My beautiful baby girl Asha Rose is now 23 weeks and 4 days old! She’s a big girl, being roughly in the top 97% of height (68.5cm) and weight (8.1kg)  for baby girls her age. Ya! She’s bigger than 97 out of every 100 – eek! According to the baby charts I have she is the size of an average 9-month-old girl. No wonder we’re often offered high chairs at cafes! She is a Size 00 but I often put her in 0′s.

Breastfeeding is going really, really well. Wow, it’s so much easier getting ready for a day out of the house when breastfeeding. I don’t have to pre-sterilise bottles every night, filter water and fill bottles, pack formula into my bag or stress about running out of it! My goal was to breastfeed until 6 months old so that’s only 3 weeks away. I’m not sure when I’ll stop… apart from the ease of it I’m kinda loving this special bond I have with her and don’t want to give it up

Though she’s often serious in the photos I post, she’s actually a very happy baby. She smiles whenever you engage with her. She loves eye contact and being talked to. As soon as the camera comes up to my face though, she loses her smile! The biggest laughs are always saved for her brother Finn though… my gosh, she cracks up! I really need to get a video of it, it’s adorable.

She goes to sleep at 6.30-7pm each night and makes it to roughly midnight before needing a feed. Occasionally she stretches this out longer  - the other night she slept from 8.30pm – 5am!! If I’m still awake I’ll breastfeed her and settle her back into her cot. I’m really trying to stop bringing her into bed with me, unless it’s 4am onwards.

I’ve been using the modern cloth nappies (bumGenius) for the last month, it’s fantastic! I’d forgotten how easy it is with a baby that’s still on milk. When Finn got gastroenteritis before our wedding I gave up using cloth nappies and found it hard to return to them. I pulled out the stash of green, blue and pale neutral nappies for Asha and am loving the lack of stinky rubbish in our bin!

Gosh, I have so many photos to post, I’m so far behind on blogging! I’ll be backdating posts with lots of pics as soon as I find some time.

Finn received a Thomas the Tank Engine track set for Christmas, which excited Scott nearly as much as Finn! Coupling the new set with the plain tracks we already had, Scott put together a fantastic course indoors, took a photo and then reassembled it outside. He secured the pieces to the board so that Finn’s little toddler fingers and knees won’t constantly knock them over!

PS: Can you believe Asha is exclusively breast-fed?? She’s one chubba bubba! Ahhh, so cuddly!

Scarlett and Layla, the twins in my Mothers Group, fawned over Asha during our first catch up for 2012. Layla put on Asha’s bib and pretended to be a baby… Scarlett gave Asha lots of hugs and played with her hair… it was so cute! There’s not much of a size difference, is there? Asha is a big girl, while the twins are on the smaller size for their age (21 months).

Merry Christmas!!

We spent Christmas at my sister’s house with all five kids together… magic! I took 532 photos in the three days we were there so I think I’ll just sum it all up with this one photo

A new Ikea store opened up an hour away! Yay! I’m excited about a few new purchases we made there, including two wooden highchairs for each of the kids. Asha is way too small for hers but it won’t be long before she’ll be able to sit upright with support.

I also bought an antique Persian rug online. I’d love to buy a massive Tabriz-style Persian rug with red tones (I’m talking 3 – 4m long!!) but our current rental house is tiny. I wanted to test the quality of the online store so I just ordered this smaller 40 – 50 year old rug and it’s lovely, particularly in real life! Finn is loving finally having somewhere he can roll around on in the loungeroom! Though beautiful and easy to clean, wooden floorboards are unforgiving on delicate elbows and knees.

My aunt and uncle recently bought a holiday house close to where we live. This is one of many beach visits we’ll have, no doubt!

We recently visited the new Ikea superstore in Springvale. It’s an hour’s drive but so worth it! Amongst other things we came home with a couple of boxes of chalk. Finn got stuck into decorating the ugly concrete slab in the middle of our grassed backyard…

Age: 19 months

She didn’t last very long, quickly getting tired and probably sore in the neck! That’s a big head she has to hold up