It seems such a long time ago…

I have been re-reading some of the very first blog posts that I had written to get the ball rolling on this whole ‘blogging’ thing, such as ‘What’s the story so far?’ or some of the posts leading up to the ‘FINALLY – He’s been born!’ post, and ultimately, ‘The Package has arrived..!’, which I’m really glad I wrote about as now I’d struggled to remember that day in such detail!!

It all seems like such a long time ago since ‘The First Night’, and even though it’s only 7 or so months ago, it is if you consider what’s happened in the mean-time. Jack has not only been born, but has learnt an awful lot about the world already, including that gravity exists each time he tried to move and that crying usually results in a mummy or a daddy to come running in.

As I said all that time ago, I wanted to start a blog to '”take note on the joys of becoming a father for the first time…” and all that, and I’d like to think that I have in some ways done exactly that.

I have just looked on the bottom right, beneath my mug-shot to see that this will be blog post 101, which I’m also surprised about, as I didn’t think I’d get much time to do this, but also I didn’t think I’d have the patience and concentration to do this, as I tend to get caught up in the new and interesting stuff to do, and sometimes let the stuff I’m meant to be doing drag on a little. Something Claire and my folks might express an opinion on!

People have read some of the posts on here and commented about how nice an idea it is, to record some of the details that might have been forgotten. Admittedly, I haven’t blogged about every little detail about what’s happened, but I’ve tried my best so far, and it is tough to do this. I’m slightly worried that Jack will not like this in the future; I don’t know how I’d feel about it if my folks had recorded a public diary like this. So if you’re reading this in 10 or 15 years Jack, the blog wasn’t actually for you, it was for me, you just happened to be the topic of conversation!!

As most of you might know, ages ago, I created a parallel site to this blog, which is full of almost all of the photos and videos that we have of Jack to date, give or taken the odd day recently. Having a public site (this one) and a private site (that one) has made it easier really to divide the world; I wanted friends and family to see our little man growing up and how much he had changed without making our photos public to the world. Although, admittedly, I didn’t envisage having quite as many photos of him, as we now have 2998 photos in our Juniper folder, now consuming 7.5GB of disk space. Yes, we still make the occasional reference to the codename! But thinking about it, if we’ve taken that many photos in just 7 months, that’s an average of 428 per month. So by the time he’s a year old, we’ll have over 5,000 photos, and by the time he’s ten years old, we’ll have 50,000 photos! I just wonder if Microsoft’s SkyDrive will allow me to hold that many photos online!!

If you get bored at work or even at home, have a look at some of the earlier posts – yes, some of the things I have written make me cringe a bit and others make me look like a spoon, but you’re still reading it so it can’t be that bad!

Swimming Lessons

Claire’s work had a minor emergency, enough for her to have to go in for the afternoon, so I booked a half-day off work to look after Jack. Although, this wasn’t a normal ‘looking after Jack-day’, as Claire had already planned on taking Jack to the start of the new season’s swimming lessons.

I will admit, I really wasn’t looking forward to this – the thought of being the only bloke very-nearly-naked in a pool with a load of mums and their babies, and singing songs to do anything, much like the cast of Grease. Hmmm.

Anyway, we went, although that was a bit close. Jack got really upset around 15:30 ish and I hadn’t managed to get any food into him, nor very much booby-juice, which turned out, that he was just tired. He needed to sleep and get to it quick-style. I got him into the car at 16:00, to make the 15 minute journey to Huntingdon, to be there for 17:00 – yes, an hour to do a quarter-hour journey, but this was tactical; I spoke to Claire and she said about taking him earlier and leaving him to sleep in the car before going into the pool. Good plan, worked like a charm, as Jack was out-cold just after getting out of town, and so I managed to drive around a bit, get fuel, and find the place – all of this, and was still early, which was good.

After having to chuck a woman and her baby out of the men’s changing room, I got to work in getting Jack into his ‘swim-nappy’ – this is basically a nappy that you pull-on like pants, but is all nappy-like everywhere else. Out of the packet, I got the one with a picture of Nemo on it, as he was going swimming and all. (I did search online for a photo of a Nemo swim-nappy, but to no avail – sorry.)

I had to put Jack back into his car-seat, that I took in with us, as otherwise I’d never be able to get changed myself, as the little blighter has learnt to crawl…!

The session was a half-hour swimming lesson for the child, but it was probably just as much of a lesson for the mums/dads, as it as least showed me that Jack could be dunked and dipped in the water, and not to be molly-cuddled and protected like your instincts tell you to do.

We stood on the side of the pool waiting for the previous group to finish, and I was starting to wonder what I have let myself in for; in the pool was a lady, dressed in a wet-suit, leading the group of about 6 or 7 mums (no blokes) and their babies, some of which who were very small. The pool itself wasn’t massive and is only 0.6m at it’s deepest but, as it’s part of a school for special needs children, it was really hot in there. And for a group of mums (and dads) like that, it was absolutely perfect. The lady was singing and splashing the water around, showing the mums what to do with their baby, demonstrating with a dummy baby that was curiously left to float in a worrying fashion when not needed.

