Big Girl Duvet

Yesterday wasn’t a good day for bumps and bruises. Freyja’s morning nap ended in a massive thud, through trying to stand up in her Gro-Bag, and failing miserably. She must have tried to stand, using the cot as support, but must have missed her footing and falling backwards, into the only part of the cot that isn’t bumper-ised. So I go into her, to find her crying inconsolably, with a massive bump and a bit of a dent in her head, which alarmed me slightly. After realising she wasn’t concussed, I settled down again, but after talking to mum, decided she shouldn’t really sleep in a Gro-Bag anymore, because she’s just too mobile for them.

So, although you shouldn’t “really” use cot duvets until your baby is 12 months old, I’ve gone with health visitor recommendation, and will be using one from tonight onwards. And I guarantee Freyja will love it.

The good news as well, is that her massive bump/dent of yesterday, is now just a red mark. Good, because dents in skulls aren’t very nice.


Brush Them Tootie-Pegs!

Freyja’s teeth have been gradually pushing through for the past few months, and we’ve been “finger brushing” them since the second one came through. But yesterday, James came home with her first toothbrush – a pink one of course. He was disappointed that he couldn’t find one with a suction cup so it could stick to the tiles, but that wasn’t really that important…

She knows exactly what to do with it – the first thing she did was put it in her mouth and move it around. I’m still giving her the toothpaste and making sure all her teeth are clean by just finger brushing them as well, but then let her use the toothbrush for a bit to get used to it.

Her 5th tooth is pushing it’s way through now – slowly but surely. She’s had a bit of a break from teething for the past few days – she hasn’t even needed any Calpol, which is unheard of of late!


Trip to the Park

We’ve been meaning to pop to the park with Freyja for a while now, and last Sunday proved to be the day we actually went.

Freyja already had her first experience of a park when we were in Andorra, but there weren’t any baby swings, so her fun was quite limited. She did enjoy the slide though – the little dare devil.

Freyja on Swing

Freyja & Slide

The park nearby to our house in Whitely does have baby swings, so our trip out on Sunday can be deemed our first official British trip to the park. She had fun there. We weren’t there for long, but she had a go on the swings, and a go on the slide. She wasn’t fussed with the see-saw though – maybe it was a little dull for her adventurous nature!

Freyja in Egg Cup

Freyja on Swing

My aim is to go for a walk to the park every day. I don’t think every day will be successful in doing so, but I will definitely be going to the park with her more often now that I know she likes it. She’ll love it even more when she can move around on her own – she couldn’t take her eyes of the bigger kids that were there – she’s desperate to be able to run around and play!


Big Car Seat for a Big Girl

Today was the first time Freyja went in her new car seat. It’s a Britax Eclipse forward facing one, that she can stay in til she’s 4. It’s awesome, and has a funky table thing you can stick on it, for when she’s bored on longer journeys. We haven’t put the table on it yet – there seems little point if we’re only going to be in the car for 20 minutes, especially as she’ll probably just throw all her toys on the floor of the car anyway. And then would get even more frustrated because the table is hindering her ability to get to her feet to pull her socks off.

Her first trip out in it was to the Persimmon market suite, to change our fridge and also to take a look at how they are coming along with our new house. It’s so fab to see it looking more and more real!

New House

Freyja seemed to enjoy her seat, so much so that she fell asleep in it… and that was without having to recline it either!

Freyja Asleep in her Car Seat


Mucky Baby

Freyja’s not going to appreciate this post when she grows up and reads it – she’ll probably say something like “Mum, you are so embarrassing, I hate you!”, but I’ll deal with that when and if it happens.

Last night, James went to bath her like he usually does, and cries out for help. I think, “Bloody hell, what is it with you and not being able to do anything without needing me”, thinking that he has been faced with a pooey nappy or something just as grotesque. But no, last night was different. I go into the bathroom, to be passed a very beautiful naked Freyja. Not just passed like normal – passed at arm’s length. What’s she done? Poo’ed in the bath!! For the first time in almost 10 months, she crapped in the bath. There’s a first for everything I guess. Bless her heart. She wondered what the hell was going on. So there I was, also holding her at arm’s length, as James sifted the bath and ran her a fresh one.

