No longer is she forever babbling “da-da-da” and “dad-dee”, she’s now saying “ma-ma-ma”, “mum-mum” and “mum-mee”! Yay, finally some recognition! Of course she probably doesn’t know what those words mean, but she can say them. I’m so proud.

Abby with her mum-mum

Abby is now 8 months old. We’ve managed to drop her evening catnap so we’re down to just two naps a day. Her naps are around 1-2 hours long. Dropping the evening nap has resulted in an earlier bedtime. She’s down around 8-8:30 most nights now instead of 9-9:30. We put her to bed at 7:30pm tonight so we’ll see if she stays asleep all night or if I’m in for an early wakeup call!

Rusk-faced cousins

She’s also well on her way to crawling. She gets her butt in the air and uses her legs to push up and her arms to pull forward – looks like a commando shuffle is progressing…  she’s not quite there, but she certainly can move herself around now (in all directions) especially when there’s some tasty fluff or dog toy she can see!

Her one tooth is growing nicely (it’s damn sharp by the way), and another is just about to break the surface. Brushing is still a joke because she’s decided she likes the taste of toothpaste and sticks her tongue out to get it, making it almost impossible to brush her tooth. Might have to just rub on some toothpaste with my finger now and then.

I has scrammed eggs

Abby is eating more challenging food now. She’s had some fun with toast fingers, scrambled eggs and steamed broccoli – unfortunately she likes to shove more than she can chew in her gob and ends up choking and gagging every now and then.

Abby on the swing

She had her 8 month Plunket checkup today. According to their scales she’s 9.52kg and 74cm tall – on the top end of the charts. After her visit, I decided to give her a go on the infant swing in the park. She chuckled with delight. Must do this more often.

“It’s ‘poo’. There’s no ‘p’ at the end.”

“There is at the end of ‘poop’.”

- Two dads having an indepth conversation (my brother-in-law and his brother, my hubby)

At 30 weeks

• Went on her first plane trip to Auckland. Not so fun when she got tired and had her usual bedtime cry!
• Moves around in her walker in all directions. She only used to be able to roll backwards but she’s all go now.
• Moving onto lumpier solids – gradually.
• Sits up well and can rebalance herself most of the time.
• Can hold her water bottle by the handles and drink by herself in short bursts. She likes to chew on the teat and fling the bottle around though.
• Plays in the bath.
• Shakes her toys.
• Plays with Fez.

Abby's first plane ride

Mmmm tasty dog-chewed rag...

At 31 weeks

• Caught a cold – boo.
• Likes dropping things to watch them fall.
• Bangs her toys to make noise.
• Can “give you five”, but only down low.
• Noms on rusks.
• Sits and happily plays with the toys in her toy box. Still needs cushions around her because she likes to jerk backwards without warning and she has a flat-enough head as it is.
• “Chews” food with her gums.
• Has breakfast and lunch with mum at the table. Her dinner is earlier than ours though so she ends up watching us gobble our food while she has to make do with a rusk.
• First tooth requires brushing. Ridiculous task – how do you make a baby spit out toothpaste? She just eats it. I put water on the brush, lean Abby over the sink and hope gravity does most of the work.

It's all smiles with her rusk

Bouncing in her slippers

At 32 weeks

• Over the worst of her cold, and just needs to blow her nose if only she knew how…
• Might be teething again as the red cheeks have reappeared.
• Has outgrown her 3-6 month clothes and mummy is sad to be putting them away.
• Zooms around in her walker – mind the Fez! (Sorry about the cellphone quality of the video.)

29 weeks – that’s 6 and a half months old – that’s more than half a year!

She now can sit quite well, as long as she’s not trying to do anything… otherwise she starts a slow descent into a face plant, so you have to always be there just in case.

Abby sitting/falling over

She’s also good at standing, with some help to balance. We put her in her walker and she chooses to stand most of the time in it.

Abby will need her first hair cut soon – another person’s hair I’ll be cutting forever… well until she’s old enough to pay for her own haircuts I suppose (and by then she’ll probably want a fancy style cut). The other week I tied her hair in pigtails just because I could.

Pigtails!

Ok, so they’re a bit crooked but you try tying pigtails on a 6 month old who won’t sit still.

Abby loves to play, both with her toys and with other people. She’s a very grabby baby, always reaching out and trying to grab things whether it’s a toy, the dog, or other babies unfortunately. (And what’s with always going for the face?)

I love my toys, especially my blocks. See my block?

Oh, her first tooth finally came through today! We’ll have to start brushing her teeth (tooth) from now –*sigh*.

She also babbles a lot, mostly “da-da” sounds but no “ma-ma” yet.

Drooling

And I still need to enrol her in a daycare, yikes! Everyone keeps telling me about the long waiting lists and I know I should’ve looked into this months ago but that’s me, the procrastinator. Reminds me I still need to finish off some work I’m doing for my “old” work – hmmm, I can never phrase that right. It’s work I’m doing for the company that I’m currently taking maternity leave from… does that make sense? Anyway, I’ll need to finish it tonight so I can go in and test things before Friday. Fun times with MS Word and VBA.

Abby loves solids. We’ve been making frozen cubes of puree for her, and she has had apple, pear, kumara, courgette, avocado, banana and carrot. Kumara and carrot together tastes a bit like pumpkin soup – I quite like it myself. She has 3-4 meals a day. At the moment they’re small meals (2-3 tablespoons) but we’re going to try bigger meals and cut down to three a day, as Plunket suggested.

Today was her five-month Plunket visit and we found out that she’s a really tall baby. She’s 71.5cm which is way above the 97th percentile. What’s crazier is that she’s almost half my height!

