You know, I first started talking about having a third baby in October 2007. I was considering the issues of two vs three kids. And every week since then, I’ve been writing a little bit about the whole journey in a series, Making Baby 3.

And it’s funny, because I often forget that for the last 3 years, a lot of my readers have been “on” this journey with me. So the fact that this baby is now ONE YEAR OLD… completely shocks some people.

They can’t believe how fast time flies! How kids grow up so quickly! How life can move along at such a swift pace! How they remember when he was first born!

That’s right! Life is short!

It scares some people. And heck, it scares me.

To see my little baby with 8 teeth and a cut on his nose, from where he fell into a rose bush. He’s so big now!

I remember the morning after I gave birth to Liam in such exquisite and vivid detail.

I remember pulling back the curtains in my hospital room and letting in a beautiful blue morning light. I opened the window a little bit to let some fresh air into the room too. I scooped up my baby from his cradle, lay him on the bed and changed him into a new outfit with polka dots.

I remember thinking, my goodness, I made a baby! How do I look after a baby again?

I turned him around so I could see his face and eyes, and he blinked slowly in a sleepy daze.

Now look at him!

It’s pretty hard to say what kind of personality Liam has. Overall he is very easy-going and undemanding, with a lot of energy and interest in the world.

I have a feeling that a big part of his personality will be defined by his big brothers. They are just the most amazing things in the world to him, and all he wants to do is follow them around.

Anyway, I love how these photos turned out! I love spontaneous and natural portraits!

I was mucking about with him on the floor, and I put a hat on his head. Then he just scrunched up his face and broke out in a series of cute, little, snorting laughs.

He is one cute and cuddly little guy, and I feel very, very blessed.

My little baby Liam is 8 months old. Within a week, he went from commando crawling, to a little hand-foot shuffle, to crawling on all fours. He is creeping along like a little lizard, happily exploring every nook and cranny of our house.

So it is now time to make the house BABY PROOF.

We have set up a play pen around our TV and electronics corner. Put away books, games and DVDs. Fitted kid-safe door locks on cupboards.

I have painstakingly picked out and packed away every single small-sized object and toy that could fit into a baby’s mouth.

Everything that is precious or breakable has been placed on higher shelves. Pot plants have been moved outside.

I guess it’s not such a big shock to me. I’ve already done this vertical migration twice. But it’s just funny to notice how our surroundings and living habits have changed over the years, as kids grow up.

Another big milestone for Liam is his eating. Ever since I introduced him to lumpy, chunky food, he has not looked back. He retches at pureed foods now.

If he eats a spoon of pumpkin puree, the next spoonful I offer him, he will actually look at what is on the spoon, and then decides whether to keep his mouth shut and turn his head away.

Sometimes I’ll try to trick him by putting a pea on top of the pumpkin puree, but he works it out pretty fast. I don’t remember my other two kids learning this quickly. And I don’t remember enjoying the humour of baby-feeding-time so much.

I think most of my pleasure comes from me being very relaxed about what he eats. It’s all very experimental and spontaneous.

He basically eats what we eat for dinner, just chopped up into tiny bits.

If I cook pasta for dinner, I’ll cut some up and spread it out on his high-chair tray. I might add some cooked peas, cooked cubes of potato, carrots, broccoli and grated cheese.

It all just sits on his table in one huge mess, and he will happily pick it all up piece by piece and pop them into his mouth.

It really is such a cute age!

I’ve forgotten the strange pleasure of turning lumps of hard vegetables into velvety, soft, creamy mush, then filling up freezer bags of colourful ice cubes.

And at the risk of sounding like a complete nerd, I just have to say – vegetable colours are so beautiful.

So without further ado, I hereby introduce you to baby food porn and all its pureed goodness!

This is raw pumpkin, chopped, ready for steaming and pureeing.

Pureed pumpkin. I find it hilarious that it looks the same coming out of the baby, as it does going in.

Ok move along, don’t look and think about it for too long.

Chopped carrots. Just check out the colour of the orange!

Broccoli, green beans and mushy white rice. Doesn’t the deep green just scream CALCIUM!

I slop all the goop into ice cube trays. When it’s all frozen, I transfer them into labelled freezer bags.

Then before feeding time, I defrost various combinations of green mush and orange mush, or mix it with mashed banana, apple puree or pear puree.

When I make apple and pear puree, it always turns out too tart, or just funny tasting. So I buy ready-made fruit purees and mix it with my own vegetable mixes.

I’ve been making baby food by the truck load these last few days. Liam is soooo hungry!

I’m sure there’s a growth spurt on the way. Or maybe just a very big pumkin coloured poo.

My baby is almost 7 months now and he eats SOOOO MUUUUCH FOOOOD.

I seriously feel like I’m preparing food every single minute of the day.

Food for the baby. Food for the kids. Food for my husband and myself. Then oh look I need more food for the baby.

