M-M-wAAAAAAAH!

And so the birthday was over. With the party and Australia Day done with, Alice was promptly marched off to the doctors for her 12 month check and her latest jabbers. Poor little thing was pretty grumpy to have three lots of needles stuck into her little thighs and to be prodded and poked, weighed and measured. It turned out she has a smallish head, is of average weight and is developing nicely. The doctor was mildly interested to learn that she is not yet pulling herself to standing, but gave her another 2 months to pull herself out of her inertia before we are to start to worry. I'm not at all worried as yet - she is crawling at 90mph and having tried to do a 360 degree bottom swivel myself, I can attest that you need some good core muscles to try to pull yourself around in that way. She has also started climbing - eg up and over your legs if you are sitting on the floor - so her legs are gaining strength. She has been known to master a kind of downward dog position when standing on a soft surface, such as sand or the bed, so am sure it will come.

In other Alice news, she has done a few cute things recently:
1. Taken herself off to the change table when she had filled a nappy and sat patiently looking up at the change mat until I got there to change her.
2. Looked at the zoo animals with a very quizzical expression, similar to this one:

3. Then adjusted to the sight of odd creatures, smiled at them and even greeted the wallabies with a royal wave.
4. Requested the continuation of a game of bouncing on the bed (it started as trying to get her to stand, but then we had too much fun bouncing) by crying "bou-bou" (sounded a bit like repeating "bouncey-bouncey" after me, honest).
5. Liberally distributed big cuddles to any parent or grandparent who happens to be nearby.


Back to the dreaded doctor's office - the poor man was quite traumatised to have made her cry - impossible to think that a man of medicine could be such a softie. The yin and yang of the practice is completed, however, by the scary dragon of a receptionist. She didn't care that Alice had sore little legs and that we had to stand about in the 100 degree office while she faffed around and made us wait for 15 minutes before I simply had to sign my name. I have to book 9am appointments because my blood pressure can't stand how she lets her favourite patients in ahead of those who have appointments. But I digress...



Alice has now had her MMR and unlike the Blairs, I can solemnly (and publicly) declare that she had the combined vaccine and since the media had no interest in reporting that the first load of research has been utterly refuted, I am sure that she will be fine and will just hope that she doesn't get too much of an adverse reaction (fever symptoms are due one week after the jab for a 24 hour period). On arriving home, I gave her some banana milkshake as a treat and realised/relished how tired the jabs made her. She passed out at 7pm that night and not a sound was heard for another 12 hours. If Stu and the dustbin men hadn't been up at 5.30am, and if the waiter hadn't been quite so assiduous in topping up my wine glass when we went for dinner, I could almost have cobbled together a whole night's sleep.


PS Yes, am bad mother who went out the night of the jabs. We were only 5 minutes away though, honest.