Sleepy boy

Little t has been so sleepy as of late, that he hasn't really been making it to the 2 hour mark that I would expect. I wonder if he's having a growth spurt. He ends up sleeping a good 4 hours a day, and 11 hours at night

This compared to his friend little c, who currently sleeps in toto just over an hour during the day.

I've also found that, because of the extended feeding time, combined with the normal daily chores and the reduced wake time, that I simply haven't had the one on one time that I would like. I've left him sitting on his own much more than I feel I should.

Don't get me wrong, he does like entertaining himself, but he's actually a little too good at it. He's not developing the social skills, or the language skills that he's going to need. (and for that matter he's not moved on from rocking forward from sitting position to crawling yet either)

All these desires that a Dad has, when really all I should be doing is providing him with love and attention. You go little guy, and work things out in your own time.

Solids are boring

So far, I have to say I'm not a fan of weaning. [delay of 24 hours cos little t woke up and then things got busy] Basically it's a lot of faffing.

It's very slow, and is very messy, to cook this stuff. The mashing of the cooked vegetables, and then portioning them out into ice cube trays for freezing covers the kitchen in goop.

It's very slow to prepare the stuff for eating. You have to unfreeze it (I haven't worked out a reliable, easy way to do this; and suggestions?), and then sit little t in the chair (we use a bumbo as he's so small) and put his bib on (full body bib of course, why even chance having his clothes dirtied). You may even have to make up a little baby rice or something. And if little t is hungry, what a nightmare!

It's very slow to be consumed. Little t will usually eat all the food, but it will take him 30-40 minutes! He spends most of that time looking away, I'm guessing he's swallowing it, so I don't push him. I also don't want meal time to become a fight, so take it as calmly as I can. And it's not that he doesn't want/like the food, he just isn't that interested.

And finally, it's not too bad to clean up, though certainly messy.

All up I'd say it now takes a good hour per meal.

All compared to a bottle which requires; buying formula, preparing and heating formula (4 minutes), feeding formula (10 minutes at most), cleaning bottle and steralizing (5 minutes). What's that, about 19 minutes, at worst.

Oh those heady days...

Feeling Ill

Well, on Wednesday night I was watching TV with big S when I suddenly thought 'the reason I'm so tired and grumpy is because I have man-cold, and I can prove it because of my now aching throat'.

Thursday was a hard day. First little t woke at 4:50 - I managed to lull him to sleep by 5:20 - then we were both grumpy and tired all day long, and my throat wasn't getting any better.

I spent the whole day trying to handle him as little as possible, and keep my hands clean and so on, but how does the primary carer _not_ pass on their highly contagious disease to their caree?

I forced myself to go out in the middle of the day, because I always feel worse if I don't, which gave t a chance to have another nap, which meant he was wide awake and ready for play when we got back - and I was tired and wanted to sleep!

Food went well, but that's about all. He ate all his breakfast (apple and pear, yum) and, with a little convincing, got through all lunch too (carrot and butternut squash/pumpkin, not so yum).

When big S got home from work I handed him over and went and collapsed on the bed - delicious, and thank you Mum!

Distractions

Related to grumpiness is my distraction level - high! I've been reading my book more than I should, I've been playing a game more than I should, and not interacting with little t enough.

I've twice got either the feed schedule or the sleep schedule wrong because I wasn't concentrating on things and didn't attend to little t as I should (don't get me wrong, I'm not leaving him crying in the corner, but might not feed him until he cries out for food)

It doesn't help that I'm having so much trouble getting him to sleep, even though his crying and red eyes and yawning all indicate that is exactly what he wants. I come to doubt my ability to tell when he's tired, and then get angry at myself for not being able to get him to sleep.

I guess that's the thing about being stuck at home all day with no one but a baby to talk to, one gets caught up in it all and gets things all out of proportion.

While he's not being neglected, I do want to interact 'socially' with him a lot. Boys start off behind on that footing, and I know that as a boy myself I might hinder his social development.

