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Cradlesong Blog: Happy Father's Day!!
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Happy
Father's Day to all the Dads out there! Hope you get to spend a lovely
day with your little ones. Sophie's Daddy was woken with a kiss, some
presents and beautiful art work. I'm sure there will be plenty more
kisses and "huggles" for Daddy as the day goes on.
So once again, Happy Father's Day!
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Cradlesong Blog: Oh Boy, Opposites
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I know I keep going on about how much Sophie is learning and how she
constantly surprises me, but she is a clever little thing and she does understand so much. Today she was playing with a
material hair band and dropped it in the sink. When I picked it up and
gave it back to her she said, "wet". I said, "yes it is wet, clever
girl". She then told me, "wet, wet, wet" pointed at the towel and
said "dry!". I was pretty impressed with that and had to oblige.
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Cradlesong Blog: A Little Swimmer at Lane Cove Aquatic Centre
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I took Sophie to our
local public pool (Lane Cove Aquatic Centre) today as she doesn't have
lessons at the moment and it's still a bit too cold for our pool. They
have a nice big set of shallow pools with fountains which were perfect
for Sophie. I tried to remember all the things we have learnt at Brewer
Swimming and we did OK. The pool was warmer than the one we are use to
so it was also the first time in a couple of months that she wasn't in
her wetsuit. Surprisingly, she was fine with this. I thought she might
notice the lack of buoyancy, but she was great. We even bumped into a
friend from Brewer in the change rooms which was a nice surprise.
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Cradlesong Blog: "Mumma"
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My beautiful little Sophie just woke herself up because she
wriggled out of her sleeping bag, but she didn't cry out. Instead she
stood in her cot saying, "Mumma, Mumma, Mumma" in her lovely little
voice. All I had to do was go in and pop her sleeping bag back on and
she settled straight away. What a little cutie.
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Cradlesong Blog: We're Back!!!
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I really don't know where the days or weeks have gone recently. A
couple of weekends ago we went to Victoria and took a trip up to the
snow with the boys and Sophie. It was a good trip, but very quick one
and since being back in Sydney, we gone straight back into our
weekly routine of Art'N'Move, play dates and swimming, followed by a
weekend of voting, cleaning and washing and then back to the weekly
routine again... all in a blur, for Mummy at least.
The snow was good and it's the first
time Sophie's been to the snow and initially she wasn't too keen. It was
pretty windy on Saturday and we had a very early start (leaving the
house at 5am) and she really wasn't too keen on the cold. I enrolled
her in the creche and did a bit of skiing with the boys, but poor
little Sophie wasn't having fun at creche so I collected her early. I
wasn't very impressed with the way the creche had handled things, but
that's another story. I stayed at the creche with her for a little bit
and made sure she had something to eat and drink before we left and we
had an easy afternoon together. We even stumbled across the Barry Magical Mountain Music Show which was a great distraction. Then after dinner, she had a fun, deep spa bath with her brothers, followed by a good night of sleep and she woke up in a great mood on Sunday. I had a nice morning with her and then met Daddy and the boys for lunch. After eating we had fun in the snow building a snowman and having a little snowball fight. It was great to hear her chuckle and have so much fun with the snow.
Art'N'Move has been as fun as ever and Sophie has started to settle in well. She especially loves the art and craft part of the class. Mummy particularly enjoys the play date and chat with a cuppa after the class.
Swimming has been great. Sophie is just doing amazingly well and her instructor even labelled her the star of the class which made Mummy very, very proud! She loves the water and has learnt to enter the pool safely, to be submerged confidently, to kick and paddle and she even did a short submerged solo polo to the pool edge and got out by herself the other week. It's amazing to see her progress so well and I really want to encourage her. Sadly she just had her last class with her current instructor, which will be a great loss to us, but I am intent on continuing her progress and finding a new class for her. If she continues as she is, I really don't see it being too long before she can swim solo. I also believe that her swimming lessons are part of the reason she is so stable and active out of the water. I think the lessons have helped to strengthen her muscles, improve her fitness and the activity of climbing in and out of the pool on a weekly basis has helped her to learn to climb on play equipment and all over the furniture at home :o)
To finish this post, I promise to start writing more frequently again!
