Little Miss is 4 Months old!

After the difficult early weeks the time really does fly with babies! We are at 4 months already and they grow and change so much in these first months don’t they? She is 13lb 1oz, still on the 25th precentile line for weight, but she is tall/long and at 36cm she is on I think the 91st percentile line for height! She is a gorgeous little girl but is still quite challenging at times.

4 mths

So what is she up to?

Feeding and Pooing

We are still using the lactose free formula at the moment and for a while after we stopped the gaviscon, all seemed well and her movements got a bit easier. Lately though she has been constipated again a few times and we are at a bit of a loss as to why really. The other thing is that she doesn’t poo in her nappy. Ever. She will only poo with her nappy off and generally with a bit of help – bicycle legs and lifting of legs. It is a situation which started out of necessity and then became normal and now we are remembering that it isn’t normal, and we certainly weren’t expecting to be doing it at this point. We had thought that by removing the gaviscon her movements would be better and we wouldn;t need to do it anymore, but it hasn’t happened the way we thought it would.

As she is 4 months she should be growing out of her lactose intolerance in theory so we have just bought some normal formula and are going to try her on that. the Lactose free formula can cause constipation so we are hoping that a change in formula will solve all of our problems. FIngers crossed she doesn’t still have a problem with lactose and it works, otherwise we will be of the the GP again! Sorry if TMI about her bowels but it takes up a lot of our attention at the moment!

Sleeping

She still sleeps really well after her sleep training a couple of months ago, which is brilliant. Her little body clock is pretty rigid at night and she goes down at 7 almost every night, regardless of what has happened! Whether she wakes up in the night is more variable, sometimes she lulls us into a false sense of security, sleeping through til anywhere between 530 and 630am or about a week, and then suddenly waking up famished at anywhere between midnight and 3 am for a few days. Because of the varing sleep patterns we still have no daytime routine to speak of (aaaah) though I am very much hoping that a pattern may settle too. We are very much baby led on routine fronts because I just don;t understand how you can force a baby to sleep at certain times or wake up at certain times. I just don’t get it. I wish I did but I don’t. Monkey’s routine fell into place around 4 1/2 mths and I am hoping hers will too. Because she sleeps in her cot we rarely see her asleep but a couple of times this month she has dozed off on me after a difficult afternoon (and once after her jabs :() so we have some shots of sleeping so peacefully!WP_20150205_17_17_16_Pro WP_20150219_15_27_58_Pro

For the most part we get it right and we put her down at the right level of tired and she goes off to sleep without a peep. other times we get it wrong and I hate it as I am convinced she is tired, only for her to ball. Sometimes she wants to go to sleep after being awake for an hour and a half, other times she will be awake for a good few hours, fussing intermittently but definitely not ready to sleep. I don’t cope well with the sound of babies crying, makes me feel like an abject failure to be perfectly honest so I really look forward to the day when we have a routine so it is a bit less guess work! Teething is playing a role in this but more on that below.

Playing

She loves lying on her playmat and batting at her toys. Her favourite is a pink Jellycat Octopus which we were sent to review before she was born. Monkey was too big to get much enjoyment out of it at the time, but she loves it! She loves her playmat more now too and chuckles away at the flashing lights and dangling butterflies above her head.

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She also has a slightly random sense of humour. One thing guaranteed to make her chuckle is Bing Bunny. It is one of her big brother’s favourite TV programmes so it is on pretty regularly, anf well, she loves it, chuckles away at it. Makes me feel like a terrible mother introducing her to TV so young but , ah well I suppose!

chuckling at Bing Buny

chuckling away at Bing Bunny

So far not so random I know, but the other thing almost guaranteed to make her laugh is the pink soap standing on the bathroom sink. Every night after her bath, Monkey has his and often she and I will come and stand in the bathroom to chat to Daddy & Monkey. I stand opposite the sink and she chuckles away for ages. At first we thought it was the taps, being all shiny and sparkly, but nope. Turns out it is the pink soap that makes her chuckle away! See, random eh?

Giggling at her favourite soap bottle!!

Giggling at her favourite soap bottle!!

