Christmas 2008

Christmas for a 3 year old must be one of the most magical events of the year - easily better than a birthday. I mean you get loads of presents, loads of cake and chocolate, loads of attention, loads os going out to see cool Xmassy things, and there's Santa and panto and carols and zillions of other things to keep an active child wild with excitement. We think Dylan enjoyed his Xmas too with his constant cheeky grin and excited state of being.
Christmas is also a time for sharing, and what better present to share than that of chicken pox passed from brother to sister. Yes, as drove home after spending 3 fun filled days at the MacCallums, Aimee complained of an itchy stomach and feeling a bit unwell. When we got home and checked her tummy sure enough, the tell-tale mini-spots were all over her torso, exactly the same as appeared on dylan two weeks previous. Ha well, another New Year spent indoors - no different to any other year I guess.

A small Christmas surprise

Spotty Boy

They say chickenpox is mild in babies, but poor Dylan is covered head to toe in volcanic pox.

Most have scabbed over and dried up now and I can;t see any new ones, so hopefully he is over

the worst. Not a nice thing, but ultimately harmless. Mind you, it is interesting how many countries offer vaccination for chickenpox. In Germany it is an option, but in the USA I believe it is compulsorary before primary school. what are they afraid of eh? It's not like it's contagious is it? Oh.

Lurgy

Uh-oh, poor Dylan has the dreaded chicken pox.

It spread like wildfire at nursery. I think every kid in the baby room has it.

But Aimee appears so far symptomless.

The silver lining is that at least it will affect him over Xmas, which, in our selfish eyes,

means less time off work to look after him since chicken pox requires quarantine from

nursery.

Weird me watching you watching me videos

Dylan watches Oscar watching Dylan

Let's all clap hands with Oscar!

I'd like to say Hello!

Aimee's first written word. Very apt I think. You can just see the bit of the robot I drew along the top left corner and I wrote the word 'hello' above it (out of sight here), but Aimee copied it exactly, minus the 'h' for some reason. Oh and she drew the three-eyed smiley face next to it too. All the arty drawing presents she got for her birthday have really helped her refine her drawing skills, plus whatever they do at nursery she seems to be really learning quickly. Even Dylan wants to draw now, but the temptation to eat whatever pen or crayon he is given is still too strong and it all ends in tears as I end up confiscating said item. Soon my little man, soon.

Dylan headbanger

Sometimes you can only look on and wonder what goes through a small child's head.

In this case we know, it is a metal tray. sigh.

Birthday Girl

Wow, it was the society event of the year - Aimee's 3rd birthday party. All the food was made, balloons blown, banners hung up, and finally the guests arrived in their stretch limos (well, daddy's car) dressed in their bestest party frocks and the whole bash turned out to be an excellent and fun afternoon for kids and adults. Happy birthday Aimee!

Dylan is one

Hard to believe a whole year has passed already.

We celebrated with cakes, biscuits, jam, jelly and lots of

more cakes. Awesome!

Happy Halloween

Aimee as a little pumpkin. Despite the gloomy face, she did actually love being
a Halloween pumpkin this morning. My accuracy and artistic skills are slightly less
than full at such an early hour in the morning (6am). But I did my best and Aimee
was bursting with excitement at the prospect of everyone at nursery seeing her
facepaint.

Being a Mum

Monday was my very first day all alone looking after the kids for the entire day. Yes, I know it is unbeleivable but with Cat starting work and me with a more flexible working arrangement, I have opted to look after the kids on Mondays until they begin nursery for five days a week next year.
It is not an easy task for the amateur like me so I planned the day to be very active to avoid midday slumps, whingeing and me getting too stressed. So the day began with a trip to the leisure centre for some softplay fun. Dylan loved it and was hard to chase after. Aimee just loves one thing and that is the slanted foam structure that acts as a slide. She really goes for it there. After softplay, we lunched at the cafetaria and then went home to be met by the Homestart assistant Anne. Homestart is a charity that offers volunteers to come round to families with young kids and offers emotional support and a person to just help play with the kids while you take a break. It is a lifeline that Cat very much needed when she was going through a tough period and I guess we just carried on with the scheme. But I suspect our needs are no longer as valid as other families anymore so it is a relationship that may soon come to an end.
With dylan sleeping most of the afternoon, I could take time to paint Aimee's face as you can see.
Finally, dinner and bath, then Mum comes home to kiss the kids goodnight. The day was a complete reversal of how we were when I was working and Cat was home on maternity leave. I felt very motherly all day!
And the good thing I realised at the end was that I did not need to use the TV as a distraction all day.

