Author: alex

For the last week or so, Lola has been transfixed by the cat-rattle that hangs from her chair. At first she would just sit there staring at it and occasionally smiling at it; then we noticed a kind of focussed twitch in her shoulders every now and then and realised she was trying to reach out to it.

It was soon obvious that this had become a top-priority mission, and every time she was put in her chair she would focus fiercely on this task until she made herself cry with tiredness and frustration. It was like watching someone trying to get to the next level of a demanding video game. Over each session you’d see some improvement, and then the coordination would falter as she tired; but each time she came back you could see a great deal of assimilation and background processing had gone on, and she’d show a significant improvement.
Today she has it mastered, and has been knocking away at the cat and her other rattle like a pro. In the evening, we put her in her gym and she applied her new skill to the various hanging toys there. She’s there as I type, gooing away to herself as she bashes away at her octopus and her whale. (Thankfully, she doesn’t have a bishop.)

She’s doing all this, I note, with her left hand (or arm, she has some work to do on accuracy); it’ll be interesting to see whether that preference holds. It’s incredible to watch — I get this big joyous swell of emotion: pride, I guess. And I have a big grin on my face. Sickening 😉

Wow — she’s coming out with some incredible noises, too; stuff I’ve never heard before. She must have impressed herself.

What a star. There has definitely never been a cleverer daughter in the history of the human race. 🙂

Lola loves her baths. She always looks fabulous as she is lowered in: extra-attentive, really aware, relaxed and happy.

Perhaps we should bathe her three times a day. Certainly, that was tempting today; she was very whingy and only really placated by her Mum.

Maybe she was tired: she didn’t really sleep last night, waking every hour. Made today pretty tough for all of us. Still, we got a few things done: I managed to find a ceiling joist to hang Lola’s cot veil from (and I only had to make half a dozen holes to find it–blooming lath-and-plaster ceilings), and Isa finished off the ribbon decorations for said veil and started on a cuddly toy project.
And we went out for groceries (and nappy liners and eye-hooks and ribbon). And we stopped for a coffee at the World. And I received and installed my new ADSL router from Demon. And we even managed to eat.

Remarkable.

We took Lola to our new GP today for her six-week checkup. We’d decided to move from our current practice, having become a little fed up with the lack of continuity — we never saw the same doctor twice. Perhaps that was our fault for not ensuring we got the same doctor whenever we arranged an appointment; anyway, our new doctor was very highly recommended by several of our friends, and a new beginning for us all seemed appropriate.

Anyway, she gave Lola a pretty thorough going-over, asking good questions of us and pointing out useful and pertinent stuff (both good traits in a GP; neither necessarily a given).

Lola is bang-on average weight for her age ([insert weight here when I remember to remind myself]) and is in the 98th centile for length at 59cm.

So there you go. And so, coincidentally, do I. ‘Night.

PS: It’s a bummer that you can’t reorganise your photostream in flickr: I uploaded our Naples pics from last year, but they appear first and interfere with Lola. As it were.

Yesterday, I celebrated the start of my final year as an under-forty. As I’d spent most of the last twelve months thinking I was already 39, this was really quite a relief.

Lola knew just what to do. She woke in the middle of the night (perhaps alerted by Isa’s groaning), took one look at the afflicted gland and set to with gusto, completely emptying it, lumps and all. Much relief all round.

One downside of having got Lola to be so good at the breast is that she now seems loathe to take a bottle; looks like we’re going to have to retrain her to be happy with either. I tried three or four times on Saturday before she finally took the bottle (though when she did, I had to refill it twice before she was satisfied). It’s really distressing when she refuses it — she gets so upset, flailing out and seeming to push the bottle away and screaming what sounds very much like “noooooo”. We think perhaps she’s just not hungry on these occasions, but was looking for the boob for comfort…

The same thing happened today when I tried to feed her while Isa was working. The first two time she went into a tantrum, but an hour and a half later she took it happily. Hey ho.

Humm…  looks like Isa may have a plugged duct. Painful lump in Rita. Let’s hope it clears easily.
kellymom.com :: Plugged Ducts and Mastitis

Well, the work we did on breastfeeding (see the earlier babysitting entry) has paid off. At that time, Isa was quite worried that she wasn’t producing enough milk and was suspecting Lola’s colick was centered around that. Well, Isa went out on a haircut job today, then popped into John Lewis on the way back; five hours later she got home with exploding boobies and expressed 225 mil of milk. An hour later and Lola is guzzling away at them, milk dribbling down her cheeks. Soon we’ll have a freezer full of the stuff; I’m already working on a plan for a breast-milk ice-cream parlour for the under-ones…

Lola’s getting so good at latching on to the boob; sometimes we think she’s playing with her new skill: on, off, on, off, on, off, on…

It’s certainly a great relief to have that sorted. Isa now has almost no pain; a bit of tenderness, but the let-down is much softer and Lola is generally much softer when suckling. There are still moments, but it’s not the non-stop gring it was.

Seven weeks old today. Does it seem longer or shorter? Both, predictably.
Tomorrow, Isa is going off to cut hair and I’ll be looking after Lola all afternoon. I’d like to go for a nice walk in the countryside; though we may have to settle for going to see the goats in Ally Pally. I fear it may rain. Isa fears Lola won’t take the bottle. Fear is bad.

Beer, on the other hand, is good. And foamy. Tonight I imbibed a pint with my work chums — that’s the first time I’ve been to the pub since Lola was born.

Lola woke Isa up every hour last night. Here’s hoping for some relief tonight.

In other news, I’m sure there was intent involved tonight as she flailed her arm repeatedly in the direction of the rattle hanging from her play gym. She bonked it five or six times, producing a rattle, while staring intently at it.

If ever you are asked to check somebody’s previously expressed breastmilk to make sure it hasn’t gone off and, when you open the bottle and apply nose, it has a slightly odd smell and, when you decant it into a clean bottle and re-apply nose, it still has a slightly odd smell: do not be tempted to taste it.

That is all.