Little Pleasures

I’ve learnt that when it comes to Sophia (or any baby for that matter!) you don’t need fancy toys or expensive days out, though they are very nice! You can make your own fun doing ordinary, everyday things.

We’d been stuck indoors all morning and the sun came out. I decided to grab her mat, toys, my camera and some bubbles and head into the garden.

We had a lovely time playing, singing, tickling and watching the bubbles in the air. Sophia loved every minute! She grabbing big chunks of grass and trying to eat them! Luckily I managed to stop her before she actually did.

Try as I might I just couldn’t get a good photo of Sophia looking at the bubbles. Every time I blew them she kept closing her eyes as you can see…!

I hope one day Sophia will look back and remember these simple but special memories of spending time just playing and having fun with her mummy.

Dear Sophia: 6 Months Old

**In all the chaos of moving house I never got around to Sophia’s 5 month update! Luckily I have pictures of her at 5 months though!**

Dear Sophia,

Wow! How you have changed! You’ve gone from being a small baby to being a mobile, active, eating, inquisitive, interactive and bright little girl. We couldn’t be any prouder of you sweet pea!

This month I’m changing the way I do your updates – you’ve been sleeping through the night for months now and nothing has changed with your milk feeds so I don’t want to just keep repeating myself when you are doing so much more nowadays!

Weaning:

As I said in my weaning post you are now having solid foods three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner following baby-led weaning. A typical day would probably look like this…

Breakfast: 2 tbsp ready brek and ½ a banana (shared with mummy)

Lunch: maybe one of our recipes or some toast. Usually with one kind of vegetable and either fruit or full fat natural yogurt.

Dinner: You will join in with our evening meal which could be anything! Sometimes it’ll be fish with potatoes and veg, stir fry, spaghetti bolognaise…you are always game for anything!

You are loving your food and enjoy sitting up at the table with us during meal times. You are learning to use a cup with handles (and no lid!) and apart from the occasional spill you are learning to sip from it really well. We can’t believe what a clever girl you are!

Development:

You have learnt so many new skills recently and are always so proud of yourself when you achieve what you want to. This month you can…

• Roll around everywhere and hold your head up with very good control.
• Commando crawl. You use your legs and knees to almost drag yourself to something that you want. You are able to get from one end of the living room to the other with alarming speed – we have to keep a very close eye on you! You are starting to realise that digging your knees in and sticking your bum in the air gets you places faster; I don’t think it’ll be long until you are crawling!
• Sitting up. In the last week you’ve mastered how to sit by yourself and you were very proud of yourself, as were we. You can stay sat up for about 3 or 4 minutes now before toppling over.
• You can focus on tasks for much longer now and will spend about 20-30 minutes at a time on your mat and exploring all of your toys and books before getting bored.

 

Five Favourites at 6 Months:

You are beginning to show clear preference when it comes to things like toys and food so I thought it’d be fun to document them then look back to see how they’ve changed.

Favourite toy: You are showing lots of interest in ordinary household objects at the moment and are more likely to choose a wooden spoon over your plastic links. Seeing this I decided to make you a ‘treasure basket’ of everyday items from our house. I will probably do a post on this soon.

Favourite book: You are really enjoying brightly coloured board books with shiny or fuzzy bits to touch in them. You love ‘That’s Not My Bunny’ by Fiona Watt and the ‘Baby's Very First Touchy-feely Playbook’ from Usborne.

Favourite food: Definitely strawberries! I think you’d eat them at every meal if I let you!

Favourite activity: You love to play ‘row the boat’ and you like to rock back and forth as we sing it.

Favourite thing to do or say: You can now say ‘Dada’! You say it over and over again. You don’t know what it means yet but we’re thrilled that you are now being much more vocal.

We absolutely love watching you grow, change and learn. We can’t believe how lucky we are to have you; you’re our whole world and there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for you. Keeping shining bright sweet, little Sophia!

Happy 6 month birthday beautiful girl!

Lots of love from Mummy and Daddy.xxx

The Sadness

For the past few weeks I’ve had a sadness over me, hanging like a big raincloud. It seems to follow me around and is always there even when I’m not thinking about it. The sadness is the thought of going back to work.

This time next week I’ll be spending my last evening of my maternity leave. I can’t believe that the past 6½ months have flown by so fast.

I know how lucky I am that I’ve got to spend every day of her life with her so far as there are many mummies who have to go back much sooner than I’ve had to. But, if money were no object, I would’ve really loved to spend 12 months off with her. I’m also very lucky that I’m able to go back to work part time.

