Category: week in review

And here we are… a hundred weeks in. Puff is happily sleeping, despite a bit of a false start. After his bath, his night routine is to say goodnight to Mum, then go into his room with Dad, where we read stories, pray, and then Dad puts him into his sleeping bag, he turns the light off, then he goes into his cot.

Tonight, he made a quick grab for the light switch, and turned it off. To stop him from trying that again, I put him straight into his cot. Needless to say, he wasn’t happy about it, and insisted on getting straight out of his cot and having the light put back on. The rest of the night routine went smoothly, and hopefully he won’t try playing with the lights again.

This week we were surprised to find that his attention span was long enough to listen to an entire little Golden book.

Not quite so good was his ability to move on from playing on this ride-on train. In fact, even when he saw a photo of himself on the train, he said “elmo? big bird?”.

He’s getting better at using a phone: – here he is listening to Aunty Chan on the phone.

When mum had to go to the dentist, Puff helped out the staff behind the counter.

In exploring the world of fashion, we make a number of attempts – here he is trying out a v-neck. (I can’t take the credit for that joke).

He’s getting better at singing – he has an excellent memory for the song words, and he’s starting to understand how to get the pitch right.

We’re really close to one hundred weeks, with Puff’s second birthday beginning to loom. This week we started giving him more of the books and posters that go with his kindermusik class.

Until this week, he’d always go and look for the book that goes with his cock-a-doodle-moo book when the song is played, but now he has a poster to look at too. When he heard the song, he kept pointing at the right picture to go with the verse.

Saturday we had a family road-trip down south. We had lunch in Wollongong, and then gave Puff a chance to roam around on the grass for a bit. He had a great time, but still managed to wander a long way from us before looking back to make sure we were still there: it’s good to see him able to explore, and be confident at a distance from us.

From Wollongong we headed further south – we had a look at Bombo beach (a word he thought was hilarious, by the way) – and then drove further down to Kiama, to have a look at the blowhole.

There’s a big fence to keep everyone safe as they look at the blowhole, and there’s a helpful sign to explain that the blowhole makes a “whoomp!” sound. This was good to know, as we thought that it was saying “whump”.

From there, we walked a bit further around to look elsewhere, and there was a brief chance for Puff to have cuddles with Mum.

Just because there’s been a dearth of videos on the site of late, we took a couple of extra ones: here he is singing a little song.

Perhaps more pleasant to listen to is this video: we found something that he thought was amusing, and kept laughing.

Another week has flown by, and Dad finally seems to have finished being sick, so life is starting to return to normal.

Two Sundays in a row now, Dad has been home with Puff while Mum went to church: this meant that Dad didn’t have to go out while sick, and Mum could still see people and listen to a sermon.

When well rested, Puff has a great time playing and running around. More and more often, we see him pull faces like this:

When he’s tired, though, we see first a loss of posture (this particular one means that he’d like to finish his mealtime).

Not long afterwards, we see – once back in the car – this kind of thing.

If we can get him home and into his cot when he’s asleep in the car, he’ll generally sleep for an hour or so in the middle of the day.

One afternoon when he was awake, baby H came by. With the age gap, Puff still wasn’t quite sure about how to play with another baby, but he had a great time playing with her toys.

With winter well underway, he’s been trying out some new clothes. You can see his new slippers in the photo above (slightly easier to have him wear slippers than wear socks). Here he is with a scarf – is it safe for babies to wear scarves?

His grandma also gave him a new jumper that she’d knitted for him: he’s still getting used to the scratchiness of wool compared to the polar fleece that he’s used to:

We’re still facing the challenge with having Puff respond when he’s called for dinner. He gets three warnings, and then we pick him up, tell him what he’s done wrong, and then put him in his chair anyway. So much repetition, but we seem to be seeing some breakthroughs: – he seems to be obeying more regularly.

With Dad sick with tonsilitis over the weekend (and only just getting over it now), it’s been a more quiet week than usual. Nonetheless, we managed to have people over for dinner on Saturday night (M and baby H, and C&J). It’s hard to push through the fever symptoms, but, as Mum keeps reminding me, being a parent means there are responsibilities, whether it’s easy or difficult to get them done.

