Baby signing

So Monday we went to our first ever Baby signing class "Sing and Sign." It was quite fun, though it was only us there, as everyone else seems to be on holiday. Fair enough, I will not be there next week, as I will be away. Baby was just crawling around the room, pulling herself up on the chairs, and playing with whatever she found, and at times actually paid attention to the singing and signing. Our teacher, J, seems really nice and friendly, and her daughter El is just so cute! I learned the basics "eat", "more", "drink", "all done" and a few animals. Ahh and the twinkle twinkle animal song! I wouldn't be surprised if "duck" is baby's first sign. Really looking forward to this. Another great thing, is the same teacher has just signed at the nursery baby will be attending, which is great as she will have the same system with me and at chilcare! I am hoping that signing serves as a link between my Spanish, and the world's English, and will help her understand both languages and lessen her frustration. I am starting to try to get into the habit of signing, and I can't wait until the day she signs something back!!

And the judging begins

So my aunt decided to come and spend my last weeks of my maternity leave with us. Which means she wants us to be travelling and doing things, so I end up spending less time with my baby or getting things sorted before I go back to work. It also means having someone next to us judging and making critical comments about everything we do. Co-sleeping- "Oh, its going to be hard to get her out of that." BF- "I don't really like seeing women breastfeeding in public, I only breastfed mine till 6 months, there's no point doing it any longer. BLW- "She looks so funny eating food like that. " and at a restaurant to a waiter " Oh sorry for the mess, she feeds herself, that's why" hmmm if anything, I should do the apologizing, not her, and baby feeding herself has nothing to do with it. Babywearing- "Oh you do prefer that, you must get tired, you probably won't be doing that for long now" "Oh, she only wants to be carried by mummy, doesn't she" That and, leaving papers, cables, laptops, etc within reach of baby, and she keeps leaving the gate open. The only time she closed it, baby was already in the sling.

stash building

5 days into cloth-nappy-land and I am quite happy with it. We have made it through the night in cloth, and it was fine. The trial kit we have only has one night nappy, so she's not wearing it every night.

And I have to say, I am getting obsessed!! Ah, the amount of time I've spent looking at websites selling new or used ones, and EBAY! WOW is that addictive!

I really need to behave, now is not really the time for me to be spending much money. But, I now have 4 pocket nappies, one wrap, and 18 terry nappies on there way to me, yikes! Still need to get a wetbag... using a ziplock bag for now.

MUST.STOP.NOW

Fluff bum!!

Ah! So we finally met up with the nappy adviser, and voila! I have my real nappy trial kit.
I am actually quite excited with this! We got different types of nappies, so we will try them all and see which ones we like or fit best, leak least, etc.

We started with a pocket one (one with a really nice and cute apple print) birth to potty one. Everything seemed ok, a while later baby was a tad cranky while we were having lunch, I thought she was just tired. When I checked her later, I realized I had done the nappy to tight! Ugh, I felt terrible, poor thing!

After that we tried a motherese cloth nappy with a wrap, but then wasn't brave enough to try cloth for bedtime, so she is back in pampers now.

So far, not bad. The main challenge will probably be the washing, or rather the drying. My flat is small, with only a tiny outdoor space where nappies could be hung to dry, but then living in Plymouth... we don't really get much sunshine, really...


All in all, I keep going into ebay and surfing different sites, looking at nappies and stuff.. I have slow myself down on this one, should really not buy anything yet, not until I've had a bit more experience with cloth nappies.

We are going on holiday in a couple of weeks, and I am still undecided whether I will be taking them or not...

We've got a cold

Day #3 of THE COLD

It started out with her a bit snotty, and me fine. Now we are both snotty, I'm sneezing and she's coughing.

In the mornings it always seems as if she's getting better and I'm getting worse, but it fluctuates during the day. We go through ok-sicky cycles, but we never match. So when I want to lay in bed, she wants to play. When I want to eat, she gets clingy.

She has managed to go to sleep now, hopefully for a few hours.

Fingers crossed for better weather tomorrow as well. Between sickness and rain, we have not been out much, or seen other people. Isolation, perhaps? Tomorrow is Thursday, and that means "RhymeTime" at the Library.


On other subjects, holiday has been booked (flights, anyways...), still no word from work, and nappy advisor got back to me today, hopefully I will have my hands on a trial kit sometime soon!

Hiya!

So, brand new blog. As if I did not have enough already.

The idea of this blog is to dedicate it to my daughter and anything motherhood related. I will try and keep it in English, as most of the parenting/baby forums I visit are in this language, but the odd Spanish and even French might come along from time to time.


About me: 27 year old, single mama to the happiest baby girl you could find.
My "parenting" style, apparently can be described as "attachment or natural parenting", or at least that seems to be the closest one I can relate to. Main topics include: breastfeeding, co-sleeping, babywearing, anti-CIO, and doing baby led weaning. The next step is switching to cloth nappies! I am still doing some research on this, there are so many options! Its amazing, I will attempt to get some guidance before buying anything, and see how we go from there.


About baby: 7 & 1/2 months old. Extremely happy, sociable, funny, nosy, noisy. Has been crawling for over a month. Eats almost anything, as long as she can manage to get it into her mouth. Starts to say "Ma-ma" though sometimes it sounds like "mum" and I wonder, who's been teaching her English?
Loves yogurt, strawberries and pulling my hair. Her top challenge at the moment: being able to stand on her own.