But all is not lost because a few days ago I had an early childhood nurse come and spend the day with us to observe what is happening and to give assistance with sleep and settling routines. They don't advocate a controlled crying routine or a cry it out approach which is good because Anna didn't take to those methods at all. In fact she cried once for 2.5 hours straight even with me patting her stomach and singing to her until I gave in and picked her up when I tried the Tizzie Hall method which I found very harsh and upsetting. But on this more gentle approach, of only letting her cry for a minute before calming her it's so far so good, her naps this week have extended to 1.5 hours, falling to sleep quite quickly and re-settling quickly halfway through if she has woken. She is only waking twice at night time now, but they are getting shorter in length and she is sleeping for more hours before waking. So for any Sydney mums, I can thoroughly recommend the lovely ladies from The Infants Home in Ashfield if you're at the end of your tether like I was.
I guess I won't be dropping her off at the orphan's home just yet as I've been threatening to do (good thing babies don't fully understand what we're saying!). And apart from this hiccup she is doing great - rolling, sitting up, improving her dexterity and hand skills, eating solids and learning to squeal for fun, although that is not so great! And she is 6 months already, I can't believe how fast time has flown by. Here is a photo from just a few days ago:

And to answer your question, Judy Ross, about the piping on the footstool in my previous post, I have to admit it was a bit of a shoddy job but you just can't really see it because of the thick fabric. Normally I would fold the raw end under and then sew the tubes one inside the other with the folded end on the outside, but because this fabric was so thick it would be too bulky, so I just overlapped the ends of the tube and sewed them down. To stop the raw end that is now exposed from fraying, I dabbed on some clear nail varnish! I suppose you could use some fray check spray if you wanted to do it properly, but I didn't have any and I find that clear nail varnish works wonders on lots of things other than your nails: stopping holes and ladders in pantyhose getting worse, replacing the plastic tips on shoelaces when they fall off, glueing down fabric where there are small holes or tears and finishing the ends of ribbon when cut. Anyway here is a close up of the join:

Now one of my real life friends is going to ask me how to do this when she spies these photos, so here is a step by step for her and anyone else interested. The rest of you more experienced sewers who could do this in their sleep please feel free to move on to a more interesting blog and ooh and ah over their new gorgeous outfit!





I'll be putting these two on my sewing wishlist, but since I did buy this principally to make the nursing top, I thought I should make it first so I could wear it whilst I am still breastfeeding. The top has a cross over front and a modesty panel underneath the lapped portions that has the sides cut out so you can access your "girls" without exposing your bra too much. The pattern looks like this:
