Wolfman

Week 6 and we're discovering the joys of a boy with a little head cold (hence the appearance of a new persona - Mr Grizzly) and the emergence of twin witching hours - the ever traditional 5pm to 8pm, and now a bonus for mum after dad leaves for work - a 7:30am till 9:30am. Bugger.

But theres also been the discovery by mum and dad that all the lullabys and sweet blues tunes they've been singing to Master M are worth diddly. And we don't mean Bo. Mike's announced to the world that he's no music girly-man - he likes a bollocking good dose of Wolfmother. The louder the better. (Maybe it's just admiration of their screaming levels...)

Clearly this is one of the signs that he actually is swimming in the AB gene pool (AB still carries a Deep Purple ticket in his wallet from about 1996 - you cant actually read it anymore, but he reckons he knows what it is...), contrary to a number of friendly observations of his obvious resemblance to Mistress P's fine featured face, hands and assorted body parts.

As further evidence he's not the postman's son (Mistress P notes our postman is actually a postwoman... "don't ruin a good story with the facts" says AB), uncle Jim has noted a remarkable similarity between Master M's twisty little toe and his own slightly spiraled metatarsal. How cool is that bit of sideways genetics..?

Mike has also suddenly taken a great liking to tummy-time. Whereas he used to just flop rag-doll forward and grizzle into the mat, he's now lifting his head like it was something he was born to do. We're not sure if the new found enjoyment of tummy-time isn't also partly related to his discovery of the gastronomic delight that is licking the aforementioned mat, but we rather wish it wasn't. "Change mat" and "good old tongue clean" are a couple of aspects of parenting we had hoped to keep somewhat separate.

Still, he's getting a stiff strong neck out of it all, and hence not only will he be able to prevent himself from asphyxiating if he rolls over one day (he has already done so once on the couch...), he will soon be able to pilot an F1 car round a 3 lateral G corner.

Speaking of future earning potential,... errr good nature friendly sporting activities, Mike has had his first ever day of beach bumming, down at Rye on a howling 30 knot northerly hanging with all those good-fer-nuthin windsurf louts. He got to stand on a little 49cm wide speed board, have sand blast into what hair he has left, go for a long wander/roll along the foreshore with Mistress P and unplain-Jane, and even have a sleep (with mum) in the back of the car.

Highlight was clearly going down to the waters edge and watching mum have her first windsurf (see pic below) since January and Coronation Beach, Western Australia. Sure, she just played on imaginary waves, but she was clearly slashin' (dude) and impressed.

Lowlight was probably having a man (lets call him,... errr.... dad) wearing a nappy of his own ("Hey, its a seat harness!") wiping your bum in the back of the car in full view of tourist-heavy Beach Rd, Rye.

Still, it all proves life doesn't have to change completely. And that imprinting can never happen too early. (Windsurfing and beach good; Brown-eying traffic - while fun - not so good.)

Anyway, thats about it for a week that involved a little less sleep (but a bit more fun) than usual.



Footnote: The sleep bit, or lack of it, was arguably best demonstrated by Mistress P staggering and stumbling off to to bed at 9pm, totally buggered, and in the process Fraudianly combining the phrases/words "I'm wrecked" and "I'm cactus" into:

"I'm erectus...".

Oh dear.

Postscript: After a weekend of worst-sleeps so far, he outdid himself, in the opposite sense, with a one-pitstop-only Monday night. Bwilliant! Maybe people are right about that 6 week hurdle...

Groundhog Day

Time flies when you're having fun. Or at least when every day seems a lot like the last.

Master M is now a tad over one month old, and during the past 2 weeks has stretched 3.2 cm to a whopping great 57.5 cm long, and added an arm-bending 500g to now be 4.73 kg - both still in the 50-75th percentile range. So doing quite nicely thank you very much.

He's also lost a lot of his acne (so he's once again the cutest baby on the block) but this is countered somewhat by the fact he's also lost most of his hair. We didn't realise till we looked back at some of his photos from when he was a wee (weee) whipper snapper - chalk that up as another reason to keep a blog. (How young can that male pattern baldness thingy come into play?)

He's also now officially; Michael Henry Watkins. Yup.. forms signed, sealed, delivered and ticked off by the family assistance women in the medicare office (where they oohh and ahhed just like everyone else as Master M slept blissfully away in dad's arms). He's now irreversibly locked into...
**The System**.


The downside of this is that, of course, he can be tracked for ever after and will never have any real privacy in this wonderful e-world of ours, and will surely be barcoded and microchipped before he's 20.

