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Birthday? Already? Blimey...
A long time ago in a hospital far far away...
A year. A whole year. I can hardly believe it. But it's here, the boy's first birthday.
Happy birthday, son!
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In The Unique Horror post about the forthcoming birthday party we discussed the options for the MO for the day. Now it's over and done with what was it really like?
Never again. Never ever again.
Some folk are really natural hosts, and we don't fit into that category. So when we had a house more full than it's ever been before it's difficult to keep track of where everyone is, how full the glasses are (even with open invitations to the beer fridge), we're just not cut out for it. Which I guess is why I found my space and hung onto it. The fact it was in front of the grill and I had an endless supply of food and beer coming helped.
I only saw my boy a couple of times, so it looks like my two-step plan for the day was exactly how it happened. Fantastic!!
The lad did really well too, I never heard any reports of him crying, even when he missed a meal (sort of deliberate), went for a nap, went to bed to leave the die-hards going.
The last year has been something special, and I'm so pleased so many made it down (or up) to help celebrate the day with us. More importantly those who shared the day with the boy, we were just there to supply food and drink, and we knew it!
Since Saturday I've been looking back at 52 weekends ago, and realising just how surreal everything was. Wandering through the corridors of the hospital to stretch the legs, to get food, to generally pass time. I remember the feelings of loneliness down there when I wasn't upstairs in the delivery suite, knowing everyone looking after MOTS was over in that part of the hospital. The strangest feeling of it was the fact a process had started, and it wasn't going to stop, that this was it, we were about to become parents, whatever that entailed. And we weren't ready for it. And that we had zero control over what was happening now.
We both got sleep that Monday night, not a great deal but we got some. That was in between the check-ups which were several hours apart. "Next exam in 4 hours". The first hour always dragged, but then the last couple of hours seemed to fly by. Just as doing nothing is really tiring, waiting can be so quick too. With several hours between exams one should have had plenty of time to read that article on some mundane rubbish in that lads toys magazine I'd got, but for some reason time was up and I hadn't looked at it - I hadn't had time. HADN'T HAD TIME? What????
With Richard finally getting me to start my own blog not long before the birth it naturally became centred on boy wonder. Which in hindsight has been fantastic, this has settled a number of differences on when things have happened because I know they are in here. OK, so sometimes not in my favour exactly, but sometimes it is. So the lad will have Richard to thank later when he can't get at any of this because MySQL has long since been replaced with some incompatible rubbish that has more security holes in it than a copy of Windows.
We've had an enormous amount of support this year from those around us, which has been fantastic, and for which we're very grateful. Right from the best bacon sandwich I've ever had to the wholesale moving of the Jeffrey's house into ours bit by bit. Yes, Ali, your BBQ will be cleaned before I ring you to come and collect it! 2 burner plus side ring gas BBQ in B&Q at £40 just now. Hmm, time to say goodby to charcoal I think.
But the real stars of the show are my family. I could never thank MOTS enough for what she went through and does for that lad, because whatever she's doing he's happy and that makes me proud. Every time he come to me though choice it melts another piece of my heart away. I can only be thankful I am not the polar ice cap otherwise that whole global warming thing and ice melting, well there'd be no polar bears left (beautiful creatures they are).
So in party terms, that was a success I feel. A little food left over, booze down to an almost acceptable level, nothing expensive broken. But never again, that was too many. The half-dozen left huddling under the gazebo (R.I.P.) in the rain but too drunk to care was a nice quiet end to a busy day. When I say quiet... "Who let the dogs out???".
The aftermath of the party has clearly given me time to reflect on the past year, and here on the eve of his birthday that's a really nice time to do it. It's just the three of us tomorrow, which will be really nice. Even his latest jabs which were scheduled for tomorrow have been re-arranged, so it's up to us what we do, where we go, who we see. The three of us.
The three of us.
We've got a whole heap of firsts coming up this next couple of weeks, hopefully the walking will be one of them. Now we're getting more and more steady on our feet the boy has decided to be adventerous and started jumping too. And without the aid of holding onto furniture!
As he's not in nursery now for almost a fortnight we're expecting him to go back walking, they did comment tonight that he was so desperate to get on the move and that he really was standing on his own a lot today. So it's not just our wishful thinking then!
Hopefully plenty to report on soon. I'll let him get his birthday out of the way first!
Why is the man of the household referred to as the "head of the family"? OK, that's a little old fashioned, but there is compelling evidence that this is history.
The evidence in our house was presented to me on Tuesday night. Not only did it suggest I wasn't on the top spot, not that I ever thought I was, but explicitly stated I was right at the bottom of the rankings I never knew existed.
How to make a short story long:-
Coming home on Tuesday night, having left the office in fine weather (fine for this summer, that's for sure) we came through some low-lying cloud and into what had been some heavy rain. Heading to the nursery it was light drizzle, but had clealry been heavy earlier on, with the amount of water on the roads. Oh great, we've missed it.
