Jeyanth Joshua Goringe

Wine and Jubilation

Well, its possible! We did it.

It is possible to go away with friends and have a great time, go wine tasting, have relaxing mealtimes (we BBQ'd breakfast as well as dinner), sit around playing games, drinking wine, eating cheese and solving the world's problems, get decent nights' sleep and all with 3 four month old babies.

We had a fabulous time with Dayan & Duncan and Stuart & Sandra. The babies (Jahan and Jordyn and of course Jeyanth) were extremely well behaved, putting up with being juggled from car-seats to Baby Bjorns and having haphazard feed and nap times. Chris is now reorganising our wine 'cellar' (other people might call it the under-stairs cupboard) to find homes for our loot.

Photos of babes and grown-ups up now.

Wine and Trepidation

Tomorrow we set off, with 2 other couples, and 2 other babies (both born within a fortnight of Jeyanth) for a long weekend in the Hunter Valley. I must admit that my looking forward to a welcome weekend away is flavoured with a little apprehension.

3 babies, 6 adults, 18 milk bottles, ~63 nappies and temperatures in the high 30s! How on earth are we going to cope?

Oh, and the theory is that we're going to have time to go wine-tasting, have relaxing BBQ's, play Ex-Libris and be wonderfully refreshed when we come home on Sunday.

Letting him learn

As blogged before, Jeyanth is learning to do various interesting contortions with his body at the moment, including rolling over, propagating himself by inchworm action and rotating on the horizontal plane by punting with one leg.

This is all great fun as a spectator sport.

However, as I watch Jeyanth try out new things and learn, I find myself encountering for the first time the great question of how to best to assist in his learning. When he gets stuck on his side in his attempt to roll over, should I intervene? At what point do I intervene? Should I let him start crying with frustration before I intervene? How long should I let him try to solve a problem before I give him a tip (like moving an obstructing limb)? I obviously want him to learn to persevere, to experiment and to enjoy the pleasure of solving his own problems, but I don't want him to be unsupported in his learning. Here's hoping that I'm working out a fair balance.

Cor - bringing up babies is hard!

R2D2

As you can imagine, being 4+ months old, Jeyanth is experimenting with vocalising in many different ways. Watching him try out sounds, pitches and various toungue movements is fascinating, and really quite cute. It is particularly amusing, as the desire to play with his vocal chords has strong competition from his desire to have something or other stuffed in his mouth. In some ways, I guess he has an even wider range of available sounds, since gurgles and coos are lent a certain richness when attempted with a muslin or a fist in the mouth.

Anway, I just wanted to mention that today's specialty was a very good R2D2 impression.

Passport Interview

Jeyanth has just returned from his passport interview at the post office. He duly confirmed to the nice lady that he looked like his photograph and was in fact an australian citizen (he had a birth certificate as well as his parents' australian passports as evidence).

He also smiled at her in his charming and dribbly manner and won her over completely - the lady being of the suitably older and more susceptible to infant-charm type.

With any luck, Jeyanth will have legal travel documents in 10 working days.

Visit to Newcastle

All my blog entries seem to be a bit retrospective this week.

Jeyanth went on his longest trip out of town this week, when we drove up to Newcastle to visit Jim and Bernie Coyle on Monday. He was very well behaved, and put up without complaint when various nap and feed times were adapted for journey convenience, and was a cheerful little soul the whole day. In fact, being in the car meant that we didn't have to do the afternoon nap battle, as he was perfectly happy to either doze or look out of the rear windscreen all afternoon on the drive back.

Rolling over

Jeyanth has now mastered the art of rolling from his back to his front as well... OK, mastered the art is a bit strong - he's done it at least twice :). Once earlier today (or so his Amma says) and once in the last two minutes.

Problem is, he doesn't really like being on his front when he's getting tired, and he can't always roll back as quickly as he would like....

New Photos

After a bit of drought, there are lots more new photos. More everyday Jeyanth, Navin's Birthday and a visit to Bernie & Jim.

Four month clinic

This blog is a bit late. Jeyanth had his clinic visit on Friday - and, many hurrays, he's still tracking correctly on length to weight; sitting firmly on the 75th percentile for both. We're putting this down to genetic material inherited from Goringe uncles.

