Baby update

The baby turn ten months next week. It’s quite scary how quickly time is flying. He’s crawling around the house with gay abandon and causing wanton destruction with much of our carefully organized living room. He pulling himself up on stuff and is trying to stand now. Yesterday he learnt how to drink using a straw and celebrated by replacing his lunch meal with a tall sippycup of h2o. He seems to be a rather pleasant character in general…almost always smiling and seemingly enjoying life. I wonder if this apparent personality trait will stay with him for life.

Gosh. So much change and it’s so wonderful to be a part of his voyage of discovery of life.

Michael Jackson

I was saddened to hear about Michael Jackson’s passing yesterday.  Partly because it’s a pity that his life was lost when he was relatively quite young.  But I guess it was also a stark reminder of my mortality in general…more so because the pop start was such an iconic figure while I was growing up.

Speaking of growing up, the baby is rapidly growing into toddlerhood.  He can’t quite walk yet but he’s pulling himself up wherever possibleand trying to stand/balance by himself.  He’s nowhere close to speaking…or saying a coherent word.  But he does make a heck of a lot of noise.  At 8 months old, it’s quite hard to shush him without getting quite loud myself.  This doesn’t make for happy situations when we’re out in public.

Laughing Baby

Our boy is now at an age where we can make him smile or laugh pretty much on demand.  It’s quite a heart warming thing to experience…a baby laughing.

Speaking about babies laughing, I saw this clip on Youtube and was found it quite funny <huge understatement>

The joys of crumpling paper

We must have about $200 worth of toys lying around the house at this of time.  But our little baby boy likes nothing better than a piece of paper to play with.  Toss him a few sheets of paper and he’ll amuse himself quite contentedly for a while.  Ah yes, the joys of infanthood, I suppose.  

He’s just about to turn 6 months now and he’s now mobile.  The little squirt darts around the place on his belly (pulling himself around like those army folk in combat).   I can’t imagine what mischief he will get into once he starts walking.  It’s clear that we need to baby-proof our house.  I’m a tad apprehensive about that because I remember that those baby-proofing mechanisms usually ended up flummoxing me too.

Underestimating the work of parenthood

I have to say that going into parenthood, I had no illusions about how hard it was going to be – fractured sleep, constantly amusing an infant, deciphering unintelligent cries of discomfort, sleepiness or boredom etc. etc.  And I was ready for it all.  Bring it on, I said.  But over the last two weeks, I learnt that there was one aspect of this entire concept of taking care of a living thing that I underestimated: The care-giving needs to continue regardless of whether the parents are sick or not!  

Yikes!

After a whirlwind trip to India, the missus and baby returned home with me.  Unfortunately, baby brought an infection back with him, which made for hectic first week back here.  After this, I got either a separate infection or a mutation of what he had…and usually, I’d just curl up in bed, take a day off of work and sleep it off.  Order in some take-out and generally chill out.  Thanks for my doll of a missus, I was able to do this for a day or two.  And then, she fell sick…with an entirely different bug.  So there we were – two hapless parents with a hyperactive baby who was just recovering from a nasty illness of his own.  That was a HARD week!

But we survived!

Baby is growing really quickly.  He’s started crawling around the place and really has tons of energy.  If only he’d eat better.  We found out that he’s rather small for his age, but the doctor assures us that it’s perfectly normal.

“The sharks are getting smarter…”

I once saw a movie called Deep Blue Sea with a good buddy of mine.  It was a terrible movie, which reminds me that this friend has managed to drag me to the worst movies I have ever seen.  Note to self: Must berate him for this!.  Anyway, I digress.  In the above movie, the central plot is about an experiment to maniuplate shark genes in order to develop a cure for Alzheimers Disease.  An unexpected outcome is that the sharks’ brains start to increase in size, resulting in some pretty intelligent predators who then proceed to wreak havoc in a way that makes Jaws look like Elmo.  There is a point in the movie (after all kinds of bad stuff has happened) when the lead scientist (a pitiful performance by Saffron Burrows) says : “The sharks are getting smarter!”.  Well, doh lady!  These creatures just organized a coordinated assault on your control center.  You think?!

I write all of the above because the missus and I are rapidly coming to the realization that our little baby is getting awfully smart.  And not in an Einsteinian way.  He seems capable of emotions of jealousy, when he sees his cousins being coddled by his mother.  He also seems to have remarkable powers of observation and imitation.  He’s noticed that when babies make loud painful noises, adults pay attention.  Having seen this work, he’s developed a brilliant strategy to ensure that he gets constant attention all the time.  Wail when you are being ignored!  And finally, he likes to be rocked to sleep in his mother’s arms.  So, if he doesn’t get that, he cranks up the volume.

The missus remarks to me after a particularly tiring night: “The sharks are getting smarter…”

Cheerios and Diapers

The missus has always claimed that my substitute breakfast of champions (the original is bananas, of course) smells like dirty diapers.  I scoffed at this for years.  However, the other day while eating my Cheerios, my mum-in-law was sitting near me.  After a few minutes, she gives the baby a suspicious look and remarks that he needs a diaper change.  She goes off to check and much to her surprise, the diaper was clean.  She comes back and sits next to me but is much perplexed because she can still smells dirty diapers…

Great Accomplishment – Putting baby to sleep

I feel on top of the world, like I just accomplished something absolutely fantastic.  I just managed to put a very cranky baby to sleep!

Baby No Like Travel

After having just moved north and trying to settle down in our new surroundings, one thing is clear.  This baby, like me, does not like traveling.  Even when we take him in the car for rides, he is not a happy camper.  I wonder what pre-disposes some people to hating travel?  

More posts to come about fatherhood etc.

Babies are a Time Sink

I was warned by tons of people that when the baby arrives, I would have no time for much else.  That the baby would demand all my time and attention.  And that I would treasure the quiet time I would get when he’s asleep.  Probably all true.  

But, I’ve been awake for the last couple of hours with my son on my lap, fast asleep.  And I have been completely engrossed in looking at his face.  It’s amazing how sometimes when he’s laughing, he reminds me of my dad.  Or when he’s just smiling, of my brother.  When he rolls his eyes in R.E.M. sleep and opens his eyelids a tad to show the whites of his eye, he scares the heck out of me…like my missus does.  What a wonderful feeling it is to comb down his hair with my fingers, cradle his head to make him feel more secure and bundle him tight so that he feels warm?  How can such a tiny little thing engender so much emotion?  Well, the skeptic in me tells me that a rat or a gerbil probably does the same for some people.  But I have to think that this is different and is probably ultimately what gives life its purpose.