That’s pretty much the theme of our household at the moment.

Aidan started playschool in January and he’s had two bouts of tonsillitis and one of bronchitis since then. Hunny has been doing some local work travel (more on that another time) and came home with something flu-ish last week, which he promptly gave to me. Actually, he may or may not have picked that up from Aidan before he left but anyhow, now Erin has it too, which is most horrible.

Sick babies are so tough to deal with. They understand nothing of what’s going on, they fight against you administering medication, and they like to breathe through their noses all the time, silly things.

Erin is a real fighter when it comes to resisting her meds. Of the three doses of antibiotics I gave her today, I must have used almost double the meds to account for all that she successfully managed to spit out. It’s easier to give a cat a pill!

On the positive side she’s actually a rather cheerful sick baby, in fact she is an allround sweetheart now that the colicy days are over. Aidan is less disrupted by her presence these days (he was quite traumatised by the shared parents in the early days) and is turning into quite a sweetie with her, if a rather rambunctious one!

I have 4 weeks of maternity leave left, and I am conflicted about going back to work. I like the sense of purpose work gives me, but I am also enjoying my little girl so much. I suppose the nerves are also because I don’t know what I am going back to.

I have lost most of the weight already, about 2kg’s shy of my pre-preg weight, but the shape is not the same! Time to start some exercising, try and get some muscle back.

So there’s your 2 minute update on the life and times of Alex, I promise to post something more substantial next time.

Erin will probably be our last child. Perhaps if I didn’t have to work things may be different, but two is all I feel I can handle as a working mom. Knowing this, I find I am mindful of all the ‘lasts’. This will be the last time I am cocooned up in a hospital with my brand new baby. This will be the last time I buy size 1 nappies. This will be the last time my days revolve around feed, burp sleep. The list is long.

At the same time I am fearful that all Erin’s ‘firsts’ will erase Aidans. I worry that I didn’t pay enough attention to remembering with him, because I didn’t think I could ever forget anything about him. But I will if I don’t record them somewhere, and that’s what this is about: Remembering Aidan in all his first child glory.

Like the way before he could crawl that he would spin around in circles on his bum, laughing all the way.

And how his dad got his first laugh out of him by beatboxing. And it only worked once.

How we waited till the only 2 days I have ever been out of town for work to start crawling. I was sitting at the airport waiting for my plane home when he upped and crawled after the cat.

How he was born with the tip of one ear folded over, and Hunny tirelessly tried to stop him sleeping it into the same fold. It straightened out on its own soon enough.

How he ate everything when we started solids. Any veg, loved his dads bolognaise, pureed chicken.

His first word (after dada) was ‘up’ not a request to be picked up, but a decription of where the lights were. Then his Afrikaans Ouma taught him the Afrikaans equivalent, and lights became ‘up-boo’
For months lights were ‘up-boos’.

Butterflies were bitty-bitty-byes.

He still struggles with pronunciation of some consonants. ‘L’ is substituted with ‘Y’, ‘J’ with ‘D’; so Jelly sounds like Dey-yey.

He can make almost anything into a motorcar, even if motorcar is a block of wood and ‘motorcar has no wheels’

Thursday is his favourite day of the week, 3 his favourite number, and he loves spotting ‘A for Aidan!’

He loves trains, fire-engines and space rockets and will beg you to play Youtube video’s of these things over and over again.

The most prized of his matchbox car collection is ‘truck flames on the side’

He can twist my arm in an instant with his mispronounciation of ‘Pweese Mama’, and he is incredibly polite when half asleep, taking his bottle with a ‘Tank-oo Mama’ (yeah, we still give him one bottle a day – when he wakes at around 4AM)

He has the tiniest freckles on his nose – you have to be right up close to see them, and the most amazing eyelashes.

He has the coolest belly-laugh that he cannot control, and a naughty sense of humour already, deliberately answering your questions incorrectly with a grin on his face: ‘Green light means STOP!’

He is clever and sneaky, and will send you out of the room if he wants to be naughty, and ask the other parent if one says no.

He hates loud noises unless they are his own. Thunder sends him running to a parent for a cuddle. He gives the best hugs.

He amazes us daily with his ability to remember songs, rhymes and stories in two languages. When he was just starting talking and brought out a new word we would first have to figure out what language it was before we could try to distinguish the word.

He talks to his toys, takes some to bed with him, even putting them on his pillow and tucking them in with a blankie.

When he went through a brief fear of the plughole stage he was worried for his bath toys, insisting we take all of them out of the bath before we took the plug out.

He loves to help his dada make food, and he eats his supper much better if he has helped make it. He also watches the food channel with his dad.

I feel so blessed to be a part of this boy’s life, being able to watch him grow up, but as he passes each milestone I know I will miss the little boy he is right now.

I love you my gorgeous sweetheart boy.

Wake up to a 2 y.o. standing next to your bed saying ‘Yucky* mommy, yucky’, holding out a fistful of the contents of the cats litter tray.

I half-heartedly instructed him to ‘go and put it back’, but the silence that ensued his departure from the room didn’t leave me convinced that this is what he was doing. Nap over.

This is said 2 y.o. enjoying the jumping castle we hired for him (and the kid in me that didn’t get enough jumping castle time when I was young) at our house warming this past weekend.

Once he’d gotten over the initial fear of a castle complete with dragon in his back yard:

Much enjoyment was had ☺

“I see you”

“Aidan Upsa down!”

I can’t describe how this little man has changed my world. I’m quite sad that he only has 6 weeks left of being an only child.

*Actually he said “Ga ga”, South African slang for yuck or the like. But the SA slang that doesn’t sound like ‘lady gaga’, but rather with a hard G, that makes a sound akin to coughing up a furball. But if I’d given this explanation in-line it’d have lost it’s punchline.

