I've compiled some baby photos for my readers to judge whether they look like Yannick or his parents. There is no solution published right now, but if there is a lot of confusion I might post one later on. Please go ahead and vote!

Yay!!!

It took me two months to unpack most of my stuff but eventually I got there and the place is nearly presentable. It's high time as my mum will come and stay with us for eleven days from Thursday onwards and then in December my sister will also visit. Frank still has a number of boxes with books in Yannick's room, but they will soon go too.

In a way we achieved more during the last week than all the time beforehand. The reason is that we got our new absolutely huge wardrobe delivered and were able to move our clothes in there. This in turn freed up space for some other stuff, which again freed up space for something else, and so on. This chain reaction allowed me to sift through a lot of things and everything that's not needed right now simply went into the shed.

The strange thing is that one box seems to have disappeared. Since we are living with Yannick we need a lot more batteries for all those musical toys. I was looking forward to be using the rechargeable ones that I had. At some point when we simply took a peek into a number of boxes to find out what's in them, I am convinced I saw the battery charger. However, since then I haven't seen the device at all and I have no idea where it went. My theory is that the box must have been beamed away. There is no other explanation. *Looking flummoxed*

Another three months have passed and it's time for an update on Yannick (see here for the three months entry).

Body control: Grabbing things and holding them has improved tremendously. He is even using his feet to move things about and to hold them if necessary. I have to watch out big time for my hair and glasses. You wouldn't believe how fast he can be when he is going for those things. Sitting up and playing with his toys and other items of course is a favourite past-time, but he can't get himself into a sitting position quite yet, so mummy and daddy have to spend loads of time being with him. When sitting he is nearly stable (took him a month to get there) but sometimes he falls to the site when trying to get another toy. There isn't much going on in terms of turning over yet (when lying down), but he can roll on his side without problems. As he prefers to sit, there isn't a lot of moving about going on either at the moment. But he started trying to stand and he's getting better by the day - who knows he might be able to stand or walk before he can crawl.

Moving baby: Yannick has finally got over his every half an hour boob needs and I can carry him in the BabyBjörn or my Maya pouch without him rooting for milk all the time. This is great as it's much easier to move about with him this way.

Food: Early September I started introducing solid foods to Yannick as I could see that he needed something in addition to the nursing (see below under sleep for the reasons). Well, the new food is not exactly solid yet, everything is mashed up. I will also give him bigger pieces of certain foods (e.g. a piece of potatoe) to get to know the real texture of different foods. So far his favourite is mashed up banana and something I can buy in a glass, blueberry and vanilla brulé. If I don't watch it he eats so much of these that he actually overeats and starts gagging at some point. If he doesn't like something his mouth will stay shut however much I try coaxing him. Quite funny. But it's even funnier to watch him eat the banana. He is getting so excited with every mouthful, he shakes his hands, makes mmmmh sounds, and opens the mouth wide for every new spoonful.

Teeth: Yannick's first tooth made itself known in the middle of October. A week later the next one followed promptly. I am not sure yet what to think of that, remember, I am nursing…! Ouch.

Sleep: Sleeping is still a battle, Yannick is far from sleeping through. Until mid September he still attempted to build up my milk supply by waking me up every hour at night. At some points the solid food seems to have kicked in and he is now sleeping slightly longer stretches, ranging from (still) 1 hour to nearly 4 hours. So instead of being woken up about 7 times in 8 hours, I only get woken up 3 to 4 times. Still a lot, but soooo much better. In addition, he finally accepts to sleep without nipple in his mouth. The first two months he would not let go until he was in very deep sleep and then he would wake up immediately when the nipple was gone. Now I can pull my nipple out when he is almost asleep or latest when he is sleeping. The important part is that this seems to set his expectation for when he wakes up during the night. Unless he really wakes up properly he is not rooting so much for the boob anymore and we had a few occasions when he even fell back to sleep without it.

General mood: Yannick is a very happy baby which is so nice. Sometimes he isn't in a brilliant mood because of the teething or because he is getting tired, but that's so far OK. Frank and I have had a go at each other because of sleep deprivation, but all in all I think we are doing pretty well.

