Happy 1/4th birthday Nico

Nico is 3 months today and decided to celebrate it by letting us sleep consecutively for 6 hours.

He's growing and developing pretty well. Or so it feels. My arms feel like they're falling off from carrying him, and Bas is also sore. Who needs the YMCA when you've got a baby...

Yesterday we gave him a dummy for the first time. Then I fully enjoyed the true meaning of silence. I just hope he or we won't get too addicted to it when he grows up. If he does, then at least we should get one of these as they are only appropriate.

I also gave him a bottle of breastmilk for the first time yesterday; just a test run to see how it would go if I cannot breastfeed him for a reason or another. I dripped a bit on my hand to test the temperature. And almost licked it off out of habit. It would have been just wrong, to drink your own breastmilk. Just wrong. Self-cannibalism.

Anyway. Let's review the milestones that we didn't quite achieve at 2 months:

• Emerging skills (half of kids can do) at 1 month:
  - Can see black and white patterns. Check. When lying on his mat, Nico turns his head around to watch Loki walk by.
  
• Emerging skills (half of kids can do) at 2 months:
  - Smiles, laughs. Check. He especially likes seeing people poke their tongues at him, and has learnt to do this himself - now he won't stop. This will come in handy around Christmas, when I'll need someone to lick stamps for me.
  - Makes smoother movements. Check. Especially when he decides to take a swat at me because I'm too slow to feed him.
  
• Mastered skills at 3 months:
  - Recognises my face and scent. Part check. I got a 'Good morning! Feed me!' smile when I leant over his cot this morning, however I haven't seen him screw his nose at my BO.
  - Holds head steady. Check.
  - Visually tracks moving objects. Check. I've been holding his head steady and move his toys left and right, up and down, and he follows them just fine. His lazy eye on the right seems to happen only every so often.
  
• Emerging skills (half of kids can do) at 3 months:
  - Squeals, gurgles and coos. Check. He got a National Bank customer services person all clucky because she could hear him on the phone.
  - Blows bubbles. I assume we're talking the slobbery type of bubble, not the soapy type. Check.
  - Recognises my voice. I don't know. Again, not sure how to check.
  
• Advanced skills (a few kids can do) at 3 months:
  - Rolls over, from tummy to back. Nope. He hates tummy time. Sometimes I have the feeling he won't start crawling till he starts high school.
  - Turns toward loud sounds. Not sure, we don't live in a very noisy environment and the only loud sound is Loki who seems to like to bark only when Nico's asleep.
  - Can bring hands together, bats at toys. I've seen him swat around, and Bas said that he grabbed his sheep once, but no clapping.

- Ce matin un lapin

In the forest during the autumn season,
The morning arrived
and brought with it
something that no one could have imagined
To the woods of Morte-Fontaine
Came all of the hunters of the area
for the hunting season.
It was a revolution,
a great time for them...
but...

This morning a rabbit killed a hunter
It was a rabbit who...
It was a rabbit who...
This morning a rabbit killed a hunter
It was a rabbit who had a gun

Nicolas Thiên Sơn Martens

Nico's New Zealand passport arrived last week. He's entitled to all three passports but it was going to take too long for the other two to arrive. Because we're not married, the Netherlands require proof that Bas has been looking after Nico for three years before agreeing to give him citizenship. As for France... well they're just slow.



So what do Nico's names mean, and where do they come from?

• Nicolas: this is the French spelling, with no H, and properly pronounced [nikɔˈlɑ]. Some people (including the Department of Internal Affairs, on his passport's observation page) have already misspelled it! It's derived from the Greek Nikolaos, which means 'Victory of the people'. Derivatives include: Nikki, Nic, Nicanor, Nicholas, Nick, Nickolaus, Nickson, Nicky, Nico, Nicodemus, Nicol, Nicson, Nikko, Nikkos, Niko, Nikolaus, Nikos, Nikson.
  
  
  
  



• Thiên Sơn: of Vietnamese origin, proposed by my parents. The meaning of it is Sky and Mountain, with the underlying meaning that he's as strong as the sky and a mountain. It's also a mountainous area 50km from Hanoi. The 'Th' isn't pronounced the English way as in 'Thickshake', rather it's a T with an expired H. And the accent above the o turn the 'oh' sound into an 'uh' sound. You'd end up with something like T-hee-en Suhn.
  
  



• Martens: Bas' Dutch surname, originating from a personal name (Latin Martinus, a derivative of Mars, the Roman god of fertility and war). This was borne by a famous 4th-century saint, Martin of Tours. Bas (and I guess other Dutch people as well) almost pronounces it 'Martons'.

