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!