Imogen's first Christmas

Christmas was different this year - but then that's no surprise really! Having to grow up and "become" Santa for a start...!

The decorations around the house had to be Imogen & Buster proof, so the big tree was sidelined this year and some decorated branches put in it's place. Not quite the same, but it added a bit of festive cheer and Imogen liked the lights around the base!

Christmas Eve was the nativity service at church. I'd somehow volunteered to write and co-ordinate it this year, so was hoping all would go well. I needn't have worried - despite a few last minute panics (like Mary not turning up!), the kids were all great and the true Christmas story was told with panache (well, not quite panache, but they were cute!) Imogen was a little angel and joined in with the final song, playing the tambourine and smiling sweetly at everyone.

Christmas morning was lovely and quiet. We opened a few presents, Imogen had a nap, and then we headed up to church for the morning service. It was a lovely service with a good sized congregation, and Imogen joining in the carols - and sermon and prayers! - with her jingle bells that Santa had brought!

Later, things didn't go quite how we'd planned or hoped. By the time half of Dave's family had arrived late, we didn't sit down to eat until way past 2 o'clock, by which time Imogen was past it and ready for bed. So, both her and I missed out on Christmas lunch. It may sound like a small thing, but to us it mattered a lot - it was our first Christmas as a family and it hurts that it was marred like that.

On Boxing Day we headed up to Skipton for a few days with my family. The usual chaos ensued with Molly & Charlie encouraging Imogen's cheeky nature! More chaos on the Saturday with the big family party (about 30 this year, I think) at Mum & Dad's. It was lovely to see everyone again, and Imogen was great and didn't seem fazed by the bedlam! During the afternoon we headed up to the local for the "beard shave" - Dad's beard disappeared after 32 years, all in aid of charity. Well done Dad and hurrah!

Generally, Imogen has enjoyed Christmas - all the new toys (including Webster the Spider) and books (The Very Hungry Caterpillar - hurrah!), Daddy at home to play with, and yummy yummy mince pies!

Imogen hasn't been well since we got back home - nothing specific, a bit snotty and a slight temperature, but the accompanying "viral rash" was quite impressive. So, nights have been bad, with her waking frequently and taking up to 2 hours to calm again. Tonight's New Year's Eve, and we're taking the opportunity to get an early night!

Inappropriate things to say to a Mum!

Babies are great for wasting time, aren't they?
No, it's not wasting time. Its spending time bonding and learning about each other. You can't spend too much time with your child.

Is life back to normal yet?
Life is now a different normal. There's no way things can go back to how they were. I'm a Mum now. I have a daughter. Life has changed forever.

Babies don't fit in an adult world.
No, and so the adult world has to adapt to the baby. Adults understand change, babies don't. My baby comes first now.

She's teething
Babies are allowed to be ill, or just have an off day, without it being their teeth!

My tongues out, I'm concenrating!

You may have noticed on several of the photos of Imogen that her tongue is out - it's a frequent occurrence! Not quite sure why, but it seems to be a kind of concentration aid. She obvious concentrates a lot! She finds it very funny when you try pushing it back into her mouth, and everyone remarks about it - the doctor even told her it would get cold if she didn't put it away!

Anyway, this video shows her current mobility level - of course, aided by the tongue!

Kitchen drumming

OK, we've now managed to get a short clip of Imogen's kitchen drumming antics. She loves it!

I am the music man!

Imogen has always seemed to like music - from very early on she settled when the organ played at church, and she seems to smile and laugh when I sing to her (or maybe that's just laughing in despair at the silly songs I make up!).

I couldn't resist buying the saxaphone for her - well, Mummy and Daddy have got one, so why shouldn't she. Dave was very impressed when he gave it to her for the first time and she held it properly and put the mouthpiece in her mouth. Fluke really, but we can dream!

And then last week we called in to see Aunty Margaret & Uncle Peter and Imogen took to the piano. She was facinated when Uncle Peter was playing and then loved having a go herself. Not exactly concert pianist standard yet, but give it a few years!

