1 year old

After the saga of the previous entry I better get to the point! Eden is now a 1 year old. Happy Birthday to our beautiful boy.

On his birthday - Saturday the 23rd just gone, we drove past Upper Hutt to Kaitoke Regional Park. Ranger Steve gave us an intro to the history of the Celebrate Life Totara Grove whilst a hand full of Grandparents and co. entertained Eden (well actually each other) with blowing bubbles.

Duncan and Grandad then dug the allotted hole and planted the Totara then Eden and I watered it with his new watering can amid adoring fans and photographers. What a sunny and only slightly breezy day it was! We ventured down to the riverside for a picnic and birthday cake. The daisies were in abundance.

Eden has so enjoyed having some new toys to play with - I almost wonder what the heck he played with before!

This past year we have gone from:
* Feeding so noisily it is embarrassing to feeding peacefully to feeding with such a wriggle it is annoying!
* Interacting with a being that did not communicate back to one who now has 100 expressions and can share a joke.
* Someone who was satisified for a long time to just lie and sit - despite what his peers were up to. Now he is determined to crawl and climb under or over everything - including me when it is in his way.

Yes a year has gone by fairly quickly but it seems like an age since I was in a classroom. Babies are adorable and fun. I wonder at God's intentions behind his invention of them. Perhaps he thought they would be nice.

I will miss Eden the baby but I have already learned that each stage has it's challenges and unexpected joys. Because I see him all the time, and the changes are so gradual, Eden in my head is always what he looks like presently - I don't have any pictures in my head of how he used to look and older photographs just look weird. I really just do not want to forget Eden the baby - that's all.

So, bring on Toddlerdom, I'm not scared. Much.

triumph

Weaning is a business I tell ya. It starts off easy as bub refuses mummy milk after lunch and dinner as he too full from his lentil patties or tuna pasta, but breakfast and afternoon tea are a different story.

I tried for weeks if not months during this winter to get Eden to drink formula for afternoon tea. The first step was to get him to drink mummy milk regularly from a sipper cup. We got as far as 50% formula and 50% mummy milk. Then he got that awful fever and refused anything but Mum. I was getting OOS from all the hand pumping anyway so I was glad of the break. When he was well again, after another few goes I gave up trying. There had to be another way.

I did not want him drinking juice because of the sugar and he doesn't drink water in huge volumes so I hit on the idea of tomato juice. He loves it - I just get an icecube of tomato paste and add half a cup of water to it. This doesn't really have the nutrience of milk or formula though and is pretty messy and, well, - red!

Around the same time he also decided he didn't mind drinking fresh cows milk but I had an even better plan: I food processed banana chips until they were powder and put a tablespoon of it in with the formula = success! Banana smoothy! And do you know what is even better? After one week of that - he now drinks formula straight. The psychology of it...

Breakfast is another story. You see another side of Eden at breakfast - Mr Grumpy. I am lucky if he even finishes his cereal before he is crying for mummy milk. It will help after day light saving begins and he is not waking up so early. By the time I am bothered to get up to him - he is totally grumpified - kicking the wall and all. He is not so bad if he sleeps longer and I go and get him as soon as he wakes.

correction

Fetid dingo's kidney is from Hitchhiker's guide - sorry. Guess which movie buff set us right?

tip of the week 2

Tall laundry baskets also make good portable playpens.

My mother remembers that she was 'hanging out' for my first birthday presents because I had grown out of all my toys and was getting pretty bored. I was feeling this way about Eden a month or two ago.

However, not at all now because although Eden is still playing with the same toys he is able to play with them differently. For a kick off, he has got the hang of buttons so that has brought a few toys to life. He also is trying out shape sorting, puzzles, (not really but kind of). In short this is great.

I'll be a fetid dingo's kidney

This is what Duncan exclaimed last night when he reached some epiphany in the spreadsheet he is crafting for istock royalties (and has been doing for 2 weeks now and we are both sick to death of him doing it). I thought it was his Australian heritage coming out in him but apparently not. Apparently it comes from a TV programme of yesteryear - Red Dwarf.

Where are we at. The past two days have been a bit of a mess - especially the kitchen because I have had to choose songs for Sunday all in a bit of a hurry. Alan Jamieson came up to me on Saturday night (we were at a goodbye do for other minister Rodney) and said 'can we do this song next week?' and handed me a piece of paper. This was how I found out I was on - eeek.

Usually we are rostered 1 in 4 weeks but there is a blip in the timetable at the moment with other people's committments. All last week I kept meaning to look in my diary and make sure I wasn't missing anything...

We had the practice last night phew. so now I can catch up on the housework for a couple of days... - except I have found another blip - my team is on two weeks in a row!