Evie is 11 months old.

Evie is officially crawling. It made it a little difficult to get this month's photo. I was on child wrangling duties. I'd put Evie down on the ground on one side of the living room. She'd immediately start crawling, Andrew would snap away and we kept our fingers crossed that she'd crawl across the play mat on her journey to muckle something. We did this a few times before we managed to get a photo we were happy with. Poor Evie was a little frustrated by the end of it because we kept on dragging her away from stuff that she wanted to play with.

Evie's new independence means that she is into everything! She's not interested in playing with her toys anymore but wants to explore every corner of the apartment. It goes a little bit like this: Look! A pile of shoes! Let me throw them around. Look! A rubber doorstop! I wonder what it tastes like... nom nom nom. Look! A cardboard box! Let me bang on it for a bit. It's been a very quick lesson in how to child proof a house. We follow Evie around and when we find her playing with something that she probably shouldn't play with we put it away.

For a giggle, here is one of the outtakes from this month's photo shoot.

See Evie's monthly photos (slideshow) on Flickr.

Evie is 10 months old. Evie is giving us the thumbs up this month. (She's actually 10 and a half months old. Uni work got on top of me. Same old excuse! Hopefully it won't be an excuse for very much longer.)

We finally have teeth! Yay! For about two weeks Evie was manically gumming all her toys and was just a tad grumpy. Then one morning when she was gnawing my finger I could feel a sharp little point. It was her first toothy peg. Evie is definitely not dentally gifted. Most of the other babies in Mothers' group have about eight teeth. Apparently the timing of teeth is hereditary and both Andrew and I were late to get them.

Evie's special trick this month is clapping. To teach Evie to clap Andrew and I would clap our hands and sing "Everybody's clapping". After a few repetitions of the song (ok, maybe more than a few) Evie started to clap along with us. She is now an excellent clapper. She claps when I sing to her (probably the only person in the world who likes my singing). She also claps when she thinks she's done something well. She gives herself a clap when she eats all her dinner. She also claps herself when she goes from being on her tummy to sitting. Evie recognises the power of positive thinking.

At 10 months old Evie is almost crawling. She can go from sitting into the crawling position but isn't quite sure how to move forwards yet. She loves walking though. We hold her hands and let her dictate the direction. When she reaches something interesting (Mummy's handbag, the nappy bag, a pile of shoes) she'll plonk herself down and refuse to keep moving until she's had a good rummage.

See Evie's monthly photos (slideshow) on Flickr.

Evie is 9 months old. She has (now) been outside longer than she was inside.

Evie's favourite food at the moment is cherry tomatoes. She pops them into her mouth, strips them of the seeds and fleshy bit and then spits out the skin. She reminds us of the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. Nom! Nom! Nom! with bits flying everywhere. Evie eats so many cherry tomatoes that I think she might turn into one. We have to make sure that they are the last thing that we offer at meals though. When the cherry tomatoes come out, she'll pick up any other food left on her tray table and drop it over the side. She's pretty cluey too. If she sees cherry tomatoes on the chopping board she'll just sit in her high chair and refuse to eat anything else until I hand them over.

My cautious little girl has discovered that a soft bed is a good place to try out new tricks. During the day Evie and I sometimes hang out on the queen sized bed. Evie bounces up and down, dives forward or falls backward and rolls over with great enthusiasm. I have to watch carefully because a couple of times I've had to stop her from diving off the edge of the bed.


Evie's favourite toy is her VTech Walker. It has lots of buttons to push which play songs and make noises. The activity board also has a phone handset and plastic shapes which clip on to the front. Evie doesn't like it when everything is in its place. When you hand her the toy the first thing she'll do is pull the handset and all the clips off. Andrew and I jokingly call Evie an Agent of Chaos. She's not a fan of neat and tidy (which means she'll fit in around here just fine).

Last week Evie reached 8 months and I wanted to make sure I posted in a timely manner - you may have noticed that I missed the 7 month post. December was so busy that I thought I would combine the two posts into one.


Evie has sitting mastered now but isn't interested in crawling yet. Truthfully she isn't even really rolling around. She can roll, she just doesn't want to. So maybe she isn't that interested in being mobile yet.

She still isn't a huge fan of tummy time so I'm not sure that she will crawl in the traditional way. I think she may become a bum shuffler as she has started to bounce up and down on her bottom. When sitting she also leans forward and puts her weight on her hands. But who knows, she always surprises us with how quickly she picks up stuff.

The big thing that has happened in the past couple of months is that Evie has started to eat real people food. She's gone from being exclusively breast fed to eating three meals a day. We started Evie on a combination of purees and finger food, however Evie wasn't a huge fan of purees. She loved feeding herself, so when I tried to spoonfeed her it would usually end in a struggle for the spoon. Then I tried the "Spoon for Mummy, Spoon for Evie" trick but that didn't work either. Evie would end up with both spoons. So I stopped trying to make Evie eat purees and just gave her finger food.

Each baby at MGroup has a strength - some crawled early, some have lots of teeth, some can wave goodbye. Evie's super power is being able to eat normal people food. Everyone watches warily while Evie chows down on cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and pieces of unpeeled fruit. She loves fruit and will eat a whole peach, nectarine or pear in one sitting. She's pretty good at just eating the flesh and will leave the skin behind. Although sometimes we have to fish the skin out of her mouth at the end of the meal or she will chew on it for ages.


So here are a couple of videos of Evie eating. It's a new skill so we've found it kind of exciting.

Here is Evie eating Mango. She looooooooooves mango (like her Mum. Her Dad thinks mango is too mangoey.)




And here is Evie trying to eat steak. She found it a bit frustrating as she doesn't have any teeth yet. Poor bubs.

Excuse me while I catch up on some Christmas posts.

To celebrate Christmas with Mothers' Group we had a lovely gathering at Michelle's house. Even though it wasn't the warmest of days, we managed to get out in the backyard and spend some time in the sun (Can you tell that I'm very disappointed about our horrible summer?)

It was a chance to play dress ups for the babies too. (Poor Evie, I love dressing up and I make her participate in my hobby. She doesn't really get a say in it). We had a Santa and several of Santa's helpers.
When you're trying to take a photo of so many babies at once it's hard to get a photo where they are all smiling. I love the photos where they are cracking it though. They are adorable.


More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.