Squad, I hear Freeman!

Behold the power of words! Yes indeedy, my son has discovered the oh-so human instinct to make sounds in a desperate bid to communicate.. with his hand.

Introducing words such as "goo", "ga" and my all-time favourite, "doo" he has mastered the art of linguistics and even become decidedly expert with it having conducted a half-hour conversation in his cot this morning.

I don't remember there being anyone else in the room mind you and unless that someone was able to climb the outside of the building (three storeys worth) then it's obvious my son was babbling away to none other than Lady Luck herself. Aye, they were probably scheming away on how best to screw me. That being said, I thought he would be lucky for me since I'm naturally unlucky - it's weird logic but I can kinda make it work. However, he's bearing the brunt of the blame for his mother's run of bad luck what with him carrying my name and bad luck being in the genes :p

But anyway, I love hearing his babble - it's hilarious and cute all at the same time.

My snot machine

My son has his first, full-blown cold complete with mucus-filled lungs, running nose and irritability :( It has meant adding yet another pharmacy thing to my ever-growing collection - Karval which is like Vicks Vaporub for infants. The last time I used medicine or any kinda thing like that was almost a decade ago and now I've suddenly acquired my own medicine bank :p

It was to be expected I suppose - his mother's half of the family all had it and had it bad and he's passed it onto my sister and dad which leaves my mum and I free and free we shall remain because we're just too bloody stubborn to get ill ;)

I really should catch something though what with wiping his nose with my hand because I can't find hankies in time and his coughing on my eyeballs (that's his personal favourite that is). He also enjoys slavering up his hand then putting it in my mouth. That couple with the fact that he laughed at me when I accidentally tripped over his baby-chair makes me think he's definitely out to bring me down.

On the plus side he's been falling asleep on my chest which is one of my favourite things :)

Squad secured

My son's new car seat has arrived (he's 7 months but weighs the same as a 9 month old) and I tried to break the damn thing.. just to make sure it was gonna be alright ;)

I lugged the monstrosity down three flights of stairs, out across a frozen car park and into my car where I took a look at the diagrams and installed it. But when I pulled on the seat, it kinda shifted about a bit and I wasn't happy. Trying to figure out what I had done wrong, I consulted the oracle (the instruction manual) and realised I needed to pull x whilst pushing y and make the z face.

Ta-daa, it was in and I couldn't move the thing at all. Put it this way, the entire back row of my car is more likely to come loose! I must admit, it's fair swanky with strap holders and the easiest to use adjusters although now I have to carry him in my arms up and down three flights :( Sounds like a job for the sling (which my family still don't want to see me use because it's hippy-ish). I'm also happy that I saved a fair amount of money on it considering Halfords sell it for £140 and I bought mine for £105. Then again, whilst Halfords do know their stuff and will give you "free" fitting demos, I'm pretty sure they've sneaked the cost for this in with the product ;)

After working in retail for eight years, I know everyone has an angel.. sorry, angle.

High-speed pursuit

There's just no stopping him!

Herding the kiddies

So I attended my first kids birthday party with my little girl at the weekend there. Now bear in mind that she's not actually mine and I'm no longer in a relationship with her mother so it makes it kind of difficult to answer certain questions. The party was for one of the kids in her nursery and it was quite a bit away from my flat. So my folks came and picked up my son whilst I rushed like a about like a mad rabbit to get everything organised and find out where the place was.

What can I say but the information on the website let me down as the street they said the soft-play area was on wasn't the right street and I was driving up and down it a few times frantically looking for it whilst my little angel was repeating that we'd be late for the party. After deciding to pull into a side street to park and ask someone who didn't look like they'd just suck the cap off a bottle of buckfast, I was amazed to see the place right next to an industrial estate-lookin' place. I kid you not, there was an Alsatian on patrol at the end who watched me reverse away from it!

The place was heaving inside with about two or three different parties going on. I didn't know anyone there as I hadn't had a chance to pop into her nursery due to being in Glasgow most of the time so I wandered over to the area where I was told our group were partying. It was mum central with the ratio of mums to dads being somewhere in the 20:1 region and one of them pounced on me saying hi to my little girl. We "signed in" and then with a flash, her shoes were off and she was rampaging about the soft-play. I really wanted to join her as I've always had fun mucking about in soft-play with her but there were many, many, MANY, signs strictly forbidding adults to enter.

