It seems that Leila is a terrific little eater even though she has just started. When I came home today she was happily being fed some rice cereal. I don’t know that Leila really knew what she was doing but she was certainly being co-operative and happy about it (which is more than we can always say for Finn and his food).
August 16, 2007 , 12:08 am by mark
Recently I have taken to calling our little princess Leila Rose Petal because it struck me as being cute.
And I maintain that it is cute. Finn, however, has to correct me and tells me that it is Leila Rose PUZZLE.
This is eben cuter still.
As I sit down to write this five month update for The Little Princess I feel as though I have nothing to talk about. Day after day I see subtle changes that hardly seem to warrant comment. Afterall she’s a baby, doing what babies do. How interesting is that? But that’s precisely the point, isn’t it. Babies doing what babies doing is very interesting and exciting because it’s all about growing and learning and being. So here goes.
It strikes me that Leila at five months is all about more. Doing more, being more. Everyday there seems to be more about The Little Princess to notice, celebrate, marvel at and enjoy.
Mark and I have a feeling that Leila maybe a Little Princess in a hurry. Although she’s not rolling yet, she’s quite intent on sitting. She’s often happiest these days sitting up where she can watch the world go by. If she’s placed lying down on or on a 45 degree angle she spends a lot of time doing abdominal crunches to try to sit up straight. She sits up in her pram. Her rocker chair is always in its most upright position and she has just begun to sit in the highchair. She loves being in the highchair. It puts her at people level so she can see and talk to us easily. She is also entranced by the idea that toys could be placed on the tray where she can see them and reach them. For Leila this must surely be one of the great wonders of the world. To have toys just sitting at your fingertips for the grabbing!
Grabbing is another favourite thing to do. Leila has been reaching for things for a long time now, but it’s taken a lot of practice and very careful study of her hands to perfect the ability to reach for and grab what she wants, when and how she wants. And things that are grabbed are meant to go into The Little Princess’ mouth. Leila loves to suck on things. Her hands, my fingers, toys, clothes, flannelette nappies (clean of course). Pretty much anything, except a dummy.
The other thing that The Little Princess’ mouth is good for is talking. A lot. Neither Mark nor I remember Finn being particularly vocal until he was actually talking and he hasn’t stopped since. Leila, on the other hand, is a very vocal young lady already and the range and volume she can achieve is impressive. We think she’s going to rival her brother for verbosity and that’s really saying something.
Leila is also discovering that mouths are quite good for eating too. She’s always been good at devouring her bottles, although she hasn’t been a huge eater. In the last few days though she’s been chugging through her bottles at a ferocious rate and taking a great interest in watching the rest of the family eat. I was going to wait until she was six months old to start her on solid food. It seems that she may be ready now, though, so I’ve begun to offer her a little bit of rice cereal. At this stage the wet mush I offer her doesn’t deserve the description of ‘solid’ but it’s really more about getting used to the new texture and taste and finding out what spoons are for than actually eating stuff. The texture is intriguing. The taste, not so great. And spoons are quite interesting to chew on.
Another of The Little Princess’ areas of expertise is sleeping. During the day she often grizzles when being put down for a sleep, but it only lasts a short time before she’s out like a light and she usually wakes up in a splendid mood. She’s also practising sleeping through the night with increasing success. We have been averaging sleeping through a couple of nights a week (I say ‘we’ because when she sleeps through, so do her parents), but last week she surprised and pleased us by making it four nights in a row. We even dared to think that it might stick. We were wrong. For the last 2 nights she has woken at 4am. It’s so much harder to get up for a feed when you’re not doing it every night and I find 4am particularly hard. It almost makes me long for the days when she was waking at 2am and 6am.
For not having much to say, I’ve written a lot, haven’t I? But then, babies are like onions, aren’t they? Once you peel back a layer there’s so much more to see and say. And our Miss Leila Rose is The Little Princess of onions.
August 7, 2007 , 9:14 pm by nicky
Leila spent her first day at childcare today and it was pretty much a success.
She was dye for a sleep when I dropped her off so the tears were completely expected and understandable. I left her in the capable hands of one of the carers who looked after Finn in the same room 3 years ago with no qualms at all.
Apparently she cried from when I left her until her sleep and was pretty happy after that for the rest of the day. She only vomited once but it was a big one which necessitated a complete change of clothes. When I arrived to collect her she was sitting up in a rocker watching the bigger kids play and was perfectly happy.
I expected that she might be a bit unhappy this evening as she often is after a big day out, but I was wrong. She was obviously tired, but a happy kind of tired which is pretty much a first. We had some minor grizzling, but otherwise she was all smiles up to, and including, going to bed.
It seems that childcare agrees with The Little Princess.
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