Alice's 1st Birthday

Well it was Alice's 1st birthday yesterday. Unfortunately she wasn't feeling too well. We had to come home early from church as she was feeling rather hot and crying lots, turned out she had a bit of a temperature. She slept lots. With some calpol she was able to enjoy opening her presents. For dinner she had her favourite meal, pasta!!! She did polish off a whole plate (she hadn't eaten anything all day) and then finished off a whole slice of her birthday cake (carrot cake, which she loves).

We had Nana and Grandpa (Stuart's parents) and Donald, Caroline and Louise (the Godparents) for a wee get together. She lasted long enough to open her presents and then it was off to bed again.

Bit of a repeat of Christmas. Stuart made her home-made red grape jelly. She didn't have any, so we ate it on her behalf last night with some ice cream, yummy!!!!

Not the best 1st Birthday, but could've been much worse.

Hedgehog

We always thought hedgehogs were nocturnal. This one decided to come out during the day and was having a wee drink of water from the pond. We weren't sure if it was looking for frogs to eat. Unfortunately Alice was in bed asleep, so she missed it, not sure how much impact it would've made anyway. We have a couple of large leylandii at the bottom of the garden and Stuart thinks that's where it's been hibernating.

Headstand

Alice does this all the time now. We say, "are you going to do a headstand?" and she goes straight into this position. Yesterday she let go of the chair she was cruising along, stood for a few seconds on her own and then slowly went down to crawling position!!!

She also has quite a few sounds now. Can you guess which is the first animal she recognises?!! Yep, the pig. Every time she sees a pig (and let's face it she sees a lot of pigs around our house, for those who don't know, Stuart has a thing for pigs, weird!!) she says "ggggg". Her bear "Fraserbear", she says "zazaza". Pancakes, she says "kkkkk", when Pauline drinks a cup of tea; or anyone has a drink of any sort, "ttttttt". She's just moving on to "pppp" for up and shopping and "bbbbb" for brush etc. Alice has moved from "ssssss" to "hasahasa".

We have also done baby sign language with her. Which is just amazing. She now tells us when she wants a drink and when she wants more food. She can sign mummy and daddy and nappy. We really must learn more signs and do them with her. It is such a great tool in helping her communicate with us. Really glad I saw Anna and Steve put it into practise with their girls.

Finding it difficult to keep up with her development at the moment.

Frogs

This is always a strange phenomenon in our garden every year. The frogs are out, getting frisky and laying their spawn. It seems before everyone else in the country. Certainly Stuart's parents in Essex don't even have any frogs in the pond yet!!! Needless to say because they lay so early, it generally dies. How many frogs can you see? I see six.

Kisses!!

Alice sat playing with her blocks for ages; well actually pulling blocks, putting them in her mouth and then throwing them behind her in order to make room for the next one. She loves standing looking out the window and cruising backwards and forwards along the window. They're just the right height for her too.


Funny wee picture of her kissing. Not quite sure where she picked that up from.

Walking (OK, with help!!)

We're finding it difficult to keep up with Alice's development. We bought this wee toddle truck for her birthday, but as you can see she's getting a lot of use out of it already. We decided it would be really silly to wait when she so clearly can use it now. So yes, Pauline's days are spent chasing around the house after Alice now; we'd better get those stair gates up quick. The crash at the end sounds muuuuch worse than it was; just the sofa, nothing broken.

Rockey and teeth

For some strange reason, although Alice does enjoy rocking on Rockey, she would much rather stand to the side of him and rock him from side to side.

Also, she now has four teeth, all came in the past month. Hoping for a bit of respite now for a couple of months. You can just about see the bottom ones, they all not completely down yet, still a way to go, but at least she's not like me; sitting at one with no teeth.

Alice Crawling

Alice started crawling properly today. She's been having a go for the past few days, but today she crawled for quite a distance. She does flop back on her belly and commando style crawl along the floor when she wants to get somewhere quickly; like our bags when our backs are turned!! She is standing on her own for a few seconds at a time and can walk (slowly) holding onto one hand and cruises along the sofas. So wondering how long it's going to be before she's walking.



Only two months to go before her birthday!!! Where have the past ten months gone?

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.