Bodmacity

Mia can now sit up from a crawling position. I seem to remember that with Jake this took a lot longer. It somes like yesterday that Mia started to crawl. Well done Mia!

While I was working from home Amy brought Mia up looking very worried. She asked me to look into her mouth. What I saw filled me with horror. I saw that the roof of her mouth was blue/black with what seemed to be white pustules on the gums.

Mia herself was absolutely fine but we as you can imagine her rather worried. We made a hasty appointment at the Doctors and whisked her round there. We were seen very quickly(well done Hilly Fields clinic). The Doctor had a trainee with him. She took a look and said she had never seen anything like it and looked shocked. The Doctor took a look and said that it looked more blue than black. He proceeded to tweeze out a large piece of soggy paper that Mia had been chewing on and had got plastered to the roof of her mouth. The white ‘pustules’ turned out to be the torn edges of the blue paper.

We felt like utter berks!

At exactly nine months old baby Mia has cut her first tooth. A fine looking tooth it is too! At first when Amy told me I couldn’t see it but after careful inspection I saw an almost transparent line almost at gum level.

This explains her watery, acid smelling, toxic poos that she has been producing over the last few days. Also it explains her bad mood :-).

Mia continues to crawl and has started to explore the house. This means I must get cracking with the stair gate(s) a.s.a.p. She also responds to our names now. If I say “Mia, where’s Daddy”, after a little prompting she will look over at me and say “Dadda!”.

Jake is on half-term this week and next. There are lot’s of play dates arranged. Sam, Conrad and Isabella, Gabriel and Laurie, Martha, Antonia. So he should have plenty to do.

Jake is now learning to write two actual words, ‘and’ and ‘the’. The words he knows so far are ‘it,is,stop,come,we,lost,home,where,here,digger,help,here,the,and’.

Quite a lot really. He has been doing really well!

I knocked off early to be able to make the 4.30pm slot at the school. Amy had been to meet Sheena in sunny West Hampstead so that they could have a chat and baby M could get a chance to play with Xanthe.

When I arrived at Catford, Amy was to be found in Little Brazil(her second home it seems!). I had lovely cuddles with Mia while we waited. We walked up to the school together and while waiting in the activity room we looked through Jake’s course work so far. The progression is amazing. He is writing letters and words, making pictures and generally doing really well.

Our talk with Mrs Hughes went very well. Jake loves it at school and likes to learn new things. He is doing well with his letters but we must also help practice writing his numbers. It is this area that he is doing amazingly well. Mrs Hughes told us that when she was showing the class the number seven he put up his hand and said “I know two ways of making a seven, four and three or five and two!”. Mrs Hughes told us this was incredible for a child his age. We were so proud. Our son a little maths genius :-).

Last week was the Harvest Festival performance. It was in the great hall at the back. The chairs were laid out in a large circle with nursery, reception and Year 1 and 2 children performing in the middle.

It kicked off with the children coming in with their gifts which they placed in wicker baskets set around the hall. Jake looked very proud as he came in holding hands with one of the older children.

They sang and danced really well. I thought the Irish Jig was amazing. They held hands in a circle and danced first clockwise and then anti-clockwise. then the girls danced together into the middle and then clapped there hands together as one. Then it was the boys turn. They marched into the middle, clapped hands and march back again. All in perfect timing!

The last song was called ‘The Harvest Song’ which was lovely. Jake admitted afterwards that he didn’t know all the words and so did a little bit of ‘miming’ ;-). I am in the process of putting together a video of the event. This involved me getting to grips with Adobe Premier Pro which, to be honest, is quite complicated.

In fact this project has spurred me on to transferring all my tapes onto a hard drive with a view to editing each one down to a consumable length. I have worked out that I need a 1 TB drive to hold all the tapes in their unedited form. It would be great to actually enjoy the vast amounts of footage I have taken instead of it mouldering in my video bag.

Mia has started to say different sounds. She now says ‘ba’ and ‘ga’. Also she looks at Amy and says ‘mama’ and looks at me and says ‘dada’! This is VERY cute.

Her purposeful crawling is still in development. Now she can traverse, albeit slowly, the length of the lounge. She has spotted the router next to the sofa and keeps making a bee-line for it :-).

We dropped Jake off at school together this morning. As usual he went on my shoulders. That is until he got to the school gates when he wanted to get down. Antonia was already there and looking a little forlorn so we ushered Jake over. After we left we peeped round the corner and saw them laughing and playing together.

The teacher on playground duty told us that Jake was very good at his reading and writing and plays really well with the other children. She said the class this year was great because they have such amazing(crazy)imaginations.

