Jeyanth Joshua Goringe

Sick baby and sad parents

Jeyanth is ill with a bug that's currently doing the rounds in Sydney. The symptoms appear to be a head cold with diarrhoea.

We've had two pretty bad nights, one with Jeyanth not sleeping for the best part of 4 hours because of a blocked nose, and the second with him waking up every 2-3hrs with a dirty nappy. However, the symptoms are easing up a little and the lad is soldiering on with fortitude and cheerfulness which I envy and admire. (I've just come down with the same thing today, and feel VERY sorry for myself). The worst aspect of the illness is a very sore bottom which makes the required frequent nappy changes a miserable affair. Jeyanth has always had sensitive skin, and obviously these bits were not designed to see action more than once a day!

Two things make me amazed and grateful; that Jeyanth still seems able to be generally cheerful despite being in quite significant discomfort and that Jeyanth trusts us enough that he does not seem to associate the awful pain of having his raw red bottom cleaned with the people who are doing it.

PDAs

Jeyanth has recently learnt a skill that wins many many points with his softy parents.

He has learnt to hug. Not just as huggee, but as a hug-initiating hugger. He will crawl up to you, clamber onto your lap if you're on the floor and throw his arms around your neck. If you're standing, he'll crawl up to your feet, use your clothes to pull himself up, and when you bend down to pick him up, fling his arms around your neck and pull close in a big hug. We actually think he really likes doing it as a specific act.

Gorgeous enough to make any parent feel soft in the knees.

Live and learn

For those of you who have wondered in your idle moments what would happen if you tried to cook exactly 12 peas on a plastic plate using your microwave oven - we can now tell you.

You see a flash, you hear a bang, then a burst of flame on your plate.
You also have exactly 3 of your 12 peas charred black. Results are reproducible, on peas and on sweetcorn.

Apparently 1000W microwaves have some interesting issues with heating very low masses of food, presented with a flat profile. The work-around is reasonably simple, use 24 peas in a thimble with some water and discard excess peas and water.

Nothing by halves

We are proud to announce, that after nine months, one week and 4 days of being toothless, Jeyanth has just presented the world with his first bit of tusk.

Of course, not being one to be left behind just because he's starting late, he's decided to grow his first four incisors all at once. Only one's actually broken through skin at this point, but we have four bulging gum-lumps, a baby obsessed with gnawing things and the hope that we can present to you a photograph of a toothy grin in the not too distant future.

How different...

Jahan and Dayan came to visit yesterday, and we were reflecting on just how different two babies of the same age can be. Jahan, as Dayan mentions here is a daredevil acrobat; he can pull himself up, cruise, and seems to launch himself about with no fear in the world. Jeyanth, as noted here, is much more cautious; he won't commit himself to any movement without testing the water first. By contrast, Jeyanth is happy with strangers (in moderation); Jahan knows who he knows. Jahan is always on the move, bouncing and dancing (even when there is no music); Jeyanth will sit with a toy in his hand for minutes on end, looking at it from different angles, trying to do things with it, contemplating. Get Jahan to drink enough milk is a struggle; stopping Jeyanth from drinking too much is a struggle.

Jahan and Jeyanth both seem to be happy, normal, and well adjusted - but in character, they could hardly be more different. I wonder whether, as they become children, teenagers, adults, these character traits will persist? Will we look at them in twenty years time and say "even as a baby Jahan was adventurous" "even as a baby Jeyanth could spend ages just looking at something"? Or am I reading way too much into this :)?

Thoughts on Daycare

Well, we haven't actually got a plan or anything, but after much discussion, Chris and I have at least made one conclusion.

We have decided that there is absolutely no way that we are ready for Jeyanth to go into some one else's care for 5 days a week. One of us will quit our job first rather than have that happen.

Having said that....what now?

If you've got any spare prayers - what would be ideal is for Chris to be able to get part time (3 days) work with Avaya.

We think we can just about cope with Jeyanth in some combination of Grandparent/CSIROCARE for up to 3 days.

Meanwhile, Jeyanth will start visiting the folks at CSIROCARE for a couple of hours in May, so that we can work out if he likes it.

Circus

Closely related to Jeyanth's attempts to pull up is another new trick, which Sureka's parents, for no reason I've been able to understand, call 'circus'. For the rest of us, this just means getting up onto your feet while in a crawling position, hands still on the floor, resting the top of your head on the ground between your hands and inspecting the world upside down.