Grumpy little t === Grumpy Big T

Maybe he's a little sick at the moment? Certainly his nose has been running a bit and he's coughing more than usual. Whatever the case, little t is proving a handful at the moment.

He doesn't want to go to sleep. He doesn't want to be held by Dad. He doesn't want to play. He's not hungry. Not a lot left!

And this gets Dad down, so he doesn't feel at all like going to a babyTalk this afternoon. I'm going to force myself anyway, but really, not very excited about it at all.

Hopefully little t will decide that he wants to go to sleep halfway through, and I can go home early.

Second, urm, whoopsi

But first - the first whoopsi turned out to not be a whoopsi. For some reason Big S's milk smells like that after freezing. (Very faintly before, but strongly after). So I'm not in trouble :) I now give little t 3.5 ounces in the morning and 3.5 in the afternoon, followed by formula. This way he takes it all, without wasting that precious real milk.

On Wednesday though, I was cutting little t's nails with the clippers for the first time, ordinarily I use my teeth. I chopped an enormous chunk of the tip of his thumb off and boy did he cry! (understandably) I managed to distract him surprisingly easily (with previously mentioned remote) but that didn't stop the blood!

In the end I called Big S and she recommended gauze (which I couldn't find) and then a band aid (funny how obvious things aren't always so obvious). The band aid stayed on for a surprisingly long time, about 30 minutes, which was long enough to staunch the blood.

So he now has a big scab on his thumb. The only consolation is that when Big S did the same thing when he was 3 weeks old, it got all infected and stuff, so I win!

Started Weaning

And Tallin is just not interested. It's not that he doesn't like it, he just isn't interested. I imagine the internal conversation in his head (assuming he's very advanced and actually has language in his little skull) is something like

"OK, fine, I'll eat some of this pumpkin stuff"
"Happy now? I ate it all up, barely razzed any. What?! More? Jeez, when does this stop?"
"Hang on, that was carrot, what's going on here? Are you trying to make it more interesting? Well, FAIL, can't I just play with the spoon?"
"What's this over here? A remote!!! awesome, can I play with that? Nope? You want me to eat more? Just give me the freaking milk and I can get it all over with, these solids are such a waste of time"

So, after 20+ minutes of boredom he's finally finished his meal. No complaining, just not at all interested.

Distracting week...

So it's been a while since I posted last.

Initially my excuse was that my Sister and Mum where here. They spent their last 2.5 days with us, and it was a lovely, relaxed time. They helped me out with little t, and on the Friday we caught up with an old friend on my Sister's. I then drove them off to the airport on Saturday (5 hour return trip...) and collapsed on the Saturday.

Since then I've been looking after little t up until today;

Monday I did GymBabes, which is like Tumble Tots for babies. It seemed ok, but not really appropriate for babies that can't crawl yet. I hope that little t will be crawling within 4 weeks, but until then I think I'll give it a miss.

Tuesday I caught up with pretty much all the NCT babies (and their Mum's) at a babytalk just outside Cambridge. It was a really nice event, and was good to see how all the other kids are going, and also meet some other new Mums. I was a little disappointed by the shocked reaction to me turning up. Fair enough if I didn't have a baby in tow, but really >:(

Wednesday I went to another babytalk just down the road, which had a lot of new people because it was the beginning of the new term. It was alright, but I guess it's a littlle harder to become friends with a 'man' :)

After that I went and got little t weighed, and suffice to say he ain't quite so little anymore - he put on 0.5 kilos, to reach a massive 14 lbs 10 oz - which is still pretty small for a 6.75 month old baby. 98% of babies are bigger than him at this age, but at least it's not 99.86 which it was 2 weeks ago.

So I guess you're not surprised that he's called 'little t' :)

Yesterday I just went out shopping (3rd time in 3 days I went to Sainsbury's) because the rest of the day was really hard. Tallin was tired all day, but just wouldn't go down easily. I don't give him his soother anymore, and I hardly prepare him for his nap now. Maybe a song and then into the Ambi. This worked relatively fine all the other days, but not yesterday.

