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 !