Growings up to do.

Emily and I went to visit the Feakins twins yesterday, as their dad Paul is also off on Thursday. It was a nice dads / babies afternoon. However, whenever you're with other children of a similar age to your own, you always end up comparing "feats".

For instance, when it comes to eating, Emily will attempt to cram everything in her hand into her mouth. She hasn't grasped the concept of ripping toast, etc. with her teeth and having a second bite. The twins however, were sitting quite nicely with a WHOLE rice cracker in one hand a sippy cup in t'other. Emily will drink from the sippy cup if you hold it to her mouth. Although, today was the first time (I've seen) that she took the cup, held it herself and drank while I just sat and watched.

Paul was also telling me - and I got to see - the twins feed themselves WITH SPOONS! Emily's able to self-wean to a degree, but again she crams in her mouth, etc. and if we give her a spoon ... well, we don't anymore. Put it that way.

Having reported these marvels to Sue, I was told we need to train Emily better. The self-weaning is coming along, as is the teethbrushing (we do it, but at least she lets us). We just have to be as vigilant with drinking, and biting off food, and holding spoons as we are with trying to get her to stand, crawl and wave buh-bye.

Getting to grips with things

I guess this early on in a child's development, everything is a major achievement. Still, it doesn't cease to amaze easily-amazed parents.

This week's amazing achievement from Emily is that she's started to grip things with her little fists of fury, focus on them, and them ram them into her gob. At this point, she grimaces and takes them out again... whether it be her book of colours or Mousey.

The miracle of this is that about a week ago, she'd only grip things if you forced her fist open, stuffed the object in her fist and then closed her fingers around the object.

I now hold out much hope of her lifting an X-box 360 controller very soon and trouncing me at just about every game we play together.