Hand, foot and mouth disease

Crikey, sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it. It mostly manifests itself in the form of a few spots on Rose’s hands and a slightly sore mouth. Hasn’t stopped her going to nursery mind.

The drooling beast of Sydenham

It’s been quite messy in our house of late. A small but ravenous creature wanders the halls drooling long lines of saliva everywhere like a very noisy snail.

This creature is, of course, Rose and her teething at the moment is most visible in her copious drooling. She sometimes lays her head on me, but lately she’s been leaving a wet patch. The nursery have started putting a bib on her all the time in an effort to mop it up.

There are some pretty big teeth coming through, some canines on top and the last two front teeth at the bottom. Can’t wait for her to finish the set and be done with it.

Jabs, weight, running and swimming in the bath

Rose amongst the volcanoes on holiday

Since we’ve come back from holiday it’s all been amazing progress for Rose.

The walking has now developed into proper running, although often followed by falling over shortly after.

The swimming skills learnt in the pool have been attempted in the bath. Rose now lies on her front amongst the bubbles and does a breast stroke like action. As a side benefit of the swimming i’ve noticed that Rose is now a lot better (or at least resigned) to having water poured over her head. Hair washing has usually been quite a tearful time but maybe we’ve all turned a corner?

It was my turn to take Rose for her second MMR jab and I was advised by Deborah to have a reward ready for the inevitable crying. Sitting in the nurses room Rose looked around (quite rightly) in a very wary manner. The nurse is obviously an old hand at this jab malarky and distracted her and then struck with the speed of a cobra. Rose burst into tears and then I quickly popped a few magic stars in her mouth which calmed her a bit. Ten minutes later all was quite and (probably) forgotten.

The nursery mentioned that they thought that Rose was quite slim for her age so while I was with the nurse I got her weighed. It seems that she is just over 10kg which means that she is in the 25% centile. Not something to be overly worried about apparently but also a bit of feeding up wouldn’t go amiss either. Apart from when she’s teething Rose is usually a very healthy eater, to the point that she has a bit of a rep at nursery. She has had a bit of a ‘loose nappy’ problem the last month which may be a part explanation. Anyway Deborah is working hard on feeding Rose up now and lets see how it goes.

More words and better pronunciation going on. Progress never stops!

Swimming like a fish

Well, floating like a seal and swimming like a dog but it all counts.

We’ve been on holiday and had a very handy pool that we’ve used to take Rose swimming every day (and sometimes several). There appears to be very few buoyancy aids for children of Rose’s age and in the end I used some water wings for children aged 6-12. I have to say though that they fit ok and they keep her afloat.

She started with a combination of being very excited while at the same time a bit scared. Every day however she’s got a bit braver and a bit better. The first breakthrough, a few days ago, was floating on her own, either on her front like a skydiver or just upright.

Today though she discovered that if she keeps kicking her legs she can propel herself around. She is also fine with jumping in on her own whixh is amazing as she normally hates water on her face (at bathtime). I can’t wait to se what she’ll do tomorrow….

All gone!

Rose has recently picked up on one of our sayings when her plate is empty – ‘All Gone’! When she says it, it is also accompanied by holding her hands out and shrugging her shoulders. It’s very cute.

She usually does mean the bowl/glass/banana is empty but we’ve gauged that it can also just mean that she’s finished. Overall this does help at mealtimes as sometimes previously she’s not understood that the food has just ran out.