Oli, The Daywalker

My boy, Oliver, is hereby unofficially declared a ‘Daywalker’ - if you’ve never seen the movie trilogy ‘Blade’, then this might not mean much to you.

In the movie, there are people. You know, regular people that sleep at night and do stuff during the day.

There are, of course, also vampires in this particular movie. Those are the people that sleep during the day and do stuff, namely bite/kill people for blood, during the night like any good vampire should.

Oliver, however, is a daywalker like Blade, the star of the movie;  Blade is a ‘special’ individual, as he does all the nocturnal stuff that vampires do, but also works well in sunlight.  Here’s why they’re similar:

The past couple of days, young Master Rigby has been going almost all day without need for a sleep. (Bearing in mind he’s not a year old, this is a problem!!) Then, at night time, he is *still* waking multiple times throughout the night, despite being 9 or so months old. So, without need for fangs and vampire-like gory stuff, he’s slowly killing his folks off, as we’re outright knackered come the morning. This makes work a bit… different, as I don’t think that the wife and I have ever had so little sleep when Jack was this age.

So, in my eyes… daywalker.

He’s 100% bubbly, playful fun during the day though, don’t get me wrong. And he’s always got a smile for his big-bro, Jack, which is certainly helpful, as Jack does like to show-off in front of Oliver to get a giggly-based reaction from the dribbly tot.

In all honesty, it could be that he’s teething or something.  He’s had an ear infection or two of late, so that probably hasn’t helped things, but he is getting to the age of sprouting a tooth or two. I just hope that all this noise and effort means that ten are coming through at the same time, and they’re fully grown adult teeth, as I’m sure I’d be disappointed if there was just one tiny little baby tooth coming through causing all of this upset, as the problem is that when he wakes up, he kicks off big-time and gets himself in a right little state, which takes a while to calm him down.

But Claire and I do consider a night that he wakes just once as a good night. Even better if he goes straight back to sleep immediately after having a drop of milk.

Hey ho. Kids, eh? Just goes to show that you simply can’t use the first child as a benchmark for the second.

Jack-Joke

After seeing a joke on TV/online about the recent possible discovery of the Higgs Boson particles, I told Claire, Jack and Oliver it over evening tea.

A Higgs Boson walks into a church and the vicar shouts “Out! We don’t allow Higgs Bosons in here!”. To which the Higgs Boson replies “But, without me, how do you have MASS??”

Anyway, I thought it was funny; they didn’t.

Days later, and totally out of the blue, Jack has interpreted the joke into:

A Higg Boson walks into the church and the vicar says “GET OOOUUUUTTTTTTT! You’re not allowed in here!!”

Made us wet ourselves. Literally.

7 Months and Chicken Pox!

Unbelievably so, it’s been AGES since I’ve written anything about the boys, Jack and Oli. I think blogging managed to be something that I’ve let run away from me, in the midst of now having two of the little blighters in the house.

I’ll try to make a more conscious effort in future, as I really want to have a record of their goings-on, but to be fair, there’s not a massive amount of time left in the month!

So, right now, Jack is 3.5 yrs old (ish) and Oliver is about 7 months old.

Oliver is a real bundled of smiles and dribble wrapped up in baby clothes – since he was very small, the drool has simply POURED out of his mouth, but not that he’s teething or anything, but just got the setting on maximum for it.  As such, he’s always wearing a bib, and goes through easily ten in a day, as they become soaked to the point of when you try to wipe the next bit dribble away, you’re actually making more of face wet!

He’s still not sleeping through the night, which is a real kicker for his mum and I. We were sort of thinking that we were making some real progress in convincing ol’ blondy that he could survive longer sleeping patterns, but just as he’s getting there, he’s gone and caught Chicken Pox. Not a massive surprise, as Claire’s been making them both share time/air with other infected nippers, to try and get it before school starts again, and before Claire has to return to work after maternity leave.  Jack seems immune to it, which is totally odd, but Oli is absolutely plastered in spots, to the point that his head is a Braille horror story. In the past day or so, he’s grown some pox-spots in or near his ears, which have made them so sensitive that Superman would worry.  So much so, he gets really upset if we accidentally breathe upon it from a distance. Tears. Screams. Not good. Especially at 5 am, which he’s taken to waking up at, permanently. 

