Break it down -Tummy Time.

You're bleary eyed from waking in the night.
Your shoulders hurt from so much rocking.
Your shirts all have vomit stains on the shoulders.
And Lady Macbeth-like; your hands have that faint eau-de-poop you just cant get off.

Yet the little girls first smiles and coos make you go all wobbly at the knees.

Yup - we've already skipped over that first few weeks when you barely get a "hows your father" from the bub and we're into the next stage.
The stage of vague recognition of the world.

Unfortunately this recognition of the world also includes the dreaded witching hour, and hence there is an increase in the cry factor - right on cue when dad arrives home from work.
"Hi dad. How was your day? Mum was really nice to me. I started crying 20 minutes ago. I'm going to scream at you now. "

But its not all tears and tantrums.
The little miss is slowly managing to sleep just that little bit longer in the night. Well, kinda...

Case in point.
Mum&Dad being the sleep zombies they are, had gone to bed in time with the girl - 9pm (yes, being a parent is that wild) - fully expecting to be woken the ISO-standard 3 hours later with a bub demanding a grease and oil change.

Sure enough, sometime later, bleatings were heard in the dark.
Something felt a bit different.
Mum&Dad rolled over and stared at the clock.
2am.
2am!
That's {counting fingers} FIVE HOURS STRAIGHT SLEEP!
("There is a god!" rejoiced dad.)

However contrary to expectations, the bleatings were not the girl but rather number one son in an extremely rare nocturnal wandering, complete with subsequent swan dive onto the marital workbench and none-too-subtle request for bed buddies and/or Chuggington DVDs.

Which subsequently woke the blissfuly sleeping little Miss S and it all ended in 2am tears.
("Geez, gods a bit of a prick really..." mumbled dad.)
Cie La Vie.

But anyway,... she's slowly/occasionally sleeping more hours and that has to be a good good thing.

As are her somewhat amazing abilities with Tummy Time.
(We'll have to pause here; we cant help but sing "Tummy Time" in tune to "U Cant Touch This", a.k.a, 'Hammer Time', by MC Hammer - its the curse of living our formative years through the eighties.) Only we're already having to be extra careful if we pop her face down on the change table as it seems she is somehow (levitation maybe?) able to move herself several inches forwards and backwards. Now thats, as we say in the parenting biz, extreme tummy timing.

Just, hopefully, not off the edge of something high. Onto something hard.

All this cuteness of the early childhood weeks is also a constant reminder to Mum&Dad that - barring unforeseen cock ups (scuse the pun) - we wont be seeing any of these stages again in our lives. Which is kinda sad. Well for the cute stuff anyway; the sleep deprivation and poo up to our elbows we can probably go happily to our graves without repeating.

As for the boy...
Well he is slowly coming to terms with the little Miss, and hence his hugs are now genuine acts of affection and less attempts to smother her out of existence. (Its a fine line...)

And he's still cute as a button too. And still going through his very own firsts.

Is this case (and only parents will understand the joy this brings to a parents heart), the first time he has announced he wants to use the potty.
Yes.
Wants.

Mum&Dad were so stoked they said "You get a reward! What do you want boy??"
"CAKE!" he replied.
As we had no cake, he was offered another first.
His first Tim Tam.
What we haven't told you is that this all came about because he was in the bath and didn't want to wallow in his own pee. Hence he ate the TT in said bath, dipping it in a few times for good measure. Tim Tams, bath, applauding parents - he was like a pig in poo.
Just not his own.

Next day dad had a shower (as you do).
"Whats this brown ring round the tub??" he bellowed.
That be arguably the worlds first Tim Tam bath ring.
Here's hoping the cleaning lady didnt think it was what it looked like. (It was all a bit "Chokito scene from Caddyshack" really.)

Its also a somewhat significant, if not slightly depressing, time when your progeny first teaches you something you never knew. No, not as in "don't hold a naked baby above your head when they haven't had a wee for a while" indirect teaching, rather common or garden variety master-to-grasshopper education.

In our case it was train signals.
While looking at yet another Thomas the Tank Engine book, dad asked Master M what the "arm out" semaphore train signal meant. M said "Stop".
When he asked about an arm down signal, M said "Go."
As dad had no idea he just nodded in agreement, with later investigation revealing the lad was spot on. How he learnt this we have no idea - it isn't in the text of any Thomas we've seen - so we'll just have to assume that humans are born with this instinct which is subsequently lost with the progression of time.

Finally, the lad has also decided that if mum can nickname little Miss S "Pumpkin", we all need vegetable names. Henceforth, according to Master M, his new name is 'potato', mum is 'broccoli' and dad is Mr 'Bean'.

Some may say, how very apt.





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