Handmade Tuesday & more about weaning

I have a pile of things I have made recently (while sitting with Wombat in his playpen) which I want to show off, so I will make Tuesday my day for displaying my handiwork.

Remember the Mummy Wombat I showed you a while ago? (Or guinea-pig, as my niece insisted.) I promised that a Daddy and a Baby Wombat would be forthcoming. Here they are!



I didn't have quite enough felt scraps in one colour, so Daddy Wombat is a combination - as Yeti said, male Wombats often have a darker stripe down their backs. They are still pretty guinea-piggy, though I did try to get the ears into more wombat-like positions.



My Wombat has seen neither real wombat nor guinea-pig, so he does not mind the similarity. If mummy says they are wombats, then wombats they are. (He likes to hold two of them and bump them together... and he giggles when I make them give him 'wombat kisses')

I am quite pleased with how the wombats turned out as my first felt toys, but the real star of the show is Rosie the Hen.



If she looks a little bedraggled, it is because Wombat has already chewed on both her head and her tail!



Not only is she a chew toy, she is also my first FINGER PUPPET! The elastic is a little tight on my finger, because it was made for Wombat - she pecks and 'boks' around with a very satisfying realism. Wombat puts her on his finger and wanders around showing her things ;) couldn't manage to get a photo of him with her, though - he would stop as soon as he saw the camera...



Rosie comes straight from the book Rosie's Walk. This is one of those wonderful books with hardly any text in them - where the parent/reader explains the story as they go - these kind of books are Wombat's favourites. (Another really good one is Hug - I have linked to the Amazon.com pages for these books as they have good reviews. If you are in Australia, I don't suggest buying from Amazon as the exchange rate is a killer - check out the Huggies book club instead - with free postage & member discounts, it is my favourite place to buy Wombat's books.)



Next, I guess Wombat will want me to make the fox! Now that will be a challenge!

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In other news, tomorrow I am going to have to tell Wombat that there will be no more mummy-milk from now on.

Since I have started cutting back on feeding him, the boobs have decided enough is enough, and their days of bounteous production are over - for this baby, at least. They ache like a bruise and I feel like I've been belted in the chest. He has been really good about not biting me, but nursing is just not the pleasant experience it used to be.

I wish the timing was better, as he is already upset with his premolars erupting... but I shall just have to try to explain it to him and get his cooperation and understanding. I'm constantly amazed at how much he understands, and the connections he makes between things in his books and things in the real world. He has a number of books with pictures of baby animals drinking milk from their mummies, and slightly older animals eating & drinking from bowls, so I will spend tomorrow discussing those with him and telling him he is not a baby anymore, he is my little boy, and while I still love him very much and that will never change, it is time for us to move on to the next stage.

Of course, I will have to come up with a new way to settle him to sleep. What's your tip for getting Wombat to snooze? Do you have a tried-and-true technique for toddler naptime?

He would much prefer to be giving up nappies! He is pretty much potty-trained for poopies, but he still hasn't worked out how to tell me when he needs to pee - and he is wetting a lot, especially at night and nap time. It is a half-hour struggle to get a nappy on him now :P He cries and squirms off the bed, runs around the room, insists he needs to sit on potty instead, and then bounces off again after a few seconds. I lost my temper tonight and forcibly held him down - once the nappy was on, he was perfectly happy to be dressed in his pyjamas. I guess it's just that with winter here, he doesn't get as much nappy-free time as he would like, since it is too cold to run around with no pants on. I am investing in some fitted cloth nappies with velcro fasteners so I can do a quick change without asking him to hold still while I fuss with pins - but at $25 a nappy, I can only afford two a fortnight. I have a hemp fleece one which is great for night-time and two different brands of bamboo ones are on the way. At least buying them piecemeal I get to try out a wide range of styles.

As time goes on, I will review them - and a pile more children's books - over at What Wombat, where I shall also try and write every Tuesday. This week's review is on the Fisher Price Link-a-doos Infant to Toddler Rocker.