A&E again

Tess is beating her sister in one respect – number of visits to A&E. Today she clocked up her second in her 8 months. So far (touch wood) we haven’t had to take Eve.

It was Tess’ last waterbabies lesson today and Anton was changing her on the changing table at the pool as usual. He had strapped her in and just turned round to pick something up, when she managed to wriggle out of the strap and over the side, onto the tiled floor. So they spent the best part of this afternoon in A&E waiting to see a doctor. Tess was upset but apart from a few bumps and bruises didn’t seem too bad, so the visit was mainly precautionary, and the doctor confirmed that she was ok and that we just need to keep an eye on her for the next couple of days.

Happy Birthday Eve!

We can’t quite believe that Eve was 2 today. Where did the time go?

Eve and Anton both took the day off and the four of us had a bit of a day out. First we went to an indoor soft play centre for an hour or so, Eve really enjoyed climbing around, going down the slides and playing in the ball pit. Then we repeated the successful birthday lunch at Carluccio’s that we had last year. Eve had a large bowl of pasta, followed by some strawberry ice cream (which she liked, but kept complaining that it was ‘hot’). Tess didn’t do too badly either, with potatoes and chicken, and a good helping of table (see photos). Then we came home and had (more) presents and birthday cake, before Eve fell into bed exhausted and hopefully happy.

Yesterday we tried as best we could to explain that today was her birthday and it was a special day, and she did seem to understand to some extent (and could repeat back to us ‘Eve Birthday’ when we asked what day it was).  She certainly got spoilt rotten.

To celebrate her birthday week, her last two molars are partially through. We think (well, we’re hoping) that this is partly responsible for her having declined an afternoon nap for the last 3 days she has been at home (she did have a brief one at nursery on Monday). If it isn’t her teeth, then it seems like she might be thinking that she doesn’t need one any more. Which she clearly does as she is really tired and grumpy by the end of the day. On the plus side, this has co-incided with a period of Eve sleeping a bit later in the mornings – after 6am the last few days.

Tess is really hungry now

Yummy

A annual pasta date

“mummy, hot”

Eve’s birthday cake

Eve with sugar cat

Mum can I have some cake too?

Dinosaurs but no manners and Tess starts a mexican wave

Eve used to say ‘Di’ for thank you, but has recently stopped saying it. However she hasn’t replaced it with ‘thank you’, laughing at us when we ask her if she can say it. She can say ‘Allosaurus’, ‘Herrerasaurus’ and ’Tarbosaurus’ to order though, so frankly we think she is taking the mickey.

Tess is enjoying waving at the moment, at anything that moves and lots of things that don’t.  Today she crawled down out of the living room and when she reached the doorway, turned to see us in the kitchen and waved, very proud of herself! Yesterday she was sitting doing a very enthusiastic double armed wave (or maybe she was dancing), and Eve promptly sat down next to her and did it too.

Yesterday Tess got her first taste of Anton’s homemade pizza (what took us so long?!). Yummy!

Growing/Moving/Talking fast

Its been just over a week since we last posted. We haven’t done a huge amount, but we always seem to be busy. It must be the little ones keeping us on our toes.

We spent the weekend with Grandma and Grandad (or “Sammy and DadDad” as Eve likes to call them), and had a lovely time. On the Saturday we went for a nice walk along the disused railway line in the Meon Valley. Tess wore her bear suit and sat in the back carrier, while Eve walked most of the way, encouraging people to run with her. The next day the weather was not as good, but they still had a lovely time playing with different toys and Eve in particular set up a shop on the kitchen table where she sold her wares to Grandad. The fact that these had been stolen from their cupboards to start with didn’t seem to phase her!

Generally they were pretty good while we were away – Tess slept well both night and Eve slept well on one of them. It always seems very strange that they are sometimes good, and sometimes not so good.

Eve’s language skills are getting better every single day, and she is now able to copy us and just say new words. Today we had “Ketchup”, “Aunty Manda” and “Tuck me in” in the space of 2 hours this evening. One of her favourite toys at the moment is a dinosaur jigsaw with A,B,C etc written on it. She is now putting this together very well, although whether this is pattern matching or letter matching is hard to tell.

Another new word is her favourite dinosaur: Troodon.

Tess is now really moving pretty well. You leave her in a room and she will be moving towards the door to follow you by the time you get back. Becca reported that she was chasing Eve around the room today trying to get hold of a toy! She has also mastered the art of Peek-a-boo using either a blanket or a door…

Smiling and crawling

A walk in the woods with Grandma and Grandad

Tess enjoyed the walk on Mummy’s back

2 Dangerous monsters behind bars

What can I get you?

More teeth

Tess now has two teeth (the two front bottom ones), with 18 to go. In sisterly inverse symmetry, Eve has 18 teeth and 2 to go. We’re just waiting for her last two pesky molars and then she is done with teething! Hooray!