I guess that’s one way of upping the water bill!


Poorly Baby

Poor Freyja hasn’t been her usual self the past couple of days. She’s usually a ray of sunshine, sociable, happy and a little monkey. But the past couple of days, she’s been miserable, sad and laid up with a cold and cough. She’s just not been herself, and being miserable and sad doesn’t suit her so I want her to hurry up and get better!

In the meantime, a steady stream of calpol and plenty of sleep seems to be in order. She’s already in bed for the second time today – she seems a little bit perkier today in comparison to yesterday, so I’m hoping this is the worst of it and she will be on the mend tomorrow.

Poor bugger.


How Long?!!

I am useless. I really am. I aimed to blog a lot more often than this. I need to put time aside every couple of days to write something in here. So much happens, I don’t want to miss anything out. It can be like a belated New Year resolution.

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.


Serious Lack of Blogging

It seems I have been slacking a bit when it comes to blogging. You’d think I’d be updating this most days, seeing as my aim is to write about Freyja for when she’s older, to jot down snippets of our life, and make a note of when she first does things. However, I’ve been terribly lazy. So I reckon this post may be an epic one.

A month has passed since I last wrote anything here. I seem to remember that the last one had a lot going on in it as well. Freyja’s over 7 months old now. Time really does fly. It’s strange really. It seems like many moons ago that I was enduring labour, I have only a vague recollection of the pain. Yet at the same time, it doesn’t seem 2 seconds since I was writing on here that Freyja had laughed for the first time. Now she laughs ALL the time, and it’s amazing to hear. She’s usually laughing at either James or myself acting like complete wazzocks, but still, it makes her smile and that’s all that counts.

So, what’s happened in the past month. Well, she’s yet again NOT sleeping through the night. We have decided that it’s got to be due to teething. She’s been having a terrible time of it. She goes through stages of not being bothered by her gums – these stages coincide with wonderful sleeps. The rest of the time, she wakes up and I settle her off again. It’s not a problem really – I’m only up for 10 minutes, but when it comes to settling myself off too sleep again, I question why I bother – Going to sleep from 5:30am until 7am seems to do me more harm than good. All the teething pain has resulted in ONE tooth emerging – that’s not even fully fledged, just a little gravestone. But it does seem to have come out a little more. It’s too cute for words. Very sharp though – as I found when she decided to bite me. I believe the sharp nibble was the same day that my precious daughter gave my jaw a lovebite. I was covering it up for 3 days with concealer.

She’s also getting more and more active and mobile by the hour. We have had to cover the DVD player/Sky box (she has a thing for machines) with parts of a big foam jigsaw. That way, she can’t meddle with the volume or turn everything off. Just a sheet of this foam jigsaw worked a few weeks ago. As of today, I’ve had to build a foam brick – the sheet form just wasn’t sturdy enough (she had figured out how to move everything to get through to the machines.) This, in a way is very smart and wonderful – it demonstrates her fantastic ability to problem solve. However, on the other hand, it’s a pain in the bum, trying to think of innovative ways to keep her away from all things technical. Especially as she has a huge thing for wires. She’d be chewing through them all if she had her choice.

Anyway, back to the moving around. She has the commando-shuffle down to a fine art. She’s really bloody quick. She can balance on her knees, and can pull them up to a crawling stance, but hasn’t quite figured out how to move one forward to start crawling. However, she can almost balance (with the help of the sofa) on her feet, and really enjoys weight-bearing. Makes me wonder whether she’ll walk before she crawls. It’s possible. But she’s still young.

We’re gradually encouraging her to have other milk as well. She still doesn’t like it much, but we’re getting there. I can’t breastfeed forever, so we do really need her to have other forms. She still despises the bottle. But she does drink it from a beaker (when she’s in the right mood).