Fetch

On a dreary Sunday afternoon, the women of the house were off partying so father and son are at home doing what men all over the world do - play ball:

Drawing Skillz

Call me biased but I think Aimee's art output is astonishing for her age. Granted, my pool of knowledge about how good nearly-three-year-olds are supposed to be is limited, but from what I've seen hanging up in her nursery and what they show on the segments in TV, I think this is seriously advanced.

When I was a youth, I was very good at drawing. But I used my powers for bad (getting caught graffitting walls, drawing teachers without clothes on to get cheap laughs...then getting caught, drawing caricatures of the bullies at school, then getting beat up - you see the theme here) I hope Aimee can use her powers to enlighten and entertain. We'll see. In the meantime, here is her most recent output, all drawn without any assistance or copying, on a little notepad in October, cue Tony Hart music...

Having a houseby

Buying a new house and having a baby share many similarities. You conceive the idea, you go through 9 months of waiting and waiting at which stage the whole thing could fall through at the drop of a hat, but then comes to big day, which is painful but exhilarating. However, it is only the start of your problems as you settle in and come to terms with a new lifestyle. Over the years, your new home/baby will grow and become part of you, will have good times, and bad times, will drain you of money, but reward you with happiness. Yup, many similarities. I only say this because ONE year ago today, we moved into our new home and Dylan will soon be one years old (next month). And let’s not forget Aimee will be 3 in November too.
Already we are thinking of how to celebrate. By now, we’ve been to more kids parties than have had sleepful nights, so the pressure is on to do something BIG. But I guess we may end up keeping it a small family affair.
Nursery news. Looks like Aimee has got over her phobia of the nursery and can be dropped off without a fuss now. However she has become fixated on just the one nursery carer who she follows around all day. If this girl ever has a day off or leaves, Aimee will be distraught. Dylan seems upset whenever we hand him over at nursery, but he quickly settles in his baby room – demolishing and bashing everything he can. Bless.

Dreams

Dreams are boring. I mean there is nothing more mind numbingly dull than listening to someone else prattle on about what happened in their dream. So here´s my dream from last night: I´m playing with Aimee outdoors. It is busy. A high street maybe, or a beach. Then she disappears. I´m searching, I can´t find her, I panic. The swell of emotion makes me wake up in a cold sweat. But I hear Aimee laughing in bedroom next doors. Phew. It was just a dream. Here´s Cat´s dream: It is 2am. Cat can hear Dylan struggling in bed next to her. She thinks I am holding him but that I have fallen asleep and about to drop him. So Cat half wakes up in a panic and lunges into me trying to `catch´ Dylan. Only, Dylan is safely asleep and so was I, until I get clawed or half punched by Cat. I mumble something in my half sleep/half unconcious state, then she goes back to sleep and we wake up next morning, bleary eyed but giggling at the silliness of it all. I´m sure I have read that weird dreams and sleep paralysis hallucinations are common to parents of young kids. Maybe it is the lack of sleep, or the constant worry you have generally. So what do these dreams mean? Who knows? But the last thing I want to do is bleat on about them to everyone else. Oh, I already have.

Nursery

The kids have spent their first full week in full-time nursery. But it's been an emotional time with mixed results. Aimee is distraught every morning when Cat leaves her there, but she is reported to be having a good time once she settles down. Yesterday, she enjoyed her group singing so much, she could hold her wee in no longer and wet herself, but gamely carried on singing. Now that's stubborn.

Dylan also cries each morning when Cat hands him over. Wringing every last drop out of Cat's heartstrings as she leaves. Yet, the carers say he is having a good time and even eats and sleeps during his stay there (which he doesn't do at home). Last night, we think he may even have reached a milestone...a whole night without waking up. A complete evening to morning period where Cat and I could sleep without our usual blurry-eyed 4am trip to his room to console, cuddle and douse him with milk or painkillers. Let's hope it really is a turning point.