Other Development

She is so strong now and still loves sitting up though can’t hold herself up at the moment (she falls forward) she loves being propped up by pillows and surveying the scene.

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She is getting happier on her tummy sometimes and she has rolled from her tummy to her back. She did it, just once, nearly a month ago, seemed to scare the heck out of herself and hasn’t quite managed it again since lol! She lifts her head beautifully when she is on her tummy though.

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Teeth

We have been convinced she was starting to teethe for a while because of all the dribbling and because of the general fussiness that has become common, and well we are now ever more certain that we are right as there is the little speck of white on her lower gum of a tooth about to pop through! I know it is early but Monkey cut his first tooth at 4 months so it doesn’t come as too great a surprise. Her upper canines also seem to bother her a lot and seem quite close to the surface so maybe they won’t be too far behind either. We shall have to see I guess.

I hate teething though. I hate it. We have an amber anklet which despite high hopes and reading success stories from other bloggers, I am just not convinced I’m afraid. She is still uber grumbly and obviously in pain a lot (I daren;t take it off though in case she is worse without it!!). We also use teething granules, teething gel and have been sent some teethers to review that so far she won’t have anything to do with. Despite all of this though there are days when she will only sleep, or just generally stop whinging and crying, when she has had calpol or baby nurofen. I hate having to give these to her, especially as she doesn’t have a fever or anything, but she is so much better when I do and it is survival as much as anything. I just hate to see her in pain and she can just be so miserable sometimes at the moment which I find really quite exhausting 🙁 Poor thing.

When she is not in pain she is generally a smily little girl and I hope that once these first teeth make an appearance that things will start to improve and we will see more smiles, and less medicine!

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Ethans Escapades

Monkey Says – January 2015

On my recent Mini Milestones post for Monkey I made a note of some of the really cute things that Monkey says at the moment – but of course I forgot loads – and some of my favourite little phrases of his. I really don’t want to forget these over the years (my memory is atrocious) so I am making a note of some more of these here, (and there may be an uber-cute video of him at the end :)).

I am not sure where it has come from but he keeps saying “D’oh” at the moment. He has never watched The Simpsons and I don’t think either hubs or I say it, but Monkey totally says “D’oh” more like “D’oooooooh” in exactly the right circumstances, it’s pretty hilarious!

Everything with Monkey is a “Great Idea” shall we play with cars? “Great idea” would you like peanut butter on toast? “Great idea.” Even when he says something like, “go outside” and we repeat with would you like to go outside, “Great idea!” lol.

Our little Monkey likes things the way he likes them. There is ever so slightly a touch of OCD about it. He has always liked lining up cars and having things a certain way. If I don’t put his drink or “cerewal” (cereal) in the right place at breakfast it’s “Not this way, this way” when he moves them into the correct position. His chair has to be at the right position too otherwise he will get off and move it. He also says “too tight!” even when he doesn’t actually mean it is too tight, more that it is not quite how he wants it to be!

He also has a pretty strong mind, making declarations about something. Like he counted some biscuits a few days ago and though he is really good with numbers sometimes he gets it wrong – but not according to Monkey. He counted 6 biscuits when there were 5. Veryg ood, but there are 5, and I count out 5. “I think there’s not” ok, well let’s count again. Repeat. See there is 5 biscuits. “Actually I think it is 6”. This happens quite a bit, he will decide something and if we contradict him “I think it’s not” or “I think it is.” Love him!

He’s very bossy at the moment too “Come on Mummy” “Come on Nanny & Pops” dragging them by the hand! When he can’t find a toy he wants and I say I don’t know where it is he says “I don’t know either… try and find it, can’t be far, must be somewhere!” Sometimes while looking for it himself and other times trying to convince me to help him find it!

There are some other just cute things he says, “Hello There” as a greeting. “We’re a family!” when we are all together, often accompanied by insisting that we all hold hands (Even LM hehe).

Then there are the amusing conversations that show how much he is growing up and getting inquisitive.

