Not sure if this one comes from us reading My Brown Can Moo, Can You? or not.
Elijah's new trick is making clicking noises with his tongue! He's also trying to do air kisses, but hasn't figured out that it's just the lips that do that one. The sound is nearly correct, though.
He's been doing lots of experimenting with his lips and tongue, so perhaps first words are on their way.
This trip contained a few first experiences for Elijah.
On Christmas Eve, we caught a train to South Bank for a picnic lunch and caught a bus home. So now Elijah has been on the following modes of transport: car, tram, ferry, tilt-train, plane, city train and city bus. This was Elijah's first picnic, first time being transported on a train in a pram and first time on a bus!
Elijah and Daddy at Southbank on grass for a picnic lunch!
On January 8, Elijah got to jump on a trampoline at his Crazy Aunt's house! He wasn't sure about it at first. He did seem to prefer trying to play with the springs.
But then he discovered, it was a lot of fun!
Elijah learned how to climb up stairs at Nan & Pop's house, but unfortunately, we don't have any footage of this. The stairs were terribly lit for photos and Elijah wouldn't climb for the video camera, he just posed instead!
Last, but not least, this trip marked his first real tanty. Daddy whipped out his phone and captured part of the action on December 30.
A reminder of why we love the boy
We've had a pretty horrid run of sleep lately, with three nights running of Elijah getting to around 1am or so and then not letting us sleep the rest of the night. Last night was marginally better, but still not great. So in times like these, when I'm cranky and sleep deprived and thinking of selling the boy on eBay, I like to remind myself why we keep him. And here it is:
I've noticed a definite pattern here. Elijah sleeps really well for the day or so after a tooth comes through. And then after that, everything goes pear-shaped again!
We put corner guards on the TV table to prevent Elijah from doing major cranial damage to himself in his moments of uncoordination. Problem is, he figured out how to take them off so he can chew them. No matter how many times we put them back on, he takes then off again.
Now he's gone one step further. He's hidden them to stop us putting them back on. We've searched for days without luck.
Either he has some fantastic hidey-hole, or he's eaten it. My bet is on the hidey-hole. He would have been in some major discomfort by now if he'd eaten it.
Despite some refreshing downpours over the last few weeks, the weather has continued to be hot, dry and a little bit depressing as an increasing amount of the local plant life turns into a shrivelled, crackling and brown version of its former self. In our own backyard, the once thriving Phoebe the Hebe, which we had resurrected after transplanting her from a pot into the garden, now appears very much dead although we do hold out some misguided hope that she will return (a flash flood-style storm while we were away washed all the bark mulch from one end of the garden to the other, exposing the once damp soil to the sun and drying every last drop of moisture out. Poor Phoebe didn't stand a chance). Cruelly, the greenest thing out back are the weeds.
I've grown to wondering about the state of our greenery as the tightening water restrictions start to bite both backyards and government-run playing fields. Our tiny townhouse backyard has very little grass, a lot of weeds (I have to let something grow to stop the soil blowing away and the weeds appear to be the only thing that don't require watering on my part) and the odd patch of bark mulch. The size and the state of disrepair are definitely not Bugalugs friendly. Consequently, he doesn't go out much. Add to that his ginger hair and very pale complexion and it's a wonder he even knows what sunlight looks like!
We were discussing a photo of me, aged about 1 year old, playing on the back lawn with my own father. What is now starting to bother me is where will Bugs play as he starts to get older? Not in our backyard, which is barely longer than cricket pitch and not a lot wider. There are little parks hidden amongst the local streets but they aren't irrigated and rely upon natural water fall as much as our own backyard. On the upside, as Elijah gets a little older, there will be plenty of playing equipment for him to fall off and hurt himself on, all within easy limping, crying distance to home.
Perhaps what I really need to do is start taking him down to the local playing fields (about 15 minutes walk, 2 minutes drive) and let him crawl around on the grass to his heart's content. At least those fields are still well irrigated. I would have to keep a close watch him though as the fields are quite open and you always need to keep an eye out for nasty, pricky, needly things (fretful father that I am).
We are slowly making our plans for the future. Those plans are going to have to include easy access to something green if Bugs is ever going to grow up knowing what the world looks like beyond the glass.