He’s waking around midnight/1am and crying and screaming himself into a state – Claire’s taken the brunt of these Oli-poundings, but the truth is, he’s awake and thrashing around for about an hour before he can be tempted into having some milk and going back to sleep.

As you can imagine, with Oli waking at midnight and then again at five, it’s not leaving any of us any real time to get some proper sleep, but although you get used to it as a new parent, 7 months is really starting too drag on a bit, young Master Rigby!! (hint hint!)

Oli’s on the tipping point, too, of crawling which is so funny to watch. He’s been able to rolly-polly around the floor by himself and sit up-right for a while now, and he can wiggle himself into the baby-crawling position, and then he rocks himself forwards and backwards as though he’s teasing us. Then he decks-it on to his front and then slams his out-stretched arms down in front of him, and pulls the world towards him on his tummy, whilst kicking his legs like he’s in the swimming pool behind him.  This is a bit different from Jack, as he used to do the the full-on army/commando crawl, and then converted this straight into walking; so we were robbed of the crawling-baby back then. Maybe Oli will be the one to enlighten us as to this elusive art?

Jack – When he’s in the company of Oliver, he’s usually either all over him, by cuddling, kissing or pulling at arms/legs/etc (affectionately – mostly!) or he’s dancing or waving his arms whilst talking Whale-speak to him. Either way, Oli has nothing but smiles and ‘coo’s for Jack, his constant entertainer.

Occasionally, Jack does get a taste of the green-eyed monster though, although this tends to be when Jack is a bit tired and aware that he’s not the centre of attention at that particular moment.  But to be fair, it’s not an easy thing to judge, as to when to show Jack the attention that he’s craving, and when not to, as to try to teach him that our little family has grown by 133% since Oli’s arrived in town.

Jack is growing and learning new things all the time. He’s recently been into historical events such as The Titanic and Cook’s HMS Endeavour, as well as dinosaurs, Range Rovers, Land Cruisers and the like.  His vocabulary is expanding massively, and sometimes, this totally catches me off-guard when he says something using a word that I didn’t know he knew. Or, even funnier, is when he re-uses something that we’ve said but in the wrong context, as he’s just relaying words.  Little star.

In September, Jack moves onto the next part of his pre-school stuff, and will be attending the local school for three hours in the mornings, five days a week.  Up until the 6 weeks (!!) holidays, he’s been going to pre-school for three hours in the afternoon.

Aladdin / Jafar Stickers

If you’ve been to our house recently, you’ll have noticed in the kitchen that there’s a pretty-rough looking Reward Chart blu-tac’d to the wall, along with a page of heavy-Aladdin-themed Avery labels that are beside it, also blu-tac’d up.

These are my take on Reward Charts for Jack, and are pretty much my top-quality (read: so-so) handy-work in Microsoft Word.

The Reward Chart itself is pretty much a grid, with the days of a week labelled down the left hand side, with about five or six boxes along for each day.  The basic premise is, that when he’s been good, he gets an ‘Aladdin’ sticker, and if (read: when!!) he’s been naughty, he gets a Jafar sticker.

I’ve made variation of the good/bad sticker, with some of the other characters too, as otherwise it could look a little odd on the chart.

Why Aladdin? Well, at the time of ‘production’ of the chart, Jack really liked watching the Aladdin movie and wouldn’t stop talking about it and asking questions about it.  So, I thought that I’d work on the good/bad theme in the film and see how this would work in practise.

To much of my surprise, and Claire’s too for that matter, Jack has been very receptive to it - We try to make a big thing about getting him an Aladdin (or Genie, Abu, Jasmine, Magic Carpet) sticker when he’s been good, and getting him to help stick it onto the chart, which usually results in a full-on palm-smack to ensure firm adhesion of the small Avery labels to the paper surface.  He also REALLY DOES NOT WANT a Jafar sticker (of three varieties – Jafar & Iago as above, ‘Old-man’ Jafar, or ‘Snake’ Jafar), to the point of when he’s being naughty or unruly, simply the mention of getting a Jafar sticker is enough to bring him around to our way of thinking. Sometimes even without a paddy first!!