Monkey: What does the moon eat?
Me: What does it eat??
Monkey: (very decisively) The Moon eats Smarties

After one of his first sessions at playgroup

Me: Did you have fun at playgroup?
Monkey: Yes
Me: What did you do?
Monkey: Ate toast read stories guin (gluing) an stickin… I cry a bit… don’t like cry (awwww)

and then at bedtime one day

Monkey: Want it want it want it
Daddy: In a minute, lets get you dry
Repeat until Daddy loses his temper and very firmly says “No”
There’s a little stare off between the two of them then but Monkey breaks first.
He chuckles and says “don’t like No”

Then I have to share this video, we don’t get a huge amount of snow where we live near the Fens so it is a bit of an event when we do and Daddy happened to have his camera out to catch this cuteness! (If you click on the cog at the bottom you can adjust the quality)

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Little Hearts, Big Love

Little Miss at 3 months

It is different for everyone but for me the first few months with a baby are the hardest. We felt it with Monkey and it has been the same with LM, the first weeks seem to last forever, and yet looking back it feels like the blink of an eye.

Because here we are, we made it, our Little Miss is 3 months old, 11lb 10oz and life is definitely getting easier, albeit gradually!

3 months

So what is she up to at the moment?

Feeding and Pooing

It might seem weird to have these under the same heading but lets face it they are very much linked! It’s over a month since we moved from breastfeeding onto a Lactose Free formula and it has definitely been a much easier month feeds wise. The colic has gone completely and the reflux has been under control with Gaviscon.

The only problem we have had is that the combination of Gaviscon with the lactose free formula has made LM quite constipated at times. We started giving her additional cool boiled water but that didn’t help much so we started giving her sugar water a couple of times a day (mixing a teeny bit of sugar into the boiled water) as I read that it was a traditional remedy and worth trying. It helped loads and for a while she was much less uncomfortable.

Then our HV actually advised that it wasn’t an ideal solution as it can make their kidneys work harder, so we went back to just water. She really didn’t want to drink much and pretty soon was struggling again. We tried the sugar water again but the cheeky minx decided she wasn’t keen on it anymore. She then got really badly constipated and it was horrible seeing her in pain as it took her a long time to do her business. Because the root of the problem was the Gaviscon we decided it would be worth phasing it out, to see how she got on and how bad her reflux is now, as she has been having the Gaviscon at every feed for the last 2 months.

The good news is that she is fine without the Gaviscon. I think there are the odd times at feeds where her reflux bothers her as she has been a little fussier sometimes since we stopped it… But it is not at every feed and there have been no nighttime screaming sessions so she is doing well. The result is much better movements too which is a huge relief!

Sleeping

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I wrote previously about how we were helping LM learn to sleep better by herself and she is doing amazingly well. She had a few days of sleeping 10-11 hours through the night, though she has decided that she doesn’t want to do that anymore 🙁 It was amazing for those few days and we know she can do it! Daytimes are still all over the place, when I started writing this I thought we may have a vague routine, but she has thrown that out of the window again now so re-writing! She has actually decided she wants to be awake for about 31/2 hours at a time now, which is fine by me as long as she is happy.

And she is. The result of the good sleep and being in less pain from colic and reflux is that she is a gorgeously happy girl now. She smiles and coos all the time and is just a joy to be around. A complete contrast to the screaming of the early days poor thing! Yes she still cry’s and fusses and late afternoons can be fun, but it is all so much easier than before. I hate the lack of routine though and am praying that some kind of pattern forms if she is going to be awake a bit longer now. I know, she’s just a baby but I feel so out of control and like a hermit because I struggle to arrange to see anyone because I don’t know what she will be doing and staying home is just less stressful.

Playtime

Ok so there’s not much playtime going on with a 3 month old but it is starting. She adores the monkey and lion faces on her bouncer and sits giggling, grinning and cooing at them for ages which is just lovely! She also bats at the dangly toys and is really enjoying the ones attached to her car seat. I was really impressed that she grabbed onto one of them the other day and held onto it for ages! Monkey was totally uninterested in any toys like this until he was quite a bit older!!

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While she loves lying on her back and kicking her legs, she still doesn’t very much enjoy tummy time. That being said though she is so strong and easily pushes herself up to have a look around and has lifted her legs like she is trying to roll so I am sure in time she will get there!

