Her Sole Intention is Learning To Crawl

I came home last night to find we'd hit another milestone, Sophie had worked out how to crawl.

Well, not exactly how to crawl, but she had an idea about how a baby might be able to move across a rug. Like a jigsaw puzzle, she has all the parts and it's only a mattter of time before she puts them together in the right order.

One arm forward.
Then the other arm.
Or was it the leg?
No, pretty sure it was the arm.
Or both arms?
Oh dear, that doesn't feel right.
Splat.
etc.

It's so hard to watch, she knows all the individual parts of crawling, but just can't link them together. And (being a man) all I want to do is to solve her problem, to explain how it all goes together, to take over completely and do it for her. But that's not going to help - I know this because I tried.

I tried demonstrating by crawling across the lawn. I tried sitting down and talking her through the process. I tried encouragement. I moved her arms and legs for her. Then my wife tried to make me realise there can be few things more pitiful than the attempts of a man of 35 trying to teach a six month old baby how to crawl.

So, in spite of my efforts, for the moment we're safe. But the kiddie locks for the cupboards will be taken out of their packaging this weekend and anything mouth sized or "push overable" will be taken off the floor. Six months on, the realisation of what I've done is still finding new ways to hit me.

Feeding time at the London zoo

I think Sophie knew something was up as she was carried to her brand new, sparkling white Ikea highchair.

It was a suspicious look she gave me, but as she sat there banging her spoon I was optimistic that there might be a chance of her trading in Mum's breast for pureed carrot, sweet potato or parsnip. Not the smartest of trades, not one I would have made, but then she was only a baby, and who knows how they think. Maybe my wife and my combined 70 odd years of experience could outwit her six months of baby cunning.

It started well - the picking up, the strapping into the chair and giving her the spoon. But from there, things got a bit harder.

With a lot of experience under my belt I don't usually have a problem finding my mouth and swallowing whatever is deposited, but trying to explain the process is not that easy. The part about putting the spoon in the mouth was fine, My wife and I could mime it and Sophie got the idea pretty quick.

The problem came with what to do once it was in the mouth. Six months of life experience and she had the theory and practice of sucking pretty well sorted. With a breast, pusing the tongue up works perfectly to seal off the mouth and provide the suction. This doesn't work quite so well with a spoon - when you have a spoon in your mouth, pushing up the tongue propels food out of the mouth and down the chin.

mmm

And again

mmm

Fifteen minutes later and we had emptied the container of sweet potato. There was some on Sophie's chin, some on her bib, quite a bit on her highchair, a few small puddles on the floor, a sprinkling on Mum and Dad and possibly some inside Sophie.

Still, she at least she seemed to enjoy the process, and even better was the reward - a good session on mother's breast. I'm not convinced the appropriate reward for eating is more eating (look what it's done to me), but round two awaits us tomorrow.

Sleep Training (Part One)

With the six month mark having passed us by and our travel calendar (consisting of a six-month best of two weekends away in a row) now cleared, my wife and I made the decision to train young Sophie in the art of sleeping by herself.

Up until now, her sleeping cycle has consisted of being rocked and jiggled to sleep over 2-3 hours in about every room of the house as we worked on the principle that she liked moving around - after all, falling asleep in the pushchair was never a problem.

However, all the books said the best way was to put her in her cot and let her fight her way to sleep. The theory behind this is that they need to learn to fall asleep by themselves and the longer they take to learn the more parents have to put up with.

But boy can she scream.

And flip herself on her stomach.

And scream.

And flip over on her back again.

And scream.

And (it seems like magic) she can go to sleep.

There's a transition that only takes a few seconds between being one of the angriest young women on the planet, hating her cot and the uncaring parents who are just stood there watching her struggle and the change to blissing out, mouth open, arms outstretched, and gently snoring.

It's been two nights so far, averaging about two hours each time. We're betting everything on two hours being all she can manage as it's about our limit too.

Perhaps the worst part, though, is that living in London it's not just us who are suffering. I hope the neighbours have as high a tolerence as us right now, if not, we have a bottle of wine and a set of ear plugs for any neighbours who come knocking at the door.