This may be a stupid thing to say but so far Tess seems to have been disturbed less by her teeth coming through than Eve was. She has been a bit grumpy, and has woken a bit earlier than usual in the mornings, but hasn’t been waking up in the night with them. So far. Famous last words and everything…

I’ve just taken Tess to be weighed and she is now 16 pounds 9 ounces, so she is continuing her assault on the percentiles. It is hardly surprising, given how much she has been eating. She gets cross if she isn’t given her food as soon as she sits at the table, and then basically keeps eating until we stop her. She can also now drink from a cup with a spout very well. Away from the kitchen table, Tess is now getting around using a commando crawl, which is getting faster and faster.

Eve is now repeating random words back to us and having fun putting words together into combinations. She can say most of the basic colour words (blue, green, red, pink, purple, black – yellow and orange sometimes), and can now count from 1 to 10 pretty reliably. She also recognises and names some letters and numbers – 5, e, m in particular. She is continuing to do some toddler boundary testing which includes some (thankfully relatively minor so far) tantrums and copying Tess when she squeals and blows raspberries (which Tess does quite  a lot – trying to be heard over the din Eve makes, I think).

We carved a pumpkin at the weekend which Eve enjoyed, but she didn’t really understand the trick or treaters coming to the door “mummy people at door” and was very scared of one costume!

Jaws II

Finally Tess has teeth! Or more accurately a tooth. One has now appeared on her bottom gum. It looks like a tooth, it feels like a tooth. Its probably a tooth.

We have had a good week, and  anice Friday off for me. Tess and I went to swimming after last week off, and had a lovely time. She always seems to enjoy herself although she does seem to get a bit grumpy after a while.

Eve shows the only safe way to use a laptop

Tess in her new bear suit

Growing fast!

Just a quick post to record Tess and my trip to the weigh-in clinic today. She tipped the scales at 15 pounds 12 ounces! A month ago she was 14 0, so this is a fairly big increase. This is very good, as she had started slipping down the percentile chart a bit. So she is now back up just below the 25 percentile, which is where she was  for the first couple of months. She is eating solid food now (and quite a bit of it, as Anton’s post yesterday said), but this is unlikely to account for the big rise, or solely account for it anyway, as she will still be getting most of her calories from milk at the moment (milk being highly calorific). Plus the big increase started before she started solid food. A mega growth spurt perhaps? Who knows!

A week away

Over the last week we have had a nice week away in Lyme Regis, and were joined for a few days by my parents, NanAnne and Grandad. We stayed in a nice flat right on the sea front and enjoyed glorious weather for pretty much the whole week. This was Eve’s second trip to Lyme Regis, but was a first trip for Tess, but they both seemed to have a great time.

We arrived on Friday, and didn’t do a great amount except get settled in. On Saturday NanAnne and Grandad were due to join us so we had a quick walk down the sea front and towards the Cobb, but didn’t get that far as Eve decided that because the weather was so warm,  she wanted a run in the sea, which became a quick dip! She managed to get completely soaked and we returned to the flat quite quickly. Later on in the day she also had her first go at rock pooling. On the Sunday we had a walk along towards the Cobb again, and a nice lunch out, and a visit to the Aquarium.

On Monday we had a trip along to a big donkey sanctuary. On Tuesday NanAnne and Grandad had to head back to Bristol and we went up to Axminster and then to Lyme Bay winery and a picnic. Wednesday we had a quiet time around Lyme Regis and Eve had another (and more planned) swim in the sea, and Tess had her first paddle in the sea, and her first taste of sand. Thursday we had a quick trip to Charmouth looking for fossils. We didn’t find any.

And then we headed home. We had a great week – Eve and Tess seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves: Eve loved the beaches (“sea”and “splosh” [when she throws a pebble in the sea] have become some of her new words) and Tess seemed to have a great time eating, of which more after the photographs…

A few steps into the water

A very soggy eve

Collecting pebbles on the beach

The family on the Cobb

All the best people wear a bucket on their head

At the Town Mill bakery, breakfast was very popular

Going for another dip

This sand is nice

…and the sea is a bit wet

Getting ready to throw some more stones

Waiting for Eve to come back!

Enjoying a few blackberries

Eve’s vocabulary keeps on increasing and we hear several new words a day (today we have had: “tucked in” and”buzz off” [from a book!]). I think that the tip away has been good.

At the risk of sounding like a gushing parent, Tess’ eating has really come on, and she is showing great enthusiasm for pretty much anything that we put in front of her. Only today she has had 3 completely new meals: porridge for breakfast, quesdillas (cheese filled tortillas) for lunch, and roasted ribs for dinner (with potatoes and carrots). While we were away, she tried pies, breakfast at the Town Mill Bakery (which they both really enjoyed – “More toast!” as Eve would say), fish pie,  pizza and crab cakes.

