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.

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.

Erin Julia, born at 11:22 am, Wednesday 08 December 2010. Weighing in at 3.25 kg’s and at 52 cm’s long, and too beautiful for words.

3 nights ago Aidan had his first midnight wandering in 2 weeks of sleeping in his big bed. I was in bed reading at the time, so I heard his little feet hit the laminate flooring and caught him at his bedroom door, blankie in had, not quite sure where he was headed. He allowed me to lead him back to his bed with no fuss, and stayed there for the rest of the night, but my peace of mind was shot. I spent the rest of the night waiting for those foot steps, afraid that if he made it to my bedside without me noticing him, I would give him and myself a screaming surprise when I did realise he was there…

2 nights ago the dogs were restless, our and the neighbours, and we kept waking up to random “Woof’s”. So did Aidan. And at around 2.30 he was fully awake and calling for Mama… Thankfully Dada could also do the trick, and got him back to sleep, but that was another restless night.

Last night we were woken at 2.39 by our alarm going off. Hunny killed it with the remote, and checked the zones for the culprit, but the system said nothing was wrong. This brand new fancy alarm system has been a pain in the behind since installation. Starting with installation taking 3 times as long as advised, and numerous re-visits due to passive sensors being to sensitive, and miss-programming of the keypad, mixing up the zones so that sleep mode armed the bedroom and disarmed the balcony. Great if you want to sleep on the balcony. Not great for sleeping in bed.

So when the alarm appeared to be alarming with no apparent provocation, well, we weren’t impressed. Likewise when 20 mins later the armed response company hadn’t called to see what was up, or sent a car around. There appeared to be no cause for concern. House and dogs were quiet. But still. Malfunctioning alarms aren’t cool.

Just about an hour later, as we were finally dozing off again, the neighbours alarm started off. Sigh.

This morning when we were in our more alert minds we realised it was probably the neighbours alarm both times, and only co-incidence that they shut it off at the same time as Hunny hit the remote. And that’d be why the alarm wasn’t as loud as we were expecting. And why the system had no breach’s in it’s history. And why the company didn’t call.

You do and think silly things when you are tired. But to think this is even before the newborn makes her appearance – well we are in for a long few months…

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.

2. My brain is taking strain. I was adamant in my first pregnancy that the much spoken about pregnancy porridge brain was a myth. I felt I actually proved it was by holding down a full time job, changing job role and studying part time – graduating top of my class to boot – and only loosing my keys once. This time I don’t have the studies, but I do have a toddler and perhaps that swings the scale. I ran the washing machine last week with detergent, fabric softener and … No clothes. I left the basket of dirty clothes right next to the machine and walked away.

3. More sensory anomalies: I am so noise sensitive. I get riled up at the first hint of a repetitive sound and I can not tolerate 2 people talking at once. Both quite unavoidable circumstances with a 2 year old in the house.

All is well with our household though, our new house household (at last), and mom and baby are growing well. We are closing in on the last straight, 7 weeks to go from tomorrow, and I wish it were sooner, except for the part were nothing in the nursery is ready…

Imagine you are the daughter of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain.

You mother is an aged teenage fruit cake and the courts don’t think she’s fit to take care of you.

Your father plastered his brains to a wall with a shotgun.

If you want to hear his voice again you can put on a CD and listen to him alternately mumbling or screeching some of the most obscure lyrics ever written. They probably don’t mean anything other than he was on heroin at the time.

Makes me think that my sometimes annoying and slightly dysfunctional family is just fine thanks.

The owner had already bought another house that was standing empty, so would want to move out as soon as possible. So we chatted about moving dates. The seller would have liked us to move in 1 June, and pay occupational rent until the house registered in our name, but we were on holiday at that time, so we optimistically discussed 1 July. If we were lucky, the house would be registered by then, but probably latest 1 August.

It’s now  25 August.

When we made the offer, back on April 10th, we immediately put our current house on the market, and sold within two. To a cash buyer. Our house registered in the new owners name on the 13th August. We are tenants in our own (old) home.

The transfer of our new house has stalled, this is it’s story…

The transfer agent phoned us around the beginning of June, to let us know that the seller had an outstanding amount on his bond. Quite a substantial amount. I don’t know what it’s for or how it happened, I haven’t asked. But he promised to settle mid July. I began to get concerned. This could potentially hold up the process by 6 weeks. The transfer agent told us that if our current house registered before the new one, we could always move in to the new house, and pay occupational rent until registration. The situation made me feel a bit uneasy, but I stayed calm.

 A month later the story had changed. The seller would pay amount that was just less than half the outstanding amount on the 25 July, and the rest by mid August. The transfer agent spoke to his bank and brought the amount owed down 20%. Come 26 July the seller paid less than the promised amount, but due to the revised settlement figures, still more than half what was outstanding. But, now he said that he would only pay the remainder on the 25th August.

I flipped my lid. I cried, I fought with Hunny for not being angry enough about this, I cried because of that, I sent emails to the transfer agents asking what we could do, if we could back out. I assured her we would most definitely NOT be moving in before registration, we would NOT pay occupational rent. I felt we couldn’t trust the seller to keep the process moving if we were paying him occupational rent every month. We had already agreed with the buyer of our current house that we would stay and pay occupational rent to him for August. We extended that to September also. And then I calmed down, and started the patient wait for 25 August for the next update.

Well. He paid 2 days early, but still 9K short of the revalued amount.

Deflated. That’s how I feel. I don’t have any anger or indignation left.

I have 108 days left till Wiggle makes her arrival. Just under 3.5 months. Registration, from submission date (which can only take place after the seller has paid his dues) will take roughly a month, provided it hits no more snags. So far the process has already taken the best part of 4 months.

I don’t know what we do next.