Elayne very kindly bought Katie some picture cards with nice photos of wild animals on them - from the Baby Einstein series (a marketer's dream of name).

 

Katie already loves looking at photos of animals in books so the cards will come in very handy and contain a wider variety of animals than in the baby books we have been given or acquired from charity shops.

 

Katie got stuck in right away as you can see from the photo. 

I took half a day off yesterday to spend it in the park with Katie, Urs and our friends Tony the cakeman, Elayne and David.

 

Tony lived up to his new-found cake-based reputation and we all had a fun time drinking red wine and enjoying the afternoon.

I put a size four nappy on Katie this evening, the first time I have done so.

 

The size three ones were just beginning to get a tad tight.

 

Urs feels we were too slow in moving from size two to size three but I think we've called this one right.

 

Panic not, the weekly nappy count will continue.

Some recent pics of Katie and Ossie. 

Further to my previous post about how Katie fell asleep on me so I had to watch some channel five shows, I can now reveal that we have ended up watching House every week.

 

And I recently bought the series one DVD, which is handy timing as the current series is over.

We've moved on from the 3-6 month gro-bags to the 6-18 months ones, even though Katie is supposed to be 18lbs.

 

She has grown so much that she was getting close to the end of the smaller ones.

 

Now she can kick away to her little heart's content.

Fun and games eating avocado.

Yes it's here.

 

What a moment.

 

Well done Katie.

 

Well done Katie's mum. 

Urs phoned me yesterday to say that Katie had rolled from a starting position of on her stomach on to her back for the very first time.

 

Very exciting.

 

We've now lost count of the times Katie has rolled from lying on her back on to her stomach.

Just got a text message.

 

"Hello Daddy. I've put on 7oz in two weeks. I now weigh 13lb 15.5oz. Love Katie x."

The thousandth nappy is within sight.

 

What a moment. 

Why eat something off the menu when you can just eat the menu?

 

See pic below for details. 

Is Katie left-handed?

 

It looks like from the way she handles her food and generally grasps things.

 

There is some left-handedness in my family so it's a possibility.

 

By the way, the title of this post came from Urs who has cunningly employed an old usage of sinister meaning on the left (from the superstition that the left side is unlucky). 

After bathing Katie last night I tried to put a 3-to-6 month vest on her and noticed how tight it was.

 

So we're off to buy some larger sized vests today.

 

Ooh, don't they grow up fast?

 

Her feet in particular look like they've grown a lot. Urs managed to get those foot castings done recently - we'll get them back next week. A nice momento of how small Katie was...

Urs told me she was going to e-mail a friend about weaning so I asked her to forward it to me so we could use it on this blog. Here we go:

 

"My catalyst for starting weaning at 23 weeks rather than 26 weeks was that Katie kept demanding feeds every half hour one lunchtime. She took all the milk I could produce but it wasn't enough. However before that she'd been grabbing at my food and watching every mouthful...
 
"Katie has been gaining weight on breast milk - as you can see from the periodic 'New weight' postings on this blog. For the past four months I've been offering Katie milk as often and for as long as I possibly can. I've been eating loads to try to produce more milk. None of this seems to have made a blind bit of difference. She's taken as much as she wants and only ever gained weight very slowly (she's somewhere between 2nd and 9th centiles). Sporadically I've attempted to give her top ups with formula but with the exception of the week that she lost weight after I'd been on antibiotics she has always violently refused formula and cried and screamed.

"My take on weaning is that I couldn't possibly expect Katie to eat anything that I wasn't going to eat myself. She'll probably be 20 before she ever tastes celery. And there's just no way that I'm going to eat any baby rice so Katie's not getting any.
 
"I decided to give baby-led weaning a go because:
* I was starting weaning at 23 weeks (which is close to the time that she should be introduced to lumps and chewing)

* Katie didn't like stuff put into her mouth but was stuffing anything she could into it herself

* Katie is pretty dextrous
 
"For baby-led weaning the food needs to be in fist sized / chip sized pieces and sufficiently soft. I've steamed lots of the stuff that needs cooking and frozen it. I've found that what works best for Katie is to have a weaning session after she's woken from a decent nap. I sit her in her (borrowed) Bumbo with bibs (yes, plural - a soft one plus a Tommy Tippee plastic one with turned-up lip at the bottom to catch food she drops), put on its tray (got that from www.bumboplaytray.co.uk), hand her some food and start eating some myself.

 

"She'll try and stuff the whole thing in her mouth, I'll take the smallest bites, chew with my mouth open and say "chew chew chew". Matt thinks I sound like a train. The first few times she used her tongue to break down the food but I think her gums are getting some action now.

 

"We tried cucumber this morning (which I admit wasn't that nice) but Katie happily destroyed the inner bit. We then had some melon, which she'd had before. She often drops the food and loses concentration and I do worry about her choking. But she seems ever so happy to be eating when we're eating and I feel very proud when she scoops up some food and puts it in her mouth. Two weeks on and we're on to two sessions like this a day and I also try to give her something to munch when Matt and I are eating.
 
"So far mango wasn't very popular but wasn't even close to the reaction formula got. We've been successful with banana, pear, melon, strawberries (but very messy), avocado, broccoli, parsnips, sweet potato, butternut squash, cucumber, courgettes. I still haven't managed to get carrots the right softness for her." 

Urs reports that Katie did a lot of rolling yesterday which means the bathtime routine has had to change slightly from now on so she doesn't get the chance to roll about and knock her head while I sort out the temperature of the water (we have a small bathroom).

 

I had it all worked out and it was all going fine yesterday in the bathroom. Not a roll in sight and no opportunities for a dangerous one either.

 

So she dropped a big log on the change mat instead.

Looks like August 25 could be the day for the 1,000th nappy after all. 

Katie rolled over three times in a matter of minutes on her activity mat yesterday evening.

 

Maybe we should buy a lottery ticket?

I got a text message on Wednesday but somehow didn't get round to posting until now.

 

"Hello Daddy. I've put on 14oz in 3 weeks. I now weigh 13lb 8.5oz. Still less than a parasol base but more than your sister's cat. Love Katie x."