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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I’m back completely in the swing of things at work, and on the two afternoons I have off a week I am trying to make sure that the girls and I are doing something nice – Storytime at the library, Messy Monsters, Soft Play, the park, or just some at home painting or cake making.
