We have been to these places for barely a moment

Grace continues to change so quickly. She is really steady on her feet and normally coasts round the furniture holding on with just one hand. She still gets down on to the floor and crawls when she meets an open space so the next step is for her to walk hands free. I think she will probably just get up and do it one day.

The girls get on so well. Olivia loves to give Gracie bear hugs and do stuff like wrap her up in a blanket and roll her around the floor and Gracie just laughs like a drain and thinks that 99.9% of everything Olivia does is hilarious. My job now is to try and get Olivia to recognise the other 0.01% and stop putting Grace in to a headlock! Olivia really loves her little sister and very earnestly told me the other day 'Mummy, Gracie is my favourite toy.' I pointed out that Grace is a baby and not a toy and she thought a bit more and then announced 'Gracie is my best friend and Daddy is your best friend'. She is so super cute!

Olivia is very clever and also very opinionated. She certainly tells you what she does and doesn't want to do. Anyone would think she was two and a half or something! This evening she screamed hysterically for about 25 minutes due to a combination of not having a daytime nap and being by Mummy told to stop swinging on Grandma's cupboard doors. She was a small slice of hell for a good while.

Thing is that being a parent can be hard but the good stuff outweighs the bad. When Olivia smiles naturally, not the silly screwed-up eyes smile she does when someone puts a camera on her, but the natural smile when she genuinely thinks something is funny, she melts my heart.

Stories That I Never Told

Well, apologies to anyone who's been checking back to see whether we've updated the site and has concluded we've all carked it from Swine Flu.

We're still sorting out the new kitchen - though it is the very last few bits now. It has taken inordinately longer than we anticipated, and we anticipated it would take longer than the builders said it would. Things have not been helped by our flooring supplier falling victim to the recession, necessitating a refund and starting that side of things off again from scratch...

Grace is doing very well. She learned to crawl about three weeks ago and now whizzes across the floor and pulls herself up on the furniture. She has a face and head covered in small bruises from all the tumbles she's taking and despite the same thing happening with Olivia, when K___ took Grace to see the health visitor for a check up, there was a tiny niggle that worried that they might think something was awry.

In the last few days, Grace has started talking. Her first 'word' was 'Dadadadada', which I know almost certainly doesn't mean 'Daddy', but anything and nothing. It was followed a day later by "Nananan" and yesterday, "Mumumum", and that really did appear to be directed at K___.

Olivia continues to do well with her potty training. She's dry all day now, and we've taken off the sides of her bed to allow her to get out and use the potty during the night too. Unfortunately, this means that at the moment we're experiencing quite a lot of night time messing about. In the week that she's had the new bed (with Balamory duvet set, no less) she's come into to our room at least once a night. Here's hoping that stops soon...

Here's some pics from my camera phone last Thursday - apologies that the quality isn't better.

If my heart were a ball It Would Roll Uphill

Stop...tummy time! Gracie has been spending lots of quality time on her tummy recently. She is now pushing right up on extended arms and is staring to bring her knees up under her. She also rolled over from her tummy to her back for the first time today. Not expecting it I didn't get a photo of her actually doing it but I did grab a snap of the look of delight on her face once she had done it.

The ladies in our readership should note her 'Nobody puts baby in the corner' bib!

The Children Playing Will Grow Up and Leave Home

Sometimes I look at Grace and realise just how quickly the baby stage slips away. She is already getting really big (although actually she is still following her own special line between the 9th and 25th centiles) and I see changes in her from day to day. She is very engaged with the world now and loves to sit or stand on your lap and 'talk' to you, or kick around on a blanket on the floor playing with toys. She has a very cheeky face and her blue eyes still show no signs of changing colour.

Here she is enjoying a play.

Especially True

Olivia was watching TV with Grandma this morning. 'Oh look - a monkey!' said Grandma. Olivia looked at her like she was some sort of mad person, a look that said, 'Are you stupid or something?' and with a stern voice she piped up, 'No Grandma, it's gorilla.' That told Grandma!

Trap the Spark

Lest we forget the little moments, here's what's new in the land of Grace...

Grace is a tall baby and has already grown out of the newborn clothes which Olivia wore for about 3 months! She is now in 'big girl' clothes. She's a lot more alert, awake a lot of the time and has just started smiling (which we hope to catch on camera soon) in the last few days.

