ONE YEAR OLD

My little girl is one.

And to everyone that's said to me "Gosh, hasn't that gone quickly?". No, not really! There are times when I do think some of the months have sped by, but on the whole it does feel like a full year... at least!

Unfortunately Charlotte was really poorly for her birthday. She was up all the night before, and on the actual day, when she wasn't crying with a raging temperature and clearly in pain, she was cuddled into one family member or another just wanting to sleep. It was frankly heartbreaking.

We had a big BBQ with both sets of family (even my brother who came over from Australia and met his niece for the first time) and friends, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. But I could only concentrate on Charlotte and making sure she was comfortable. Thankfully my parents are always the hosts-with-the-most and took over sorting the food and drinks.

Took Charlotte to the doctors and it seems she'd had a virus, and has a chest infection for which she has anti-biotics. She's sowly getting better, but has been up every night for at least an hour crying and crying until her next dose of Nurofen kicks in - or she's too tired to fight her sleep anymore.

Sadly, we didn't get any good pictures from her first birthday, but here are a couple form when she wasn't too poorly:

having just moved into a new house, I think we're going to have to move into an even bigger one to accommodate all Charlotte's birthday presents!

NURSERY

I have so much to catch up on on my blog - not least the fact that Charlotte turned one this weekend - but I've been so busy.

Last Friday was Charlotte's first full day at Nursery. She's only going one day a week for the time being, and seemed to get on fine. In the first settling-in session where I stayed with her, she barely acknowledged I was there - far too many new toys to explore!

She was also fine in her second session - the only time she grizzled was when I went to pick her up and I think she suddenly realised I hadn't been around. She did a half day last Monday in which she had a suprisingly long nap and managed to eat some soup and banana & custard. She was apparently a bit upset when she woke up because she wasn't sure where she was, but that's totally understandable.

And Friday was fine. They give her lunch a bit earlier than I normally would, and so she doesn't get her morning nap until after lunch - so by 11am she was a bit grizzly. But it sounds like she did really well with her food and then had more than an hour's sleep. Again - she got a bit upset when I went to collect her, just as she used to when I've left her at her Grandma's if I don't go and give her a cuddle immediately.

The nursery give us a daily 'report' on how she's got on - what she's eaten, how long she's slept, what she's played with etc. -  which is really nice. 

I still have reservations about her being at nursery, but I've been given a load of freelance shifts that financially I simply can't turn down, and I can't rely on Grandparents all the time. And I know it will do her good socially. But already she's picked up a virus/chest infection (more on that in next post) - something I know will become more frequent as she mixes with more children.

But we'll give it a go for the next couple of months, and if I'm still not 100% happy then we can always take her out, try a different nursery, or I just won't work so much. We'll see how it goes.

SHE'S OFF....

At 11 months, Charlotte has finally started crawling. I was convinced she wasn't ever going to bother, and go straight to walking. But while unpacking some boxes in our new house, she made her way to her Bumbo box which had pictures of babies on the outside.

She's still a bit tentative, but can easily make it across a room... usually aiming for a DVD to pull off a shelf, a plug socket, or a cable.

But she's still much more content to sit with her books - or "bookies" as she calls them. She's a real bookworm -  sat with picture books, books with sounds, flaps or regular storybooks for hours. Tearing and chewing the pages less and less.