My fantasy nappy bag

Nappy bags are troublesome. Off the shelf nappy bags always have some major failing and other bags always have something which makes them not quite right for the job. Part of the problem is we have unusual requirements which few manufacturers cater to. And even when we find something which is great, the girl gets older and requires something new to be carried around with us.

Most nappy bags look like a standard woman's over-the-sholder handbag. At this point I have so much RSI from parenting I'm not willing to carry anything of any decent weight on one shoulder for any length of time. So that style is right out.

There's a number of lines of nappy-bags-for-men, all of which look like courier bags. These take some weight off the shoulder, but distributes it right across the child – since she's sling-carried. So that's not an option either.

That pretty much leaves backpacks.

Fine, there's plenty of backpacks out there. Surely someone must make something that fits my needs? Well… so far it appears not.

So, what do I need?

• A compartment for food. Enough for 2 meals - just in case we're away for longer than expected, or she decides she's ravenous. Ideally this would be insulated so it'll stay cold/warm, but that just just a wild dream.
• An outside pocket for her water bottle. Or at least somewhere to store it where it won't leak on anything else.
• An outside pocket for an umbrella. We live in London. The only way to ensure it won't rain is to take an umbrella with us wherever we go.
• A compartment with enough room for a change of clothes in case of accidents. Plus some extra space for a jumper or coat and a few small toys or books. Even better would be enough room for a jumper for me, so I don't risk getting cold.
• We're ECing her, so we need a place for the portable toilet seat we have to carry about. And it's got to be in a separate compartment from the clothes and food. The compartment has to have enough room for her nappies.At his point we carry around 1 or 2 cloth nappies with covers, plus a couple of emergency disposable nappies, just in case. I can live with these being in the clothing section, but the "toilet" section needs enough room for them once they're used.
  For those unfamiliar with reusable nappies, used ones go into a wet bag, aka The Bag of Yuck, until I can get home and trasnfer them into the laundry pail. The "toilet" section has to have enough room for the wet bag filled with 2 nappies and an entire change of soiled clothes. However, as long as the change-of-clothes compartment gets smaller as the toilet compartment gets bigger, I'll be happy.
• It's got to have enough room for stuff I need with me. All I really need is enough space for some pills, lip-balm/moisturiser, a couple of cloth grocery bags¹ and, as I said before, a spare jumper. L probably would like a bit more space for her stuff since she doesn't usually have as many pockets as I do. This could go in the clothes section, but I'd rather not have to dig through baby socks and suchlike to find my ibuprofen.
• I don't need a changing mat. I can't remember the last time she had a miss outside the house that we needed to put her on a mat to resolve.

When she was an infant, we got by rather nicely with a Petunia Pickle Bottom bag. It could be a backpack or a shoulder bag. Plus it was tasteful – not too girly or too manly, and never looked awkward with what either of us were wearing. When all we had to worry about was changes of nappies and clothes it was great. But its one big section doesn't play nicely if you have toilet seat and clothes and nappies all together, leaving no room for food. We still use it when travelling since we only have disposable nappies then, which take up less room.

We've been mainly using an old laptop backpack for the past several months. It's got 3 sections, one of which is tiny. So we often end up putting the portable seat in the big compartment along with the food inside a thermos bag. Which takes up far more room than it should. It's passingly acceptable, but ends up packed to the gills almost all the time. And it'll only get worse as she'll need more food (and fewer changes of clothes, I hope) over the coming months.

Sooooo… that's a backpack with a minimum of 3 big compartments and 2 outside pockets. Plus, ideally another smaller compartment. Every time I go to a baby shop, I have a look at what bags are available. Some have some really great ideas, but so far nothing has worked. I've even toyed with the idea of getting her a small backpack to carry her food or clothes, and I carry the rest in my backpack. After all, her back does face out in the sling. But I can't see that working. So I'm still at a bit of a loss and kind of exploding around the edges.

¹ At this point it rarely occurs to me I can still go to a shop if I haven't brought my own bags. I usually just skip grocery shopping on the way home if I don't have a bag I can put them into.

Levelelling up

The girl appears to have levelled up again. In the past week or so she's added a whole bunch of new skills to her repertoire.

• New consonant – The letter L. Today she just started saying la la la la la over and over for ages this morning.
• New service – Kisses on request. You ask her Can I have a kiss and point to your cheek, she'll smile, walk over and plant a kiss on your cheek. Sometimes twice.
• New dance move – Spinning. Sometimes when she likes a song, she'll start spinning. Only occasionally will she fall down afterwards.
• New skill – Get up on sofa. She can now get up on the taller sofa. It takes her a while. Well, she couldn't do it 2 days ago. Only managed it a few times yesterday, and will much effort. Today she can almost always manage to get up. And occasionally fall over on her back getting off. Done that 3 times today, which kind of dampens the excitement on the new skill.
• Enhanced grabbing range – she can now reach more than 50% of the stuff on top of my dresser. And open the drawers.
• Forthcoming skill – blowing her nose. For now, she just holds a tissue in front of her face and makes a raspberry noise. But she’s close.

It's weird how a whole slew of new skills all come at once.

What goes around comes around

I've been carrying the girl in a sling since she was born. I've always found it a rather sweet way to transport the child. It's a little like a long extended hug, or at least it was when she was very young. Now she tends to be much more active, and will often flip through a book while attached (often swatting my nose or adams apple when turning the pages).

I have found myself planting a kiss on the top of her head at random moments when carrying her in the sling. I'd be just standing or walking around, and, well, why not? Until recently I never really considered if it she liked it or not.

Now, I've been carrying her on my shoulders on occasion. If we're walking around and she's out of the sling, it's sometimes easier to carry her that way than to walk alongside her – given how easily she can be distracted by, well, everything. The past few times she's been on my shoulders, she's occasionally bent down and planted a kiss on the top of my head. I nearly melted the first time she did that. She'll also sometimes swing her head round till she caches my eye and smiles at me.

I think she likes it.

On a similar note, I do wonder how long I can/should be carrying her in the sling. She can walk just fine now, though I'd not be willing to walk down Oxford Street with her this time of year. But I do find that one advantage of babies transported in prams, is that their parents will take them out at any time and they can walk alongside them, or play while waiting in a queue and so on. The sling is a bit of a pain to take her out and put her back in, so I only do it if I'll be a place for a while. I sometimes feel that keeping her in the sling is stunting her ability to deal with the world around her.

I also wonder how big she should get before it's too troublesome to carry her. At this point I already have RSI in one shoulder from picking her up (and she's small for her age), and if I carry her for too many hours in a day, it does start to hurt. How long can I keep carrying her before it starts to be a bad idea for me? And will this happen before she's ready to walk everywhere? And if so, how will we transport her around? I'm not going to start using a pram.

Travel fever

I don't understand why the girl gets sick, usually with a fever, every single time we go on holiday. Except for that one trip we made when she was ten weeks old, she's come down with something every time we travel. It does not matter if we go by car or plane, stay in a house or a hotel. She always gets sick.

We live in London, so she's not wanting for constant exposure to strange germs. Could travelling have such an impact on her that it weakens her immune system?
I'd potentially blame it on travelling in winter and her dealing with the unexpected chill, but the same thing happened when we went to the beach in August. She eats mostly the same things on holiday. The only notable difference is that we put her in disposable nappies when travelling (rather than reusable cloth). That can't possibly make a difference, can it?

We're going to be in the States for 3 weeks at the end of the month. I'm dreading what sort of cold she'll come up with this time. Must stock up on baby ibuprofen.

meanwhile...

It's been ages since I've posted here. Not sure if it's lack of time or volition. So much has happened in the last 7 weeks, this would be the largest post ever if I tired to cover it all. So I'll keep this brief.

The girl has followed the pox with a number of small colds. Or maybe one long one. It's hard to tell. On the bright side she's learning to wipe her nose with a tissue. She gets it a little right, but its mostly just practice for now. It'd be just like a daughter of mine that she'd be able to use a tissue properly before she can talk. I guess we'll work on blowing get nose next.

Mimicry is her new thing. If one of us does something, she'll try it too. Sometimes with words like rice or cat. Or dancing – which is fun, at least when she dances to songs I like.

I tired exercising in front of her. When I did push ups, she lay on her tummy and kept going into cobra pose. She tried to do sit ups with me, but didn't have the muscles for it. So she walked over and kissed my belly in between sit ups. After a while she crawled onto my chest. So I kept doing the sit ups, but of course, it was much more challenging. But the baby giggles made up for it.

Pre Post Pox

We seem to have survived the worst of the chicken pox. It's been a big shock to all of us. Life is starting to return to normal. Normal with less sleep and extra medications.

She went through a couple of days of abject misery. She'd spend most of her mornings very fragile, bawling at the slightest slight. She'd hardly sleep for more than an hour at a time, even at night. Which made the rest of us rather tetchy and on the verge of a bit of meltdown. After that it was just a fragile little girl, with occasional bouts of scratching.

I think the worst for her was being cooped up inside for a couple of weeks before it started and almost a couple of weeks afterwards. When L first took her outside to a park, she clearly missed being there. It's practically a month since she'd been and I feel sorry for having to be away for so long during the one time of year it's best to go.

