Yep, that’s right…Baby A getting ready to cry. Still, what are we supposed to do – lock him up in the house and leave him? (Hmmm…..interesting idea…). 

It is quite customary to buy new outfits for for Eid as presents. I had done my good deed and had remembered to buy an outfit for Mummy A….I even picked it myself. Ok, not completely myself…admittedly Mummy A’s mother was with me…but only to assist of course. 

This was also I the first time I bought an outfit for Baby A. And this really was all by myself. I got him a nice Tigger outfit, with a lovely striped red tank top. I thought he looked very handsome. Takes after his old man…

It was a nice day seeing friends and family, and Baby A was alright. Well…as alright as he gets anyway – as long as you sit by him and nobody tries to pick him up…then he’s alright. 

The typical thing in Eid is to give money to the kids as a gift – if you have a lot of friends and older relatives you can do pretty well for yourself. Baby A did pretty well for himself, I have to say – I might have to get a loan from him! Although, I am going to deduct the cost of my glasses from his earnings…

What would you do for your child? I don’t mean the “die for your child” type stuff, but just the every day sort of things you would do to/for him that you would never do for anyone else. Here’s a list of five things from me:

· Put my fingernail in his nose to take out the bogeys

· Hold my hand to his mouth to catch his vomit

· Clean his bum

· Blow raspberries on his stomach

· Put my nose to his bum to smell if he has done a poo

How many people would you do that for?

Take a trip to Toys r us and it’s a treasure trove for kids. Although….I would always be reluctant to take your kid with you to the toy shop. It’s like waving every variation of cocaine, heroin and cannabis in the face of a hard core drug addict. Or – and I like this analogy better – giving Coca Cola to a three year old.

Having said that, though, I don’t know why we bother. No matter what toy he gets, they all end up in one place…his mouth. He’s not restricted to toys either. Yes, we already know his habit of chewing on his hands or even his feet, but pretty much anything is fair game.

Books, bibs, remote controls (a favourite for all kids apparently), chair legs – he’ll give anything a taste. He enjoys biting on the wheels of my office chair….and we found him licking the tiled floor the other day. Yuck. We really need to break him of that particular habit.

Apparently “mouthing” is pretty common for babies – it’s there way of exploring their environment. So…nothing to worry about. Not that I was worried about anything of course. As if. 

I just wish he would choose to “explore” his own food once in a while.

So how did the Special One* achieve this incredible feat? Well, he decided today would be the day to do the sloppiest poos possible (I’m not obsessed with poo…honest). Of course it’s not just about sloppiness, but also timing and volume.

I had barely changed his first nappy of the day when he started grunting with strain. Yep, the first nappy lasted about 2 minutes. Another change followed breakfast, and I thought that would be it – there couldn’t be that much left could there?

He’s a crafty little bugger though, and thought he would hold some back, just to torment me. Where does he keep it all? He must have a hollow leg.

* NOT copyrighted by Jose Mourinho, all you Chelsea fans, so I’m perfectly entitled to use it.

I called a friend the other day, and his daughter answered:

Me : Hi, how are you?

Her: I’m fine thank you

Me : Whatcha doing?

Her: Eating

Me : Oh? What are you eating?

Her: Oh, just some rice and fish

(In the background I hear her mum say “no, you’re not, you’re eating chicken!“)

Her: Oh….(she thinks about it for a moment) well it tastes like fish….

I have tasted her cooking, so I refuse to comment.I look forward to Ayaan talking…

Then...

Now that Baby A is drinking his milk it really takes a load off your mind. When they’re this small you want them to eat and drink as much as possible. Mummy A always said she wanted a plump baby (mainly ‘cos a tubby baby looks cute) but that looks unlikely in Baby A’s case. Hey, as long as he’s eating, I’m happy.

It did get me thinking though, about how things used to be in the past, all those many months ago back in January…

- Our first experience of feeding was guided by the midwife at the hospital. We were taught to support his head with our hand (It was a great way of getting cramp in your arm). This is despite the fact that every other mother in the universe holds their baby at the elbow…

- We fed him Aptamil because that’s what the hospital told us. So of course it Must Be Right. We now feed him Cow & Gate and can’t see any difference – the ingredients are identical, but it is slightly cheaper. I’ll leave you to decide what’s best.

- We were feeding him about an ounce of milk…every hour on the hour. You know what that means…no sleep.

