She’s up, she’s standing, no where is safe.

According to my mother I was standing at 7 months. I skipped crawling and went straight to walking, though I did have to use things to hold myself up but still why crawl when you can walk? We wondered if the little one would take after us and after months of her wanting to grow up before her time, we decided that it was a sure thing that she will be walking quite quickly. Having experienced how well she can climb using our bodies as her very own climbing wall and finding out how strong her grip really is (her throat attack is something that Navy Seals would envy) we knew it wasn’t long before she was exploring the world around her.

It took her awhile to perfect the crawl, instead opting for the more hip hop caterpillar move across the floor. She sometimes looked like she was army crawling towards you which was fun to watch. Suddenly though, one day she got the crawling down to a T. Must be the same with many parents, the baby looks as if they are struggling to crawl, then BAM, they’ve figured it out and have disappeared from your sight without you even realizing. Only those who have seen it first hand know how fast babies can move once they’ve learned to crawl, it’s crazy fast. So now my wife can leave her in the living room or on the floor, with toys or without, and she’s happy to crawl, roll and play till she realizes mother is trying to do something and cries. It was when my wife was doing something else that it happened.

Sitting down for the first time that day, my other half takes her seat on the sofa, The Goldbergs on the TV (a GREAT show) and flicks through her Facebook timeline to catch up on the life of her friends and random funny images that people post. Her eye is suddenly distracted by a small head popping up over the sofa, hands clinging to the cushion and smiling like she always does. She was up, she had pulled herself up and was standing. We discovered early on that she could take her weight on her legs and would stand for long periods of time with the help of someone holding her. Now she didn’t need us anymore, she had found the world around her. Taking a few pictures my wife then watched her shuffle herself around the sofa towards the magazine on the sofa (she had recently gotten a taste for the front cover and was craving more).

It’s fun to watch her stand up by herself, with the help of the things around her, and I don’t think it will be long before she’s up without any help. I do feel like she’s trying to grow up too quickly, but right now I can’t really tell her to slow down. I can, and do, but she doesn’t listen. She just smiles and laughs and carries on. Watching TV has defiantly changed as now every so often we get a small smiling (she looks like the Stay Puft Marsh mellow man) baby looking up at us from the edge of the sofa, her vice like grip clawing the sofa and keeping herself upright.

Some quick thoughts – Why so serious?, Sickdays & Did you hit your child?

So this one is a quick post as had a few things that I wanted to say. Due to my loving wife having to fight of some kind of flu, she was having trouble breathing, which meant struggling to look after the little bean. This is actually the reason for both thoughts in this blog. If you knew my wife, which some of you will and a lot of you won’t, however she is a tough one that one. She rarely takes sick days, like one a century and that’s down to her iron will and her immune system of steal. So when the other half asks me to come home to help I know that she’s not just struggling with a small case of the sniffles. On arriving home I find my wife crying and in a lot of pain, so I take over and let her get some rest. Which is when I realized something had changed since having the bean.

Before having a child I would call in sick when I was ill (or wanted a day off) but it was my illness that stopped me. Now I find myself in work fighting off a cold at my desk because I have already taken off sick days for my little one. Sick days are reserved for our children now, we have to fight the illness at work to the moans and complaints from colleagues, it’s all changed now. Those with children will understand, but still join in with the moaning, and will sit and suffer when they are ill. We are in this together and our children’s health comes first, who cares about the parents?

So my second thought today happened when I walked in and took over baby duties. My wife had already informed me that our little explorer had decided to face plant into the fireplace and cut her mouth. What I didn’t expect was when looking at her to think she was about to ask me ‘Why so serious?’ or ‘Do you want to know how I got these scars?’ All she needed was a matching mark on the other side of her mouth, some white face paint, lipstick, green hair and I would have sworn I was looking at a mini (female) Heath Ledger’s joker. Luckily the marks not permanent (we hope) and will be gone in a few days (we hope) which got me onto another thought.

I wonder if people when they see a mark on a baby out and about, think that their parents must hit them. I mean our baby has had a few bruises from her exploring and I am sure she will endure some more as she discovers the world and the hard things that inhabit it. Sometimes it does look like we’ve hit her in the head, when in truth we just didn’t catch her in time as she falls head first into the side of the changing table. I’ve not had any looks of concern from other people but give it time, I’m sure it will happen.

Random thought of the day; does my daughter make jokes?

So most recently my daughter has started using the wonderful word dadad and it’s wonderful. Hearing you daughter say dad, or at least dadada, is something else. Any father will tell you how it feels and non fathers can only imagine the feeling that they get. Waking up in the morning and walking into her room to find her happy, smiling and saying dadada is one of my favourite things in my life so far. Though she does say mama it’s usually when she’s moaning. She says dadada in a more happier tone and much more often. That’s my girl.

However she does do something that I find amusing. She will start speaking, random dadadas, dada, dad and mumbles and smiling as she does. But then after a few random words she will stop and laugh to herself. Did my daughter just make a joke? No idea what the punchline is but she thinks it’s funny. Though laughing at her own jokes, that’s just not cool.

Films that scare me now

I’m not a big fan of horror films, infact I don’t really watch them at all. I loved the old classic horror films such as Halloween, Friday the 13th and Texas chainsaw massacre. Films that were simple but scary and didn’t rely on gore and shocks to scare the audience. Now a days films will go for scares and gore over plot or suspense. I liked the first saw film as it was different but since then a whole new genre was made, torture porn. Since having a child my views on what scares me have changed.

When I first watched War of the world’s with Tom Cruise (yes some of you may think it’s a terrible film) it genuinely scared me. Even before my bundle of joy, watching Tom Cruise trying to keep his children safe while the world goes to hell around him was worrying to watch. Obviously the alien bit is far fetched but still what if it happened? This got me thinking about the films that didn’t scare me but now do.

