Issy at 1.5 years old - Enormobaby

Tomorrow Issy will be eighteen months old. She weighs 12.6kg and is 82cm tall. She is chatty and can make her needs and opinions reasonably clearly known.

She likes dancing and sometimes sings herself little songs. We do get instead tantrums but they don't last more than a few seconds and she doesn't hold a grudge.

Yesterday we tried a weeride bike seat for the first time, and despite the fact it is alleged to be for an age range that should comfortably accommodate our girl she appears to be too large for it!

This week Issy went to the toddlers group in Wickham Market with my mum, she also went swimming for the first time. At both groups folk commented that Issy was considerably taller than the other children of her age. We've raised an Enormobaby.

The Issy chair - the first 14 months of Issy!

The last fourteen months have been remarkable, and the speed at which Issy is growing up is starting to get a little alarming, but in quite an exciting way.  Issy now repeats most of what she hears, which means we're starting to have to watch our language; we don't want our girl to swear like a docker until she is at least ten years old.

Every few months I take a photo of our girl sitting on the same chair to try and get an idea of how much she has grown.  In the early days this was a useful indicator, but these days we know exactly how tall our daughter is because we know to what height objects we don't want her to get hold of have to be raised above.

Here's a condensed version of the Issy chair photo series (click for a larger photo):

Quick update on parenting progress

The NCT classes were pretty good but they don't prepare you for running around after a naked one year old pleading with her to put a nappy on because you KNOW she's in need of a wee and is favouring your cream coloured carpets as a testing ground for trying to walk while farting, and you just know that each fart reduces the time margin till one of those odd tricolore poos falls out, and then you'll have to be damn quick or she'll pick it up, or post it through the catflap, where it will land in your slipper that was posted through just a few minutes ago, swiftly followed by the TV remote / wallet / panicking elderly cat.

Dear lord why the hell do we have so many light coloured furnishings, we've had cats for fifteen years! Same cats too, my god they're old, nice though. I've gone a bit off point here, but that's because I haven't slept much FOR A YEAR!

On the whole though yes, those little magnum ice creams are probably better than fab lollies.

*falls of chair, falls asleep*

Weaning day 1 - oh the humanity!

This isn't weaning strictly speaking, the wee one is still a breast milk fan, but for a long time now Issy has been fascinated by whatever it is we happen to be shovelling down our gob-holes at each meal so we decided to start introducing her to food.

I was going to write a paragraph about how cautious we're being here, but I think it's quite evident that we know how to look after our daughter's well-being so rest assured all is well.

One of the main guidelines for this exercise (according to the book my wife read) is to make the whole exercise seem quite normal, and a big part of this is NOT laughing at the youngling while she's tearing her food to shreds and running her own personal experiments into the viscosity and spreadability of various foodstuffs.  Not tittering while Issy smears food anywhere she can is hard enough, but it's almost impossible to keep from belly-laughing when Issy's face betrays her opinion of the taste any of any morsels that actually manage to make it to her mouth.

Have a look at these photos from Issy's first proper food adventure and I'm sure you'll understand why we're struggling to keep straight faces at meal times.

A photo a day, and Issy's first pub lunch.

Issy at her first pub lunch,
that's Uncle Graham in the background

For a few weeks now I've been taking at least one photo of Issy a day and sending it to the aunties, uncles and grandparents. I realised that back when we were babies (in the 1970s - ha!) taking and sharing photos was an expensive and slow process, but now with smartphones and the interwebs taking a photo and emailing it takes a matter of seconds, so for as long as I can I'm going to take a photo of Issy every day.  I only wish I'd thought of it sooner; it would have been brilliant to have a photo of our baby from every day since birth.

And here's the other reason to take a photo a day
Every day Issy seems to change totally - she'll notice so much more, interact with more consideration and continues to become exponentially more fascinated with the world around her.  It's quite alarming to think that our tiny baby is nearly half a year old, I'm making a concerted effort to absorb every moment of her growing up, but there's just to much to take note of that it all becomes a bit of a blur.  When Issy was born both sets of grandparents admitted that they could barely remember any of the day to day detail of living with a newborn, and at first I couldn't believe that anyone could forget any of this wonderment, but now I understand it totally!

All is well!

Issy snap by Issy's Uncle Mark

I know, I'm sorry, I haven't posted for a very long time, but oh boy have we been busy!  Now that Issy is coming up for six months old we feel like we're really getting to know her as the proper little person that she is.

The first few months were a bit crazy but apparently that's totally normal for new parents, and if I've learnt anything over the last few months it's that there appears to be nothing new under the sun when it comes to parenting; no matter how well or badly you think you're coping there's always someone somewhere who has done the same or felt the same way.

Now that we're getting into the swing of this parenting lark I've got say that I'm loving it - my wife and I both agree that our lives very much seemed to start 'properly' when Issy was born, and all experiences can be split into 'PI' and 'AB' (pre-Issy and after-birth).

I could quite cheerfully fill this blog post with gushing loving sentiment about my little girl but it has all been said before by folk far more eloquent than I.


In summary baby = yay!

Seven weeks old!

I borrowed a camera and took a nice photo of Issy, I know that all dads think their daughters are beautiful, but seriously, look at that face!