Mothers Day

It wasn't going to take much to make this years mothers day better than last years.
Last year we had a long drive on the motorway the day before. During that trip I began to feel a little uncomfortable. The following day I had to pass up the breakfast in bed and the baby cuddles as I was enduring a very nasty bout of gastroenteritis. There's nothing that puts a dampener on your day more than that. I'd actually rather have a cold or even proper flu than have to dash to the loo twice an hour suffering with terrible cramps. Not even Imodium could help me.
This year.....
Ah! Two soft boiled eggs, cooked to perfection with some toast soldiers and one of those big things with the press down plungers full of fresh coffee. Now, I do know what they're called but I haven't a clue how you spell the name and all the spell check could suggest was "cafeteria". A cafeteria full of coffee is a lot more than I think is wise to be drunk in one go.
Two cards - one from my husband and one from my son, who I suspect had a bit of help to write his name.
The rest of the day I did precisely nothing. Well, that's the way it's supposed to go, isn't it? When it's mothers day I get the day off and believe me I will return the favour on fathers day. Joseph was cute, but then he does that all the time.
For dinner, Andy pulled out all the stops. We splashed out on a nice bit of lamb from the farm shop and he roasted it with spuds, roasted sweet potato, green veg and lovely lovely gravy. For pudding we had pancakes and there was a nice bottle of chianti to complement the meal. I made the usual joke about fava beans and having an old friend for dinner and Andy said he was disappointed that the wine hadn't got a rafia thing going on with the bottle.
Happy, full of food and relieved to be in a good state of health we settled down to watch the formula 1 highlights on the iPlayer.

Separation Anxiety

This Sunday, Andy was rather unwell. I went to church on my own and coped with Joseph to start with, but what with beating a hasty exit as I was running rather late, I forgot to pack any toys.
So, rather than put up with nearly two hours of stress, loud "No!" shouts and chewed hymn books I decided to try him in the crèche. The children all got up to go out to Sunday school and I followed with Joseph in the buggy. Hey, when you're small enough to be wheeled about you might as well enjoy it. If I'm ever an old lady in need of a wheelchair then I shall enjoy every minute of not having to exert myself. Why Joseph makes such a fuss when I strap him in, I have no idea. Doesn't know when he's lucky sometimes.
We got to the crèche room and I thought things would go well. The toys were got out and Joseph immediately went for the big big bag of big big bricks. This will be fine, I thought. He loves bricks and he loves stacking stuff. He got in the shopping this week and started stacking up my tins of mackerel!
 I slipped out and enjoyed most of the rest of the service, believing that a big bag of plastic shapes would prevent me from being missed too much.
Alas I was wrong. Within a few minutes of me leaving him he began to get nervous. He started looking around and generally sounding unhappy. He started whimpering.
Soon, the whimpering became crying and the crying became rather too full on to cope with. They did their best, those lovely girls that run the crèche. They're a calm bunch, but Joseph wore them down. One of them slipped back into the meeting and gently asked if I might come and retrieve my unhappy son who now bore more resemblance to an over ripe tomato than a little boy.
He's been fine every day I've left him with Granny. Perhaps an unfamiliar room with unfamiliar people was just too much to ask, although I really did think the plastic blocks would help. I'll give it another go next week and this time I'll stay with him for a bit.
Today he's been quite demanding of cuddles, lots of arms waved in the air at me. What's annoying is then when I pick him up or sit him on my lap like he seems to want he very quickly gets wriggly and fidgety and wants to get down. As soon as I put him down then up go the little arms and out comes the whine.
An interesting point - when you type the word creche without the little hat over the e then one of the options the spell checker offers is "screeching". Perhaps it's been to a crèche!

