CHARLOTTE-ISMs

The Baby Bible claims 2-year old toddler's should be able to say around 20 words, and early talkers don't put three-word sentences together and count to 10 until around 24-months. Charlotte had 50-words at 11-months, and has been counting to 10 since she was 14 months. Hmmm...

 

Now we know she's not unique - we have friends with equally talkative and bright children. But right now I'm trying to remember and savour this brilliant time where we're having full-on conversations, but she gets things just a little bit wrong which makes me smile. The innocence of trying. And I don't always correct her, because it's so cute how she gets things nearly right, and she gets so much right I want to cling on to the rare baby-ish bit of her just a while longer.

 

Here are a few of my favourite Charlotte-isms:
 

• "See soon, later" (when she says Goodbye)
• "'Ow 'bowwwt" (trans. "how about"... to pretty much everything - choosing a book, choice of CD in the car, what to have for tea, when we're going round the supermarket)
• "Oh No - his milk fell over" (when her baby brother brings up a bit of milk)
• "It's MINDS" (mine - claiming possession of most things these days)
• "Mummy Sofie, Mummy Kobi" (talking about her friends' Mum's)
• "Cue-bunger" (cucumber)
• "Beeeeeeez" (instead of Buzzz for a Bee)

The only thing that worries me... is that it's another year and a half until she goes to pre-school!

SIX WEEKS/20.5 MONTHS

Getting loads of proper smiles now :)

So I haven't given up breastfeeding after all :) Was so close last week, but pushed on through and each day things seem to be getting a little better.

I've had great support from the local hospital's breastfeeding 'guru' - she's been very encouraging, checking I'm doing everything right and not having a go at me for introducing the bottle or the odd bit of formula. The suggestion from her is that James is simply a hungry baby that needs feeding a bit more than we were used to with Charlotte. So that means top ups, or more frequent feeds - the latter of which isn't conducive to also looking after a 20-month old toddler.

So at the moment - I'm feeding James myself when he's awake enough and we've got the time, otherwise it's a bottle of expressed milk (or formula if we've not got enough), with top-ups from the bottle if he doesn't seem satisfied despite coming off the breast.

So a mish-mash of everything, which is hard work, but should get easier the more he's simply taking from the breast. And if he's full and winded, we have one very chilled out boy. In fact that's how both the bf woman and the health visitor described him - "chilled". Rather different to the "strong personality" we often heard to describe his sister!

Talking of her - she's having horrendous nights because of her constant cough once again. She's on another course of antibiotics after the doctor said she's got a lingering chest infection. But she seems happy enough in between coughing fits. 

Despite her rough nights, she's now sleeping in her 'big girl bed'. She kept ending up in it after cuddles to ease her cough anyway, so we thought we might as well try the full night. Unfortunately we've had one falling out incident, thanks to an ill-fitting bed guard (now rectified) - which ended up waking her up to the point of her thinking it was playtime, so ended up back in her cot. 

And I can hardly believe her speech can have improved even more week by week - but the full sentences she now comes out with astounds me. "Look Mummy - it's a breadstick", "Look Grandad, my jeans fell down!". The talking of a 3-year old if the experts and books are to be believed.

Lastly, for this post, we're trying to establish a bit of routine with James already - otherwise we have no idea where we're at. So we've started with bedtime. Bath, massage, feed, story, bed, starting at 6pm - just as we did with Charlotte from a similar age - and so far it seems to be working.

He definitely gets his longest sleep when he's gone down (usually between 7.30-8pm), and up for feeds roughly every 3-4 hours after that (usually around 11-30pm, 2am, and then anything between 0430 and 6am). But it's proving trickier in the day as he doesn't follow very much of a pattern from which to take his lead - other than alternating one very awake day and one very sleepy day. So any kind of napping schedule will have to wait, and I'm just feeding him when he's hungry or every 3-4 hours if it's not so obvious.

Oh, go on then - another picture of my smiley 6-week old:

BOOK WORM

Hurrah - for the first time in ages I've actually managed to read Charlotte a bedtime story that wasn't either The Gruffalo, Gruffalo's Child, Room on the Broom or The Snail and the Whale. Alright - it was still a Julia Donaldson (Stick Man) - but every minor breakthrough....

