Peas

A baby's food is an important thing. Often there is nothing more important than getting that next feed. With that background, you may even think it a little cruel to give Alice a meal consisting of peas. You can imagine a picture of her poor wee uncoordinated hands struggling to grasp such small objects.



As the video demonstrates though, she's pretty good at such things; even to the point of extreme determination. I must add that the meal did consist of chips as well as peas. I wonder if the strong preference of peas over chips will continue for all that long!?

Alice looking for Daddy

Alice is now moving along the floor, but on her belly, commando style. She has also just started following us about, rather than playing where she is, she needs to come and see what we're up to as well.

Plus we bought her a new car seat last week. She's almost ready to move to the next stage up where she can sit facing forwards, but we thought we'd get one in the sales and we did. However, she doesn't look overly impressed with it. She'd better get used to it because it's got to last her until she's about 4.

Google Flight Simulator and Internet Security

Amidst all the posts about Alice, I would like to just add in a few small posts about some useful techie things I've discovered recently. All very useful; honest!

Did you know that Google Earth provides a flight simulator? Simply press Ctrl-Alt-A from within Google Earth to get to the flight simulator screen. The following page provides all the keys:
http://earth.google.com/intl/en/userguide/v4/flightsim/
Not the easiest plane to fly, but fun. I've crashed in to quite a few seas/ hills already. One of the start options is to begin flying from an airport runway. Many of these are particularly interesting airports with mountains or interesting cities nearby. Well worth a try if you already have Google Earth installed.

I've currently mid-way through a 30 day trial of some new internet security software (anti-virus and firewall). Eset's NOD32 has been a leading anti virus provider for many years, but their latest offering combines that virus protection with a firewall and anti-spam (for Microsoft mail clients) - see http://www.eset.com/smartsecurity/index.php. Since I installed the software, I have seen a huge improvement in the performance of the computer. Under our old security software, Firefox would take a good 10 seconds or so to start up; now it's down to two seconds. A remarkable improvement. It's like having a brand new computer. It's well worth testing out if your anti virus package is coming up for renewal. Anti virus software can affect different computers in different ways depending on the installed software, so a test for yourself is worth while. Following bitter experience, I would always suggest a trial period with a new anti-virus suite before parting with your cash.

A word of warning, anti virus software is tricky to test out. With an office suite (e.g. MS Office) you know what you are getting and you can test out all the functionality to check that you have all you need. However, anti virus software only really comes in to its own when you encounter a virus. That's not a common occurrence. In this case, I have read some magazine and web reviews of the Eset software. In summary, it's excellent at detecting web threats (where a website might try to take over your computer via an altered web page) and good at detecting software containing threats (that you might have downloaded on purpose).

Baby-led weaning update

Just wanted to update you all on how it is going. She's doing really well and seems to really enjoy eating with us at the dinner table. It is a long process, but we think very worth it. In the video she's eating; petit filous, roasted courgette, pear and pancake. She had everything we ate on Christmas Day and even downed half a brussel sprout. She doesn't eat huge quantities but her weight gain is moving up the centile chart. This just feels very natural, as she puts everything in her mouth anyway, why not her food too.

We're both more than happy to answer any questions you have about this form of weaning.

Alice's 1st Christmas

Alice caught quite a nasty cold on Christmas Eve and so was a bit poorly over Christmas, but we spent three days opening her presents. Not because she had loads, but because we had to do it in short bursts. She's feeling much like herself again, wanting to be mobile and standing and bouncing all the time, rather than just sitting on mummy's knee.

She got a rocking horse, which she was a bit reticent about initially, but got the hang of it quite quickly and rocks herself and tries to stand up on it too. Family and friends were very generous, so we thank them all.

Alice moving a bit more

Alice is just wanting to be on the move so much. We think she gets quite frustrated in that she's not quite there yet with crawling. She just wants to be on her feet all the time and it's almost like she wants to skip crawling and go straight to walking. She can't pull herself up yet and stand, but she's getting there.

Stuart reckons she'll be crawling by Christmas. So she's got less than a week!!

Alice moves. A bit anyway

Alice has recently turned her "sky diving" style flailing in to something more useful. As she gets stronger she can now wriggle across a room pretty quickly. Obviously, she only bothers with this energy sapping feat if the object of her desire is tempting enough. These tempting items include: the top and tail bowl; plastic bags of all types; remote controls; and shoe laces. On this occasion, it also included her own toys.

We've had a good weekend so far. Today we visited the annual French Market that sets up near where we live. We bought our usual bottles of sparkling , red grape juice which is becoming a bit of a tradition on Christmas Day. We went with Mike and Vicky (which is also becoming a bit of a tradition) and had the obligatory crepes with chocolate spread. Alice also enjoyed a bit of my crepe; minus the spread.

Alice clapping

Alice just started clapping her hands today, then there was no stopping her.

She is also reaching for everything at the moment, however, has no fear. She doesn't realise that if she's on the chair and mummy's laces are on the floor, you can't just reach down for them without some sort of consequence, e.g hurting yourself. But mummy is always there to keep a hold of her. Well, nearly always.

UCB in the North East

Found out by rescanning our digital radio this weekend that United Christian Broadcasters are now broadcasting via DAB in the north east.
http://www.ucb.co.uk/index.cfm?itemid=4857
A bit twee and cheesy in places, but still real Christian radio in the north east!

St James' Park

St. James' Park in all it's glory this afternoon. Not hugely interesting; except the white things on the pitch. These were delivering artificial sunlight to the pitch! Simply, not enough sunlight gets to the pitch in the autumn/winter. What they need is to get rid of all these seats....

Smile at the camera!!

Alice has learned that if you turn on the camera and point it in her general direction, she just smiles and you will take copious pictures and laugh a lot. So that's now what she does. She will stop what you're trying to take a picture of her doing and just sit and some might say pose, but of course we just say smile. With each passing day she feels less and less like a baby. Today when the doorbell rang, she stopped what she was doing, starting waving her arms with excitement, smiled and as I got up with her to go to the door, she giggled. She even waved off the parcel delivery bloke as he left.


This one is just a funny picture of her on the swing.

Alice and Petit Filous

As you know we are doing the baby-led weaning. We had to stop for three weeks as Alice had a tummy bug and was pooing for Britain for about two weeks afterwards. Anyway, started back a couple of weeks ago and had to start from square one. Her favourite food seems to be petit filous. I put a dollop on her tray and as you can see she just either licks the tray or scoops it up with her fingers and licks it off. I think she was holding off on the other food I was giving her until she had her petit filous. So I've stopped giving it to her until she is more established with other foods.

It does take a long time for babies to learn to mush the food and then swallow it. There is a lot of gagging (not choking) and spitting stuff out. She likes courgette and today has had avocado for the first time and it seemed to be a hit. She had mash and peas last week and that seemed to go down well too. She's not too keen on bananas or sweet potatoes. When she does eat, it is very small amounts, but she is getting there. This form of weaning does take a lot of patience. But it is very enjoyable because I get to eat my lunch and breakfast at the same time as Alice and I'm not having a bite of mine and then spooning food into her and so on.