November 1997

The guinea pig incident: Matthew, although fascinated by Jet, our guinea pig, is terrified of her. Now he can crawl he keeps on chasing around to her hutch on our kitchen floor, but as soon as he sees her he screams!... It didn't take him long to get used to her though, and he is very interested in her food, of course!

Matthew had his eight month review this week, and passed with flying colours. He is now 69cm tall and weighs 9.24kg/20lbs6oz. He is showing all the right signs of developing normally - not that we really had any worries. I have booked him in for his hearing test.

On bonfire night Matthew seemed curious, but concerned by the smell of firworks in the air: he was very clingy, but he really loved to see the flashes and sparkles of other people's rockets in the sky. We decided to get some "no bang" fireworks for the garden for Matthew to watch, and he really enjoyed it - except the whoosh of the rockets taking off, which made him jump. Afterwards we went out to an indian restaurant for a meal, and Matthew behaved perfectly. Now he has his teeth he is happy to eat grown up food, and he especially loved the popadoms and the ice-cream for pudding.

Matthew now has six teeth, and has stopped teething. He has all four top incisors and the two central, bottom incisors. His cold cleared up within days of the last tooth coming through, and he now seems to be growing again. He had completely stopped growing through the teething, and was still in three to six month clothes!.. but all of a sudden they have got too small. I'm loath to buy too many clothes now, when he is growing so fast, and I was hoping to pick up some stuff in the January sales, but he will need some winter clothes to tide him over till then. I like to buy most of his clothes from second hand shops because you can get some really nice stuff, and I can afford to get plenty of outfits for him. I tend to buy from nursery agencies where most of the baby clothes are still in fantasic condition. I also have a favourite charity shop which specialises in baby and childrens clothes so there is always lots to choose from. One advantage of buying clothes like this is that Matthew never has the same outfit as any other children, which I prefer.

I have really got into using the washable nappies on Matthew. I can't believe I didn't do it sooner. It is such a shame that this great alternative to disposable nappies is not widely available, and that only those mothers who are really determined to find out about them do. (I have been amazed by the number of people to show an interest in Matthew's cloth nappies since I started using them). I have found the napies very reliable and only little extra work, although the encouragement I got from other people who had used them before was invaluable. Now I would like to take my turn in suporting and encouraging other people thinking of using washable nappies.