It has been getting harder and harder to work out what to write for these half monthly updates.  Everything is just a gradual improvement, with Nathan getting better at the skills he is practising, rather than him obtaining new skills.  He is still standing at every opportunity and every day he is straighter and reaching higher (to pull down whatever he can reach).  He still occasionally lets go of what he’s holding onto and standing on his own for a few seconds at a time.  He has started waving and although Andrew has tried and tried to teach him how to clap, it is still beyond him.  When he wants something, he reaches with one arm/hand towards the thing he wants.  It isn’t always something that is close, so sometimes it’s hard to work out what he wants.

Nathan knows who people are, and if you say to him “where’s Daddy?” or “where’s Mummy?” or “where’s Sophie?” (his toy elephant) or “where’s Arthur?” (his bear) then Nathan will turn his head to look at the person/object.  Thismorning when Andrew was still in bed I asked Nathan where Daddy was, and he crawled into the bedroom and started playing with the mirrored wardrobe doors, so I’m not sure if he was heading in there because Daddy was there or if it was a coincidence.  He loves playing peekaboo, and even puts his own head down and looks up in his own version of the game.  We also think he is trying to repeat what we say, because the syllables are often right and sometimes it even sounds like what we were saying, but mostly his chatter is still baby babble.

Nathan also knows that when I get my pump and handbag and computer ready for work then it means I’m leaving him, and he tends to cry quite a lot.  I’m hoping that as he gets used to Alice (our nanny) that he will be happier more quickly.

Food-wise Nathan is a complete guts and has a belly to prove it.  He will literally eat anything we give him.  He has even tried to eat an apple that I am eating by scraping his bottom teeth along the flesh of the apple.  Oh, talking about teeth, he has 3 of his top teeth coming through at the moment.  He still hasn’t eaten nuts, but he’s had just about every other food that is well known for causing allergies, so all seems well from that point of view.

Our boy is three quarters of a year old.  Time has simply flown!!

Well, we couldn’t do it. Today is Andrew’s first day back at work, and instead of Nathan being in childcare I am at home looking after him.

Andrew took Nathan to the childcare place yesterday for a ‘play date’ which was supposed to be to let him get used to the people and babies there. Andrew hated the place. One baby was being held while a carer was shovelling puree into the mouth of another one. The babies that were awake but not being attended to were strapped into bouncers, some babies were asleep in the cots and one baby spent 15 minutes screaming in his cot because there was noone to comfort him. There were supposed to be two people looking after the baby room, but one runs the place and was forever running in and out of the room. Andrew told them that we don’t feed Nathan purees, and so he was offered a chunk of apple! No, Nathan doesn’t eat puree, but he does still eat age appropriate foods (except for the chili sausage Andrew tried him on last night and which he hated!) and uncooked apple is not age appropriate!

They had told me that they follow our routines, but it was obvious that there weren’t enough hands available to spend time rocking Nathan to sleep for starters! The lady there told Andrew that most babies don’t sleep for the first few weeks!!! They supplied their own disposable nappies, and changed them on a schedule, and they used commercially available wipes. Andrew told them they can’t use them on Nathan (as he reacts to them) and said we just use a cloth and water, and they said we’d have to supply the cloths, which is fine with me if I could be sure they’d use them!

So we both had visions of our 8 month old son, who has been used to having his needs met promptly and is crawling like a trooper and standing and being active all his waking moments, being left in the cot to cry, being strapped into a bouncer while awake and not being attended to, and generally not being cared for or even stimulated. I went to talk to my direct supervisor at work about it, and ended up crying my eyes out to our business manager. I decided then and there that there was no way he was going to childcare today, and Andrew admitted to me later that he had decided if I insisted that he go to childcare that he would have taken a sick day or something and looked after him.

So, I guess we are back to trying to find someone to care for Nathan while we are at work. I can see it’s not going to be easy.

