Be Excellent To Each Other

After reading of Zio's exploits in B&B I decided to create a thread as decreed by WTB circa 2011.

If anyone ever says that kids don't change you, let me share a tale...

My brother's coming to visit today. They said they were coming over 'early', so we were up and sorted by 8am (baby's first feed is 7am).

Since then I have:
Hoovered the house
Washed the dishes
Mopped the kitchen
Cleaned the car
Walked to the supermarket and back
Reinstalled Windows on my media server
Ordered a new wifi card for the laptop

They're still not here

Still, his wife's 6 months preggo, so he'll get it soon enough.

and other sundries

I have read that twice, and I still don't understand.

What DavPaz appears to be saying, is that having a child is really easy, you have plenty of time to do other stuff and it isn't as difficult as everyone makes out.

Have I got that right?

Is the moral of this story that being a parent makes you too (?) to set a time and not realise that 'early' is not an hour of the day?

I was also up and ready at 7am. I didn't think it was a particularly spectacular achievement of mine.

I think he might be saying that since the baby came along, MrsDavPaz now wears the trousers.

Thats how I read it too.

Sorry, I'm in pain and thus thread annoyed me, not because I'm not extremely happy for Davpaz and how well fatherhood seems to suit his giant head, but because I'm snippy, upset and overtired, and also gave sat through too much self congratulatory nonsense from sisters and cousins acting as if getting knocked up is something akin to climbing Everest that only a handful of people have ever Achieved, rather than billions of people through history. The biggest change I saw in them was that they became even more self absorbed and insufferable, I don't mean to put that on to Davpaz.

I love babies so so much. I guess I just find some parents unbearable sometimes. Not you, Paz. Or One of my cousin's wives, Tara. She is the coolest parent ever.

Anyway, I've just made myself upset because if this thread and feel kind a complete frigging failure in every flipping way. And Davpaz's story above would make a crap dinner party anecdote, by the way.

Actually, it's the tagline of this thread. It upsets me so much, and I think it's a pretty nasty little in-joke. It hurts me every time someone posts it over and over.

<hug>

Seems like you need that at the moment meems

I'm sure that DavPaz would be shocked at that. On this forum, it has been an in joke for quite some time, but not poking fun at people without children, instead gently poking fun at silly parents who think you can't understand anything about life unless you have kids of your own.

Yeah, what Craster said. I certainly won't be saying it again if it's upsetting though.

Apologies all round. Never considered that this thread would offend or upset in any way. That was not the intention of the thread at all.

I blame WTB

Honestly, the way I see it, I'm sure Mimi isn't actually angry at you personally, but by her own admission up above there, she's a bit delicate at the moment so not in the best frame of mind (apologies to Mimi, if that sounds patronising by the way).

Aye, no bumhurt here. I'm sure Meems meant as much malice as I did

I've just noticed that her monkey appears to have y-fronts on.

My top parenting tip:


"Don't."


Hope this helps!

Newborns are supposed to sleep, like, 16+ hours a day. Ours seems to sleep for about 4 and scream for the remainder.

Have you considered giving her the remainder?

Been potty training My daughter the last 2 weeks, and she's taken to it really well, sometimes even waking up in the night to tell us that she needs a wee.

But the last 2 or 3 nights, at bed time, she keeps on saying "I need a wee", like 4 or 5 times, now at first I would take her to the toilet and let her go, and she might do something the first time, but on the 2nd time, there would be nothing, she would sit there for 5-10 minutes (when normally she goes in under a minute). Now it's obviously a tactic to stay up late (she's used these before, but not normally once she's got in her cot and I'm usually able to divert her attention, and we have our bed time routine quite nice) but I don't really know what to do.

Do I keep on taking her to the loo even though she really doesn't need to go, or do I insist that it's bed time and she's had her chance of weeing and that's that?

If she really needs to go, I don't want to set her back with potty training, but I don't want her to be taking the piss either (lol).

Tonight I took her 4 times, (1st time she did a wee, the next 3 times nothing) and then the last time I took her off after 5 minutes, and she was insisting she needed another wee. She's fallen asleep now, but it took 20 minutes of her crying which wasn't nice (for her or me).

Not had much experience with this, as the boys were much older when they were potty trained, and you could get more out of them, also they took a long time to potty train, and even then didn't care if they had nappies.pull ups on.

Really not sure what to do...

Malc

Things the midwife never tells you

Feeding "every two hours" is utter bollocks, they feed for 20 mins, need burping, changing getting back to sleep - another half hour at least. This gives you a maximum of an hour and a half before you have to do it again. Sleep when and where you can new parents, don't fall into the "well I have an hour to myself I'll go do X" sleep deprivation is a bitch.

You get over any "ewww piss/shit/vomit" thing you may have within a day.

keep crayons the fuck away from under 5s unless you are in the room watching them, if you have to go to the bathroom take child with you.

Hide anything nice or expensive you own, it will get broken.

5:30am exists.

Well, she's still not gone to sleep yet tonight...

She's hardcore!

