Return of the Mega-Yak

Yes. It’s happened again. And this time, it was all over me.

It was probably my fault for making fun of it happening to Claire, but this time, my little saved his entire stomach contents for his dad. Thanks son.

We’re trying a new approach in giving him his milk at 19:30 when he goes to bed, rather than to put him to bed without it, and then wake him up at 22:30 to feed him, change his nappy and put him in his little sleeping bag.

So, as I’ve been at work all day, I took Jack upstairs to get his pyjamas on, and Claire get his milk ready for me to give him. No problems. Yet.

He drank about half of it, which wasn’t surprising, as he’d not long had his food. And dessert. And fruit. With more fruit, with vegetables too in places.

Most of the time, he gnashes through the food with the only teeth he has so far, which are at the front of his mouth, and then spits out the skin from the grapes, or the blueberry ‘shells’ and so on, so I didn’t really think that he eats a great deal of them. Until now.

After his milk, he tried to get up and wander around, but a little half-heartedly, as he was shattered from going swimming earlier with his mum.

Before he got really sleepy, I took him into the en-suite in our bedroom to brush his teeth as normal, but just as we got there, the eruption was imminent!

Within seconds, we were re-creating the final scenes of Pompeii. Instead of hot black ash and lava, there was brightly coloured pieces of recognisable food that he’d eaten a couple of hours ago, all mixed together and decorating the floor, the walls, the toilet and the sink. And the door. And of course, Jack and I.  As I was holding him in my arms before the point of impact, it was all over me, neck downwards.  And it was obviously body temperature, which is very not-nice!

Luckily, we were in the en-suite which has tiled flooring, making the clearing-up a lot easier than if it had happened on the carpet!

I think I must have moved him before allowing the milk to settle, but I sort of had a niggling feeling in the back of my mind that this might happen. If only I had paid more attention to said ‘niggling feelings’, I could have tried to get Attack Number Three over Claire instead of me - but hey, there’s anyways next time!!

(Seeing as this is the third time now, I’ve even added a new category to the blog-site about Mega-Yak.  Yes, I’m sad…)

Walking Wonders

The other morning before I left for work, Jack decided that he would show the world (or at least, his mum and I) that he could walk by himself!

I’m not saying that he’s stopped crawling in favour of walking now, especially not overnight, but he will now voluntarily walk across the room to another object… this is something that we’ve been trying to get him to do, but he just wouldn’t have any of it. Although, we did find that crawling between his mum and dad wasn’t enough of a prize, but walking for the Sky remote was!

He’s really funny in the actual walking-part of it all though, as he’s a bit gangly on his feet, wobbly about like a drunken zombie with his arm outstretched reaching for whatever he’s walking towards. Also, he knows it’s something that he’ll get a lot of praise for, and will make sure that his mum is watching first and then go for broke.

Now that the weather has brighten up and reached t-shirt weather, we’re able to play outside a lot more now with him, walking him around the garden, chasing the dog, footballs and so on. He quite likes it out there, as well as walking out towards the road, as there’s cars, vans and lorries out there that he obviously seems to like too.

Anyway, hopefully, now he’s walking around a lot more, he’ll realise that it’s much better than crawling, as that’s only for babies and Commandos or Marines that crawl under barbed wire, with live rounds being fired over their heads. Jack will happily hold one of my fingers whilst walking too, so when he starts to doubt himself about this whole ‘walking’ thing, holding my hand sometimes helps to give him that little assurance that he needs.

Strange day, turned out good!

This morning, Jack was a bit upset from about 03:00 onwards until about 05:00-05:30, and as Claire went to work yesterday, I went to sort him out.

I don’t know what the matter with him was, but he was screaming by the time I went into him, and so I picked him up and tried to calm him down by laying him on my chest as I sat in the rocking chair. It sort of worked, to a fashion, and before long, he was back asleep.

Or so I though. 15 minutes after getting him back to sleep, he was crying again, and I was back in there.

The pattern above must have happen several times in the early hours of this morning until about 05:30 when I was left laying in bed wide awake.

Instead of laying there hoping that I’d sleep, I thought I’d nip downstairs and get a few jobs done whilst Claire and Jack were still sleeping, assuming that the little man stays asleep!

Well… he did. Claire didn’t wake up until about 09:00 and then we both went to wake him up, as he was still fast asleep, catching up on the sleep he didn’t get in the night. I was a little hesitant about waking him, as I was expecting the same screaming/grumpy Jack that we’ve had a taste of recently, but no. Actually, he was in a good mood and stayed that was for most of the day!

We went to the local park to walk the dog and ended up walking Jack around the park, holding his fingers whilst his little legs did twenty to the dozen. Only occasionally did he start to get tired and his legs caved in on him, but other than that, it’s certainly the longest distance that he’s ever walked.

