Oh, my god! Where did the time go? It's already september!
Charlotte is already nearly 7 months old! We hardly can remember how she was when she was 4 weeks old. We just remember that she didn't move. And now? Since 5 weeks or so she manages to turn around and lie on her belly. In the beginning it was more or less luck if she managed to. Then, two weeks ago she was able to turn back on her own. This is something she doesn't do any more at the moment. Instead she makes funny noises to tell us that she's unhappy. In addition she spreads her arms really often like flying over the floor which is - at least to us - more exhausting than holding up with her own hands - obviously she doesn't think so or can't understand yet.
As well: After a few weeks of extensively trying new sounds with her mouth (such as "PF") she reduced her efforts around that ability (maybe she got to know they she won't need that when talking deciding to talk english only ;-))
So, it really seems that she takes a breath of a week or two to come back afterwards stronger than before and with more capabilities than we've seen so far.
But there might be two more reasons:
She's now 29 weeks old - exactly the time when most of the babies start learning about distance (mummy can leave the room and is away when doing so). She therefore carefully watches Marlene and myself and she's really upset if we don't play with her.
The second reason for her being a little bit stressful this week might be that we were on vacation twice. So there's a lot of people and things she's seen and that she has to process with her little young brain.
First we've been to Spain for a week. More precisely we've been to a wedding near Marbella. It was unbelievably hot - for me in the same way than for Charlotte. Nevertheless we had a really great time, went to the pool, watched the sea and met a lot of nice people.
Secondly last week we travelled through Germany. It nearly felt like our yearly christmas odyssey: We went to my parents, had a family reunion there and also met my Kindergarden friend, his wife and son. Next we spent a few days in the Lüneburger heath and met with a friend of Marlene and her two small daughthers. Already after this meeting we realized that Charlotte was not so relaxed any more. She slept very bad every night and needed a lot of closeness. So we cancelled a meeting with friends in Hamburg and only spent a night at a friend's house in Bremen. The next day we continued our journey to Oldenburg (the original destination of our travel) where we celebrated the 60th birthday of Marlenes dad. Although there was really loud music playing on that party Charlotte slept really well in the restaurant and we went to the hotel at around 11PM.
The next day we started our way back home and just spent another night in Düsseldorf at Marlenes sister. Otherwise the drive would have been too long for Charlotte.
In total we spent around 1600km on the road with Charlotte sleeping most of the time.
But I can imagine that it has been really stressful for her seeing new people everytime she woke up and got pulled out of the car.
So, although we already arrived back home last monday it's totally ok if Charlotte needs another 2 or 3 days to calm down again. But not more, please ;-)
Tomorrow morning we will try the swimming pool here in Mannheim for the second time. Cross the fingers!!
Good night!