I'm so glad we started reading to Elijah early. He has already developed excellent habits for story time. He sits quietly and looks at the pictures and will follow the words if I point to them. Sometimes he'll help turn the pages and sometimes he will close the book to have a look at the front cover again. You can tell that he loves story time.
Even with his cloth and board books that are more for play than reading, he will turn pages and look at them instead of merely chewing.
Elijah is read to at least once a day. He always gets a book at bedtime (usually three unless he's super tired and stroppy) and often gets one before each nap during the day as well, depending on what's happening. I've found that reading to him during the day helps to settle him and he goes to sleep much easier for his naps.
Some of Elijah's favourites are Where's My Cow by Terry Pratchett, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr Seuss and Where is the Green Sheep? by Mem Fox.
ETA photo 30/01/07
Daddy reads Can't You Sleep, Little Bear? to Elijah
This morning, I was trying to get Elijah down for a nap. This was rather unsuccessful. Elijah had decided, after falling asleep on the boob, that he didn't want a nap after all. He got tired of fighting me, so just lay in my arms, staring at the ceiling and occasionally kicking me.
Problem was, I was falling asleep. After two nights of a return to the bad old days, I was wrecked.
So I did something I've never done before: I put him in the cot, closed his door and went to my room. He only whinged for about 30 seconds and then I could hear him quietly playing to himself in the cot. He was probably playing with the blinds again. He really enjoys looking outside. This is probably because he doesn't often get to go outside due to the combination of blistering heat, his fair skin and red hair and hard ground that is not conducive to outdoor play.
I lay on my bed, willing him to stay quiet, so I could have a little break. Next thing I know, it's half an hour later and I've been woken up because he's obviously bored and wants some company.
Thank you, Bugalugs for giving me that 30 minutes. I needed it. And I was a much nicer Mummy the rest of the day for it.
On Sunday, we went to a big reunion for all the members of Elijah's harem and their parents. It was difficult to get all the bubs lined up for a group photo as they were so mobile. Of course, Elijah was the first to head for the camera.
Left to right: Georgia, Asha, Isabel, Rachel, Elijah
Here are Elijah's girlfriends in action. It was good to see they could all hold their own against Elijah. He now sports a bruise on his forehead that we think came from Georgia. He deserved it!
Top row: Asha and Isabel; Bottom row: Georgia and Rachel
It was so much fun watching all the babies play together. Highlights were:
Watching all the babies follow Elijah's pull-along-phone like they were watching a tennis match;
Georgia, who had been put to sleep swaddled, on the floor of another room, waking, unwrapping herself and crawling back into the main room to get back into the action before anyone even realised she was awake;
Rachel getting her fingers into the Vienetta dessert;
Asha dancing with me and trying to play peekaboo with my skirt;
Isabel lapping up all the attention from the adults and ignoring Elijah, much to his disgust!
Here are some photos of them playing together.
Elijah: "Isabel, please pay attention to me!"
Georgia hamming it up for Rachel Asha and Rachel Isabel and Georgia attack a camera
Asha: "Come back here, Elijah and apologise for hitting!"
This was the first time all the Daddies were there together, so we commemorated the event with a group photo.
It was such a wonderful afternoon. We'd like to have another reunion again in a few months time to see how they have all changed.
We did three separate gift unwrapping sessions this Christmas, as we didn't want to take gifts for each other interstate and then bring them home again. We had enough luggage as it was!
Here, Elijah unwraps his big present from Mummy and Daddy...
...and gives it a test run.
The most fun he had was at his Nan and Pop's place. There were plenty of presents for him to open and no other distractions. Finding another present was distraction enough! Mummy had to help with quite a few.
The trail of destruction!
Cards and paper got just as much attention as presents!
At Elijah's Auntie's house, Daddy ended up unwrapping the presents. Elijah was a little overwhelmed with the amount of new people and there wasn't time for him to settle in before the present 'ceremony' began. He was, however, pretty interested in the shoes his uncle and aunt gave him, though it doesn't really show in this photo.
All up, though, Elijah did very well out of Christmas, and received a lot of things that he needed. Books were abundant and clothes with growing room also featured alongside developmentally appropriate toys.
For the first time ever, Elijah has had a good night's sleep, plus two solid day naps. He is a totally different child: happy and playful instead of grumpy or hyperactive!
