Baby Steps

Sigh. After a half week of really good sleeps (up to six hours! In a row!), F has reverted to an earlier type. Every half hour or less brought a scream of protest from the cot, signalling some untoward horror befalling our young. Like she'd dropped her pacifier again, or her mobile wasn't turned on.

It's a good mobile - it's called Rain Forest. It's a hand-me-down from V's brother, we couldn't work out why it had that name for well over two months. A big plastic thing that hangs over the side of the crib, it's got a few palm leaves with ribboned tassels, a blue elephant, a pink monkey and a leopard, which is leopard coloured. When you turn it on, the animals rotate with a faint grinding noise, flowers are projected in soft warm light on to the ceiling and 'Sheep May Safely Graze' by Bach plays until you can't remember any other music. Nice, but not exactly Rain Foresty.

It turns out to have a switch round the back that I never saw. Hit that and you get authentic rain forest noises to help your little one drift off to sleep. F is a fan. So much so that when the track runs out, she wakes up and starts screaming. I suspect this isn't the intended effect, but you never know. Fisher Price are fishy bastards.

F makes huge progressive strides otherwise. Baby manuals and online guides to raising children, of which there are an unlimited amount, all in wild contradiction to one another, do all seem to agree that around three months or so you can start helping train your baby's muscles for crawling. You do this by putting them on the floor, possibly face down or possibly with small supportive blankets or pillows, and hopefully expecting them to lift their heads and smile at you winningly.

F does no such thing. She remains resolutely face down, screaming into the blanket, until rescued. This isn't because she can't lift her head - she totally can. It's that she has decided to skip the crawling stage, and will only respond to being supported under the armpits so she can practise walking. She mostly puts one foot in front of the other, starting from my waist and progressing until she has reached a position of dominance.

Victory is Mine

She took a healthy interest in our breakfasts this morning, another leap forward. It leaves us two options - either leave her in her baby sitter and enjoy our breakfast to the sound of bloody murder being committed on innocent lambs with a dentist's drill, or hold her in one arm and play shove-ha'penny with the plates. Both are good.

Foolishly, I tried to expand on all this advanced behaviour by adding flying. She enjoys flying, i.e. being swooshed round the room while I go 'nyyyaaaaoooooww'. It beats walking. Walking practice now engenders screaming and my shoulders feel like I've accidentally commenced military training. Sigh.