The thing that helped the most was the camille lotion. I'm sure it helped her at least a little. But it really helped me a lot covering up her spots under an opaque white layer. Seeing the spots always brought on the guilt of having not avoided the exposure to the pox in the first place. It was weird that, after a year of my brain swimming in oxytocin, it just cut out and replaced with guilt. A bit of a depressing come down.

She's no longer contagious now. Most of her spots thankfully just faded away. There's a lot which have turned into scabs – mostly on her back and face. So we're just waiting for the scabs to fall off or disappear. We're still attacking her regularly with a combination of camille lotion for the scabs and vitamin E oil for where the scabs came off, plus the occasional antihistamine. And most of the laundry basket is black clothes with loads of the white camille splotches all over them.

Pox

The girl came down with chicken pox Tuesday night. She was exposed when we went on holiday at the beginning of the month, right after her birthday. An unfortunate gift that ironically took the same route as a lot of her hand-me-downs.

Incubation period is supposed to be up to 3 weeks. I was trying to keep her away from crowds and other babies, just in case. And as more time passed she stayed clean and we figured she got lucky. Or maybe the fact she's still breastfeeding helped. But no. The first spots came Tuesday night and the number seemed to grow exponentially. By now she's completely covered with hundreds of pox from head to toe – though the growth seems to have plateaued.

To all those who have told me over the years that if you get chicken pox really young, you hardly get any spots at all – that's clearly a myth. Stop telling people that.

I'm really worried she's going to end up scarred for life. I caught chickenpox at 33. It was a nasty case and I ended up in hospital for five days. I was completely covered from head to toe, about the same amount as the girl is now. Today I have little white scars scattered all over my body. My scalp and forehead are awkwardly lumpy from where chunks are missing from the subdermis. I'd hate for the girl to have put up with this for effectively her entire life.

I'm also really furious with people who take a lackadaisical attitude toward exposure to the pox. Yes, it's an inconvenience to have to stay at home if you or your child might potentially have chicken pox. But you don't go out and slash random people with razors – which kind of amounts to the same thing.

While she's not getting more spotty, she's been getting more and more fragile. She still has her chipper periods, when she acts like her normal self. But it's so easy to set her off on crying bouts which are really hard to console. So far it seems to be a moderate fever and bad moods. So while it superficially looks as bad as what I'd had, at least it doesn't itch much (yet?). Perhaps she's been hit especially hard because she was just getting over a cold when she caught it. Or maybe it's just genetic from me.

Plus I feel insanely guilty for exposing her. I had wanted to get her vaccinated when she turned one (Privately. They annoyingly don't believe in the varicella vaccine in the UK – but then again, they don't believe in allergy shots either). I should have cut short the holiday the moment it was clear the other child had the pox. I misunderstood how long the disease is contagious, so the girl was constantly exposed for another 4 days or so, guaranteeing that she'd come down with it.

It's hard to not apologise for putting her through this every time I see her. I just hope I'm overreacting. I'll know in a couple of weeks.

Ouch

Yesterday was my second hospital visit with the girl. But this time it was me that was injured.

Our flat is in a bit of a state. Boxes moved from the nursery where L started, but did not complete, putting up rails and things (drill bit broke in the middle). Luggage still unpacked from our recent seaside holiday. All together it makes for a cluttered place not completely safe for a little girl. Which means we have to keep an eye on her when she's playing to make sure she does not stray or play with inappropriate things.

I was in the office working on the PC trying to psyche myself up for doing a bit of taxes. The girl was in the next room with L occasionally running from one room to the other. At one point L said she's heading for the stairs!

I leapt off my box toward the door to catch her, with visions of her tumbling down the stairs and ending up in A&E again.

Instead, I put my foot down on the luggage which slipped from under me, sending me falling to the floor. I came down hard on my left arm and right knee. And slightly less hard on the rest of my limbs. I just lay there on the floor while L spirited the girl away to her cot and fetched some ice for my injuries. Two year old broadbeans, to be specific.

A bit of I think I broke my arm, followed quickly by a Actually no, I'm fine, I'm fine, followed a few minutes later by a OMFG OW! and I declare we're going to UCH for a bit of X-rays before in the influx of Saturday night injuries start.

This time we get public transport to hospital. L's got the girl all bundled up in the sling, and I'm limping alongside them. It was slow, but all was fine until the queue at A&E. I arrived at the magical time where there was a queue, but appear to have been the last person top show for for at least half an hour. I assume I came at the cutoff time after which people should sleep on their injuries rather than face the Saturday night crowd.

When I finally go the the head of the queue I could barely stand. Which meshed well with the receptionist who had reached the end of her shift and could barely think.

Who is your next of kin?

My wife over there [I point to L who is walking the girl around the room].

Okay. Did you come with anyone today?

[Long awkward pause] Yes.    My wife.    Over there.

Oh, you're married now? Congratulations.

[and so on]

I got seen by a doctor who ruled out a broken elbow, but decided my knee needed X-raying. They gave me a handful of painkillers and sent me to the X-ray queue. 45 minutes later a new doctor sees me and says nothing is broken in my ever-swelling knee, but my arm might not be not-broken after all, and it now needs X-rays. I think Whatever. I'm not planning on having any more kids.

More queuing and waiting, and by now the girl is asleep in the sling in L's arms. The doctor says Nope. Not broken. Keep things elevated, get some rest, but move around. And you're not excused from carrying the baby. – a mixed blessing that.

I get out 3 hours after arriving, starving for some food. It was 11, so we'd pretty much missed any decent restaurant in the area (the main reason I decided we'd go to UCH) and also would miss any decent take-away by the time we got home.

Fortunately the girl sleeps all the way through the trip home and being put in her cot. Meanwhile I make us adults a pasta dinner followed quickly by collapsing in bed.

Not the best end to the day, but it at least was only a few wasted hours followed by random pain and discomfort. So I decided to pretend we just had a bad night out at the pub.

366 days later

Monday, 30 July, 12:30 in the morning. The girl woke up very congested and could not sleep. After trying to settle her with no luck, we took her to sleep in the bed with us. Which she did. In her usual big-arms way – leaving me about 10 inches to sleep in. Eventually she's breathing well enough and L takes her to sleep in her own cot. Around 4ish I fall asleep.

8:30 exactly. The wife and I wake to the sound of her crying. I smile and say to L This better be important.

She laughs and and we get up to the girl's first birthday.

Again, it's a not-very-rushed breakfast of smoothies for everyone. The girl gets her first blueberry smoothie. She drinks a bit, but not very much. We prepare for an afternoon in the park. The weather claims to be an island of no rain in a week of drizzles and thunderstorms. Her party on Sunday was rained out, and we ended up all squeezed into our dining room.

Monday was much better. Though quite chilly for most of the day. We went to the park to try out her new scooter. Ever since she got it she's been trying to play with anything scooter-sized with wheels – most of which belong to other people, so I have to drag her away crying. Not the nicest side-effect.

After much rolling around the park, we went to a birthday picnic hosted by the other child in our NCT group that was born on the same day. There was much frolicking with other babies of her age followed by a tuckered-out trip home.

The first birthday is the last one for the parents. It was our celebration of having kept her alive for a year. She'll never remember this, so all we needed to do was a have a good time and take lots of pictures of her having fun. From here on out, it's her birthdays and it will be all about her. I've got to figure out more baby-flavoured fun by then.

Advice for my daughter on her birthday

Some months before my daughter was born, I started writing down (well, writing in emails to myself) things I've learned over the years that might save her some trouble to know. I've been holding onto this for a while now, so I'm putting this out there now so she can read it when she's able.

The rest of this post is for her.

…

In honour of your first birthday, here's some advice from me to you. It won't make sense to you now, but it will at some point. I could just wait and tell you these in person over the years, but I felt it would help their creditability to you by posting them anonymously on the internet.
All of these have stood the test of time and helped me over the years. All I can hope is that some of this might make your life a little better.

Never get the cheapest of anything unless you know exactly what you're getting into. There's a reason it's cheap, and if they could legally make it cheaper, they would.
That said, if it's cheap and small enough, experiment. Sometimes the cheapest option is the one which leaves out all the crap you don't want.

Start a skin care regime by 20 at the latest. You'll appreciate it when you're 40 and people are constantly shocked to find out how old you are.

Never tell someone when you find something is broken. A fair chunk of the time they'll just not notice and make it work anyways. Thanks for letting me stay at your place. As thanks, I baked you some cookies. – oh, I meant to tell you, that oven has never worked since I moved here.

Rocket science is easy – it's rocket engineering that's hard. Anyone with a pencil and a basic knowledge of maths can figure out the escape velocity to get into the desired orbit. The hard thing is figuring out what chemical reaction will get the rocket up to speed. But without exploding the rocket. Or destroying the ground under it. Or what to make it strong enough to bear the strain, but not too heavy to lift. And make sure it goes in the right direction (up). And with a reasonable acceleration to not destroy the payload. And that doesn't include what to do once it's in orbit. Engineering is like art. You never finish a project – you just declare it good enough it and hope for the best.