Apparently the world upside down is an interesting thing to look at; Jeyanth spends a lot of time doing so, anyway.

Pulling up

The latest challenge that Jeyanth seems to have decided to tackle is that of pulling himself up to standing, using the stairs, coffee table, sofas, or parents' legs. He hasn't really mastered it yet, but does manage every now and then. When he does get upright he calls out in triumph and looks very pleased with himself for a few moments, before he starts to worry about what happens next. On the rug the answer is that falling over doesn't really hurt, but when he's pulled up on the sofa and is standing on the slate floor the mode of descent is a little more tricky.

One thing Sureka and I have noticed, which is probably a blessing, is that Jeyanth is really quite cautious when trying out now physical activity. He isn't one to launch out on one hand and one foot and see what happens - instead, every move seems to be tested carefully to ensure it won't result in bad things happening before it is committed to...

Day-care dilemma

We've been wondering for a while what we were going to do come mid-July, when Jeyanth turns one and Chris' parental leave finishes. We were expecting to get an opening in CSIRO-care (the day care center at CSIRO, where Sureka works - indeed, that Sureka's office window overlooks) for two or three days a week from January, when Jeyanth will be 18 months old (we turned down a position at the start of this year, feeling we wanted Jeyanth to spend more time with his parents before going to be looked after by any day care, however good). But with Sureka's contract running until the end of the year (at which point she might be able to negotiate to go back part-time), we were unsure what we would do in July. Ammamma is happy (keen!) to look after Jeyanth some of the time, but none of us want that to be a full-time arrangement.

Suddenly, the dilemma has been thrust upon us more urgently; a mid-year vacancy has come up at CSIRO-care (something that very rarely happens). So we suddenly have to decide whether to commit to three days a week of day care for Jeyanth from the end of April.

In some ways this would be a great opportunity; Jeyanth is probably old enough to benefit from the time spent with other children and the activities that CSIRO-care organises; having a couple of months overlap with Chris' parental leave means we could ease him in gently (a morning or two to start with, and gradually work up to three days). On the other hand, it leaves our July problem only partially solved; if, by then, Jeyanth is at CSIRO three days a week, what will he do the other two? If he spends it with Ammamma, how will Sureka and I cope with only having him at the weekend? And if he doesn't take to day care, what will we do?

Questions, questions...

New pictures

From the first half of April are now in the archives.

Introductions

It occured to me that as this blog is, at least in part, an attempt to keep a memento of Jeyanth's early life, it would be nice to write into the record, as it were, who all the people showing an interest in his life are.

So, if you are a regular, or semi-regular reader of the blog, please take this chance to introduce yourself in the comments. Just click where it says "comments" below (or scroll down to the bottom of this page), and you can meet Jeyanth's other friends and introduce yourself!

By the way, I've modified the blog to allow anonymous comments, so if you aren't comfortable entering an email address you don't need to!

Light and Shadows

Jeyanth has recently become fascinated with light and shadow. He's always been attracted to bright lights, of course, but at the moment, in the morning, the sun casts a small pool of light on the tiles in the middle of our family room, and Jeyanth will sit in this pool, watching the motes of dust in the air, or waving his hands slowly up and down and watching the shadow moving on the tiles. He'll then try to grab hold of the shadow, which leads to some considerable confusion.

Unfortunately, it's proved impossible so far to get a photo or video of this, as Jeyanth's other fascination at the moment is photographic equipment. Come near him with a camera and he will stop whatever he is doing and crawl, top speed, towards you. Bit of a blow of naturalistic photo-ops.

To see a world in a grain of sand

I've just seen two of the fattest, fluffiest kookaburras that you can imagine. They sat and laughed at me while I went for my lunchtime walk in the bush. And the rush of pleasure when I caught sight of the birds was immediately followed by an urgent longing for Jeyanth to see them too.

Whenever I hear a new idea, read a good book or think a new thought, my instinct is to rush off and tell Chris about it. (In fact, my brain is quite good at processing thoughts by pretending to relate them to Chris and extrapolating a response - spares Chris a lot of tedium.)

With Jeyanth, it's the world I can't wait to share. When I see a rainbow, a wildflower, a sunset or a slug, my instinct is to want to share them with Jeyanth. He's too young yet, but very soon the time will come. What blows my mind is that when I do that, it will be his first rainbow !

