The Homework Conundrum

I've been very me-centric here for a while, so let me just very quickly explain what has been happening with school homework here. The boys, year 1 and 4 (ages 7 and 10) have been complaining more and more about homework. They don't have very much to do but it has become a very big issue in our house, with far more time spent arguing and cajoling than actually working. I've done a little bit of reading (Louise Porter is my go-to on all things child development related. I find her approach makes a kind of visceral sense to me and works for family).

It came to a point where I re-read Louise Porter on homework and decided we had to change something for everyone's sanity. I talked to other parents and realised that I have too much going on in my life to take this up with the department of education or the school, but I could address it individually for my kids with the teachers. I don't like singling my kids out - part of the reason they go to school is to learn to be herd animals - but this was causing significant disharmony, so first I spoke to the kids about what parts of homework they thought were valuable (spelling words and writing - reading doesn't count because it's one of our leisure activities) and talked to them about the idea of 'opting them out' of homework. We agreed it would be a good plan. At this stage they have the option to do any homework they want to do and need to do the big annual projects. They don't get out of spelling tests or any other regular classwork. The other big change is they need to help more around the house. More home work less homework and it is now their responsibility to cook dinner on Monday night. It has started well, and although they require lots of help they are getting the hang of the idea, and that cooking dinner includes planning, shopping and cleaning up, which makes my heart sing.

I spoke to their teachers, who were surprised but supportive and I followed it up with an email. I'm going to include the email here (names etc redacted) in case I can inspire others to have a full and frank discussion about homework in lower primary school and potentially provide a template for them to opt out too, if homework is causing trouble. Significant thanks to my dear friend Tanya for her copy editing genius!

Dear Jxxx and Txxx
Thanks for meeting with me - this is just a follow up to that conversation. Firstly, let me thank you both for working with our kids this year. Axxx and Kxxx have been extremely happy with their classes and they both have great respect for you, their teachers. I feel like you’ve really heard our concerns that at present, homework is detrimental to their learning and causing distress for both boys at home. Both Sxxx and I feel strongly about this, and he’s asked me to make it clear that this email comes from us both.
Accordingly, we’ve discussed homework with the children and the two things they feel are valuable are reading and spelling words. They will also be expected to continue with any tests and work done by the other kids. They will also participate in big projects ('all about me', dioramas etc). As a family, we’ve decided to make any other homework optional and focus on more holistic learning opportunities at home instead. For example, they will need to cook dinner one night per week. My hope is that this can help them with maths (shopping, measuring ingredients), literacy (reading recipes, interpreting recipe information), science (heat/oxidation reactions, physics of liquids etc, biology, ecology), PHPE (nutrition, self-efficacy and fine motor skills improvement).
We want to decrease our family conflict around homework, leave space in all our lives for other pursuits, including letting kids be kids and leaving them outside to play freely as well as relieve you both of one set of homework-marking.
Thanks so much for reading this. I'd very much like this to be the start of a conversation about homework, and I'm more than happy to work with you to ensure there is minimal disruption to your classroom.
Warm regards,

Asher's Bedtime Story

The evening routine is pretty arduous here at the moment. After a week of evening stuff happening (friend's birthday dinners, Diwali, etc) Asher hasn't been going to sleep til around 9pm and it's taking it's toll. Particularly the two nights last week where Sanj wasn't home - all I wanted was to get the kid to sleep so I could sit down with the TV and a glass of wine. Anyhow, a new evening routine is emerging. Bath, dinner, desert (often a smoothy, a.k.a shaky), teeth, toilet, night nappy, books, story then sleep. I've been keeping Kiran in with us while I read books, then telling the same story that Asher always asks for: the hare and the tortoise. Yesterday he asked me if I wanted him to tell me the princess story and, not having told him any stories with princesses I was very interested. It went something like this:

Once upon a time the princess forgot her glass shoe. She left it on the step. But it was broken, so she took it inside and put it in the bin and it made a big noise. A really big noise. And then they lived happily ever after.

Tonight's story had a "really big puffer fish" a shark and a golden seagull, but I couldn't follow it enough to write it down. I really love the blend of inventiveness and the everyday - his stories remind me of the tales Tim used to tell as a similar age. He had a whole series about a sausage who lived in a biscuit tin!

Kiran Update

We went to the Early Childhood Health Centre (ECHC) yesterday (when I started this post the visit was yesterday, now I'd have to say 'Thursday' instead) for Kiran's 8 week check. It was all good and apart from the Whooping Cough he is fine and growing like a weed. In fact it appears that he put on around 500g since last Tuesday's paediatrician visit. That is a lot of breastmilk! When I told Sanjay he suddenly realised why I've been so hungry recently and why I've been a bit tired (I feel like a Cheshire-mother, I might vanish at any moment, leaving just my milky breasts).

