6 months tomorrow.
It has been 6 months since baby Violet has come into our lives. Wow. I can still remember holding her little body in the hospital and feeling totally overwhelmed and in awe of what had just happened and with the perfect little life we created together. Gah. I know I'll be saying these same things in years to come. Hah. Since becoming a parent I feel like I instantly understand EVERYTHING my parents have ever said and done. When you think about how desperately in love you are with your own baby/child you realise this is how my parents have always felt about me. They have been overseas for 7 weeks and I think I'll see them tomorrow at Pearl's 5th birthday party (they only returned yesterday so will probably be very jet lagged.) Violet has grown and developed so much since the last time they saw her! It will be so nice to see them again.
What is Violet doing now??
- We started giving her finger foods for the first time last week. I'm interested in the 'baby lead weaning' style of doing things, though I don't really know what I'm doing sometimes. (That's probably parenthood in general?) I just like the concept of her feeding herself real foods at her own pace, choosing what she wants, not forcing her to eat and giving her a variety of foods. I have read that this is considered to be a good way to raise a happy and healthy eater. This is very important to me. I don't want Violet to do the things I've done over the years... Fast for days on end, obsessively exercise, binge binge binge, hate my body etc. I've come a long way but perhaps things could have been different. This way of doing things makes sense to me and she seems to be loving it too. It's so interesting to watch her try and pick up a piece of soft food and bring it to her mouth to gnaw on. You can almost see her brain ticking away, concentrating, figuring things out (another reason why I like blw.)
So far she has had avocado (smeared it everywhere) sucked on watermelon (she seemed to love that), soft pear, banana and today she had steamed apple. I'll have to try some veggies this week. I'm still getting the hang of cooking things for the right amount of time and cutting things into the right size pieces so she can handle them easily. These things are really important for it to work properly and so she's not at risk of choking. It's so much nicer than just putting a spoonful of mush in her mouth.
She is very close to sitting up on her own. If you position her right she will sit up for a little while, but if she tries to reach for something she usually topples over. She picks up things so easily now, pretty much in one flowing movement if it's an easy enough object/toy. She shakes her toys lots and squeals as a way of communicating. Sometimes they are happy squeals and sometimes that's how she tells me she is tired or hungry. She oves bath time. She splashes everywhere and loves laying back and sucking on one of her bath toys. Sometimes we have a big bath together and I love those. She gets to float properly and has more room to move. I also feel close to her this way and it reminds me of when she was born (both of us being naked.)
Mother's group is going well and the 3 other girls and I catch up about every fortnight on a Friday. I have little in common with the girls but getting together and spending a couple of hours just talking about being new mothers and how we are navigating this whole thing is awesome. The girls make me feel normal for all the hard times we go through and we talk about how much we love our kids. It's nice to unashamedly talk constantly about our babies.
I could write more but daylight savings starts tonight and we're losing an hour so I should get to bed to sleep.
What is Violet doing now??
- We started giving her finger foods for the first time last week. I'm interested in the 'baby lead weaning' style of doing things, though I don't really know what I'm doing sometimes. (That's probably parenthood in general?) I just like the concept of her feeding herself real foods at her own pace, choosing what she wants, not forcing her to eat and giving her a variety of foods. I have read that this is considered to be a good way to raise a happy and healthy eater. This is very important to me. I don't want Violet to do the things I've done over the years... Fast for days on end, obsessively exercise, binge binge binge, hate my body etc. I've come a long way but perhaps things could have been different. This way of doing things makes sense to me and she seems to be loving it too. It's so interesting to watch her try and pick up a piece of soft food and bring it to her mouth to gnaw on. You can almost see her brain ticking away, concentrating, figuring things out (another reason why I like blw.)
So far she has had avocado (smeared it everywhere) sucked on watermelon (she seemed to love that), soft pear, banana and today she had steamed apple. I'll have to try some veggies this week. I'm still getting the hang of cooking things for the right amount of time and cutting things into the right size pieces so she can handle them easily. These things are really important for it to work properly and so she's not at risk of choking. It's so much nicer than just putting a spoonful of mush in her mouth.
She is very close to sitting up on her own. If you position her right she will sit up for a little while, but if she tries to reach for something she usually topples over. She picks up things so easily now, pretty much in one flowing movement if it's an easy enough object/toy. She shakes her toys lots and squeals as a way of communicating. Sometimes they are happy squeals and sometimes that's how she tells me she is tired or hungry. She oves bath time. She splashes everywhere and loves laying back and sucking on one of her bath toys. Sometimes we have a big bath together and I love those. She gets to float properly and has more room to move. I also feel close to her this way and it reminds me of when she was born (both of us being naked.)
Mother's group is going well and the 3 other girls and I catch up about every fortnight on a Friday. I have little in common with the girls but getting together and spending a couple of hours just talking about being new mothers and how we are navigating this whole thing is awesome. The girls make me feel normal for all the hard times we go through and we talk about how much we love our kids. It's nice to unashamedly talk constantly about our babies.
I could write more but daylight savings starts tonight and we're losing an hour so I should get to bed to sleep.