SWINGS AND ROUNDABOUTS

Well actually just swings. Charlotte had her first go in a swing on a beautiful sunny day this weekend, and she seemed to love it. Kicking her legs in excitement and making lovely noises.

Thankfully this park is very close to the new house we'll (hopefully) be moving into in the next few months, and there's another one not too far away either. So I can see us spending many an hour on the swings - and slides, roundabouts and see-saws in the coming years.

Charlotte will be eight months old at the end of the week - and finally we've seen the first tooth emerging. Or rather my OH felt it the other morning as she bit his finger. And today I can see the little white ridge pushing through the gum. She's been incredibly good so far - a tiny bit grouchy in the day, and one wake up on our one night out in ages when her Grandma was babysitting on Friday night, but so far we seem to be very lucky. 

I am expecting a couple of rough nights sometime this week as it pokes through further, but there are none of the usual signs that go with teething - her cheeks are no redder, she's not really drooling much more, and she's always got stuff in her mouth so that's not much different to usual. She just seems to be a little bit off her milk. Perhaps we'll be one of the very lucky few... or perhaps I'll be eating my words by tomorrow!

ACTIVE MONKEY

It's been a busy week for Charlotte. On Monday she totally surprised us by lifting her head and shoulders while on her tummy. It came totally out of nowhere, given that for the past three and a half months she's hated being on her tummy for any more than about 30 seconds. I just rolled her over to do up a dress and she was up, looking around, happy as anything for a good few minutes.

So she's been practising that all week - and we tried her in her door bouncer for the first time, too. She took to it straight away, seemed to really enjoy it - kicking her legs in a walking type motion and spinning round. I think she's still a bit too light to actually bounce yet, but it bodes well that she tried to use her legs to walk.

Shouldn't be too long before she's heavy enough to bounce properly - her latest weigh-in with the Health Visitor was a success. A nice healthy 5.5kg (12.1lb) - a steady gain of 500g in three weeks, heading further towards the 25th percentile and away from the 9th. The only change we've really made to her feeding has come in the last week when we've introduced a formula feed before bed. Not necessarily to 'tank her up' - but because she's so exhausted by 6.30 (I don't need to remind regular readers of her poor daytime naps/sleeping), she just keeps falling asleep on the breast before getting a decent feed. She falls asleep less easily on the bottle, and I'm happy to start introducing formula just once a day at this stage. In fact on Tuesday night she slept right through from 7.30pm - 6.50 am, so something must be working.1

And if all that wasn't progress enough, she had her first swimming lesson on Wednesday too. She was absolutely fantastic. Not a single grizzle, even though she was tired, and seemed quite at home in the water on her front and back. We're doing Aquatots lessons, and I really enjoyed it and enjoyed meeting some more new Mums as well. No photos, as with the sad state of society we're forbidden from taking pictures of our own children in a swimming pool, so I'll just have to wait until we're on holiday.