Teething Troubles

How many times have I used that phrase around the office? Sitting in a grey-walled meeting room, framed newspaper clippings and tech-vendor awards on the walls, explaining the readiness of a technically complex new product to the project manager:

"the platform will meet the product requirements, will be scalable and redundant, and will be well-documented for acceptance testing and operational handover in time for the planned launch date. However, we must expect some teething troubles shortly after launch"

That kind of teething trouble is only metaphorically teething trouble. And oh, is there a difference between the metaphorical and the real....

It isn't the sit-there-inexplicably-whinging type of teething trouble. It isn't the I-used-to-sleep-well-but-now-I-don't type either. And it certainly isn't the wake-up-at-1:30am-and-then-again-at-3:30am-crying kind of teething trouble.

I'll take teething troubles in the business sense over the teething troubles in the literal sense any day of the week!

Our poor little Dalai Levi has a literal case of teething troubles at the moment. Took us a little while to work it out, but once we saw what the problem was it all became clear. It does come and go a bit, but mainly it comes and stays. We were given a fantastic little feeding thing called a mesh feeder - it's like a little netting bag with a big plastic ring on the end of it. Stuff a couple of chunks of cold watermelon into the bag and give it to Levi and he'll grab the ring, unceremoniously put the netting bag into his mouth, and chomp down on the cold, sweet, juicy fruit. It's working like a treat at the moment, even if watermelon juice does make a bit of a mess....

He's just turned 6 months old, and has simultaneously kicked off with both a bunch of new skills and a bunch of new problems. First, the new skills:
* can sit up very well on his own, and often just sits there laughing to himself
* can do press ups, and can kind of move backwards slowly along the floor by doing multiple push ups in a row (hasn't yet got the hang of one-handed pushups like his daddy, and, um, jean-claude van damme.....)
* can stand up with something to hold on to (and amusingly is gripped with then looking down at the floor from a standing position - the look of wonder on his face is hilarious!)
* can pass stuff from one hand to the other, bang things against other things, throw things around. And he's an expert at raking anything within arm's reach closer, so that he can get it into his mouth :)
* can eat mushed up solid foods - and that's a big new skill. He loves to grab hold of the spoon himself and stuff it into his mouth, but often the little monkey grabs it around the handle with one hand, and then once he has control of the spoon, runs his fingers carefully through the food on the other end. He'll then do something very clever, like rub his eyes, pull on his ears, slap his hands on the traytable - any way to get that food everywhere :) Quick fix suggestion from mum - use two spoons! Let him control one of them, while we use the other to actually feed him - brilliant :)

(I've been amusing myself, and my wife, by making up names for the food - for instance, a mixture of pumpkin and apple becomes: pumple - or apkin. A mixture of avocado and banana becomes: avonana. The hilarity just goes on and on.....)

some new problems:
* sometimes, he just really wants his mummy. Not his daddy, just his mummy. I don't blame him, after all she's very nice, and can sing in a soft high-pitched voice, whereas his daddy is usually unshaven, a bit smelly, and there's no milk in his boobs. But sometimes it's actually daddy's turn.
* sometimes, his teeth are hurting enough that he can't get to sleep. Nothing unusual there, I guess, but he's been *such* a good sleeper up until now.
* along with feeding The Boy solids, which is a pleasure, comes at least two new problems. The lesser of the two is ensuring there are enough clean bibs and flannels around the place - after 6 months of using cloth nappies, we can handle a bit of laundry. The bigger problem is that his poohs have, well, become more like *real* poohs. Oh yes, they no longer smell of roses - they smell like shit :)

I've posted an album of photos of Levi at 6 months old on Facebook - non-facebook users can see it by clicking here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=30380&l=b54c5&id=699605134

Solo travel, and the lost ring

I had a whole weekend to myself, time to spend however I wished. A rare and valuable thing. I dedicated it to independence, exploring and surfing on the Sunshine Coast, but it started badly. I was quite pleased with myself for packing the car the night before, and actually getting up when my alarm went off at 5am. I was even more pleased when I found my way to the surf breaks at Caloundra without using a map. I had a big grin on my face when, after checking several of the usual breaks along the Caloundra coastline, I found that Ann Street was both looking good *and* virtually empty. And just as I was waxing up my board in the carpark, by pure luck I bumped into a friend who was also about to paddle out. All good.