Wrapped Up in Time

Sometimes I look at Olivia and I can't believe how big she is. It doesn't seem like 5 minutes since she was the size of Grace and now she is a big girl and almost 2. It is obviously the effect of having once that is so much smaller and lighter in comparison but I swear that Olivia got twice as tall and twice as heavy the day Grace was born - surely I would have noticed if she had been so grown up before?

Her language has come on in leaps and bounds in the last month. She now says sentences such as 'Grandma, out chair please' when she wants to get down from the table and her vocab has greatly expanded. She is so much better able to express herself and is therefor a lot less frustrated.

I know that in the blink of an eye both her and Grace will be big girls and so I try to enjoy every second while they are still little.

They Got Money

Olivia's language has dramatically improved in the last few weeks. She now says so many words I am kind of losing count. She also now calls all the family by their names (or recognizable variations upon them) which is very cute. It makes such a difference to both her and us that she can now make herself understood much of the time and she gets a lot less cross and frustrated.

She obviously remembers things and stores them away for an appropriate moment because earlier she found a coin on the floor and took it to F_ and said 'Daddy, money'. We were not aware that she knew this word but she has obviously got her priorities set up :)

Gimme the News

Olivia's had new things a-gogo in the last week. Here's a brief catch up.

Saying her own name: Admittedly, it sounds like she's saying 'Allah', which may well be grounds for a fatwa. To be fair, 'Olivia' is quite a difficult word to get right, and it does sound more like 'Aaalughuh'.

Reading her own name: On Olivia's bedroom door is a big, pink wooden butterfly with block capital letters spelling out her name. On the wall above her bed, are six canvasses about 20 cm square, each with a letter upon it. Whenever we go into her room, I make a point of tracing over the letters and spelling out her name on one or other. When we realised she was saying her name, I thought I'd see what happened if I pointed at her name and asked her what it said. 'Allah,' came the reply. I was somewhat gobsmacked. It hadn't really occured to me it might work, but we've written it on various bits of paper since and she definitely gets it right. without prompting beyond, 'What does that say?'

She can also tell you that the last letter is an 'A', but I'm not so sure that's genuine. Certainly with the recognising her own name, she's recognising it as a block of letters, rather than reading it. It's more akin to recognising a logo than proper reading, but nevertheless pretty good.

Swimming: We went to our local swimming pool last weekend, and I remarked to K___ how much more confident Olivia was in the water. We went again today, and bugger me with a Sherman Tank if she didn't 'swim'! She was in water that was up to my stomach, so way out of her depth, and she was lying on her front and kicking a few strokes totally unsupported. She also lay on her back and floated, again unsupported. In neither case did she do it for long, but it was five seconds or so. and all the while she was beaming like she was Esther Williams.

Obviously, she had armbands on and I was ready to grab her at the first sign of any trouble, but I was still really surprised.

Singing: Duetting, in fact.
Me: "Tinky Winky... Dipsy..."
Olivia: "Laaaa-Laaa... Po..."
Me: "Teletubbies... Teletubbies... Say 'Eh-oh'!"
Olivia: "EH-OHHH!!!!"

As an aside, I bought a couple of episodes of Teletubbies from iTunes the other day, because Olivia's obsessed with it. We sat through one and I thought nothing of it. Later on, I logged onto LastFM only to discover one of my LastFM buddies questioning my sudden love for children's T V characters because it got picked up and reported onto the site. Now deleted.

Anyway, so while Baby 2 is apparently happy remaining in situ for a little longer, we've got plenty to occupy us with Baby 1.

You Can Bash Me With Your Book of Words

It was only a matter of time, given the fact that technically both her parents are qualified librarians (I say technically cause Daddy works a in records rather than libraries these days). Olivia has always embraced reading. I think that if a day ever came when she 'read' less than 10 books she would probably spontaneously combust! Anyway, Olivia has learned the work 'book' and now spend her day from first waking up asking Mummy and Daddy for a book.

Did You Drink Too Much Too Soon?

Olivia has finally learner to say 'cup'. Amusingly she also says 'tea' when she wants a drink, even though she has never had tea and only drinks milk or water!

Who Can Say What You See

This week Olivia learnt those three little words that every parent longs to hear...

















Mine...more...why!

