Happy first birthday Isla!

Last week my littlest baby had her first birthday and is, as Lilly tells me, “nearly a big girl”.

We celebrated with a barbecue for family at the weekend, with pass the parcel for the girls. And on Isla’s actual birthday, we took the girls to Windmill Animal Farm in Burscough where Isla enjoyed riding on a little tractor, stroking some animals (although she wasn’t so sure about the calves once they made a noise!), a good climb on the soft play and in the ball pool, and a first taste of chocolate ice cream… with hilarious reaction as she battled to eat it despite it being oh! so cold!

Yep, Isla is a whole 12 months and (obviously) growing fast, learning new tricks and showing us more and more of her personality all the time.

At 1, she has plenty of favourite things. She loves music and will dance the instant she hears any tune, even jingles on adverts. She has a repertoire of funky moves, wiggling her hips and rotatingher shoulders to the music – a sight you could never tire of enjoying!

She likes toys with wheels and is very good at rolling Thomas the Tank engine or other suitable toys along the ground. But her absolute favourite thing at the moment is her Vtech First Steps Baby Walker – she just cannot be without it! She reminds me of Macca Pakka endlessly trekking unsteadily from one side of the room to another. Since she discovered how to turn around, a world of possibilities has opened up! She is even able to push it up and down the garden and will happily do this for quite a while!

Isla also enjoys taking things out of baskets and putting them back in again. She will sit for a very long time taking clothes out of the washing basket then putting them back in again. Hubby is hopefull this is a sign she will be a tidy person (ie not like her mum) but I think it’s a bit early to be so optimistic!

Other things she likes, but doesn’t get to enjoy often are iPhones, remote controls, Wii remotes, that kind of thing! Pressing buttons on my washing machine or oven is another great sport. She also loves to chew shoes – especially her own, which she prefers in her mouth than on her feet…

Sleeping wise – on the whole I suppose you’d say she sleeps fairly well - but we still do have at least a few nights a week where she’ll wake in the night. Sometimes she’ll have some milk and resettle, other times (like on Monday) she wakes and nothing will resettle her, so she ends up being awake for 2 hours (and usually not happy!) We are already getting to the stage when we start to wonder whether we need to think about dropping her down to one nap a day instead of her current one nap after breakfast, one nap after lunch (noooooooo!)

Because of her regular disturbed nights, Operation Shared Bedroom has gone totally on the back burner & Isla is still sleeping in our room. All things being well, we might attempt to move the sisters in together in the not too distant future.

Things Isla doesn’t like: Seeing mummy & daddy on the phone – and don’t even attempt to use the laptop in her presence! She will make her displeasure known – loudly! She also very much dislikes face wipes, nose wipes, nappy changes & the shower being on. Like her sister she has an absolute terror of handriers in public toilets.

Isla is a competent crawler, has a gold medal in pulling herself up to standing, and can walk for a long way with the aid of her walker. This morning was the first time she stood unaided for any length of time – she managed about 20 seconds, which very much impressed me! She hasn’t tried to walk independently yet – we’re gently encouraging her to walk holding our hands at the moment. She can, however, climb stairs – cue major living room reorganisation to create a barrier to block off the bottom step (our stairs are in the living room & are at the wrong angle for a stairgate). Physically, she has always been really strong. If she is pulling or pushing something, you know about it (especially if it is the wardrobe door, and you are standing behind it!)

Isla has a few words in her repertoire – “adda” – dadda; “hi-jah” – hiya; and recently she’s added: “eye-dah” which we think is “Isla”. “Mamamama” first came at about 10 months, then disappeared for a while but seems to be back now. But her current favourite word is a crystal clear “No”, accompanied by head shaking! (Oh help, it’s started already!!!)

Isla loves interacting with her sister. They can play simple games with each other which make them both laugh – splashing in the bath or copying each other nodding their heads or making the same noises, or bouncing on our bed. In the mornings, the girls are always full of smiles when they first see each other – and Isla will even give kisses to her sister when she has stopped giving them out to us adults (when we ask for a kiss, which she used to give out willingly, we now get a shaking head and a “no!”) However, Isla has started to take less kindly to Lilly snatching things off her (which she does all too often) and the other morning lashed out at her a bit with a big shout when Lilly tried pinching something out of her hands. As Tony said: “Come quick, I think they’re having their first row!”

