Barbie and Tinkerbell Take A Bath Together

It was like a scene from Toy Story: Uncut, which is X rated due to nudity. The two girls were in the tub together, and Tinkerbell was being a bit of a pain. A total whinge if I'm honest. Barbie just lost it with her.

Tink [in a really whiney voice]: I want to come tooooooooo. I want to come. I want to come tooooo.
Barbie [snappish]: That's it. That's it, Tinkerbell. I'm going under the water. No chances, no chances, Tinkerbell.

Barbie submerged herself in the tub.

Tink: I want to come too. Let me come under water.

I just love watching Phoebe role play with her dolls.

Bubble bath

We've been having some fun bath times the past few nights. Phoebe has been in an absolutely adorable mood. Of course, she has the typical toddler split-personality and turns into Mr Hyde as soon as she's out of the bath and I'm trying to put her nappy on. But let's focus on the good stuff.

We've been singing lots of songs in the bath. She likes "Old MacDonald had a farm". They must sing it at daycare. She says "E-I-E-I-E-I" and that's my cue to start singing. (Or maybe she's just practising her Geordie language skills for when Nana and Grandad visit next month: "Eeh aye! Eeh Aye!" I'm just waiting for her to throw "man", "like" or "hadawayanshite" on to the end of it.)

So I sing Old MacDonald and she joins in with the "E-I" bit. I asked her what was on the farm.

"Baby," she said.

Novel idea. Farming babies. But I went with it. "Wah wah here, wah wah there." You get the picture.

Next verse. What's on the farm Phoebe?

"Baa baa," she said.

Excellent! A sheep. Now this is something I can work with. "Baa baa here..." etc. Phoebe joined in with the baa baas.

What's next, Phoebe. What's on the farm?

"Baby!"

Another baby. Okay. Wah wahs again. Next?

"Baby!"

Apparently there were four babies and a baa baa on the farm.

Another song we like to sing is one from her Gymbaroo CD. It goes,

"The grandfather clock goes tick tock tick tock.
The kitchen clock goes tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock.
All the little watches go tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick."

Each clock gets progressively faster. Phoebe sings along to the tick tocks and sways from side to side in time, which results in much manic bopping by the time we get to the little watches. We sang that song on the bike on the way home from daycare yesterday and I nearly toppled over when she started lunging left and right.

So, anyway, we were in the bath - well she was. I don't bath with her anymore on account of trying to wean her and her tendency to launch herself at my breasts whenever she sees them. So she was in the bath and we were having a jolly old time. She was standing up, so excited was she at our little sing-along. Then she let rip a little botty burp. She looked at me with a little smile on her face. I tried to keep a poker face. Next thing she let rip a proper fart. Had a little giggle at herself. I tried very hard to maintain my poker face but jeez it was funny. Then another louder fart and a proper belly laugh from Phoebe this time. Well, I couldn't help myself and had to have a little giggle along with her. Then she squatted down into the water, farted again and made bubbles. You can only imagine how hilarious we both found this.

So there we were laughing away, oh isn't it funny when Phoebe farts, when all of a sudden she pooed. Apparently it wasn't funny any more. She turned around to see what had happened. It broke up in the bath water and then she did another one. She was surrounded by tiny little floaters and completely freaked out. Full on tears and she was practically climbing up the side of the bath trying to get out. Funny girl. That's the second time she's pooed in the bath and lost it. One can only hope this means she'll be easy to toilet train. Or perhaps just completely inconsolable whenever she has a little accident.

Save Water: Bath with the baby

Tonight I shared a bath with Phoebe and an army of dead ants.

I spent the entire time trying to recover little ant bodies with Phoebe's bath toys, less out of respect for the dead than me not wanting to wash my hair in a tub of floating insects. This wasn't as easy as it sounds due to the fact that baby bath toys tend to have holes in them so that baby can watch water falling through them. Evidently, this is something babies find fascinating as they try to grab the water over and over again. This draining property was the main reason I thought using her toys would be a good idea. The water could drain out of the vessel, leaving the ant body behind. However, these particular ants were very tiny and slipped straight through the holes back into the bath. I would not like to go to war against an army of ants; even in death they are excellent escape artists.

