March 2017 - Part 3

March 2017 – Part 3

Hot Air Balloons

Francis and I were out on the bike early on Wednesday morning to go and see all the hot air balloons lift off in the Balloons Over Waikato festival. We liked it so much we went back on the second morning!

Hot Air Bottoms

Francis and I spend quite a lot of our time out and about on the bicycle. His seat is directly behind mine. Occasionally, there may be the sound of breaking wind emanating from one of us- well, okay, mostly from me. This fills Francis with delight and he makes a huge raspberry noise himself, all the while gleefully pointing at Daddy.  He doesn’t  let me get away with any slight indiscretion!

He’s now turning this into performance art. Just the other day I was completing my back and forward back stretching exercise when such a gaseous release occurred.  Quite accidentally of course. He threw his hands up in the air and gleefully blew raspberries in his toy corner where he was sitting with mammy, crawled over to me as fast as he could, stood up right behind and put his face right next to my butt, then collapsed in a dead heap on the floor. Man he’s a crack up!

Word Up!

Some more words from the Francis’ lexicon:

Teeth – getting pretty  good with this one

Trucky-trucky-truck – whenever he sees a truck or lorry. He’s pretty obsessed with these. Uncle Andrew take note.

Baby Sign language –

Food  - imagine an Italian ham-actor in a cheesy advert bringing his thumb and two fingers towards his lips and saying “bellissimo”.

Help -  Clenched hand on the palm of another and then being raised.

He can’t walk but he can…….

Slide

Bike and Dance

 

Music Credit - SilverSun Pickups : "Growing Old is Getting Old"

Climb and Dance

 Music Credit - James : "Bitch"

Build

The latest Francis Tower....

and the topping out ceremony.....

.... with a sample spoon from Duck Island as the spire.

 Actually he can walk 4 or 5 steps, he just chooses not to! Crawling is way faster.

 Sleep

Just mentioning this very quietly, so as not to jinx it, but it's getting much better. Two days ago he napped for almost four hours, and mostly only wakes once at night. Shhhhhhhh

March 2017 - Part 2

March 2017 – Part 2

Playground Quest

Francis and I have been making the most of the late arrival of summer and our new found biking freedom. Hamilton has a number of “Destination” playgrounds, seven so far,  and I think more planned. Five of them have been voted the best playgrounds in New Zealand – so time to go on a quest!  They are all uniquely designed with a bunch of really cool features, everything from traditional based swings and slides, to sand digging equipment, climbing frames, water features and play, aviaries etc. We hit up three in the first week, all easily accessible for us on our bike. In our current order of favourites, which I am sure will change as Francis gets older….

Parana Park :

Awesome water and paddling pool and a big old Banana slide that Francis loves, coming down head first. I’ve not been fast enough to get to the bottom of the slide to take video but here’s some pictures. There’s also tons of good crawling frames for him to go and climb over. Cool advantage of this park is that it’s pretty close to Duck Island Ice Creamery for a well deserved ice cream after some playing and to refuel Daddy’s legs for the cycle home. One downside was it was a bit of a mosquito-fest the first morning we went, so now we always wear long shirts and pants  when we go there!

Hamilton Lake:

This WOULD be a real short and beautiful cycle ride from our home, but since bikes are not allowed on the path around the lake, the ride is much more boring along a main and busy road. So we use the footpath, since there is no cycle lane.

A great playground with loads of cool things to do; lots of water based activities and dams; sand diggers, music, swings, and awesome climbing and tube slides! Francis loves these almost as much as his Dad, as he’s not quite up to going down them by himself. So I sacrifice my dignity, find my inner child and “weeeeeeeeeeeeeee” down we go. Friggin’ Awesome! 

Hamilton Gardens:

The newest of the playgrounds and opened in Dec 2016. This is really close to where we live and in beautiful surrounds. Actually all three of these are. This playground is designed for slightly older kids as the climbing frames etc are a bit more advanced than the ones at the previous two, but there’s lots of open space for him to use his imagination, and a stage for him to explore.  I think as Francis gets older, the order of these three parks will be reversed.