But.

A couple of waves into the session I got rolled by a steep, sucky one and when I came up for air and got back onto my board, my left hand felt a bit, well, wrong. It took no more than an instant to realise what was wrong. There was something missing, an absent, meaningful, never-ending circle, a lack of something to rap on the rail of my surfboard whilst waiting for a set... I looked down, but couldn't even see my feet through the water. I looked to the shoreline, saw the breakers, the white water and the swirling currents and I just deflated as I knew my wedding ring was not going to magically appear on the dry sand or float up next to me. I paddled out of the impact zone and sat up on my board out the back. Powerless, nothing I could do, wished I had bloody taken the thing off and left it in the car before paddling out, thought about just paddling back in and going home, calling the whole weekend off. It wasn't even 7am yet. I did a bit of looking around, stared at the ocean, swore, slapped my board. But life just goes on, the waves kept rolling in, and I knew that Skye would understand.

I surfed a few more waves, but my heart wasn't really in it and about an hour after I had paddled out I was back in the car park. Amusingly, just as I was rinsing off the salt water the rain came bucketing down leaving me no option but to stand around wet and getting wetter waiting for it to stop. Once the sun came out again, I got on the phone to Skye, told her what had happened and I was right that she immediately understood. "You know you've married the right girl when..."

And the weekend just got better and better from there on in :) I ate breakfast with friends, camped and made friends with the families on either side of my pitch, and I surfed twice in perfect conditions at Tea Tree Bay. I ate fish and chips sitting on the sandy shore of the Noosa River under the moon, I woke up to the sound of Corellas squawking at the dawn, and I caught up with more friends for a beer on the way home. I surfed each session for as long as I wanted, staying in the water for a personal record of 3 hours on Sunday morning, and I saw the most vivid rainbow I've ever seen, sitting up on my board at Tea Tree Bay, 6:30am Sunday morning, the full, unbroken arch touching the surface of the water on both sides of the bay. If only a pod of dolphins had swum through it :)

The thing I most enjoy about time spent on my own is finding out what I'll actually do. For instance, it's all very well *saying* that I'll get up at 5am to go surfing - but to then actually do it when there's no-one else around to witness it tells you a bit about yourself. While I was eating my fish and chips with only a home-brew beer for company on Saturday night, I thought about the weekends I spent camping solo in the Black Mountains in Wales. I used to drive off to Wales with something on my mind, take the weekend at my own pace, and emerge from the forest, mountains and motorways tired but relaxed, with a sense of peacefulness and an increased confidence in my independent abilities. There's something about going on a journey, traveling on your own. I feel exactly that same after my weekend on the Sunshine Coast, except the aches and pains are all in my shoulders and back rather than in my legs :)

...but don't misunderstand me here. I would have loved to have had Skye and Levi there with me to see the rainbow, to enjoy a relaxed breakfast by the beach, and to see the Koala in his usual tree in the national park. But with the pair of them in New South Wales, it would have been criminal to miss my chance for some solo travel.

Back in Brissy, the rain's bucketing down but it's hot and steamy all through the night. I've somehow got more to do each evening than there's time for, and I've happily got computer parts spread all over the lounge floor as I chip away at the old media centre PC I'm rebuilding. Skye sends me photos and videos from her mobile each day, but I can't wait to see them both again soon.

Welcome to 2008

That was by far the quietest New Year's Eve since I was a child. All 3 of us Byers in Brisbane were either ill, recovering from being ill, or coming down with the same illness the other two had. Honestly, there wasn't a Byer awake in Brisbane after 10pm on NYE. And we didn't even leave the house at all on New Year's day.

...not that we had the weather to tempt us out of the place, either. It's been unseasonably cool this festive period, with plenty of showers and overcast skies, the temperatures have rarely gone above 25 degrees and there's been plenty of rain and strong winds from the south to make it all feel much cooler. Most of this weather has been caused by a large surface low that's been sitting off the east coast of Fraser Island happily generating some epic surf conditions all along the SE Qld coast. Photos on coastalwatch.com have shown double overhead waves barrelling at takeoff points that are normally gentle 2 foot sliders, and waves and currents too big and heavy for anything other than tow-in surfing.



