Further evidence that lackadaisical parenting works

Allowing Jacob to potty train in his own time seems to have worked.  It's 4 weeks since we started potty training, and without really noticing, we were done about 2 or 3 weeks ago.  We haven't tried to push night-time dryness, as we figure that will also come in its own time, but right from the start he probably had 2 or 3 dry nights a week.  We haven't added it as a target yet, we're quite happy to work on one thing at once.  And that one thing really hasn't been too much of a bind.  He seems to have a bladder worthy of a superhero - as on at least 3 occasions he's gone an entire day at nursery without needing a wee (this is not withholding, he genuinely doesn't need to go.  He'll often be back at home for an hour or two before he finally goes, and even then he doesn't produce a huge amount).  This makes me a lot more confident being out and about, so we ditched the pull-ups before he'd been through a single pack of them, and we're rocking the pants now.

All of this means that we're now frantically scrambling to get him into Meithrin (nursery/pre-school/the class that 3 year olds attend for a half-day every day before they start full-time school the September after they turn 4) ready for September.  We went to see our preferred school today, and it was Lovely.  We have our fingers tightly crossed for a place.

I'd like to add that this is not through any desire to get rid of him or to rush him into education - personally I'm of the keep-them-home-til-they're-about-7 school of thought.  Practically though, I'm going to have a newborn in November.  Having a couple of hours a day to focus on the baby might be kinda nice.  And whilst I'd love to homeschool, Jamie is not on board, I worry about my mental health, and the boy loves his day nursery and the friends he's gained there.  He can't continue at that particular day nursery (to the uninitiated, a day nursery is a private childcare facility where you shove your children while you go to work) because it's near my current place of work, and therefore far from my house.  This makes me (and him) sad.

Any road.  My baby.  School.  Already.  Crazy.

This afternoon, for no real reason other than just having discovered that they do cheap afternoon sessions, I took the boy swimming.  It's been over a year since we last went.  It used to be a huge struggle, it's expensive, it was too much for us to face.  I'm not proud of the fact that we let it go so long, but always sometimes, it's just easier to take the ... easy road.

So I took him swimming, on my own.  After umpteen nervous trips to the toilet, we emptied our respective bladders, and took the (both literal and figurative) plunge.  He did not stop laughing the whole time we were in there.  He loved it.  He decided he could swim, and showing unbelievable abilities at mind over matter (I'm starting to believe this superhero thing might be closer to the truth than not), he pretty much could.  With a flotation vest, he kicked, he struck out with his hands, cupped and pulled himself through the water.  He made startling progress round the lazy river (as long as I had my hand under his tummy).  All in all, he was awesome.  We swam for 2 hours, and we're going back again tomorrow (capitalising on the confidence while we can!).

It just goes to show, that like the potty training, you leave them to do shit in their own time, and they do it.  Go on, pick holes in my logic.  Am I too passive?  Neglectful?  Denying him opportunities?  We could have kept on pushing the swimming when he was obviously uncomfortable, or we could have done what we did, and let him come to it in his own time.  Same with the pottying.  I'm so proud of him for both achievements and I'd do the same again, if I had the choice.

When we got home, he carefully spread the blanket out on the floor, and lined some shells up around the edge.  That took about an hour, and he told us that the blanket was a swimming pool and the shells were on the beach.  He lay on his stomach and 'swam' around his pool for a while.

Then he climbed on the sofa, jumped onto the blanket and yelled "Splash!" :D

I could watch his imaginative play all day long.

He's gone to bed and left me under strict instructions not to tidy his seaside up.  I wouldn't dream of it.

#2 and #3 done already!

Look at that - just 4 little days into my half-term break and somehow, I've done 2 out of the 5 things off my list. And when I say 'I', I mean 'we'. Jamie needed to print some stuff, so he hoiked the printer upstairs and installed it into his shiny new study.

And this evening, a half-fledged idea to make J-cub a play-kitchen area in the living room turned into 4 straight hours of sorting and organising toys, so that everything is easily accessible and easily tidyable. Very important. We've got a bit lax on the old tidying front round here, and it's doing my head in.

