Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

General thirteenth month bits, home and away, 9 May - 9 June, 2010

Outside the MCHC clinic, waiting for Sparrow's twelve-month appointment on the day after her birthday. We collected a whole bunch of vital statistics.
Weight: 9120g, which is just under 20 pounds 2 ounces, puts her somewhere around the 35-40 percentile range and is maybe two good meals under average weight (which is 9.5 kg for a 12 month old girl). She weighed a little more than that when we measured her at home a few weeks ago so I think it might just have been a light day. Her weight is above average for her height though, she's not skinny.
Head circumference 45 cm, which is only half a cm bigger than at eight months but is exactly average size for her age. I think her last measurement might have been fractionally loose. Either that or she went through a head growth spurt just then.
Length: 70.8 cm, which is almost four cm longer than at 8 months and which puts her at only the 15-20th percentile for height (after having been a big baby for most of the year). The average height is about 74 cm. I thought she was lengthening out a lot in this last little bit, she's unchubbed a lot and it wasn't my imagination that she'd outgrown the first pants Maggie knitted for her. But she's not heading towards tall just at this moment. That may still come. It does explain why she was still wearing a lot of 00 clothes though.

There's a good list of developmental things they look for at this checkup, by giving Sparrow stuff to play with and watching what she does. But it didn't help that it was Sparrow's morning tea time and so she didn't want to play with any of the toys, she wanted to eat them, she was hungry. So every time the nurse gave her two little blocks to try and bang together one would go straight in the mouth. I don't recall having seen her bang things together with two hands, she does the one-handed banging but not necessarily two. But I'll keep an eye out for that now. In the end I pulled out a little tub of pomegranate seeds, which Sparrow loves, and she played with and ate some of those so the nurse could see that she uses both hands freely, has the fine finger pincer movement to pick them up (like she's showing with the top she's playing with), and she knows where the seeds are if I hide some.
Other motor skill things: she doesn't really point purposefully yet, though it's starting and she kind of gets it if it's us pointing at things. She releases objects voluntarily, sits well for an indefinite time, crawls, stands alone, pulls herself to standing using furniture, can get to sitting from lying down, does not walk yet. Language: she knows and turns to her own name, has multiple-syllable babble and occasionally what sounds like a clear word ("Hey!" or "Ja!" or "No!"). She reacts to music and moves to it, and she can understand simple instructions like "let go" or "come here" (though as I said to the nurse, she's also learnt that ignoring those instructions means she gets to keep having fun). Social and play: she drinks from a cup though needs assistance for perfect accuracy, holds a spoon and eats from it (well, it mostly goes in the right way around and mostly the right way up, but she does do it), can find hidden objects, loves cuddles and eye contact, and is sensitive to approval and disapproval. She doesn't yet wave "bye bye", so I may have to start actively encouraging hello and goodbye waving.

Just a pretty picture, but what an expression on her face.

She's stuck. She got herself in behind the piano Because It Was There, and now can't get out. Usually I have the piano up to the wall, but we'd pulled it out a little for her birthday party so the kids could get to it more easily. I moved it back again after this. That's present wrapping paper and other birthday party detritus still floating around on the left, I cleaned up very slowly and bit by bit over a few days. And wrapping paper is fun to have around.

The Thursday after her birthday they had a little party for Sparrow at her daycare. Some of the other kids from Joanne's extended family and a nearby daycare group came over as well. They have party hats and trimmings in the cupboard for these occasions, and I provided little cupcakes in pirate paper patties with some smiley-face candles. It was a wonderful celebration right at the end of lunchtime. This was the last week I had her in care for only half days - after this it was full days. She was sleeping well enough, eating well enough and balancing her feeds well enough, plus I had a one-day job start the week after this. So it was time to move onto spending the whole seven hours, 9-4, and see how that went. Sparrow promptly started getting sick on Thursdays and Fridays and having to stay home with me all day instead of going to daycare at all. So it was an interesting month in that regard. The first afternoon I was at work was just as scary as the first morning I'd left her back in January. I left work early because I couldn't concentrate (though I'd done everything they had for me to do so that was OK).

Party hat! The tiara design is simple, fun, and well-lasting (it's probably been through several rounds of small children and birthday parties). Joanne has a lot of clever little touches like that, which I'd expect given that she's been a carer for almost twenty years.