At this point, some of the other mums came over and said hello, starting their conversations off with ‘Is that Jack..?’ It sounds like he’s a celebrity or something, but the truth was that they are mums that were at last season’s sessions with Claire and had remembered him, but even that was nice.

The previous group faded out of the water and the mums in our group wasted no time in getting in. I soon followed and went for the back corner of the pool, towards the deeper part, although I was crouching so that my head was out of the water to match the other mums! (I didn’t want to stand up straight and make myself even more noticeable!!)

The lady in the wet-suit brought us into a circle and sang a song, which then, when repeated, went around each child in the group, saying hello and welcome to the group. A bit weird, but was quite nice in that it welcomed each child in turn, but also spent a moment with the child seeing if he/she would dunk their head or blow bubbles in the water, etc. I could repeat the words to it off the top of my head, as it’s one of those that just seem to lodge themselves in your mind and find myself reciting it even now..! Bah!

Once the circle-work was over, everybody dissipated to their own little area of the pool and then it seemed like it was only really Jack and myself in there, occasionally listening to the new instruction from the lady in the suit. There was a bit of swooshing Jack around the pool in my arms to a song, ending with you having to kiss and praise him for doing so well, to which he looked at me as if to say ‘yeah, what about it, dad?’.

She broke out the funky-looking purple and yellow floats, and got us to sit our babies on them and drive them across the water in speed-boat style, as well as lay them on the float on their bellies and get them to paddle in a body-board style. She then also tried to get the mums (and me) to lay the float on the side of the pool, sit the baby on top and then yank the float into the water, submerging the baby. Yeah… it was only really me that tried that one, and even then, I was a bit cautious about actually ‘dunking’ the poor child, although I don’t know why – maybe I’m worried that he hasn’t learnt to stop breathing under water or something!

A bit more singing and splashing later, and she’s getting us to teach our babies how to hold onto the rail around the pool, and then how to climb safely out of a pool, ending up laying on the deck in line with the pool edge. He’s probably a bit young to worry about doing this, as at 7 months old, there’s not a lot of chance of him being far from one of us!

She brought us into the centre of the pool again in a circle style and thanked us for coming along this week, which is when I noticed the next group on the pool-side waiting to get in and have their lesson. Admittedly, in their group, there was a few more blokes than in mine!

But in all, Jack was really good. He didn’t cry or moan at all throughout the half-hour session, so he obviously liked it. And so did I, it was a good couple of hours spent, even if he did cry half the way home!

I’m glad, though, that Claire had booked him in for these lessons – Claire used to swim a lot when she was younger, but even so, getting Jack in the water when he is young has got to be good for him, by way of exercise and all that for when he’s older. I didn’t spend that much time when I was young playing in swimming pools – I can swim, but I don’t really get excited about swimming length after length, or anything like that!

First night out…

…for Jack and for us!

For the first time in Jack’s entire life, we went out and left him with someone else. All night.

Basically, we left the dog and Jack with his Grandparents whilst we went out with ten pin bowling and for food with our friends, Phil and Lucy.

Not-so-basically, it was a bit of a wonder if he’d be ok, as he’s been a bit of a wuss recently with regards to his mum. Recently, he’s had a cold that some horrid person gave him (me), so he’s been sleeping badly too, as in he’s been waking up a lot and crying when he normally sleeps right through the night. So, in the back of our minds, we weren’t sure if he was going to cry their house down all night whilst we slept in peace and quiet!

Plus, on the other side of things, we weren’t sure how we’d feel about him being out all night, as new parents ‘n all. So, as new as it was for Jack staying out, it was for us too.

As it turned out, it went really well, for all of us!

We left Jack at Claire’s folks’ house at 6pm, putting him to bed just before we left. Claire left her mum a ‘do this at this time’ sheet, telling them when to feed him, when to give him his milk, etc in the following morning. It might sound a little odd to do that, but it worked out really well, as it gave her folks a cheat-sheet to keeping Jack quiet/happy in the morning, from 6am onwards! Claire left me a cheat-sheet before when Jack and I spent the day together, and it makes it sooooo much easier to be expecting to feed him at a given time, rather than to try and ‘read’ him and see what he wants. Claire’s definitely the expert on Jack and she really does know him and his moods, timings etc. She’s dead good.

Anyway, we were almost putting bets on as to the time of the night that we get told that had woken up… but he’s been sleeping really well for the past couple of days, so in theory, he should be ok.

As I said earlier, Claire and I went out and met Phil and Lucy at the Bowling venue and later went out for a meal at a Beefeater restaurant, which was all good. We still couldn’t be out all night (not that we ever did before, really) because Claire is still expressing Booby-Juice for Jack, so she had to do her pumping when we got back.

But, getting back to an empty house without the baby and the dog, was brilliant. It was almost like we had stepped back 2 years or so before all this happened.

Having said that, it was more of a novelty that we were by ourselves; we did miss the fact that Jack, and the dog even, weren’t in the house and weren’t there in the morning, making the usual noise and commotion, etc.

