BABY | Squidge 1 year update

I almost can’t believe I’m writing this… but Squidge is now 1 year old!!!! Oh my gosh, where did the last year go? Seriously!

It’s so incredible to see how he’s developing, every day he makes me such a proud mummy, and full of amazement in all the things he can do.  I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in my life, as I have in the last year, he makes me laugh with the things he does, and says, every day :)

The weekend before his birthday we had a very small party for him.  We had a few friends over and a few family members, to celebrate him turning one.  His birthday was last Tuesday (6th), so we had the party a few days early when most people could make it.

Sleeping

We’ve gone through quite a few ups and downs with his sleeping, but we’re currently in an ‘up’.  He goes to bed a little later than before, it used to be 6, but now it’s about 7pm.  We take him upstairs, sit in his nursing chair and feed him his last bottle.  After that, we give him a quick cuddle while standing by the cot, kiss him goodnight on his forehead, and put him in the cot, placing his comforter on his tummy.  It goes one of two ways.  Either he’ll get straight back up (this usually happens if he’s left quite a bit of his bottle), we’ll go straight in and give him the rest of the bottle (he literally won’t do this unless we go through this specific routine!), or he’ll fall right asleep :)

He tends to sleep through until about 6am take or leave an hour, so getting a bit less sleep than he used to (about 2 hours less).

Day naps have changed too, he now only has 2.  His first nap is about 9am and can last anything from 30 mins – 2 hours (typically about an hour).  And then an afternoon nap at about 2pm, again, anything from half an hour, to 1.5 hrs.

Eating

He’s still a bit on the lean side.  He’s so active we really struggle to get enough food in him.  We can still see his vertebrae and ribs, so could do with having a bit more fat on him.  He eats well, but is getting fussier.  He loves eating poached or steamed fish, he can pretty much eat an entire fillet by himself! He loves feeding himself anything he can hold, like chips, roasted veg, fish fingers (he loves my homemade ones) etc J  He’s firmly on 3 square meals a day, although he never seems to have much for breakfast.  Lunch and dinner are the big meals J

Teething

We’re still teething on and off! Does it ever end?  He’s now got 6 teeth all the way through, with another 1 right there in the middle of breaking through. 

Development

He’s officially walking by himself! He can pretty much walk across the room and will walk without encouragement just because he wants to :) He can say loads of words, but understands almost everything you say to him.  The other week when we went to pick him up from his grandparents.  His Nanna grabbed a ball of his socks, and said to him ‘Can you pass these to your mother?’.  He looked at her and the socks, took them, looked at me, and passed them to me – I was amazed!

He can say: Dat (cat – although he’s also started using ‘dat’ when he wants to know what something is called), Duck, Bruum (car), Dettle (kettle), Dada, Gandad (Grandad), Ta (thank you – although, I’m really trying to teach him thank you), Door… I’m sure there’s more but I can’t remember, is that bad? :)  Oh and in the last couple of days, he's said Mama a couple of times, melts my heart!

He’s also learned some colours and shapes.  If you have a book with a cat in it (even if surrounded by other images) and you ask him to point to the cat, he’ll point right to the cat.  Similarly if you have a picture of 3 balloons (one red, one blue and one yellow) and ask him to point to the red balloon, he’ll point to it, and if you have a red balloon in the room, he’ll go and get that :)

He can communicate what he wants.  When I’m feeding him, I’ll often hold two pieces of food up, tell him what they are, and ask him to point to the one he wants, which he always does. 

He’s starting to learn to give kisses, although so far when I’ve asked him to give me a kiss, he’s sucked the end of my nose… it’s not quite the same as a kiss on the cheek, but he kinda knows, lol.

Favourites

His favourite thing to watch on the TV is definitely My Neighbour Totoro, he get’s SO excited when the intro music comes on!  He also really likes In the Night Garden, and loves Iggle Piggle :)  He loves having books read to him, his favourite is Elmer’s Friends.  He doesn’t really have a favourite toy yet, although he does love giving his IKEA kitten teddy a cuddle :)

The face he's pulling in the pic above is his fake strain, it's so funny!  If you do a fake strain to him, he copies you, but he does it properly, turning his little face red and making the sounds :P

He's also pretty adept at throwing tantrums and forgetting he's 1, not 2 - you can read more about all that on his grandmother's blog here as she blogged about all his tantrums a couple days ago.

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Twilight Turtle

Something that can really help soothe a baby to sleep and give them comfort in a dark room is a night light.  When you have a baby, you'll see there's a lot of different night lights out there and it's hard to know which to choose, what will work for your baby?

A few months ago we were lucky enough to be able to try the Twilight Turtle: Starry Nightlight out on Squidge.  

The turtle has 3 different colour settings, green, blue and orange.  You can also set it so that it cycles through the different colours.  It has a hard shell on the top, with star constellations cut out so that when the light in the shell is on, it projects onto the ceiling.  The rest of the turtle is soft and squishy. It also automatically switches off after a certain amount of time, so it doesn't waste the batteries.

Sorry for the grainy pictures, I had to take this in a darkened room so you could see!
(we did still have a lamp on in the room)

Did this help Squidge sleep?  Not exactly, but that's ok, we use it in a different way.  For us, if we put anything like that in the room when he's trying to sleep, he gets stimulated and goes mad wanting to play with it.  However, what we have found is that if he wakes up early in the morning, too early, then if we put that on, it does keep him mesmerised for 10 mins so we can get a little extra sleep.

I think it's the kind of thing that would have either helped when he was much smaller, more like a newborn, or maybe when he's older.

The twilight turtle can be bought from the Wicked Uncle online store for £29.99*.

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BOARD GAMES | Dobble

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll probably know I love playing board games, and not your every day games like Monopoly, but what I call 'proper' games :)  That could be a big meaty game like Agricola or the LOTR Card game, or something more light and fun and quick, like Dobble.

The best way to describe Dobble, is that it's like snap, but WAY more fun and manic!  The game comes in a solid metal tin (great for chucking in your bag) filled with round cards.  Each card has 8 symbols on it, and one symbol from each card will match any other card in the deck.  Your job is to find that symbol quicker than every one else - not as easy as it sounds!  

Here's a test - in the next 2 pictures, can you spot the matching symbols?

There's lots of different mini-games you can play too which gives it much more life and replayability. My two favs are The Towering Inferno - this is where you have a draw pile in the middle of the table and at the same time you all turn over a card - you then have to match a symbol from your card to the draw pile and if you match it, you take the card from the draw pile and add it to your pile and keep going until the draw pile is gone.  Whoever has the most cards, wins!  I also really like the mini-game 'The Well' it's basically the opposite, all the cards get dealt, and only one card is in the middle, you turn it over and you need to match your hand to the pile in the middle, and the first to get rid of their cards wins. 

The set up for 'The Towering Inferno'

The more people you play this with, the more manic (and better) it gets, it really is a lot of fun :) It's available at Waterstones for £12.99*, or online at Argos and WH Smith - if you're having a games night, this is a brilliant one to either kick off with, or end on :)

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