Monday 31 October 2011

Stand

Naomi's getting better at standing all the time. She seems to need less support every day!

Friday 28 October 2011

39 weeks and 5 days

Today is the 28th of October 2011, Naomi is 39 weeks and 5 days old today, this is the gestation she was when she was born, or put more simply, she has been out of me for as long as she was in!

We can now say with some certainty that her eyes are blue and her hair is blonde with a hint of what might be a wave, she looks a lot like her Daddy.  I can't tell you how much she weighs as it is too long since she was measured, but she maintains the 25th percentile and is beautifully in proportion, although even now at 9 months, she is wearing a lot of 3-6 month clothes and even some 0-3!  That said, she is definitely losing her baby look now and beginning to look more like a little girl.

a picture of Naomi next to a picture of Sandy as a baby


She can now crawl with great proficiency and can cruise round the furniture without too much effort.  She is desperate to stand up and every so often lets go of stuff to give it a go, so far not with much success though.  She loves to climb and explore and is into everything, she NEVER stops!

Food is certainly not an inconvenience to her, I guess she is like her Mummy.  Her favourites continue to be fish and brocolli, although she is quite partial to yoghurt and the odd banana too!


She now has six teeth which help with chewing too, two on the bottom and four on the top.  We assume they will even out at some point so she is less "top-heavy"!

Naomi loves things with music, she loves to listen to Daddy play the guitar or just a toy play a song.  At church she loves when we have music and sing, she even has a little dance and a wiggle along with what she hears!

Her favourite thing to do in a day is just to be outside, out for a walk, going to the park or just playing in the garden, it is all good fun for Naomi




Naomi is definitely an independent kind of girl, when we go to baby groups and the likes she doesn't so much as look back when she goes off to play with toys.  Although, she's still very keen on milk and so I she would be sad if I left her forever!  She is very clear on her likes and dislikes and will make it known if she is unhappy.

People often comment on how smiley Naomi is, and it's true.  She is often smiling and rarely crying, though she does have an incredibly loud cry when she chooses to use it, as if she only has on and off switches and hasn't yet discovered the volume control!
a smile from our girl!

Naomi can now sleeps through the night and normally does, though day time napping is not a favourite activity and never has been, so days where Daddy is at work can be long for Mummy!

Talking extends, so far, to babbling noises, though we are almost convinced that her Mummy noise is actually Mummy.  It is clear there are certain words she does understand though, Mummy, Daddy and Milk being definitely understood things!

Our baby girl is amazing, I am very excited to see how much more changes in the next 39 weeks and 5 days!

Thursday 27 October 2011

Eating

Right since before the start of weaning we've let Naomi play with a spoon so she wouldn't be too concerned when we started putting food on it and trying to put it in her mouth. She knew exactly what to do with it straight away.

More recently we've been giving her lots of finger food, and although there is still some mess involved she's pretty good at picking up bits of toast, fruit and so on and feeding herself. She also likes to hold a spoon herself while being fed, I guess she maybe feels she's helping that way! On occasions we've felt particularly brave and motivated to clean up afterwards, we've tried letting her have a shot with combining spoon and food herself. Here's the first venture into this where it's been reasonably successful...


Wednesday 26 October 2011

Relaxation

We honestly didn't put Naomi into this pose - she did it all by herself :)

Monday 24 October 2011

Boxes

So, you may have gather from the recent proliferation of posts that we've amassed quite a few pictures and videos of Naomi that need shared! We are getting there now.

Last week I was on leave, in part to help tidy up the house and make it feel like we'd moved into a bigger place without actually having done so. Part of this process meant doing away with some of the moving boxes (mostly empty and stored just-in-case, but one still used to store stuff). There's still plenty of boxes left in our loft, so we freecycled a few of them. Naturally, while they waited in our living room to be taken away, Naomi discovered what all children eventually find out: boxes are great toys! Here she is enjoying some of them.

Sunday 23 October 2011

Babyproofing!

Naomi is getting more and more mobile these days, she is quite the adventurer too, getting into everything by climbing, crawling, standing, crying till you pick her up, whatever seems to work best at the time! And so the babyproofing commences!

All over our house you will now find those things for plugs that stop little fingers from mixing with electricity and we have a fair few of those rubbery things you stick on corners (corner cushions as my good friend Sarah called them, what exactly is different about a cushion for a corner? I was thinking for at least 5 minutes one day!) and we also now have a stair gate.

