Bye bye penis

Is it normal for a child to say 'bye bye' to his penis every time you put a nappy on him?

Child development - no so much terrible two as meddling moaners

I only managed a couple of episodes of The Wire, but this quote sums up the phase Boo is going through at the moment. 'There you go. Givin' a fuck when it ain't your turn to give a fuck.' Falling into this category are: his insistence that I must not wear socks, his demands that Ben replace the lightbulb with one which we know to have blown and his belief that he should be allowed to dictate the bedtimes of everyone in the house.
His interest in his own jobs - eating, allowing us to attend to his personal care and sleeping - is minimal. He needs constant reminders to chew when his mouth is full of food, so wrapped up can he be in sticking his nose into things that are simply none of his concern. He can be endlessly fascinated by a sequin on the other side of the room, whilst simultaneously being incapable of maintaining focus on a mouthful of water for long enough to swallow it without incident. Fortunately, he's cute which is all that's stopping us from incarcerating him.

Unclean (not for the faint-hearted or weak of stomach)

After nearly nine months of genetically indefensible good luck, the small one has been ill.  It started as conjunctivitis a month ago, was found to be a viral ear infection which mutated into an upper respiratory tract infection but the last week it has become something more disturbing.  By which I mean not that it is any more serious in medical terms, just that the infection is now manifesting itself in the form of extreme clinginess (which is in itself quite sweet given that he has only just begun to acknowledge us as his favourite or at least most recognisable people) and a cough which is occasionally so violent it causes him to vomit copiously and with surprising force.

Having volunteered to bring the wailing boy downstairs to allow the Boy Wonder to enjoy the first shift of sleep, I am now typing this one-handed, at a glacially slow pace from my late-night post on the sofa which is festooned with towels, sheets, muslins and tea-towels in a desperate attempt to protect our soft furnishings from the liberal covering of Calpol streaked sick to which they would otherwise be subjected.  Our kitchen is awash (not too tired for puns - never too tired for puns) with laundry.  A small baby is capable of producing enough vomit in one sitting to necessitate changing the clothes of two adults, one child and a king sized bed, so there have been days when I have done more loads of laundry than I've had hours of sleep. However, the worst thing about it is that our usually cheerful and contented progeny has been transformed into a wailing, wilting little bundle of tiredness and dismay and that's making the tiredness feel even more desperate.

(As it turned out, this was the beginning of a long and frustrating process whereby the small one was ill, developed anaemia and had to be referred to the hospital, developed lactose intolerance and generally didn't do much in the way of sleeping for months on end. Fortunately, it was all over eventually and he is now the slightly over-zealous picture of rude health!)

Moving House

We are, theoretically at least, in the process of moving. In reality this means that we have half packed our stuff into boxes and then had to ring a solicitor at least once a day only to be told that we might get to move some 8 weeks after the original date we were given.
However, I am still excited about the move. Not only is the new house much bigger, so hopefully all our stuff will actually fit in it, unlike our current house. But one of the more secret reasons for my excitement is the fact that going to the loo should be a lot less stressful in the new house.
Our current house has one toilet, which is in the bathroom. This means that if one of us wants to use said toilet, have a bath or shower or rearrange our towel collection, then everybody else (really only the Boy Wonder and I as the small boy still just poos wherever he is and expects us to clean it up) has to wait until they are done before they can use the facilities. This means that occasionally a cry goes up the stairs beseeching the incumbent to hurry along, and when we have people to stay there can be up to five adults, usually hung over, all politely vying for time in the smallest room.
In our  new house, however, we have a grand total of three toilets. I cannot wait for this. The pressure of maintaining adequate toilet roll stock in 200% more toilets will be more than made up for by the fact that we will not only enjoy the convenience of a downstairs loo (which will hopefully be worth its weight in gold when toilet training begins) but also a en-suite loo as well as one in the main bathroom. Let joy be unconfined, we will all be able to wee at once someday, and if that's not living the dream then I don't know what is.

Things I've become good at since becoming a parent

1. Judging quantities of liquid - there's nothing like having to measure out 200ml of water for the steriliser to hone your powers of estimating how much liquid is in any given container. 

 2. Estimating microwave cooking times for small quantities of food - if you've ever picked irredeemably shrivelled vegetables out of a pot, you will know that it really doesn't take that long to cook two carrot batons and a solitary piece of parsnip on full power. 