In all, I had spent a hour or two on Google Images and found images that met my needs, whacked them into Paint.Net to crop and down-scale them to size and then used Microsoft Word to drum-up a labels document to match the sheets of A4 labels I had in the drawer and, hey presto!, instant stickers and Reward Chart!

It’s still early days with these stickers and the whole Reward Chart thing, as it’s more of a grown-up experiment on mind-controlling a three year old, but it’s fun when it works in either direction!!

School-boy Jack

Well, ‘school’ is a probably a little over-used in that title. ‘Pre-school’ may be more appropriate, but nonetheless, my boy has spent his first week at school!

He’s on a breaking-in session, whereby he attends the local primary school from 12:00 until 15:00 and gets to play, read, paint, cut-out stuff and basically do anything he likes, really! Much like home but without the mess. And the noise!!

The teacher at the school said Jack was ‘adorable’, to which Claire had to make sure that they were talking about the same child. This was confirmed by Jack physically being there, but I’m thinking it’s a common one-liner to new school kids’ parents to put them at ease. But, to be fair, they seem like good teachers there and look like they’ll keep him in line, as he does tend to get a little boisterous at times. Especially if another child has taken a train or truck off of him!

We’ve noticed that, over the past week, he’s been shattered at night times. To the point of falling asleep almost at tea times, which is really funny in one sense, but worrying in another, as we’re sure that he’ll be roaming about the house at 04:30 as a result of sleeping earlier.  We try to keep him awake, but he’s pretty much flaked out for the evening.

But he does seem to really like it there. Why wouldn’t he? The school was fantastic when they showed us around – filled with things to play with or to do, which really surprised Claire and I, as we didn’t get that impression from the nursery that he’s been going to, that we’ve been paying for!

I’m sure there’ll be more on this school topic for later – might have to add a ‘school’ category on the blog, methinks.

Oliver–3 months old!

Yes, it’s true – the little man is three months old, there or there-about.

He’s past the stage of crying all the time because of wind (or colic) and is a really smiley, happy little boy. (honest!)

He smiles a lot now, which really is a nice thing to see. 

Claire also found out a little while ago that he’s ticklish and laughs with a big wide-open mouth and the occasional chuckle! I tickle him now and then, as you do, and he’s getting easier to ‘get’ each time.  Tonight, for instance, I was blowing raspberries on his tummy and tickling him and he loved it, which is great as I’m seeing a totally different side to him; Claire has been saying for weeks that he’s a happy, bubbly little boy, but when I get home from work, around 1800ish, he’s been grumpy and crying lots.  Coming home to that each night makes it more difficult to imagine the happy child, but, as I said – finally – I’m seeing what she means,

He’s getting to be a big, strong boy too – he’s able to hold his neck up and look around, which is good. He’s starting to understand about rolling over, but still needs big brother Jack to yank on his leg to make the centre of gravity change position. After that, he’s find.

I’ve been playing on the bed with him, and rolling him sideways onto his tummy and then over again onto his back, which he seems to enjoy. I used to do this with Jack, too, which I guess was about the same sort of age.  I’d imagine that it’s a whole new world at that age, as he’s been either face up or face down in bed and that it! Now, he’s finding out that there’s a series of steps in between those poses.

He’s still not sleeping through the night entirely as yet though, much to mummy and daddy’s disappointment! In the past couple of nights (literally) he’s slept for four or five hours straight, which is the most he’s managed. Previously, it’s been as long as three hours and as little as thirty minutes, which sort of makes for a very long night.

But, we’ll see how it pans out. In terms of the holy-grail at the moment, it would be getting Oliver to sleep the entire night through. In his own bed. And not waking up until a decent hour!

Oliver

I seem to remember saying that age-old thing about time flying past in another post, but this is different. But the same. Sort of.