Eventually I developed the following method of body removal: firstly, I used the Funny Purple Hippo Thing to scoop up the ant. Then I tilted it this way and that so that water would run out of one hole without the ant falling through. It was a bit like one of those plastic puzzles where you have to get the silver ball through the maze without letting it fall through the holes. Once the water was pretty much drained from the Funny Purple Hippo Thing, I gave it a good whack into the Big Green Number 10 Stacking Cup so that the wet ant would fall into the cup. I then used the Funny Purple Hippo Thing to scoop up the next ant.

It was an arduous process and took a very long time but I entertained myself by singing "Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant" to The Pink Panther Theme tune. Meanwhile, the survivors of the Great Tiny Ant Drowning Disaster patrolled the perimeter of the bath, looking forlornly into the tub at their lost mates, which was bloody brave of them in my opinion. I think I managed to scoop out about 13 ants using this technique. I had to keep emptying the cup down the sink as ants kept escaping back into the bath, which was darn annoying.

Meanwhile, Phoebe danced around the edge of the bath whirling the wet face cloth around her head, living up to her recently earned nickname, Cyclone Phoebe.

There is hope

After my somewhat unnerving experience at the local childcare centre I set my Facebook status to:

"Lindsey doesn't want to send her baby to a scummy daycare centre."

A friend emailed me a fantastic message that made me feel so much better. She told me how she'd had similar experiences looking for daycare in Ireland for her wee lad. She described the place that she eventually got him into and when I read it I thought, "yes, that's exactly what I was expecting and hoping and want". Hopefully they exist in Australia too. This is what she said:

I really felt happy and safe the minute I walked into the baby room ... The staff all really engage with the babies, they seem to spend most of their time on the floor playing with them or carrying them around if they are cranky. They sing to them, let them play with pots and pans, read stories, listen to nursery rhymes and all the usual things you would be doing at home to keep them entertained and stimulated. They've got lots of bright rugs and cushions on the floor for them to explore and mirrors at crawling baby eye level for them to admire themselves. It feels like a really nurturing, warm environment.

I have managed to get another couple of names of centres to check out which I must do soon. Hopefully waiting until we get back from the UK (as we leave in about 10 days) won't be too late. There is no way I'm putting her in a scummy place even if it's temporary.

So there may be hope yet for childcare. However, I am not sure about the safety of my child with her father. Tonight, after bathing her, he said to me:

"I think we should get some bits of rubber to put around the edge of the bath so she doesn't hurt her head if she falls over."

"Well, she shouldn't fall over because you should be supervising her very closely and should be able to stop her if she topples," I replied (calmly, might I add).

"But I think she needs to learn that falling into water is a bad thing," he said.

Sheesh!

The Bath Incident

Tonight, whilst I was feeding Phoebe, Toby ran the big bath for us before heading outside to cover the trailer with a tarp. Once or twice a week we like to all get into our huge spa bath together rather than bath Phoebe in her little baby bath. We get just as wet with the little baby bath and it's nowhere near as much fun for us.

I am starting to reduce Phoebe's daytime feeds by trying to ensure that she empties one breast before I offer the other. I'm sure we were doing that anyway but I wasn't very mindful of it. Sometimes this can take a little while, especially as we are just settling down and getting back into the swing of things after Phoebe's mammoth growth spurt. So, after some time spent feeding and still being able to hear the bath water going and still being able to see Toby outside faffing with the tarp I attempted to call him to go and check on the bath. The trouble is I have laryngitis and he probably wouldn't have been able to hear me anyway but as I had no voice there was no hope really. So eventually, apologising profusely to Phoebe who looked at me rather stunned, I hauled myself up off the sofa and trotted off to the bathroom whilst trying to allow her to continue feeding.

I wish I'd taken a photograph, and if I hadn't have been breastfeeding I probably would have; I got there in the nick of time. Suddenly letting Phoebe continue to feed became the least of my worries... managing to hold onto her whilst I hurriedly leaned over the bath to turn off the taps was the new challenge. The weird little indent that looks like a seat at the side of the bath was completely flooded and the sides of the bath were covered in water and about 1cm off going over the edge. And it's a BIG bath!!! Good job our dams are 70% full at the moment. The news stations reported a predicted storm surge for last night... and we nearly got it in our bathroom tonight, I tell ya.