Word Up!

We’re starting to get some recognizable words from F-bomb these days, so it’s all the more important to watch what we say in front of him. Usual expletives have been replaced by Fudge and Fiddlesticks and of course Mother Fudge-cakes. If anyone has any other we can use, please let me know.

Here’s some of the words that I currently claim Francis is saying :

Blueberry – a breakfast favourite he likes to put in his mouth and then spit out as fast as he can!

Helicopter – we see and hear a bunch of these living so close to the hospital.

Cain – one of our dogs.

Ta – we had been persevering with “thank you” for months without success. Took him about 2 minutes to pick up Ta!

Garden – he’s been saying this for a long time and is obsessed with outside – even when we have torrential rain.

Oops -  this normally accompanies the throwing of food off the table.

All done-  following on closely from the above to signal he is done eating.

Baby Sign language –

We’ve been trying to teach Francis baby sign language since he was born – maybe we were too keen in starting that early. Anyway, we’re starting to see the following…

Milkies   - he makes a milking like sign to let Ananda know he wants breast fed – or just stick his hand down her bra or lifts her shirt up. All three convey the same meaning!

Water -  not quite getting this one right, but watching his stick his full fist in his mouth is always amusing!

Down – one Francis invented all by himself. Extend both index fingers, jab vigorously downwards into tray of high chair, or push chair or wherever  he is restrained!

More -  he’s mainly uses this when reading books or playing games with us, but trying to incorporate it into meal times as well.  Sometimes he doesn’t always get the more he is requesting. Eg. Showing Francis how I pee in to the toilet whilst he was in the bath the other day, was followed by the more sign…. “Hmmmmmm you’ll have to wait awhile son….”

Banksy

A rainy day activity gone awry, after I turned my back on Francis, his crayons and his colouring book…..

It actually looks quite good, so we’ve left it in place…. For now.

According to Ananda earlier that morning: "Only irresponsible parents who don't watch their children let that happen" QED #1.

Old dog- teaching new tricks.

It just dawned on me the other day that getting to stay at home with Francis is like having a new but much more intelligent dog to teach tricks. I’ve gotten such a kick out of teaching him how to shake hands like a proper English gent (as opposed to the crass “high-five” his ‘Merican mom is trying to teach him). Next week I will work on “fetch”, “down” and “roll-over and play dead”.

  

Injury Report

1) PPTSD

Playground Parent Trauma Stress Dis-order! As mentioned above, Francis likes to come down slides head first and had successfully negotiated all the big kids slides without mishap.  At Hamilton lakes there’s a smaller traditional kids playground as well and Francis came down that tiny slide headfirst, at quite a rate of knots. Although I was standing at the bottom of it, he flew straight off the end and landed face first in the sand between my feet.   QED #2.

Cue much blood from front teeth meeting bottom lip, a sand covered face and much screaming of pain –short lived. All of this happened right in front of  a mum and baby group and I felt so embarrassed and could almost hear them thinking “stupid Dad what was he doing letting that happened”. I retreated to the corner to attend to Francis’ wounds, only to further add to my embarrassment by having to remove one of his socks to mop up the blood and clean his face since I had no wipes or tissue with me. 

F showed what a trooper he was by heading right back to the same slide, and this time not managing to hurtle off the end. I punched the end in delight and cried out a silent “See I told you so” to all the other parents there… well maybe not.

2) Man vs Machine

Finger......

...plus blender.....

 

.... equals.

I lost a recent battle I had with a hand blender (maybe they should change the name as I certainly don't recommend doing that). Whist trying to dislodge a clogged tomato -  "you say tomato I say instrument of torture" - my finger got a wee bit blended. Wasn't sure if I was going to vomit or pass out or both, and luckily it was a Saturday so Ananda was at home. Took about 30 minutes for the room to stop spinning before I could drive myself to Urgent care. 

