Becoming a parent can open your eyes to so many new things – as columnist Alex Jee has been finding out...

They say a week is a long time in politics, so what on earth does that say about two months in early parenthood?

That’s roughly how long it has been since I last wrote a column about my experiences in parenting – you can blame the rest of the county for having too much news, if you want – and there is hardly a single thing that has not changed in that time.

The last few months have passed in a medley of tears, bottles, nappies and spit-up. Oh, and my daughter has come along for the ride as well.

The tiny little girl who couldn’t hold her head up and slept for seven hours a night (I know!) is now a slightly less tiny girl with one enormous personality.

Does she sleep now? Does she hell! She’s got far more important things to do!

Things like keeping her mother and me entertained for hours on end (well, an hour-and-a-half at a time anyway) and terrorising the dog, who has become very attached to the shouty thing that we brought home almost six months ago.

She’s busy growing teeth like it’s nobody’s business too – three before she’s five months old, meaning she has a further six months grow a fourth and she’ll be at the average for that age.

Oh, and there’s the rolling. Oh, the rolling. I can’t tell you how many times in the last few weeks that I’ve glanced at the baby monitor and not only is she in a different place to where we left her, she’s also facing a different direction.

It does make bedtime that much more tense. Am I going to be able to get her blanket on her before she rolls away? Does she just wait until I’m out of the room to roll over – because it’s happening too many times to be a coincidence?

Carrying on the theme of a different direction, she has also started to take things in around her – and this leads me to look at the world in a different light.

It is hard not to take on a newfound appreciation for things when you see someone, no matter how little, witness something for the first time.

My daughter came out with me (in her harness – despite her best efforts, we’re not at walking yet, thank God) to walk the dog and on our way, we passed a field with a number of horses grazing.

As I showed her these animals that we will see regularly, I feel her grab hold of my finger and hang on for dear life – and it’s then I realise she has never seen a horse before. God only knows what that must be like, I think to myself.

Maybe that’s another one of those important lessons that our children teach us without even knowing – take some time to appreciate the things that you take for granted. Even if they seem like life at its most trivial.