Jessica’s blog.

On Saturday we were invited over to friends, Chris and Angela (the latter, incidentally, being the person who signed Jessica’s passport application form) for dinner. As we’d only received the invitation a couple of days before, we didn’t have time to arrange a babysitter. So we decided to take her with us. As we were due there at 7.30 and it’s a half hour drive, we had to feed her, get her ready for bed and hope that she settled in the car seat rather than the cot. She didn’t really settle on the way: even the motion of the car failed to rock her to sleep, so when we arrived we had a slightly cranky and confused baby. Fortunately, Chris and Angela allowed us to put Jessica in their bedroom where it was that bit quieter. It didn’t take Gabriella too long to sing her off to sleep, in which state she stayed all evening. Jessica stirred slightly as we put her back in the car and looked decidedly bewildered, but she nodded off again as soon as she realised that she was safe with us. Again, when we got home Jessica stirred when we took her out of the car, but she went straight back to sleep when Gabriella laid her down in the cot at around half past 11. Jessica then slept though until just before 6.
This has given us confidence to have more evenings out and taking Jessica with us.

Jessica’s not really shown any signs of wanting to crawl. According to my parents, neither my sister or I crawled and pretty soon after we were sitting upright unsupported, we developed a ‘shuffle-bottom’ motion, so maybe Jessica will go with that method.
Something I’ve noticed in the last few days is her insistance for standing up. If one pulls Jessica’s arms to bring her up into a sitting position, she will keep her body straight and allow herself to be pulled onto her feet. Once there, she doesn’t need much in the way of support. I can hold her hands lightly and she’ll stay there swaying gently. In fact, yesterday when I was changing Jessica for the night, I let go of her hands and she stayed up leaning very gently against my chest. As Jessica’s so keen to be upright, we’re trying to teach her the art of taking a few steps. Maybe she’ll skip the whole crawling/shuffle-bottom modes of propulsion and go straight to walking…
As an aside to this, we measured Jessica last week and she is now 68.5cm (27 inches) tall.

I think Jessica’s starting to enter the bam-bam (think The Flintstones) stage. Nearly everything she gets hold of gets shaken with extreme vigour! She has hurt herself slightly a couple of times. One particularly memorable (if that’s the right expression…) occasion was where she’d grabbed her green rattle. Jessica was really giving it a good shake, when she bopped herself squarely on the nose. After the surprised expression had worn off, she continued to shake the rattle vigorously. Unfortunately (and it was like it was in slow motion) there was a loud, slightly hollow-sounding, thud as the rattle connected with her forehead. There then followed a trembling bottom lip, capped off by a serious bout of Wah-Wahing. Needless to say I picked her up and comforted her for a bit. She was soon her happy, giggly self and appeared to have completely forgotten that it had happened.

I daresay that there’ll be other moments like this, but that’s all part of the fun of parenthood.

Ian.

I think I might have found something that Jessica doesn’t like: avocado. She’s had it twice now and it’s not been more than a few mouthfuls each time before she’s started to cry and not been interested in trying any more. It’s possible that her disinterest is down to the fact that I’ve given her avocado lunch-time, at which point she’s usually getting a bit tired again, even if she’s had a decent morning nap. Sometimes she gets impatient with solids as a result: she has been known to even refuse banana! (For this reason I have moved lunch forward about half an hour – the longer gap after lunch until the 4pm meal doesn’t seem to bother her.) So maybe it was just the timing that was wrong. Maybe I should try giving her avocado for her mid-morning meal next time…

When Jessica eats, I fill the spoon for her and then hands it over to her so she can feed herself. This means that meal time is pretty messy, with food a bit everywhere on Jessica, me and the high chair… (She’s managed to avoid the carpet fairly well, so far.) It would’ve been much tidier if I fed her, of course, but she gets impatient with that and I’d like to see if letting her handle the spoon herself this early on might encourage her to perfect her use of cutlery sooner. She manages to get most of the food in her mouth, I’m pleased to say, and the food that goes outside I retrieve with the spare spoon I’m holding and serve back to her.

Jessica now shows a definite preference for using her right hand when reaching for the spoon, even though I offer it to both her hands. It’s fine if she turns out right-handed, of course, but it’d be great if she’d be able to use both of her hands as equally well as possible, like Ian: he’s left-handed but in most instances ambidextrous.

