"K" is for keeping busy

This post is about all the things we've been doing instead of blogging! Well, not all, but you'll get the idea.

Mostly, we try to be social as much as we can. Twice a week, Alexander and I get out to some kind of kiddie event, like rhyme time at the library or a play date. We've visited with old friends and made some new ones (thanks to the library meetings), and Alexander is getting much more interested in other children. He still doesn't play, but he reacts when his toys are snatched and he watches the others move around.

We've been going out to lunch rather a lot. Sometimes we meet a friend, other times it's just baby and mama, and I actually like that fine. He is able to eat most things now, and I can share much of what I eat. Below he is enjoying an egg yolk, which I fried for him. You will notice that we are just using the portable "high chair" and covering the chairs with a garbage bag. Nice temporary living!When we go out, I always have the big favourite, rice cake, in my bag, and sometimes I bring one of his little meals (his current favorites are green lentils with chicken or a couscous and parsnip rissottoish thing) if I think that the lunch won't be baby friendly (like today, spicy Thai curry is not yet part of his range). He still squeals like a dolphin, which is rather piercing, but mostly he is becoming quite able to behave himself in public, so long as I don't make him stay in one place for tooo long.

When we're home we hang out in the living room, where I often put him into his travel crib so he can practice walking in safety. Here he is, hanging out with his favourite truck.He's been pulling himself up to standing for ages, but until last week he was not able to reliably sit up. As of last week though, he can sit up by himself and can always get back up to standing when he falls down. Normally he falls because he's dropped a toy and is trying to bend over and retrieve it. Sometimes he gets so happy about his toy that he forgets to hold on, thus inadvertently practicing standing unassisted. He's managed several seconds at a time. I tried to add in the tail end of one attempt that I got on film but the Internet is so slow right now. It isn't a great capture but it's all we have right now. I had to turn the camera on and get recording, so I only got the very end, but he's really getting a lot better. When Goran is home I don't bother with the crib, because we're both there to act as spotters. We have filmed a few minutes of him walking around too, sort or cruising along the edges of furniture, but they all take so long to upload. Check him out on Flickr.

Our weekends are fairly predictable at this point. At least one morning we walk to Holland Park (see below) and then stop off at a quite nice French bakery on the walk home. We get bread for the week as well as some sort of pastry to have with coffee after lunch. It works well because Alexander gets all tired out and is ready for a nap when we come home, so we can indulge in the pastry!

He still sleeps on a schedule that has him awake no more than 2-3 hours between naps, though more and more often we drop the third short nap in the late afternoon. That means he goes to bed promptly at 6.30. The only time he still takes the third nap is if I intend to keep him up later, like if we try to go out to dinner or something. Then he sleeps from 4.30 till a bit after 5 and we can have him up till almost 8. That happens maybe once a week. The nights are getting better too; we have cut out his 4am feeding, so I now get to sleep from midnightish until 6am, and I gradually feel like some of my absent brain cells are returning. All in all, he is turning out to be a reasonable little sleeper. I hope our luck holds.

That is pretty much it. It's very calm and nice, but not so photo worthy so I don't often have much blog fodder. I will try to be better!