Suffice to say that the days of pre-parenting illness were much more about DVD watching and trying to rest. Sometimes, I miss those days.

Saturday, with Dad still feeling okay, we went to the Eveleigh markets to catch up with C,A&L, and ended up seeing a few other familiar faces as well. From there, we went to the fish markets for a picnic lunch.

It’s hard to tell if Puff liked the yoghurt cup or this set of toys more, but he was pretty happy with each one.

A trip to the shops with Mum led to Puff sitting happily in one of the Thomas the Tank Engine trucks in an in-store merry-go-round ride. Suddenly, another Mum came along with her kids, and put money in the machine: Puff was pretty excited to see the possibilities of this toy, but we’ve made it pretty clear that it was something that someone else had to make happen.

We’ll see how long that works.

He’s putting up less of a fight when it’s time to change his nappy, and when it’s time to do as he’s told, if he’s had enough rest, he tends to be pretty obedient. When he’s tired, though, all bets are off.

At the moment, our discipline approach is to give him a little bit of time to come when he’s called, and then to go over, pick him up, and take him to wherever it was we asked him to go. Seems pretty age appropriate, and yet reinforces that he’ll end up doing what he’s told whether he cooperates or not.

It’s a struggle to know whether we’re making the right decision about discipline, but we just watch how his decision-making is going, and make changes as we go.

This week Puff has had a couple of very late nights: here he is asleep with the lights on.

One night last week, he insisted that he read one of his bedtime books, which he then read through a good half-dozen times before Dad could talk him down.

A couple of mornings in a row we came in and saw that he’d managed to get some of the way out of his pyjamas. Last week he started taking off his pants (and – despite the cold weather – this continues). This week he has somehow taken his arm out of his pyjama sleeve, then push his arm back through the neck of the sleeve, and twist it back through the sleeve, making something not entirely dissimilar to a tourniquet.

His preferred toys to keep on his table vary: he still does a lot of pencil drawing, but he’ll leave his keyboard on there, playing with it from time to time, and occasionally typing on it – even though it’s not hooked up to anything: we’re still trying to limit how much time he spends looking at various screens. (In the picture he’s wearing a hat that Aunty Chan made for him).

He’s more and more interested in numbers: he can read the numbers from 1-10, and he knows the number 20 and the number 100 by sight. He’ even memorised the order of the house numbers on a street near our place – he knows what the next house number will be! When we went to visit someone in hospital, one of his favourite parts of the visit was this map of what was on each floor, doubtless because of the big numbers.

This morning he asked mum if he could try on her scarf, and wear her slippers: he looks pretty happy.

This week we’re seeing Puff starting to wake up a bit earlier – he’s moved up a size of sleeping bag, and so he can crawl out. Worse yet – with the mornings being colder and colder, he’s decided that now is the time to remove his pyjama pants at every opportunity. In the mornings, we generally know that he’s awake when we hear him saying “miaow” any number of times to himself (or perhaps to his toy cat)

It was a busy weekend – Saturday we had a breakfast for a friend’s birthday, lunch with friends and then dinner with some of Dad’s old workmates, Sunday we had another birthday party.

Saturday we started out getting some walking done – he didn’t make it the full distance without demanding to be picked up, but we managed to avoid injury from the long stick on the balloon.

After working his way through a small cafe breakfast, there was time for a quick cuddle with mum, and then spend some time looking at the earth moving equipment – there were trucks, and diggers and he enjoyed watching them work.

Somehow he made it through lunch, playing on a trampoline and climbing and sliding, a quick nap, and then on to dinner at a Lebanese restaurant, where Puff watched the belly dancer (coping with the loud music) with her bright-coloured outfit, and even tried dancing along while standing on Mum’s lap.

Sunday saw us head up to Kuring-gai Chase national park, where we had a friend’s birthday party – three years old. Puff is still a bit young for games like pass the parcel, but he was pretty happen when – sitting in Dad’s lap – the music stopped, and he earned himself a set of large pencils.

