I Am That Dad

Last weekend we met up with the other parents in our NCT group and it was great to see all the other babies and where they are in their development. I can't help but be reminded of the school playground but instead of making unsubstantiated claims about our parents strength and prowess, we were all secretly comparing our children. Oh he's still waking for a feed every two hours? Ours sleeps 7 hours at night now. Look how alert he is, yours is still sleeping lots I see. And so it goes on and I realise I am already a competitive dad. I was absolutely brimming with pride when the other dads were impressed with how strong Noah's neck was, how good he is at holding his head up. Yes thought I, my son is brilliant he is super clever and way more advanced than any other baby that had ever lived. Clearly I need to start him on Japanese lessons next week.

So this weekend saw the end of the London 2012 Olympic games and when we applied for tickets all those months ago, we had absolutely no idea Noah would be with us. We were fortunate enough to gain tickets for the BMX finals this weekend and so for the last couple if weeks we have been trying to encourage Noah to take to the bottle so we could enlist one of our parents to look after him whilst we went out on a day trip. He had other plans however, spitting out the bottle with a look of disdain: 'what is this rubber thing? What do you think your playing at daddy? Do you think me the fool?' We abandoned the idea of leaving him with a grandparent and with some trepidation decided to take him with us. Which as it happened was fine. Sure it was ridiculously hot, the hottest day of the whole games, yes our seats were in full sun so we actually only sat in ten for 5 seconds before moving to a shady patch with a very restricted view. But we had made it tithe Olympics with our baby b...

Noah had his 8 week immunisation injections yesterday, one in each of his thighs. I was fortunate enough to be at work for the actual event, definitely a good thing as I am rubbish with needles and from what Nikala told me the needle was huge. In my head I envisioned a knitting needle, the size of one of his femurs and I don't even think that was much of an exaggeration, given Nikala's description. Predictably he screamed, or at least he did for the second; he was blissfully unaware of the torture about to befall him for the first. But what was truly horrible was how unwell it made him feel for the next 48 hours. By the time I got home he was quite listless and didn't want to be put down at all, even though he was exhausted. He just kept on pushing out his bottom lip in that way which breaks my heart. I'd do anything to take his pain and discomfort away. Poor little chap.