Today our little Hute is 9 months old. He is pretty miserable with a virus that has meant 3 days of fever and an enormous amount of green snot. Here he is this morning, burning hot and so very sad…
Things were looking a little grim for his 9 month birthday, but then the lovely ones from enough grows dropped off a get-well cake (how did they manage that with a just-hatched-baby!?) and this afternoon we were treated to the most delicious scones ever when we had tea with our friends Nixand the lovely D.
We felt much better, and so did he:
(The paracetamol helped too.)
Huey has been learning to do a lot of exciting things over the past month. He has learnt that sitting can be fun - you can check out all sorts of interesting parts of your body, you can shake rattles much more effectively, and you can read books! He has started pushing a walker confidently and is experimenting with letting go when standing. Yikes. We are going to have two toddlers very soon. He’s also waving and nearly pointing, and often surprises us with the things he understands and can do. He is just a delight to have around, our Huey - a busy, independent, stroppy and gorgeously funny little fluffball. We all love him to bits.
When Huey was born he received a knitted woolen snake. It was cute, but nothing special, and we tossed it in the toybox thinking we’d never really see it again.
We were so wrong.
Some months later, we noticed that Huey had fallen deeply in love with Snake. Snake was shaken, bent, and chewed. And when crawling really kicked in, Snake became Huey’s favourite exploring companion. Huey is a rather independent little soul, and will often take off on adventures around the house, Snake bravely leading the way (clutched in Huey’s hand and flopping forwards with every step). Snake isn’t exactly a transitional object - when Snake isn’t around, Huey is fine, and he often carries all sorts of things around the house, but Snake is definitely a favourite friend.
Today, we had a little of the rare and lovely double nap time because Arlo went down late for his midday nap. I heard a squeak from the bedroom and rushed in to find Huey and Snake setting off on an important Arlo-awakening mission. (Amazingly, Arlo didn’t wake up, even when we all convened on the bed, laughing and chatting, turned on the light and took a flash photo.)
Sometimes, when we are at the end of our tether, when we are exhausted from the unrelenting imperative to look after the every need of two small beings and feeling rather sorry for ourselves and wishing we had grandparents who could pop over and help out now and then - such as this week where we’ve caught a bog load of illness (first S with gastro, then me with gastro and a woozy cold, then arlo with the gastro and then tonsillitis - yes, it’s been a bloody awful week) - huey, who has miraculously remained unscathed thus far, bestows upon us a goofy grin of such delight, whilst surrounded by his halo of happy hair, that it doth break through our miserable fug and restoreth us to greener pastures and whatnot.
We love our evening routine. Dinner is some time between 5pm and 6pm (chaos!), followed by playtime, then bath at 6.30pm and bed at 7pm. But they are just delightful after dinner and we love hanging out with them so much that playtime often stretches a leetle longer than it should…
Gee it’s hard to get back on the horse when you’ve taken a big blog break. There seems to be too much and yet too little to post about. Life goes on - up close, it is vivid and interesting, but from a distance (or a blog break) it takes on a rather bland texture. We get up, we get through the day, we go to bed, we get through the night, and then we get up again.
We haven’t posted much lately because bean being sick made the days harder to get through than usual for a little while there. But from Arlo and Huey’s point of view, life has been very eventful indeed. It is rushing by so fast - sometimes it seems like they hit new exciting milestones every day, and I can’t keep up. We’re long overdue for a list of milestones achieved and cute things done, but today I give you only a few:
• Sometimes they play together in the living room - well, more strictly, they parallel play, but it doesn’t always require our input (though we spy on them anyway!). And now that Huey can crawl, sometimes they set off on expeditions around the house together, accompanied by many delighted squeals and giggles. Arlo is still much faster than Huey (though Huey is catching up fast), and so he travels about twice as far as he goes backwards and forwards between Huey and their destination (usually the kitchen or the bathroom).
• Arlo’s love affair with books continues. Many times a day he will bring a book to one of us, waving it in the air and pushing it into our faces, then climbing into our lap so that it can be read. When we read to him he does his special concentrating heavy breathing, and cries if we stop before he is ready. He doesn’t like to share reading with Huey though, because Huey is still at the eating books stage and that really annoys Arlo. Pointing is Arlo’s second favourite activity after reading (accompanied by an emphatic ‘deh’, and either signifying want of an item, or wanting us to name or talk about the item), and now the two have come together so that he happily points to things he likes in the books (ducks, kittens, babies etc).
