June 30, 2004
All in a day's work...
The last couple of days have been pretty up and down for Jeyanth and his parents...
On the up side, J has been standing up more frequently, sometimes totally unaided, and sometimes by pulling himself up on a box and then pushing it away. He seems to know that he has done something clever, because he looks around and claps himself whenever he is upright.
Less pleasing to his parents is that Jeyanth has forgotten how to go back to sleep again when he wakes up at night. Or rather, we suspect, has decided that he will not do so. Monday night Sureka and I left him with Ammamma to go and see a movie, and returned to find that he had cried all evening - and continued to do so into the night. Similarly yesterday: having fallen asleep (very tired for having lost 6 hours sleep the night before) he woke up again around 11pm and howled for company. We're telling ourselves that it's a combination of teething pain (he is dribbling and chewing hard things a lot at the moment), indigestion, and a new bout of separation anxiety brought on by his increasing emotional maturity. Or something like that.
To cap things off we also had a rush visit to see the doctor yesterday after a tired baby, having his nappy changed by a tired parent, managed to empty a bowl of baby powder into his face and get an eyeful. Prompt rinsing followed by an inspection by the doctor ensured that no harm was done.
To end on a happy note - today CSIROCARE officially got the all-important grandparental stamp of approval. Ammamma came with Jeyanth and me to school this morning, met the staff and saw the facilities, and declared herself happy.
June 28, 2004
Sleepyhead
Very few parents, I'm sure, complain about their baby waking up too late in the morning. And we're not going to complain either. But Jeyanth has, at least for the past few days, developed the habit of lying in until 8, 8:30 or even 9am - in fact, this morning, we had to wake him up at 9 for his breakfast.
Perhaps he just takes after his father, and loves a lie-in, but I rather suspect it has more to do with the fact that he was singing to himself for a good part of an hour at 5am...
June 27, 2004
The weekly plan
We've now worked out how we think Jeyanth's week will work out once I go back to work (just two weeks away now...).
Sureka's parents will be staying with us on Monday and Tuesday to look after him. On Monday I will be home as well, but Ammamma will take responsibility for JJ to free me up for other things; on Tuesday I will be at work. Wednesday and Thurday Sureka and I will work staggered days: I'll go in and come home early (working for an American company this is quite useful) and Sureka will go in and come home late, so Jeyanth can go into CSIROCARE with Sureka at 9am or so, and I'll pick him up at 3:30 or 4pm, with one or both of us visiting at lunchtime most days. He seems to be enjoying CSIROCARE, and has been doing steadily longer days there, so we think this will work out well. On Friday it'll be Daddy and Jeyanth at home, and the weekends will be the three of us, just like old times.
At least that's the plan...
Freestanding
Yesterday Jeyanth took another step (well, non-step, really) on his way to walking: standing unsupported for a period longer than just the time it takes to fall over.
He first got himself up into a half standing half squatting position just before bed time, and then during his bath (in which he currently spends most of his time standing up) he suddenly let go of the sides and stood for about 10 seconds before carefully and stably lowering himself down to all fours. Obviously, we have a rubber mat on the base of our bath to make him more secure: equally obviously he decided to do his standing right at the end of the bath where the mat doesn't reach.
He's repeated the trick today, standing on our bed while we were talking to his grandparents on the phone. It seems that the challenge of an insecure surface just increases his desire to stand up...
June 25, 2004
Striptease
In the last few minutes, Jeyanth decided (as far as I can recall, for the first time) to try to take off his clothes - at least, his shirt and vest. He managed to get one arm out of one shirt sleeve, and then got very confused about what happened next (mostly because he now didn't have the use of his right arm). I helped him out of the shirt, and he started pulling at his vest (downwards from the neck, which really doesn't work), so I took that off as well. A minute later I put his vest back on, and immediately he started trying to take it off again, this time by pulling the neck upwards. He might have been successful were it not for the fact that this vest was quite a tight fit over the head, so I needed to help out again.
