Jessica’s blog.

Just a quick update following Gabriella’s most recent post, there is a short clip of Jessica playing with leaves in the Video section (just click on the link to on the right-side of the page).

Enjoy!

Ian.

Forgot to mention in the last entry that Jessica has been to her first Bonfire Party, which she seemed to quite enjoy. It was at our friends Richard, Cara and Daisy here in Horley on Saturday 3 November. We made it as easy for ourselves as we could, going there with the car, so that we could settle Jessica for the night in the car seat (the party started at 6pm and Jessica’s bedtime is usually 6.45/7pm, so it meant she could take part in some of it) and then later hopefully sneak her out into the car without disturbing her sleep to much when it was time to go home. Jessica enjoyed seeing Daisy again and was quite ‘chatty’ for a while, then mesmerised by the big bonfire at the back of our hosts’ garden. Fireworks were going off all around but the bangs didn’t seem to startle either Jessica or Daisy, which was a relief. By all account, Jessica did notice the fireworks too – she turned towards the sound and then seemed to follow the cascades of light and colour on the night sky with her eyes. Later she seemed to settle well in the new surroundings – didn’t make much of a fuss at all and went to sleep quite quietly. We didn’t stay late but said our goodbyes at 9pm. Jessica stirred when she was put in the car and sat awake and excited (nowadays she always gets excited when she’s put in a car seat, regardless of whether she was cranky before) all the way home. It took a little while for her to get to sleep in her cot but she wasn’t crying, only chatting away to herself – possibly about the strange events of the evening…

On Friday the 9th, Jessica and I met up with a larger group of mums and babies from the post-natal group we’ve been seeing, for lunch at one of the mum’s house. It as great to see how much more the little ones interacted with each other: looking and making noises at each other, grabbing for each other and each other’s toys. Jessica took the opportunity to show off, too – there was a little trolley standing near her, similar to the one she’s been walking with at home. Jessica was standing up on the floor holding on to my hands but simply grabbed hold of the handle on the trolley and started walking with it across the room as if it was the most obvious thing in the world to do (without any prompting or encouragement from me). At which point she received lots of praise and admiration from the other mums – she may be the last to get teeth, but she is the first one getting this far learning to walk. Some of the other babies crawl very well indeed, but I guess Jessica’s just skipped that bit, and saved herself some time…

Just to overcompensate for the lack of pictures recently, here are a few from our little family walk in Outwood last Sunday (11th November):

(And, yes, she did try to eat the leaves – almost first thing when on the ground she bent down to grab a big wad of them and shove them in her mouth…!)

Jessica and I will be flying to Sweden tomorrow, to stay with my sister for a week over Jessica’s cousin Isac’s birthday – very exciting! Will report back with photos (though probably a few days after we are back at the soonest).

Gabriella

You may have noticed there haven’t many photos lately – unfortunately the flash on Ian’s otherwise brilliant digital camera has stopped working, so not many photos are being taken at present. Will have to dig my own (slow) digital camera out to remedy the lack of imagery…

Since three days ago, Jessica turns over to her front to sleep, which isn’t going completely smoothly. I’m not sure why she does it, as it more often than not seems a source of frustration for her. She’s not confident at turning back over again, so it partly puzzles me why she voluntarily gets herself ‘stuck’ that way and partly it worries me that she’ll end up face down in the mattress and not be able to breathe properly. Unless she’s half asleep already, as soon as I put her in her cot she sticks her left leg out and uses it to pivot around to her front. After a while though she starts to cry. Before, I’ve been able to leave her to herself and after perhaps a bit of crying, some chatting and general noise, she’s nodded off to sleep. Half the time now the crying seems to go on and on (even though I have a peer through the door to check that she’s not stuck or in any pain) and she’s taking longer to settle.