Anyway, I swear, I have blinked, and Oliver is already nearly ten weeks old. It’s strange, as although he’s only been born this relatively short period, our lives have changed so much all over again, and yet it seems like this is our new ‘normal’.

Just before Oli had arrived, it seemed like we had ‘settled’ into a routine, with ourselves, with Jack, with everything. Straight after Oli came, the regular pattern of getting up, getting ready to go out, and so forth was blown to smithereens. I’m not blaming him directly here (much), but it did seem like we were on  top of things. 

Oli came, and as Claire’s expressing milk, it pretty much pins her to a chair for the duration.  Oli, being a baby, cries and she’s able to manage ok, providing Jack isn’t kicking off, or demanding attention. Not that he would. Much.

Jack is all over Oli.  It’s funny, as we really worried about it going the other way, thinking that Jack would resent Oli for stealing his mum away from him and so on. But he loves him. Maybe a little too much!! He always wants to be involved if Oli’s about, kissing him constantly and very nicely too.  He tells visitors that Oli is his baby brother and that he loves him.  Trying to remember the age that I understood that word, I’m guessing Jack is repeating what we’re telling him about ‘love’ but maybe he does ‘get it’ too. Who knows.  Either way, Jack likes Oliver. And, Oli likes Jack too. He smiles when Jack’s there, or when he kisses him, even if Jack unintentionally gets a little heavy-handed, as three year olds do.  But in all, Jack is sharing his mum with Oliver really well. He’s not too fussed about his dad, but hey-ho.  Although, Claire did say that Jack is getting a little funny about sharing his grandparents (on my side) with his first set of to-be cousins…! All good fun, I’m sure.

It’s nice that they’re like this, and hopefully they’ll learn to play games and toys together, despite the age gap. But when they’re older, brothers will be brothers and pick the occasional fights too, as we all have done, so that should be interesting to see, possibly.

Literally, this morning before leaving for work, I had about 30 minutes with Oliver, where he has been quite the happy chappie; it seems that he’s been quite uncomfortable with wind for the past couple of weeks and, hence, has been a right grump.  But today, he must have had a decent night’s sleep, and was all “coo’s” and smiles for me, which was nice.

He’s still sleeping in the crib next to our bed at night times, despite that I’m not in there myself in the week! His grunting and snoring is nowhere near as bad as I remember Jack being at nights, but Oli is not yet sleeping through the night, so Claire’s been doing a top-job of bottle-feeding him in the nights.  Only fairly recently has this been extended to the first wake/feed of the night coming in at 03:00 – previously, it was every couple of hours.  Weekends, I try my best to help. I have been trying,where possible, to let Claire get away from it all, and sleep in the spare room (aka my office) where I’ve been hiding/sleeping, and trying to keep Oli happy with the milk too.  Problem is, I don’t seem to be able to cope on as little sleep at the moment that Claire is getting; the next day I’m a right old misery. Hey, perhaps me and the new nipper, Oli, are a right old pair together already, him being grumpy and me being miserable.

I seem to remember that Jack was sleeping through the night from about eight weeks old, and was in his own room by eleven weeks. Oli may be a little behind on that yet, but a week appears to be a long time for these babies!! Lots of things could change in that time yet..!  We shall have to wait and see.

But for those that haven’t had (yet or otherwise) children, here’s a summary of what a baby of Oli’s age does, in no particular order:

• Cries.
• Smiles, occasionally, between cries. (Maybe wind?)
• Drinks only milk at this stage. Then burps. Smiles. Then cries for more milk.
• Generate copious quantities of poo. Then cries, to make a point that they want it changed.
• Wait until you’re at the exposed, critical mid-point of changing a nappy, before successfully recreating the Bellagio fountains with a range only a fireman would appreciate, followed by a suspiciously evil-looking smile. Then cries as his ‘nads are getting cold because the second half of the nappy-change is now taking considerably longer.
• Sleeps. Lots in the day time, random/patchy hours in the night time. Waking to cries. Gets milk. Snores, grunts and farts until in R.E.M. sleep mode.
• Makes the occasional ‘coo’ noise for everyone else, even less for daddies.

All. Good. Fun.

