Happy 1st Birthday Nico!!!

Woohoo! We made it! Exactly one year and 12hrs on, and here we are, alive with all our limbs and toes!

This has been a really interesting journey - like Vaughan said, the great parenting conspiration is about everyone telling you how fun it is and no one speaking of the hardship. Because if they did, the human race wouldn't survive for too long. It is true on both accounts, I wasn't quite prepared to have my heart swelling at the sight of this gummy smile, my bum bruising from all these falls down the stairs due to lack of sleep, my zygomatic muscles getting sore from smiling proudly at some achievement, and my nostrils clogging up from the stench of a carnivore's nappies.

So many things are happening at the moment, events and milestones.

Birthday parties are plentiful (there must have been nothing interesting on TV at the beginning of the year), and Nico's is this Saturday. We're having a BBQ at Oma's. For his 1st present, Mummy and Daddy got him a wooden rocking dragon which he hopefully will enjoy for the next 5 years.



I'm starting work on 3 November after a one-year parental leave (don't think it qualifies as a break or a holiday) and will take on a role with less responsibilities, as I will only be working 3 days a week, with the Wednesday from home.

This means that Nico will stay with Oma on Mondays, with me on Wednesdays and at daycare on Fridays.

We both went to daycare for an hour or two yesterday, and after his little cry for a cuddle, he settled down to explore. Wasn't too bad. Now to leave him on his own.

Swimming lessons are still going, and on his third lesson we went underwater. Judging from the panicked look on his face, the answer to 'Nicolas, are you ready?' was a no. At least he didn't cry.

We were planning on moving Nico down to his own bedroom after we come back from our holiday visiting Ong Ngoai and Ba Ngoai in Noumea. But he sped up the process by deciding to stay awake at 1am despite being informed that Daddy needed to wake up early to go to the airport. So he's been sleeping downstairs by himself for the last week and a half now, and all is going well.




He's able to feed himself using his fingers, however the use of a spoon is a very messy exercise. My only hope of saving the food is to hold his hand and keep the spoon upright. Can't imagine teaching him the use of chopsticks.

He's reached the stage where boxes can now contain objects and any toy with holes can now fit onto his stacking tower. This means that before putting/throwing anything away, we have to check first whether there's a plastic car or a wooden ring inside.

Walking? Nope... Standing upright? Not even that... He's crawling up the stairs quite well though, especially when Naliah's at the top.

Bring on the next 17 years. If we've survived thus far, we can go through anything.

Splash

Nicolas is 11 months, 2 weeks and 3 days old today.

On Monday I took him to Hilton Brown Swimming Pools in Onehunga for his first swimming lessons. The reason for that is because Oma will be looking after Nico on Mondays when I start work in 2.5 weeks, and she's quite keen on taking him for a dip.

Things we needed to bring:

• A baby, preferably the one taking the swimming lessons
• An adult to hold the baby
• Swimming suits for both
• Water-friendly nappy, such as Huggies Swimmers or cloth swim nappy
• Towels
• $115.65 for the 10 lessons (30 minutes each)
• $2.50 per visit for the baby

It was pretty warm in there - pretty much the first time I've attended a swimming pool in New Zealand and it was a good start. There were about 5 other babies with their mums and the one dad, all coached by two instructors.

We learnt to paddle and kick and float (face up) and do the monkey walk (don't ask) and dive. I think Nico enjoyed himself, he certainly slept well during his nap. It was all done with songs, sometimes with squirt toys and a foam mat. Nico didn't get dunked straight away - first-timers just get splashed on the head, right before they pull a funny face.

His eczema flared up again, I'm guessing because of the chlorine in the water - looks like we won't be doing that too often.

Almost there...

... Tadpole is 11 months and 4 days old today. We are so close to the one-year milestone!

Life pre-Nicolas seems so far away now. 11 months ago if I visited Yahoo! Answers I'd go to the Computers & Internet section and look up interesting questions. Now I just go to the Pregnancy & Parenting section and seem to be able to answer any of these questions.

I'm vaguely panicking at the idea of resuming work (2 days in the office, 1 day from home) and having to leave Nico for two days. After a whole year with him, it'll be like re-surfacing to the life of the living. I took him to First Steps Parnell day care and left him with the carers for a little bit while sorting out the paperwork and they returned him to me with tears on his face... I have the feeling that this is going to be a bit harder than I expected.

Geek and petrol head

As you can tell from the tardiness of this post, days with an inquisitive and very fast baby can be incredibly short and unproductive. Add to that the fact that he's grumpy from his cold, and the teething, and my working hours are drastically reduced. Especially since Nico started developing a fetish for my laptop's keyboard. Or the dog/cats' biscuits and water. Or Daddy's already dying pot plant.

Look Mummy, I'm about to cause trouble!

His eczema is playing yoyo, but is kept under control as long as we baste him in creams.

I just can't decide whether I want to ignore that milestone thing or not. So anyway, things Nico is up to:

• Says 'Mama' and 'Dada' to the correct parent. I think so. I hear a lot of Mumumums but I don't know if Daddy gets the equivalent.
  
• Plays patty-cake and peek-a-boo. Not sure what they mean here. He enjoys it when I play peek-a-boo, but I haven't seem him hide behind his hands and do it himself... and he high-fives.
  
• Stands alone for a couple of seconds. I don't think he wants to, Daddy reckons he really likes it when I let go of him and catch him before he falls, so we don't see any real effort to remain standing.
  
• Cruises...
  

Oh, stuff it. I don't like that milestone thing, makes me anxious. Nico's fun, he's cute, he's healthy, and if he's a bit slower, it's because he's a boy and quadrilingual and not surrounded by other kids to learn from, and that's too bad. I'm sure he'll learn all that stuff one day before he reaches his teenage years.

He's helping me tidy away the dominoes by putting them back into their box, then closing the lid. That there are still dominoes outside, or Mummy's fingers are on the way is just a trivial matter. Here's to hoping he will grow up to be a tidier individual than messy me.

Loves the dog (I caught him poking Loki's balls today. Maybe he'll grow up to be a vasectomy surgeon) and Aicha, has a peculiar fixation for Naliah. Dislikes sauerkraut, hates day time napping. Enjoys having his teeth and hair brushed and funnily enough stays still for the nasal aspirator.