Having a ‘smashing’ time

The other morning, I managed to wangle a lie-in whilst Claire got up with Jack, as he was having ‘one of those mornings’ where he wanted to get up early.

I managed to sleep-in until about 8 o’clock in the morning, which for me at the best of times is a fantastic lie-in; When I got up, I wandered into spare bedroom, which has now transformed itself as Jack’s second bedroom/playroom, to find Claire and Jack playing quite peacefully. Although Claire looked quite bemused, thinking that I knew what had happened so far that morning.

It turns out that Jack had been a bit ‘playful’ earlier in the morning during their breakfast and had managed to reach up at the kitchen table and grab at the cloth placemat that Claire was using for her breakfast and pulled at it, bringing it and everything that was on it, onto the floor, including a plate of toast and a three-quarter-full glass of orange juice!

As Jack’s toys were already on the floor from him playing earlier, these added to the carnage that I saw when I nipped down for a peek, as Claire couldn’t clean up properly, as Jack is getting quicker with his crawling. It was as though Jack had been through the cupboards and smashed every plate going, as it looked much worse than it really was.

It has made us realise that he’s also getting taller and things that were previously out of his reach are now potential targets of destruction!

Kitchen mayhem

As Jack is old enough now to move himself about, and quite quickly too, he’s also able to reach up and grab at the kitchen cupboard door handles, which was funny to start with, as he just used to hang onto them, but now he’s more curious as to what’s inside, it’s a job to keep up with him!

I’ve just been right through every ground-based cupboard in the kitchen and have fitted those little latches that only a grown-up knows how to get in, just to be told by Claire that Jack’s worked out how to get into the cupboard in the utility room. Great.

Apparently, he pulls the door twice in quick succession and the latch gives way. This is a problem, as there’s all sorts of horrible stuff that babies shouldn’t get to see, such as bleach, or washing powder and other boring cleaning stuff like that, but it also made me smile, as you can almost see that he’s going to be trouble when he’s older.

He does things sometimes and looks at you with ‘that look’ as if he knows exactly what he’s doing and that he also knows that he’s not meant to do that, or his mum might not approve. As the token-responsible parent in the house, you can’t laugh or seem to encourage him as he’ll certainly do it again next time. But I certainly wanted to.

I mentioned something about this to my mum a little while ago, and she said they had to hide their smiles and laughter at stuff we did as kids during a telling-off, all them years ago. Personally, I can’t remember any hint of them wanting to smile or laugh, so they must have done it well, or had plenty of practice, as I do remember being told off quite a lot…

Distractions

Bit of a wide-ranging topic/title, but still quite appropriate, and here’s why:

Jack is getting to that age whereby he’s listening to what you’re saying, and although he can’t talk back, he pretty much knows what’s going on.

He’s able to point, or at the very least ‘stare’ at various objects in the room that you ask him about, such as the clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen, the telly on the sideboard, where his high-chair is, and so on. And they’re things that he understands what you’re talking about and will move to look for them.

These objects in the room have come in quite handy when he’s been having a tantrum or not eating his food, distracting him from what he was doing and allowing you a moment’s breathe to win the fight. Dirty tactics? Maybe. Does it work? Mostly.

On the other hand, there are those other distractions in the house that take Jack’s focus away from what Claire and I want him to concentrate on. The main culprit for this happens to be our friendly pooch, Alfie, who must know when to come marching into the kitchen when we’re trying to feed Jack, or stand there whimpering by the front door wanting to go out and bark at something. Jack is quite taken by Alfie and we’re really glad that they’re not scared of each other, etc, but when you’re trying to get things done first thing in the morning before getting ready yourself to go to work, it’s not the best of help you could expect from the dog.

In terms of me, this blog site and distractions, I’ve had a little too many of them myself recently. (Hence the radio-silence on here and then all of a sudden a burst of activity!) I think it’s too easy to let something like blogging slip, especially when tired after getting up at silly-o’clock in the morning with Jack and then going to work, etc, etc. Excuses, I know, but I know I enjoy writing these posts, so I’ll try to make a conscious effort!!

Maybe another problem, is that we’ve started an internal blog at work and I think it’s fair to say I’ve contributed to it enough recently, and maybe that’s taken away my blogging concentration-quota recently, (or at least the desire to blog at home), despite the topics being totally separate.

In addition to all of this, the actual amount of spare time I have is significantly reduced; something that I was fully aware would happen, and I’ve ‘tried’ to cater for it, but it’s not until you literally have *no* spare time that you appreciate it. So, when I do get a little spare time, I’ve got work/projects that I want to get on and do, and this ‘playtime’ comes mostly at about 8pm – 10pm.

I’m not moaning or complaining about any of this, it’s just that I think that this is a key area of being a parent that I think is worth highlighting for those who have not yet had the joys of being a parent. Maybe this is why parents look forward to shipping their children out when they’re old enough to move out, as the spare time factor returns? Only another 18 years left then…

The snow is falling…

Snow. Great when you’re inside looking out, but horrible when you’re out in it.

The last time it snowed here, was on the 5th February, the day after Jack was born. Why do I remember that? Well, that was the day that the nice policeman closed the road that took me to the hospital, and my dad ended up taking me later on his 4x4 truck.

I just had to go outside and stop the side gate banging around in the wind, and that was quite bad. It appears to be settling too, which might mean it stands a chance of causing havoc tomorrow, seeing as we seem to fall apart at the sight of snow here in the UK.

December already??

It sounds strange to say, but it really doesn’t feel like it should be December already. The weeks and months have disappeared; Jack is now 10 months old and his first Christmas is literally just around the corner, adding weight to they “they grow up fast” argument.

So, what’s happened in the past month since I last blogged? Lots, but where to start.

Jack is doing really well. He’s growing taller and filling out a lot more now, as he’s doing much better with his eating. He’s still eating the food that Claire’s been making for him, which is great. Despite all the work that making the food for him is, I think we’re both really pleased not only that we're able to do that for him, but also what he’s actually getting is exactly what Claire puts in the pan; no extra salt, preservatives, etc.

As he is relatively tall for his age, I think at one point we were a *little* concerned that he was a slightly under the weight-line on the graphs, but when comparing your little baby against a line on a graph, working in percentiles of the countries’ babies, it’s a little easy to get tied up in it all. Stats are just that, in my opinion and as long he’s not off at an extreme, he’s doing ok.

There are some areas of baby-life like this that make me wonder: Just how did people survive years ago without charts and averages etc? People seem to have managed without know what percentile their little bundle of joy is in, and they’ve obviously grown up just fine.

As I said in the last blog post, we all had a helping of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease, which was nice. We’re all good now and to be honest, I’m glad to see the back of it. I hate feeling ill – it seems so… unproductive!! It’s not that we’re *blaming* Jack for us getting it, but he did have it first and managed to get rid of it quickly too…!

He’s not far from walking now, we think. We keep sitting opposite each other on the floor in his playroom, and encouraging him to take a few steps towards one of us, and he’s getting there. He does try, but gravity is a constant force, and one that Jack hasn’t quite come to grips with yet!! He’ll gladly scale the stairs if you let him. And fairly quick too, seeing as each step is chest-height and there’s loads of them, he doesn’t do too badly.

His crawling has improved also. He’s been commando-crawling for as long as he could crawl, but the past week maybe, he’s been crawling ‘properly’, as one would imagine a baby to crawl.

What else can I think has happened? Brain-mush. I might have to post this blog item and get another one posted when I remember what else has happened, as otherwise, this will never get uploaded!!

What’s been going on?

Well, lots really, and that’s probably why I haven’t had much time to write much on here about it all.

Jack is getting on really well – he’s not yet walking, talking or voting or anything like that, but he’s getting there.

Walking – he’s now at that stage whereby he wants to push his baby walker around the house, rather than sit in it. In fact, I’ve tried to put him in it several times over the last week or two and he just gets annoyed/frustrated, as that wasn’t what he wanted! He just wants to stand behind it, and push it until he runs out of house to push it to, then turns around and does the same thing again.

He’s getting more and more confident with his walking too – he’s now in ‘cruising’ mode, which means that he can stand up-right using against the sofa and use it help him along it to where he wants to go, but as far as proper steps are going, not yet.

Talking – he’s starting to say words like ‘mama’, ‘dada’, ‘kaaah’ (for ‘car’ as they go by the front of the house) but these words are currently all interchangeable, and it makes for a change to be called a car and the dustbin be called ‘dada’. Claire’s dad is trying to get him to say ‘Thermostatic Radiator Valves’, but I think this might be a few more days off yet, Grand-dad.

Voting – Well, not in the sense that you’re thinking, nor that I probably implied, but in a way, he is trying to get his point across by waiving his hand/finger in the area as if to say ‘take me that way, peasant!’, but mostly it’s towards the Sky box, which he desperately needs to hit with his fist, and then push right to the back of the TV stand, whilst holding onto the Playstation.

Illness - He’s had his first proper virus – Hand Foot and Mouth disease. No, it’s not the Foot and Mouth disease that sheep and cows get, but more the baby variety that extends to the mouth also. And I don’t get why it’s called a disease, as when I think ‘disease’, I think like serious, proper diseases, not infections like this.

So, Jack had it first and then soon passed it onto his ma and pa for good measure. Basically, it’s an infectious virus transferred through the saliva and poo, and results in a majorly sore throat and spots/blisters on the hands/arms, feet/legs and face around the mouth area.

Jack had it for a few days, and prior to the spots appearing, we honestly thought he was off his food because of another tooth coming through (he currently has the four front teeth), until Claire took him to the Quack’s to find out it’s HF&M.

He was up crying a lot of the nights, but didn’t seem to take long before he was back to normal. The spots are very nearly gone, and the only ones left are the ones that blistered really badly and was sore. The ones on his face have almost gone entirely with very little or no marking left behind.