Clinic nurse was very pleased, as he is doing all the right things re development. We had a long discussion about Jeyanth's recent forays into slighly odd eating (huge variations in apetite) and sleeping (doesn't want to go to sleep at bedtime) habits. She put down the eating to the large temperature fluctuations that Sydney has during spring. She said that the resisting bedtime was more 6month old behaviour, but that we were just to persist and not give in. No real solutions, but a few ideas to try out, and relief that we hadn't just entered some sort of twilight zone.

Actually, he's been pretty good at bedtime for the last couple of days. Now he doesn't want his afternoon nap! But on the whole, his unsettledness seems to be passing and we're all feeling a lot better. Hurray!

Vaccinations

On Wednesday, Jeyanth had his 4 month shots. Both Chris and I got to hold him while the nurse injected him (twice). He screamed when the needle went in, but stopped screaming pretty much as soon as in was removed, and he'd had a cuddle.

He was a little out of sorts yesterday, with a slightly elevated temperature and a depressed appetite. I gave him a little bit of infant paracetamol, and he was his normal cheerful self by the end of the evening. He's got little red spots on his legs where the needles went in, but they don't seem to bother him much.

Shivanjali

Jeyanth is proud to announce the arrival of a new little friend. Shivanjali Narayan Bhasin was born on the 5th of November in New York, weighed 3.18kg (7lbs) and is in the pink of health.

Victorian Work Ethic

Yesterday was the second 'interesting' evening in a row - Jeyanth is obviously trying to organise himself into a different rhythm, but his parents haven't quite twigged onto what it is yet.

OK, I'm a control freak - I've always been one, and I guess its not going to change in a hurry. But I think even normal people who are parents must have days when they feel nothing but anger, frustration and dread because they simply have no idea what on earth is going on.

I had plenty of opportunity yesterday to probe this reaction, to find out what makes it tick. It's the work ethic, or a closely related phenomenon, where for all my life, my self-worth, self-confidence and self-image have been defined by my 'work'. However much I believe that what really matters is that I am beloved of God, deep down, my psyche knows that it is what I do, and how well I do it, that really matters.

So when I do not understand why my son has suddenly decided to change his eating and sleeping habits, and I have no hypotheses on which to base my reactions, when I am tired and short tempered because, well, because frankly that is all that happens when you try to fight a 4 month old, then the logical conclusion is that I am incompetant and a failure.

Cheerful thought eh? Well, of course I know better. I'm just going to have to relax and become one of those people who actually enjoys flying blind.

The Gap

Is there a word for that crack between the chin and the bib, to which all fluids are magically drawn?

The Tea Law

There is nothing more effective in waking a baby from the soundest slumber, than the subliminal vibes set off by a parent making a fresh cup of tea somewhere in the house.

Jeyanth goes to work

Yesterday, Jeyanth came into Avaya for a couple of hours. In theory this was to give Sureka the chance to go into the city for a meeting, but in reality it was so that I could show off my cute baby to the rest of Auslabs :). He certainly lived up to expectations... smiled, gurgled and dribbled in an entirely acceptable way, and generally charmed everyone in sight.

Bed time

So, Jeyanth has had his bath, and Amma has headed off for the evening, leaving me to feed him and put him to bed. There's a new routine developing here, and it's one I accept, but don't understand.

J feeds till he falls asleep, then wakes up again and feeds some more. Then you put him to bed, and after a few minutes he starts to cry. The crying gets more insistent, and about five minutes in, you go in, pick him up, reswaddle him really tightly and then hold him so he can't move at all. Once he realises what is happening he moves into top gear - screams and screams and screams as if you were shoving red hot needles under his fingernails. He struggles and fights to move, but you hold him firmly. After five minutes - or fifteen - he stops screaming, and becomes totally relaxed. Then you put him down and he goes to sleep for the next ten or twelve hours.

As long as this works, as I say, I can accept it. But why? What is he screaming about? Most of the day or night, holding him serves to calm him down - but for this short period, it seems to infuriate him...

Slugs and Dogs

This entry is not about Jeyanth - I just thought you should know.

It is well known that dog-owners cannot use slug pellets in their garden because dogs will eat them, and get sick.

