The boy can RIDE!

Lack of context there, admittedly, so I’ll try to explain myself.

The boy, (Oliver), can RIDE (his bike without stabilisers)!

During the summer holidays, I’ve been determined to get Oli onto his bike and ride like Jack and the other bigger boys do, namely, without his stabilisers. He’s been fairly reluctant to begin with, but when I told him that his friend Charlie (from down our road) can ride his bike “like a big boy”, I could see that I had caught his attention.

I’ve been holding the rear of the seat and holding him up-right, but I think he’s been over-relying on my being there, to the point of not bothering to try and balance in the middle of the bike, but then as the feeling of loss of control happened, he’d let go of the handlebars and reach out for me, making the whole bike unsteady. Not really the best thing to do, but it worked for him, as I’d soon grab him and come to an abrupt stop.

But Sunday this week, we tried again, same as we have been, and this time, he just seemed to get it and understood the idea of peddling hard and staying upright, and was going quick enough to make me break out into a swift jog alongside him.

Giggling all the way, he obviously enjoyed it, we did lots more ‘lengths’ of our part of the road and he loved it. We only stopped as he’d seen that Jack was playing on a ride-on truck, and then jealousy set in. But then, and after I had put the bike back in the garage, did he go back in and ask to go again. Also, in a completely un-related topic, it was also bloomin’ hot that weekend, and so it was me that was dripping with sweat, from running alongside him.

The next trick, is for him to learn to:

look forward pay attention to what he’s about to crash into…

Madness. but very funny.

"Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies"

So, I’ve got two boys. ‘Chalk’ Rigby and ‘Cheese’ Rigby.

Jack…
Simply. Cannot. Lie.

He tries; once he's thought about it for a moment, but then messes it up. We even got thrown off of a water slide at Center Parcs because Jack ‘fessed up at the wrong moment, after I told the slide-man at the top that he’d been on it before, despite being under the funny minimum height-measuring stick by a smidgeon.  So, it was the swimming pool walk of shame, right down past all the others, each then doubting their own ability to ride.

Master Oliver, however, has definitely got the 'little boy gene' for telling porkies. Sometimes it's just over embellishment, which as adults normally happens with your mates having a pint in the pub. But this kid's certainly a ‘live wire’.

Outright and not bothered, I'll see him do something, whether it's whack Jack or throw something, and then flat-out lie about it, to my face. Then, later, he'll then believe his version of events, fictitious of course, and then we'll have a repeat argument/discussion about it. 

I always had a good imagination, and this probably helped/hindered me and my lying ability as a child (don’t check this my folks!) and this is probably just what Oli is doing. It’s just the blatant-ness of it all which is amusing, but not helpful if you need to tell him off at the same time!!  Little snot.

Growing up!

Jack is almost six and Oliver’s just had his third birthday.

Seems like they should both be older than they are, as they seem like we’ve never had a life previous to having children. Which is odd, as the time has just flown by, and sometimes I think, ‘Crikey, my YOUNGEST lad is three years old!’, making me feel older than I ought to!

There was a period of time, although I hadn’t blogged about it, that Jack and Oli weren’t getting on too well, probably about a year ago. Oliver would have just found the ability to manipulate people (as all two year olds do!) and Jack hadn’t got out properly from the jealously stage, as we would (undoubtedly) have been giving Oliver the attention that he rightly deserves as a small child, but now we’re cutting down on Jack’s time to ‘service’ Oli. So, I can well see how jealousy sets in, and I probably would have been there myself when I was that age, as we (that had younger siblings) all were.

Nowadays, they’re getting on a bit better, and it’s not so hard to see why. Oli’' has pretty much grown out of any/all of the baby-related paraphernalia and his toys are such that Jack isn’t too old for, and actually wants to play with them too. The sort of thing I’m talking about, is the action figures and castle, with horses, catapults, dragons and all that. (To be honest, it’s really good and it’s easy to play along with them, as a parent!)

