Favourite Toy of the Week: The Fridge

Yes, that's right folks. This is the week that JD discovered the fridge.

This week he not only worked out that the fridge was full of 'toys', evidently placed there for his amusement, but he learned how to open the fridge, close it, dismantle the shelving and open and shut the cheese containers.

Briefly, he also discovered eggs, the way to take the top of the tomato sauce bottom and attempt to suck out the tomato sauce and how to appropriate celery. These explorations were curtailed, due to the totalitarian regime pursued by his unsympathetic mother.

Apart from these small details, he spent most of the week standing inside the fridge, talking to all the bottles and jars and sometimes singing a special fridge song. He took out all the bottles and jars, chased them around the kitchen and sometimes even put them back in (usually in the vegetable crisper), before starting all over again. It worked quite well because he is just the right height to stand inside the fridge, and it is a lot warmer in the fridge than it is outside at the moment.

He's the original 'frund in the frudge'.

My Holiday by JD

I went to the sea-side with my mummy and daddy. Daddy did all the heavy lifting and mummy took lots of photos.


I played in the sand and tried to crawl out to sea. I discovered stones and sand and sea-caps. I wanted to eat the sea-cap but daddy wouldn't let me.

I held daddy's hands and walked in the water, which was really cool. I wanted to keep walking and walking because I really liked the water. Daddy kept pulling me back. I can see there's going to be some issues we'll have to work through.

Then I played in the sand some more and got to at least eat some of that, but sand is more fun if you cover your arms and legs with it, and make patterns in it with your hands.

It was lots of fun and I mean to go back. When I do, I'll ditch the parents and crawl out to sea and then come back and eat all the sea-caps I want.

Domestic Animalia

One of the odd things about having a small child is the constant need to talk about domestic animals with them. True, you could probably avoid it if you were so inclined, but it might have a negative impact on their socialisation.

I realised this during 'Rhyme Time' last month. I sing 'Old MacDonalds Farm' and 'The Farmer in the Dell' to JD along with various other animal based songs. But frankly it was all getting a bit boring and so I introduced another lot of more interesting animals. The echidna, camel, iguana and various other creatures now inhabit Old MacDonalds farm, making it more educational for JD and more interesting for me. Though I still haven't really figured out what noise an echidna makes.

And on one very hot and long afternoon when there were teeth coming, 'The Farmer in the Dell' became a narrative framework for an involved story including the Albatross, his friend the Mongoose and the Mongoose's friend Switch who had a small army of cockroaches in a cardboard box, which he carried about his person. This was unsettling for the Albatross, but due to social constraints he felt unable to protest. However, the army of cockroaches proved its usefulness by forcing Pirate Sam the Man to stand down from his piracy, at least as it related to Albatross, Mongoose and Switch. All ended happily.

The problem is though, that when we were at Rhyme Time, the older children were given the opportunity of choosing an animal from a bag and saying what that animal was for Old MacDonald's farm. One child pulled a duck out of the bag and announced it was a duck. I thought, "How boring. Why does it need to be a duck? Why can't it be an albatross?" Which led me to the realisation that if I keep finding odd and interesting animals on Old MacDonalds Farm, JD will come to expect them. He'll want dolphins, elephant beetles and moles when he calls out his favourite, and that is if we manage to teach him in time that griffins, murlocs and yetis are actually not real.

I came home from Rhyme Time frustrated. Levor said to me, "So what do we learn from this little adventure?" I said, "That Rhyme Time is limited and needs its horizons expanded."

I don't think that the answer I was meant to give...

Corn

I can't smile now. I'm eating corn.

I'm going to look this way. Eating corn requires concentration. Eventually she'll go away.
Nope. Not gonna smile. At all. Eating corn now.

I can outlast you.

Idiosyncratic. Eccentric even.

That's our boy.

I had in my head that any children we had would constantly be in a state of bemusement when it came to their parents. We are odd people. We know that. We could try not to be odd people but it really doesn't work. So we are just eccentric and we like each other, so, hey.

But for some reason I thought we would have normal children who would consider us with the same level of bemusement that many people do.

Instead I find myself thinking that our boy is a bit odd. I never think that about people, because even if they are odd they usually so much less odd than I am that I can't in good conscience think that. But JD? Well, let me tell you about two of his oddities.


Crop circles.

Yes. As he is going to sleep, JD flings himself onto his stomach and starts to draw circles on each side of him with the palms of his hands. It is useful in that it is clear that he is on the way to sleep, but it is rather unusual. If anything interrupts the crop circling, he starts to wake up again. He doesn't just crop circle against the sheets, but if I am holding him, he'll crop circle against me.

We are weird, yes. But neither of us crop circle.

The other weird thing JD does is bite my nose. This is his pet project if he is ever in the vicinity of my face. He never tries this with Levor, (who has a handy beard to pull anyway). But from about 6 months, he's been focussed on giving my nose a good bite, if he can pull it off. This was particularly impressive when he was a bit younger and less co-ordinated. He'd have to hitch himself up, then line himself up and then let go of whatever he was holding onto, landing with his mouth around my nose.