So Jacob's cafe is now open for business, with his cash register and wares available on the left, his oven ready to cook breakfasts and light lunches, fresh fruit and veg in their baskets, and his teapot and cup out on the table ready to pour me a thousand imaginary cups of coffee. And Batty and Judy are eagerly sitting at the table, awaiting service.

It's gonna be yet another rainy day tomorrow, and for once, we'll be prepared with plenty of fun things to do. Today J-cub went the whole day without his dummy and bunny (apart from naptime), and it's good to have lots of play options if he's going to do the same tomorrow.

A little amusing moment from our day earlier - J-cub has (finally) learnt to say sorry and due to the bucketfuls of reinforcement we've been pouring over him when he says it spontaneously, he's now over-using it slightly. Case in point: I was in the kitchen earlier, bashed my elbow and shouted 'Ow!'. J-cub (in the lounge, out of sight), called "Sorry Mummy!".

Quite possibly the funniest, and cutest, thing he's ever done.

Day 41 - He's on the phone.

J-cub is now having full on conversations on his toy phones. Usually with one of us, although when we made it ring early, he picked up the handset and held it out to Tilly, then when she didn't take it, he placed it carefully on her back. Bless.

Day 33 - Chalk it up...

(Saturday August 21st)

J-cub's passion for drawing has been taken up a notch by the purchase of some chunky chalks. No more little tiny pieces of crumbly, edible chalk which he can barely hold and which make hardly a mark on the old blackboard. Instead, these lovely things make chalking J-cub's new favourite activity.

We tried to instil a rule whereby if he used chalk on anything other than the blackboard (the carpet, the TV, my shoulder...) it would be immediately removed. Cue screaming tantrums and frantic pointing and grunting at the box of chalks. Even attempts at doing alternative activities (like nappy changing, eating or sleeping...) elicited J-cub's first self-invented sign, a very precise finger-wiggle in the air, just like scribbling on a blackboard.

Returning the piece (or pieces) of chalk to him made him extremely happy. I think we've created a monster.

Day 32 - Ringslinging

(Friday August 20th)

Probably stemming from a lack of sleep yesterday, J-cub was very clingy today. I had tons to get on with, but he didn't want to be left alone for a second. This is getting to be more and more the norm, with our time in the living room spent with me watching J-cub play, because he doesn't want interference from me, but equally he doesn't want me to do anything else. If I pick up the laptop, he slams the lid of it shut. If I pick up a book, he tears it out of my hand and throws it away.

He does love reading together, and drawing together, and singing nursery rhymes etc, but most games descend into rough and tumble play which can get a bit too rough and tumbly for my liking. The boy loves headbutting, and biting, and smacking, and throwing things. I'm not too keen on any of these.

So I'm taking to babywearing more and more around the house, in an attempt to keep up with day-to-day housework whilst simultaneously having nice calm, gentle cuddles with no violence. J-cub's favourite job is washing up, he especially likes it if I let him hold his hand under running water and flick bubbles around. But he's equally content to sit and watch, as long as I keep up a running commentary or sing to him. Today, the Mei Tai was in the car and it was raining, so I gave the ring sling another go. I'm not overly keen on the ring sling, it's not great for long carries as one-shoulder carries are uncomfortable with a heavy toddler, and I'm not experienced enough to stop worrying that he's going to fall out.

Today, the ring sling and I (and J-cub) clicked. I managed to get him in a really comfortable, secure position on my hip, and after some ring-positioning practice, got him onto my back. He sat there perfectly happily, resting his head on my shoulder and watching me work. It was lovely.

We had to go out to Asda later for some bits and bobs, and I took the ring sling as it was still raining and there's very few parent and child parking spaces. I got him in the sling quickly and put my waterproof coat on top of both of us. He stayed there happily until the excitement of several babies being pushed around the children's clothing aisle got too much for him and I had to switch him into the trolley.

I'm now kicking myself that at the last NCT Nearly New sale I attended, I passed up a beautiful Ellaroo ring sling for the bargainous price of £9. Instead I have a cheap and extremely thin plain cotton one for about £3 from ebay. I suppose it does the trick, but it would be so nice to have something a bit more sturdy. I'll be at the sling table at the next sale with bells on.

