paper! Thanks, Oma!! This is the best thing ever. (Sparrow's parents were quite happy to see the chocolate. They figure they can have it all seeing as Sparrow doesn't know what chocolate is yet and doesn't really need to know for another year.)

Lots of other things in the box too, like this little duck bucket (herein known as "the ducket"), and some knitted chicks that Sparrow turned out to quite love playing with and carrying around with her. And a new warm winter outfit. At first glance I thought it would be too big, but we tried it on and it fit beautifully.

The complete outfit - suit, hat, jumper and booties.

We left the paper, box and wrapping out on the floor for a couple of weeks because it was so much fun to play with. Thomas thought the box wrapping was a great place to wriggle into and hide.

However, being hidden has its hazards.

We haz found ur Easter Eggs. They wuz rite here in this box All The Time.

The two of them do collaborate on a certain amount of play. In the case of the box, Thomas and Sparrow between them dislodge the lid, Sparrow removes it completely and takes the shredded paper out, and then Thomas has a cosy place to snuggle. He does like it with some of the paper left in.

The weather was cooling rapidly, and seeing as her new suit looked so big but fit so well I thought it was time to see if some of her other jumpers fit. This one is now the right size. She's a bit confused by the hood though. She takes hats off by grabbing just behind the ears and pulling forward. When she does this to a hood she just gets more covered and tangled. She ended up roaming around the floor like a little green Pacman ghost trying to work out how to get out of this terrible terrible hat. Hasn't mastered it yet though.