But did you know that slugs eat dog pellets and thrive?
Slugs from all over our garden make nightly pilgrimage to our sun room to feast on dry dog food (aka kibbles) and daily we have to peel the slimy sods off the dogfood bowls. If the sun room door is shut, they will climb up the sheer vertical side of the sun room up to 1.5m to try to get in through the windows. An amazing feat of slug-imagination and slug-resourcefulness. Fortunately, the windows have wire mesh on them, but we still have to deal with myriad criss-crossing silvery trails on the walls, and the odd slug trapped at dizzy heights due to onset of slug-vertigo.

Yep, it is glorious spring in Sydney.

Rolling Over

We blogged a few days ago that Jeyanth had managed to accidentally roll over while on his tummy, much to his surprise and ours.

Well, he can now do it at will, and does so almost every time you put him on his tummy. Just this morning he did it 6 times in a row. You might think I was being mean returning him to his tummy each time, but I was just trying to photograph him doing it!

More daylight-saving woes

Someone has kidnapped our beautifully trained, "go to sleep without a hitch and stay asleep for 11 hours" baby, and replaced him with a similarly cute, but completely random baby.

And I'm laying all the blame squarely at the feet of changing clocks.

We've had a week of variable success (variable failure?) at bedtimes. When the clocks changed on sunday, instead of just being 1 hour off from his normal routine, Jeyanth decided that he'd have lie-ins till 8am. Since, this meant a fairly late bed time, I spent the week trying to shift him around so that his last feed of the day was due at 7pm. But since this was only 6pm by AEST, he decided it was far too early to go to bed for the day, so napped for 45 minutes, and then woke up wanting to play for a couple of hours before scoring an extra feed at 10 before going to bed.

So we decided that we could fix this by waking him up at 6.30am and feeding him, thereby forcing him to start the day earlier, thinking this would bump him back to the old routine. Ha! No chance! Hence, when we had dinner guests, who had agreed to bring their 3month old babies to our house, because their babies were less routine-dependant and more portable, we had two guest-babies both fast asleep in portacots and bassinets for the whole evening, and the resident star managed to stay up till 11.15pm!

So, yesterday, we gave in and played it his way. So we now have a baby who wakes up at 8am and goes down around 8.30pm (with only minor drama). Pity, since 8.30pm is too late to really have a full evening after you've put him down, and too early to take him out anywhere. But I suppose that I should be grateful that he's not up till 11pm.

The power of suggestion

On saturday I had one of those moments where I realised just how much Jeyanth has actually developed in the last three months. Babies start out almost complete mysteries, you have a couple of clues (like 'put food in one end, and clean up the other'), but other than that the rules of engagement are pretty vague. The small pink bundle screams unpredictably, at some times a cuddle is a magic cure, at other times, nothing that you can imagine doing (and you find yourself pretty creative) can appease the pitiful cries. The idea of 'like' and 'dislike' are pretty fluid, and you are stuck in cycle of attempting pattern recognition, and starting from scratch.

On saturday, when Jeyanth was refusing to go to bed quietly (another long story), there came a point in the evening when Chris had been in with him for 5 mins and he hadn't stopped screaming. Now, I had tried going in to calm him before, but was getting frustrated because as soon as I showed up next to the cot, the loud protestations immediately transformed into the "I won" smug grin, along with the arching 'pick me up now' neck posture. Our dinner guests (yes, we were having a dinner party!) challenged me to go in, as given the pitch of the screams now, it seemed extremely unlikely that smug grins were going to be an issue.

So I decided to give Jeyanth the benefit of the doubt. I went in, and without picking him up, started chatting to him with a big cheesy grin plastered on my face, in a robust 'cheering you up' voice. And, to my amazement, it worked. He calmed down, stopped screaming, and proceeded to move onto the "well, now that you're here, you may as well pick me up, because I'm irresistably cute" mode.

There you go, Jeyanth is definitely moving along from being a baby-black-box to someone actually capable of person-like responses. I could actually cajole him from one state of mind to another, without resorting to physical comforting. Now, of course, he's being evolving gradually over the last 15 weeks, but that one instance stands out, as I remember the impossibility of such a thing 8 weeks ago.