She's also learning that hitting things makes a noise, and thinks that's great! I did try and take a video of her playing the kitchen "drums", but it didn't work, so you'll just have to imagine that one. Uncle Hugh should be proud!

Marmite - yuck!

I can't believe my daughter is a marmite lover! Grr!

Stupidly I bought her some marmite cheese bites, not thinking that it might lead to the real thing. I only bought them to give her a bit of a flavour (thinking she wouldn't like it 'cos neither Dave or I do - or so I thought). As it turns out she loved the cheese, and Dave decided to inform me that he likes marmite (proves you never know everything!) and that he hadn't had it for ages, so he'd buy a jar. We're now on the second jar, and Imogen loves it - the cheese bites and the real thing on toast.

Yuck, yuck, yuck!!!

Sleep

Things seem to have improved a lot on the sleep front over the last couple of weeks, which has made for a happier life for all!

We were getting to the stage of not really knowing what to do - Imogen was waking during the night and sometimes it would be 1 1/2 - 2 hours before she would settle in her cot again, and when this happens two or three times a night for several nights in a row, it's just not funny. We didn't know what the problem was - she would settle fine if she was cuddled, but as soon as we made any attempt to put her down in her cot she would wake and scream. I could cope for an hour at a time, but then would get frustrated and angry which wasn't doing either of us any good - waking Dave up to take over meant at least Imogen was kept calmish, even if I still didn't get sleep.

We couldn't go on like that, so we made a decision that Dave was going to get up to her in the night, to try to get her out of the habit of wanting milk from me every time she woke - I was finding it very difficult to settle her in any other way - and I would only get up if it was really necessary. This didn't mean a whole night's sleep for me, 'cos I still woke when she did and had to prod Dave to wake him! So that went on for a couple of nights and things were a bit calmer. We still weren't sure why she was walking in the first place, but she did seem to settle back a bit better.

The real break-through came when we were going to the boat for the weekend. We'd been using blankets at home, but decided that she'd need a gro-bag on the boat as it would be colder there. As she hadn't been in a gro-bag since camping in the summer, we put her in it for a couple of nights at home before going away - and bingo, she slept through!

Since then we've had more sleep-through nights that waking ones. They're not every night, but at least we get some decent sleep. On the theory that when you change something you have to do things for three days for it to become the norm, we reckoned that we'd have to have three sleep-throughs in a row before we could in any way hope for more. We've had several two-nights-in-a-row, but it's never got to three - until last night! Hurray!

Sleep in the day is a lot better now as well. In the morning she seems to be ready for a sleep about 1 1/2 hours after getting up - for anywhere between 1/2 and 2 hours - and then another sleep in the afternoon. It's all fairly flexible though and as long as she gets a couple of sleeps during the day, with one of them of a decent length, then she's fine - they can be in the car, in the pushchair walking Buster or in her cot as long as it's somewhere where there's not too much going on for a nosey little girl to watch!

And Imogen is so much happier when she's slept properly - when she wakes up she doesn't cry straight away, but will lie and talk to Mr Cow for a while, before giing you a lovely big grin when you come to get her. Great!

Tha Nanny Factor

Why does Nanny have some magical influence over my daughter? Imogen's on antibiotics at the moment for a chest infection, which started on Wednesday. Last week she was refusing to take it from me, so I was having to let her cry, squirt about 0.5ml into her mouth then let her suck her thumb to get her to swallow it, before repeating again and again until the full dose had gone. However, over the weekend, when Nanny was around, Imogen decided that the antibiotics were yummy and she would just suck it straight out of the syringe with a grin on her face. It didn't even have to be Nanny giving her it, she just needed to be around. And now we're home? Yes, you've guessed it - we're back to the screaming, squirting, thumb-sucking routine!

Come back Nanny!

Canal-boating

I'm writing this whilst sitting on the boat, so it's a bang-up-to-date story.