Andrew only has one day left of his 6 weeks of parental leave, and I officially drop back to 3 days a week at work next week.  This means that next week Nathan starts childcare 3 days a week.  The day we have agonised about is coming, and both Andrew and I are still agonising over our decision to put Nathan into child care.  Neither of us want Nathan to go into child care, and I don’t really think he is ready for it.  Part of that reason is because Nathan still is learning how to go to sleep and won’t do it on his own in the cot yet, part is because we have quite an alternative parenting style to most people and I don’t want to confuse him or have him in situations where he won’t be able to be comforted when needed because there are 4 other babies being looked after by the same carer, and part is because he’s our baby and still changing so quickly and neither of us want him to grow up while we are away from him.  I guess that the bottom line is that we decided to have a baby, and we think it’s our responsibility to bring him up and it shouldn’t be left to some stranger to do it for us.  However, we live in Sydney and have a mortgage and I thought that we wouldn’t be able to survive on one wage in order for someone to stay home.  I was also feeling responsible for a project I do at work that is due to be finished by the end of the year and felt compelled to return to work to get it finished.  I never thought I’d be interested in being a stay-at-home-mum either, but interestingly I feel quite differently about that now!  I’m not saying I’d never want to go back to work, but I would like to spend a bit longer looking after Nathan!  Andrew is currently suggesting that I take next year off to look after him, and to rethink my career (I feel the need for a change right now).  I’m just waiting to see how 3 days a week of work will go before making any decisions on that front.

Anyway, back to Nathan’s development.  He’s crawling properly (and quickly) without the little jump that was a part of his crawling style before. He’s also standing very well now, even when supporting himself with just one hand.  He still wobbles and it will be a while before he will be able to stand unsupported, but he’s standing at every opportunity.  He will also take steps if encouraged, and now that he has a Wheelie-Bug he will walk along behind it (with either Andrew or I making sure that it doesn’t move too quickly for him).  He’s also turning pages when we read books, and loves knocking down Leggo towers that Andrew builds.  Actually, it’s Quatro that is made by Leggo but don’t seem to be available in Australia anymore!  Nathan has really discovered birds too, and just stops and stares at them whenever he sees any. And finally, he’s now had his first bad cold and has been sick with elevated temperatures, conjunctivitis, coughing, sneezing, and being so congested that he’s found it difficult to breathe while breastfeeding. Thankfully he’s well on the mend now, even though his cough and blocked nose persist. He got weighed at one of his appointment with the GP, and he weighed in at just under 8.5 kg (fully clothed).

We got home from doing the grocery shopping last weekend and, as usual, everything got dumped on the floor until it could be put away (we don’t have much bench space in the kitchen, eh, we don’t have much space in the kitchen!). I needed to feed Nathan, so he and I plonked ourselves down on the couch for a while, and Andrew started putting things away and getting dinner ready.

There were still a couple of plastic bags (we forgot our green bags…oops) full of shopping on the floor when I finished feeding Nathan, so when I put him on the ground he went to investigate. The next thing I know he has helped himself to a bag full of mushrooms! He got one out, took a bite, grabbed another one with his other hand, took a bite of that and decided it was no good so put it back in the bag. He then went on to eat an entire mushroom!

As always, time is flying past.  I’ve been back at work for nearly 4 weeks now, and we seem to have settled down into a bit of a routine (of sorts).  We try to have Nathan in bed by 8:30 pm and he is generally awake around 6 am.  I express every feed at home and 3 times during my working day, which gets me around 220 ml of milk.  Nathan then has two feeds of around 110 ml each during the day, and I also breastfeed him when he wakes in the morning, after his breakfast and before I head off to work, when I return home from work, when I feed him to sleep around 8:30 pm and he usually has one feed during the night.  However, we did have our first unbroken 8 hour sleep from Nathan recently!!  Yes, you read correctly, EIGHT HOURS!  Mind you, Andrew and I didn’t sleep so well, as we kept waking and wondering if Nathan was ok!!  Hahaha!

Andrew is really enjoying his time with Nathan, and they go for lots of walks, meetup with the other women from the Mother’s group, go swimming and get to a park at any opportunity.  The park at Coogee is their favourite so far, with a swing that Andrew sort of lies Nathan in (face downwards) and he loves it!

Nathan is only just getting the hang of crawling properly, but still uses a combination of jumping, pulling and crawling to get places fast!  He is now also pulling himself up to standing at every opportunity. 

We definitely now have 2 teeth (and for the record, Andrew was correct and the first tooth through was on Nathan’s right side).  He’s doing really well at biting and chewing, and just loves to feed himself.  So we often put his food on a tray and just let him go for it.

And finally, we got tired of Nathan’s crazy hair, so he had a haircut a few days ago….

And now he only looks a little bit crazy!