Nursery Update

Over the past several weeks, Jack has been getting considerably better whilst at nursery.  Ok, he cries a tiny bit now when we drop him off, but once we’re gone, they say he settles down really well now and actually enjoys playing with the toys, running around etc.

When I went to get Jack from nursery the other day, Tracey said that she was really pleased with how he’s been behaving as the weeks go on.  Obviously, they knew this would happen, as I’m sure that they’ve seen it lots before, but it’s probably more on our part, as when we used to leave Jack at nursery and he was crying, we seem to imagine that’s how he’ll be all day, crying and missing us, etc.  But he doesn’t and it’s more a case of Claire and I getting used to that more than Jack.

A week or so ago, I got there to pick him up after I got home from work, and had to chase him to get him to come home!  That made a bit of a turn-up for the books!

Nursery time!

We have started taking Jack to nursery just a few miles away from our home, and it’s fair to say that he doesn’t like, nor does he want, to be there.

Because of the usual working week that both Claire and I have, we have not needed to take him to nursery before, as Claire, her mum and I share looking after him during the weekdays over a fortnight.  But as we’ve been having him in environments that he’s been comfortable in, we thought he might need to learn to play with other children and get out a bit more, to learn somewhere else than our homes.  Get him out of his comfort zone a little and meet new boys and girls his own age. Plus, it gives us a bit of time to do stuff when he’s not around, so there’s benefits to us too.

The nursery he’s been going to have been really good with him so far.  They’ve changed their shift patterns a bit so that the same people are with him when he’s there, or as they know he’s not too happy, they try to get out the toy that they know he likes, like trains and cars, etc. But he still doesn’t like it, nor does he appreciate their efforts for him.

The first couple of weeks, he had to go for an hour-long ‘taster’ session, and then to keep doing that regularly such that he became familiar with the surroundings, but where one of us would stay during that hour. Then it would be himself for an hour, then four hours, and so on. Unfortunately, they don’t don’t do boarding, otherwise he’d be booked in as mummy and daddy could *really* do with the sleep!!

He’s getting better at going as time goes on and gets older and used to all of it, as in, he doesn’t cry all day now. Just most of it, but that’s progress eh?

He might look small and fuzzy-haired, but little Jack ain’t daft.  Last time I took him, he seemed to know where he was going before we even pulled into the driveway and instantly, the bottom lip came out, tear drops and everything. I thought this was just coincidence, but Claire’s mum said the same thing too, he seemed to recognise the road of where the nursery is even before seeing the nursery and burst into tears.  And before you think, again, coincidence, he doesn’t cry in the car normally; he’ll sit there in the car of the car and look out the window, pointing out things like buses, tractors and the like, so it can’t be that.

I’ve taken him this morning and dropped him off, but clever daddy had a little plan, in that we’d go the other way and come into the road from the top end, rather than from the bypass. Clever eh?  No.  He didn’t get it straight away, but he knew where he was.

Normally, I park out on the road, but this time we pulled into the car-park behind the nursery and he walked in; that is progress in itself, as last time I took him, I had to carry him as he was in his head-back-screaming-tantrum mode, which helps of course. But no, today, he held my hand and walked in, sobbing to himself admittedly but, nonetheless, he walked all the way into the tweenies room (i.e. less than 2 years old but older than a screaming baby). 

I thought I’d stay a little bit, just to help get him started and quickly retrieved the police car, fire engine and the helicopter from the toy box that they set out in expectation of Jack’s arrival, where one of the ladies that work there was happy to try and get his mind off things for him. 

I don’t think he’ll be too bad today, as although he did cry when I said bye-bye, he was pushing the cars back and forth and putting the little driver in his seat in the police car.  Little signs, but hopefully a big message!

I swiftly made my exit and until I shut the car door, I’m sure I could hear him crying.  But he’ll be fine, I’m sure.  If not, it’s them that had to bear his noise all day!! (Evil laugh!!)  Me? I’m off back to bed for the sleep I didn’t get last night because of his crying at midnight thru to 2:30am.

Rugby Tackles Galore

This weekend, we went down to Bath for a 1 year old birthday party, for Claire’s friend’s daughter, Lara.

