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.

Xmas Xpress

Xmas

The B'Wood Yangs enjoyed another Xmas this year at the Macca household - now with fully extended kitchen, dining area and master bedroom. Aimee of course made thorough use of all the new space and scurried around the place like it was her own home.

Both Aimee and Dylan (his first Xmas...wow!) received bountiful supply of pressies, so many that our car was in danger of collapsing under the weight. Sadly, the untrusty jalopy that is my car did indeed collapse, post Boxing Day necessitating a tow truck and a mechanic that was thankfully open during Xmas. My New Years resolution will definitely include buying a new car.

That was not the only incident over Xmas. 92 year old Granny still had enough gas in her to cause upset and turmoil with her criticisms and comments, same as every year.

But it did not spoil what was one of the best Xmas's we enjoyed for a long time, with our super extended family.

Tantrums

Aimee is now officially in the terrible twos (TT) category. Over Xmas she developed a quite demanding persona, escalating to full blown tantrum stakes. Back at home I went to Tesco and of course, supermarkets and toddler tantrums go to together like fish and chips. She went into a full on hysteria screaming fit all because I couldn't cuddle her, push the trolley and pick out groceries at the same time. She wanted cuddles there and then and everything had to stop. So after doing every trick I knew, I had enough and just plonked her into the trolley and proceeded to check out, with her screaming more loudly and begging 'out, out, out trolley, no daddy no daddy'. You can imagine the pitying onlookers and perpahs not a few unapproving gazes as well.

Since then, she has threatended a few more TT tantrums, but we've averted them with distraction and concessions. I have a horrible feeling it is only going to get worse.

Return of the Yangs

My mum and dad came back from Thailand after a 3 month stay from looking after my sister and her newborn Oscar. It was great to see them again, and looking so healthy and well. ngand dad immediately, well it was that and the tons of presents they brough back. She is easily pleased is our Aimee. My parents went all gaga with Dylan straight away, with lots of cooing and complimenting about his healthy physique and handsome face (of course, like his daddy!). Dyls played his part superbly by smiling lots and being generally cute. But as always, the star of the show is Aimee and she played them her full repertoire of laughs, gurnings, dance moves, comedy acts etc etc.

The new year will bring many changes for our kids. We hope to find a good nursery. We will start Aimee potty trainng. Dylan will grow bigger and start bottle, then weening. And, towards the end of 2008, Cat will return to work and we will have to work out a new routine. Lots for us to think and fret over.

Brother sister

More weighings

Dylan, at 5 weeks old, now weighs an arm busting 4.74 Kg (10lb7oz).

Contrast the differences in differing boroughs, but the health visitor here seems to come round our house almost weekly. In Hackney, they just left you on your own after a week.

Dyls seems to be settling into a pattern of constant 2 hour feeds interruped by half sleeps during the day, coupled with long 5-6 hour sleeps at night. Great for our own sleep, but exhaustingly high maintenance during the day. But we've learned a few tricks from early Aimee days and any fussiness is quickly quelled with various rocking, shooshing and knee dipping (nicked from the one baby Pilates/yoga class Cat ever took) techniques.

I'm off on leave now and can help look after Aimee before the Xmas hols. So I used the chance to check out the local parent and toddler play group in the village hall. From the outside, the hall is a ramshackle tin hut, but on the inside, it is a warm, inviting bedlam of fun. Aimee enjoyed it but we got there too late and only had about 20 minutes. We'll certainly go again and for £1.50, it is a bargain and a vital service for local mums (and the odd dad).

Yummy Mummy

Cat, Aimee and Dylan became models for the new Tesco Direct catalogue (summer edition). Aimee of course loved every second under the spotlights of the camera. Dylan was also enraptured, then fell back to sleep. One of the Tesco media staff described Cat as a ‘Yummy Mummy’ which is a lovely compliment.
This evening, I was mucking around with silly faces in front of Dylan and I swear, he smiled, not just the first time, but several times and exactly in response to my silly faces. He kinda gurgled in pleasure too. This surely has to be a record – who’s ever heard of a 5 week old actually smiling. Some say wind, but I’m convinced it is otherwise. It’s an amazing experience to witness your bambino smile for the first time. I seem to remember Aimee smiling very early too but we didn’t believe it. She hasn’t stopped flashing her famous smile ever since.

Photo makes me look like I got my hands full! Well it's certainly true, but not as full as Cat, who looks after both all day every day...what a champ she is.

Dyls's tests came back normal, he is fine and I guess that means no UV phototherapy to treat the jaundice thank goodness. I reckon a spot of normal daylight would be adequate but with the really shite weather at the moment, I doubt he'll get out much.

Aimee was reported to have managed to unknot a tied up door key and very nearly make her escape from grandparent's house in MK. She's developing some very crafty and ingenious naughty tactics that her old man would be proud of in his own toddler days (child safety comes first now though, ahem.)

Billy Rubin

Poor little Dylan is still jaundiced so Cat took him to see the paediatrician. She took blood and urine samples (Dylan confidently filled his vial of weewee more than twice over!) and we'll soon find out if he has any underlying illness. The doc also noted from her careful Q&A that he has acid reflux.
This is when the baby's gut is not mature enough to stop stomach acid entering the upper throat and mouth, causing pain and discomfort. Cat did notice on seveal occasions that Dyls had sicked up transparent fluid which I said was acid. This was confirmed by the doc so we now have to slightly change the way we feed him and put him to sleep.
Having said that, Dyls has been sleeping pretty well at night - 4 hours a go with one major feed about 3am. I reasoned that it is because it is quiet and fairly cool and he can rest without his big sister trying to poke him in the eye. The sleep certainly helps Cat but, like a high pedigree Friesan, her boobs do get painful if she is not milked for more than 4 hours!
Despite the miserable December weather, we've been trying to get Aimee out and about as much as possible. It's not very healthy for an active toddler to stay indoors all day. Cat has found a number of toddler playgroups in B'Wood and Aimee now goes for walks with reins strapped to her (which she loves!). Photos of that to come soon.