Time

Do The Time Warp

It amazes me just how fast the weeks go by, one of my fears going into this was that time would move in slow motion, and I'd be bored stupid. It 's turned out to be quite the opposite. Now the weeks seem to be flying through. In anticipation of the boredom and lack of adult conversation I adopted a number of tactics. What I discovered is that play with your baby can really engaging and you don't need these tactics to have a great day and stave of the boredom. The best ways I've found are: to focus on tasks like cleaning; go to lots of activities like swimming and Mother group; and to have interesting Podcats or Radio on in the background. Not so good ideas are surfing the web on your phone, it is rude to ignore your children like that; and try to avoid the boredom eating trap...

Little Dad, Big Pond
Two weeks ago, Alex Graduated from the first swimming class. This is significant because Alex is only 11 mths, and they only pass people up after they turn 1, I was so proud. When we went back the next week the new class was a major step up with the kids a lot older, We had literally changed ponds... we were the worst pair. I laughed about it later, but it is a great reminder that kids sports is not something dad's should get competitive about... that only leads to bad things, either that or the Williams sisters. Anyway I'll try to remember not to get caught up in junior sport.

Keep Running 
Last week I purchased a running pram on Gumtree for $125. I figure if I can get a dollar a KM that's a great price. So far its costing me approx $13 a km, so lots of running to do...

Does size matter?
It's really funny to watch what Alex eat. He can really eat, but he has some funny habits. Sometimes he sorts through his plate and eat food in a particular order. Sometimes its type of food e.g. all the broccoli then all the corn... but the funniest is when he starts comparing size of the pieces. He will pick up the two largest pieces, one in each hand hold them up and compare then take a bite from the largest. Only to realise that now the other one is bigger. So he swaps, drops the first one and takes a bite from the second one... after a while he realises it is no longer the biggest piece... and so it continues until there is no food left. Of course there are other days when he just screams and throws his food everywhere...

Apologies for not posting frequently, and a special thanks to those who wrote to complain about my slackness.

Changes
In the last 1.5 weeks I've stated to normalise the house's daily routine, getting the cleaning, cooking, shopping, social baby outings under control, these all fit in around the babies two daytime sleeps. But as is the nature of babies, they keep growing, and with this their needs change. This effects the baby's sleep times and thus forces a reshuffle of the daily routine. These are generally slight changes, sleeping less, waking up earlier or taking longer to settle. However every so often, we have disruptive changes, for example, last week Alex started walking, he is not at full pace yet, but it won't be long. I've pondered the idea of applying a SCRUM Methodology to parenting to help adapt to these changes. I generally plan each week at a time based on the last, however I've started identifying trends which I'm now incorporating, e.g progressive changes in morning sleep habits.

Tissues
Tissues must be an odd thing to babies, we have always had to keep the tissues out of reach, or Alex will pull each tissue out of the box one by one, and eat the tissues. I'm not sure why but I figured that babies just like tissues. However last week Alex had a cold with a constantly running nose, He instinctively wiped the snot right across his face, using his left hand always*.  When ever I tried to wipe his nose with a tissue he would push me away, throw his arms across his face and scream. It is amazing how evasive the little guy can be.  Surprisingly if I wiped it using only my fingers, no reaction, I tried a number of things, because using my fingers is gross. In the end I sacrificed a cow puppet named Sir Loin, which my sister in-law had given us for easter... (sorry Kat - I'll wash it and get it back in the toy box). The puppet worked great, although we would have looked funny in public...

*- Perhaps this is the first sign that he is a lefty, or perhaps not, but it would make a great story, "Son, I first noticed that you were left handed when you repeatedly rubbed snot across your face right to left with your left hand....

I'll finish with a bad poem about how much I love our robot vacuum, mostly because it makes it easy to stop Alex eating random stuff from the ground.

Ode to robot vacuum cleaner
The two-wheel bot, with a fish eye lense and an aptitude for dust destruction
You patrol my floors and don't ask for instruction
Exterminate! Exterminate! dirt with pure aggression
You clean my floors to near perfection!
You bump and crash your way around, while I do the dishes
the laundry, the bathroom as is my wishes
I'm thankful for the time you save me, you are not a dunce
It's the only way I can be a true mum and do two things at once

I've been at this 2.5 weeks now, and I think I've read the same set of baby books 50 times. Needless to say, I'm getting sick of them. So today we went to the library and read some different books which was great. The quality of baby books varies, so here are my book reviews:

Things that go (part of the "My First Black and White" series)

I'd first like to point out that this book is a non-fiction baby book. There are many books like this, essentially it consists of a page with an object on it the name of that object. This book contains 6 words, who knew you could become a published author by writing books with only 6 words in it!?!

