Yes, it’s true – the little man is three months old, there or there-about.

He’s past the stage of crying all the time because of wind (or colic) and is a really smiley, happy little boy. (honest!)

He smiles a lot now, which really is a nice thing to see. 

Claire also found out a little while ago that he’s ticklish and laughs with a big wide-open mouth and the occasional chuckle! I tickle him now and then, as you do, and he’s getting easier to ‘get’ each time.  Tonight, for instance, I was blowing raspberries on his tummy and tickling him and he loved it, which is great as I’m seeing a totally different side to him; Claire has been saying for weeks that he’s a happy, bubbly little boy, but when I get home from work, around 1800ish, he’s been grumpy and crying lots.  Coming home to that each night makes it more difficult to imagine the happy child, but, as I said – finally – I’m seeing what she means,

He’s getting to be a big, strong boy too – he’s able to hold his neck up and look around, which is good. He’s starting to understand about rolling over, but still needs big brother Jack to yank on his leg to make the centre of gravity change position. After that, he’s find.

I’ve been playing on the bed with him, and rolling him sideways onto his tummy and then over again onto his back, which he seems to enjoy. I used to do this with Jack, too, which I guess was about the same sort of age.  I’d imagine that it’s a whole new world at that age, as he’s been either face up or face down in bed and that it! Now, he’s finding out that there’s a series of steps in between those poses.

He’s still not sleeping through the night entirely as yet though, much to mummy and daddy’s disappointment! In the past couple of nights (literally) he’s slept for four or five hours straight, which is the most he’s managed. Previously, it’s been as long as three hours and as little as thirty minutes, which sort of makes for a very long night.

But, we’ll see how it pans out. In terms of the holy-grail at the moment, it would be getting Oliver to sleep the entire night through. In his own bed. And not waking up until a decent hour!

Jack was asking about twenty-thousand why/who/what questions the other day, about something or other to do with my work; when he asked where I was going today, rather flippantly, I said ‘Switzerland’. It wasn’t true, but it was somewhere that wasn’t where he’d know, but it (almost) had the desired effect, as he paused for thought about it.

“What’s that?” came the reply, in keeping with the rest of the conversation, and so it went on until  I asked Jack if he could say ‘Switzerland’. 

He tried a little and failed after a decent attempt, bearing in mind that he’s only two years old. And so, Claire stepped in to help him with his pronunciation.

“Swit. Zer. Land" – she said.

Quick as a flash, the little blue-eyed monster replied, “Well done, mummy!”, clapping his hands with a look of happiness across his face.

Made us both laugh, although Jack was looking at us in confusion, as mummy had, indeed, said it correctly.

Priceless.

That’s all he does. He jabbers on about all sorts from the moment he wakes up.

Some things that are totally ‘in’ the flow of the conversation but, occasionally, when you think he’s waffling on about something unrelated, he’s usually just working off at a tangent, but the point of what he’s got to say is bang on the money.

He’ll tell you that he’s needs a drink, wants to watch ‘Peppa Pig’ on TV (or DVD!!), that he had cried at nursery that day, that he loves you, or even that he’s grumpy. (But he will not admit to being tired!!)

Over the past several weeks, Claire and I have noticed how well his ‘jabbering’ has improved on a weekly basis. That’s to say that this week is much improved on last week, and that on the week before and so on.

Sometimes his pronunciation is a little off, but he’s trying! (And he is only two!)

Jack is now speaking in sentences, rather than just mumbles, grunts and one-word-burps. He asks for things, tells us things and everything, which may sound perfectly normal, but I still do not have a benchmark to compare Jack to, as I have never spent any significant time around any kids of friends or family. I don’t know what age they’re meant to be able to do something, or say something, etc, so to me, this is as it comes.

It’s the speed that his little brain is soaking up the information and processing it, that gets both Claire and myself. It’s fascinating to watch unpeel before your eyes, really.

One of my lecturers at university said, within an Artificial Intelligence module, that if we wanted to create something that could learn organically, then we should simply “have a child”.  And he is/was right, as the mind boggles at how much computing power and software creativity would be needed to create a computer that could do what Jack’s brain is doing, as well as being able to swing arms and legs in a motion that we call walking or running.  Computers can learn a specific task by repetition and trial/error, but seeing something, learning the word for it, and then being told that it relates to something else and understanding what is going on… remembering where he is, without a GPS device… asking questions about new things, or saying sorry for hurting someone else… that’s crazy-computing-thinking.

If you ask any parent, there’s a good chance that they’ll backup my claims that it’s absolutely crazy about how the human brain learns. You can see this process happening over the course of days, weeks and months in a small child, by simply watching and listening to them and the things that they do.

Note: I cannot, nor will I try to, compare Jack to another 2 year old – the ‘About me…’ part of this blog is still true, in that I am still new to this baby lark and have only ever spent any proper time with him. So, my observations are directly as a result of him and his actions.

The things that he remembers is quite extraordinary; when we’re talking about something, he’ll throw something completely random into the conversation, but if you pause and think for a moment, you can ‘see’ the conversation links that got him from talking about this, to what he’s thinking about that.

What I mean is, I mentioned in the last post about the conversations that we had about his Grand-dad and his whistling, but as well as that, he actually understands what you’re talking about and is thinking through from one topic into another, but remembers details about things too, that I certainly don’t expect at the time!