I'm wondering if this is a flow-on effect from the emergence on tooth #1.
Consequently, Mummy is a different person too! No grumpy Mummy today. Hence, the happy dance.
Today, our boy is nine months old! And we definitely have a bottom tooth poking through.
Official stats as of Thursday are as follows: Weight - 8 kgs Length - 71 cm (a little suspect, as our paediatrician has never been terribly accurate with his tape measure) HC - 45 cm
Yes, you read that right. Elijah has put on an entire kilogram in one month. So much for all the concern about his weight gain.
Below is how Elijah's weight has plotted over the past nine months.
According to the WHO chart, this places him on the 15th percentile and considering his genetic make-up, I'd say that this is about perfect.
It seems that Elijah may finally be cutting a tooth. After months and months (seriously, it's been six solid months!) of, "Oh, look at him putting things in his mouth. He must be teething!" and "That's a lot of drool. He must be teething!" and even, "Oh yes, I can definitely feel some teeth coming through there," WE can feel a sharp protrusion in the centre of his bottom gum.
Tonight, after he'd been down for about half an hour, he woke and refused to settle. When I accidentally felt what is most likely a tooth and had his Daddy confirm it, we gave him some Bonjela and he went almost straight back to sleep. I think this is a pretty good indication of teething.
It sure explains why over the past few days, his moods have been absolutely hellish, to put it nicely. It doesn't explain why he hasn't been sleeping well for the last three-and-a-half months, but darn it, I can't let all this stress and commotion go unexplained!
Elijah's First Christmas Holiday: Come Fly With Me
Travelling with an eight-and-a-half-month-old is very different to travelling with a five-month-old. For a start, Elijah decided that planes are not for sleeping. He fed on take off, but then preferred to look around and play musical parents than settle down for a nap. Then on the descent, he refused to feed altogether. I was concerned about the pressure on his ears, but there were no complaints from the boy at all. In fact, as we came in for the landing and things got super-loud, he looked out the window and jumped up and down on my lap, as if to say, "Again! Again!". Maybe a career as a pilot looms? He's definitely an adrenalin junkie.
Of course, this meant that he was totally hyped up by the time we got to Elijah's Nan and Pop's house and didn't go to bed until very late.
There is an art to transporting huge amounts of luggage when you have a baby. The first rule is don't put the baby in the pram. Why use up all that space, plus two hands to push the pram, when it would be better put to use transporting two pieces of luggage (one in the seat, one balanced on the foot rest) and the baby car seat (upside down on top of the hood)? Elijah was carried in the sling, I wore him and his backpack of essentials and pushed the pram and his Daddy wore our carry-on on his back and hauled the other two suitcases behind him. We got some strange looks, but at least we did it all without needing a luggage trolley.
However, in Brisbane, we discovered, to our anger and dismay, that one of the wheels on our pram was busted in transit. It's not as if it was flimsy either: it's a solid aluminium spoke that had been cracked. Here's a photo:
You can see the crack in the spoke, right near the hub, that rendered the wheel unstable and unsafe. What did the baggage handlers do? Drop it out of the plane before it landed? I was prepared to get on my high horse when I called the Virgin customer care number, but luckily for them, they were very concerned about the whole situation and told me that we'd most likely be reimbursed for repair or replacement. When they called us back, this was confirmed. All we needed was a quote and they would transfer the money.
So at least the staff were prompt and courteous when fixing the incompetence of the baggage handlers, and we were reassured that both airports would be informed of the damage caused so that more care would be taken in future.
Happily, there were no real problems (apart from a smashed present that was securely packed, but probably wasn't appropriate for this form of transport anyway) on the way back home.
Bugalugs was even more excited about flying on the return leg. While we were waiting on the tarmac, he was looking out the window at the other planes and the people walking around and started complaining because he wanted to go outside to have a closer look! Yet again, he fed on take-off and refused to settle for a nap. This time, however, he discovered that there were people behind us with whom he could flirt, as long as he climbed the ladder that is Mummy to look over the top of the seats. There was also a fascinating pocket in the back of the seat in front, which was fun to pull and hold while jumping on the floor of the plane. It also had menus that could be pulled out. Hours of entertainment! We drew the line at his ambitions to crawl up and down the aisle of the plane.