Speak to the Wise with the Voice of Insanity

Olivia had everyone in stitches today as Daddy has taught her how to say 'turtle' and she says it in a very cute way. We are trying to teach her to say 'please' and 'thank you' and she does...when she feels like it. She is stubbornly refusing to say 'cup' and still just point and gets cross until you give her some water. Auntie A_ is teaching her the phonetic alphabet sounds and she is getting very good at it 'a,a,a,a,a,a,a,a', 'b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,' - it is all a bit Eliza Doolittle really so I may start her on 'the rain in spain' any day now :)

The other game amusing the grown ups at the moment is a game called 'ask Olivia amusing stuff'. Here is a conversation A_ had with her today:

A: Do you love Mummy?
O: No
A: Do you love Daddy?
O: No
A: Do you want some Christmas presents?
O: Yes
A: Do you love Grandma?
O: No
A: Do you want some chocolate?
O: Yes

Given the fact that Mummy is too puritanical to let her have much chocolate and she wouldn't have the first clue what a Christmas present was I have no idea how she knows, but somehow she has decided that these are questions one really ought to answer yes to!

Learning From My Own Words

Olivia is obviously having a language development week. Since last weekend she has said the following for the first time:

boy (she went to visit a friend of my Mum and walked straight in, went straight up to her son and said 'boy')
please (this one is a bit hit and miss at the moment and she only says it when she feels like it)
cake (she got this from the plastic play food as Mummy is far too puritanical to let her have much cake!)


bowl
spoon
These two stem from the fact that she is currently obsessed with cereal and would have nothing but breakfast all day if you let her. She gets a bowl and the cereal out of the cupboards but cannot reach to get a spoon from the drawer.

She has also learned the word 'no', which she uses A LOT but doesn't really seem to entirely get the hang of as, like she does with 'yes' she answers questions fairly randomly based on how she feels. We are amazed it has taken her so long to learn this word, considering how often she hears it :)

She has also learned 'bye' which she uses with gusto, shouting 'bye' at you at the top of her voice even if you are just going to the other side of the room to get something!

What she really needs to learn now is 'cup' because at the moment she just starts shouting 'uh, uh,uh,uh' until you give her a drink!

What the hell do we want?

I've just watched a video of ZygoteDaddy's toddler, Red, reading a book. On each page, an adult (possibly his daddy, but it's not clear) points at something on the page and asks, 'What's that?'

'Buh-dubba-dah,' answers Red, confidently. Next page.
'What's that?'
'Buh-dubba-dah.'

And so on.

Olivia's much the same. She even has a similar vocal tick that she says all the time, although hers is, 'Dubba-dubba-dubba-dubba'.

It's frustrating for toddlers. They spent a lot of their time taking great effort to tell you things, and all you hear is 'Bud-Dubba-Dah' or 'Dubba-dubba-dubba-dubba' with the occasional real word chucked in, and then laughing at them. And you do laugh, because it's funny.

Occasionally, you feel like a heel, like tonight when I finally worked out the reason she wouldn't settle down and go to sleep was because she had a nappy full of especially noxious bottom gifts. She'd been telling me for ages, but because I'd only changed her half an hour before when she did a poo, I hadn't considered it an option. Most of the time, it's just funny.

Olivia has now picked up on saying, 'Yeah' in response to questions. Sometimes you can get her to answer whether she has a dirty nappy. The trouble is that 'Yeah' sometimes genuinely means, 'Yes, Father, I do have soiled undergarments - how clever of you to spot it - and would be greatly appreciative if you could affect a change,' and sometimes it just means, 'I randomly answer questions with the word 'yeah', because, in case you haven't remembered, I'm a toddler and I have a pretty limited vocabulary, actually'.

My very helpful reaction to the fact that you can pretty much make her say 'yeah' to anything as long as you ask in the right tone of voice, is to take pleasure in asking her, 'Do you want the moon on a stick?' and getting her to respond in the affirmative. I realise this means nothing to anyone who wasn't into the 90s comedy series 'Fist of Fun' but I find it enormously satisfying.

Looking At It, Not Seeing It

So, the twenty week scan...


We feel like old hands at this scan business now. This is the sixth we've had, including those with Olivia. They don't hold many fears really. The 20 week scan is AKA 'the anatomy scan'; where they check all the bits are there and developing normally; brain, face, spine, heart, stomach, bowel, kidneys and limbs. Given we've had the nuchal scan at the Fetal Medicine Centre, we're very confident that everything is okay. The baby is also kicking on a regular basis now - evening disco sessions are the norm - and this is another sign things are fine. Of course, it is still possible that something could go wrong.


The other thing they do at the 20 week scan is tell you - if you want to know - the sex of your baby. Well, we've already been given a good indication of what it is, so this isn't as exciting as maybe it could be.


