Distractions

Bit of a wide-ranging topic/title, but still quite appropriate, and here’s why:

Jack is getting to that age whereby he’s listening to what you’re saying, and although he can’t talk back, he pretty much knows what’s going on.

He’s able to point, or at the very least ‘stare’ at various objects in the room that you ask him about, such as the clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen, the telly on the sideboard, where his high-chair is, and so on. And they’re things that he understands what you’re talking about and will move to look for them.

These objects in the room have come in quite handy when he’s been having a tantrum or not eating his food, distracting him from what he was doing and allowing you a moment’s breathe to win the fight. Dirty tactics? Maybe. Does it work? Mostly.

On the other hand, there are those other distractions in the house that take Jack’s focus away from what Claire and I want him to concentrate on. The main culprit for this happens to be our friendly pooch, Alfie, who must know when to come marching into the kitchen when we’re trying to feed Jack, or stand there whimpering by the front door wanting to go out and bark at something. Jack is quite taken by Alfie and we’re really glad that they’re not scared of each other, etc, but when you’re trying to get things done first thing in the morning before getting ready yourself to go to work, it’s not the best of help you could expect from the dog.

In terms of me, this blog site and distractions, I’ve had a little too many of them myself recently. (Hence the radio-silence on here and then all of a sudden a burst of activity!) I think it’s too easy to let something like blogging slip, especially when tired after getting up at silly-o’clock in the morning with Jack and then going to work, etc, etc. Excuses, I know, but I know I enjoy writing these posts, so I’ll try to make a conscious effort!!

Maybe another problem, is that we’ve started an internal blog at work and I think it’s fair to say I’ve contributed to it enough recently, and maybe that’s taken away my blogging concentration-quota recently, (or at least the desire to blog at home), despite the topics being totally separate.

In addition to all of this, the actual amount of spare time I have is significantly reduced; something that I was fully aware would happen, and I’ve ‘tried’ to cater for it, but it’s not until you literally have *no* spare time that you appreciate it. So, when I do get a little spare time, I’ve got work/projects that I want to get on and do, and this ‘playtime’ comes mostly at about 8pm – 10pm.

I’m not moaning or complaining about any of this, it’s just that I think that this is a key area of being a parent that I think is worth highlighting for those who have not yet had the joys of being a parent. Maybe this is why parents look forward to shipping their children out when they’re old enough to move out, as the spare time factor returns? Only another 18 years left then…

The snow is falling…

Snow. Great when you’re inside looking out, but horrible when you’re out in it.

The last time it snowed here, was on the 5th February, the day after Jack was born. Why do I remember that? Well, that was the day that the nice policeman closed the road that took me to the hospital, and my dad ended up taking me later on his 4x4 truck.

I just had to go outside and stop the side gate banging around in the wind, and that was quite bad. It appears to be settling too, which might mean it stands a chance of causing havoc tomorrow, seeing as we seem to fall apart at the sight of snow here in the UK.

December already??

It sounds strange to say, but it really doesn’t feel like it should be December already. The weeks and months have disappeared; Jack is now 10 months old and his first Christmas is literally just around the corner, adding weight to they “they grow up fast” argument.

So, what’s happened in the past month since I last blogged? Lots, but where to start.

Jack is doing really well. He’s growing taller and filling out a lot more now, as he’s doing much better with his eating. He’s still eating the food that Claire’s been making for him, which is great. Despite all the work that making the food for him is, I think we’re both really pleased not only that we're able to do that for him, but also what he’s actually getting is exactly what Claire puts in the pan; no extra salt, preservatives, etc.

As he is relatively tall for his age, I think at one point we were a *little* concerned that he was a slightly under the weight-line on the graphs, but when comparing your little baby against a line on a graph, working in percentiles of the countries’ babies, it’s a little easy to get tied up in it all. Stats are just that, in my opinion and as long he’s not off at an extreme, he’s doing ok.

There are some areas of baby-life like this that make me wonder: Just how did people survive years ago without charts and averages etc? People seem to have managed without know what percentile their little bundle of joy is in, and they’ve obviously grown up just fine.

As I said in the last blog post, we all had a helping of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease, which was nice. We’re all good now and to be honest, I’m glad to see the back of it. I hate feeling ill – it seems so… unproductive!! It’s not that we’re *blaming* Jack for us getting it, but he did have it first and managed to get rid of it quickly too…!

He’s not far from walking now, we think. We keep sitting opposite each other on the floor in his playroom, and encouraging him to take a few steps towards one of us, and he’s getting there. He does try, but gravity is a constant force, and one that Jack hasn’t quite come to grips with yet!! He’ll gladly scale the stairs if you let him. And fairly quick too, seeing as each step is chest-height and there’s loads of them, he doesn’t do too badly.