I also particularly like the warning on the back of the book "Do not leave your child with this book unsupervised."  1. That is super creepy. 2,  is the book genuinely dangerous, like letting your child play with a cobra? or is it reverse-psychology to trick your young rebellious baby into literacy?

Dad's rating: 2/5 - one point for durability - each page is 4 mm thick, and one point because I can clap the pages together which entertains Alex better than reading this book. 

Alex's rating: 2/5

Tatty Tractor and Big Yellow Truck

This book follows the old baby's fiction formula of a poem with pictures, with the clever twist of including two poems in the one book.  So it practically reads itself. However the delineation between the two stories is not great - One minute you are reading about a tractor and next the main character is a truck. This can be confusing when you are sleep deprived.

If you have a Green leaning, maybe this book is not for you - it features pictures of Open cut mining and clear felling deforestation. 

Dad's rating: 3.5/5 - This book grew on my as I read it more and more. It has a loose plot and a Farmer named Ruggles. It also lost points for lack of durability... Alex ripped this book apart. 

Alex's rating: 5/5

Football Mad
This book is a sporting book so I had high hopes. The plot is average and straight forward, there is no come back, the game is won on a penalty and there is no attempt by the author to engage the reader emotionally with the characters.

The book does have 4 buttons for electronic sound effects, which is great when you stand on the book while trying to put the baby to sleep... true story.
Dad's rating: 2/5
Alex's rating: 2/5

It's been a relatively big couple of weeks since I last posted, getting over the Gastro and then visiting Grandma and Grandad for easter.

Louise was last to get gastro and as a result, worked from home for 3 days last week to avoid infecting her work colleagues. This introduced a new dynamic in our household. Obviously I have a lot less experience than Louise and I also run the house in a different way to how she does. Having Louise home for those three days, at first, I was paranoid, and asked Louise advice on everything... as you can imagine, that got old pretty quick, especially because Louise is on a tight deadline. So after that I was constantly looking over my shoulder waiting to be corrected, but she was very good and graciously bit her tongue the vast majority of times I was "doing it wrong".  Although the last day it seemed every time she come upstairs (from the downstairs study) Alex was crying, I was burning the food, or there was something on the floor that shouldn't be there...

Parental Observations:

• There is no "right way" only a thousand wrong ways - or at least it feels like that
• When you make a mistake someone will there to see you
• I should have read some parenting books... 

Easter at the grandparents
My Parents live approx 2 hours away, so the drive was pretty easy.  My Sister and her husband were competing in a dancing competition and had dropped off her two daughters for the long weekend. It also rained all weekend. I learned that 3 kids fill a house pretty quick.... It also gave me insight to some of the challenges that will come in the next phases of Alex's life.

Tomorrow I will be taking Alex on the Train... Wish me luck, I genuinely hope he doesn't scream the whole way. I would deserve it though for judging others with crying babies on the train... On how the tables have turned.

Week one - It begins

This blog is intended to be the story of my family as Mummy and Daddy (me) swap places for a period of 11 weeks. My work offers 11 weeks Paternity leave above government regulations to both Men and Women. "That's great" I hear you say, it is, but there is just one catch, the employee must be the Primary carer for the child for the period of 11 weeks. The policy is designed to get families to discuss who should return to work and challenge the notion that is should be the woman who stays home and has the career put on hold for x number of years. 

Both Louise and I are professional white collar workers and both of us are good at our jobs (humble too...), when I heard about the policy I thought that's something I'd like to try. Early on in the pregnancy we discussed it and decided that the chance for me to get to spend so much time early on in the life of our baby is too good an opportunity to miss. So having no idea about parenting we decided that we would give it a go and discuss the work arrangements going forward during the experiment.

Meet the Schofields - a little background on who we are:  

Louise and I (Chris) are early 30's professionals who grew up in rural areas, but moved to the city for Uni/Jobs (relevant in that we have very little family within 2 hrs drive). I'm a consultant that works long hours on high pressure engagements (big shout out to my work mates and client, I love my job, I really do) and Louise is a management accountant at a not for profit.

