Hair changes

When the little one was born, she had fine light brown hair all over her head. And a bit on her back too, for good measure. Her eyelashes were golden, which made for an odd contrast. She also had little bits of light highlights in her hair. It was like it had two colours, but you could only see if you looked at it just right. It was light looking at glitter or a sequinned dress.

If I look back at her old photos, I can see the stark difference. And with the hundreds of photos I've taken, the slow evolution over time is clear. She's blonde now. Not platinum, just light blonde, or maybe dirty blonde. Her hair just changed over the months to match her original eyelash colour.

I guess it makes for less of a shock. Giving birth to a dark haired child was no surprise – which is nice, since there was surprise enough then. Looking now at my blonde, blue-eyed baby still surprises me. I suppose my scandinavian mother-in-law had a similar shock with her dark haired daughter.

I never expected to have a blonde child, since both L and I are both dark haired. On the other hand, whenever I pictured having a child, I imagined a blonde blue-eyed girl, I guess because that's what everyone else in England seems to be having.

In a related note, the grey seems to have ramped up on my head. I'd had two or three grey hairs over the years. But now four through ten seem to have made an appearance. I gave up plucking them out at 7 and now 3 grey hairs stare back at me in the mirror in the morning, hinting at all the hidden ones I've yet to catch and all the new ones waiting for a stressful day to move in.

8 month checkup

We had the 8 month checkup today. It went better than I expected. The health visitor running it may not have been completely on the ball, but she was quite personable, which goes a long way to making the whole experience better.

The thing is pretty simple, which is probably why we got no details in advance. People with an 8 month or so old child show up at 10am. Whoever comes that day is seen. First they weigh the kid, then everyone sits around a big playmat while the health visitor asks us questions about sleeping, eating, excreting, and so on.

Three babies showed up today. The other two families were a baby boy, an older sister and a mother. Not only was I the only father there, I was the only male over 9 months. The other two babies were barely just sitting up. My little one, held up by me, toddled over to the playmat, plopped down and started crawling. She stopped when she found a small rubber duck which she popped in her mouth and started chewing (I suggested she get some hoisin sauce to go with it).

One family was seen separately due to not speaking English. So really it was 2 babies and their parents being questioned. L did most of the talking for us. I'm not sure if I was just being quiet, or if the health visitor was subtly directing all questions at her. Or maybe she just likes talking about our child. L says it's like a woman in the sciences – if you don't speak up you'll be completely looked over.

After the group questions, the two families took turns doing 1:1 with the health visitor. Answering questions and getting answers to whatever was on our minds. Turns out all issues we wondered about the wee one are pretty common and will work out over time. It was mostly things like her standing funny and her bloodshot eyelid. She's also a bit small for her age, but that might just be due to all the colds she's had lately. They said to come back in 6 weeks and see if the little one's fallen down another percentile group. I didn't want to ask them anything too esoteric or prone to soapbox opinions, since I doubt we'd have gotten anything we didn't already know – read a book or follow my dubious advice.

Seeing the babe with other children her age is a huge contrast. She's soooooo inquisitive. Craning her neck here and there to see what was happening just out of sight. Picking up and playing and chewing on everything (I'm still worried we'll get another fever out of that exchange). With one child she would have taken the dummy right from his mouth if we'd not stopped her.

We're so going to have our hands full with this one. But it's worth it. She's all smiles and excitement and delight. Just an amazing little creature who just drinks in the world around her. She'll sometimes just sit and stare at some other child and a day or two later she's got an impressive new skill. Today she was all about showing off what she can do as much as she could. I'm really impressed by her. I know that by the time they hit 5, all these development differences disappear. But for now I half-facetiously think that it must be good genes or hybrid vigour and that maybe she is a wunderkind.

Standing and walking

She took rather quickly to walking. It plateaued for a bit, but seems to have improved in the past day.

The first day, I would hold her under the arms, dangle her feet on the floor, and twist her a little side to side, so first one foot would move forward, then the other.

The next day, I tried again, and she would move her a feet a little forward when I twisted her.

A coupled of days later, and all we needed to do was to hold her enough to keep her balanced. She'd kick one floppy leg forward, the foot would land on the floor, and she'd pull herself along. Repeat. She's walking. Not by herself, but, if we hold her hands, she can walk across a room. She really likes it. So far we've taken a number of videos of her crossing the room.

Today she's standing with only the tiniest of supports. Just pushing against my pinky finger is enough to keep her upright. Until she starts getting tired, of course. She's mastered cruising. Before she could move along bannisters or the baby cage. ow she can hand off from the sofa to a chair the the baby cage and back again. Arms reaching to their full extent to cross the space between furniture.

It seems that now that she's over her colds of the past few months, she's making up for lost time. Her EC has improved drastically to, with few misses in the past couple of days.

In other news, she's got her 8 month checkup with the health visitors tomorrow. They've been mixed quality so far. I'm hoping it's not a waste of time.

Pointing, poking, pinching and prodding

The little girl has mastered pointing. She can extend her index fingers on both hands, with the rest of her fingers in a ball. She's so far used it to feel textures on things, touch things and pick up small objects (along with her thumb). The last one is a common development milestone, so one more notch for her in her red book. I've taking to handing her food to eat, but only letting go when she's got a good grip with index finger and thumb. I'm both encouraging her and and being mean. Fun!

Actually, it's good she's learned to pinch with those two fingers. The whole hand pinches are a bit rough, and I'm hoping fewer nails means it'll hurt less now.

It's hard to tell if she's actually pointing, or just holding her hand out preparing to poke. I did try, when she was younger, to teach her the difference between point and poke, but perhaps she's confused them in her head, or just decided they're parts of the same thing. I suppose I have to wait till she points and makes some kind of telling squeaking noise.

Oddly enough, she mastered it on her left hand a couple of days before the right. I've no idea if this means anything about her handedness. L says no, because she must be right handed because the direction her hair curls on the top of her head. I'd be likely to discount that as a old wives' tail if it weren't for L's PhD and tendency to read studies on child development.