Baby J At 8 Months

"Gosh," said one mum at kinder the other day. "I can't believe how J's grown! I can remember when you first brought her to kinder; she was so little and just lying down. Now she's sitting up!"

At church yesterday too, J was sitting on a bench playing, and a friend commented to his wife, "Can you believe it? She's sitting up already!"

J is going through a phase of extreme separation anxiety at the moment.

"It's because you carry her a lot," suggested one sympathetic mum at church.

I said no, actually I let her play on her own as much as possible.

At BS last night, I plopped J down on the play mat, with Beth and the other kids nearby, expecting that she would make a grab for the toys. Instead, when she realized I was leaving the play room, she turned around and started crawling desperately towards me, wailing in that pitiful way which meant I would have to be very hard-hearted to walk away.

Later on, the creche supervisor reported that J burst into tears when Beth left the play room to look for me.

It's the sort of milestone you celebrate with a sense of dread: Baby has learnt to recognize familiar faces and to form an attachment to a selected few.

After a feed, J normally falls asleep in my arms, and I will then try to carry her to her cot, put her in with as little movement as possible, and tiptoe away in a hurry.

But she's getting smarter.

Now, the minute I stand up or even move my arms, she opens her eyes and looks around suspiciously to see where she is and where I'm trying to take her.

When I bring out her Grobag, she knows I'm going to pop her in it, and then put her in her cot next, so what does she do? She stiffens her body and fights me, her arms and legs flailing.

The mums at kinder love to peer into J's pram to see how she's doing.

"Hello gorgeous! You're beautiful, you are," they coo.

And this one's the best: "She's such a good baby! You're so lucky!"

And I'm like, hah, wait till you're at home with her.