Absence makes the child grow blonder

Bless me readers it has been a week since my last blog. I am finally back to work. Heavy stuff. So heavy that my wonderful wife and beautiful son have taken the opportunity to head home to the West for a few days. I am left to work late and fend for myself. I managed to get down to see them at the weekend but only for 24 hours.

So for the last week I have not seen much of the subject of this blog. It is difficult to blog about someone who you can't see. I could try and explain the depths of separation that I feel. The long days and weeks together and then a simple separation. But this blog is not about me. So I will rely on second hand reports and pictures and my brief impressions of him at the weekend.

He seems very indifferent to the move. Different hands change his nappy and a different shoulder comforts him but it seems that he doesn't notice. He will smile if smiled at and will respond to tickles and the right baby noises. He is in the best hands and his Mum is right there to provide the nurture and nourishment.

The other piece of news is that he is taking an irregular bottle to augment his normal feeds. It is early days but he will take whats given to him only in a very specific set of circumstances. He must not be too hungry, he must be calm, he must be where he wants to be and he must be able to wriggle. It takes a bit of work but if all the things are right then he will drink it down in seconds, even through a special slow breast-like teat.

He has a little rash. It's just a little one but he has sort of pimped the rash by scratching himself. Take two or three light scratches and in a certain light he looks like a zombie child. If he rolls his eyes at the same time then its brainzzzzz for everyone. So I bit his nails. It was a bit weird but if you nip the edge of the nail and then tear sideways the nail rips off along the grain and the extra claws are gone. This also cleans the nails - which are very dirty and make me ashamed.

The first time I did this I got a very funny taste in my mouth. It was like a tasting history of everything that Max had touched since his last bath. The floor, his mouth, milk, clothes, the pram, the car seat, all the people who have held him. It tasted like a combination of milk and baby and clean dirt. But I took it like a man and reckoned that if his hands go into his mouth then I can probably handle it too! Properly shorn, he can scratch as much as he likes without adding to or subtracting from his complexion. At least until next week when he will grow a new set of them.

A note, he is now eight weeks and a few days, that's two months. Two months! Two months! sure he is practically applying for his driving license - slow this train down!

Long time no blog

Now all two of you avid readers will have noticed a long absence of news about little Max. Well we were on holidays. En vacances en France! Tres bien! I didn't advertise this beforehand because I know for a fact that one of you avid followers is a burglar with my home address, just waiting for advanced notice of a trip and bang - the apartment would be cleared out! Sorry I seem to have slipped through a few tenses there.

So news of Max - well it turns out that there is a little switch in a baby's head that flicks on at about five or six weeks. This activates their personality, motor function and realisation that there is a world and people in it. Max's has flipped. He is of course seven weeks old (and two days) now, and still 'very advanced'.

His switch flipped a couple of weeks ago, just before we went to France. He started to properly look at things. Not just stare blankly into space. He started to recognise his mum and dad and not just flick his head from side to side in search of food. It is very funny to look back at what we thought were smiles. They were just wind, we turn to each other and knowingly smile at our young parent naivety. I wonder if there is a conspiracy of silence amongst older parents to let the young ones have their imaginings and not burst their bubble.

Well if I thought that the things he did were cute, there is a whole world of cute having its six days of creation at the moment. He is smiling, laughing, grabbing for things, looking at his mobile, toys and visitors. He is very nearly properly interactive. Now we are not at the stage of teaching him the alphabet but we have high hopes for an early appearance on 'So you think you can dance' judging by his hyperactive arms and leg movements.

So the real sickeningly cute thing is the smiles for his mum and dad. I was not prepared for this. When he is not troubled by hunger, wind or a nappy and when he sees one of us, his face breaks out in a smile. And it is just us. We two are the two he is happy about - distinctly. Sure in his world - she is the one with the food and he is the one who takes away the waste but i will settle for that level of pigeon-holing if it means a smile like that!

But it's not all joy and glee. I want to recount a very disturbing development that goes along with improved brain function, drool. Lots of drool. The vomit I can handle. That's simple, wipe it up, wash the clothes and move on. The drool is more subtle. It creeps where the vomit assaults. Let me explain. It's the summer. At night I take the astonishing move of discarding the top half of my Dickensian style night attire. When the little man needs soothing in the darkness, up over the shoulder he goes. Rocking backward and forward is the best plan for getting him back to slumberland. Imagine then if you will the sensation of warm but cooling liquid dropping down your exposed back in the middle of the night. Horror stories begin in such a way. At first it feels like an insect is crawling - legs, creeping down. then it feels like an itch, so you scratch and your hand comes away moist. Cue the screaming girl and you have the full picture. I know I should hang a cloth over my shoulder, but lets face the reality of sleep deprivation, at 2:30 am I am incapable of any cleverness, nevermind motor function.