This is our second day at home just the two of us – outside it’s cold, blustery and damp, which doesn’t exactly encourage me to take Jessica out and about much, even though we still go for our regular walks. She’s sat at that battery-driven ‘control panel’ type toy a fair bit now (she seems to have found renewed interest in it from her being able to sit on the floor and play) and she sits very well on her own now, I’m very proud to say. I suspect that the inflatable ring has had a lot to do with that.

She likes plastic bags a lot – if they’re within reach she’ll grab them and pull, if they’re light enough to thrash about with she will. The bag with nappies and the bag with cotton wool balls in the bathroom have both suffered repeatedly at her hands…

Just one more thing: both Ian and I have now caught Jessica, on different occasions, pulling her sock off. So it’s not just the wriggling that does it but deliberate action too. Now we are wiser. (But I bet you it will happen several times again anyway.)

Gabriella

On days when Jessica has slept well, including having a proper (1 – 1 1/2 hour long) nap in the morning and the afternoon, she’s happy and chatty and doesn’t need much to entertain herself. Unfortunately, not every day is like that, as she sometimes takes a bit more persuasion to fall asleep. I didn’t want to create an association between her cot and daytime napping, as her night-time sleep is going so well on the whole and I didn’t want to risk mucking that up. Plus we’re also out and about a fair bit and if she was unable to sleep anywhere else but in her cot, we’d be in trouble… Most of the time she goes to sleep in her push chair – connecting being on the move with an opportunity to sleep might turn out handy in future.

Yesterday Jessica didn’t nap very well at all. She only managed half an hour of sleep in the morning and afternoon respectively. As a result, she struggled to stay in a good mood during the day, starting to cry from sheer exhaustion at regular intervals. Unfortunately, this coincided with her farmor’s birthday celebrations and Jessica’s first pub lunch.

Jessica’s aunt Wendy had booked a table at The Plough and Furrows and, as usual, the new environment and seeing new people initially made Jessica very excited, but it wasn’t long until the cracks started to appear… When the tiredness was too much for Jessica to bear, Ian managed to rock and sing her to sleep and we put her in the car seat to let her sleep under a corner of our table. She slept for long enough for us to finish our desserts but that was about it and Ian and I realised we wouldn’t be able to stay for too much longer. I was preparing to whisk Jessica away for some fresh air and peace and quiet outside just as a couple of members of staff carried in a Bailey’s with a birthday candle for farmor Diana and the whole pub started to sing ‘Happy birthday’. This was in a sense the last drop and Jessica, red in the face, started to cry desperately… Needless to say, we got her out of there as soon as possible.

We were going back to ours for coffee afterwards and I tried to persuade Jessica to have another snooze but she wouldn’t have it. Her mood was swinging up and down all afternoon, but while it was on the ‘up’, she kicked a ball around with her Auntie Wendy and farmor Diana – from a seated position and with some assistance, I must add, but also with lots of giggles…!

Already at 5.30pm, an hour earlier than usual, Jessica had had enough of the day – there was nothing that could distract her from being grizzly. We got her ready for bed, I fed her and put her in her cot but she wouldn’t stop crying. After almost an hour I realised I just wasn’t going to be able to settle her and handed over to her Daddy, who repeated his trick from that same afternoon. Ian’s rocking and quiet singing made Jessica at ease and not long after he had closed the door around her she nodded off to sleep. I was dreading the night, fearing she would wake up a lot and be unsettled, but as it happened she slept through until 6.30am – so I actually got a lie-in…!

Today, Jessica’s been sitting up and playing without support, which was really exciting. I kept nearby to help her up when she toppled, which inevitably she did when she reached for something a little bit further away, but she sat upright all by herself for a good few minutes at the time.

She slept for an hour and a half in the morning and then 40 minutes in the afternoon and we had a really good day as a result. Today she had banana & raspberry for second breakfast, cauliflower with a bit of grated cheese for lunch and plum porridge, along with her usual formula feeds. I also introduced her to drinking water out of a sipping cup: she kept wrinkling her nose at the taste of water but also kept lifting the cup up for another try. I’ll keep giving her a bit of water everyday and hopefully she’ll grow to like it.

Finally, I can’t believe Jessica is actually 6 months old today… It’s amazing how big she looks suddenly.

