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!!