Rich Tea biscuits: made for dunking.

Oliver has discovered the joys of Rich Tea biscuits and particularly dunking them in his cup of tea. He doesn't drink any of his cup of tea, it's purely for dunking. So now when he asks for a biscuit, he usually follows it up with a request for a cup of tea.

Whaddya think I'm funny?

Hayley and Lucy being entertained by Oliver.

Lucy often just sits and watches Oliver. There's good chance this is partly down to self-preservation in case he absent-mindedly sits on her or rushes over and gives her an over-exhuberant hug. But sometimes it is just because she wants to know what he is doing and would probably join in herself, if only she could. In short, she has the advantage of a younger sibling: the older sibling is a free home entertainment system.

This morning Hayley was sitting at the dining table with Lucy on her knee. Oliver was sitting next to them on another chair. He started to bounce up and down in his seat. This made Lucy laugh. So Oliver did it more. This made Lucy laugh more, which in turn made made Oliver laugh... which made Lucy laugh more... which made Oliver bounce and laugh even more.... you get the picture.

It's probably the first time you could say that they have played and laughed together. Long may it continue.

BBC NEWS | Education | Summer-born to start school later

BBC NEWS | Education | Summer-born to start school later

This is particulalrly of interest to us as Lucy was born in August.

BBC NEWS | Wales | Cancer patient loses visa battle

BBC NEWS | Wales | Cancer patient loses visa battle

This woman came to the UK to study so that she could support her two children but wasn't admitted to the course because her English wasn't good enough. So she stayed on in the UK to improve her English. While here her husband died. She made arrangments for her children to be looked after and returned to the UK. But then she became ill with cancer.

Yesterday the Home office forcibly removed her from a hospital where she was being treated and deported her to a certain and hastened death (because she can't afford treatment in Ghana), leaving her children unsupported and therefore without education (as it is not free) and hence sentenced to a life of poverty.

A friend told BBC radio that she was "a mess" when she boarded the plane.

Doesn't it just make you proud to be British.

Conversation of the Day

The scene: Lucy in her stroller in the kitchen. Oliver making Rice Krispie cakes with his Mummy.

Oliver: "Hello Lucy chubby cheeks".
Hayley (laughing): "Did you just call her chubby cheeks?"
Oliver (smiling): "Yes."
Hayley: "Who calls her that Oliver?"
Oliver: "Daddy." (This is true.)
Oliver (offering Rice Krispie cake to Lucy):"Would you like to taste it Lucy? Here you are."
Hayley: "No darling, Lucy can't eat cake like that."
Oliver: "She'll be hungry."
Hayley: "It's OK she has special milk."

I got home in time for Oliver to give me the special Rice Krispie cake he had made for me: a single, giant white chocolate Rice Krispie cake.
"We share it?" he asked. How could I refuse.

Taking the strain

Lucy at Tesco

Hayley has taken the strain over the Christmas and New Year break while I have been ill. This morning she woke feeling full of flu, so it was my chance to reciprocate.

Oliver and I delayed our departure for our Tesco breakfast until Lucy was up and had drunk her first bottle, then off the three of us went. This was to be the first time I had taken both my kids out without Hayley there to help.

While Oliver and I tucked into our cooked breakfasts, Lucy sat happily in her car seat (pictured above) wearing her "I may be small but I'm the BOSS" t-shirt, watching us and occasionally throwing one of her toys into my baked beans. Nice.

At the end of the meal she started to grumble and sure enough it was time to head to the baby changing room. Oliver came along happily and sang to me while I changed Lucy. What a cheery chap.

We ended our trip with a ride on "Clifford the big red dog" for Oliver. Always popular.

After popping in at home, Oliver and I headed off to Whale-around (an indoor playground) for a couple of hours, leaving Lucy with Hayley who was still poorly but missing her little girl.

When we returned Oliver was still on best behaviour, despite foregoing any nap all day and he remained cheery and chatty all afternoon while I made dinner, prepared bottles (with Lucy in the Baby Bjorn carrier), played with him and even finally watched football on TV.

