Enjoying the sunshine...

The weather over the past 2 weeks has been absolutely beautiful. We've been enjoying bright, sunny weather in the low 70s. One of the privileges of being on maternity leave is that I get to enjoy it all without being cramped in an office. Yea! We've been going on long walks and sitting out in the garden (the front garden, since our back garden still needs seeded and sowed!)

Here are some pictures of my little monster...

Other news.. we've bought our floors for downstairs and the wood is going in next weekend!! Finally!! We've also got our tiler coming during next week to tile the kitchen floor. This house will start looking a bit tidier, finally. And yes, I'll post some picture up soon.

5 Months

Can't believe how quickly the past 5 months have passed. I am nearly ready to return to work... well not so much 'ready' as 'having to'. Our little boy is turning into a little man. He's growing so much, his hair is really starting to fill in and he's really establishing a personality of his own. I have started weaning him over this past week. I had been giving him a bit of baby rice for the past few weeks, but just started to introduce a baby cereal as well as carrots and sweet potato. I bought a new handheld food processor to make all of his baby foods from scratch. It's all organic and homemade for my wee man! We'll start introducing broccoli, peas, apples, pears, avocado and banana over the next week. Eating baby cereal...

Carrots...

Sweet Potato...

His new sippy cup...

All in all he seems a very content little man. He gets a bit cranky when his routine is changed, but I suppose we all do. We visited the health visitor on his 5 month birthday for a weight, length and overall progress update. He's a whopping 18 lbs and 28 inches. This boy is a little monster. I've had to pop him into his 6-9 month clothes. Even the health visitor had to double check with me that he was only 5 months. She thought he was at least 7 months. She was really pleased with his progress and kept commenting on how advanced she thought he was for his age (both in size and activity). He kept rolling over onto his tummy while I was trying to undress him. And he kept grabbing for her glasses, babbling away and smiling his little head off.

He is able to sit much better and attempts to sit up fully whenever lying down or in his bouncing chair. He never stays on his back for longer than a few seconds. As soon as I put him down he's straight onto his tummy. He's still sleeping through the night for us. We normally get him down between 7-8 pm and he's up around 7 am. He takes a few naps throughout the day and is on a pretty regular feeding schedule- three 9 oz bottles, baby cereal in the morning, rice in the evening and carrot or sweet potato at lunch time. I'm going to start introducing snacks over the next few weeks (apple or pear mid morning or mid afternoon).

We are still going to baby yoga and he's one of the more active babies in the class. As the weather is getting better, I'm going to start doing more outdoor activities. It is over a mile and a half from our house to the bottom of the road leading into our development. We'll be trying to walk up and down every other day. I also changed his pram from infant to baby mode last month. He loves to look out at everyone and everything going on.

Here he is at Botanic Gardens. He really loves smiling for the camera now.

I think he looks like me in this picture. Actually, I think he usually looks like me when he is sleeping. He's so cute!

The Roller

Took this the other week...

Super cutie!

The smiler

Our wee man has started to really smile for the camera. A real ham, just like his mommy!! I would normally have to trick him into smiling at me and quickly put the camera in front of his face, but now he's happy to genuinely smile at me through the lens of the camera. He has also started to get this cheeky grin where he scrunches up his nose and gives me that toothless grin. It's super cute.



We had a few friends up on Saturday to watch the United match and have dinner. It was my first attempt at homemade lasagna and thankfully was hailed as a success! I made a separate small veggie lasagna for myself. Here is a picture of Liam and little Jack all decked out in their United kit. They looked so cute together!

We're rolling...

Liam has been turning over onto his belly for a few weeks now, but not consistently. He would often get stuck halfway through, get frustrated and give up. Yesterday he did it 6 times and I found him in his cot that morning upside down and on his belly- quite impressive! He's still not felt the need to continue the roll back onto his back at this stage, but we're working on it.

He's also shown signs that he is getting ready to crawl (or at least the signs the books suggest). Rather than staying in a Sphinx type pose when on his belly, he tries to push his butt up in the air and get onto his knees. He can't manage to lift his head and shoulders up quite yet, but he seems a bit of a stubborn child that won't let this challenge defeat him!

Other news, Liam has been moved into his own room. Yea! We decorated the small box room at the weekend and moved him out of our room. Unfortunately we have had to put the loft conversion plans on hold because of the ridiculous cost of childcare (it's another mortgage for us... I'm not exaggerating at all!) So, we're continuing to use his bedroom as the spare room and had to use the study as his room. It's small, but fits everything that he needs in just perfectly. I'll post some pictures of his room. This is the bedding we decided on. We've kept the bedroom magnolia and the cotbed and changer are in a natural pine.

The cool thing about his cotbed is that it transforms into both a bed and a daybed/sofa later on. Hopefully we'll get a good stretch of use out of it!

Manchester United Man

United's newest fan showed off his kit yesterday while watching the game with his daddy. At first he seemed a bit more interested in his hands than the game...

Here is Liam practicing his free kicks...

16 Week Exam

Here's the newest update on our wee man... He had his last round of injections on Thursday and he wasn't very impressed. I feel so powerless trying to comfort him. He just looks at me as if to say 'why are you hurting me mommy?' It just breaks my heart! To be fair, he only cried for a few minutes and then seemed okay. Thankfully he doesn't seem to have taken a reaction to the shots like he did last time. He's lost his appetite a bit and is quite sleepy, but he's happy and not vomiting or having diarrhoea.

Well, Liam is still a big man and has gained 3 cms in length and is up to 68 cms. He's not gained as much weight in the past 4 weeks and is only 16 lbs 4 ozs. The doctor said that he probably lost a bit of weight following his last injections as he wasn't eating or keeping much down.

Recently Liam has been taking more interest in holding his bottle.

Here are a few pictures to show just how big he's getting. He used to have loads of room in his bouncer, but his feet are hanging over the edge most of the time!

Here are his big chubby cheeks!

He's talking loads now, well making tons of sounds. Each week he seems to progress so much. I've bought all of the Baby Einstein dvds, which he absolutely loves. It gives me a bit of time to get the housework done.