Lost and Found

Yesterday brought another reminder of Sophie's Christening.

I finally got around to taking my suit to the drycleaners* and was doing a final pocket check, when I found the booties that went with her Christening outfit.

Yep, those same booties that I swore I put in in the car, the same booties that I desparately tried to find someone else to blame for losing and the same booties that I spent at least an hour looking for, cursing under my breath all the while.

I'm pretty sure this is the coolest thing I've ever found left in my pockets. It definitely ranks above hankies (clean or dirty), above bibs (usually dirty) and above cash too (at least the amounts I'm likely to find in my pockets).

In terms of the feeling that came with finding them it rates above everything.

Not sure also what this says about her Dad trying to teach her stuff when his memory is going already. At this rate I'll have forgotten everything before I get to pass it on.

At least I'll be in good company though and can (quietly) blame forgetting the bonnet on my wife. In my (quiet) opinion, the gown is so long that no one would have seen the booties anyway, but the bonnet - on second thoughts mentioning the bonnet is only going to cause trouble!

So tomorrow it's off to the post office to send the booties 11,000 miles back to Christchurch to await the next Christening and their next wearer, and by sending them, I'm taking full responsibility for smuggling them out of the country. Best to have them in a safe place, and who knows, in another few years there just might be another call for booties and a bonnet ...

* Yes, she's just as keen to leave her mark on Dad's best suit as she is any of my older clothes. Yes, it has taken me three weeks to get around to unpacking. And no, I'm not looking forward to handing the suit over to the drycleaners after all that time in the suitcase.

Sophie's Christening

The main reason we went back to New Zealand was to introduce Sophie to the Grandparents, especially mine because she's their first grandchild.

But while we were there we also wanted to get her Christened and to do it in the church we got married in (which is the same one connected to the primary school my wife went to - not sure exactly how weird that is!).

There was a lot of tradition around the Christening, Sophie wore the gown that's gone through about 4 generations now - different coloured ribbons for boys and girls of course - and it's a neat feeling to bring someone in to a tradition like that.

I've had traditions before, but most of them are of the rugby club or university initiation type you don't really talk about in polite company. This was something really special and even though we're not regular churchgoers, it felt like bringing her into a wider family and connecting with something larger. A bit like getting married, just affirming someone in front of a group of other people extends it from the purely personal and is like taking on more responsibility.

More precisely, I think it's a process of making her more real. I think about her all the time, and on the train home each night I can't wait to see her, but sometimes, on the rare morning that I wake up naturally (and not to the sound of crying at 5:30am), it takes a moment before remember I'm a Dad as well as the person I've always been.

Now there's more to me than just me. We have this wonderful daughter, but she's still so small and while she is developing her personality and has carved out a permanent place in our hearts, there is a very big world out there and so many things she needs to go through to become a person.

Now we can look back at the Christening videos and photos and have something else to show her, another rite of passage that we took her through. I think that's what parents do, make a list of everything a child should go through and try to take them through it in the right order and to try to help them make sense of it all. Hopefully her Christening will be at least a small part of that.

Growing Up - Staring Eyes and Poking Tongues

It's amazing how things change every day, I thought it was all moving fast in the beginning, that transition from Sophie being inside my pregnant wife to out here in the real world was amazing enough. I thought that nothing could top it when Sophie came home from the hospital, but she just seems to change faster and faster, and every day brings something new.

Now when she's being carried in the Baby Bjorn I don't have to worry about her head bumping around, it goes exactly where she wants it (though I've learnt that the more uncomfortable it looks the happier she probably is). Unfortunately the days of having her tucked in facing me are very much over.

Much to my distress, suddenly Dad's chest is not the most fascinating thing around, the outside world is much more exciting, especially other people. Not great for a Dad's ego when he's ignored and complete strangers take her full attention. She just stares at them, and to make things worse, she's started getting a reflex action: the harder she stares, the more her tongue pokes out.

