10 (or so) things at 7 months.

Last week, my friend Rose posted this on her blog: 10 things at 10 months, and I really enjoyed reading it. I loved the way it marked a moment in time, filled with tiny details that will be forgotten as soon as the next baby 'stage' arrives, which will be soon, no doubt. She had borrowed this format from another blog she enjoys reading and apologised in advance for the plagiarism. I'll do the same. Rose, sorry for copying you but hey, what are friends for if you can't borrow a little from each other?

so here goes,

10 things that make my heart burst:

#1: your hair. You emerged the proud son of your ginger Daddy. I loved it then and I love it even more now. It keeps growing, showing hints of curls and in the sunlight, your beautiful soft mop of hair is as bright as a red ball of fire. It's stunning.

#2: your skin: it is perfect and as soft as velvet. When you are nursing, the little palms of your hands caress my arm and it feels like being touched by a cloud.

#3: your gummy smile: at 7 1/2 months, still no sign of teeth. We're not complaining and for now, we can keep enjoying your adorable gummy smile knowing that your face will change dramatically once little teeth start popping out.

#4: your easy-going temperament: you rarely cry, especially when we are out and about. Instead, you observe and listen intently, your face focused and your big dark eyes shining bright.

#5: you are an explorer: from the moment you started rolling, you haven't stopped moving. In just a few weeks, you have taught yourself to crawl, sit, spin and climb. Your unfaltering determination amazes me.

#6: the way you roll over as soon as we put you in your cot. You never sleep on your back anymore, preferring your side or your stomach. Sometimes, you just need a little pat on the back to tip you over the edge of slumber. It's adorable.

#7: hearing you chat to yourself when you wake up from a good nap, practicing all your little sounds while you roll around in bed a little longer.

#8: every single part of your body: I could just write this post about your big round eyes, your long eyelashes, your button nose, soft cheeks and delicate mouth, your chubby thighs, your pudgy little feet, your soft little butt cheeks, the beauty mark on your arm...

#9: watching you eat. You are becoming surprisingly agile with your fingers. That pincer grip isn't far off. I love watching you decide what you will eat, chewing loudly with your mouth open. It makes you look like a funny little man who wasn't taught his manners. We've got plenty of time for that so just keep enjoying yourself for now.

#10: your laugh. Nothing makes my heart burst quite like your laugh. It feels like an explosion of thousands of tiny crystals into the air. There is nothing I wouldn't do to hear that sound.

And just one more for the road,

#11: even though it's against all the stupid rules about everything, I love it when you fall asleep while nursing. It's one of the most peaceful and precious experiences I have ever had to hold you and nurture you until your body surrenders completely. It won't last much longer and that makes me a little sad.

10 (or less) things that test my patience:

#1: self-settling isn't your thing and sometimes it's really REALLY hard to get you to sleep. If you don't fall asleep when I feed you, then I basically have nothing left up my sleeve...

#2: since you've started rolling and crawling, changing your nappy has turned into a competitive sport.

#3: quite often, you get distracted while nursing and with jaws firmly clenched down, you throw your head back to see where the noise came from. This 180 degrees trick makes me look like a centrefold... in National Geographic.

#4: your little nails grow quickly and you scratch a lot. It hurts, especially when you do it inside my mouth or up my nose...

#5: you pull my hair. Actually, you grab my hair with both hands and use your grip to pull yourself up, just like a rock-climber would.

#6: sometimes it's scary to see where you adventurous spirit leads you but don't let that worry you. You keep doing what you do and I'll keep you away from too much danger... or stick you in a playpen!

That will do. I don't feel like wracking my brain for things I don't enjoy and am lucky at the moment to be rested enough to be able to focus on the positives.

:)

7 months: Hugo is on the move.

I can barely remember what happened this month and that's probably because half of it was spent in a jet-lagged daze, following our flight home. The second half seems to have been spent keeping an eye on Hugo as he starts to explore every corner of the living room. He doesn't seem to have realised that he could go past the abstract boundaries of that room and we're not telling him. So for now, his explorations remain confined to an area where table and chair legs abound and suffice.

