Learning to crawl.

                            

Sophie continues to have the best time - every day is fun and she is always smiling

We're mostly now down to solids and formula milk. Sophie's favourite foods are cheese, pasta and caviar. Ok, so I am joking about caviar - replace that with banana.

Sophie's big adventure this week has been continuing to learn how to crawl. She can get up on her hands and knees and rock back and forward but she unfortunately ends up going backwards. How frustrating for her!

She also started swimming last week and was dunked under the water twice - she had a wonderful time. Here she is getting ready to go to lessons......

Sophie is also getting pretty good at copying - in fact everything her Mum does she wants to do - brushing her hair, brushing her teeth, eating some toast, drinking a cup of decaf tea!

                                   

She is also becoming more and more vocal  - in a few weeks I am sure we won't be able to get her to stop talking.

"Daddy bought me some bricks"

"I'm loving my solids"

The other trick Sophie has learned this week is waving goodbye - took us by surprise today so there are not photos or videos of it but she's definitely got the hang of it.

To finish here is the lemon video from Christmas day - no Sophie's were harmed in the making of this video.

                              

A New Year and a new regime.

So back to work for me on Monday and I will certainly miss hanging out with my two favourite girls but I think we have all turned a huge corner over the last 4 weeks.

Sophie is now drinking milk from a sippy cup three times a day and eating a LOT of solid foods -  last night we had her go through the night without an additional feed which means she is close to sleeping through the night on her own and being solely fed at the table along with having milk drinks from a bottle, which is tremendous progress. She is also having very defined naps during the day and although we know this will change at a moments notice it is great to feel that things are settling down for everyone. Katie and Sophie already had a great routine but with Sophie a little bit older and more interested in solid food etc.. hopefully things will be a lot easier from now on.

Sophie is also desperately trying to start crawling - watch this space but she's not far from zooming around under her own steam. She also starts her swimming lessons on Monday - she'll be unstoppable from Tuesday onwards.

We had a great New Years Day, a long walk followed by a really lovely dinner at our house with Gran and Grandad - it was a great way to start the year.

"Is Gran really letting me do this?"

Today we had a wee family day out to Pollok park and the Burrell Collection on what was a really nice sunny day. I have also managed to get my camera out a wee bit more recently in what I hope will become a more regular feature - personally and professionally.

"I've just eaten a huge amount"

"Mum - what on earth is this?"

"Oh, I see - it's a new game!"

You can tell me which you prefer of the next picture (black and white or colour) in the comments section below, it would be good to hear some opinions.

We have had a great Christmas and New Year together - next stop Easter and Uncle Paul's Wedding. Here's to a non-stop, full on, action 2015!

"If you look closely you can see my wee teeth"

A spooky couple of weeks and then a solid start

"These solids are great!"

Probably best to start with something a wee bit funny - we started Sophie on solids this week and she seems to love them. the plastic aside she has had baby porridge and baby rice - both of which she seems to just get stuck into without even thinking twice. She still wants the milk though and she wasn't into the carrots yet.

"here's my innocent face."

We've had a real rollercoaster couple of weeks actually - Katie hasn't been well again which has been tough on us all (she's better now) - coupled with the fact we had a plasterer and a painter decorator in and it all became a lot more stressful.

The hallway if you remember had polystyrene tiles and adhesive spots that had to be removed.

In the end it kind of worked out like this - just the floor to be done and we have a hallway to be proud of!

But back to the real fun - Sophie has been an absolute star throughout all the upheaval and she's even been (on occasion) only getting up once during the night - which has been great for us all.

We've taken the decision to start weaning Sophie at 5 months and as mentioned at the start of this post she's taking it all in her stride - loving the food in fact. The next stage is to gradually increase proper foods and reduce the breast feeds.

Hilary and Ailsdhair paid us a visit to see how Katie was after her latest adventure - Sophie dressed up as a bumblebee as it was Halloween.

And talking of Halloween, Sophie had her very first parties. Our thoughts on costumes for Dave and Kate's childhood heroes party ranged from Mr T to Wonder Woman but after all the kerfuffle we kept things simple and used the same Cat costume for all the parties.

"If that skeleton touches those Haribo I won't be happy". 

"Got my own!" 

Kate's costume gets stress tested.

We took a wee day trip down to Ayr on Saturday - typically for Scotland the sun was out all morning and by the time we had arrived the weather had taken a turn for the worse. We had a great time regardless.

And then we went a long walk on Sunday to Mugdock reservoir - Sophie slept most of the time but we stopped to appreciate the great sky.

Finally - Katie and Sophie also caught up with Jenny Soep recently - a talented artist that Katie has known since childhood. She did a wee sketch of Sophie that I will post at some point.