Pulling up onto the drive, the timing was perfectly bad. Just as the car came to a halt the heavy rain returned. We decided to wait a minute or two to see how it panned out, but realising it was set for a while I did something that most who know me will be shocked by. I offered to be a gentleman and run to the house to grab a brolly to hold so my wife could get out of the car half dry. The fact I did it for my boy was neither here nor there.
With the decision to bolt for it made I opened the car door. An certain amount of water had collected by the door seal which suddenly found itself liberated from its gravity-blocked state and did the inevitable. It fell straight down onto the arm that was being used to push the door open. My arm.
An expletive suitable to the situation rang out as the door was firmly closed again. The next sound was the sound of humility. The boy was sat in the back giggling at his Dad's misfortune.
Was I anything but proud of this? Oh no. The giggling is infectious. The pair of us up front laughed too. This was a "passive" giggle rather than an "active" giggle (active = taking part in some activity, eg funny faces, tickling - passive = being observant but not activley involved in a situation).
Laughing at his Dad's misfortune. There we have it, the put-down. The evidence that I am indeed the bottom of the household, not the head.
You wait all year for a bus then 3 come along at once. Or so the old saying goes.
We have been waiting for the boy to take his first step and, like the preverbial buses, he managed three in one go.
3 stepsNow this happened yesterday, and I missed it. Not for being at work, not for being out on the beer, but for as simple line of sight problem. The bottom of the bed was in the way!. I can now see a market for a glass-constructed bed frame, never could before. Funny how your view of products change once you become a parent.
He's been building up to it for a while. Sure, we can walk holding onto Mummy or Daddy's fingers, it's just that we choose not to because it's quicker to crawl. Sure, we can use the walker to scoot across the floor, but we choose not to because it's quicker to crawl. But he has been getting steadier on his feet, standing on his own, holding on with one hand, holding on with no hands while he uses one to hit the item of furniture he's stood against. Even this hitting the furniture constitutes using it for balance in my book.
On Saturday he was a livewire on the train, hardly settling at all. Some of this time he was stood on the table pinned up against the glass, whacking it and trying to see if it really was toughened safety glass. But then something strange happened. He stopped hitting the glass. He let go completely. And for a number of seconds hitting double figures he stood, unaided. On a moving train. At high speed. Something even I have difficulty with. At low speed.
On Sunday morning I heard MOTS shouting for me to look at him. He was standing alone again, this time without the added hindrance of hitting the standard track defects at 125mph.
But I was too slow. I missed him standing on his own two feet. I missed his slight imbalance as he lifted one foot and moved it forward. I missed him place this airborne foot on the carpet, realising the other foot was now lagging behind. I missed the rear foot being lifted and brought forward to match the new level of the forward foot, and the misjudged distance meaning the rear foot now becomes the forward foot. I missed the previously forward foot but now the rear foot taking its rightful place as the forward foot. I just caught the sack of potatoes impression he made as he collapsed to the ground.
Damn! His first three steps and I missed them. And I was only 5 feet away and in the same room! But for a bed made of glass...
It's not a major event though, everything he's done so far has been a case of "done that, don't need to do it again". Most developmental stages have started with an initial showing, then a gap, then just getting on with it sometime later (eg rolling over, crawling). So we're expecting the next steps not today, not tomorrow, but when he can be bothered in a few weeks time.
Saw this story on the BBC news site today, and one question rang out:
Too much lead? Surely that should be "any lead".
Switch to diesel, that's my advice.
With all the recent excitement (if excitement is the right word) we sort of missed out on the real goings-on this weekend, and that was the next step in learning to copy what mum & dad do.
We've been having raspberry blowing contests for ages, sometimes getting more giggles from MOTS than from Junior. And the start of the "You've got what I want because I want what you've got" type of signs have been there and increasing in frequency. The odd wave goodbay too over the last few weeks.
But now it's all coming together. Waving goodbye is almost always. I say almost always because at nursery there's far more interesting stuff going on other than saying goodbye to us, so he just gets stuck in and forgets us, the wee shite. The welcomes are getting more and more enthusiastic, with me tending to get more of a hello than MOTS. But then as a weekend dad that's no great surprise.
And we're onto the clapping. This came on this weekend, with Grandma and Grandad being there to see the early stages of it and Granny & Grandpops being there to witness the perfecting of the act. No more clapping by slapping one han on a leg, oh no, we're on the real deal now. This is just the latest in the increasing line-up of things he tries once, betters the second time, and has mastered by attempt 3.
He wasn't clapping at lunchtime yesterday, however. With his sore tooth we decided to give nursery all bottles ratehr than some solids for him, to save them being really careful. And the report we got this morning is that at lunchtime when the others were getting their bowls and he was getting a bottle he wasn't too chuffed, apparently he wanted his solids. Bless....
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