Sweet Little Lies

Aimee is now at a level where we have to use bribes, coercion, gentle persuasion and downright force sometimes to get her to do what we think is right. Food is a very big issue. But today, something (we think) remarkable happened. We told a white lie. Normally, when we introduce a new food, Aimee says: Wot dat?
And we tell her the name. Which falls into her trap, and inevitably, she says: No, don't want [insert food name].
Today, I cooked oven chips and had some left over. I know full well Aimee would reject them (as she has in the past) but today, I just put them in a bowl and said to her: Hey, Aimee, look.
Right on cue, she asks me what they were, and I said: Biscuits.
Ok, not a white lie, a COMPLETE LIE.
I did qualify that they were 'potato biscuits'.
I should explain that Aimee loves biscuits. she eats them by the truck load and would eat them exclusively if she had the choice.
So by labelling them biscuits, she accepted them and ate them all, then asked for more!

Now, this trick won't work for everything (try spinach omelette for example). Since the item has to pass some resemblence to a biscuit. Since chips look like finger biscuits, I guess she just thought they were those.
An awesome result to a tiring but fun day. As it was sunny all weekend, the garden and park was used a lot, much to Daddy's exhaustion.

Some Dylan news, in response to our health visitor insisting we should dose DJ up on more protein, we now know that Dylan loves chicken. We tried him with creamy chicken straight out of a Heinz baby jar (bang goes our organic cook at home credentials) and he got so hyper with excitement, he kept blowing raspberries for ages and giggling, in a slightly demented fashion. So gathering that he digged chicken, I made a big batch of same thing, but home made (Annabel Karmel's Easy One Pot Chicken) and pureed it with formula milk (oh yeah, we're throwing everything at him). He loved it, sort of. He was also very tired and grumpy so picked at it. But I'm sure he'll be more enthusiastic tomorrow. If not, then it's a lot of chicken soup for us over the coming week! Or, we could always tell him it was biscuit (pureed).

Dylan gets the giggles

Dylan Boy - gets the giggles.



Not sure why he's laughing so manically. Maybe he is celebrating the emergence of his first tooth. It hasn't stopped his crying though, so we reckon they will all come in very quick succession.

Like Father like son

I've been thinking about language recently. Just how do you first learn to talk? I mean, when I listen to Aimee chat away, it's a wonder to realise that nearly 99 percent of what she says now, is proper talking. But how does someone so young acquire language? I mean it's not like we sit there and say, OK aimee, today's new word is, erm, no, you can;t understand me can you?
Somehow, the baby and toddler brain just naturally deconstructs everything he or she hears and over a very short period of time, begins to realise how sentances are constructed and what words mean. It's all down to repetition I suppose. Oh, and lots of TV. I know, TV is bad and should not be a substitute nanny. But Aimee just loves Peppa Pig right now. It's the only way we can get her to eat and pee - often at the same time.
Darnit, we'll do better with Dylan, promise.
Speaking of whom. The heavenly angel is now officially the demon child. He screams, and screams, and screams and screams, etc etc etc. Now with added volume. We think strongly that it is his teeth as you can feel ALL of them poking under the gums now (not just the front ones). Although, as yet, they are shy of emerging. God, we hope they do soon, just for our sanity and our hearing. And another thing. He won't drink from the bottle even though we've tried FOUR different brands and a dozen different style teats. He just licks it and blows raspberries. Hmm, I think he knows a lot more than he is able to say.

Girls versus Boys

Before Dylan was born, we thought it would be interesting to see what the guide books say about the experience of raising two little kids was. Most books just talked about jealousy management tactics and gleefully advised that no two kids are the same. Hell yeah, I would agree with that.

Already Dylan is showing strong mannerisms that are a world apart from how Aimee was when she was 5 months old. Like the fact that he wants to eat everything you eat. He'll strain and reach and grab and demand everything that you put in your mouth. Aimee was never interested and still is a food fuss pot, eschewing almost anything new. The baby Aimee would look at a new toy with interest. Turning it over and inspecting, maybe putting it in her mouth. Dylan boy bashes, and bangs and chews and bites and smashes. Aimee would be happy if you put her down on the ground and walked away. Dylan screams if you even lost eye contact. Aimee hates my singing and guitar playing. Dylan is soothed by it. Both were early smilers. I think Dylan has caught to the smile and youet a smile back trick earlier. Aimee was a struggle to breast eed. Dylan much les so, but he refuses the bottle so far, whereas it was never a problem with Aimee.

And so on...there are too numerous differences between the two monkeys. Ones thing is for certain with both though. Together, they make mean combination for us to deal with. When bot kickoff with screaming and crying, it's a very stressful time for all. But when they are both sweet, it is lovely.

