Apologies – our site has been down for a little while due to an oversight on our part. We’ll try to catch up with events as soon as we can!
(Entry below written on Friday 14 December:)
Seems like things are happening so quickly nowadays, it’s hard to keep up. Coming towards Christmas, with our living room still not finished after the damp proofing works (almost four weeks on and the walls still haven’t dried completely plus our landlord isn’t happy with what’s been done and wants it fixed – we don’t know how much will need redoing yet, but our landlord has agreed that it will now have to wait until after Christmas), it doesn’t seem like there’s enough time to do things. Still, I’m starting to look forward to celebrating Jessica’s first Christmas. She won’t know what’s going on and she probably won’t remember it, but it’ll be nice to make it a bit special.
Jessica is so confident walking about using furniture, walls and cupboards now. She hardly falls over at all, unless she’s getting tired and a bit unsteady in the evening or before her afternoon nap. She more often than not holds on to just the one finger of ours to navigate across open spaces, but if she can get to it she’ll also happily use the little trolley to help her get where she wants to go. For the second time ever I witnessed her pulling herself up to standing all by herself this morning, using the sofa again: she turned her whole body around while sitting on the floor, then got to one of her knees, grab hold of the seat of the sofa and pulled herself up. Ian got to see it too, this time and we were both so chuffed. A lot of new things that Jessica does she seems to do just the once at first, and then it takes a while before she suddenly starts doing it regularly. Perhaps we’ll now see her pull herself up more often.
For over a month now – I keep forgetting to mention things! – Jessica’s responded differently to some of her toys. Especially the doll she got from my Mum’s former work colleague Saul but really any soft toys that have a face, like several of the cuddly stuffed toy animals that she’s got: Molly the monkey, the elephant Elvis (to which Ian lends a superb trumpeting noise!), Saba the giraffe, and lately her little cuddly Miffy rattle, to mention but a few. If one takes the toy and moves it around, as if it was dancing, peering around a corner at Jessica, kissing her on the cheek or brings her a toy, Jessica looks at it very intently with a perfectly delighted look on her face, giggles and talks at it, as if she is interacting with another living being. Maybe these are her first imaginary friends…? It’s great fun trying to think of new things for her toys to do – Ian has lots of different ideas to mine and I think we’re both doing pretty well in the imagination stakes so far… It’s also nice to know that whenever Jessica is a little bit upset, if I grab the doll (Miriam, I’ve decided to call it) and let it bring Jessica a few rattles or a book and attempt to play with her, Jessica soon cheers up.
Other games that make Jessica laugh out loud at are: playing peek-a-boo with Mummy or Daddy, being chased by Daddy around the high chair, playing tug of war over a muslin with Daddy and being tickled on the tummy by Daddy or Mummy (though Daddy tends to have a slightly higher success rate in getting it just right…).
One day end of November, I suddenly noticed Jessica twisting her tongue sideways. It’s something Ian’s able to do, but not me. I think it was the first time she had done it, as that day was all about playing with her tongue: twisting it sideways and generally leave it hanging out of her mouth… She usually walks around with her mouth wide open anyway – as if she is perpetually astonished about the world around her – but sticking her tongue out seemed a fun, new activity. This carried on for a couple of weeks, though lately she has calmed down on that front at little bit and we don’t see her tongue quite as often.
For the first time today Jessica protested about not being allowed to do something. We have an old-fashioned nappy bucket, which we got from Ian’s parents and which consists of a plastic bucket and a flat lid that lifts right off. So far the bucket’s been standing on the bathroom floor next to the nappy changing mat for ease of use. Jessica likes walking around in the bathroom as well as anywhere else and so far we’ve managed to keep anything sharp, heavy or otherwise dangerous out of her reach. She’s only really patted the lid of the nappy bucket before and – as with anything else we haven’t wanted her to touch or grab – I’ve steered her away and she’s happily let herself get distracted. But this time, when I held the lid down and said “nejâ€, she voiced her annoyance and tried again. So I still held the lid down and said no again. She screwed her face up and cried, obviously annoyed with me for not letting her open the bucket, and bent down to try to grab the lid again, more forcefully this time. I had to move the bucket out of her reach (and for the moment it lives in the bath tub, where she – so far… – isn’t able to reach it).
Jessica is walking around the control panel toy all by herself nowadays; we have raised it up on legs so that she can play with it whilst standing up. She’s now mastered the last couple of things on it that she didn’t manage before: a lever and a wheel that you turn around in a circle. It’s been quite interesting watching her – with her increasing strength, dexterity and understanding – being able to do more and more of the activities on the toy.
Almost forgot to mention, we went for Jessica’s 10 month check up today (she’ll be 10 months in a week’s time), which was done by the local health visitor at our surgery. Jessica’s weight is now 10.8 kilos (23.12 lbs), her height 76 cm (2ft 5.9in) and her head circumference 46.5 cm (1ft 6.3in). Apparently this is all nicely in proportion and about the size of a one-year-old. The health visitor also checked Jessica’s hips (which were fine), asked whether she said ‘dada’ and ‘mama’ (which I confirmed) and put a little brightly coloured pellet in her had to see if Jessica was able to pick it up using first one hand and then the other (which she did). The next check-up will be at one year and then at two years but I will bring Jessica to the weighing clinic in January to have her weighed then.
Gabriella