As well as getting longer and chubbier he's developing in other ways. He seems to recognise my face from several metres away now, he will lie on the floor and look at his toys or lie on the bed and gaze out the window for ten minutes at a time or more. I don't remember Asher being able to amuse himself for that long with any regularity until he was much older. He's very communicative and loves to gaze into my eyes, smile and then we have 'conversations' where I ask him questions and he vocalises with little 'ahs' back to me.

Kiran is also getting into a really good nighttime routine (will writing about it jinx it?). He goes to bed between 8 and 9:30 then wakes for a feed between11:30 and 1:30. He generally wakes again around 6 or 6:30am and Asher usually wakes and comes in before 7am so we are effectively awake for the day, even if Kiran sometimes goes back to sleep.

The little guy also had his first bottle last night. I went out for dinner with the Mummies and left both boys at home with Sanj. I expressed some milk the other day (almost 100ml) when I was feeling a bit full and so I got another 100ml yesterday which I hoped would be enough. It turns out he was a little reluctant to drink from the bottle at first but once he got the idea had the 100ml and a bit more from me when I got home before he went back to sleep. Dinner out with the mummies was great for me - just the tonic I needed after feeling a bit caged and tense for the last week or two. We were talking about how everyday things slip by so fast, particularly with second children, and how we should all be keeping a diary everyday and I thought about how irregularly I blog and made a pact to write something every day for a week. That seems a bit poor in the light of day, like I should be doing more, but I really want to do it and I hate over-committing. So, stay tuned for a post, however brief, every day for a week!

My lovely lads

I don't want to be always comparing my two boys but it's hard not to. I'm not just comparing them though, I'm comparing my feelings then and now too. When Asher was less than 12 weeks old I would dread any day that I knew Sanjay would be late home from work. This time around it's so different. Sanj told me this morning that he was going to be late, but that his parents would pick Asher up from Kindy and give him a bath and dinner. I felt a flood of relief - I didn't have much to achieve today so this evening is going to be blessedly calm. With both Sanjay and Asher getting home at around 7pm, and the baby pinning me to the couch to cluster feed from 4:30 to 7:30 most nights all I can do is sit here and enjoy the quiet house and wish I had remembered to get myself a big drink of water before I sat down. When Asher was tiny I would have had to bounce and walk him around for those afternoon hours, and even with rocking and bouncing and feeding and singing he would still have howled for quite a lot of that time.

The baby, despite being snuffly with what I think is cold rather than just more of the pertussis cough, is lying in my lap gazing at me, grinning and vocalising when I look down at him and talk to him. I think that he's developing a pattern of having a good sleep in the morning and a good long sleep in his hammock in the afternoon and a snooze in the Ergo in the middle of the day. He also seems to just wake up up twice a night most nights, and so far he hasn't been to difficult to get back to sleep. If I followed the time honoured wisdom of 'sleeping when the baby sleeps' I'd actually get enough sleep! Instead I walk around with him in the Ergo or try to eat and get some washing done and the kitchen tidied. Maybe next week I'll get a rest during the day.

And before I get even more distracted, the real reason I wanted to post was to note a few of the cute things Asher says and does before he changes and they slip away for ever. After three years of no TV he's now crazy for it. It is a fondness that I think will wane fairly quickly as long as we set reasonable limits and don't get too strung up about it. He doesn't watch actual TV though, just his 'movies' which are a Bindy Irwin DVD and a few Wiggles and Thomas DVDs. He puts them on himself and then uses the 'ke-mote' (remote) to adjust the volume or get the appropriate segment of the DVD to play. Drat, the baby is grizzling but I really need to write about how under the thumb Asher's grandfather is sometime and how great those grandparents are, particularly since we've had Kiran.

One month old!

Baby K turned 4 weeks old yesterday! He's a lovely mellow baby but I've worked out that the routine we have doesn't really allow me to blog very easily. He's growing really well and although I haven't weighed him I can tell because he's starting to grow out of the smallest clothes. The Bonds 0000 Wondersuits are almost too tight now and the Target 00000 growsuit doesn't fit at all anymore. He loves being in the Ergo, he sleeps well in the Amby hammock and goes to sleep in the car. Unlike Asher he reliably sleeps on 'non-living surfaces' and is often content to lie around and look out the window or something for minutes at a time - sometimes 10 or 15 minutes, which leaves me free to attend to Asher. The more I live with this easy baby the more I realise that I was not insane to think that Asher was quite needy when he was a newborn and I was a first time mother. In retrospect he behaved more like a close-to-term premmie with his neediness - feeding lots but slowly and falling asleep during feeds but not being able to stay asleep without contact with an adult.

