Close the door, turn out the light

Trying to get into the mind of a two year old is often a bit pointless. For example, his Mummy is beginning the long and arduous task of packing for our holiday at the moment. When asked what he would like to take, M'laddo responded with "Annabelle". Yes, well that's all well and good but there are a couple of problems with that- firstly she has chicken pox at the moment, secondly and perhaps more importantly, she probably wouldn't like to spend a prolonged time in your tufty suitcase in the boot of the car, nevermind that she doesn't like anyone taking her to the toilet or putting her to bed that isn't her mummy or daddy.

That's understandable in a way, as M'laddo does like his little friend. But M'laddo thinks about more than his friends- he's been busy recently devising a game of wit and skill, that can take many a devious turn if the wrong path is taken. This game is called "Shut Door!".

Shut door takes place either in our king size bed or on the floor with a large duvet. The main gist of it is to spot gaps under the cover where light and fresh air can get in and point at them quickly, shouting "Shut door!" until they are covered. There are various other components to this, which involve: standing up with the covers like a cape and roaring, whispering, wriggling down the bed, putting either mummy, daddy or bunny outside the covers (only to be allowed to return when permission is granted in line with the rules of the game) and jumping up and down a lot.

Once I've fully sussed the complex interaction of the rules, I might approach MB Games about releasing it as a kit for all future generations of two year olds to enjoy but I have a feeling it might take me a while to fully get to grips with it...

All right now

Wifey is obviously doing something right:

If you've somehow missed her long long long review, its here ;)

Crazy

I wonder whether it's the lack of sleep (the wee lass has a cold at the moment) or the hot weather, but people are being exceedingly strange at the moment. And I've used at the moment twice in a sentence, even after staring blankly at the screen for two whole minutes trying to word it differently. Oh well.

Strange things I have experienced this week:

1. Park warden driving around like a loon all over the grass in his petrol buggy, screeching to a halt and leaning out to pick up litter with his grabby thing. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Baden Powell driving it, use your legs man!
2. Closed ice cream hut in the park, with owner sitting outside at a plastic table eating an ice cream. This is a recession you poltroon!
3. M'laddo reinventing the drive in movie theatre by sitting in his ebay acquired Little Tykes car on the patio watching Bee Movie through the window. Play outside offspring of my loins!!!
4. Cyberpatrols concept of a year appears to only run to 2 months. Wifey was asked to review it on her blog in April, the incentive being we got a full years subscription for it. Two months later its expired. Lets hope this doesn't happen when you buy it normally as its a bugger to uninstall.

Actually, reading back over that list it probably is lack of sleep on my part as most of it seems pretty normal. I'm off for a lie down, don't tell my boss...

Words...

M'laddo was weaned off his dummy at 3 months, something we're pretty proud of. And by weaned off, I mean we just stopped giving it to him, so it was a pretty quick weaning all told. Unfortunately we underestimated the cunning of a wee lad, and the dummy was eventually replaced by bunny's ear, which gets an almighty sucking when he's: tired/upset/lonely/scared/overwhelmed. And it stinks. We actually have a family of them and they're washed on rotation but now washing doesn't really cut the mustard- the smell of baby saliva is ingrained- so its a case of pre-treating the offending ear with biotex or nappisan.

This has had a bit of detrimental effect on M'laddo's language development, as he spends half his time mumbling round a rabbit ear clenched between his teeth but in the last month he's really come along. He's always understood a lot but not been that vocal but now his spoken sentences are getting longer and longer: "Sit!" became "Sit here!" which in turn became "Sit here Dadda!" which is currently floating around as "Sit here Dadda, NOW!" Polysyllabic words are still a bit tricky but, tellingly, the best he manages is "lollopop" for "lollipop".

The best words though are probably the ones he puts the most emotional feeling into, like "wow!", or "oh no!". "Wow!" can be triggered by anything from seeing his favourite toy that he'd forgotten about, to getting a biscuit or a lollopop. "Oh no!" can be triggered by just about anything else: "M'laddo, dinosaurs are extinct!", "Oh no!".