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Her favourite thing is sitting up, she just loves looking around. She sits on my lap and if I lay her on my knees she is always lifting her head and trying to pull forward. We sit and sing “If you’re happy and you know it” and “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” and ‘row row row” is great for strengthening her “sit up” muscles! Because she loves sitting up so much we have just got out Monkey’s Jumperoo and she sat in it today for the first time. She can’t bounce yet and I have a cushion under her to support her but she definitely likes being in there!

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She is fascinated by mirrors and stares at herself in it, mesmerised! When she saw Daddy in the mirror the other day she could not stop smiling, though she wasn’t interested in seeing the real Daddy, standing right next to her! I think she is a bit of a Daddy’s girl already as she always has smiles for Daddy, even when she is tired!

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Post Comment Love
Ethans Escapades
Not My Year Off

Monkey at 32 months

Monkey is doing and saying so many things at the moment that I really want to capture and remember. Rather than write a specific post about them all individually, I thought it was time for another mini milestones post – even if it is more of a summary of his cute (and not so cute) behaviour rather than specifically divided into areas of development as I have done previously.

Things Monkey Says

After being a little slow on the speech development side, Monkey now chatters and sings pretty much constantly and it is really lovely. There are still occasions where we aren’t sure what he is saying, but for the most part he is pretty clear, and his pronunciation is getting better all the time. He still struggles to pronounce his Ls and they come out as Ns but when you think about how you say them, they take a pretty similar tongue movement so I am sure he will get there!

He is so polite and really learning about when to say please and thank you, although please sounds more like “twease” sometimes!  He has picked up a really very cute habit of saying”you’re most welcome” when anyone says thank you, which melts a few hearts!

Other favourite phrases are “my turn” (shockingly) “don’t want to” (again no big surprise) and it has taken a lot of effort to stop him announcing “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” to everyone we come across!

He has started saying “Hello there” which is pretty adorable and loves telling us “I love that” when he really likes some food or some activity or something. The other morning he came downstairs and said, completely unprompted “I love you daddy, I love you mummy!” Which melted our hearts.

He keeps trying to get away with calling us Mum and Dad instead of Mummy and Daddy and we are not ready to accept that yet!!

When he does something that makes us cross or upset he looks at us and says “Make happy now” as he really doesn’t like us being anything other than smiley bless him!

He sings all the time, with the alphabet song being his favourite, though he also loves incy wincy spider, twinkle twinkle little star and well most nursery rhymes really!

Post office

Monkey's post officeMonkey has always been a fan of Postman Pat so be extension he loves anything to do with post. he runs to the door to get the post for me every morning and loves letters, parcels etc. He has a toy area behind our sofa with cubby holes, boxes and a couple of drawers. One day I saw him pick up a DVD insert and go trotting off behind the sofa with it saying something about post. Intrigued I had a peek and he has decided that one of his drawers is a “post office!” It’s hilarious and there is all sorts of bits and bobs in there, taxi leaflets that have been pushed through the door, old envelopes, dvd inserts, all sorts and every time he finds a bit of paper lying around he goes “ooh post” and pops it into his post office. It’s hilarious, I just love it and now we know where to look if we ever lose something!!

Naps

He doesn’t need a nap every day now, which is good as with two afternoons a week being at playgroup, he can’t really, but if he goes for a couple of days with no nap, he gets very very testy and we have the mother of all meltdowns. He has always been a child that relies on the right balance of food and sleep to make him happy and it still makes a huge difference to his temperament if he is hungry or tired! When he does nap, he cans till sleep for around 3 hours between 2 and 5 and then still goes down to bed and sleeps through the night from around 7.15-715. It’s bonkers really but it works.

Bedtime Friends

His two loves of doggy bear and blankie have been companions at bedtime for a long time. Gradually he has taken to a few other teddies and now he has loads which he loves. They all have to be present at bedtime and there has been times where they have all had to come downstairs after his nap, though we are trying not to indulge that too much as there is a lot of teddies to cart about! Sometimes though he has a little ritual where Mummy Teddy, Daddy Teddy and Doggy Bear all have to be tucked up under blankie before he will go to sleep. So cute!