3. Knowing the sodium content of non-salty foodstuffs such as pasta - as you begin weaning, you are frequently told that allowing your child to eat too much sodium is worse than not feeding them at all, so you become obsessed with how much sodium is in almost everything you eat. Shortly after this, you realise that the process of weaning is really an extended period of making food which your child waves around in the air briefly, smears into their hair and then throws on the floor and you could probably give them salt sticks without needing to worry (although sod's law would dictate that a salt stick would be the only food that they would finish first time). 

4. Expanding the list of times/places/circumstances in which I think it appropriate to sleep - when micro boy was first born, every time he fell asleep the Boy Wonder and I were simultaneously terrified that he would wake up and terrified that he would fail to wake up. Thus, when he was asleep, we found ways to sleep around him so that we would be on hand to prevent anything untoward occurring to him whilst asleep, or to us through sleep deprivation. 

 As time went on and we were persuaded that he could probably be poured into his own bed most of the time, and our bed when absolutely necessary, it became less important that we adapted our sleeping pattern to suit his, but nonetheless there have been occasions when I have slept in ways that I could never have predicted. 

These include: in the front seat of my car in the car park of a garden centre; in an MRI machine while I was supposed to be doing special types of breathing; during root canal work; during a heart procedure for which I was specifically told to stay awake(!);  . The overriding inspiration for all of these is twofold: any sleep is better than no sleep and the average level of sleep enjoyed by the two adults in the house can never rise above the level of 'slightly less relaxed than that of the baby'. 

5. Time management - it used to be the case that the Boy Wonder and I could be late for an event at 8pm having done nothing all day other than loll around in our pyjamas, eat breakfast at around 3pm and relax. Now, however, we can be just as late for an 8pm even having been up since 7am, taken micro Boy out for breakfast, visited relatives for lunch, had naps all round, completed up to five showers between the three of us and packed a nappy bag with everything that we could possibly need whilst out with a small baby. 

6. Doing things with one hand - being trapped under a sleeping child with my right hand in a supporting position has led my left-handed typing skills to improve immensely, and today I managed to manoeuvre a trolley around Tesco one-handed whilst trying to placate an inexplicably sad baby (unless it was just a normal response to finding oneself in Tesco of a Thursday afternoon). Cooking, washing, pouring drinks, sterilising and dressing have all proved possible one handed - the only thing I consistently cannot do unless I have both hands free is tie my hair back, but I'm working on it. 

7. Identifying a floorboard which is likely to creak - there is nothing like trying to sneak out of a room where a baby is sleeping to concentrate the mind on remembering which of the floorboards on the way out of the bedroom will make the most surprisingly loud noise as you try to beat a silent retreat.

Dancing in this hole

We took the Blob to the dentist this week. He is pretty good about cleaning his teeth and seems to have grown all the necessary stuff in his mouth, but we wanted to get into good habits with him so I booked him an appointment just to get the ball rolling.

We did a lot of preparatory talk about how fun dentists were and how the dentist really wanted to count his teeth, so we would just pop in so he could have a quick look (although the Blob insisted that he had 'eight or nine' teeth, he was happy to have someone else confirm this).

Armed with a bag full of distractions, we settled into the waiting room where the Blob proceeded to be adorable all over the place, reading books, doing as he was told and grinning widely at the receptionists.

Then he wanted to explore, so we let him roam a little, as there was nobody else in the room at the time, and he found his way into the very small hallway that separated the main door from the interior one.

I could hear a bit of shuffling going on, so I asked him what he was doing. He poked his head around the door and said 'Just dancing in this hole!' with such a look of glee on his face that I couldn't help but laugh indulgently.

Then his name was called, he stopped dancing and followed us meekly to the room with the actual dentists in it. At which point, he realised that this was a medical-ish setting and began to freak out in a way that only a toddler can. I managed to contain him on my lap, and although my best attempts at distracting him with the kindle were powerless in the face of his fear/fury, he did nonetheless, accidentally shout in such a way that allowed the dentist to have a quick look around his mouth and confirm that he had, in fact, got twenty teeth.

The assistant gave him a sticker, I gave him a cuddle, and we all trooped out again with the words 'see you in a year's time' floating out behind us. By the time we got home the Blob was thrilled at his dentist trip and had acquired four new sticks to 'bangininin onananana big green drum' within our garden (it's not a drum - it's a table). Everyone's a winner - roll on next year.

Things that only happen on TV

People don't know who's calling their mobiles

Nobody says goodbye when they've been on the phone

People never finish a drink or meal
Falling over whilst putting on trousers
Ordering 'a pint' and not being asked 'of what?'
Sniffing the clothes of a person you miss
Hugging someone whilst looking traumatised over their shoulder
Hearing something dramatic over a baby monitor