A New Beginning

Another corner turned, another milestone passed, another day that our babies become less babies. sigh...yesterday Aimee and Dylan began their first experience of their new nursery. Day was ok, only a short one hour introductory session. Aimee was in a bit of a daze and rather quiet and clingy. I had to be by her side all session and she freaked out at how boisterous and territorial the established kids were. She rather more used to getting what she wants from us, and to have to be more assertive on unknown territory was a new thing. On day 2 however, Cat managed to leave the room quietly without aimee noticing for a good hour. The staff reported that Aimee was happily playing and eating her lunch and did not cry. One beneficial (to us) side effect of nursery that I forgot when she was at the old place was that Aimee is so knackered when she gets home, that bed time is a very swift affair - a quick bath, brush, story and lights out. She is fast asleep within minutes. During her recent sabbatical (Cat's maternity leave) she would take ages every night to go down. Nothing too hyper, but she just wanted lots of stories and lots of toys and lots of this and that, it would sometimes be 8:30-9pm before I could get away from her room.

With Dylan I thought it would be more tricky to break into the nursery habit since he is Sooooo clingy at home. But no, he slept, he ate, he played, he destroyed (some artwork and pulled all the toys down off the shelf). Apart from a few murmers of disquiet, he was actually quite happy in the baby room. I guess we underestimated how flexible a more young child can be.

Generally I like the nursery, it is well run with good facilities and plenty of outdoor space. The combined cost as I mentioned before is expensive to us, but actually they are cheap compared to most other places. When I was there, I spent a great deal of time observing the kids and it is really amazing what miniature but very determined little characters they can be at such a young age. One little boy appeared to be quite a handful in the playground. But when I commented about him to a member of staff, they explained that he had recently lost his mother. Such things really make you look twice at yourself and realise just how lucky you really are.

Let's hope the kids settle well and going to nursery everyday will be as normal and routine as everything else in our lives.

BTW The photo above is Dylan covered head to toe in kiddie fun paint. He seemed to think it was fun to use his body as a paint brush. It was not fun to clean up afterwards. Anyway, its all good for his development, I think.

And here's Aimee as Bambam.

Parents Allowed

Hot news - parents of two actually make it out of their house and in to town shocker!
Yes, instead of our usual Sunday where we are still in pyjamas and chasing after our kids, we decide, totally impromptu, to drive in to Chinatown and sample some of their food. It was tough going, with tears, tantrums and long delays on the roads. But we managed it, and enjoyed the nosh immensly.

Hair tales

Dylan is slowly starting to grow some head hair. Only a very light fuzzy growth, way less than most 10 month-olds. I think that's one of the things that make his appearance so distinctive and, I have to confess, adds to his baby-like cuteness. Babies born with a full head of hair I think look a bit too mature for their face. One person at work (who doesn't really like kids) once screeched that she thought babies with lots of hair look like freaks! Well I wouldn't go that far.
He still doesn't have enough hair to tell what colour it will be. It's definitely lighter than Aimee's. At one point we thought he might turn into a copper top, and in strong sunlight, you do see a bit of the red in it. A harkback to his Scottish heritage I suspect. Now that would be a look to stun my kiddie-hating colleague - the half chinese ginger haired kid.

Aimee had a similar slow showing of head hair. At ten months, it was also a fuzzy peach fluff. Today, as she approaches 3 years, it's a messy mop of curls and tangles which desperately needs cutting. She does finally lke having her hair tied up into a vertical bunch though - just like Bam Bam from the flintstones. I'll try to get a snap of Aimee in BamBam mode, but in the meantime, here's the cartoon version.

Gold

The Olympics are over, boohoo. Every morning, for two weeks, when the kids wake up at their unGodly hour, I would turn on the TV and watch Team GB win Gold, live. It weas brilliant being able to actually enjoy early early mornings with the kids. Aimee had a special fascination for the British National Anthem. She insisted she hear it loud and she stood to attention while the flags were raised and medals honoured. Lucky for her and for Team GB that there was lots of opportunity to hear God Save the Queen.
Last weekend, we all went to a neighbouring child's Pirate themed birthday party. What a blast it was to dress up and don make-up. Aimee was the star of the show in her mummy-made treasure chest outfit. Check out the Yangwood photo gallery website for all the pictures. She was pure gold!

Dylan stands

Not to be outdone by his big artists sister, Dylan proceeds to show

the world he can stand unaided. Sorry, don;t know how to rotate the video.