In terms of the routine of our week, I spend Mondays and Tuesdays with both kids, usually with Megan and Karen and their kids too, and for most of that time we are out and about so no time for blogging. Not that being out and about is the main thing stopping me from writing anything on those days -a newborn and an active 3 year old who doesn't nap are really enough.

Wednesdays I usually try to stay home most of the day. I'm usually sore from carting Kiran about in the Ergo for hours on end (5 hours of carrying 5+ kilos will wear you down!) and the house often looks like a pig-sty so I gaze at the baby, do a few loads of laundry and attempt to get an afternoon nap and make dinner. Not once have I managed all of that (today I made beef stew in the morning and got the washing on but Kiran won't let me nap, so I'm cross-legged on the couch with the baby in my lap, periodically getting up to raid the kitchen for chocolate).

Thursday and Friday are for running errands and hanging out with the baby and maybe catching up with a friend for coffee. I've been managing to keep up with the laundry on those days too and I'm hoping to start being able to prepare dinner and pick Asher up from Kindy sometimes too.

Weekends are family time - a lot of the time this means Sanjay hangs out with Asher and I look after the baby. This works really well but I worry that I'll lose my strong connection with Asher and Sanj won't bond well with Kiran - maybe I'm just neurotic and looking for something to worry about?

The rhythms of the days are pretty similar - we wake up for the day when Kiran wakes between 6:45am and 8am. Sanjay and Asher get up and start breakfast while I catch an extra half an hours sleep or feed the baby. We get ourselves ready to go out, and between 8:30 (today) and 10:30am we manage to get ourselves together and get out. Baths for the kids start around 4:30-5pm with dinner then bed for Asher by around 7:30. He seems to be sleeping better now that I'm a bit more strict with bed time. Sanj and I watch TV or clean up or Sanj works while I read until the baby wakes and then I feed him and head to bed. Sanjay either finishes of his work or gets ready for the next day and comes to bed after me. This means I rarely get to sleep before 11pm and Sanj is sometimes up until midnight, which would be OK except we have between 1 and 3 wake-ups to feed baby K. So, not quite enough sleep, but not too bad, considering the baby sleeps well, and generally goes straight back to sleep after he's been fed and changed.

Asher has been just delightful with the new baby. Sanjay and I have been very careful to keep his life as consistent as possible with his previous routine. I also try to ensure that it's never 'the baby' when I want him to be quiet or when he can't have my attention. For instance I tell him that we need to go inside because I'm cold, rather than telling him that the baby needs feeding and he's responding really well. He needs more help with things like feeding himself and putting his shoes on and he gets really whingy sometimes, but he's never been anything but extremely loving with his little brother. We also tell him how much Kiran likes him and what a good big brother he is and Asher being Asher likes that too. He's getting all his sillys out when he's with his mate Miles - the two of them yell and rumble and behave like lads which is simultaneously irritating and hilarious.

The poor little Kiran seems to have a cold - probably from Asher - his chest sounds rattle-y and he's coughing quite a lot. It doesn't seem to be bothering him too much though - he spent ages gazing into my eyes today, trying to talk to me, copying my facial expressions and smiling. The baby, snuggled into the nest of my crossed legs is starting to complain and need feeding. I can't manage much one handed typing, so that's it from me for now....

Bedtime Story

Tomorrow it's one calendar month until this baby is due. I feel huge and ungainly, my maternity clothes barely cover my bump, I'm tired and I need to pee all the time. I also have a cold, which is adding to the crankiness and the whingyness. So, to spare you all the force of my grouching I'm going to tell you the bedtime story that Asher tells me every night. After Sanjay has read books with him I go in to tell Asher one of three stories. I tell him my version of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Three Bears or The Hare And The Tortoise. Before I start I ask him which story he wants, he tells me he wants the story of The Tortoise, Just the Tortoise. I tell him I don't know that one and he needs to tell me that story and he begins:

Once upon a time there were three tortoises, Luki, Juki, Ooki. They lived in a field and ate grass and flowers and they all lived happily ever after.

Sometiems there is one tortoise, occasionally five and sometimes there names are different, but always a variation on the theme. Whether there are one, three or five tortoises there are still only three names. Occasionally they live in a house (as well as the field) or they eat grass and flowers for breakfast, or some other slight variation. Despite the limited dramatic tension (or any plot *at all*) I find this story quite soothing - feel free to use it anytime you are trying to put me to sleep!