As I said, Claire and I have both had it too, as well as my mum catching it too. Claire had the spots and a bit of a sore throat for a few days – I had loads of spots and probably the worst sore throat I have ever had. It got to the point whereby I could only really eat ice-cream and Angel Delight, drinking only pints of Nesquik banana milkshake, as everything else felt like it was burning a hole in the back of my throat, and then came the pain of actually trying to swallow something.

It honestly felt I had a ball of nails wedged at the rear of my throat for days. I’m in day six of recover now and it’s the first day I haven’t need to rush for the pain killers. The pain is still there and definitely on it’s way out, but I really hope I don’t come across that one again. ‘Thanks’ Jack.

My mum came over one afternoon, picked up ‘the lurgie’ and also had time off work because of it!

“More Room!” - In other news, Jack has taken over another room in the house – we’ve ejected the spare bed and made way for his playroom. It’s much better, as it means that all of his toys are based up there now, and we can have the downstairs back to semi-normal again.

Booby-Juice is no longer on the menu for Jack. Claire was hoping to slow this down just before she started back at work, but it turns out the well started to go dry by itself naturally. He’s now on powered-milk, also known as ‘plastic-milk’, which is ok, but it smells really bad/different to anything else. He doesn’t seem to notice the difference.

Food – Jack has eating things from the real world too. If we’re eating something that we think he might try, he has a bit of that.

The meals that Claire is making for him are probably better than the stuff we’re eating, as it’s all cooked fresh for him and contains absolutely no rubbish in there at all; all of the menus up until recently have come from the Annabel Karmel recipe books, but she’s also been scouring the internet for new recipes for him.

Actually, the meals that he has isn’t just baby-mush – they’re all using things like rib-eye steak, salmon, and fresh fruit, etc. If they weren’t all blended to a pulp before being frozen, you’d probably eat it and probably like it too. I do (occasionally), and I do.

Photo collection

I have mentioned in the past about the ease of taking too many photos with digital cameras.

Well, I have been busy uploading the past few weeks worth of photos to the SkyDrive account (free online storage) and it crossed my mine to check the amount of photos, to see what sort of disk space we’re consuming online.

On the computer in our house, there’s 10 Gigabytes of photos related to Jack. That’s 10,000 Megabytes – 12.5 CD-R’s full, or just over 2 DVD’s full of images. In all, there’s 3833 photo of the little tyke. Admittedly, not 100% of the photos we have are online as, believe it or not, we do actually vet the photos before we upload them, removing

• any blurry or pointless photos
• any that make Claire or I look bad
• any that are almost exactly the same as the ten before it
• any with Jack’s tinkle in them

In terms of the online storage aspect, I’m not really worried at the moment, as I believe that Microsoft give you 25GB of free storage space these days with the SkyDrive accounts, which is up from the 5GB that I had when I first created the account a year or two ago. Maybe in another 8 months when we’re nearing the 20GB limit, we might have to look at creating another account maybe!!

Dragging himself up in the mornings…

Over the past week or two, Jack has taken to pulling himself upright using anything that will take his weight, such as furniture, toys, etc.

This is really good, as it shows that he’s growing and that it really won’t be long before he’s walking, I’m sure. On the other hand, it has also been a bit of a problem, as he’s now got in the habit of doing it in his cot… if we put him to bed at night and he’s not particularly wanting to sleep, he crawls over to the side of the cot and literally uses his arms and upper-body strength to drag himself upright, whilst his feet are almost running in the same direction, aiding the cause. Within seconds, he’s there, standing upright and beaming with glee, watching for that look of congratulation on our faces. This might be all ok for him, but when he needs to go to sleep, and we need him to sleep, this defiance in him seems to be making this a little worse. In the mornings also, he’s stood there, waiting for one of us to come in and get him out, but then it’s not so bad as his smiley face seems to make the mornings a little… funnier.

The problem is, that as this ability to stand upright is still new to him, he sometimes forgets to hold on at all times… and if you’re not quick to catch him, he falls down much quicker than he gets up! I think that his fall is more of a shock to him than the pain of him falling, but I suppose that it’s been more luck that he’s fallen on something soft, like his bum.

The first weekend away

Claire, Jack and I went away last weekend for the first time and stayed at Eye Kettleby Lakes in their Hazel lodge.

These ‘lodges’ are 1/2/3 bedroom luxury log cabins (of Switzerland ilk) and are fully kitted out inside with everything you need; kitchen, lounge, bathroom, en-suite, freeview tv and dvd player, and even now have free wireless internet access, if you so desire.

We went a couple of years ago to Eye Kettleby and stayed in the Holly log cabin there and really enjoyed ourselves; it’s such a peaceful place to stop and is just outside of Melton Mowbray and 15 or so miles from Leicester. The log cabins are all quiet private, each with their own hot-tub and bbq area.

A few of our friends (Phil and Lucy) are from Melton originally, and when we said that we was going to Eye Kettleby (last time) for a long weekend, they laughed, wondering why on earth we wanted to do that… but this time around, they actually came over to visit, stopped for a Chinese takeaway and a dip in the ‘tub, and they really liked it! they could see why we wanted to come back, and will probably go back again.

Anyway, the whole point was to have a bit of a break, just the three of us, before Claire goes back to work next week for the first time (properly) since Christmas 2008. AND, the other reason was to have some time together without a computer in sight, as I have been spending a bit of time on the computer recently (working on an ASP .Net MVC database app for someone.) [geek!]

We dordled around a bit over the weekend, and did exactly as we pleased – Jack was absolutely brilliant. Even though he’s in the middle of teething (and therefore crying when it hurts) he was an absolute star.

We also took Jack over to Twycross Zoo, in Warwickshire, which was about an hour’s drive away from where we were, but was told it was the best place to see lots of Monkeys, as well as other animals, such as Giraffes and Elephants – incidentally, they’re just had a new baby elephant there, hence the picture (from their website).

Admittedly, Jack was a little young to fully appreciate the day out, but nonetheless it was fun.

Also, they’re doing lots of work there, so it’s going to be much better in future. Go visit.

All in all, it was a very relaxing weekend away – with the minor exception that we pretty much took the entire house in the back of the car. It was literally packed full with baby stuff, including toys, travel cot, bottle sterilizer, etc. To be fair, it was because we had more space that we didn’t have any reason not to take something… so even if we had bought a bigger car, it would still be packed to the rafters too!

It seems such a long time ago…

I have been re-reading some of the very first blog posts that I had written to get the ball rolling on this whole ‘blogging’ thing, such as ‘What’s the story so far?’ or some of the posts leading up to the ‘FINALLY – He’s been born!’ post, and ultimately, ‘The Package has arrived..!’, which I’m really glad I wrote about as now I’d struggled to remember that day in such detail!!

It all seems like such a long time ago since ‘The First Night’, and even though it’s only 7 or so months ago, it is if you consider what’s happened in the mean-time. Jack has not only been born, but has learnt an awful lot about the world already, including that gravity exists each time he tried to move and that crying usually results in a mummy or a daddy to come running in.

As I said all that time ago, I wanted to start a blog to '”take note on the joys of becoming a father for the first time…” and all that, and I’d like to think that I have in some ways done exactly that.

I have just looked on the bottom right, beneath my mug-shot to see that this will be blog post 101, which I’m also surprised about, as I didn’t think I’d get much time to do this, but also I didn’t think I’d have the patience and concentration to do this, as I tend to get caught up in the new and interesting stuff to do, and sometimes let the stuff I’m meant to be doing drag on a little. Something Claire and my folks might express an opinion on!

People have read some of the posts on here and commented about how nice an idea it is, to record some of the details that might have been forgotten. Admittedly, I haven’t blogged about every little detail about what’s happened, but I’ve tried my best so far, and it is tough to do this. I’m slightly worried that Jack will not like this in the future; I don’t know how I’d feel about it if my folks had recorded a public diary like this. So if you’re reading this in 10 or 15 years Jack, the blog wasn’t actually for you, it was for me, you just happened to be the topic of conversation!!

As most of you might know, ages ago, I created a parallel site to this blog, which is full of almost all of the photos and videos that we have of Jack to date, give or taken the odd day recently. Having a public site (this one) and a private site (that one) has made it easier really to divide the world; I wanted friends and family to see our little man growing up and how much he had changed without making our photos public to the world. Although, admittedly, I didn’t envisage having quite as many photos of him, as we now have 2998 photos in our Juniper folder, now consuming 7.5GB of disk space. Yes, we still make the occasional reference to the codename! But thinking about it, if we’ve taken that many photos in just 7 months, that’s an average of 428 per month. So by the time he’s a year old, we’ll have over 5,000 photos, and by the time he’s ten years old, we’ll have 50,000 photos! I just wonder if Microsoft’s SkyDrive will allow me to hold that many photos online!!

If you get bored at work or even at home, have a look at some of the earlier posts – yes, some of the things I have written make me cringe a bit and others make me look like a spoon, but you’re still reading it so it can’t be that bad!

Swimming Lessons

Claire’s work had a minor emergency, enough for her to have to go in for the afternoon, so I booked a half-day off work to look after Jack. Although, this wasn’t a normal ‘looking after Jack-day’, as Claire had already planned on taking Jack to the start of the new season’s swimming lessons.

I will admit, I really wasn’t looking forward to this – the thought of being the only bloke very-nearly-naked in a pool with a load of mums and their babies, and singing songs to do anything, much like the cast of Grease. Hmmm.

Anyway, we went, although that was a bit close. Jack got really upset around 15:30 ish and I hadn’t managed to get any food into him, nor very much booby-juice, which turned out, that he was just tired. He needed to sleep and get to it quick-style. I got him into the car at 16:00, to make the 15 minute journey to Huntingdon, to be there for 17:00 – yes, an hour to do a quarter-hour journey, but this was tactical; I spoke to Claire and she said about taking him earlier and leaving him to sleep in the car before going into the pool. Good plan, worked like a charm, as Jack was out-cold just after getting out of town, and so I managed to drive around a bit, get fuel, and find the place – all of this, and was still early, which was good.