On a serious note, how is she when it comes to feeding? If she has any kind of lactose intolerance and is being bottle fed, she's going to be pretty miserable a lot of the time. My eldest one had it, his mouth and lips would go red and he'd get a rash on his cheeks, he was breast fed so it wasn't picked up until he was older but on the few occasions he had regular formula, there was just no consoling him. My mother said I did nothing but cry for at least the first 6 months, but on seeing how my boy was after having milk, she realised I was probably lactose intolerant too! It had never been suggested by any of the doctors or midwives, people just didn't have allergies and stuff 20 years ago, apparently!?

I also know of a child who nearly worried his parents in to an early grave because he was constantly sick after feeding, not just a little bit but half his feed at least. He was losing weight and constantly crying, he had some kind of reflux disorder that was, luckily, fixed with medicine.

If she's feeding well, is happy about it and is putting on weight then colic or something similar would probably be my next guess but it's difficult to know with tiny babies! Sometimes they're just difficult to settle, which is often worse than when they actually have something wrong with them...at least if they're ill you have a chance to make them better

I don't think there's anything wrong with her per se, she just sleeps at stupid times and has a lot of trouble with wind and pain when doing a poo (she'll cry loads before pooing, then afterwards will be fine).

Also she's just inconsistent. Some days she'll love sleeping over my shoulder, the next day will hate that but love the sound of the extractor fan, the next day something different, etc.

Dead cute though.

Zioette had a reflux problem when she was very little, we had to put Gaviscon in her bottles for a long time. She seems absolutely fine nowadays though.

She's very ambitious for a not-quite-two-year-old though - she was trying to get me to teach her to drive last weekend...

She has ace hair Zio.

The devils curls!!

All the best people have curly bed-head hair.....

It's amazing how long her hair is too, when we wash her hair and it straightens out, it goes halfway down her back. She hates having her hair washed though - one time I was bathing her at her mum's and she got so upset that, afterwards, her mum used the hair dryer on her for the first time ever, thinking it might cheer her up. She had to stop though as her hair started drying straight and we started to worry we'd ruined the curls.

Tell her to keep her hands at ten-to-two positions! They like you to do that for the test, apparently. Also, with her driving position she should probably adjust those mirrors.

Gotta say, I'm loving

Cheeky Wipes

Re-usable bottom wipes for babies. They're ace, and seem to clean the baby bum very well and in a far more convenient manner than either cotton wool or regular baby wipes.

Have just wanged the first set into the washing machine. I will report back if they work as well the second time around!

How is the baby andrew? I've seen lots of pictures of her on facebook. Still not getting any sleep?

Nice one, my sister likes these ones http://www.facebook.com/#!/Spuggies?sk=app_135607783795 Sorry for the FB link, but she only started up a while ago and I don't think she has her own site yet (could be wrong).

She is fine thank you Nicholas.

Sleeping a bit better now, in that we've not had a night with no sleep ina while. Still only getting one four hour stretch some nights, but on others we might get two sets of 3 hours or something. It's amazing how quickly you get used to it.

Was this supposed to be a PM, Nick?

MiniPaz slept from 10pm until 5:30am today. That was nice.

*jealousy*

Mini-Curio slept from 11.30pm until 4am.

Nope, just wondering how dadhood was for young Andrew.

I'm curious how old your babies are
our girlie is 14 months and we are still struggeling with sleeping through the night
a night light has helped a lot, but still - any excuse to make trouble in the middle of the night ...

13 weeks for mine. 3 teeth

wauw excellent!
our late diva was 8 months when shw got her first two

5 weeks 4 days here.

She has thus far learned how to smile, has freakishly good head movement, and likes to be attached orally to my wife's breasts (but, hey, who can blame her?).

I have just been informed by my not quite 2 and 1/2 year old, (this is out of the blue, she's supposed to be going to bed) that she has 16 teeth!

Which is quite a fact to know when you're not even 30 months old!

Malc

My ex has taken Zioette on holiday this week. I got a phone call earlier as today would normally be one of my evenings for going round to see her.

She really is a funny little girl. Hasn't quite grasped that I can't see anything on the phone, so keeps grabbing it off her mum, pointing it at things and shouting "look daddy!". Also she told me "buggy broken, fix it daddy!". Fortunately it seems her toy buggy was less broken, more stuck between some furniture and just needed her mum to move it.

Anyway, she's going to be two on Monday. Which seems to have come around awfully fast!

wauw curiosity not even 6 weeks! Congratulations! Sounds like she's doing great.

malc, that's quite impressive

zio, it's great how long they don't get the phone but are still fascinated with it
this weekend our girl put the remote to her ear and for the first time said ''ajooo ajooooo"
it's such a cliché but annoyingly true, it all does go really fast

I don't think she knows what "16" is, she obviously heard somewhere that children have 16 teeth and has pulled that fact from the ether. She can count by rote to about 10, but she still does the wild dabbing her finger all over the page if asked to count how many ducks in the pond or whatever.

Malc

Heh, Zioette can count to ten, but as with your daughter Malc, it's more by memory than genuine understanding. We've also been trying to get her to learn her colours, but without much luck so far. No matter what the actual colour the object you are pointing at is, she always replies "pink!" as soon as you ask her. When you tell her to try again, she looks a little embarassed, them very quietly picks a random colour (for instance you could be holding a strawberry and she'll almost whisper to you that it's blue). I'm sure we'll get there in the end though!

George can count to 11.. And can recognise his numbers, as we were drawing them with on the patio with chalk...

yes I am very very happy that I can see him now for a full day..