He's obviously some way off being able to take his clothes off himself, but this seems to be a new area where he has realised that there is the possibility of some sort of independance: he can have an opinion about whether he wants to have a shirt on or not, and has started to make his opinion known.
This and the desire to control his own feeding, are signs that he is starting to develop a sense of independence. We're going to have a toddler before long.
Now, lets see if I can persuade him to put his shirt back on to go out for a walk...
A (new) typical day
Six weeks ago I posted a typical day for Jeyanth, and at the time I said I was doing it because it looked like it was going to change. Well, now seems as good a time as any (Jeyanth has just found my study recycling bin, so he'll be happily occupied with lots of old papers for a while) to record the new routine. It's basically two or three bottles, one nap, three meals.
Sometime overnight (Midnight? 2am? 6am?): Wake and howl for a bottle of milk. Drink said milk. Go back to sleep happily.
Sometime between 7am and 8am: Wake up again. Talk to self for while. Pull myself up and throw my muslin over the edge of the cot. Shout for someone to come and get it (and me). Up. If my overnight bottle was at midnight, ask for milk. Keep asking till I get it.
8:30am: Breakfast. Bowl of museli or oats. Drink of water. Then playtime (or in the car and off the school).
9:30am (if at school) or 10am (at home): Morning tea. Cracker or piece of bread. Refuse to drink milk from a cup, have water instead.
11:15am: Lunch. 1/2 jar of baby food mixed with the same again of home made (lumpier) food. Refuse milk from cup again.
Noon: Yawn. Nap time.
2pm (ish): Up again. Let's play!
3:30pm: Afternoon tea. Jeyanth want a cracker. If at school, this is when Amma and Daddy turn up and I give them a quick cuddle then go back to the toys. Oh, they want to go home?
4:30pm: starting to get cranky now. Can we go out? Read me a story?
5:15pm: Dinner time. Similar to lunch, but with yoghurt and fruit for dessert!
6pm: Milk! Yes!
6:15pm: Bath, followed by rest of my milk, water, story and prayers.
7pm: Bed.
June 24, 2004
ba-ba
If Sureka and I were milestone obsessed, worry ridden, competitive parents, it would be Jeyanth's vocalisation that would worry us. We're really not, especially as we know that there is enormous variation in the development of language (at 18 months, apparently, 90% of children can say 3 words, and 25% can say more than 50) which bears no correlation to anything that matters.
None the less, it is with some pleasure that we can say with confidence that Jeyanth has now 'got' his first word (word defined loosely as 'something said in the right context and with some vague resemblence to a real word'). When we leave a place or say goodbye to a visitor and Sureka and I say 'bye bye', Jeyanth will now fairly consistently wave and say 'ba-ba'.
I'm still willing to claim 'Daddy' as his first word, since a few times now he has seen me and said something that sounds awfully like it, but since his reaction to anything good is to say 'da da da' I am fully aware that I am kidding myself :).
June 18, 2004
Welcome Jonathan Bowler
Our good friends Dave and Erica have had their third baby boy...
Jonathan David Peter Bowler, born 17th June 2004 weighing 3.48kg.
Congratulations to all involved :)
June 17, 2004
Food Independence
Having made some leaps forward in self-feeding during the last couple of weeks, Jeyanth made several retrograde steps recently. First he stopped eating anything that was in the least bit firm - peas, sweet corn, rice, all things he'd happily eaten for months, just got spat straight out. Then over the last two days, we started to think that he'd decided to live by photosynthesis. Well, photosynthesis and milk. The mere appearance of a bowl and spoon would induce violent head-shaking and vigourous hand waving. Any persistance on the part of well-intentioned feeders would result in howls of anger.
However, today, we think we may have happened on an explanation: Jeyanth may well have re-invented the Gandhian notion of hunger-striking for independence.