Christmas was also a low-key affair this year, with a pleasantly relaxed christmas eve barbie on our back deck, and casual lunch and afternoon over at Nat and Al's on christmas day. Unfortunately, that was when Levi started to show signs of being sick, and by the end of the day he was sneezing and spluttering away. This is the first time he's been ill, so we kept a very close eye on him, and had a doctor come to visit on boxing day. Turns out he had bronchiolitis, a viral infection. Also turns out that you can never be too careful with young babies, so when he was sounding worse the next day, we were at the hospital to see another doctor by 6am. Thankfully, The Boy's strong enough to tough his way through being ill, (and cute enough to charm all the nurses and doctors) and it didn't develop into anything worse.

All that sitting around the house too ill to go out actually turned into quality family time together. Worried about Levi getting bored of his usual toys, we dug deep into his toybox and pulled out toys he hasn't seen yet - including a soft red and white football, which it turns out he loves. Check out the video below showing Levi's footballing talents.



Speaking of videos, I should also mention that Skye and I had our first night out without Levi when we went to see Daft Punk at the Riverstage here in Brisbane. One of the best gigs I've ever been too, Daft Punk were simply amazing. The music, the lightshow, the outdoor venue, and just the atmosphere all added up to a fantastic night out. To top it off, Levi stayed fast asleep all night, so we didn't get any calls from the babysitters. See below for my video of the gig.



...and, today is officially my last day of contracting. As of monday, I'm a permanent, salaried member of staff. I've never taken a pay cut before, so looking that in the eye is an unnerving feeling (especially now that my income is the total income for my family...). But. The company pays for income protection, and very importantly pays me while I'm sick or on holiday - what a relief! It's also quite strange not to have a date in mind for the end of my contract.... it took me a while to get used to being a contractor, but it's been 2 years now and without realising it, I've got comfortable in that way of thinking and now switching back to permanent may take me a while to get used to!

Levi's latest tricks, the birth of Gabby, home improvements, and news on the job front

It's just stunning how many new things The Boy comes up with, if not on a daily basis then certainly every week. Since I last posted on the blog about him beginning to coo at us, his vocalisations have *really* progressed. Right now he's able to give a cute, gurgling "aah-googhhh" sound while smiling, make whale/dolphin style wails and screeches, and give full-bore ground-shaking both-lungs-at-full-volume sustained cries. We're mostly loving the "aah-googhhh" ones....

We recently came across a technique of picking him up in a kind of lotus position, and swinging him like a pendulum (thanks Mike and Al).


He really loves it - and (coincidentally....?) since we started doing that, he's begun holding onto his feet. As soon as you put him on his back, up come his feet and he'll be gripping onto his toes and gurgling away in no time - very, very sweet. And also helpful when changing his nappy :) And as if that wasn't a fancy enough new trick, within just a couple of days he's started holding onto his toes while sitting up too.

And his very latest trick is helping daddy turn the pages of books that we read together. He loves grabbing the pages of the soft cloth books (and stuffing them in his gob), and he tries to do the same with normal paper pages, but there's one book we have that has stiff cardboard pages that he can grip and turn well. Seeing him sitting there holding onto a page and turning it back and forth to see what's on each side is pretty amazing.

I've posted some recent very very cute photos of The Boy here on facebook.

A big announcement is that Levi has a new cousin - Gabriella Grace Wade was born on Weds 28th November, mum and bub doing fine.


Summer's getting into full swing now, with daily temperatures at or over the 30 degree mark, and nighttime temperatures staying well above 20 degrees. We've just started to leave the ceiling fans on all night now. Our new house is much, much better in the heat than the old place, but it's still pretty bloody warm indoors through the heat of the day. With mosquitos about in the evenings, we're wary about leaving the windows open, but we just have to. We've got some fancy retractable flyscreens on the way at the start of January that should take care of that worry, and in the meantime we're just slapping and squishing the little buggers.

