Out of respect for Eilidh, I have not updated the blog for a couple of weeks. If you have been directed here to read my tribute to Eilidh please click here, click on her name in the tag cloud or search for her in the Search bar both of which can be found in the right hand column.
We had a shock today, as our first born has reached the tender age of 18 weeks! We had somehow managed to mislay a couple of weeks and were working on the fact that she was approaching 16 or 17 weeks (we weren’t quite sure) but Friday marks the end of the 18th week since we became parents and as you can see from the photos below Éowyn’s development is still speeding along. It seems that you only have to leave her for five minutes and she is doing something new at the moment. She takes after her father in many ways, not all of them good, but one of the better ways is her love of laughing. She finds delight in most things, mainly her dad doing stupid things, making stupid noises and tickling her belly. It is without doubt the best noise in the world, it takes away all the world’s worries.
She also takes after her father in her new major achievement. She has been able to roll onto her belly now for many weeks, and she has been getting herself into the crawl stance for the last couple of weeks, but has not managed the next stage. Then last Saturday (14th February) she crawled for the first time! Not very far, half a body length or so, and not very quickly, but nonetheless she crawled. Only it was in reverse. Yes she went backwards backing away from the toy she was trying to reach but it was movement! Apparently I only ever learnt to crawl backwards before taking to two legs, it explains a lot. It reminds me of the Goofus bird of North American lumberjack tales, that only flies backwards, so that is can see where it has been! This is an extension of her recent trick of rolling on to her belly and then rotating her lower body round in a circle such that she is 180° to how you left her. So in her cot, she sleeps with her feet to the foot of the cot, but if she wakes and gets bored, she will kick the covers off, roll on to her belly and then rotate her body round, pivoting around her head and shoulders (see photos below). You have to be careful where you leave her now!
She is also currently fascinated by food. (yes, like her dad!) She loves to watch you eat. I think she is trying to work out why the thing that you have put into your mouth does come back out again. Anything that is within reach is currently forced into her mouth and chewed. Today, she tried to grab my coconut macaroon, it is a good job she is my daughter, many a person hasn’t lived to tell the tale of stealing a man’s macaroon! This is why we had to calculate how old she was. We were thinking that she had not yet reached her 4 month mark and hence no solids, but as she is passed that mark, we aim to introduce her to baby rice on Saturday. The current NHS guidelines say that you should not give a baby solids before they are 6 months old, but I think that tens of thousands of years of humans introducing solids to babies when they start showing an interest in food hasn’t done us much harm as a species… and she is a Bagnall!
Enjoy the photos below, there are some new ones on the Flickr site too.
Peace and Love
Baggie!
