2nd night alone

Jack spent his second-ever night away from us the other night, staying with my folks and… it was great! The dog was at Claire’s parents’ too meaning that we didn’t need to get up early or in the middle of the night or anything! It was absolutely fantastic! The house was silent!

My parents really enjoyed having him over to stay for the night too, which was good. My mum said how surprised she was at how well behaved Jack was, even after we had tip-toed out of their house Friday evening! She said he almost cried a couple of times when he’d realised we had gone, but he soon got over it with the prospect of two old grandparents to run around after him! It probably didn’t help when she’s showing Jack photos of all of us, saying ‘who is that?’… doh!

On a serious note, it’s really good that we’re able to leave him like that, that both sets of our parents are willing to have him, and that he’s good in their company. We’re really lucky in that respect, as some folks don’t have their parents close-by, or some people’s parents aren’t willing to help as much as ours, and of course, some aren’t willing to help at all.

My folks had moved to Wales not long after I was born and so had neither sets of parents within at least 300miles of them, so I appreciate that it must have been difficult. But then, I suppose, it’s a case of just getting on and doing what’s best really.

Claire’s drafted her mum to help a couple of days a week with Jack, as Claire being back at work, too, makes the normality from before we had Jack, come back into our new normal life with Jack. Claire has always really liked working but really likes being with Jack too, so working a few days a week is good all round. It also means that I get to spend loads of time with him too. All good fun.

First Birthday? Done.

Yes, as mad as it sounds, Jack is already a year old.

I know that it was only a matter of time, but the time has flown by. Already, we’re packing him up for university, as that’ll be here soon.

Jack had lots of new toys to add to his growing heap of brightly coloured plastic in his playroom. So much so, that Toys ‘R Us are getting twitchy.

It seems that most of the toys for kiddies these days all require batteries, are filled with lights and make random noises in the night! I don’t remember that far back, obviously, but I don’t remember having toys like that. A better comparison, maybe, would be that I don’t remember younger cousins or family friends’ babies having such toys – instead, they were more Action Man-esque, in that they were figures or toys that you played with. Hmm, but maybe then I’m thinking of toys for older children.

Anyway, Jack had a small family gathering on the weekend following his birthday, where I cooked the most of the meal… on the barbeque. Outside in the cold. In February. Claire’s folks, my folks and my sister came to which the little sprog a happy birthday, making Jack the centre of attention yet again - something that he’s getting to enjoy. He seems like pulling their strings by getting them to clap after he has – something he even managed to do the other day in Church for a Christening with the other attendees. (He claps. They clap. He laughs. They laugh. The Vicar notices. I laugh.)

As with Christmas, he didn’t really get the point of it all. We tried half-opening presents and encouraging him to rip the paper open, which almost goes against everything that we’re teaching him, such as how he handles books and not to rip pages, etc. And then we give him brightly coloured boxes and show how to do it. Madness.

He didn’t really get the whole ‘singing happy birthday in the presence of a cake and then blowing out a fire single-handed’. Just to make sure he knew what we were doing, (and to get the most out of the ‘1’ candle) Claire and I re-lit it, and made everyone sing again. Again, he looked bemused, but it made us all laugh when he joined in the clapping at the end. We were all clapping that it was his birthday; he was clapping that we’d all finally finished singing!

One thing we tried, being that it was a party for a child, was to make the jelly component of jelly-and-ice-cream. The only problem, was that we didn’t have any jelly moulds and tried at several places in town to get some. I had a brilliant idea of using ice-cube trays and filling lots of them with different flavoured jelly and then serving them up together, by popping them out of the mould. Simple.

Well - Here’s a tip for you:

“Don’t try to use ice-cube trays as jelly moulds. It doesn’t work like that.”
– Brett Rigby, 2010

We found this out the hard way.

After making six different flavour mixes of jelly, and chilling each of them to set in the trays, serving them (whole and intact) wasn’t easy and ended up scooping them out with a tea-spoon. The result wasn’t bad, as we made the best of a bad situation, it just was not the ideal-world scenario that I had envisaged. I think everyone liked it though, even my sister Emma who “doesn’t like Orange jelly”. :o)

All in all, I think he really enjoyed himself. We did.

Walking efforts

Whilst I think of it, I thought I’d mention the state of play with his walking, as people keep asking about it now he’s a year old.

He can stand up and sit down by himself, but this is only when he’s holding something, to keep him stable. Same, too, if we hold his hands, even if he’s got just one of our fingers, he uses that to keep himself stable whilst happily walking across the room.