I discovered something about parents - they tend to have little cliquey groups where they discuss houses and scandal and house scandals. I received smiles from people I passed but no real invitations to join in the conversation and whilst I'm comfortable blabbing away to people, I'm not too good and bursting in and putting my nose where it's not wanted.. especially with people who feast on gossip and my situation is a succulent four course meal.

Alas my little darling did the one thing I had hoped and prayed she wouldn't do - she poo'd herself and I hadn't put a nappy on her because we were in the toilet training phase. I was so disappointed because we had gone over about asking me to go to the toilet when she needed countless times and she had always replied the same answer which is just, simple rote learning. So I changed her into clothes and went back to my coke sipping.

Then came time for her meal and all the kids were herded into a little room with little tables and little chairs but BIG forks and BIG knives.. nice. I think I came across as a bit imposing as I stayed in there to cut her food up and make sure she was okay without me. There were quite a few mums doing the same thing but I was the only guy - wish I had the visual impressiveness of vin diesel from the babysitter or babyshitter or shitmovievin but nah.. I'm never gonna pull that off.

I got back to my table to see this orange-tanned mum sitting in my chair reading a hello magazine. I should point out that my coat was across the back of the chair, my cup was still in front of it and I had a couple of bags beside it on the floor yet still, she chose to sit there. I approached and she smiled. I went to take my coat off the back of MY chair when she went "oh.. I'm really sorry, I didn't know anyone was sitting here"

What? What the hell? MARIA!! I'm not even going to explain that one because it should be plainly obvious to everyone why I'm astounded :p

Anyway, my little girl came away happy and with a bag of goodies and I came away hungry and with a bag of poo covered clothes.

The complex baby

I don't think I'll ever understand how a baby's body works? I know routine's an important thing to a baby (heck, to us all) and so I know that my boy takes a feed about half seven and then falls asleep right after that 'til about six-ish in the morning (sometimes even seven!) But the other night I was forced to give him a bottle just after six in the evening (he pointed a gun at my head and called me a "dame") and half-way through the bottle he fell asleep. Totally out for the count!

That was him 'til five in the morning (which woulda been six had the clocks not went back) and since I was totally knackered, I brought him into my room to sleep beside me. This he managed 'til seven! So half a bottle will do him over twelve hours and a full bottle will keep him for about ten hours - eh?

Confusing.

But not as eye-openingly disturbing as when I played with my little girl (she's two and a half) this afternoon. She was on her bed playing with her My Little Ponies, so I picked one up and started playing with her which she absolutely loved. Then she turns to me and goes "let's play bash and scream!" and starts banging her pony into mine :o

Bash and scream with my little pony :$

Gain an hour, lose an hour

This whole "clocks go back" malarkey is really something else. I remember it being a great event to look forward to for you received, at no extra cost, an extra hour in your bed!

This year, it actually cost me an hour's sleep as no one thought to tell my son about it. Naturally, Mr. 5.5 months decided to get up around about his usual time of half six-ish.. which was suddenly relabelled half five-ish by the government. So whilst the majority cosily enjoy that extra hour, I was doing my best caveman impression at that ungodly hour this morning.

Not only that but he fell asleep before his last feed just after half seven in the evening which was actually half eight - way past his bedtime. I have no idea how I'm gonna get him onto this time difference although I may have to invent some sort of Einstein-slapping, temporal distortion thingy-ma-jig.

A routine is healthy.. for adults

* It's half two in the morning and you're woken up with the sound of your son mumbling and thrashing his legs about which is making a helluva noise.

* You know to resist the urge to get up and make him a feed up but it's hard because he's fussing and starting to suck on his arm.

* You're awake for what seems like a Thundercat year (much longer than a convential year) listening to him faff about.

* Eventually all is quiet as he falls asleep and you try and follow suit.

* It's quarter past five in the morning now and you hear him starting up again although this time he's a bit more frantic and desperate in his thrashing.

* Again you try and hold off going through to make his feed knowing he could fall asleep again.

* But no, it's not going to happen and so you get up at half five and stagger through to the kitchen.