I've been working on another little home improvement, which I managed to turn around in a reasonable period (which is pretty unusual). We now have a shiny new paved path to the back gate, wide enough to easily roll the pram over on the way to and from the cycleway. It took me a couple of weekend days, but would have been much, much more difficult without the rain. I woke up on saturday morning to find that the overnight storm was still drizzling, and the ground was nice and soft. Thinking it would only be 2 hour's worth of work to finish the job, and seeing as it was overcast, I just got stuck into it. But 4 hours later when it was all finished, and despite Skye slip slop slapping some suncream on me halfway through, I was well and truly sunburnt. As I write this 3 days later, the sunburn on the back of my left shoulder still looks fresh...


We took a family trip to Sydney a couple of weeks ago, and had the interesting experience of travelling with a 3 month old baby. Overall, it was pretty good going - we just scaled back our expectations of how much we could do, and tried to get people to come to us rather than us trying to get around Sydney too much. We spent a lovely couple of days with Mike, Al and Talia in Manly, enoying snorkelling at Shelley Beach, body surfing at the southern end of Manly beach, and hooking up with friends for a beachside barbie. I headed back to Brissy on the Monday morning commuter flight, while Skye stayed a few more days to spend time with family and friends in Sydney and the Southern Highlands. When I picked her up on the Thursday evening back in Brisbane, even though it had only been a few days it felt like much, much longer - and Levi had grown *and* learnt a couple of new tricks!

I did have great pleasure on my return to find that my beer fridge had been restocked with homebrew while I was away. A crispy cold beer on a hot evening (especially after laying all those pavers!!) is such a simple pleasure, but multiplying it by a fridge-full makes it even better :)


I have news from work too (will this blog post never end?!?!) - I'm leaving the contracting game behind, and turning permanent. I'm just waiting on the paperwork, which I am assured will be in my possession very shortly, and then a signature should bring an end to the matter. It's been an interesting but relatively painless negotiation, and although we won't have anywhere near the same amount of monthly income, I will have paid annual leave and sick leave, and I'll be earning TOIL for my out of hours work. It's all swings and roundabouts, but we both know that I come home with a smile on my face most days, which is an unquantifiable benefit that we've been enjoying since I started working here.

I'm also very pleased to say that I've been for my first surf as a dad, and that somehow leaving the house at 6am on a Sunday not only suited me, but also suited my wife and son! Crack of dawn is the best time for surfing, as the surface of the ocean is usually smooth, and the daily onshore winds haven't kicked up yet. Turns out that it's also a good time to take a baby in a pram for a long walk, as it's neither too hot nor too windy. So we all cruised up to Caloundra, where I caught a couple of waves (left-handers!) and Skye and Levi had a nice walk up and down the esplanade. We then swapped jobs, with me cuddling The Boy while Skye had a swim, then we just hung out in the shade and had a late breakfast before heading back home. Lovely. However, that was weeks ago and we've yet to repeat the feat :)

Chanukah is already here, and Christmas is on the way - love and seasons greetings from the Byers in Oz to you all!

Baby talk

We read a good tip in the babycentre.co.uk newsletter this week:

"Cooing is your baby's way of showing she's happy. This pre-speech exercise lets her play with sound just as she plays with her fingers and toes. You can show that you've heard her by cooing or talking in response; see if you can have an extended conversation. "

Levi has recently started making gurgles and coos, so we tried having a conversation with him last night and it was a great success. He was happily kicking around under his jungle gym, punching and grabbing at the dangling toys, trying to pull them into his mouth. We were sat down on either side of him, playing with him and recording with the camcorder. When he made a sound, I smiled at him and made a short similar sound back at him. He picked up on it instantly, locked his gaze on my face and replied with another sound. I kept up my side of the conversation, and we had a little chat between ourselves for a little while - lovely. Skye joined in from behind the camcorder, and soon the whole family were telling stories to each other. Levi seemed to enjoy joining in the conversation, and once he'd finished telling us his side of the story, he got straight back into punching and kicking those dangling toys with a renewed vigour.


He's at a really sweet age right now, just under 3 months. He smiles and coos, he can grip on to things and wave them about, he loves having nursery rhymes sung to him, and he's just on the verge of being able to roll himself over. He's a strong little man, and we're helping him work on his physique with regular sit-ups to the tune of "row row row your boat" - soon he'll be looking as toned as his old man :)

grandparents, baby development and a table

A table? Well, not just any old table. *The* table is finally finished! "What table?" you might be wondering - well, the saga stretches right back to our first week in Oz....