After another frustrating start to an evening meal, where at least one parent was starting to lose their cool, we resorted to give him what he ALWAYS eats; broken up pieces of sliced brown bread. So much for balanced diets - not least on our minds was the overnight consequences of putting an empty-tummed baby to bed for the night.
But this time, I spread the brown bread with a mince&veg sauce. True to form, Jeyanth proceed to grab the pieces of bread and stuff them into his mouth, not at all disturbed by the 'contamination' of the bread. We thought we were onto a good thing.
Chris, thinking that now Jeyanth had remembered the concept of solid food he might be amenable to his original meal, offered him a spoonful of pasta in mince sauce, which was of course promptly knocked back by a flailing fist, and landed in a squishy lump on the high chair tray. Much to our surprise, Jeyanth then proceeded to carry out the fairly difficult task of scooping up slippery pasta with his hands and eating it enthusiastically, albeit a little messily.
Things were getting curiouser and curiouser.
Then, clever Daddy put a spoon, laden with food, on the tray. And Jeyanth calmly reached over, picked up the spoon, and put it into his mouth.
We managed to feed him his entire dinner by leaving spoonfuls of food on the tray and letting him feed it to himself. (He also ate an entire slice of bread, spread with sauce, with his fingers).
So there we have it. The new autonomous Jeyanth. It's no longer good enough to hand him a laden spoon, HE and ONLY HE must pick it up off the table and feed himself.
June 15, 2004
Feeding Myself
We wrote recently about Jeyanth's advances in feeding himself. Unfortunately, he's now stopped taking the spoon out of his mouth and putting it back into the bowl, because, with four teeth now through, he's discovered a new trick (3MB .wmv)
Systematic Baby
A couple of times in the past few days we've noticed Jeyanth doing things systematically: taking all of the fish in the bath and putting them up on the ledge, or taking all of the blocks one by one and putting them into the box. I've managed to capture the latter on video this morning (5MB .wmv).
June 13, 2004
Quick Update
Just so all our avid readers aren't left worrying about Jeyanth's health.
He's clearly got a bit of a cold, but his appetite is close to normal, and he has remained his usual cheerful self throughout. The only real downer is that he has a stuffy nose, which interferes with him sleeping properly.
Sureka and I were out at a party last night, and Geetho was babysitting. I think she spent from 10pm till 1am more or less continually cuddling Jeyanth back to sleep...
June 11, 2004
Here we go again
After a record breaking 8 days of good health, Jeyanth has now got the 'flu. At least, this is the doctor's diagnosis: given the lack of any significant temperature, I'd be tempted to call it a cold, but there you go. No throat or ear infection this time, thankfully, but he's very sleepy and a bit whingy and has a blocked nose which upsets him.
He was fine yesterday, but we became suspicious when he didn't wake up at 4am for a feed, instead sleeping through until 7:15. He's spent a lot of today either asleep in his cot or playing very quietly (five minutes playing with blocks followed by five minutes lying on the rug or on Daddy). Apparently we're set for two or three days of this. He's on some symptom supressant drugs which we hope will at least keep his nose clear so he can sleep well tonight, since sleep seems to be what he most wants right now.
Our grand plans to drop the middle of the day bottle are now back on hold...
June 10, 2004
Artwork
Yesterday at Playschool, Jeyanth produced his first crayon drawing.
Interpretations are welcomed.
June 09, 2004
Almost feeding myself
I've just put Jeyanth to bed after a remarkably cooperative dinner. For a while now, Jeyanth has, from time to time, been happy to take a spoon offered to him, shove it in his mouth with some degree of accuracy and suck the contents off it. It's always been a bit of a struggle to get the spoon back off him, though.
Today, we had a definite change. Over and again he took the spoon, ate what was on it, put the spoon back into the bowl of food and either let go or at least gave up control so I could load it up with another mouthful of food. Then he took over again and shoved another mouthful of food in.
The only real problem was that when putting the spoon back into the bowl, he didn't make much distinction between the handle end and the bowl end of the spoon, which made the whole affair rather sticky.
