Rhiannon Miller

More pictures here.

The fire brigade were out doing some sort of safety campaign, hence the fire engine. I think Faith was a little nonplussed by it. We also met up with Grandma and Grandpa, who are in the final photo.

We took Faith to the zoo on Saturday, and met up with Grandma and Grandpa and Granny and Grandad for lunch. She's been telling me ever since about the tiger ('rahr!'), the penguins having a shower, and the baby baboon. Must take her back again soon!

So after church last Sunday she toddled through into the hall for a biscuit, which she nibbled over the next few minutes while we bought jam and got buttonholed by various people. She finished it just as I was strapping her into her pushchair.

'More,' she said.
'We're going home now,' I said, 'and we'll have lunch when we get home.'
She looked at me. 'More bibbit.'

That was her first sentence!* So of course after that I had to give her another biscuit. She ate it on the way home and then fell asleep.

A couple of days later I brought her home from nursery. She was hungry and so I gave her a biscuit to keep her going until dinner was ready. She finished it.

'More!'
'More what?' I asked.
'Bibbit!'
'You want another biscuit?'
She nodded. 'Peassssss.'

She got another biscuit.

Tomorrow we go to the zoo. She's very excited about this and I've been counting down the days with her. She can name quite a lot of animals - her favourites are elephants and tigers (with a side order of zebra). Oh, and giraffes are called 'necks'. I've been warning her that Edinburgh Zoo is too small to have elephants so she's not too disappointed, but I think there'll be enough to occupy her that she won't mind.

* Apart from 'Hiya Dadada' when she was about eleven months old and very excited that Daddy had come to pick her up from nursery, but I think that was just because she didn't know which of the two words she wanted to say most.

Recent new words include giraffe, rainbow, and zebra (said and signed – she's been watching the signing DVD, where they visit a zoo). This morning I heard some more new ones: knife, shark, shell. None of which I recall teaching her, so she's obviously picking something up at nursery. (The 'shark' she was pointing at was actually a picture of a dolphin, but I think that's pretty good nonetheless.) And she's started saying 'sa' for 'what's that?' when she wants something identified.

She can consistently identify purple and cyan. Most of the time, all other colours are 'yellow' until I identify them as something else, though she will then repeat the correct name after me. Maybe she is confusing the words 'yellow' and 'colour'?

Faith's latest new words include: amen, all done, away, flower, hot, please, shower, and a fair attempt at roundabout!

This afternoon, as has become usual on a Sunday, I took Faith swimming followed by a quick visit to the play park beside the swimming pool. She looks forward to this all week and points out the swimming pool whenever we go near it (twice a day on weekdays since you can see it up the road on the way to nursery). The swimming pool has a couple of little shallow shelves with gentle jacuzzi-type bubbles, which she loves to play on.

So I was putting her to bed this evening and said good night.
She signed 'swing'.
'Yes, you went on the swings today. Now go to sleep.'
She said 'Ba!' (park).
'Yes, you went on the swings in the park. Now go to sleep.'
She signed 'swim'.
'Yes, you went swimming this afternoon. Now go to sleep.'
She said 'Bubboo' (bubble).
'Yes, you played with the bubbles in the swimming pool. Now go to sleep.'
She signed 'swing'.
'Yes, and then you went on the swings. Now go to sleep.'

After about three iterations of this I put her in her cot and told her 'Yes, you had lots of fun today, and now it's night-time and time to go to sleep. No, you've been to the toilet, you don't need to go again. Lie down and go to sleep.'

Cue some wailing, but it didn't take that long before she quietened down, cuddled into my arm reaching into the cot and went to sleep.

So I took the day off work today to blitz the cleaning, as the house is becoming a bit of a disaster area. Robin seized the opportunity to take me out to lunch to celebrate my promotion. We decided to go to one of our favourites, Jade Garden, as we remembered having some very nice Italian bubbly there a while back. But when we got there, we found it wasn't on the wine list. We'd been having some friendly chat with the waiter, so I asked after the wine. He said he thought they'd discontinued it, but he'd go and have a look.

Lo and behold, there was one last bottle of it left! So he served it to us, though he said he didn't know whether there was still a code in the machine for it. 'That's ok,' I joked, 'we don't mind if you give it to us for free.'

The wine was even more delicious than we remembered – I think it must have aged some more in the bottle. The food was excellent too, as always, as was the Chinese tea.

At the end of the meal, he handed us the bill and told us the wine was on the house, because there was no way to put it through the system! So the whole three-course meal, plus orange juice, tea, and a bottle of bubbly, came to just £21.

We left a large tip.

I've been angling for a promotion at work for some time now, and yesterday I was told I've got it! Woo-hoo!

Faith can identify Miffy. Apart from some lovely slippers she wore between about three and six months (thank you roosje_katoen!), she hasn't really had any Miffy stuff, nor have we talked of Miffy. No books, pictures, or toys.

