Yelly Emily

She has a new haircut and a new attitude!

Haircuts and such

Suzi Quatro via last.fm

Sue took Em for another haircut on Monday and it's amazing how much better she looks.

Previously, Em was sporting a middle-parted "flick" that made her resemble a 70s glam rocker somewhat (the Suzie Quatro, as we called it).

Now she's had her back cleaned up a bit and her fringe is tidied up and all one length and she looks quite the toddler.

It's amazing how one little change like this can really make such a visual difference. Em's last haircuts didn't really make her appearance change this much.

Clifford the big red treat

As a treat tonight, I decided to see if I could find some YouTube fun for Emily. Mainly some Clifford the Big Red dog episodes or some In The Night Garden.
I found both.

We watched a couple of episodes of both shows and Emily was transfixed.
I don't want to her become a square-eyed boxhead, but I can imagine how cool it must have been for her to see Clifford come to life, having read his book cover to cover almost daily for the last few months.

Walking - almost there

Sue and I have really been pushing Emily to walk. Every little trip that we could carry her or let her crawl we've been pushing her to walk.

This weekend, she's actually started to show a lot of the fruits of the labour. She's started walking further and further. Previously, it would be a few zombie steps between mummy and daddy (with arms held out, zombie fashion, obviously for balance). Now, she's wandering off, oblivious to the fact that she's walking. She's also dropping down on her bum mid-walk, but then standing back up, without needing to use anything for help or balance.

They say that by 18 months children are usually walking, and given how indifferent she was we really had no hope of achieving that. However, with the progress of the last few days, I'm placing good money on the "before 18 months" scenario.

Emily's singing

I got home tonight to a neat surprise.

Emily had learned to hum along to "Baa Baa Blacksheep". It's this quiet little hum, the kind you'd do without noticing while busy doing something else.

Sue and I have subjected the poor child to music almost since the day she was born. I play her songs on my guitar and our singing actually soothes her and puts her to sleep. She's started to sing her own little nonsense tunes before, but today was the first time she's hummed anything that sounded like anything.

We've been talking about getting her a toddler's acoustic guitar, looks like she could use it now.

Emily may NOT be walking, but she knows about the black sheep!

Afternoon nap

Image via Wikipedia

Being home the last couple of days with an illness I hope isn't pig related, I've been able to see a bit more of Emily.

Part of that has involved trying to get her to stick to an afternoon nap as part of her daily routine. It's never easy to get a child to sleep, especially when they're nosy and they think they might miss something.

Yesterday and today, however, I have hit the magic bullet ... for now. At the first sign of any tiredness (yawn, glazed look, eye rubbing) I put her on our bed with a couple of her favourite board books, Clifford The Red Dog being a current fave. After a few minutes, she invariably falls asleep. She looks at her books so intensely, studying them like a doctor would study a patient, I'm not surprised she nods off.

I hope this instils in her a love of books though, and doesn't make her equate them with falling asleep.

It's just nice that she's taking her afternoon nap and not waiting until 7pm to begin her evening tiredness grizzle.

Child minding issues. Continued.

With our previous child minder out of action for a bit, we are now currently searching for new services.

Thankfully, we have a stop gap in my aunt, so we can search with a bit more leeway and not take the first child minder that comes along.

We have the first appointment tomorrow around noon with a woman who lives around the corner from us in Wallington. Bonus point here - it's on the WAY to work, not 25 minutes the other way.

I imagine we have a wonderful few weeks of interviews, reference checking and other sundry vetting ahead of us. Oh happy days.

Child minding issues

For reasons I won't be going into we've suddenly found ourselves child minderless. Having processed this information last night, I was trying to find the silver lining to the cloud. The only one really being that Sue and I might be able to source one a little closer / more convenient to my work.

I did a cursory look around NetMums last night and there seems to be a few choices out there. It's just a question of narrowing down, contacting, checking references, etc. Not something we can really do tomorrow and Friday.

Up until this point, I was happy to drive Emily in completely the wrong direction from work as we were completely happy with our child minder and didn't want to uproot Emily from what had become her routine. How fate intervenes.

Today Emily is in emergency childcare at Deutsche Bank and Sue doesn't plan on repeating the trip any time soon, as Emily is getting to the age where her attention span is short and her means of letting you know this quite vocal.

Hopefully we'll have an option surface that will afford us a bit of breathing room. Today I'm feeling all sorts of odd, as I guess it's hitting me that Emily is actually child minderless and we really have no light at the end of the tunnel yet.

Almost walking

It's the pre-milestone moments that are the most amazing. The milestone moments themselves are quite bittersweet, as you know your child can finally do something is amazing, but the build up over the previous weeks and months is no longer there. All that work - trial and error that went into the activity is now over, and all you're left with is your child being able to do something they couldn't do before.

I guess this is just natural, or else my mum and dad would call me up every day and a) be amazed I can talk and b) be amazed I didn't kill myself with them not around to look after me.

As I write this, I am currently committing to memory the last few pre-walking milestone days we have left with Emily. She's able to take a couple of steps by herself and then either teeters over or collapses. It's been a lot of work for Sue and I, as well as a lot of work for Emily, constantly being told, "c'mon Em, you can do it", like you'd say to a pet dog or trained chimp.

After this milestone, I don't really know what's next - talking? brushing her teeth by herself? eating WITH chewing?

It's a lot of fun seeing development through a child's eyes and long may it continue.