After having to chuck a woman and her baby out of the men’s changing room, I got to work in getting Jack into his ‘swim-nappy’ – this is basically a nappy that you pull-on like pants, but is all nappy-like everywhere else. Out of the packet, I got the one with a picture of Nemo on it, as he was going swimming and all. (I did search online for a photo of a Nemo swim-nappy, but to no avail – sorry.)

I had to put Jack back into his car-seat, that I took in with us, as otherwise I’d never be able to get changed myself, as the little blighter has learnt to crawl…!

The session was a half-hour swimming lesson for the child, but it was probably just as much of a lesson for the mums/dads, as it as least showed me that Jack could be dunked and dipped in the water, and not to be molly-cuddled and protected like your instincts tell you to do.

We stood on the side of the pool waiting for the previous group to finish, and I was starting to wonder what I have let myself in for; in the pool was a lady, dressed in a wet-suit, leading the group of about 6 or 7 mums (no blokes) and their babies, some of which who were very small. The pool itself wasn’t massive and is only 0.6m at it’s deepest but, as it’s part of a school for special needs children, it was really hot in there. And for a group of mums (and dads) like that, it was absolutely perfect. The lady was singing and splashing the water around, showing the mums what to do with their baby, demonstrating with a dummy baby that was curiously left to float in a worrying fashion when not needed.

At this point, some of the other mums came over and said hello, starting their conversations off with ‘Is that Jack..?’ It sounds like he’s a celebrity or something, but the truth was that they are mums that were at last season’s sessions with Claire and had remembered him, but even that was nice.

The previous group faded out of the water and the mums in our group wasted no time in getting in. I soon followed and went for the back corner of the pool, towards the deeper part, although I was crouching so that my head was out of the water to match the other mums! (I didn’t want to stand up straight and make myself even more noticeable!!)

The lady in the wet-suit brought us into a circle and sang a song, which then, when repeated, went around each child in the group, saying hello and welcome to the group. A bit weird, but was quite nice in that it welcomed each child in turn, but also spent a moment with the child seeing if he/she would dunk their head or blow bubbles in the water, etc. I could repeat the words to it off the top of my head, as it’s one of those that just seem to lodge themselves in your mind and find myself reciting it even now..! Bah!

Once the circle-work was over, everybody dissipated to their own little area of the pool and then it seemed like it was only really Jack and myself in there, occasionally listening to the new instruction from the lady in the suit. There was a bit of swooshing Jack around the pool in my arms to a song, ending with you having to kiss and praise him for doing so well, to which he looked at me as if to say ‘yeah, what about it, dad?’.

She broke out the funky-looking purple and yellow floats, and got us to sit our babies on them and drive them across the water in speed-boat style, as well as lay them on the float on their bellies and get them to paddle in a body-board style. She then also tried to get the mums (and me) to lay the float on the side of the pool, sit the baby on top and then yank the float into the water, submerging the baby. Yeah… it was only really me that tried that one, and even then, I was a bit cautious about actually ‘dunking’ the poor child, although I don’t know why – maybe I’m worried that he hasn’t learnt to stop breathing under water or something!

A bit more singing and splashing later, and she’s getting us to teach our babies how to hold onto the rail around the pool, and then how to climb safely out of a pool, ending up laying on the deck in line with the pool edge. He’s probably a bit young to worry about doing this, as at 7 months old, there’s not a lot of chance of him being far from one of us!

She brought us into the centre of the pool again in a circle style and thanked us for coming along this week, which is when I noticed the next group on the pool-side waiting to get in and have their lesson. Admittedly, in their group, there was a few more blokes than in mine!

But in all, Jack was really good. He didn’t cry or moan at all throughout the half-hour session, so he obviously liked it. And so did I, it was a good couple of hours spent, even if he did cry half the way home!

I’m glad, though, that Claire had booked him in for these lessons – Claire used to swim a lot when she was younger, but even so, getting Jack in the water when he is young has got to be good for him, by way of exercise and all that for when he’s older. I didn’t spend that much time when I was young playing in swimming pools – I can swim, but I don’t really get excited about swimming length after length, or anything like that!

First night out…

…for Jack and for us!

For the first time in Jack’s entire life, we went out and left him with someone else. All night.

Basically, we left the dog and Jack with his Grandparents whilst we went out with ten pin bowling and for food with our friends, Phil and Lucy.

Not-so-basically, it was a bit of a wonder if he’d be ok, as he’s been a bit of a wuss recently with regards to his mum. Recently, he’s had a cold that some horrid person gave him (me), so he’s been sleeping badly too, as in he’s been waking up a lot and crying when he normally sleeps right through the night. So, in the back of our minds, we weren’t sure if he was going to cry their house down all night whilst we slept in peace and quiet!

Plus, on the other side of things, we weren’t sure how we’d feel about him being out all night, as new parents ‘n all. So, as new as it was for Jack staying out, it was for us too.

As it turned out, it went really well, for all of us!

We left Jack at Claire’s folks’ house at 6pm, putting him to bed just before we left. Claire left her mum a ‘do this at this time’ sheet, telling them when to feed him, when to give him his milk, etc in the following morning. It might sound a little odd to do that, but it worked out really well, as it gave her folks a cheat-sheet to keeping Jack quiet/happy in the morning, from 6am onwards! Claire left me a cheat-sheet before when Jack and I spent the day together, and it makes it sooooo much easier to be expecting to feed him at a given time, rather than to try and ‘read’ him and see what he wants. Claire’s definitely the expert on Jack and she really does know him and his moods, timings etc. She’s dead good.

Anyway, we were almost putting bets on as to the time of the night that we get told that had woken up… but he’s been sleeping really well for the past couple of days, so in theory, he should be ok.

As I said earlier, Claire and I went out and met Phil and Lucy at the Bowling venue and later went out for a meal at a Beefeater restaurant, which was all good. We still couldn’t be out all night (not that we ever did before, really) because Claire is still expressing Booby-Juice for Jack, so she had to do her pumping when we got back.

But, getting back to an empty house without the baby and the dog, was brilliant. It was almost like we had stepped back 2 years or so before all this happened.

Having said that, it was more of a novelty that we were by ourselves; we did miss the fact that Jack, and the dog even, weren’t in the house and weren’t there in the morning, making the usual noise and commotion, etc.

Jack seemed happy enough and Claire’s folks enjoyed having him. He did wake up at 6am exactly (which I’m still trying to work out how he knows what time it is!!) and they’ve been entertaining him all morning until Claire went over there at around 11-ish. (I had to go out this morning) but he seemed like it was ok and everything.

Good fun all round then?

Uh oh – he’s mobile… nearly!

Yes, that’s right. Young Jack is able to get about under his own steam, which is a bit weird as up until now, he’s tended to stay where we’ve left him.

In the mornings, we have been laying Jack on our bed and one of us has been reading stories to him whilst the other gets showered and dressed etc. But now, the stories are a little broken up by the catching of Jack as he wriggles towards the edge of the bed!

He’s really funny to watch, as it’s more of a commando-crawl-under-barbed-wire-and-netting-on-an-assault-course than a run-of-the-mill baby-crawl-across-the-floor-towards-his-toys routine. Especially as he’s looking more and more like Bam Bam Rubble..!

Also, today, when I have got back from work, Claire made a point that Jack has been jabbering all day. Not just the usual girly-sounding squeals that he’s always done, but total nonsense-waffle-jabber, as though he’s talking to someone. Which is strange how yesterday when I was at home all day, I don’t remember him doing anything like that, but today, he’s all motor mouth! Must be a Rigby then…

Bad night

It was. Really.

Jack has not had the best of days today, partly due to the cold that I lovingly gave him, but also because of his teeth (we think!).

Claire said yesterday that she found a tooth coming through in Jack’s gums, but today, she’s sure that it’s ever-so-slightly through, which might be why the last day or two he’s been how he has. Looking more closely (as he’s given us more chance as he’s had his mouth open slightly whilst crying… lots) it appears that there may be a couple more coming through at the same time, but not before this first one.

Anyway, so: he’s got a cold, he’s teething, and then possibly earache as result of the toothache. Either way, he has cried more today than I can remember for a long while.

We’ve given him Calpol (children’s medicine) to help with things, and it really does work… when it kicks in. I just wish we had given him a bit more before he went to bed last night, as he was awake crying (loudly) every 2 hours throughout the night… which was fun for him and us.

He’s had some more Calpol today, and has been much better; he’s still had his moments, but I think that we’re starting to learn when would be a good time to give him some, as yesterday we may have been a little too late in the scheme of things, meaning that he’s already got himself in such a state that it’s hard to calm him down easily.

Hopefully, he’ll sleep a little better tonight, and hopefully, so will we!!

He’s unwell, and it’s all my fault…

No, seriously, Jack isn’t well, in that he has his first ever cold. And yes, I gave it to him.

I don’t feel good about it, but it’s happened. It came on this morning; his nose just started dribbling as much as his mouth normally does, except this nose-dribbling-thing wasn’t normal. He also started acting a little more grumpy than he does normally, not drinking as much booby-juice as he normally would, and not wanting any of the food that his mum has spent so long making for him. Recently, he’s been having about 800-900 mls of milk plus food, but today, he was well down on that number, having around 550 mls by the time he went to bed, around after 6pm, crying, I might add.

He also has his first tooth looking like it might shine through, which might be adding to things. He had a bit of pain-relief, but it takes a little while to work, so the poor little guy had to fight through it for a while. Or fall sleep. Either way, he had to stop crying, which he eventually did.

We decided that we’d wake him up to give him more booby-juice before the night was out, otherwise he could be a problem in the night. So, his mum went upstairs to try and give him a little more and he’s ended up drinking about 200 mls – much more that I thought he would…! So, he was hungry, and, since he’s calmed down (as he’s been asleep for a couple of hours and not crying like he was earlier), he was much more amenable to topping-up his milk levels.