Day 31 - Monkey legs

(Thursday August 19th)

An important First today - First day of No Naps. Gah. J-cub usually sleeps for at least 2 hours in the morning, near enough 2 hours on the dot from when he wakes up, and still often has a 2 hour nap in the afternoon too. I knew this morning was going to be a bit out of sync, as we had a playdate planned for 11am at a soft play centre about 30 minutes drive away. J-cub had shown no sign of being sleepy before we left, so I hoped he would nap in the car and not be too grumpy when we got there.

No such luck - wide awake all the way there and practically bouncing off the walls when we got inside. My lovely friend Rhian and her daughter Poppy were already there, and we quickly chucked the little ones into the toddler area and got on with some good chatting. Poppy and J-cub were both so full of beans that we got just as much of a workout as they did, climbing up slopes and ladders after them, sliding down slides, getting stuck at the very top and having to ask young children to show us the way down.

We broke for lunch and Poppy put J-cub to shame by perfectly eating a plate of cheese and tomato pasta using her fork to spear and eat every single piece. J-cub enjoyed holding his fork in one hand and shovelling in beans on toast with the other. He did manage to eat the whole meal without throwing any on the floor, so that's a start.

After some more playing we called it quits and left for home. J-cub slept for less than 10 minutes (car-induced sleep rather than a proper nap, so it doesn't count), and came into the house wide-awake and bouncing.

We'd picked up a parcel from the sorting office on the way, and it was some goodies from Babykind. I'd never bought anything from them before, but someone recommended them to me as having cheap postage and as I only needed a few things, I was pleased not to have to double the cost of my order with postage costs. For orders under £20, they charge just £1 postage which is very unusual. I needed some nappy sanitizer, a new mesh bag for the nappy pail, some Babylegs (not strictly needed, but they were on offer) and some old Green Parenting magazines. My order came to just over £20 so I paid the £2 postage, and when I picked up the parcel I was gobsmacked to see it had cost them over £8 to send it. It's definitely worth a look at their informative and well-stocked online shop, and there's tons of bargains to be had if you've got the time to wade through their massive list of bargain items.

J-cub's favourite item was his ToodleBugz, baby leg warmers covered with monkeys. He's still loving pretending to be a monkey at the moment, and having legs covered with monkeys led to much hilarity all afternoon.

J-cub went to bed at his usual time of 7pm, not appearing any more tired than usual. I was shattered.

Day 30 - The boy eats curry

Ahhh it's so lovely to be up to date and only have one blog post to write today.

It's Jamie's day off today, and we kicked off the morning with a couple of hours play, as per usual, followed by an awesome three hour nap, which rather left me and Jamie twiddling our thumbs once we'd finished our usual showering/shaving/dressing/make-uping/tidying/cleaning routine. I do wish J-cub would tell us when he's going for a long sleep.

Still, at least it meant that by the time he'd woken up, had his lunch and got dressed, he had no time to make a mess of the lovely tidy lounge before we went out. We went to see some friends who bravely have three children, and spent the afternoon being dragged in various directions by all four of them, whilst attempting to maintain some semblance of adult conversation at the same time. It was lovely though, but J-cub got a bit overtired and grouchy when he wanted the blue ball, and Seren had the blue ball, and he didn't want the orange ball, even though it was identical, and Seren didn't want the orange ball, and she wouldn't give up the blue ball, and they had a big bawling screaming fight. Seren is 2 and a half and should know better. She should hide her balls before J-cub comes to visit.

J-cub absolutely adored their big trampoline, and actually seemed to know how to bounce on it. He liked falling down on it too:

By the time he ran out of steam it was gone 4pm, and we decided to venture into town rather than go straight home, and have dinner out somewhere. We had a quick scout round Toys R Us for a present for a friend's child, then crossed the road to Sainsbury's (oooh the glamour) for our tea. We found that children's meals were just £1 with any adult meal, and we ordered chicken curry and rice for J-cub (it also came with a Fruit Shoot and some fruit, bargain). I may have mentioned before that whilst we've been going through this J-cub-not-eating phase, nursery have reported that he'll happily eat curry, chilli, stew, all kinds of things which he wouldn't dream of touching at home. So we wanted to put him to the test. We had to wait AGES for the food to appear, which made us wish we'd spent another pound to get the child's snack meal to entertain him in the meantime. We managed to unearth some snacks from his change-bag though...

