Walking, Talking; Shouting and Fighting!

I think the title pretty much says it all, young Master Oliver is pulling no punches when it comes to fighting with his older brother, Jack.  

Jack might think its funny to wind up Oliver, whether he's teasing him with toys that he wants, or generally applying 'brotherly love' (arguing, pushing or fighting), Oli will more than rise to the challenge and won't back down. In fact, we quite often have to drag Oli off of Jack and at least Jack knows where and when to stop, but Oli still needs to learn that!, as well as the terms of engagement - his teeth are a powerful weapon that we're all finding out about!!

Oli has grown up so fast and is a lovely, bubbly and playful little man when he's not sinking teeth, that is! He jabbers away all day to himself or to anyone that will listen.

He's discovered the wonderful world of Justin Fletcher - for those of you don't know, Justin is a God to any kid under the age of 7... look him up on Wikipedia or something, the man's a legend.  But anyway, Oliver sings along to the title music, joins in with calling for Mr Tumble (again, if you don't know, look him up!) with such excited-ness and passion. I really need to catch him on video camera, as its really funny.

His speaking has progressed massively in the past few weeks. We've been talking to him in much of the same way, that I can remember, that we did for Jack and he's learning more words all of the time and is getting better each day or week at pronouncing them.

We started taking Oliver to nursery at an earlier age than we did for Jack - we found that Jack wasn't used to being looked after by anyone else than ourselves or immediate family and it made it bad for many weeks or months, as he'd kick off on being left. It took a long while for him to get used to it, and we knew that we couldn't go through that again with Oli, especially as he's got more of his mum's temper than Jack, shall we say!

They do get on well, though. There's times when they're playing really nicely by themselves, when we sneak into find out what they're doing, as their silence is *really* disconcerting..! Jack is still trying to find out the invisible boundaries in terms of Oli, as Oli doesn't care about who's pens or pencils they are, what they're for, or whatever - he knows that throwing them across the room gets Jack's attention enough for him to react. You can imagine the rest.

Sleep-wise though, Oliver is nearly two, and only now is learning to sleep for a whole night. There must be an invisible alarm clock in his room, as no matter what time he goes to bed, he's awake at 5am, almost to the dot. But we'll get there.

Distractions

I don’t know where I’ve heard or read about this, so I’m not trying to take the credit here; instead, I’m trying to explain our approach on this.

From practical experience with our two boys, distracting them from doing something ahead of time is much more beneficial than suffering the consequences of letting a situation brew.

For instance: Nappy changing is a nightmare at the best of times when these kids are strong enough to mimic a crocodile rolling over to kill it’s food.  But if there’s a poo-filled nappy involved and the kiddo decides to roll onto their fronts, instead of lying calmly and patiently on their backs like they do on the TV, there’s then another angle to the problem that I’ll leave you to ponder upon. Rather than allow our boys to get up to no-good during this very frequent, surgical-like, procedure we try our best to distract them, by getting them to do something or look at something to get them thinking otherwise. Such things could be, trying to find the fire engine on the big poster stuck on the opposing wall. Or the digger that is part of the lamp shade. “Where’s your hair?” tactics, basically, anything that will interest them into concentrating on something other than death-rolls, making the poo-nappy situation a little easier to deal with.

This works in other walks of life too. We’ve subconsciously been doing this in the car too, to alleviate boredom during our travels, such as trying to find the tractors on the fields, or point out buses, police cars, big lorries, and so on. 

The dog. Ah, the dog. Many-a-time during a tantrum or crying session, we’ll say to the boys (particularly when they were young), “Ssh, can you hear Alfie barking? Quick, lets go and find him!” and it suddenly gives them something different to think about, other than the situation at hand.

Another example, is that we’ve still got 6”x4” photos of vehicles and animals around the room in the kitchen, ready for when Oliver is beginning to flag in terms of eating. At any time, we can get him to find the lorry, the double-decker bus or even the pig – this gives us something to give him to think about, such that we can keep his head still long enough to shovel more food in.

There’s even a tactfully placed helicopter photograph stuck to the ceiling, directly above where the high-chair is, for those emergencies when you need the physiology of the human body to help out and physically ease off the muscles of the face that’s force-holding a jaw closed, such that a spoon fits nicely into their mouths. (100% my idea that! Patent pending.)

It’s amazing how distracting them ahead of a problem is so much easier to deal with, rather than trying to get them back from the brink of a major disaster.

The boys: update

Where do I start? It’s weird, but it feels like a lifetime ago when it was just Claire and myself in our own little world. Makes me wonder what we used to do when we had spare time, as it’s something that we dream of right now!

Oliver is a year old already; Jack is four.