1. Less awe at baby’s development – we are no less amazed at the miracle growing inside me, but this time it isn’t like discovering a whole new thing. I was 12 weeks before I subscribed to a pregnancy calendar

2. Less fear of doing things wrong – I know this time that it’s difficult to break a baby. Not that I am taking unnecessary risks, but if something happens (Like catching myself several mouthfuls into the Biltong before remembering ‘Oh hay, this is dried raw beef’) I don’t beat myself up about it.

3. People treat you as less special. People swoon over first time pregnant women. Your second child? ‘Oh, that’s nice’

4. You treat yourself as less special. Let’s face it, there is a house to run, a job to do, and a toddler who wants your undivided attention. There is less time and energy to be spent on feeling and behaving pregnant. Because if hubby does meet you at the door, you’d rather he entertain the toddler for a few minutes than fret over him not carrying your bags like he did in the last pregnancy.

5. Less silly purchases – in baby stuff and in maternity clothes. By know you know what works for you.

6. No guilt free eating – last time I shoved my face full of everything I felt like, because of course I would be able to loose it all after. But 4 times as much fat as baby does NOT simply drop off when baby is born. And newborns put terrible constraints on your exercise times.

7. I have become painfully aware of how little weight some other pregnant women pick up – women who look fantastic 5 weeks, and 12 weeks post partum, and it took me 14 months and some drastic measures to get within short-sitedness of my pre-preg weight.

8. Enjoying my boys last few months of being a single child. He has no idea how life is going to change! And I can let him grow up without lamenting the loss of my baby boy, because he doesn’t need to be my baby anymore.

9. Knowing I will cope. I was a complete novice last time – no baby experience at all – it’s good not to be so worried about coping.

10. Where are my fantastic finger nails? My nails were the best they have ever been last pregnancy. This time they re their same old brittle splitting selves.

We told Aidan this week about his new sibling on the way. He is 21 months old, so has no idea what we are on about, but tries to repeat what we say anyway, with some amusing results:

“Aidan is getting a yittle mister”
“Aidan is getting a master”
Before finally pulling of “Aidan is getting a sister”.

But the reaction of laughter he got from the “Aidan is getting a master” comment means that he still deliberately uses that mispronunciation sometimes

Yes my boy, we are all getting a new master, if my recollection of your early days is correct!

What happens if I have a baby girl who isn’t as beautiful as my little boy?

In case you were wondering, this is what my most gorgeous boy looks like now:

Fun in the flowerbeds:

Not so tasty afterall:

Just the two of us:

Went out for a friends hen night on saturday – 10 more sleeps Kylie! – and stayed out way too late. Got home right as Aidan was demanding his 4AM bottie. I didn’t drink much so I wasn’t battling any hangovers, but it seems my immune system is a tad fragile at the mo. I didn’t get the opportunity to catch up any sleep on Sunday, and the resultant breach in the immune defenses has left me with a fiery throat, post nasal drip and ringing ears – with the accompanying light headedness. Not fun. Rather annoying in fact.

But now, one day later it seems like Aidan is coming down with the same thing. Not enough of a gap there for me to have given it to him, I suspect we both picked it up from the same place. Thing is, I can’t recall us being around any sick people 3-5 days ago. We did visit my SIL and Aidans cousins on sunday but they were all in good health…

It’s so frustrating. It seems to me like my boy gets sick from every sick person he encounters. When is his immune system gonna strengthen up? He’s a well fed boy, I have him on a multi-vit designed especially for respiratory tract support and it’s still summer! What more can I do without barricading us in the house 24-7-365?

Argh. Imagine what we’d be like if he were still in daycare?

Kay, I’ll stop whining now and get my sorry arse to bed. Maybe we’ll all wake up healthy in the morning.

 

All bounced out

So we sleep under a Blessed sky tonight, and hope our luck holds for another 354 days.

Raise your glasses to 2010.

Three years before I started a blog I started a blog. Hunny created it and told me to post some stuff on it. I didn’t grasp the concept very well at the time, but I wrote some stuff and posted it. And then I promptly forgot about it.
I have no idea where it is now. It’s out there somewhere still, I’m sure, but I don’t even recall the name, and I didn’t put my name to it, so chances are good I won’t ever find it again.

This blog can’t suffer that fate, if only because I own its domain, and that domain is my name. So unless I forget me name, it’s safe. It’s not safe from neglect though, I’ve proved that time and again.

I’d like to find that old blog of mine though. It was a great snapshot of my life at the time. In a crushing job, planning a wedding on shortish notice, and suffering greatly under the stress that came from the crappy job.

My how times change! Now I’m married, have a gorgeous boy child, and really battle to get freak-out stressed about work. Pity that, because that level of stress is a great diet plan for me. Sure I get annoyed; angry sometimes. And when faced with something new and daunting I still get some knots in my stomach. But that’s nothing like the wreck I used to be when things weren’t working and I had to go and sit in the toilets for a while lest I cry in front of my co-workers.

Two things have contributed to this. First off, I have a much better bunch of colleagues. These guys do actually work as a team, not against one another. But mostly it’s Aidan. I finally have the ‘this is not the end of the world’ perspective I have always been searching for in my work-life.
Because seriously, the world will not end if our software is down for a little while. Hell, I don’t even work on the kind of stuff that could kill a couple of people if it’s not operational (think medical software), never mind the stuff that launches nuclear weapons and kills whole nations.

Now when 2PM comes around, I go home. Sure I’ll pitch in and stay a little longer if it will actually achieve results, but now I have a boy to go and collect, and love, and be fascinated by, and be frustrated by, and laugh at, and laugh with, and teach, and learn from. And that is just so much bigger than any job I have ever done.