We made a decision to bring Olivia along to the hospital with us. The appointment was at 10:35, which wasn't ideal as she's usually a bit tired and ready for her morning nap at about that sort of time, but we figured it shouldn't take too long and would be okay.


When we arrived at the car park, it was rather full and I had to drop K___ and Olivia and search for a space elsewhere. By the time I got in there, we barely had a couple of minutes before we got called. K___ lay down on the examination couch and exposed her belly ready for the operator to squirt on the jelly. I had Olivia out of her buggy and sitting on my lap. I pointed out the monitor and explained how she would be able to see a picture of 'mummy's baby' on the screen. It's difficult to know exactly how much she takes in. Sometimes she can follow reasonably complex instructions, or, by looking at something you've mentioned, indicate she understands words. We say to her, 'Where's Mummy's baby..?' and she'll lift K___'s top to show her tummy and pat it, but what actual understanding she has of what she's doing is debatable. I suspect not much. Something like the scan itself is a very abstract concept to grasp, and she seemed rather indifferent, it has to be said.


Actually, call it indifferent and fidgety. By this point, the operator had started the scan, and there was a picture on the monitor. I pointed at it and said to Olivia, 'There's Mummy's baby!', and for a few seconds she seemed interested. The quality of the scans seems to have improved significantly since Olivia's time. Either that, or the scanner at Southend hospital was pretty poor. Now, you can see an awful lot of information. Most clearly, I remember the clarity with which we could see the ribcage and the tiny toes of the baby's feet.


Unfortunately, the baby wasn't co-operating in terms of how it was lying, making it difficult for the operator to get some of the measurements she wanted. She had the head measurements, and was happy they accorded with the dates, and there were the right number of limbs but it wasn't possible to see all of the digits unless the baby moved, something it seemed singularly disinclined to do.


Meanwhile, Olivia kept arching her back so that I was having a hard time keeping her on my lap. If you've never fought a toddler that doesn't want to be held, you may be imagining that it would be quite easy to control them. No so. They're surprisingly strong and you have to be very careful that if you're attempting to restrain them, you don't accidentally bash them in the process. Anyway, after a few minutes fighting, I ended up putting her down, and she promptly went off and started opening the bins full of medical waste (just gloves and the like, not hypodermic needles) and generally being a bit of a handful.


And so, on to what is - bearing in mind we weren't greatly worried that there might be anything wrong - arguably the most interesting thing you find out... the sex! Now, we already think we know what it is, because when we went for the Nuchal, the scan operator had a look. We know it's not 100% guaranteed, but nevertheless, we're pretty certain we know the sex.


'That's right between the legs there,' said the operator. It has to be said that the angle made it a little difficult to make sense of what we were seeing. At one point I said, 'Isn't that...?' only to be told I was miles away from where I should have been looking.


'Well,' said the operator, 'I'm pretty certain it's a little girl.'

What?! A girl? No, it's a boy. We've been told it's a boy...

'Well, it's not one hundred percent certain, but I can see three white lines and that usually means a girl.'


I honestly have no preference what sex the baby is, but it was a bit of a curve ball. We had got used to the idea it was a boy. We'd even been calling it a boy's name and now we've got to adjust. Olivia, on the other hand, doesn't really seem bothered.

Say the Word

• Olivia has learned to say Mumma, she says it A LOT.
• Olivia also says 'good girl', duck, quack, car, cat, Daddy, teddy (which actually means both teddy and baby) Marmar (which means Grandma), hiya, gone, do (which may mean do or shoe) and has also copied other words when they are said to her but won't use them of her own accord.
• Olivia likes to eat toast and bananas and cheese and yoghurt and sultanas and salmon and peas. She likes to pick everything off the highchair tray and make Mummy put it back on the plate so that she can hold the plate and choose what she wants to eat next.
• Olivia likes to have her own spoon and is getting good at eating yoghurt.
• If you ask Olivia where Mummy's baby is she comes up and lifts up Mummy's T shirt and looks.
• Olivia loves music and point to the CD player and gets very impatient when she wants you to put music on. She loves the Silver Balloon her 'Auntie' L got her so much that Mummy and Daddy used to find themselves humming the songs at work. For the sake of everyone's sanity Mummy brought Silver Balloon 2 and is anxiously awaiting Silver Balloon 3!
• Olivia has lots of teeth and likes to chew everything.
• Olivia loves to read. She choses a book and brings it to you and puts her arms up in the air and makes the noise I always associate with kids trying to attract teacher's attention when they know the answer to the question in class and are keen to be chosen. She keeps doing this noise till you pick her up, put her on your lap and look at the book with her. She likes to look at picture books and is very good at pointing to the pictures of things she knows if you say the word to her. When you say lion or dinosaur she roars!
• When Olivia gets very excited she runs on the spot.
• Olivia helps unpack the shopping by getting things out of the bag one at a time and handing them to Mummy to put in the cupboards or the fridge.
• Olivia is very good at climbing stairs but not as good at going down again.
• Olivia likes to sit on the step at Grandma's and drink water from her sippy cup.
  