I think that the month also went quickly because so much is happening in Hugo's expanding world. He is eating (a bit) and moving, moving, moving. It's a wonderful and slightly frightening thing to watch. Here comes the baby-proofing, the dead bugs and dirty leaves in the mouth and extracting him from under furniture. On the bright side, he is able to entertain himself for longer periods (minutes, not hours) by chewing on something or other, climbing over obstacles or licking the table legs. Sometimes, I can even write an email while he is awake... The times they are a'changing.

In no particular order, here are a few things that happened.

 

We flew home from TX, with a quick sunrise stopover in Brisbane.

Hugo graduated to facing forward in the car, liberating some much needed leg room for the front passenger. We've been waiting for this for a long time!

Hugo has begun a culinary journey that will last a lifetime. With a combination of purees and 'family foods', he has already tried quite a variety of things, from asparagus to fish, cheese and ham, toast with avocado, chicken, banana, yoghurt and more... It's a mess but it's a fun and fascinating mess.

As mentioned earlier, Hugo has been exploring and experimenting with his own mobility. These photos  only show a few of his moves but I'll just say that his speed and technique leave us quite impressed with how quickly he is working things out. At the moment, he is perfecting a sort of crawl type motion best described as 'the caterpillar'. It's surprisingly effective!

In typical Australian fashion, the weather seems to have skipped a whole season and gone straight from what was an impossibly mild winter to what might suggest a sticky hot summer. In Newcastle, that means heading to the beach and the park to roll around, eat handfuls of sand, scratch dirt and pull grass out. As long as we can find some shade, this should be a fun summer. 

We've also started a post-postnatal yoga Mother's group. A few of us struck up a friendship going to yoga with our babies but as they get older, we find ourselves doing less and less yoga and ultimately, deserting the group, opting for baby-free yoga sessions while our husbandslook after the babies. Unfortunately, that meant we were missing out on the coffee afterwards. So anyway, now we have a regular catch-up to look forward to each week. 

On a general note, both Chris and I are loving this stage with Hugo. He continues to delight us with his sunny and cheerful demeanour. His pattern has changed and he is now awake for blocks of three hours and taking longer naps. The days are long but have a much nicer pace to them. At least, I don't feel like I am constantly getting him ready for the next nap, which I really struggled with. We've been working a little more actively on his night-time routine, trying to find a pattern which allows us to get some rest. It's going quite well so I would say that spirits are up in our house at the moment which is just how we like it. This photo makes my heart burst a little. 

And finally, he is becoming aware of the existence of other people in the world... oh wait... Maybe not.

Working mum

It's Tuesday morning and my week-end begins. Kind of... I spent a large part of the week-end working while Chris spent a large part of his week-end taking care of Hugo. These days, I consider the traditional week-end to be my working, or should I say my 'earning' week and as a result, Chris and I don't get much leisure time to share but it is all for the greater good, we suppose.

Someone else might have done it differently, squeezing little bits of work throughout the days, while the baby naps, or in the evenings. I have tried and found it very challenging. Hugo is too unpredictable to plan work time into days and as for the evenings, our nights are still too messy to have any energy, let alone brain power left by the time the sun sets.

Trying to get all my work done over the week-end takes the pressure off during the week. The pressure to be alert all the time and the pressure on Hugo to be convenient. Some days, he is and some days, he isn't. That's just the way it is and I can cope with that if I am not trying to write an article at the same time.

So as I worked solidly over the week-end, Chris was on his feet, taking Hugo on long walks, putting him to sleep, playing with him on the mat, changing and dressing him etc etc...

By the end of the week-end, Chris looked more exhausted than he did on Friday night, I had computer eyes and we hadn't spent much time together at all but in some ways, we were both happy. I enjoy my work and being able to do it, even if it isn't as straightforward as it once was and judging by the giggling, the cooing and kisses, Chris relishes these one-on-one times with his son too.

The only thing missing in all of this is a bit of 'us' time and we'll make it come back. It looks like we'll have to start going on 'date nights' which we can only hope would be less corny than it sounds... 

6 months! A turning point.

6 months family portrait... sans Daddy :(

Granny Love filling in for Daddy.

Well, here we go again. Another month of parenthood under our belts. This time feels a little special though. 6 months! Half a year. I can hardly believe it.