* You take a feed out of the fridge and drop it in the bottle warmer.

* You take the opportunity to have a piss (in the bathroom obviously)

* The bottle's ready and so you take it back through to your room with a bib.

* You go to pick up your son and instantly you can smell poo (at what age does poo become shit?).

* Knowing he'll never get back to sleep with a totally filthy nappy and that him sitting on your knee will only mash it into every crevice known to man, you make an executive decision (poor Steven Seagal) to change his nappy.

* You take him through to the livingroom where you dim the lights so as not to totally blind him and yourself for that matter.

* You have a nappy ready.

* You have several baby wipes ready.

* You open up his nappy and see a new style of poo (you have no idea of how many variants there are).

* It's vile, stinking worse than anything and he's smiling away at you.

* You start wiping it off his bum but your dexterity fails you (as you've just woken up) and a chunk of greeny/yellowy/black poo lands on your finger and the smell just chokes you close to vomitting.

* You reach into the babywipe packet with your free hand (the other one is holding his legs up) and try to pull one free but end up grabbing all of them.

* Panic sets in as you realise you're gonna struggle to get anymore babywipes without letting your son's legs go and fall into the goop.

* But you manage because you're ace and well practiced in night changes.

* With him clean, you take him back to your room to feed (not on him obviously)

* He chokes down the milk sending it all over the place but you barely notice just how milky you're becoming because you're still only half-awake.

* You finish and try to burp him but he's fast asleep with his head hanging between your index finger and thumb.

* He kinda burps which is good enough for you and so you put him down into his cot where he magically wakes up again and start fussing as if he's never been fed in the first place.

* You leave him to it and know you've only got a few hours before he wakes you up again.

* He wakes you up at seven and you decide you're not gonna get anymore sleep that morning so you get up and go to pick him up.

* He looks up at you and suddenly bursts into the biggest smile you've seen in a long time and you realise that all the crap you wade through and all the sleep you lose is worth it without a doubt.

tick tock tick tock

Five minutes can seem like five hours when you have a baby crying for milk and you're waiting on the bottle warmer to work its magic. Not just crying but the type of savage crying that tugs at some non-physical "parent" string that makes you instantly want to save them from whatever's wrong. But when you know what's wrong and the solution takes five minutes to get ready, you have no choice but to keep focussed and ignore the screaming.

How the hell can something so small make such a loud noise? Whatever you do, do NOT go near them when they're like that (unless you are of the breast variety of parent in which case you don't need to wait the five minutes). I went near him after thiry two seconds of warming and he screamed and gret even louder than before. He even had little tears streaming down his face and his bottom lip was quivering more than a kite in the wind. Seriously, just stand by the bottle warmer and will it to finish - that's about as much as you can do to help. Anything else and you'll just end up getting stressed and thinking you're doing the kid some kind of permanent damage... which you're not. :p

Perhaps he could be used for biological warfare?

Anyway, last night I mad two tactical errors that cost me dearly. My son was being funny with me when I got him back to the 'zero and no matter what I tried, he just screamed.. and screamed.. and screamed. He even unveiled his new scream which was even worse that the jaw-wrenching one as it sounded like he was in some awful pain and I felt my heart-rate quicken quite a bit - damn this genetic link. He eventually cried himself out and fell asleep through exhaustion. After a feed, he was in his bed all sound and happy.

He normally starts to wake up at 2am ish and then by 2:30 I'm shoving a bottle in his mouth. 2AM comes and I'm up but he isn't. So I go back to sleep. 3AM comes and I'm up but he's still sleeping soundly. 4AM comes and he finally wakes up and I know he's up because I can hear his arse exploding six ways from sunday. So I warm the milk, bring through a towel to change him on my bed (his mother does it this way and she's more experienced than I so I figured it was obviously a good idea to mimic her). I take his nappy off and it's FULL of shite, liquidy shite too (but that's normal) and I realise that some of it's probably gone up his back and onto his suit so a full change is required.. at 4 in the morning :(

I leave him on my towel with his bum clean, go through to the livingroom, pickup a spare sleepsuit, come back to my room and find him positively grinning at me.

