The Ninth Month: July
1st
Our last visit to Lucy Livingstone’s ‘Love and Laughter’ music group today. T – you are now crawling like a snake, sneaking your way on your belly to see the things Lucy puts out; chiffon scarves, shakers, coloured balls and a great silk parachute, that we sit under. We started and ended with a barn dance, but we have blown bubbles, danced with scarves and babies, sung songs from musicals – My Favourite Things, songs from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and nursery rhymes.
Also new songs (writing it down will help me remember the tune):
‘Now we are bouncing, bouncing, bouncing,
Now we are bouncing like a ball
I never knew you could fly so high
Now we are bouncing x 3
When we get tired, down we fall.’
‘Stroke those lovely cheeks, stroke those lovely cheeks,
Stroke and stroke and stroke and stroke, and stroke those lovely cheeks
Tickle that lovely tum….’
T – I have taken you to this group since you were 3 months old, when you were still wide eyed and observant, and even at that age you smiled at the other babies. I felt sad leaving today, our little temporary community finished, and also because it is the passing of an era. You ‘re a moving being now, no longer my babe in arms, but a boy wriggling out to explore the world.
11th
T – your first trip abroad (Piedrahita, nr Avila, Spain). Dada is in a paragliding comp. As it happens you came down with a nasty cough and runny nose on our second day in the village. I think you caught it from a little girl who came to cuddle you. The Spanish are so enthusiastic about babies. Everyone we pass in the street stops to admire you. The old people say ‘Mira! El guapo!’ The shopkeeper says ‘que guapo! And the man weighing out the frutas gives you extra cherries. Our landlady’s mother says ‘Que precioso’. You’ve also been called ‘Gordito’ – little corpulent one! And told what wonderful ‘azul ojos’ you have. I am so proud of you and all the admirers you attract.
Just 8 months old when we left the UK (7/7) and the next day I noticed your 5th and 6th teeth coming through at the top. Maybe that is why you have been so unhappy today, on top of your smoker’s cough. You love all the fresh nectarines, cherries and apricots here, as well as cooked carrots and courgettes. Now you are starting to lean forward with full-outstretched legs and you love to stand and hold onto us. Dada is trying to get you to practise walking! We have been keeping to Spanish time, resting indoors in the afternoon and staying out too late in the evening. Our first night we arrived about 1am and you spent an hour crawling round the bedroom squealing excitedly, as if checking out our new surroundings and being excited to have arrived, after sleeping in the car for a few hours. It’s taken an hour to calm you and feed you to sleep while you became this funny creature, sucking, but also flapping your arms, sometimes hitting me on the chest or pinching my belly, or fiddling with your ear or kicking you legs. Then you turn away from me briefly, then turn back to suckle some more, sometimes completely missing and going for the nearest thing – my arms – your eyes semi closed, in a dream like state.
Even when I want you to go to sleep, I’m still thinking what an amazing little person you are, so full of life and character. A few days before we left you, I left you to nap in your 3-sided cot, first lying down with you for 15 minutes or so, and then went to hang out the washing. Ten minutes later I heard a thud and rushed upstairs to find you had woken, crawled across our bed without a sound, to fall on the floor, crying loudly. I held you close and felt terrible, though you soon stopped crying, and just looked surprised.
A few weeks previously I’d done the same thing (22nd June 9am), but closed the bedroom door and the attic door where I was working (preparing the talk about my visit to Reggio Emilia for the Bristol Montessori school). I didn’t notice the time, then realised after 40 minutes I hadn’t heard you, so opened the attic door to large wails. I rushed downstairs to find you lying in the darkness of our curtained room, at the edge of the bed, with the bedside light on (you had switched it on!). I was thankful you hadn’t fallen that time. But I was so shocked you could crawl across the bed at 7.5 months. So I hope I’ve learned. I rang Dada immediately and said we should put up the cot side without further delay. So here we are in Spain with you on a single mattress at night and an open staircase from the mezzanine bedroom…but we made a drawbridge out of a trunk. T, you are so precious, we must be especially vigilant, now you have reached your adventurous stage.