It might seem like an arbitrary landmark but Hugo's developments over the last few weeks definitely usher in the sense that the next 6 months will be very different to the last. If the first 6 months were an extension of pregnancy, his little body intrinsically linked to mine for his nourishment and mobility, then the next 6 will be all about developing his own physical independence. By the end of his first year, he will not be needing me in the same intense way he does now and as we celebrate half a year gone by, this is the transition we begin - with both sadness and joy.

Most of Hugo's 6th month was spent in the hot and dry end of the Texan summer. With Chris holding the fort in Newcastle, Hugo and I embarked on our first overseas trip together. The 15 hours in the air went reasonably smoothly with at least Hugo getting a fair bit of sleep. I didn't and landed feeling like a happy zombie.

Hugo enjoying the Qantas Lounge, literally.

Marc had arrived the previous day from his holiday in Nice to spend a week with us in TX, and with my Mum and Lolo on holidays as well, there were definitely plenty of hands on deck to look after Hugo while Mummy caught up on some precious zzz.

A full nest.

Marc, Hugo and his Marsupilami.

Interestingly, our easiest nights here happened when Hugo was still jet-lagged, thanks to a combination of exhaustion and co-sleeping - which I haven't felt comfortable doing before or especially since those first few days.

Paul arrived the next day to hang out with us for a few days. Crazily enough, I hadn't seen either of my brothers for 2 1/2 years but it felt that no time had passed, except for the small detail that I have a baby now.

We basically played in the pool by day, taking go-pro selfies and pushing Hugo around in his floating palace, and caught up on each other's adventures in the far corners of the world by night.

The floating palace.

In addition to his uncles, Hugo basked in the glory of his grandparents love and affection. Every morning, Laurent (sometimes joined by my mum) knocked on our door at the crack of dawn to take care of Hugo while I caught up on some elusive sleep. Safely buckled into his stroller, they went walking around the neighbourhood until mid-morning, when they came home and jumped into the pool for a refreshing dip in the hope of tiring him out before his next nap.

After a few days with Paul and a week with Marc, Paul went back to grizzly Seattle and Marc jetted off to sunny LA where he is hoping to find some work.

Luckily though, they didn't leave until we did this:

Marc's brilliant idea of re-creating an old time photo.

What followed my brother's departure is a blur of shopping, late afternoon swimming, agitated nights and long morning sleep-ins, lots of fun at the dinner table, a bit of TV watching in the evenings, a few attempts to do cultural things (although mostly limited to the museum's gift shops) and the heat!

A couple weeks into our stay, Hugo was the guest of honour at his first formal event. My mum's friend Paula hosted a "sip & see" as an opportunity for my mum's friends to meet us and for me to meet them. It was a lovely gesture and occasion, and a long awaited chance to put names to faces.

Trying to fit our activities amongst Hugo's naptimes was OK. It just meant that we had to move fast and efficiently. Once in a while, he was pushed a little past his limits but overall, Hugo maintained his calm and sunny demeanour through most of our expeditions. We also managed to satiate my burger cravings for one lunch by going to a place where the food and decor (pronounced Day-cor) were as gloriously American as it gets.

Hugo chose this time to start experimenting with his own mobility. Months of tummy time have paid off since one day Hugo managed to roll from his back to his stomach. The next day, he figured out the reverse and hasn't looked back since. He now swivels around on his tummy and pulls himself forward towards anything he might be able to chew on. His new abilities have also given him a chance to experiment with sleeping positions and now, he rarely sleeps on his back, opting for his side or tummy instead. I am not complaining because his naps have gotten longer and we have even started taking encouraging steps towards self-settling.

With only a few days left before heading off again, we are busy trying to do all the last little things we had said we would although somehow, we always seem to end up at Gap instead, filling imaginary suitcases we can only hope will be big enough. We marvel at how quickly Hugo has changed in the space of only 3 weeks and wonder if his proud Daddy will be as amazed with the changes as we are. And of course, we keep trying to soak it all in, making the most of every moment we still have, until next time. Everything always goes too fast and I mean that about the last 3 weeks as much as the last 6 months...