Hopefully, it’ll be enough to see him through the night, as if he wakes up, we’re waking up too, which I’m not looking forward to…

Time has flown by!

Just a quick post to say that it’s August 7th today, which means that the 4th August was Jack’s unofficial half-birthday! (as in, he’s now 6 months old!)

We didn’t have a half-birthday cake, nor did we get him to blow-out half a candle – we’ll save that for when he’s a full year old! - but, nonetheless, he’s still a whole 6 months-old already! Time literally has flown by! It seems funny to say, but it seems like a million years ago during the days when we didn’t have him.

I know, I’ve heard new parents say that before, and I groaned when they said it. The only benefit you have, dear reader, is that you don’t have to worry about me hearing you say it!!

He’s doing really well though – he’s not crawling yet, but he doesn’t seem like he’ll be long at it!

He’s also taken a shine to the Sky remote… not for it’s purpose in life of changing what noise-and-pictures comes out of the big box in the corner of the room, but more to press buttons (as the red light appears at the top of the remote) and shove as much of the thing in his mouth as he can. Claire was going through the ‘Planner’ on the Sky box, asking me about what tv-programmes that I had recorded – turns out, Jack had been having a go at recording things too… Shame it wasn’t anything interesting!!

Watch out, Master Chef at work!

Claire has been making Jack lots of different types of mushed-up food for the past few weeks or so now. She has been following the recipes from an ‘Annabel Karmel’ baby cook-book, and has been doing a fantastic job too!

• Broccoli and Potato
• Pea and Potato
• Carrot and Sweet corn
• Sweet Potato and Broccoli
• Apple and Oats
• Courgette and Sweet Potato
• Steak and Chips

Ok, maybe not the Steak and Chips, but I’m sure that’ll come soon!

Anyway – I (to be entirely honest) was quite surprised how she went about all this. Claire bought this fantastic little steamer/blender and it’s truly brilliant.

First of all, she cuts up the food into small blocks and then filled the holder inside the blender cup – this not only has a blade in, but also has an inlet hole at the top that the steam comes in through to cook the food.

Once the food has been steam-cooked, the holder inside the blender cup is removed, allowing the food to sit directly onto the blender-blade at the bottom and is mixed with water to soon turn it to mush.

Then, these tiny little pots (which have appeared from nowhere) get filled, date-stamped and sent to the freezer until needed, all done in a factory-line style.

When the pots are out of the freezer, Claire leaves them to defrost overnight in the fridge and then zaps them in the microwave for about 10 seconds to warm them up. Then, we have to wait 10 minutes for it to cool down again before we try to feed them to Jack, during which we mostly have to smile and laugh to him so that he thinks that the mushy, strange-tasting stuff in his mouth is ok, before repeating with the next spoonful.7

Taking time to get the drinks down

So – it turns out Jack has a few traits of mine in the drinking department.

He’s becoming a bit slow in getting his drinks down him and loses interest in the last 40mls or so. He almost needs a break in the drinking, so that he can have a burb or two – then, he eventually gets a second wind and then can sometimes carry on. He really is a chip off the ol’ block!!

As he’s sleeping lots more, and we’re not waking him up at ten-ish, he’s not having as many feed-stops in a given day and, therefore, he’s not having as many opportunities to have the same amount of milk. The idea is/was that he' makes up for the missing milk during the day and has more – but he’s had a few days where he’s dropped the amount of the milk he’s been having in the day. (We know this, as we’re still playing ‘milk-monitor’ at home, which is where recording the amounts that he has comes in useful, as we’re able to see a difference in quantities.)

I know this sounds strange, but if Claire was breastfeeding him directly instead of expressing into bottles, how would we even know if he’s had anything to drink at all? And how many times a day would he need to keep having a bit of milk, as from what I can understand, babies have a bit of milk here and there when breastfeeding (unless I am misinformed) – at the moment, Jack has a whole bottle of 200mls +/- 20mls each time; how do you tell the quantity of milk he would have had by the breast? Measurement of time?? Is that a reliable means of testing?

Feed times are going to have take a bit longer than normal from now on, in order to allow Jack his time to be awkward, and then giving him the time to return to finishing the last little bit off. Not massively longer, but I think beforehand, we’ve just assumed that he doesn’t want the rest of the milk and then we’ve been surprised that he’s not had much to drink!

Baby-Smash meets the laptop!

As the blurb on the right-hand side of the blog site says, I am a self-confessed IT geek and through my geek-world, I know of a chap called Scott Hanselman who works for the mighty Microsoft. Anyway, he made a free website/computer-application called ‘Baby-Smash’ for his kids and released it into the wild, and it is pretty much as it sounds…babies smash on computers for fun.

So, as I started saying, the program allows for babies to whack keys on the keyboard and symbol appears on the screen in bright, funky colours. Fantastic, if you don’t mind your keyboard taking a pounding.

Anyway, Claire had Jack on her lap, whilst checking her emails on her laptop in the lounge at the table. Jack was happily banging away at the table-top with the flats of his hands, when the Baby-Smash website popped into my head. The application soon installed (in no time at all) and within seconds, Jack had his slobbery mits all over the keyboard playing Baby-Smash, much to Claire’s delight.

Jack managed (somehow…!) to press the exact key combination (using both hands, I muse point out) that was needed to rotate the entire the screen on the laptop by 90° counter-clockwise!! By some sheer fluke of time, Jack’s milk was now warmed to perfection and I decided that he ‘needed’ his milk that second, so I took Jack and the milk to go feed him and left Claire with a 90°-neck, matching the screen’s appearance.

Of course, she asked like any other normal person, about how to rotate the screen back to normal. And, as I was in the middle of something, I only had time to stand up, and lift the laptop onto it’s side making the screen correct but the laptop now perpendicular to the table!!

Oh, how we laughed. No, seriously, we [all] laughed as though it was really funny, but of course it wasn’t really.

What goes in, must come out…!

Up until recently, Jack has been having his regular feed of breast milk, a.k.a. “Booby-Juice”. Nowadays, he has the milk as before, but with added foodstuffs on top, as I think I mentioned before.

Anyway. Luck has probably been on my side, along with working late and weekends at work for the project I was on, and so I haven’t really had to change many, if any, of Jack’s poo-nappies.

Before, Jack’s poo-nappies have been filled with a “whole-grain-mustard” type of poo (according to Ian at work!!), which is pretty much as it sounds, but I would add to that, that it is also a little watery. This is normal/ok/dandy, as Jack was having Booby-Juice.

Now, however, I have very recently found out that his poo is similar to before, only much thicker in consistency and there’s about five times the quantity in one go! Literally!

This isn’t really a problem, providing that he’s sat in a decent position when he does this ‘passing’ of the poo. Nappies do their job, and there’s nowt to worry about.

Unless, that is, if he happens to be sitting in his Bumbo chair-thing, which is a soft rubber/plastic type chair (looks a bit like a high-22sided potty) that allows babies to sit upright keeping their back straight, etc. If he’s sat in there, not only do you get a major echo going on, that reverberates around the base of the chair and through into the kitchen units and floor, but it also means that the poo gets squirted at high pressure up his back instead of downwards into the nappy.

So, the Bumbo needs cleaning, Jack needs a new version of whatever he’s wearing, which pretty much means everything, especially if he’s quick and gets a few fingers down to his bum or back area, as he helps as best he can to spread it around onto anything else in the vicinity that isn’t yet poo-coloured. When this happens, the job of holding his legs up in the air with one hand and using your other hand to clean him up, means that you need one more hand to hold his hand so that he doesn’t

1. spread even more poo about
2. stick his fingers in or near his mouth.

All good fun that most if not all parents have a t-shirt to show that they have been there. But it’s the sort of detail that they don’t seem to tell you about in antenatal classes. Nor when you’re in school learning about babies and sex and stuff. Maybe if they did, there might be a few more clued up parents, and hopefully a few less 12 years old mums and dads.

Yes, he does!

Jack managed to sleep ALL night last night – going from 6pm through until I woke him up at 6am!

If there was ever any doubt that Jack was Claire’s son, that proves it.

We’re chancing our arm once more tonight and have already put Jack in his sleeping bag ready, in the assumption that he’s there for the night!

If anything, it was ME that was waking up looking at the clock wondering if he’s woken up! Claire, as always, was fast asleep and didn’t notice anything until the morning…! Cheers m’dear.

Can he do a full night of 12hrs sleep?

Well, that’s the question.

Over the past week or two, Claire has been reducing the amount of milk that we give Jack for his 10:00pm feed.

To reiterate what we’re doing, he has a full bottle of around 200mls at 6:00pm and then we’re putting him to bed almost straight away, after changing his bum first of course!

Normally, we’re letting him sleep until 10:00pm and then getting him up but not trying to actively wake him up – what I mean, is that we’re not talking to him, or letting him play with toys, etc, but merely getting him up and out of bed enough to feed him a bottle. Then, once he’s had it, around half ten-ish, we’d put him straight back to bed where he’d sleep until around 5:45am-6:00am.

So, as I was saying at the very top of this blog-post… we’ve been reducing the amount that he is being given for his 10:00pm feed, right down to around 90mls last night. It has meant that he has been making up for it during the day, as his drinking quota has increased enough to cater for it. (Yes, we’re still writing down the amounts that he has! Yes, we’re sad. But yes, we know exactly what he’s had and whether he needs more, so are we really that daft? Maybe not.)

But tonight is going to be the first night that we’re going to let him sleep without having any milk at 10:00pm. I am expecting to have to get up in the night to feed him, but we’ll see…! He might be ok… Last night, when I tried to give him his 90ml bottle at 10:00pm, he only drank half of it and even turned the rest away, meaning that he did the whole of last night on about 45mls, so is it really too much to expect?

Either way, if it doesn’t happen tonight, maybe in a few nights time, or next week?

I’ll let you know tomorrow evening, if I can.

