Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - parenting

Travelling with the truffler

2013-04-24T01:22:00+01:00

We're are about halfway through our family holiday to the remote ends of the earth. It has been the first time we've taken Ursula on a plane so we thought we'd make it a big journey while we are at it.

To her credit she was mostly fine with the 24 hours on a plane required to get to the other side of the world. Most of the tears were during take-off and landing when it was hard to explain pressurisation to a 16 month old child. There were a few other snatches of complaint due to tiredness but otherwise it went well. It helps that she is a very cute child who instantly won over the cabin crew who were keen to help keeping her amused. She even had a freshly prepared meal of Salmon Fried Rice cooked for her by the First Class cabin crew.

Before we left the UK I had left Ursula playing in the kitchen while I sorted something out in the living room. When I came back into the suspiciously quiet kitchen I found the following example of toddler OCD:

OCD much?

An interesting aspect of having psychologist for a mother-in-law is the wonderful insight she gives me on how the mind works. It had only been few weeks earlier that we had been talking about a common behaviour that often precedes a spurt in language development. It seems as children start getting their heads around the concept of things belonging to categories they will start sorting their toys (or anything else) into organised piles. Obviously an understanding of the fact things can exist in categories is a prerequisite for understanding a lot of things about language.

I make the distinction between language and speech because the two are very different skills. Language is primarily a cognitive ability to map communicated ideas to abstract concepts. Speech is the vocalisation of that communication and involves fairly precise control of a dizzying array of muscles in our mouth and vocal chords. The mastery of this physical skill takes a lot longer so often the distinction between words is only recognisable to parents and others who spend a lot of time with the child.

Ursula has been understanding basic instructions for some time now and it's now possible to send her off to fetch or carry things with a reasonable degree of success. Combined with her deistic pointing there has been genuine two way communication for some time. However perhaps due to fluke or stimulated by the new environment she's in on holiday we are starting to see an explosion in words. She's had the basic "Dadadada" and "Momamama" for sometime although it's hard to distinguish from the baby babbling she's been doing for a long time. We have long joked about her generic use of "dat/cat" for the cat and then pretty much any other object she was pointing at. Just before we left she had started associating "NaNa" with bananas (a favourite food of hers). We now have distinct sounds for birds, cats, dogs and my favourite "papa" for the Nexus 7 which we call the PadPad so as to avoid confusing it with the Apple brand product ;-)

My mum found my description of all this behaviour very amusing as I swing between proud Dad and scientific curiosity. I will put on the record that I'm not treating my daughter as a lab experiment but I do find the whole development of language and mind fascinating. I understand now why watching your kids grow and develop is so often cited by parents as one of the main joys of parenthood.

2012 a year in review

2013-01-18T12:38:00+00:00

In past years when I would review the year I'd flip back through my blog. For 2012 however I managed on average one post a month and the majority of those were geek related ones which in some ways are a lot easier to write.

The big change has been becoming a parent of course but at the same time I also took back the reigns of management as I became the head of the software team at work. The combined effect has been a year that flew by very quickly leaving a slight sense of bewilderment about where it has all gone.

I no longer feel quite as out of my depth as I did half way through last year. The first 6 months are pretty gruelling in terms of missing sleep and trying to interpret the needs and desires of something that can basically sleep or cry. However Ursula has grown up so fast you soon forget about what she was like and try and re-focus on what's she's doing now.

For starters she's now a fully mobile and operational battle-truffler able to move under her own direction. Next to that she's moved from simply reporting state (happy/unhappy) to communication. Granted every object she sees currently seems to be a cat (or possibly "that") but I suspect her vocal cords just need to catch up.

She's now pointing to objects she wants to interact with including multiple objects she'd like to combine (e.g. Bonjella and teething ring) like some sort console RPG game. She laughs at silliness, enjoys playing around and being chased and basically has a personality that is uniquely hers.

I used to think that it wouldn't get interesting until she learnt to talk but of course my preconceptions about what it would be like are constantly being shattered. Sure it still gets frustrating at times especially for Ursula. She understands more and more of what her parents are saying without being able to respond the same way. As she gradually realises she's an independent being able to manipulate the world around her she's very quickly having to learn that she can't control everything. I suspect that would put teenage angst in perspective if only we could remember our really formative years.

