Roll, roll it girl, roll it girl.

Watching a small human learn how to become mobile is probably one of the most entertaining bits of parenting. This small creature not only has to discover it's own body, but then has to work out how to coordinate these newly acquired bits and pieces to achieve some sort of motion. It's quite a lot of work. 

Wren-Lee could roll from her tummy to her back at 3 months already. A necessary step for a child who seems to live by the motto "Work smarter, not harder". She refuses to hold her own bottle although she can, rolls off her tummy if she's feeling lazy and pretends to cry to get our attention if she's tossed her dummy somewhere that she can't reach. Yup, she's got this efficiency thing down. 

But when it came to rolling from her back to her tummy, it took a bit of effort from everyone. I spent hours teaching her to tuck her arm in so she could shift her weight. We rolled her back and forth as often as possible so she'd get used to the movement. Eventually, she seemed to understand what to do and began attempting it on her own. (And cue "Eye of the tiger") 

This resulted in a small baby contortionist act. Wren twisted her body into the most bizarre shapes as she tried to master this new skill. I've seen S shapes, Q shapes, a pretzel and a few yoga poses in the mix. She also got herself tangled in her playgym trying to roll over. 

Finally, she worked out her own little system and does manage to roll but it takes some effort. And after the hard work it took just to get this right, the kid has discovered a new challenge: Once she's on her tummy, how does she move forward? Oh well, guess we better prepare ourselves for learning to crawl soon. 

Who's upside down: you or me? 

Chubby cheeks

If you look back at photos of Wren-Lee, you'll notice that she's quite petite and not quite as fat and squishy as other babies. That's because we had no idea that she was a skinny kid. In fact, she was a full kilogram underweight for her height.

We took her to a dietician who specialises in paediatric nutrition. Yes, we also didn't know someone like that exists. Turns out she knows her stuff and gave us a simple solution to the problem: we add a supplement to Wren-Lee's formula which provides extra kilojoules. The canister of soft powder is probably every dieter and model's nightmare.

So, she's been on the supplement for about 6 weeks now and gained weight really well. We discovered that her digestive system didn't like rice cereal so her solids diet consists of yummy fruits and vegetables (which she LOVES!). We'll be introducing protein into the mix soon in the form of chicken and we get to try the cereal again but this time it'll be brown rice cereal which is an unrefined wholegrain and likely to not aggravate her reflux.

And now that the boring nutrition lesson is done, the proof is in the pudding (or so they say). In our case, it's our little pudding face. Here's a before and after pic so you can see that our little bird has chubby cheeks :-)

Before

After