In the last 6 weeks or so she’s taken notice of the tv for the first time. She was in raptures over the baby in the Tellytubby sunshine, and likes laughing at the funny faces the engines pull in Thomas The Tank engine. But mainly she just likes dancing to any theme music.

Food wise, Isla’s favourite things seem to be meals which contain cheese or fish, and it seems mince based dishes are a no-go. At the barbecue party for her birthday, she preferred cucumber to sausages – strange child!

Until the age of about 5 months, we would have described Isla as a very placid and easy baby. I think since then she has realised that she who shouts loudest gets heard, and she is wanting a piece of the action! When she starts going for it, you know about it! And I think the natural frustrations of not being able to talk or completely master walking come out quite often. She is not an overly giggly baby – you have to work hard to get a laugh out of her – and when it comes, it isn’t the typical baby giggle from the Cow & Gate advert – it’s a more grown up sounding laugh that sounds as if it has come out despite itself. It’s a gorgeous sound which we savour on the occasions we do hear it. That’s not to say she isn’t a happy baby – I believe she really is – but I think she is also quite curious and thoughtful. But, safe to say being placid has gone out of the window and I think we now have two feisty sisters on our hands!

Happy birthday to our darling little baby. We can’t imagine our world without you in it. And we know the next 12 months will see you grow and change so very, very much, learning so many new skills and developing into a little girl, not a little baby. We just can’t wait to enjoy every single stage along with way with you. Love you Isla xxx

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Isla at 10 months old

Isla is now 10 months old – it seems impossible that my littlest baby is coming up to her first birthday so fast!

She is now much more mobile, she’s crawling and practicing doing a “bridge” with her feet and hands on the floor and her bottom sticking up in the air! She isn’t fully able to pull herself up on the furniture, although she is starting to try, and I am trying to encourage her to put more weight on her feet at the moment in preparation for walking. We have just got out the trusty old VTech walker for her, which she loves pressing buttons on (when she gets a chance because it is also Lilly’s new favourite toy too!)

Her personality is lovely. She remains largely chilled out but, since becoming more mobile she has become a little bit more demanding, and can be grizzly if she is hungry, tired or frustrated! Her face when Lilly has a tantrum is a picture – at first there will be a flicker of concern, then usually just amusement, or bemusement! In the last couple of months she has become much more of a smiler and laugher – her first few months she was very serious, as though she was taking everything in before deciding how to react. Now she will smile and wave at strangers in shops and she giggles more. I also love the fact that now, when she hears music of any kind, she will start jigging away!

Isla’s favourite things are baths – she loves splashing her hands and especially when Lilly joins in – she doesn’t even seem to mind being splashed in the face in the process! She also loves the sensation of being dropped downwards – even walking down the stairs with her in your arms makes her smile. She really loves her big sister. When Lilly comes into our bedroom in the morning and Isla is awake already, Isla will get really excited and start bouncing about on the bed when she sees her, which usually gets Lilly excited too – so generally a lovely start to the day. And Isla has started giving out lots of sloppy, open mouth kisses to people – usually me, daddy, Lilly or Nanna. She is a much cuddlier baby than Lilly was at this age (Lilly was always fiercly independent and didn’t “do” cuddles until she was probably about 18 months! - although she makes up for it now) and will still sit happily on your lap for quite a while. She loves to be carried around the house with one speculative arm out ready to grab anything that it comes across!

Food wise we are making progress. (I must confess that my work in the kitchen making homemade baby meals went through a bit of a slow patch recently – finding the time while working and also trying to make all mine and Tony’s meals from scratch for our weightwatchers diet left me with little time to batch cook. But we’re back on track now with a freezer full of food…) Anyway, after a slow start with lumps Isla is now eating sandwiches and toast, and managing slightly lumpier food. She is  down to just two milks a day – one at bedtime, one on waking. Yesterday, she ate one of Lilly’s chicken and apple balls which was great. I always have a mind on the fact that we’ll be going away to France in 3 months and I want her to be able to eat as “normally” as possible by then. And so far, she hasn’t been fussy in terms of flavour, she’s enjoyed all the jars and homemade things we have made for her. She even reattempted a strawberry the other day!   

