Strange Days Indeed

Baby D is going through a rapid phase of development at the moment. He's now officially mobile. Inspired by the A-Team he spends his days busily rolling commando style across the floor, then, when he’s bored of that, barks commands at me to sit him back up, where he stays for a few seconds before flopping down onto his tummy and starting off again. You wouldn’t think he’d cover much ground but yesterday, I popped into the kitchen to flick on the kettle and came out to find he’d made his way to the cat’s bowl, tipped out the water and was about to chow down on her nuts.
The other big development is less fun as Baby D has what the books call separation anxiety. In other words he’s learnt how to worry when I’m not there and last week wouldn’t let me out of his sight at bedtime. I guess when I said to him; “Night Night Baby D. See you in the morning,” he heard, “As soon as I leave this room I’m going to be abducted by aliens, transported to the planet Zog and you’ll never, ever, ever, ever see me again!!” The poor pet.
Anyway the upshot is that another chapter has been added to the ever increasing tome that is the saga of Baby D’s sleeping habits. He spent several nights waking up on the hour, panicking because his little hand wasn’t firmly gripping onto Mammy’s finger. When I’ve finally convinced him that the aliens aren’t on the way I've been woken again at 5.30 am by a series of escalating coughs that translates as: “Please rescue me. I’ve rolled around until I've squished myself in a corner of the cot that I can’t get out of!” So I've ignored all advice to the contrary and started to bring him into my bed in the morning. I do my best to catch up on some more sleep with one eye ajar, making sure he doesn’t brain me with the mobile he’s playing with and a finger hooked into his baby-gro in case he bungee jumps off the bed. That lasts about 20 minutes until I feel a hot breath and heavy breathing in my ear as Baby D presses his nose aginst me wondering what’s so interesting on my side of the bed.
Anyway I’m back to wandering the streets of Stoneybatter bleary eyed in search of caffeine and wondering how my friends with more than one baby do it, and not just do it but work, email and socialise as well?
Then, this evening, I looked into the bedroom as Hubbie was getting him ready for his bath. Baby D looked straight at me, wrinkled his tiny button nose and said softly for the first time: “Mama!”
And, just like that, all the sleepless nights were washed away.

I was crawling through a festival way out west...

Last Friday I sat by Baby D’s cot as he shuffled about trying to find a comfortable position for the night, and realised that it was Oxygen weekend. After a medley of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’, ‘Yellow Submarine’ and ‘Ten Green Bottles’, I sat down with a cup of tea and complained to Hubbie that I should have been in a field rocking out to Arcade Fire drinking beer.
“Ah we’re too old for that malarkey anyway,” he said as he removed the ‘Mozart for Babies’ CD from the stereo. In fact now that I think of it we were probably too old for Oxygen the last time we ventured down, drinking lattes and trying to read the Sunday Times on the bus as the 13 year olds behind us discussed the deadly buzz they had and how many cans they could knock back before security.
The deadliest buzz I get these days is the adrenaline rush when I manage to sneak out of Baby D’s room without waking him up. Cars, trucks and sirens can blare past outside his window but the tiniest creak of the floorboard in his room is enough to snap him into full alert. So currently it takes us ten minutes to get him asleep and another 20 to leave the room. Hubbie has taken to crawling out while I employ a series of maneouvres similar to that balancing thing the Karate Kid did for Mr Miyagi. What we really need is the contraption Tom Cruise used to lower himself from the ceiling in ‘Mission Impossible’. I might look on eBay in case the spies arrested in the States recently had a chance to flog some of their stuff before being shipped back to Russia.

A Small Rant

I’m officially sick of other Mothers advising me on how well their babies are sleeping. This week I bumped into a friend whom I hadn’t seen in a while and after dutifully admiring each other’s off spring, she couldn’t wait another minute before telling me breathlessly that, “Milseán is sleeping through the night already (dramatic pause)........ and she’s only three weeks old! We don’t know ourselves now that we are getting a good night’s sleep.” She looked triumphantly at me.
What I felt like saying was: “Please don’t tell me how your baby is sleeping unless I ask, or, unless they aren't sleeping at all. I don’t want to hear how bloody brilliant she is at napping and sleeping through the night until Baby D is taking naps and sleeping for more than 3 hours on the trot himself and at the rate he’s going that won’t be until he’s eighteen. And I definitely don’t want to hear about how you’re catching up on sleep yourself when I am so tired I went to a yoga class with my shorts on inside out."
Very grumpy of me I know, but here’s what happened last night;
7.00 pm I put Baby D to Bed
7.30 pm I manage to leave the room
9.30 pm Baby D wakes up. Feed and settles after a quick blast of “Ten Green Bottles”
12.30am Baby D wakes up. Feed and sit with for a while until he finds a comfy position to sleep.
1.00am Baby D Wakes up. I'm not sure why but change pooey nappy anyway.
1.15am Decide it’s teething. Wake Hubbie to help administer Nurofen.
1.45am Everyone back to bed.
2.00am Baby D needs to hold my hand going to sleep.
2.30am Withdraw hand and sneak back to bed.
3.05 am Baby D realises hand is gone, protests. I reinstate hand.
3.10am Gardaí discuss what to do about a vandalised car right outside the bedroom window - LOUDLY.
3.30am Finally Baby D is asleep and I’m back in bed.
3.35am Tow truck for vandalised car pulls up and LOUDLY removes car very s..l..o..w..l..y.
3.45am I am still waiting for tow truck to leave and Baby D to wake at any minute.
4.00am. Truck gone, Baby D asleep still, unfortunately I am now wide-awake.
6.50am Baby D awakes bright eyed and bushy tailed. “Gooooood Moooorning Kingscourt!”

Of course I didn’t say anything of the sort. Instead I lied.
“That’s super! You know Baby D is sooo much better at night as well!”

Buckets and Spades

We took the plunge and stayed at home this year for our summer holidays. I refuse to use the term staycation – in fact anyone over twenty five should be banned from using it as when we were young you definitely didn’t ‘staycation'. It just went without saying that you went on your holiyers to Tramore or Killarney and if you had notions above yourself you “went abroad” to an unspecified destination. Anyway, having said all that I haven’t spent a summer holiday in Ireland since I could afford to buy a flight so it was a bit strange heading down to Youghal for a week. Fortunately the weather was Mediterranean and we only had one day where we looked out the window and discussed options until eventually one of us declared “You know what, we’ll go for a drive.”
For Baby D it was business as usual as the Baby D Production Line™ simply relocated to Cork. He had a few problems to iron out, such as Mammy’s attempt to feed him baby food from a jar, (a face of horror with lips zipped up tighter than a pair of my pre-pregnancy jeans directed me into the kitchen to chop and mash something more palatable) and a spotty tummy, which resulted in a pleasant Sunday morning tracking down an on-call Doctor. The strong Cork accent didn’t faze him and he continued to converse fluently in Baby-D-ESE, “Splut – Ba Ba BA – DA HEH! HEH!…Splut.. Splut...Spluttttt!” He disccovered that rolling onto his tummy is the best thing ever and undertook a gruelling exercise regime of 100 roly-polys in the morning before breakfast. Eventually all the exercise and sea air finally caught up with him and on our last day Hubbie and myself managed to have a long relaxing lunch in a restaurant perched on the side of a cliff, with spectacular ocean views, the sun beaming down from a cloudless sky and without once being disturbed by Baby D. Ah Bliss. As the fella sez, you can’t beat a staycation.
Anyone for the last few choc-ices now?