Even MORE food, and a rainy journey

We can’t believe how quickly Tess has got the hang of eating. We’re sure Eve took a bit longer than this. Tess is now mostly eating what we have, or parts of it, and she doesn’t seem to be phased by anything.  She is getting much more adept at getting the food into her mouth, and is now chewing and making loud swallowing noises. Her nappies provide evidence that a lot is going down! So, since our last post Tess has had macaroni cheese, veggie shepherds pie, scrambled egg on toast and yoghurt, amongst other things. She is really keen to use spoons. She is still VERY messy though…

At the weekend we met Chris and Lara (and the dogs)  for a walk at Christmas Common, followed by a pint in a very nice pub. It was a pleasant autumn afternoon. Eve and Tess were fairly well behaved, although it would have been nice if Eve had taken a few tips from Lara on how to sit down and be sociable in the pub garden. Eve just wanted to look at the stones and the dogs and the flowers and the million and one other things that caught her eye! It didn’t help that she hadn’t had a sleep after her lunch (again!).

This week we’ve been working on Eve’s early wakings, or rather, her need for someone to be with her from when she wakes up until it is time to get up. A few weeks ago we put a light on a timer in her room. We had previously been using an alarm clock but that wasn’t ideal as it would wake her up if she wasn’t already awake. With the light, she can see if it is on or not, but hopefully it won’t wake her if she is in a deep slumber. We’ve been getting her used to the idea that when the light comes on, that is time to get up. This week, when she wakes (usually around 5.30-5.45) we’ve started going in and putting her back in bed, but then leaving. She wasn’t too happy about this to start with, but the last couple of days has been much better. We’re not bothered about her sleeping in late – we’re fairly early rising people so we can hardly expect her to be otherwise, but if she would consistently sleep till 6 or 6.30, or at least play quietly in her room, we’d be really happy.

This evening, Eve and Anton came home from nursery on the bus. Buses are Eve’s latest love, she points to them and says ’town bus’ or ‘blue bus’ or ‘pink bus’. Anton reports that she really enjoyed the journey, looking out of the windows and making friends with other people on the bus. They managed to sit at the front on the top deck so had a really good view. When they got home, Eve was still very excited. Unfortunately it was pouring with rain and it is a bit of a walk to the bus stop from the nursery, so they both got really rather wet. Eve was soaked through her raincoat, top and vest, so it was straight into a warm bath – it is the first time I’ve seen Eve pull out her changing mat, spread it out on the floor and lie down to have her nappy taken off so she could get in amongst the warm bubbles.

Eve and Anton on the bus, a bit soggy

Tess vs Macaroni

Tess likes yoghurt

Eve and Lara compare drinks

On we munch…

… through courgette, plum, potato, banana, green beans, broccoli and strawberries (yum!) and sweetcorn fritters. Not bad going considering this is only day 6. The plum and strawberries have gone down particularly well. We’re also seeing plenty of evidence that things are actually being eaten, rather than just played with. Some more pictures below (of Tess eating, not the evidence. That would be nasty).

Tess had her first go in a swing on Thursday, which she seemed to enjoy. Eve certainly enjoyed it (‘Tess swing tess swing tess swing’).

Yesterday we had a lovely lunch at Auntie Lou and Uncle Dom’s house. Eve was mostly good apart from a short but loud tantrum when we stopped her eating a whole loaf of bread. She is definitely trying to use the old toddler trick of screaming loudly whenever she wants something, but so far they are fairly short as we try to stick to our guns and don’t often give in, so she knows there isn’t much point.

Nappies and the effectiveness of them are occupying us when it comes to Eve at the moment. She is holding in her wee more and more now – often going 4 or 5 hours without one. She also tends not to wee in the night. However this means that when she does go, they are massive and the nappies just don’t hold them – both our re-usable tots bots and the disposable eco pull up pants that she wears at night. So we’re getting through a lot of trousers and pyjama bottoms at the moment. We’ve had some success at sitting her on the potty at crucial moments and catching the odd one, but she is still a way off being able to tell us far enough in advance to really start trying to potty train her. We are starting to suspect that her early waking (although to be fair recently this has been nearer 6 than 5, and one day last week she slept till 7am!!!) may be due to needing a wee waking her up.

Finally, twice recently Eve hasn’t had an afternoon nap, despite being put to bed – she has just played in her room and not wanted to stay in bed. We’re hoping this isn’t the start of her dropping her nap altogether – although if it means she sleeps longer at night that would be some compensation! Tess’ sleeps are usually pretty good although she too will often skip a sleep. Normally she goes to sleep well in the evening, but will have the occassional fairly major grump. We are hoping that this shows we have learnt a bit from having Eve, but is probably just luck…

Eve in a box

Tess in a swing

Tess and Broccoli

Tess and Strawberry