Devon at 5 months

January seems to be flying past at a ridiculous rate, and somehow Devon has reached 5 months old.

It's true, looking after a baby most definitely gets easier as you go along.

Devon is much happier now than he was a few months ago. Most of the time he sits happily on our laps, plays with his toys, watches the cat and is generally interested in what's going on around him. He loves being bounced and has a great time in his jumperoo.

This is a vast improvement from us having to constantly hold him and walk around the house while he wailed, never getting to sit down unless he was asleep or feeding, taking it in turns to eat dinner etc etc!

Unfortunately he still thinks 5am is time to get up, and wakes several times during the night. I think I've just got used to having less sleep now.

I also think we have grown more confident as we get to know what works and what doesn't, and have developed our own ways of adapting to life with a small baby.

We have just started the solids adventure. I was going to wait until six months, but he has been showing signs of readiness so I mixed up a few teaspoons of baby rice with some breastmilk a couple of days ago and offered it to him on a spoon just to see what he would do. Once he realised what was going on, he opened his mouth wide and gobbled it down, looking at me expectantly for more!

We'll be taking it slow with the solids though, as we're still going strong with the breastfeeding, which is not only easy peasy now, but has meant that I have now lost all my pregnancy weight (I put on 20kg - way more than you're supposed to!) without a shred of diet or strenuous exercise. Just shows you that nature knows best, obviously I needed to eat all those cakes during my pregnancy for milk making. And I still get to eat as much as I want!

It's getting hot now, and while we have air-con so it's nice and cool inside, I don't really like staying in all day with Devon. I get bored, so I figure he must do too. But it's hard to find things to do when it's 40 degrees out. We took him for his first swim last weekend, down at our local lido. They have a couple of shady baby pools, and he loved it, watching the other children and splashing about. We also go to the library sometimes as that's nice and cool too.

In other news, all our chickens are now dead. We're not 100% sure what killed them, but we found their dead bodies crawling with bull ants so it's possible it was the ants that killed them. We need to get rid of the ants nest before we can get any more chickens.

There is a transition going on in the garden, all the winter plants and grasses are dying off (Nick's lawn sadly didn't make it) while the summer trees and shrubs are surging into life. New lemons, oranges and pomegranates are starting to appear. I'm hoping we'll get a couple of pomegranates this year before the parrots eat them all again.

We have moved into bushfire season now, only last week there was a serious blaze that destroyed over 50 homes, only 10-15km away. And only this week there was a fire down the other end of our road. We are all members of a facebook fire alerts group, so if there is a risk we can be notified pretty quick. My emergency plan is basically grab Devon and go. Scary stuff.

This Festive Season

It's quite hard to feel festive when it's sunny and warm, Christmas in the southern hemisphere is a very different holiday to the Midwinter celebrations we are used to in the UK. Last year we went camping, but this year is our first Christmas with Devon, our 4 month old baby, so we stayed at home and had a nice relaxing time.

Normally we like a big family get together this time of year but that would have meant flying back to the UK, and with a four month old baby we didn't quite fancy it!

Even though Devon didn't really know what was going on, we wanted to make the day special so we put up decorations, got a few presents and ate lots of food.

We opened the presents slowly, one by one, taking breaks for naps and lunch.

It seemed too much effort to cook a roast dinner for just the two of us, so we cooked a ham like we do every year (in cider and spices) and had bread, cheese and chutneys.

Life with a baby is pretty different, no more lie-ins (5.30am is sleeping in late for Devon, I kid you not). Hence no more late nights, and little or no drinking anymore. But the perks are that Devon wakes every morning smiling his head off and now loves playing and laughing and interacting with people. He still has his grumpy moments but they are getting fewer. Getting a baby to laugh is one of the most gratifying things in the world and you don't want it to stop.

We didn't even try to stay up until midnight on New Years Eve, in fact we were all in bed by 9pm. Devon sometimes wakes for a midnight snack, but he didn't wake until 2.30am so we all missed 12 o'clock. Sleep is more important right now!

Instead to celebrate the start of the new year we all went out for a picnic on New Years Day to Lake Leschenaultia and it was a lovely day, 26 degrees and a gentle breeze.

We are quite excited about 2014. 2013 was great, our first full year here in Australia and of course, Devon was born. But the first few months of his life went by in a bit of a sleep-deprived blur, with a lot of trial and error going on. It's so amazing to think of all the things he will learn this year, starting to eat, walk and talk.

And now he is getting so much more aware of his surroundings, and we are slowly finding more energy, we can do more with him, take him camping, and hiking and all the stuff we like to do. As a result it feels like our normal life is slowly starting to resume!

Best wishes to all for 2014!