She also has an ever-developing palate for food. She’s still abit iffy with savoury stuff – she loves fruit though. It’s just the veggies and meat that she has to be in the right frame of mind for. But she does eat it. She’s tried quite a lot now, and we blend almost all of our meals so she eats the same stuff. She’s had so far: cottage pie, chicken, fish, broccoli, spinach, lentils, butternut squash, pumpkin, sweet and normal potato, as well as toast, yoghurts and loads of fruits. She’s pretty easy to feed really. Similarly to the sleeping, it all depends on how badly she’s teething. Let’s just say that Calpol has taken a battering.

All in all, she’s wonderful. We can’t be happier. She makes us so proud – is enormously sociable and happy, hardly ever cries (and when she does she has an obvious reason), and is absolutely gorgeous with heaps of character. She has learned to nod her head, can guide a spoon to her mouth and can almost handle her beaker without any help. She even waved at James as he went to work the other week. She’s also learned how to click her tongue, blow raspberrys and can say “dada”. She’s just amazing. A true pleasure.

Note to self: Hoover the carpet more often. Your daughter seems to have a growing obsession with bits of fluff. She also is currently laughing at the living room door. Also, throw away the Bumbo – she has figured out how to get out of it. Not very gracefully may I add – it did involve her face-planting the floor. She was just so desperate to get to her dropped spoon so she could continue to try and chew a hole in it.


Busy Busy Weekend

Well, I think we are just about recovering from the past week. It’s been a pretty hectic one, but a lovely one. Freyja’s granny and grandad were over from France for a week and it we had a lovely time. It did mean Freyja’s days were a bit mucked up – her routine was pretty much the same, but she did miss some milk feeds and didn’t get to bed til later than usual. But we don’t mind, because it’s not for long, and we wanted her to enjoy the week with Granny and Grandad anyway.

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!
Freyja in the Bouncer
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.

Freyja & Gygy John
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!


Weaning – Not Fun with Fusspots

Freyja has been having extra carbohydrates on top of her breast milk for a number of weeks now, since she was about 15 weeks old. Now, at 6 months old, it’s time to wean her properly – I thought, or rather *hoped* that the task would be a breeze; that she wouldn’t be fussy in the slightest seeing as her dad and me eat pretty much anything. The *hope* that she would be an easy weaner didn’t happen… She’s a bugger.

The problem, I think, is that I introduced her to some fruits before the vegetables. For a baby who doesn’t know about different flavours, no wonder she doesn’t want her vegetables. She has always liked banana, apple, pear and peach. Trying to encourage her to eat butternut squash, courgette and carrot is an entirely different mission. I don’t blame her to be fair – I know I wouldn’t like trying a savoury item after I had tasted the joy of something sweet. So it’s going to be a case of perseverance. I *think* she will quite like butternut squash eventually – I tried her with it 2 days ago – she ate it. She didn’t like eating it, but she didn’t spit it out; merely screwed her face up but swallowed it anyway. So I’m trying her with that today. I should look at it as a fun process I guess, rather than a frustrating one. I know she’ll be fine once she gets used to, and learns to enjoy, the new flavours, but I’m not one for patience, so this task is definately going to test my “I give up” attitude.

The other thing I have to try and get her into is drinking from a sippy cup. She won’t drink from a bottle – I don’t really know why. If I could re-live the last 6 months, the only thing I would change is I would purposely give her a bottle feed every day – whether it be breast milk or formula; just to get her used to drinking from one. That way, I don’t think we would have the problem now. My plan is to skip the bottle altogether. If I can encourage her to drink liquid from a sippy cup, there will be no problem. IF I can. She knows what to do with the cup – that’s not the problem. She takes it herself and puts the beaker to her mouth. She drinks from it. She just spits out what she tastes. She’s a funny bugger. But all these issues will subside – I’m sure of it.

Freyja's Food


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