Actually the best wow recently revolved around arriving in central London far too early for the British Mummy Bloggers Meet and wandering around China Town for a bit. A chinese supermarket was (re)opening and they had a Dragon which M'laddo watched rapt from my shoulders for about 10 minutes with multiple wow'ings occurring.

The sense of wonder little nippers have is ace and something we can't recapture as adults and is a treasure I'll keep with me.

I Wanna Go Where The People Go

Top album by the way, PHUQ by the Wildhearts ( if you haven't sussed most of my blog titles are either film quotes or song titles, wakey wakey!)

There are several different versions of me. The me after very little kip is different to the well rested me, much like the happy me is a lot more fun than the fed up me.

So the big question facing me as the waiter delivered my goats cheese vegematerian option (for the 2nd weekend on the trot) was, why does the altruistic me order the food in advance when its invariably the starving hungry me that turns up to scoff.

Last weekend saw the wedding of one of wifey's friends, and today saw the inaurgral meeting of the British Mummy Bloggers at the Rainforest cafe on Shaftsbury Avenue. I'm a member (they do let chaps in which is nice but I could have scabbed entry via the lovely lady wife anyway as it turns out). Before I carry on I have to say massive "Well dones" to Susannah and Amy for organising it, a big hurrah to Silver Cross for sponsoring it (with two young nippers and having just been out for our anniversary two days previously, if it wasn't for Silver Crosses largesse in making it a free to attend event, we wouldn't have been able to go). and I should say, shame the Rainforest cafe missed out on the opportunity for a lot of great word of mouth promotion by not getting in on the act.

I think around 40 people came along, and although I'm not sure if that included the likes of the wee lass who was there only to flirt with Noble Savage's little lad, it was a top turn out. I did feel a bit out of place surrounded by so many proactive ladies (one of whom was about to embark on a round the world yatch race), most of who had left the other half at home babysitting.

And of course thanks to the wee lass chosing the last couple of nights to prove that she had us fooled, the version of me that turned up was the knackered and a bit shy version. Hey ho, if you think I was stand offish, I wasn't honest, I was just failing to cope with being up every hour and a quarter over the last two nights.

Anyway, as a chap riding on the coat tails of mummy blogging, I had a top time and by the end of it I even convinced myself that my goats cheese tart was better than the spare ribs, the steak burger or the chicken sandwich with chips.

A quick name check to the people I saw or even managed to slightly talk to: Home Office Mum, Noble Savage, and one more means 4 and thanks to metropolitan mum for unhooking M'laddos leg when he tried to climb down off my lap whilst I had the wee lass balanced on my other knee. I should add that I'm terrible with names, so if you've read the above and thought "who the heck is this bloke?" or, "I spent ages talking to that ingrate and he's not even name checked me", i've probably got you confused with someone else- sorry :)

The Sound of (a complete lack of) Silence

When I was a nipper I wasn't really into music. I couldn't understand the idea of listening to something that didn't tell a story. As long as I had my Famous Five story tapes, any long car journey was covered as far as I was concerned.

This may have had something to do with my mum's love of Cliff Richards and my Dad's obsession with Nana Mouskouri and the Carpenters. I have of course been making up for it ever since but on occasion I still remember the day I bought my first two albums- "Hey hey hey its the Monkees Greatest Hits!" and "Velveteen" by Transvision Vamp. An ageing hippy called Jeff Minter put me onto Transvision Vamp in a column he used to write in Sinclair User. The year was 1989 and I was 14.

That's my guilty secret I've been attempting to atone for ever since (hey, I like Trout Mask Replica, I'm a proper music fan!) and I'm determined M'laddo (and in a bit the wee lass) aren't going to grow up not listening to music. Since M'laddo moved into his own room we've always played him a cd to help send him off to sleep. He's an active, loud, rambunctious lad and silence doesn't sit well with him, so we thought it would be a good way to distract him from being cast out of the partental nest/room. Sure, he has the Night Garden album but we've tried to be a bit more diverse than that and thankfully have kept the Tweenies well out of it.