Gabriella

After all that fantastic late summer weather we’ve now had a few days of autumn: cold, blustery and lots of showers… I’ve persevered with our morning walks, just wrapped a blanket around Jessica, a rain cover around the push chair and zipped my own jacket up a bit higher. Jessica didn’t seem to mind: she dozed off for her morning nap as per usual. When awake, Jessica likes to move about in the push chair (I’m clipping the ‘seat belt’ around her every time as she once very quickly got halfway on her way out of the push chair, with her bottom where her feet should be…), waving her arms and legs and sticking her feet up in the air, and she’s brilliant at wriggling her socks off. We usually catch her out before she manages to kick them off, though one afternoon I temporarily lost one and had to leave it until the next morning to go looking for it as Jessica was due a feed. The following morning I retraced our steps and someone had helpfully put the sock up on a fence, easy to find. We haven’t lost any of her clothes or toys yet and – touch wood! – I hope it stays that way…

Last Saturday (11th August) was lovely and sunny and we went over to our friends Phil and Anna in Reigate for tea and cake in the afternoon. Their little baby boy Mark is 4 months older than Jessica but they’re about the same size – though saying that, Mark is a little bit tinier than his siblings were at the same age. Jessica and Mark had a little bit of a chat and touching of hands, which was nice to see. They’re too young to be playing with each other yet but hopefully they’ll get on really well when they’re a bit older.

Phil and Anna have two dogs plus currently also two rabbits on loan. Jessica didn’t react much to either the dogs (although Rusty, the big Golden Retriever, is very hard to miss) or the rabbits – it’s like she doesn’t notice them somehow. It will be interesting to see when she’ll take an interest in animals (I’m assuming all kids do at some point…?).

Jessica had been yawning during the car journey there but once we arrived she got very excited by the new scenery and company, as she usually does. Subsequently she found it very hard to settle for an afternoon nap. That’s usually the problem when we’re somewhere different with her: she doesn’t want to miss out on anything new and keeps going until she starts to cry from exhaustion. I took her in my arms, stepped back a bit from the others and rocked from side to side while singing a lullaby. It took a while and she was grizzly meanwhile but eventually she did drop off to sleep. Unfortunately this was as late as 4.40-4.45pm, which means that she takes longer to get ready for bed in the evenings – not a problem in itself, only I like to have some of the evening to do a few bits and pieces and then sit down and relax with Ian for a while before going to bed myself…

Saturday evening, Ian’s sister and Jessica’s aunt Wendy came over to babysit while Ian and I went down the pub to meet a couple of friends (also with small baby being babysat) for a few drinks. I’d put Jessica to bed but, I guess due to her late afternoon nap, she was full of beans chatting and creaking to herself and rolling back and forth in her cot. She did go to sleep before Ian and I left, on her right-hand side with her thumb in her mouth – the first time she hasn’t fallen asleep on her back. (She doesn’t usually put her thumb in her mouth to go to sleep in the evening either.)

I forgot to say earlier that, apart from being able to go quite high-pitched nowadays – with a slight increase of volume at times – Jessica also smacks her lips and makes a ‘k’ sound. I heard the latter for the first time last Friday (10th August), I think, when I was looking through a picture book with her which was full of dragons – I kept talking about the dragons on the pictures: ‘oh, look, what a lovely blue dragon’ (‘drake’ in Swedish) and suddenly she went: ‘k, k’. I’d like to think she copied my sound but I’m not sure she’s at that stage yet.

Gabriella

We’ve got to borrow a highchair from a couple of friends and I put Jessica in it for the first time on Wednesday (8th August). She looked so small in it (and terribly cute!) but very confident too: sat there with her back straight and one arm on each of the arm rests, as if she was chairing an important meeting.

I have now fed her combinations like raspberry & banana, apple & mango, parsnip & peas, potato & sweet potato as well as porridge mixed with fresh fruit. She still hasn’t refused anything, though when I was due to feed her avocado the other day she was too tired to be interested in solids (“just let me have the straightforward bottle of formula, please!”) and I didn’t insist as I don’t want her to get frustrated with the whole food thing. She loves everything involving fruit – because it’s sweet I presume… Porridge mixed with fruit is a hit, too. She leans forward and opens her mouth, barely giving me time to fill the spoon again.

She has cried from frustration a few times, though, at what I’m assuming is the slow pace of the feed and the lack of control on her part. At times she has grabbed the mug out of my hands – she obviously knows that’s where the food comes from – and tried to drink the puree straight out of it… I have given her her own spoon and helped her fill it with food, and then she has promptly put it in her mouth. But, of course, she’s not mastered the skill yet, so most of the food doesn’t go where it should, plus she can’t refill the spoon (actually, she did try to once yesterday, but she put the handle down first, so it didn’t quite work…).

