Julie's Boggle

The sad day finally arrived last month when I could procrastinate no longer… I had to say goodbye to my South African citizenship.

After the mistakes made when getting my British citizenship, I couldn’t renew my South African passport which expired last month. And with a trip to SA coming up soon, I had to act quickly to get the letter that would free me to enter SA on my UK passport without fear of being arrested!

To secure this letter, I had to send in my SA passport and ID book, and a letter of my own saying that I had voluntarily applied for British citizenship. (I also took the opportunity to point out rather sharply that if the Home Affairs website were clearer this would not have happened!)

In return, I got a battered letter that looks like a photostat with an original signature, telling me that in terms of Act blah, section blah-blah-blah of 19-something-or-other, I had forfeited my South African citizenship [by getting UK citizenship]. I’m free to reclaim it if I return to SA permanently. They also returned my passport and ID book covered with “CANCELLED” stamps. Sigh.

Last Saturday, we had a very exciting outing to the British Library that fulfilled a long held ambition for me.

One of the great things about Christianity is that it is well supported by the available evidence. In particular, the events described in the New Testament of the Bible are very difficult to explain unless you take Christianity at face value.

Part of the strength of the New Testament is that it is far and away the most reliable set of ancient documents we have. Not only does it consist of multiple eye witness accounts recorded well within living memory of the events, but the vast number of early dated copies allows us to be very sure that nothing significant has been changed in the copying process.

One of the most important early documents is Codex Sinaiticus, which is an almost complete copy of the entire Bible dated around 350AD. This document is owned by the British nation and lives in the British Library. Given its proximity, I have long wanted to go along and see it so I can affirm its existence. But I haven’t quite ever got round to finding out how a nondescript member of the public might get access to such a unique and valuable document.

I was very excited, therefore, to learn that the British Library was having an exhibition of valuable Christian, Jewish and Muslim documents through the ages. Amongst them was Codex Sinaiticus. So along we went. And what a feast, not only did they have Sinaiticus, but also Codex Alexandrinus (the third oldest copy of the entire Bible), a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls and two of the Chester Beatty Papyri (dated around 250AD, they cover most of the New Testament).

There are still many other, older fragments around the world, but this covered about half of the most important manuscripts all in one trip.  So, all in all, a very worthwhile excursion.

Six weeks old, and I think you could call our “at home” routine fairly established. No two days are ever the same for Jon and me, but the average weekday goes roughly like this:

06h40: Alarm goes off. Cue lying in bed for another 10 minutes.

06h50: Tom gets up to make breakfast and, most significantly, coffee, and I make the bed and potter round half asleep. By 07h00 we’re eating breakfast.

07h15: Wake Jonathan and feed him. This takes about an hour including Daddy doing the all-important nappy change and having some cuddling time in the middle.

08h30: Awake (or more likely, drowsy) time spent in his chair or lying somewhere where he can look out the window. This is till 09h15 when he’s deposited back in his bed for his first morning sleep.

09h30: By now Jon should be asleep and this is my time to shower, make quick phone calls, do minor chores etc.

10h30: Wake Jon and feed him. Again about an hour to an hour and a half here although it can drag on if I’m not careful and let him drift off instead of feeding! This includes a nappy change and the unpopular routine of giving his face and hands a once-over with some wet cotton wool.

12h00: More awake time. Taken as a short walk or time in the garden if the weather is pleasant.

12h30: Jon goes down again, fingers crossed that he goes to sleep. Here I need to be disciplined and make sure I get a decent meal to fuel the milk production. Fit in some preparations towards supper if necessary. Most importantly, finish everything by 13h30 to have a nap!

14h45: Wake Jon after we’ve both had a good sleep. Feed, change etc. which usually takes till around 16h00. Keep him entertained till 16h45 which is usually fairly easy, particularly if the feed drags on, and generally involves time in his chair or on the playmat.

16h45: In an ideal world, Jonathan is now asleep and this becomes either supper preparation time or relaxing time depending on the status of food in the fridge. It can also be used as shopping time with Jon sleeping in his pushchair while I trawl the aisles.

17h30: Wake Jon and do half a feed, 30 — 45 minutes. This needs to be judged very carefully or bathtime will not be peaceful.

After that, it’s a nice quiet time kicking around on his mat on the kitchen floor “nappy-free”. (Where anything that can be “sprayed” can also be cleaned very easily!) As long as he’s not hungry, he’ll really enjoy this time, staring up through the windows and glass roof at the end of the kitchen for ages. After that he gets his bath which he also tends to enjoy with more intent gazing out the window (see left).

19h30: By now Tom’s home and we’re putting Jon down again having finished off the feed and said his prayers. This “rest period” tends to be a little hit and miss… Somehow he often doesn’t really want to sleep during this time and it can turn into a battle of wills to see who lasts out longest: yelling baby or fraught parents. We used to be a little reluctant to put a dummy in during these times — it seemed to be a bad habit to get into. We’ve got over that now. Dummy = peace and quiet and often a sleeping baby which has taken priority over our earlier principles!

19h45: Time to get ourselves supper, catch up over the day’s events and relax, usually with a DVD.

22h00: Final feed for the evening to set up our good night’s sleep. This one gets handled by Tom (good for father-son bonding) with a bottle of breast milk expressed from earlier in the day, and a final session with the mobile dairy at 21h30. In the meantime, I head for bed to get whatever bonus sleep I can.

04h00: The dreaded cry that cuts through warm dreams like a hot knife through cream cheese. Tom usually sleeps through these without a problem. It feels like quite a special time once we get going — Jon’s usually very quiet and dedicated about getting his food at this hour.

I’ve learned better than to skip the nappy change — that led to multiple items of bedding and babyware needing to be washed when the sodden nappy reached capacity. Usually the entire session takes about an hour and if Jonathan hasn’t passed out by the time he goes down, I leave him burbling away to himself and pull our bedroom door closed behind me, confident that I’ll hear any outraged cries if they come.

Time to fit in another 1.5 hours of sleep before the alarm goes off and it all starts again…

P.S. Some fresh photos of the lad can be found here. This is the same link as the one under “Baby Albums” on the right.

We’ve cracked it!

For the last few weeks getting Jonathan to sleep during the day has been getting increasingly tricky. This is not to say he isn’t tired – we’ve been giving him extra awake time. He’s not hungry or wet or dirty or sick… It’s just that he doesn’t like being put down when there’s so much interesting stuff happening out there in the big wide world.

The dummy has proved handy in this regard as it stops him getting frustrated. But it has a significant drawback in that it keeps popping out of his mouth through the gap left by the cleft lip. Then he gets angry again. And we’ve found that he needs to have it in for a good half hour before he’ll close his eyes. Once his eyes are closed he drops off really quickly. But who wants to hang around for half an hour holding a dummy in a baby’s mouth?

Cue a new technique… hold the dummy in his mouth and use your palm to block his vision at the same time. Then he very quickly loses interest, closes his eyes, and falls asleep. We discovered this trick two days ago and it’s worked like a charm since. What joy, now we can get on with all the things that need doing and spend our time with him when he’s fresh and happy.