As we drive back up our driveway with Puff in his seat in the back, he will say “Check Mail”, and get more and more excited until someone takes him out to the letterbox to see if there’s any mail. We’re seeing this more and more – he will notice a pattern in life, and then get very excited about being able to say the name of whatever it is, so he can participate.
Feeding times are generally going well: he has his moments of being a fussy eater, but most of the time he will get through a meal in a relatively timely fashion.
He’s very hands-on in his eating approach (despite our best efforts to teach him how to use a spoon, it’s a pretty slow and ineffective process) – here is a small insight into what his hands look like towards the end of a meal. Note for dads: clean your child’s hands very carefully before picking them up or letting them loose anywhere – crumbs can be quite tricky to remove from the tiny recesses of a baby’s hands.
On Saturday, we took Puff to Cronulla, couldn’t find parking, and so went to Glebe instead (it made sense at the time). In his sun gear and the ergo carrier, we did some walking around Glebe Markets looking for a new pair of sunglasses for Mum. He had a great time doing some people watching.
After the Markets, we went down to a park at the other end of Glebe Point Road for a picnic lunch, overlooking the water. Puff had a great time watching the little kids on their bikes, and the puppies. Oh, the puppies. It was very exciting.
Saturday night we went out for dinner, and to see a show while Aunty C and Uncle J looked after Puff’s night routine – thanks for letting us have a night off!
One Christmas present that Puff received (as we’ve mentioned before) was the croc. He will cheerfully tell you that a croc says “snap snap”, but still doesn’t trust its teeth. Here he is, after some persuading, patting it, but away from its mouth.
One other new thing in Puff’s routine is his walking practice. He’s able to walk quite quickly while pushing this block trolley – most of the photos (this one included) are a blur just trying to keep up with him.
He’s come a long way with the trolley from his first hesitant steps: he can now confidently change direction, turn in a small-ish space, and even fall over and pick himself up again.
You might be able to tell from the video that he’s in the advanced stages of losing his baby hair and replacing it with grown-up (?!) hair – apparently this is normal for at least one part of his family tree, and we’ve been quite relieved to see that as the bald spot makes its way backwards on his head, it’s being replaced with new hair. This does give him an unfortunate, somewhat monastic look at the moment, but we have every confidence he will have a full head of hair again in, say, another three months!
We’ve also been practising taking him outside in the backyard to try walking on the grass. Once stood up, he can stay standing without holding on to anything for a few seconds, and will even take a few hesitant steps before falling over into Dad’s arms. Not long now, and our whole experience of parental life will change again.
It’s hard to describe the sense of pride that comes from watching him (or hearing him) learn about new things: with a little bit of prompting now, he can say the whole of the grace we’ve taught him: “Thank You Father God for this food, Amen.” Amazing.
We’ve also made some slight changes to his bedtime routine: it now goes dinner, getting ready for bath, bath, pyjamas, clean teeth, milk, up to three books (“bunnies”, “party”, “duck”) and then his bible story, prayers and into his sleeping bag and into bed. His most recent addition to his cat toy and monkey toy is his favourite blue bear, named “Bear”.