I’m sure her departure isn’t the reason for Freyja’s aversion to good behaviour today though – she’s going through what I hope is going to be “brief phase” of not wanting to sleep. She has been so brilliant over the past couple of months, settling quickly, and sleeping through the night, and napping well during the day, but for the past few days, she’s been hard work. She’s taken much longer to settle at night, and is sometimes so worked up during the day she doesn’t want to sleep at all. After having a read around the t’Internet, we’ve decided that it will more than likely be down to a couple of things:

• teething – she’s always struggled with her teeth, and has forever red cheeks, and suffering lately due to the 6th tooth popping through
• her new-found ability to stand up in her cot and jump around without the risk of falling over in her sleeping bag. I guess sleeping under a quilt and having this problem is the lesser of two evils, when the alternative involves Freyja injuring herself through falling over in her Gro-Bag.

Hopefully she’ll be OK after she has got used to the new found freedom. I hope it’s not a long phase – it’s hard work!

I’ve also finally got a spam filter sorted so I don’t get any stupid bot dudes coming in and writing stupid comments. That’s all gone. So now, all I need to do is sit down, pull my finger out and write about my beautiful baby girl that just won’t stop growing! She has come on leaps and bounds since I last blogged – that’s a pretty obvious point, considering I haven’t blogged in 2 months. She’s 9 months old now, nearly 10, and has learned so many new skills. She can eat finger food super well now, and her appetite is like that of a horse. She loves her food, and isn’t fussy at all. As long as it tastes good, she’ll eat it. She can tell the difference between homemade food and jarred stuff – she’ll turn her nose up at the jarred stuff. To be fair, it is super bland, so it doesn’t surprise me. She loves beef, fish, chicken, vegetables, fruit, cheese – everything I make she will devour. It makes me so happy watching her eat. I’m so pleased she isn’t a fussy bugger who doesn’t like anything. She’s truly amazing and her appetite astounds me. In a typical day, she will demolish a massive bowl of porridge and a yoghurt or 2 for breakfast, then she has some milk. At lunch, she’ll have a sandwich and another yoghurt, or beans on toast or something. Then for tea, she’ll have a huge bowl of whatever’s going, meat fish potatoes veg, whatever. In between, she’ll snack lots too. She’s amazing.

Apart from that, she’s learned to clap, and looks so pleased with herself in doing so. She has also learned how to put shapes in the holes in her toys, and how to get them back out again. And the piece d’resistance is she can stand up and walk along the furniture. She’s dying to be able to walk unaided, and I doubt it will be much longer before she does so – she just needs to perfect her balance. Oh yeah, and she can crawl the normal way as combat now. She’s awesome.

She has also perfected some of her babbling too, now saying dada, mama and nana. She doesn’t know quite what they mean yet, but she’s getting there.

Since my last post, we have all been over to France twice. We went over Christmas, followed by a week in Andorra. Freyja quite liked the snow, and had her first go on a slide and a brief go on a swing, which she loved. And her first Christmas was fab – both sets of grandparents were there, which made the day, and Freyja loved all of her new things, in particular the wrapping paper that they all came in. We arrived back to the UK on the 4th January, after a big drive and ferry crossing – Freyja behaved wonderfully as always. She’s a true credit to us both and her behaviour and sociability makes us very proud parents. We have just returned from another weekend in France via plane. It was Freyja’s grandad’s 60th birthday, and we all surprised him by turning up on his doorstep. He really enjoyed it, and it was a lovely time had by all. So now we’re home, with a mountain of washing to do, and a bit of a poorly Freyja who has caught a cold/cough which she is struggling with at the moment. She’s never had a cough before, so I don’t think she knows what to do! Hopefully it doesn’t develop into any more than just a cough.

In other news, we are going to be moving house soon! Yay! Cannot wait! The completion date has been put back a month due to a particularly harsh fortnight of snow, so we should be moving in to our brand new pad at the end of April. It’s so exciting. It’s our first home, and it’s also closer to Portsmouth than we are now, so we will be closer to our friends again, which is something we have truly missed since moving away.

Before then, we have my birthday and Freyja’s 1st birthday to look forward to – we’re hoping to do some sort of 1st birthday party for her, but not sure what yet. Will have to get my thinking cap on. I know for sure that it will be lovely.

Right, that update is enough for now. But I have promised myself I will be more on the ball in future, and will write more often so that I don’t have to cram everything into one post. It gets very difficult!

Edit: She now has 3 teeth and a 4th poking through. We could easily keep Calpol in business by the amount we get through because of this. Since my last post, she can also sleep through the night, and if she wakes up, doesn’t need me to settle her anymore. So our sleeps have infinitely improved. I’m still lazy though – I really need to get out of that habit.

She also had a bouncer from Samantha – it had been gathering dust in the garage, when Granny realised that Freyja may enjoy it. That’s an understatement. It could entertain her for hours if I left her in it long enough! The only problem is the getting out of it part. That proves to be rather difficult with only one set of hands. But she loves it all the same, and it really strengthens them legs of hers. She’ll be walking in no time!

At the weekend, Gygy Mum and Gygy John came down to Portsmouth for the Bernice christening extravaganza. It was lovely to see them both again, and they were over the moon to spend some time with Freyja.

So this week has been spent recovering from all the busy-ness. I’m still looking for some work – there doesn’t seem to be much out there which I can do around looking after Freyja. I’m sure I’ll find something though!