Julie's Boggle

Our lovely little guy will be 12 weeks old tomorrow. Jonathan now weighs approximately 5kg and is in the process of popping out of the smallest of his 0 – 3 month babygrows. (As an indication of how fickle babygrow sizes are, he’s still fitting into a set of three marked 0 – 1 month!)

It’s great to be right on hand to watch all the little changes in him. Yesterday morning for example, was the first time that I had to remove a very firm, but slippery little hand from Jon’s mouth so I could put in a dummy at 05h20. Aside from that we’re still waiting for the coordination to extend to batting or deliberately grasping things.

His eyes have been turning a hazel-type colour (like Tom’s) for a while now. Thwarting my hope that they’d stay the deep blue they were at birth. At the moment though, the hazel is just a ring around the pupil and the outer parts are a dark blue which is quite an attractive mix.

We’re also seeing more of the baby highs and lows expressed as sound. More happy little noises when he’s content which interestingly get countered by more tantrum-like, desperate, “you’re betraying me” type howls when he feels
badly let down.

But some things just don’t elicit cries or yells any more. Like drying him after his bath for example. One day he just didn’t cry, and that was the end of it. Rather cool I thought. Nappy changes have gone quiet as well. Mild unhappiness is more often conveyed by expressive yells rather than just plain crying.

Crying seems to be reserved for when he’s particularly tired and fed-up with the world. At these times a dummy and a quiet environment are good aids to helping him unwind and fall asleep.

Content times are best experienced after a feed and before he gets tired. He’s still happiest while looking at light areas — be it electric or windows, and pictures on the walls, and he does appreciate a sound-track.

Right now he’s lying on the floor chirping and gurgling along to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and looking around, smiling occasionally.

I miss some of the cute tiny baby antics that have gone as well though. Like the way he would try to eat the cotton wool that was cleaning his face at bath-time. And the delightful sneezes that would start off with him extending his arms out to the sides as he felt it coming on, and then jerk them together over his chest as the sneeze hit.

As far as middle of the night feeds go, we’ve come a long way! From having to wake Jon up at 3am in the early days, to being woken up between 2 and 4am, to the most recent stage of being woken up between 5 and 7am.

This last stage is a little more tiring to be honest. The days when he wakes up after 6:30 are great! But when he wakes up before 6am we try to keep him going till at least 6. We’ve had one day where a single dummy application took us all the way through to 7am when our alarm goes off! And two days where he didn’t wake us up at all — we woke him at 7am! Hallelujah!

But we’ve also had rather a number where he’s woken up at 5am and needed 3 – 4 parental visits to see him through to 6. Sigh. These are the days when I end up feeling a little ragged around the edges and we’re hoping that they’re numbered!

In general, Jon has adapted very well to the routine we’ve given him. He’s even delighting us by going down quietly at 19h30 now (as long as he hasn’t slept too much during the day). I’m a little nervous about what 3 weeks in SA will do to all this, but that will definitely be another blog entry!

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P.S. Fresh baby pics here.

Having carefully ticked the box marked “No substitutes” before checking out at the end of my ASDA online shopping experience, this was what happened at the time of delivery:

Three items were not available.

1. Tin of custard powder

Substituted with: Packet of instant (just add water) custard.

Reaction: Rejected. Ick! Whoever chose this clearly does not make their own custard and does not understand that anyone who actually cares enough to make real custard, does not want to be stuck with the just-add-water variety!

2. Oat and sultana biscuits

Substituted with: Chocolate chip cookies

Reaction: Rejected. Having trawled through their list of 40-something different varieties of biscuits, I had carefully chosen ones that (a) looked healthy and (b) excluded chocolate. (Does that sound tautologous? ) Omitting this substitution would have been a safer bet.

3. 2 x 250g bricks of Willow butter

Substituted with: Nothing. Finding something similar on this one (only 5 other brands of butter to choose from!) apparently had them completely stumped!

Reaction: Huh?!

On the positive side:

• The driver was friendly and prepared to wait while I went through all the bags to check that nothing was damaged.
• Nothing was damaged.
• The driver had all the paperwork with him.
• Delivery was free as part of a special offer.
• I didn’t have to go to the shops and carry it all home.

And the first four are a lot more than could be said for the Tesco lot!

(If you’re wondering, the driver does take all the rejected items away with him and we get a refund.)

The shortage of blog posts lately has not been due to either lack of desire or lack of subject matter, but rather a severe lack of “keyboard time”. There’s a lot I can do on the internet while feeding Jon, but typing is one that is particularly tricky — he does not appreciate my leaning over him to get to the keyboard!

Instead I while away my time on activities that are mainly mouse-driven. Playing Scrabble and checking out friends on Facebook (yes, I succumbed!) and reading my favourite blogs and online news.

So why can’t I blog while Jonathan is asleep? Well that would be because our computers reside in his bedroom. (With space being as expensive as it is in London right now, we only have two bedrooms.) It’s an arrangement that works well enough, with the notable exception of not being able to use them while he’s sleeping!

We have come up with a solution to this problem but it probably won’t be fully implemented until we’re back from SA, late October. The essence of the plan is to move one of the PCs into a corner of the hallway. (This has its own set of inconveniences which we’ll ignore for now.)

But to do that we must first move the things that currently reside in that space — Weber kettle braai and bicycle — into the shed in the garden. After replacing the existing shed, which is in an advanced state of disrepair, with a new one. Which will be done as soon as the handyman we’ve organised finishes his current job. Whew!

And then, with the lovely Jon letting us get more sleep at night, I can finally utilise some of the spare time while he’s napping, to catch up with emails and the blog!

There’s no doubt about it — our boy is definitely getting bigger… From the weight measurements in the clinic, to the outgrowing of the “Newborn” sized babygrows, Jonathan is slowly but steadily increasing.

I’ve already had to take him for his 6 — 8 week growth check (all a-okay), and his 2 month vaccinations (poor baby, one in each thigh!) which were traumatic for both of us.

It’s harder to see the growth changes when you’re with him every day, but I have noticed, with a certain sadness, that the width of his back no longer fits into the palm of my hand.

And the little face sticking out above the bed covers is undoubtedly filling out. (Pics on the right are 1.5 weeks and 8 weeks respectively.)

But in return for this loss of inate “newborn baby-ness”, we are getting a lot more alertness.

Feeding is no longer automatically followed by napping, and Jon generally spends a lot more of the daytime watching the world with interest. (With the exception of when you’d really like him to be awake, which is a sure sign that he’ll fall asleep immediately!)

These days Jon often looks pleased when he gets picked up out of his bed, and when he’s successfully managed to wet his clothes — and occasionally his parent — on the changing mat.

We even started getting a few little smiles last week which was very rewarding.

Last night our gorgeous little chap got all the way through the night (23h00 to 06h30) for the second time! Ok, the previous time was more than a week ago, but we’re taking it as a good sign of things to come.

And what a pleasure, nearly 7.5 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Bliss!

P.S. More baby pics can be found here.