Kate and Andrew Scott

Monarchs of Kensington

Our little girl is long longer really what you’d call little, still a baby certainly, but very much a grown up one. Her major new skills is the ability to sit up, which she now does in preference to any other activity, which would be fine if she could get into a sitting position by herself, but of course she needs assistance to do it! She also loves hanging upside down, another tricky one for her to pull off on her lonesome, as well as standing (see photo) and playing with (read banging together) anything that is not officially a toy – yep she’s definitely growing up. Teeth are yet to make an appearance but are certainly on their way, thank goodness for rusks, teething rings and the odd spot of Bonjela.

But she’s a happy little soul, smiling at everyone especially her Dad when he comes home from work. Harriet truly believes that there’s no such thing as a stranger, just friends she has yet to convert to the cult of Harriet. She’s won over older ladies in shopping centres (not much of a challenge), other children (even less of a challenge) and a group of late teen men on the train (surely the toughest nut to crack). She’s a lovely smile-filled child, which makes her a joy to be around, most of the time! The looks that cross her face are also great fun to watch, from the intense concentration of discovering new objects, to the look of surprise when she hears a new sound, to the look of disgruntled annoyance when she realises that she’s been put down on her tummy and will now have to flip herself over, and make her displeasure known until someone comes and sits her up.

We also attempted solids this month, see Kate’s Flickr page for photos. While she tolerated it for a while Harriet wasn’t really a fan, so we’re having a short break while she realises that really spoons full of food are both fun and tasty. As a wise man said to us ‘I don’t know any adults who don’t eat’ so this is something that will come with time, in the meantime breastfeeding remains Harriet’s thing, some what to the bemusement of Kate, who’s really starting to have had enough of the whole thing, thanks very much.

Apart from baby raising and gazing we have managed to do some other things this month.

• Andrew had an exam, which he reports went pretty well (he felt he knew the right answers to 5 out of 6 questions).
• We headed north to see Em, Oscar and Violet (the rest of the Hearnshaw clan were in Melbourne) for the day, and visited the beautiful Evans’ twins which reminded us of how small Harriet once was (OK she was a lot larger than the boys but still).
• There were two MTC plays, one which Andrew went to, and one which Kate attended as well as the Australian Grand Prix, which due to the feeding schedule Kate had to watch at home, but it was on our beautiful new digital, LCD TV, so that made it somewhat better.
• We escaped having to buy a new washing machine after our current one was given a re-vamp, and we were told to stop using the gray water hose to pump the water out onto the lawn. We were OK with this as the water had just made the grass grow, which was a bummer as neither of us could be bothered cutting it.
• Kate and Harriet also had some lovely lunches in the city with Kate’s mum and Nana (on the excuse of having our rings checked and cleaned) and we caught up with Catrin Brain when she was in town for lunch at the Bot Gardens. Kate and Harriet also got to catch up with Cathy Collins, who was in town picking up an National Gallery exhibit from the gallery in Melbourne.
• We discovered the DollHouse TV show, which is excellent. Watching an episode on Saturday night has become our new thing, yes, we are the parents of a 6mth old!

So that’s about it, the update on the Scotts of Melbourne. Lots of things happened, lots of things went on as per usual, and April’s shaping up to be a corker!