Other interests that Jack has, Oli is trying to copy and that helps bring the gap between them in a little. Jack will sit and draw or colour pictures in, or even make some monstrosity of a robot from about 20,000 cardboard boxes and about 17 rolls of sellotape to hold this ‘thing’ together. Whilst he’s doing all of this, Oliver obviously wants to copy and to join in, and so is learning to hold the pens/pencils/crayons/etc and so there’s common ground forming.

The age gap between Jack and Oliver is about the same between me and my older brother, but I guess (simply as I cannot remember but my blogging abilities back then were about as good/frequent as they are now!!) that at the time of being 3 years old that’s how it is and where the fun’s at, so I suppose I would have done the same.

In terms of … patterns … and interest and …. abilities, I can see a little of how Oliver will progress and grow, through seeing how Jack has. The whole point to this blog-thing was because I had zero experience of being around young children, to see what they do, how they learn, and all that. So, taking Jack how he is now, which is to say that he’s genuinely a very bright and intelligent young lad with lots of thoughts and ideas, and then taking Oliver, who is starting to show signs these traits, too… it’s quite rewarding/exciting/interesting/amazing all at once.

What I mean, is that we’ve ALWAYS spent a lot of time with Jack, whether it’s reading, talking to him and explaining things that he’s asked about (sometimes in a little too much detail!). From this invested time and effort, you don’t see day-to-day the differences made or the huge leaps forward in Jack’s growth and development. But when you see that Oliver is pretty much where Jack was three years ago, we know that all of the time that we have spent, and will continue to spend, with Oliver is so very worth it.

Just to expand on that a little, I can’t stress enough the difference it has made to Jack’s reading and writing because of the breadth of his speaking vocabulary, as words that he’s come across in reading and/or writing, he knows and doesn’t give them a second thought, and more importantly, we’re not bogged down each time we pick up a book and have to explain every other word in a sentence. But that’s not to say he’s a big-head and knows everything, but he knows that when we come across something new, he’ll ask what it is and we’ll explain to the point of being able to comprehend it to a certain degree.

I find the best time to talk to either Jack or Oliver is when we’re in the car alone together, going somewhere. We’re both strapped to the seat and not going anywhere without the other, and seeing the same things, to bring the same conversation. So, it’s easy to talk about buses and trucks and lorries and clouds and trees and so on.

Anyway, I think I’ve gone off-piste a little, but there’s some reality behind my idle ramblings, hopefully.

“I’ve got something to tell you”

I wanted to make note of this, as it made me really smile and don’t want to forget it. Ever.

I was just walking out of the front door to get into the car, and Claire and Oliver were in the hallway, and just as I crossed the threshold, Oli says “Dad, I’ve got something to tell you.”

Intrigued, I looked at Claire, expecting some form of a ‘play-along’ look from her, but instead she had no idea of what he was about to say either.

Oli came towards me, and held offered his hands out, as if to draw me closer and whisper something.

I went along with it. I bend down, lent forward, offered up my right ear, half expecting either a soft little kiss, or a shout/scream in my lug-hole. But instead, I got this, (AND BEARING IN MIND HE’S STILL TWO YEARS OLD!):

“It’s nearly Christmas time.”

I don’t know where it came from, why he said it, or why it needed to have been said just then, like that. But there it was. And do you know what? He ain’t daft - it is nearly Christmas time, and all!

Give with one hand… and snatches back with the other!

This is in reference to my youngest lad, Oliver.

Delightful little chap, he is.

Funny, polite and quite imaginative, despite not being three years old yet.

Out of the blue (and yes, totally unprompted) he cuddled me and told me: “You’re the best, dad.”  (Not “you’re the best dad”, but more “Dad – you’re the best”.

And this was a lovely thing to hear from your child. Made me feel really appreciated, wanted, loved and blah blah blah.