And when the chicken curry arrived, he tucked in with gusto. Using a real adult-sized spoon and fork, he wolfed it down. See, he can eat!

We were just about to leave when it started to hammer down, and with no coats or hats or raincovers we had to splash out (get it) £6.99 on a lovely new golfing umbrella. J-cub thought it was the best thing he'd ever seen:

We managed to get home dead-on 7pm, gave him a bottle, changed him and threw him into bed. It only took him another 2 hours of burbling and playing to fall asleep...

Day 23 - Imaginative play

(Wednesday August 11th)

Another trip to IKEA today (inspired by our fleeting visit on Monday, which I'll write more about later). When we got home, J-cub was playing around when he came across my ring sling, and put it around his neck. He picked up his new IKEA cat and brought her to me, I tucked her in and tightened the sling appropriately.

He wandered off and played with his toys with the cat in the sling for ages, stopping from time to time to give her a kiss:

How cute is that?

Day 7 - Other people's toys

I took J-cub with me to work for the first time today. The boys I look after live in a gorgeous, huge house, which is full of 14 years' worth of accumulated toys. We arrived at 8am, and the boys were still asleep after a hard night's work playing DS. After their Dad had left, we explored the kitchen, utility room, playroom and lounge, and J-cub was beside himself with joy at all these new toys.

They have a lovely play table with a Brio train set, which J-cub didn't really understand but liked picking up the trains and carefully placing them on the floor.

We found an old keyboard under the piano, upon which I gave the boys keyboard lessons when they were little (like most of their musical instruments, their interest waned as they grew older). J-cub sang and banged the keys and made a complete racket, it was lovely to watch. Our piano is currently covered in boxes of stuff, and I haven't played at all since before he was born. I'll have to rectify that soon.

After his nap we made some more racket, which woke the boys and they played with him while I cooked lunch. They found an old box full of play food and spent ages tipping it out, putting it all back in the box, then tipping it out again. After half an hour, one of the boys commented "Babies are tiring, aren't they?" :D

Part of my role involves 'shadowing' my main charge, E, in school. I am technically a teaching assistant, but in a behavioural therapy capacity, whereby I prompt him through his work and his school day in the least intrusive way possible, until he learns through repetition and reinforcement how to do things for himself. I use a lot of gestures which have been adapted from Makaton and British Sign Language, all of which allow me to communicate with him without the other children being aware that I'm telling him to stop pinching his skin or to look at his teacher. I explained to him about the CBeebies programme Something Special, and taught him some of the signs that J-cub uses. Within minutes he was generalising the ABA techniques I use with him, to teach J-cub the signs being demonstrated in the programme. It was amazing to watch.

Towards the end of my shift the boys started to run out of baby-wrangling patience, so I set up a ping-pong tournament to give them a break. It lasted for about 5 minutes, before J-cub decided he wanted in on the action, and stole the ball. We swapped to playing table football, but J-cub swiped that ball too.

Game over!

Bongos

I don't think I've said much about J-cub's love of drumming, but ever since he learnt that smacking his hand against something made a noise, he's been on a mission to become the greatest drummer since the Roland 808.

He's got an electronic drum from Mothercare, and a cheapy drum we picked up from an NCT Nearly New sale, and a plethora of percussion instruments. We thought it was time for him to take the next step up, and I tracked down a set of bongos on ebay, which I won for the shocking price of £3.60.

They arrived this morning, and after a confusing moment where the box and packaging were far more exciting than the contents, he's been playing them ever since. I say playing, but he seems to prefer sitting on them and surveying his domain.

Still, at £3.60, I don't really care what he uses them for, as long as he's happy. And it's hilarious to watch.

A Day in Pictures (2)

We've had such a lovely day today, and I had too many photos to choose from, so I'm doing another day in pictures. Last night was awful - we've had 2 nights of pure, unbroken sleep from 7pm-7am, which has obviously lulled us into a false sense of security which needed shaking up. We put J-cub down at 8pm last night, he immediately fell asleep but woke up 10 minutes later and grizzled and groaned and descended into full-blown screaming over the course of the next hour. We gave up and brought him down for some extra playtime. At 10.30pm, he went back to bed, and eventually drifted off. Result, we thought, that means a lie-in tomorrow morning.