3) Man vs Man

My first run out and practice session with an 11-a-side team I hope to play for, resulted in a broken toe. Didn't stop me from finishing the game though.... Hard as nails me!

Off to Urgent care again then. We're buying shares.

Quote of the Week

"I just ate a bit of rice cake off the couch. I'm not sure if that was the bit that was stuck to his balls". Ananda during nappy free snack time.

March 2017 - Part 1

March 2017 – Part 1

Sleeping or not as the case may be.

Not been able to find the time to write a blog recently, as I’ve been doing some moonlighting for a friend whilst Francis naps. I was hoping to sit down and write a chirpy and witty prose about nappies and other things, but feeling a bit too tired. But we’ll soldier on and see how we do.

Although it now seems like four months ago, I think it was only last weekend when Francis had two nights in a row where he only woke up once. We were pretty stunned. Cue the phrase “ calm before the storm”. 

Since then, for the past countless nights he’s woken about 5-6 times a night JUST between going to bed at 8ish and 1am, as well as his usual wake ups at 5am and then at 6:30am.  So about 8 times a night. I'm normally quite elegant when I return to bed so as not to wake up Ananda, but last night I was like a tree being felled in the forest. Each time I just keeled over once I got close to the bed. More by luck than planning that I never head butted Ananda or the head board!

Lack of sleep does not seem to faze Francis as he’s as bright as a button through the day, unlike his Dad, who can barely recall conversations he’s had with people. That’s if they are real people and I’m not just hallucinating.

Some remedy for me would be to nap when he does, BUT I’m useless at that. So we just soldier on. Maybe I should go out clubbing with him? Some friends have told us about the 18 month sleep regression so maybe that’s it. Some other friends with a 4 month old are worried their child is sleeping 10h a night. Embrace it while it lasts, my friends, embrace it with two bear-hugging arms and cherish it. Store it as a memory for the future when you forget what sleep is.

Walking

Young Francis has started to take some tentative steps in his walking. He can do about 4 or five steps and you can clearly see the enjoyment he takes from it. I’m sure that’ll not last long once I get him signed up to his first morning paper round. Do they still do that? And how much do they pay?

Nappies

We decided right from the get go we were going to go the re-useable nappy route, for a whole bunch of reason such as environmental, cost, etc. Not going to go into those two subjects right now, but if you’re contemplating going the same route we did, then hopefully the following description will help clarify how it all works. I know it sounds pretty simple, but when we first started looking into it, there was a bewildering rang of types, and nomenclature to deal with, so hopefully someone out there will find this helpful. We also found a bunch of other good reusable tools too and wanted to pass on some of the tips as well, that help keep Francis clean at both ends of his alimentary canal!

Types

There's about four types of reusable nappies and we’ve tried them all, but had most luck with the following three types:

1) Pre-fold – rectangular absorbent pads (ours are made from bamboo)  that are held in place by a waterproof outer layer. We use a “Flip” outer layer and a “reusable liner” –see later explanation.  The pads sit directly against the babies skin. The picture below shows the inside and outside and how it looks when put together.

They seem to work pretty well, but probably the type we use the least.

2)   Pocket nappies – as above rectangular absorbent pads that fit inside a pocket in an outer layer. This helps hold the pads in place really well. Again we use a liner. We normally put two pads inside each pocket. Some pocket nappies come with the pads attached to the pockets, which can make drying a bit more arduous.  With this style the absorbent pads are not in direct contact with the babies skin.

As you can see from the pictures, our nappies after 16 months of hard wear and tear - (a euphemism for lots of piss and shit on them) -  are still very white and look  as good as new – despite not using bleach on them – see Laundry section later for details. The brands we use are Babyco that we bought in New Zealand and Bum Genius which we got in the States. We also used Baby Mio earlier one but found their velcro tabs were uncomfortable for Francis.

Reusable liners

I’m not sure which one of us first stumbled across this idea but we had started out using “Water Wipes” to clean Francis’ face after feeding etc, and also at nappy changing time. Awesome chemical free wipes.

