Conrad’s blog

Gabriella

So, a quick run through of how things are progressing so far:

Conrad’s having three meals per day now. I didn’t mean to rush him in any way but he has been really keen, so I’ve just carried on offering him new things and a little bit more every time. As an example of what he eats now, today for dinner he had one ‘ice cube’ sweet potato mixed with one ‘ice cube’ parsnip, plus 1.5 ‘ice cube’ cooked apple for dessert. Just have to say though, to anyone who hasn’t taken part in weaning a baby and is wondering how on earth they can make such a mess when it’s the grown-up holding the spoon: well, at about the same age as weaning starts, babies seem to go through a stage of wanting their arms and legs to get involved in everything, and trying to feed a baby puree is really a test of how well you can dodge flailing arms, kicking legs (nothing aggressive, it’s all excitement!) and those little hands grabbing the bib and shoving it in baby’s mouth at the same time as you’re trying to get in there with a spoonful of runny, sticky and usually very brightly coloured stuff…

Last Wednesday, Conrad deliberately was walking, one foot put in front of the other, for about a meter across the living room floor over to the control panel toy – I was holding him upright, of course (he wasn’t walking all by himself) by his hands with his arms at about elbow height, but his feet and legs moving were all him. I’m still amazed at how strong he is (though do wonder whether the wiring in his brain is all there yet to actually let him start walking by himself any time soon).

When it comes to sleeping, Conrad now falls asleep fairly easily in his cot for a daytime nap. When he rubs his eyes, pulls or rub his ear or starts cranking a little bit (and it’s been 2-3 hours since he last slept) I tuck him in in his cot (he’s very good at kicking his blankets off, so they have to be pushed right in under the mattress) and it usually doesn’t take him longer than 5-10 minutes to go to sleep. Sometimes he complains a bit about being in his cot, so I don’t leave him for longer than 4-5 minutes before I go back to show him I’m still around, maybe to pick him up for a cuddle to calm him down if he’s a bit upset. So far I haven’t had to go back a second time. Night time, I put him straight into his cot after he’s finished his feed so he’s tucked in while still awake. He doesn’t complain about it, though a few times he’s been chatting and kicking excitedly for a little bit before drifting off to sleep.

In the bath he sits very upright now, and looking much happier than when he was lying back – he even beams at me with his lovely smile now and then, instead of the previous slightly hesitant look. Hopefully he’ll start to really enjoy bath time. I put one or two bath toys in with him now and he reaches for and grabs them, so it’s not all just boring wash time.

A few photos from when we were staying at Conrad’s farmor and farfar last week:

Gabriella

On Saturday the 15th November we had a naming party for Conrad. Well, it was more of a welcoming party, perhaps, as we didn’t have an official ‘celebrant’ or similar and didn’t make it very formal. Ian and I had also decided to keep numbers small and only invite close family this time, as we wanted to make sure that arrangements didn’t run ahead with us, stopping us from giving the kids as much attention as we’d like them to have – after all, it was Conrad’s day and not ours. Conrad’s farmor and farfar kindly lent us the use of their house as party venue, as our house the week before had been treated (again) for rising damp, as well as mould, and we’d realised that we wouldn’t have been able to get it reasonably straight in time.

We had a wonderful time, and Conrad seemed to be enjoying himself too. Although he didn’t get a nap all afternoon (he couldn’t really switch off with everything going on around him, even when put in his temporary cot upstairs, which he had slept well in during the week, when the whole family had camped out in farmor and farfar’s ‘granny flat’ to escape the works in our house in Horley), everyone were saying how well he coped.