He even managed it a few times. I got used to listening for the panting (exertion of positioning himself), the dribble (from the ready-opened mouth) and the absolute quiet (intense concentration). In the presence of these three factors I knew my nose was in danger and I need to move. Once in the absence of dribble (and when I was so very tired), I didn't move. It turned out that he was undertaking the same process only with a pacifier in his mouth. He managed to execute this without losing the pacifier. It is the weirdest sensation I have ever experienced: having my nose bitten by someone sucking a pacifier at the same time.

I have to say, I am impressed that he actually has a method worked out for this procedure and that it involves quite a bit of skill. I just can't boast about it to all the other mums though, without seeming.... weird.

So, there you have it. JD is a little bit odd.


How cool. He's just like us. He's our boy.

Benediction

You know those moments in life, the ones where you realise something significant is happening and you're far too relaxed and 'in the moment' to really take everything in. You feel that you should be remembering every word, every intonation of what is being said. You say to yourself, "This is perfectly extraordinary! This will never happen again." And you try and concentrate.

But you're really enjoying it too much to memorise it.

Something like that happened the other week. We were at church, and so were some friends of ours from Australia. These friends happened to be Important People, which is incidental, but important for the story.

One of these friends came up to me while I was talking and carted Jonathan off for a cuddle. This, in itself was rather nice. Not that I mind being responsible for Jonathan, but in those idyllic families with aunts and uncles and grandparents and lavish amounts of kindness, children are cuddled and passed from hand to hand and so forth. I know this because in the childcare books I read it tells me how to handle that.

Anyway, I flitted around talking to people and eventually found the two of them out in the courtyard sitting in the sun. I looked over and thought, "He is an important person. I probably shouldn't disturb him." But then I remembered that everyone thinks this about important people and so they get a bit lonely sometimes. So I went over, and he motioned me to sit down and just as I was racking my brains for some kind of meaningless smalltalk, he started to pray.

It was a Simeon-in-the-temple kind of prayer: rich, full of blessing and interest and an expression of genuine care for the person that the baby is and will become. He prayed that Jonathan would be kept safe and grow strong; that he would grow into a man who knew how to love others; that Jonathan would never know a time when he didn't know and love the Lord Jesus and would always serve and honour him; and that Jonathan might become a man of God.

It was a remarkable prayer. I would love to listen to it again, though as I was not the recipient of the prayer it is less significant that I remember it.

One day, when this Important Person remains in this world only in legend, I'll tell Jonathan about this prayer for him. And I'll tell him how people who owed him nothing loved him and were kind to him. And how they blessed him.

This, in itself is a blessing.

Introducing... the Ocean.

Well, the sea actually.

This is us taking JD down to the water's edge at St Andrews. I would say 'beach' but I'm from Australia, where the waves are more than enlarged ripples. And where the sand is not usually muddy. And where pebbles aren't a prominent part of the beachscape.

And it is the North Sea - the cold, grey North Sea. Not the restless, surf charged, sun dazzling oceans we are blessed with in Australia.

There were seagulls. Of course.

But there was the water that goes on and on, which is the whole point of the exercise.

JD was suitably awestruck.









Wait till he sees Bondi.

Life Lessons: All About Tummies

Pretty much ever since JD was born, Levor has blown raspberries on his tummy when he was changing JD's nappy. He found this a bit odd at first but soon came to find it entertaining and now shouts with laughter when he receives his requisite raspberry. (I have also adopted this, more as a strategy to keep JD lying on his back for two seconds so I can quickly put his nappy on before he flips himself over and takes off).

This is hardly interesting, except that somewhere in there JD has developed the understanding that tummies are for raspberries. This became evident when he was engaged in his usual pre-crawling activity of finding a prone adult, hitching himself up against them and bouncing his entire body up and down, while thumping them and singing at the top of his voice. This had the further advantage of guaranteeing that the prone adult would continue to be prone for quite some time.

So, one day engaged in this activity with Levor playing the part of prone adult, JD came across his stomach, exposed after quite a lot of thumping on JD's part. Unperturbed, JD stuck his head down and started to methodically blow raspberries all over his father's stomach.

We thought this was funny, but JD topped it in the following week. During a particularly bad night when he and I were lying down together at about 3am, and he had gone back to sleep, then quite suddenly he woke up. It was completely dark. And he woke up, not sad and annoyed and needing to go back to sleep, but wide awake. He sat up, found a handy prone adult right next to him and got stuck into the dancing-thumping-singing routine. Not long into this process he discovered an exposed stomache and set to blowing raspberries. Only this time he was too tired to actually keep his head up. So he just blew one long raspberry, moving a bit to the left and the right from time to time. Unfortunately I found this absolutely hilarious, which really didn't help in setting the context in which to explain to this odd little child that blowing raspberries was something people do during the day.



(In case you should think that he just blows raspberries on exposed flesh generally, this is not the case. I was sitting next to him the other day without socks on. He bit my toe.)

So, there you have it. Tummies are for blowing raspberries. It's what they're for.

We think we have probably ruined JD's ability to appreciate the bikini for all time.