Except, LITERALLY two minutes later, he wanted to get something that he knew he wasn’t allowed and when I said he couldn’t have it, he ripped me. Broke me in two, with the following:

“You’re not the best anymore”.

He gives. And then he snatches it all back again.

I think Oli is a fish.

Claire has been taking Oli to swimming lessons from about the same age as Jack, probably at about 15-20 weeks old.

They go to the Calm-A-Baby pool in Peterborough, where the heated pool is absolutely baking hot whilst you’re sitting on the side waiting, but lovely once you’re in.  The children love it, and best of all, they don’t go blue due to the coldness!

Anyway, there seems to have been a turning point in Oliver’s swimming, as he is like a little fish! He can hold his breathe and kick like mad under water, which actually gives him forward propulsion! He can get things from the bottom of the pool, providing you give him that fatherly shove, of course.

He likes to jump in, and splash around like any 2 year old little monster, but it always makes me laugh to see him when we’re both underwater; when he realises that you’re looking at him, he looks straight back with the biggest, cheesiest grin ever.

He just loves it.

Until you want to get out. Then it’s a nightmare.

Jack thinks he's 'Bad'

A while back, Jack had a liking of Elvis Presley's music, particularly the Suspicious Minds song. In an attempt to divert him away from the crooner's tunes, I told Jack about Michael Jackson, thinking that I must have an album laying around somewhere.

Or at least I thought I did. Turns out, the 'Bad' album I thought I had probably perished ages ago when the cassette tape dried up or something, as we'd expect in the age of digital downloads.

Anyway, a couple of quid and a day's delivery later, and a CD of Michael Jackson's Bad album was delivered by those delightful chums at eBay. Since then, it's been the number one CD in the mini-CD player in Jack's bedroom.

The track of choice was 'Bad', as we had watched the YouTube video whilst waiting for delivery, but had soon introduced him to the 'Smooth Criminal' track too, as well as its video, as I remember watching that as a child too.

He likes it so much, that he even danced to them during a recent street party, where the karaoke man was presented with the CD by Jack!

First contact…

It’s bothered me for a while about how the boys are going to respond to the fact that I’ve been writing a blog, with them as the core topic.  Would they be intrigued, bothered or embarrassed about it being about them?

Well, tonight, unexpectedly, I found out, with Master Jack as the one asking questions.

He’s been reading a book about a 14 year old that has circumnavigated the globe, which was a fascinating book in itself, but there were references within the book about ‘blogging’, as he’d kept his notes and memoirs online.  Claire had to explain to Jack what a blog is, understandably, but also then mentioned that he geek-o dad had been keeping notes himself.

So tonight, instead of the now-traditional bedtimes stories as written by Charles Dickens, we picked out and read a handful of Brett Rigby Blog Posts. Hardly comparable, but made me proud/happy that someone was interested to ask about it!

We started with the very first blog post, introducing the world to my inner-brain, set the scene a little, explained a few Brett-devised things, such as his project codename, and then skipped some of the boring pre-birth stuff, as this seemed a little dreary to him. And to me, by now!

Obviously, being a boy and now fie years old at that, he bored quite quickly of the occasional blog post I picked out, as they were interesting to me, but not him.  Unless of course they happened to mention the words ‘wee’ or ‘poo’ and the like, as (being me) I obviously wrote them with some sarcastic humour… to which he loved.

We read the first post that I had written in 2014, where at this point, Oliver was well and truly in our little lives for sure, but this particular post was about Jack and how I’d forgotten how young he still was at that age, and I suppose still is, relatively-speaking. Despite it being written six months ago, though, nothing’s changed in terms of Jack’s sleeping abilities and is always awake before 6am and fighting with us as to why he’s not allowed to go downstairs by himself.