The Sleep Thing

It's the sleep thing again. Asher has been taking a long time to go to sleep, then waking a few times most night recently, and it’s been driving us all pretty crazy. The going to bed routine now consist of teeth brushing, nappy, PJs then Sanjay reading a story, me going in and telling a story (I’ll have to write down my version of the three bears sometime!) then I have to leave and Sanjay has to go back in again. Sometimes that is just a last cuddle, sometimes Sanjay has to stay there until Asher drops off to sleep. After all that palaver Asher’s getting to sleep between 8:30pm and 10pm which means that he’s often tired the next day and Sanjay and I have very little grown-up time together (…and then there is food to be eaten, cleaning up to be done, Sanjay has work to do and we end up tired and grumpy with one another – but that is another post for another time). When there is only one parent present it is often a bit easier, but that doesn’t really solve the problem. When I'm putting him to sleep during the day I'm also noticing that he's practising 'counting' on his fingers - Sanjay has shown him how to hold up one, two, three, four and five fingers but the manual dexterity required means that Asher has had to practise. Maybe part of the sleep disturbance is a developmental change - just like when he was six months old and his sleep was really disturbed just as he was learning to crawl.

When Asher wakes up in the night Sanjay, bless him, usually deals with it. Since nobody sleeps very well when a kicking, fidgeting, toddler is in our bed we tend to escort him back to his own room as soon as he’s calm. Sometimes it’s as simple as going to the kitchen for a glass of water (“with a piece of ice!”). Either way, when it happens occasionally it’s fine, when it’s multiple times a night it’s just not on.

I was too busy trying to ‘fix’ what was obviously broken and didn't stop to wonder what was going on, whether there was a cause. I tried encouraging him to go to sleep by having one of us sleep in his bed next to him (not effective) and I tried being stern and spending less time in the putting to bed routine (even less effective and unpleasant for everyone) and I tried re-framing my thought about how ‘putting Asher to bed’ should be (no one got any more sleep, but I was more relaxed). So the other night when, just before bed, Asher asked me if there were owls at night I absentmindedly told him that there were, and that they flew around outside. Sanjay added that the owls didn’t come inside people’s houses, that they were shy and liked it outside by themselves and then I twigged. We had been reading Beatrix Potter’s ‘The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin’ a lot, particularly at bedtime and it seems that the part where Old Brown the Owl comes very close to skinning and eating naughty little Squirrel Nutkin was just too scary for poor Asher. Unfortunately, instead of Asher choosing a different book or asking me about the story or about owls he just kept requesting the book ("I want my new book again!") and I, not realising that anything was amiss, kept reading it, and making it even scarier with each reading. I had even read, and laughed with sympathetic amusement at, this blog post from Finslippy so you would think I would have twigged to what was going on earlier. I think being 'in the moment' is so necessary in parenting, but conversely you can't be a really thoughtful, 'conscious' parent without removing yourself a bit sometimes.

So, now we are limiting bedtime books to things like Green Eggs and Ham, The Magic Beach and Where's Wally and things are getting a bit better. The night wake-ups are minimised (he has a cold and has woken up snotty a few times, but that's different) and we are going to look at the bedtime routine gradually. I'm going out tomorrow night and might suggest Sanj heads out on Saturday night or early next week so we can try putting him to bed as solo parents in the hope that decreases the amount of neediness at bedtime.

Oh shit!

I put Asher into his cot for his daytime snooze about two an hours ago, with a song and a cuddle as I usually do. I could hear that he wasn't asleep, but I ate some lunch and then was cleaning the bathrooms (not playing around on Facebook or reading forums, really) when I heard sounds coming from what sounded like just behind Asher's door. I ve-r-y quietly opened the door a crack and saw him sitting, with his back almost against the door, playing with his toys.

HE CAN GET OUT OF HIS COT!!!!!!

WHAT DO WE DO??????

He's been happily playing about in his room, with his 'play-house'* and his garage for over an hour now. Even though he hasn't slept for his usual hour or two of he'll be OK 'coz he's had quiet time.

I'm really not ready for him to start escaping regularly! We rely on the cot as a containment mechanism, so he can't get out and play during the night and so that even if he spends some time playing with his baby and stuffed animals he'll usually have some sleep in his cot during the day. I was planning on waiting until he potty trained himself before we moved him into a 'big bed' (as he'll obviously need to escape his sleeping place to use the potty when he's not wearing a nappy). I'll let you know if it happens again, but for now, I had better go and get him, as he's starting to call out for me.


* the play-house is really a dolls house, a very male-toddler-appropriate one, that I got cheap on eBay. Sanjay didn't like the idea of his son playing with a dolls house so before I bid on it I sold the idea to him by telling him it was a play-house.

Daily Routine

Why do I want to blog when I'm pushing the buggy and heading off to the park? I think of things that Asher does that are funny or that I want to record for posterity, or stuff that's happening in the world that I really want to comment on. By the time I get home from wherever I've been I just want to get Asher to bed and eat some lunch and tidy up and I've forgotten whatever it was that I wanted to say. In lieu of a thought-out and thoughtful post I'm going to post about our daily routine.

