Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Fourteenth month, 9 June - 9 July, 2010

It's the keyboard girl! This month Sparrow started pressing single keys on the digital piano as well as just mashing at it with her hands and seeing what buttons she could slap. Somehow she suddenly got the idea that you could press the keys separately, using just one finger. Almost immediately afterwards, she developed interest in this computer keyboard that had been out on the floor under the table for ages but generally ignored. Now that she can press the buttons individually (and hear all the little clicks) it's suddenly much cooler.

We still have an ongoing battle about not climbing on the piano. And here you see that she's not climbing on the piano at all, not in the slightest, she's just up on this stool and happened to drop something over past the piano that she needs to get. This was the first time we saw her manage to get up on the stool. She didn't do it too many times, though - it's not really super stable for climbing on, and tends to rotate backwards if you push weight on it. She didn't like the consequences terribly much.

This is more of a cute kitten photo than a cute baby photo. Thomas was entertaining himself by walking on the railing. When the cats want to come inside on the winter mornings after breakfast they'll usually come and sit on my pot plants out the street-side here, where they're nice and visible in front of the windows and can catch any sun that's around. Sparrow enjoys watching them.

Das ist Quitte! Sparrow zehr liebt Quitte. (Not sure if I've got that right.) This month was where Sparrow discovered quince, I think. Or maybe it was the month before. At any rate, quince chopped into small pieces and zapped in the microwave for thirty seconds makes a tasty meal that one small toddler is more than happy to take complete charge of. I can give her the bowl and leave her be and she'll be just fine. If I only give her a few pieces while I'm waiting for the rest to cool down, she will quite enthusiastically remind me that there should be more somewhere, where is it and why isn't it in her reach?

Toy sorting time. Sparrow had a lot of toys out, many of which had been out for a while. There were so many floating around that she was never seeing most of them, and so not playing with them. She doesn't seem to remember that certain toys might be somewhere or that she could go looking for a toy she hasn't seen for a day or two, it's still a bit out-of-sight-out-of-mind. (A toy she's only just put somewhere or that she's seen us hide is however fair game.) So I got two big boxes and put most of them away, just leaving out a few for her to discover. Sparrow is helping me put them away, and exclaiming in delight whenever she discovers a toy she likes but didn't know was there. That happened a lot. I used to cycle the toys away into the smaller box, but she has a lot more toys than fit in it now. So I sorted big toys to the big box, small toys to the small box, and left both boxes stacked in the loungeroom by the television within easy reach whenever I want to shuffle some toys out and in. Conveniently this made a good stand for my laptop too for when James and I want to watch computer files through the TV, and for times when I want to check things on my computer without Sparrow being able to reach it.

It's been a while since I tried this. She's much heavier than the last time, and a little less impressed though it was all right for the first few moments. Between her growing size and growing wiggle it's probably the last time I'll be able to try putting her in this basket. But it was fun.

My (belated) Mothers Day present. I'd told James I wanted one of the little rear-view mirrors that you could use to check on the child in the car seat when you heard strange and mysterious noises that left you wondering just exactly what was going on back there. Eventually he found a couple, so there's now one in each of our cars. It's really handy, and quite fun. Sparrow can kindof see my face in it too.

Sparrow wasn't well. She had a few patches of not well last month and this month. This particular night she was having a lot of trouble sleeping, needed to be mostly upright and cuddled and still couldn't stay asleep for long, just kept waking up crying. I was exhausted. James said "Why don't I sit up with her for a few hours - there's a World Cup match on that I want to watch anyway". So for five hours she played with her soccer ball, cuddled Daddy, looked at the TV once or twice before getting bored, walked around muttering "Abble abble abble" as the commentators screamed "Diablo!", slept every so often and just enjoyed Daddy time. And for those five hours I slept, without interruption, without waking. It may be only the second time since she was born that I've done that. I felt like a completely different person the next day! When the match finished I tagged with James and sat with her encouraging her to sleep while he collapsed in bed. He enjoyed a sleep-in while she and I just had a nice quiet time together. We were expecting a really horrible night because she was struggling so badly, but thanks to the World Cup we both got lots of sleep and it all went really well. Who'dathunk.

One of the things I did this month was look through the No Cry Sleep Solution book (or was that last month? Sleep deprivation makes my sense of chronology a little blurry :-). There were a couple of things that looked like they might help us encourage her to sleep better at night and break the cycle she's got of poor waking-ups. In particular I looked at the food issue - she's getting more and more into solid food, and needs more to eat, but she really wasn't eating dinner. So then of course she was hungry a lot of the night. I changed the time I was feeding her to try and give a reasonable-sized first meal between 4:30 and 5 pm instead of 5:30-6:30, and that helped, she started eating a lot more. And then we started supplementing that both with official "dinner" somewhere between 5:30 and 7, and/or with a supper from the range of foods suggested in the book, offered just before we start the putting-to-bed routine. I remember I often drank hot milk before bedtime when I was a kid, until I managed to convince Mum that I hated it. And Sparrow seems quite happy to do so too. So we've made this part of our bedtime routine now, to have a drink of warm milk, and she really quite likes it.

She's getting quite good at managing cups herself now. Though we still choose the time and place.

Daddy has made lamb cutlets for dinner. Sparrow likes gnawing on lamb cutlets. She has so many more teeth to do it with now than the first time, too.

Sparrow is helping put away the shopping, and has decided that the leek and the bag go in the lounge room. She likes going vegie shopping, spends lots of time craning around and flailing trying to get bites of everything. She was completely fascinated by this leek and carried it back and forth for a bit when we got home. The shopping bag has become a favourite toy too - she will pick it up by its handles and drag it around with her.

This was a wonderful moment. The basket of nappies was on the rug, Sparrow came over and took some out, and then started picking them up and putting them back in!!!! It's so wonderful that she has that concept now. Til this point there wasn't a lot of scope for things like "putting toys away" or "putting things back". Now I can start occasionally including "putting toys away" as part of the bedtime routine, or get her to put stuff back in one place after she's spread it everywhere (results are a bit hit and miss, but hey, it's cool :-). It happened quite quickly in this one week - it started when I heard her playing with the bowl of toy animals in the kitchen, and after a couple of minutes realised I could still hear her taking the toy animals out of the bowl. And there's only ten of them, so it usually only takes thirty seconds or so if that. So I looked, and she was taking them out, picking up two or three and putting them back in the bowl, then taking them out again, and repeating. It was keeping her busy for much longer. I approved.

Other things she put "in" this week included the baboushka dolls inside each other, a toy in her stool and she managed to put a remarkable amount of dirt from my pot plants very neatly through one of the tiny holes in the balcony railing. Not the big gaps that you can stick your arm through, but the little circles that are only a little wider than her finger (she was clearly aiming for precision when I watched her doing it). She can spend a lot of time with these dolls now, it seems like she's sitting there going "Wow, you put this in here and then it's *inside*, and then you take it out again and now it's *outside*...". Her method of getting them open though is still the eagle technique - throw them on the ground repeatedly until they jar against something enough to break apart. Some sophistication still to come there.

Climb, climb, climb. Thomas was out on the rooftop, and Sparrow was keen to get closer to him, and worked out she could climb up on this pot and hold the railing and look out. She quite enjoyed that game for part of one morning. (There's those little circles I mentioned that she decided to "file" my dirt in.)

And back to the shopping bag. Taking things in and out of it started to become a potential game this month, seeing as she was getting the hang of putting things in and out. It's like this great surprise, look what's in this bag! However, if you look closely, what's in this bag this time is Thomas. Thomas likes hiding in bags. There is a certain potential for awkwardness here.