16th
Really scuttling along now on your hands and knees on the tiled floors of Piedrahita’s houses. You can move from lying down, to sitting, to crawling and with Dada’s help you can get down from beds and sofas by turning round. Dada is teaching you this to prevent you rolling off the bed again. Today you have been fascinated by the rocks and pebbles at Rio Tormes. We found the most delightful, perfect gorge where we have been splashing and swimming, and you have been carefully examining yellow leaves and long grasses, and chewing Cava corks and plastic straws. Maybe teething this week – lots of dribble and runny nose. And probably a bit more grizzly than usual because of your hacking cough, and the very lat nights we have been subjecting you to (10.30-11.30pm bedtimes). Sometimes you’re very happy entertaining yourself, and talking while we consume chiperones, sepia, calamares, langostinas and cervezas, followed by ice creams at the heladeria in the main square. Other times you are crying and inconsolable, even when offered ma ma ma.
On the very hot afternoon we went to Avila (30C at 5pm), we wheeled you around inside the walls of the old city in the small pieces of shade. Suddenly a young man approached and seemed to prostate himself in admiration. He looked at you ad bent down, slapping his knees and exclaiming ‘Que bonita, que guapa, que precioso – preciosissima!’ also looking at us and congratulating us on our fine, young, beautiful son.
31st
Dear T.,
Today was your Naming Ceremony. So many people here in your honour: G’ma G’pa King, King sisters and families (except Aunt Dominique), brothers Aoin and Bruno (and Auntie Sima and your niece Irma), Melissa, John and Cicely, your mentor and special friend Pete T., Jackie B. and Madaleine, your little friend Samuel and his parents Chris and Sophie.
We named you in our garden and celebrated in style with Papa P.’s pizzas, salads of spinach, pea and feta; rice and tofu; tomato, avocado and mozzarella, as well as charcuterie and pudding of Eton mess and lemon and almond cake. Sadly you are still eating butternut squash, mange tout and mini sweet corns so didn’t participate in our feasting. You were great though, enjoying watching and playing around all the other children, chewing Cava corks and cardboard labels and crawling everywhere, full of energy, vim and vigour and calm as always.
So much happening the past month. I wonder if your babyhood is whizzing by – it is – in a flurry of activity, swimming classes, music, pram trips to the shops on the train; visits to friends, all now sandwiched in between 3 meals a day, 4/5 breast milk feeds and 3 naps. I look back at our early months together where I hardly left the house, and would sit for hours on winter days with you at my breast, on the large white chair in the front room or in our bed looking at the winter skyline.
My memory is of you always being alert, hardly crying, except when tired, when you would always wave your arms. Hard to believe that you remained perfectly still and didn’t move from where I left you. When I changed your nappy we would play for ages. I would sing to you, tickle your belly, tickle your thighs and gaze into your big blue eyes. I remember you lying sparkly-eyed on the carpet in your little blue cardigan that Marian gave you.
Now you won’t keep still when I change you and want to be off. I saw you take a step this week, holding the cat’s basket, then your Trip Trap chair. You’re so dextrous; you even turn the pages of the books we look at. Today you climbed up the stairs with Dada, the whole flight! I could hardly believe it, we are definitely at the next stage, no longer are you a babe in arms – I hold your hands as you stand up and you take a step towards me. It’s like the first 6 months is a blur, a big, warm, cuddly blur, and suddenly, you, T, have emerged as a little boy child from our symbiotic nest. I remember times of being very tired, trying to get you to sleep in the early hours after feeding you because you were always reluctant to leave my arms and go back to your little bed. Then I gave up and even now you spend those early hours snuggled up between us. The blur, - I just remember feeding you between your naps, sometimes reading a book, although often a magazine or catalogue was all I could concentrate on.
It was a revelation to me when I realised other mothers fed their babies at certain times, and discussed the 2am feed and the 10pm feed. I didn’t know what they meant. I think you fed every 2-3 hours before you began eating solids. I was also amazed to discover that one mother left her baby to cry in his cot in the morning ‘because I have to have my shower’. If you were fractious in the morning I wouldn’t even think about a shower, and often left the house in pyjamas or an apron, with unwashed face to take you for your morning walk/sleep. I tried it once when you were about 4 months old, leaving you in the bedroom, while I showered, and you cried for 20 minutes. It was too horrible, I didn’t do it again. I organise my day around you and hoped that you lie or sit and be happy if I needed to do things. On the whole you were very capable of entertaining yourself, being curious about toys or some little fluff blob on the carpet, while I was sorting out bills or making phone calls. But if you got in a flap, I knew you were tired and took you for a walk in the pushchair. That was an early routine that emerged, awake at 6am and ready for a sleep by 9am. And I would always bath you and put you to bed between 7-8pm from 7 weeks of age. I was a bit too keen to set the bedtime routine, and needn’t have started so early.
