The First Birthday

It’s the 26^th of February and it’s the first day of seconds for H. Every day last year was a day of firsts but today is the first time he will have lived through a whole day on the calendar for the second time. He was born just before midnight on the 25^th of February last year. That makes this day another one to mark as just as special as his first birthday yesterday.

On the weekend a number of family and friends gathered to have a bit of a party for H’s first birthday. The invitation we sent out was quite explicit in that it said the party wasn’t about him – it was more about the fact that his Mum and Dad had survived the first year.

I feel quite strongly that this is what first birthdays are all about. They are a celebration of the family having made it through. My initial experience of this came a few years ago when I attended my first ‘first birthday party’. I was a single bloke and was thinking that this was going to be a quick hi to the parents, laugh at the kids playing cutely and get out of there quickly. It wasn’t and I had to really hold myself back on the constant flow of beers that were being thrown my way so that I could drive home!

The first birthday is, to me, a celebration of the African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child.” At the party there were numerous people who had contributed to H’s growth and development in so many little ways during his first year. There were people who had given us support, guidance and advice when things were going a little pear shaped standing in the room, people who arrived with croissants and coffee at our door when H was just weeks old, people who have come in to babysit him so that his parents could have time out to ourselves and people who had just said the right thing at the right time when we needed it. They were all there to share in the day.  However, we realise there are also so many others who could not make it because of distance or other commitments and I know that they too will get the chance to share more time with H as he grows.

To everyone who has helped in H’s first year I want to say a massive thank you. You have been great support to us in raising our son and it’s because of you every day raising H is as special as his birthday - if somewhat slightly mad.

Toilet Training or Toilet Humour?

In spending time with my son there have been plenty of things that have caused me angst as a parent. However, there is plenty that has left me laughing very hard at the same time. Being a male, who is now only beginning to grow up, toilet humour is one that always brings a smile to the face. I love reading my son’s favourite story The Pirate who had to Pee as much as loves listening to it!

Which brings me to the somewhat humourous toilet training issue that has plagued us the past few days. In our first week together I wasn’t sure what to do when I went to the toilet. Should I just leave H playing? Should I take him with me? Should I shut the door? Now these are questions that are simple, probably don’t need to asked (or shared) but are none the less (I have discovered) very important ones. What do you do with your crawling, very mobile son while you go to the bathroom?

My first discovery of this issue came when we returned from our swimming lesson. I’d changed him at the pool but came home in my wet swimmers and towel. Arriving home, wet gear still on, having had a half hour swimming lesson etc etc my keys hit the lock and I needed to go to the bathroom. I put H down with his toys and raced to the toilet leaving the door open behind me. Within seconds I heard the slap, slap, slap of his hands as he crawled around the corner. He let out a huge “Ooowwwwwwwww” and he charged into the bathroom behind me.

“No, H, No!” I implored to no avail.

His hands grabbed onto the back of my legs, taking a handful of hair and twisting on the way up for good measure. Hit, stick and squeeze! The shoulder contacted the back of my knee in a perfect tackle with just enough leg drive up to buckle the knee and cause plenty of wobbling.

Finally, the few seconds (it actually felt like hours), were over and I could turn around while repeatedly telling H “No!” In the days since he has become fixated with the toilet, climbing up to hold onto the bowl and then trying to stick his hands in as far as they can go.

Since his hair tweaking, crash tackling toilet escapades I have tried several methods to stop him joining me and repeating the incident. Door shut equals screaming while toys and books equal a momentary distraction and a chance for him to develop his side step and swerve while racing forward. What do I do? I am sure I’m not the first person to be crash tackled from behind by an infant in the toilet. Are there any Dads out there (this is probably not a problem Mums can help with) who have any advice on how to toilet train my son from tackling his me into the toilet?

The Boys Together - week 1

We’ve just finished the first week of a Slightly Mad Dad and his son being home alone together. On Monday Sane Mum became the Bread Winning Mum (BWM) and returned to the workforce leaving the boys together at home. Slightly Mad Dad called his blog just that because he thought he was mad being a stay at home dad and it was going to be pretty hard work.

How hard was it? A lot harder than I ever imagined! Monday was pretty good I started the day at 90% excited 10% scared on my sliding scale. We went to swimming lessons, had a sleep, we caught up for lunch with a couple of other dads in the park and we cruised around. This was pretty good. It was only about 4:30pm when the witching hour started and I was busy trying to get dinner organised and H was grizzling that the scale started to slide more toward scared. It’s around this time I started to look for the cavalry coming over the hill. Was it coming? Yes but only after dinner, bath and bottle and Mum arrived home from her own exhausting day to kiss H good night and put him to bed.

