M is for Millie…and Mischief

Maybe as time has past, my memory has blurred. We do tend to pick out the bits we like or are more eventful in life. However, how I remember Callum is that he rarely had the aspiration to get up to too much mischief.

We had a cat yet only twice did he show an interest with playing sandcastles with the cat litter and never showed any desire to eat cat food or squidge it between his fingers. If we nipped to the loo, we could leave him playing safe in the knowledge he would highly likely be exactly where we left him when we returned. There was a period where he found it much fun to pull out all the CDs in the CD rack about 100 times a day but I do not recall any other relentless mischief!

Then along came Millie!

Don’t be fooled by that butter wouldn’t melt cheeky smile!

Yeah that one!

From before she could move we could tell that knowing look in her eye that as soon as she would learn to crawl she would be into EVERYTHING! And she was, except she became a bottom shuffler rather than a crawler. It was a wonder it took her so long to bottom shuffle with her insatiable curiosity!

Callum quite quickly grew out of the insistent throwing of food on the floor but no, Millie still finds it fascinating to see the reaction (even when I’m determined not to give her one) of throwing food, cutlery, plastic bowls, not so plastic bowls…oooh look, they don’t bounce!

Also, I never knew how fascinating it could be to see what happens when you tip bottles and cups upside down. You may not quite notice the first time, or the second, or even the third, fourth or fifth for that matter. In fact, maybe you should try it fifty times and you get an even better reaction if you pour it over your Daddy’s head.

It’s so lovely that she likes to draw and colour so much. Callum was never interested in colouring really, only getting into it in the last year. She has mastered the tripod grip on a pencil, I was so proud…until she decided to decorate the carpet, the toilet seat, the bedside table, the dressing table stool, the door…need I go on! And the continuous temptation of Callum’s felt tip pens is too great – queue big tantrums dare we deny her!

The latest game is seeing what happens when the dry cat food is thrown into the water bowl!

And the most infuriating thing is, you just can’t be cross! We’ve tried! Many a time! But she just looks and laughs and pulls the most adorable faces and your eyebrows start to quiver, your cheek twitches then before you know it you are hiding a giggle behind your hand!

She is relentless, exhausting, infuriating, but goddamn bloody cute and adorable too! Rah!

Wake Up Millie, I Think I’ve Got Some Food to Give to You

We are now well into weaning and its so great to see Millie’s enthusiasm for trying new foods. Dare you try have something that she’s not allowed and she looks most perturbed at your cheek!

One of the problems I am finding though, and I think I remember this with Callum too, is trying to provide the opportunities for Millie to try things. I get so excited when I buy a food ingredient or make something Millie hasn’t tried yet – I’m being brave and looking for foods I wouldn’t normally buy. Its a great opportunity for us all to try something new, including Callum. So I’ll plan a meal or keep it waiting for the right time to try.

To increase the chances of BLW being successful your baby should eat when you are eating or at least with someone else other than them eating. In this day and age, its not always easy to eat dinners as a family and Stuart and I do like to eat together in the evening so I like Millie to eat when Callum eats for her ‘evening’ meal. Then during the day, I usually eat my breakfast and lunch at the same time as Callum and Millie.

However, it is typical that as we approach lunch or evening meal time for Callum, it will coincide with Millie’s nap time. Millie doesn’t have a routine for napping, it suits us better that she wakes when she wants and then naps when she wants and where-ever is convenient. Millie wakes at a different time each day and her naps last different amounts of times. She will wake between 6.30 and 7.30am. She is awake for between 1.5-2 hours and then will sleep from anywhere between 45minutes to 2.5 hours. Because her nap routine is unpredictable, it isn’t easy for me to plan a dinner time. I try to keep Callum’s dinner time the same time each evening (between 4.30 and 5) and hope that Millie is able to join in at some point. He takes so long to eat that sometimes it works for Callum to start dinner & Millie to join when she wakes up.

Then  on Thursdays and Fridays, Callum has dinner at nursery so she often doesn’t get a dinner on those days.

At the moment, as far as Millie is concerned, she is just playing and not actually consuming food. She does not yet know that real food can satisfy her hunger and milk is the main source of food for her. Therefore, it doesn’t matter in the early days if she misses meals. But, to give her the most opportunities to learn about food and how to eat, the more she joins us when eating the better. As I’ve said before, Millie is much more interested in the food when it is on my plate rather than presented to her.

Despite all this, we’ve tried lots more new foods this past week.

Strawberries – liked
Raspberries – didn’t like and I amazing managed to salvage her top & trousers which I thought were destroyed with juice stains. Vanish soap I love you!
Parsnip – liked
Beef – liked
Smoked Salmon – tried a couple of times but pulled disgusted face & discarded
Avocado – liked
Lasagne – I preloaded the spoon for her but let her play with her hands too. She was keen to start with but then was more interested in the bowl
Spaghetti Bolognese – played with but didn’t get much to her mouth
Pitta bread – liked
Apple rice cakes – liked
Cabbage – liked
Asparagus – loved
Carrot Stick crisp – liked
Bread dipped in tomato & basil soup – didn’t like

We had tried mash before but without much luck. Millie seems to prefer the solid food to the mush. Its probably nicer on her teething gums. However, I tried mash again and she showed more interest this time…until she just wanted her spoon back minus the mash and did this to dispatch of the mash.