I’m not sure quite what to do when she cries out of frustration, apart from generally taking things slow and let her set the pace as well as I can. I try to offer the next spoonful as quickly as possible so it’s up to her how soon she wants to eat it, to let her hold the spoon herself and I obviously don’t force any food into her mouth or try to pop it in there when she’s crying. When she cries and I know there’s tiredness involved, I lift her out of the highchair and give her formula instead.

When it comes to fruit, Jessica has so far had banana, apple, pear, mango, raspberries and nectarine. I have deliberately hesitated about blueberries, as I dread the resulting stains on her muslin squares and clothes… She’s not throwing up quite as much as she used to – this was actually the case even before the weaning started. But she still does throw up and instead of only milk-coloured stains on everything we now have orange for carrot and sweet potato, red for raspberries and green for broccoli and peas…

I don’t know if it’s one of those general baby things (obviously a modern day one, if it is), but Jessica is completely fascinated by my mobile phone and will drop any toy if she spots it. She’ll grab for it straight away if it’s within reach and try to put it in her mouth. I’ll hazard a guess and say that she’s picked up on the fact that I find it so interesting: she sees me clicking the buttons and staring at the screen and feels like she wants in on the game. But I can’t let her play with it, really. I’m not sure about the radiation issue of having the mobile that close to her little brain. Also, she dribbles all over it and I’m not sure how waterproof it is. Yesterday she started to cry when I took it away – that’s the first time she’s ever reacted that way to anything she is playing with being removed.

Jessica has gone a step further in her development regarding rolling: in the last couple of days we have seen her do it deliberately a few times and looking mightily pleased with herself! Once on her tummy she’s looked all around her, emitted happy little shrieks and proceeded to grab at the nearest object. She likes lying on her tummy on the grass – I guess it’s a fairly new surface compared to carpets and rugs. She’ll tear at the grass, filling her hand and getting it all over herself, and afterwards I seem to find grass everywhere: on her toys, her rug, the nappy changing mat, her mouth…

When in the garden it has moved from the ‘see but not touch’ approach to a much more hands-on one – she’s been touching leaves for a while but nowadays she tears at them, ripping leaves of branches and either putting them in her mouth or dropping them on the floor. She can also grab a branch and then thrash it around for a while. One of us often takes her for a walk around the garden before bedtime and you can tell when she’s getting tired and fed-up and it’s time for bed: then she thrashes branches about without even looking at them, with a firm grip and a stern face.

Jessica splashes a lot more in the bath now, deliberately whacking her arms against the surface and kicking her legs and watching the effect. It’s fun to watch her play: she smiles and giggles. Her Mum gets pretty much soaked every time, so I’ve started to strip down to my underwear to bathe her. Jessica is getting a bit too long for the baby bath and as soon as she’s confident sitting up without support, I’ll go in the big bath with her – that’s bound to be easier all around.

Gabriella

Ian and I were pleased to find that there are quite a few birds in and around our garden (well, at least until we plant those berry bushes we’ve been thinking about…). It doesn’t seem like Jessica’s noticed them yet – I imagine they’re simply something fuzzy and distant in her peripheral vision, which is fair enough. But there’s one very bold robin, which I’m really keen that she should see. It’s come very close to us several times when we’ve been sitting out in the garden, perching on the fence or the back of a chair, and only the other day it flew straight over the keyboard of Ian’s laptop while he was lying on his stomach working on it, right in front of Ian’s face…! When I’ve been carrying Jessica for a tour around the garden the robin has occasionally come up to watch us, sitting on top of the fence, and I’ve been able to walk right up to it with Jessica in my arms. I’ve even pretty much touched its beak with the tip of my index finger going: “Look, Jessica, it’s a robin, look!” but she’s only glanced across it or looked the other way. Maybe she thinks that’s how all birds behave and nothing to make a fuss about.

There was a light summer rain today. Dark clouds came in while we were playing in the garden so I put Jessica down to take the washing down and bring her push chair all toys inside, which she didn’t like. She stopped grumbling as soon as I picked her up. As the rain wasn’t very heavy I stood with her just outside the door, so that she could feel the rain on her head and arms. She seemed to like it: she laughed and looked all around her and – carefully – up at the sky.

Gabriella

Summer is here, after all that rain! We’ve had a hot and sunny week now; apparently yesterday temperatures were 30+ in places. The lack of rain has meant plenty of opportunity to spend time in our little garden. The gazebo has not come down since last Monday and Jessica and I have spent a good few hours on a blanket underneath it.