The baby sling

It's lovely to have the young fellow close to you. He likes it too, his preference for falling asleep is on someones chest or shoulder. He is a snuggler. That is wonderful. He is small, he is cute and most of the time he smells very nice so there is no problem. There has been a bit of difficulty at night getting him to settle in his basket. He does prefer the bed with us. We are working with this and he is spending most of his time in the basket. There are times though, like that random 6am feed and the impending 7am wake up that it is just better to get him to sleep quickly rather than face an hour pacing. He had his first dream feed last night where he stayed asleep through the whole process. Sure he is getting on for six weeks now.

The other manifestation of his snuggliness is his fondness for the sling. We have his and hers slings. Ciara has a sort of long indian sari thing with a DVD of instructions on how to tie it. If you don't have a DVD player a group of scouts come along and tie it for you, they each get a badge for their efforts. Mine is the BabyBjorn sort of rucksacky one. It's fantastic. The little guy sits into it and falls asleep. I carry him around and with both hands free can eat food, drink (a cold drink to avoid scalding) and do some typing like I am doing now. It is warm and comfy. It does have a bit of a drawback though.

My son is an independent soul, he likes to look around, he likes to wriggle, he likes to thrash wildly at a moments notice, lets put it bluntly. The collar of the sling accommodates this by being higher than Max's head. There are two straps at the side that enable the head area to be enlarged or made smaller. He still finds a bit of room to headbutt my chest. It's not that he hurts me, the space is small, he is asleep but it's the suddenness of it that is slightly shocking. I will be walking along minding my own business and bang, a blow to the chest, could be a heart attack or a mugging, or just my little man seeking attention. He doesn't even wake up. The first few times it happened I was desperately concerned, I opened the sling, check his head forensically and thought about MRI scans and x-rays. Now I just snigger (i understand that this is wrong). You are reading this thinking that Max headbutts me on a sort of hourly basis and will be a loon by the time he is two. Far from it. It happens very rarely and is all the more shocking for it.

The other thing about the sling is the lack of eye-contact. Max is now at the stage where he is looking straight at us and smiling and gurgling so it is nice to keep him at eye level. The difficulty with this is it makes looking at things really hard as infants are not known for their transparency. The benefits of having both hands free are out weighed by the lack of vision. Soon he will be able to hold his head up by himself and then he can turn around and face the outside world himself.

The other thing about the sling is the girls. Now let me be very clear. I am happily married, very happily, I am in no need of womanly attention. Nor would I act on any if I got it. It's still nice though, to be collaterally noticed for my son. Girls like babies. They flock, cooing, poking, sort of swooning. I do not like to be sexist, but men do not act in this way, nor do they seem to want to. It's not as if there are sub-groups of men in dark rooms cooing over babies in a clucky way away from the harsh glare of the manly men who's peer pressure keeps them from doing it in public.

Girls like babies and they flock around a man who has one. They especially find it cute if you are being independent and caring for the child yourself. Swinge benefits I guess.

So the next big thing is six weeks. This is a sort of Baby Mecca when all sorts of developmental changes are due to happen. Also a massive feeding frenzy growth spurt! Don't worry, I'll keep you posted!

Calling Social Services

Babies cry. I know this. I want to be clear that I know this. I also know that they do it for a variety of reasons and sometimes for no reason at all. Babies cry. I get it. There is a simple elimination process, food, nappy, wind. Once you have them out of the way the little fellow normally stops and all is well. But sometimes he just cries.

I suppose that because a great many of us have had children already this fact is know to many. In fact you could call it notorious. So why do I feel like I do? Why do I feel that when I am out minding him and he cries, at any moment someone is going to call Social Services. When Ciara is around it's not a problem. She can feed him (the number one solution) or she can smile that smile and let people know that, you know, babies cry. Me, I'm just an old man with a child in a buggy.

