Bug = 3 years 1 month
Bub = 1 year 3 months 10 days What was Linus up to at this age?
Bud = 12 weeks gestation

Going to Sleep

When Ada was about 11 months old, we decided to stop putting her in her cot asleep and let her do some crying. I’m not a big fan of cry-it-out or even controlled crying techniques (especially when applied to babies in their first six months of life), but it felt like the right time for all of us to get Ada to go to sleep with a little less effort on our parts, particularly with me going back to work and Nana taking over the childcare 2 days a week.

We never left her more than 10 minutes, and using the monitor could always tell if she sounded “really” upset or not. It didn’t take long for her to work out that her cot wasn’t actually so bad, and that in the end she wanted to go to sleep.

Ada is now simply brilliant at going to sleep. Daddy, Nana and I rarely have any trouble putting her down, and she’s usually put down awake (with her two soft toys, Mandy and Foxy). I tend to feed her first for routine and enjoyment: she can quite easily go without if she needs to, but why would I deny myself the lie-down and the cuddle?!

If she does cry, she usually settles herself, and on the rare occasion that she doesn’t after 10 minutes or so, it usually turns out she’s dirtied her nappy.

Waking Up

Ada’s waking up times are strongly affected by her brother: specifically, what time he comes into our room in the morning and how much noise he makes (i.e. how much he grizzles). I think she could easily sleep until 7:30am or 8:00am if undisturbed, but it’s more often than not before 7:00am that she ends up waking for the day.

Naps

Ada has just started leaning towards having one good (1 1/2 to 2 hour) nap a day at around lunchtime. However there are still days when she’s obviously tired earlier in the morning and so has to have a couple of naps. This makes things a bit unpredictable at the moment, but she’s fairly flexible and doesn’t get too grumpy in the evenings (as long as we give her a 5:00pm snack to help her through her food rage until tea time).

Night Sleep

Ada has always spent a fair chunk (if not all) of each night in bed with us, and we’ve enjoyed it. So imagine our surprise and mixture of pleasure and disappointment a couple of months ago when we realised that she preferred sleeping in her cot rather than staying in our bed after middle-of-the-night feeds.

We now have our bed to ourselves a lot more, which is nice. But we also don’t get the pleasure of cuddling our girl all night, or waking up next to her in the morning. We also no longer have the “tool” of bringing her into bed as a last resort when she’s upset… she’s not soothed by it and it seems to kind of annoy her

The altogether positive change over the past few weeks is that Ada is very rarely waking at nights. She often stirs with a grizzle and resettles herself; often if we hear her stir one or both of us will start “Shhhhh”ing and she’ll resettle; and if she’s still not settling one of us (OK, usually Bob!) will get up and put a hand on her and whisper sweet, soothing nothings at her until she goes back to sleep. It’s pretty rare that we have to pick her up in the middle of the night, and rarer still for me to have to feed her.

Bug = 3 years 1 month
Bub = 1 year 3 months 4 days What was Linus up to at this age?
Bud = 11 weeks 1 day gestation

I realise that I’ve posted very little about my pregnancy since I announced it a month ago, so here are some answers to questions you didn’t ask.

Due Date

10 October 2009

When We Found Out

On 28th January I’d been having faint nausea on and off for a few days. One evening I was washing dishes and wondering idly if the nausea was pregnancy nausea – which it sure felt like! – so I decided to take a pregnancy test to put an end to the wondering (even though a false negative was quite likely since it was only 25 days since my LMP). Obviously the result was positive.

With the result being so (ridiculously!) early, we decided not to tell people until late February (to coincide with Granny’s birthday, plus a wedding and hen’s night I’d be attending). The exception we made was Nana – she’s staying with us three nights a week to look after the kids, and it was too tough for Bob and me not to be able to talk about it in front of her.

How I’m Feeling

For the week and a half after I found out I was pregnant, I was absolutely wiped out… I slept a LOT, and wasn’t up to doing much at all. Since then, however, I haven’t felt unusually tired at all. Which is quite a blessing when you have a job and two children!

I’ve had constant but very mild nausea the whole time so far, which I’m hoping might disappear for the second trimester (before the horrible heartburn of the third trimester).

I’ve also had something I didn’t notice during my last two pregnancies – three or four periods of extreme teariness. They felt completely hormonal - they occurred when I wasn’t at all unhappy or particularly tired, but I’d just start crying at the drop of a hat.

