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.