And when I’m not actually MAKING FOOD, I’m thinking about what food to make for the next meal. What’s for dinner tonight? What about tomorrow’s lunch? Leftovers? And morning tea? Do I have enough food for tomorrow? Baby will be hungry soon. If I make lunch for the kids NOW, they won’t nag me while I’m feeding the baby. But what am I going to eat? Because the baby wants food NOW!

ARGH.

This cooking thing? I’m so over it.

So the consequence of my baby eating so much food, is that he makes SOOOO MUUUUCH POOOOOO.

I am a 24/7 arse wiper. Always armed and ready with a wet wipe.

But moving right along…

Liam is at the pre-crawling stage.

He gets up on his hands and knees, wriggles back and forth, stretches and arches, squirms, rolls and plops… and after a few minutes, he’s moved to the OTHER SIDE OF THE MAT!

It’s not graceful, and it’s not fast, but he does manage to get what he wants.

He sleeps 11-12 hours through the night. 2-3 hours in the morning. And takes a little nap around 4pm.

His personality so far is still easy-going and placid. In the mornings he’s very dopey and blur. But after his morning nap, he’s bright as a button, hungry, noisy and very active.

He’s my very happy chappy (doing a whole lot of poo).

Liam is approaching 6 months… and he just loves curling up like a ball and rolling around the lounge room.

I love how babies are so flexible! The photo above is Liam when he’s in his toe sucking mood.

He has 2 teeth now. They popped up at the same time, last week.

My other two babies were quite grumpy during their “teething stage”. But Liam, true to his style, cruised right through it. The only thing that happened was: he drooled a lot, and his chin got a bit red. He still sleeps 12 hours straight through the night.

However, his appetite has increased phenomenally this week. I have been eating large meals, 6 times a day, pigging out on dairy and carbs, and I still can’t keep up the milk production. I don’t have enough milk!

He was unusually irritable one day – grizzling and crying, I thought it was his teeth, until I realised that he was just hungry. I had no milk, so I supplemented him with a bottle of formula. Presto, he was happy as could be.

I’m also offering him a small amount of solids about 3 times each day. He will hungrily chomp on anything I wave in front of him – rice, banana, apple, pumpkin. But he just swirls it around in his mouth, and it dribbles back out when he smiles at me. So he hasn’t gotten the hang of SWALLOWING yet.

Every time I place him next to another baby his age, he looks so SMALL in comparison! A part of me is a teeny bit worried that he might be underweight.

But like my other two kids, he is as active as can be. He’s not one of those cute pork-dumpling, sumo babies who lay about. Liam wriggles, jiggles and squirms like crazy during his mat time.

In fact he’s digging his toes into the carpet, bringing his knees up and moving very quickly towards CRAWLING!

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My bub is heavenly at the moment. He’s just so chilled and happy all the time. And super cute!

I call this one the airplane.

Every time we plonk him on the floor, he flips over and does this sky diving thing. He might prop himself up on his elbows, and try again and again. But most times we’ll find him frozen in this position.

Extra cute when he kicks his little feet and waggles his hands.

And serious cuteness overload when my OTHER two boys join him on the floor, like 3 little turtles out of water.

Look at his hair in this light! And his eye brows! It looks ginger!

Oh and he finally fits this What A Hoot Romper from Baby’s Got Style. Too cute.

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Some people prefer to look at pictures of kittens or puppies. But not me.

I love babies. Babies eating yoghurt. Babies with funny hats. Babies with raincoats. Babies dressed up like bumble bees.

So if you’re a bit like me, here’s today’s baby fix for you.

Liam is 5 months, and he rolls over.

Ok, I know, I’ve already seen this with my other two kids. But it still amazes me.

Babies seem to work things out and learn so quickly.

Scrunch up knees. Tuck arms in. Roll to the side. Force top shoulder forward. Land on the belly and pull arm out.

In front of your eyes, you’re watching all the neural pathways connecting and being formed in his brain.

Then the next day they’ll do something different, progressing on what they learnt.

Like one of those super-intelligent, learning robots.

Cool. But freaky.

Next they’ll take over the world.

I just love the way he rocks back and forth, playing with the movement of his body.

And I especially love his little laugh right at the end.

He still can’t seem to keep his head up and smile at the same time. We call it his Chuckle Head Splat.

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I figured it was a sign that he was ready to eat more than just breast milk.

Time to start him on solid food!

Now most veteran parents might admit with some fondness, that starting their baby on solids was exciting, hilarious and novel for…. hmm, the first 5 minutes.

And for the next 13 years, it is just HARD WORK.

I completely agree.

So I thought I’d capture, the first FIVE PRECIOUS MINUTES of my baby’s first meal.

Today on the menu, was watery, cooked brown rice.

My other two boys said, “Mum, why are you feeding Liam glue?”

