Progress

Our baby is growing up fast! We're past five months already and Lydia is coming on quite the thing.

Of course, like all our girls, she's always had good head control. She enjoys her tummy time and has rolled over a few times (mainly front-to-back).

More odd to see (given how small she is) is her most excellent ability to stand. The balance needs some fine tuning but if you hold her hands she's quite capable of supporting her weight.

Also - on holiday isn't the best place to start, but she's been quite hungry of late, so we're now weaning. Her first meal was sweet potato, and seemed to go down pretty well. She's now also had apple, avocado and pear with varying degrees of success.

Sorry for the radio silence!

Life has been a little hectic with all the moving and such but here are some photos/stories/goings on by way of some updates!

I have been finding life a little tough without toddler groups as that is something we did a lot of in Loughborough.  We will do toddler groups soon but it is the school holidays here and has been since we arrived and so instead we have been going to the park!

We have been really lucky with some beautiful weather since we arrived so we have been touring all the parks to see which ones are best.

This one is a fair walk from the house but it's lots of fun and has a toilet for our potty trained toddler!

surveying the scene

\Naomi can now climb into this unaided!

 Miriam is now an absolute fiend at eating, here you can see her eating some french toast, not bad when you consider she only has two teeth!

Favourite activity of the moment, for Miriam, is to swing!

Here we are swinging together!

On my way home from the "big" park we have this lovely view, stunning!

Miriam got some rare time with mummy to herself as her sister fell asleep in the buggy one day, as you can see we had fun together.

Lots of sunshine means lots of lunches in the garden

More swinging!

Naomi is learning to share.  For her age I think she does an admirable job.  She is very keen to share and indeed naturally seems inclined to make sure that everyone has something to play with.  That said, she is very inclined to make sure she gets the best "thing" (whatever that may be) for herself.  I told her she could only have the toy she was trying to snatch from her sister if she replaced it with something else.  Naomi promptly found Miriam a clothes peg! Not quite what I had in mind!  This photo sums it up perfectly, Naomi was picking daisies and wanted Mummy to have one too, as you can see, though, she kept the best (bigger is always better when you are two) for herself!

 I love this photo of Naomi in her chosen outfit for the day ready to go to the shops!

Miriam had a taste of mango here, she enjoyed it lots, although was a little frustrated by its slippery nature.

this photo makes me smile just because it gives me hope that one day, rather than having to constantly protect Miriam from an overbearing Naomi, they will learn to play together.  This particular day I was very poorly and mummying all had to be done from the sofa so lots of non-squabbling was much appreciated!

A random photo of Naomi enjoying the garden in the new house.  The garden is easily the best bit about our new house!

I recently went down to Loughborough for a night to celebrate with my good friends Kate and Shayne who have been married for 10 years! (Sandy and I get to celebrate that particular milestone next month).  For a variety of reasons we decided it would be too much to take the who family down and so I went down on my own.  With no children.  Alone! This resulted in a very exciting prospect of managing to read a whole book!  It was a very fun night and I was really pleased to come back to some girls (and a husband) who had missed me and gave me awesome cuddles and amazing smiles.  Less good was that Miriam woke frequently over the night to make sure I hadn't gone away again.  Oh well, you win some, you lose some!

More Food!!

As you can see here Miriam is now starting to enjoy the world of solid food.  I can report, that just like her big sister she LOVES food!

Having not been on solid foods very long most foods are a new experience.  I thought you might like to see what she looked like after her first experience of spinach, she had it tonight with fish and mashed potato.

Yum!!

Food!

So, we had been planning on weaning Miriam after we got back from our next trip to Scotland as it is only a couple of weeks away.  Our baby was just too hungry, though, so I thought I would try her with a little bit of baby rice.

Here she is waiting with anticipation

As an aside, this failed photo shows a very cool hair style!

Here she is after the first spoonful, she took a moment to decide how she felt

But very quickly she decided that she LOVED it!