Oliver is walking around this week like he’s always been able to, and likes to do what he likes to do. If that means hitting Jack on the head with a toy car, then so be it. Jack is taking it all though, which I’m quite surprised about. He’s been a lot better than I expected him to have been, considering that he’s having to shave everything he’s ever known with Oliver, like parents, toys, general attention, etc etc.

Oliver is learning ‘stuff’ already – we’ve got the same flash-cards that we used for Jack all that time ago, and have pinned them up in the kitchen. During lunch, we try to encourage Oliver to find the photo of the tractor, the fire engine, and so on, which he’s picking up really well.

Jack is… well, fantastic. He’s at the age now, or realistically has been for a while now, that we can trust him to do things. If we need to attend to Oliver, I feel happy telling Jack where we’ll be, and know that he’s safe enough and happy enough to hang on in there by himself, doing whatever he’s doing. Little star, really.

Claire’s been taking Oliver to baby-signing (with my sister and her two young kids), as she did before with Jack. He’s starting to try to say some things, whilst at the same time trying to mumble something, mostly about the dog. “Where,o-where, o-where is Al-fie dog-dog-dog?”…. is a phrase well versed in our house of late.

The boys: update

Where do I start? It’s weird, but it feels like a lifetime ago when it was just Claire and myself in our own little world. Makes me wonder what we used to do when we had spare time, as it’s something that we dream of right now!

Oliver is a year old already; Jack is four.

Oliver is walking around this week like he’s always been able to, and likes to do what he likes to do. If that means hitting Jack on the head with a toy car, then so be it. Jack is taking it all though, which I’m quite surprised about. He’s been a lot better than I expected him to have been, considering that he’s having to shave everything he’s ever known with Oliver, like parents, toys, general attention, etc etc.

Oliver is learning ‘stuff’ already – we’ve got the same flash-cards that we used for Jack all that time ago, and have pinned them up in the kitchen. During lunch, we try to encourage Oliver to find the photo of the tractor, the fire engine, and so on, which he’s picking up really well.

Jack is… well, fantastic. He’s at the age now, or realistically has been for a while now, that we can trust him to do things. If we need to attend to Oliver, I feel happy telling Jack where we’ll be, and know that he’s safe enough and happy enough to hang on in there by himself, doing whatever he’s doing. Little star, really.

Claire’s been taking Oliver to baby-signing (with my sister and her two young kids), as she did before with Jack. He’s starting to try to say some things, whilst at the same time trying to mumble something, mostly about the dog. “Where,o-where, o-where is Al-fie dog-dog-dog?”…. is a phrase well versed in our house of late.

Sleeping. Or not, as the case maybe.

Oliver is just over a year old now, and he's only managed to sleep through the night 13 times. 

Why and how do I know that it's 13 times?  It's not rocket science... I've counted!!

Jack slept through the night from about 8-10 weeks old. Oliver didn't get that memo. Instead, he's decided that he likes seeing us in the night. And to get our attention, he simply uses the tried and tested 'parent call' (patent pending), as a sure-fire way to drag us out of a warm bed.

Last night was no exception. I soon lost count of the number of times, as well as the time, of each calling. I've fed him a lot of milk, so that must mean there was a lot of waking up on his part. Sometimes, he'll lay back down and sleep for a couple of hours. Sometimes, just ten minutes.

Either way, it makes the next day run at a slightly slower pace. 

Food fit for Kings

Literally.

A while back, I mentioned that we (I say ‘we’, but you’re to read: Claire) had been busy making pre-made food for Jack.

Well, this hasn’t really stopped.  Mass food production for Jack increased slightly, in that we had been making bigger portions for him as he grew, but since then, we’ve been making food for Oliver now too.  Some are some of the old favourites that we used to make for Jack when he was a baby (and still do but in a bigger form), but in addition, there’s a few new recipes too.

But in case you’re thinking this is mushed-up, gunky, bad-tasting baby fast-food, I can categorically assure you that this is not.

The meals that Claire’s been making are absolutely fantastic meals that an adult would enjoy.  The only obvious difference, is that for Oliver being a young ‘un with only a few front teeth to chew with, they’ve been blended to make it easier for him.  Jack’s food is part-blended, but only to mix the stuff together thoroughly after cooking.

Other than that, the Salmon Surprise, Beef Stew, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Thai Green Curry, King Prawn Korma and Spaghetti Carbonara are fantastic meals with quality, fresh, ingredients. No crap here.

Admittedly, the recipes are modified slightly such that there’s no added salt or sugar in them, but I’ve tried almost all of them along the way, and I would certainly eat them.

Basically, the food is cooked en-mass, and then divided up into portion-sized bowls or ice-bricks and then frozen.  All we need to do then, is get them out to defrost in-time for the boys, and re-heat them before each meal in the microwave.  It makes a *huge* difference, as when they’re getting hungry and ready for food still at the table, we’ve got them some great, healthy and nutritious meals out that they can have in front of them in seconds. Otherwise, we’d be scrambling to give them something to tide them over until we’d manage to rustle up something each meal-time, with breakfast being no different.