Seal of Success

This is Aimee's drawing of a seal, with a happy smiling face and a glowing sun above his head. Ahh, bless her creative skills! And still only 2 years old, I think it is remarkable.

Poo Bare

Poo. Before babies, I would say dealing with poo would have been my biggest fear. Fast forward nearly three years and I can honestly say, sorting out nappies and potty training for my kids has not been the phobia that I thought it was. Yes, it stinks and yes it is messy but most of the time, you simply clean up the bums, buff to a fine polish and place on new nappy without so much as a blink of the eye. Cleaning the bums of your own kids is no different than cleaning your own bum.
On the other hand, any other kid and I would probably retch. I have helped on a couple of occasions a couple of other Mums clean up their babies soiled nappies and the smell is so different that I really thought I would puke. Why is this? Is there some sort of family odour (bad or otherwise) that bonds us Yangs together? I guess science could answer this question but I have yet to come across any research on this subject (and I read a lot of science papers everyday). Maybe it is just the shear daily drudgery of nappy changing that makes one immune to these things. Mind you, when you have had liquid poo projectiled into your face, wee all over your clothes, had to scoop poo from the bath and had to manually fish out half-stuck constipated poo from your kids, then I guess not much else can phaze you.
Last week, Aimee successfully pooed into her potty. Upon getting up she was really curious to see the product of her efforts. All the books say this is normal so I let her peer into the bowl (although I was actually worried she would pick it up – I haven’t let go of all my squeamishness!). After studying it for a few seconds, she looked at me and beamed a big grin. What’s up Aimee I said, she replied, Oh wow, poo has got sweetcorn in it!
And sure enough, poking out of the poo was a couple of kernels of undigested corn. I laughed out loud so hard, I thought I would poo myself!!!Ah, the joys of poo. Now, enjoy your breakfast.

Dylan Climbs!

Making plans

I think we hit an important milestone with Aimee. Yesterday she went through a whole day without once leaking or missing her cue on the potty. Everytime she needed to go, without fuss or noise, she simply went over, pulled down her briefs and did the business. It helped that she spent all day indoors at home (she wears nappies when going out). The only bit need to do now is to teach her how to clean up afterwards, as her wiping technique is a tad sloppy. Now, we up the stakes and at some point we will venture to take her outdoors without wearing nappies, cue the inevitable whine of 'I need wee weee mummy...NOW!' that you hear up and down shopping centres and on streets everywhere - basically in places where there are no loos.

Dylan offers us new tricks to his repertoire of cheeky behaviour every day. His new one at the moment is to clamber up the entire flight of stairs all on his own. It is at once an amazing spectacle and at the same time, really scary as at any moment, he could slip and fall onto the unforgiving hard cold floor tiles below. Well, let me first explain that his stair climbing is strictly supervised and yes, we will have to buy a stair gate for the bottom as well as the top now.

Cat has confirmed her date to go back to work - late October. But already, difficulties to our carefully laid plans may arise with the juggling of who will drop off kids, who will pick-up and who will cover in emergencies. Her new bosses are not really sympathetic to her idea of taking off every Monday and not happy about her having to leave early enough to pick up the kids on days when I cannot. I'm sure things will work out in the end, but it would help if employers could be more flexible.

Before then though, and despite the trauma of our Wales holiday, we are considering another weekend family break. This one is only 3 hours drive away so I reckon we can just about handle that. More details later.

Da, Da, Da

Dylan be the bad boy of babbling, oh yeah!

Do The Math

Holy Smoke! It has just really hit me how much we will have to spend on childcare.
I just got a letter from our new nursery and the good news is that they have a place available for both Aimee and Dylan in September, thus allowing Cat to go back to work after her maternity leave expires. But, and here’s the shockingly awful part - the new nursery costs £1416 a month to cover both kids.
It doesn’t sound too bad until you look at it over a year, a sum total just shy of £17,000 a year!! And that's not even for a full time placement, as they will only attend 4 days a week.
I wonder if instead of nursery, I can hire an au pair or nanny for the same amount or less? Mind you, I am permanently traumatised by the horror flick The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, so that alone rules out personal childcare.
Still, it's not all bad news. The government offer a voucher scheme that means we don't pay income tax on £243 a month, effectively saving about £1900 annually if both parents use the scheme. And we get a few bob in child maintenance and child tax credit, but ultimately it is just shaving snowflakes off a £17,000 iceberg into so-called Early Years Education.
Now I know why a lot of Mums, and increasingly dads too, give up their job to look after their kids full time. It simply is not economically viable to put two or more through nursery. It’s not long term fortunately. When Aimee turns 5, she’ll go to proper school, but even here, there are uniforms and breakfast/after school club fees to pay for.
A newspaper article about the lifetime cost of raising a child makes depressing reading.
Still, at least we have their happy little faces to cheer us up…well until they reach that moody age.

