Books are everywhere

Yesterday I took Cat to the Baby Clinic after 2 months break. This time she was highly interested in other babies: she stared at few of them and even tried to grab the foot of the little boy sitting next to us. And I marvelled at how tiny some of the babies were – I don’t think Cat was ever that small, though I’m struggling to remember how she looked like as a newborn. Maybe it is time to look through her old photos again. I keep on meaning to organize them into the album; I even borrowed a book on scrapbooking from the library, but it probably will take me years to get it done.

She finally got weighted (8.96 kilos) after waiting for more than one hour (our area’s health clinic is severely understaffed). I had a chat with a health visitor and was given the first bookstart pack with two baby books and information on reading & local libraries for the parents. There are two more packs: one given at 18 months and one at three years. I think it is a great programme to encourage reading, although I’m unlikely to think anything else since I love books. The bookstart website also has song sheets with illustrations and lists of good book for children. From the pack I found out that there is a company which publishes bilingual books and now I have to resist the temptation to order some.

We already accumulated a good sized collection of children books (though not so many ones suitable for the baby) as I discovered many in good condition in the local charity shops. My latest favourite finds are Lion’s Precious Gift with the beautiful illustrations by Amanda Hall and a book of rhymes Twiddling Your Thumbs by Wendy Cope – I love her quirky poetry for adults and kids. Clive and I finally accepted the fact that there is no curing of my book collecting addiction and bought two more bookshelves.

I think I can go on and on talking about books (did I ever whinge about our library having a borrowing limit of 12 books? It used to be 7 until recently. Seven is a very small number!), but I think I’ll stop now.

Things that come out at night

Teeth! Today in the morning I discovered that Cat now has both of her lower central incisors. Poor babe, she was so unhappy yesterday and there are still 18 teeth to go.

We finally made to the baby clinic yesterday and found out that Cat now weights 8.04 kilos.

Cat update

Weight: 6.64 kg
Morning wake up time: 7-7:30 (thanks to the summer time change)
Favourite self-amusement activity: Grabbing own feet, wiggling and pushing herself backwards (she lifts her bottom up and propels herself with her legs), while parents try to change her nappy.

Favourite Toy: Teething beads (she misses her mouth about 40% of the time)


Favourite nap location: Her own cot (Hurray! Finally)
Number of naps: Alternates between 2 and 3 (I wish she would settle on 2 naps)
Last non-parent person, who had conversation with her: Librarian

Immunisations again

Catherine had the second round of immunisations today. She screamed so loudly. Poor thing. But thanks to her best friend the thumb the screaming stopped after few seconds and 10 minutes later she even smiled at me.

Her weight is 5.99 kilos.

Check-ups

Went to Baby Clinic on Tuesday. Catherine passed 5 kg mark and is now 5,040 grams. She is also about to outgrow most of her 0-3 months clothes, her body is just too long for them. I wonder if there actually many babies that are still wearing 0-3 months clothes on their 3-month bday.

Yesterday I took her for her 6-week check up. Since appointment was at the end of her morning feed we were about 10 minutes late, but still had to wait for another 10 minutes before the doctor was finished with earlier patient. Nothing exciting to report – Catherine is boringly (thank goodness!) healthy baby.

Looks like all our problems were due to her not getting too much foremilk and not enough hindmilk. I managed to get my milk supply under control and she is doing much better, sometimes going as long as 6 hours between feeds and smiling much more. I still haven’t managed to get a good picture of her wonderful smile.

I can’t believe that UK’s Big Brother is BBC’s main news for today and made international news. Depressing! I’m sure there are more interesting and important things going on in the world today.

Getting heavier

Cat's weight is now 4720 grams and she is onto Pampas size 3 nappies. It took few damp spots on her clothes due to the leaks for us to realise that size 2 were getting too small.

Weight Gain

We are back from the Baby Clinic. Catherine is now 4300 grams - she gained 300 grams in one week.

Books, presents & weight

Early in the morning both my orders of Russian books arrived (yep, I’m using my baby as an excuse to feed my book addiction) and now we are out of bookshelf space again hence need to figure out where we can fit another one. Since it didn’t rain in the morning I sat in the garden with Cat and looked through the books. The best buys – Pavel Bazhov and Russian Folk Tales. Both made out of good paper, with good binding and have fantastic colourful illustrations. I love Bazhov’s tales – according to my mum as a child I would agree to do anything if my parents promised me to read from his book. Sadly his books are almost impossible to get in English. There are few other Russian books I would recommend, but sadly they are also hard to get. I wanted to use Roadside Picnic by Brothers Strugatsky as an example, but Gollancz re-publishing it next year (I'm very happy about finally being able to get a copy for Clive to expand his knowledge of russians as he has scary narrow stereotipical vision of us :-P ). The edition from 2000 is going for over £70 on Amazon! Now I have to figure out how many copies I want to pre-order -> makes good present for IT geeks.

We also received the cutest little outfit from Arnaud & Anne. My baby has her first French garment! She is definitely going to end up having better wardrobe than I do. Julia is already asking what type of clothes she should bring back from her January USA trip.

Went to the Baby Clinic in the afternoon. Catherine is now 4 kilos. Not bad for the girl, who had thrush (yeast infection) at the end of last week and wasn’t feeding well for few days. While she is gaining weight, I’m loosing it. I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight of 60.8 kilos – it is certainly good time to start concentrating on have additional lunch each day before I totally disappear.