Jigsaws

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Monkey is obsessed with Jigsaws at the moment. We got him a fab set for Christmas from the ELC which has 10 jigsaws all at slightly different levels of difficulty. He started off a bit unsure but all of a sudden he can now do 5 or 6 of these entirely by himself. The ones that are more than 2 rows high seem to daunt him a little bit but the others he just loves and does them so quickly now it is incredible!

Food

Our little fusspot is still very up and down with food, we had a real low patch where he barely ate any evening meals, then we reinforced our behaviour and he seemed to do better for a while , but now we are in a dip again! He has this awful habit at the moment where he will put food in his mouth, but then won’t eat it, just leaving it sitting there for ages and ages and eventually he wants to spit it out – which I have to admit really winds me up as I think it is disgusting! Sometimes he will store it for ages then randomly swallow it which I don’t really understand but prefer it to spitting it out.

It winds hubs and I up no end though and we do all sorts of bad things, bribing, threatening, cajoling,  and nagging to get him to eat. I know it isn’t right but hey we are not perfect people and we really do try, but sometimes it feels like the only tactics that work! The randomest tactic that works is using his Postman Pat toy, putting on a deep voice and having “Pat” talk to Monkey and ask him to eat it. He responds well to that a lot of the time – the power of Pat!

Clever boy

Now this may sound like I am bragging and I don’t mean to, I am just really proud of our boy and think he is really clever. I have no idea what is normal or advanced for his age but I am just really proud of him, he’s like a little sponge soaking up knowledge! He knows all of his alphabet and switches been phonics and letter names for most letters. He can recognise his own name written down and when playing with letters can even put them.in the right order for his name sometimes.

He knows loads of colours and when I asked him what colours he wanted to paint with the other day, he recited them in rainbow order, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple lol! Then added pink on the end too 🙂 so with a little help we then made s rainbow picture! Before mixing them all up and doing lots of brown splodges and hand prints :).

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He is really good with shapes and points them out all over the place, pointing at a door and saying rectangle, a 20p piece and saying hexagon, an old teething ring and saying oval. He still loves numbers and recognises up to 100 though occasionally gets them mixed up,so for example if he sees 63, sometimes he will say 36 instead, but not every time. He is also really good with his left and right and he gets that right nearly every time which astounds me as I still have to think about which is which, my brain just can’t get it at all so the fact his does really impresses me!!

I feel like I could go on forever about our gorgeous boy but I think this post is long enough! Needless to say though I adore him and even though he really pushes my buttons sometimes I am so so proud of him every day as he is just a lovely little boy 🙂

Ethans Escapades
Not My Year Off


RaisingEmily

Routines

This week is all about routines in our house. First of all, hubby is back at work after 2 weeks off over the festive break. We had a lovely time and got lots of much needed jobs done while he was off, but it is good to be getting back to a normal day to day routine. This is especially true as we have been sleep training Little Miss ( I talk about this in more detail here) and trying to find a routine that works for her and for us.

Nighttimes are going brilliantly, meaning hubs and I are getting a more normal amount of sleep now and therefore we are getting into a more normal routine, for the first time in months really! this means more jobs are getting done around the house, little things that have only had cursory cleans are now getting proper cleans, as we are not so drop-dead tired at the end of every day! LM is also happier lately and we are being rewarded with lots more lovely smiles and she even mad her first giggly sound yesterday which melted my heart.

hard to catch on camera but here's a little smile :)

hard to catch on camera but here’s a little smile 🙂

Day-times with LM have been trickier and just when we thought she was getting into a routine…. she threw me for a loop again and changed her nap lengths and wake up times. A few days of this and this and then she does it again! I am a big lover of routines but I have to try and not let my control freak planner side take over and get stressed when things don’t go according to the routine. Especially at this young age as she can’t help it. It does make planning things difficult though and arranging to see a mummy friend this week I really wasn’t sure what time to say to meet she was that all over the place. Thankfully though my friend has obviously been through it and was therefore totally understanding about waiting until the day itself to decide a time… then it started raining, well anyway that’s a story for another day!

Trying to spot patterns in LM's behaviour!

Trying to spot patterns in LM’s behaviour!