Come Tuesday I knew what I was in for a little more. BWM had meetings until late and wouldn’t be getting home until after H was in bed. This was something she was not happy about and is working hard to make sure she can get home to see H before he goes to bed. The boys were going to be together all day – no cavalry would be coming. In this case I started the day at 80% excited 20% scared. We were went for a run, had a sleep, we went to the shops, we kept busy and by the time he was down and out for sleep I was probably at 50% excited 30% scared and 20% exhausted.

Wednesday came and went with visits, sleeps, shops, play time. BWM had seen H for a few minutes in the morning as he woke up late and she only just made it home to see him as he fell asleep again. Despite me feeling exhausted at the end of the day I could see it was difficult for BWM because she had spent the last year spending everyday with her son and now things were changing. We were lucky that we could sit down each night and talk our way through our days, our anxieties and also our successes so that the feeling of where we were on the excited / scared (exhausted) scale could even itself back more toward the excited end.

We got through Thursday with the routine we had begun to establish. Morning walk, sleep and then off to Gymbaroo for some playtime in the afternoon all happened fairly smoothly.  Thursday though saw BWM come home early so she could spend some time with H and also I could go to rugby training. As she arrived home I was sitting at the table feeding H his dinner all dressed in my rugby gear with the scales tipping up towards the high 90s on excitement. I won’t go into the details of rugby (that’s for another blog) but it was so good to spend time with adults again after four days with so much contact with a child of nearly one.

On Friday morning H went to childcare for the day. The boys had been doing some great bonding all week and we’d been setting up our routines. Watching him go into childcare for the day was the hardest thing I have done in a longtime. From the moment he arrived he started to tense up and as we walked into the room he gripped me tighter and as soon as I put him down to play he cried and cried. What are my choices here? Stay and play and maybe make it worse or get out of there fast and trust the carers who work at the centre. I chose to get out fast – I didn’t want to be the parent who hung around and maybe makes it worse. It is quite distressing to walk out the door to your own child’s cries. As I drove away there was a tear of my own in sympathy for my son. Needless to say when I rang later he was running amuck outside very happily.

How did the first week rate then? As I said at the beginning I thought it was going to be hard. It was harder. Was it fun? Most definitely! Did I learn anything? I learnt lots (I now have many notes for more blogs – just need to the time to write them!). The best parts of the week though involved knowing I had the support of BWM and that together we are going to enjoy helping our son grow up this year.

Firsts and Lasts

My wife’s last day of maternity leave coincided with our son’s first day of childcare. Last Friday was going to be a big day for us all.

One great thing about H is he is a pretty good night sleeper. Maybe once do we hear him stir in the night and we go in and settle him (more often roll him away from the corner where he is stuck) and he’s back to sleep. However, on the night before his first day he was screaming at 3am and wouldn’t go back to sleep. After both parents tried to settle him, change his nappy (nothing) it was eventually decided it must be his ever-emerging teeth and to give him a shot of Panadol Kids. This sent him back to sleep just after 4.

What this meant was the boy who is usually awake between 6 and 6.30 slept all the way to 7:30am. Naturally, as his super organised parents we hadn’t labeled any of the items he was taking to childcare. Nor had we packed his bag. Nor had we even found the picture we needed to give them to go up on the family tree. So our dream of dropping H off just after 8am for his first day was already looking very shabby. The mad rush of Mum feeding H and Slightly Mad Dad busily trying to affix the iron-on labels and print off photos began.

Just after 9am we made it to childcare and dropped H off. This was, I suppose, the moment I had been thinking about for a while. How do you let your child go? I know as parents we had discussed this moment a lot. Having worked as a teacher I always hated the parents who hung around outside the classroom on the first day (or any day after that!) and I was determined that I was not going to let this happen. We were going to drop and run, the band-aid was being ripped off, call it what you will!

Only problem was the staff wouldn’t let us run away. There was extra paperwork to fill in – the can your child sleep on their stomach, permission to give nappy rash cream, what are your 11 month olds favourite activities etc etc etc. We were there for about ten minutes and the best part of it was in that time H began to play with the other kids. He was then lifted into a seat to partake in one of his favourite activities – eating. He was happily distracted and we were able to exit the building after a brief farewell to staff and our son along with a quick reminder to stick with the Marquess of Queensberry’s Rules.

