The Dower Family

I just knew that as soon as we had cut one tooth the others wouldn't be far behind. Despite me sticking my fingers in Ollie's mouth at every opportunity it took Nick to tell me that the tooth next to his first one (front bottom left) was coming through. They are like little razors now. I have to keep inspecting the top of his mouth in case they come through without me even noticing. As Nick was able to take Friday off work, we have had a lovely three day weekend. We started it off well with a family picnic to this fabulous river park nearby. It is absolute chaos on the weekends but on a weekday it is only mother's groups and the like with their youngins (as opposed to weekends where there are preteens splashing about and scaring all the olliebears). This was Ollie's third visit and, like the first two he cried when I put him in the water. But he really warmed up to it and took great delight in a shallow part where he rolled and swivelled around with no regard for the...

It has finally happened! After 9 months, Ollie's first tooth has made its appearance. It has been in the works for the last week or so but thankfully it has cut through the gum now and even though you can't really see it yet, there is a pretty sharp edge you can feel. Now, just for the next 19... In another development which to me is right up there with the tooth, but I appreciate it may not be quite as exciting to anyone else, Ollie has worked out how to make the "mamama" sound. He mastered "dadadada" quite some time ago and has been trotting it out at every opportunity so I was pretty impressed when "mamamama" came along. Now we just need to work on "kitty". Other than these milestones, the week has been a very busy one. We have had Nanna Freddy staying with us still which saw us set up a sweat shop in the end room to make Ollie some cute little outfits. We also had Aunty Alicia and Uncle Guy visit on Saturday afternoon. They were ...

In some respects it has been a very trying week around here. Even though I've been talking about Ollie getting teeth for ages, there is definitely some toothypeg action going on. It appears that the two front bottom teeth are about to come through at the same time (with the one that came suddenly out of nowhere about to win the race). This is causing him a LOT of grief and in turn causing me a lot of sleepless nights. Last night wasn't too bad though as he managed to go a stretch of four hours without crying and needing me to go into him! Another delightful crying experience we've had in the last week was an afternoon walk around the neighbourhood that I thought would be perfectly timed to lull Ollie off to a peaceful slumber. Since I'm writing about this, you can tell that things didn't go to plan. Not only did he not sleep (and therefore threw the whole afternoon/evening off) but he screamed bloody murder the entire time - almost an hour. I swear that people in ca...

Ollie is turning 9 months this week so we went along for our check-up. He now weighs a whopping 10.18 kilos and is 75 cm tall. Talk about a big unit! He scored lots of ticks for his developmental checks and showed off his latest trick - high fiving. The nurse and I spent most of the time sitting on the floor while Ollie rolled himself around the floor of her office. This increased mobility is evident in so many of parts of our day now. Probably the only time it is frustrating for me is during nappy changes, or as I've dubbed them the "Nappy Gymnastics Olympics". Ollie manages to wiggle and squirm the entire time, flipping from his back onto his tummy, trying to get into the nappy bin and quickly grabbing handfuls of wipes to stuff into his mouth. Adorable but tedious sometimes and potentially dangerous too. Ollie's favourite (bargain basement) toy this week - an empty pepsi bottle that he is chasing around the floor! Along with our usual activities last week (swimmin...