Professional photos – March 2009

Esme is famous!

Have been meaning to write this for awhile! About the time that Esme was born Baby Beehinds were running a competition. All you had to do was write some feedback about how you found their nappies and send a photo in and you would go in the draw to win some nappies. Baby Beehinds were already our favourite nappies so it was no trouble for us to put in some photos and we included a photo of Esme at one week old in the nappies. Anyway, we ended up winning 6 minkee nappies (yay!) AND the feedback I wrote and Esme's photo are now on the Baby Beehinds website! So she's kinda famous ;) Esme is on page 4 of the customer feedback

Here's the link to our feedback on the Baby Beehinds website

Baby-led solids

Esme is now 6 months old so we decided to let her try some solids. We're doing things differently this time round and using baby-led solids rather feeding her pureed stuff like we did with Jacob. Baby-led solids is about letting the baby control what and how much they take in with the idea that they are able to moderate their intake, this is particularly relevant for breastfed babies. The principles of baby-led solids are basically that babies need to master certain skills before they have food shoved down their throats. This means they need to have lost the tongue thrust reflex, they must be able to sit without being propped, they need to show an interest in reaching and grabbing for food, they need to be able to use a pincer grip and so on. Babies are offered finger food and allowed to pick and choose what they eat. Even though people worry about choking with finger foods, babies have a very strong gag reflex and there is actually less risk of them choking on finger food than there is of choking on purees.

Anyway, so far Esme has been going great! She shows more interest in mashing up the food with her hands but she has actually taken a few little mouthfuls! I don't know that she was that impressed though, she much prefers her milk I think! So far she has had pumpkin, sweet potato, potato, zucchini, broccoli, watermelon and a grape. She doesn't mind potato too much (as you can see in the video) but is not a big fan of broccoli (like her mummy lol)



Here's a link to Gill Rapley's website on baby-led weaning.

Sisterly love!

I'm constantly amazed at how much Esme adores her big brother! I think he gets more smiles from her than us!!! He loves to make her laugh at the moment and has her in fits of giggles over the silliest things. Here is a video of Jacob 'jumping' to make Esme laugh!

6 months old and crawling?!

Well, Esme turned 6 months old on Friday. I am still wondering where the time has disappeared to! She is such a gorgeous little girl, a real little socialite! She always has lots of smiles for everyone and is very chatty. She is happy to spend lots of time on the floor exploring everything. I can't believe she is kind of crawling already though! She has been getting up on her hands and knees for at least a month now and now can move forwards by getting up on hands and knees and 'lurching' forwards or by pulling herself along 'commando style'. She can move fairly quickly, but it usually takes something, such as Jacob's toys, to motivate her to get moving. Esme just adores Jacob and Jacob is so good with his little sister too although I don't know how much he is appreciating her 'playing' with his toys!! I'm constantly amazed watching Esme play and explore. She knows exactly what she wants and is so accurate with grabbing whatever it is that she wants. I'm sure Jacob was never like this! She usually prefers to play with everything that is NOT a toy though. She loves to pull herself up to the toy drawers and pull the labels off them, eat paper and play with shoes/chair legs and so on! She is trying to sit up from being on her tummy already. I keep trying to tell her that she needs to be able to keep her balance sitting up before doing this but she doesn't listen! She often ends up toppling over onto her back because she can't balance herself. I don't imagine it will be much longer till she is really on the move and into everything! I'm not so sure I'm ready for that!!!

Fires!

This summer has been a particularly bad one for fires. We've had lots of 40 degrees + days that have really dried everything out. Combine this with windy days and it makes for bad fire weather! We had a fire threat a couple of weeks ago (in the national park up near the Belgrave shops, luckily the wind was blowing away from us and it was contained pretty quickly!) but on Monday we were faced with a pretty serious fire. It started in Birdsland reserve which is very close to our property and which kind of runs behind our property as well.

I had left to go out shopping and when I came out of the shops I heard about it on the radio. They were issuing an urgent threat message for our area and when I looked up to the mountain I could see heaps of smoke. I half panicked and headed back to our place to get the bag of important stuff (photos and stuff that couldn't be replaced) and the animals. Looking back it was quite stupid of me to go back but I couldn't stand the thought of leaving this stuff behind! And yes, we have contingency plans should this happen again, the bag of stuff will now be permantly located elsewhere during fire season! Anyway, I grabbed the stuff and our next door neighbour came round with a cage for the chooks. I tried to get the bunnies but was a bit stressed out and one of them jumped out of the cage while the lid was open :( Anyway, we headed to my Mum and Dad's. It took us over an hour to get down the mountain though as everyone was trying to leave at once.

We ended up staying the night at Mum and Dad's as they had closed our road and we weren't going to head back anyway with the fire threat still around (the wind had changed direction by this stage and was blowing the fire back towards us). The CFA worked hard on the fire and by 5am it was contained - we were happy to wake up to that news!! We headed home the next morning to a house that smelt like smoke, but we were just glad to still have a house to come back to! Now the yard has been raked and the gutters cleared. We just need to work on getting our roof sprinkler to work! Oh, and we were pleased to find Goofy the bunny still hanging around our property (just have to actually catch her now!!)

Friday is forecast to be another hot day with bad conditions for fires so fingers crossed that doesn't eventuate!

ABA Conference

Last weekend saw Esme and I heading off to Ballarat for my first ABA conference, leaving Chris and Jacob at home by themselves. This was my first time away from Jacob and needless to say, I was a little nervous! Not just about leaving Jacob but also about looking after Esme by myself and how I was going to manage. Luckily I had Donna with me to give me some moral support (and to entertain Esme in the car LOL) We headed off Friday afternoon and arrived in Ballarat by about 6, stopping once to feed Esme along the way.

That Friday night I was so nervous, Esme was unsettled and getting tired so I had to head back to the room to get her to bed and miss the talk that was on. When I got back to the room I realised my mobile had gone AWOL. Argggh! That was meant to be my lifeline, so I could call Chris whenever I was having trouble. I came so close to getting back in that car and heading straight back to Melbourne right then and there!! But I didn't! I went on and survived two very full on days of talks and workshops, all the while having to juggle a sometimes unhappy little girl who only sleeps in the sling!! I have to admit though that Esme was really pretty good, she did have a few moments of being quite unsettled but this could be put down to getting two more teeth! She was also a little angel for me at night, going down to bed easily, waking only once during the night for a feed and a little snuggle in bed with me from about 6 in the morning :)

All in all, it was a pretty good weekend. Lots of learning and making new friends and I was very happy to sign off on another workbook too!! But gee, I was so glad to be home again (and this single parenting gig is definately NOT for me LOL)

P.S. Jacob usually feeds to sleep at night so Chris had a little trouble getting him to sleep without him having 'mulk' However, the second night he'd obviously had enough of not getting his milk so he pointed to Chris' chest and said 'Daddy. mulk?'