And yet when I left a smalll box lying around which had a picture of Miffy on the lid, she pointed at it and said 'Mi'y, mi'y!' She did the same when she spotted a small piece of waxed paper from inside the box, which was also decorated with a Miffy print. I can only assume she's being exposed to Miffy at nursery somehow. Unless she remembers the slippers?

(The box had contained a china beaker, one of her christening presents. I unpacked it into the china cupboard the other day, reckoning she's old enough now to handle crockery, and left the box lying around – it's now in use holding her crayons.)

Faith is eighteen months old today!

Latest word: 'knee', accompanied by pointing to her shin.

Video of Faith walking in the garden (with added aeroplanes and police car sirens):

Low res (5Mb)
High res (13.5Mb)

Just today, Faith has really started taking off on her feet! Here is a video of her walking across the room to Daddy, quite confidently and fast without any support. She seems enormously pleased with herself about it too. Over the last few days she's been walking on her own more, but today she's suddenly become much more sure of herself and walks about all over the place without assistance, including back and forth between Mummy and Daddy just to show off!

She loves drawing, too. In that video, the thing she's reaching for is her crayons and paper – and she'll mime scribbling to ask for them. She's also obsessed with swimming and points out the swimming pool when we see it up the road on the way to and from nursery. Her favourite words are currently 'tractor' and 'bubble'.

Here are some photos of her over the last couple of months.

Faith has gone on an independence drive. She wants to put her jumper on by herself, and even though she can't manage the sleeves at all she yells at me if I try to help her! She's started having cute little tantrums where she lies down on the floor and cries if I try to get her to go somewhere she doesn't want to. (Yes, very cute for now while they only last about five seconds – what will they be like next year?) She stands on her little stool to wash her hands at the sink after she's been to the loo (even though most trips are false positives). And she's decided at long last that she wants to go to sleep in her cot and not in Mummy's arms. Which takes forever because she has no idea how to go about going to sleep, and so she rolls about in the cot talking to herself for ages before tiredness overtakes her (I just tell her to 'lie down and go to sleep' every time she tries to get up, and she usually does; sometimes she needs to be lain down again, but she's mostly quite happy with that). But I'm hopeful that she'll now learn either to go to sleep quickly once she's in her cot in the dark, or to roll about in the cot for a while without Mummy being there, and then go to sleep. Either way that will really save our nights!

[Slightly adapted from a post to the Baby-Led Weaning forums]

Last weekend (not the one just been, but the one before that) we went to Edinburgh to see Robin's siblings. For lunch we went to Phuket Pavilion, a Thai restaurant just off the top end of Leith Walk. Faith and I had never been before (though the rest of the party had) and we didn't know whether they'd cope with a small child, and so I went in first to ask if they served children. There was an oldish man whom I think must have been the proprietor, and a young woman who waited on us. They said that was fine, come on in, so in we all trooped, and the waitress showed us to an ideal table in the window with room beside it for the pushchair[1], and then went off to get a high chair. She asked whether we needed more space than the four-person table, but I said that if the high chair had a tray that would be fine (as indeed it was).

We started choosing our food. The waitress came by with two baskets of prawn crackers, and offered one to Faith baby. She'd never had one before. She took it, had a little sniff and a nibble, then proceeded to inhale the rest of it and reach for more! She carried on munching them while we ordered our food and waited for the first course to arrive (and ate some prawn crackers ourselves: they were delicious and very well made). I ordered a chicken satay for the baby's starter and a red curry for the main. The waitress was very doubtful that the baby would eat something so spicy, and I explained that she liked spicy. Waitress was not convinced and said she would have it made mild. I said that really wasn't necessary, but when it arrived it was very mild, though very very tasty indeed.

Faith didn't care much for her satay (Daddy ended up eating most of it) and just ate more prawn crackers instead (about this point the waitress brought her some more!) but she loved the red curry, and also ate some of my rather hotter, and also tasty, green curry. She had a bit of trouble with the meat which was in quite large portions, but once it had been torn up for her she wolfed that down too. She struggled manfully with the full-size spoon, but once I'd asked for a teaspoon, which the waitress was happy to provide, she took them both and had a good go at using the one to push the food onto the other.

Throughout the meal the two staff kept dropping by to watch Faith eat with some fascination, talking to her and asking questions about her. Waitress in particular was astounded that the baby would eat red curry, even though it was so mild, and both commented on how well she ate. As the waitress cleared away our plates she also wiped down the highchair tray and washed Faith's hands and face.

At the end of the meal, while we had some delicious jasmine tea, she began to get a bit grumpy (it now being nearly an hour after her normal naptime). So we produced the remaining prawn crackers, which we'd hidden when the main course arrived to ensure she ate some! and we had a happy baby again.