• Huey is now pulling up to standing, and cruising rather unsteadily around the furniture. His favourite place to pull up is the toybox, and he stands there for ages holding on precariously with one hand and pulling things out with the other. He’s working on sitting down but he hasn’t quite got it yet, so when he’s had enough he stands there grizzling and occasionally bending his knees until one of us comes to save him. With pulling up has come babbling - ‘hey-dah!’. It’s adorable.
But let me tell you the story of what just happened as I was writing this post. Both boys went down for a sleep around 10am (earlier than usual for Arlo because they have another cold). Bean went out to get a long overdue haircut, and I settled in for a bit of computer time. About 40 minutes later, I heard a sad cry from the bedroom. I rushed in to find Arlo red faced and upset and still mostly asleep, with Huey looking up at me from the far side of Arlo with a bright cheeky grin. Huey had silently crawled across the width of two queen size mattresses and over Arlo to play with his brother (or maybe the curtains), but his brother was not impressed with this feat at all. Somehow I managed to re-settle Arlo while Huey pulled up on me saying ‘hey-DAH!’ at the top of his voice (Arlo really is sick and sad to go back to sleep through that commotion). And now Huey is pottering around at my feet smiling at me and trying to amuse himself in the study (mostly by playing with the heater). Time to split them up for their daytime naps, perhaps?
And because we haven’t posted a photo of Arlo for a little while, here he is pushing around the pumpkins that he helped me pick from the garden. Cute, hey.
Our wee Huey is six months old! We’ve always thought he was laid back, but the older he gets, the more we are surprised by our shmall shoft Hute. Things we think we know:
• Underneath his mild exterior he has a will of iron. It scares us a little.
• When he’s cranky about something, he blows raspberries. It’s hard to take him seriously, but it is a true expression of annoyance and so we try not to laugh.
• His head is still smaller than our breasts, and he has movie star hair - thick, blonde, and luxuriously wavy.
• He is mostly delighted, occasionally alarmed by Arlo’s attempts at sociability. Actually - they adore each other. There are big smiles and happy flaps on both sides when they see each other, and the other day Arlo gave Huey a big sloppy kiss and a cuddle (we were little puddles of love on the floor afterwards). The alarm only creeps in when Huey has been crawled over or had his toy taken away one too many times that day.
• He and Arlo also chat to each other, by mimicking each other’s sounds. Usually we get a symphony of squealing, but one memorable night recently they had a 3am conversation in muffled grunts as they fed back to sleep.
• Sitting is still fraught with danger, as he throws himself backwards as soon as he is happy/excited/alarmed. He has skipped rolling and having barely managed crawling, is now trying to pull himself to standing (with limited success at this stage), but if propped up he can stand quite well (for long enough to take a good photo).
• He still gets the joke, every time. (Note careful placement of foot to catch the perilous backwards swing.)
• His lips feel better when sucked in.
• He still loves a good double arm flap, although the frantic thigh slapping days seem to be numbered.
• Eating is becoming an obsession, but he still gets very cranky with food if it does not behave. He is especially unimpressed with pureed food. The high chair is barely coping with the enthusiastic horse-riding that accompanies the approach of food or spoon.
• He loves books (and still finds them tasty).
• He can play by himself for ages, just pottering around the living room checking stuff out. He is particularly in love with the indoor clothes rack that is living permanently in the living room now that cooler weather is upon us - he crawls over the struts and helpfully pulls down the clothes.
• He loves singing in the garden (just like his brother did at six months).
• He has no teeth, nor any signs of teething. It seems he is a late teether too - which just means more time for us to appreciate his gummy smiles!
• He may soon be the only member of the family able to wolf whistle.
Taking photos of my son dressed up like an extra from FAME!:**
* At least we didn’t give him the matches. He wandered off by himself, went ominously quiet, and was found engrossed in match play. I am, however, responsible for leaving them too close to the edge of the desk.
** The headband is because Huey’s hair is now so long it gets in his eyes, but I can’t bear to cut it. The stripy leggings are to keep his legs warm while allowing him maximum mobility to practice his new, wobbly, all fours crawling. The skivvy is to keep his top warm. There is a reason for everything, but the total outfit went way beyond the sum of the parts.