We also have a bit of excitement this week as on Friday Monkey has his first ever session at playgroup. He will be going 2 afternoons a week from now on. So far he is very much looking forward to it and we hope he enjoys it. I definitely think he is ready for it and am sure when he settles in he will really enjoy it. That being said it will be strange at first. Apart from grandparents, I am used to being the one who looks after him and so have to loosen the reins slightly. I know it is the right thing but it will be strange to think of him being in that situation without me. He may be ready but I’m not sure I am! I am sure I will manage though and it will give me more 1 on 1 time with LM as she gets older which is a good thing.

Anyway this will all change our routine as for the first time since Monkey was born we will now have to be somewhere at a set time twice a week. It starts at 12.30 so lunch will either have to be a tiny bit early or quite a quick affair on those days. I can’t help but wonder how I will balance LM’s routine with this either… But again refusing to worry about it, what will be wil be and she will have to go along with it all I guess! I shall let you know how Monkey gets on at playgroup, eek!

Finally I have also been getting into a bit of a routine with my diet and weight loss. I will do a specific post about it but so far it is definitely working, though I am so tempted to comfort eat when LM is throwing me through a loop, it has really been testing my willpower! I know it is worth it though and comfort eating doesn’t actually solve anything! ( I wrote that earlier but am actually sat drinking a glass of wine and eating chocolate at the mo, hopefully not destroying all of my progress so far!)

So that was my week, how has your week been?

The Reading Residence

Siblings December

Monkey is really growing to not only accept, but love his baby sister. He includes her whenever he talks about things as a family. When making cakes with Daddy recently he said “One a Mummy, One a Daddy, One a me, One a LM (he uses his actual name for her, not LM but just to avoid confusion).

He has gone from not wanting to look at her or have anything to do with her, to looking at her, and now to actively trying to engage with her. He gives her little cuddles and kisses. He holds her hand. He strokes her head and her arms. In the morning if she is asleep upstairs he asks where she is and wants to wake her up. He pretended to be Dr to her and gave her some “medicine” probably because he sees we are always giving her medicine (infacol, gaviscon, colic calm).

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Colic? Reflux? An allergy? or just anxious parents?

In all honesty we are having a bit of a rough time with Little Miss at the moment. Sadly she spends a lot of her life, and most of her awake time, screaming, and in pain. There is something different about the cry of a baby in pain. Tired cries are a bit whiney, hungry a bit demanding, uncomfortable a bit angry, and in pain is, to my ears, very shrill. It is horrible and draining to hear for hours on end when nothing you do seems to help. It is hard enough during the day but in the early hours of the morning, when you have been attempting to sooth your child for 2-3 hours it becomes unbearable.
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Little Miss at 4 weeks old

WP_20141118_09_38_01_ProLittle Miss is 4 weeks old today. The last 4 weeks seem to have both flown by and lasted forever, isn’t that just the way of it with newborn babies?

Colic has well and truly taken over too unfortunately. After spending a lot of time fretting about whether there was anything I could do to help or prevent the colic, at the weekend we reached a level of acceptance I think. We have to accept that our evenings and a lot of night times are spent trying to soothe a baby in pain. Horrible as it is, it is only for the next couple of months and then we know it gets better. We have been through it once with Monkey and we can get through it again.

Having said that, the last few days have been really tough. She is definitely worse when I have eaten dairy as on Monday night we had a really cheesy dinner. I didn’t even think about it as it was a meal made and frozen before she was born but it is made largely from milk and cheese. And well since then she has been really rough. That night was awful and Tuesday morning she did a weird jelly poo (sorry if TMI) and spent  lot of the day in quite a lot of pain and therefore very unhappy.

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Monkey’s Mini Milestones at 29 months

I haven’t done a mini milestones post in a while and there are a few lovely Monkey things that are making me dead proud at the moment so I thought it was time I did. It seems that he has grown up and his development has sped up rapidly just in the last couple of weeks since the arrival of his baby sister. It is incredible and he really is very fun to be around at the moment.

This may seem like a slightly braggy post (Look how amazing my toddler is) but it’s mainly to keep a record of what he can do, when, and if I sound a bit braggy it’s because I am actually pretty amazed by his development, and loving every minute of it.
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