“Why don’t you give him some pizza? I’m sure he’ll like that!”

It’s funny how you can buy those exquisite cookbooks for baby food, featuring beautifully photographed pureed avocado, as if it came straight from a chef’s kitchen.

Then you can spend hours peeling, cutting, steaming, pureeing, food for your baby – then have it spat out onto the floor.

And how you can experiment with every recipe in the book – tuna patties, corn fritters, slow cooked lamb ragout, cheese pinwheels – but all your kid wants to eat is frozen bread.

Suffice to say, my baby was not impressed with the rice and spat it out.

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Each month, I knew exactly what to expect in my child’s development, all the different things to look out for, how to handle these new situations, and even what to prepare for next month.

I did everything by the book – everything that was recommended by experts, and the wonderful world of parenting books and magazines.

I sterilised my bottles. I wiped toys before I gave them to my child. Swaddled him before putting him to sleep. Sang songs to him. And I waited 6 months (to the day) before I fed my baby solids – of course, following the recommended schedule of introductory foods.

Bringing up a child was like running a small business. I was constantly thinking, thinking, thinking, planning, planning, planning and organising EVERYTHING.

I knew a lot of women like me, so I guess I thought it was all quite normal. And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved it! Having all that knowledge really empowered me as a mother.

So during those early days, I met a mother who just had her third child. We became friends and as I got to know her, I realised that she was an incredible mother, yet she was doing everything differently!

In particular, she seemed to disregard all “the recommended blah”.

She was feeding her child teething rusks at 5 months! She didn’t keep her child’s toys in a separate zip-lock bag! She didn’t carry wipes with her! She kept her nappy bag in the car! How did she survive??

I was puzzled as to how she managed to NOT be bamboozled by the whole BRAIN STRAIN of keeping on top of her baby’s development.

For me, I was constantly thinking about… when will he start crawling, what to do when his teeth come through, where the best place to buy nappies, what’s the right way to cut his nails, should I start baby swimming yet?

Whereas, she would shrug her shoulders and say things like, “Oh teeth? She’ll get them eventually. Nails? I cut them when I have time.“

I was blown away and shocked, yet I found it to be very, very cool. I really admired how she found her own parenting style – confident, bold, relaxed, intuitive, with an excellent sense of humour. And I was inspired to be the same. Somehow.

So now it’s 6 years later, and I have 3 kids.

And I finally understand the whole concept of this “relaxed and intuitive” parenting.

Suddenly I’m the one saying things like, “Oh, have I started my baby on solids? I’m a bit busy this week, maybe next week I’ll give it a go. I’ll feed him some leftover rice or something.”

And as the words come out of my mouth, I laugh.

I don’t know if it’s a matter of being truly instinctive, because my view is, my world doesn’t revolve around my baby, and I only have time to focus on what’s truly important. I want to spend as much time cuddling and playing with my baby, and all these other things I “have to do”, I will do them when the time comes.

How’s that for parenting wisdom?

Because I agree. Baby teeth? I’m sure they’ll come through sooner or later.

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Not much has changed in the last 4 weeks. Which is a good thing! He is still a very happy and contented little baby.

He sleeps 12 hours through the night. He has a big 2 hour nap in the morning, and grabs little 30 – 45 minute naps throughout the day – in the sling, in the car, in the shopping trolley.

He would probably sleep a bit more during his naps, but I’m often waking him up and dragging him around the place, picking up the other kids from school etc.

I think he’s about 6kgs. He’s much bigger and longer than my other 2 sons at this age, so he doesn’t fit ANY of the winter hand-me-downs!

He has been sick with a running nose and a phlegmy cough a few times in the last month, but he didn’t seem to be greatly affected by it. He still feeds and sleeps all the same.

Liam’s pretty sleepy and dopey in the mornings, but he brightens up considerably in the afternoons and evenings. He chuckles and sings, and he’s just such a pleasure to be with.

He has begun to look at things with interest, reach out to grab things, bite things and get tangled in things.

He can hold his head up for a few minutes now! But he can’t do that and SMILE at the same time. If he does, his head wobbles, he face plants the floor, and he breaks out into chuckles. Very funny.

When he is on his tummy, I can see that he is beginning to bring his knees up and giving a little kick – the first signs of crawling.

To be honest, I’m dreading the moment when he begins to move. It means I have to be a lot more diligent with the cleanliness of my house. Small bits of lego, coloured matchsticks, bits of stickers, and cashew nuts… I can’t walk past it all and think, “Meh, I’ll do it later.”

I’m really, really enjoying this baby phase. I get a bit weepy and precious whenever I think that this will be the last time I get to cuddle a baby. But in the same second, I’m looking forward to fishing and camping trips with the whole family in the future. Ah, such bittersweet moments.

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Click here to see the whole story of Making Baby 3.