This is the lovely jumper that Margaret gave us, and I love the colours. Sparrow really took off with reading this month. She quite happily picks a book up and "reads" it. A lot of her birthday presents were books, so there's been a constant pile out on the floor. This is one of two that Kristen gave us, about different kinds of feelings. Quite a sensible topic if possibly a bit moralistic, but Sparrow doesn't seem to mind and I think it's a useful thing to elucidate. I must go look up the other books in the set. Books have become one of her default things to do when she's a bit bored or not sure what next or is trying to delay sleep. If things go suspiciously quiet when she's out of sight, I can check the nearest pile of books first and see if that's where she is. Like mother like daughter, I guess. She also goes and reads a book as a default behaviour if I get grumpy, just gives me this look that says "Well, if you're going to be like that then I'll do this" then picks up a book and starts reading, and every so often looks up at me to see if I'm done grumping yet. I don't know if she worked this out herself or is just copying her Daddy.

I'm not sure what this expression is. I suspect she is in the middle of telling herself bits of this story - she opens the book to whatever page she gets (her method gives somewhat random results) and talks a little, then repeats. We're partway through getting her dressed to go out to the football with James. This involves lots of layers and trying to keep the warm bits on. We had a couple of Eagles away games here in Melbourne on weekend afternoons this month, and I enjoyed all of them. I didn't go, James just took Sparrow off with a packed afternoon tea and some frozen milk and didn't come back for five hours. It was a fabulous break for me, I got all kinds of things done at high speed to take full advantage of the time.

And our happy adventurers return from the football in the cold dark night, ready for dinner and cuddles. Sparrow doesn't seem to mind the games, there are always lots of people to watch. And the Eagles aren't doing very well this year so if she gets bored and wants to explore her daddy doesn't mind paying more attention to her than the game.

Every girl needs a chicken! I am visiting Kate Leslie from the Transition Towns group here in Hobsons Bay, and she had a lovely permaculture-ish garden with interesting plants and straw and chickens wandering around. Sparrow was quite taken with the chickens. This is her "Check this out, have you seen one of these things before? Isn't it cool?" look, which she is giving to the owner of the chickens. I think Kate was a little surprised at how comfortable and unprotective I was with letting Sparrow explore natural surfaces and substances like ornamental rocks and garden beds, but really they're quite straightforward and less toxic than the man-made ones here in the refinery-industrial-belt.

I had been wanting to get Sparrow a ball for a while. I was going to get her one like the one her Grandma got her at Christmas (which stayed at the farm as it was too big for a suitcase and they're only a few dollars at KMart anyway). But when I looked at them closely I didn't think they'd stand up to her current chewing-of-everything. Then they had World Cup soccerballs at the newsagent downstairs, and I thought the Germany one was perfect. I didn't think she'd be able to hold it, but surprise for Mummy, here we are in the newsagent cafe and she's picking it up and walking while holding it.

Sparrow found out how to turn the television on herself this month. It surprised us, actually, because we'd thought that the power button was too hard for her to push. And it still is. What James didn't know is that if the TV's on standby you can press a channel button on the lower right and it will switch itself on. Our daughter has found a way to work our technology that we didn't know about. I know that's supposed to be common with new generations, but we weren't expecting it to happen to our high-tech physicist-computer-programmer new-technology-enabled family quite this early. Thankfully when she does turn it on she just gets snow. Which she seems quite happy with, oddly enough. So I come along and press the power button and turn the TV off completely, and then none of the buttons work. Or the remote control. Which is then a little surprise for her daddy when he sits down in the big beanbag and tries to start the Playstation...

Generally Sparrow doesn't get much screen time, but putting pictures of her on the television is such a good way to distract her on cranky mornings. And she and I had a few of those this month, given that she stayed home sick from daycare three different days and I had to leave work early to pick her up early on a fourth. Some of it was teething - two more teeth this month I think it was - and some of it just mystery childhood illnesses.

Every Friday Sparrow's daycare group goes to storytime at the local library (the one in Altona Meadows is quite close to them). Sparrow was home sick this week, and on Friday she was mostly better but I still felt she'd be better off with a calm home day where I could keep an eye on her, make sure she didn't fever up again and just generally run to no particular schedule. I'm a big believer in doing that when you're sick. But seeing as she was mostly well and getting a bit tired of being home with me, we drove down to the library and joined the others for storytime. I quite enjoyed the whole process. At the end of storytime the librarian got the kids to get out craft materials and they made cat-ear-hats to go with the pet stories she'd been reading. The other girls were really happy to see Sparrow and made quite a fuss over her. Rocco (who is just exiting the photo stage right) made an extra hat for Sparrow to wear.

My cute little girl in this month's crazy hat. I was glad we went - it was a bit of fuss and noise for Sparrow, but she was happy to go home and go to sleep afterwards. I got out a lovely illustrated picture book of the Quangle Wangle's Hat and had great fun reading it to Sparrow over the next two weeks.