Dare to be different is easy. Anyone can be contrary. The hard thing is to dare to be the same. It's okay to like what everyone else likes if you really do like it.

Follow you dreams, but remember, someday you'll actually finish them. And then what? Keep in mind what you want to do next. When playing pool the trick is not to just get the ball in the pocket, but to set yourself up to make the next shot as well.

Don't be too afraid of trying something new. The world can take you to wonderful places if you let it.

Just because someone doesn't like you doesn't mean you shouldn't be nice to them. There's no point in being mean to them, and if they're actually a decent person, they'll eventually come round.
Likewise, just because you don't like someone, doesn't mean you should be mean to them. Actually, not being mean to those you don't like makes them that much more tolerable.

You can do anything if you have enough time or enough money. With enough effort a single dedicated person can produce a world-class creation. Don't be put off trying something because you don't have the materials or aren't qualified. And don't be afraid to ask for help from people you trust.

Not everything you feel makes sense. You're just a bag of meat and hormones that thinks it's a person – just like everyone else. Learn to recognise when there's a good reason for you to feel sad, tired, angry or whatever. And also recognise when it's just because your body is just out of whack.

When you're wrong, admit it. Then try to fix it. Then move on. Rarely are the consequences of screwing up worse than the gaping hole of trust denial leaves.

Patience is not a virtue. You can end up just watching life pass you by. Do it now. And if you fail, there's still time to try again later.

Keep a duplicate of all your essential medicines, toiletries and makeup in a small bag. Spontaneous adventures are much more fun when you feel clean and looking your best.

That which does not kill you only sometimes makes you stronger. But it still really hurts and always takes time to recover.

Time spent clubbing till the wee hours is not wasted. Some of my closest friends to this day were met clubbing. And the dancing is great exercise – I'd never been so fit in my life than when I was going out 5 nights a week. Plus, learning to get by with lots of exertion and minimal sleep is invaluable if you ever have a baby.

I'd say Trust your instincts, but that really does depend on having some quality instincts in the first place. That will come in time. Until then, don't overthink things. Your first guess is usually correct, or close enough.
With enough second guessing you can convince yourself anything is true. The scary thing is, everything you think might be true probably is – to some degree. And the thing you thought of first most likely came to mind because it's the biggest factor.

Most people are wrong. The best admit they don't know. The worst just lie and make something up.

And finally, take advice with a grain of salt. Take this advice with a grain of salt. Don't just learn what people tell you, understand it. Use it, discard it or replace it with something better. And when you have something better, pass it on so someone else can use it or perfect it.

You've been amazing so far and I'm sure you'll get by just fine. It's been a delight just seeing the person you're becoming. And I'm kind of jealous for all the good things you've got ahead of you. Happy birthday sweetie!

The next generation

The other day I saw a presentation about designing things for today's youth market – "Generation Y" – which got me thinking what the traits of my daughter's generation will be like?

I grew up in the US squarely in Generation X. The aimless slackers from the 80s built a future for ourselves in the Internet in the 90s. We had the first taste of what the future would be like. It wasn't flying cars and jetpacks. It was instant communication with everyone you know, all the worlds knowledge at your fingertips, and your brain half-delegated into the cloud, accessible wherever and whenever you wanted.

Generation Y grew up with the web already in place, but missing that overall sense of no future gotten by growing up under Reagan or Thatcher. They seem to have much more sense of entitlement. Not than Gen X doesn't have that too — not everyone my age grew up expecting to live in Brazil, Delicatessen or Clerks. But the sense of why can't I have nice stuff? seems pretty strong in today's pop culture.

The meeting of Gen Y's instant gratification with the smartphonification of the internet is the generational change that even the most hypersocial Gen Xer has trouble keeping up with. Where Gen X tried to change the world with technology, Gen Y seems to be building a place for making money and getting nice things, a la App stores and Kickstarter.

So with Generation Y being always on, always connected and comfortable living in public, what's Generation Z going to be like? How are they going to think? What are they going to build that's going be so different that I can't imagine it?

What happens when all you've ever known is that you can hear any song, watch any movie, know any fact, find any recipe, read any book, take any class, at any time with no effort? Do you get lazy with too many choices? Will misinformation drown out the real media and real facts (Are you sure Mark Twain didn't write Tale of Two Cities? My online comp lit class covered him during the Naturalism movement.)

How much effort we spent finding that hidden gem of a song/book/movie/whatever was a blessing for our generation as well as a tragedy. They were hard to find, but once we got it, we really appreciated it. When we got our hands on that album we'd been hunting for ages, we listened to it over and over until we could recite the whole thing end-to-end in our sleep. And there was that movie we finally saw at 35 that would have changed our lives if we saw it when it came out when we were 17.

Will Gen Z be better off having everything at their fingertips? Never missing out on that lost opportunity? Or will they be so blasé about it that they never bother to watch anything more than once, if even that? Will anything have the chance to really impact or will it just be one more byte in the feed?

I focus on this because it's the most obvious trend I can see coming to a point in the next decade or so. There's lots of other technological things I can see coming, but social trends they usher in are much harder to predict. I've always been a little ahead of the game on using internet for communication (I was researching the mobile computing and social networking back in 1995), so I'd like to think I can at least have a chance of getting in the head of my daughter's generation on that front.

But will the mobile internet still be the defining factor on her generation? There are so many things that we appear to be on the crux of. Climate change, alternative energy, bio and nano tech, air travel, economic/political turmoil… All of those are potential game changers. It's hard to picture what could happen, let alone how it's going to affect culture.

Baby sat

Our first professional babysitter went off without much of a hitch.

The biggest problem was using an online-only agency. We could book, but not give any special instructions. And I really did feel that when sitting a kid for the first time, a heads-up about what they're like would be useful. But there was no way to put that info in the booking, and they only contacted me via SMS, with no return number. So there was no way to say the important essentials:

• She's walking and quite mobile, but can't manage stairs on her own yet.
• We use cloth nappies
• Take her to the loo whenever she wakes up – it usually means she has to go
• She will usually fight and complain when going to sleep
• We've no TV. Bring something to read or a laptop or phone.

That alone would have avoided the surprises the sitter had when she got here. Each datum we told her was followed by a bit of raised eyebrow making it clear this would not be a usual sit. Only the lack of TV warranted an Oh no! from the sitter, in that usual English ambiguously mock tone where you can't tell if they're serious or not.

I did spend the effort in the afternoon setting up a guest wifi account so she could get online, but not access our intranet or require us to change our passkey afterwards. But she didn't bring anything internetly with her. On the uninformed front, I too didn't know what we were getting beyond someone with a female first name. I was more expecting a 20 year old net-savvy txt-maniac. Not the I've brought a newspaper grandmother we got. On the bright side, at least she'd seen cloth nappies before. 15 years ago.

Regardless, it went off as we'd hoped. We left the flat and heard not a peep from her. We got home at 1am and the girl was asleep. And when the girl next woke, she wasn't visibly distressed or anxious from having us gone.

This bodes well for future sittering. Though at £50+ for a night I'd really like to keep it to a minimum.

Baby sitter

Tomorrow we're getting our first real baby sitter. Hiring a professional to come in and look after the child while we go off to an evening wedding.

I really don't know the etiquette for this. We don't have a TV. I don't have any computers in the house I'm comfortable letting a stranger use. Do I give the sitter our Wifi key and tell her to bring a laptop or phone? Tell her to bring a good book? She's going to sit in our house for 7 hours – maybe 5 or so after the kid's gone to bed.

Do I provide food for her? The sitter, not the baby. The baby gets all the milk she needs (L's been pumping). Do I leave something for the sitter? Um, there's oatmeal and lemonade and some left-over pasta sauce in the fridge. And help yourself to espresso. Somehow I don't think that'd be too appealing.

And looking at our house from the perspective of a stranger — man it's unevenly cluttered. Yes, it's a bit messy. that we can tidy up. But a lot of things just have no "away". They came into the house after the baby was born and have just sat on a sofa or chair or table, and that's as away as they get. At least through some rather hard work in the past week from L we can now walk from one end of the nursery to the other without having to jump over something (which I can kind of pretend was a makeshift baby gate).

On a similar note, today she found the off switch for the router. She just crawled over and cheerily flicked the switch on the surge protector. Fortunately the PC plugged into it was off, but it killed the internet for a bit. Perhaps it was because I stopped her from pulling the books off the shelves? Regardless, I've got to find a way to have my stuff and her stuff coexist in the same rooms.

Now we are walking

She started walking for real on Tuesday. L gave her the bottom end of a crutch, which she used as a cane. Quite successfully, too. The girl used it to keep her balance while walking, and even tried to use it to help her stand from sitting.

By Thursday she no longer needed the crutch. Which was good, since we lost it. She was standing easily on her own and walking without being prompted. And opening cabinets, because she's not just picking up one skill at a time.

Today, L and I were playing catch with the child. L sat on the floor about six feet away from me, holding the girl, and I'd beckon her over. She'd walk to me giggling the whole way. I'd turn her around, and she'd walk back to L. Repeat over and over. It's really quite fun.