Jack seemed happy enough and Claire’s folks enjoyed having him. He did wake up at 6am exactly (which I’m still trying to work out how he knows what time it is!!) and they’ve been entertaining him all morning until Claire went over there at around 11-ish. (I had to go out this morning) but he seemed like it was ok and everything.

Good fun all round then?

Uh oh – he’s mobile… nearly!

Yes, that’s right. Young Jack is able to get about under his own steam, which is a bit weird as up until now, he’s tended to stay where we’ve left him.

In the mornings, we have been laying Jack on our bed and one of us has been reading stories to him whilst the other gets showered and dressed etc. But now, the stories are a little broken up by the catching of Jack as he wriggles towards the edge of the bed!

He’s really funny to watch, as it’s more of a commando-crawl-under-barbed-wire-and-netting-on-an-assault-course than a run-of-the-mill baby-crawl-across-the-floor-towards-his-toys routine. Especially as he’s looking more and more like Bam Bam Rubble..!

Also, today, when I have got back from work, Claire made a point that Jack has been jabbering all day. Not just the usual girly-sounding squeals that he’s always done, but total nonsense-waffle-jabber, as though he’s talking to someone. Which is strange how yesterday when I was at home all day, I don’t remember him doing anything like that, but today, he’s all motor mouth! Must be a Rigby then…

Bad night

It was. Really.

Jack has not had the best of days today, partly due to the cold that I lovingly gave him, but also because of his teeth (we think!).

Claire said yesterday that she found a tooth coming through in Jack’s gums, but today, she’s sure that it’s ever-so-slightly through, which might be why the last day or two he’s been how he has. Looking more closely (as he’s given us more chance as he’s had his mouth open slightly whilst crying… lots) it appears that there may be a couple more coming through at the same time, but not before this first one.

Anyway, so: he’s got a cold, he’s teething, and then possibly earache as result of the toothache. Either way, he has cried more today than I can remember for a long while.

We’ve given him Calpol (children’s medicine) to help with things, and it really does work… when it kicks in. I just wish we had given him a bit more before he went to bed last night, as he was awake crying (loudly) every 2 hours throughout the night… which was fun for him and us.

He’s had some more Calpol today, and has been much better; he’s still had his moments, but I think that we’re starting to learn when would be a good time to give him some, as yesterday we may have been a little too late in the scheme of things, meaning that he’s already got himself in such a state that it’s hard to calm him down easily.

Hopefully, he’ll sleep a little better tonight, and hopefully, so will we!!

He’s unwell, and it’s all my fault…

No, seriously, Jack isn’t well, in that he has his first ever cold. And yes, I gave it to him.

I don’t feel good about it, but it’s happened. It came on this morning; his nose just started dribbling as much as his mouth normally does, except this nose-dribbling-thing wasn’t normal. He also started acting a little more grumpy than he does normally, not drinking as much booby-juice as he normally would, and not wanting any of the food that his mum has spent so long making for him. Recently, he’s been having about 800-900 mls of milk plus food, but today, he was well down on that number, having around 550 mls by the time he went to bed, around after 6pm, crying, I might add.

He also has his first tooth looking like it might shine through, which might be adding to things. He had a bit of pain-relief, but it takes a little while to work, so the poor little guy had to fight through it for a while. Or fall sleep. Either way, he had to stop crying, which he eventually did.

We decided that we’d wake him up to give him more booby-juice before the night was out, otherwise he could be a problem in the night. So, his mum went upstairs to try and give him a little more and he’s ended up drinking about 200 mls – much more that I thought he would…! So, he was hungry, and, since he’s calmed down (as he’s been asleep for a couple of hours and not crying like he was earlier), he was much more amenable to topping-up his milk levels.

Hopefully, it’ll be enough to see him through the night, as if he wakes up, we’re waking up too, which I’m not looking forward to…

Time has flown by!

Just a quick post to say that it’s August 7th today, which means that the 4th August was Jack’s unofficial half-birthday! (as in, he’s now 6 months old!)

We didn’t have a half-birthday cake, nor did we get him to blow-out half a candle – we’ll save that for when he’s a full year old! - but, nonetheless, he’s still a whole 6 months-old already! Time literally has flown by! It seems funny to say, but it seems like a million years ago during the days when we didn’t have him.

I know, I’ve heard new parents say that before, and I groaned when they said it. The only benefit you have, dear reader, is that you don’t have to worry about me hearing you say it!!

He’s doing really well though – he’s not crawling yet, but he doesn’t seem like he’ll be long at it!

He’s also taken a shine to the Sky remote… not for it’s purpose in life of changing what noise-and-pictures comes out of the big box in the corner of the room, but more to press buttons (as the red light appears at the top of the remote) and shove as much of the thing in his mouth as he can. Claire was going through the ‘Planner’ on the Sky box, asking me about what tv-programmes that I had recorded – turns out, Jack had been having a go at recording things too… Shame it wasn’t anything interesting!!