One month on from the last ‘blog entry and Heidi is ten months old and getting rounder and heavier. Her two little toothy-pegs are shiny white and are quite capable of giving a nasty, but playful, nip. The thick card books she reads have all the corners missing and you can see little peg like gnawing all over them. Quite substantial pieces of her jigsaw book are gone forever, turned into a pulp I assume and I cannot find them.
Her crawling is rapid and quite slick now, and she can move with far more grace than before, which was like a three legged tortoise in some instances.
On the 25 February she stood for the first time which was nice as we were all there, aided of course by fixed objects. When in her cot and her play pen (which she now loves being in) she spends as long as she can standing. Her ability to hold on with one hand whilst reaching down for a toy is coming on, as are her skills in swapping hands over so as to move along the pen. Occasionally there will be a thud and a short silence when both hands have been removed at the same time. She has a bruise on her forehead from yesterdays tumble on to a hard floor, after performing a tricky manoeuvre.
She is a pleasure to bath now, in that she is happy to sit upright unaided and not slip around. She must have inherited my habit of wallowing for as long as possible in the bath. She likes to drink dirty bath water too, and suck on the bath sponge or wash mit – unlike me though.
She continues to attend Jolly Babies on a Friday morning with Rachel, which she loves. Lots of singing and meeting fellow babies and a good chance to catch the latest bug. Yesterday, Heidi was planning to go swimming with one of her friends from Jolly Babies, although the other tot had a cold, so it was postponed until next week. Heidi’s little pink all in one swimsuit sit ready for action in her room awaiting its maiden voyage.
One of the local stores in Torquay is closing down, so I popped in to see what was on offer as everything was half price. I spied a little three ring paddling pool for less than £2.00 so snaffled that up. Once the warmer weather comes we can get it out and Heidi can have a cold bath for once, sharing it with toads that have slipped in overnight. This one will probably head up to Grans as we intend to station one or two about the grandparents.
Next week, on the 19th, Fred would have been three years old. We are taking the day off to do something different and to try and not mope about. Last year we went to the Zoo and no doubt we’ll pop in shortly, to sit on Fred’s bench. I had an email from Shelagh today, someone whom we met through Fred appearing in a newspaper article, and she was remembering Fred’s birthday coming up as her daughters was a couple of days prior to his. Lovely to get a little message like that and to keep in touch with people who helped us so much.
We all went to a Baby Fair today in Totnes. It is a bit “hippy” as always which is quite nice, and we needed to get some more waterproof breathable outers for Heidi’s reusable nappies. We are still persevering with them, and she rarely gets nappy rash. If she does then we go back to disposables which are useful, usually for a short time. We also bought some liners and watched a demo about reusable cloth nappies and learnt a few things. They even have coconut ones now but they take hours to dry in a tumble drier, so maybe not a good investment in this country. Its great to see all her nappies hung up like bats on the line though, waiting to dry out.

We also had some lunch at Dartington Cider Press which was good, as the sun was shining and we sat in the takeaway courtyard. Rachel’s cheese and red onion baguette, my chicken and ham pie, and Heidi’s beef stew went down well. Except Heidi’s got too cold for and she grumbled constantly as she tried to eat it.
A very tired Heidi fell asleep before her semolina pudding arrived and so went straight to bed without any protest. Probably means she’ll wake at 0400h then?