What do you do when your child has his first day in childcare? We went out for breakfast and as we drove away from the centre I quickly did some mathematical calculations that it had been 351 days since my wife and I had been in a situation where we were going to be childfree for a day. And this was where the nerves really kicked in – because after so long becoming conditioned to being a parent and caring for your child we were now adults again with the day ahead of us. What did we do? It took a while to decide but we treated ourselves and went to the movies. Something we hadn’t done since well before H was born. Was it good to sit in a cinema? Oh yes, especially because there was not another soul there except the two of us!

We eventually picked H up after his first day just after 4. We (sorry I) had made one phone call to check in on him (cried after we left, but then played and was now asleep) but other than that no news. Of course this is good news. However, the anxiety of being a parent kicked back in here. Will he not like us and give us the cold shoulder when we pick him up? Will he have hated it and cried all day? Of course these are things we put in our own heads because we when we arrived to pick him up he was happy to see us. He seemed to have had a good day, he was smiling but he hadn’t eaten much lunch or drank his afternoon bottle. These are things he does at home sometimes so it seemed like a good day.

When we put him down to sleep that night it all seemed fine. He was the same happy boy who had woken up in the morning. He’d had new adventures, his parents had got over their anxieties and he was ready to go to sleep and he did all the way through until the next morning - the joy of being exhausted. Now we can’t wait for next Friday when the boys get to do it all on their own.

In Plane Sight......

We recently took H on a brief holiday to Byron Bay. It was great to spend the time together as a family having a holiday away from everything in our normal lives. It was even better as a teacher to be able to say I was going away on holiday the week that school went back!

It was on the first morning of that holiday away that I passed ‘judgment’ on a few other Dads I saw early in the morning. It got me thinking about how we pass judgment on ourselves and our anxieties as new parents. In a nutshell, “How do we see own anxieties and the behavior of our child in public?”

I think the flight home from Ballina to Sydney was a great example of this for me. We arrived at Ballina airport, checked in and did all the plane things that you have to do when flying. However, it’s only a tiny airport and once you go through security there was no shops or cafes. While I organised a couple of bottles of water for the flight H, while being held by his Mum, quite happily stood on a bar next to the glass wall which separated the departure lounge from the rest of airport. All I could see was my son blowing raspberries and slobbering all over the glass while making plenty of his usual grunting sounds. The lady who was working security on the other side of the glass later said to us it was so funny to watch him having fun and playing providing her with a big smile to keep her happy at work.

Once we got on the plane I got to see this again as H sat belted in my lap. He quickly smashed a bottle of formula as we took off and then promptly started to wriggle and wriggle and wriggle. His Mum took over holding him and I passed him food. He was ok but wriggled lots while eating bits of pasta and steamed carrot for his dinner. I noticed he kept trying to climb over his Mum and look at the people behind her. I turned around but the lady behind was playing peek-a-boo with him and both of them were smiling happily. Every time they brought the drinks trolley past the airline staff smiled happily and engaged with this wriggly little bundle on our laps. The lady on the aisle also engaged H and chatted to his Mum throughout the flight. Finally we landed in Sydney and he cried a little as we landed but sucked a dummy for most of it while giving it his wriggles on my lap. He finally sat still as he taxied toward the terminal as he watched planes taking off and he loves seeing planes fly! The wriggling stopped but the excited grunts started! As we exited the plane the people around all said their good-byes as did the staff.

What struck me most though was one young man in his early 20s sitting across from us said how well behaved H had been during the flight. He hadn’t engaged with us at all. He’d been listening to music. In fact the only other thing I remember was he looked a little dismayed to be sitting opposite what was the only infant on a fairly packed flight.

During the two hours of being at the airport, boarding and flying to Sydney all these people had commented on how H made them smile or how good he’d been. His Mum and I had seen a little wriggler who had done his best to exhaust us. Who was right in what they saw? These people who saw a lovely little boy or his parents who saw the relief in making it back without a major meltdown?

Once again it’s all about the perception. Yet when I think about the amount of time H’s Mum puts into the getting things organised for trips such as this one then I know that more often than not it will come off smoothly. So when I think about this I really should not think of the wriggly child who attempted to escape from my lap but remember the little explorer who wanted to meet so many new friends on his plane trip home. That’s a perception I want to keep up!