Faces

Aimee is getting pretty good at drawing faces now. Thanks to her easy wipe scribbler pad.
It won't be long before she starts producing the classic children's drawing of the family members as stick men.
I think it is decided amongst me and Cat that Dylan is getting harder to look after the older he gets. The once promising easy going laid back baby has transformed into a never-happy constantly fidgeting, cry if you leave me alone for one nano second, baby. I mean he will really scream blue murder if you put him on the floor just to tend to something and when you return he will grin the biggest grin.
We think the biggest issue with him is his unemerged teeth. they burn away like daggers in his gums. And he lets us know it!
the other problems we think he gets annoyed with are - hunger, due to not being able to feed long enough before the pain of the teething gums gets in the way. Then there is the constipation, yep, days and days of no poo ever since we started him on baby rice. As of today, he will be five days without the poo. That's gotta bug him as it would us adults. then there is boredom. With the attention span of a gnat, Dylan will do something, like try to crawl or bite a toy, but gets bored within 2 minutes and scream.
So there you go, life as a five month old is pretty hard going.

Dreaming of a white Springtime

Try to remember when you first saw snow? I mean real snow. Not snow in books, or film or snow shakers. Real snow. This weekend little Aimee finally got the chance to muck around in the white stuff. Of course she knew what it was because of all the picture books and she has seen it before from the window, but we never went out in the snow before. This time, we zipped her up in her all in one snow suit and went out to a patch of grass outdoors.
Her first instinct was to smell the snow. Yes smell it. Then she wanted to feel it and get her hands cold. It was all so wonderful to her. Especially making footprints.
If you this is all very unremarkable, then realise the time of the year – it is April!
We’re all looking forward to the heatwave in December.

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?

Praise Bee

Aimee is a very clever girl. I know so, because she told me. After counting numbers to 13 or 14 yesterday, she finished by saying: WELL DONE AIMEE, CLEVER GIRL – and then clapping self-approvingly.Of course she has no idea what it means (or maybe she does, which would mean she is indeed very clever), as she is just mimicking what me or Cat say after each accomplished task. In the early days, we started off praising her with high targets such as, can Aimee change her clothes or climb the stairs, but now our targets are much more, erm, realistic, like, just trying to get her to put a spoon of food in her mouth and not spitting it out again.

Year of the Rat

Chinatown New Year lanterns, Cat with kids

"I HATE KIDS"
Not me you understand, but others. Yes, nothing divides opinion and causes normal sane people to act irrationally as much as their personal feelings about kids. You either love em or hate em. And those that hate them (who are in most cases, though not always, childless themselves) , are quite vocal about it, often adding a blasphemous expletive in front of the above quote. I get this fairly often. People I know actually say that they hate kids directly to me. Like what am I supposed to do? Hide them from view and not talk about ANYTHING kid/baby related. Not only that, but they'll go into such amazing detail about exactly what aspects of children really annoys them (you name it: noise, too small, too precocious, too noisy, too whingey, noise etc).
People who bang on about never wanting ever to have kids, how they hate the idea of kids etc, really annoy me. They're in huge denial and probably hate themselves more than they hate kids. But the worst offenders are the people who say this: "Well, I don't mind kids cos when I play with my nephews/neices/friends kids etc... I know full well that I can give them back and let them deal with the tantrums whilst I can go home to a quiet house...hahahha" (the laugh at the end is really important.) What a dumbass mindless thing to say. Grrrr.

Anyway, onto more important matters.

We thought Dylan could teeth for Britain but these past few days he has excelled himself with tortured teething symptoms. But still no sign of a tooth. But his crying, red cheeks and constant drooling have definitely increased. Poor kid, one day they'll come.

Aimee has developed a new habit. Somewhat embarassing. She likes to, erm, how can I put it, pleasure herself against the car seat or pram harness. She'll really go for it quite vigorously and refuses to stop when me or Cat ask her (trying hard not to sound hysterical) to stop doing it. She was going flat out in Ikea today whilst both me and Cat were going bright red and desperately hoping no one passing by noticed. It's all thoroughly normal according to the child books, and a brief phase that will pass. But at least Aimee has been getting better at potty practice. We've managed to get her to do a biggie in it several times as well as her usual wee. She's now fascinated by the whole excretory process that she constantly looks at the bowl to check if she has eliminated anything. It's a good sign of course, but still a long way to go before she's ready to stop wearing nappies.

Face to face

Doesn't really seem that baby Dyls has changed much in his appearance over 3 months. But the camera lies. He is longer and heavier - as the growing mounds of too small clothes can testify - and he holds his head pretty well. Plus he is fitting his size 3 nappies fairly snuggly now. The poor cheeks glow red with teething pain every day. Despite this, our little soldier still manages to down his daily quota of milk and night time sleeps. But he can now laugh - you gotta work hard at the funny faces but he definitely laughs.

Aimee is regularly weeing into her potty now. You have to initiate it with copious Pingu, but if you time it right, she can wee. A very handy incentive is the Kandoo froggy soap which she loves - so it becomes her reward whenever she is succesful on the potty.