Jessica loves being in the garden. She’ll roll around and shriek happily for ages, not needing much in way of toys to keep her occupied. Just the sounds and sights of her surroundings must be enough. And I take her point completely – lying on the blanket next to her and staring at that lovely blue August sky is a pretty fabulous thing…!

She naps very well in our garden, too. A couple of afternoons now she has slept on a blanket underneath the gazebo or in her push chair for 1-2 hours at the time. I’m thinking maybe the fresh air has something to do with it. She’s in an even happier mood for the last bit of the day after one of those naps, and I do wish she could get in the habit of having them every day but, alas, it does vary greatly… I can see how she forces herself to stay awake at times, as if sleeping is a bad thing.

She’s much better at sleeping at night. She settles quite nicely after her last milk feed, still around 6.30/7pm. I became braver about a month ago about whether Jessica would throw up in her cot or not from not settling straight away and nowadays put her in her cot straight away after her last feed, whether she’s dozing off or is wide awake still. (Though more often than not she’s close to going to sleep – she still doesn’t nap very well during the day and is pretty shattered by the end of it.) As long as she’s burped and full she doesn’t mind being put to bed. I kiss her goodnight and leave her to it. Sometimes she’ll be very alert when I do, but she just kicks her legs and fiddles with the bumper guard for a bit before she drifts off to sleep.

As I mentioned in my last entry, she’s started waking up again early morning. After some advice from my sister (thanks, Malin!) I’ve now introduced a portion of porridge during the evening to hopefully keep her going for longer during the night. For the last three evenings I’ve given her this about an hour before her last milk feed and at the weekend she woke up at 5.30am on Sunday and 6.30am today, so by all accounts it did make some difference. She was restless during the night, though – I’m not sure whether the heat had anything to do with that. I left one of the small top windows open and didn’t put any pyjama bottoms on her. She did her bit to keep cool, too, by promptly kicking her blanket off, seemingly in her sleep, the couple of times towards the morning when I thought it was getting a bit cooler and put a blanket over her legs as I didn’t want her to wake up from feeling cold.

Jessica has started to suck her thumb, very possibly a result of us not giving her a dummy. She doesn’t suck her thumb to go to sleep first thing at night but now and then I wake up during the night to hear a sucking sound from the cot: Jessica sucking her thumb, presumably as a way to help send herself back to sleep. Some of those times I’ve noticed that as she drifts off to sleep the thumb slides out of her mouth and she stirs again. On a couple of occasions – when that’s happened a few times preventing her from going back to sleep – I’ve got up, folded a muslin square and pushed it in under her arm and hand to prop them up just enough for her hand to stay in place when she nods off again…

I forgot to mention that we went to the health visitor clinic in Horley last Wednesday (1st August). At the surgery we are registered they only have the weighing clinic every fortnight during the summer, presumably because it’s a smaller clinic with less resources and/or with fewer babies on its books. They don’t have any self-weigh service but either the health visitor or the nurse that she works with has a chat with you and weigh the baby. It was the nurse that saw us; a very friendly and fairly young girl. She immediately commented on Jessica’s eyes, saying they were beautiful and throughout our visit she kept being distracted by Jessica’s excited, happy behaviour, interrupting herself halfway through sentences in order to say “hello there, gorgeous!” and “aren’t you a lovely, happy baby!”. (In general, Jessica is so ready to communicate and interact with people that it seems they just can’t help themselves but stop in their tracks to smile back and talk to her.)

Jessica was exactly 9 kilos this time (19 lb 13 oz), which is still on that higher curve. “She’s a tall girl, though”, the nurse said. “Shall we measure her?” (Which they never offered at the Redhill clinic, so of course I jumped at the chance…!) She made Jessica’s length 66.5 cm and seemed to feel she had to reassure me a couple of times that Jessica was “in proportion” and the higher weight curve was nothing to worry about. The next big health check-up for Jessica is at 10 months age at the clinic we’re with (in other places I’ve heard it’s 8 or 9 months) but the nurse asked me to come back to the weighing clinic in a couple of weeks time, when Jessica’s 6 months, to check her weight again then.

I lingered at the clinic for a bit before I put Jessica in her push chair to leave. I could tell she was excited about being there: she was waving her arms and legs, her head turning everywhere and she was looking at some of the babies waiting to be weighed trying to talk to them. I felt almost nasty taking Jessica away from there, as it had only been her and me that morning and would be so for the afternoon too and she wanted to make friends… But if she was disappointed as we left she didn’t let on. She’s very good to me, you know.

