Harrison

Harrison loves his new house and crawls around everywhere with much excitement. We think he likes having his own room but who can tell?
It is Harrison’s first birthday in just over a week. Time has passed rather quickly and made that lovely little thing that just lay there into “the little terrorist” as his Daddy calls him.
He is currently asleep (yay), having his morning nap.
He has learnt to pull himself to standing on furniture, vacuum cleaners, cardboard boxes, the edge of the bath, the toilet, the open dishwasher - so anything the correct height will be used. But then he can’t get down again so he just stands there and cries until we rescue him. Fun.
His vocab has expanded - now all people are “dad” all books are “duck” and all animals are “ca..ca…”
The cutest thing is when he can’t find us and crawls around calling out “dad” in an obviously questioning tone.
Also, last week, he was holding a toy and when I asked him what he had he said “this”.

So we are looking forward to the zoo, zoo, zoo next week. Where there will be lots of “dad” and “ca..ca…”

After an overly long delay I have added more photos of Harrison! A variety of photos from the last couple of months has been added to the collection, and can be found in the current ‘Nine to Twelve Months’ gallery.

We, and Harrison, had our first holiday this past weekend. For Harrison this meant a holiday away from us, with his Nana and Poppa (also his Aunty Em, Nicky and Bebe the dogs, and Bill the surly cat). For us this meant two days with no Harrison in the Bay of Islands.

It seems that we all coped well, Harrison ate, slept, played and generally did what he does well, apparently only showing minor signs of missing his mum and dad. We did good too, Mel spent relatively little time whimpering “where’s my baby” and by day two was fairly satisfied that her parents probably hadn’t accidentally killed Harrison. Although I did suggest the hilarious situation of them running around all the adoption agencies looking for a baby just like Harrison before we got back.

We bought cheese. It was good. Harrison sampled a number of flavours of ice cream over the duration of his vacation - Vanilla, Chocolate, Cookies and Cream, Marshmellow Coconut Ice and Caramel. He seems to like all ice cream equally, also to a lesser extent he likes formula, baby food, paper, grass and dead bugs.

Harrison continues to “eat” everything. Paper is put where he can’t get it as this appears to be his favourite snack. I blame Aunty Jessamine for that one.
He is so lovely and big and cuddly. We move into our new place soon, which is fully carpeted, so this should be good for him to move around on - less sore on the knees!

Harrison has a small area (4 big floor cushions with a duvet on top) which we call “Harrison-topia”. He has been venturing off this in his expanding world type way and today has bumped his head twice. One only required distraction by giving him the “cityscene” paper to play with/eat. The other was a bit harder and required holding and bouncing and soothing.
We assume that he will eventually learn that the ground is hard.

and he won’t stop. We need to “Harrison-proof” the lounge. He’s shuffling everywhere and has an obsession with paper. Anything made of paper (books, junk mail, the TV Guide) gets shuffled over to at top speed and then gets semi-eaten.
And he has also started going for the door.
So our project for the weekend is to make the lounge/kitchen area a safer place to be. For Harrison and for our stuff!!!!!

and into his Mummy’s lip. He head butted me very hard in the mouth last night and managed to cut the inside of my lip. Ouch!
He is also trying very hard to crawl, but isn’t quite there yet.
Today we had a go on some playground equipment - seesaw = no, slide = unsure and swing = yes.

830A whole heap of new images are now online, and I’ve installed new photo gallery software that integrates a little better with the site, and I think it’s a bit nicer. You can bask in the visual glory that is Harrison.

He’s just about 9 months old now, and soon will be on the fast track to the big Zero-One! My once tiny baby is not so tiny any longer, and he is really learning to throw his weight around now (literally). Just about a one year old now, I can only imagine what lies ahead. He seems tantalisingly close to saying “dada” (or “data” - maybe he’ll be a geek yet) and crawling is just moments away I am sure, from there surely nothing can stop him!

Harrison has added a new syllable into his speech: da.
It is only a small step to “dada”
and then onto “daddy”
obviously I have to step up my game plan and get “mmmmm” into there quickly!!!

and not just his rolls of fat!
Harrison is on the move. He doesn’t stay very long in one place anymore. In the morning he rolls over in his cot, and this morning he wriggled backwards, past his cot bumper, until he could see his Daddy. And then grinned.
So we begin the hunt for a bigger house with room outside for his rolling ways.

Also, he had made friends with Antonio. Until Antonio kicked him in the nose (and he had his shoes on).
Personally I think thats what you get for trying to eat your friends but Harrison was fairly upset and spent a while glaring at Antonio.

Many thanks to “Grunty” Kathy for the Kookaburra puppet. Even when Harrison is at his grumpiest we make the Kookaburra peck and tickle him and it always gets a laugh!!!
I am not sure whether he realises that the Kookaburra is joined to us or not.