Little Weaner

Make no doubt about it. Our boy is gonna be a food lover.
Three days into our weaning experiment (because the health visitor told us we should start - against our instinct), it seems Dylan is loving the baby rice big time.
In fact he is ravenous for it, grabbing the spoon, lurching forwards and opening his mouth in a desperate attempt to get more. He reminds me a lot of a small reptile, gorging on insects that pass his way with lightning reflexes.
Bless his appetite, may it long continue.

Double trouble

A star is born!
Or rather, three stars - Cat, Aimee and Dylan all star in the latest edition of the Tesco Direct summer Catalogue.

Weight Loss Shocker

In a slightly shocking departure from Dylan’s meteoric growth progress, the baby nurse says Dylan is slightly underweight and needs to start weaning. Like what? This early? He’s only 4 and a bit months old. But she said he exhibited all the signs of a very hungry baby and simply wasn’t getting enough in his milk. Also, she said Cat needs to rest more (oh yeah, like that's rthe easy bit) and eat more calories (lots of chocolates are ok apparently). I must say, all this advice is a little contrary to what I was led to believe was the right thing to do. The UK govt officially recommends delaying weaning until baby is six months old, but admittedly most parents I know start when their bubba is 5 months old. So it’s all a bit confusing.
right now, Dyls seems happy to play and roll around. Maybe we'll see if he likes a bite of baby rice tomorrow. Only he can tell us if he is ready I guess.

The Pre-Dawn Chorus

There is a reason why early morning birdsong is called the dawn chorus. It’s because it happens at dawn of course. But there is an eerie silence about an hour before the birds kick off. I know this because the little Madam, SHE who must be obeyed, has now decided that this pre-dawn chorus hour is now the perfect time to wake up and scream for attention. We’re talking four-flipping-thirty-flipping-am!!!! The human body is clearly not designed to function at this ungodly hour. While Aimee runs around like it is midday, I slump onto the sofa and whinge, snooze, awake in panic in case she has hurt herself, then snooze etc until the cavalry (Cat and Dylan) arrive.

The problem is not so much the earliness, it’s the terrible practice I make of snatching a quick nap prior to going to work. It kills my body clock, and I am groggy all day at work. The online and textbook advice suggests it is a passing phase and maybe we could tweek her hours with less daytime sleep and other measures.

Yesterday Cat took the kids to their very first Easter egg hunt. A fellow Mum organised one at her house for 8 or so toddlers to seek out the highly prized chocolate goodies. Previously, we've been very good at barring Aimee from sweets or chocolate. We don’t give them to her and she doesn’t ask. This could all change since she now has the taste for it. Lots of it. In fact, on the day, she must have eaten the equivalent to 2 or 3 whole milk chocolate eggs - yeah the big ones. Subsequently Aimee became hyped up, with mad tantrums couple with excessive bursts of energy and a strange babbling, delirious ‘high’. It was terrible, and putting her to sleep took about 3 hours. From now on, chocolate will be restricted to being only mummy and daddy food.

Down and Out in Beverly Wood

The true cost of raising children has just hit me like a humungous slap in the face. So far we’ve been living in isolated bliss. Cat on fully paid maternity leave and me swanning around with my reduced working hours and plenty of quality parenting time. But come September, when Cat goes back to work, we have to place both Aimee and Dylan into nursery day care. Oh my God. We’re talking £1400 a month for full time care for both. That’s the cheapest nursery in town. If you add food, bills and other non-fun everyday expenditure, then basically both me and Cat will be out of pocket by a few hundred each month. My eyes nearly popped out when I worked it all out using Excel, and Cat looked on the brink of tears.

So our first solution was to suggest that Aimee work hard manual labour down the coal shaft (we’ll just call it the ‘find the black ball’ game), and Dylan to get a major new role in Eastenders (after all, you never see half-asian actors on TV, it’s an equality thing). The boringly serious solution though, is to find a way of tweeking our work hours and putting the kids into nursery for only part of the week. We’ll also need to change a habit of a lifetime and live strictly to budget. No more fancy cakes and impulse buys at Tesco. It’s Value meals and lots of home-made freezer food. But that’s all to come in September. Now pass me the caviar.

Aimee's first drawing of a face

The 'face' on the left is completely unaided drawn by Aimee with no prompting or copying whatsoever. I mean it just came out of the blue. Me and Cat were both Gobsmacked.

Literally, the day before, all she could muster was a few meaningless random scribbles, then suddenly, next day, a proper face. Clearly, genius at work. Mind you, really not sure what the object on the right is. A lopsided praying mantis head perhaps?