Rover

The intelligence scale I mentioned a while back (i.e. your newborn is an earthworm, bit dispiriting really) has awarded my child the dubious distinction of being 'a quadruped mammal' by this age. Sort of insulting but then again if you watch the baby...

• He 'walks' on all fours
• He makes a lot of interesting noises to try and communicate though none of them are out-and-out what you'd call proper words
• He understands quite a lot of words though - things like ball, no, sit, up
• He likes feet and shoes, and will chew on either
• He likes waiting by the letterflap for the post to arrive and then chewing on it vigorously so that by the time you get it it's sort of raggedy round the edges
• He is very interested in (other) dogs and any animal
• He likes children and will try to bite them with great love and enthusiasm
• He likes the bins a lot

...so on balance I think maybe the scale has a point.

Walkies!

Dominoes....

... Except now my husband has the Roseola. Sigh. He is now feeling very sorry for himself - and for the baby as he now knows exactly how the poor mite was feeling just a few days ago. 'No wonder he wouldn't eat,' he moaned this evening. 'Awful sore throat.' Bit anoying after all the sites and books chirpily reassured us that adults hardly ever get it, just babies. Apparently 'everyone' is immune after about 4. Ummm, or not?

Really, really praying I am not up next. Enough already.

Down but not for long

The poor baby got Roseola (still no idea how to pronounce it) - a fairly mild virus involving fever and a rash - the fever was sad, he whimpered and looked miserable, felt burning hot and I had to reluctantly get out the Calpol and baby Nurofen - I know fevers are designed to 'burn up' the virus but the possibility of febrile convulsions always scares me... especially when it says in the books 'not to worry, they're really usually harmless, just scary to watch - but dial 999 if it happens...' umm, mixed messages?
Anyway once that stopped he got a rash and looked like a poor little sick monster. He carried on crawling, but in a desultory manner, as though it really wasn't worth the effort and sat about looking sad and weary. He stopped eating altogether and for one day barely drank, not even milk, which was a bit worrying. He somehow looked smaller, as though you need life force to make up the whole of your physical bulk and his was diminished.

But suddenly he turned the corner and woke up - at 2.30 am - full of beans and the joy of life. The rash had reduced quite impressively just overnight. By 3.30am we admitted defeat and allowed him to be awake - he was obviously feeling GREAT as you do after an illness and was keen to get back to exploring. It was almost a relief to watch him pull wine bottles out of the wine rack, huge books out of the bookshelf - which trapped his legs under them and then see how excited he was by a new swing kindly bought for him by his Great-Grandmother, which had arrived while he was languishing.

Normal service resumed.

And they're off...

He's crawling good and proper. His knees are covered with small bruises from whamming along our wooden floors, but he doesn't seem to care. What started as commando crawling (on his belly) became a tentative effort at all-fours crawling (with great Bambi-on-ice impressions along the way, the floors are pretty slippy), and then somehow his legs got stronger and he understood how it worked better. And now he crawls. Fast. As a result he has suddenly learnt several new things:

• Rooms interconnect.
• If someone leaves the room and you are all alone you can chase after them rather than cry for them to come back.
• There are amazing new things to discover because the grownups have not yet fully childproofed the house:
• House plants in pots of earth which is very yummy to eat.
• House plants with leaves that are nice to eat.
• Bowls of lavender seeds that can be eaten and spread around the whole living room, creating a lovely smell, as well as the appearance of:
• The vacuum cleaner, which has lots of buttons, cables and fluff to explore (and eat).
• Bins - and Mamma's 'cross' voice, hitherto not heard so much. Also the word NO.
• The recycling basket with a LOT of paper to be ripped, strewn across the floor and eaten, preferably before Mamma catches you at it.
• Stairs - and the hasty appearance of stairgates, disappointingly.
• The (muddy) wheels of the pram - and the contents of the changing bag, handily near floor level in the pram under-basket.
• Toilets, toilet brushes... and then bathroom door mysteriously started being kept shut. Sad really, that room had potential...
• Outside in the garden even more things have become accessible:
• Earth. Yummy.
• Watering can for drinking out of/showering with.
• Brambles.
• Aphids. And that word NO again.
• Small plants in neat rows. Well, they were neat.

With all these new things to explore the toys are mostly abandoned on the floor, except for two books of colours (i.e. a green page with photos of green things, etc) which are read continuously until they mysteriously disappear.... but they must be round here somewhere, it's just a case of pulling out all the books on the lower bookshelf till they are found again.