He was happiest when he was playing by himself, or kicking the ball around – it was good to have a big space where he could safely run around.

The other new thing for the week was Puff having his face painted: given how enthusiastic he’s been about cats, we thought he’d look good as a cat.

We’re seeing him exhibit stronger and stronger moods: – he knows what he wants to do, and if we happen to disagree, then he’ll very quickly change his mood, and even start crying or saying “no” in no uncertain terms. This is especially an issue when he feels like watching a short video on the computer, or on Dad’s phone, and we think he’s had enough.

Amazing how quickly he can get hooked on things like videos, or even books! It seems like we’re going to need more and more wisdom as parents as he gets more and more complicated.

Dad’s exam is over, and there was a long weekend: this meant lots of time with Puff, Dad and Mum all together.

But before that, there was a trip to the park, where a common piece of playground equipment is the giant abacus.

Friday night we all went to the Rocks to watch a family-friendly-time (6:15pm!) light show near the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Puff – suitably rugged up for the evening weather – had a great time.

The high point was when he saw one of the Indian dancers quite near where we were sitting, and started to dance along!

After quite a while sitting on Dad’s lap (like a little hot water bottle) and a surprise visit from a Sydney foreshore photographer asking to take a photo of the three of us), he decided he’d rather sit with Mum.

On the trip back to the train station, Puff explored one of the light-sculpture trees for a while (and a series of blurry photos resulted).

The next day was a friend’s birthday party (she turned 4). Puff walked along with the present, and even handed it over with minimal fuss. He even managed a couple of hits of the pinata with a stick!

A trip to a cafe in Balmain on Sunday presented Puff with a veritable feast of cheese on toast, which he made a significant dent in. He proved his skills as a great eater yet again – spotting something on Mum’s plate, he said “Grape?”. Mum said “That’s not a grape, it’s an olive”. He said “Olive?”. Then he ate the olive, and asked for “more olives?”

Our favourite physical development this week has been Puff getting back into going on slides – even when they’re incredibly tall, he works out how to climb up, and makes it work.

Another odd thing that Mum mentioned today – Puff suddenly started praying! We pray with him every night, with mostly the same format, and today he started rattling off the names of people, and praying for them!

Dad has an exam this week, so this is a shorter than usual post.

Puff continues to amaze us with how well-mannered he is, and how much he can remember and recite. When talking to some of dads co-workers, he managed to get past his shyness enough to start quoting some numbers (counting up and down), and even say hi to some people he’s always been shy of in the office. A positive step.

We took him to a couple of cafes and a park on Sunday, and – after a lengthy time on the play equipment – spent some time stomping on autumn leaves. He really enjoyed it, and even tried his hand at racing Dad across the park. It’s still a new concept, so he needed a lot of encouragement to keep running, but he managed to touch the park bench first (Dad might have been going a little slower than top speed to keep it competitive).

We’re starting to be more careful in our choice of cafes – will it have the kind of toys that will keep him distracted for long enough to eat some food, or drink our coffee? Do they have high chairs? Here is a dad’s-eye-view of what it’s like to look after Puff in a cafe.

Everything else continues on much as usual. He’s very co-operative with getting out of the bath, with the nightly process of teeth-brushing, and – though he doesn’t always come straight away – he will generally respond when we tell him to come and have a meal, or to get ready to go out.

Dad in particular has been struggling to find the patience sometimes, but it seems a better result when we wait a little while extra for him to be obedient, rather than try and punish him somehow for being disobedient (there’s not really a punishment that makes sense to us yet – he’ll cheerfully explain that what he was/is doing the wrong thing, but that doesn’t quite get us to the point of obedience).

Puff is in bed for the night, and so it’s time to write another puff update. During dinner, we were talking about the days of the week, and he started quoting the Very Hungry Caterpillar, in extreme detail. Not quite word-perfect, but it was exciting and disturbing all at once.

