Leaving on a jet plane

Our little family is heading stateside, to visit the grandparents and introduce our new addition to our friends. Jon and I are both nervous about our first flight with an infant. We've got some bad karma, we used to be the people who hated getting on a flight with kids on it, and now we'll be the ones people pray not to sit next to!

Packing was interesting too. Now I get to overpack for two of us!!

I'll let you know how it goes.


- Posted from my iPhone

Ouch! That's sharp!

Alex just cut his first tooth this evening! I can't believe it. He's been showing teething signs for about a month or so now but I've heard it can go on for months before the teeth actually come through, so I wasn't totally surprised but nor was I totally expecting it.

I found out the hard way of course, with a very firm bite that felt sharper than usual. My little angel baby has been a little out of sorts the last couple of days and has been really chewing on things as well as being clingier than normal. During a particularly reluctant bedtime tonight and a lot of growling and struggling through his bedtime feed I felt his gums and there was definitely a sharp little edge on the bottom row.

Haircut and tooth! Big week for the little man!!

Baby's first haircut

Alex got an impromptu haircut tonight. We went with Daddy when he was getting his done and he and the hairdressers ganged up and persuaded Mummy it should be done. I had been wanting to trim it, it was certainly getting long and rather mullety at the back, but hadn't quite mentally prepared for it yet.

I sat him on my lap while the hairdresser went at him with clippers. He wondered what was going on and squirmed quite and bit. He's not the only one. I sat wincing as I watched my beautiful baby boy's beautiful baby hair fall to the ground! He got upset towards the end so it's not a great cut - if he were an adult you would ask for your money back, but it's not so bad he looks like a scabies victim! - but who'll notice? It's cute but he does look very different and I barely recognise my own baby. He looks more Chinese now, he has the same hair and look as every little Chinese boy you see. When we go to Chinese restaurants I'll have to be careful not to walk off with the wrong kid!!

He doesn't look so happy here but I don't think it's because of the hair!

Meeting the grandparents

And while we're on the subject of grandparents, Alex met those from the Jones side for the first time when they visited in March. Of course there's been a fair amount of Skype action in our house but this was the first face to face meeting when he was two and a half months old. Alex hasn't learned how to smile for the camera yet but he had a lovely time.

The Jones men, all three generations

Alex and his Koong Koong

My dad is very happy and proud to be a grandfather. Here they are at one and three months old.

Separation anxiety... and relief

We moved Alex into his own room last night. A momentous milestone for Mummy. Oh, and for him of course! He has been going backwards where sleep is concerned. Having slept through the night since he was two and a half months or so, he has recently been waking at least twice in the night, which we have been putting down to either growth spurts or teething at different times.

Since birth he has slept in a crib at the end of our bed and I knew he would be outgrowing it very soon, and seems comfortable in his cot in the nursery when I've put him in it for daytime naps, so after a fraught couple of nights of broken sleep for everyone we decided to try moving him there overnight. Hey, what did we have to lose, we weren't sleeping either way! It was great though, he slept 11 hours. I, however, was awake every few hours anyway and creeping into the nursery to check on him. Even though I had the baby monitor turned up high and right by my head!! Still, I was high from the peaceful night and extra sleep, having almost reached delirium from a series of broken nights prior to that.

I hope the novelty doesn't wear off soon!

NCT

This post is in tribute to my lovely friends I met through the NCT. For those of you outside the UK or those who have simply never heard of them, the NCT is the National Childbirth Trust and they are a "parenting charity" who offer support and services to young families and parents to be. Don't be fooled by the word charity though, these services do not generally come cheap! The most common form of entry into this world is through the antenatal classes they offer and when they were recommended to me by a couple of friends and colleagues I hesitated a little at the price (when I was already looking at a pretty scary spreadsheet of the things we needed to buy for the baby!) but I am so glad we did it, it has been worth every penny.

We took our classes back in October, two full days plus one three hour session on breastfeeding. The classes were great (although the breastfeeding one was not) but the real reason to take them was to meet other local couples. Let's not put any spin on it, we paid to find friends!! There was a total of eight couples and everyone was so nice. I was also amazed at how involved the dads were. I think Jon got something out of it, if only a dose of reality about what was to come! We kept in touch after the course and although our numbers have diminished a little, we have our core group who I see frequently and now consider good friends. As soon as we all went on maternity leave we started "doing lunch" and then one by one the babies were born.

Here's us in January when Alex was just over a month old:

Here's us a month later:

How cute is this bunch of little people?

No doubt there'll be many more photos as these guys grow old together! Although we have lost one mum and baby to a 6 month move to Boston, and when we get them back we will lose another to a permanent move to Boston, so we may not see all five of them together again for a long time if ever.

I don't know what I would have done without these guys. I am pretty certain I may have spent a lot more time fretting and worrying and feeling very lonely. I would have had a very different experience I'm sure. It has made such a difference having people in the same boat to support you, confide in, bitch to, learn from, and just people to lunch and have coffee with all afternoon sometimes. I love that we have known each other since we were pregnant and that our babies have known each other all their short lives so far. Alex is the youngest in the group (although he has a birthday twin who is five hours older) so we have the advantage of learning from the experience of the other mums.

I've met other people through various other NCT avenues since then (mum and baby groups, events and a postnatal group) but none I've gelled with as much as the original antenatal class. I think we got very lucky with the group we ended up in.

So anyway, I've probably gone on about it too much but if you're wondering what Alex and I have been doing with ourselves the last few months, you can blame this lot!!

Hospital adventures

Wee Alex had his first hospital stay and surgery experience at the delicate age of 6 weeks. It was quite an adventure and seemed a lot to go through for a minor problem but he was very brave. It was all for what was basically a boil on his bum!! He had an abscess which had to be drained but had to be done under general anaesthetic. If it happened to an adult or an older child it wouldn't be such a big deal but he was so little. It was quite unexpected and without going through the whole story was quite an ordeal with the way things turned out because he had to be nil by mouth for 8 hours which meant I had to deny him several feeds even though he was literally screaming hysterically. Any nursing mother of a 6 week old could tell you how emotionally and physically harrowing that is. But we got through it. After a night in the hospital and a heart wrenching leaving-him-at-the-operating-theatre moment he had a speedy and successful surgery, and all was well.

Here he is all tubed up and in the hospital gown that prompted the comment "Why is he wearing a dress?" from Jon!

So sweet and tiny. And the up side to all this is he seems pretty brave with injections now!

Baby's first Christmas

Alex was one week old on his first Christmas. And he didn't have a name yet! He was still just "Baby" at that point. He was a very good cooperative boy and wore this little Santa outfit for a quick photoshoot for mummy. Some might accuse me of cruelty but I will have you know that he got away lucky, I saw a Christmas pudding outfit in Mothercare and had the decency to put it back. Even I realised it was bordering on child abuse! Still, there's always next year.

Teeny tiny baby

I have a lot to catch you up on so this is the first of a few retrospective posts about baby Alex. As I was trying to get my head around what to write about and taking a short but eventful trip down baby memory lane, I couldn't believe how tiny he looked in the early photos. He is growing so fast and it's already hard to remember how little he was not so long ago.

Here's proof:

Who on earth is that teeny little scrawny baby? Because the baby we know now is a big fat chubby guy with edible cheeks! This picture was taken just this week.
I can't believe I'm saying something so cliched as "they grow up so fast"...but I am!