Elliot Pascoe's Blog

Being a kid is great. The whole world is out there and most of it you have never experienced before. Us boring and sedentary old adults don’t get to have many first times anymore.

I wouldn’t say Elliot has worked out how to jump yet, but he can manage a little Cossack style `marionette on strings’ sort of jig.

Just 2 or 3 minutes is enough for one go for now.

Luckily for Elliot his cousin Gabrielle is too big for the Jolly Jumper now so he can have his turn to get his jollies.

This shot was taken with a new lens on Sam’s camera (Canon EOS 300D, same model as mine). The 50mm lens is good for portraits. It has a short depth of field so is good for burry backgrounds which give portraits that warm feeling. The colours turned out pretty bright here too – the light in the lounge room is nice and clean. I am currently shooting in RAW mode, but this is a JPEG shot straight out of the camera, so in good lighting you can indeed get excellent results from using the automatic features on the 300D.

OK thats enough techno speak for one post. All of the above paragraph was just some fluff so that I could put up a cute shot of Elliot. You’ll forgive me, won’t you ?

This week Elliot gets to try some solids. Well solid isn’t really an accurate description. When you mix 1 part rice cereal with 4 parts milk you really only get runny. Still it is something new to try.

Handily for us he has also learnt that he can hold his toes. Perfect position for feeding ! Elly you keep holding those toes while we shovel your runny.

The second photo is a cheat, he can grasp stuff and it can find its way to his mouth, but as for feeding himself – not for quite a while yet.

I’ve seen lots of cute photos in baby magazines and figured `how hard could it be to take a good portrait shot ?’ Well quite hard, apparently. Having a plain background is very important – and not that easy to organise around home.

So anyway Elliot responded like a trooper and didn’t mind being posed and moved around. He even resisted the urge to `mark’ his mother’s lovely fluffy white towels. If you’d like to see more of my experimenting with how to take a portrait, have a look at Baby Portraits 

Well the Gymbaroo term is over. Elliot has done 10 weeks in the `immobile’ class. The gym is setup with heaps of new forms of stimulation, so much more than anyone could have at home. It is a really intense 45 minutes. Songs, massage, tummy time, tickles, squeakers, dancing, free play with the gym – you name it. He normally comes home totally zonked.

Apart from tears when that big scary silk parachute comes out, this is pretty much what his face looks like all session. 

Elliot is now 5 months so it will be time in a few weeks to think about solids.

Here you can see him voting for some more substantial food – feed the man meat !!!

The mouth really is centre of the universe for a baby. All things get put there without fear or favour. At times it is soothing just to have something to suck.

We’ve survived so far without a dummy, but I do feel sorry for the little guy when he is dying to suck something and we swaddle him for a sleep. It does mean he sleeps well though – otherwise he wacks himself all nap time.