We picked the table up in pieces from my father-in-law when we first arrived in Oz back in Jan '05, and we personally freighted it from Queanbeyan to Brisbane in the back of The Bus all the way up the coast road. It's been patiently awaiting attention in the sheds of no less than 3 separate homes since then, sporadically enjoying a vigorous sanding when time permitted. Other priorities pushed the table further and further down the To Do list (mere insignificancies, like getting married, buying a house and having a baby....) - but once those big jobs were checked off the list, the table rose higher and higher in the priority stakes until finallly, last night, after much sanding, staining and varnishing, it was triumphantly screwed back together and positioned happily next to the kitchen with a nice view out over the garden. Lovely - a family table for our family. (now all we need are some chairs!!)



Speaking of our family, the youngest member has been meeting some of the older members. Grandparents and even a great-grandparent have had a good old coo over the cheeky young man, coming from as far away as Queanbeyan, Sydney and London. And the The Boy (as we call him) has capably taken on his responsibilities to charm 'em all.

After learning how to smile and even chuckle a bit, his very latest trick is gripping stuff and pulling it towards his face so he can maybe get a taste of whatever it is. He's also getting into having a good old sing song with his folks, who are starting to get nursery rhymes seriously stuck in their heads... We've now set a weekly timeslot with Grandma Barbie and Grandpa David to Skype, in a way it's like our own style School of the Air via Skype. Class runs every monday (9am GMT / 6pm AEST), with a strict curriculum of trans-global nursery rhymes and games for babies. We tuned into the first "class" this week, and had great fun singing along with our nephew and nieces in the UK. They can add Kookaburras to Old MacDonald's farm now that we've given them a rendition of the noise they make!

Levi's had his first couple of road trips to the coast, checking out the surf at Noosa (excellent 3 foot and glassy) and Currumbin (utterly blown out and unsurfable that day). I've yet to have my first surf as a dad (4 long months without so much as getting my feet wet!) but I'm hopeful that I'll get into the water this saturday. I scraped the old wax off my board at the weekend, crossing my fingers for a good surf forecast...

It's springtime here in Brissy, and it's just a such a lovely time of year. All the plants and flowers get into bloom, the lorikeets have all come back from wintering further north to chase away the noisy mynah birds, and the temperatures are just right for warm sunny days and mild evenings. Somehow, colours just seem more vivid at this time of year.

Updates

Since I last wrote a post, I seem to have been preoccupied with sending photos and movies to family and friends, fiddling about with facebook, and dabbling in parenting :)

Some events worthy of note (in no particular order) from the last month:

* on father's day, my son managed to fart a couple of curds of pooh onto my t shirt whilst I was changing his nappy. It's definitely a sign of my adaptation to being a parent that I didn't mind at all :)

* went to the beach for the first time in *ages* - but didn't even get my toes wet, despite having packed all my surfing gear into/on top of the car. Bloody northerly wind had completely blown out what little swell there was. Oooh it hurts to find the beach entirely useless to me on my only chance to get there after 2 months of reading surf reports about the coming and going of one of the best winter swells seen in the last 20 years...

* "The IT Crowd" is hilarious. Got hold of series 2 via the internet and this cunning 3 step guide to getting hold of tv programmes, and we both laughed long and hard whilst watching it. Can't seem to find the first series, but I am working on it...

* Skype is really coming into its own now that we have a something that everyone wants to see - our son :) The latest version for the Mac has improved echo-reduction, so we're now happy Skyping without headsets. Levi has met his cousins, auntie, uncles, grandparents and even his great-grandmother over Skype.

* sleep. There hasn't been as much of it as there used to be. But, there's no real hardship in waking up at the wrong time of day to spend a bit of zombie time cuddling Levi (easy for me to say - I only do middle-of-the-night stuff at the weekends, Skye answers those calls during the week).

* and last but not least, we got tickets to the Daft Punk gig here in Brisbane. I'm still stoked about that ! Got the tickets the moment they went on pre-sale, just need to arrange the babysitter now :) Luckily the gig's not until the end of December, so we've got plenty of time to work that out.