First day at the baby nursery

The day finally arrived that every parent dreads - the leaving of your precious little one to a bunch of strangers. Aimee's first day at baby-nursery was a a very successful day indeed. The nursery is quite large with three 'rooms' each containing children separated according to age groups. As soon as you open the door, there is a cacophony of noise - fun noise like laughter and yells and general racket. The baby room was very quiet and quite laid back. As we put Aimee down in the room and chatted to tha staff, Aimee just went about her usual routine of playing, observing everything, and playing. She was very happy. But not as happy as when the food arrived. She sat there all quiet and lovely at the baby chair and the staff brought in freshly cooked organic pasta and tomato with cheese. Me and Cat looked at it and then at each other. 'She ain't gonna eat all that' we both said. The portion was enough to fill a grown man let alone a baby, let alone a baby that is really fussy like Aimee. How wrong we were! Aimee finished the lot! I swear, it was the most we had ever seen her eat in one go. Plus she had pudding - although was visibly flagging mid way through the middle of her rice pudding. The other babies even looked surprised. Aimee just sat there and with each spoobful opened her little mouth wanting more.



Aimee even had a little sleep in the cot. A minor miracle considering the background noise. But she was soooo whacked out. Cat and I celebrated/calmed aourselves down with an Aimee-free lunchtime at Shanghai - the amazing Dim Sum restaurant in Dalston.
In the evening, Aimee ate all her dinner and drank all her milk. Could this be the dawn of a brand new Aimee?
Time will tell, but adding the nursery drop-off and pick-up routine into our daily cycle will take a lot of effort, planning and of course - lots of money.

Crawling, rolling, juggling

It is so hard to believe that nine and a half months ago, my life was about to take a huge leap into fatherhood. How innocent and unknowing I was then. Fast forward to now and I cannot imagine my life without this little bundle of love called Aimee.Aimee has developed in huge leaps recently. She now plays with toys and examines them rather than eats them or ignore them. She certainly has firm favourites - mainly a couple of furry toys she hugs at night. Yes, the dreaded night time. The pattern seems to be changing. She'll still wake up and cry at various points in the night, but I have put a firm foot down and insisted we do not attend to her needs. It so far seems to be working as Aimee will fuss for about ten minutes, but soon settles and doesn't stir until about 7am.
Cat has built a massive playpen out of TWO BabyDan cages. By linking them both up, there
is still (just) enough room to walk around the perimeter and switch on the TV. Inside, Aimee can roll around to her heart's content. Today, she even crawled for about a foot forward. Its the funiest thing. Her arms and legs were a frenzied blur but her belly remained rooted to the floor, but little by little, she inched forward to finally obtain the object she so desperately craved (some random toy).
With every positive, there is a negative. Aimee is still a massive fusspot when eating and drinking. We are convinced she takes in maybe a fraction of what she should be eating each day. But she has developed a whole raft of cunning techniques to avoid us getting the spoon into her mouth. We battle every day with this, and it frustrates us enormously. But, I guess somehow she does get enough to eat cos she seems healthy enough.On Tuesday this week, we put Aimee into the nursery for a few hours. This will be her very first time in the hands of strangers. It'll probably be me and Cat freaking out with nerves and hysterics rather than Aimee - who is more than happy with strangers. But it needs to be done. In a week, Cat goes back to work and thus begins a new chapter in our lives - the dual working parent juggling act.


A hyped Aimee inside the 'cage'

Sticky buns

A terribly long absence from the Aimee blog, apologies to all my three readers!
Well it certainly has been eventful recently. Firstly, Aimee’s Grandad (Ye-Ye in Chinese), my Dad, suffered a stroke and is recovering in hospital. Aimee went to visit him several times and seems to be quite excited with the hustle and bustle of hospital life. It certainly put a smile on my Dads face to see the little one. I especially adore his personal descriptive comments of Aimee. My favourite being the one where he likens her pudgy hands to Chinese dim sum dish called bao-bao – white puffy buns filled with sweet meat. Quite accurate.

Aimee now has three teeth with a fourth possibly about to appear soon – we hope, since each tooth brings at least 3 nights of painful crying at night and no sleep for me and Cat.
She is increasingly active and explorative these days. The front room has two padded play mats that cover the entire floor space – and still she finds nooks and crannies in which to wedge herself. All this from a baby who cannot yet crawl. The preferred method of locomotion is to roll sideways, or bum shuffle backwards. We cannot take our eyes of her for a second or some impending object will be grabbed or she will disappear down some cactus plant pot.

On a positive front, Aimee can pretty much go to sleep at night without the long drawn out routine of rocking, feeding, comforting etc that we have been doing for the past 8 months. After a generous bottle feed, a few words goodnight, we leave her in the cot to play with her toys (she loves cuddly animals now) eventually falling asleep. So far, only the teething pains have woken her.Aimee starts nursery next month. I’ll report on how she does in my next article.