Cleanliness next to Godliness

Last post I mentioned that I wished all aspects of bringing up kids were as easy as Aimee's noodle eating antics. Whilst most skills that I have to nag my kids about are met with stern resistance, eg reliable potty usage, there are a few rare other habits that Aimee gets wonderfully adept at straight away. Brushing her teeth is one of them. She loves brushing her teeth and staring in my shaving mirror as she beams her pearly whites. Of course the technique is sloppy and she probably swallows more foam than she spits out, but by and large, it's been quite easy to show her. Better still, she lets me finish the job when I say to let Daddy do a final polish (thanks to Dai for that tip). And as for rinsing her mouth and spitting out the remnants, she spews out the water with great enthusiasm. Sometimes too much enthusiasm and I get an early shower.

Today, I can report that Aimee passed another hygiene milestone by letting me, nay willingly and obligingly, letting me wash her hair. For months and months, this singular act has become increasingly fraught with tears and screaming tantrums. Most times I give up trying and just let her run around with greasy smelly hair. But recently she has begun to relax bit by bit until today, she positively begged to have jugs of water poured over her scalp. I can't begin to describe how small incidents like this make one completely forget the endless trauma and battles of the past on this issue. As for Dylan, well he only has three teeth and no hair, so we've yet to cross that bridge.

Noodle Girl

I love noodles. And judging by the gusto with which little Aimee-san here gobbles up her ramen, she's a chip off the old block. I always thought chopsticks would be hard to teach, but I never taught Aimee. She just grabbed them off the table and started shovelling away. Bless her. If only all apsects of kiddie rearing were as straight forward and easy.

Today, I took Aimee to the cinema for the first time in her life. We saw Kung Fu Panda. I certainly enjoyed and I think Aimee did, but I suspect most of the jokes, plot and concepts were too much for her. Still, she liked the Tiger character and screamed in joy everytime she saw her, followed by me frantically shooshing her to keep quiet.

Flower Girls

Aimee actually let someone paint her face today. Wow!

Battlestar Galactica

Well, the kids and Mum are spending the week at Grandma&pa Macs and daddy here is enjoying a rare time-off away from the kids. So what am I doing? Mucking around with this blog layout for starters. Oh and the small matter of the mountain...no,make that a whole Mariana Trench full of dirty laundry. Ho Boy, we're talking months of unwashed clothes. Hundreds of baby socks and toddler trousers, adult t-shirts, bras, pants, shorts, vests, gazillions of baby grows. The list goes on!
In between the wash loads, I'm cramming as much Battlestar Galactica episodes I can take.
But time alone makes me realise what a huge carbon footprint it is having kids. Yes, I know, it's a no-brainer - kids=expense and energy usage. But until you are on your own, as I have been, you realise not by what is being used, but by what I don;t use. For example, I am only using lights for the room I am currently in. Previously, lights were on willy nilly and pretty much all day.
Another example is food. I buy exactly what I need to eat, no more no less. But when the family are all present, a weeks groceries could easily amount to £130 plus, more recently with all the price hikes. Gas, electricity, water, petrol, yes, running a household full of little people is a hugely energy intensive business. And we're paying the price.

Mad house

HuhBoy! It's been a really tough week for FamilyYangs. I just recover from an injured neck when I go and badly twist my ankle doing daft things in jujitsu class. My reduced mobility meant a hard time getting things in the house done and not being able to look after the kids like I normally do. But what has made things really tough this week is Dylan's current bout of teething. He cries all the time, we have to use Calpol round the clock,he gets red hot fever,he does not eat, he barely drinks. It is not a happy time. It has been like that for over a week and we're pretty sure he'slosing what little weight he has due to lack of food. This phase had better pass soon or we're all going to end up in the mad house!