Whilst we were walking, we did that “1…2…3… jump…”-thing, whereby Claire and I had hold of one of his hands each between us. Good fun. He certainly enjoyed it!

Screaming Baby Alert!

Yes, it’s true – he can scream and very loudly at that.

The only thing that we can see is the problem, is that Jack’s teeth are causing him pain. Because of this pain, he’s not only fussed about eating very much. Because he’s not eating very much, he’s putting his nice little routine out and then he’s hungry in the middle of the night and is awake for a period of time. Being he’s awake, he’s then tired at different times in the day, hungry at different times, and it’s a struggle to know what to do and when, for the best.

Calpol is good, but it takes time to work and it does wear off.

If you haven’t got children, you may not necessarily know about this – basically, it’s paracetemol in liquid form, for babies and children. That, coupled with Nurofen for Children, and MediSed can really help Jack sleep with his various growing pains.

We don’t really ‘keep him dosed up’ all the time – that’s a bit pointless, wasteful and is ultimately giving him medicine that he may not even need, which I think is a little backward. The main times that we generally need to given him anything like that is at night times, but then it can be a struggle by yourself, as when he needs it, he isn’t calm and relaxed enough to take it without splashing it up the walls, or covering himself in it.

Jack is normally very good. He’s well tempered most of the time and we haven’t had much problems in that respect. However. The last few days have been a bit… unusual. At times, it seems like he’s cried for days and, occasionally, there’s no consoling him. He can be in a mood, tired and sometimes hungry and when he doesn’t get his way, the tantrums come out in full force!

The amount that he’s cried in the past few days, I’d hope that he’s got about 10 teeth all coming through at the same time!

But then, babies do cry. They do have sleepless nights sometimes. Teeth do grow. So, I think that we’re seeing it as one of those things and taking it as it comes really. Once he’s settled down and back to his routine, he’ll be fine again. Until next time…

MMR Jabs

Last week, I took Jack for his MMR jabs – only I forgot to blog about it!

Yeah, so, I took Jack to the local doctors’ surgery for his jabs, and I think that it could have gone a lot better.

Last time he had to have some jabs, Claire took him and was worried about his next lot, the MMRs. I volunteered (foolishly, in hindsight!) to take him, booked the day off and that’s what we did.

Jack was extremely tired before we had even got there, and was ultimately, grouchy. (He must take after his mum or something in that respect!)

Waiting in the waiting room was bad enough, as he didn’t want me to hold him, yet he didn’t want to go on the floor. To be honest, I was quite happy with that, as it is a bit grim in there on the chairs, let alone the floor; plus, all those sick people that normally sit there too, coughing and spluttering... Not good.

Anyway, the appointment was for 13:30 and even though we were there in plenty of time, we didn’t get seen until about 14:15 and then it was straight into the nurse’s office.

I think Jack knew what was coming here – a bit like taking the dog to the vets, they just know it’ll result in a needle somehow. Jack knew that this wasn’t going to be good nor easy, and he was right.

The nurse started to tell me about what he was going to have, and trying to engage in conversation about life in general, which was pretty hard-going, as Jack was wriggling like a caught fish on lap as I sat in the chair. I had to ask her to proceed straight to the bad stuff, which is when I asked how many injections there were going to be today.

“Two, but it’ll be fine.”, she assured me.

When I asked if it was possible to have two nurses, armed with a needle each to do the jabbing, she was quite surprised as though I was the first person to even suggest such a thing. A bit flustered, she talked me down, telling me that “it’ll be fine”, as she “does this sort of thing all the time”, despite me saying that Claire had a nightmare of a time with the second jab last time, as he tensed all the muscles in his little legs and kicked ferociously.

Anyway. I think that she might have quietly changed her mind after she couldn’t even stick him with the first jab, bearing in mind that I was already holding Jack still. She had to get the other non-nurse lady in the room just to hold his legs down, which proved to work…the first time.

The second jab, however, didn’t prove to be as ‘easy’ as the first, and he really made sure of that.

So. I’m sat in a chair, holding Jack as best as I can, bearing in mind that he’s not only thrashing his legs in protest, but also turning over to face me and then back around again. The opposite leg from last time is now rotating at a pace just behind his body, and she’s trying to get hold of his thigh with one hand, whilst the other is poised, ready to pounce on the target, once locked-on.

I really had to hold him tightly, the other lady clamped down on his little legs and, finally, the nurse scored a hit.

Jack was left sobbing and screaming at the same time, making me feel like a really bad dad for putting him through all of this.

We had to then wait back in the waiting room for 15 minutes, I guess it’s just to make sure that he didn’t have a reaction to the drugs.