After dropping Jake off we went to Little Brazil for a coffee with the other parents. I felt a little strange being the only Daddy there but was soon made to feel welcome. Before they arrived I gave Mia her milk. Afterwards she must have got some phlegm in her throat because she had a coughing ‘episode’. This resulted in her whole feed being vomited over me and the cafe floor :-(. It was a ‘Mr Creosote’ moment!

Mia was awake several times last night. Her head cold has moved to her chest so now she has a nasty cough. One to match Jake’s! Last night she kept waking every hour-ish. I gave her the rest of her milk, she slept. She woke, I gave her some calpol, she slept. She woke, I gave her another 5oz of milk. She slept and yes after half an hour she woke again.

I went into her room and tried to calm her by putting my hand gently on her back. This worked for a few minutes then she lifted her head, looked round and said ‘dada!’ with a big smile. I picked her up(who wouldn’t?) and we went downstairs. It was around 12.30am. We played for a bit then she settled down on the sofa. She lay her head on my chest and was soon asleep. It was lovely cuddling up like that although I could have done without the snoring! I was just contemplating taking her upstairs when she woke up.

I put her down again and this time thankfully she slept until 6.30am. Amy got up while I tried to recoup my lost sleep.

Jake got the ‘star of the week’ sticker today for making a lovely picture of a robot :-). This evening I read his latest story ‘In The Garden’ with the new words ‘no’ and ‘not’.

Mia ha started crawling. I looked on amazed as she slowly made her way across the landing. Time to put up the stair gates then!

Jake has started to learn words! For the last couple of weeks he has come home from school with letters to learn. So far he has learnt i,t,a and s. His homework has been to practice writing the letters, which he has done very well!

Last week he came home with a book to read. In the book were just three words, ‘look’, ‘in’ and ‘here’.
Jake immediately recognised ‘look’ and ‘in’ but struggled with ‘here’. The teacher said at the parents evening that within a matter of weeks the children will begin to write simple words. To aid the writing Jake has been practising holding his knife and fork correctly. Apparently this helps a great deal when writing because the cutlery is held in a similar manner to a pencil.

Young Mia has also been progressing. She has started to crawl forwards a little bit. She also has started to wave with her hand when she sees someone else doing it. She is still scrunching up her face and blowing through her nose. In fact if Amy or I do it she tends to follow and copy us :-). Thankfully she is now back to her normal self and is feeding and sleeping well.

We had a terrible night last night. Mia woke at 1am. When I went in she was burning up and not a happy bunny. After a feed she went back to sleep, but only for an hour! This time she did not go back to sleep. After trying unsuccessfully to put her down, I took her downstairs for a ‘play’. Before this I dosed her up with good old Calpol.

This seemed to work as she was much happier. I put her on the floor of the lounge with the nursing pillow surrounding her. I got out three toys and when she got bored of those replaced them with another three. She loves her Elmer ball and takes great delight in alternatively trying to eat it and batting it away from her. This ‘three toy’ technique worked well. Between this and an old episode of Total Wipeout one and a half hours was gone. I thought that by now she must be tired and ready for bed.

I took her upstairs but again she was unsettled. This time I placed my hand on her back while she grizzled. It took about 10 minutes but in the end she drifted off. By this time I, of course, was absolutely shattered. I was due to be up at 5.15am in order to cycle into work. Needless to say this didn’t happen and I spent the day working from home.

While I’m here let’s see what she has been doing. Well, she now says ‘nannannannnanna’, especially when she gets cross! She still says ‘dada’ and ‘hed’. Her crawling practice is coming along. She kind-of pushes herself forwards by manically rocking and kicking her legs out. This takes a lot of energy and she gets puffed out in a short space of time at which time she bellows ‘nannn!!’ or ‘niiiin!’. She has been doing a lot of face pulling. Things like sucking in the lips or my favourite, screwing up her face and blowing repeatedly through her nose.

Oh dear. I made a boo boo today. I was feeling very pleased with myself. Single-handledly(well almost) I had fed and clothed Jake and got all his school things together, ready to leave the house at 8am on the dot. Amy came too because we were to have a nice coffee at Luke’s mums Brazilian coffee shop in Catford.

The journey there was uneventful and we found a nice parking spot just off Faversham Road near the school.
Jake jumped out of the car. Amy looked down at him and exclaimed “Why is Jake in those shoes!!” Inadvertently I had put Jake’s casual trainers on instead of his regulation black school shoes. Jake looked down and repeated what Amy has said. I was lost for words. At this point Jake did not want to go to school without his proper shoes and was starting to get upset. I was feeling wretched at making my son feel self-conscious. Amy persuaded him to go into school while I went back for the shoes.

It was a speedy journey there and back. But I regained my status by walking into the school playground with shoes AND water bottle(that had been left in the car) just as the school bell rang! Hooray! Daddy points regained!