As we started the descent, I offered him a feed and he accepted. Elijah remained true to form and promptly fell asleep five minutes before arriving at a destination, irrespective of how long the actual journey was. Instead of rushing to collect our overhead luggage and impatiently waiting in the aisle for the doors to open like 95% of all airline passengers, we stayed on the plane for as long as we could after landing, to prolong the nap. It had been such an exhausting three weeks and if we have learned one thing over that period of time, it is take your rest where you can find it.
We are back home safe and online again. However, as our only New Year's Resolution is to spend less time in the evenings on the computer and more time as a family, the blogging of our Christmas holiday will be brought to you piecemeal. I've decided to blog thematically rather than chronologically, to deliver a more succinct account of our three-week sojourn. So keep an eye out for these posts, which will be interspersed between our regular updates of Elijah's progress.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programme.
This quiet time has become a bit of Elijah's year in review.
The following is more dodgy mobile phone footage (I carry it everywhere so it's good for those little snippets of life that never happen if the little bugger thinks a camera is actually on him which means "Showtime!") of Elijah at feeding time back on 25 November.
It's got some historical significance as well as it's the first recorded evidence of the "Hands in the Ay-uh" game he loves to play in the high chair. The rules are simple:
He lifts his arm in the air, and he complains until everyone else around him does the same.
Just to prove life isn't all bad (even if it feels like it sometimes).
Here's some dodgy mobile phone footage of Elijah standing (with support, obviously) back when his improving mobility was cute and not the scary portent of things to come that it is today.
We've been staying at my parents' place since 19 December for Christmas/New Year. Over the last 16 nights we have not had a single uninterrupted, solid block of slumber and I think it is slowly killing me.
His bed is nominally a borrowed port-a-cot which is very similar to one we have at home. In reality, he spends as much time in our bed as in his.
If he isn't taking four or five attempts to settle him in during the evening, he is waking at 2am and refusing to be resettled until he gets a feed whereupon he refuses to go back to sleep. If we're really lucky, he'll go back to sleep after about 2 hours of babbling, blowing raspberries and crying because we have to restrain his arms and legs to stop him hitting us in the face and give us sweet release for maybe an hour before insisting it is time to wake up.
During the day he refuses to nap and we often spend more time trying to put him down for a nap than he actually spends napping. This afternoon it took almost 2 hours to put him down for a 1 hour nap, and that was made possible only because his Mummy went to sleep with him on the bed. Because he won't nap, we can't nap either. It seems like his mobility has increased exponentially over the last 2 weeks and he needs constant supervision (he causes enough damage to himself losing balance on furniture and crawling into things while we are watching - the thought of leaving him to his own devices for more than 5 minutes makes my skin crawl).
He wants to sleep. His eyes are often red through extreme over-tiredness. He yawns and rubs his eyes. In fact, he rubs his eyes so much he has a nasty red scab on one eyelid where actually rubbed away the skin, making his eyelid bleed. I don't know why he is fighting this so much!
I snap at the slightest provocation. My teeth hurt from constantly clenching my jaw to prevent myself from screaming in his ear or biting him or crying when trying to settle/re-settle him for naps or bedtime or mid-dawn stirrings. My shoulders are like rocks from restraining myself from hitting him or shaking him or just dumping him on the bed and walking away. I'm tired and am starting to feel like a total failure as a dad because I can't even get him to do the one thing he desperately wants to do. His mother's back, neck and shoulders are constantly aching from leaning over into the port-a-cot to calm or re-settle him.
There are 5 more nights until he is sleeping in his own cot once more. I don't know how much more of this either one of us can take. I hope we have at least 5 more nights in us.
Don't get me started on blowing raspberries during mealtimes. That's a whole other world of aggravation, irritation and pain. I think I've expressed enough poison for one post.
(For the record, I'm just blowing some steam. He's not in any physical danger. It's our mental health I worry about.)
Oh my goodness, this child is growing and changing at an alarming rate. We haven't weighed him properly in a while, but we have jumped on the scales with him and compared the difference between that weight and the weight minus Elijah. He was wearing clothes and a wet nappy, but even taking off 400g to account for that means he's put on about a kilogram in three weeks! Let's see what the actual weight is when we go to the paediatrician for his 9 month check up.
Photos and anecdotes of Elijah's first Christmas will be coming soon!