His crawling has improved also. He’s been commando-crawling for as long as he could crawl, but the past week maybe, he’s been crawling ‘properly’, as one would imagine a baby to crawl.

What else can I think has happened? Brain-mush. I might have to post this blog item and get another one posted when I remember what else has happened, as otherwise, this will never get uploaded!!

What’s been going on?

Well, lots really, and that’s probably why I haven’t had much time to write much on here about it all.

Jack is getting on really well – he’s not yet walking, talking or voting or anything like that, but he’s getting there.

Walking – he’s now at that stage whereby he wants to push his baby walker around the house, rather than sit in it. In fact, I’ve tried to put him in it several times over the last week or two and he just gets annoyed/frustrated, as that wasn’t what he wanted! He just wants to stand behind it, and push it until he runs out of house to push it to, then turns around and does the same thing again.

He’s getting more and more confident with his walking too – he’s now in ‘cruising’ mode, which means that he can stand up-right using against the sofa and use it help him along it to where he wants to go, but as far as proper steps are going, not yet.

Talking – he’s starting to say words like ‘mama’, ‘dada’, ‘kaaah’ (for ‘car’ as they go by the front of the house) but these words are currently all interchangeable, and it makes for a change to be called a car and the dustbin be called ‘dada’. Claire’s dad is trying to get him to say ‘Thermostatic Radiator Valves’, but I think this might be a few more days off yet, Grand-dad.

Voting – Well, not in the sense that you’re thinking, nor that I probably implied, but in a way, he is trying to get his point across by waiving his hand/finger in the area as if to say ‘take me that way, peasant!’, but mostly it’s towards the Sky box, which he desperately needs to hit with his fist, and then push right to the back of the TV stand, whilst holding onto the Playstation.

Illness - He’s had his first proper virus – Hand Foot and Mouth disease. No, it’s not the Foot and Mouth disease that sheep and cows get, but more the baby variety that extends to the mouth also. And I don’t get why it’s called a disease, as when I think ‘disease’, I think like serious, proper diseases, not infections like this.

So, Jack had it first and then soon passed it onto his ma and pa for good measure. Basically, it’s an infectious virus transferred through the saliva and poo, and results in a majorly sore throat and spots/blisters on the hands/arms, feet/legs and face around the mouth area.

Jack had it for a few days, and prior to the spots appearing, we honestly thought he was off his food because of another tooth coming through (he currently has the four front teeth), until Claire took him to the Quack’s to find out it’s HF&M.

He was up crying a lot of the nights, but didn’t seem to take long before he was back to normal. The spots are very nearly gone, and the only ones left are the ones that blistered really badly and was sore. The ones on his face have almost gone entirely with very little or no marking left behind.

As I said, Claire and I have both had it too, as well as my mum catching it too. Claire had the spots and a bit of a sore throat for a few days – I had loads of spots and probably the worst sore throat I have ever had. It got to the point whereby I could only really eat ice-cream and Angel Delight, drinking only pints of Nesquik banana milkshake, as everything else felt like it was burning a hole in the back of my throat, and then came the pain of actually trying to swallow something.

It honestly felt I had a ball of nails wedged at the rear of my throat for days. I’m in day six of recover now and it’s the first day I haven’t need to rush for the pain killers. The pain is still there and definitely on it’s way out, but I really hope I don’t come across that one again. ‘Thanks’ Jack.

My mum came over one afternoon, picked up ‘the lurgie’ and also had time off work because of it!

“More Room!” - In other news, Jack has taken over another room in the house – we’ve ejected the spare bed and made way for his playroom. It’s much better, as it means that all of his toys are based up there now, and we can have the downstairs back to semi-normal again.

Booby-Juice is no longer on the menu for Jack. Claire was hoping to slow this down just before she started back at work, but it turns out the well started to go dry by itself naturally. He’s now on powered-milk, also known as ‘plastic-milk’, which is ok, but it smells really bad/different to anything else. He doesn’t seem to notice the difference.

Food – Jack has eating things from the real world too. If we’re eating something that we think he might try, he has a bit of that.

The meals that Claire is making for him are probably better than the stuff we’re eating, as it’s all cooked fresh for him and contains absolutely no rubbish in there at all; all of the menus up until recently have come from the Annabel Karmel recipe books, but she’s also been scouring the internet for new recipes for him.

Actually, the meals that he has isn’t just baby-mush – they’re all using things like rib-eye steak, salmon, and fresh fruit, etc. If they weren’t all blended to a pulp before being frozen, you’d probably eat it and probably like it too. I do (occasionally), and I do.