• Olivia's favourite song is still 'Old MacDonald'
  

There Will Come a Day

If you happen to know anything about geological time, you'll probably know that for an extraordinarily long period between roughly 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth first formed, and about 1 billion years ago, not very much happened.

Oh, all right, lots happened. This is an extremely inexact metaphor; just bear with it.

Life formed. That's a very big thing indeed. It's something of the most monumental unlikelihood that we can't comprehend quite how likely it is. It's less likely than me sitting through an entire football game without getting bored. However, once it developed, it didn't do very much more. Life remained comparatively simple. It did get more complex, certainly, but it did so very slowly indeed.

Then there was a period of some 190 million years (practically nothing on the geological scale) when it's like someone lit a fire under life. The Cambrian Explosion, as it's known, saw an incredible leap forward in complexity and variety of organisms. In just (and 'just' is absolutely the right word) 190 million years, all of the ancestors of the life as we know it emerged. This was a completely unprecedented, exhuberant ullalation of existence and we still don't entirely understand why this happened, though we have theories.

That's all the geology/ evolution stuff over with, except to say that I got in from work yesterday and after spending a few minutes playing with Olivia before she went to bed, it struck me as a halfway reasonable image for how she's developed. From being born until now, there's been a slow and steady progress from simplicty towards greater complexity, but this week she's hit the 'Cambrian Explosion' of baby development. That's how it seems, anyway.

All of a sudden she's mastered a lot of skills. Crawling? Yes. 'Daddy, what are you typing about? I've always being able to crawl this well,' says Olivia. But she hasn't. Until this week, she's done about three or four steps on her hands and knees and stopped. Yesterday, she raced across the room towards the television at a rate of knots. Considerably more than three or four steps. Not only that, she was giggling like mad because I was chasing after her and she thought she might have a half chance of pulling out all the DVD cases and lobbing them on the floor before I got there. It was a naughty, 'I shouldn't be doing this, but I am' chuckle!

She's also mastered standing up (as long as there's an object to hold onto - she's not freestanding) and - as of yesterday - sitting down again.

If you hold her hands, she's now voluntarily moving one foot in front of the other to walk towards someone else. Until this week, you had to tip the whole baby one way and then the next, as though walking a large, unwieldy box along.

When I put her to bed, I laid her in her cot and did the baby sign for sleep; two hands held together, and placed under one side of the chin. She mirrored the sign, and she's also doing 'milk'.

So, that's Olivia's Cambrian Explosion. I've no idea how poor that analogy will turn out to be. Maybe she'll do similar things every so often (though perhaps this would be a 'Punctuated Equilibrium' equivalent), but regardless, her Jedi powers have become considerably more powerful than you could ever know in the last couple of days.

At the Risk of Stark Applause

F_ has taught Olivia how to clap and now she thinks she is very clever and likes to give herself a round of applause every now and again (or in actually fact a standing ovation :)

Stand Straight

My Mum took Olivia to a coffee morning at a friend's house last week. Olivia was playing happily on the floor and my Mum was chatting away to her chums, glancing at Olivia now and again to make sure she was not up to no good. Mum turned around to get something out of the nappy bag and when she turned back Olivia was standing up and walking along holding on to the coffee table! Queue all the hot drinks being moved to higher surfaces.

This was the first time she had pulled herself to standing as previously she only coasted if we stood her up in her playpen. Just like her Mummy once she has done something once it becomes old hat and now she acts as if she has always done this and is getting very experienced indeed at pulling herself back to standing once she has fallen in her playpen (or The Play Penitentiary as it has come to be known :) . Of course she getting very cocky about standing up and coasting and is now covered in bruises so no doubt Social Services are on high alert...

She'll definitely be walking by Christmas so there goes the end of Mummy and Daddy's sanity...