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Cradlesong Blog: Sleep Pattern Puzzles
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After a combination of a few minor illnesses,
spending whole days out with Nanny and Grandad and Mummy taking the
easy option too many times, Sophie's sleep patterns have been thrown
out. About a month ago she would wake up at around 5am and want to feed
until 7am when she would get up. I'm still breastfeeding her in morning
and I just physically couldn't keep up with this, so I decided to make
a change. I started by patting, cuddling or rocking her back to sleep
when she would first wake. This seemed to work well and she started to
naturally wake up around 6.30am for a short feed before she jumps up
and tackles the day head on. So yet again, I've learnt the lesson that
the easy option is NEVER the easiest option and that these problems are
normally pretty straight forward to fix.
Having said all that, now we need to sort out the daytime naps and
bedtime! To be honest, bedtime isn't bad, although she has the odd
night when she doesn't want to settle straight away, but that isn't
often and she's normally back in bed within 10 - 20 minutes. Daytime
sleeps are a completely different matter and I'm at a loss. She will
just keep on going and going if I let her. She has fallen asleep in her
highchair after lunch and sometimes I can successfully transfer her to
the bed, but the car wins every time. She will fall asleep in the car
when we are on our way back home from a morning of adventures and I can
nearly always pop her on the bed without waking her. The problem I have
there is no rhyme or reason to the time she takes a sleep, the amount
of sleep she has and it's almost impossible to get to have a sleep at
home even when she's visibly exhausted. I don't think it will be long
before she simply doesn't have a daytime sleep and then how will Mummy
survive the day or get anything done?!
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Cradlesong Blog: The Best Word in the World!!
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As I've mentioned previously, Sophie is growing her vocabulary at a
great rate. She has now learnt the word cuddle, although, it sounds
more like "cuggle" which is really sweet. Today she even turned to me
and said, "Mumma cuggle" and my heart melted. What a cutie!
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Cradlesong Blog: Seat Belt Saga
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We've been having some real problems with Sophie in the car. She has
learnt how to wiggle her arms under the shoulder straps of the five
point harness. It has been a real worry for me and caused dramas
especially when it's just been the two of us in the car and I've had to
pull over to get her back in the seat belt properly. We tried doing a
bit of a make-do fix with a velcro strap across her chest between the
shoulder straps, but she managed to bypass that pretty easily. Anyway,
on the weekend we found a specially made gadget that wraps around the
shoulder straps and poppers into place, that has been designed for the
exact problem we've been having. It's called the SECURAP and is made by
infa-secure. Thankfully it seems to of done the trick. Sophie has tried
to get her arms under the belt since we got it, but has failed and a
Playschool CD distracted her from her consequent frustration, so
fingers crossed we have a solution.
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Cradlesong Blog: So Many Words!
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Sophie is turning into a little chatterbox. She seems
to have a handful of new words every day. She points out things in
books and magazines, on the TV, out of the window, at the shops and
anywhere else she can. It really is amazing. When we were getting her
immunisations done we were asked how we felt she was doing
developmentally and how many words she can say. We weren't really sure
as we hadn't tried to count lately and finally agreed it was most
definitely over twenty. So that evening we made a list so we could
satisfy our curiosity and we came up with over 60 words very quickly
and have added at least another 10 to that since. I mean I knew she was
chatty, but I still found that pretty amazing. Now we just have to work
on understanding what it is she wants when she's desperately trying to
ask for something and I still draw a blank after offering her
everything I can possibly think of.
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Cradlesong Blog: Mum's Group Catch Up
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On Saturday morning Sophie and I were due to catch up with some of our
Mum's Group at a local park. Unfortunately, the weather was a bit wet
for the park, so we volunteered our place for the catch up. We had six
little visitors and their mums. It was great to see the toddlers
(they're not bubs anymore) playing and interacting with each other and
to reflect on how much they have grown!! We are a lucky group of mums
with such healthy, beautiful little people with so much character. It
was also great to catch up with mums and hear their news, even if I do
feel like I had about fifteen half conversations between keeping Sophie
in tow. Hopefully, we'll be able to catch up again soon.
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