We discovered you could launder them many times before they fell apart. So, after we used them on his face or butt we washed them and they became our nappy liners.  They keep on getting re-used until a) they become too thread-bare or  b) the poop on them is too wet and loose to simply fall off into the toilet bowl after we change F. Hmmm did I forget to tell you not to read this whilst eating?

I think we only buy maybe one packet a quarter.

Bum Wipes

With our imagination fuelled by a friend of ours who told us she used to “re-purpose” the little hand towels from business class travel trips as face wipes, (and by re-purpose we mean steal), Ananda found these great soft cloths that we use on Francis. So after we’ve detected F-bomb has dropped a S-bomb (either by smell, sound or intuition) we grab a few of these cloths from his nappy draw and wet them with warm tap water (if he’s lucky!) and then take them to ground zero in a re-used ice cream tub. I also keep a dry one for drying at the end of cleaning.  Once Francis is all cleaned up we spread a little Weleda barrier cream on his cute little butt and we’re all done. The dirty wipes get put in his nappy bucket with his dirty nappy, and hopefully not too dirty liner.

Face Wipes

Same process as above really expect we have a separate set of cloths for that – these nice and colourful ones, that get laundered with his clothes.

The Nappy Bucket

I guess this could conjure up visions of a cesspool of pee and poo stenching away in the corner of the laundry, but to be honest it ain’t all that bad. The bucket is dry – i.e the nappies are not soaked in anything, and has a tightish fitting lid. The pads are removed from the pockets and placed in the bucket with the liners and outer shells to await laundry day. I think we’ve only cleaned the bucket two or three times since we had it.

Laundry

We do the nappy laundry every other day – we could stretch it out to three days as he gets older and requires less changing, but for the most part we have enough nappies (about 20 when all types are taken into consideration) to make that a good cycle time for us.

It’s a basic 60C wash with a pre-wash cycle and three rinses and we use EcoStore laundry powder. The wash takes about two hours which we do through the night, so they are ready to be hung outside to line dry first thing in the morning. 

We did have to “strip” the nappies once in the past. Ananda had been home in the US for an extended period of time, and the nappies started to smell a bit like ammonia. So we did the stripping process there. Maybe it was the different wash cycle, the different water or the different detergent.   

On as side note, a few weeks ago I thought I would have to do the stripping process as the nappies were smelling really bad when I took them out of the washing machine one morning. I had placed most of them in the laundry basket for hanging outside when I realized they had not even be washed! I had forgotten to close the door to the machine properly! Phew – well kinda - since I had to give my hands and the laundry basket a good scrubbing!

So, that’s how we roll in our house. Francis has maybe had mild nappy rash twice. First time was when we weren’t using barrier cream after washing him after a poopy nappy, and I’m not sure if we figured out why it happened the second time. 

A guilty caveat to this is that we do put Francis in a disposable at night time – although I’m not sure why since he doesn’t pee at night – so maybe we need to change that……..yeah, let's mess some more with his sleep routine! LOL.

All in all super happy with the choice we made to do this, and as the parent that does most of the messy end of the laundry it really is not all that bad – just practice good hygiene and wash your hands. I wash my hands after loading the machine and BEFORE I close the door, or add the powder or press the buttons!  Considering the fact that we plan and hope to have more kids to re-use the re-useable they cost and environmental savings will then double!

Stacking

Francis is getting such a kick out of stacking things and I mean anything on top of each other.  It really good for his hand eye coordination and is hopefully also teaching him to place things gently on top of one another.  So now when Francis goes all quite his is now doing one of three things : 1) Having a poo; 2) doing something he knows he shouldn't be; 3) stacking!

Here are some of his more note-worthy stacking achievements.

Campervan stacking on a pretty un-level surface.

Stacking the cargo trucks on the train set he got for his birthday....

.... and being embarrassed at the praise he got.

His forthcoming entry for the Tate...

... and contemplating what he'll call it.

Train stacking!

The Shoe Illusion was one of F's first attempts and still one of hie finest!