The towel's now wet
My duvet's now wet
The quilt's now wet

Yup, he'd went for a mammoth pee all over the place, even reaching some distance too (makes me proud that) hitting my shorts on the floor by my chair. So my room smells of faint urine and I need to wash all the linen AND a chunk of my quilt - not fun. And to top it all off, the poo never went up his back at all, it just looked like that because I used his nappy to take some the crap off his bum and thought "uh oh". Sleep deprevation can do this to you.

Rule number 1: Never EVER leave a baby for any length of time without a nappy on. Yes, it may look cute and you may only be a second but a helluva lot can go wrong in a second

Rule number 2: Don't change them on your bed. Even IF you've followed rule number 1, you're asking for trouble.

Learning new tricks

I learned very early on about the criminal nature of nappy changing a newborn baby. We had a sort-of routine where I would change his nappies during the night letting his mother get some more sleep and she'd feed him during the night letting me get some sleep. I think it was the first night that I discovered my super-boy could do a great wee trick. I was already aware from long-winded tales from others about how they tended to pee on you when you weren't looking but my boy wanted to be better than baby average (musta got that from his ol' man)

At something o'clock in the morning (all I remember was that no one was awake outside and even the bats had called it a night) when I popped him down on his little changing mat (a god-send, you gotta get one) I opened up his wet nappy and went to get a bit of cotton wool (you'll end up begging to use the baby wipes). When I swung back round he grinned at me.

I know it was dimly lit and I know that one of my eyes was semi open having been glued with with sleep but I know he grinned at me! He squirted poo at me! Not content to pee on his ol' man, oh no, my boy had to project poo up at me. And how the hell can you aim that stuff? Hell, I didn't even know you could squirt it!

I quickly developed a habit of leaving him in his nappy until I'd hear his bum explode for a third time and only THEN would I try to set a new land-speed record changing his nappy.

It's all to do with a start

Well I've decided to put worthwhile things here and see how big this blog becomes and when my son turns into a dad himself he can read everything here and avoid the mistakes I've made ;)

Sure my son's trip to the outside world was a long, unusual and difficult one since his mother and I split up but It is amazing feeling him move about inside the womb. In turth, it's also kinda freaky and alien but on the whole, cool. I did try vibrating a message of "being nice to his dad" using my lips through the belly but I don't think he got it, either that or he simply ignored it and readied his plans for mischief and mayhem.

Apparently I did a good job during the actual pregnancy which was funny because I thought I was about as much use as a quadraplegic brick layer. The plans in my head were so bloody intricate, complicated and (well I thought anyway) well laid out however what I actually did in the delivery room was pretty much play catchup. My suggestion for playing music was indeed a good one although I was restrained (almost physically) from singing.. awww...

In the "manual" they tell you not to be a cheerleader shouting "come on" and "push, push, push" so I was trying to rephrase those things in my head and out of panic I just ended up telling her when the contractions were fading because I could see them on the monitor. Although, I'm pretty sure she knew when they were going away what with having to actually deal with them.

I did accuse three doctors of being students (which was a big no no for us) so I think the nerves were showing. As for our son? Well he eventually (as labours go, I don't think it was a particularly long one) ran out of there in record time and before I could blink or even remember not to be a cheerleader (wouldn't fit in the skirt anyway) he was slapped onto her stomach all covered in blood and fernix or fenix (cannae mind).

Awww my heart melted there to tell the truth. He was so small and so fragile and so beautiful. There was the panic when the midwife left to fill out the paperwork (it's like buying a car) and his mother disappeared to have a shower and I was left craddling him in my arms. From that moment on you have this awesomeness about you - like you're the greatest man ever because you've brought such a wonderfull thing into the world but you also feel so shit-scared because there's this little guy who's dependant on you (more so in my case since we had separated). It's not like the great computer game you buy that's brilliant for a time then you leave it on the shelf to collect dust beside Enter the Matrix.

'Bu.. bu.. where did he go? We were having fun weren't we? It was a match made it heaven! He said he loved me!!'
'Easy there lad, you've been shelved now, you belong with us. Here, get some dust about you so you don't look so much like a n00b'

Of course he started screaming after about a minute alone with me and I thought "this is it, he's just gonna do this all the time to me 'coz he knows, he knows".