Should I be putting more energy into teaching him other skills that aren’t literary? It’s great that he’s so advanced in remembering books, but there’s lots of other life skills that he’ll need to pick up.

Last weekend we went to Cronulla for breakfast with some friends, and then for a bit of a walk around, to go and play in the park. It had been raining a bit, and so a lot of the play equipment was wet, but he still had a great time. He remains worried about slides, but he’s trying to climb higher and more challenging pieces of equipment.

Later that day Dad took his Mum out for high tea. In the meantime, Mum and Puff went out for pancakes. A quick look at the menu, and Puff chose the pancakes with strawberries (even when the option of chocolate strawberries was available). Here he is with the resulting order.

He had some help, but here’s the end-game (in fact, he ate mostly berries). He also had a banana smoothie (his new favourite beverage when it’s on offer), and he’s been asking for one every day this week.

Sunday involved a trip to a couple of markets (a big contrast to last weekend’s stay-in-and-write-sermon). First, to South Sydney markets – here’s a snapshot of his latest grin.

The high-point of South Sydney markets was going to pat the baby farm animals (free!). Puff was pretty anxious about the animals at first, but with a bit of guidance from Dad managed to have some fun.

From there we went to Marrickville markets: it was like a trip to Bellingen markets with its quiet corners, live music and incense burners. Puff was enjoying looking around, but was most taken by the bouncing castle.

After making sure he wasn’t too tired by wandering around the markets, and running around in the nearby park, he had a play on the bouncing castle. He still hadn’t figured out how to jump, but he was having a great time trying to crawl and bounce around on it.

From there, we went to a cafe in Newtown where a fairly tired Puff nonetheless had a good time: trying out the cafe, and playing at the table by counting sugars as he took them in and out of the on-table cup.

The theme of the week has been trips to cafes and babycinos. Puff had his first marshmallow ever: we weren’t quick enough to capture it with a camera – he took a hesitant nibble for a second, but as soon as he’d tasted it, he pushed the whole thing into his mouth, and there was no looking back from there.

Since then, he’s had a few more babycinos, and he seems to be enjoying the whole experience, even if he hasn’t mastered consuming them in a gentlemanly fashion just yet.

Mum went to a play centre for mothers’ group last week, and so he had his first experience in a ball pit, or bubble pit as he kept calling it – he loved it, but found the whole experience to be quite tiring, and had some substantial sleep afterwards.

Elsewhere during the week, having skipped his regular naps, he made it as far as helping mum with some shopping before some long blinks, and then he fell asleep in the shopping trolley.

The non-food high point for him this week was the kids drum kit that Uncle J sourced for him. He’s already referring to it as “his” drumkit, along with “his” car, and “his” everything else that comes along: he makes a lot of noise with it, but has already been taught by Uncle J how to play in 4/4 time, or at least how to count to 4 fairly steadily while hitting the drum or cymbal.

Here’s a clip of some of his early work:

The weekend was spent largely in sermon preparation (though we managed a trip to a friend’s birthday party, which was a lot of fun). He became so used to seeing dad sitting at a desk that he wanted to have a go at it for himself, and so his toys have been re-arranged yet again so that he can get his own desk work done.

Amazing to see how quickly he’ll imitate something he sees me doing – makes me ever more vigilant to be trying to do only things that I’d like to see him emulate.

He’s becoming more interested in videos that he can make with Photo Booth on the mac, and recognises himself on camera, and can even move around to experiment with how his different actions will change what’s on screen. He hasn’t mastered it yet, but it’s great to watch him grin as he tries to figure things out.

He can also recite his alphabet, and the months of the year, count backwards from ten, quote several books in their entirety, without needing the book as a prop, and I’ve started trying to move him from saying “want [[noun]]” to saying “may I have [[noun]]” – I think it will be easier to listen to when it’s repeated any number of times, but we’ll see.

We’re trying to get him used to eating with a fork or spoon (depending on the meal) with mixed success – he’s not having a perfect strike rate with keeping the spoon level, and so the learning process is quite messy.