Elijah received a belated birthday gift: a gorgeous pair of hand-knitted longies (long wool pants to wear over cloth nappies). Our very clever friend from Midnight Madness made them. Pretty swish, hey?
The wrapping paper was very cute. I'm assuming it was a craft project.
I can't wait to try them on Elijah and will post pics of him "modelling" when I can get him to stand still for five seconds.
Parenting lesson #317: Do not leave anything on a kitchen chair, especially if it can be tipped out onto the floor.
It's Nutrigrain, for those playing at home. Elijah loves it. And apparently it tastes fine off the floor too. Well at least it's boosting his immune system.
Elijah has always talked in a very tired voice when falling asleep in the car on drives, but now he's including this habit in his bedtime ritual as well.
The other night, he was having a cuddle with me in the rocking chair and I thought he was asleep. Suddenly, this little voice piped up, "Oi, aya... Good!" Too cute.
We're hoping that out of the soil will arise hope for a new African violet. No signs so far, but the fact that most of the leaves are still green is promising.
Vi is still bravely battling away in her pot. However, after being ripped from the soil twice, I'm gradually preparing myself for the worst.
Elijah has an infection. It's not particularly nasty and should clear up in a few days with some antibacterial cream, but it's in a particularly nasty place. Poor thing. Nappy changes are not fun at the moment.
Proof positive that Elijah is a very clever baby, and it's not just proud parents seeing what they want to see.
The thing that most impressed the both of us is that there are at least four or five other blocks inside the wooden box. Elijah deliberately kept choosing the green round block. He knew exactly what he was doing. Way cool.
Picture this: I'm sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper, as Elijah happily toddles around the kitchen and lounge room. Sporadically he comes to cuddle my leg. After one particular cuddle, I can sense he's still behind my chair, but I haven't heard anything. I turn around to talk to him and see that Vi is once again sitting out of her pot! There is no mistaking the culprit: Elijah has dirt on his hands!
Poor Vi! She's been through so much. I have replanted her (again!) but hope is fading that she will survive this latest attack from her mortal enemy. She was still looking rather green and healthy, but I don't know how much longer this will last.
If anyone can suggest a nice sunny spot inside that isn't the windowsill (too narrow for her pot) or on the floor by the glass sliding door (her current home), she and I would be very grateful.
Who knows why "bread" is suddenly so important that it warrants being said all the time. Maybe it's because he likes sandwiches? "What" stems from the following situation: Elijah - "Dad Dad" Daddy - "What?" Elijah - "What!" "Dide" is Elijah-speak for "Outside". He looks out the back glass door and says "Dide! Dide! Dide!" It would be nice to be able to take him outside more often, but it's really not terribly safe.
Yes, that, folks, is my beautiful, long-suffering, African Violet, Vi. Or should I say, my former beautiful African Violet, Vi, who before yesterday had survived for well over 5 years, battling through two moves, drought, flood, famine... you get the picture. Not only did Elijah pull the plant out of the pot, but he also ripped the root system off the plant in order to "plant" magnets.
How did he find magnets, you ask? The magnets belong to the mechanism that opens and shuts our blinds, which Elijah also destroyed.
We gave her some emergency surgery and hopefully she or her little babies that we are striking as backup, will get through this latest hurdle.
The Government will provide $8.7 million over four years to raise awareness amongst parents and health professionals of the benefits of breastfeeding. Advice and support will be provided to mothers who may wish to breastfeed. This funding will also go towards research to understand the factors that influence the decision by mothers to breastfeed, which will inform the development of information and support to mothers, their partners, families and professionals.
Well, they've totally missed the point. I'm not sure if the Inquiry into Breastfeeding (for which I wrote a submission) has written their report yet, but nevertheless, the government has skewed this the entirely wrong way. Submission after submission stated that initiation rates for breastfeeding were very high. This means that the majority of Australian women do want to breastfeed their children. Even if the report has not been written, the statistics on initiation rates are obviously out there for the policy makers to find. The federal government should not be wasting taxpayers' money seeking to understand why women decide to breastfeed. They should be researching and implementing methods of enabling women to successfully establish breastfeeding and continue to breastfeed.
This makes me almost mad enough to write a Letter to the Editor.