You are drunk go home, oh you’re just a baby.

Most of us have been drunk at some point in their lives. Not everyone drinks, I didn’t till I was 22years old but even now I don’t get that drunk. I have heard stories of how drunk people have been and what they have done that they don’t remember. That is till the photos appear on facebook the following morning from that one friend who didn’t drink that much. All the memories come flashing back in a wave of regret, sorrow and more regret. Then you swear off alcohol for good till the following weekend where more photos appear. Most of us who have drunk will have at least one embarressing story to tell, whether its falling asleep in the bathroom thinking its your bedroom, walking into a glass door at your very own home, sleeping on the floor because you didn’t make it onto the bed or you just throw up everywhere you shouldn’t have.

Now the reason for mentioning alcohol is that someone once told me that babies, and toddlers, are just small versions of drunk people. Well slightly smaller than my wife but still the signs are there. Since having my daughter I have come to see how true this really is.

Random thought of the day; does my daughter want to be in Kiss?

As my daughter has slowly gotten bigger and older, certain traits have appeared. Everyday she learns something new I swear. Whether its the blowing raspberries, almost crawling, pulling hair or giving us wet sloppy kisses, shes learning new skills faster than you can say ‘let go of my hair!’.

Her newest skill makes me wonder if she is trying to join Kiss. Known for rock music, make up and flashing tongues, Kiss are not a band I’m all that into. However since discovering she has a tongue, my daughter cant help but stick it out ALL the time. She even, while being held in the swimming pool, spent the whole time with her tongue out and drinking the pool water. She looked like a basking shark, the ones with the giant mouth that eats plankton.

Along with the tongue action she also begun singing along to songs in the car. At least as best she can when unable to form words with her mouth. She even on occasion sings in time and almost in tune. Must have gotten that from her mother. So I wait for that fateful day when the phone rings and its Gene Simmons from Kiss, calling up to recruit our daughter to join them on their next rock and roll tour. Could be worse, One Direction could call.

Please can you roll me over, thank you.

Our daughter, like her mother, talks in her sleep. Though not actual words yet, she still makes many noises as she sleeps. All which are picked up by the monitor at an audible level that we can hear over the television. Most of the time we leave her alone as after her random mumblings she falls back asleep. However the other night she was making more noises than usual and more muffled. So I decided to check in on her and what do I find, a face down mumbling baby.

She wasn’t suffocating, shes strong enough to pick herself up now and many times has she suffocated herself on our shoulderd only to lift up, gasp for air and fall back to sleep. So there she was face down and mumbling to herself. It was dark so I couldn’t see her eyes but when I rolled her over, boom she was back to nap nap land and sleeping like shes awesome. I left her to sleep and came to the conclusion that she was mumbling for someone to come turn her over as she was too tired to do it herself. Lazy little bugger but I love her.

Listen to your grandparents, they know their sh!t

Parents will tell you things as you grow up that as their child you decide not to listen to. Wisdom, as they call it, but wisdom that goes in one ear and comes out the other side a blur of words and letters. In hindsight we should have really listened to our parents but then how would we learn? We learn from our own mistakes, even if your parents tried to warn us as they had made the same mistakes themselves many, many, many moons ago. Parent wisdom comes from years and years of making mistakes, watching the world and learning to be the parent that you know and, hopefully, love.

Below are some things, now being a parent myself, that I have learned from my parents growing up. Wisdom as they called it that only really make sense now, or things that my parents didn’t say but from watching them as I grew up, have come to realize is useful.

You need this, that, those and some of them, probably or maybe not

As we go through life we no doubt end up with things that we really don’t need. When you do a clear out or move house you realize how much stuff you’ve collected over the years that are pointless. Things that take up space, stuff you thought at the time was needed but was only ever used once and junk passed down from generations to generations. Sometimes if you can sell it you can make a bit of money, one mans junk is apparently other mans treasure. At least they think so till a couple years down the line they are selling it on as well. Its an endless cycle of things we don’t need.

When the little one was born we had so much stuff. Stuff we bought ourselves, things bought for us and a lot of things people gave us. Anyone with kids will know its hard to get rid of things, so when a friend , colleague or stranger tells you they have kids, what a great chance to get rid of the things you don’t need anymore. Below is a list of the things that we found we didn’t need while she was a small creature. We were appreciative of all the things we got, whether we used them or not.

Date night but not as we know it.

Date night seems to be an American thing, especially the film with Steve Carell, but what else can you really call it. It is a night when those who struggle to have alone time or time together set some time once or more a week and plan a date. This could be a meal together, a movie in front of the TV, going for some drinks, cinema, a walk, whatever it is, it’s a date. Married couples may do this to rekindle something that is lost while parents may do it to get some alone time together as when children arrive on the scene, spontaneous nights together vanish quicker than sleep. BB (before baby) my wife (girlfriend at the time) had a lot of alone time together but soon, as we got longer into the relationship, we added in date nights. These were simple trips to the cinema, food or going for a walk but they worked.

AB (after baby) all this changed and it took us a while to get back to date nights. Having a baby is hard work on both parents but more on the mother, in my opinion at least, so trying to get time after baby has finally gone to sleep was difficult. I would rather my wife caught up on sleep as she would be woken in the night for a nightly feed at least twice. Some of our friends with kids had managed to get out for some drinks or a meal but they had a good support system behind them, we did not. Though our parents have done a lot for us, our siblings have been less than helpful. It hasn’t helped also that due to the milk allergy and not wanting a bottle, we couldn’t leave the baby for more than a couple hours before she needed the boob once more.