My baby boy is ten months old today! I say baby; I swear he looks more like a proper little person every time I look at him! He sits there quite happily (when he’s not teething – more on that dreckly!) chatting to himself, sat up playing with his toys, engrossed in the television… And he continues to impress me every month when I come to do this update and realise just how much he’s learned and grown in the last few weeks.
I have a one line a day diary where I write a memory of Jenson each day and every Thursday evening I write about how incredible he is at swimming. He’s really doing so well and there’s such a difference every time my mum comes to watch. He can hold onmto the bar, jump in by himself, float on the water noodles on his own and when his teacher launches him off into the water towards me he can swim for a good couple of seconds all by himself (before I freak out and grab him!). It’s amazing and I’m so glad that we decided to start these lessons.
Last month I had started to settle back into work and adjust to being away from Jenson three days a week. And I was doing great – until I had 12 days off and went back again this week. Jenson had a really great week while I was off, moving into his own room (full nursery tour blog post coming soon), sleeping until 6/6.30am (with the odd cry for his dummy) and he even had the occasional really happy day while we were together as a family. Then he started cutting three teeth at the same time. Yep. Remember how much it sucks when their first tooth comes through? Imagine that times a bazillion. The poor chap woke up from a nap while I was in the bank with him last week and he had a total meltdown. Like, inconsolable, screaming in agony. It was heart-breaking and he’d only cried like that a couple of times before. Fortunately his lovely Auntie Toni was working and there were no other customers in at the time so I managed to avoid having a breakdown myself. Just.
This morning I had to walk away from him and go to work after he woke up just before 5am screaming his little heart out with a big nightmare-type cry. It was awful and he wouldn’t settle until he’d had paracetamol and a bottle. Luke had a really rough day with him while I was at work but we get another four days together as a family now as Luke has the weekend off. I love it when we get to spend the whole day together, not least because when Jenson’s really upset it’s great to have someone to share the load with.
But it’s not all been doom and gloom. I’ve made more of an effort to film him being super-cute and awesome, so here are some videos for you to swoon over. Sorry if it makes your ovaries explode!
This is Jenson doing karate chops with his daddy…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdfWke_6dFM]
Here’s Jenson watching telly. He loves cartoon theme tunes and adverts, especially the Go Compare guy, the British Gas penguin and the PG Tips monkey. He gets so excited when we put the TV on in the morning. It’s easiest to pop him in his walker, put the TV on and go and make a coffee and grab breakfast. He gets so excited in anticipation and starts flapping about – cute!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvLWfiMJgLE]
And he’s been blowing loads of raspberries. He went through a phase for a couple of weeks of doing it with a mouthful of food or water but he seems to have outgrown that pretty quickly, thank god! Pretty funny in the beginning though…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qQkNefTOAI]
In terms of milestones, he’s able to click his tongue (which he thinks is awesome and loves copying you when you do it), he’s mastered saying “Nan-nan”, in front of my mum too, which is obviously the best thing in the world, and he can sort of crawl backwards – like how he started going backwards in the walker first. Now he can go forwards so give it time… And my favourite thing of all? When he reaches out for a hug. It’s so frickin’ adorable! When I get in from work he looks towards the door, gives me the biggest smile and reaches out to me.
Oh, we do have one more iffy update. Jenson has this weird thing on his bum – kinda like a big skin tack right in his butt crack. Weird, right? Anyways, we took him to the GP who referred him to pediatrics but she said not to worry. Apparently she had to refer him because it came on suddenly with no known cause and removing it is difficult because of its location. It doesn’t seem to bother him but it is weird. If any of you have had something similar with one of your little ones, do leave me a little comment at the end of this post. The appointment is on 17 May so we’ve got a bit of a wait…
And that’s all folks! Look out for the beautiful nursery tour coming as soon as we can sort out one final piece of wall art. It really is quite stunning if I may say so myself. My mum came over for the day to watch Jenson so we could crack on and get it all done in one day and I felt a teeny bit emosh when it was finished.
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He’s been doing so well in there on his own and we also managed to drop him down to three bottles last week, so I felt like I had a super-productive week off!
Oh, I almost forgot! We’ve started planning his first birthday party! We’ll have our first birthday party at the end April as his little friends start hitting that big milestone. It’s crazy how it feels like we all just had our babies and now many of them are walking and talking! Plus birthdays mean I get to buy some cute little girl clothes for presents! Yay!
A photo posted by Emma Farley (@emslf) on Mar 28, 2016 at 1:14am PDT
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I’ll be posting some party planning and present wish listing stuff over the next few weeks but here’s a little peak at some stuff I picked up last week
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Cute, right? I can’t bring myself to watch Dumbo with him because I’d be an emotional wreck but he loves his elephants, especially my cuddly Dumbo which he ended up commandeering, so it was a good choice. And so cheap! Good old Pound Stretcher! Anyhoo, we’re not planning on having a massive do for the big day, just a little picnic for his friends in the park behind our house. I noticed the other day that some people had bought a little gazebo and put that up with some balloons for their kid’s birthday, so now I’m thinking about browsing the Argos catalogue for something similar… Wish me luck!