Wow - can you imagine? The whole breath-takingly beautiful world, in hand-crafted detail, and I get to accompany my son as he discovers it for the first time. There is no pricing this privilege.

Imitation

Yesterday was the first time that Sureka and I have noticed Jeyanth doing something that was deliberate imitation; he stuck his tounge out when we stuck ours out at him. He's done things before that might have been imitation (clapping, for instance) but could equally be explained in other ways, but in this case there seemed to be no doubt.

I think once upon a time I would have assumed that babies learnt most things by imitation; and I'm sure that as they get older it becomes a significant part of how they learn; but I've noticed with Jeyanth (and this is no great revelation, I'm sure it's in 'Infant Development 101') how small a role it plays compared to random experimentation and feedback; how skills seem to evolve rather than being deliberately learnt.

It struck me just how sophisticated a concept it is to imitate another person. You have to understand that the faces you see have a correspondance to those muscles in your face; that the parental tounge is in some sense 'like' the thing you use to squash food; that the appearance of a tounge outside the lips is equivalent to that feeling I get when I push food out of my mouth; that something experienced entirely by observation can be duplicated in something experienced entirely subjectively.

In order to imitate there needs to be some very basic understanding of the fact that others are in some way like me.

TV and Babies

On my other blog, Things I've Seen, I've written a bit about the recent study linking pre-school TV exposure to ADHD.

Children under two should not watch television because it increases the risk of them developing attention deficit disorder, a US scientific report argued yesterday.

I'm very aware that it's easy for me to say - not being a TV watcher myself, having a single, very cooperative, baby and a good network of baby-sitters - that we won't let Jeyanth watch any television. It's true he's probably watched less than an hour of TV in his life, and we would like to keep it that way, but there's also a part of me that argues that all sensory stimulation has its place, in moderation...

Eight

A while ago, Mike posted about language development over on Bridget's Blog.

I would have thought that the first sorts of words that a baby would be likely to pick up would be words deeply and regularly embedded in frequently repeated activities.

I think, although I admit that my evidence would not stand up to peer review, that Jeyanth has learnt to recognise at least one word in this way; and that word is "eight".

The significance of "eight" is that Jeyanth's milk, the second most important part of his day (the first, of course, is Sureka coming home) consists of eight scoops of powder in a bottle of water. Since Christmas, I've been in the habit of counting out the scoops as I put them into the bottle, and have noted before that he reacts to the counting. Recently, though, I've noticed that even if I don't count all the way from one out loud, but just count "six... seven...eight" the word "eight" triggers a shout of pleasure.

I've tried to eliminate other factors, for instance by keeping my voice as flat as possible so he isn't reading the tone. I've also tried counting "apple... pumpkin... potato", in which case he still shouts happily, but only later, when he sees me shaking the bottle. As far as I can make out, in this context, he recognises the word "eight"; presumably he thinks it means "now Daddy just has to shake the bottle and then you can have your milk", in which case he will be disappointed in the future to discover that the English language is not quite that compact...

Another Era Ends

A long time ago, I blogged about pattern recognition being a big part of learning to cope with parenthood. One aspect of this, in our case, is fervently adhering to routines that work, even when they make no sense.

Till two days ago, Jeyanth was still being swaddled when he went down for the night. We gave up wrapping him before his day-naps months ago, so we know he can fall asleep without it, we know that it takes him about 30 seconds flat to get out of his swaddling when we put him down, so it's crazy that we've been doing it till now, when he's almost 9 months old.

On the other hand, I think we all enjoyed it. Since Jeyanth was about 2 months old, it's taken 2 parents to swaddle him, one holding the flailing limbs while the other wraps and tucks. Jeyanth has never put up anything more than a minimal resistance to it. He gets the last cuddles of the day from both parents while in a tightly wrapped cosy bundle, lies quite still and gazes at you with liquid brown eyes while you say your prayers for him, and then when you put him in the cot, say goodnight and walk away, gets out of his swaddling with one deft wriggle, before you've got out the door. It was a well established, much loved tradition!

Alas, the occasions where only one parent is available at bedtime is getting more frequent, and having had two such evenings in a row, we've dispensed with swaddling. Ah well, the teenage years would have been difficult anyway.

No news of Bridget :(