But he seems to be aware that he’s not holding something, if we try and make him walk without. Then, he’ll stumble a few steps, and then falls forwards, which I think is because his nose is too big and heavy, and pulls his head towards the ground.

Either way, as I say, he’ll do maybe three steps in succession, but either fall (and we catch him) or he gets worried and his knees collapse under him.

Good fun trying though. He doesn’t mind at all, but he’ll certainly let us know when he’s had enough of that!

Change of plan…

Ok – so here’s the day’s events so far…

Jack didn’t wake up until about 07:45 and was in a really good mood as a result. I was thinking that maybe he’d be a bit grumpy or something for sleeping so much, but no.

We got up, washed and dressed and then the plan *was* that we went to Rhyme Time – basically, lots of mums and the occasional dad with their babies and small kids sitting around going through nursery rhymes. It’s a free thing, so they tend be packed, and held in the library in town.

I know Claire quite liked going to Rhyme Time before she went back to work on Thursdays, as it’s an opportunity to get out of the house and meet other mums in the same boat, etc. And, it’s all quite safe to let them roam around a bit. The worst they can do, is pull a few books off the shelves.

But anyway, we didn’t quite make it there this morning, as I we got to town a bit early and decided to go straight to the Church Rooms, where they hold the sessions to have the babies weighed frequently. As we were pretty much the only ones there, we had the 1:1 treatment, and she was telling me what he can and can’t have, now that he’s a year old.

By the time we left there, time was getting on, and so I decided that rather than going to the library and being 20 minutes late for a 30 minute session, I’d take him to see his Grandma (at work)and Great-Grandma (at home)instead. On the way around to seeing his Great-Grandma, we saw that Granddad's car was at home too, so we called into see him too!

So, busy day, so far.

We’ve just got back, warmed his milk and he soon fell asleep in my arms after it. Peace and quiet for a little while.

The start to a good birthday?

I don’t know if someone told Jack it was his birthday today, but he’s certainly making the most of it, having a really long lie-in!

As I write this (at 07:37) he’s still asleep in bed! I’ve been awake since Claire left for work this morning, just before 07:00, and have been expecting M’ Lord up there to have woken by now and demand attention.

But no.

The first birthday!!

Oh my word.

…

…

It’s finally here.

Jack is one year old tomorrow. A whole year old, 365 days and all that.

I wanted to write something here about the fact that it’s his birthday, not because it’s his birthday, but the fact that it’s here, upon us.

He’s grown so much in the past few months, its unreal. He now stands up taller than the side of his cot in the mornings when we go to get him up. He can even reach the drawers on the unit beside the cot and bang it shut when he’s bored! Little monster.

Some of his clothes seem to have shrunk too. The older stuff I mean. The clothes that he had several months ago, seem to be a bit tight, especially the baby-grow/jumpsuit type of clothes that go over his head and get his feet in too, stitching together between his legs. However, the alternative is the newer clothes that are still too big for him that make him look like Maggie from The Simpsons, where her blue clothing drags behind her and trips her up every other minute – Jack’s just the same, as it’s his ‘feet’ in his new baby-grow/jumpsuit thing that are too long and drag behind him.

Claire and I were just talking about this being a weird year, and that it feels like a really long year in one respect, as we’ve had almost zero sleep, but then on the other hand, it seems like the days/weeks/months this year have literally flown by – once we’ve got home from work, had food, sorted out Jack and got him to bed, there’s a bit of time left to clean up, or in some cases, make his food, and then it’s midnight. Kapow.

But, as I might have mentioned earlier, tomorrow is indeed Jack’s birthday. I have the day off work and we’re off to Rhyme Time in the morning and then off to see how much the little fattie weighs.

We’ve noticed that there’s a few photos missing from the SkyDrive photo collection and we’re in the process of uploading them. Same, too, for the video clips on Jack’s website: my mum constantly has her digital camera set to video mode, and has helped in almost doubling the video clips that we have of him to process, and upload to YouTube, and then linking to the website. I have days occasionally where by it’s great to do something like that, but at the moment, finding the several hours to sit there and vet them isn’t possible!

Oh, one other really important fact for me to record here, is that we have officially taken… 4806 photos of Jack in his first year, which averages out at about 13 photos per day!! That’s quite worrying really..!! But we’d rather have them and look at the occasionally, than to have not taken them at all and wish that we had.

So – tomorrow, Jack stops begin none-years old! Wahey!