A few weeks ago, Claire had to go into work last minute and so couldn’t take Jack for his swimming lesson in Peterborough, so I took him, but my dad brought Jack from our house to my work in Peterborough so that I could take him. Yesterday, when Jack and I was talking about something or nothing, I mentioned Peterborough as Claire and I were going out for the evening. Instantly, he mentioned that daddy works in Peterborough, and that he’d been to my workplace and that his grand-dad brought him, and without very much pushing, he remembered that we went swimming too.

This might all sound a bit ‘yeah, so?’, but it’s amazing about the things that he picks up and why. And how! For instance, I’m a software developer at heart, and the basic idea is that the program that you’re writing does nothing by default, until you make it do it. But his little brain is learning as each day passes. All those little neurons are firing and connecting as his brain develops over time. Relating it back to the techie-world again where my knowledge is more in-depth than babies and the like, trying to get a computer to learn at the rate a child does like that is almost impossible! Computer processors can ‘learn’ but that’s not even the same thing, as they’re coded by a human to learn in a specific way.  This is organic learning as a result of evolution or something, and not some Hollywood sci-fi movie where robots learn ‘stuff' instantly.

I know that you and I went through this process ourselves, which is part of what makes us human, but to see it unfold before your eyes is very interesting.

The other morning before I left for work, Jack decided that he would show the world (or at least, his mum and I) that he could walk by himself!

I’m not saying that he’s stopped crawling in favour of walking now, especially not overnight, but he will now voluntarily walk across the room to another object… this is something that we’ve been trying to get him to do, but he just wouldn’t have any of it.  Although,  we did find that crawling between his mum and dad wasn’t enough of a prize, but walking for the Sky remote was!

He’s really funny in the actual walking-part of it all though, as he’s a bit gangly on his feet, wobbly about like a drunken zombie with his arm outstretched reaching for whatever he’s walking towards.  Also, he knows it’s something that he’ll get a lot of praise for, and will make sure that his mum is watching first and then go for broke.

Now that the weather has brighten up and reached t-shirt weather, we’re able to play outside a lot more now with him, walking him around the garden, chasing the dog, footballs and so on.  He quite likes it out there, as well as walking out towards the road, as there’s cars, vans and lorries out there that he obviously seems to like too.

Anyway, hopefully, now he’s walking around a lot more, he’ll realise that it’s much better than crawling, as that’s only for babies and Commandos or Marines that crawl under barbed wire, with live rounds being fired over their heads.  Jack will happily hold one of my fingers whilst walking too, so when he starts to doubt himself about this whole ‘walking’ thing, holding my hand sometimes helps to give him that little assurance that he needs.

I know it probably sounds like an odd thing to say, but Jack has developed his own little personality which has almost appeared from nowhere!

What I mean, is that he’s got his likes, his dislikes and then he’s got his own way of expressing his choices to us, all in a good way.

When Jack was a little baby, he cried, poo’d and then cried some more after a little bit of sleep. When we gave him food, he eat it. All. When we gave him his bottle of milk, he drank almost all of it, all of the time.

Now, if he’s not interested in something like food, or doesn’t want to finish his milk, he can be quite stubborn and not have it.  We try each time we feed him now to give him lots of food before he gets bored, and then change something so that it is different and so on.  With his milk though, once he’s had enough there’s no changing his mind.  Obviously a trait he’s got from his mum!! ;o)

But food and drink aside, it’s weird to see him do the things he wants to do, and also funny watching him throw a bit of a tantrum when he’s doing something he doesn’t want to do.

Like for instance, he likes watching the cars, lorry, etc go by outside the window, or when we’re driving along, he’s now tall enough to see over the passenger seat in my car and he’ll point out a bus at quite a way away.  Sometimes, we can even use this car/lorry watching as a means of calming him down when he’s upset or bumped his head or whatever.  He’ll happily stand on the window-sill in our bedroom, holding onto the window handle with one hand and the other smacking or prodding the window as and when he sees fit. And yes, we are always directly behind him, before you think otherwise!

The past few weeks, he’s been a bit more clingy than he’s probably ever been before – which means carrying him around all the time, which is ok for a while, but when you need to put him down to get his or our food ready, he can get quick upset, and quite quickly too. He soon gets over it if we try to ignore him, as there’s things that we have to do without him in our arms, such as getting food in or out of the oven, etc.  It’s then that the tears come out straight away, mouth wide open and the screams start! Literally within about 30 seconds, he’s seen a toy or something he wants to play with, or somewhere he can go and investigate and it’s as though he forgets what he was all upset about!

I’m really glad that Claire’s been making a massive effort with him in taking him to Sign And Sign classes – baby sign, that is. I think that you can already see in his face when he’s not happy about something, and if his baby signing improves further, then this might alleviate more problems down the line, or make them easier for us to understand what he’s after or trying to do. He’s already got a certificate for proving that he can wave his hands to tell us little things, which is what it’s all about.  If he’s able to tell us in a simple yet effective sign of his hands that he’s not able to verbally pronounce, then it’s great.

At the moment, he’s able to, basically, ask for more of something; this is what he got his first certificate for. If we give him a baby-biscuit, or a chocolate button or something that he likes, he uses both hands to sign the word for ‘more’ and then he points at what he wants. Simple.  Bonjella is a good one for that – he likes the taste of Bonjella teething gel and, if you let him, he’ll have the lot. (Except, that’s bad, as he’s only allowed 2 or 3 ‘shots’ a day of it!)

Good stuff though. He’s funny to be around and is always up for a game of peek-a-boo!