All Stand Up

Time flies so fast these days. Already my sister, Mat and their son Oscar are preparing to fly back to their home in Thailand. The time was so brief but the kids seem to really enjoy their stay. I hope they get to meet up more often as they grow older. I loved playing with Oscar and I think being an uncle is kinda cool.

Dylan goes through days when we is voracious, gobbling up anything you feed him and drinking well. Then there are days, sadly quite a lot of them, where he simply refuses outright, thrashing his fists in anger and shaking his head in fury. We've given up trying to figure out his mood swings and erratic night schedule and just cope the best we can - resigned to a life (for now) of little sleep and constant exhuaustion. But DJ can do amazing things. Today he stood up. I kid you not, the boy (7 months old remember) stood up on his own, wavered around, squatted then stood up again - all without holding on to anything. He seemed to realise his amazing feat and grinned ear to ear. I was open mouthed in shock, but only I witnessed it and Cat doesn't believe me.

I filled in forms today for both Aimee and Dylan to go to the local nursery. Not just any nursery, it is a Montessori school.
This method believes that children go through specific 'sensitive' periods where they learn a new skill very fast. I think Aimee is going through this right now for speech. Everyday, me and Cat are amazed at something new she has said, often in a perfect sentance. She even makes jokes and funny faces just to amuse us. She also has an incredible memory. We have this book, meant for adults to read, but it has loads of clip art of misc things and she has memorised them all. Yesterday I bought a book with 1000 pictures in, and I am gonna see how many she can learn and remember.

Congratulations for my friends Dai and Lisa who just had their second child - a healthy boy called Evan.

A cousin comes over

The Yangwood home has just welcomed sister Mei back in the UK with her lovely baby boy Oscar. They're in the UK only for a few weeks, but already, the first few days were spent busily showing the best we have in B'Wood.
It's really cool watching Oscar, who can crawl at quite a pace, interact with our two little mischief makers. Dylan seems to thoroughly enjoy the company and Aimee is completely besotted with her aunty gu-gu, follwing her everywhere and demanding that she play with her all the time.

Whilst we were out and about, Dylan got the chance to have his first go on the playground swings. As you can see from his happy expression, he enjoyed the experience immensely. Dylan is also eating a lot better since we started him on the Rinitidine. In fact he is so voracious all the time that he puts anything and everything in his mouth. From puree to small finger foods in quick succession. Already he is loving potato, chicken, beef, carrots, proper long grain rice, crackers, biscuit and many more. He still doesn't any patience for the bottle or breast so doesn't drink much during the day, but the health visitor thinks he is doing ok. He'll be weighed again in a fortnight and if he doesn't pile on the weight and hit the 'correct' portion of his growth chart, I'll eat my hat!

Baby bouncers

Aimee in July 2006 and Dylan in May 2008. We've actually found something that both kids seem to have enjoyed...the door hanging bouncer. Aimee liked to spin round and around but did didn't do too much actual bouncing. Dylan likes to bounce but also to take giant steps forward, only to swing back in frustration. At least it keeps him amused for about ten minutes, a minor miracle given that he screams if you let go of him for even a minute.

Mumbles

The Family Yanguns just spent a weekend in Wales to see some old friends and to attend their party. It was our first trip away from home as a four piece. But Boy! If I knew what a torture the journey it was in advance, I may have decided against it. On a good day, it takes about 4.5 to 5 hours to go from London to Swansea. We took a more leisurely 6.5 hours and pretty much every single waking minute of it, Dylan screamed all the way. Aimee sometimes protested, but mainly because Dylan was upsetting her. With regular pitstops at service stations to break up the torture, we finally made our destination (Mumbles) somewhat frazzled and stressed.

That evening, we spent our time at my friend's house party. Aimee found her idol in the girly pinkness that is Olivia, my friend's daughter. Olivia is the very epitome of pinkishness and Aimee saw her bedroom as a treasure trove. She couldn't contain herself and wore hundreds of necklaces, bracelets, hair adornments and millions of spangly, pinkyish, glittery things. She loved it. After we got back to out hotel, the tactical error of all sleeping in one room became apparent as none of us got any sleep. Dylan woke up screaming, which woke up Aimee, whihc woke up Cat then me, after settling all back dopwn, it kicked off again and the pattern repeated. It was hell.

