Baby Steps

It's been a week where Kien has been trying to walk a lot more than previously. From just a few steps only a couple of weeks ago he is now walking so much more confidently. Check it out!

We wriggled, and we rhymed...

...and Kien is so independent he doesn't want to stay put one minute next to his mama! While all the other babes were being snuggled and sung to and tickled by their parent Kien was zooming around the room trying to make friends with everyone. And then he started collecting the stray balls that didn't get picked up from an earlier song sequence. Of course when the other kids saw Kien had colourful balls it was all on with them trying to snatch them off him. But my tricky little guy can crawl fast (as commented by one mother witnessing his antics), and he was across the room with the balls before the other kids knew what was going on. So for the entire half hour at the Grey Lynn library I was chasing after Kien. When we did manage to have a song and dance together I had to be vigorous with the swinging and turning and the jumping, because otherwise he loses interest and wriggles to get down.

We caught the bus down Williamson Ave, and made it home by 11:30 in time for his lunch and nap. So looks like we are going to do this more often now that it doesn't eat into his nap time, which was what I struggled with previously when I was just walking home. Why didn't I think of taking the bus before now?

I am loving my Tuesdays with Kien.

No wriggling nor rhyming today

I haven't taken Kien to Wriggle & Rhyme for ages since it conflicts with his nap, but this morning he woke up late so I decided to take him to the Grey Lynn library session. Since I only remembered at 10:30 I had to get there in 15 minutes. So I got him into the buggy and sprinted there....only to find out it was not on today :-( due to it being anniversary weekend (yeah, go figure!). Kien had a chance to play with some kids anyway. I texted Jef and told him where we were and why we were there and that there were lots of other disappointed mothers too. He suggested starting human beat-boxing, get a groove going and start wriggling!!!Can you imagine? It would be like a scene out of a movie :-)

Over the weekend Kien started signing back to us. Jef and I were talking and he heard "hat" and signed it. Then I said "milk" and he signed that. Yesterday I showed him how to sign "cracker" and he did that, then last night I did "bath" sign when we were going to have a bath and he signed that too. He is now slowly getting the hang of signing, which is great because it has been ages coming. I've been signing to him since he was born, but I admit not as consistently as I would have liked. But now that he is signing back I will be signing a lot more to him. Hopefully when he gets better at it I will be able to take a movie. Watch this space.

A visit from Thomas

On Saturday we had a lovely visit from Thomas, accompanied by his parents Michelle and Mat. I enjoyed holding and talking to Thomas; he was responsive, chatty and completely adorable.

Kien had a blast playing with Mat - it was fun just watching them!



Mum and Rod stayed for a brief lunch of Subway rolls after I put Kien down for a nap.

In the afternoon we went to Butterfly Creek. The butterfly enclosure was really cool - actually exceptionally warm and humid!

We didn't really think much of the rest of the "attractions". It was way too crowded for the facilities, and they operated this tiny train with only 5 carriages every 30 minutes. So I went and got a refund for the train that we couldn't get on.

Kien enjoyed watching the planes landing at the lookout point.

Three steps...

About 5 minutes ago Kien stood up, took a drink from his sippy cup and walked 3 steps, and then sat down again like nothing has happened. Jef and I both watched it, and were so surprised! He has been practicing his standing, but not walking independently. I guess these next few days we will see him progress his walking.

Meal time mania

I've been reading about 'baby lead weaning' so have decided to let Kien feed himself as much as possible. Meal times are so much fun. I prepare meals that we can all eat, then Jef and I sit with Kien, next to his highchair, and we eat together. Meal times have all of a sudden got extremely messy! Here is last night's carnage.

Standing, bathing, and stepping

On Friday 7th evening Jef was outside on the lawn with Kien at Amy's place. He stood up independently from squat, and as standing for a few seconds. Then on Sunday 9th January Kien took his first step without hanging on to anything. He did this first on the couch, then from holding onto the chair transitioning to the walker. Since then he has continued to build his confidence, and he has often stood and let go of what he was holding on to for support. He has done this a lot in the bath - which is quite scary because it is slippery in there!

Speaking of baths Kien went through a stage of about a week around Xmas/NY period where he did not want to get into the bath and would screech and cling on to me tightly at the sight of the bath. It was so sad to see him petrified of the bath because he loved it so much and would spend so much time in there. I had to slowly coax him back into the bath by getting in with him and having him sit on my knees playing with his toys until he dropped them and wanted to get down to pick them up. Once he was in the water everything is back to normal again...go figure :-) So now we no longer bath him in the little plastic baby bath because of this episode.

We went to the beach on Saturday afternoon - the sunshine was glorious.



And on 13th January I stopped filling out my spreadsheet. That is a milestone!