7-7:30am - we wake up, Sanjay gets Asher his breakfast I eat breakfast, shower, get clothes for myself and Asher, make a Vegemite sandwich for Asher, put a load of washing on and Sanj gets ready for work.
8:30-9am - Sanj leaves for work and Asher and I usually head out to playgroup, the park or on Tuesdays, music class.
11:30-12 - Asher and I arrive home and at around 12 I put Asher in his cot for his sleep. Then I put out the washing, check email and make any necessary phone calls and eat my lunch. Before Asher wakes up I also try to get a bit tidied up, perhaps take the rubbish out, clean the kitchen or sweep. I also try and lie down for a few minutes while he's asleep.
2-3pm - Asher wakes up and we sometimes hang around home or go out for a walk. If he's grouchy I put him straight in the buggy and we head out. We either go up to the shops to pick up something for dinner or we head to the park or over to Megan's place. Sometimes we'll get a lift to the beach or have some other adventure with friends.
5-6pm - we usually get home and Asher eats, usually before 6:15. Sanjay gets home around this time too and between us we feed and play with Asher and start prepping our dinner and tidy up the devastation.
7pm - Sanjay bathes for Asher while I usually clean up after Asher's dinner. When he is in his PJs we have some books and songs and it's time for bed around 7:30.
8pm - Sanj and eat dinner and have a glass of wine. Often we sit in stunned silence and stare at the TV or we sit at the table outside. We clean up, maybe get something else done around the house or spend some time Internetting, watching TV or reading and then I am usually in bed around 11pm waiting for it all to start again in the morning.

So, not an interesting post, but perhaps useful in the future when I'm trying to remember what life was like when Asher was 20 months old.....

The worst part of parenting?

Nope, although the sleep deprivation was bad when Asher was still a baby it wasn't the worst bit for us. The lack of spontaneity in our lives now doesn't bother me at all and although we rarely go out to nice restaurants not having the money or opportunity isn't a real problem for us. Before Asher arrived I thought the gross bits of parenting would be just awful but I now just laugh when I realise I'm wiping snot off a little nose with my own clothing and even today's cheerful game of peek-a-boo around the toilet door whilst stuck on the loo with diarrhoea wasn't that bad. For me, the worst bits of parenting are the relentlessness and the not knowing whether you are doing the right thing.

The relentlessness is realising that this demanding 24x7 job is never going to end. Even when you aren't 'on duty' you are on call in case of emergency and even when your kids are adults you will still worry about them. I'm getting more and more used to this part, but it really hits home occasionally. Especially when people tell me they are going to be off work for a month, holidaying on an island for a week and then driving down the coast for a few weeks, stopping where and when they feel like it (er, have a great honeymoon Niki and Ryan!)

The not knowing is different. At this stage I'm not sure I'm ever going to come to grips with it. Apart from the physical evidence of Asher growing, learning and obviously thriving there are times, many of them, when I'm just so conflicted about what I should be doing. I remember my own parents always seeming to know exactly what was and wasn't allowed (and why), what the right thing to do in any circumstance was and also why (when that reason was 'because I said so' I still believed them). I now realise that a lot of it was bluff - it must have been!

The part of our lives that I'm most unsure about centres around food and eating. Sanjay, not normally one for stern pronouncements, stated that our child would not be a fussy eater. He started saying this well before I got pregnant with Asher and continued to proclaim it until about the time Asher started wanting to make his own choices around food, sometime before he was a year old. It turns out we have somewhat of a fussy eater, even considering the normally capricious nature of toddlers. Now, the unsure-ness plays into all this when I try to work out what I *should* be doing about it. Will he get scurvy if he has absolutely no fruit or vegetables besides sultanas for a month? Is the protein in cheese, yoghurt, Weetbix, butter and bread enough? Will he turn into a spoilt brat if I keep offering him things each dinnertime until he deigns to eat something? Will the impulse to give him a good shake be too strong if he screams like I'm forcing him to eat dishwasher powder when I put some in front of him for dinner that was a favourite yesterday? Should I let him go to bed with no dinner if he doesn't eat the first two or three things I put in front of him? Even if we gave in and decided he could live happily on nothing but Weetbix for breakfast, vegemite sandwiches for lunch and brie for dinner would he survive? Why is something that he can't get enough of one day imperiously rejected with no hope of him even tasting it the next? It's driving me crazy and I don't really know what to do about it.

At the moment he does eat Weetbix with milk and yoghurt for breakfast. He nibbles on vegemite sandwiches, sultanas and sometimes some crackers or a biscuit from about 10am until midday. He might have a cracker when he wakes up from his sleep but then from 3pm until dinnertime I don't let him have anything so he has some chance of being hungry for dinner (between 5pm and 6pm). For dinner, which is the problem meal, I usually offer him leftovers from our meal the night before or something from the freezer that he has liked in the past. Occasionally I am able to get a few kernels of sweetcorn into him and he'll often eat something involving rice (a month ago it was risotto, now that is considered poison and he'll eat dhal and rice). He generally won't eat finger food for dinner (er, unless it's toast) and anything green, such as a speck of parsley, will be either spat out if it's not rejected outright. We can't eat with him (we don't want to and it doesn't fit in with Sanjay getting home from work) and I do everything I can think of to make meals pleasant and stress free. I suspect that he'll continue to be healthy (perhaps he extracts nutrients from the air?) but the real problem is that it's driving me absolutely batshit crazy. I'm going to get my ever-patient and enthusiastic mother to feed Asher when we head up to Crowdy Head for Christmas. Until then I'll just try to rustle up some inner reserves of peace and zen-like calm in the face of the dinner-time tantrums - and getting a gin and tonic for me will have to be just part of getting Asher's meal ready.

We've Moved

Asher helps to pack
Originally uploaded by karmakeda

I've been waiting to post until I could include a pic or two of the new place but I left my camera battery charger at Sanjay's parents house on the day of the Mundan and my camera has no juice left, so I'll have to settle for a picture of the packing.

The move went as well as could be expected, considering we weren't really packed up properly. The movers came at 2pm on Friday and finished at 9pm and we did 8-10 car loads over the weekend. I had some wonderful friends looking after Asher on Friday afternoon and my mother was around for much of the afternoon ferrying people where they needed to be, keeping us fed and calm and helping out with Asher for the bedtime routine while Sanjay was back at the old place helping the removalists get the second load on the truck.

Asher was just amazing. I credit his general amazingness and also our repeated conversations about how 'mummy and daddy and Asher and all our things were all going together to the new house' but we also worked hard to keep the routine as normal as possible, just in a different location. Our little boy who has never slept at all well outside his own cot in his own room has had no sleep disturbance and he has not been any clingy-er or less cheerful than usual. Although the little guy doesn't say that much he certainly understands a lot!

I think perhaps I'm having the hardest time of any of us with the settling in. I have the shits that everything is everywhere, that I can't find things, that home smells so different, that the new dishwasher doesn't clean as well as the old one, that despite living almost on the ground floor I'm still struggling with the pram and the groceries when I get home, that I feel like I'm getting no help with getting unpacked and organised (Duh! Sanjay is at work during the day and can't help Keda!), that we've got so much to do to make the place ours and the list goes on. I realise that these are all pretty petty complaints but added together they seem almost overwhelming to me at the moment. I suspect I'm far more a creature of routine than I like to think I am. I'll update next week with how I'm feeling about it all once we've had a weekend together to get a bit more settled - I expect things will be a little more positive by then.

In the interests of not letting this blog die of neglect...

...I'm just going to mention how much I hate school holidays! I always thought that school holidays only affected parents of school aged children (except for the decrease in traffic and lack of obnoxious high schoolers on public transport int he afternoons) but the affects seem to be much more far reaching than that. Most of the playgroups seem to shut down during school holidays, so the normal pattern of our week is interrupted. The zoo, the indoor playcentres and other fun places to take little kids are really busy and unpleasant because Asher and his little friends practically get trampled by the 'big kids' who are on holidays from their preschools and kindergartens.

We still go to the park or for a coffee in the early mornings (we often leave home at the same time as Sanjay to minimise the opportunity for tantrums) and we still meet up with the baby club gang on Thursdays but we miss our favourite Tuesday afternoon TAFE playgroup.

At least this holiday is only two weeks, and hopefully Clare will come and hang out with us a bit while she doesn't have classes. I wonder what other parents of toddlers think of school holidays? What are the favourite distractions for really little kids that don't involve extra crowds?

Toddlerdom development update

Asher is learning and growing every day, and it still amazes me. His walking, in the space of a week, has gone from a few tentative steps most days to suddenly wanting to walk everywhere. Almost whenever he wants to go somewhere no he takes off walking and then after 1 or 5 steps he either reaches his goal or falls to the floor and crawls. My friend K said her daughter A used to do the opposite - stand looking at her objective and calculating whether it would be easier and faster to walk or crawl.

His language development has also come along in the last two weeks. He understands quite a lot of what we say. He finds my nose when requested, can generally point to his ball or his truck (and in fact the other day at the park I wanted to pack up and started muttering "where's your green ball Asher" and he pointed it out to me). He has a sign for "more" which he uses whenever he's hungry (he thinks it means "Food! Now!") and requests various songs by using their actions. He's also just taken to using the imperial point and saying "dat!" and I try to name the things he points at for him. I think he's really thrilled about being able to communicate with us.

He's also obsessed by technology - particularly the phone (which he calls 'Gah!' - I thinks it's from me walking into the room saying "Gah! He's got my phone again"). He holds the phone up to his ear and makes a word that liberally interpreted could be understood as hello. He will also feel around on the table above his head to find the computer mouse and the other day he pushed his little chair over to the table to get at both my phone and the mouse. It was so cute I had to photograph it:


Now he's awake, so I have to turn the moniter off before Sanjay gets him out of bed (he's pretty much transitioned to one sleep per day) but despite how relentless his little demands are, I just love him!

New tricks!

Bathtime
Originally uploaded by karmakeda

We have a perfect prompter for a general baby development update - today Asher took his first unaided step! But since he let go of my hands, stepped forward and immediately fell flat on his face I'm pretty sure this isn't the start of walking. Actually, he isn't showing that much interest in walking generally, although he likes pottering around the room kicking his balloon while keeping my fingers gripped tightly in each of his little fists.

His communication has come along in leaps and bounds recently - as well as waving goodbye when he wants to leave, or when he wants someone else to leave, he now hisses when he wants more of something (particularly food) and has a funny open-closed hand gesture to indicate when he's finished eating something. He did it the other day when he'd finished breastfeeding on one side and wanted the other one, which was really weird, although I can't pin down exactly why. He's making some new sounds ('la') and putting together proto-words a bit more and I also think that sometimes he says 'ta' when I hand something to him, but I'm not completely certain. Some of my family hate the 'ta' thing, far preferring a proper 'thank you' but with little kids I really don't care and having him say anything that is his version of thanking someone is just fine with me.

He still loves his bath, and when he's ready to get out he starts stacking up his bath toys on the side of the bath. Sanjay, who still does 99% of bath duty tells me he can only get the plug out when the bath is part empty, but he can put it in. After his bath Sanj puts his PJs on and there is a little more play before he gets put in his sleeping bag, has a breastfeed, a story book and then gets put to bed. He generally goes to bed without complaint now, and although we sometimes hear him singing to himself for a little while, he generally drifts off by himself and doesn't wake until a relatively civilized 7am-ish unless he's sick, cold or otherwise upset. Last week he slept til 7:30 and Sanj was late for work. Of course, it doesn't always work like that -on Sunday morning woke at around 4am and needed to be cuddled on the lounge for hours. Why did it have to be the morning after Sanj had been to a bucks night and I had been solving the worlds problems with my dad and several bottles of wine?

His day sleeps are all over the place. He seemed to be transitioning to one sleep a day, but has had two sleeps for the last few days. Perhaps the one sleep a day thing was just a hiccough or perhaps he needs a little extra sleep this week because he has a bit of a cold still/again. It seems that all the little ones I know have colds at the moment so I've resigned myself completely to wiping runny noses and dealing with a slightly 'off colour' child until the weather changes.

There probably won't be another update this week - I will be baking wedding cupcakes for the lovely Bruce and Fiona who are getting married this Friday. Wish me luck, because I'm definitely going to need it!

Quick update

So, I didn't realise how addicted to our routine I was until Asher decided to change it! He's starting to not want two sleeps a day, and considering how poor I am at recognising his tired signs this makes it really hard for me to do anything without have a kid is is tired and grouchy. I'll use this as my excuse for recent lack of blog posting.


And so, as you can tell from the pic (or possibly your calendar!) it was Asher's first birthday last week. I meant to write a dooce-like letter to him here, but I feel so strapped for time at the moment. If he's awake I can't easily use the computer (or the phone for that matter) because he wants part of the action. Speaking of, there is a vacuum cleaner just started up outside in the stairwell and it seems to have woken the little guy up, so I'll go and get him and then we'll be off and out of the house. I'll try to post soon about all his new and cool tricks!

I'm so lucky to have good friends

Elvira reading Asher his bedtime story
Originally uploaded by karmakeda.

If I was a fairy from a story and got to bestow gifts on little babies that I love I would always wish for them to have really good friends around. I do, and I regularly feel so blessed, but it's kind of awkward to say without sounding soppy, and if I mention specific people I always leave out good friends who have been wonderful to me. Anyhow, I'm sending a silent prayer of thanks to the universe for my good friends.

Elvira came over last night and helped me get the kidlet ready for bed and then had dinner with me. It was just lovely to see her, and Asher was so tired he curled up and went to sleep really easily (not that it's hard the rest of the time, but there is usually some whinging when he gets put in his cot).

Today I'm meeting my inlaws for coffee when Asher wakes up and then we are going to try out Jumping Jacks before coming home for a sleep. Tonight I think mum and Clare will be coming over to help bathe the little guy and they will stay for dinner. I had better think about what I'm going to feed them and then raid the freezer.

The other thing that's happening today is that the lovely Bindy is having her baby! I look forward to hearing how the whole thing goes, and later in the week meeting the new little person.

Baby's first Christmas

Well, Christmas and the trip to Crowdy Head is all done. It wasn't quite as fun as I had hoped - Asher is starting to get a bit clingy (obviously completely developmentally appropriate) and wasn't sleeping well in an unfamiliar environment so I was tired, he was tired and therefore neither of us were at our best. He is also just about to start crawling and is wildly frustrated that he can't go anywhere which made him rather short tempered. We did get to have lots of good food, a swim (despite the rather uninspiring weather), lots of nice wine. Watching the little guy opening his presents was also great.

Sanjay had to come back to Sydney for work but Asher and I stayed up at mum's for a few extra days. It was nice, and everyone helped out with the baby but since he wouldn't sleep in his tent when I put him in there I didn't get much sleep. The flight back was ok but it was at the end of the day so he required full-on entertainment to avoid a meltdown. This included a lot of saying 'gah!' to each other, bouncing (on my full bladder) and singing under my breath in his ear. Apart from the fact that a storm in Sydney meant our flight was a lot longer and bouncier than it should have been it was all good. It was nice to be home though.

And, just for Brendan a convenient list of Asher's New Tricks:
- Handling objects much better
- Eating pretty well off a spoon
- Almost crawling (inching backwards and bunny hopping forwards).
- Sitting fairly reliably
- Saying "Gah!" ('mum' and 'dad' still to come).

I have to go and think about my New Year's resolutions (keeping the blog updated?) and make cheese biscuits (we are having a few people over to Sanj's brother's place tonight to watch fireworks) and I hope everyone has a very happy and safe New Year!

Routines and rhythms

I always knew that tiny babies aren't great with routine but I feel that we are just beginning to get some kind of rhythm in our lives. I want to record some of the proto-routines that work for us now because I know it will change so soon and I want to be able to remember how we spend our days. I suspect I will look back on this time and wonder what I did with my self. The week has some relatively fixed points - Tuesday is swimming class with one of the other mothers from baby club and recently we have been going to the Early Childhood Health Centre for talks on Tuesday's too. Whether or not we go to the talk we always end up having coffee, and often lunch afterwards with other mummies, so it ends up taking up a lot of the day. Thursday, as previously mentioned, is baby club which again takes up a lot of the day and then the weekend is often taken up with family things.

The days usually start at not long after 6 when we here the little guy start to chat in his cot. I guess he must start to grizzle and Sanjay gets up, but I can't really think what happens at that time, coz I'm not really awake. Recently my back has been too sore to let me continue sleeping in bed (sometimes I can sleep on the couch, which is weird) but previously I'd keep sleeping til about 7:30 when I'd get up to find my breakfast made and Sanjay and the baby on the floor in the lounge room hanging out together. Between when I wake up and 8:30 I spend my time hassling Sanjay to get off to work in the hope that if he gets to work early he'll get home early. He never gets there early. Asher gets back to sleep between 8:30 and 9:30 and our routine goes out the window from then til late afternoon.

Well, I guess that's not strictly true. I used to try to get him to sleep after he had been up for an hour or two and I'm not sure when that evolved into our current chaos. I try to watch for tired signs but I don't always catch them so sometimes he gets a bit overtired, but we do what we can. At worst he only has 3 or 4 20 min naps at best he has a really long (2+ hour) nap and a few others. I can't complain though, because he's a very easy night time baby.

In the late afternoon we have a real routine, one that I more-or-less created rather than one that is purely organic. Sometime between 4 and 5 I recognise that Asher is getting tired and grouchy. It usually happens about the same time when I am getting tired and grouchy and would really like to have a cup of tea and not be holding a wriggly baby. At that point, if we are home (and I leave it as late as I can) we go outside and sit on the balcony. This started in the hot water when I wanted to water the balcony plants in the afternoon but now happens even if its cold and rainy like today. Either he sits in his little rocking chair while I wield the watering can or he sits on my lap and we just look out at the world. As close to 6pm as I can manage it we come inside and I feed him (one b00b), generally with the TV on. Sanjay usually gets home before 7pm and bathes the baby, either in the baby bath or they have a shower together. After his bath I get him ready for bed then he gets the other side and either Sanj or I put him to sleep. Generally he is asleep in his bed by 7:30pm.

The joy is that he then stays asleep til at least 2am, occasionally as late as 4:30am when he gets fed one side, has his nappy changed, fed the other side then wrapped up and put back in his bed. Generally Sanj gets the baby, I feed him, whoever is feeling most generous changes him and I put him back to bed, without putting him to sleep first. Then the whole cycle starts again.
I'm very lucky that he's so easy at night and even though he is generally pretty cheerful during the day I would love him to sleep a bit more regularly so I can plan my days around his sleeps a little better. I might blog a day or two of sleep/wake/feed times and see if that shows me any patters. It will almost certainly bore any readers!