Bodmacity

Okay, Jake has officially been toilet trained :-). To mark this momentous occasion Ames took him to Lewisham to buy some pants. He came back proudly holding a set of 7 Mr Men pants. He got very excited when he tried on his Mr Messy and Mr Happy pants. He kept looking down and saying “Wowee!!”.

Jake has taken to running round in circles shouting “Running!”. This is a game I also join in, in fact I am often summoned and end up running round the lounge. Climbing is another favourite hobby, followed by falling down which he finds hilarious.

Today I was cooking a nice Chile Con Carne. Jake wanted to see so he emptied his box of lego bricks, took it into the kitchen and then used it to climb up so he could watch from the higher vantage point. A bit of a worrying development if you ask me!.

We had Adam and Jo over yesterday. They are staying the night and going to the Boat Show tomorrow. Amy cooked an excellent Roast Beef Joint complete with veg. The potatoes alas were still cooking away by the time we sat down to eat. The meal was delicious regardless of th pots.

Jake was a pet lamb. I was singing the ‘Scouting for Girls’ song saying ‘She’s so lovely, she’s so lovely etc’ and Jake started to join in. He then started to sing ‘Daddy’s loverrlly’ which was just too damn cute for words :-).

Jake’s potty training is almost complete. This morning his nappy was completely dry. He looked up at me in his cot and said “wet”. What he meant was that if he didn’t get to the potty soon he would be wet! The next step is get him to keep his trouser ON when he sits down for his wee or poo.

Jake has been potty training for the last week. Amy has had him running around sans trousers in the lounge with the potty at hand. He has had a couple of accidents but that is to be expected. On the whole though Jake asks for the potty when he needs it. In fact last thing at night he uses it as a ruse to stay up a little longer :-).

Jake’s latest developments:

• Jumping
• saying ‘thank you’ without prompting
• saying I ‘fallded’ down
• saying ‘hello mate’
• saying ‘that’s nice’
• saying ‘mok’ which means ‘milk’

His latest thing is running around in a circle with Mummy or Daddy chasing. He loves this! Came a cropper at Hilly Fields when he tumbled while running and suffered a nasty graze and bruise on his head.

Oh dear. I unplugged the router before going to bed in order to save electricity and when I plugged it back in I used the wrong power supply. The resulting smoke and smell of charred circuit board led me to believe that the router was destroyed. I went into PC World to find a replacement and chanced upon a Belkin N Router in the sale for £60.

The setup was quite easy. The only real difference between the old Dlink and the new Belkin was that the routers IP address was slightly different. It was easy to change it to the old one and so preserve my bookmarks.

I am very happy with the MIMO functionality. I haven’t had any dropped connections while working from home and haven’t yet had to reboot the other. The Dlink suffered from both dropped connections and occasional lock ups.

It’s back to work tomorrow and I’m feeling a little depressed about the prospect. Jake has been an absolute angel. Yesterday we woke him at midnight to go to Hilly Fields to look at the fireworks over London. He was a little bleary eyed but quite content. He was very excited to see the fireworks when they started to go off.

Recent activities:
Jake comes into a room and says “Hello There!” or “Hello Mate!”
He laughs when the word eyeball is mentioned
He says sit down now Daddy! and pats the floor
He can count up to ten(sometimes)
He kisses things better when they are dropped
He says ahhh when he has a hug
He says sorry when he bumps into you or when he pushes you out of the way

He has just thrown everything off the sofa and then said “Naughty” with a little laugh.
I just heard him walk into the Kitchen and say to Amy “Hello there!”

Yesterday and today he managed to do a poo and a wee in his potty. In fact today we just left him to it. He came into our room and said “wee wee”. I thought he had done a wee on the floor but no he had pooed in his potty. What was amazing was that he didn’t touch the poo after doing it.

Amy has taught Jake to count to ten! Sometimes he gets too excited and just says “one, two… TEN!!”