Press activity around a recent study published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, Television and DVD/video viewing in children younger than 2 years, by a team of University of Washington researchers caught my eye because of one startling statistic - 9 out of 10 children in the United States, under the age of 2, regularly watch TV, DVDs or videos. 9 out of 10.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to gain access to the original research report so the following is based on a Reuters-sourced article from the Sydney Morning Herald. However:
90% of children under the age of 2 years, and 40% under the age of 3 months, watch between 1 and 3 hours of TV per day;
only about 50% of the TV was educational, with the rest split between non-educational children's content, baby DVDs/videos and adult TV (I'm assuming this means grown up TV and not a euphemism, which would be just plain wrong; and
29% of parents believed that baby-oriented TV and video was educational, despite the fact that there is no conclusive evidence either way on the issue.
I do have one issue with the research as it was a telephone survey of approximately 1,000 families with young children. I don't trust telephone survey results as much as I would results gathered from a guy with a clipboard. Judging from my own behaviour, it's far easier to deliberately play games with the truth over the phone than it is if the person is right in front of you asking the questions. Be that as it may, the telephone survey is considered a legitimate information gathering technique, so I'll have to accept it.
This particular research doesn't draw any conclusions as to the impact of television. One of the authors, Assoc Prof Frederick Zimmerman, was quoted as saying:
We don't know from the study whether it is good or bad. What we know is that it is big.
Research in the same edition of Archives found that teens who watched three to four hours of TV a day were more likely to have attention or learning problems and less likely to go on to college, with the effects being cumulative the more you watched TV. For example, more than one hour a day had adverse consequences, three hours was much worse, two hours not so bad but worse than one etc. These results appeared to be the same irrespective of socio-economic status.
Zimmerman's staff page summarises some other research of his that indicates that early TV viewing can lead to :
becoming more resistant to parental requests to turn off the TV.
It's no secret that we're not big fans of TV. I am starting to see more and more research that indicates that TV is nothing but bad for children under 2, and only has benefits in moderation (ie less than an hour a day) for older children. I am horrified but sadly not surprised that 90% of babies and infants in the US regularly watch TV and I would not be surprised if that was mirrored here in Australia.
Bugs does not watch TV. At all. We simply do not turn it on when he is awake. He used to watch some TV when he was around 3 months, but that was mainly daytime talk shows while was feeding or DL.TV episodes burnt to DVD while I watched over his playtime when Mummy was teaching students (or taking a nap) but that stopped some months ago. He watches none at all now, and we intend to maintain this as long as possible. I will admit that this is easy for me to say as I don't have to look after him during the day. However, his mother believes in this quite strongly, and I am of the opinion that he won't miss what he doesn't know.
I pass no judgement on other people who choose to let their child watch TV or videos. All I know is that we are doing what we think will work best for our own child, in our individual circumstances. The more research I read, the more I feel that we are doing something that will be good for him long term.
Something has clicked with Elijah and he's realised that he actually CAN walk! So he's doing it much more often now. In fact, if he's standing, then he's now more likely to try a few independent steps than cruise or crawl. He's consistently taking anywhere between four and twelve steps in one go and can actually walk in one direction, stop, turn and walk back int he other direction.
Inspired by Quilly's post about a wonderful personalised Cinquain she had received from a student, I decided to get my creative self into gear and write one about Elijah.
Bugalugs clever, curious playing, learning, exploring growing up too fast Elijah
We had the 12-month immunisation appointment today. Even though Elijah's birthday was three weeks ago, this was the earliest I could get him in to the clinic!
He was such a trouper today. He had three separate jabs, one in each arm and one in his leg. He cried for all of 2 minutes and didn't even need booby to settle down. He was content to cuddle for another couple of minutes and then was down on the floor cruising again and flirting with all the little girl babies in the clinic.
And as for side effects, this time there were none! He had no fever, no swelling, didn't go off his food and was pretty happy for the rest of the day.
If I'm eating a banana, Elijah wants a banana. If I'm eating a sandwich, he wants a sandwich. It doesn't matter if he was happily eating cheese 30 seconds ago, if he sees me with something different, he wants it and wants nothing to do with the food that had previously been more than adequate!
At least this means that he's getting more adept (read less messy) at self-feeding with all the practice he's getting.