I have stolen the child and that's why he's crying. I have not fed him for weeks, I haven't changed his nappy and he is harbouring a lump of wind as big as a football. That's what runs through my head. The wails of my young child are so plaintive. They go directly through my brain and demand a physical response. When that response is as weak as picking Max up and rocking him and he still wails, I am convinced I am next in the family courts.

Everyone can hear him, there are seasoned parents turning to each other and exchanging knowing glances and whispers. They are commenting on my parenting skills or lack of them. They are taking out their phones and calling the authorities. They are explaining to their own daughters how important it is that they don't marry a man like that fellow. They are coming over and offering advice as a ruse to see the child and make sure he isn't physically harmed. They are....

Then he stops crying. My heart rate returns to normal, the sound of approaching sirens recedes and the man in the hi-vis jacket turns down another street. Panic over. Run back to Mum for a good feed and a nappy change.

An inordinate facination with baby poo

Don't let the title of this blog put you off. This is a serious discourse on one of my young child's three main occupations. I'm not really sure that anyone has truly explored the diversity of baby poo. It is quite extraordinary. It's like playing a game of Russian Roulette with a loaded canon.

Just to satisfy those who really want to know, Max is doing really well. He is gaining weight and height and his attentive grandparents and parents who are monitoring him on a second to second basis pronounce all well. I still think he is the best in the world and would kill to protect him and lay down my life to save him. Fine, mush out of the way, back to the fecal discourse.

I mentioned before, the various colours. These have settled down into a sort of muddy brown colour. Do you know when you were young and you were using water based paints and you had washed the brush after each paint colour. The shade of brown that the cleaning water went, that is the colour of Max's poo. I refer to it as poo, because that is the name that I think suits it best. Feces is fine but it sounds far to clinical for this comedy. Shit is very coarse and not at all appropriate when referring to a child. So poo it is. The child poos.

Now most of the nappies are soiled in a very light way. This is fine, a quick flip of a cotton ball or baby wipe and it is all forgotten. The lad still lacks continence and little else can be expected. Some days however you get a real doozie.

They are pure comedy. The system is so ridiculous as to be comic. What intelligent designer would arrange things this way is beyond me. These nappies smell, feel and look like the Marx brothers are in charge of waste disposal in the human design shop. Let me tell you more.

The other day, Max had a lightly dirty but very wet nappy. I changed him on a new easy clean mat on a bed. This meant that he created a little easy clean mat bowl. That was fine he was gurgling away happily. I turned around to get a new nappy and as I did heard a baby farting noise behind me. I smiled to myself because it is a well known fact that farts are very funny to men. The smile was very quickly wiped off my face as I turned to see my little boy paddling in a little pond of poo. Oh Dear God, his legs were brown, his thighs were brown, his whole lower body was brown. There was no cotton ball or baby wipe that could soak up this desperate deluge. We grabbed him and ran for the sink. As I ran little drops ran from his legs to the bed sheets, the floor and most horribly my feet.

The sink washed him clean. The easy clean mat turned out to be exactly that. It turns out that our son is also the easy clean version. The clothes, the bed sheets, the floor and my feet, were less easy. I look back and laugh at that image of the little hippo wallowing in his little brown pool.

The second and no less dramatic incident I would like to relate is that of the inflating nappy. One of the real challenges of childcare is knowing when to change a nappy. Sometimes it is very obvious, the lingering smell that would curl your nose hairs. That's fine. Sometimes the smell is merely a fart and that's another nappy wasted and another slice of the rain forest irrevocably ripped asunder. Some other times the little fellow's face goes bright red and his brow furrows just like an old man who has not had his bran intake for the week and is in need of a good dose of concentrated prune juice.

Other times it is very obvious. Like Tuesday... He had just fed, he was happy, he was cooing gently and he farted. My hand was under his nappy at the time and I felt it inflate, I felt the air find an outlet along his back and I felt it deflate. At least I thought it was air. The brown stain that spread along his back made a lie of this thought. I whipped off his baby-gro and vest and was greeted by a war zone of a dorsal area. His poo had exploded up his back and to his neck and behind his ears. Small flecks were found at the tips of his south-most hairs. I looked in horror, I looked in awe. I laid him down and stood up and clapped!

Thank all that is good, poo is like gold, it can be spread very thin without loosing its colour. As such it can be easily cleaned off. A bath that evening saw to the last of it and though the clothes will never be the same again, the young fellow will always have that achievement under, over and all around his belt!