Too early

I lay in bed last night blogging in my head. I often do this as I fall asleep. I think there was a post about the ethics of reduced shopping and another one about something else not related to Sophia (I'm trying to not just blog about her, but it's not really worked this week!)
But I can never remember what it was I 'wrote' when it actually comes to writing it.

This morning all I have to say is
TOO EARLY TOO EARLY TOO EARLY. Waking before 5am is TOO EARLY.

I'll return when I've had a bit more sleep.

Oh, in other news...

Sophia learnt to clap yesterday and is so proud of it. And forward movement is getting more and more fluid. Boy are we in trouble.

Oh, and Sophia is hence forth to be known as Rudolph. Well maybe not, but she did manage to lick one of Menard's paintings (which was dry) yesterday and cover her chin, nose, forehead and tongue with red paint. She can only have got a couple of licks before we caught her, but that was enough!

It's a good good good good good good morning...

...gonna be a very good day*

Sophia stayed in bed til 6.50. She woke before that, but was happy to stay in her crib until then. The bedsheets at the window bought us almost two extra hours in bed.

We now need to work on her not waking up at night and taking over an hour to settle again (Wednesday night it was two and a half hours, and then up at 5am which made it so bad, last night it was wind and took an hour to settle her again)

*Lyrics from "Good morning!" by Phil Joel on a CD called Deliberate Kids

Sleepy sleepy

Last night was a rough one with Sophia, so I'm hoping tonight will be better. We're also trying operation blackout - we're covering up the blinds to make it darker so maybe she'll sleep later in the morning.

Only the best toys for our Sophie!

5am

It's a quiet and sleepy time. Sophia woke up with a sore belly, or so I'd imagine, as once she was up she farted loudly a number of times, and then decided that "as I'm up mummy, let's have some milk now".

She's got a full belly and an empty nappy, so I'm hoping we might get to go back to bed soon. Currently she's on the floor playing with my toes. So long as I wiggle them once in a while she will somehow find them fascinating. Oh no, in her excitement she's set off backwards across the room. I think sometimes she gets over excited about what's in front of her, tries to go forward to take a better look and ends up further away. At first this terribly frustrated, but now she's learning to make the most of where she finds herself ending up. (Like now she's found her toys and apparently my sandals too, but hopefully the toys are more entertaining!)

I'm not intending this blog to become just a picture blog, or to be all about Sophia, it's just as a stay at home mummy there's a lot of Sophia in my life, and she is pretty adorable!

Hey, I think this may be working - I was hoping that blogging at half 5 when my brain is not properly awake might help me to get over my current writers block. Don't get me wrong, I'm still continually writing blog posts, it's just that mostly that's in my head as I lay in bed before I go to sleep, and when I sit at the computer to officially get them down, my mind goes blank and I wander off (online) to do something else.

Ants are currently having a field day in my kitchen. I knew that they would. Last night Menard was out and Sophia needed lots of attention. It was fine so long as I was in the room, but were I to leave it she was not a happy bunny. Anyway, this meant that last nights washing up did not get done, as by the time she did go down this mummy was too tired and having too much fun catching up with friends online. And then she realised it was half 9 and ought to head to bed in a hurry.

But anyway, lesson learnt and from now on I will be endeavouring to keep on top of the washing up so that ants don't have a giant playground over night. It's not that there's lots, well I guess it depends how many you call lots, but there's definitely enough, by any standards!

Sophia loves electrical leads. I'm sure she must inherit this love from her daddy who absolutely loves his gadgets. There are advantages and disadvantages to this new found love - I'm sure it must be dangerous, for example like last night when I found her trying to suck on one of Menard's speaker leads. However, credit where credit is due, she also managed to locate my phone charger for me at a time where I was not entirely sure of its location.

Ok, I'll end with a pic, as there are far too many cute ones waiting to be shared. This is one of her new found skills. When she first discovered she could do it she would look down at her feet and then up at you with the biggest grin on her face. It was as if to say "LOOK AT MY FEET! I'm standing ON them. HOW COOL IS THAT?!"

Backwards is the new forwards

Sophia's started crawling. Problem is she only goes backwards so far, and is often getting stuck under or behind things like the sofa!


And of course Mummy grabs the camera before rescuing her.

"Mama" - that's me!

Sophia just said "mama" to me for the first time. She's been saying it already as part of her general chatter, as well as "nan-nan" and "ro-ro" among other sounds. But today she put up her arms to be picked up and looking right at me said "ma-ma"

*slinks in quietly and hopes noone realises how long I've been away*

There are many posts that ought to have been written, and now I don't know where to start. Sophia is 7 months old now, the reduced experiment is going well, and I have lots of other random thoughts that I might have blogged about had I had them in the past!

I'm addicted to shopping reduced. I've definitely saved money, and although I generally buy fruit, veg, bread meat and tins, I've also found laundry detergent, toilet paper, washing up liquid, chocolate and other staples of life. My freezer is full of meat and bread, my cupboards are full of tins and packets, and our bellies are full of yummy food. I'd say that my method of shopping is probably changed to shopping this way at the present as I have the flexibility of popping in to Morrisons as and when I'm near there (since I'm at home with Sophia rather than being out at work). I'm getting to know the guy who does the second reductions at the chill cabinet 'reduced to clear' section - and he's willing to let me pick what I want and he'll reduce those things next. (I possibly need to find a new hobby, as last week I think I was in Morrisons about 4 days in a row!)

Sophia's well stuck in to 'solid' foods. I don't know why it's called that as it's still mostly pureed or mashed. I gave her a dried apple ring this morning and unlike most other things, it only made it into her mouth once or twice! I think it got a few licks, and although she quite liked holding it and waving it around, it got a bit fluffy so I decided to remove it to the bin.