Sophia is such a social, happy little girl that she’d blossom anywhere she went. And part of me is looking forward to seeing my work friends and doing something by myself.

But as I bathed her tonight and cut her tiny, little nails I realised how she’s still so small and so needy. We’re her whole world and all she knows. When I set off to work next week it’ll be with a heavy heart and a pang of guilt for leaving a part of me behind.

I think it’s made all the worse that I work so far away and that I’ll be spending my time at a job that I don’t really enjoy. It seems ironic that I’ll be leaving my child to go and look after and teach other people’s children. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE working with children – I think it’s all I’m built to do. But, I hate all the politics that come with working in a school. In the four years I’ve been working in school I’ve become quite disillusioned with the schooling system and whether it actually has children’s best interests at heart. Maybe it’ll be time for a career change soon, I don’t know.

But as I’m driving to work next Tuesday, probably with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat, I’ll have to just suck it up and get through the day. Because, ultimately it comes down to money. I want Sophia to have this lovely house and all of the things she needs. And the only way that’ll happen is by having working parents. And when everything is said and done I’d do absolutely anything for that beautiful, precious little girl.

A new member of the family…

We have a new addition to our family…a cute and very mischievous kitten. His name is Smudge!

Sophia absolutely loves him and is learning to be gentle and carefully stroke him.

BLW Recipe: Fruity Cheese on Toast

I got a new recipe book yesterday. It’s the River Cottage Baby & Toddler Cookbook. I’ve tried out quite a few of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s recipes and enjoy watching the River Cottage TV programmes so was very excited when it came through the letterbox.

It has lots of information on nutrition and just what a baby needs to grow healthily which I found useful to look at. It also groups the recipes by season which is great if you like to use seasonal, local produce.

This lunchtime I decided to try one of the recipe’s out and it turned out to be delicious to both baby and mummy!

I adapted the original recipe slightly by adding carrot and using Red Leicester cheese instead of cheddar.

Serves: 1 adult and 1 baby

 

Ingredients:

3 slices wholemeal bread

1 apple, grated

½ large carrot, grated

60g Red Leicester, grated

 

Method:

1. Preheat the grill and toast the bread on each side.
2. Grate the apple into the bowl. There is no need to peel the apple but just double check there are no large bits of peel. Grate in the cheese and carrot and mix.
3. Pile the mixture onto the three pieces of bread and put back under the grill until the cheese is golden and bubbling.
4. Leave to cool a little then serve! We had ours with a little Greek yogurt for afters.

BLW Recipe: Carrot and Cumin Muffins

These little muffins are a perfect way to gently introduce your baby to spice. The cumin and carrot marry well to create a sweet flavour and a small kick of spice. With their moist middle and crumbly top they make a tasty lunch for babies and adults alike!

Makes: 12 small muffins.

Ingredients:

1 egg, beaten

½ cup full fat greek yogurt

⅓ cup vegetable/sunflower oil

1½ cups self-raising flour

1 tsp ground cumin

1 large carrot, peeled and grated

 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200^oc and line a cupcake tray with cases (you can use a muffin tin for bigger muffins).
2. In a bowl add the egg, yogurt and oil and whisk until combined. Sprinkle in the cumin and whisk again.
3. Slowly sift in the flower, mixing to combine. The dough is a soft, wet dough. Don’t be tempted to add anymore flour as this will make the muffins too dense.
4. Stir in the grated carrot until they are flecked evenly throughout the dough.
5. Spoon the mixture into the 12 cases and put into the oven for around 20 minutes or until they are cooked through and golden on top.
6. Serve! We ate ours with some juicy watermelon.

Sophia’s Play Area

I thought I’d do a little post on Sophia’s play area. It’s in our living room.

In it she has…

• Play mat
• ‘Boppy’ cushion
• Basket of toys
• Shape sorter
• Fluffy rabbit (bought by Daddy for her before she was born)
• Selection of books
• ‘Treasure’ basket (post coming soon!)

Sophia definitely doesn’t stay on the mat much at all but I think it’s nice for her to have a ‘base’. We have to put cushions along the hearth as it is very hard and we’re scared of her banging her head.

By the end of playtime it looks nothing like this as she takes everything out of the baskets and moves things around and sometimes even rolls herself up in the blanket! However, this is how I set up her area each time she goes up for a nap so she knows where to find everything again when she comes back down.

Sophia’s Christening

“Before I formed you in your mother’s womb, I knew you

Before you were born, I set you apart.” Jeremiah 1:5.

I realised that in amongst my laptop breaking and moving house I’ve never put up pictures of Sophia’s and James’ christening. We had a lovely day and the service itself was so unique as it was outside in the church yard.