J-cub hadn't finished toying with us though. At 3.30am, the screaming started again. We were up, and down, and rubbing his back, and cuddling him, and trying everything under the sun to get him to go back to sleep. I don't know when he did, I just know that I've once again been floating on a cloud of exhaustion today (and he wouldn't go down for his afternoon nap, just when we really needed a break).

It didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves though...

J-cub having his first go on the climbing frame. It's built in a square, with different surfaces and sides on each section. He went round and round and round, while we ran round the edge to block the exits and stop him from falling off.

Crawling through the tunnel, full of giggles.

Riding a very evil looking horse.

My favourite moment - we walked round to the park for the first time with J-cub between us, holding our hands. He got tired a few times and we carried him for a while, then he'd be back down for another go. It's like we're proper parents all of a sudden.

New walking skill - holding just one hand.

Bad Mummy - J-cub's first taste of ice-cream (and it was a Magnum - nothing but the best for our boy).

Picking the flowers.

Adapting our game from a few days ago - "What's in the boot?".

Covering the car with a sarong makes it even more exciting.

Building a den under the Jumperoo.

Rescuing Jemaine from inside the den.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Today's Look Up photo: J-cub enjoying the swing with tiny chuckles and wide-mouthed grins, lots of pointing and staring up at the sky.

Jacob's driving in his car...

The two lovely boys I work with are now aged 10, and have decided that it's about time to let go of some of their toddler toys. They invited me to rummage through their garden shed, where I found two lovely Little Tikes cars, which they thought they could just about bear to be parted from. I chose one, and while I tutored E, his brother J scrubbed and washed and cleaned all the spiders off the car. I folded down the backseats of the car and squeezed it in, and arrived home to give J-cub his belated birthday present from his honorary brothers.

We helped him into it, and he's barely spent a second out of it since. We were a bit worried that it would take him a while to work out how to climb in and out of it, but about 5 minutes after he'd first sat in it, Jamie took J-cub out of it to give him his tea, left him for a second to get his cup, and came back in to find J-cub sitting back in the car with the door shut.

His legs aren't long or strong enough yet to propel himself forwards, but he's enjoyed using it as a highchair, sitting it and spinning the wheel, reading books while leaning out the front window, climbing in the wrong way round, standing on the seat and leaning out the front window, sitting on the parcel shelf, climbing out of the door, cruising round to the other side, and climbing back in through the window.

I was very cruel and put it in the garden, after I got sick of having no room for anything else and after J-cub got stuck in the footwell for the hundredth time. I'm just waiting for him to start pointing out the back and signing 'car'. In the meantime, I've been taking him out every time it's not raining for some driving practice.

Today's Look Up photo was an easy one - he leant out the front window to check out the ceiling (just in case there was anything going on up there). AMAZING face :D

What's in the box?

Now that J-cub's getting a bit older, I've been trying to play with him in a more useful way. Tammy at The Heartful Blogger has recommend The Toddler's Busy Book, which is on my wish list. In the meantime, I've been looking for inspiration from other blogs. When I find it, it always makes me feel like such an idiot for not having thought it up myself.

Today's game, courtesy of Chasing Cheerios, is 'What's Inside?'. This was swiftly rechristened 'What's in the box?', said in a wailing, Brad Pitt-esque voice from the scene at the end of Se7en (which you can see a comedy version of here). Our version involved sneaking something into a biscuit tin, banging the lid whilst chanting "What's in the box?", shaking the box whilst chanting "What's in the box?", then saying "Oooooooh what's in the box?" during the big reveal.

J-cub cottoned on to the game after about 2 seconds, he took over the banging of the lid, clapped while I shook it, then clasped his hands together in anticipation before chuckling when he saw what was inside.

When I thought he'd had enough of playing, I wandered off for a while, only to see that J-cub was carrying on playing on his own. He quickly mastered getting the lid on and off, and even remembered to put something inside the box a few times.