I think he’s growing…

I know that might sound like an obvious thing to say, but it’s true, as day-to-day, you don’t really notice him growing and changing so much.

The other night, I was looking back at some of the millions of photos of Jack and the countless video clips of him and he seemed all wrinkly and small when he was first born… all screwed up and tiny. His hands were a fraction of the size that they are now and they were a bit baggie with the skin. He had scratch marks on his face and even went a bit blotchy at times!

Now, his hands are bigger and fuller, making the skin on his still-tiny little hands tighter, but more normal-looking if that makes sense? His face seems like it has changed massively since he was born. His hair has changed colour from a dark brown/black to a fair/blonde. He weighs a lot more and fills the pram that he used to occupy just a corner of!

It feels strange to say and think all of this, as he has changed so very much in such a very short space of time, literally 157 days, but on the other hand it seems like he hasn’t changed at all! What I mean, is that it seems like he’s always been how he is now, but then looking back at photos even a couple of months ago, he looks like a different baby entirely. His head and face have changed shape totally.

It has it’s upsides though - He’s much more fun nowadays compared to when he was a new-born baby. Then, he used to just cry and poo all the time. Then he used to cry every night for a couple of hours solid. Then he didn’t really ‘do’ anything, apart from an occasionally gurgle.

Now, he’s different. Now, he giggles, laughs, looks longingly into your eyes with the sweetest of smiles… before gouging one out with sharp nails on the end of the hands that he’s getting good at aiming with.

He is eating semi-normal food too (pureed fruit), which makes a difference. In a way, it sort of separates him in my mind from when he was a ‘tiny’ baby to now being ‘just’ a baby.

He and I sort of ‘play-fight’ on our bed… He doesn’t mind being rolled over again and again as he makes his way across the length or width of the bed and back. He even manages to grab handfuls of my hair whilst I’m blowing raspberries on his neck making him giggle like a little girl. He seems to enjoy being lifted up in the air quickly and ‘caught’, even though he doesn’t actually leave my hands.

But he still saves his special smiles for his mum. Just fake smiles for me, real ones for his ma.

The Day After…

So, yesterday, we had a few friends and family over to my parent’s house for a little barbeque.

Quite surprisingly, two of our friends said that they had already read the blog post that I had written earlier yesterday morning whilst waiting for my dad to pick me up and not only that, but one had even signed up to Twitter to read my tweets throughout the day…! The only problem, was that my mobile phone gets absolutely no mobile phone reception at my parent's house (thanks Orange!), so it put an instant stop to that, so I couldn’t send any Twitter updates, or even send SMS (text) messages to Twitter that way either! Doh! (Sorry Phil!)

Anyway, the day itself went really well – It wasn’t long before people started to appear, the food cooking and the beers flowing. The weather had been a bit pants in the morning whilst we were setting tables and chairs out, but gradually throughout the day, the clouds turned from dark grey to white fluffy clouds and the sun shone through. There was a bit a bit of a wind throughout the day, which probably helped to mask the heat from the sun, as I did manage to get burnt!

We hired a bouncy castle for the day, for the kids of course, but Jack even made an appearance on there – one of the girls was holding him and bouncing on it and he really seemed to like it… and then threw his lunch up later! Maybe too much physical movement after having food! Doh! The kids of all ages seemed to enjoy themselves – I went on there a couple of times, and was attacked by a load of the kids and wrestled to the floor. Nightmare.

I managed to take about 250 photos on my camera throughout the day, and we’re going to go through them before uploading to Jack’s website (If you have any, however many or however good, send me an email and we’ll talk about how the best way to get the photos from you and onto the web too.)

Claire and I would like to thank everybody for coming, as well as say a big thank you for the gifts that we really weren’t expecting; so thank you very much indeed.

Jack has been a bit out of routine the last few days, as we’ve been over to my parents a bit in the last few days trying to get organised and everything, and he really did manage to get upset at times. It wasn’t necessarily anything that anyone was doing particularly at the time, he just didn’t sleep when he normally did, or didn’t have as much food, etc etc. So, if you were one of them, don’t take it personally!

BBQ vs. Rain? Who knows!!

So, today, we’re having a BBQ with a couple of friends and a few family members.

I was really worried about the weather, as last night and first thing this morning (around 7am), it looked really grim and wet – you know, the usual weather that appears when I bring out the charcoal!!

Anyway, at the moment, the weather is all sunny and bright. There’s a few clouds roaming around up there in the sky, but as long as they stay as clouds up there and not magically transform themselves as droplets, we’ll be ok.

BBC News this morning said that the day will be really warm over East Anglia by 4pm, which isn’t too bad. We shall have to wait and see.

Off to the butchers in a moment to pick up the meat and then on it goes! (I found this picture –attached - on t’internet and thought it was funny enough to embed in this post…)

Also, I’m debating with myself whether or not to try and use Twitter throughout the day – I don’t really see the point, but just for the craic really… providing I can get network coverage that is!!

Proper foods!

I forgot to mention that last week or so, Claire has been busy making up various small pots of food for Jack and freezing them for when he needs them. When needed, she’s getting one small portion out of the freezer, zapping it in the microwave and it’s nearly ready in seconds!

Claire has been really busy buying lots of fresh fruit and vegetables (more than normal when talking about the fruit!!) such as sweet potatoes, broccoli, parsnips, etc. and then blending them down into a mushy sauce.

Yesterday for example, Jack had a small amount of sweet potato and broccoli mixed together, which made for an interesting colour of orange-with-green-bitty-mush scattered all over his face, arms, bib and table area, let alone Claire and myself for trying to feed it to him.

He seems to like it too, which is great; either that or he’s smiling at us congratulating him for having such stuff in his mouth and making it look like he likes them. He’s not spitting it out, lets put it that way. When he does, we simply scoop it off his face, bib and/or ceiling and serve it right back to him as if it’s fresh… he doesn’t seem to mind!!

By the way, Jack is still on his regular booby-juice as normal – this is an addition to that milk.

Today (Friday), he has had apple, again mushed to pieces, zapped and then served cold.

We have tried to record it on the video camera, and I’ll see if I can get a link on here to it maybe. (If not, the video feeds are definitely on Jack website, if you have access.)

But this is all a big credit to Claire – she’s been reading books and stuff online and busy doing mum-stuff too. I have literally helped in serving the stuff, whatever colour and smell, to Jack, but she has thought about each recipe and bought the stuff she needed and just did it. She’s a star.

Been busy…

So – I haven’t blogged recently.

I have been having to work more for work to meet a project deadline, and so some nights I have either been staying late in the office, or working from home which isn’t as bad. Either way, I have managed to clock up lots of time-in-lieu, and so I am currently ‘spending’ some of that time accrued this week, which is the up-side to doing it.

Also, the last weekend or so, as I have been away on a Stag Do in Spain, no less. One of the lads on the stag do co-owns a place in Cazorla in Spain, and so it was the place to have the bash! The windy streets of the town of Cazorla kept us all on our toes, and probably helped to walk off most of the beer consumed over the weekend. (Cheers to Ian for that, by the way - much appreciated.)

In total, seven of us went (two dads, the groom, myself and three others) and all seven returned safely without prosecution or hospitalisation of any kind, as I think I was expecting before we went.

The weekend itself was great – totally non-touristy, and so we even had to explain in broken-pigeon-English to the locals why one of us, namely the groom, was dressed in a pink spandex legs and a matching tutu. (Isn’t ebay a wonderful place!)

Anyway, reason I mention this stag-do, is because it was the first time I have been away from Jack and Claire – we pretty much moved Claire and Jack out of our house and into her parent’s house for the long weekend, and the amount of baby-related fodder that needed taking was crazy. Everything that could be taken, was. Literally. The boot on our new car was put through it’s paces, as things were rammed in there.

I know her parents were there to help her out, but I did feel bad for abandoning her when Jack is still quite young and a handful at times. Claire even admitted that she now looks forward to me coming home at night after work, as it’s a time when she doesn’t have to sing ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ to keep Jack entertained when he starts to flag. So me not being there obviously has an impact on her, but also that I haven’t seen my little baby for a few days. (I am reading into this and see the fact that prior to Jack not being here, Claire didn’t look forward to me coming home… thanks, wife!)

At my old job where I was the IT Manager for an international sports event management company, part of the job was to go away on the weekend projects and not only oversee the IT side of things, but I would also pitch in and help the work of setting up to be done, as well as helping to drink all the beers afterwards. Anyway, the least I’d be away was around 4/5 days at a time, and part of the reason to leave there and work where I do currently, is because of the time away from home and from Claire, which takes its toll after a while. Now with a baby in the frame, there’s another face in the back of my head.

He’s a little wriggler!

The week just gone, I have had Thursday off work as my ‘work life balance’ (WLB) day – basically WLB is where I work extra hours in the office during a fortnight and therefore have the time accrued as a day off; a bit like flexi-time but more structured.

Anyway, I was off work and at home with Claire and Jack, at least until Claire suggested that I took Jack to Rhyme Time, held in the library at Chatteris.

Rhyme Time is a half-hour get-together for mums and babies/toddlers, where the group of mums involve themselves and their children in the activities…

Here’s how my darling wife sold it to me -

• “If you’re going to have Jack on a Thursday when I go back to work, you might as well take him to things like Rhyme Time…”
• “There’s not many people there, it’s normally half full or so…”
• “…quite often there are other dads there…”
• “…it’s just rhyming, you don’t have to do anything.”

Yeah. Either way, I felt suckered into it, so I went, in the interests of Jack.

Here’s how it really was.

• It was packed. There were more moaning mums per square mile than I have ever experienced before.
• I was the only male over 5 years old in the room.
• I could see people nudging each other and doing that pointing across the room with their eyes and nose, but without using their finger.
• AND there was group-singing, not just this ‘rhyming’ that I ‘didn’t have to do anything’.

Yep, thanks Claire.