Three legs for elevenses

I tried an experiment last weekend. We were at the park with some friends. One of their kids had a pinwheel on a long somewhat sturdy stick. I wanted to see how the girl got by with standing if she could use a cane.

She stands easily enough holding on to things, but up till then had never stood for more than a few seconds. So I demonstrated to her how she could hold the stick braced against the ground and stand that way. She understood, but not in the way I expected. She held on the stick and stood for a bit. Then lifted the stick in the air, still holding onto it tightly. And she stood for the next 30 seconds or so. Then she took a single step before decided this was too much, and sat down.

Clearly, she understood it was the stick that helped her stand. Though she didn't get that it helps her stand by bracing it against the ground. But, whatever works for her. I need to get a stick like that for her, so she can practice this at home.

Edited to add: Turns out she's done much better since then. I took this shot the next day, but it illustrates this story quite well.

Things that didn't happen

Just about every post for for the past year has been about the baby. For a change, this one will be all about me. Specifically, things I've not done since the baby was born. Here's the list I've come up with for all the things I've not done since the baby was born:

• Bought new clothes (for myself).
• Bought new shoes. And mine are really starting to fall apart.
• Seen a movie in a theatre
• Bought anything at a comic shop
• Washed the floors (there's always someone on it)
  
• Played a video game
• Rode a bike
• Gone on a proper holiday
• Gone to Camden Town for anything besides dinner
• Made something new from a cookbook
• Had a meal on the terrace
• Gone to an art museum
• Did something with the leftover materials from the construction last year

And that does not count the number of things I've hardly done since she was born.

Made of straw

The girl's been making a huge mess when drinking lately. She's pretty much given up on the sippy cup and now just treats it a chew toy she can bash food with. We've been giving her water from an actual cup for a couple of weeks. She drinks it, but ends up soaked. We've tried shallow and wide and narrow and deep, but she finds a way to spill most of the glass all over herself and the high seat tray.

Today, on a whim, I tried a straw in the cup. She immediately started chewing it, then spent a few minutes blowing bubbles in the water, She liked that. Then, just as I'd resigned myself to an afternoon of her blowing bubbles in water, she started sucking up the water. The flow was more than she could swallow, so some dribbled out. But for the first time in weeks she drank a whole cup of water without drenching herself.

Of course a few minutes later she realised she could take the straw out and play with it. But that just means I have to hold the straw in the cup. For now (I hope).

She ended up drinking over 250ml after dinner. Which means I think we're in store for some very wet nappies overnight. Mixed blessing that.

Intent

Just a small note today. The lass has been quite awkward to get to sleep for the past several days. Last night we tried to get her to sleep in the cot several times before giving up. We ended up just holding her while watching a documentary.

Eventually she just started fussing again, but more so this time. So I asked her What do you want? I stood her on the floor and held her hands and let her lead me.

She walked straight out of the room, to the stairs and I carried her down those. On the landing, she led me straight to the next stairs (the ones she fell down the other day) and I carried her down those. On that floor, she walked straight past all the doors and right to the next set of stairs. I carried her down those. She walked past the loo and into her room. I turned on the light and she led me to a stool, which she grabbed hold of, finally letting go of my hands.

I've never seen her so directed. This was not explore mode, but Don't you get it, I'm tired and want bed mode. It's good to know she's gotten to the point she can express herself to us. In a vague sort of way.

Out and about

Yesterday I got to live the life of the "yummy mummies" that live in the neighbourhood. L and I had a nice long lunch at a local cafe with one of our neighbours. The neighbour brought her 3 month old, we brought our 10 month old. We sat there chatting for over two hours.

This is one of the reasons I was attracted to this area. So many places I could hang out during the day that would be baby friendly. This is pretty much the first time since I've moved here I could take advantage of it. It took ages to recover financially from the move two years ago. So that summer and fall had us going out very little. Finally, this week we had the combination of it being warm, and me having the day off. I liked it. It's given me insight into what life would be like if L got a job and I was the stay-at-home parent. The idea is appealing. Though I wonder if it'd completely wreck my career.

After lunch and a nap from the girl, I went to meet coworkers who also had off today. I brought the lass, partly to give L time to get some work done, and partly because it's nice to get more time with her, and also partly because my coworkers really like her.

She was her usual charming self. Enjoying all the attention and playing with anyone who'd give her the chance. I'm really glad she does not get separation anxiety. It meant I could hand her off to people to get a break and have some non-baby conversation time, while not having to worry or leap across the room to fix a meltdown.

I also really liked showing off her skills. I'm proud of this lass and enjoy the praise she gets. I wonder if that's the road to becoming one of those parents?

On the buses on the way home, the girl tried to catch the eye of everyone she could. I ended up chatting with the woman sitting next to me on the first bus, and smiling a goodbye to the couple sitting behind me on the second. Similar stuff happened to me on the tube yesterday.

This is really unusual for London, and rather shocking to me. Just chatting to random people who just happen by. This happens pretty much every time I take the girl anywhere. I kind of like it. I suppose I'll miss it when she's older. I doubt I'd be able to do this without a baby in tow.

Now we play

Last week I took the girl to a playgroup at the local leisure centre. L had taken her there once before, and this was my turn to take the girl for a bit of early morning public play before heading off to work.

The wee one is still partly on east coast time, so I had to wake her before getting out of the house. I suspect that's why she didn't really seemed to enjoy herself. She spent almost the whole time staring at the other children. Very little excited her. She'd grudgingly accept walking around, playing with balls, or attempting to share with other kids. For the most part she'd just sit and take in the environment.

The play time is about 45 minute long and is for up to 15 age 5 and unders. I think there were about a dozen kinds, mostly between 1 and 2. It was free play on soft platforms and shapes or in a ball pit. Followed by about 10 minutes of singing. Mostly songs I did not know. Or songs I couldn't do the hand motions to (There's a hand gesture for …washed the spider out…?).

I spent most of the time teaching the lass how to safely get off of platforms. She was doing quite well. Until she fell over while I was putting on my shoes at the end. Great. Always fun to be the incompetent parent who has to console his crying child for getting her hurt while he wasn't looking. At least my embarrassment was reduced since most people had left by then.

I was pleasantly surprised the thing wasn't as mothercentric as I was expecting. There were two other fathers there. There was nothing inherent in any of the play or facilities that precluded a father taking their child. The only problem was the mensroom with the changing table was locked and the normal mensroom was a changing room with showers – too wet and dirty to change the girl in. But there was a reasonable changing room upstairs that was clean and free. The only problem was it had no toilet, so I could not EC the girl.

Note to all restroom designers. Always put a toilet in the room with the changing table. It's good to have a clean place to put the baby to reclothe them after they go to the loo.

I'll likely go again. At least a few more times and see if the girl actually takes a liking toward it. I'm sure she'd have fun if she were more awake for it. We'll just have to wait and see.

Yesterday I took the girl to the local park. After her accident the other day, I was very conservative on the play. Don't play there, you'll get sand in your wound, We can't play on that, you might hit your head and reopen your wound. She did enjoy the swing and the seesaw. Though on the seesaw, I was holding on to one leg the whole time. I was no fun at all. I'm hoping the paranoia ends soon.

Falling down

The girl had her first A&E trip on Saturday. A momentary flicker in her stair climbing skills sent her down 3 or 4 steps and headfirst into a bookcase. I was in the nursery at the time when I heard the crash and various screamings. I ran out to find L holding the girl, her face covered with blood.

We took her to the bathroom to clean her up. All I could find were nappy liners to wipe away the blood. I was relieved to find what looked to be a flap of skin was actually the blood soaked on her eyebrow. Then L uncovered the actual wound – a 2cm vertical gash in the middle of her forehead. Again, a bit of a relief since a cut forehead I could deal with. L didn't see it that way and started to panic more since we clearly had to get to hospital. She suggested we call 999. I hesitated for bit, but the girl seemed to be getting worse.

After that is a blur. I remember talking to someone on the phone, and the girl starting to go into shock and droopy eyed while shaking, I don't recall what order things happened.

L sat on the toilet seat holding the baby's forehead wound shut with her hand, while trying to keep the girl still. I went downstairs to open the front door for the paramedics when they'd come. The doorbell wasn't working and I didn't want to miss them. Then I went back upstairs when I saw the drops of blood all over the floor. I don't know what part of my brain took over, but I used some of the remaining nappy liners to clean up trail of blood from the bookcase to the bathroom.

The paramedics arrived after about 10 minutes.
By this point, her shaking had stopped, and she seemed more alert. Less crying and more wriggling, making it harder to hold the bandage. Fortunately, most of the bleeding had slowed to a mild ooze.

The wee one clearly decided, Oh, company, stopped crying and started charming the paramedics. First thing, they taped a bandage to her head. Then many tests were given, checking this vital and that. The girl was clearly quite interested in what was going on. Playing with the monitors and lights when the let her.

Then they suggested we get shoes and phones and keys and get in the ambulance to go to hospital. I remembered enough to get the nappy bag, the sling and my travel card for when I had to get home afterwards.

I really should have brought a jumper. It got cold in the evening.

