The past weekend’s troubles definitely ended with the arrival of new front teeth. The question is, did one cause the other?

There was a period, during her first months in nursery, when Ingrid had one cold after the other. That seems to have passed, and she hasn’t been ill for a long time. Until this weekend’s symptoms, that is. So I’m quite tempted to see a causal relationship there.

Now, all sorts of Internet sages claim that neither diarrhea nor fever are supposed to be teething symptoms. It’s just a myth. But when both symptoms start just a day or two before the tooth erupts, and then disappear immediately after, I have to say I’m more inclined to believe the myth than the doctors.

A few traditional symptoms, such as fussiness, lack of appetite, difficulty sleeping, were all present. There was also one night waking with half an hour of inconsolable crying. That happened once before, and Eric says that was when the previous two teeth came. (I only remember it happened, not when.) On the other hand some of the symptoms that doctors expect – drooling more than usual, being more inclined to chew on things – were conspicuously absent.

Need more data.

Ten months this Tuesday.

There have been lots of changes every month, of course, but this past month it feels like Ingrid has really blossomed. Was it the vacation, perhaps, with all the new people and places, the crawling in the grass, the extra attention? It seems like she has suddenly learned to think more.

There’s no one major thing she’s learned to do, but a lot of small ones. Clapping her hands. Crawling around obstacles rather than trying to go straight over them. Trying a lot more varied facial expressions and speech-like sounds. (I believe that in the last few days she has just learned to say “mmme” or “mmma” for “emme”. She doesn’t seem to differentiate between myself and Eric yet, we’re both “emme”.)

She is spending more and more time standing, holding on to whatever she can. She also practices standing up and sitting down a lot, as well as squats, which look like hard work. She is less picky about her choice of support – while she would previously only accept something steady (such as a chair), wobbly and flimsy things (such as trouser legs) will now do as well, or even just a wall. When she finds something good to hold on to, she is now happy to let go with one hand, maybe look over her shoulder, and even walk longer distances, not just a few steps – back and forth along the bookshelf or the edge of a garden deck, for example.

We have tried a number of new activities, including bicycle trips, playing with sand (both in a sandbox and on the beach), and swinging on a playground swing. Likewise a range of new “toys” have been explored, and new uses found for old toys. Toys that can be banged against the floor have been particularly popular. Not everything goes straight into the mouth: rattles can be rattled, book pages can be turned, and paper can be torn in pieces before being stuffed in the mouth.

Due to all this exploring we’ve also had our first case of baby damage. Ingrid explored a paper lamp and the lamp was seriously (but not fatally) wounded – it looks rather ragged now.

Her teeth are still only two, and not yet fully out, so most of Ingrid’s food is still mush, but she has also accepted pieces of real food. Previously she would carefully spit out any lumps in her food. Now she’s eaten small pieces of fish, potato, cabbage and such. When she gets a piece of bread crust, most of it now ends up being eaten rather than crumbled on the floor. And last week she happily attacked a whole apple. More and more it seems like she prefers food with more complex flavour to simple pureed veggies.

Sunday’s observation – that Ingrid will pull herself to standing when she holds onto my hands, but not against other things – is already out of date. Now she tries to stand with the help of the sofa table, the CD shelf, the bookshelf, the wastepaper basket, the pushchair etc. In fact pretty much anything will do. Some of these things are of course more suitable than others – the armchair keeps swivelling so it’s kind of hard to use (but on the other hand it has very chewable leather edges) and the wastepaper basket was a resounding failure (being very light, it fell, and so did Ingrid).

Never one to rest on her laurels, Ingrid’s already taking small steps, learning to stand on one leg and, I suspect, attempting to climb. I think we have a climber on our hands.

(Sorry, crappy photo – she was standing in the narrow space between our bed and the balcony door and left me very little room for manoeuvre.)

Ingrid has mostly understood that plants are not for playing. Either that, or she’s just trying to lull me into a false sense of security, and then when I look away she will attack them all at once. Seriously, she now actually passes the plants on her way to the CD player, which is a lot more fun because it has a pile of nice hard shiny CD cases that one can play with.

The earth in the flower pots on the other hand is still of great interest. I’m starting to give up on keeping her away from that. As long as she isn’t actually pulling it out and wilfully throwing it around, she can poke at it if she wants to… Of course poking is not what she’s really after; she wants to put the earth in her mouth. My hope now is that she will discover after a while that earth really isn’t such a good thing for babies to eat. Today she already threw up after eating some (probably more than I realised).

Nine months. Time flies. It doesn’t feel like a month has passed since I last wrote one of these posts.

Ingrid crawls happily around the flat and gradually discovers new parts of the living room. It seems to still be hard work for her, because she doesn’t like to crawl long distances, but it’s certainly made life more fun for her. Not only can she explore the world: she can also reach toys that used to be just out of reach, as well as wholly new toys (shoes are good!) – or simply show that she wants to play with me by crawling towards me.

