Bug = 2 years 4 months
Bub = 6 months 23 days

Who knows how his little brain works? Both of the following statements were completely out of the blue… they weren’t follow-ons or natural associations from recent conversations or activities. It’s alarming when he says things like this that are completely creative, not stock phrases or mimicry – it’s as if he has a mind of his own!

• The other night at around 10pm Linus woke up hot, so I took him some water, and Daddy and Ada came in to say goodnight to him. We sat there on his bed, watching him drink and generally just adoring him in the dimly lit room. When he finished his drink, he handed me the bottle, then looked at his Daddy and said “Can you be a goat?“

• This evening Linus and RIR and I were eating tea together. In a quiet moment, Linus pointed to a lone pea on RIR’s plate and asked “Is that a bulldozer?“

Bug = 2 years 4 months
Bub = 6 months 23 days

We’ve got a couple of nights out planned in the next few weeks, so Ada (and Linus) will be looked after by Nana. Ada’s hand-eye coordination is coming on in leaps and bounds, so rather than try her on a bottle again – which she’s not used to – I decided we’d start getting her used to a cup. With a sippy cup, she can try feeding herself with the sippy lid on, or an adult can feed her with the lid off.

A couple of nights ago we tried giving Ada a sippy cup for the first time. Since she’s started dabbling in solids (she’s wrecked about 4 or 5 cooked carrot sticks to date, and probably swallowed nothing), I thought it wouldn’t hurt to give her a little water while she practised using a cup. I didn’t want to waste breast milk on the exercise in case it all ended up on the floor.

The cup has a handle on each side, and Ada picked it up like a natural. True, she did whack herself in the face a few times. Well, a lot. But she didn’t mind, and she seemed to get the gist of putting the nozzle in her mouth and drinking the water.

Last night I tried her on the same cup with a little breast milk. There wasn’t really enough milk in there for her to drink it herself (she couldn’t tip the cup high enough), but I managed to get it all into her by taking the lid off and slowly tipping it into her mouth.

So fingers crossed Ada won’t mind too much (I’d like her to mind a little bit!) when it’s Nana, not Mummy, on the other side of the breast milk next week!

Bug = 2 years 4 months
Bub = 6 months 22 days

I was right about Linus being unwell. That night he was very hot in bed and developed quite a cough, so the next day I took him to the doctor where he was diagnosed with Fifth Disease (a.k.a. “slapped cheek syndrome”).

It’s not as dramatic as it sounds… it’s a common childhood virus. Because it’s a virus, antibiotics are useless against it, and so the treatment is the cure-all “fluids and rest”, plus paracetamol to cool the associated fever.

I’m not 100% convinced by the diagnosis. In skimming the literature, the harsh cough isn’t one of the listed symptoms, and I wonder if my doctor may have rushed a little to his conclusion solely because Linus had bright red cheeks at the time. The redness hasn’t been as noticeable since that afternoon, and I don’t think the “rash” has spread to other parts of his body.

In any case, while Linus is relatively happy I don’t particularly care what virus is making him sick. If he takes a turn for the worse I’ll consider visiting a doctor again.

As is, Linus is actually quite nice when he’s sick. He’d cuddly, quiet, subdued, and not – for the most part – unhappy, just a little more sensitive and clumsy than usual. But of course I want him to get better (she says, trying to convince herself that it’s true…)

Bug = 2 years 4 months
Bub = 6 months 19 days

I did a first today. I sat Linus down in front of the TV.

I’ve avoided it up until now. Some authorities recommend that children watch no TV until they’re at least two years old, so I’ve done that with Linus. He’s seen some when he’s been with his grandparents, but he never watches any at home and we don’t watch any while he’s awake. (Until Ada was born, we watched very little at all.)

Quite a while ago a friend gave us a DVD of Hairy Maclary, which Linus has read HEAPS and has seen a few times at his Nana’s. Since Linus turned two, I’ve been toying with the idea of using the DVD if the right need arose, but it never did.

This afternoon, without being able to put my finger on exactly why, I felt that Linus’s grizzliness and requests for mummy milk were due to more than tiredness and that he might be a little unwell. However I had to keep making tea, so I decided that this was the right time to sit him down in front of the TV for up to 50 minutes (the length of the DVD).

(And – in another similar first – on Saturday, the combination of being snowed in and both of us being sick made Bob and me decide to play a Playstation 2 game while Linus was up. We needed to spoil ourselves a little. And to hell with the children!)

I still don’t plan to do this often. I would find it all too easy to use TV as a babysitter, and unlike many mothers I know, I’m in the privileged position of having plenty of free and willing babysitters and entertainers available (i.e. grandparents and aunties), who have a lot more love, attention, care, play, and wisdom to give Linus than a TV ever will.

Bug = 2 years 4 months
Bub = 6 months 19 days

Ada is strong on her tummy. She pushes herself up, pushes herself back, swivels, etc. But she doesn’t roll. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her.

She has swiftly become an expert sitter. Her daddy was recently away for a week: before he left, she sat only when supported by cushions and often slipped or fell over; when he returned, I was leaving her sitting on the floor surrounded by toys for extended periods, confident that she was very unlikely to fall over. I don’t even bother moving hard toys out of her “fall-zone” anymore… if she does fall, she doesn’t often hurt herself.

All of this is just background info to what happened today. I left Ada lying on the floor to have some tummy time. She was surrounded by toys and was quite happy, so I chatted on the phone to Nana for a while and paid Ada no attention. Until at one point I glanced at her and realised that she was sitting up.

I replayed my movements over and over in my head, and I’m 90% sure I didn’t sit her up and she must have somehow done it herself. And to make matters worse, she repeated the feat a couple of hours later (again, without eye-witnesses!).

I don’t understand how a baby who can’t even ROLL can move from lying on her tummy to sitting. I have serious doubts about whether it actually happened. Maybe my coffee was too strong this morning?!