The Speed of Growth

It has been a busy few weeks in the Oh Waily household. The Little Miss has been practicing her crawling and sitting, which finally became the genuine article about two weeks ago. It has been a meteoric rise from barely able to kneel, to scuttling around the house terrifying the biggest Oh Waily Boy.
This is one for her permanent record - "officially" crawling at just a smidgen before turning seven months old.

Then a couple of days ago Mr O thought he felt the arrival of her first tooth, and lo and behold there was the sharp beginnings of a pearly white tooth. With this revelation we also clear up the most recent baby mystery - what happened to her good sleep pattern?

Miss O has spent the past two weeks being "unsettled" as the baby books like to describe it. In plain language this translates to: "I'm not going to sleep now, even if I have been awake for four hours straight and have rubbed my nose and eyes to bright red beacons. I don't care. I'm going to cry and gripe and whine, but I am NOT going to sleep."

One of the alternative indicators of impending tooth arrivals is the advent of dribbling.
Yes, I know. Yet another wet and icky bodily function to deal with. Will they never end?

In Miss O's case she has chosen to be an insomniac but thankfully not a dribbler.
I say thankfully as I have seen other babies drooling with teething. It's not a pretty sight. It can be a permanent state - your baby could have a self-made waterfall for months while all 20 of the little pieces of enamel make their way into the mouth.
However, as the sleep pattern disruption continues and my eyes start to hang out on stalks in the mornings, I am starting to question whether I would trade a dribbler for an insomniac. If I have another few months of disturbed sleep and whinging baby maybe I would actually be happy to mop up buckets of dribble.

The absolute worst thing would be a combination baby - dribble and insomnia. Even longer hours of cleaning for Mum and Dad, with no sleep to aid recovery. Oh my! What a thought.

As for The Parents, Mr and Mrs Oh Waily are both currently crippled. Mr O has been for some time, of course. But this past week I had the embarrassment of joining him in the decrepit category. Imagine this...

A busy street with lots of morning traffic.
A tired, but determined new Mum attempting to take some exercise.
Running.
Well, truth to be told, shuffling. That's quite important... the shuffling.
150 metres from home, after 25 minutes of effort.
A building site, a lumpy bit of pavement.
A moment of distraction.
A shuffle.
A trip on the piece of pavement heading up and away from the shuffler.
An attempt to recover from the trip.
A foot landing just on the down side of the lumpy pavement.
A twist of an ankle, an undignified rolling collapse onto knees and bum.
An ouch.
A twisted ankle, a bruised ego and at least four onlookers to witness it all.

The morals of the story?
Keep your eye on the prize (and if you shuffle while you run - an eye on the pavement).
Packets of frozen peas are a must-have, as is a bandage to strap up such mishaps.
Oh, and of course... lift your feet when you run !

 

Lessons from the first six months

It's been a little over half a year since our family expanded to include Miss OWW, and I have been thinking about all of the lessons she has brought into my life. There are quite a few of them and I thought I would share some with you.

Every time you think you know the routine, the baby will change it.

This is a guarantee. Please don't think for one minute that you are in any way in charge of what is happening, you are merely a bystander and personal assistant. Imagine working for the most changeable boss possible and you are part way to understanding life with your new baby.

Take any and all offers of help.

Whatever you do, don't be Ms Independent or Ms I Can Cope Thanks. If people aren't breaking down your door with arms full of frozen meals and offers of house cleaning, it's time to make a list of jobs someone else could be doing for you and then assigning them to each family member or friend who comes to congratulate you on your new bundle of joy.
Once upon a time we lived in a society that was close-knit and kids were brought up in an environment that included members of the extended family. If you are lucky enough to still experience that in your family, take full advantage of it.

Learn to express milk.

This applies to those who are planning to breastfeed their little ones. Take every opportunity to bank milk in the freezer. It will allow you the flexibility to have a life that does not revolve around the feed, wake, sleep cycle of your baby. It is also pretty good value to see the joy it can give a Dad to feed their progeny. If you don't work at this one the baby will keep you at beck and call for a good number of months before you can have more than a couple hours to yourself.

Being Bewildered is Normal.

At least for part of the time you will find this to be the case. You may lose track of hours and days. Mr OWW likes to razz me about my love of lists, forms and paperwork of all types but I can truly say that there is a time and a place for these things. I would suggest that being a new Mum is one of them. I can't begin to tell you how many times I would forget the numbers of feeds Miss OWW had during the day or how long she had slept. Sleep deprivation tends to play havoc with your ability to remember things from one minute to the next. Bewilderment is bound to occur.

I will post a list of my little anti-bewilderment aides shortly, should you wish to avail yourself of ready-made solutions.

In the meantime, if you have any lessons to share please leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you.

The Garden of Eden

and Other Criminal Delights is a compilation of short stories by Faye Kellerman.

This has been my reading for the past week. It has been a very successful choice because the stories are short and the writing is engaging.