The plants have survived her attention and I get the impression that she actually understand that she isn’t supposed to pull at them.

Standing up, holding on to my hands, is another favourite pastime. Sometimes, when she’s feeling adventurous, she even takes a few steps. But for some reason hands are the only thing that she uses for support when pulling herself up. Once she is standing, she can let go of my hands in order to grab hold of a chair or my knee, but not before. The farthest she’ll go with just furniture is onto her knees, not to standing.

She hasn’t fallen at all when standing – when she gets tired or loses her balance, she lands on her cloth-nappy-padded bottom. She doesn’t fall forward because there’s always something there to hold on to. She’s more likely to hurt herself crawling, actually – not only when crawling off beds but also when she simply slips on the floor.

The first tooth is halfway out and the second one is already visible and on its way.

The teeth are not exactly useful for eating yet so her food is still mashed and pureed. But lumpy purees are more and more OK: she used to filter them out, swallow the rest and push any lumps out with her tongue. Now she mashes the lumps with her gums. And she is quite happy to eat real pieces of banana. I’d have thought that finger foods would be fun for her by now but she cannot pick things up between thumb and index finger yet, only with a full hand grip, and that makes it hard to actually put small things in her mouth. So I’m still putting all the food in her mouth, one way or another.

On the other hand, she has totally understood how sippy cups work: you grab the handles and pull the cup towards you and put the spout in your mouth and tilt the cup, and then you suck lots of water in your mouth and spit it out in a well-controlled, tight, beautifully curved spurt that soaks everything.

The noises she make are getting more and more differentiated and she is, I think, getting to the point where she purposefully makes different noises in different situations. Nowhere near “emme” yet, but close to being conscious communication. (While crying is communication, it generally seems like an instinctive thing, whereas words seem more conscious.)

Ingrid only woke once during the night. Nursed and went straight back to sleep, and so did I. Next thing I knew, it was 6.30 in the morning and we were both just waking up. This was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in about 5 months, and in the top three since Ingrid was born.

I thought it was interesting that we quite naturally woke up at the same time, without one of us being obviously woken by the other. It’s not the first time, either.

Ingrid’s crawling is still a bit unstable – sometimes she slips and lands nose-first on the floor. So frequently, in fact, that I’ve lost count of her falls. But what can I do?

This afternoon she was crawling towards me in a straight line, so intent and so happy because she was about to reach me all on her own… and a few tiny steps before she reached me, her nose hit the floor, and she went from great happiness to great sadness in the blink of an eye. I felt so sorry for her.

Popular toys:

A whisk	A big IKEA bag
Paper recyling	A pumice stone / nail brush

I’ve also put a few more new photos in the gallery.

There is no doubt that Ingrid is actually crawling now. Proper crawling, on all fours, moving forward rather than backwards, and reaching whatever she wants to reach.

Not surprisingly the things she wants to reach are the things that she previously hasn’t been close to, and for very good reasons. These are things like bookshelves, plants, and the bundle of cables under our desks. At the moment she is still happy to explore the safer things, but it’s only a matter of time before she gets bored with them and wants to see the rest as well. After all, that’s what I would do if I found myself in her situation.

So what do we do now? There is no way we can remove everything breakable from the living room. We wouldn’t have anything left. And there is no real way to block off that half of the room, either. I don’t think it’s even possible to put a safety gate across a room that measures 6 metres wall to wall.

For now I try to have a relaxed interpretation of “child-safe”. The rules are still work-in-progress but the following seems to make sense:
– Things that would do permanent harm to her are not OK. (Blinds cords, or chewing on electricity cords.)
– Things that are expensive or hard to replace are not OK. (Pulling on computer cables, or books. Each book on its own is not expensive, but the contents of the lower bookshelf as a whole are expensive so the bookshelf is off limits.)

Everything else is really OK, even if it’s not ideal from an adult’s point of view. I think we just need to get used to a lot of cleaning up.
Bags: OK. A bit of baby drool won’t kill a rucksack. Same goes for carpets and most clothes.
Clothes rack: OK. It will hurt if she pulls it on her head, but won’t do any real damage.
Shoes: OK. A bit dirty, but then again she licks the floor as well.
The bag full of paper to be recycled: OK. Makes a real mess if spread out in the kitchen, but she’s old enough to not choke on the pieces, and it’s not that hard to pick it all up again.
Rubbish bin: OK. What’s the worst she can do? Spread mango peels and used napkins on the floor? That won’t kill us.

I’m not sure what to do about the plants though. We have so many that it’s hard to keep her away from them, and of course they look so very inviting, so great to play with. Some would survive if she pulled them down, and would survive a bit of chewing as well. Others would not. And some are harder to replace than others. I suspect that if she did pull one down, it would make such an interesting noise that she might want to repeat the experience, so plants are probably all off-limits for now.

I wonder how long it will take before it will actually be possible to tell her “no, don’t play with this” and have her listen. She completely ignores any such comments now.