Later on, he found his shadow on the wall for the first time, and happily smacked it around for a while.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I wrote yesterday about the swallows (house-martins?) and managed to get some photos today looking up at them flying into their nest in the eaves of the house behind us. This stretched my photographic capabilities to their limits, as swallows apparently forage at 30-40kph. I got a few usable shots though, and this was my favourite.

Play dates

I was supposed to have a play date with my two Mummy friends and their babies today. We used to get together every week, but illness and tiredness and other things seem to always get in the way now, and it's been a while since we've all been together.

J-cub went down late for his morning nap, therefore woke up late, and after a hurried lunch we set off to drive to R's house. By the time we arrived, my other friend, C, had already left. Her little one was having an undiagnosed screaming fit, so she'd scarpered to the sanctity of home. R's little one, P, had just gone down for her nap. So 3 out of the planned 6 of us had a lovely play - J-cub enjoyed all the novel toys, the clinky fireguard, the too-high-for-climbing-sofa, the books he'd never read before, and the dogs. The dogs quickly became his new best friends, he fed them breadsticks through the stairgate, laughed when they barked at him, and gently poked their faces.

At exactly the point when P woke up, J-cub started having a bit of an I'm-really-quite-tired-now-Mummy tantrum, threw himself eye-first onto a doorframe, and had a massive screaming meltdown.

We had approximately 5 minutes when both babies were awake and not crying, although P was adorably half-asleep and fluffy-haired and mostly just stared at J-cub in a "where did you come from?" type way.

It was a lovely afternoon, although it didn't exactly work out the way we'd planned it. It's always nice to have some mummy-talk, and for J-cub to play with some different toys. P also still has balloons up from her birthday, and today's Look Up photo shows J-cub looking up at them with glee and longing. When we got home, he stuck the tied-end of one of his balloons in his mouth and crawled around with it bobbing up and down. He now has a rather scary looking lump on his eyebrow from his incident with the doorframe, and I'm predicting a black eye tomorrow morning.

The Wicker Boy

When I was pregnant, we found a lovely wicker storage basket in Dunelm Mill, lined with blue gingham and with little wooden wheels. We stored in it all the bits and bobs of baby-clothes which we acquired, and some special soft toys. It languished in the corner of the nursery during the first few months of J-cub's life, filled with cot blankets which were too big to be used while he was tiny.

As he got bigger and the influx of toys started, the basket was moved downstairs to the lounge, was gradually filled up, and quickly overflowed. It's fairly sturdy, and J-cub first pulled himself to stand holding on to it, tempted by the bounty within. From time to time, he starts searching for something in it, chucking toys over his shoulder with little or no regard for people or cats who might be within a hitting radius.

This afternoon he managed to empty the entire basket, turn it on its side, and began to delight himself with the sound the wicker made as he hit it, and rubbed his hands on it, and scratched it. He then realised that he could see through the sides, and played Peepo with us through and around it for ages...

At the moment, when he gets excited he reaches both arms up to the ceiling, throws his head back, squeezes his eyes tightly shut and giggles before slamming both hands down on whatever it is that he's crushing on. I tried to get a shot-from-above of this move (pre-shutting-eyes) for today's look up photo, but was foiled. I just love the expression of pure joy on his face here though...

Having extricated the basket from the mess he'd made, I discovered that the wheels were sturdier than they looked, and I pushed him around the lounge in it for a while, getting up as much speed as possible and crashing into the furniture...

Then J-cub realised that he could push the basket around himself. He's been using his VTech First Steps Baby Walker for a week or so now, and is so proud of his abilities to walk across the floor with it. It does go a bit fast though, and he tends to get left behind and ends up on his knees (or flat on his face). He also can't push it one handed, and can't hold the handle with his giraffe Jemaine also in his hand. The basket solved both these problems; heavy enough to push at a J-cub-appropriate speed, and with room to spare for Jemaine to travel in style...

He also struggles to turn the VTech walker around corners, or to reverse direction, but the basket was just the right height to cruise around to the far side, then push it back the way he came...

J-cub played with the basket for TWO SOLID HOURS. I didn't get a proper look up photo, but it's my rules, and I say the second and third photos count. And it was great fun.