What big eyes you have
Posted on Sun 18 December 2011 by alex in general
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We've had Ursula at home for over a week now and are slowly getting into the swing of this parenting malarkey. So far we've nicknamed her "Trufflehog" after the manner she searches for the breasts when she's hungry which seems to basically be when she's awake. We are getting a growing amount of the "Quiet Attentive" awake state though. Her fascination is mainly with areas of contrast which to us mainly seems to be corners of the room. I'm not sure how much is down to baby face morphology but one comment that keeps coming up is how big her eyes are. Although I'm bound to be an overly proud Dad I'm fairly sure she's already starting to track objects and points in space. You can play an interesting game carrying her around being guided by the position of her head. A head she seems to be able to keep upright most of the time by herself although she still hasn't mastered the art of pushing up when on the play-mat.
As she is currently not self-propelling the day to day handling is fairly simple. However preparation is the key to success here:
I'm sure all too soon she will become self-propelling and then our lives will become a lot less sedentary. In the meantime we are feeling quite pleased having made it out of the house several times. We've managed a brief trip into town, a tea-morning and a couple of trips to the pub. Ursula certainly seems to be happy to drop off when ever she is put in the car seat and driven anywhere. This tendency also translates to the car seat being "fitted" to the shopping trolley.
One area we have struggled with is the pram cot which she doesn't like at all - tending to kick and scream while at the same time divesting herself of the layers of warm blankets to shield her from the environment. While wheelies seem to briefly calm her down it's not a long term practical solution. I wonder if she is developing Minbari sleeping habits?
As it has been almost impossible to get her to sleep in the mosses basket we've already taken our first major parenting decision to keep her in the bed with us. It has improved on the amount of sleep we actually get and it makes feeding her fairly non-distracting. We do worry about the advice against co-sleeping but feel the size of the bed makes it a little more practical and we've developed fairly light sleeping habits quite quickly. The feedback from others has been interesting though, ranging from warnings about making a rod for our own backs later to encouragements to go with what works for us. At some point we'll have to encourage her to sleep on her own but it's a bridge we'll cross later on when she's sleeping longer hours.
I've been back to work a few days and have the next two to look forward to until I break for Christmas. I'm already looking forward to what month 2 brings. I'm hoping just a little more sleep and a lot more activity from Ursula.