So, suckered I was. Luckily, I caught up with Clare, Claire’s mate and mother of our God-daughter, Imogen. She didn’t really have to do anything, but helped me to not look so lost in a sea of mums…! She had her arms full with her two kids, and although I would have liked to have offered to help, but keeping Jack on my lap was job-enough!!

Anyway, my head is telling me that this session is 30 minutes or so long, assuming that of course Claire hasn’t spun me a good ‘un on the time-front too, and therefore it would literally be a shear matter of time before it was over. How long can 30 minutes be? Well, a lifetime it seemed at the time!

They all joined in with the singing of the rhymes, such as Old MacDonald, The Wheels On The Bus, and others I didn’t even know, and during the singing they were waving their babies arms and legs around and even flinging them up in the air in time too.

Did I sing? Erm, no. I don’t sing when I am made to go to Church for things such as Weddings, Funerals, Christenings, etc. Not because I am trying to be defiant, it’s just that I suppose I’m a bit self-conscious that I sound like a spoon at the best of times, let alone with my singing voice!

Either way, no singing, but I did attempt the obligatory miming when I felt someone of some importance in the group was looking over (namely the Rhyme Time leader) – bit like being in Church really!!

I tried to make Jack have as good a time as I think that he would if Claire had taken him, but me feeling a little ‘new’ to the group and somewhat ‘lost’ amongst the sea of mums probably didn’t help much! He fell asleep almost in time with the ending of the group, which gave me my ‘out’.

I’d like to say I enjoyed it, and that I’d like to go back again during my next day off from work, but I seem to ‘remember’ that I am no longer allowed any time off, ever, thus preventing me against my will, of course… :o)

But, it did make me appreciated a little more the effort that Claire has put into the entertainment of Jack, as well as ensuring that she doesn’t go cuckoo being at home all day, everyday!!

Hmmmm

Well, this afternoon hasn’t been as good as this morning…

I’ve checked on Jack  as I’ve walked by his room and found him fast asleep. The thing is, he gets that much of his leg through the bars, that when he moves his leg, it must hurt. But then when he falls asleep like that, I try and push it back in which wakes him up and then he cries. Nightmare.

My dad called in for lunch and said hello to Jack when he woke up.

Since then, he’s been a bit of a monster. He was crying just before 15:00, and according to Claire’s list, he’d be hungry by around then. So, I already had the milk warming for him, but he didn’t want any and then when I’ve got to try to get him to sleep again, he’s cried and cried.

Now. Claire says that when I am at work, he’s a little angel. But now I’m here, he’s not quite as angelic as she makes out. Is it my wife telling porkies, or am I doing something wrong here?

Either way, he’s still crying as I write this, and we had previously decided that we would leave him cry a little rather than keep going in and picking him up and getting him used to us doing that. But this is a bit bad. He normally does this in the evenings when I am home but it’s not even 16:00 yet…

:o(

Three Shirts Brett

So, it’s 10:40 and I’m now on t-shirt number three (no joke!) – t-shirt number one took a hit for the team, proving that a few mouthfuls of baby-yak won’t stop it… much. It gave out and paved the way for t-shirt number two to step in, but gave a relatively pathetic performance in the ring and was knocked out in about 10 minutes flat, literally, by a yak-filled hit to the rib-area. (Under-arm sick isn’t nice.)

So t-shirt number three it is, and we’ll see how far that goes. (Only problem is, this t-shirt is a polo-shirt and the last time I wore this, Jack threw up right down the front, underneath the open neck/button area.) If it helps, Jack managed to get sick on his clothes too, so new all-in-one shirt for him then.

Incidentally, Claire laughs at me for changing my t-shirt saying, “it’s only a little bit of sick…” - Right. Dribbled all the way from the collar to my waist, and stinking of yak and wet on my belly… nice. I’ll change, thanks.

‘Someone upstairs’ who is supposed to be asleep right now was crying a moment or two as though he was in pain, so I rushed up there to find him laying on the right-side of the bed (looking down), face down, with his right leg dangling between the bars again, right up to his thighs, stuck. Freed him, flipped him over, he had a bit of a cry and he was out for the count in seconds. If only I could fall asleep that fast, I’d be ok.

Since last blogging, we’ve not done a great deal. Jack has had more milk at 09:00, according to the feeding list at the zoo. We’ve been playing with his giant bumble bee that’s got crinkly wings, a mirror on his foot, a rattle in one hand and a squeak in the another – it’s great this, staying at home playing with kid’s toys all day…

Jack’s Granddad Garry (my dad) has been reading the blog already this morning and seen that I’m in all day, so he’s going to come over for lunch later. I’m obviously a house-wife-in-training, in that I don’t actually know what’s in the cupboard to feed him, but Claire’s a bit more efficient that I am, so I can safely assume that there’s something edible in the house.

Incidentally, the dog, Alfie isn’t here this morning. Claire took him yesterday over to Jack’s Great Grandma Gert’s house for the night, as I think she thought I couldn’t manage with both of them – pah! Easy. Erm… well, maybe not actually, as Alfie can be a nuisance as he thinks that he has to bark and growl at any one who has dared to walk past the front of our house. He seems to know when Jack is ready to fall asleep and then barks in perfect timing, which can make things a little more complicated, and that’s when Claire and I are here.

I was just searching back through my blog to find the above link to the post about Alfie, and stumbled across this post, which means that this isn’t the first full day that I’ve spent with Jack… and that was back in April!

More later.

Morning progress

Well, things aren’t going too badly at the moment – It is 08:42 now, Jack is asleep at the moment and I have done some of the things that Claire has left me on the list of ‘To Do’ stuff, namely washing up the baby bottles and pumping apparatus, etc.

Claire left the house this morning at around 05:00 to get the train t’ ‘Big Smoke’. I think I have mentioned this before, but Claire is far from quiet in anything she does, and me being the lightest sleeper in the world, I was wide awake at 05:45 and was already in and out of the shower.

Jack is normally awake naturally around 06:00, with the occasional lay-in some days, such as weekends. Today, however, I had to wake him up at 06:30, as otherwise, he could throw the day’s planning that Claire has also left, and me trying to work out times on-the-fly probably isn’t the best idea. (I have to use the whiteboard in the kitchen when cooking, as I have to plan the times to put the sausages on, etc!)

Anyway, I got him up and checked his bum, as he’s usually full of poo first thing in the morning, but today I had a little dilemma, as he hadn’t yet poo’d, but his nappy was full of wee… “Do I change him now… fast, or do I wait and have his nappy erupt like a volcano?”

Well, needless to say that I changed his nappy faster than a Formula 1 pit-crew, saving myself from having to scrape poo off of the carpet. Which wouldn’t be nice.

Straight downstairs to find the bottle that Claire had prepared earlier for him in an insulated bag, and straight into the lounge to watch BBC Breakfast whilst feeding him, where he drank about 150mls from the 200mls that was in there. We’re still writing down the volumes that he drinks – might have to update that ol’ Excel chart at some point, but not today!

No major dramas there, so we milled around the house, and went to read a story on our bed, as this is normally what Claire would do in the morning whilst I get ready to go to work.

We read some random story about a woman who had to make eleven shirts made from nettles to save her brothers…!?! Something about them being swans… Good job he’s too small to understand what I was reading to him, as that’s just weird!!

Jack then showed me (downstairs on the lounge floor) how he rolls over onto his front and uses his arms to prop himself up. This is a trick that we’re now having to watch out for when we put him to bed, as he’s getting good at it now. The only problem comes, like about 5 minutes ago, I went up there to check he was ok and laying on his back, but instead he’s laying on his side on the edge of the cot with the whole of his right leg dangling out between the bars. Not quite a Houdini just yet!

I’ve just realised that it’s 09:00 and I am still wearing the same t-shirt that I put on this morning – no sick or dribble all down it yet… must be time for a t-shirt change soon!

He should be awake any minute now, so I’ll check back later when he’s next asleep.

The WHOLE day by ourselves

Tomorrow, Claire is going out on some training course in the Big Smoke, leaving Jack and I to fend for ourselves.

She’s going really early too, so we will literally have the day to play with his toys and roll around on the mat.

To be honest, this is the first full day that I’ll have had with him alone – don’t get me wrong, Claire has been out for several hours without us, but I am taking the day off to look after him, and it will be a whole day of it. No ASP .Net MVC development for me tomorrow then!

I don’t know yet what fun and games that Jack has in store for me, but he’s quite a happy chappy at the moment so whatever happens, it should be good.

No doubt Claire will have lists of jobs ready and waiting for me, that I am blatantly not going to have done by the time she gets back in the evening, expecting her tea and the house to be ping-ping tidy. Pah, no problem. Messing around at home all day? How hard can it be.

Either way, I’ll try and document anything good here if, and when, the little monster goes to sleep.

So, my Zombie-ness continues.

I still keep getting up in the night and doing weird stuff before waking and realising that I’m being daft again, and get back into bed.

It’s bad enough that I’m doing this, but I’m getting more and more shattered each time, as I’m having broken sleep each night.

At work, I feel like I’ve done a whole day’s work and the time is only 10am!

Claire’s sure that I’ve got some underlying ‘issue’ that is causing all of this – maybe I do, but I’m not worried about anything nor panicking about Jack’s welfare. As I said before, if I really thought there was something wrong, then Claire would be a little more concerned than she appears in the night; as in, she’s not!

And what is it about Jack and these chuffin’ pillow cases then, eh? I keep dreaming that Jack is not only asleep in our bed, but inside a pillow case too… For a start, Jack has never slept in our bed, with or without us. And for why he’d be inside a pillow case, I have no idea. I even woke myself up when I was ripping the pillow case to get to him. Absolutely no idea.

I’m not overly bothered by the fact that I am having these dreams, but feel bad for disturbing Claire in the night.

Life. And kid’s toys.

It seems strange to say or even think this, but our lives are now totally different from how they were just a year ago.

Apart from the obvious crying-poo-machine that we’ve created and brought into this world, I mean the more local, short-sighted and seemingly permanent changes.