The thing is, she can finish off nearly every sentence of any book we've read more than 3 or 4 times now - so she demands certain books ALL the time (the aforementioned, Ugly Duckling, Three Billy Goats Gruff and A Squash and a Squeeze are among the favourites). Hoping that the veritable library of books she got for Christmas might give us a bit more variety - but think that might be wishful thinking!

Not surprisingly perhaps with all the book-reading that goes on in our house, her speech continues to astound and amaze us. Forget the "expert" books that say early talkers will start creating three word sentences from ages 24-36 months... try 18 months! And loving hearing her starting to really sing along with nursery rhymes and other songs (e.g. all the songs of the various In The Night Garden characters) :)

Charlotte was an angel on Christmas Day - playing dutifully with every present for a little while, which made ALL the grandparents (and great-grandparent) that were at ours for the day very happy. 

C's even been sleeping much better the last couple of weeks (except for suddenly needing to be rocked every nap time - but I'm just grateful she's still having a decent nap time even if it takes a little encouragement, because at one stage she looked like giving it up entirely). 

As for Number Two - just three weeks to go... and I'm measuring big. So fully expecting it to be a boy. Feeling very heavy and slow now - so won't be entirely surprised if he/she is early. To honest, I'd be quite happy with that to put an end to the worry about how I'm going to cope with two - I just want to get on with it now...

TV... YOU CAN COUNT ON IT

Is it normal for a 16 month old to nearly be able to count to ten? Charlotte's latest party trick is (usually while looking at the numbers up the side of her bottle at bedtime) "two, see, sore, ive, six, eight, nine, TEN" said with a massive grin and an "aren't I clever" look! One and seven are usually sadly lacking!

For a while she's wandered up to the TV when the weather or Sky Sports News has been on and pointed at numbers - usually 2, 3 or 8 - and said them. But now she's nearly there with reciting 1-10 at various points through the day. She's been obsessed with her little number/picture books since she could sit up and hold a book, so I guess it's all come from there.

And now one of her favourite TV shows is Numtums. It's only 5 minutes long and she'll happily sit transfixed. I'm loathe to say "one of her favourite TV shows" because I'm afraid the honest truth is she does end up watching a bit more than I'd like some days. Her bedtime routine has always started with half an hour of TV before bath - usually a combination of Abney and Teal, Waybuloo, Peppa Pig and/or In The Night Garden.

Charlie and Lola and the more recent 74 Zoo Lane really haven't caught her attention - so thank goodness for Sky Plus! But by far and away her favourite show of the moment is Raa Raa The Noisy Lion. It doesn't matter how grumpy she is, it always cheers her up. She's even started to sing along to the theme tune and knows most of the characters' names (as she also does with Night Garden). The best thing is that you can download podcasts of it from the CBeebies website, so car journeys are also less fraught when she's fed up of her Children's Songs CD.

But the point is we (almost) always watch the shows together, so we're interacting, talking about what she can see etc. Rather than using it as a babysitter. And I'm still definitely reading to her more each day than she watches TV. Given that she has a vocabulary of way more than 50 words, I can only assume the TV that she does watch is complimenting the reading.

Oh, and her sleeping is still rubbish and after another spell of hunger strike her feeding's picking up slowly again - but the less said about all that the better.

I PUT SOME NEW SHOES ON (and suddenly everything is right)

Reading back over my last post, I can't believe Baby Number Two has become something of a footnote - and the fact that Charlotte took her first steps got just a glancing mention. This post is going to be much more celebratory and positive of my 15-month old's achievements this past week!

We've been on holiday in Sussex for the last week - house-sitting at my parents' - and within a day Charlotte's walking literally just took off. She's tottering everywhere now, albeit with the odd tumble that doesn't phase her at all, so we bought her first pair of shoes.

During our week away, we took in a brilliant kids' farm and the Sea Life Centre in Brighton - both of which she genuinely seemed to enjoy for at least the first hour or so.

There was also the obligatory parks and swimming. I'm not sure who enjoyed the week more - Charlotte or her Daddy! And in our quest to get her to eat more than easy-to-eat baby/toddler meals, she even ate a few chips:

Charlotte's speech is continuing to come along at great pace still, too. She's now putting a couple of words together. As we left the house to try a new playgroup this morning she said: "Bye bye Daddy, see soon"! And everything is "hello" or "bye bye" - "hello bear, hello door, hello car", "bye bye book, bye bye cow, bye bye park!"