Jake woke early this morning. Amy thinks I habitually set the alarm clock too early and this wakes him, but I’m not sure. I had a shave and then went into his room to see him. We had some good cuddles and he read his “Words” book while the nappy was changed.

We then went downstairs or “STAIRS!” as Jakes like to say. The usual routine is to make a cup of coffee. Jake likes this because he gets to take the pod out, get a mug, place said pod in the machine and then, best off all, to press the “but”. After the coffee is made and Jake’s milk is heated we tend to go and watch some Cbeebies. This morning it was a Christmas edition of Teletubbies. Jake loves the sun-baby and always chuckles when he sees him. This is a nice time when he can just cuddle up together before the days play begins.

This particular morning Jake did a wee before having his milk which then leaked through the wrap and onto my top. We went upstairs to change the nappy. Jake spied his dressing gown hanging on the elephant rack and wanted to put it on. “Warm!” he exclaimed. Then I had to put my “gown” on even though I was dressed. “Daddy gown warm” Jake kept saying. Of course in the end I relented :-).

It was very frosty as I stepped out the door to go to work. I could see Jake sitting in the big seat watching beebies. I tapped on the window and he waved before returning him gaze back to the Tweenies…Really!!

We went to Bluewater on Saturday to buy our Christmas presents. We arrived at 10am and there were lots of parking spaces. Inside it was pleasantly uncrowded. Jake was clutching his taggie and sucking furiously on his radish, having not had his usual morning nap. He loved the decorations. When he saw the big Christmas baubles and stars he said “wow!”.

There was a Christmas market outside so we ventured into the bitter cold for some mulled wine. As we were sipping, a couple of reindeers walked by. I rubbed my eyes and though “my, this wine must be strong”. Looking again it was true there were two real life reindeers walking about. Jake had a cuddle with one and stroked his neck. They then started to get a little friskly and we didn’t want to get Jake too close to those sharp antlers.

We went into “The Christmas Shop” and bought some new decorations for the tree. Jake chose a sparkly green elephant while Amy went for the more traditional bauble stylee. Mid-afternoon and still the crowds hadn’t arrived. It was busy but nothing out of the ordinary. Later we bought our tree from the hardware shop in Ladywell. By the end of the day the tree was dressed and ALL the presents were wrapped :-).

Yesterday we went to a party at a friends house. Jake was in an awful mood, having not had his nap(my fault this time!). He was better when we arrived because he could explore and play with the other children. He had fun climbing on and off an empty chair, but when the chair was taken by an adult he exclaimed “get down now!”. Quite “dorty” but cute nonetheless.

This morning Jake was studying the tree and trying hard not to pull off the decorations. I asked him which one he chose and he pointed to the green elephant. While doing this he reenacted when he chose it by saying “dis one!” and then said “I chose it”! What a poppet.

This weekend was Jake’s first full weekend away. Both Amy and myself were feeling a little sad and were missing our little boy. He had a lovely time at his Granny’s though. He went to see Santa(who he didn’t like), played with a new chum(who he liked very much) and charged around to his hearts content.

We were shocked when we picked him up on Sunday because in the short time he has been away his speech has come on leaps and bounds. We were are sitting around the table at A. Ro’s for Erin’s birthday party. Jake stood up and sang “Happy birthday to you”. We were amazed!! He has also absorbed all the animal names on his cards. I talked to him on the phone this morning and he said “Narwhal” to me. My god, there must be something in the sea air in Worthing :-).

He has also taken to gesturing with his hand when he says something which he was not doing on Friday.

The title refers to Jake’s latest favourite phrase. It’s very cute. Jake has overcome his long-running cold albeit with the aid of some antibiotics. We found out that he was allergic to Amoxycillin after coming out in Hives all over his face and body :-(.

The Doctor gave him a substitute(name I cannot remember) that has done a grand job. Now he is as right as rain.

In the cuteness stakes Jake has been VERY cute recently. One day while we were out shopping I gave Jake my debit card. He turned it over, saw the signature, pointed to it and said “pikar!”. Very cute indeed.