Photo collection

I have mentioned in the past about the ease of taking too many photos with digital cameras.

Well, I have been busy uploading the past few weeks worth of photos to the SkyDrive account (free online storage) and it crossed my mine to check the amount of photos, to see what sort of disk space we’re consuming online.

On the computer in our house, there’s 10 Gigabytes of photos related to Jack. That’s 10,000 Megabytes – 12.5 CD-R’s full, or just over 2 DVD’s full of images. In all, there’s 3833 photo of the little tyke. Admittedly, not 100% of the photos we have are online as, believe it or not, we do actually vet the photos before we upload them, removing

• any blurry or pointless photos
• any that make Claire or I look bad
• any that are almost exactly the same as the ten before it
• any with Jack’s tinkle in them

In terms of the online storage aspect, I’m not really worried at the moment, as I believe that Microsoft give you 25GB of free storage space these days with the SkyDrive accounts, which is up from the 5GB that I had when I first created the account a year or two ago. Maybe in another 8 months when we’re nearing the 20GB limit, we might have to look at creating another account maybe!!

Dragging himself up in the mornings…

Over the past week or two, Jack has taken to pulling himself upright using anything that will take his weight, such as furniture, toys, etc.

This is really good, as it shows that he’s growing and that it really won’t be long before he’s walking, I’m sure. On the other hand, it has also been a bit of a problem, as he’s now got in the habit of doing it in his cot… if we put him to bed at night and he’s not particularly wanting to sleep, he crawls over to the side of the cot and literally uses his arms and upper-body strength to drag himself upright, whilst his feet are almost running in the same direction, aiding the cause. Within seconds, he’s there, standing upright and beaming with glee, watching for that look of congratulation on our faces. This might be all ok for him, but when he needs to go to sleep, and we need him to sleep, this defiance in him seems to be making this a little worse. In the mornings also, he’s stood there, waiting for one of us to come in and get him out, but then it’s not so bad as his smiley face seems to make the mornings a little… funnier.

The problem is, that as this ability to stand upright is still new to him, he sometimes forgets to hold on at all times… and if you’re not quick to catch him, he falls down much quicker than he gets up! I think that his fall is more of a shock to him than the pain of him falling, but I suppose that it’s been more luck that he’s fallen on something soft, like his bum.

The first weekend away

Claire, Jack and I went away last weekend for the first time and stayed at Eye Kettleby Lakes in their Hazel lodge.

These ‘lodges’ are 1/2/3 bedroom luxury log cabins (of Switzerland ilk) and are fully kitted out inside with everything you need; kitchen, lounge, bathroom, en-suite, freeview tv and dvd player, and even now have free wireless internet access, if you so desire.

We went a couple of years ago to Eye Kettleby and stayed in the Holly log cabin there and really enjoyed ourselves; it’s such a peaceful place to stop and is just outside of Melton Mowbray and 15 or so miles from Leicester. The log cabins are all quiet private, each with their own hot-tub and bbq area.

A few of our friends (Phil and Lucy) are from Melton originally, and when we said that we was going to Eye Kettleby (last time) for a long weekend, they laughed, wondering why on earth we wanted to do that… but this time around, they actually came over to visit, stopped for a Chinese takeaway and a dip in the ‘tub, and they really liked it! they could see why we wanted to come back, and will probably go back again.

Anyway, the whole point was to have a bit of a break, just the three of us, before Claire goes back to work next week for the first time (properly) since Christmas 2008. AND, the other reason was to have some time together without a computer in sight, as I have been spending a bit of time on the computer recently (working on an ASP .Net MVC database app for someone.) [geek!]

We dordled around a bit over the weekend, and did exactly as we pleased – Jack was absolutely brilliant. Even though he’s in the middle of teething (and therefore crying when it hurts) he was an absolute star.

We also took Jack over to Twycross Zoo, in Warwickshire, which was about an hour’s drive away from where we were, but was told it was the best place to see lots of Monkeys, as well as other animals, such as Giraffes and Elephants – incidentally, they’re just had a new baby elephant there, hence the picture (from their website).

Admittedly, Jack was a little young to fully appreciate the day out, but nonetheless it was fun.

Also, they’re doing lots of work there, so it’s going to be much better in future. Go visit.

All in all, it was a very relaxing weekend away – with the minor exception that we pretty much took the entire house in the back of the car. It was literally packed full with baby stuff, including toys, travel cot, bottle sterilizer, etc. To be fair, it was because we had more space that we didn’t have any reason not to take something… so even if we had bought a bigger car, it would still be packed to the rafters too!