Sleep Debt

For the sake of the local songbird population we decided to fit The Cat with a bell.
So far this spring we have not had any incidence of the silly moggy bringing in anything vaguely resembling a dishmop with legs. Good for the local birds and good for Joseph. Not so good for us who are now sometimes woken up by The Cat having a scratch at 3am. We banned her from the bedroom some time ago, but you can still hear the noise through the door. Doesn't seem to bother Joseph, though.
He's had a couple of wobbly nights recently. We've got rather used to him sleeping well, he was giving us a good six ours plus a night from eight weeks old and I'm just not used to going without. I don't cope well when I've not had my eight hours.
Last Thursday a week ago, he just didn't want to be away from us. We could put him in the cot but if we left the room he would cry. We ended up with him sat on Andy's lap in the dark, hoping this would calm him down. By 9.30pm he seemed quieter and finally settled off. We slept all right and we just assumed that Joseph had missed me, as I'd been at work that day.
This week the same happened. I changed him and put him down and he seemed calm, but he did not settle. We could not eat our dinner in peace and the same procedure was tried. He did calm down slowly and he did finally go to sleep, but this was not the end of the nights events.
He woke up at twenty to one. I'd managed to get a couple of hours in, but that was to be all. He was crabby to a high degree, only when hugged would he calm down and as soon as he got near the cot again he would scream as if in a lot of pain.
He hadn't done a stealth poo and we couldn't think of any other reason for his discomfort. We gave him calpol which calmed him a little, but not enough. I ended up lying in bed and cuddling him and he seemed calm and happy, as long as I didn't move. As I lay there I couldn't help but think that we were breaking every rule in the Gina Ford book. The problem being that we had let him cry on his own for a while, but he just got more distressed. What do you do when your child just wont calm down?
We were at a loose end because we're just not used to it.
Last night he slept like a log. I slept like a log too, but Andy didn't. For some reason he woke early and couldn't get back to sleep again. I think it was The Cat, having her early morning stretch and scratch.

Just for Laughs

I have no idea what is happening upstairs right now, but it sounds funny.
There are some guaranteed ways to make Joseph laugh. One is to lay him flat and rub your nose on his belly. Don't ask me why this works, but it usually brings out the giggles. Tickling his feet makes him smile, but not always laugh. If he's ticklish in the way I am then there's probably only a small space between funny tickling and tickling to the point of finding it hard to breath and being in pain. I'll not risk that, it's very unpleasant.
If he's sat by the side of the sofa and you lean over and shout "Boo!" then he'll laugh, and the more you catch him by surprise the better. He seems to actually like being made to jump! Today I found out that simply opening your mouth wide and saying "Aaaagh!" at him is a good way to get a laugh.
Standing holding him and spinning round in circles is usually a good one for laughs, but I can't do it or very long as I get quite nauseous. Andy likes to pick him up by the ankles and spin round and even upside down Joseph finds the whole experience side splittingly good. I have no idea why he doesn't throw up!
Chasing him around the living room is also funny and if you stop and kneel on the floor he'll sneak up behind you and push you in the middle of your back. The best thing to do is to fall over forwards in your best comedy pratfall and he'll laugh then all right and he might even try and help you up by pulling on your belt. A few days ago Andy was playing this game with Joseph but instead of just falling over he reached round and grabbed Joseph by the legs, bringing him too. As far as I could tell Joseph thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened to him, at least until this evening.
Well.... if you can't act the goat with your fifteen month old son, when can you do it?

Childhood

I have found myself wondering recently - when do I stop referring to my son as a "baby"? He's right in that join between babyhood and childhood and sometimes I wonder if by still thinking of him as a baby then I am in the wrong.
After all, he no longer just lies there. Ah, I miss those days, when I could put him down and go and do something, safe in the knowledge that he'd still be in the same place when I got back and not knee deep in trouble. He can finger feed - for the most part - and is certainly not the floppy necked, un-focussing, tiny, delicate infant I was presented with on the first day of his life. He smiles and laughs and can get around on his own two feet with only the odd mishap.
He's a toddler, but for all that he still feels like a baby. He still needs two good naps in the day and his mobility itself makes him vulnerable as he simply has no understanding at all of any dangers around him.
Perhaps that's it, rather than physical development I should think in terms of his understanding. When he becomes aware of the fact that not all the things around him are toys and some things can harm him, when he learns the rules of cause and consequence and when he can effectively communicate with me then I can stop thinking of him as a baby.
Unfortunately I have met a number of adults who have not reached all of these goals, especially the last two. Most teenagers fail them, after all.
Indeed, the dividing line between child and adult isn't hard and fast, some teenagers are mature and sensible people and some in their twenties are total idiots. Just because someone has reached their eighteenth birthday they don't suddenly become a mature, suit wearing, sensible person over night.
Perhaps I should stop thinking of him as a baby when he no longer fits in the biggest baby-gro size I can find. It's arbitrary, but then so is everything else.
One day I'll wake up and realise that he's grown up. I'm not sure if that makes me feel good or quite sad.