For the most part the prose is all easy reading and the story lines are nice little vignettes. There is one truly dark and disturbing tale called Bonding about pseudo-incest and murder, but this is balanced out by the humourous and dark story Mummy and Jack and the tongue-in-cheek take on corporate shenanigans in Holy Water. While the personal tale Free Parking shows the quirks of family life, as seen in the Kellerman household.

This is the first book by Faye Kellerman that I have read and I will now seek out her series featuring Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus to see if the writing style still appeals in the longer form of her work.

If you are looking for a light summertime read, then this could be your book. It is about the darker side of humans, but there is plenty of good in the stories to balance this out. I would recommend putting this on your shopping list for your next trip to the library.


My Rating: 3 out of 5

Family Photograph Update and News

Just a quick update.

This morning while laying on her tummy on the floor our young Miss decided that she would get to her knees.
There's nothing particularly unusual about this as she has been rocking back and forth on her knees for most of this past week and had worked out how to pull her knees under her while pushing up with her hands. I' m guessing that all of this is balance training for the day she finally decides to crawl.
However, what was unusual was the fact that she kept pulling her knees up under her and pushing her hands backwards towards her knees. It took me a moment to figure out what she was doing, and then move the musical activity thingy out from behind her. Then as if by magic Miss OWW sat up.

All on her own. No assistance. Apparently intentionally.

Babies really are quite remarkable. Really.

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Photograph updates of the young Miss can be found at Flickr under the Family and Pets Set (or on the front page of my stream).
Included in this upload are photographs of what a small baby can do in a bath when allowed seated play time. It's a good thing she gets her bath in the kitchen sink, and that the floor and bench are mop-up-able. As for me, there was no "after" photograph, but if there was it would have shown a woman wearing a red top that had mysteriously become soaking wet from neck to waist. Still the Miss had fun, I got some good action photographs (courtesy of Mr OWW's assistance with watching the Miss for me), including her very first attempt at the haka. ;)

Photography Challenge: Black and White

This was the challenge that I set for myself at the end of January.
As you can tell from my February goals update post, this has been something of a fizzer.

However, I do have some older photographs that I can share on the B&W theme, so here they are:

A Portrait of Benny.

A Profile of Duke.

A Pensive Moment for Miss OWW.

Well that wasn't the most inspiring few photographs that I have ever taken. So I will extend this challenge through March and hopefully will come up with some better examples. And just to make it even more fun I will add another challenge: Pick-A-Colour Theme and take photographs on that theme.

Oooo, I'd better get going on this one then, since a week of the month is already gone. See you again at the end of March.

Goals Update: February

Where did February go?
I know that there are two days fewer, but that just doesn't seem to be enough to explain the whistle-stop speed.

The list of accomplishments for February are suitably short in deference to the shortest month of the year. Here they are in all of their tiny glory.

Parenting Goals:

Get more sleep.

This one has been a bit of an up and down ride. During the day we are normally happy to sleep for two hours straight, but we are still refusing to sleep through the night. At least as of the last couple of weeks we have stopped waking up three times a night (midnight, 2:30-ish and 5:30-ish) and are back to two times (3:30-ish and 6:30-ish). But we have developed another little habit of going to bed after the evening bath and only sleeping an hour before deciding we would rather be awake thanks. Fortunately that has generally coincided with Mum's falling in to bed time, so at least I haven't gone to sleep yet.

Creativity Goals:


Blog consistently from now on.

Lets just agree to laugh at this one, okay?

Follow through with twelve months of photography challenges.

Sadly this one has been a fizzer in February. I will be posting some Black and White photographs shortly, but most if not all will be old images. Will try to do better in March. [Hangs head and shuffles feet.]

Personal Pleasures, Treasures and Measures Goals:


Read 24 books or more.

I keep starting them, but not finishing them. Maybe I should have set a goal to do with finishing more than one tenth of the books that I start !

Lose “X” kilograms.

This one has been marginally successful. I am almost a kilo lighter for my efforts, and as the previous post tells you - I have started running again, so this should finally be on track for 2008.

Spend some time on family history research and break through one brick wall.

I have done a bit of this, and some for my father-in-law too. No major brick walls kicked down, but some interesting information has been found. All up, a good month for this goal.

Work Goals:


Create the new website.

A good month for this too. I have at last started to focus on what I want the outcome to be, even though I have flip-flopped about how to achieve it. There is now a real possibility that I will use Wordpress to generate a static site. This is still in investigation mode, but is looking very promising. More on this as it develops.

Update the content of the website.

This is underway with the start of a Mindmap, so we are on track here too.
If you happen to have an interest in marine or aviation safety, ie you are a yachtie, boatie, commercial shipping person or a helicopter pilot, then please wander through the existing site and see what we may have missed that you would like to know. Even if you have no marine or aviation interests but have a question or a suggestion then I'd still love to hear from you. You can send me an email with whatever query or suggestion you have.

Until next month...