Now...

- We were worried about him getting sick, and his problems with feeding. A midwife told us that bacteria could rush in as soon as the steriliser containing the bottles was opened. Talk about scaremongering – how the hell do you get a bottle without opening the steriliser?

- We bought a set of Dr Brown’s bottles ‘cos we thought he had colic. What a waste of money that was. We were convinced he drank better with them – but in hindsight I don’t think it actually made much difference which bottle we used.

- Speaking of colic, I remember trying all sorts of medicines, such as dentinox, infacol and gaviscon (to name but a few). I thought they were great stuff, but wish we hadn’t bothered. Let’s face it, no one has been able to pinpoint exactly what colic is, so it’s something you’ve got to ride out.

Phew! There are lots of things we just never knew about or understood. I’d like to think I’m pretty clued up now, although there’s probably a million and one things I could still do with knowing about*. I’m sure it will all come in time. Although…maybe not in this lifetime.

*Like…how do you put a baby up for adoption? Just out of curiosity of course…

We’ve had the E-thos baby monitor for a while now and thought it was about time I share my experiences. If you don’t plan on buying a monitor any time soon…feel free to leave now.

Here’s the short version: It’s great! Buy it!

…And the long version: Getting it the first time, it was easy to set up. The monitor is in two parts – the camera and the screen. Plug them both in, make sure they’re both set to the same channel (a choice of 4) and you’re good to go. Easy peasy. 

The screen is 5.6″ in colour and the image quality is pretty decent. You do get a bit of static/interference occasionally, but it is quite good on the whole. It’s quite nice to have a big screen – apparently you can even record the images on to a video/DVD, although we haven’t tried. One caveat (which I noticed someone put in another review) – the screen MUST be connected to a power socket. It’s not a deal breaker for us, but If you want full portability, this probably isn’t the one for you.

The camera can run on batteries or directly plugged in – we keep ours plugged. The one hassle we had was positioning it correctly – the camera doesn’t swivel enough to get the angle we needed from the top of a cupboard, so we ended up taping it to the side of the cot. Silly solution, I know, but from what I can tell a lot of these baby monitor cameras don’t swivel enough.

When we first switched it on, it picked up the Sky TV signal – so you could actually use it as a mini TV! Why watch the baby when you could watch Sky Movies? And did I mention it has a 5.6″ screen?

Ok, before I’m accused of advertising, it is by no means perfect. When we first used it, it wouldn’t adjust to nightvision mode, so the screen just got darker and darker. Luckily, this was only for the first day – it seems to be fine since then. We sometimes get this annoying static noise, but you can usually resolve it by changing the position of the monitor. It is also, to be fair, a bit pricey. Argos and Mothercare are currently selling it at £199.99 (we bought it at a discount) – so look out for offers.

Overall, though, I would highly recommend it – it’s great to be able to see what you baby is up to – even if it does involve watching him sleep. When we first got it, we spent ages just staring at the screen, watching him. Hey, at least he’ll be used to the Big Brother society we are heading towards! PS….did I mention it has a 5.6″ screen?

PROS – Big screen, night mode, record to video/DVD. Can also get a Sky signal and watch TV!

CONS – Screen must be connected to power source, occasional static interference, camera does not rotate enough, quite expensive.

Baby A has been sitting up quite a  bit now (nope, still not by himself). Of course, as a result he falls over an awful lot too. It’s very important to keep him protected, otherwise he’ll bang his head all the time.

We were in doing a bit of shopping today and I saw this great mat. It was quite a large circular one and quite padded like a mattress. Perfect! Baby A could sit on that – if he fell over, he wouldn’t hurt himself. So I showed it to Mummy A.

She looked at it, looked at me, then looked at it again.

“Our son’s not a dog, you know!” She said sternly.

Er…what?

I looked at the mat again…and suddenly noticed the picture of a bone on it. Then I looked around me – and realised we were in the Pets department. Hey, how was I to know they make it so comfortable for dogs?

Oops.

Actually, I think I need to put a few caveats in that:

• His crawl speed is more tortoise than hare. I’m pretty sure if he raced against a snail….the snail would win.
• He can cover a distance equivalent to 100 times is body length….well, if he was an ant that is. The most ground I’ve seen him cover so far is about a metre. 
• Baby A only has one gear….reverse. Yep, he can’t actually crawl forwards yet!