We were both moody and tired by the end of the day, so big S didn't have much fun when she got home!

Today is my day off, so I am finally writing some entries in this, and am about to start my day off activities - read all about them over at 'DynamOS', I'm sure it will be of interest to pretty much nobody...

first, erm, whoopsi

We had a lovely day yesterday, going for a nice walk and eating some baby rice. Sleep went ok too, and my evening sojourn was delayed so I got to spend time with Sharon.

Felt amazingly tired given I'd done very little indeed (did get laundry and washing up done).

This morning I slept in (which means I played with little t until he got tired, put him to bed, and then fell asleep myself). When we finally got up t wasn't hungry, so I waited a little bit, but when he saw the bottle he almost lost it! So excited.

Anyhoo, I gave said bottle to said little t and he drank down 3 ounces. That's it, 3 ounces. I knew something was wrong, and when I smelt the milk, I knew what it was - the milk was off! I had mixed two lots of breast milk together, and I guess one of them was bad - and I didn't check.

So I changed him into clothes he could dirty and carefully played with him (and had a shower and put the dishes away). Finally he had a tiny spew, so then I fed him a further 4 ounces of formula and tried to put him to bad.

Fortunately this little mistake hasn't been too bad, but I will definitely be checking the milk before giving it to him from now on!

My sister and my Mum are due back from their little trip today (in minutes really) so it will be nice for them to catch up with little t. They go back to Oz in 3 days, which sux, but there you have it.

Bumbo

(Ok, so I've put the washing in now - short cycle so I can still go for a walk)

We have a bumbo for little t, and I love it. It's a big and soft and plasticy chair, and has a little table addition so I can feed t in it. The only thing I need to do is find a place in the kitchen for it, because I like to have little t watch me doing stuff and at the moment it's pretty precarious (don't tell Big S ok!)

Oh, the other thing about the bumbo is that little t is, um, too little for said chair. He's currently only just over 13 pounds, which is about 3 pounds off the average for a nearly 7 month old...

... developmentally he's A OK, just a little wee is all. We suspect that the less efficient, but more fattening formula may address that issue, but we're not too concerned yet.

He should be waking up very shortly, will have to go.

Welcome to a brand new day!

Things have worked out such that I have the wonderful opportunity to spend the next 6 months with my son, little t. I'm still employed, but my employer (thoughtworks.com) has let me have the time off because they're basically a great bunch of people. Big S, my wife, has gone back to work today so this is it.

Me at home with the little one.

I've just put him down for his second nap of the day, hoping that I'll get a good 45 minutes of Dad time. Suppose I should do the washing and such, but hey, I've only just started and I have to let you all know what's going on, right?

Ordinarily I would hope to have left the house for a walk or something like that by now, but I'm just taking one step at a time, and Tallin was threatening to do a poo, which is not something I want to deal with in public just yet.

We've only recently started him on formula (made it to 6 months just breastmilk! Big S's awesome!), and even more recently on solids, so his poos are changing quite a bit - and he's not liking it one little bit. The little straining face is very cute though - I have to stop myself laughing at the poor little mite.

After this sleep I think I'll go for a quick walk, and then it's lunch at 12:30 or so. Little t managed to discover 'razzing' at the same time as we introduced solids - he loves to razz it all over the table! Big S is concerned that he's not learning to feed, but I figure it's just a case of giving him time. It doesn't all go down his front!

A quick note on what I'm doing - basically it's me at home with little t Monday to Thursday, then it's Big S's go on Friday while I nerd it out, and then family time on the weekend. If you're interested in what I'm nerding out on, I'm sure to have a link available sometime soon.

I'm hoping that, since I don't have to commute for 6 months, I'll have a chance to start doing some kickboxing/judo in the evenings again.

(footloose is playing in the background - thanks Dwayne!)

Anyway, enough for today. I'll try to be relatively regular with this thang, but don't expect excellent english or nuffin, I haven't really written long form english an about 17 years...