And indeed as soon as it finished (despite being given what I thought was quite a large first ever portion) she let me know she was sad about it

Today she has also had some banana and I can tell you that she is LOVING food, just like her big sister did!

I also thought I would share this picture from last thing before bed as we were getting changed after a shared bath

sisters

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...

Dublin

Last week I was away with work again, this time at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) in Dublin. This is one of the biggest conferences in my field - each year there are several hundred people at it - and if you want to catch up on evolutionary computing stuff it's one of the best places to go. As you'll have gathered from my trip to Paris I tend to quite enjoy this kind of stuff. Catching up with other people doing the same kind of research, seeing what else is happening at the moment and bouncing ideas around.

The different locations are quite fun too! GECCO takes place annually, every other year in the USA and in between "somewhere else". Needless to say, I had something of a chuckle when one of the first things to follow the venue announcement last year was the notice that the social programme for this one was going to be at the Guinness factory. Awesome. The Guinness people were also doing lessons on pint pouring, and pictured you can see my certificate. Dublin is also where Jay and I honeymooned and it was nice seeing some of the places we went again.

Of course, the main reason for going was research, and I spent a lot of time talking with people about various things. There's quite a few ideas sloshing around now that I need to think about! While there I also presented a poster of my recent work - for those who've not seen an academic poster before they tend to be a bit dry unless the creator is particularly creative (which I'm not) - and basically presenting involves standing next to it for a couple of hours while people come up to peer at it. Mine is the stripey on on the end in the picture. The idea is that it's a bit more free for discussion than giving a talk and taking questions and I got a couple of good suggestions out of it. During the conference I also had the pleasing experience of seeing one of the other presenters referring to my work - I don't think that's happened before and it felt pretty cool!

Of course, I was pretty tired on returning and took a couple of days to recover. I don't imagine this was much compared to Jay's levels of tiredness as sole child carer for the week though... Both her and Naomi were quite pleased to see me, and after a little uncertainness at the airport I got grinned at all the way home.

Finally, another update on food. We'll try to get a video sometime of Naomi eating broccoli - it really is worth seeing as she likes it so much it can't come fast enough. She really shakes and looks panicked in between mouthfuls! Yesterday we determined that she's not all that keen on cheese (mouth clamped shut) - but many readers will be pleased to note that she is keen on toast, and here she is enjoying some. Also, as of yesterday she's now officially twice her birth weight at 14lb 10oz.

(I can't believe it's taken this long for a "toast" label on the blog)

Teeth

As you can read about here Naomi has cut her first two teeth, we didn't think we would be able to get any photos of them for some time, although I was determined as the teeth were getting more and more obvious in real life.  I couldn't (can't) find our "real" camera and so was using my phone which didn't make the task any easier, so I ended up with many photos of Naomi's mouth, some nicer than others...

Eventually though, she was chewing on a toy and I saw my chance, so here, I present you with, the teeth!!

This does mean, though, that we need to start brushing them, for now all this means is putting her toothbrush into her mouth, soon we will start putting a little toothpaste on it, but not quite yet.  Here she is having her first experience of the brush, as you can see, she is a little unsure!

Of course, the benefit of teeth is that you can chew stuff, so here is Naomi in her highchair for the first time chewing on some rice cake and apple

Finally, nothing to do with teeth, here she is holding her feet, just because it is cute!

Cup

In addition to figuring out spoons, Naomi has now managed to work out the subtle are of cup holding. This is useful as some of her solid foods are a bit on the solid side and she'd developed quite a taste for a bit of water (usually getting quite upset when it's taken away). This can only increase as according to the EAT study from today she has wheat in her diet too, at the moment in the form of weetabix which is well-known for its alternative use as sandbagging in the flood prevention industry, such is its absorbing capability. Typically at the moment it's a bit of a messy affair - she ends up very wet - but nonetheless she's getting pretty skilled at the old motor control. Last night she also found her feet for the first time, and had a good grab of her toes prior to bath time!