Clothes

This week, whilst sat downstairs with the first cup of tea of the day, I heard Andy say "What a poor deprived little boy!".
Why would he say that? Joseph is not deprived in any way at all, he get as many hugs as we can possibly give him, I always do my best to provide him with fruit and vegetable meals that are cooked in many different ways so he doesn't get bored and boy does he have a lot of toys. I've put a stop to more toy purchases until we can find more space to keep them - by buying a much bigger house.
No, the reason for his deprivation was his baby-gro, which at last had shown that it was too small for him by going at the toe. I was presented with a giggling little boy with the teeny nail of his teeny toe just sticking out. Sadly, that was one of my favourite baby-gros, it was red and made him look like he'd stolen the underwear of a cowboy.
Still, the label did say 9-12 months on it and he's a strapping lad at 15 months, still on the 75th percentile for height so above average for his age. It's not surprising that the baby-gro in question was finally showing the strain.
We dug out the pack of new babygros I bought quite a while ago that clearly state that they are for 12-18 months on the label. Perhaps they were actually for a 12-18 month elephant, they certainly weren't going to fit my son, he'll have to grow another foot (in height, not an actual foot) before they fit him. As I said before he's above average in height so just where did Sainsbury's, for indeed it was from their baby range, get their measurements from?
To make it even sillier he's currently in bed asleep (well, quiet at least) in a baby-gro with a label boasting 6-9 months on it and it's much bigger than the red one we just threw away!
And I thought the sizes on womens clothes were variable and unreliable. You'd think clothing retailers could have some consistency in their ranges, or at least someone getting sizing information for them who actually knows something about the average size of babies.
On the other hand we have more than one top that is the right age for him and fits around him all right and the sleeves are fine, but they're just too short in the body. Does my son have an unusually long torso, or are the clothing designers actually making things for baby orang-utans?
Who knows? After all, if they let Posh Spice have her own clothing label then that doesn't bode well for the rest of the industry.

Targets

According to the various helpful emails I get from the various baby clubs I have joined (I did it for the vouchers) my little chap should have "up to eight teeth by now". He's got eight and the points of four molars sticking through as well. In teeth terms, he's ahead of the curve.
He has broken his block stacking record as well, now reaching six in a tall tower - and these were put on top of his squash bottle as well, making it more of a challenge. Apparently on the 2-2 1/2 year check you only need to manage three to be considered "normal".
On the other hand he hasn't shown a great deal of interest in using the spoon to feed himself and even finger feeding still has its bad days. How can a child who can put all the blocks in his shape sorter in less than two minutes find the concept of a spoon so hard to grasp?
Ah, development targets. I have to admit, all they seem to do is worry good parents and be utterly ignored by the bad. How many words should my fifteen month old be able to say? We've got Daddy, Mummy and No is coming along well, but neither of the first two really mean Andy or myself. Daddy seems to mean "What's that?" or "I want that!". Mummy usually means "I need attention" or "I'm unhappy". No, some of the time at least, does mean a negative. The rest of the time I think he just likes the sound. I keep hoping he'll get "Kitty" but no luck so far.
Still, his walking is now pretty much spot on, all he has to learn is that the quickest route from A to B isn't necessarily in a straight line if there's stuff on the floor. He's showing signs of wanting to run now, but so far he hasn't been able to do it.
He'll get there at his own pace which, knowing him, will be a fast walk.