Random Little Planet bits

• Separation anxiety?! In a previous post, I talked about how exhausted I was because, after months and months of being a contented little baby as happy to play on her own as with others, Little Planet was now beginning to cry every time I even turned my back on her. Well, that phase of separation anxiety lasted all of 1 week when she had a cold and when she was cutting her first tooth. Well, that first tooth cut through, her cold eased off and she reverted back to being my happy, contented, independent little baby girl again
  
  
• In fact, we now have separation anxiety of a different kind. She is having such a good time with her childminders that she cries each night when I collect her and take her away from them! Last night, she cried as soon as one of the childminders put her into my arms, and she twisted away from me to reach back out for her childminder. Fortunately, she was soon babbling happily away and smiling at me once she was on her way home
  
  
• Little Planet's latest favourite activity is to prod at a trail of ants as they meander their way across the childminders' garden
  
  
• In fact, she loves fingering all teeny tiny things. She will spot a single grain of rice across the other side of the room and, despite being surrounded by all her books and toys, she will crawl zealously toward that tiny grain of rice and prod at it for minutes at a time. Ditto a blade of grass or a piece of thread. Whenever she suddenly goes quiet, we now know it is because she has found a teeny tiny object on the floor to poke and analyse
  
  
• She enjoys throwing the coloured bricks out of her playpen at home and then crawling out (we leave the door open) and throwing them back in
  
  
• She babbles non-stop, all day long. Her favourite "word" is currently "gungala", often posed as a question, as in "gungala?" She will definitely be a chatterer
  
  
• She enjoys sucking on cucumbers and satsumas and munching down on bananas
  
  
• She loves looking at herself in the mirror and shaking her mass of curls around. If she is grouchy, then placing her in front of the mirror instantly makes her forget her woes
  
  
• She also likes shaking all her toys at this other little person in the mirror
  
  
• She is very big on looking at other people's reflections. I often catch her grinning up at me through the reflection on the oven door, for example
  
  
• Books are her favourite toys. She is now beginning to leaf through our books. Her favourite adult book to pull off our shelves and leaf through is Banana Yoshimoto's Hardboiled / Hard Luck. I think it is because it is a thin book and has a colourful blue cover
  
  
• Her second tooth has finally cut through
  
  
• It looks like she may be dropping to one nap a day. She mainly fights her morning nap nowadays, preferring to save her daytime sleep for the nap after lunch. This is fine by me, as it means we can go out earlier in the day now. Her night sleep is still long and deep
  
  
• She understands the word and concept of "no". If she tries to touch anything she shouldn't, for example the DVD player or an electrical wire, then I call out her name, say a firm "no" and then look away. So far, it works. She's not a willful toddler testing boundaries yet, though. I am the disciplinarian in our household; her daddy is the softy and one day, I am sure, she will take advantage of that
  
  
• I am sorry I am no longer posting photos of my baby. Believe me, I think she is so, so so beautiful that I long to show her off here every time I post. But now she is getting older, I think it is only fair to stop posting photos of her, especially considering that I do not post photos of myself and M. Take it from me, though, that she is as cute as ever and looks more like a little girl than a 10 month old baby!