Love, bubs and life on our little farm

When I celebrated my bday we also celebrated Elka turning 8 months. She has been a busy girl in the last month. She loves to pull herself up to standing and to grab at anything in reach - the bookshelves and the coffee table being favourites.

She plays peek-a-boo with us- holding something up to block her view of us whilst we say "where is Elka?" and then pulling it down with a huge grin as we say "THERE'S Elka!". Its very cute and any bib or dress will do for this game.

Her crawling has gotten faster and she does more of it "properly" as in on her knees rather than commado crawling. She actually likes to crawl-sit-crawl-sit and moves along alot like this.

She is eating lots of fruit as finger food and adores munching on rice cakes. All of her meals contain rice or pasta or some carbohydrate now. She has also started eating tuna in a white sauce (made with formula). She takes a lot of bottles now and drains them rapidly. I am still breastfeeding but when she is away from me she quite happily takes formula.

She has started daycare two days a week and is thriving with it. I am amazed at the new things she comes home doing. In the last week, she now stands in the cot, claps her hands and stands up with barely any support from an inaminent object. She eats and sleeps well there and seems to be loving the company of the other babies. I am very pleased with the carers - it is a very good environment from what I have seen so far.

Elka is continuing with her swimming lessons. She now holds her breath and goes underwater, brave girl! She also kicks and paddles after toys.

She is still a good sleeper - still two day naps of 1.5 hours or so and from 7pm to 7am at night without waking. Though sometime she wakes at 6am and I can hear her chatting to her bunny toy through the baby monitor!

We haven't spotted anymore teeth yet but she seems to be teething again judging by the dirty nappies and finger sucking. Her two top ones have grown long and she now looks like alittle vampire since she is missing the front two.

She still won't say Dad - she loves to chatter about Mum and Bub and she did say Bye to Jase one morning when she was waving goodbye. She gets very excited by the ducks and chickens and feeding the horses elicts happy squeals and kicking legs and waving arms of delight.

Her favourite toys at the moment are her toy phones - she now holds them to her ear like Jase and I do! She also loves her books - she unpacks them all and sits there flipping through them for ages.

She is the happiest little bub with smiles and giggles for everyone. I love caring for her everyday and the best part of my work day is seeing her smile when she sees me come in to pick her up.