As I returned to the living room, Phoebe back on the breast now the excitement was over, Toby saw me through the window and said something, I forget what but he was obviously enquiring as to why I was breastfeeding whilst wandering around the house and did I need a hand with anything. "The bath," I croaked and his response was something like "oh s*@t!". Indeed.

In other news...

Phoebe is now settling back down and has slept through for the last two nights. Of course I now have to get up to express milk again but hopefully that will pass. I have given up trying to see a pattern in her routine but I think one will slowly form again over the coming weeks and I am trying some new things after reading a book a friend sent, such as trying to get her to take a long nap at lunch time and shorter naps in the morning and afternoon. That might prove more difficult once we're out and about during the week though. I often go out after her morning nap and don't get back until after lunch so unless I go for a walk with her in the pram and put off coming home until later then she will have a shorter nap. I might try getting out earlier or later in the day and see if that works out for us. Another thing I've started doing is giving her bedtime feed in the bedroom with some nice music playing. It doesn't seem to stop her from whinging when we try to put her to bed though but tonight it was more of a winey chat than a scream so maybe she'll settle down over time.

As I get my Australian citizenship this week, and I have decided to have a barbecue on Saturday afternoon to celebrate I would like to have a few beers so we're trying to get Phoebe to take a bottle, without much success. After she screamed at Toby during one feed yesterday I then let her play with the bottle for a while before her next feed when she wasn't very hungry. She was interested but not enough to actually drink from it. Today we just didn't really get much chance to introduce her to it again and I'm running out of time. Every day I express some milk and that gets put into the bottle for her to play with later on and gradually get used to the idea. But I also need to find time to express a bit more to freeze and feed her with on Saturday. Today I didn't get the chance. Maybe I'll have to stick to a light beer or two straight after a feed but that's not very Australian now is it?

And finally, something I got rather excited about... before Phoebe was born I spotted a rather cool looking play mat on my friend's photographs and enquired as to the brand: The Fisher Price Rainforest Gym. When I found it in the shops it was about $120 although at one stage I did see it on special for $90 or $100. But then Lucie told me someone she knew of was selling a Lottie Ladybird mat (worth about $200!) so I ended up getting that, a bouncer and a couple of bits and pieces for $70. 

Since then Phoebe has visited two houses with the Rainforest gym and she loves it. She already has two activity mats as her Nan bought her a different Fisher Price mat (see a photo of Phoebe on it) lately which she also loves. But the Rainforest gym is bigger, you can easily add other toys to it and she seems so much more mobile when lying on it. In fact she wiggled around 90 degrees on Thursday and I thought I'd picked her up and put her down without remembering (mums do that kind of thing) until a few minutes later she'd almost gone full circle. 

So I thought I'd have a look online and see whether anyone had it on special. And what do I find? A local woman selling one second-hand on eBay! I made sure I was home for the end of the auction this afternoon and got it for $61, $1 over my budget but what the hell? I know Toby thinks three activity mats is too many and he wants me to sell one, and I might sell Lottie Ladybird but then babies get bored so quickly and we do have a big house so I can put them in different rooms. Personally I think I got it for a good price and it was something I've wanted for a while so I'm happy. The Ladybird mat just isn't that engaging for her now that she can reach out and bat toys so I think the new one will be good for her development. I'm reluctant to sell it just yet though as perhaps it will be good for her later when she's at a different stage. I'll sell them all eventually. Here's a photo of her with her friends Julian and Hugo, the centre of attention as the only girl. Julian doesn't look too impressed that Phoebe is hogging his play mat though.

I know I said "finally" at the start of the last paragraph but that was before I knew what I'm about to tell you, which is not good news. My Picasa account has reached its limit which means I can't add any more photos to Phoebe's album. And just when she was getting interesting too. I'm going to see if I can persuade Toby to let me purchase a storage upgrade.

So, until that happens, here's one final cute-as photo of my beautiful babe just so that remaining megabyte of storage doesn't go to waste: