Train 'em up young

Everybody has a right to be an individual. Does the world really need another me? Probably not! But I can't help but want to share some of the twisted way that I grew up with my son. Think it as a way of connecting. And it looks like I am succeeding via the medium of music and television.

To ensure that Alex could share some of the experiences that I did when I was young I purchased a number of DVD's for our collection. The boxed set of all Monkey episodes and a number of Goodies episodes (and they are currently screening the series on ABC TV!).

So far the Monkey has mostly stayed in its box, but the Goodies has already had an effect. Alex sings out "Goodies! Goody goody yum yum!" and asks to watch them. I even taught him about lighthouses and rockets using a couple of episodes.

Occasionally Alex will also see a bit of the Thunderbirds on Saturday mornings. I used to set my alarm to wake up to watch them when I was a wittle boy.

This Wednesday I had another success. After playing the four CDs that comprise the Series 4 Specials and Series 5 soundtracks, then screening half of the first episode of Series 5 Alex suddenly started asking about "Doctor Who".

I may have to rearrange the couch so that he can hide behind it.

One and a half

I can't believe Alex is one and a half. It feels like such a short/long time. It's a long time since I had a full night's rest (just had to duck out and attend to him then), but he has also changed so much over a short period. He's going through the toddler phase of trying to demonstrate his independence and saying "no" (even when he means yes). But he continues to demonstrate his wicked sense of humour and his love. Every moment with him is precious, which is good, because so few moments are without him, except for those painful days at work. Neither B nor I could ever imagine how much joy he has brought to our lives over the past year and half. May it continue for many, many more.

Toddler temper tantrums

Alex has learned to say "No!". The last week's train ride have been very difficult at times. Our 16 month old has been off colour (so many bugs since starting childcare!) and has been throwing tantrums in packed trains. I can't blame him. He's tired, a bit unwell, and it's no fun in such a crowded train.

But tantrums are only a tiny part of his day. He can also say "Yes" (actually "yeah"), everything seems to be a star or a shark, except Kita who says "woof!" He has a powerful voice that can project quite far. One amazing thing is his sense of balance. He can walk around a moving train only rarely falling over.

My days are very long. Alex usually wakes at around 5:20am. Sometimes I am still settling him at 9pm, so that doesn't leave much free time, if any at all, to do things like update blogs or plan holidays. Sometimes I fall asleep next to him when settling him on the futon in his room. But he is such a snuggly kid that I forgive him!

Australia Day 2009

I could rant and rave over the jingoistic nationalism that has spoiled the Australian flag (and that dreadful Union Jack in the top left corner), but I'm not going to this time. But I'm not going to.

Apropriate for Australia Day, while cleaning out a wardrobe yesterday we discovered a couple of Australian flags purchased for the Sydney Olympics. Our little Assembled in Australia From a Mixture of Local and Imported Ingredients loved waving them around.

In the evening we drove down to a local oval where they had stalls and performances celebrating the day. Alex stroked guinea pigs, goats and rabbits at the mini farm while our solicitor's daughter sang up on stage. We gave Alex a little bit of sausage sanger before returning home for our real dinner.

For the last time we stood at a rear window of our house watched the fireworks explode into the sky.

A week of childcare

Alex survived his first week of childcare, as did his parents. When I left him there I felt confident that he was being looked after. He seemed happy, too busy playing outside to notice that his Daddy was leaving.

However, for the past two days he has burst into tears when I came to pick him up. He sees me and wants to be picked up and reassured, which of course I do. Then he cheers up again.

The real challenge is the train ride to and from childcare. Sometimes he is quiet, other times a real handful. He's always hungry on the ride home. Then there is my trip from childcare to work and back. More walking in the very hot sun, more train rides. I am sorely tempted to give up my green transport and drive, saving so much time and effort - Alex is usually good in the car, especially with good film music on the car stereo.

Just need to get my licence. Ha ha.

North Ryde station, on the new Epping to Chatswood railway line, is an impressive piece of architecture. I could see it used in some futuristic film. It certainly doesn't feel like Sydney. I always feel like there should be a small stall or series of stalls selling drinks, kuih, nasi lemak, or other Asian snacks. Unfortunately, there's nothing.

I miss looking after Alex during the day. I think it was easier than work/childcare and certainly more fun. Plus Alex tended to wake up later than 5:30, which he has suddenly started doing. At least it's a short week coming up.

Childcare tomorrow

Alex starts childcare tomorrow. I think he'll do fine, but I'm going to miss looking after him and sharing the day with him. I wonder if it's cruel that he has to follow our too-long work and transport schedules as well. I guess we'll see how it goes.

It's been tough looking after him lately, as he has developed a bit of separation anxiety when I leave his sight or go outside. It's been a 24 hour job in many ways, especially when he wakes up during the night and it feels like I have little time to myself. Meals are rushed, toilet breaks quickly snatched during his naps. I have numerous computers located around the house so that I can access work emails when he's on the move - a laptop is just an attraction for his itchy fingers. But when he smiles it is all worth it.

He sees an aeroplane it's "wow!" and a sweep of his hand with a whooshing noise. His favourite word right now is our dog's name Kita, which he can say quite clearly. He has started to make animal sounds (ducks quack, lions and tigers roar) and to make sounds from his favourite stories.

Alex is almost walking. He took a couple of steps to me the other day, but he is still too hesitant to let go of his support while he moves around. He can stand unaided for a few seconds though and delighted tonight in doing dramatic "falls" on to his bottom.

When settling him tonight I feigned sleep and he responded by squeezing my nose, then laughing. Very cute!

First words

It's a debate whether Alex's first words are "Wow!" or "Yum!". I suggest the latter. He loves his food.

Alex is one!

Alex turned one year old today. What an amazing first year it's been. He's done an incredible number of things in that time:

1. Was born
2. Started crawling
   
3. Visited Japan, Malaysia and Singapore and been on a short road trips around the south of NSW and Canberra
4. Taken nine flights, including two on the A380
5. Caught numerous trains, including the super fast Shinkansen
6. Ate durian
   
7. Started swimming lessons
8. Attended a wedding and a funeral
9. Watched a movie at the cinema (Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince)
10. Attended a science conference

Last Saturday we held a party for him. I decorated his cake as an aircraft. Today, on his actual birthday, I took him in to visit him Mum at work then to see Sydney Aquarium. Alex seemed to enjoy it, saying "wow!" when he woke up in the shark viewing area.

He's a determined and confident child and an absolute delight. He is worth all the sleepless nights as he has brought such joy into the household. Happy Birthday Alex!

1st tooth

We noticed Alex's first tooth, a lower incisor, on Sunday. No associated drama, despite all the stories. It's very cute!

Baby swims

Took Alex for his first swimming "lesson" in the local pool on Saturday. It's not really swimming, just familiarising the children with water, playing games and singing nursery rhymes. Alex took to it like a fish to water, kicking his legs as he has done since before he was born. Exhausted him though, and the poor kid had to meet the cousins for a Malaysian lunch at Abang Sam in Kensington.

He's so much fun. I dread returning to work on Monday as it means being away from the family. Weekends are wonderful for the time spent together.

Half a year old

It's difficult to believe just how quickly the last six months have passed. We were looking through some old photos of Alex a couple of nights ago and it's incredible to compare his size at birth with his long frame now. He has also lost hair and does a pretty good Dr Evil (or is that Mini-Me?) impression.

Just as incredible is how many adventures he has already had over the last six months. Viewing world-class art exhibitions, two weeks zipping around Japan on high speed trains, carried to the top of a castle, around a ferris wheel, and watched monkeys play in the wild. He's gone on long drives south to Canberra and further a few times now and even attended a Star Wars exhibition.

Last Sunday he squealed with delight as we wandered around Ikea when, for the first time, he was faced forward in the Baby Bjorn.

I don't know what he thought of all of those adventures, but I do know that music brings him a lot of pleasure. If Alex hears John Williams' themes to Star Wars, Superman or Indiana Jones he listens intently. He's started to "sing" along when listening to music or bashing away at the electronic keyboard, he sings to his mobiles above his cot.

We read him books, but one of his favourites we cannot read (yet). A book about the Ampanman train in Shikoku might be written in Japanese, but it has a series of buttons that play various sounds related to the train. Symbols on the page give you sequences of buttons to press and he seems to be able to relate the two.

But what seems to bring him the most pleasure of all is being around his parents. Last night, after returning home from work, I opened the door to see Alex in B's arms. Alex saw me and began smiling and laughing away whenever we looked at each other. Naturally I was laughing just as hard back at him. It is the most wonderful feeling to give love and be loved in return.

Alex and the Art

Alex has now seen two blockbuster art exhibitions in his first two months. A couple of weeks ago we took him to the Degas Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Today we caught a train into the city and viewed the exhibition of Monet & the Impressionists at the Art Gallery of NSW, just a few days before it is scheduled to close.

He was whinging in his stroller, so I took him out and carried him in my arms around the gallery. Alex was wide eyed and staring the whole way, gurgling and chattering away. We know he likes good art - he can't stop staring at the fine print of McCubbin's "The Lost Child" in our lounge room. I think he's now taking more notice of the Monet print as well!

The pieces of Monet's work on display were gorgeous. We fell in love with his works, and those of the other impressionists, when we visited the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Claude Monet is inarguably the best of all of them, with an incredible ability to capture both light and life in his paintings.

Just one more exhibition to attend now: the Powerhouse Museum's Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination. I'd better play the DVD's to him first!

Never again

I was searching for information related to our upcoming trip to Japan when I came across the following photo:


It's a photo by Shogo Yamahata (©) of Tanaka Kio trying to breastfeed her 4 month old son as he lies dying. They were victims of the atomic bomb blast over Nagasaki. Seeing this and the other photos of Ms Tanaka and reading more about her story brought me to tears. The thought of experiencing something like this with our own son is horrifying.

I have not visited Nagasaki before, perhaps we will this time. We did go to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum back in 2006. The memorials, the stories, the models of schoolchildren with their clothes burned off their backs, they affected us deeply.

War is not a game and atomic weapons are not tools that anyone should contemplate using. I hope no child will die ever again through a nuclear bomb.

Peace and quiet

Today felt strange. The streets of Sydney were quiet. Almost everybody who was travelling seemed to be either leaving the city or going to the shopping malls for the post-Christmas sales. We too were looking to buy. Worried by the rapid depreciation of our car and greatly restricted in space by the paraphernalia of raising a child we were in the hunt for good deals on a Mazda 6.

We drove first to North Parramatta, spent a long time negotiating, fed Alex in their rec room, but couldn't close the deal. So we drove south, intending to return to the Sutherland dealer who had sold us our current car, a Mazda 3.

On the way down King George's Road we stopped at Beverly Hills for lunch. Most of the cafes and restaurants were closed for the Christmas/New Year break, leaving the shopping strip dead but for the noise of main road traffic. We found a sleepy Thai restaurant with a dingy interior, ceiling fans turning languidly in the humid summer heat. Two Thai women manned the counter and the stoves. It felt like we were back in Thailand, B was even wearing a shirt purchased there. The food was good too.

As we drove along during the day I would stare up into the silver-grey sky and watch the silhouetted great jets fly northwards from the airport. From the inside of the car they floated silently, purposefully through the air. In this dreamy, quiet, hot atmosphere, the Qantas 747's called to me, "fly away, seek adventure", but spending our savings on a car means there will be no European vacation this year, or for a while. I console myself that our holiday dreams are not dead, just limited, but of that I can say no more.

The day ended with the breaking of the storm. But by then we had already signed our contract. Not quite what we were looking for, but it is enough that we have not exceeded our budget.

We arrived home into thunder, lightning and driving rain with an exhausted, crying child with equally tired parents. But it was a quiet day.

Baby's first Christmas

Baby's First Christmas is a Big Deal judging from the number of ornaments, clothes and toys for sale that include that label. Of course, the little ones have no clue what the fuss is all about. They just wake you up early because it's feed time, not I-can't-wait-to-unwrap-my-presents time.

It doesn't matter because Alex's parents had a fun time. We invited B's mother and friend over for a lunch of roast chicken and pudding, followed by a viewing of the Mamma Mia DVD that I gave B for Christmas.

I hope everyone else's Christmases were as relaxed and pleasant as our own.

New tricks

Alex has learned a new trick and I don't like it.

He has learned to shoot his poop out at us while on the change table. It was bad enough that he would practice a career as a water feature, but this latest development has made changing him a dangerous occupation.

Yesterday I was pooed on, peed on and vomited on by our son in a matter of minutes. This morning we were wiping poo off B, off the furniture and the carpet.

At least he gives you the cutest looks as soon as you remove his dirty clothes. And we aren't alone with this problem.

Yesterday wasn't all about the bad stuff, however. We took a drive down through the bushland and temperate rainforest of the Royal National Park to Otford. Soon after you emerge from the park there are magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean on your left and a corner store called Otford Pastries on your right.

Along with some hot meals, devonshire teas and really good milkshakes, the store specialises in apple pies. The pastry of the apple and black cherry pie slice we ate for dessert there was the best I've ever had, full of cinnamon flavour. Unfortunately, the pie we brought back for dinner with the in-laws wasn't of the same standard, but I'd still return for more.

There is also a resident blue-tongued lizard inside the shop, the couple that run the place feeding it scraps of fruit. It's a nice little spot for bite after a drive through the National Park or along the spectacular coastal route between Sydney and Wollongong.

Unsettled

I would love to write about something other than raising a baby - I have several items floating around my head - but the fact is that a newborn consumes every spare moment of your life.

Since last Saturday, evenings have proved to be a real struggle. Not unusually for a baby, evenings have been Alex's unsettled time. He refuses to go to sleep after his evening feed until (hopefully) his late night feed. That means that we can't rest from the time I get home from vwork until maybe 11pm.

On the upside he is often alert and can give you the most wonderful smiles when you play with him. However, too much play just exacerbates the wakefulness problem. My problem is that I end up absolutely exhausted myself, my whole body ready to collapse in a heap. Oh well, I still have some tricks to try.

Even after he is settled we still have to get up for his later feeds. The late-night television viewing continues. This week I discovered that while channels 7 and 10 both show the Home Shopping program at the same time, the remaining commercial station, channel 9 has Danoz-Direct which advertises the same products anyway. Collusion!

We have been mainly watching pre-recorded television anyway to get around the mundane nature of late night TV. The hilarious zombies of Shaun of the Dead. Kita ignored the melodrama of Rex in Rome until he heard the squeak of a dog toy. I prefer the Austrian version.

Yesterday we all attended Possum Cottage, where the nurses help you with feeding and settling problems for a day. They seemed pleased with us, but it was so nice to leave a sleeping Alex in their care for an hour while we had lunch in a cafe.

Possum Cottage is located at Sutherland Hospital. Their recent redevelopment has included some gorgeous courtyards, each different. My favourite was a bamboo forest with a pond of clear water bumbling over a mat of bamboo leaves, toy pandas positioned as if climbing the thick bamboo stems.

Bright Dragon

Two weeks after he was born we finally settled on Alex's middle name.

We had decided long ago that our children would have a Chinese middle name. Mother in law wanted a Mandarin (Putonghua) name, saying that it would replace the other Chinese dialects in future. Right though she may be, B doesn't speak Mandarin, only Cantonese, and the Mandarin names are not only difficult to correctly pronounce, but also the official Pinyin romanisation looks nothing like the sound.

At the last moment we changed to a Cantonese name. It doesn't matter if the language is "dying" because this a way of honouring it and anyway, the characters (not official, because you can only register English character names) are the same as in Mandarin.

After all that, what is his middle name? Ming-Lang 明龍.

It means "Bright Dragon". Actually, Lang is not the most correct romanisation of the character, which is also symbolic of the Chinese Emperor, but it's how B's surname was written so we kept it.

Hopefully our Bright Dragon won't be Ming the Merciless and be kind enough not to be so unsettled at night!

Chinese and kanji character tools

We decided that Alex should have a Chinese middle name to represent that side of his heritage, as suggested by B's mother. As neither of us can read most Chinese characters we have had to rely on translation and romanisation tools to assist us in determining the correct spelling for the name.

The following tools are pretty useful:

• Convert Chinese characters to pinyin with English meanings
• Mandarin and Cantonese translator (Learn Cantonese site)
• Cantonese dictionary
  
• Kanji (Japanese) to hiragana and romaji
  

Things I learned from late night TV

So we were up at around 2am feeding baby Alex when we decided to switch on the television. It was so terribly disappointing to see that the moronic mobile phone game shows were off the air, but there was still an education to be had. We learned:

• How to hide drug paraphenalia as sex toys (Life Support, SBS)
• That Australian satirical comedy is better than US satirical comedy (Life Support, SBS vs MadTV, 9)
• St Malo is cold this time of year (World weather, SBS)
• That channels 7 and 10 should be taken to the ACCC.

What are channel 7 and 10 doing showing exactly the same television program at the same time of night? Okay, I can almost forgive something like a speech from the PM or a royal wedding, but the Home Shopping Network? It's anti-competitive!