The next day was spent walking around Mumbles in a zombie like daze.

But the big party that next night was actually brilliant. I caught up with loads of old friends and faces. aimee partyed hard until midnight and even Dylan took it all in his stride.

That night, everyone slept well.

Sadly, the journey back was even worse, as Dylan screamed ALL the way without sleeping. Aimee vomited and started screaming as well and me and Cat were on the verge of exploding. It was 6 hours of unimaginable torture.

So, although the mini-holiday was fun overall, the journey was just too much to ever bear doing again in the near future.

In other news, Dylan is still not putting on enough weight according to the health experts, but we are finding that regular doses of Gaviscon, a anti-acid for kids, is allowing DJ to eat and drink for longer without his usual awful symptoms of pain and discomfort that have plagued him since birth. But we must monitor his weight weekly now.

Having said all that, DJ appears to be in rude health and is exploring the world with his increasingly improving crawling skills. He can now take about three paces forward, and spin a complete 360 on his knees. He is still his usual very curious, nosey parker self, and will always crane his neck to check out the latest noise, or event.

Aimee's language skills are improving beyond recognition. She is uttering completely new sentances every day, most of which she has independently constructed, rather than leart like a parrot. I am always amazed at this.

Manbaby

I've just discovered this awesome fun website called Manbaby, in which, for no reason other than pure joy, people manipulate photos and swap baby heads for daddy heads. Here's my first attempt.
The thing is, Dylan looks ok in the photo, but I look weird.

Sunny

I get a lot of comments saying Aimee bears a strong resemblence to my sister Sylvie.
By the look of this photo, why they could be twins, albeit separated by more than three decades.

Well, summer is finally here. Temperatures in our part of the world are hitting the mid twenties and as usual, the Brits go crazy in the Sun and start walking around as if it was Rio de Janiro, wearing skimpy outfits, loud colours and badly burned skin.
But for us, it means we get to road test our garden. And what a great joy the British garden is to us little islanders. Aimee can run around with wild abandon, and we can sit outside and enjoy the fine weather in private.
We too also went a bit 'summer', mad and blew all our months budget on fun summer garden toys for Aimee. Like the sandpit Hippo and the push-along tricycle. Ah well, the sun only ever shines a few weeks in the year, might as well enjoy it while it lasts!

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.

Growing Pains

Dylan reclines in superman pose whilst we eat at the soon to be gone Oriental City Shopping Centre.













The trouble with things that grow in small increments is that you never notice how much they have grown. Take my fig plant. I bought it about 5 years ago and basically left it to rot, watering about once a month if I can even remember. But that darn plant is growing about a foot a month and continues to, if not thrive, then at least survive well despite my neglect. It’s currently taking over my lav with Triffid-like intent.
Luckily for Aimee and Dylan, my sloppy plant keeping skills do not apply to parenting and both are developing at an amazing rate.
Dylan was weighed a week or so back and is a bit over 6Kg. That’s about a kilo a month since his birth, and well over the 75th percentile for his age range. I bought a nice new Britax car seat on Saturday and just expected him to fit into the ‘newborn’ position, but was shocked to discover that he was spilling over the sides. The seat needed several large adjustments before he could be slotted in to fit. I wouldn’t say he is chubby, definitely not compared to his cousin in Thailand, but he’s definitely chunky. And his teething pains are a real torment for all of us as he screams and wails and drools. It could take weeks if not months for the first teg to appear. Aimee used to have really bad teething symptoms for her first few teeth, then only ever mild symptoms after that. A cheeky flash of her broad grin is enough to remind us that the teething thing will eventually pass.

We all cannot wait for the miserable UK winter weather to lighten up. Not least Aimee, who has clearly suffered from being stuck indoors for most of the winter. But as the temperature gets milder and the days a little bit brighter, we’ve started going out much more, and Aimee has clearly enjoyed her trips to the park, playgroups and other activities. Sadly, the potty training has gone literally down the pan as she has not produced a millidrop into the potty, although she’ll happily sit in it for ages. I guess it will happen in time. In the meantime, it’s continue with my 4-times a day phrase: ok Aimee drop your trousers, let’s potty train with Pingu (her new favouritest TV cartoon).