I now have a pretty eclectic taste in music, running the gauntlet of the New Folk Revival, to 70's heavey/hairy rock, prog rock and some more modern stuff, and wifey would say her musical tastes are a lot more respectable than mine (she got to listen to the Rolling Stones growing up), so M'laddo gets a good selection of tunes to listen to. We try to go for slowler tempo stuff, so he's only had a brief fliration with Deep Purple but to give you a flavour of his night time listening, these are the CD's on current rotation:

The Definitive Simon and Garfunkel
The Very Best of Cat Stevens
The Cosmic Rough Riders
Pet Sounds- The Beach Boys
When it Falls- Zero 7
Wish You Were Here- Pink Floyd
The Rolling Stones

I also have a confession to make. M'laddo was nearly born to a nice soothing Morecheeba track. Unfortunately he decided to fight and was eventually born about 15 minutes later and the MP3 player had moved on to the next album which was Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction. And yes, I'm still apologising for this one over two years later but I can't help think it was rather apt...

We have had a breakthrough!*

The wee lass is almost 5 months old now, something that has crept up on us all of a sudden. There have been a few indicators of this in recent weeks: she's watched us eating with great focus and intensity, she gets bored laying down very quickly, she's almost repeated the infamous new nostril ripping trick her brother visited upon me at a similar age and the cries of frustration and not quite being able to roll over are frequent and loud (although she has managed to roll off the sofa but not on my watch I hasten to add).

We only started M'laddo on solids as early as we did because of his silent acid reflux. We had no intention of doing the same with the wee lass but she was watching the fork to mouth action so intently, we thought we'd try and now you can see her straining forward with every fibre of her being towards to spoon with purée on it that evidently isn't coming towards her as fast as she'd like.

The one area that the wee lass is still causing problem in is her feeding though. Especially at night time, she has stubbornly refused to deviate from a 3 hour feeding regime. And as a lot of you will know, the timing for a 3 hour gap between feeds is from the start of the feed, so by the time you factor in the feeding and the winding and the getting back off to sleep, as a parent you often only get an hour or two between feeds. Well for the last 3 days (possibly due to the huge quantities of Ella's Organics we've stuffed into her chops), she's slept from 7.30pm to half two and then from half two til gone 6. Yes, I know she's only pretending and that it will be much worse once she reasserts her normal pattern but for the moment we're clinging to this tiny crumb of hope with both hands and stifling a yawn at the same time :)

And it really is hats off to wifey- she does this arduous night time regime Sunday through to Thursday and I only do the weekends. And its all I can do to not be a grumpy so and so on a Saturday as I've been up half the night after a busy week at work. Still, mustn't grumble as I have it easy compared to some (Miles, if Jenny's reading this she should tell you I have it easy!)

*that will turn out to be very short lived I'm sure. I know from bitter experience with M'laddo that they lull you into a false sense of security and then catch you out.

Feeling hot hot hot

Firstly to all you lovely people who have given me awards, sorry, I'm crap and I will try and sort them out soon. Once the significant other has shown me what to do :)

I see from the weather forecast (Ha! Do they ever actually forecast the weather or do they just tell you what the weathers been like today? They certainly do the latter more accurately for sure) that the weather is going to be cooler tomorrow. Boo hiss etcetera etcetera. Aside from a lack of sunshine and general heat, this means m'laddo isn't going to sleep as well. During the current hot spell he has done his usual- he has two speeds, full pelt and asleep, much like the missus- and run around like a loon, he's had a nap and sleep really well all night. In fact at the weekend he slept in until almost 9am. Which was nice.

He's also been sleeping under a quilt wearing a little singlet, which makes him look like a right little bruiser (the singlet that is, not the quilt, the quilt has cute little animals on it) but it looks like this will be an end to this.