- Alouette -

Lark, lovely Lark
Lark, I am going to pluck you
I am going to pluck your head,
I am going to pluck your head,
And the head, and the head,
O-o-o-o-oh...

All the verses are the same except the part of the body. The usual ones are: the head, the beak, the eyes, the neck, the wings, the back, the legs, the tail.

Baaa

In true Kiwi bloke fashion, Nico is displaying a worrying interest in sheep... Of all the five toys on his playmat - sheep, chicken, horse, cow and rainbow, this is the one that seems to fascinate him.




He's 2 months and 3 weeks old today. His giggles are starting to become more pronounced, and he readily smiles at strangers. He will keep hold of things put in his fist or things he accidentally grabs, but I don't think he can actively reach and hold things just yet.

- Une souris verte -

A green mouse
Which ran in the grass,
I caught it by its tail
I showed it to those men.
The men said:
Dip it in oil,
Dip it in water
It will become an escargot
Nice and warm.

Hallelujah!

I slept for 5 consecutive hours last night!
And breastfeeding takes only 20 minutes now!
And I no longer have to burp Nico for ages!

Life is good...

Nico's 2 months, 1 week and 3 days old today. And he's listening to some weird French lullaby lyrics. I will post some in future posts as I come across them.

He's 4.7kg (more than 10% of my current weight) and 55cm (more than 1/3 of my height).


- Il etait un petit navire -

There was a little ship
That had never sailed
Oh eh oh eh oh eh mate
Mate sail onto the sea
Oh eh oh eh oh eh mate
Mate sail onto the sea
It began a long travel
On the Mediterranean Sea
After five or six weeks
The food ran short
They drew straws
To know who would be eaten
It fell to the youngest
Though he wasn't very fat
They tried to find the way
The poor child would be cooked
One wanted him fried
Another wanted him cooked
...

Nursery rhymes

Nico is 2 months, 1 week and 2 days old today.

For a few weeks now I've been using Limewire to download nursery rhymes and lullabies for Nico to fool around with when he grows up. Limewire is a peer-to-peer file sharing program, which basically searches for my keywords on other people's computers and returns the matching files (audio, images, video, documents or programs) for me to download. Interestingly enough, before downloading the software, the site asked if I was intending to use it to infringe copyright. Of course not.

So at the moment I've got over 50 rhymes and lullabies on my laptop, in English and French. Talk about flashbacks listening to la Dance des Canards (the Chicken Dance) or Freres Jacques! Others I didn't know, like the Muffin Man or Three Blind Mice. And all of a sudden, Shrek made a lot more sense. Below are the ones I managed to download:

A la claire Fontaine

A-Tisket A-Tasket
Ainsi font les petites marionnettes
Alouette
Baby's First Lullaby

Berceuse Bretonne

Berceuse, Op 57

Brahms' Lullaby

Ce matin un lapin

Dodo, L'enfant Do

Down By The Bay
Fais dodo colas mon petit frere

Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed
Frere Jacques

Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes
Hickory Dickory Dock
Hokey Pokey
Humpty Dumpty

I'm a Little Teapot
Il pleut bergere
Il etait un petit navire
J'aime papa , j'aime maman
L'Alphabet de Mozart
L'oiseau de feu

La barbichette
La danse Des Canards

London Bridge
Maman Les Petits Bateaux
Mere Michelle
Mon hippopotame
Mozart's Lullaby

Pirouette Cacahouette
Promenons Nous Dans Les Bois
Ring Around The Rosie

Row, Row, Row Your Boat
Sleepy Time

Sur le pont d'avignon
The Hokey Pokey
The Muffin Man
There's A Hole In My Bucket
This Old Man Knick Knack Patty Whack
Trois Petits Chats
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Un Grand Cerf
Un, Deux, Trois, Allons Dans Les Bois
Une Petite Coccinelle
Une souris verte
Willy wonka oompa loompa song
You Are My Sunshine

Some of these songs are rather interesting to listen to; London Bridge which seems to deal with a complex engineering issue, Il Etait Un Petit Navire which almost saw cannibalism happening, and A-Tisket A-Tasket which talks about theft. Alouette is a bit gruesome with the poor bird's head, beak, eyes, neck, wings, legs, tail and back about to get plucked. As a side note, I'm no ornithologist but last I checked, birds' beaks, eyes and legs haven't got feathers...

I'm hoping that playing the lullabies when he's about to doze off to sleep will help establish some association. At the moment he starts grizzling as soon as his cot mobile stops, and I have no intention on taking this mobile everywhere we go. A laptop on the other hand could be handy if we really needed some aid to put him to sleep. Though at times neither him nor I need help falling asleep...

I also accidentally downloaded porn but I don't think Nico will be very interested in it till he reaches his teens.