STOP PRESS: Cat just called me to say that Aimee had done her first EVER wee on the potty. She just sat there as usual, watching Pingu and then got up, looked at Cat and said 'wee wee'. Cat was amazed. I can't believe I missed it. Let's hope this is the start of a blossoming new habit.

Gone to pot

Well after 5 days of 'training', all Aimee has done is found herself a nice comfy potty chair to sit on and watch Pinngu. The health visitor came round and reckoned that since Aimee has no control nor even any awareness of her bladder control, she is probably not close to being potty trained and it is best to leave it alone for now. That's fine with me, but I thought it could be done. Aimee is her happy self anyhow and I hope I haven't imparted too much trauma on her these past few days.

Big Potter

Day Two in the Big Potty House.
Little Aimee has run around with no nappies and consequently passed water on almost every item in the house. Luckily her poo was caught by her naptime nappy. At the moment, she seems to have no awareness of when she is about to go, and to be honest, no awareness of even when she has gone (thus no warning whatsoever). For example, at dinner time, she was eating her supper sitting in the high chair and out came a gushing stream of wee. She did not blink or stop eating, or even comment at all.I asked, Aimee, are you wet? And she just carried on eating. Only when the warm wee started to get cold did she mention that she was wet, but stlll carried on eating. Remarkable. The running around with no pants or trousers thing is probably a bit self-defeating at the moment. So we're back to those 'training' nappies.

Poor Dylan is having a wretched time with his teething pain. We give him the full works of Bonjela, granules and Calpol but it seems he still feels the discomfort. Add to that his recent immune jabs and it adds up to a miserable time for him. But he is strong and very alert, so it will pass quickly for him, we hope.

Potty time

Potty training - DAY 1
Well I took a day off work to initiate Aimee's potty regime.
Aimee started off well by happily wearing her disposable training pants (they are supposed to feel 'wet' when they get weed on), and Aimee sat on the potty whenever asked.
But around midday, the first disaster struck when she pooed in the pants and freaked out when I showed her the result. From then on, she refuses to wear the panties. So I let her run around butt naked. This resulted in several major leakages on our floor and, following the PC advice, cleared it up without a fuss and gently reminded Aimee that if she felt the need, the potty was available. It wasn't all bad, Aimee continued to sit on the potty at regular intervals, albeit without any product, but it's only Day1.
In the evening, I was curious to note the large number of online adverts all claiming to guarantee potty training success within 3 days!
Somehow I'm rather suspicious of such claims. But then again, if our attempts prove fruitless, then who knows.

The Great Escape

It had to happen sooner or later. Aimee has now started to climb out of the cot by herself. Those longer legs and stronger arms enable her to clamber out with confidence and at will. In the past, she would raise her leg and plonk it on the guard rail, but not do anything, almost like testing the water.
This afternoon naptime, she got out twice, on each occassion without any harm. No one saw her do it, but heard thethump and her giggling and then running around in her room upstairs. Cat called me at work in quite a shock.
It may be time to consider that Aimee needs to graduate bed types. This is not all bad, in that her old cot can pass to Dylan. But it means a whole new approach to bed times. No more dumping her in the cot and letting her scream until she sleeps. The kid now has legs.

Potty day looming...

Bottoms Up

It's the moment I have been dreading and putting off for months...toilet training.
I don;t know why this, above all other baby things, brings me most fear. I mean Aimee passed all her milestones, from walking, to weaning, to talking, with flying colours, so there is no reason why potty training should be any different. In any case, she is more than physically and mentally ready for the big leap.
So far I've prepped Aimee by letting her sit on her potty and play with it and telling her it is for her poopoo and weewee. She seems to love sitting on it and today, we even pulled down her pants and let her sit on it bare-bottomed. No wee or poo came out and she didn;t even try but it was a positive start.
I have ear-marked next weekend a 'P-Day' where Aimee goes live with her training pants and, if it is suitably warm, bare bottom around the house while I will chase after her, pack of wet wipes and tissues following closely behind. I will report on her progress in the blog.

Dylan seems to find the need to chew frantically on his fist at regular intervals. I think he is beginning teething, cos he does it even after a full feed. If that's the case, he could develop toothy tegs even quicker than Aimee. It also means a possibility of some difficult sleepless nights ahead.