In terms of progress, nappy watch is still on and there are still flecks of toast and wheatabix and evidence of the odd thing getting through…like asparagus – that was a pleasant nappy!!!

But the majority of food still gets gagged and coughed out of her mouth. Even the stuff she likes above she still loses interest in pretty quickly so she’ll suck on a rice cake until about a quarter of it has dissolved then will discard it.

She will often prefer the hard plastic lids, bowls, spoons to the actual food if they are within reach.

                

She is getting better at getting food and even loaded spoons to her mouth but there is still a lot of room for improvement. She will often study what is on a spoon and grab at the contents with her fingers. We’re in no hurry, she’ll get there in the end and in the meantime we are having fun with it! Which is the important thing!

Comparing Chalk to Cheese? More Cheddar to Feta!

Despite repeating the mantra “every child is different” it is still natural, when you have more than one child, to compare! Are they more chilled? Do they sleep better? When did the first one sit up, roll over, crawl etc, and will this one be sooner or later?

You hear stories from friends, family, strangers in the street – “oh the second child is a lot more chilled than the first, they have to be”. “My John was a great sleeper but his little brother, Roger, had us up every night until the age of 20!!”.

So, yes, I’ve been doing my own little bit of comparing since Millie arrived!

Night-time Sleep

My memory of Callum was of the constant battle to get him to sleep through the night but waking up about every 1.5 to 2 hours at the start and every 3 to 4 hours near the end, eventually doing the much anticipated but felt illusive ‘sleep through’ at about 6 months! I considered this quite average. Not “my baby slept through at 6 weeks” wonderful but not “my child still wakes us up every night at aged 3” fear.

Millie, apart from the first few days where she was very ‘typical’ of a newborn, feeding all though the night and sleeping all through the day, it was very early on when she gave me a taste of sleep. Within the first couple of weeks she did a couple of 7 hour stints, then regularly slotted into a 6 hour sleep at night but once or twice going as long as 8 hours!

But that is no more – after playing around with formula versus breastmilk for a while (her and me) she has now slotted into a sleep about 8pm, wake for dummy about 11.30pm – feed between 1 and 2am then feed about 4am. I say “slotted into” like it is some sort of regular routine. She has done this for last 2 nights but still every night can be very different so I hesitate to say it is her ‘usual’ routine.

I will say, though, that she appeared to sleep much better when solely breastfed even when she was breastfed through the night but formula fed through the day I’m sure the 2nd 4am feed used to be more like 5am!

I sometimes wish she never granted me with that little taste – I’d probably feel much better about the wake ups now!

Day-time sleep

For Callum I remember holding him, rocking him, attempting to lay him in the cot, bending myself double so he thought he was still firmly held to me, managing to get him horizontal, gently starting to place him on the cot then “waaaaaaaaaaaaah” – screaming like I was placing him in a bath full of acid!

Trying to get him to sleep day or night on his own, self-soothing was laughable and reading back in my blog it appears I could spend a whole hour trying to get him off for a nap. But I also think I tried to push him into a fixed daytime sleep routine too soon. I still don’t have such a thing with Millie. With Millie, I’m all about the cues – the first yawn & grizzle she is straight up to bed whether she has been awake an hour or 2 hours, she leads the way and I place her down in her gro-bag (sleeping bag type thing) with her dummy in, place her muslin one side, her bunny comforter the other side, draw blinds & walk out the room. I may have to go into her once or twice to replace her dummy or muslin but it really is very little effort. If she is overtired due to missing the cues or trying to stretch her a little longer for whatever reason then I may have to hold her to sleep but even when this is the case, I can usually just get her to drowsy & place her down in her cot. With Callum, I never saw a cue until it was too late!

Feeding

Their feeding patterns appear to be quite similar. Both have hit a 2oz per feed max phase about the same 3 month point. Neither of them ever ‘big’ eaters. I don’t think we ever got Callum up to 8oz and he wasn’t a big scoffer though he would take a bottle nearly every time you offered it, just maybe not take very much. This means, if he had his last bottle a couple of hours ago but I was giving him another as part of his bedtime routine, he would take it. Millie – not a chance! If only half hour before her next feed she will refuse, pushing the teat out with her tongue and batting the bottle away with her hands. She will sleep then wake up at her proper feed time – the little madam!!!

Development

Despite Callum being born 3.5 weeks early, he was pretty strong at holding his neck up and Millie followed suit but, if anything was even stronger than Callum. Her legs constantly wanted to stand & she would throw herself back away from you with such force that you were scared she was going to throw herself out of your hands – you daren’t hold her with one arm/hand when she was upright.

Then very early on she blessed us with a smile, then shortly following a laugh. Her first roll from front to back was at 12 weeks – Callum was 6 months, 3 weeks before his first roll though was very early to sit at 5 months. We don’t know for Millie yet – its too early for sitting.

Of course, its still far too soon to tell how different their personalities are going to be and any further development milestones are unknown. But its exciting waiting to find out.

I think it is not so much that Millie is more chilled than Callum but when she hits the same or similar phases to Callum, I am more chilled about it & know things will take their own course there’s no use getting stressed about it. Apart from the milk consumption – I can’t help thinking if I could just get more milk into her during the day she’ll sleep better at night but – if my memory does serve me right it isn’t necessarily that one will naturally follow the other, I think the sleep came before the milk consumption for Callum.

It will be interesting to do another one of these posts in a couple of months time comparing the 6 months stage.

Callum & Millie both at aproximately 14 Weeks