Our house is now totally the playground of master Jack – the only rooms to survive the dribble-covered Hand of Jack are the toilets! I might have mentioned this before, but it sort of dawns on me occasionally. But the weird thing, is how quickly we have gotten used to it all cluttering up our house, and most of it seems to be invisible for most of the time to us, but probably not to visitors to the house!

When you don’t have children, and you visit someone who does, you instantly notice piles of baby or child-like stuff around the house that you’re visiting; we did, and these are normally brightly coloured plastic or stuffed toys that are designed to catch the eye of young ‘uns.

But looking at it on the flip-side, we’re now in that position of having said brightly coloured toys laying around and I can’t help but notice the look on people’s faces when they come around, and to be honest, we don’t even have that much stuff in comparison to some of our friends! It’s quite funny, but all quite innocent fun, as I’m sure that people don’t mean anything by the look of horror on their faces, as we didn’t when we were once doing it!!

He’s starting to fatten up!

It appears that our little monster is beginning to fatten up a little, which is a good thing, of course!

Jack has always been on the tall side for his age, according to the charts that the NHS give you. He’s not the tallest baby in human history, but he’s getting there. Anyway, we’ve noticed that he’s been a bit thinner than some of the other babies that we’ve seen since he’s been born, but he’s not too thin that would cause a concern or anything.

The straps on his nappies have had to overlap in order to keep the nappy tight against his skin, otherwise the poo and wee will squeeze out like tomato sauce from a bottle. But recently, the straps are getting a little further apart, indicating that his belly is getting a bit fatter.

His legs too are starting to fill out a bit – proper meaty little Rugby-player thighs already.

Just thought I’d share that with you.

Zombie Brett strikes again. And again, and again…

I know I have mentioned this whole zombie sleep-walking thing before, but it hasn’t really stopped. I’m sure that Claire thinks I’ve lost the plot entirely, but other than being annoyed at myself for doing it, I can’t really do much about it. Sometimes it’s funny, especially in the morning telling Claire about what I’ve been up to!

As I said before, I used to do this sleep-walking thing when I was at university and came home for the weekend. But since Jack’s came along, I have started to do it again, I thought because of the lack of sleep I was getting. I thought when he went into his own room, I’d be ok again, as I’d be getting more sleep… yeah, right.

What I do, is that I get up in the night and begin hunting around for Jack. Then, when I start to worry about him not being there, I wake up and realise that I'm being a dope and simply get back in bed and I fall asleep straight away.

Last night in particular, I got up around 3ish and was looking on top of the bed for Jack. I mean, actively hunting around for him, lifting folds of the duvet, sliding the doors to the wardrobe open and everything. In the past, I have been known to look inside pillow cases, as this seems to be the most logical place for Claire to put Jack in the night, of course. I even thought in the night that Claire was looking for him too, and I thought I had found him and so I asked Claire if she wanted to take Jack. Saying something aloud, must have stirred me a little, and so if I dreamt that Jack was there, then he instantly disappeared, making me worry a bit more, hence waking me up properly. On waking myself up properly, I soon realise properly what I’m doing and just shrug it off and get in bed.

I think the other night, I even tore one of the pillow cases trying (whilst fast asleep) to find the baby.

Claire is of course, mostly oblivious to all of this. She sleeps through almost everything, and maybe it’s a good thing that she does, as I’d spoil her night’s sleep as well as mine!

Claire thinks I am worried about Jack, and this is causes me to have these dreams/nightmares/episodes. Maybe subconsciously I am, but I don’t think that I am particularly. Well, of course I’m worried about him and don’t want anything bad to happen to him as a whole, but I think that any parent will say that. I know that if Claire was worried about him, then I’d know about it, and I think that is what makes me realise in the night that it’s just me that wandering around again, as she’s fast asleep – if there was something to worry about, she’d be a touch more concerned.

“It’s like he’s a real person and everything..”

Over the last few days, I have noticed something about Jack – he’s starting to appear, certainly to me anyway, like a mini-person…

I admit, that sounds like a daft/stupid/obvious/dad-like thing to say, but I’ll try to explain.

When we’ve been over to people’s houses to see their new babies, they’re exactly what it says on the tin… a baby. As in, it cries and poos. Lots.

But Jack has already started to develop his own little personality, making him appear more and more grown up each day. When I say personality, I don’t think he’s developed a taste for a particular genre of music, or love of the arts, or anything, but more that he seems to have developed a ‘happy mode’, whereby he’s up for a giggle, or to be thrown up in the air and caught (gently!!) that he finds amusing, but then later he has a little mood swing, like we all do, and he’s hungry and determined to get some milk, almost like a ‘grumpy mode’, and we’re able to see when he’s in either of those and we are (I should say ‘I’ here, as Claire has been like this with him for ages!) starting to be able to expect and adjust his behaviour with how we treat him.

Hhhmmm, maybe I shouldn’t have tried to explain that, as it might sound like I’ve been living in a cave for the last 16 weeks and have been ignoring him, but the point is, that he’s growing and learning to do stuff and it’s quite an amazing process to watch in such detail.

He’s started to get a bit good with his hands and is able to use them to full force to tell us that he’s full and doesn’t want any more milk, but clamping his hands around either side of the milk bottle and trying to throw it directly away from his face to stop the milk-flow - this is in addition to using his tongue to purge any reside milk in his mouth that he doesn’t want.

One last thing with regards to this whole personification thing going on in this blog post, Jack is getting to be a right little telly-addict…! It’s easy to see why people seem to shove kids in front of the TV to shut them up, as he’s quiet in a second almost, even from the hurricane of all crying-storms! Especially so when he’s watching one of his Disney Baby Einstein DVDs! However, on the other hand, it’s a bit too easy to do that and then it’s a bit of a cop-out instead of playing with him and his toys.

Incidentally, Claire has just walked in the room after printing out a few more of the photos for her album and she’s just said that it’s amazing how much he has grown, compared to the wrinkly, shrivelled-up, yet hairy, little baby that we brought home from the shop.

Swimming in the ‘tub!

On the bank holiday weekend, we went to my parents’ house for a BBQ, with my sister, Emma, and her other half, Vincent.

Before we left the house, Claire asked if I thought it was an idea to take my swimming trunks, as well as Jack’s swim-nappy and us both get in the hot tub over there. I’m not normally fussed about hot tubs, but it sounded like a good idea, as when Claire, Jack and I went swimming in Ely before, it wasn’t as warm in there as Claire had sold it to me.

We almost forgot about the whole thing, but I soon got my milk-bottle-white legs out and my not-so-hairy chest, and donned the shorts in true summer style… all for Jack’s benefit, of course.

Once we were in, Jack loved it in there, as it was already set to be about 38 degrees C, which was a stroke of luck – we normally run Jack’s bath to be about 37, so he probably didn’t notice the difference.

Actually, it worked out really well, as being a hot tub, it was plenty big enough for the pair of us (and there wasn’t any other screaming and crying kids in there distracting him, like there are in the pool) but it wasn’t too big that it was an effort.

My mum had bought these little plastic toys that suck up the bath water and when you squeeze them, they shoot out the water, so we brought them along too, seeing as we’re technically in a bath. Needless to say, it wasn’t Jack that found that they could reach his grandma sitting a good distance away. Ahem.

The kiddies’ pool that Claire takes Jack to in Ely gets deeper towards the end, but even a short-wheel-based person could stand up straight in there, which is fine if you’re a nipper, but the adults all get cold, as it’s difficult to stay under the water so you get cold really quick. Minor point, but… you know.

Anyway, My family assumed the role of the paparazzi in my absence and so I also got a taste as to what I’ve been subjecting visitors to our house with!!

The weather was just brilliant though – easily the warmest day we’ve had so far this year. Just glad that it was over a weekend, and not during the week when I get to see how nice a day it is from inside the office at work.

15 weeks and 15 pounds!

Claire took Jack to the weighing station again today, and he’s now measuring 15 pounds and 3 ounces!

He’s also 15 weeks old this week, which is crazy in itself!

He’s getting funnier and funnier to be around and he’s really focusing his attention on us, particularly with Claire, and is reacting to things that you do.

Jack has also had two nights where he’s not screamed the house down too! Amazing I know, and it’s a bit of a relief to see that he can have at least a couple of evenings without another war ripping out. He’s been sleeping well once he’s quietened down, but the last couple of nights he has been happy through into the evening and has even been going to be before he’s fast asleep and has been getting to sleep by himself.

Having said that, I am also having to actually wake him up in the morning so that we can all get up and ready before I leave for work in the morning. Our routine seems to go a little like this…

• 05:50 Claire wakes up and subsequently wakes Brett up whilst trying to be quiet.
• 05:50 Claire gets up out of bed to go downstairs to start expressing booby-juice for Jack.
• 06:10 Brett has been laying in bed for 20 minutes trying to work out what day it is.
• 06:10 Brett gets up and goes straight in to get Jack up.
• 06:15 Brett tries to change Jack’s dirty nappy, but Jack usually has other plans, including kicking his legs as though he’s on a marathon.
• 06:30 Brett brings Jack downstairs to the lounge where Claire is usually finished pumping by now, and has transplanted the milk into a baby bottle for Jack.
• 06:45 Jack has finished his milk by now and has a few minutes to chill-out and try to stop him from chucking it all up again (which he’s done a few times recently)

From here on, Claire is on-duty with Jack, leaving me to get ready for work. Usually, I manage to leave on time, normally with Claire and Jack in the kitchen, him being in his bouncy chair running and kicking away sporting a great big smile on his face.

During the last few minutes before I leave to go to work, I can hear Claire singing some very random songs and nursery rhymes to Jack – so much so, I ended up having the words to ‘Row, row, row your boat…’ firmly fixed in my head again for the whole day, the other day. (Including the extra verses that Claire has made up too…)

Over 100 days old already!

