Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Development in her twelfth month part 2, 9 April - 9 May, 2010

The paper plates that Mum sent work well. Sparrow is still fascinated by faces, hasn't outgrown that yet at all. The plates are easy for her to handle, to turn over, stack, pick up, manipulate, and she likes to look at them. I was going to stick a bunch of faces into a scrapbook - and I still will - but the plates are working great.

The carrot and the stool. There was a lot of food left over from the Druid Assembly and we took home a bag of carrots that I had to work out what to do with. Sparrow thought chewing on carrot was fantastic, carried this one around and played with it for a while. She had a great time with it. The stool is the one that my mother bought when she was here a couple of weeks before. It's a really good height for Sparrow to stand at. She can use it as kind of a table, but particularly likes getting things out of the storage box inside. She can't get the lid off on her own yet, we have to set it ajar for her, but if we do then she gets a big smile and comes over, takes the lid off and starts pulling out all the "treasures" inside. I have fun stocking it with interesting little small things.

I think this is a tomato she's eating. It's a bit hard to tell. She doesn't tend to eat a lot of vegetables - they interest her when raw but she can't chew them easily, and once cooked they are BORING, or so I'm told. But tomato is a fruit, I guess, and here it is getting Enjoyed.

Eating an apple. Apples were new this month, triggered partly by our visit to Petty's Orchard last month and by getting to help herself to the basket of them at the Druid Assembly this month. She loved holding this one and attempting to gnaw on it. It must be so exciting to have front teeth.

New overalls from the shopping trips. They're one of the most girly outfits I've bought for her, with the strong purple and the hot pink trimmings. But they're solid, warm, padded, and I figured I keep saying she gets *all* the colours so a bit of purple's OK. And that little badge on the front says "Spud Kids". How was I supposed to resist something so obviously made for her? This is one of the last times she played much with these links - for a long time they were the best toy ever but she has mostly lost interest in them now. She may regain interest when she works out how to deliberately link and unlink them, but she's not there yet.

The word "dada" means James, and it means toast. Breakfast time is for sharing.

I can't confuse her by putting her under the laundry basket any more. She doesn't fit, she's too big!

The Level 1 Human shirt we ordered for her birthday arrived, and we gave it a test wear. Roleplaying jokes ahoy!

Isn't this an innocent face?! She couldn't possibly have just managed to steal Daddy's keys from his pocket. They are the best toys in the universe EVER, and she's surprisingly good at making sure they end up in her hands.

Her hair is growing. Mostly though it seems to be growing in that one central spot, and today that one big lock of hair is... a little jaunty, one might say. The rest of her head has a ways to go to catch up.

She was asking for a bath, or for her toys that she'd dropped in the bath, so I picked her up and put her in the tub. She took it with surprising equanimity. It kept her out of the way while I did one or two other bathroom things, but I don't think it was quite what she wanted somehow.
She's standing quite comfortably there, you'll note. This month was where we stopped counting under our breath every time she stood up without holding onto something. She'd gone from eight seconds, to eleven seconds, to twenty five, and this month she'd easily stand for over two minutes at a time without losing her balance. She was also quite confident about just standing up from sitting, without having to pull herself up with anything - she'd go into an Indian squat, and then straighten her knees and push right up. And then wave her hands in glee for a little while because she was so pleased with herself. Sometimes the handwaving was vigorous enough to knock her off balance again but mostly it wasn't.

Feet first! I have been saying this a lot. She started getting keen to come out the kitchen door, and she's gotten the hang of going feet first off our bed (if imperfectly in execution) so I know she knows the phrase. So it was time to start making sure she knows how to get down these steps safely before she tried it some moment when I wasn't looking. She took to it quite well today, managed to get all the way from the kitchen tiles to the bottom of the steps on her own with only a tiny bit of Mum assistance when she thought that maybe it would be quicker if she just went over the side instead of doing lots of steps. Of course, this then gives her access to all kinds of mischief - the cats, the cat food bowls, thongs to eat, some poisonous plants, she's looking at the swing that Mum brought over which is sitting just out of shot waiting for us to hang it up. So I don't really want her to start trying to come play out here, there's just too much Chiff. But at least she has a better chance of making it out without hurting herself if she tries it on her own.

This one's a development just for me. It's the Friday before Mothers' Day, and at daycare the girls all made gifts. This is my first Mothers' Day present from Sparrow. I'm kind of touched, really. It's an odd feeling to know that this is the first of many handmade and pre-loved strange crafty items that I will say loud thankyous for and then place prominently somewhere like on the fridge.

They're crepe paper flowers, quite a clever little design, and I imagine that carer Joanne really made these ones with only a little "assistance" from my daughter. But that's OK. The label with a printed picture of Sparrow cut out and stuck on is cute too.