Very conveniently for Claire and I, I read the ‘Amazon-Jack’ blog post to him, as this sort of re-iterated what we’ve been trying to get across to Jack about his fantastic reading abilities, and that it comes as a result of some hard work on Claire’s part, as well as some very heavy credit-card spending, I might add!! I suppose that as he’s not know any different and is probably too young to be interested in comparisons between himself and his peers, he thinks that it’s ‘normal’, which I know it is, but he’s able to read signs on shops now, ‘help’ me navigate when driving by reading directions on roadsigns and so on.  What I am trying to say (badly) is that I feel he and his reading is a product of invested time and hard work on our part, which I know that we are both very proud of, knowing that whatever he does in life, where-ever he goes, he’s always going to read something, and that we did that for him, as opposed to ignore him and let him watch TV until 10pm. 

Anyway, I digress, he read in that blog post about how his reading bands jumped from one to the next, and again and again and it sort of looked for a moment that he might have twigged that reading is probably the best thing in the world, and the smile on his little face might have suggested that he liked it – which I know he does. 

Showing this blogging-lark to him for the first time also highlighted to Claire, Jack and I as to how much I had initially written, but had subsequently slowed right down on since then. Obviously, I have my reasons for not being able to write as much as I could have done, but it also reminded me that I do actually like doing this, and that maybe I ought to write more. Especially given that Oliver will discover this one day and will also want to know about things related to him as well as all of us, so had better get writing, thus adding to the mental weight of being a blogger!!

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.

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.

Garden sprinkler + baby = very wet baby!

Simple maths, I know, but a combination that was very funny to watch!

We’ve had grass put down in the garden and so we’ve got the garden hose out to water it (lots) and last night after I got back from work, Claire had let Jack outside to play before his bath-time and he had wandered over to where the sprinkler was spraying water.  It’s probably worth noting here that he was only wearing his white baby vest and a nappy (of course, as Naked Toddlers Make a Mess!)

As he’d be poking around with the sprinkler, the direction of it changed and he caught a bit of the spray.  As I mentioned in the Confidence++ post, he’s getting more and more brave and so kept going back for more, despite being ‘bitten’ by the sprinkler!

At one point, he was leaning almost directly over it looking downwards at it whilst the sprinkler sprayed off to one side, and then as it came back, he copped a real eye-full and was almost instantly drenched.

At this point, Claire was sitting on the doorstep laughing whilst I was trying to get a £250 prize by capturing it all on the video camera! (Hmm, one day maybe I should actually submit that to ‘You’ve Been Framed’!)

The end result was a very soggy Jack – standing there in his now see-through vest, dripping from head to toe in cold tap water!

Although the weather outside was still quite warm, he started shivering until we wrapped him up in a big bath towel and whisked him off inside.  But, you can see that he was absolutely enjoying himself by the big beaming smile plastered all across his little face.  And that he whined when we brought him in! Kids, eh?

Biking up the road!

A while ago, we bought Jack a funky-looking trike – bright colours, bigger wheels, the lot.  It took ages to put it together and then he didn’t use it, as it was a struggle to climb on to it, because of it’s size in comparison to him.  It’s really good, as it’s even got a handle on the back for us to push with, but it also twists too, which controls the steering – fantastic!

Anyway, now he’s a bit bigger and a lot more sure of himself, he’s able to climb onto the trike much easier than before, even though it still looks like a struggle to me!  So, we’ve been pushing him around the inside of the house, and was ok with it, but not entirely sure, as straight lines can be a bit boring.

So today, to liven things up a little, I put Jack’s shoes and coat on him, sat him on his trike and strapped him in (using the built-it seat belt – safety first and all that). He looked a bit worried as I pushed him out the front door (i.e. down the step!!), but he looked a little better when we started to go around the back of the house on the brick patio, occasionally off-roading on the grass for a bit more excitement.

Making full use of his baby-sign language, the two hands come together to make the expression of ‘more’, meaning “don’t stop now, Dad!”.