After everyone had arrived we had a buffet, followed by cake: as we’d decided on the very simple theme of blue and silver – with balloons, table cloth, paper plates and cutlery to match – I’d decorated those with blueberries and tiny silver balls. Then we gathered in the living room for Conrad’s farmor to say a few words, Auntie Wendy to read us a Winnie the Pooh story, which was a lovely idea – she sat cross-legged on the floor with a big book on her lap and told us how Winnie the Pooh got his name. (Conrad’s sister Jessica was shrieking happily throughout the story-telling, but I think most of us heard most of it…!) And then of course we toasted our little Conrad, in some lovely sparkling wine from the local vineyard Denbies.

Ian, I and the kids stayed the night to save us from having to dash home to Horley for the kids’ dinner at 5.30 but most of our guests had left by the time we started getting Conrad and his sister ready for the night at 6pm. Farmor Diana’s cousin Rita and husband were the last ones and they’d left by the time the kids were in bed. There had been a few people missing that we had loved to have seen at the party, but aside from that, I don’t think it could have gone any better than it did – Ian and I were so pleased with how it had all turned out!

Gabriella

After the wonderful night when Conrad slept for over nine hours, he had almost a week of waking up every three hours throughout the night (although he did go back to sleep almost always straight away after a feed) and I was starting to feel a bit despondent again. But then lately, he has only woken up once a night, sometimes after as much as 7 hours’ sleep. I’m a bit at a loss on what to do to help him settle back when he cries in the night apart from giving him a bottle: e.g. stroking or cuddling him or changing his nappy doesn’t help the slightest. I just have to hope that he learns to resettle himself at some point – broken sleep can’t be great for Conrad either in the long run.

In the day time, Conrad still has a morning nap of anything between 1 and 4 hours, usually around 3 hours. In the afternoon I’ve started to put him in his cot when I suspect that he’s tired (unless we’re out and about – then he just dozes off in the pushchair if he needs a nap) and three times now he has fallen asleep there, once even without any kind of cranking, just happy chatter that gradually went more quiet until he drifted off. It’d be nice in a way if Conrad could sleep wherever whenever, but at home it’s safer for him to nap in his cot when Jessica and sometimes other toddlers are around.

Of course Jessica and any visiting toddlers don’t mean any harm, but they don’t always look where they’re going, and Jessica can get a bit overexcited around Conrad. She finds him fascinating, loves pointing out his facial features (I always keep a very close and slightly worried look when she points at his eyes, but she has learned to point them out at a slight distance), grabbing his feet (sometimes a bit hard), burying him in toys (Conrad isn’t always overly keen when toys get stacked right in front of or on top his face, funnily enough…!) or pat his head (sometimes a bit hard too, when she gets carried away). So I’ve decided that if he can be safely tucked away upstairs to sleep in peace, that’s the better option. In the afternoon he can sleep from half an hour to one and a half. I’m not expecting regular eating and sleeping times for quite some time yet, or they might not ever happen (and I’ll be forever guessing whether he’s tired or not…).

Conrad does get bored at times. A few days ago, I decided to try a few of Jessica’s books on him to see how he’d like them, and it went down really well! I chose a couple with good contrast in the pictures – one has coloured shapes which he looks at more that the black and white images of other babies on the opposing page, the other has bold colours and textures. He reaches for the pages, tries to grab the images and sometimes gets a very firm hold on the side of the page. Both books are cardboard ones, and I really have to struggle to keep the pages open and steady: he’s so strong, but obviously not yet in complete control over what his hands and arms are doing.

Conrad has taken to sucking his thumb every so often. It’s not when he’s about to go to sleep or at any other seemingly regularly occurring occasion – maybe his thumb is just another fun thing to chomp on and he’ll get bored of it after a while. We’ve never given Conrad a dummy, but if he chooses to suck his thumb instead, so be it.

As today was the Wednesday nearest to Conrad’s 5 month day (Sunday the 9th), I took him to the health visitor clinic to be weighed. He’s now just under 9 kilos: 8.96 kilos (or 19 lbs 11 oz). At home in the early evening, Ian got the tape measure out and we checked Conrad’s length too: 71 cm (2 ft 4 in).

Gabriella