When it comes to parenting I'm best described as keen and naive. Which contrasts nicely with Louise's natural instincts and her mothering skills that know no bounds. 

Alex (the baby) was born approx 10 months ago. Alex is great baby and makes parenting a joy, My mum tells me he cries a lot less than other babies, and certainly less than I did. So that is a win. 

Alex is also a giant baby, he was over 5 kgs and has continued to grow.... 

Principles of the Blog

1. Open and honest about our experiences
2. Louise has vito power on the blog
3. Don't Judge us ->I'm new at this and life is pretty analogue
4. Update once per week
5. Entertaining over boring I.E. The blog will not be a verbatim list of things I did each day - boring. 
6. Insightful -> I hope to detail what I'm learning about parenting. 

Disclaimer - this is a work of fiction...

Anticipation

As the time ticked down and the parental leave got closer, it became realer and realer. I started to worry about my ability to actually do what my wife had made look easy for 10 months. I would notice on Saturdays, when  I would look after Alex for the morning while Louise slept in, the amount of times I would ask her advice, she would come out to intervene when Alex wouldn't settle, or wouldn't eat or would try to escape the change mat etc. 

For a long time I thought before it starts I'll pick up stuff from Louise, but the work did not ramp down, and I really can't walk away without closing out stuff. So I worked harder, longer and neglected learning more parental skills from Louise. So on the Sunday night before Louise went back to work, we both lay in bed, anxious about how Day 1 would go. Would I be calling Louise every 5 mins, would Alex get separation anxiety, would Louise have to come home, these were just the known risks, what about the unknown unknowns! Damn you Rumsfeld. 

Louise worried too, about how she was going back to a different role, how she would handle being away from Alex, changes in how things are done at work, and maintaining mental focus for 8 hours.

Day 1

I don't want to dwell on the details of the day as they are monotonous. The key milestones I was looking to hit were: Breakfast; Lunch and afternoon sleep. I'll describe the challenges and variability of meals another time. Anyway day one went about as good as it could have. The only real issue was that I left Alex in the high-chair at lunch a little bit too long, which caused him to crack up, kind of like when you are at a restaurant and it takes the waitstaff forever to bring the bill. I understand why he cracked up, I'm always screaming on the inside when that happens to me.  

Through the first week I noticed a few things:

• Babies are 100% reliant on you. It's not boring, but it's places an incredible demand on your time, the baby needs you 95% of the time (awake time) you can't really do anything, you can't even use your phone or laptop... the baby wants in on it. Just going down to hang out the washing is a gamble if the baby will crack up once you move them.

• Babies eat everything.... Alex constantly places everything in his month, this includes eating paper... The split second you look away, wham something goes in his mouth. 

• You begin to try to reason with a 10mth old.... I'm not sure why I expect Alex to understand, when you take a step back, it seems ridiculous the way I speak to him, explaining the pros and cons of eating paper.

• Babies cry, a lot. - For a baby there is a fine line between laughing and crying. When Alex is tired, and I'm playing with him, he can quickly swing between laughing and crying. This is double edged, on the negative side you need to watch how much you joke around when the baby is tired, but on the positive side, you can sometimes turn crying into laughing if you are skilled enough. 

• There is no toy - There is no distinction between toys and other things, only objects. Objects which can be discovered and ultimately chewed on. This too is double edged, it means that Alex constantly tries to play with things that I don't want him to play with e.g power supply to the laptop, but on the positive side, you don't need to buy new toys, just show him things he hasn't seen before to entertain him for hours. 

• Baby's watch you and see what you place value on, then target those things. Alex realises that I listen to a lot of radio, and use my mobile and laptop a lot, he makes a bee-line for those objects that I use the most.

• The speed at which you can do things (e.g. do the shopping, go to the park) is inversely proportional to the number of kids you have. I visited my mum as she baby sat my two nieces. We spent more time getting ready to go to the park than at the park. This is a major contrast to my professional background, it is really quiet foreign, and very frustrating.  

On Thursday Morning not long after breakfast, Alex Started throwing up, a lot. I cleaned him, myself and the lounge up, then he did it again, only this time worse. Since then both Louise and I have been violently ill. I'll write about it in more detail once we get through this... but I did learn that 10 month old baby's need to have a medical certificate to get out of swimming lessons, unfortunately I only learned this after I left the doctor and had to go back the next day to get a letter from the doctor explaining that Alex was not fit to participate in his swimming lesson. I thought this was truly weird.