So we're walking around the Sainsbury's in Streatham with Sophie in the Baby Bjorn. Her eyes are wide open, she's grinning, and her tongue is hanging out.

My first thought is that this is London and you should never stare at anyone, but it's time for me to get an education because all she gets are smiles.

Babies, it seems, can get away with anything, even in London.

My Daughter's First Steps

Ok, so first steps is optimistic for a twelve-week old baby, but she can almost roll over!

Yesterday, Sophie was lying there on her playmat, wriggling around a bit more than usual, when she lifted up her head and one arm, pulling her shoulder about an inch off the ground, then fell back. Then she did it again, and again. We feel like spectators at our very own Olympics; she's giving it everything and we're there to cheer her on.

But like all good Dads there are a couple of things that worry me:

1. She has a habit of not liking what she gets, and she doesn't like being on her front, so I've got the feeling she might not like what she gets when she does learn to roll over.
   
2. I quite like the fact that when we put her down somewhere she stays put. This is the start of her getting independent (maybe a velcro grow suit so we could stick her in place would help?)
   

So Sophie has registered another first, getting a shoulder off the ground might not rate highly, it's not going to make the news, and a year ago I would have been embarrased to write about it, but right now everything she does makes her parents proud, and we don't care who knows it.

Good Times, Bad Times

Having a daughter has brought some of the strongest feelings in my life, and as an INTJ, feelings are not something I usually pay much attention to.

In the days of my youth
I was told what it was to be a man,
Now I've reached the age
I've tried to do all those things the best I can

Led Zep lyrics are great in that they can be bent to fit any situation. There been no brown eyed man stealing my wife away (that I know of anyway) and it been a long long time since I had any dealings with a sixteen year old girl. But what I 've found is true as a Dad is that all the things I was told "in my youth" have stared to float back. I've posted before about how everyone has advice for new Dads, but I think it's the advice people give you before you are a Dad, before you're even thinking about becoming a Dad, that is the most important.

In those days of innocence, when meeting people and discovering girls is a new adventure, fathers are people who are there in the background for most, who come home at night and watch TV. I was lucky enough to have a great Dad, but silly enough not to know it, or rather to take it for granted. After all, didn't everyone's Dad take them to tennis, to rugby, help coach their teams? The simple answer is "no".

I went down to Streatham Common last Saturday and there was lots of football training, some coaches were out there giving it everything, encouraging the kids to run up the hill, to chase the ball and do the drills. But what struck me was that there weren't many parents there. I guess sport has become a sort of a babysitting service. These kids grow up thinking that it's normal for someone else to take care of them, that parents are not for learning from, that parents are what you have when something isn't so important.

So perhaps it's not something that's said aloud, and it's defintely not politically correct to talk about how someone else is raising their children, but letting someone else bring up your kids and get the best out of them is an option. But taking it is not what I think it is to be a man.

Immunisation - The First Rite of Passage

Just put my daughter to bed after a long day. She is now the not so proud owner of two immunisation jabs, apparently proof against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), and the worst thing she has ever been through.

My wife decided to breastfeed while she got the jabs, it worked for the first one, she took it with just a whimper, but nothing was going to distract her from the second one, so Mum was in the bad books all day.

When I got home from work I've never had a daughter as glad to see me. She hadn't slept since the immunisation jabs, but about 5 minutes after I held her she was fast asleep, opening an eye occasionally to make sure Mum wasn't getting too close.

Of course, hunger won out in the end and the ban on Mum came to a finish. She's still getting suspicious looks though, and it's going to take a while to rebuild that trust.

It's a shame these things hurt so much, we thought alot about it before booking her in as there's so much in the media about links with autism and other problems. She certainly came down with a fever and spent an unhappy afternoon, but it's nothing compared to what could happen if she wasn't protected. We keep telling our daughter, "Welcome to the real world" (we didn't have the nerve to try, "This hurts us more than it hurts me", though to be honest, I think it did).

Here's hoping she'll be right again in the morning. I've got a game of paper, rock, sicissors to win against my wife to see who will take her in for the next round, a second rite of passage - it could be the most important game of my life!