Our last visit to Lucy Livingstone’s ‘Love and Laughter’ music group today. T – you are now crawling like a snake, sneaking your way on your belly to see the things Lucy puts out; chiffon scarves, shakers, coloured balls and a great silk parachute, that we sit under. We started and ended with a barn dance, but we have blown bubbles, danced with scarves and babies, sung songs from musicals – My Favourite Things, songs from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and nursery rhymes.
Also new songs (writing it down will help me remember the tune):
‘Now we are bouncing, bouncing, bouncing,
Now we are bouncing like a ball
I never knew you could fly so high
Now we are bouncing x 3
When we get tired, down we fall.’
‘Stroke those lovely cheeks, stroke those lovely cheeks,
Stroke and stroke and stroke and stroke, and stroke those lovely cheeks
Tickle that lovely tum….’
T – I have taken you to this group since you were 3 months old, when you were still wide eyed and observant, and even at that age you smiled at the other babies. I felt sad leaving today, our little temporary community finished, and also because it is the passing of an era. You ‘re a moving being now, no longer my babe in arms, but a boy wriggling out to explore the world.
11th
T – your first trip abroad (Piedrahita, nr Avila, Spain). Dada is in a paragliding comp. As it happens you came down with a nasty cough and runny nose on our second day in the village. I think you caught it from a little girl who came to cuddle you. The Spanish are so enthusiastic about babies. Everyone we pass in the street stops to admire you. The old people say ‘Mira! El guapo!’ The shopkeeper says ‘que guapo! And the man weighing out the frutas gives you extra cherries. Our landlady’s mother says ‘Que precioso’. You’ve also been called ‘Gordito’ – little corpulent one! And told what wonderful ‘azul ojos’ you have. I am so proud of you and all the admirers you attract.
Just 8 months old when we left the UK (7/7) and the next day I noticed your 5th and 6th teeth coming through at the top. Maybe that is why you have been so unhappy today, on top of your smoker’s cough. You love all the fresh nectarines, cherries and apricots here, as well as cooked carrots and courgettes. Now you are starting to lean forward with full-outstretched legs and you love to stand and hold onto us. Dada is trying to get you to practise walking! We have been keeping to Spanish time, resting indoors in the afternoon and staying out too late in the evening. Our first night we arrived about 1am and you spent an hour crawling round the bedroom squealing excitedly, as if checking out our new surroundings and being excited to have arrived, after sleeping in the car for a few hours. It’s taken an hour to calm you and feed you to sleep while you became this funny creature, sucking, but also flapping your arms, sometimes hitting me on the chest or pinching my belly, or fiddling with your ear or kicking you legs. Then you turn away from me briefly, then turn back to suckle some more, sometimes completely missing and going for the nearest thing – my arms – your eyes semi closed, in a dream like state.
Even when I want you to go to sleep, I’m still thinking what an amazing little person you are, so full of life and character. A few days before we left you, I left you to nap in your 3-sided cot, first lying down with you for 15 minutes or so, and then went to hang out the washing. Ten minutes later I heard a thud and rushed upstairs to find you had woken, crawled across our bed without a sound, to fall on the floor, crying loudly. I held you close and felt terrible, though you soon stopped crying, and just looked surprised.
A few weeks previously I’d done the same thing (22nd June 9am), but closed the bedroom door and the attic door where I was working (preparing the talk about my visit to Reggio Emilia for the Bristol Montessori school). I didn’t notice the time, then realised after 40 minutes I hadn’t heard you, so opened the attic door to large wails. I rushed downstairs to find you lying in the darkness of our curtained room, at the edge of the bed, with the bedside light on (you had switched it on!). I was thankful you hadn’t fallen that time. But I was so shocked you could crawl across the bed at 7.5 months. So I hope I’ve learned. I rang Dada immediately and said we should put up the cot side without further delay. So here we are in Spain with you on a single mattress at night and an open staircase from the mezzanine bedroom…but we made a drawbridge out of a trunk. T, you are so precious, we must be especially vigilant, now you have reached your adventurous stage.
