Boys will be… boys!

There’s no denying it, boys is troubles.

If they’re not fighting over some silly toy or which TV programme to watch, they’re arguing with us, the wife and I.

It doesn’t necessarily matter what I’m actually talking about, as you, the reader, can simply pick an element of ‘life’, and use that in the imagination part of this blog post. For instance, they’ll argue and scream blue-murder about something as trivial as whether there’s too much water in their cup, or the food is too hot/cold, or whether there’s too much or too little on their plate to eat.

Ignoring the fact that whatever they are actually arguing about, the ‘problem’ itself could be rectified immediately, but they insist on dragging things out, as tired little boys do.

All of this arguing, to’ing and fro’ing, has made me remember-back to how things were when I was their ages, and how life was different in some ways.  It’s difficult to stop one’s self from this, and I’m sure I’m only remembering the bits I want to remember, but nonetheless, I’m still dragging myself back all those year, for the simple sake of comparison.

Yes, we all argued, me and my brother, Russell, or my and my sister, Emma. Or Emma and Russell, or any other combination of the three of us against each other.  We fought, screamed and argued our way through the foundation years of our lives, which has inadvertently become the Brett Rigby Benchmark, used for the comparisons of life mentioned above.

We were probably no different to how Jack and Oliver are now, in that we, too, were very spoilt little children who had almost EVERYTHING we could dream for and more, and had no idea about the values of things… as children don’t.

Our parents worked. They bought us lots of things, and we didn’t go without.  They’re in the same boat.

But the other thing I keep reminding myself about, is that we’ve not done this whole ‘parenting’ thing before, and there’s no manual that helps.  As an IT geek, there are rules for making things work; but life ain’t that easy. And so, we’re trying to find out how to do this for ourselves. 

By and large, we’re doing ok with it – not amazingly, like people dream and envisage whilst the lady is still carrying, but ok.  We have our good days, but we’re probably outweighed with our days of late, in shouting at an angry, argumentative (spoilt) child. 

Of course, we want to do the best we can, and Claire and I are always talking about something that’s recently happened, and what we can do as parents to fix it, or make sure it doesn’t happen again, etc. We spend nights awake talking about this stuff, but sometimes I think it’s also a little of Jack/Oliver learning for themselves, too.  They’re learning the same boundaries that I did as a child; they’re learning that bad things mean good things are sent away for a bit; they’re learning who they are too, just as I did.

So, maybe boys will be boys, but we’re trying to help them learn from the mistakes we made in the past too, and sometimes, they need to make mistakes for themselves in the first place.

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!!

Little Oli isn’t so… little!

He’s growing ever so much, its crazy.

It was Oliver’s two year old birthday at the beginning of January. TWO YEARS OLD!

He’s not only walking and talking, he’s singing, dancing and running circles around us all. He’s fixated with Mr Tumble and loves his ‘spotty bag’ and his Tumble Tap (an electronic game similar to that which Justin Fletcher uses on the Something Special TV programme on Cbeebies).

Oliver is much more interested in the sign language from the Something Special TV programme, joining in as or when it comes on telly. 

Physically, he’s made of a lot thicker stuff than Jack ever was – I don’t mean that horribly at all, but he’s got a lot more meat on him. And taking cues from Jack, he’s ever so confident too. But as he’s still quite young, he loves to be ticked and rolled about, or jumping all over the bed.

Little monster.

But as I said in the last blog post, he’s not as good at sleeping as Jack (and their mum!!) is.  We’ve taken to sleeping on the floor beside his cot, to keep him in his bed at night time, which is not the most comfortable but needs must, I guess.  We have been sleeping on triple-folder duvets to pad-out the floor, but last night was quite bad, especially as he started waking at 23:00 and then peaked at 01:30 this morning when singing along to the Mr Tumble teddy in his cot. (Not a good idea that one!)

But when he’s awake, he’s so funny – he takes no stick from Jack or the dog, or from Claire and I, come to think about it!!  He can talk enough to tell us exactly what he wants to do, and when he wants it.

Little monster.

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.

Car! Ca! Ka! Kar! Kah! – Part 2

In the first post about this, I said how we’d got the various photos from Google Images of a car, a motorbike, etc and printed them out on 7”x5” photo-cards, laminated them and stuck them around the playroom as flashcards.

Well, actually, he’s not half bad! And, that’s not me or Claire making it up.

Here’s my proof that he knows what things are called, but not necessarily know how to pronounce their names.

If I carry Jack into the middle of the room and hold him whilst I kneel down on the floor, I can ask him where the car is, namely the bright red Ferrari which is in the centre under the window. Easy, really, as he knows these things that drive around outside are called cars, and that’s the one that most resembles a car.

But then, if I ask him where the van is, he’ll look around, seeing the motorbike and the double-decker bus that are to the left of the car, ignore them, swing his head around to the right of the car, sometimes looking around me, to see a white Ford Transit van on the wall perpendicular to the window-wall. Then, you can see his eyes lock onto it, like a bird of prey seeing a mouse, and whilst his smile forms on his face, his hand is already up with his finger extending the best he can, pointing to the van.

Ok, I could have trained him to do that. So, he knows where the car and the van are, but then if you ask where the motorbike is, you can see his expression on his face change, as if to say, “ooh, I know that one… where is it?” and then scan the images again, looking for the Orange County Chopper motorbike photo.

Between the car and the van is the photo of the Land Rover Defender, which I’m calling a Truck, and he can find that too. To the left of the motorbike, is the double-decker bus and he can do that one too.

The others, namely the helicopter, aeroplane, tractor and Eddie Stobart artic lorry, haven’t had much attention from us yet. But in terms of early progress, I think he’s doing great! Claire still gets confused sometimes as to what they’re called! (Joke!)

Admittedly, if you were to ask him what any of them are called, they’re all cars, but I’m working on that!

Car! Ca! Ka! Kar! Kah!

However he’s saying it, he’s saying it when pointing at cars. And vans. Buses… and articulated lorries too.

But he seems to think that things that drive by outside the window of the house are called ‘cars’ and although he’s wrong on a technicality, he’s not a million miles away really.

So, as he’s trying to say words that he can’t pronounce, I thought I’d help him to be clear what we’re talking about with flash-cards of different vehicles.

Claire’s already printed out a load of photos that are laminated as flash-cards that Jack’s got in his playroom upstairs, but hers are of family members that he may not see everyday and that we can get him to point at, etc. I video’d him standing at the door-gate in the playroom, whilst encouraging him to come over and pick put his Great Granny from the scattered photos on the floor, and although you might not believe me here, he did exactly that. Straight over to her photo, no messing, from a selection of about 8 photos of other people. He’s small and dribbley but he’s not daft.

Obviously, one vehicle from each category, without straying into vehicles such as those two wheel contraptions that you stand on and lean forward/backward/etc.

I’ve printed them out in full colour, all on 7”x5” glossy photo cards and will laminate them ready for Jack to have in his playroom, maybe even stuck to the wall around the room.

We’ll find out how he gets on…