I get up at regular intervals anyway (just don’t seem to be able to sleep properly anymore…) and peer in at her every time. She seems to stay pretty much in the same position all night, on her front, but she always has her face to the side. I guess this is just one of those developmental stages that she has to go through. So far she hasn’t shown much interest in rolling over, as she’s preferred not to be lying down at all in the first place, so I guess she hasn’t got much practice in moving around that way. Quite often now she grabs the bars in the cot and tugs at them. Perhaps this is part of her learning to get up from the floor herself: grabbing hold of things to pull herself up. For her walks about the house (still with our help) or along furniture (on her own with increasing confidence) she’s till relying on us to help her up to standing.

Monday Jessica stood by herself without support for a whole 9(!) seconds and since she has done it again a couple of times for a similar length of time. She was holding on to a toy with both ands each time (different toys) – perhaps she was just so focussed on the toy she forgot to wobble… She walks around a bit with the trolley every day now (she didn’t use to be very keen but has warmed to it a bit more now, realised it can take her across the floor to another ‘anchor point’) but she still needs us to put her at the handlebars. We don’t really have that much furniture or other things for her too pull herself up on, so I’m not sure how she’ll get sufficient opportunity to practice that (apart from maybe in her cot, if that is where that’s going..).

Jessica has noticed the fruit and veg on the corner shelf in the kitchen now and often stops there to grab a satsuma or occasionally a sweet potato. When she’s got hold of a satsuma, she likes to carry it with her as we continue walking, so I can only hold one of her hands – on the other side I have to support her under the arm while she proudly holds the satsuma high. Everything goes in her mouth still of course and so does the fruit and veg. I left her sitting on the floor in the bathroom one day, happily sucking a trophy satsuma. Only minutes later I heard her spitting and coughing and hurried back to take a look. She was sitting on the floor still, but with her face all screwed up and in her hands the satsuma was split almost in half…! I certainly hadn’t expected her to be able to break the skin, seeing as there’s no sign of any teeth yet. The experience didn’t put Jessica off satsumas, though – later the same day she was at the fruit and veg shelf again grabbing for another one.

Gabriella

As expected, Jessica didn’t set her clock back when everyone else did last weekend. On the Monday, she decided to wake up at 4.20am…! Although, as we had been out the previous afternoon and early evening (more about that later) combined with slightly bad planning on my part, Jessica hadn’t had any solids for dinner, only formula. As she because of that might be hungry sooner anyway, I gave her a bottle of formula and put her back in bed. She didn’t grumble for long and, by the sound (or lack of…) of it, went back to sleep. I later gave her her usual breakfast at 6am and then we carried on from there. I’d decided to stick to the ‘new’ times as strictly as possible to help Jessica adapt. But, as it seems, she was very happy to go along with it straight away and it has taken no effort: every morning since, she has woken up at 5.30, 6 or even 6.30 am, seemingly not troubled at all by the fact that it has all been shifted one hour compared to before.

Jessica is getting more confident on her feet still. She’ll walk the length of the sofa, the coffee table (which is lined up next to the sofa at the moment) and then on to the dehumidifier (yes, we have that one up and running again…) and back again several times in a row now, without any support from us and seemingly without too much effort. She’ll also walk around the high chair and onto the chair opposite again and again (they’re fairly close together) without us lending her a hand too. Yesterday I watched her standing at arms’ length from the dehumidifier, only her fingertips touching it, contemplating whether she should risk the distance to the back legs of the highchair – it was just that little bit too far away and would have required a couple of steps without no support whatsoever. I was so chuffed when she went for it – as it happens, she lost her balance but Mummy was there to catch her mid-fall. She’ll pick up things from the floor herself quite readily now, supporting herself on a low table or the sofa, and I’m very pleased to say that she keeps her back straight and bends properly at the knees – that’s more than most adults manage…!