When I headed for the door with Faith, the two staff were waiting for me with a large doggy bag of prawn crackers for the baby[2]. They waved her bye-bye and hoped to see her again soon. They also insisted on not charging for the baby, even though we'd ordered her a full-size meal! I suspect that she made their day, being so cute and such a good appreciator of their food.

[1] Faith has recently decided she wants to travel in the pushchair and not in the wrap. It's a bit of a tradeoff between weight and inconvenience, so I'm leaving the decision up to her. She got very upset when we were getting ready to go out and Daddy took the pushchair away to put it in the car!

[2] I didn't want her to have too many more, but I did produce a couple for her to eat with her dinner in the evening. Robin and I scoffed the rest.

According to nursery staff, Faith is now walking on her own, but only when she thinks no-one's looking!

At the beginning of the year we started trying to introduce Faith to the potty. She would not sit on it. I reckoned this was because she was uncomfortable on it and last month we finally got round to acquiring an adaptor seat for her for the real toilet.
( Of poo and other matters )

Faith's latest word is 'Eye'. I think this comes from a book I got her from the library which talks about eyes and noses and mouths and so on. Tonight as I was putting her to bed she kept saying 'eye' and pointing at (or rather poking) my eyes and pointing at her own eyes. She also said 'eye' when she pointed at my nose, but I'm sure she'll learn!

She's still teething. Some people on a forum I frequent swear by amber bead necklaces. Apparently they release succinic acid which is absorbed through the skin. I can't quite see it myself. You can get succinic acid from amber, yes, but surely even round the throat the beads would be too far away from the site of the pain to do any good, even if succinic acid does relieve pain (can't find any evidence for that either). Lots of articles (e.g. this one) say 'Recent scientific research has proved that succinic acid has a beneficial affect on the human body', usually in that exact wording which makes me suspect that they're all copying from the same source. None of them link to any of this purported research. I would like to see a randomised controlled trial comparing amber necklaces with amber-coloured plastic ones, but I doubt anyone's doing that. So I reckon its main function is a placebo effect on mummies, with the possible added benefit of making the baby look terribly cute in a little necklace.

Paracetamol, now. Paracetamol works. And she knows it: she signs 'hurt' and reaches for the bottle…

I had a horrible lurgy the week before last, which coincided with Faith teething and entering a very clingy period needing lots of cuddling in the middle of the night. For the first time ever, Robin had it less badly than me! Faith is beginning to emerge from the clinginess but is still working on her canines, so I'm still not getting much sleep.

I think the clinginess is a developmental thing because she is working on standing up on her own – she just started this weekend while we were playing in the garden and enjoying the sunshine. It's very cute. I say 'Stand up, Faith', and she sticks her bottom in the air, then raises her hands and stands up, wobbles for a moment, then grins and starts bouncing in triumph – and has to sit down again in a hurry!

I had hoped to spend Good Friday gardening while Faith was at nursery, but Robin's office chair broke very dramatically on Thursday – the arm cracked apart and the back fell flat! So we spent the day hunting round furniture shops and couldn't find a single place that sold office chairs. PC World, everyone said, but they only had a couple of horrible little 'typist' chairs. We popped into a furniture shop that had a bed sale on and ended up impulse-buying a new mattress. (Our current one is getting quite old and saggy and we're beginning to roll into the middle on it.) Maybe that will help us get more sleep. And we did finally manage to find Robin a new chair, which was expensive but which he loves and is very comfortable in.

Here are the latest photos of Faith!

Faith's communication is coming along nicely. She's now saying 'bye bye' (or rather 'ba ba') – up until now she's said 'hiya' for both 'hello' and 'goodbye'. ('Ba ba' can also mean 'beep beep' as in a pedestrian crossing, and 'boobie'.) I got a book for her out of the library with words and illustrations for 'heads shoulders knees and toes' and sang it to her several times. Now she can point to her head when asked, and a few days ago as I was getting her up she pulled her pyjamas off her leg and, once her foot was out, pointed to her toes and said 'toh'.

On Sunday we had grandparents for the afternoon and a three-course dinner, which in the way of these things was a little later than normal. In the gap between finishing the first course and serving the second course Faith became grumpy – she'd had an exciting afternoon and was now very tired. So she started signing 'brush teeth, brush teeth' to indicate that she wanted to brush her teeth and go to bed! Or perhaps she was signing 'pudding' – but in any event she wanted things to move along a bit faster, and could let us know about it.

Faith has recently discovered an alphabet book that Grandma and Grandpa gave her for her christening – she pulled it off the shelf and now keeps wanting me to read it to her. So I say 'here is Ah, and Ah is for Apple and Axe and Arrow; and here is Buh, and Buh is for Bunny and Butterfly and Boat and Bee' and so on, while she says 'Ah, Ah, Ah' and 'Buh, Buh, Buh' etc. very enthusiastically. I doubt she's getting an idea of the shapes of the actual letters yet, but she's certainly very keen to learn their sounds!