On the trip to hospital the wee one calmly played with the blood oxygen monitor, nary a peep. In fact, she'd not cried since the EMTs got to our place. All day, the EMTs and nurses and doctor kept saying how if they did x she would cry. She didn't not when they took her vitals, not when they cleaned the wound, not when they glued it shut. I'm not sure if that means if she's hardcore and can take it, or is just well dispositioned.

After being seen by the triage nurse and having the girl's vitals taken, we sat in the waiting room. There were 4 other children ahead of us. L first used the downtime to go to the washroom and get all the blood off of her. Then she fed the girl. That's when the wee one started crying. Turns out she'd bit her tongue in the fall, and it was still bleeding.

We got seen about 2 hours after the fall. The doctor came in, looked at her and said a nurse would glue her wound together. And rather than explain anything to us, he said we'd be given a So your baby had a headwound pamphlet on the way out.

Ouch!

After he left, a nurse comes in and says she's going to get the glue and stuff to clean her head, and that she wanted to take the child with her. I was a bit shocked that they though that it would be ok for someone I'd never seen before to come in the room and take my child away. I mean she was dressed as a nurse, but anyone could do that.

So I let her take the girl, but followed her, and was relieved when everyone at the nurse station said hello to her as she passed. There was no actual need to take the girl, so I really wonder why the nurse wanted her with while she rifled through the storeroom. Perhaps for a bit of a cuddle? I'm guessing so the baby got used to her before she did potentially painful things to her. I have no idea. But that was the part of the process that disturbed me most.

Anyway, the nurse cleaned her wound and applied the glue. It looked like Krazy Glue. Just a thin clear liquid that dried pretty much instantly. Given how well Krazy Glue bonds skin, I'm not surprised the finally came up a medical equivalent. They say it shouldn't scar, but I'm dubious. The cut looks huge on her forehead. Then again, when I hold my arm next to her and imagine the cut on my arm, I'd probably just put a big plaster on it.

We were out of hospital and back home just over 3 hours past the initial accident. So it all went pretty fast (we took the bus home, and were rather cold from the lack of forethought to bring jumpers). Ever since I've been treating the child very carefully. Avoiding having anything touch her forehead or anything get near her head that she could bump. That's going to be hard. I just want to keep her safe until the cut heals.

We've really got to come up with a better solution for how to get the girl to hospital. I'm not going to buy a car for the occasional emergency journey. A minicab probably wouldn't take someone screaming or bleeding. Maybe something like zip car? The bus is not an option. There's a direct bus to one hospital, bus it's far and takes 50 min. The closest hospital has no good way to get there. It's only served by busses that come every 15-20 minutes. I'm not going to take a wounded child on a bus. What do other people do?

Now we are different

This is not the same girl went on holiday with two weeks ago.

We came back a few days ago. Over the period we were gone the wee one has levelled up quite a bit.

She's now producing a stream of babble. Before she could say a few syllables, sometimes in combination. Now I'm pretty sure she's saying what she thinks are words. Every now and then she'll repeat something back someone says to her. That's the best part – not necessarily her understanding, but her clearly interacting.

She's learned to point. Finally my point vs poke training has come to fruition. She'll point at something of note and say Dat!, which I can only assume means What is that?So I always answer her with That's a painting or That's a mirror or That's toilet paper.

She gotten lots of other hand movements. She was waving before we left. She's regressed a bit on that, but she's started waving again a couple of days ago. She also enjoys shaking hands. At least she'll stick out her and and let you shake it. She'll also put her hands on her hips. I can't tell if it it's intentional, but she often has a bit of a stern look about her when she does it.

Stairs. She can go up and down stairs now. All the shallower carpeted stairs at her grandparents' and my uncle's places really helped. She's since been able to go up an entire flight of steep wooden stairs at our place. She's much slower and hesitant in going downstairs. It's basically, sit on the stair facing out, dangling her feet over the edge until she's practically standing on the step below. Then she stands on the stairs below, holding on to the bannister.

She's not quite standing. Well, she doesn't think she can stand. She can stand holding on to things, or leaning against something. But she'll only stand unsupported for a few seconds before she realises and sits down. But a controlled sit, which is good.

She still can't walk on her own, but she walks quite well when holding hands. Or using a walker. Or box. Or anything draggable that's big enough to lean against. She's far more comfortable with it than when I walked her through her first queue at the start of the holiday.

All this progress seems to have come at a price. She's sleeping very lightly now. It seems like any movement near her will wake her up. She will wake up without crying, sometimes, which is nice. But she's still awake and really hard to get back to sleep.

She's also not eating much. she'll breastfeed like a champ, but she's hardly eating any solid food we put before her. Even roast mushrooms, her heretofore favourite, are summarily tossed on the floor.

I'm hoping that goes away soon and we can get her to bed and stay asleep without too much effort. I've been a bit dozy in the brain the past couple of days at work.

In other news, I found an article online which explains the whole "fine with just one child" thing far better than I did the other day. Must be something in the air to cause both of us to post the same thought at the same time.

Now we are flying again

We're now on the wee lass's second intercontinental trip. At 10 months she's far far more active than she was at 3 months. Which makes travel much harder. No downtime at all for us. I got maybe 10 min of sleep on the flight – all of which was on the runway.

The first experiment was taking the tube to Heathrow. We've been hiring cars to the airport so far. But that was getting expensive. At some point we had to try it, so we did. We took the bus to the Piccadilly line, and sat and sat and sat. Part of the experiment was travelling with no pram or car seat. I carried the girl in the Baby Bjorn, and L did the bulk of the heavy lifting of the two bags.

I have to say, OMG, that was a success. Everything was easier. Getting to the airport, walking around the airport, going through security, not checking the pram at the gate. Everything. Everything was easier. If I can get away with it, we're not air travelling with a pram again.

Rush hour was over when we got on, but the car was still pretty full. I headed toward an empty seat, but L forced a man sitting in the "give this up" seat to get up. My husband needs this seat. Perfectly in character for her, considering she did that when she was pregnant. But not truly necessary since there was an empty seat.

The car emptied out just past central London, and we had a long but uneventful trip. I listened to podcasts, while the baby slept and L played games on her phone. That was the last relaxing moment we had for a while.

Our plan was to go to Boston. L's family wanted to see us. We did the maths and it turns out to be cheaper to fly to DC and back for a few days, than the equivalent in hotel fees for everyone. So a month after getting the tickets to Boston we bought an internal flight from Boston to DC. We got the last flight of the day we could, with 2 1/2 hours for getting through passport control, customs, check in and so on.

Checking into a flight with a baby is hassle because you can't check in in advance. So we take our chances that we'll even sit next to each other (I bought my ticket separately), let alone get a "sky cot" for the lass. In between checking in and bag drop, I take the girl to the loo. The baby changing rooms at Heathrow do not work so well with EC. No toilet, just a changing mat, sink and very very full rubbish bins. Fortunately we brought the portable seat which acts as a loo in a pinch. Which, for the first time for me, she used. So with that success behind me, I head back to L, still in the queue, next to someone with an identical nappy bag – which was a bit of a surprise since ours was gift from my mum, bought in the US.

Airport security was soooo much easier without the pram. I just walked through with the baby still attached. Everything went off without a hitch, including lunch, boarding and so on. We even had the middle row of four seats to ourselves. The pilot came on to say we may be able to take off early too. But instead, we sat on the runway for an hour and a half while some engineering issue was being resolved. Eventually they told us to get off the plane, and get on a new one which would be ready in two hours. Our Boston to DC transfer was 2 1/2 hours. At this point we knew we'd be at least 3 1/2 hours late. Bugger.

I was very wary of taking Virgin again after they broke our pram on the last flight we took with them. We spoke to Virgin at the desk, who said Not our problem, you bought the other tickets separately. We spoke to US Air who said Sure, we'll change your flight to tomorrow, but it's up to Virgin to pay for your hotel. We spoke to Virgin on the phone, and they said It's up to the people at the desk, but they should give you a hotel voucher. We spoke to the travel insurance emergency line and they said It's after 5 (it was 5:07), call back on Monday. Can you at least tell me what, if anything, is covered? Nope. Call back Monday. Good luck. Back to the Virgin desk for us, No hotel for you, really. Full Stop. they tell us.

On, the bright side, on the way back to the desk there was a big queue, but it was moving at a moderate pace. So I took out the lass and walked her through the queue. It was going just fast enough for her to keep us. Her first queue!

So, we qet on the new plane in bit of a cranky mood. Adding to the annoyance was the fact that there were people sitting in the row next to us now. However, it wasn't such a bad thing – they were there for the other sky cot. They were travelling with an 11 month old girl. We did the usual introduction of the children, and giving their ages. This time after half a minute I remembered to add Oh, and I'm Bob and this is L.

I'm trying to hard to remember this part of introductions. Almost always I meet other parents and come away knowing their child's name, but almost never do we exchange adult names.

At one point the two little girls sat next to each other and tried holding hands (the best they could do is hold wrists) which was really cute. Another cute point was when L was holding our child on my left, and the other girl was on my right. I announced I'm surrounded by baby toes! to the amusement of the rest of the row.