16th
Really scuttling along now on your hands and knees on the tiled floors of Piedrahita’s houses. You can move from lying down, to sitting, to crawling and with Dada’s help you can get down from beds and sofas by turning round. Dada is teaching you this to prevent you rolling off the bed again. Today you have been fascinated by the rocks and pebbles at Rio Tormes. We found the most delightful, perfect gorge where we have been splashing and swimming, and you have been carefully examining yellow leaves and long grasses, and chewing Cava corks and plastic straws. Maybe teething this week – lots of dribble and runny nose. And probably a bit more grizzly than usual because of your hacking cough, and the very lat nights we have been subjecting you to (10.30-11.30pm bedtimes). Sometimes you’re very happy entertaining yourself, and talking while we consume chiperones, sepia, calamares, langostinas and cervezas, followed by ice creams at the heladeria in the main square. Other times you are crying and inconsolable, even when offered ma ma ma.
On the very hot afternoon we went to Avila (30C at 5pm), we wheeled you around inside the walls of the old city in the small pieces of shade. Suddenly a young man approached and seemed to prostate himself in admiration. He looked at you ad bent down, slapping his knees and exclaiming ‘Que bonita, que guapa, que precioso – preciosissima!’ also looking at us and congratulating us on our fine, young, beautiful son.
31st
Dear T.,
Today was your Naming Ceremony. So many people here in your honour: G’ma G’pa King, King sisters and families (except Aunt Dominique), brothers Aoin and Bruno (and Auntie Sima and your niece Irma), Melissa, John and Cicely, your mentor and special friend Pete T., Jackie B. and Madaleine, your little friend Samuel and his parents Chris and Sophie.
We named you in our garden and celebrated in style with Papa P.’s pizzas, salads of spinach, pea and feta; rice and tofu; tomato, avocado and mozzarella, as well as charcuterie and pudding of Eton mess and lemon and almond cake. Sadly you are still eating butternut squash, mange tout and mini sweet corns so didn’t participate in our feasting. You were great though, enjoying watching and playing around all the other children, chewing Cava corks and cardboard labels and crawling everywhere, full of energy, vim and vigour and calm as always.
So much happening the past month. I wonder if your babyhood is whizzing by – it is – in a flurry of activity, swimming classes, music, pram trips to the shops on the train; visits to friends, all now sandwiched in between 3 meals a day, 4/5 breast milk feeds and 3 naps. I look back at our early months together where I hardly left the house, and would sit for hours on winter days with you at my breast, on the large white chair in the front room or in our bed looking at the winter skyline.
My memory is of you always being alert, hardly crying, except when tired, when you would always wave your arms. Hard to believe that you remained perfectly still and didn’t move from where I left you. When I changed your nappy we would play for ages. I would sing to you, tickle your belly, tickle your thighs and gaze into your big blue eyes. I remember you lying sparkly-eyed on the carpet in your little blue cardigan that Marian gave you.
Now you won’t keep still when I change you and want to be off. I saw you take a step this week, holding the cat’s basket, then your Trip Trap chair. You’re so dextrous; you even turn the pages of the books we look at. Today you climbed up the stairs with Dada, the whole flight! I could hardly believe it, we are definitely at the next stage, no longer are you a babe in arms – I hold your hands as you stand up and you take a step towards me. It’s like the first 6 months is a blur, a big, warm, cuddly blur, and suddenly, you, T, have emerged as a little boy child from our symbiotic nest. I remember times of being very tired, trying to get you to sleep in the early hours after feeding you because you were always reluctant to leave my arms and go back to your little bed. Then I gave up and even now you spend those early hours snuggled up between us. The blur, - I just remember feeding you between your naps, sometimes reading a book, although often a magazine or catalogue was all I could concentrate on.
It was a revelation to me when I realised other mothers fed their babies at certain times, and discussed the 2am feed and the 10pm feed. I didn’t know what they meant. I think you fed every 2-3 hours before you began eating solids. I was also amazed to discover that one mother left her baby to cry in his cot in the morning ‘because I have to have my shower’. If you were fractious in the morning I wouldn’t even think about a shower, and often left the house in pyjamas or an apron, with unwashed face to take you for your morning walk/sleep. I tried it once when you were about 4 months old, leaving you in the bedroom, while I showered, and you cried for 20 minutes. It was too horrible, I didn’t do it again. I organise my day around you and hoped that you lie or sit and be happy if I needed to do things. On the whole you were very capable of entertaining yourself, being curious about toys or some little fluff blob on the carpet, while I was sorting out bills or making phone calls. But if you got in a flap, I knew you were tired and took you for a walk in the pushchair. That was an early routine that emerged, awake at 6am and ready for a sleep by 9am. And I would always bath you and put you to bed between 7-8pm from 7 weeks of age. I was a bit too keen to set the bedtime routine, and needn’t have started so early.
posted by f at 11:12 AM
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