Boy or Girl?

With Linus, we found chose not to find out whether we were having a boy or girl. With Ada, we decided to find out, mainly because Bob was keen to. This time, we’ve decided we’re not going to find out. I really like surprises!

People keep saying “Well I guess you’ve got all the boy-things and girl-things already, so it doesn’t really matter”, but that’s never been of the slightest concern for me (obviously, since I didn’t find out Linus’s sex).

We’ll follow the convention we did with Linus and with Ada (before we knew her sex): that is, Bud will be “he” on odd days and “she” on even days. (The alternatives are the impersonal “it” or the awkward “he or she”.)

Names

We’re not telling anyone anything until Bud is born. (Last time we were able to mention it occasionally to Linus because he wasn’t reliably talking or remembering things, but we won’t get away with that this time.)

Considerations

The main things we have to consider over the next six months are:

• Vehicle: it looks like a people-mover and big debt might be on the cards
• Bedrooms: Ada will have to leave our room and the cot, so we’ll set her and Linus up sharing a room.

Bug = 3 YEARS!!
Bub = 1 year 2 months 26 days What was Linus up to at this age?
Bud = 10 weeks 2 days gestation

Speaking

Ada’s talking is progressing well. Since a month ago when I last mentioned her skills in this area (i.e. making animal noises), she has developed some real words:

• Teddy
• Ball
• Duck (although I think she still thinks this is the noise a duck makes, not the name of the animal, but close enough!)
• Up.

And – as she’s doing right this second – “Boo!” (or rather “Bah”) when surprising us from around a doorway.

Her repertoire of animal noises is also increasing. She now knows:

• Lion (although she only gets half a point for this since it’s actually the same noise – ROAR! – that a tiger makes)
• Cow
• Pig (sort of – she’s working on it).

Understanding

It’s constantly surprising how much Ada understands. The other night I let Ada out of her high chair and took her bib off her. Then on a whim I handed the bib to her and told her – without gesturing or pointing at all – to “Take this and put it in the hamper” (like Linus does after every meal). And I was astonished and delighted when she did just that!

Bug = 3 YEARS!!
Bub = 1 year 2 months 24 days What was Linus up to at this age?
Bud = 10 weeks gestation

Poor Linus suffered a trauma this week.

Fresh Air

We’d spent the entire day indoors, and at 4:30pm I decided to kit the kids out in woollies, jackets, and gumboots and face the wind and rain for half an hour of fresh air. We went down to the Nairn St playground, chosen because we’d never been there before and because it’s relatively sheltered.

I let Linus out of the car, then got Ada and carried her around to the footpath. I put her down, then realised one of her gumboots had fallen off and she now had one wet foot. I picked her up and asked Linus to get the dropped boot, which he very obligingly did (he’s quite the little helper these days!).

Tragedy Strikes

With the Ada-juggling, I hadn’t yet got around to shutting the car door, and at that moment a gust of wind whipped two balloons out of the car and they swiftly flew away across the playing field. Linus freaked out! He ran – still carrying Ada’s gumboot – across the playing field in a pointless effort to rescue his precious balloons, ignoring all my cries for him to stop and come back.

I quickly put Ada into Linus’s carseat with one strap buckled up, then ran after Linus. Three quarters of the way across the field he finally stopped and let me catch up to him. He was in tears over his loss, so I combined comforting him with telling him off for running away.

But that wasn’t the end of it. We got Ada out of the car and wandered around the soggy park for about 20 minutes. For the entire time, Linus was teary, clingy, and panicky. (He kept telling me “Get Ada!” whenever she wandered more than 10 feet away from me!)

He also said that he was sleepy and wanted to go to bed, which is unprecedented from him!

When we got home, he was over the teariness, but was still sad and needed lots of comfort and cuddles.

PTSD

The reason I call this event a “trauma” is that quite a few times since the incident, Linus has been panicky when wind has gusted around the car. He anxiously begs me not let something (his teddy on one occasion, a carton of milk on another) blow away. I’m trying to convince him that it’s “just balloons” that blow away in the wind.

Bug = 3 YEARS!!
Bub = 1 year 2 months 18 days What was Linus up to at this age?
Bud = 9 weeks 1 day gestation

Linus has been attending swimming lessons at Moana Pool for the last three weeks.  I’ve been leaving work at about 4pm, picking him up from home and taking him down to the pool.