Our girl just would not sleep in the sky cot. Every attempt L made to put her in would wake her up crying. So she eventually just held the sleeping girl in her arms. After a few hours I tried my luck. Success. Except ten minutes later when the other girl started crying which woke ours, crying.

In the end, L and I got maybe 20 minutes of sleep between us. The girl got about 4 hours. The toilets were just small enough that she couldn't wriggle too far, but large enough I could put her on the loo without raising the changing table. she loved the air jet. It distracted her and she played with it.

Passport control and customs were fast and easy to get through. We were out by 9:30 or so. We could have made the 2nd flight if we'd arrived a couple hours earlier. I was hoping the 2nd flight was delayed enough we'd make it, but no. It left on time.

We went up to the Virgin making-connections person just past customs, explained the situation, and he said, Ok, we'll get you a hotel, but you'll have to go to the US Air desk at Terminal B to sort out a replacement flight in the morning. Just sit here for a few minutes while I do the paperwork. Okaaaay. Why they couldn't do that in the first place is beyond me. But I'm not complaining. Literally. This saved me the effort of a huge scathing letter I was going to write to them about their drop in quality of customer service.

We went out to catch the shuttle to terminal B. No shuttle in sight. The sign said it was 0.3 miles, so we decided that since we still had the trolley for the luggage, and the girl was safely in the Baby Bjorn, we'd just walk it.

Bit of a mistake there. The airport is a big U shape. And the route through from E to B, walking inside the airport is not direct. Two notable things. First, there's the rocking chairs in terminal C. The other is the really nice baby changing facilities in terminal D. Enough room for both adults and the luggage. A huge bin which was easy to get waste into, and wasn't full (like in Heathrow), a good size changing table and a toilet, so we could EC the lass. Which was good, since she was ready to go by that point.

We finally got to terminal B, which was itself a big U shape – we had to trek through the car park to bypass the bulk of the walk. I was terrified that they'd be closed, but at the far end of the US Air area was one open desk with a live person. We wearily marched up to him and explained ourselves. He told us that when they built this airport, they must have done huge amounts of research on airport design so they could build the worst possible layout that could fit in the area. We certainly agreed. He also told us that the only reason he was still there is that there was a delayed flight to Buffalo still to come, and if it were on time, the desk would have been closed. Scary bit of luck for us.

He cheerfully and immediately put us on the next flight at 6am (ick) and were done. He told us how to get to the hotel and we were on our way. Via terminal A – so we'd walked through the entire airport by the time we were done.

The hotel is attached to the airport. We found ourselves suddenly in the conference centre in the hotel still pushing the luggage trolley we got when we picked up our bags. This did not work at all well on the carpet. So we cheekily abandoned it and went off in search of the lobby. On check-in we found we also had $100 of food vouchers. Which was good, since we were starving, and room service in the US is hideously over-priced. We got to our room at 10:57. L found the room service menu which said it ended at 11. A mad selection of food and a panicked attempt to figure out the room phone followed, but we got the order in on time.

They gave us a travel cot for the lass, but she did not take to it at all. We had to be up at 3:40, so cosleeping was the far better option than trying to convince the child to use the cot. We collapsed on the bed and were up again far too soon.

This time we took the shuttle to the airport. A quick check in and baggage check and we were off to the security queue. They saw the girl and sent us through the business-class queue, which was nice. I had to take off my shoes, but the baby could stay attached. They took me aside for a hand check, at which I joked, Whose hands? We have four of them before I panicked and realised you do not joke with airport security. But the woman laughed and passed me on to someone who brushed over my hands with a magical chemical-sensing wand. Whatever it checked for, I did not have, so all was well. I still wonder if that's standard with people carrying babies, or it was random? Were they checking for baby poop and sudocrem?

There were no baby changing rooms in terminal B, so we had to make do with L changing her in the ladies'.

The puddlejumper we got on to DC was small, but at least we sat next to each other. No sky cot. Not even a baby seatbelt. We just held on to the kid during takeoff and landing. We took turns walking the lass up and down the aisle during the flight, so she'd not get restless and maybe use up some of her energy. I passed person after person head down and asleep on their tray. One of the stewardesses was friendly and chatty, which helped keep me awake enough to survive the flight.

At the end, we landed early, breezed out of the airport and spent 1/2 an hour trying to get the car seat fitted in L's sister's car. The baby cried the whole car ride, and would only be settled by being sung French lullabies by L and her sister. She finally fell asleep two minutes from the house.

.

The wife's cycle has started up again. It wasn't nearly has dramatic as what I'd read on various blogs. It was more Hey. I'm back. Just popped in to say hello.

The most annoying thing (for me at least) is the irregularity of it. It's weird after almost two years of this baby-growing process to have pregnancy scares again. There's just no way to know if it's late or there's a bun in the oven. It's not like the usual "sore breasts" sign works when you're already breastfeeding.

For the record, there is no bun.

The way I like to look at it, we've hit perfection with this girl. I don't need another child. My biological clock is content with what we have – which I'm rather grateful for.

Another, more cynical way to look at it is that, thinking back at all the stages we've gone through, to be honest I'm not that interested in doing it again. I'm happy with this girl and it's "cured" that yearning need I felt before. Somehow, with the biological clock out of the way, any thoughts of new babies always end up in logicland, where they prove to be impractical. I don't want to have to think of another set of names, or find a house with enough space for another person, or worry about cots and clothes and mediate arguments and worry about being hyper-fair.

It's hard to describe without sounding offensive to by daughter or just generally hypocritical. I'll just say she completes our family well and leave it at that.

Food

Dining is starting to settle down a bit. We're almost at a point I can live with. She eats with us, but she eats her own food. For L and I, I make the usual grown-up food. For the little one I usually roast some vegetables. No spices, just roasted at low temperature (125-150°C) for a few hours. I start the oven when I start dinner. Chop some combination of mushrooms (She really likes the mushrooms), onions, peppers, aubergines, celery, potatoes or whatever else we have at hand. Put it in a dish and take it out after we're done eating. Put it in the fridge, then dole it out over the next few days.

I have to say, the stuff tastes brilliant. I've never really had the patience for roast veg for meals before, but this works really well, since it's so little work and prepped in advance. It's hard for me to not pick at the food meant for her. Though I draw the line at not taking food from her tray.

My only concern is that it really does taste better on the day it's cooked. But it does still taste ok after being refrigerated a few days.

We feed her by putting a selection of stuff on her tray,and letting her pick it up. She's done when she doesn't try to eat anything new we put down.

Breakfast is less exciting – sliced fruits: Banana, orange, apple. Whatever else we have around – carrots, tomatoes. I do need to start having a more consistent set of breakfast foods around. Like toast.

We used to try to put her to sleep before dinner. At first she'd be in the moses basket we kept in the dining room. She'd often sleep for the first 10 minutes of dinner, then start crying. One of us would gulp down dinner and settle her, while the other would eat. Usually it'd end up with L feeding her.

After a while she'd sleep through dinner. She graduated to sleeping in her own cot. We'd aim a video phone at her and watch her over skype on the laptop. This often degraded to one of us bolting downstairs to collect the crying girl, bringing her upstairs til she was calm again.

After 6 months had passed we started baby-led weaning. Which started off very slowly. She'd take the stuff, put it in her mouth. Chew, sometimes completely masticating it. Then it'd just fall out on the tray of her high chair. I started with simple easy to grab food like carrot sticks, celery, sliced peppers and cucumber. It certainly helped her master grabbing things. She was holding between thumb and index finger quite deftly. But that was pretty much all she got out of it. This went on for a couple of months. It seemed any food she'd ingest was by accident.

It was really cute at first. She'd make a horrible face whenever she was introduced to a new food. This stopped pretty quickly, and the only food she's really reacted too since was a mushroom from a thai green curry. I suspect it was too hot for her. I recently tried feeding her a chunk of lemon (seeds removed) to see if she'd replicate the looks in the babies tasting lemon for the first time video. She ate it right up. Yum.

We got to the point where we were about to give up the baby-led weaning. We decided to feed her puree one meal a day.

Day one worked. She at an entire meal.

Day two, she started to be dubious about the puree.

At day 3 she was refusing the puree entirely. And eating solids. It's like she realised that if she did not get on with eating the real food we give her, she'd have nothing but this mush forever. Which, in fact, was more or less true. Or perhaps she finally figured out how to swallow. Which seems more true, but doesn't sound as nice.

So what's next? At some point we need to start feeding her more grown-up food. I'd like to be able to only have to make one meal. I also need to get more D and iron in her diet – since she's not getting much from milk.

The real downside here is the output. Her stool really smells bad now. And is much less pleasant to clean up. She's defecating far less now, and she's using the loo for most of it. But that just makes the dirty misses even harder to deal with.

Taking risks

I kind of envy the child's tenacity. She learns how to do things by watching and trying. When she tries she really does try. She'll spend ages at something she wants to do. Going over it again and again til she gets it. She takes risks I'd not be at all comfortable with. Like climbing stairs. The steps are up to her waist. She lifts a leg to the next step, bending sideways to get her knee high enough to plant solidly on the step. She uses that and the bannister on the opposite side to pull herself up. We have hard wood floors. If she falls, it will hurt. But she tries anyway.