All went well, so I upped the ante a little, and I pushed him out through the gate and onto the front garden, making circles around my car and various stones for a bit of extra ‘spice’, as it corners quite quickly.   Again, the baby-hands come out to say ‘more’, but this time, he’s pointing down the road, as if to say, “Take me that way, peasant!”.

And so, I did.

We were off up the road, made a quick u-turn on the pavement a good stone’s throw away from our house, and then back, stopping occasionally to check the expression on his face, as although we’ve simply gone a little further than before, the stones on the pavement shake the plastic-wheeled trike, but he’s still held on.  When I’ve checked his face, he’s got a beaming smile on, from ear to ear with his eyes wide open! He loves it.

‘More, MORE!’, as the hands come together with a bit more force.  Back past our house, to the same distance the other way, again, beaming smiles whilst the wind rushes through his little blonde hair, as by now we’re walking at a decent pace, too.

I originally put the seat-belt on, as a means of slowing him down in case he wanted to get off, buying me enough time to grab him before he stacks himself on the floor in a heap.  The fact is, he didn’t even need it, as he didn’t want to get off – he was holding the bright yellow grips firmly in each hand, letting go to wave at the occasional artic lorry that goes chugging by.

Incidentally, it’s a bit weird when your toddler son waves at an articulated lorry that’s coming towards us as the road bends through the village, only to see the cab-filling-driver inside waving back, floppy-armed mimicking the way that Jack was waving at him! 

Embarrassed, I waved back, smiling as if to say, “Erm, yeah, hi.” 

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!

Swimming in the ‘tub!

On the bank holiday weekend, we went to my parents’ house for a BBQ, with my sister, Emma, and her other half, Vincent.

Before we left the house, Claire asked if I thought it was an idea to take my swimming trunks, as well as Jack’s swim-nappy and us both get in the hot tub over there. I’m not normally fussed about hot tubs, but it sounded like a good idea, as when Claire, Jack and I went swimming in Ely before, it wasn’t as warm in there as Claire had sold it to me.

We almost forgot about the whole thing, but I soon got my milk-bottle-white legs out and my not-so-hairy chest, and donned the shorts in true summer style… all for Jack’s benefit, of course.

Once we were in, Jack loved it in there, as it was already set to be about 38 degrees C, which was a stroke of luck – we normally run Jack’s bath to be about 37, so he probably didn’t notice the difference.

Actually, it worked out really well, as being a hot tub, it was plenty big enough for the pair of us (and there wasn’t any other screaming and crying kids in there distracting him, like there are in the pool) but it wasn’t too big that it was an effort.

My mum had bought these little plastic toys that suck up the bath water and when you squeeze them, they shoot out the water, so we brought them along too, seeing as we’re technically in a bath. Needless to say, it wasn’t Jack that found that they could reach his grandma sitting a good distance away. Ahem.

The kiddies’ pool that Claire takes Jack to in Ely gets deeper towards the end, but even a short-wheel-based person could stand up straight in there, which is fine if you’re a nipper, but the adults all get cold, as it’s difficult to stay under the water so you get cold really quick. Minor point, but… you know.

Anyway, My family assumed the role of the paparazzi in my absence and so I also got a taste as to what I’ve been subjecting visitors to our house with!!

The weather was just brilliant though – easily the warmest day we’ve had so far this year. Just glad that it was over a weekend, and not during the week when I get to see how nice a day it is from inside the office at work.

Laughing-boy Jack

The other day, I said something to Claire about Jack’s new trick which is giggling when being tickled, but she didn’t believe me. But then trying to make him laugh again that evening was a no-no.

Anyway, I got home from work today and Claire laid Jack on the bed upstairs and I was with him playing and tickling him and he suddenly burst into laughing! I wasn’t trying to make him do it, he just did it!

He did it a few times when I was tickling him shoulders and around his neck! Claire really wanted to make him laugh but couldn’t!

Made us smile anyway. We thought about trying to get it on camera to put on the website, but he’s asleep now, so maybe another day.