Week One

On the first week I arrived home to Linus asleep in the car.  Linda had been out to Mosgiel earlier in the day and Linus had fallen asleep on the way home.  We had already pumped him up about being a “tiny turtle” for the previous week and so I hoped that him waking up, combined with the excitement wouldn’t push him over the edge into tantrumsville.  He woke on the way down the hill and when I carefully explained what we were doing he seemed to gain enthusiasm at a greater rate than tantrumium (the chemical element from which all tantrums stem).

As we pulled into the carpark and I got Linus out of the car, I said to him “Yay, we’re here!” to which he replied – and I quote – “Oh! I can’t believe it!”.  Great wedges of cheese proceeded to fall from the sky.  On arrival at the pool reception we had to purchase a swimming cap and some goggles.  This proved to be too much for my little turtle, and with time running out we left the swim shop for poolside to quickly get changed.

In jumped my turtle, and so did I – just to get him a little more comfortable with being in the water with someone who wasn’t his mum, dad or nana.  This went OK and I was a little shocked as the other two kids in the class proceeded to plunge under the water and resurface with big grins on their faces.  Had there been a mistake?  Linus can’t put his head under yet – maybe they’d put him in the wrong class.

Anyway, the lesson proceeded with Kate the instructor getting the kids to float on their backs – Linus awkwardly lay back with my hands supporting him, but strained to sit up so he looked more like a sinking Chinese Dragon Boat than a child learning to float.  The final exercise involved the kids diving down to fetch a plastic stick.  There was no way Linus was going to do that, but when he saw the plastic stick was a plastic squid he was real keen – but couldn’t reach down to get it.  The squid is spoken of to this day – he liked that.

Week Two

Swimming cap & goggles

Week two was pretty much the same as the first week, except we had time and presence of mind to go into the swim shop and get a swimming cap and goggles.  Linus seemed pretty happy to wear them which was great.  Again, I was in the water with him but it was more like the class proceeded and I happened to be there with Linus.  The instructor – Brittney this time – told Linus at the end of the lesson that “You did really great, but guess what – next week Dad isn’t getting into the water with you”.  It hit me like a magic eye picture – of course, what the hell was I doing in the water – I shouldn’t be there as an easy escape from learning.  I thanked Brittney for this revelation and looked forward to next week.

Week Three

A few days before the lesson we had a call to say that the instructor for the Tiny Turtles class had been finalised and that Michelle would be taking the class.  After chopping and changing instructors a bit it appeared there might be some regularity which would help Linus to look forward to the lesson.  We (me, Linus & Ada) arrived at the pool about 20 minutes before he was due to swim and had a good old thrash around in the kids pool with Nana.  Linus reluctantly tried his goggles and cap under the water spouts and was pleased to see that the water didn’t get in his eyes.  When the time came, I popped him into the learners pool with cap and goggles on and sat on the sidelines with the other two dads whose aquatic prodigies it seemed were boring them.  I watched tentatively as Linus hung onto Michelle for dear life at first, and then relaxed a little.  Still reluctant to perform the set tasks, but getting pretty good at blowing bubbles (a helper task that they get the kids to do).

Michelle shot me the occasional glance and appeared to be seeking something – approval? moral support? a confession? but I had nothing to give back, so I just shrugged, smiled and she continued.

Week Four

Arriving at the pool early seems to work well – Nana and Ada go off and do their thing and Linus and I go to the swimming lesson.  He is getting more confident in the water and spent a lot of the time standing up in the neck deep water and sometimes away from, or behind Michelle.  This makes me feel horribly insecure, and at one point when my line of sight was blocked I stood up in a slight panic to see how he was.  Oblivious and happy.  Really he couldn’t be in safer water – a swimming pool with a life guard watching over the whole pool, full of instructors – one of which is only one swimming stroke away, yet the amount of experience he has had with surprises in the water (i.e. only a few) makes me think that if he did lose his balance, or the water went over his mouth for some reason, then he’d likely panic and thrash about wildly, gulping mouthfuls of chlorinated water.

HOWEVER, nothing bad happened, and he even scored an “awesome effort” ribbon, which he was pretty chuffed to get.  The next swimming lesson is tomorrow, so we’ll see how it goes.