What else? Yannick likes the mirror in the hallway. Most times when I carry him past it, he will turn to look at the baby in there and smile. He is also looking at mummy and daddy in the mirror then looking at the real parent to check out how that can be that there are two of each. When he looks at himself he laughs and smiles a lot. I am still not sure that he actually recognizes that the baby in the mirror is himself. Whatever he thinks, I am sure he believes the baby in the mirror is simply GEORGEOUS!!!
Lately he also likes to explore things with his hands, especially when they have a pattern. He finds it very interesting when the pattern is something that can be felt, like a pillow case with stitches on it for example.
He also taking a big interest in the house. When I carry him around his head goes from left to right and back all the time so that he can see absolutely everything.
When he wants me to pick him up, he stretches out his arms to me. I am bad and ignore him sometimes.
I have found a local baby and toddler playgroup and it's fun to see Yannick being amazed by what's going on. This was much needed as he was too sheltered here at home, so much that even roads with lots of traffic started to scare him.

In terms of vital statistics we have this:

Height: Last time I measured Yannick he was 68 cm long, that's 6 cm since last time. Update 1/11 - I measured him again, and he seems to have grown 2cm in two weeks. Is that possible???

Weight: Yannick weighs 7.8 kg now and therefore is still not a fat baby, but he has definitely got chubbier cheeks.

Looking through boxes and sorting out things I found a piece of paper with this on it:

From: Richard
To:     Sylke
Date: Friday 4 March, 1994 8:54 am
Subject:

MS SYLKE KRAMER,
OUR FAVOURITE TRAINER,
WITH HER SLIM, TRIM FRAME, HER
EYES INFLAME, HER
GOLDEN MANE, HER
LIPS, HER MIEN, HER
VOICE, HER NAME,
NO ONE CAN CLAIM HER,
NO ONE CAN CHAIN HER,
OUR FAVOURITE TRAINER,
MS SYLKE KRAMER!....

At the time I found this quite flattering - and I still do!

This poem was written by one of my students when I was on a work placement in a training company. I taught a group of ca. 25 people basic computer skills. The full-time seven week course included word processing (WordPerfect), spreadsheets (Lotus 1-2-3), databases (dBase), desktop publishing (no idea what we used), email, and an intro to Windows 3.1. And this was only 12 years ago. Gosh, we've come a long way! All of this was during my first stint in England, when I was based in East London.

I met some really nice people at the course but unfortunately I lost contact with all of them. (Bob, Ben, if you should read this and remember me, contact me!!!)

Sitting at home with Yannick and facing some dilemmas I've taken to read about how other parents solve their problems. Once again the internet is such a great thing as you can really find a lot of information. Before Yannick was born I deliberately didn't read too much parenting literature as I didn't want my mind to be clouded by advice fog without knowing what my child would be like. Looking back, I think a little bit of info about child sleeping patterns and good sleep habits would have been useful but other than that this decision was ok. We are learning as we stumble along.

With the help of the internet I've figured out that my parenting style is a flavour of attachment parenting and that I really don't like the idea of 'crying it out' and 'controlled crying' whatsoever. Controlled whinging maybe, but that's about it. This doesn't necessarily make my life easier, but I believe it's so much better for my baby. I've also found a group on a discussion board with likewise minded mums who face similar challenges as I do and all of a sudden I don't feel so much of a failure anymore that my baby is still not sleeping through the night at all. That's just the way it is and it will resolve itself with a little help by me eventually. There is also a lot of advice available that goes along with my beliefs and I've spent many hours reading through that. My favourites are Dr Sears and Kellymom. Apart from the sleeping problems I have a very alert nearly six month old child here who is usually very happy. So I must be doing something right!

If you would like some idea of what most of my days looked like until about two months ago, read this article in the Diaper Pail blog. Only my little one used to feed even more often than the one described there.

I also found some other info that intrigued me, read this if you would like to learn something about men and nursing. Yes, apparently it's possible!