The whole day was great and Jack was being very well behaved for most of it, until the man with the bouncy-castle appeared…!  When they were first allowed onto it, all the children went into shy-mode, not wanting to be the first.  Except Jack.

Not bothered by things like shyness, Jack (with me shortly behind him) went bounding towards this inflatable land.  I didn’t know what he would make of it and so I climbed onto the bouncy castle too, just to help, of course.  We started to bounce around and then one tumble after another and suddenly, it was filled with children that arrived from nowhere.

To put things into a little context, Jack was certainly one of the smaller children there that day, and was easily knocked around by the bounces that the other kids were putting out. He spent most of the time on the floor, struggling to regain his footing, and this is where he decided that he needed a little help.

So, the most logical thing for a 19 month old child to do, is to hold something that might appear stable and secure. Namely, another child by the scruff of their neck! Needless to say that the other child, an older girl in the first instance, didn’t appreciate this and began crying by the time I made it over to them.

Jack didn’t see the problem in this, and although it did seem quite funny in a naughty sort of way, I knew the girl’s parents would be on-looking and so I had to do the ‘say sorry, Jack’ bit.  The girl looked at Jack as if to say that Justice had been done and that he really saw sorry for his actions, especially as Claire’s standing at the foot of the castle telling me to tell Jack to say ‘sorry’.

In reality, Jack is 19 months old and has no concept of ‘sorry’ or other people’s pain, as kids of that age don’t.  All the while that I am ‘telling him off’, he’s got a big cheesy grin plastered across his face, as throughout this little chat, he’s being bounced all over the place and is quite enjoying it.

Sadly, this wasn’t a one-off, and it soon evolved into Jack taking a dive into a little boy as a result of a bounce from another older boy, taking them both to the ground.  Once on the deck, Jack remained clinging to his new buddy, holding firm for whatever reason.  Again, I had to step in, but by this point, I had already retired to the sidelines because of the amount of kiddies throwing themselves around like loons on there. 

Again, I had to go through the motions of ‘telling Jack off’ for his actions, but he didn’t really get it, and wasn’t ‘sorry’.

I’d like to think that the other children got motion sickness, or simply bored, of the bouncy castle and retired one by one, but I think Jack’s assaults on them may have had an impact. But he was like a little hit-man, taking a different child down each time, so it wasn’t like he was bullying any one child in particular…

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?

Confidence++

Jack is getting more and more confident as time goes on. I know that’s pretty much a given, but it’s the effect on him that makes us both smile.

For example, before, he could crawl - but if we were to hold his hands, he’d walk.  Then, as he got a bit more sure of himself and obviously a little stronger too, he started to walk and realised that it’s an improvement on crawling and so gained more confidence in himself and his abilities.

Now, not only is he running, but he’s also walking backwards and playing on it too.  When Claire or I chase him around the house, he’ll respond more like a little boy by trying to duck  or dodge the attack.  Sounds like an obvious thing to say, but I think it shows that he’s learning to use these new fangled ‘muscles’ in different ways.

Not only the walking/running thing, but also in his general being – him being more confident means that he’s developing more and more of his own character, expressing himself to others about what he does and doesn’t like and more importantly, what he does and doesn’t want to do.

It’s a bit difficult, as able to tell us what he wants, possibly as a result of the baby-sign classes that Claire has been taking him to, but he’s not at that point whereby you can argue with him or bribe him properly, which is what I’m looking forward to next.

Jack and Alfie (the resident Westie) are also getting on a bit too well as a result of Jack’s confidence; possibly, that should be ‘over-confidence’ in that respect, as Jack is happy to play with Alfie (and vice versa) but Jack doesn’t yet understand that there’s a currently-unreached limit with any animal, that has certain consequences. 

To be entirely fair to him, Alfie is absolutely brilliant with Jack.  Sometimes Alfie doesn’t want to be around him, which is fine, but then other times, he does and can sometimes get a bit boisterous with his playing.  He can grumble and growl a bit whilst doing it, but the intention is not to bit or anything, but little hands coupled with very soft skin against the dog’s teeth is going to make marks one day.  We’ll see. All good fun though.

