Amelia's favourite things

At the moment, Amelia has three favourite things.

Her tummy time toy:

Bath time:

And, of course, her blue and pink friend:

We're still here!

A belated Happy 2013 to everyone. I’ve not been able to get to my laptop for a while as Amelia’s been a bit of a handful so far this year! It seems she’s become so used to sleeping next to me during the day she now doesn’t want to sleep in her crib at night either, and so it's taken us over two hours to get her to sleep some nights these past few weeks. HOWEVER, today, she had all three naps in her crib in her room and it only took us 20 minutes to get her to sleep this evening. Hooray! Her naps only lasted 30 minutes each time, and so by the time bed time came around she was pretty exhausted, but still, I feel we’ve made lots of progress. I’m looking forward to being able to do some housework and other fun things tomorrow!

Amelia is growing up so fast. This week, we were playing on our tummies and she rolled onto her back all by herself. I think it was quite hard work for her though, as she seemed a bit out of it for a few minutes afterwards.

Now that she can hold herself up a bit better, we’ve been trying her out in the baby bouncer Seaside Grandma bought her for Christmas:

This photo was taken about a minute before she was sick all over herself, the bouncer and the carpet.

We’ve been reading to Amelia since she was two weeks old, but she’s now starting to listen to the stories and look at the pictures:

I don’t know if she knows what’s going on, but she seems entertained now when we read to her!

I can’t figure out how to rotate these photos, but here’s Amelia with her favourite toy again:

I can’t wait to show her this when she’s (much) older!

Amelia's also been trying to grab her rattle this week:

We're so proud of her!

I gotta feeling that tonight's gonna be a good night...

Something exciting happened tonight: Amelia went straight to sleep as soon as I put her to bed. She didn’t even wimper! It also means that Mark and I have a WHOLE evening together. Hooray!

In other news, Amelia has become obsessed with the television:

It’s one way to calm her down when she gets in a pickle at least, but I don’t want her to get square eyes! During the day, when we’re not listening to music, I like to keep the television on as background noise, as I’m hoping it’ll encourage her to sleep more deeply. I may need to re-think this now though!

She also enjoys being in the ‘throne position’. She loves being carried around anyway, but especially likes being carried like this, so that she can look around:

When Mark took Amelia for her second set of injections this week, the nurse found it very funny that this position stopped her crying afterwards!

What a princess.

Amelia's room

It's a little messy still, but as promised, here are some photos of Amelia's room:

She's still sleeping in her crib in our room at the moment, but we play and read in her nursery. I'll miss her when she moves to her cot in her own room!

Phases one to three of the bungalow renovation

Phase one

The living room:

 The kitchen:

 The bedrooms:

The garden:

The hallway:

You can tell a heavy smoker lived here before us!

We had to live out of boxes in the conservatory for a while:

Phase two

The living room:

 Bedroom no. 2, Amelia's room:

Bathroom no. 1:

Phase three

The living room, which is now finished:

We just need to buy some red curtains and cushions and two single chairs to replace the green and white garden ones!

The kitchen:

The unpacked conservatory!

Amelia's room is nearly finished too. I'm in the middle of replacing her 0-3 month clothes with her 3-6 month clothes, so it's a little messy at the moment, but I'll try to tidy her room and take some photos of it before the weekend!

More Christmas Festivities

By popular request, this blog entry will consist mostly of photos!

Amelia made a second baby friend, William, last week:

William's mum and I have been friends since we were 11 - along with a few other girls - when we joined the same choir. We kept singing together until we turned 18 (when we were too old for children's choirs) and still get together for the occasional singsong - most recently at each other's weddings!

Here are a selection of Amelia's Christmas presents:

Auntie Becca made the green stocking!

It's now cold enough for boots and snow suits:

and my favourite hat ever:

Amelia's started to babble, which is so cute! I made a video of one of her chatty episodes last week, but the sound's not very good:

Something else she enjoys is being 'supermanned' across the room:

It gets pretty tiring after a while though!

Happy New Year everyone!