Pool party for a 3 year old

It was Jack’s 3rd birthday the other week, and Claire and I had been discussing what to arrange for a party for him and some of his friends.

Claire had the idea of renting the swimming pool in Peterborough that she’s been taking him to for swimming lessons for the past 2 or 3 years, which is at the Calm-A-Baby swimming pool – a fantastic, heated swimming pool for children’s swimming lessons.

Calm-A-Baby are on Facebook too, which is here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Calm-a-Baby/58803121893

The pool itself is warm, so even new-born babies can use it, without fear of them turning blue and shivering after 20 minutes.

We booked the pool for the Sunday after his party, and had invited a gathering of friends and family to join us. The schedule was to have the pool, entirely, from 14:00 to 15:00, and then half an hour of ‘Wiggle and Jiggle’ to help further wear-out any kids that might still be awake after an hour long session in the pool.

Wiggle and Jiggle is another group-type meeting that Claire and Jack have been attending only recently, held at the same place as the pool, but in an upstairs room.  Sarah, who runs the group, gets the gathering of children and gets them to be manic, whilst still under control; in that, they’re allowed to make a mess with a pile of stuffed toys, musical instruments and singing and dancing and so forth. Basically, far too much exercise for my liking, but the kids love it.

In the pool, we had a few of Jack’s friends from various other baby groups that Claire and he have been going to, along with, of course, their mum and/or dad, some of our neighbours and their children of the same age, in addition to some family members too, so a great mix of people and children in all.

The hour seemed to flash by! Both Claire and I were in the pool, one of us with Jack and the other with Oliver. Strangely, both sets of Grandparents managed to forget their swimming costumes, but there’s always next time!

To start with, I had Jack with me and even though he’s been swimming and playing in the pool for a few years now, he’s still a little unsure about trusting himself, and seems to want to hang on to me. Whether he does this with his mum, I don’t know, but of course I don’t want him to go under either, and so I am happy to help him.  I was trying to get him to swim/float/flap-n-paddle by himself and after about 10 minutes or so, he did! Admittedly, he did have a ‘woggle’ with him, which is a long, cylindrical float-aide that is bendy and flexy, or yellow rubber-ring at times too.  With the woggle tucked under his armpits and me not too far away in front of him (i.e. arm’s reach!) he was doing it!! Well done little mate! #ProudMoment

Claire and I swapped, and I took the newborn(ish) nipper, Oliver, out for a paddle; by now Claire had got hold of Jack and was diving down from the surface and swimming under water with him holding the arms of her swimming costume, sitting on her back! The other kids took a turn on riding on Claire’s back and being thrust underwater and they all loved it! Glad we didn’t have to pay Claire too for her entertainment work too!

As I said, the hour literally flew by. Everyone loved it in there, especially me.

After the pool party, we had a short wait until Sarah started the Wiggle and Jiggle. Jack was obviously shattered as he had started to show off a little bit and pick and choose when he wanted to join in and follow instructions. He wasn’t too bad, but everyone else was a little better behaved, shall we say.

They all banged drums, crashed symbols or blew flutes in a big chaotic mess, whilst all parents looked on in deafened-horror. Again, the kids loved it and had a whale of a time throwing things up in the air, or dancing around and the like.  Of course, I would have loved to have joined in, but I was designated to be the official photographer, so I was stuck on the safe side of the lens.

After all of this, the children had cooked finger-food and cup-cakes (provided by Selina's Tea Rooms, part of the Calm-A-Baby venue), as well as birthday cake.

Jack. was. shattered. Unsurprisingly, he slept well that night. And so did Claire and I, with the exception of Oliver waking throughout the night!

The whole party was great and much fun was had by all. The pool is a great place for these parties and we’d hope that we’d do it again there another time.  There’s lots of ‘little moments’ that I’d like to share about the party, but to be honest, I don’t know where to start in listing them.

We took a whole load of photographs of the day and if they’re not available on Jack’s website, they will be shortly.  If you came and there’s any that you’d like on a disc, just let us know.  During the swim, my mum had my camera and was taking pool-side shots, which have come out very well. (Well done, Granny Rigby!)