Tonight, Hayley went to bed at 9pm, which was as soon as Lucy had her last bottle (a bit earlier than usual!). Both kids were such treasures today that taking the lead in looking after them was easier than I expected. I still know I couldn't do half the job Hayley does with them day in day out though!

Lucy milestones

Lucy is now 4 and half months old. Here's what she is up to.

She now rolls on her side on her playmat and in her cot.

For the last week or two she has been turning around in her cot. We have added a colourful bumper down one side to stop her from bumping her head. Last night she did a 180 degree turn. She doesn't seem too bothered by ending up lying across her cot. As with pretty much everything, she doesn't complain much. She is also happier on her front than Oliver was. Today she rolled onto her front with only a little extra help from Hayley. And then she tried to crawl! Slow down little girl!

We've got a screamer! Lucy likes to bat merry hell out of the bird on the playmat and is quite dexterous with the other toys on there. As she pulls at them she screams! Sometimes her face goes red. It was quite scary at first, but there's no doubt she is happy. She will break off from her screaming to give you a big smile, then carry on.

Lucy chats away and makes some sounds consistently. A sort of "ma ma ma" sound and also one that sounds spookily like "Oliver".

She is a grabber too. She likes holding my fingers in her hands and has quite a grip. Yesterday she inflicted tangible pain on me by twisting my little fingers in the wornd direction.

She can happily spend ages in the Baby Bjorn front carrier. You almost forget she's there, she is so quiet and happy watching everything her pilot is doing. Last night she fell asleep in the carrier on me while I tidied the kitchen and made her bottles.

She is very interested in food now. She has been watching us eat for a couple of weeks and even grabs at your food if sitting on your knee. The other day she even pulled at the tablecloth, as if to get the bowl nearer after I moved it away. Could have been coincidence but... She has tasted ice cream and last night had some whipped cream from the Etons Mess we were enjoying.

Above all she loves to be talked to and to be involved. Most of the time you only have to smile at her and she'll smile back. She is such a smiler! An absolute treasure.

In summary, Lucy is still a little dream of a baby. Hayley left her with our friend Jo for half an hour yesterday and her comment afterwards was "she's so contented, you could forget she's there!"

BBC News - " Labour 'failing working parents' "

Labour 'failing working parents'

This area is a minefield. When you look at the family make-up of the kids in poverty the biggest group is those with 2 working parents. It seems crazy.

Personally, I think it's good to have a parent at home with pre-school kids, but once they are at school it makes sense to reward parents who want to rejoin the workforce. I'm not sure the government are yet providing sufficient support to enable either of these situations to happen for most families.

BBC NEWS | UK | Pub chain limits parents' drinks

BBC NEWS | UK | Pub chain limits parents' drinks

What utter nonsense. JD Wetherspoons have introduced a policy of refusing to serve a third drink to a parent with children, even if the other parent is drinking water.

Do Wetherspoons refuse to sell 8 pints to teenagers? No.
Do Wetherspoons refuse to sell 8 pints to a man who may then be going home to look after his kids? No of course not.

So why do they intervene in this ridiculous pseudo-moralistic way?

Their story has been changing more often this morning than Lucy's nappies. One minute it is down to health and safety legislation, then it is because kids will be bored, then a spokesman comes on and says it's not unreasonable to expect someone with a child to be limited in this way.

What happened to treating people as individuals and consdiering these things on a case by case basis? If the real cause is rowdy kids, stop serving their parents IF that happens. Don't blight the rest of us because there's a theoretical possibility that one child might get a bit restless and tip over a plant-pot.

It strikes me they just want to shift children through and out of the doors as fast as possible and thought they could get away with this patronising policy to achieve it.

BBC NEWS | Education | The curse of the meddling parent

BBC NEWS | Education | The curse of the meddling parent

Being part of Generation X, I don't like to imagine I will become a "Helicopter parent". But it all seems very far in the future right now.

"Happy Holidays"? What holiday?!

What a Christmas break we've had. We've been on a treadmill of waking kids by night, fractious kids by day and illness at all hours.