We're on the boat for the weekend, having come to see Nanny & Gramps and introduce Imogen and Buster to the joys of boating. As you can see, it's been a very wet introduction, but at least we can't be accused of mollicoddling (not sure about the spelling of that!) our child! As I once heard someone say "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing"!

Bless her, she kept smiling while the rain dripped down her face and her eyes watered from the wind. Don't worry - she had plenty of layers on under the waterproof.

On slightly different news, her crawling is developing "well" - she can now move about fairly efficiently on hands and knees, rather than hauling herself along on her belly - this latest skill has been practised a lot on the boat where she's decided the sparkly surround to the fire is a good thing to aim for. I say well, but I can see that as the hands and legs get more co-ordinated the crawling is going to become more efficient and I'm really not going to be able to keep up with her - good for her, but not so good for me! She's now also able to go from sitting to crawling, so I can't even rely on leaving her sat with a few toys - anything that's not immediately in front of her is always more attractive.

Buster seems to be quite happy with the boat as well. After being a bit cautious about getting on it when we arrived he's now a dab hand at the jumping on and off bit. The towpath is generally a good place where he can run off some energy (unless there's a road nearby of course) although a manic episode nearly ended in a splash earlier when he was running towards me and skidded on the wet ground - luckily he stopped in time!

There's no stopping her now!

OK. So she was crawling, and she was sitting, but hadn't quite linked the two together - until now! So, now we can't leave her sat in the middle of a room and expect her to be there when we return. At the moment it takes a bit of effort, but it doesn't stop her and that object at the far side of the room is always more attractive than whatever is right by her side! That object could be the vegetable rack in the corner of the kitchen, the cable that we thought we'd pushed far enough under the sideboard (ha!) or the magazine that we left by the side of the sofa. In fact, anything that's not a toy!

So now our house looks like gate city! Having three stories in the house, with the kitchen, lounge and playroom on the middle floor, we've got to have 2 gates just for the stairs on that floor. And then we decided to put another one across the landing to keep Imogen separate from Buster without constantly banishing the dog downstairs. This gate means that Buster can have the lounge, while I'm in the kitchen and Imogen's in the playroom and everyone's happy - it also stops Buster getting to Imogen's toys!

Oh the joys of a moving child!

A night out - just the two of us!

Yesterday was Dave's birthday, so having had offers of babysitters from various angles, and with Imogen being more reliable (but not totally!) in her sleep, we decided we deserved a night out. We booked a table at the restaurant in the village for 8.30, so we could be faily sure she'd be asleep, and she was - so we escaped!

Dave tried to ban me from saying "I hope she's OK" which didn't totally work - and we were home by 10.30, 'cos we were both too tired to stay out longer! But we had a lovely time and will certainly be repeating the experience again!

It's a good job we didn't go out tonight though - she's got another cold (and has had for a couple of days) and Dave's up with her at the moment trying to resettle her after a coughing fit!

Photographs

Now Imogen is 6 months old, and the number of photographs is increasing all the time, I've decided to archive the photo album here. A new one, to cover the next 6 months or so, can be seen at the left.

Indescribable antics

Some things you just can't describe, so here's a couple of short clips of Imogen's latest antics - blowing raspberries (as taught by her little friend, Ollie P) and shaking her head.

Off-road buggies

We went to Meadowhall today and whilst walking round, and waiting for me to try clothes on, Dave obviously got bored and made an observation. Of all the three-wheeler, "off-roader" buggies, ours was the only one with mud on the wheels! Is this a kiddie version of the Chelsea Tractors?

First tooth

Imogen has her first tooth! I don't believe all this "She's teething" malarkey - kids get colds and feel rotten and it doesn't have to be the teeth. But anyway, her first one is here. We've been expecting it as Dave noticed the gums were a bit white a few days ago, and then I noticed that the gum looked like it was starting to split. And this morning, there was the appearance of a sharp top of a bottom tooth. It's only just coming through, so not yet very visible, but if you put your finger in her mouth you can feel it!