The upside is... the gummint give Mum and Dad the one-off plasma TV allowance! (i.e., A payment of over $4000 just for popping out a sprog - surely the biggest boost to JB Hi Fi's bottom line ever...) And then there is also the immunisation allowance (bummer, only a set of golf clubs/$300) and the child care tax offset (of another $4000, which is still a cupla grand in the bank/a new wave board for AB, next tax time).

All up, this boys a nice little earner.

Now of course much of the above is just one great big barrel of John Howard pork, but hey, thats whats great about democracy. They offer you (your own, lets face it) money. You say "thank you very much". Then you vote the bastards out anyway. (Surely if we sold democracy this way to, say, Iraq, the war would have been over years ago...)

The lad, of course, has no idea about any of this. All he wants is a(nother) drink. And hence to give Mistress P a little distraction from the Groundhog Day that is early motherhood, we've done some expressing and Master M has now suckled his first silicon nipple. No Pamela Anderson jokes please (though Mistress P is comparably pneumatic); we're talking bottle feeding here.

For dad this was quite an experience as Master M sucked down almost perfectly his weight-in-kg*165 /number-of-feeds-per-day amount. (i.e., about 100 ml). There certainly is an intimacy involved in the whole feeding process that you don't get any other way. Though admittedly, this feeling may change at 3am when he also smells of poo.

For mum though, its just a relief to have some of the shackles removed. Granted the bottle feed has only occurred once thus far, but the mere fact that it can be done is morale boosting enough, and dads been booked in for future duties.

Apart from feeding (and washing and changing and...) Mistress P has also spent her daytimes, now that AB is back at the salt mine, visiting and being visited by numerous people, mostly fellow mums. And one of the new highlights of the week is the parents club, which has now truly become mothers club as almost all the hangers-on (i.e., the hubbies) have been banished back to work.

And true to prophesied form, it has quickly become a hotbed of discussion about a) hubbies, and b) sex. Sometimes both at the same time. On the latter topic it appears that only some have had it and most haven't, but that half want it desperately and half (heres the hubby bit) are beating their betrothed off with the biggest stick they can lay hand to.

Then (for one member of the latter half community) the biggest conundrum of all raised its ugly head:
"His birthday is coming up - what do i do?!"
(...we checked the fine print - conjugal birthdays aren't actually in the marriage contract. No, seriously...)

So thats been the last week and a bit.

Bigger, longer, richer and with fewer zits. (Just don't mention the hair.)
Mikes the Man.

Working class man

Four weeks old.

And we're a big boy now.

Yup... no more "newborn" huggies for Master Mike. He's graduated to the "infants" and hence we're left with a nappy mountain of mini poo-bags (AB says its our very own carbon sequestation program.) We already have some friends at the 9-weeks-preggas stage, so we suspect they wont go to waste...

And while Mike has made the first step towards tax-payer-status, dad is once again a working class man. After a few weeks joining Mistress P at home on baby standby and then getting to know little Mike and his various expulsions, the time has come (the walrus said) for AB to once again be staple gunned to the desk in Collins St and do something good for the world. Or at least write a climate forecast that gets misinterpreted by the Hun...

In the first couple of weeks this is taking the form of "every-other-day" at work. And already AB is finding that its a bit of a killer. Ever sat down to review a document, read half a page, and realised you hadn't the foggiest idea of what you've just read - or even if you had read it?!? Well thats what reduced REM sleep will do for you...

Sleep deprivation can also do funny things in other ways. Like give you a bad haircut.

Scene 1: The clan venture off to Fountain Lakes to sign their collective lives away to Medicare, and for AB to have the 6 weekly fight with a lawnmower. The wonders of mobile phone technology meant that AB and P(+M) could head off in different directions and regroup at a later time. Unfortunately Master M decided otherwise, and started bellowing like a blacksmith in mums ear.

Scene 2: Mum decides to abandon ship, and wanders back to the $15 cheap cuts (AB: "real men dont pay more than a lobster for a haircut...") and informs dad shes making a beeline for the car. Hair-cut-lady hears crying baby, sees frazzled mum, states her membership in the motherhood, gives about 3 more clips on dads head and packs him on his way.

Scene 3: At home, AB stands in front of mirror and realises that on one side his sideburn has a bizarre 60 degree slope, more akin to a skijump than a haircut, and on the other side he appears to have a mutton chop that Graeme Garden (The Goodies) would be proud of. Not to mentiona slight cocky crest atop his head... (nothing a bitta spit wouldnt fix).

All this is enough to (almost) bring a tear to the eye... something young Mike now appears to be able to do. Make tears that is. We've only seen one or two, but its something new.

New also was a wander through Sherbrooke (AB always has to stop himself saying Sherwood, and thinking of a band of merry men) forest in the Blue Dandenongs, and hence Mikes first introduction to the Aussie bush. Not that he paid much attention, strapped to dad in the baby-bjorn carrier, but we'll take his silence as a vote of delight.

