Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam

Why is it when I try and think of songs to sing my daughter all that comes to mind are hideous Sunday school hymns from my childhood?
And much worse than this Lily just adores them.

Reality

It's funny, but I still wake up every morning having to pinch myself that my baby girl is lying asleep in the next room.

Consumption

Lily has learnt to stage cough like an absolute pro, she coughs so well it sounds like she has contracted consumption, a drop or two of theatrical blood on her T-Shirt would complete the scene nicely. Initially the stage coughing was really cute.... This, for many reasons (not least that people cross the street to avoid us) is no longer the case.

5 Months and Just a Few Days

Facebook has taken over my life.
This is my pitiful excuse for not blogging for several weeks and I feel rotten about it because probably I have missed all sorts of exciting stuff.
Or not, as the case may be.

But no!

Hold the front page!

That daughter of mine has grown a nubbin of a tooth, I am not entirely sure nubbin is an actual word but it sure seems to explain what I want to get across so I shall use it anyway.
On Sunday as she was biting down on my fingers in her usual manner and 'gggrrrrring' like a tiger (as is her want), I felt the tip of a tooth on her bottom gum.
I was so excited! And then I realised that this is about as good as it gets these days, overjoyed about a nubbin....*sigh*

Holiday

Lily is full of surprises, most noticeably her capacity for change. I was punished severely for thinking I had cracked it, a few almost slept through nights and some regular proper feeds and then the holiday in The Cotswolds blasted all semblance of smugness out of me. My little princess is now waking at 3 or sometimes 4 in the morning (that's if I'm lucky) and refusing to return to the Land of Nod. I am beginning to feel and look like an extra out of Dawn of the Dead.

Clinging on to the fact that everything is a phase and hopefully a short one.

However at 16ish weeks she is properly giggling, constantly smiling and rolling all over the place, how something quite so glorious could come out of my samantha is beyond me.

Oz

Nothing can prepare you for the first 6 weeks; in the first six weeks I felt rather like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz as she was deposited unceremoniously in a completely alien land. Or possibly more like the Wicked Witch of the South crushed under a huge house. Whatever it was, it wasn't nice. In those days you are just surviving, I was lucky to make it out of my pajamas and most days were spent careering from one unexpected surprise, or rather calamity, to the next.

3 months on life as taken on at least some semblance of normality. At least I am beginning to find out who I am again and beginning to find out more about LLLT, little by little.

The best advice I have been given so far is by my sister:
"There is no such thing as normal in the world of babies, whatever Lily is doing now that is normal for Lily."

Salivating

3 months on and Lily has learnt all sorts of fancy tricks; grabbing and holding stuff (well, she has done this twice and it's possibly a fluke), laughing delightedly at just about everything but most noticeably fart noises ( she gets this from her Father), catapulting herself upwards with her legs and slobbering profusely like a very over-excited Doberman.

I have learnt that it is remarkably easy to loose a day playing peek-a-boo with your daughter, it is almost always best to let sleeping babies lie and most importantly of all, to never leave a bucket full of stinky nappies to fester in the bathroom.