Gabriella

Another night when Jessica slept through until just before 6am – excellent. She woke up happy, said good morning to Daddy before having a wash and a change and then played nicely while Mum was getting ready before breakfast at 7am. Then I took Jessica for a walk at around 8am during which she soon fell asleep – and amazingly slept a whole hour and a half…! That’s possibly why she’s happy playing on her own at the mo (it’s now just before noon and soon time for her bath) while I’m getting on with checking emails and writing the blog. At the moment she’s emitting lots of happy little sounds and is grabbing her trouser legs and pulling them up at the same time as she lifts both legs in the air and waves them about a bit. She does this a lot, mostly when on the floor but also in her push chair: in the latter, when you’re walking behind pushing her you often see her little feet sticking out in the air on both sides…

When feeding, Jessica’s nowadays well aware that a bottle filled with formula contains her food. She’ll reach for it and suck the lid if she can reach while I carry her and the warmed-up bottle from the kitchen into the living room, where we usually sit on the sofa for a milk feed. If I take the bottle away temporarily during a feed, she will lean forward, as if she’s trying to get out of my lap to fetch it. She’ll also grab our hands when we feed her, to control the feeding as best she can, yanking our hands away from or towards her mouth with varied results… The bottle’s too heavy for her to hold on her own, and when she grabs my hand with a spoonful of puree to steer it towards her mouth or grabs the spoon to try to feed herself, food ends up on her nose or cheek instead… By the way, it tends to be the left hand she uses to grab the spoon – but then this could be because this is the nearest one, as I feed her using my right hand.

Speaking of purees, she’s had her first mix of vegetables now: carrot and sweetcorn, which she seemed to really enjoy. Apart from banana, so far this is the only solid food she’s been upset about there not being more of. I’m probably a bit slow introducing new foods to her – one of the mums from the post-natal group that Jessica and I see once a week is already feeding her little girl things like chicken and pea risotto made with (salt-free) vegetable stock and brown rice, and that baby is only 4 1/2 months…! Part of me thinks, though, that there’s no reason to not go it a bit slow as Jessica’s sleeping through the night most of the time (she has woken up a few times at around 4.15-4.30am, but mainly wanting to play it seems), is healthy and gaining weight – milk is meant to be her main source of nutrition for a few months yet.

At the moment, I’m giving Jessica solids for her 10am and 4pm meals, but I guess we should shift them to make it lunch and dinner (1pm and 7pm) instead – maybe as I introduce a third meal which I then make breakfast… The reason I’ve been hesitating about feeding Jessica solids for dinner is that she tends to get cranky quite suddenly in the evenings before bedtime, sometimes earlier than other times, and I didn’t want her to reject/get frustrated by solids at that point. A couple of times when feeding her during the day she has been too hungry to have the patience for solids. What I have done then is to give her some milk before offering her the puree and then she has been interested again. (Maybe I should do that with the ‘dinner’ feed too…?).

She likes grabbing our faces now – ouch… She’s yanked Ian’s nose really hard, not sure if she tried to twist it, and almost every time now after I’ve bottlefed her and lifted her up over my shoulder as a bit of a signal that the feed is over now, she’ll first start scratching delightedly at the sofa behind me, then ‘discover’ my face and reach out for it with a big happy grin on her face. And then it’s a case of dodging her little fingers trying to grab my nose, pull my bottom lip off or just generally yank the skin on my cheeks…! She reminds me a bit of a lion cub, actually, playing rough with its parents and older siblings the way she clambers on me to ‘claw’ at my face and ‘bite’ my fingers. Just wondering whether we’ll find that she growls and roars rather than speaks one day… (She does make these purring sounds every so often, though.)

Jessica’s not sitting unsupported yet but we’ve borrowed an inflated ring from our friends Phil and Anna that they used to ‘keep’ their baby boy Mark in; the ring is like a big bath ring with a fabric cover, which supports a baby on all sides when put in the middle. Jessica’s still inclined to slide down a bit or topple over but she’s doing better and hopefully the ring will give her opportunity to practise trunk control as well as playing on her own, picking up the toys that she wants to play with.

Just to finish off: she put her right big toe in her mouth this morning! She’s been trying for quite a while now, seemingly tiredlessly (she seems more interested in this than rolling over to try to crawl…), and finally success. No doubt will she keep on trying to perfect the skill, though. (It amazes me how agile little babies are!)

Gabriella