The latter has been primarily suffered by me but it's hard to tell with the kids. Even now Oliver loses all ability (and/or will) to communicate in the night when he wakes crying. When he's clearly upset I can understand this. But other times his 'crying' will stop the moment I come in and he is absolutely fine. Then he will just lie there not answering me when I ask him what's wrong. But if I try to leave he starts to cry again (although once he realises I'm not coming straight back in he will stop, as if it's not worth the effort). The most I get out of him if I do go back in and ask him what's wrong is an "Errrrmmmm..." as he tries to think how to detain me longer, or possibly a request to get up at 4am. Often I think he just wants to know I am there. The difficulty is in spotting the times when he is really fine and when he is genuinely poorly. The boy who cried wolf springs to mind.

Oliver has developed a really strange tendency to wake after about 2-3 hours sleep. Often he is soaked in sweat, regardless of how warm or cold I have made his room, but other times there is no sweating and no visible reason why is he should wake so upset. We've seen the doctor about this and he just said (in so many words) that he probably just naturally sweats a lot.

The tricky thing for us now is to spot when he is forming a habit of needing us to come in to him for no other reason than he wants us to be there. We already went through the pain of progressing him to sleeping through the night without our intervention. But in reality, today he is no longer consistently doing so. At this rate we'll be going through it again with Oliver just when we need to do the same with Lucy. Or maybe I'm just being gloomy and pessimistic due to lack of sleep.

Lucy is waking some nights, as many as three times, though she never needs to feed. Other nights she will sleep right through. As she is approaching the weaning phase it's understandable that this wakefulness might occur. She is currently drinking five 7-ounce bottles a day, made up of four scoops of Aptamil-2 and three of Apatamil-1. She seemed to get constipated when we moved her to just Aptamil-2, hence her personalised blend as we phase in Aptamil-2 more slowly. But overall Lucy is still a very easy-going, contented baby and thank goodness that's the case.

So as the "holiday" draws to a close, I am still ill, on antibiotics and being deprived of sleep by illness even if the kids sleep relatively well. It's almost enough to make you look forward to going back to work.

Christmas Round-up 2007

Christmas Eve

In the run-up to Christmas we told Oliver we would put out a carrot for Rudolph and a mince pie and glass of whisky for Father Christmas. (The politically correct glass of water that seems to have been proposed by playgroups and/or nursery was never going to be an option. He drank whisky when I was a lad and I have heard nothing of him going tee-total.) Oliver even insisted on me taking a detour to Somerfield to buy the carrot in readiness. So he was an eager participant when we laid out our offerings on Christmas Eve.

Oliver showed no interest in looking out of the window to see whether he could see Father Christmas and Rudoph in the sky. He just wanted his bedtime milk. Once he was asleep I crept into his room and removed the Christmas stocking we had placed there together earlier. I filled it with a few presents, some lollipops and a tangerine before creeping back in and placing it back at the end of his bed. It was a delightful experience. Hopefully the first of many times to come.

Christmas Day

On Christmas morning Oliver had to be reminded that it was Christmas and that he had a stocking of presents at the foot of his bed. We took it into our bedroom and all four of us sat on the bed and opened the first present. It was a Shrek and Donkey filled with bath foam, but Shrek's head was missing! Later we found it and there appears to have been no long-term psychological damage.

Much of Christmas morning was passed with Oliver singing along to Wizzard and other Christmas songs that were being served up by VH1 music channel.

Oliver and Hayley had great fun making the stuffing balls for dinner.

At Christmas dinner, Oliver reminded us that it was Jesus' birthday and then proceeded to say the prayer he knows from Kids on SUnday. "Jesus friend of little children, be friend to me, take my hand and ever keep me, close to thee." He then told us we should sing Happy Birthday.

Lucy was included at our Christmas dinner with a nice bottle of milk, though she seemed intent on something stronger.

After dinner, everyone collapsed in front of the TV. Mummy and Daddy cuddled up on the sofa...



...while Oliver napped beside us and Lucy napped in an armchair.

Later in the afternoon we visited our friend Lisete where we drank wine, snacked and chatted while her daughters entertained Oliver. They entertained him so well in fact that he was not at all keen to come home two hours later when Hayley and I were ready to leave.