Here’s a quick photo I took just the other night when I was getting their food out for the next day:

Top left, is Salmon Surprise and Potato, in larger portion size for Jack’s evening meal. Directly below this, is a portion of Apple, Pear and Blueberry for Jack’s evening dessert. 

In the middle at the top in the green bowl, are three ‘bricks’ Beef Stew and Sweet Potato for Master Oliver’s evening meal, with the orange bowl to the right having two bricks of Peach, Pear and Strawberries for his dessert.

Centre-shot, is Oliver’s lunch, which is one brick of Salmon Surprise and one of mixed Potato. His dessert for this meal was not shown, but was two bricks of Apple and Rhubarb.

At the bottom of the photos, the two bowls side-by-side have a single brick for each Jack and Oliver, of Summer Fruits – these are the fruit bases that we then add their breakfast, such as muesli, Weetabix or other basic cereals to.  Oliver is still having full-fat milk with his breakfast, whilst Jack has progressed onto semi-skimmed.  Additionally, with their breakfast, the boys will have a small pile of raisins – Jack will mix his into his breakfast whilst Oliver currently chews some, slimes others and flings the rest across the kitchen floor.

As we feed Oliver first, due to the sheer noise he makes as a young Rigby, he’s pretty much done when we’re ready to eat our meals, whether it’s breakfast, lunch or tea.  In this case, we give him more food that he can feed himself, such as cut grapes, strawberries, blueberries (his current favourite), raisins, chopped apple or pear, or even cherries, but these are a bit more tricky as we have to de-pip them first.

We are most certainly happy that they’re eating good food. Yes, some, if not a lot, gets wasted. Some gets slapped sideways onto the kitchen cupboards by an over-excited 1 year old, (Oliver, I’m looking at you here) and some just gets left.  But as we’ve got personal investment other than money in the food that they’re eating, we’re keen that they eat this first. If Jack is still wanting more food after his meal, then we’ll certainly allow him treats, knowing that he’s eaten well first.  But he’s more than aware that if he doesn’t eat his first meal, then he’ll not be getting anything else, which was a problem initially, but not any more.

Oliver is 90% mobile!

No, he doesn’t have a mobile phone (yet).

More importantly, he’s very nearly there with his walking!

He’s been able to pull himself up the sofa and sideways-walk along it for a little while now, but also in the past day or two, he’s learning to let go of something that doesn’t move and is learning to walk to other inanimate objects!

Of course, we’re able to position him and direct him to the open arms of another person awaiting his arrival, and he’ll (mostly) get there without landing on his face; but when he **lets go** of something on his own accord, in favour of getting something or going somewhere, that is actually quite amazing to watch.

It’s also worrying too, as the more these sprogs are able to move, the quicker you have to be OR the more stuff you have to have moved out of reach in advance. Or both, usually.

Fields.

The boys and I were driving over to see my parents on a quiet Sunday morning.

Oliver: “Blaa-gaah”

Jack: “Daddy, that means ‘field’.”

Me: “Oh right. So, why doesn’t Oliver just say ‘field’ then?”

…

…

Jack “Because he can’t speak our language yet.”

Genius.

Night time milk feeds

I seem to remember with Jack there being this almost invisible cut-off date at which we stopped feeding him milk by a bottle in his bedroom before putting him down to sleep each night. I don't, however, remember thinking twice about it, nor feeling any sort of loss about not doing it anymore.

This evening, it crossed my mind, whilst feeding a now-one-year old, Oliver.

As much of a chore as it is to make bottles of what I call 'plastic milk', (that is, powdered milk) and everything that goes with it, such as washing/sterilising/etc, it's actually... relaxing.

Here's what I mean to clarify that; Assuming that you can calm a screaming hungry toddler down in the dead of night which is the whole reason that you're there in the lion's den, the actual act of feeding a small, innocent and, to be fair, helpless/feeble child and to then lay them softly back into their cot ideally fast asleep, is quite gratifying.

Tonight, and no different from most nights that I feed him, Oliver was laying on my chest, face upwards, drinking from his bottle of plastic milk, eyes closed and arms open wide. His head rested on my shoulder, almost ear-to-ear, and occasionally stopping the sucking of milk, but otherwise, chomping though as though this was his first feed in weeks. Basically, his complete and utter trust/faith/love in me, as a parent, is personified right there.

And that's when I thought about it.

"Will I miss this moment?"

"Will I forget how peaceful he sounds or how relaxed he and I both are (aside from listening to the noise of moving liquid just millimetres away from my ear or constantly smelling the foulness of the previously-powder-now-stinky formula milk)?"

"Should I make more of a mental note to remember these details, for when he's older and pestering me for money for something?"

Hmm. Maybe.