She also got her first toothbrush today, so now just to get some teeth.

Other developments over the last four weeks:

• She’s drooling a lot more and the bumps on her gums look like teeth are going to come through soon
• She finally found her feet a few weeks ago, and loves sucking on her toes
• She babbles and ‘talks’ lots making sounds liks ‘bababa’ and ‘wawawa’
• She’s starting to push up when she’s on her tummy
• She has three naps a day, sometimes two hours long, sometimes only one, but at least we get some freedom at regular periods
• She’s interested in Fez and tries to grab him whenever he’s close by
• She loves playing with toys (and watching TV but shhh), and new things excite her

Rolling on the rug

We met up with Abby’s cousin Bridget and her parents, and walked along the Hutt River to town. We had planned to go out to brunch with Abby’s cousin Bridget and her parents, but did not plan on the places we chose to be fully booked out for Mother’s Day – should have known (even if it was over in the Hutt). We ended up at Mr Bun(!) and I even forgot that they did decent brunches and ended up ordering chicken and chips from the warmer. I could’ve had banana and bacon pancakes! Oh well. It was good chicken and chips at least.

Then we did a bit of baby shopping. I was wanting to find some therals but ended up getting two winter weight sleeping sacks instead. Abby likes to kick off her sheets at night so these sacks should keep her warm. And 30% off was not a bad deal at all.

Afterwards we had a cup of tea back at the brother-in-law’s and let the babies have some play time while the dads did brotherly geek things. Abby gets a bit grabby (Grabby Abby – hehe, yet another nickname) and I had to rescue poor Bridget from those sharp litte nails Abby has.

It was nice just being out and spending time together with family. And it was extra nice to be reminded that I am a mother to a beautiful baby girl.

I hope all mothers and their loved ones had a wonderful Mother’s Day today.

(Abby wore her Sunday best today. I had been wanting to dress her up in this dress that a friend’s mother gave me but didn’t have any occasion for it so thought, bugger it I’ll dress her up anyway before she’s too big for it!)

On my first Mother's Day

Looking pretty pleased about rolling over

She really is growing up. She can hold her tippy cup and drink from it by herself, although she also likes to play with it and always ends up with a soaked top. Once she was flinging it about and donked herself hard on the head. It took her a few seconds to register the feeling called pain. I’ve only ever heard her cry like that when she got her shots.

We thought we had discovered Abby’s first tooth last week. However it ended up being a calcium deposit, or something to that tune, because it has disappeared! It did look and feel like a hard sharp tip of a tooth, but nope. Or maybe it went back in…?

Abby has developed a new sound. She likes to make shrill “EeEEEeeEe”  sounds, mainly when she is tired or hungry. She also seems to talk to herself a lot when she’s playing which is super cute.

I still need to print some nice photos of her so we can frame them. We put a nakie Abby on our bed the other day in an effort to take some good photos. I managed some very nice ones, and Abby managed to wee on the bed.

Like an angel, that wees on your bed

Life is so much sweeter now that she has a couple of good two-hour naps in the day. I’m suddenly finding myself with some more time to blog and craft, and do housework (boo). I hope her good napping continues as I may be busy soon with some custom paintings. (Have you entered the Cupcake Giveaway yet? Today’s the last day to enter!)

I think Abby is teething, or at least about to. She’s been a lot dribblier and often has rosy cheeks (sometimes only one at a time), and she’s gnawing at everything she can get her hands on, including her hands. She’s also been fussy with food, both milk and solids. She still has her good moments where she’ll scoff everything without hardly stopping.

Ooh, ahhh, ha!

Abby is starting to entertain herself more. She doesn’t cry when she wakes up from her nap much anymore. Often she’s just lying there staring at her mobile and eating her hands. And we can put her down on the floor and she’ll be happy playing with her toys and trying to turn over. She also seems to like blowing raspberries with a mouthful of food then laugh about it! Not so funny Abby.

Now that she’s nommed on several different fruits, her poos are really getting interesting. I’m not looking forward to when meat is part of her diet!

Daylight savings is a real bitch isn’t it!? The Little Miss got all confused and started waking up before six. We had to keep her up as long as we could to get back to her usual routine.

Anyway, here’s Abby and Bridget having a kung fu fight. Looks a bit brutal but it really wasn’t :)

Oh, and don’t forget to enter my Cupcake Giveaway. Anyone can enter and you can win an original painting by yours truly – easy as.

WHhaaAAaaaaahhh

Not sure I like this 'food'...

She had exciting baby rice as part of her dinner – well, it was exciting for her. I took a taste and it was pretty bad. She managed about a tablespoon of very runny rice but did really well, without making a big mess like I expected.

Her Jolly Jumper is probably the best $25 we’ve spent. Got it off Trademe and it was such a good deal because it’s almost new (can’t even tell it’s been used) and she lovvvves it! I had to take a video of her jumping in it – she has the hiccups and she’s slipping around a bit on the wooden floors, then Fez comes along for a sniff which distracts her until he leaves, then she’s back to jumping before stopping to taste the harness straps.

Abby and cousin Bridget

Abby’s been out and about a bit lately including the second PIN catch up where she got to play with some other tiny people. I even managed a solo-parent shopping trip to get supplies for my paintings.

Playing on the mat

As for me, my breast milk has dried up so no more expressing – yay! It’s weird not having big boobs anymore, but it’s good.

Abby in her carseat

However I’ve been feeling a bit off lately. Tummy’s been playing up and feeling a bit nauseous … I am hoping that I’m just run down, or it’s a tummy bug, or it’s just my body readjusting back to what it used to be, before all those hormones related to pregnancy and breastfeeding. Does that sound right? I hope that’s all it is!