Million Dollar Smile

Here's the photo I've been trying to get for ages. Normally when I get the camera out, JD is all about trying to get hold of it for his own purposes. Not sure what they are, but I suspect there would be some chewing involved. But I have to work pretty hard to distract him from the camera. Today for some reason, the camera wasn't as much an issue.

So here is the smile I get first thing in the morning, and sometimes randomly throughout the day when I check in on him or he stops playing and turns around to find me and just beams.

All dimples and squishy eyes, and totally expressive. Just love that smile.

Personal Seagull

I have my own seagull.

Thankfully he isn't as noisy or as annoying as an ordinary seagull. But he is as persistent.

Our boy has discovered food and thinks it the best thing since sliced bread (which he had for the first time day... and ate the best part of a whole slice for afternoon tea). He went through the pureed food stage in less than a week and I am barely holding him in the mushed/mashed stage. Basically if I sat him down with a lobster salad tomorrow and helped him get the shells off, I think he'd eat the lot.

So, we feed him. We feed him as much as we think he needs (according to the books I read and their recommendations). We do feed him. I need to write this to convince myself, because sometimes the intent to feed is so strong I wonder whether we have inadvertently not fed him. But we do. Feed him. Regularly.

And then he sees us eating, and especially if he is near us, he'll sit there and open his mouth, waiting to be fed. It was particularly bad the other night when he had just eaten what I was worried was too much. I was eating dinner and he was sitting on Levor's lap. He watched me take a mouthful, looking at the food on my fork intently, watching it go into my mouth, looking at me with the practised stare of a small puppy. Then when he saw me put together the next forkful, he opened his mouth. Clearly, this one was his. I'd had the last one. Mouth open, very politely, please to have some food, mum. He got some broccoli for his trouble.

This culminated in much hilarity on Monday when we went out for the day. Here is the young seagull, perched on my lap. Levor had just taken about 30 photos of JD and I, trying to get JD to smile. He didn't. He was sucking a spoon and wasn't interested in smiling. You can see we got him to smile when he was with Levor (above).

Then as we were giving up, I took a sip of my tea. Out came the spoon. The mouth shot open. Eating was happening and he wanted his share! (Despite having just had a significant lunch).

A small, cute, persistent and determined seagull.

Dailies

Our quest each day is to go for a walk. I don't always succeed in this endeavour, but I usually try hard to make it happen.

Part of the reason I try and make it happen is that JD really enjoys walks. Which is surprising. Whenever we go walking he goes really quiet, doesn't say much at all (not even bird noises) and looks down at the pavement. But when we don't go for a walk, he is restless and doesn't seem to enjoy life as much. So, having made that connection I try and take him for a walk in the morning, and Levor tries to take him for a walk in the afternoon, thereby fulfilling our exercise requirements for the day and contributing to the demise of two feathered creatures simultaneously.

The photo is important for this blog because there are several things to note. The first is the hat. The hat is not on the boy's head. He is holding it, but do not let that deceive you. The hat is being held so that it can be chewed. Never mind the sun (which is always in his eyes without the hat because he won't endure a sunshade). The hat is for chewing.

The second thing to note is the socks. One of the joys of the walk for JD is trying to get both socks off his feet before we get home. If I am not watching very closely he'll lose them on the way home.

This means that at the age of 7 months I already have an odd sock problem with our son. I was expecting this more to be a 4 year old and onwards problem that I could work up to. But no. It has started.

The third thing is the big smile. The big smile happens as soon as we get in the door and tell him "we're home!" and he starts interacting and talking again. One could be forgiven for thinking that the walk was a dreadful imposition which he endure for the sake of the grown ups.

So, there you have it. Our daily quest. Worth JD honour points.

Sleeping Lions

Our little boy really doesn't take after me. He has his dad's face, expressions and generally looks like Levor (without his beard); he even seems to have something of his dad's personality when he was little (before his parents split up).

He sneezes like me. Often and always twice (at least).

He might have my eyes.

But the other day something happened that made me realise that he really is my son.

After a trying few hours I gave up and lay down with JD on the bed, and soon both of us were asleep. Levor happened upon us and took a photo:

You can see that JD sleeps like I do. Levor thinks this is cute. I think it's funny.

ROFL (literally)

Last night our little boy woke up at 12am. That is actually fairly unusual these days. He normally sleeps till about 3am and then does a stint of rolling onto his hand and knees and waking up and me rolling him back. We play that game for about 1/2 hour and he goes back to sleep till 6am. It's not a bad system. It could improve, but I can live with it.

Last night he woke up at 12am.

Wide awake. Arms and legs waving about in the air. Eyes wide open, looking at everything.

I was tired, and didn't feel like a long drawn out battle. So, I brought him into the lounge room and we lay down together on the doona. He gurgled away and whacked one of his toys with the enthusiasm which tires an adult just by observing it.

I went into one of those micro-sleeps you do when you are very tired. When I woke up he had turned himself onto his hands and knees practically on top of me, so his face was right next to mine. When I opened my eyes, startled, he burst into peals of laughter.

The incongruity of the situation made me laugh. Which made him start giggling infectiously. Which... well, you get the idea.

So, there we lay on the floor in the middle of the night, laughing out loud. It was extremely fun.