After all of that, we came home and he slept for a good couple of hours, as he’s certainly worked for it!!

I now understand what Claire meant about last time. Strangely, I seem to remember my work cancelling all holiday for me in future where I have to do that again. (joke!)

As much as I don’t want to have to go through that all again with him, I’m sort of glad that I went, and sort-of saved Claire the ordeal.

Up-chuck Galore

I don’t know if it’s anything (food-wise) that I’ve given him in the past 2 days whilst he’s been in my care, but Jack managed to throw up the volume of three people’s stomachs last night, again, all over Claire!

A few months ago, Claire got back from work on a Saturday evening in time to get Jack to bed. Coincidentally, I was about to get ready to nip down to the local Chinese takeaway to collect our order. So, I handed Jack over to his mum and started getting my coat on to go – just as Claire got to the top of the stairs… Mega-Yak strikes! All over Claire, the carpet, everywhere. Nice.

Almost the same thing happened last night.

Claire got back from work and had bathed Jack and got him ready for bed around 19:30 as usual, when I was about to leave to get the Chinese takeaway.

This time, Claire had made it just inside the playroom when Mega-Yak II strikes! Claire just froze holding him, but managed to re-route all available energy to her voice-box in the form of calling me. Loud.

I made it from downstairs, up and into the playroom to see the last moments of Mega-Yak II making my wife’s white blouse… not white anymore. It was everywhere. Fair play to Jack, I don’t think he could have planned it better. It was all over her hair, face, shirt, arms and certainly all over the floor in the playroom!

At the time, it was grim. Now, it’s quite funny thinking back, hence I thought I’d mention it here; as I’m sure that when Jack is old enough to find worms and mud funny, he’ll want to know about this! :o)

Personality? Check!

I know it probably sounds like an odd thing to say, but Jack has developed his own little personality which has almost appeared from nowhere!

What I mean, is that he’s got his likes, his dislikes and then he’s got his own way of expressing his choices to us, all in a good way.

When Jack was a little baby, he cried, poo’d and then cried some more after a little bit of sleep. When we gave him food, he eat it. All. When we gave him his bottle of milk, he drank almost all of it, all of the time.

Now, if he’s not interested in something like food, or doesn’t want to finish his milk, he can be quite stubborn and not have it. We try each time we feed him now to give him lots of food before he gets bored, and then change something so that it is different and so on. With his milk though, once he’s had enough there’s no changing his mind. Obviously a trait he’s got from his mum!! ;o)

But food and drink aside, it’s weird to see him do the things he wants to do, and also funny watching him throw a bit of a tantrum when he’s doing something he doesn’t want to do.

Like for instance, he likes watching the cars, lorry, etc go by outside the window, or when we’re driving along, he’s now tall enough to see over the passenger seat in my car and he’ll point out a bus at quite a way away. Sometimes, we can even use this car/lorry watching as a means of calming him down when he’s upset or bumped his head or whatever. He’ll happily stand on the window-sill in our bedroom, holding onto the window handle with one hand and the other smacking or prodding the window as and when he sees fit. And yes, we are always directly behind him, before you think otherwise!

The past few weeks, he’s been a bit more clingy than he’s probably ever been before – which means carrying him around all the time, which is ok for a while, but when you need to put him down to get his or our food ready, he can get quick upset, and quite quickly too. He soon gets over it if we try to ignore him, as there’s things that we have to do without him in our arms, such as getting food in or out of the oven, etc. It’s then that the tears come out straight away, mouth wide open and the screams start! Literally within about 30 seconds, he’s seen a toy or something he wants to play with, or somewhere he can go and investigate and it’s as though he forgets what he was all upset about!

I’m really glad that Claire’s been making a massive effort with him in taking him to Sign And Sign classes – baby sign, that is. I think that you can already see in his face when he’s not happy about something, and if his baby signing improves further, then this might alleviate more problems down the line, or make them easier for us to understand what he’s after or trying to do. He’s already got a certificate for proving that he can wave his hands to tell us little things, which is what it’s all about. If he’s able to tell us in a simple yet effective sign of his hands that he’s not able to verbally pronounce, then it’s great.

At the moment, he’s able to, basically, ask for more of something; this is what he got his first certificate for. If we give him a baby-biscuit, or a chocolate button or something that he likes, he uses both hands to sign the word for ‘more’ and then he points at what he wants. Simple. Bonjella is a good one for that – he likes the taste of Bonjella teething gel and, if you let him, he’ll have the lot. (Except, that’s bad, as he’s only allowed 2 or 3 ‘shots’ a day of it!)

Good stuff though. He’s funny to be around and is always up for a game of peek-a-boo!