Ironically the stair gate isn't on the stairs, the layout of the house and positioning of doors is such that we don't need any there but we have now put one between the kitchen and the rest of the house. It was deemed necessary after Naomi pulled a casserole dish onto herself and it broke!

The thing is, she quite likes the stair gate, it is good for helping one stand up and it is good for climbing on, I'm sure she would consider it good for swinging on too, but thankfully she is unable to open it!

Here she is using the gate for standing purposes


Apparently it is good to be able to see Mummy even if we can't quite get to her!


Don't worry though, I'll work out how to get through this thing!

Saturday 22 October 2011

Growl



After a spell of learning words like "bababa" and "mumumum", Naomi has been growling the past few days. Not totally sure why - we think it might be because I make a sound a bit like a growl when tickling here - but it's still fun to hear :)

Friday 21 October 2011

Beautiful Girl

Recently Naomi has managed to get the hang of having her photo taken and seems to quite enjoy it.  On top of that she is starting to lose her baby look and beginning to look like a little girl and is get quite close to being a fully fledged "toddler"!

Sandy was taking some pictures of Naomi a few days ago and ended up with these gems, we think they show just how beautiful she is, we hope you enjoy!




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Lemon meringue pie. Simultaneously the sweetest and bitterest words in the english language. Also delicious.


Thursday 20 October 2011

Snap!

Much as i'm not one for tv shows that feel the need to have a competitive element, we followed the great british bakeoff very closley over the last few weeks. The main appeal being the baking. Anyhow, here is the result of our first inspiration from the programme, some brandy snaps. They don't look great, but golly, they did taste good! They're also gluten free. I'd attach some to the post for you to try, except for two things. 1. We've eaten all of them. 2. One can't send food on the internet.



Tuesday 11 October 2011

Students

So, the students are back. Working in a university this is obviously quite a big deal, but in a town like Loughborough (which is in many ways a university with a town attached) it makes a huge difference. I don't remember the place being this busy before the summer, but the place is mad now! Two weeks ago was moving in time, and there were people everywhere.

This is quite well illustrated by my ability to park a bike on a sunny day during the holidays...


Contrasted with a rather less hot day at the end of last week...


Still, I won't complain, the place has got a great amount of life again!

In other news, this week I got to sit in on a class, my first lecture where I wasn't at the front in more than six years. There's a course going this week about building energy, and it was suggested that it might help me to understand the problems I'm working on better. I quite enjoyed it - and was quite suprised by how quickly I got back in to learn-mode. There's two more for me to go to later in the week too; and sandwiched in between them is me giving a talk to the computing people here about my research. A diverse week lies ahead...

Finally, many will be aware of this already, but a couple of weeks ago we received a moving in present. No, we've not moved since last October, and this was indeed ordered in 2010. Here are some flowers that rank among the latest to arrive in existence:

Squirrels!

Naomi and I went for a walk to the park today, we often do because it is a pretty place to walk around.

We often see squirrels around the place but today we managed to get really close, Naomi was fascinated by the wee creatures running around climbing the trees and jumping across branches (giving the amount of climbing Naomi has done recently I suspect she was jealous of there agility)

I didn't have the proper camera with me, just my 'phone, but I thought you'd like to see the pictures of the squirrels



Of course, though, I know you would love to see a picture of Naomi, and so here is a photo of the cheeky girl herself enjoying having Daddy at home over the weekend

Sunday 9 October 2011

Play

The last few days we have had a lot of fun with Naomi.  She is at a very fun stage where she is quite good at playing independently, though enjoys playing with you too.  She laughs lots.  Generally days are quite good fun just now!


We took this video of her playing with a couple of her toys, she was doing this for a good long while, the video cut out because Sandy's memory card was full but this is very typical of her play just now (today aside, she has been in a weird mood all day) and we are all having lots of fun as a result.






Naomi is also learning to mimic us with sounds more and more.  She does a very convincing "Mummy" now, which obviously makes me incredibly happy, I am her first word!

This is a very fun stage to have a little girl!

Friday 7 October 2011

Hugs

Here is the scene as I was about to leave this morning...


It seems Naomi has figured out the art of hugs - or at least something like it! Sometimes it's more of a "clawing". She also gets pretty upset when either Jay or I leave the room (though with Jay it seems to be bad news whenever she does anything that isn't giving Naomi total attention all the time - something I at least get allowed some time off from).

She does know how to make us feel appreciated though :)


Oh - I've recently started showing her the pictures I've been taking of her straight after they're taken. I'm not sure if this has allowed her to work out what's going on, but at the moment she no longer seems so adverse to having her picture taken...