Oh, and for those who are interested - almost all of this is done with his left hand. It may be that he has learnt to use his left because we use our right hands to give him to spoon, so it's on his left, but no amount of offering the spoon to his right hand makes a difference: he just leans across and grabs. So Hester might yet get her way :).
June 04, 2004
Feeding myself
I'll put some pictures of this together soon, but here's a sneak preview:
Historical note: this photo is slightly staged.
First Trick?
Minutiae of life - the first time Jeyanth played a trick...
The day before yesterday, Jeyanth and Daddy invented a new game. Basically, Daddy lies on his back with a small ball (golf ball size) perched on top of his slightly open mouth. He then takes a deep breath, and blows the ball off. Jeyanth, when he stops laughing, chases after the ball, brings it back and puts it back onto Daddy's mouth (something he quickly got very good at doing), and the game repeats itself (this final phrase seems to come up a lot in games played with or by Jeyanth...).
Today we were playing this game, and, as usual, Jeyanth put the ball onto Daddy's mouth. Daddy took a deep breath to blow it off, but at the last moment Jeyanth snatched the ball away again, with a shout of triumph followed by howls of laughter.
June 03, 2004
Negative Results
I guess in a way I've always known this, but it really struck me today: that in learning, trying things that don't work is just as important as trying things that do.
For Jeyanth to understand relative size, it's no good him just putting smaller cups into bigger ones - he also has to spend a lot of time trying, very hard, to put bigger cups into smaller ones. He has to spend a lot of time trying to put cubes through the round hole, and trying to put balls onto flat but not-quite-horizontal surfaces.
In fact, he needs to spend a lot more time doing the things that don't work, because he's trying to prove a negative. Round balls go through the circular hole: ok, one or two repeats, and that much is clear. But cubes don't? Maybe because I didn't get the angle right. Maybe because I didn't push hard enough. Maybe just because it's thursday. How many times does a cube have to not go through that hole before he can conclude that it never will?
Similarly with the stacking cups. At the moment, I'd guess that Jeyanth's state of understanding is that if you put one cup onto another, it will either go into it, or sit on top of it, or (most frequently) fall off it. There are a lot more experiments to be done before he will be able to predict - or control - the outcome.
So, while I will continue to cheer when Jeyanth gets things 'right', I am resolved not to get frustrated the next time he tries to force the cube through that round hole...
June 01, 2004
To Daddy
Three more recent developments...
Firstly, Jeyanth has been gradually mastering the art of cruising. We've mentioned this a couple of times, because it has been slow and steady progress, but he now more or less seems to have the hang of it. He'll move around the outside of the room (from window to sofa to sofa to coffee table) quite confidently, if not quickly.
Secondly, he's starting to (sometimes) show some cooperation at getting dressed. Specifically, if you take his hand and put it into his sleeve, most of the time he will work it through and out of the other end by himself.
Thirdly, and very excitingly, just yesterday Jeyanth showed his first signs of responding to a request to 'give' (in context, with gestures). If he is holding a ball, and I hold out a hand and say 'ball to Daddy', a fairly high proportion of the time he will place the ball into my outstretched hand and let go, with a big smile. Even if he isn't holding the ball, if we've been playing with it, he will often pick the ball up and put it into my hand when I ask and gesture. He's also done this trick with Ammamma this evening, so I'm fairly sure it's not just my imagination :).
Over the worst
About half an hour ago I got back from Jeyanth's follow up visit to the doctor. The verdict is that he is over the worst, there has been no diarrhoea since yesterday afternoon, and he is only showing very mild signs of dehydration - nothing to worry about. The ear infection is definitely gone, and the throat is pretty well cleared up, so no more antibiotics. He's back on milk (lactose-free) as of this morning; he'll be back on solids and normal milk from thursday, assuming that there are no adverse reactions.
Right now he's fast asleep. I'm about to be too.