I was going to bring Jessica to the health visitor weighing clinic already on the 17th but completely forgot, as Ian’s parents were here that day. Instead I took her last Wednesday (24th October). We were having a quiet day at home just the two of us, so it was nice to be able to let her spend a little bit of time somewhere different, watching other babies and toddlers. They had lots of toys as usual, so I put Jessica on the floor near some of them. Smiling at everyone as she always does, she soon – separately – attracted the interest of a couple of boys at about 2-3 years of age. They were quite similar in their behaviour, though: at first they wanted to take some of the toys away from her (especially a bigger car and a fire engine), but in her usual chilled out way Jessica didn’t mind, just found herself a new toy, and after a while of the boys’ mums going “give that toy back, Josh/Adam, these are not your toys and you have to share”, the boys instead started to go and find toys to bring back and place in front of Jessica for her to play with. It was quite fun to see.

Finally it was our turn at one of the sets of scales. It’s now easier to sit Jessica up on the scales rather than laying her down on them, but she still moves around lots (excited about the relatively unfamiliar environment and people) so it takes a while for the digital display to decide what to show. It eventually stopped at 10.2 kilos (22lbs 7oz). When we left, the little boy called Adam waved and said “bye, bye” to Jessica. Ian and I got the tape measure out a day or so later and made her length 73 centimetres. She’s certainly growing…!

Something strange that Jessica has started to do in the last couple of weeks, although she was absolutely fine with it before, is to start to cry whenever Ian or I blow our noses. We have no idea why this is. It doesn’t seem to be the noise of blowing our noses, as just wiping one’s nose makes her cry just the same. So we’re thinking it must be the act of moving a handkerchief up to the nose, partly covering our faces. When we do, she stares at us, then the corners of her mouth turn down, her bottom lip starts to tremble and then she starts to cry. We’re really puzzled! We can’t think of any association she might have made that could explain it. We now take great care not to do this within her field of vision, as she sometimes takes a while to comfort – I’ve had to lift her up and then she’s buried her face in my shoulder and cried for a fair while. When we sneeze, cough or yawn she’s not troubled at all – actually she smiles quite widely both at me sneezing and yawning. Has anyone else come across this before…?!

Back to the afternoon and early evening (Sunday 28th October) out that I was going to tell you more about. We drove over to Heathfield, about an hour’s drive, to see a couple of friends that have bought themselves a house there. Last time we saw them it was in the evening past Jessica’s bedtime and we’d settled Jessica for the night in her car seat at home, then taken her with us in the car and re-settled her in our hosts’ bedroom to sleep their during our visit. This time, we’d originally been invited to a house warming party on the Saturday evening but then our hosts suggested the Sunday afternoon for just the three of us instead, to make it a more sociable hour for Jessica, and this worked out great. Their new house was lovely and huge, and Jessica really enjoyed walking around exploring it. She reached for a few things, especially the plates with snacks on the coffee table which were nicely just at the right height, but not too persistently – she was too preoccupied with taking in her new surroundings in general, I think – and played happily for quite a long while on a rug at Daddy’s feet with some of her toys that we had brought with us.

The most exciting thing for Jessica, though, was perhaps meeting a cat for the first time! Ian’s parents have a cat, Sheba, but she tends to be hidden away when we’re around, as I’m allergic to cats (not too badly but I get wheezy, my nose starts to run and I feel uncomfortable). So Jessica hadn’t seen a cat close up before. Millie was lying on a bed while we were given a guided tour of the house, so I lifted Jessica up on the bed too and she got very excited when she saw Millie. Nowadays it’s a case of holding a hand on Jessica’s arm when she reaches out to touch babies, toddlers and animals – she likes to grab hold when she explores but doesn’t, of course, realise that she can hurt others. I let her touch Millie’s fur with the palm of her hand but then she tried to grab hold, so I held her arm back just out of reach. Millie was very calm, though we could tell she was watching Jessica intently from the corner of her eye. Later, when Jessica was walking up and down the kitchen and Millie came in to get some food, Millie made sure to keep just that extra little bit of distance.

One of our friends said a while ago that babies are at their cutest at about 9 months old – that’s when you need to be aware because you’re very likely to go “oh, he/she is so cute – shall we have another one?”. I thought Jessica was the cutest baby ever already before but I must admit that now, at 8 1/2 months, it’s getting a bit ridiculous: she’s so adorable I sometimes don’t know what to do with myself…!

Gabriella