Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Eleven months


Today is Baby's eleven-month birthday, and it's also my second day as a temporarily single parent.

Don't panic, the boy hasn't left me for a perkier, younger model; he had to go to Jakarta for work and he swore he's coming back before the end of the week.

Yesterday, my first day as Baby's sole parent, was not quite as scary as that day the boy went back to work, two weeks after Baby was born. That day was was terrifying; yesterday was merely a little tense. It was tense because I knew that I won't be getting any Baby-free breaks for about four days, and if she decides to have a terrible night I won't be able to ask the boy to go and settle her for me. It'll be all up to me.

Anyway, today Baby turned eleven months. Wow. It's hard to believe it's been nearly a whole year since she was born.

At eleven months, Baby definitely prefers feeding herself oven chips to being spoonfed mashed potato. She throws a tantrum if I take my Empire magazine off her, before she rips the pages out and puts them in her mouth (I thought tantrums were a Terrible Twos thing - obviously she is very advanced in this respect).

Even though Baby is still not crawling, her bum-shuffling is impressively quick. If I prop her up against the couch she'll happily stand there for about five minutes before getting bored and demanding to be tickled or bounced.

She's now more likely to wake for only one nightfeed than two, and for the last four nights has allowed me to sleep for around 7 uninterrupted hours overnight. But then she'll wake up at 5am wanting to watch a Baby Einstein DVD.

Her hair still sticks up; food seems to work at least as well as hair gel.

5 comments:

LK said...

Wow, I can remeber when you were still just waiting for Baby to arrive.

I understand about the no free time thing - I'm now in my fourth week of solo-parenting and can't wait for him to return (one more week to go).

But remember, supermums can do anything - apparently even turn food into hairgel.

Anonymous said...

Happy 11 months! Baby has come a long way and sounds like you've already started chasing after her.

Violet said...

nyx: yes I can even remember her birth fairly vividly - although it's somewhat true about a woman's ability to forget just how painful childbirth is. I think it's due to months of sleep deprivation.

beth: I do most of the drudge work too, but the boy is very handy to complain to if I'm having a bad day :-)

eb: yep. She always shuffles over to the magazines piled on the trolley, or the box of nappies. That's when she's not shuffling over to any remotes which have fallen onto the floor.

Rainypete said...

We're sitting on the ten and ahalf ish mark ourselves. It's scary how much they change in that short a time isn't it. As for tantrums.....they are ready for them before you are. Our little guy likes to meltdown over nothinga t all for a minute or two. Forunately he is easily pulled froma tantrum with a quick cuddle or a laugh, but still.........bet without.

Violet said...

rainypete: thank goodness for distractibility eh?