Beth and her "breast pads"

Beth's curiosity knows no bounds and she wants to know what everything is all the time. "Mummy whaz that?" would be one of her most common questions. At some time in the past she must have found out that I wear breast pads to help with leakage when breastfeeding. Naturally, she wanted to have some of her own to look at but I don't remember her ever wanting to wear them. Anyway, she found some muffin cake paper liners in the pantry and started playing with them. Then she came up to me holding one and said "here Mummy, here's a breast pad for you". "Thanks Beth", I said. "You're welcome" was her response. Since then these muffin liners have been "breast pads" to Beth and come in handy for putting stickers on, drawing on, or just lining up all over the kitchen floor.

After Easter up at Avoca we had our usual mess of unpacking in the hallway upstairs and so Beth was rummaging through it and being quietly industrious while Tom and I were running her bath. She came into the bathroom holding her green gumboot in her hand. "What's in there Beth", asked Tom. "I've got breastpads in my gumboot Daddy" she said. "Now that's a sentence that's probably never been said before" was Tom's response. I think he's right on that one.

Things that wrench your heart

Barnaby started at Daycare on Monday 31st March. He's going one day a week and is in the same room as Beth which I'm really glad about. But it was a really tough decision to make about him starting when we got the call a couple of weeks ago. If he was just a couple of months older it would have been an easier decision, especially once he started crawling. But... he's just a little 7 month old baby (our baby!) who can only just sit up on his own and gets around by rolling everywhere. I shed quite a few tears on Sunday night despite having a week or so to emotionally process this transition. I guess it means to me that I'll never have Barnaby with me 24/7 again. We're both moving on from that - but are either of us ready for it?

Well, Barney had a great first day and the staff are enamoured with him. He gives them a huge smile whenever we walk in the door to drop off Beth. It's good that he's been seeing this place twice a week ever since he was born because of her. I don't think it even registered to him to feel sad that I had left him there with Beth - he was just interested in watching everything going on around him. So he's fine, Beth's fine, Tom's fine and I am too (mostly). But it does tug at the heart strings a bit (at times a lot). How must it be when kids start kindy five days a week?

Baby's growing up

It's amazing how much can change in a month. Around end Jan when Barnaby was just 5 months old I tried him with rice cereal for the first time. His response was far from encouraging - face pulling, hands trying to bat the food away, crying etc. Too early... he's not ready. So I just tried every few days or so but didn't stress if he didn't have any. Barney started to get the whole swallowing thing but not the mouth opening part. Then at the beginning of March, when I was at my sister's minding Alex and Annabel, Barnaby started opening his mouth as the spoon with food came toward him... hallelujah! Yep, he's got it! Since then Barney has quickly progressed to 3 meals a day and eats everything! Hurrah. He had cous cous with mashed sweet potato and natural yoghurt for dinner tonight and couldn't get enough of it. He then had 2/3 of a mashed banana for dessert and would have had more if I'd offered it.

We were up at Avoca last weekend and Barnaby slept through the night until 8am - yey again. This week I've offered him water in a bottle rather than milk if he's woken in the night and he's settled back to sleep again until 8-ish. Hopefully in a few more days he'll wake up, cry a little and then settle himself back to sleep (just like Beth learned to do). So I'm hopeful we're about to get uninterrupted nights back again.

Barney is now 8.3kgs and 68cms long. He's really chubbing up, especially in the legs, since he got into solids fully. Up at Avoca on Sunday morning he was up on all fours rocking which is fantastic. I think he'll be on the move fairly soon.