Speak to any parent and it seems that they’ll tell you that time flies by, especially when used in the context of their children. Well, I suppose Claire and I can categorise ourselves as ‘one of those people’, as Jack is over a hundred days old now, which seems inevitable but almost unbelievable in some respects.

The round figure of a hundred days seems like a milestone that we weren’t looking for, but it’s one of those that appears when looking back – if that makes sense? Jack is growing lots and putting on more weight as the weeks go by, but he’s also learning lots too and is smiling, laughing and interacting more each day.

What a day!

Today has been one of those days for me. I have been rushing around doing stuff, and the day has just disappeared!

Giving Blood: One of my first jobs for today was to go and give blood in Chatteris – I have been giving blood for a few years now and have clocked up my 11th or 12th bleeding-session now, which is good. I do try to go every three months, but haven’t been for a while, as the last donor session was when Claire was overdue to give birth. Despite what people think, it doesn’t hurt much and the sense of helping someone, somewhere is quite rewarding. And, I managed my own personal best of just 4 minutes, 33 seconds to donate the blood. Must try to beat that next time! Also, I always manage to see someone in there that I know, which passes the waiting time considerably! But I would really recommend making an appointment though, as turning up is ok but you have to wait! I didn’t make an appointment this time, and really wished I had!

Jack’s Jabs: The next thing to tick-off on the list, was to take young Jack to the doctors for his second round of jabs! I think Claire thought she’d get out of taking him this time, especially after the first round a couple of weeks ago! We timed the waiting room really well, beating all other mums and dads in there, and ended up waiting about five minutes or so. When we got in there, the nurse soon jabbed one leg, (loud screams) and then just as he calmed down, she jabbed the other leg (again, loud screams). He was a really good boy, considering that the needle was literally about half an inch long and went straight into the side of his leg, which isn’t much bigger itself! Needless to say, he cried a bit in the waiting room (we had to wait 15 minutes afterwards in case he yakked) but the car-ride home was… loud.

Laughing-boy Jack

The other day, I said something to Claire about Jack’s new trick which is giggling when being tickled, but she didn’t believe me. But then trying to make him laugh again that evening was a no-no.

Anyway, I got home from work today and Claire laid Jack on the bed upstairs and I was with him playing and tickling him and he suddenly burst into laughing! I wasn’t trying to make him do it, he just did it!

He did it a few times when I was tickling him shoulders and around his neck! Claire really wanted to make him laugh but couldn’t!

Made us smile anyway. We thought about trying to get it on camera to put on the website, but he’s asleep now, so maybe another day.

New way to stop Jack’s 7pm upset?

So, it turns out that Jack is much more like his mum than we thought!

Jack went into his usual 7pm crying session and continued to cry and cry, despite us both trying to calm him down. We tried all of our normal tricks, but he wasn’t having any of it. Bathing him used to be a good ‘un, but he’s become immune to that recently.

By chance, we found something that he finds… soothing!?!

Claire needed to do some hoovering around upstairs and as soon as Claire came anywhere near Jack’s room, he stopped crying and started to look at me through his teary eyes, as I was hanging over the edge of the cot trying to calm him down.

To test the theory again (in the name of science), we brought the vacuum cleaner into Jack’s room and he simply stopped – switched it off again, and he started to cry. Back on, and he stopped. Strange.

Blog Writing, Made Easy!

In terms of actually writing these blog posts, I have recently found a new tool that has made this all much easier! It’s called Windows Live Writer (part of the Windows Live Essentials tools) by Microsoft, and it’s everything that I have been wanting without me knowing about it!

I used to write the blog posts in Microsoft Word for it’s spell checker facility and then copy and paste the text into Adobe Dreamweaver, as Dreamweaver is an HTML-editor and since blog posts are essentially HTML, it’s easier to format the text, etc. I would also have used Adobe Fireworks to modify or scale any images I wanted to use, to make them small and lightweight enough for use on the web. Back into Dreamweaver to apply the changed images, and then once that part was finished, I would then upload any images to my webspace manually and then go back into Dreamweaver and re-link to use the online versions of the images.

Then… I would make sure that everything looked right, and then copy the raw HTML from Dreamweaver into the hidden part of this blog site when I had logged in. Then, I’d re-read it (sometimes), add category tags, change minor little things here and there, before pressing the ‘Publish to Weblog’ button, which makes it live.

Until now.

Windows Live Writer takes note of which blogs you publish content to, namely this one, as well as any settings for it, such as the web address, username and password for it, and then it goes off to your website to find out what it needs to let you do everything inside of Live Writer! When I say everything, I mean everything.

Right now, I am working on my computer in my house, on Live Writer. In here, I am typing in the font that I would expect when published online, and can add things like images, photo albums, etc and I can also preview it on my PC too. When it ‘previews’ a blog post, it actually shows you everything that you’d expect to see when it appears on the internet, namely the header, navigation and so on. Great – previews. Wow… No, there’s more.

Inside here, I can also set the same tags that I have configured inside my blog, which makes navigation in a particular topic much easier now that I’ve turned on the Navigation box (top-right of this page). I can also publish this directly to my blog site and it appears instantly, without me needing to log in! OR, I can publish it in Edit Mode, which means that it will send up what I have written already, but not make it ‘live’ online until I press the aforementioned ‘Publish to Weblog’ button. Fantastic.

It does loads more stuff too, but these are enough to mean that I’ll carry on using Live Writer – I have also installed it on Claire’s laptop, so I can use that to make blog posts too and whack them up in exactly the same way.

The only downside was the installation – I wanted Live Writer, and when you download it from the Microsoft website (for free) it downloads pretty much all of the Live Essential tools – none of which I wanted – and then you pick which ones you want to install. It also tries to install the MSN toolbar as part of the process, and you have to actually un-select it from the list. None of these points are a pain, but I just thought I’d point this out really in case anyone wanted to try it.

The Family Swimming Trip

Claire, Jack and I all went swimming this morning together for the first time, which was great.

We went to the swimming pool at Ely, as there’s a baby-pool there which is warm (apparently anyway!!) and wasn’t too deep at any point. Jack was floating around with either one of us holding his head out of the water, whilst he splashed and kicked away.

At one point when we first got there, we think he fell asleep in the pool, as he looked comfortable enough! I don’t think he slept in the car on the way there when he should have, and was looking a little tired before we started. And then later he got a bit grumpy, so we had to cut it short after about 3/4 of an hour in there.

Our friends down the road turned up there too with our God-daughter and her little baby brother, but just as we was about to leave, which was a shame. We saw them to say hello but didn’t get any splash-time. Maybe next time.

Sold the car…

So – as the title suggests, we’ve sold the Focus that I mentioned before, in the attempt to go and buy a bus to cart the wife and child around in.

I had to drop the price a bit lower than I had originally hoped, as looking through the Auto Trader website, there are currently 10 Ford Focus for sale in a 10 mile radius of here, and all were about the same price that I had it on for originally, which was £4250, but all were about the same age or older, but all were a lesser specification than my car. I wanted to drop the price a little, to make it stand out from a group really.

Ironically, just as we’ve done ‘the deal’ for the chap to buy the car, a man from down the road knocks on the door, asking if the Focus is still for sale! Doh!

We’re going to go to Peterborough shopping to see what we can get for our money – we’ve spoken to lots of people now who have either recently bought a new car for themselves, or know someone who has, and the general feeling is that it’s a buyer’s market out there and that the garages are keen to strike a deal at whatever rate. We’ll see… and with money in the back-pocket, we’re in a much better position now to haggle on the price.

I’ll keep you posted.

More firsts!

It appears that my post about 'firsts' this week has missed out a few more 'firsts'...

Swimming

Claire took Jack for his first swimming lesson at Spring Common School on Wednesday. I was in trouble before they started, as I had Claire's car that day which meant I also had her sat-nav too! So, she got lost... on the Oxmoor..! Doh!

Claire was hoping that swimming would go as well as the baths that we've been giving Jack recently, as we've been bathing him in the proper 'grown-up' bath in the bathroom at home. From what I have been told, the pool is very warm, so it should be ideal for babies. Incidentally, when we bath Jack here, we have a floating thermometer that tells us that it needs to be near to body temperature... how does that work in a baby pool?

Claire suggested I take Jack next week as it is my 'work-life balance' day from work until she mentioned that there were 3 Jacks in the group! How did she know this? They has to 'sing' hello to each other..!!

How do you teach a baby a baby to swim when, blatantly, they don't have proper control of their arms, legs or even heads yet! Well, good question, especially as all 5 babies are under a year old! Well, they blew bubbles and learnt to float, as well as going around the pool to see the steps, the drains (different noises), pouring water near the baby, splashing them, etc.

So - what did Jack think? Claire said he loved it. Apparently, he only cried once (and for about 10 seconds) when the teacher got too close!

Luckily though, Jack decided to leave poo-ing in the pool for another day, which is a shame, as the nappies haven't had a full and thorough testing as yet!! Maybe next week.

When Jack and Claire got home just after me that day, he was well tired. Claire and I were trying to get food ready and Jack just cried as his routine had been upset AND it was after 6pm, so he cries anyway.

Which leads me onto our next 'first'...

Jack's first DVD box set!

A few weeks ago, Claire had been on the internet armed with a credit card (again) but this time bought Jack a DVD box set from Disney's Baby Einstein range. The DVDs are marked as being 3 months onwards, but we thought we'd jump the gun and try the youngest age DVD of 3 months, expecting that the older age DVDs were into quantum computing or something. So we put Jack in the bouncy-chair-thing in front of the TV in the lounge, during the biggest screaming session ever and, within seconds, not only had he stopped crying but he was watching the DVD and paying attention too! He loved it!

It's a bit weird though if normal 'grown-up' people watch it, as there's toys on the screen for about 10 seconds (to music) and then it changes to another toy, in bright colours and captivating movements. Some are executive toy-style objects, but some are bubbles , etc. It's really random, but it worked in keeping Jack's tantrums at bay. Might use them more often!