Boxing Day

Boxing Day was spent up at my Mum's house. Oliver was most entertained by my Dad magically changing his expression by wiping his hand across his face, a trick he used to entertain me with when I was Oliver's age.



Meanwhile Lucy explored the possibilities of a career as a concert pianist.

Vital statistics

Last week we took Lucy to the baby clinic to check her weight and height. WHile we were there we took the opportunity to check Oliver too.

Lucy is in the 99th percentile for height! But she is only in the 38th percentile for weight. So she currently has the proportions of a supermodel. Seriously though, her weight is not really a worry as she does seem to be gaining nicely.

Oliver is in the 94th percentile for height (at 94cm), and 50th for weight (around 15Kg). So it seems he may have something like my build, as I was always slim, often with a BMI below 20 until I was around 25 years old. (Then I blinked and found I was fighting the flab like everyone else.)

Thank God it's Christmas

What a week! Since I lasted posted that Lucy woke at 3am she has turned it into a nightly ritual, but thankfully seems to be able to settle herself at least some of the time.

Yesterday was a date on the calendar that Hayley and I had been looking forward to for months. We don't manage to go out as a couple without the kids half as much as we'd like or, frankly, half as much as is healthy for a relationship. So we planned before the start of the football season to go to a few Man Utd home games together. Yesterday was the first.

Or at least it should have been. Oliver came down with a temperature of 102 in the night and was no better in the morning. We had no choice but to cancel. Not only was this a huge disappointment but at £44 per seat it was also £88 down the drain.

So we set about salvaging the day. Oliver was in reasonably good spirits, all things considered, so we asked if he would like to go to Brookside Garden Centre where he could ride on the miniature steam train, getting off half way round to visit Santa's grotto. Not only did he like this idea but he then proceeded to tell us what we would do when got there, repeatedly. "We get on the tracks. We get off. We see Father Christmas...."

However, when we got to Brookside, purchased our tickets and queued for the ride, he started to say "no". When we got to the train he physically struggled to get off. Clearly this was a non-starter, so Hayley and Lucy went for a ride while Oliver and I sat alone in the little station waiting for their return.

I managed to get a refund, just ("you can still walk round to the grotto"!) before we headed home feeling properly deflated.

But still there was an evening out and a few drinks with friends on the cards for Hayley to look forward to. Off she went at 8.30pm and wasn't seen again until 11.30pm. While she was away, despite all appearing calm as she left, I found myself running up and downstairs, alternating between my feverish son and my happy but insistent-on-my-attention daughter. Finally Lucy nodded off on the sofa. When she awoke, instead of her usual smile, to my astonishment she screamed. I don't know why for certain, but I do know she was very tired and drank barely 1.5 ounces of milk before going to sleep for the night, screaming every time she woke between the sofa and her cot.

Five minutes later Oliver was wailing and I went in to find him hot and upset. I gave him some Calprofen, settled him down and he asked to go back to bed.

Two hours later, the scene was repeated, but his pyjamas and bedsheets were so drenched in sweat that we changed them all. After that he only shouted out occasionally in his sleep.

Lucy, meanwhile actually slept through the night without crying, stirring occasionally but getting herself back to sleep. She even managed it around 5.30am when she was very sniffly and not able to breathe properly through her nose. I was amazed but delighted that she managed that. And it is worth mentioning here that in the last few days we have moved her out of her Moses basket and into her cot. (Although in fact we have had the basket inside the cot for a while to get her used to the new environment.)

At least we now have Christmas to look forward to. Hopefully everyone will feel better from here on in.

Mummy officially melted

This morning when I came downstairs at 9 o'clock I found Hayley unusually cheerful for someone who had gone without her scheduled lie-in just to allow me to nurse a totally self-inflicted hangover.

She had been playing with Oliver, singing Christmas Carols and putting on their Father Christmas hats. At one point she walked into the kitchen for something and after a moment Oliver, standing at the door, quite unprompted said "I love you".

I'm still waiting for her to come back down from her cloud.