Noisy boy, 24/7!

If Bumper turns out to be a boy, we are going to have a very noisy home.

Boys just seem to be noisier than girls, even at this early age. It is noticeable when there are 2 or 3 girls of Oliver's age at the house that the level of noise and mayhem drops dramatically when he has a nap. The girls play together more quietly and seemingly less argumentatively.

But it isn't just during the day that Oliver is noisy. One thing I can't really understand (and which no-one else's baby seems to do) is to be so noisy at night when asleep or half-asleep. When he turns over in the night he really shouts and sometimes screams. It only lasts a few seconds but it is loud enough to wake us up, even though our baby monitor is set to its lowest volume. It sounds like frustration and irritation as he turns over or re-orients himself because he has shuffled right up to the top of his cot.

His sleep pattern is pretty predictable at the moment. He goes to bed at about 7.45pm, often without complaint, though the last two nights have seen brief crying despite him being so tired he falls asleep 30 seconds later. (I suspect he just wants the fun to go on all night!)

Then after 2 - 3 hours he will wake and on most occasions need one of us to go into him to settle him back down. When we do he usually goes straight back down and goes back to sleep. We are trying to stop doing this but it isn't easy. Sometimes he settles himself. Other times if we leave him too long he'll get upset and much harder to settle again.

After that it varies how often he wakes us with his nocturnal shouting. Sometimes he can wake us as often as every 20 - 30 minutes but more often we'll hear little or nothing until about 5.30.

After 5.30 he will either make more frequent grumpy noises, dozing in-between, or sometimes he'll wake up and sing before quietly nodding off again.

From 6.30 he's usually awake, usually announced by a grumpy shout, but after a few minutes we hear him chatting to his various toys in his cot and we know it's safe to go in without him starting the day grumpy. (By the way his toys in his cot are Julien, Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, a Man Utd bear, a little horse and a cow - oh and there are a giraffe and a tomato hanging from the side of the cot.)

By then it's approaching 7am. So you see if it weren't for the first awakening and this nocturnal yelping we'd be getting a really good night's sleep.

And of course, he always wakes more on the nights we go to bed early to try to catch up on lost sleep. That's Oliver's Law. Well, one of them.

All the best toys...

All the best toys are not toys at all! Our living room has a large box which is literally overflowing with toys. So what does Oliver play with? The pots and pans in the cupboard of course. And the door to the cupboard itself which he swings open and shut repeatedly.

Other great "toys" include:

the TV which is great for turning on and off when Daddy is trying to watch something trivial like, say, live coverage of Man Utd vs Liverpool

the telephone which has an interesting backlit hands-free button (resulting in several inadvertent phone calls)

the Sky remote control which has a worrying tendency to select obscure pay-per-view channels when in Oliver's hands. (That's my excuse when the bill comes in and I'm sticking with it.)

the Dust-buster vaccuum cleaner which he helpfully uses with varying degrees of effectiveness

Mummy's expensive scented candles in heavy glass holders which have to be removed from the table at every oportunity.

the controls on the oil heater in the conservatory resulting in tropical temperatures and the imminent purchase of a fireguard

Still, he has to explore to learn. At least to date he hasn't repeated my early experiment with un-cooked eggs by dropping them on the kitchen floor to smash.