“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.

Jack’s reading

I dread to think how many books this little man has read already in his life.

He gets through his school reading books either the same night he gets it, or the following morning before school.

He will also get through at least one other book at night, that he reads to either one of us. 

We also read to him, as even though he’s not reading it, he loves the stories that we read to him. And he pays very close attention too, despite my trying to take the stories off at tangents when I think he’s not listening.

We’ve read 4 or 5 Roald Dahl books already, namely:

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• The Witches
• Georges Marvellous Medicine
• Danny, the Champion of the World
• The Magic Finger
• and probably a few more now that I think about it.

If he wakes up early in the morning, and it’s very obvious that there’s no-one downstairs, after banging around in the toilet, he’ll go back to his room and turn the light on, to sit and read one of the many millions of books that he’s lucky enough to have.

At school, he’s currently on the ‘O’ band, which means that as he works alphabetically through the bands, they get progressively harder, using bigger word or more complicated sentences. I know he’s ahead of his school friends in reading, and I think he’s doing a great job, and full credit goes to his mum, although I think technically own Amazon as a result.

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.

Progress Update

Jack is almost 6yrs old and Oliver almost 3.

Each of The Rigby Boys have their own unique take on life and, despite it sounding like an obvious thing to say, they are SO very different from each other, it’s unreal.

Problem is, I can’t remember without watching videos, exactly how Jack was at the age that Oli is now, so it could be that they’re quite similar. But when we do see photos or videos of Jack at this age, there are still similarities!

Jack is doing very well at trying to understand the entire world before lunch, and Oliver’s vocabulary is growing massively each day, along with big improvements in his pronunciation too.

We’re finding with Jack that he more appreciates the company of older children, but more so the company of an adult. Will come back to this particular topic another day, as there’s a bit more to say on it.

Oli is just a barrel of laughs – there’s always a reason to tickle him and there’s always a giggle waiting in response.  He’s been sleeping through the night for the past 5/6 months now, and it’s made the world of difference to Claire and I, as we’re both able to sleep, which is amazing.

Summary: in all, they’re both great boys. Different in many ways, but both good fun to be around.

Fighting, then friends

Sometimes it’s a job to work these two out.

First they're going out of their way to annoy each other (mostly Jack though, to be fair to Oliver!) and then the next minute, they're cuddling and confessing their undying love.

A few weeks ago, it seemed a bit of a stretch to imagine that they'd play nicely together. And now, they're getting on much better, which is great. When they're quiet sometimes, it can be a bit of a worry and Claire and I would find ourselves sneaking up on them to see what they're doing, expecting to catch them in the act of some form of wrong-doings. To be honest, it's a bit disconcerting to find them playing with the Batman action-figures!

“I’ll take the iPad away!”

Yes. 

I was the one that said it.

And yes, as it happens, it worked.

Roll back a bit, and I’ll explain.

Since Oliver has been sitting up the table, we [stupidly] started to use the iPad to distract the boys at the breakfast/dinner/tea table, as a means to shove more food into them, as they’d otherwise run away.  I’ve blogged about this before, so won’t rehash old hashes. But we used it.

Then, it got worse.

We bought another one, as the little monsters were arguing about it, and I feared for the safety of my iPad. (In fact, I should have let it break, as this would’ve fixed the problem, nipping it in the bud.) But, nonetheless, we did.  Nectar points, that I had previously deemed worthless, seemed to have amounted to some value, namely two-thirds of an iPad, hence, we sprung for another.

Worth pointing out, that my boys don’t have “an iPad each” – admittedly, the number-count of my children does equal the number-count of iPad devices in our house, but this is purely an accident. They are allowed to utilise the iPads for their education, information and entertainment purposes *only*, but they are not ‘pre-allocated’ to a particular child.  (They simply haven’t signed out the mobile/tablet under the Brett Rigby IT Policy… joke.)

Anyway, I digress.

Jack occasionally over-boils. He’s allowed at times, I guess, when the weight of the world is on his shoulders, he sometimes pops his lid, and mostly in the direction of Claire and myself.  He seems to do this when he’s had time in the company of someone who can direct all of their attention at him (my parents, or at the in-laws, for example) and then when he comes home, the stark reality of normal life is a bit overwhelming. Pop.

The ONLY thing that I’ve found that appears to hurt him (so to speak) is the threat of me taking the iPad away to work with me. I kid you not, although I wish it were a joke. I’ve threatened to stop him from going to his weekly Karate lessons, stop him from riding his bike and/or scooter, stop him from doing ANYTHING that I had previously thought that he loved doing, but to no success.

Me: “I’ll take the iPad away”
Him:  <silence>

It’s not like the little monster even uses it a great deal anyway. But this really does the job, and I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.  He and Oliver are far from “the Geek’s children” and affixed to a phone/tablet/computer at any given opportunity. Far from it. But it’s odd that he’s like this about it. 

However. On the flip-side, the iPad is THE best treat/reward for doing something, such as homework (yes, he’s five and gets homework!).  Ten minutes on the iPad for doing some ‘boring’ handwriting and reading a book? Pfft. No problem.

Will see how this pans out.