A week ago she climbed up slowly with much grunting. Now she can do 3 steps, one after the other, in under a minute.

I can't remember where I came across this, but I recall scientists saying that children and teenager's brains are hardwired to take risks. That might very well be true, but I think the reason in this case is simpler than that.

Her entire life, all she's known is that whenever she fails and hurts herself, someone quickly scoops her up, cuddles and kisses her. Holding her telling her how good a try she made and how much they love her. With such rewards for failure, I can see why puts so much effort into what she does.

I wish I could find some way for risk taking to be so rewarding.

Hair changes

When the little one was born, she had fine light brown hair all over her head. And a bit on her back too, for good measure. Her eyelashes were golden, which made for an odd contrast. She also had little bits of light highlights in her hair. It was like it had two colours, but you could only see if you looked at it just right. It was light looking at glitter or a sequinned dress.

If I look back at her old photos, I can see the stark difference. And with the hundreds of photos I've taken, the slow evolution over time is clear. She's blonde now. Not platinum, just light blonde, or maybe dirty blonde. Her hair just changed over the months to match her original eyelash colour.

I guess it makes for less of a shock. Giving birth to a dark haired child was no surprise – which is nice, since there was surprise enough then. Looking now at my blonde, blue-eyed baby still surprises me. I suppose my scandinavian mother-in-law had a similar shock with her dark haired daughter.

I never expected to have a blonde child, since both L and I are both dark haired. On the other hand, whenever I pictured having a child, I imagined a blonde blue-eyed girl, I guess because that's what everyone else in England seems to be having.

In a related note, the grey seems to have ramped up on my head. I'd had two or three grey hairs over the years. But now four through ten seem to have made an appearance. I gave up plucking them out at 7 and now 3 grey hairs stare back at me in the mirror in the morning, hinting at all the hidden ones I've yet to catch and all the new ones waiting for a stressful day to move in.

8 month checkup

We had the 8 month checkup today. It went better than I expected. The health visitor running it may not have been completely on the ball, but she was quite personable, which goes a long way to making the whole experience better.

The thing is pretty simple, which is probably why we got no details in advance. People with an 8 month or so old child show up at 10am. Whoever comes that day is seen. First they weigh the kid, then everyone sits around a big playmat while the health visitor asks us questions about sleeping, eating, excreting, and so on.

Three babies showed up today. The other two families were a baby boy, an older sister and a mother. Not only was I the only father there, I was the only male over 9 months. The other two babies were barely just sitting up. My little one, held up by me, toddled over to the playmat, plopped down and started crawling. She stopped when she found a small rubber duck which she popped in her mouth and started chewing (I suggested she get some hoisin sauce to go with it).

One family was seen separately due to not speaking English. So really it was 2 babies and their parents being questioned. L did most of the talking for us. I'm not sure if I was just being quiet, or if the health visitor was subtly directing all questions at her. Or maybe she just likes talking about our child. L says it's like a woman in the sciences – if you don't speak up you'll be completely looked over.

After the group questions, the two families took turns doing 1:1 with the health visitor. Answering questions and getting answers to whatever was on our minds. Turns out all issues we wondered about the wee one are pretty common and will work out over time. It was mostly things like her standing funny and her bloodshot eyelid. She's also a bit small for her age, but that might just be due to all the colds she's had lately. They said to come back in 6 weeks and see if the little one's fallen down another percentile group. I didn't want to ask them anything too esoteric or prone to soapbox opinions, since I doubt we'd have gotten anything we didn't already know – read a book or follow my dubious advice.

Seeing the babe with other children her age is a huge contrast. She's soooooo inquisitive. Craning her neck here and there to see what was happening just out of sight. Picking up and playing and chewing on everything (I'm still worried we'll get another fever out of that exchange). With one child she would have taken the dummy right from his mouth if we'd not stopped her.

We're so going to have our hands full with this one. But it's worth it. She's all smiles and excitement and delight. Just an amazing little creature who just drinks in the world around her. She'll sometimes just sit and stare at some other child and a day or two later she's got an impressive new skill. Today she was all about showing off what she can do as much as she could. I'm really impressed by her. I know that by the time they hit 5, all these development differences disappear. But for now I half-facetiously think that it must be good genes or hybrid vigour and that maybe she is a wunderkind.

Standing and walking

She took rather quickly to walking. It plateaued for a bit, but seems to have improved in the past day.

The first day, I would hold her under the arms, dangle her feet on the floor, and twist her a little side to side, so first one foot would move forward, then the other.

The next day, I tried again, and she would move her a feet a little forward when I twisted her.

A coupled of days later, and all we needed to do was to hold her enough to keep her balanced. She'd kick one floppy leg forward, the foot would land on the floor, and she'd pull herself along. Repeat. She's walking. Not by herself, but, if we hold her hands, she can walk across a room. She really likes it. So far we've taken a number of videos of her crossing the room.

Today she's standing with only the tiniest of supports. Just pushing against my pinky finger is enough to keep her upright. Until she starts getting tired, of course. She's mastered cruising. Before she could move along bannisters or the baby cage. ow she can hand off from the sofa to a chair the the baby cage and back again. Arms reaching to their full extent to cross the space between furniture.

It seems that now that she's over her colds of the past few months, she's making up for lost time. Her EC has improved drastically to, with few misses in the past couple of days.

In other news, she's got her 8 month checkup with the health visitors tomorrow. They've been mixed quality so far. I'm hoping it's not a waste of time.

Pointing, poking, pinching and prodding

The little girl has mastered pointing. She can extend her index fingers on both hands, with the rest of her fingers in a ball. She's so far used it to feel textures on things, touch things and pick up small objects (along with her thumb). The last one is a common development milestone, so one more notch for her in her red book. I've taking to handing her food to eat, but only letting go when she's got a good grip with index finger and thumb. I'm both encouraging her and and being mean. Fun!

Actually, it's good she's learned to pinch with those two fingers. The whole hand pinches are a bit rough, and I'm hoping fewer nails means it'll hurt less now.

It's hard to tell if she's actually pointing, or just holding her hand out preparing to poke. I did try, when she was younger, to teach her the difference between point and poke, but perhaps she's confused them in her head, or just decided they're parts of the same thing. I suppose I have to wait till she points and makes some kind of telling squeaking noise.

Oddly enough, she mastered it on her left hand a couple of days before the right. I've no idea if this means anything about her handedness. L says no, because she must be right handed because the direction her hair curls on the top of her head. I'd be likely to discount that as a old wives' tail if it weren't for L's PhD and tendency to read studies on child development.

Now we are cruising

The little one started crawling and standing at around the same time, back in Feb. Her crawling is getting much better. She was flopping one hesitant hand on the floor at a time. Now she'll move from room to hallway – where she'll get distracted by something and stay for a while.

She can also now stand, but only holding on to something. So she'll pull herself up on a baby gate, chair, table or whatever she can find, and then just stand for ages. She's taken to bending down while holding on to pick up a toy. It's cute – she bends over like an old lady. Weird symmetry there.

She's also trying very hard to stand without holding on to anything. But she ends up just doing a downward facing dog. I suspect standing on her own will be coming quite soon.

She's cruising to the extent that she'll hold on to something and slowly shuffle down the length of it to get where she wants to be. For those non-baby people reading this, cruising means just that – walking by holding on to something and moving along it.

She likes standing. She seems to really like it, and will pull herself up whenever she can. All. The. Time. Especially when she's upset. It seems to be her way of self-soothing.
Which is quite annoying, since a child learning to self sooth is the big hurdle on the way to getting them to fall asleep on their own. And clearly, she's not going to fall asleep while standing, holding on to the side of a cot. So easy sleeping is not in the cards for us anytime soon. In fact, I can hear the wife downstairs right now trying to sing her to sleep. I'm always torn, if I go down there to try to help, seeing me may wake the girl. Or maybe tag-teaming the lulling may help. It's really hard to tell how the wee one's going to react.

As an aside, I've not posted for ages and ages. I've been ill with complications and now springtime allergies. The wife was ill. The child was ill. I'd had nothing to write about except how unpleasant a family of snot and fever was. And I've done that enough times that I figured a break was in order. I read a book. And ate a lot of ice cream.

On a final note, I finally got the cheque from Virgin Atlantic for the damage they did to the pram on our flight to the States when she was 3 months old. She was 7 months old when we got the cheque. Again, not impressed.

Dadadadadadada

First off, the wee one is making a variety of sounds. One of her recent masteries is saying Dada, which I think it utterly brilliant that that is her first real word, even if she extends it too far most of the time, Dadadadadadadada.... I'm sure she does not actually know what it means yet, but I always turn my head to her and answer yes? when she says it, in hopes she'll get it in time. I always said I did not know what I would be called, and, conveniently, she seems to have decided that for me.

I'm pretty sure she is actually trying to talk, in general, but just does not have the muscle control to make actual words. When she says something short and a seemingly random combination of syllables, I do try really hard to figure what word she's trying to mimic.

In related news, the internet brought this article to my attention recently: At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns.