11 MONTHS OLD

The last month's all been a bit higgeldy-piggedly as we've been moving house (again!). Not surprisingly, Charlotte's been a little unsettled - more clingy than usual, crying when one of us leaves a room, and wanting her dummy more. But she's been much more like her old self today - and only had her dummy for sleeping (Long naps today of 50 mins and more than an hour!).

Despite having had three homes in her first 11 months, it's the first time - aside from being at her grandparents' - that she's had a garden. She really didn't like the grass at first when we practised her walking, but was fine after a couple of days. Here's Charlotte enjoying the sun:

Her speech and communication continues to astound us. She's such a mimic - trying to copy lots of words we say, and although they don't really sound much like the actual word we can hear she's really trying. She can point to her head, hair, eyes, nose, mouth, tongue (she loves that one!), tummy, hands, feet and toes - and can do animal noises (or approximations of!) for a cow, duck, pig, sheep and - her favourite - monkey!

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But the little monkey still seems to have a mental block when it comes to 'Mummy'.... I'm still 'Dad-deeee' - and her Daddy gets the best receptions every time!!

BUBBLES, BALLS AND BUMBLE BEES

Sat having dinner the other evening, myself and my OH worked out that Charlotte now recognises and responds to about FIFTY words! How the hell did that happen? Is that normal for 10 months?

She can point out the animals - from Bumble Bee to Octopus in her books, she knows what 'more', 'up' and 'high' mean among many others, and she does hand actions for things like 'star' and 'spider'. She's been saying Daddy (to most people), bubbles and ball for quite a while now, but it's the responding with actions or pointing to items that seems to be advancing at quite a pace. And she can do a rough attempt at about half a dozen animal noises. Brilliant!

Walking with support is also improving every day - and she's usually much happier up on two feet these days than sat down. Crawling still looks like it's going to pass her by. Interestingly - she'll happily sit for ages if she's got a few books to occupy her - in particular the That's Not My... series which are excellent.

(TOO) CLEVER (FOR HER OWN GOOD) MONKEY

Be warned - this post may well come across as a bit "isn't my daughter just the most wonderful, clever, bright little thing"...!

But Charlotte has been amazing me this week with quite how much an eight and a half month old can understand. If I put out a selection of half a dozen of her soft toys and ask her "Where's dog?" or "Where's Pennguin" or whichever random stuffed animal, nine times out of ten she'll pick the right one up.

And if I then say "Kiss dog/penguin/lion/Daddy/Mummy" she'll give the aforementioned a special Charlotte kiss - mouth wide open and placed over its face til it's all wet. I know she's been able to follow simple commands for a while because we do "kick, kick, kick", "splash" and "hold on" etc at her swimming lessons, but it's astounded me how much she's also picked up at home.

Her babbling contiunes to delight me, even if most of it is still 'dadada', 'bababa' and what sounds like 'baden-baden-baden'. And when I took her to a free Rhythm Time session this afternoon, the teachers were a bit taken back by how well she was joining in, playing with the instruments and reacting to what was going on.

So it seems any fears I had over her lack of daytime sleep affecting her development have been pretty much allayed.

BABBLING BABY

I got a bit of a lie-in this morning while my OH gave Charlotte her breakfast. As I awoke, all I could hear was "Dadadadada" - in varying pitches and intonations. Out of nowhere, Charlotte has properly started babbling away.

The "Dadadadadada" did not stop all day - not that I wanted it to! It's such a lovely sound. Occasionally it would be interspersed with the odd "Rarara" or "Bababa", what sounds a bit like "Yeah", and the old favourite "ahhh boo". But there was no mistaking her new skill that she spent the day practising. "Dadadadada" all day long!

It co-incided with a busy day of me throwing myself into all the local baby groups - NCT Bumps and Babes in the morning, and - ironically - Baby Babble in the afternoon. As I'm new to the area it's the best way to meet other Mums, and Charlotte also seems to thrive among other people.

We've also started another baby swimming group after the success of last term in London. Unfortunately there's only one other baby in the class, and she's a second time Mum, so there's not all the comparing notes in the changing rooms that we had last time, but Charlotte loves it in the water and it's good fun for both of us nonetheless.