The Eighth Month: June
3rd
7 months today! I offer you stewed apricots in the sunshine this morning. Little pieces, chewed up, I don’t know if you ate any. We are staying in Newcastle with Auntie Karen, Ronnie and cousins Gabriel and Madeleine. You slept in the warm shadows at the back of the garden 9.30-10.10am, falling asleep watching the light and breeze spreading through the trees. I had to push you for a few minutes out of the back gate before you dropped off. You are chewing everything these days, the zips on my rucsac, the laces of your lambskin slippers. Strangely, you know not to eat the buttercups and pink campions I showed you. We wake up together in the new little spare room on a floor level mattress. You always have a curious, smiley, contented face in the morning, bright eyes and rosy cheeks. When you were 3 and 4 months old, we used to play in the mornings, you sat on my bended knees as I lay down in bed, singing ‘ Good Morning, good morning, good morning to you’ (from Singing in the Rain). Now we get up to get ready, for you to go back to sleep at 9-ish (me pushing you down the street in the old green checked pushchair, that has had 4 other babies in it).
We visited Warkworth today, a castle by an estuary and walked in a beautiful buttercup meadow. You were probably too long in the car seat and pram and you cried so much in the car, tears rolling down your cheeks, your little face red, and your head sweaty. I don’t think you like the restriction of the baby car seat, which is now really too small for you. While Karen drove, I sat with you in the back of the car, and managed to lean over your seat at some obscure angle and give you a boob for comfort.
This evening when we got home, you lay in the dappled evening sunlight of the living room, with your nappy off, kicking you legs and babbling. When on your front, you managed to turn 360 degrees, examining the label on your changing mat, and some other such details, making up for the day’s stillness and enforced harness constriction. You watched attentively the moving shadows of the leaves rustling in the wind, as they played across the rug. This morning you noticed the shadow of my hands moving in the sunlight.
Such difficult evenings at the moment – you wake every 20-30 minutes between bedtime and 10-11pm. No doubt exacerbated by being in a new place, and no Dada to calm you. I don’t know if it’s indigestion, habit, or what, but I spend most of the evening going upstairs to calm you, lie beside you, turn you on your side or hold you sitting upright, often you fall back to sleep in 5 minutes from your previously crying state.
June 16th
7.5 months
You can clap both hands! Kate taught us:
‘Clap Hands
Daddy comes
With his pocket full of plums
All for ..T’
And you clapped!
You are on the move, bottom shuffling and launching yourself with the force of your thighs, climbing on me in the morning, and when I sat on the sofa, with you sat below me, you grabbed my knees and stood up.
21st
You are such a funny little character, full of vim and vigour. You have so many different expressions. I love it when you wrinkle up your nose and show your teeth. I call you the pirate baby, with your bottom two toothy pegs, and now two top ones creeping through. All the things you can do like taking off your socks and chewing them; taking off your hat; waving your arms as if you are about to be airborne; now leaning right forward on your haunches. Today you moved as if to crawl and then got stuck, and started crying with frustration. There’ll be more of that I know, when you find new limits to your agility. You roll around from front to back and vice versa. Last week at swimming I left you wrapped in the towel while I dressed, to find you had flipped over and started slithering like a snake on the wet tiled floor after some interesting label. You move ‘commando’ style as if tunnelling underground, and still you smile and laugh when we lift you high or burrow our faces into you and blow strange sounds.
7 months today! I offer you stewed apricots in the sunshine this morning. Little pieces, chewed up, I don’t know if you ate any. We are staying in Newcastle with Auntie Karen, Ronnie and cousins Gabriel and Madeleine. You slept in the warm shadows at the back of the garden 9.30-10.10am, falling asleep watching the light and breeze spreading through the trees. I had to push you for a few minutes out of the back gate before you dropped off. You are chewing everything these days, the zips on my rucsac, the laces of your lambskin slippers. Strangely, you know not to eat the buttercups and pink campions I showed you. We wake up together in the new little spare room on a floor level mattress. You always have a curious, smiley, contented face in the morning, bright eyes and rosy cheeks. When you were 3 and 4 months old, we used to play in the mornings, you sat on my bended knees as I lay down in bed, singing ‘ Good Morning, good morning, good morning to you’ (from Singing in the Rain). Now we get up to get ready, for you to go back to sleep at 9-ish (me pushing you down the street in the old green checked pushchair, that has had 4 other babies in it).
We visited Warkworth today, a castle by an estuary and walked in a beautiful buttercup meadow. You were probably too long in the car seat and pram and you cried so much in the car, tears rolling down your cheeks, your little face red, and your head sweaty. I don’t think you like the restriction of the baby car seat, which is now really too small for you. While Karen drove, I sat with you in the back of the car, and managed to lean over your seat at some obscure angle and give you a boob for comfort.
This evening when we got home, you lay in the dappled evening sunlight of the living room, with your nappy off, kicking you legs and babbling. When on your front, you managed to turn 360 degrees, examining the label on your changing mat, and some other such details, making up for the day’s stillness and enforced harness constriction. You watched attentively the moving shadows of the leaves rustling in the wind, as they played across the rug. This morning you noticed the shadow of my hands moving in the sunlight.
Such difficult evenings at the moment – you wake every 20-30 minutes between bedtime and 10-11pm. No doubt exacerbated by being in a new place, and no Dada to calm you. I don’t know if it’s indigestion, habit, or what, but I spend most of the evening going upstairs to calm you, lie beside you, turn you on your side or hold you sitting upright, often you fall back to sleep in 5 minutes from your previously crying state.
June 16th
7.5 months
You can clap both hands! Kate taught us:
‘Clap Hands
Daddy comes
With his pocket full of plums
All for ..T’
And you clapped!
You are on the move, bottom shuffling and launching yourself with the force of your thighs, climbing on me in the morning, and when I sat on the sofa, with you sat below me, you grabbed my knees and stood up.
21st
You are such a funny little character, full of vim and vigour. You have so many different expressions. I love it when you wrinkle up your nose and show your teeth. I call you the pirate baby, with your bottom two toothy pegs, and now two top ones creeping through. All the things you can do like taking off your socks and chewing them; taking off your hat; waving your arms as if you are about to be airborne; now leaning right forward on your haunches. Today you moved as if to crawl and then got stuck, and started crying with frustration. There’ll be more of that I know, when you find new limits to your agility. You roll around from front to back and vice versa. Last week at swimming I left you wrapped in the towel while I dressed, to find you had flipped over and started slithering like a snake on the wet tiled floor after some interesting label. You move ‘commando’ style as if tunnelling underground, and still you smile and laugh when we lift you high or burrow our faces into you and blow strange sounds.
posted by f at 9:44 AM
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