The New House!

So, we’re in!

Jack was pretty much oblivious to the whole moving process as he stayed over at each of his Grandparents house the day before and after the move, which bought us enough time to get his bedroom furniture all assembled again.  

I think that the first day that he was here, he wasn’t aware that this would be where we’d be living, as he was throwing those sorts of tantrums that he would when he was tired and wanted to go home to bed. 

He’s got much more space to put his toys now – not that it mattered before, as Claire and I have become used to having a small bundle of his toys in each room of the house. Some were intentional, like the toy cars in our bedroom that he could play with whilst we got dressed, or made the bed, but others were of Jack’s doing; he’d slowly distribute stuff that would marked his territory.  Who knows where it would stop, maybe with the taking over of the world, one bedroom at a time.

We’re running on 10 year old internet connections at the moment (56k dial-up) and have only just got that, so the uploading of photos, videos and even blog posts have been heavily restricted.

A new world

Well, maybe not quite a new ‘world’, but we are on the cusp of moving house, at least.  We have a buyer for our house and have put our dibs on a new house and things are very close now to exchange/completion, etc.

The reason I mention this, is probably my reason for have not posted anything recently, as each night after work and weekend days have been spent packing another area of life in the Rigby household into boxes.

So – back to the topic of the overall blog, Mr Rigby Junior. Here’s a bit of an update. 

He’s changed so much recently. So much, that it’s only when looking at pictures and videos of him from just a few months ago, that to us, it’s really noticeable as we’re seeing him day by day, little by little growing up.

He’s running circles around (literally) as he’s totally mobile now, which is good,  although a probably to keep track of him each minute.  He’s also found that the world isn’t flat, and want to climb up on absolutely everything, from the stairs to boxes, shelves, sides, in the bath, out of the bath.  Things just don’t seem to appear to him as a problem – just things that are in the way and need climbing over.  He will even climb directly over the top of me, if I am laying on his playroom floor and there’s something that he ‘needs’ the other side of me, whereas a couple of months ago, although he could walk, he would have walked around me to get where he wanted.

Little things like that make you smile at the time.

Talking – well, he’s getting better at that! He’s able to repeat words when you fire them back to him, mostly 1 syllable words like mum, dad, Jack, dog, car, truck, train, shoes, and so on, occasionally daring to begin with the 2 syllable words, like tractor, as he does seem to like tractors.  

Years ago, when we used to go and baby-sit Claire’s god-daughter Bethany, she must have been at the slightly older age where she could (and would) repeat pretty much anything you liked. So, over the course of the evening that we were there, I got her to say words from a Chinese takeaway menu, such as ‘egg fried rice’ as at the time, I thought it was hilarious in a very sad way, simply for the reason that she had no idea what egg fried rice was.  Obviously, I wasn’t thinking very creatively at the time, so, bringing this idea to my own child, my plan is to get him to say something like ‘Intel Pentium 4 Quad-Core Processor’, simply for geek comedy value. Claire’s not so sure though.  But time will tell…!

He’s also been taught (we don’t know entirely by whom as yet!) to yell for the dog, which is actually really funny.  Here’s what I mean:

Jack will pick up one of the dog’s chewie bone-shaped thing and to start with, we thought that he wanted to eat it, or play with it, etc and stopped him.  When we stood back and watched, he picked up the toy and then wanted to give it to Alfie, our Westie dog. With Alfie just out of sight on the stairs, Jack stood there at the foot of the stairs and, in incrementing volumes, started to yell…

“Dog’

‘Doooog!’

‘Doooooooog!’

‘Doooooooooooooooog!’

Of course, Alfie was far to lazy clever for this nonsense and simply ignored him. When Jack found him laying on the stairs, he started to climb the stairs with this dog toy in hand and when he got to him, he offered it out to him, expecting Alfie to take it.  (The reason why this dog toy is still around, is probably because we bought it ages ago for Alfie and he’s not bothered with it, meaning he doesn’t like those sort, but we didn’t have the heart to tell Jack this.)