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: “Dad.” Jack: “Daaaad.” Jack: “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.” Daddy: “What’s up, little man? It’s getting late – you should be asleep.” Jack: “Dad…”, holding his knee with cupped hands. Daddy: “What’s the matter? It’s late, you need to go to sleep.” Jack: “My elbow hurts.” Daddy: (smiling) “That’s not your elbow. Go to bed.” Jack: “Dad! My elbow hurts.” Daddy: “That’s not your elbow. Now come on, go to bed.” Jack: “Where is my elbow?” Daddy: “Here’s your elbow. Bed.” Jack: holding his elbow and rubbing it… “Daaaad……” Daddy: “Jaaaaaaaaack…” … … Jack: “My elbow hurts.”
If you’ve read some of my older blog posts, you’ll recall that, particularly during the first few weeks/months of us having Jack, I went through a phase of having a bad night’s sleep, due to wandering around the room/house because of Jack..! Anyway, if you didn’t know, well, I did, and sort of grew-out of it, partly due to his track-record in sleeping, but also partly due to the baby-gate we put on his room, meaning that he’s confined to that room!! So, with that in mind, imagine my horror when we (Claire, Jack and I) stayed in a hotel near Peppa Pig World in Southampton, to be woken up at midnight by Claire saying that she can’t hear Jacks’ snorting and breathing coming from his bed just feet away from ours. At this point, I was shattered, and genuinely thought she was going mad, but, being married to her, I humoured her all the same and went over to his bed to check it out. She was right, there was no sound, so I thought he must have slipped under the bed-sheets, and as kids can’t regulate their body temperature as yet, they sweat. Big time. So, there’s me; in the nod, in the pitch black room, leaning over a double-bed with my little boy in it, pulled back the bedsheets to find…. he wasn’t there! Seriously, I woke up within one of those heart-beats that I’m sure I skipped. It was like an absolute instant hang-over cure. “How the… hell… do you lose a child in a one-room room!?!” was going through my head. Logic set in - The hotel room door was heavy, even for an adult, but it was also double-bolted shut anyway, so he simply couldn’t have left the room not without making at least a little noise… yet that didn’t stop it being the first thing that came to Claire’s mind! Turned out, Jack must have slipped out of the far-side of the bed, between the bed and the wall, and was curled up in a heap under the window! Panic over. Call in the search party, cancel the helicopters and give the dogs the rest of the night off. He was a bit cold, but in a deep sleep somewhere in nod-land. Incidentally, there wasn’t a thud, or noise, so we can only assume that he did it himself… although, thinking about it now, those floors are made of concrete, with only a bit of carpet on top for decoration, so maybe we wouldn’t have heard it. But then, surely, it would hurt, induced crying and maybe that would have woken him and us!?! At that point, Claire and I actually debated – and this might make us sound like bad parents, but we’re not!! – about leaving him where he was…(Yeah! I know!! Crazy…) What we didn’t want to do, was to wake him and then struggle to get him back to sleep. But I did. (Pick him up, that is!) Partly to get him back to somewhere comfortable, loveable little chap. Partly to feel a bit better about myself for not leaving a darling little two year old asleep, cold, on the floor. And partly to see if he could be woken, by way of some sort of childish means of getting him back for the panic he caused us. (ECG results are fine, by the way!) But no. Little man just kept snoring, grunting and farting occasionally, indicating that normal service had resumed. The sheets on the bed muted some of the somewhat-missed sounds, but not as well as the entire bed did when he was on the floor, preventing almost all sound from him! Could/should put him back on the floor but, I suppose, there’s always next time.
My first car was a beaten-up Ford Fiesta which boasted lugged around a 950cc engine, which was only just bigger than the engine on my lawn mower now, and that’s not to say it’s a very big lawn mower..! One of the quirks of that car, was that I am sure that it had an odd-shaped petrol tank, as the (leaded) petrol in the first three quarters of the tank appeared to be used proportionally to the miles travelled in the car, whereas the final quarter seemed to run out disproportionally to the miles travelled. All of a sudden, you’d have next-to-no petrol left and find ones’ self searching around for a juice-station. The reason that I am telling you this boring detail of my car, is because that is how I can best describe what’s happened today with regards to young Master Rigby – he’s been on top form all day, racing around like Lewis Hamilton, inside, outside, upstairs and down, and then all of a sudden, whilst eating his lunch, he’s obviously gone into the last remnants of the final quarter-tank of petrol and he’s nearly fallen asleep in his chair. Complete power-down situation. He’s not miserable in this state, but very funny to watch, as his eye-lids look like they’re lead-lined and a struggle to keep open, especially when he appears to be diverting all available energy into the mouth department to continue the eating motion. I wasn’t expecting him to need a nap this early in the day, as it’s normally after 13:30 these days that he needs a quick power-nap, but he’s caught me off-guard today! Made me smile, as I’m poking him in the cheek to try to keep him awake.
BANG! It was the dead of night, and the noise woke me instantly. I must have gone from fast asleep to completely 100% wide-awake in a small fraction of a very fast split second; in this time, I knew what had happened as, just then, it started…. WWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Yep, Jack had fallen out of bed at 03:30 in the morning. But not just any bed; Ours, which is quite high off of the floor. But (luckily/unluckily) I wasn’t in it, so I had to climb out of the spare bed, realise where I was, navigate the piles of junk that we’re in the middle of sorting out, out the bedroom down the hallway a bit and into our bedroom to find Claire trying to calm down the ever-so-slightly upset Jack. This was not an ordinary night, as the events earlier in the evening were almost trying to tell us. Around 11:00ish, Jack woke up screaming, and I mean very loudly. He seems to wind himself up into these screaming, crying tantrums, that it’s difficult to know what to do with him. He doesn’t want to be picked up, he doesn’t then want to be put back in his bed/cot, you can’t soothe him, calm or anything. Nightmare. I can only conclude that this behaviour must be from his mum’s side. Eventually, he went back to sleep, but only for a bit, as at 01:30, he’s awake again crying and screaming. As I was due to go to work the next morning, Claire took over, which was good, as there was extra flappy-arms-screaming-paddy-tantrums when I tried to pick him up; his mum was ok, but not me. Fine - I went to bed and was soon followed by Claire with a somewhat calmer Jack, but one that didn’t want to sleep in his bed, so she brought him into ours to see if that might help things. For the record, Jack has never successfully slept in our bed. Ever. Even when he was really small, he only ever slept in his Moses basket/crib/thing or in his cot in the other bedroom. So, to think that it might work was a bit of a faff. Knowing this sleeping situation would not work, I volunteered to sleep in the other bedroom, which was good for me, as I managed to sleep until the 03:30 awakening. Claire, on the other hand, (bless her) didn’t manage to get any sleep, as Jack would wake every 20-30 minutes and have a bit of a cry, only to be soothed back to sleep instantly by his mum. Getting up for 06:30 normally isn’t too much of a problem, but that day, strangely, it was… Ho-hum. Fun and games of having kids, I suppose! I’ve just added a ‘Tantrums’ category to the blog site… I have a feeling that I might be needing that in future.
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