Touch wood the last few weeks have been relatively illness free (she finally shook of her bad chest and cough with the help of antibiotics) and teething seems to have slowed for now – she still just has the six teeth and the dribbling is nowhere near as bad as it was a few months ago. Isla seems to be finally settling in nursery – we had a few weeks during which she wasn’t sleeping in nursery at all and was coming home in a dreadful state – red faced, overtired, really grumpy. One day I stayed in nursery and tried to settle her down for her post-breakfast nap but couldn’t – in the end she became completely hysterical everytime I tried to leave – in the end I just had to leave with her crying, it was awful. And then she started crying when I dropped her off. But for the last couple of weeks we have been taking her sleeping bag into nursery with her and they have tried her sleeping on a beanbag instead of in their cot and we seem to have had a breakthrough – she will now have 30 mins after breakfast (compared to an hour at home) and an hour after lunch (compared to 1-2 hours at home), and she comes home a much happier baby. I try to leave while she’s eating her weetabix in the morning, so that she doesn’t cry seeing me go and when Tony picks her up in the afternoons he says she is generally happy and playing when he gets there, which is a weight off both our minds.

At the moment she is going through a bit of a clingy stage though. It’s just little things like her reaction when I come home from work. She is really excited to see me, but then if I walk into the kitchen to take off my coat and shoes and I go out of site, she’ll cry. I have to come in and give her a cuddle first! And the other day I came back from the supermarket and was making a few trips to the car bringing in the bags. Everytime I appeared at the door she would be exicted and laugh, but then everytime I went back to the car she would cry!!

Isla has also started to take notice of animals, and she loves them! First it was Nanna and Grandad’s cat, Alex. Whenever he walks into the room she’s clench her fists, stretch out her hands and say “Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!” as if she can’t contain her excitement! On our trips to the local pet shop and garden centre, rabbits and guinea pigs have got the same reception, and she remains totally fascinated and hypnotised by fish. Lilly was the same with Alex at that age but she never wanted to actually touch him, she was always a bit too wary about how he would feel, I think! But Isla is much braver, she just goes for it and tries to grab him! She was even brave enough to try and touch Grannie’s tortoise the other day, something Lilly still needs a lot of encouragement to do!

Isla’s favourite game is opening and shutting doors – now that she is mobile she loves to sit in the doorway playing with the door – obviously not a very good idea as she is always getting stuck behind it, and in constant danger of trapping her fingers so mean mummy is always taking her away from the door and saying “We need to buy a doorstop”, but hey. Isla also likes opening and shutting the oven door on Lilly’s play kitchen, and her favourite toys are probably plastic bottles or empty (or full) packs of baby wipes! She also enjoys eating books when she can. Her biggest ambition in life is to chew my iphone. She also has a new toy where you press buttons and things pop up and has just started to work out how the cause and effect element of that works, which is fascinating to watch.

Language wise she now says a lot of “mamamamamama”, especially in the mornings when she wakes up and wants attention! I would like to count it as a first word, but then again I wouldn’t let Tony count “dadadada” as her first word a few weeks ago because we couldn’t be sure it was in context and not just a sound, so I think I have to wait for more definite verification!

And her sleeping remains good, she is usually exhausted by just after 6pm and will go down without fuss and sleep until about 5.50am (yes, it usually is that precise!) Lilly and Isla are still in seperate rooms – ie Isla is still in with us – but hopefully we can think about moving them back in together in a little while as they are both – touch wood – sleeping well these days.

Oh, and Isla has had her first pair of shoes. However, all she wants to do is eat them, and if they stay on her feet more than five seconds I am lucky! I’ve pretty much given up on them now, to be honest… seem to spend most of the time carrying them around in the changing bag!

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Has it really been so long?

Goodness, me! Lilly is now coming up to eight months old and this is my first post since she was born… (bad, bad blogger!)

Having a baby is certainly a full time job, and somehow you just don’t seem to have the time on your hands you did when you were pregnant – funny that!

Lilly is now a very bouncing happy little girl of seven and a half months. She smiles, laughs, sits, stands (with help), eats dinners in her highchair, rolls front and back and loves playing peekabo! We aren’t quite at the crawling stage but i don’t think she is far off. We are preparing ourselves for baby proofing the house and spending a fair bit of time chasing round after her.

All the baby cliches are totally true… they aren’t newborns for long (only about a month!), and they do, literally, change week by week. They are exhausting, but they are the most rewarding thing you’ll ever do. Our lives are unrecognisable from what they were, but we wouldn’t swap it for anything in the world.

I am posting this thanks to our new laptop which enables me to spend some time on the internet while Lilly is asleep, so who knows, i may even post on here a little bit more regularly again. Not making too many promises though…

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