Moments & miscellany #2

* Little C, the playgroup weakling, "if you make me do tummy time I will just lie here with my face in the rug and cry" has figured out that if I insist in putting her on her front she can escape by rolling onto her back. Go C! To be fair, she is also getting better about lifting her head up. But I am hoping she delays figuring out that enemy of sleep-loving parents everywhere- the back to front roll. 

* Speaking of my small funny one, we have exiled her to her own room at night. She is still waking about as frequently but I'm sleeping better in between. E was about the same age when we banished her for likewise being too noisy for me to cope with. I have learnt something though, as with E we went hardcore and took away the dummy, swaddle and bassinette all at once resulting in a few weeks of dreadful nights. C has never had a dummy and always slept in a Grobag at night. We moved her simply by wheeling the bassinette next door. To start with we left the travel bed crammed inside it but last night moved the travel bed into the cot.

* Lots of unfair comparisons going on (inside my head at least) between little C, who is a delight, and E who is a ... challenge. My super-stubborn, wilful, big-and-still-so-little four year old. She is learning to sound out words, she can go to a kindy disco, she can crack an egg by herself, but she is back to being patted to sleep at night. If C is sitting on someone's lap, she has to sit on someone's lap too (usually the same person who is holding C). Every little thing (putting shoes on, brushing teeth, using cutlery, getting dressed, picking up toys...) requires a negotiation. Simple raised voices don't work. Slowly I am finding better ways to manage our daily interactions - like for meal times we included her in the drafting of a list of family rules - but it's an ongoing process.

* D's Dad had surgery on the weekend to remove a benign but very large pancreatic cyst. He is still in hospital for another three or four nights but came through the surgery well and is recovering. I read last week (a fictional but I suspect gruesomely accurate) account of the removal of a breast tumour without anaesthetic in the early 1800s. So grateful for modern medicine and clean hospitals and dedicated doctors.