17 month baby update
I wonder how long I should carry on doing these baby updates. Technically speaking, is Daphne still a baby? She doesn't toddle yet, so maybe she is. In any case, at this rate, I can envision myself continuing to blog about her when she turns 21, which I'm fairly sure she wouldn't be that impressed with...
Anyway, I'll keep going I think, at least until next month (18 months feels like a big milestone - something to do with it being the next clothes size up maybe!), and then maybe I'll have a break until she turns two. Which I am sure will come around in record time. It's crazy how much growing and changing a baby can do in two years (and how much ageing their mum can do at the same time - ha!).
So this month has been dominated by the sleep issue I already wrote about. And I think it's probably related to her naps. I really want to transition her onto one nap, but it's so hard when she wakes up at 5am, and is utterly shattered by 9 - it feels cruel not to put her down for a nap when she's yawning and grumpy and rubbing her eyes, but of course, this just perpetuates the problem, as then her afternoon nap is short as she's not tired enough for a long one, and thus her bedtime ends up being early too... and then we go round again. We try to push her nap back a little each day (15 mins or so) but somehow something will always go wrong - she'll fall asleep in the car, or we'll need her to nap a bit earlier one day so we can go somewhere later, and we just seem to be back to square one. I'm not sure how to solve this. Daphne started at the childminder's last week (more on that later) and she usually puts them all down for a long nap at 12.30. There's no way Daph could survive that long without going mad, so we agreed to let her have a little power nap in the buggy when the childminder walks to their playgroup in the morning, which seemed to work OK with regards to her getting overtired. Because the irony is, of course, that an overtired baby just sleeps worse (more badly? my grammar has deserted me today) and wakes up even earlier the next morning - babies make no sense! My preoccupation every waking moment is ensuring that Daph doesn't become overtired during the day, because that just makes everything go to hell. I am a woman obsessed.
We have the Gro clock but the first time I tried to use it I forgot to set it (didn't realise you had to do it manually every night), and then she woke up at 5am and so I set it then, trying to explain it to her, and it went straight to a great big cheery sun and lit the whole bloody room up, so I've obviously done something wrong. Anyway it made me so cross (little things will do that at 5am) that I unplugged the damn thing and now it lies next to her cot looking forlorn and useless. She's probably (definitely) a bit young to make sense of it anyway, but I was hoping for a miracle, as people in desperate situations do.
I guess the only solution is time, and her growing up a bit and being able to handle longer wake times. So it's a case of sitting it out, like all baby phases, trying to go to bed early (I'm getting better at this but do seethe with resentment at having my grown-up time curtailed in favour of a morning that starts before the dawn chorus) and just praying that the eighteen month sleep regression passes us by. Please god, don't we deserve a sleep break?! We've had it all: colic, split nights for MONTHS, middle of the night poos for MONTHS, a dream feed that persisted past 12 months... and now the super early risings. Let us off on this one thing, pretty please?!
Ahem. Yes, I am a woman obsessed. But onto the good things - Daph seems to love the childminder's. And no one told me how much more you love your child after they've been at the childminder's all day. I didn't cry when Oli took her (hardhearted mum that I am) but I did get a bit teary picking her up, and seeing how happy she'd been playing with all the bigger kids. It's so cute to see that side of her, and see how desperate she is to have 'friends' and copy the older kids. Bless! Made me feel we've been depriving her a bit by keeping her at home with us all day. And of course, it's great (although so weird) to have a day to myself to focus on my own stuff (although we've invariably been washing and cleaning and doing the noisy/dangerous DIY you can't do when she's here).
Not much else to report this month. Still no walking, although she's become a master cruiser, making her way across a room using every available surface to help her. Standing is getting better but she'll still only do it for a few seconds. I did notice this month that she's learnt how to crouch down from standing to pick something up, so clearly her legs are getting stronger. We took her to have her feet measured last week, and bought her her first proper pair of shoes, and we're trying to make her wear them in the house more, as we think they'll help her put her feet flat more often (she still mostly stands on tiptoes, it's no wonder her balance is so off). If she's still wobbly standing at eighteen months I might take her back to the GP, just to see if there are some exercises or something we can do with her to help her, but I'm confident that she'll get there in her own time, as she is still making progress. Baby steps. Ha.
Oh yes! One thing she has finally mastered this month, is learning to clap. About a year after the baby books said she should. Even longer perhaps. It kind of makes me laugh that she just clearly didn't want to do anything to the conventional timeline. But yes, she now claps, on command and at things that excite her, as if to stick two fingers up at Mummy a year ago who was paranoid that her lack of clapping meant something serious was wrong. Ugh, how I wish I could go back and tell myself not to worry about this stuff.
She's as chatty as ever, and keeps stunning me by answering quite complicated questions - for example, we were walking back from the town the other day and about to turn into our road, and I said 'Who are we going to see at home Daph?' and she said, without a second's hesitation, 'Purdy'. Considering she couldn't see the house, or the cat, I was quite impressed with her brain working that one out. Oh and other developments - she is utterly obsessed with Duplo! We got her some for Christmas and she loved it, so we got her a few more boxes and it keeps her entertained for hours. She particularly likes posting the little people through the windows of the 'houses' mummy builds. I actually quite enjoy it too - certainly more fun than rattles and endless stacking cups!