We're also quite pleased that the past couple of nights have been much better sleep-wise - last night she woke up once and was asleep again after 15 minutes, with no feeding :) Long may this continue.

She continues to get more engaged in toys and playing with stuff. I think I may have posted a shot of her enjoying this toy before but this video is rather neat; she's playing with a watery pillow which her Grandma got her, it has some floating shapes in it for her to bat around and she's rather pleased with it. Also look out for her spotting that I'm filming her activities...

Bouncing

Thanks to our good friends McGarry back in Aberdeen Naomi is the owner of a great door bouncer and now that her head control is a bit better she can go in it, though we haven't done it too often yet as I am a little wary of putting her in and taking her out on my own, though I am sure with a few more practices I will be just fine (I used to be nervous of putting her in the sling, and that definitely isn't true any more!)

Here is a video of her bouncing away the first time that we gave it a go

As an update to the weaning, it is all going well, Naomi is still loving food!  She has now had her first food that she has to eat for the EAT study and has been eating yoghurt this week, slightly unfortunately, as this is a food she "has" to eat, it probably would be her least favourite so far, though we found that by putting some banana in it (as opposed to apple or pear) she liked it a little better.

Her favourite by far, though, continues to be broccoli.  I found myself telling her that if she ate her youghurt like a good girl she could have some broccoli as a treat, Sandy pointed out that there is probably only a short window in her life that this will be true!  The photo below is after tonight's dinner of broccoli and butternut squash, in contrast to our usual photos of mess, you will notice that barely a drop has been allowed to escape her mouth, broccoli is just too precious to let it sit on a bib you see!

Sleeeeeeeep

Many of you will know that Naomi hasn't been sleeping as well of late, proving a little harder to settle at night then waking up every couple of hours or so. This is in sharp contrast to the sleeping-right-through we had a few weeks ago. Consequently, both parents have been somewhat tired. We've been working through a number of things which might be causing this:

Keeping the window closed to avoid noise coming in from outside (now aborted as her room gets much too warm)

Reducing clothing to get temperature right

Application of teething gel just in case (this is now happening anyway as there's an obvious tooth coming)

Early daylighting - her room now has a Shore Porter's box attached (skilfully by Jay) with gaffa tape to the window; this may have improved the going to sleep part of things

Cancelling the dream-feed

The most recent plan was to take the dangerous step of changing her during the night, and using a disposable nappy as they're a bit less fuss and better at doing the absorbing. So, increased comfort, but given how much she loves changing (not much) it leads to a very awake child.

Anyway, last night sleep was achieved within minutes (good for Jay as I had to be out), and then only one awakening (albeit a lengthy one) prior to about 7am! Both parents were suitably pleased with this outcome as the tiredness is causing some odd things to happen. Of course this may have been a one-off - but we hope it'll continue. So no changes to the winning formula for tonight. The sleep issue has of course made napping happen a bit better as she gets tired through the day...

Feeding is coming on well - here's one of her first taste of non-milk water....

We've yet to find a food she really doesn't like. Normally the first try of a new food is met with some hesitation (and mess) but the second try usually goes down a treat. Here's the first experience of butternut squash - as Eddie Izzard would say - COVERED IN FOOD!

Update - presumably this food business is helping her to grow - today she was weighed in at 13lb 2 oz! This is fast approaching double her birth weight. (I wonder what age it becomes inappropriate to post her weight on the Internet?)

Sling

Here's Naomi enjoying the much-loved sling in a new orientation. She was having a good chuckle about this but every time I get the camera out she becomes intensely interested in it and the grin disappears!

Now on to some more food - it seems she's enjoying this a bit more now. Still not quite got the hang of swallowing but she clearly knows what's coming what the bib goes on and she leans forward looking for more each time the spoon come out. Even broccoli went down a treat! Here she is having dinner a couple of nights ago...

She seems to be sleeping a little better again (up once last night) - hopefully this is down to the food and will keep up :)