Jessica’s first trip to IKEA today. Felt like we were a very Swedish little family – going there in our Saab, Jessica and me wearing H&M clothes and her being carried in a Baby Björn… We needed to pick up a few bits and pieces for our new place: laundry basket, lamp shades, door mat, low energy light bulbs and have a look at and discussion around some new pieces of furniture (book cases, sofa, bits for bathroom…). We won’t get them all just yet as we want to wait a bit first and see what we feel suits our house the best, but we did pick up a Billy oak veneer book case for Jessica’s room, as it wasn’t too big and cumbersome and it gave us a nice sense of achievement to bring it home.
The stacks of boxes are going down a bit now, and we’re hoping that Jessica’s finding her feet a bit again. Both the trip to Sweden over Midsummer and the move unsettled her a bit, with her sleeping patterns being all over the place. Ian and I think that the bright nights in Sweden probably confused the issue a bit – it never got completely dark so little Jessica, when waking up at midnight, 2am, 4pm, etc., probably thought it was morning already…! Some nights in Sweden and back in England after the move I only got around 3 hours sleep but the last three nights she’s only woken up once, around 4/5am, for a feed and then slept through for an hour or two longer, so not quite so bad. (Her bedtime has changed until a fair bit later though – she now falls asleep around 8pm.) Though Jessica also seems ready for weaning now. Because of the move it’s had to wait, but I did feed her some banana porridge again yesterday and she was very keen. I wanted to cook and puree some carrots for her today (mid-morning is supposed to be the best time to introduce new foods) but the trip to IKEA happened instead. So I’ll start Monday – when Ian’s back at work again as ‘normal’ – and we’ll take it from there.
In some ways it’s almost like she’s a new little Jessica since coming back from Sweden. She’s expanded her range of sounds quite extensively, with lots of soft d’s, b’s and l’s included and a bit of raspberry blowing and spitting as a result. It’s hard to imagine that she’ll actually be able to speak proper words and sentences one day in the not too distance future, but it’s really exciting to see her progress.
She’s become a little bit ‘wilder’ too, laughing and shrieking louder when she’s excited, wanting to see more and touch more and prefers being carried around to sitting down. She reaches out to touch doors, plant leaves, plastic bags and people with the palm of her hand. Sometimes when we hold her up on our shoulder and she’s fed and happy she’ll excitedly dive in towards our shoulder and burrow down with a happy shriek. She also likes to turn her head back and forth to look both ways, often quickly and without warning, so we’re often chasing her face with a muslin, trying to catch the seemingly inevitable bounced milk, not always succeeding…
She holds her head higher for longer when we put her on her front on the floor, and very often starts to chat happily while she’s there, moving her arms and legs as if she wants to move forward. When on the nappy changing mat – one of the very few occasions when she enjoys being on the floor, the location tends to bore her otherwise – she rolls over to her side and seems to prefer lying that way, craning her neck a bit and stretching her legs out in front of her, chatting and giggling, touching her knees and chins and, actually, yesterday, looking at and touching her toes for the first time.
The trip to Sweden felt like it worked even better than we hoped. Jessica seemed to enjoy so much of it, even just sitting at Gatwick airport watching the world go by seemed incredibly exciting. It was thrilling to see the cousins Jessica and Isac meet for the first time – they both seemed fascinated by each other! Isac kept clambering to touch Jessica and Jessica kept watching him, smiling and giggling. Ian and I were thinking that perhaps Jessica would get a few ideas from her cousin – Isac is a very mobile little lad, an expert at crawling and already walking some, plus very apt at pulling himself up to standing using chairs, tables, people’s legs, etc. Jessica doesn’t really have many ‘baby role models’ – most other babies she’s met are the same age or younger, and while she might not easily compare herself to toddlers or grown-ups, seeing someone only 3 months older than herself might be just about right to ‘inspire’ her.
On Midsummer’s Day my sister Malin kindly hosted a party for Jessica and my little nephew and Jessica was in her element! When people started arriving she was a bit grizzly and Ian and I started to get apprehensive about the whole thing. But then we thought we’d just bite the bullet and bring her downstairs – we could always make our excuses and whisk her away upstairs to our room again should she be really grumpy. But as soon as she saw all the guests she lit up and really didn’t stop smiling: there were lots of people, including other babies, that she could talk to! When she got tired after a couple of hours she didn’t grumble, just fell asleep quietly on my shoulder. We took loads of pictures during the holiday and will publish some on our ‘main’ site as soon as we can – please bear with us a little bit longer…!
On the whole we think Jessica enjoyed her first holiday abroad. But it also seemed to take a lot out of her, so moving house just after we got back perhaps wasn’t the best idea we’ve ever had from that point of view… We’ll probably try to let her settle into a routine here in our new home for a while now before staying anywhere new overnight or introducing any bigger changes.
By the way, Jessica sat with me at the keyboard and helped me with the blog this time, so please excuse any enthusiastic contribution of hers that may have managed to escape proofing…!
Gabriella