Still it was just the start of a big weekend for young Mike.

Mistress P may well feel its Groundhog Day, with Mike currently feeding every 3-4 hours, but on Sunday it was also her first Mothers Day, which encompassed a trip to grandmas place on the Mornington Peninsula and subsequent stroll past the house where 37 years ago Mike's dad (i.e., AB) was of similar size, but screaming a helluva lot more it would seem. (Unlike Mike's fists of fury, AB had feet of fire, which apparently thrashed about so badly that they actually wore their way through a bunny rug...)

Mistress P was not only rewarded on Mums-day with a slap up BBQ (i.e., the Blokes cooked) feed amongst the trees and birds in the warmth of the sun - at 23.9degC, it was Melbourne's warmest day this close to winter since 21 May 1975 - and a chocolate teddy bear biscuit or three, but Master M came to the party (after a fairly, lets say, raucous, weekend of witching hours, though slightly tempered by his first use of a dummy) by sleeping for 6 hours straight. In his bassinet. At night: 9pm to 3am.

Really, could a mum ask for more?



Footnote: BigTum pics are now available in the BigTum photo gallery at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/windjunky/BigTum

Old School ; New School

Its now been three weeks, and the "firsts" just keep getting ticked off. First trip to a sailboard shop (SHQ) being a highlight (just edging out his first stiffy...). First mozzie bite being the lowlight. In between theres been first trip in a supermarket kiddie-trolley thing, first projectile poo (mum had to strip naked and have a full body wash) and first shower (with dad).

Little Mike also had his first maternal health care check up. He's put on nearly 400 grams (in 10 days), and grown another 2.3 cm , making him 54.3cm long. Apparently, this growth rate is all good and infact somewhat above median, so he may well have climbed the height/weight percentile ladder a little more.

And mum and dad are learning a helluva lot too.

For instance, did you know dads are superfluous to the baby raising experience??
No, neither did we, until we visted our first parents(i.e., mothers) group...

The group consisted of a whopping great 16 mums (and 17 bubs: 1 set of twins) with the little'uns ranging in age from the youngest - just under 2 weeks - to the oldest - 9 weeks. Fortunately for AB, there was also 3 other dads at this first group meeting, including the dad of the twins.

The woman taking the class admittedly she hadnt done this very much, but she was a nurse of many years and a midwife for only slightly less. Still, when she announced that fathers pretty much just got in the way during this baby rearing thingy, and hence had to sit back and let mum rule and basically keep in the background cos mother knows best, all the blokes, and a fair proportion of the chicks, were, well, a bit stunned.

What is this? The fifties???

Mistress P was actually more upset about this comment than AB was - but thats prolly because AB has heard it all now, and realises that this is the old school baby nursing philosophy colliding with the new school one.

Old School - blokes dont change nappies and if (and I paraphrase from one parenting book) "mum feels like relaxing during the hectic day of looking after baby, a good thing to do is to cook a nice dinner for your husband, as he has probably been complaining that he hasnt been fed that well during the early weeks of parenthood". Oh sweet fanny adams. Did Bill Heffernan write this stuff???

New School - it took two to tango, so now you both gotta pay the band. A poo'ey nappy doesnt discriminate who changes it, so neither should you. (As Donald Duck Dunne said in the Blue Brothers; if the shit fits, wear it. Or something like that.)

Anyway, thats the rant.

The best thing about the "parents" club meeting was 1) realising how buggered everyone else was, and that, in fact, we were doing quite well thank you very much, and 2) that there were a number of other parents living remarkably close by. The closest - Megan - is in fact less than a sand wedge away, diagonally opposite our place and next door to "mad taxi driver family". (As soon as we said "do you live next door to 'mad taxi driver family'?" there was an immediate "YES!" of mutual recognition (of the madness we suspsct), plus a laugh.)

Quite apart from the growing realisation that life will never be the same again, is the growing fear that it has changed the way we'll look at boobies for ever more. At "parents" club they were just being thrown out and about like nobodies business, and indeed at home the sight of a naked breast has become a daily (as opposed to birthdays and wedding anniversary) occurance.

The newfound pneumaticy and the need for the occasional 'air dry' has AB worried that Mistress P will wander off down the shops one day with "the headlights on"...

Not that its any worry for Mr Mike. He's still reveling in the joys of breastfeeding. He can go about 3-4 hours without a drink, but any longer (or sometimes even shorter) and the little head starts bobbing back and forward and the cries go up. Put him infront of a booby and its like docking the space shuttle - complete with inpenetrable airlock.

How life has changed...