I have to say, yeah. True. Clearly. The little one knows her own name. Has for a while. At least she looks at me when I say it. When I say her mother's name in the exact same tone, she does not look at me.

Another case I discovered recently, to my shock, is how well the EC cue for urination works. She was fussing while I was trying to get her to sit on the toilet. I my frustration, I decided it might help to make sure she understood why she was there and what I expected of her by sounding the urination cue.

Turns out, she clearly knows what the cue means. She stood on the seat of the loo and promptly started peeing on my leg and the floor.

So… that article... obviously, and definitely spot on. Babies know more than they let on.

I'm sure if I paid really close attention could point out lots more cases where she knows what I'm saying. She knows that it's me on the other side of the little box when I do video calls on Skype. She is sentient, to a degree, even if she doesn't have the ability to clearly communicate it.

EC going well

The EC seems to be going rather well. I'm impressed how little effort and how much easier it makes life. The little one has taken to it like a duck to… well… not water, but perhaps the grass near a pond. It's not its favourite place to be, but it's content to spend some time there despite being a little awkward.

Anyway, it is a bit of a relief for us. While she still pees in her nappies more often than not, she generally only dirties her nappy on average once every two days. And considering that cleaning her bum after pooing in the loo is so much easier than after defecating in a nappy, I can definitely live with this.

It's not all smooth sailing. She's really good about the loo first thing in the morning, since she's been holding it in all night. That alone would make EC worth it. It's during the day we really have to guess when she needs to go. If she doesn't need to go she'll fidget and cry and generally try to escape – not the safest thing to do when sitting on the loo, even with the baby seat. She also tends to prefer when I'm holding her on the loo. I don't mind that at all, except for the fact that I'm not there during working hours, and disappear for a few days at a time at irregular intervals. I don't know if the relative infrequency is why she prefers me, or maybe I just have an easier time squatting in front of her on the floor (L's hips are still recovering from the pregnancy).

So… EC – definitely a success. I'll certainly be keeping this up.

Turning into my father

Somehow I've managed to find myself on a plane, for work, 3 of the past 4 weeks. I had in mind, when the child came, I would work from home a day or so a week. Rarely travel. How did I find myself working from Europe far more often than I was expecting to work from home?

I'm travelling more often than I was 10 years ago, when I thought I was travelling loads – once week out of every 8 on average. And back then L was fully self-suffcient. And by that I mean I have made commitments by being a parent that she now has to pick up the shortfall for. Back then the only comittments were household chores and pleasant company – something that she could safely do on her own or live without.

My father spent a fair chunk of my very early years working from another city. I just remember him leaving for the week and coming back... on weekends maybe – it's hard to remember. I don't resent him for it, and I didn't resent him for it. I just did not want that for myself.

These things just sneak up on you.

It irks me that somehow I ended up on a path I did not want.

I came home last night after a 3 day trip and the wee one smiled and slowly crawled to me across the floor.

She wasn't doing that when I left.

Teeth and guilt

The nightmare in Germany of the incoming top teeth fever seems to be the worst of it. She's up to 5 teeth now, with a 6^th coming in any moment. These don't seem to be causing as much pain – she's clearly using them to chomp on fingers, and the occasional nipple. There's not as much fever, though she has been warm, and is the snotliest I've seen her. She's getting used to having her nose wiped without crying, though I have to say the snotsucker tube makes me sick just thinking about it. I've yet to come close to trying it. Or even watching while L uses it. I know I'm being a big baby and just need to get over it. But there's just this big squick factor I can't get over.

Speaking of big baby things... I had another business trip last week. Three days away this time, with a flight out at 7am monday morning.

I'm still sick from my trip last month (the one where the wee one got the fever). I felt utterly awful at 430 when I got up. I very nearly cancelled, but I went because I knew my only chance to get enough rest to beat the cold was being alone in a hotel. I still feel really guilty for leaving the wife alone to care for the child for 3 days alone. The 11 hours sleep I got Monday night alleviated the guilt a little, but I still feel wrong. Even worse is the fact that now that I'm back, the cold which was getting better is now getting worse. I can't blame the family. I mean, it's work's fault I have this bloody thing in the first place. And their new accidental policy of no working from home is certainly not helping (oops, we broke the VPN. We'll have it working for you again in at probably a fortnight). But, to be honest, I don't want to blame anyone. I just want to be able to walk up a flight of stairs without needing to cough out my lungs.

The business trip

Work has asked me to spend more time at our office in Germany. This is clearly not easily compatible with spending time with the wee one. So I hatched a plan I'll, go, but the family comes with me. They agreed. I decided that we'd just try it for a single week, to make sure this was remotely feasible.

To cut a long story short – I won't be doing this again.

The trip over was filled with annoyances, which I won't go into since none were related to the child. She only started being problematic when she started bawling in the rental car from just outside the airport for the next half hour on the autobahn. That and the car's transmission was buggered and try to rev out of control every ten minutes or so.

We escaped that death trap and arrived at the hotel to find that the room work booked for me was not actually a double. Why have someone do bookings for you if they screw it up? I'm competent enough to make my own mistakes – I don't need help getting a booking wrong.

The good part about cosleeping is that you don't need to worry about travel cots or anything of that nature. What you do need to worry about is the destination having a bed big enough for even two people. This hotel does not have the concept of beds bigger than a single. So we had to try our luck with the bed legs bound together to try to keep them from eating the child.

The first day worked out well. I went into the office and got useful stuff done. L stayed at the hotel with the child, away from household distractions and got things done herself. In theory, if things kept on like this the trip would have been fine.

That evening the wee one started feeling poorly. Dinner was awkward with her being quite fussy. We suspected a fever, but, due to a I thought it was already packed error, we had no way to check it. We ended up getting the hotel to call us a doctor.

Note to other new parents in the UK: Get yourself an EHIC card now. It takes 3 minutes to fill in the forms on the web site (or six if you have to fill it in from scratch after mistakenly filling in the child's details first) and will save you trouble in the end.

Doctors comes shortly after and tells us 3 things.

1. She's a very well-behaved baby (always good to have you baby professionally assessed as wonderful)
2. She does have a fever – alternate baby paracetemol and baby ibuprofen to keep it in check.
3. it's not meningitis or encephalitis or anything worrisome. It's all teething related. No need to be concerned unless she stops eating.

Good to know.

So we get very little sleep that night with a fussy pained baby. And we fill the prescription first thing the next morning.

She does not eat all day.

Well, not more than a few sips here and there. But she's clearly getting more and more dehydrated. Stuff comes out, but nothing really goes in. At 4 in the morning L and I finally start discussing the logistics of taking her to hospital.

She latches on for a full feed half an hour later.

She starts getting better and is fine by the next day. My ability to deal with humans continues to degrade. Work ends up with several heated conversations by the end of the week. I decide that while the comfort of having family makes the trip much more comfortable, the strain of having family makes the work much harder.

So no more bringing family with with on trips. Or at least not until the baby can promise to stay healthy the whole time.

Waste matters

Toilet training is working. Or at least EC is. I've been told not to call it toilet training because people get their knickers in a twist over that.

Regardless, it is useful. First thing every morning after she wakes we place her on her Thomas the Tank Engine toilet seat (very odd choice of marketing there) and she does the full set of excretions with a very smiley face when we tell her how proud of her she is.

The best part is having fewer dirty nappies to change. If I time it well, we get to her before she has to go. And she knows now that when she's on the loo that now is the best time to go. You can see her putting effort into it. Her belly wrinkles and she taps her right foot sometimes – so cute!

The next best thing is that cleaning a baby's bottom after using the loo is soooo much easier than cleaning one after going in a nappy.

All in all I claim this experiment to have worked. We'll have to wait and see if there's any surprising long-term side effects. But for now, having the wee one understand there's and time and place for producing waste can only be a good thing.

Now we area sitting

First off, happy new year! Looking back, I'm a bit startled to find I started this in 2010. Admittedly, it was the end of 2010, and now it's the start of 2012, but it's interesting to watch how this gestation thing has evolved from watching the wife and guessing at what was going on insider her, to watching the child and guessing at what is going on inside her mind.

I'm impressed how fast the wee one's picking up things. Literally, in places. She's gotten quite good at grabbing. She can pick up toys pretty well now. Or various other things like nappies, towels, clothes, anything remotely near where she's sat. Tonight I was feeding her and she surprised me by grabbing the bottle, and holding on to it with both hands. I eventually let go and she kept holding on, and drinking. Which is really novel since she's refused to drink out of a bottle for weeks, until yesterday. And now she's drinking and holding the thing. She needed a bit of hinting about tilting it to get more as it empties, but she was firmly and clearly feeding herself. I'm rather proud.

In other skills news, she can also sit. She can't get in a sitting position on her own, but she can stay sitting for a while til she gets tired. She finally mastered that on Sunday. It certainly made getting her in position with the Skype video call too the grandparents much easier.

Most interesting is she now responds to her name. I'm still shocked at that. I say her name and she turns and looks at me. I can say other things and she won't turn. Not in the same way. Well, sometimes she responds the same way, like when I say Doodlehead. But she does not respond at all when it's L's name, even if I use the same tone. Clearly I need to experiment more with this one.