Well this post seems to have turned into yet another one about my child growing up. Other things have happened to me that are not Ursula related but really there not as interesting. Instead I shall try and look forward to what's coming up. The annual February walking holiday is just round the corner and I'm looking forward to catching up with all the other new (and slightly more experienced) parents at that. We'll be up in Manchester (without Ursula) for P&K's wedding which we are really looking forward to. And we'll be off to the land down-under for a much delayed holiday in April. Hopefully the next post will not be too far away ;-)

Trials and Trufulations

2012-06-08T18:17:00+01:00

One of the most challenging things about managing small bundles of fun is the fact their neural circuitry is brand new and developing very quickly. A key part of development at this stage is bonding with their parents. The last few weeks have been quite hard when Ursula has spent large chunks of time in my sole presence being very un-happy and wanting Mum (who I've been trying to let have some sleep). Understandably at this point she is most familiar with Fliss as well as having a fairly base urge for the milky goodness only she can provide. It hasn't helped that I've been working hard so not always been able to get home in time for the evening bath and bed ritual.

This combined with lack of sleep has seen me reach a fairly low ebb of late. In fact it's possible I've had a glimpse of the lack of emotional state that someone with depression has to deal with on a more regular basis. I was certainly hard pressed to remember the last feeling of emotion I'd had for some time.

It was fortunate then the jubilee weekend celebrations saw us visiting Leominster for M&T's wedding anniversary. Being able to spend time with both Ursula and so many of my old friends from Manchester was an excellent tonic for my depressed mood. What was even more useful was being able to chat to fellow parents who had already been down this particular road and were more than reassuring. I didn't realise quite how much I'd been bottling up worries about my parental abilities and it was good talk about it.

Of course now with those worries put aside for now we are tackling the next emotional roller coaster of trying to instill a regular sleep pattern in our dear daughter. Much as it is satisfying to successfully rock a previously fractious baby to sleep it's not a long term viable solution. Ursula will have to learn to "self-sooth" and get herself to sleep without her parents. The process however is fraught and there is a lot of conflicting theories on the best way to achieve this. Suffice it to say it's not been overly popular with Ursula herself and the resulting wobbly lipped tantrums have been taking their toll on us. We are trying to maintain perspective and keep our eyes on the long term goals. Wish us luck!

Simple State Machines and Other Things I Have Learnt

2011-12-27T13:27:00+00:00

We've just returned from 3 days at Fliss' Mum's house. Although we are still fairly sleep deprived things were made a lot easier by the presence of aunts and grandmothers who offered to take turns tending to the baby. This included one of those rarest of things, time for the two of us spend together without any other distractions. My life has now been reduced to a fairly simple state machine. There are predominantly 3 activities, for now ignoring the fourth: "At Work" which won't kick in until the 10th.

Checking baby is happy

This involves running though a fairly simple set of checks. Is the baby too hot or cold? Is the baby clean? Is the baby hungry?

I have to confess I have quickly developed the parental habit of sniffing around the crotch area of the baby. It is so far the fastest and most effective way of telling if a change is required.

Ursula is starting show interest in things so occasionally the correct action is just to walk around a bit so she can look at new stuff. I have no idea how her brain is assimilating all the knowledge of corners and ceilings (being areas of contrast she can make out) but it could possibly point to a future career as a engineer ;-)

Checking Mummy is happy

Invariably the baby's internal state eventually resolves to "Hungry" which requires it to be passed to Mum for feeding. Although we have been expressing and trying bottle feeds at the moment she gulps way to fast and invariably throws most of it up after the feed. So far we have found feeding "at source" is generally the most effective. However it does tend to immobilise Mum while she feeds so it falls to me to fetch and carry to ensure as many useful things are within reach when required.

Do everything else

The general order being cleaning, preparing food, household chores and finally if I'm lucky something else. Last night I did get a few hours to play through some of the latest CoD which Santa delivered over Christmas. I do harbour some hope of doing some recreational coding over the next few days although my start-up latency is so high that the state machine is often reset before I get into anything worthwhile.

The last few weeks have thrown up a few more interesting discoveries though. One of the more recent ones is that white noise is very restful for babies. We've managed to extend naps in the stroller/bassinet from around 5 minutes to up to 45 minutes by running a white noise app on the phone. My favourite Android app so far is Chromadoze which lovely little ope source app with a rather funky main display for setting the frequency balance of the noise. If I get a chance I may have a play at adding some features more aimed at soothing babies.

What big eyes you have

2011-12-18T18:42:00+00:00

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We've had Ursula at home for over a week now and are slowly getting into the swing of this parenting malarkey. So far we've nicknamed her "Trufflehog" after the manner she searches for the breasts when she's hungry which seems to basically be when she's awake. We are getting a growing amount of the "Quiet Attentive" awake state though. Her fascination is mainly with areas of contrast which to us mainly seems to be corners of the room. I'm not sure how much is down to baby face morphology but one comment that keeps coming up is how big her eyes are. Although I'm bound to be an overly proud Dad I'm fairly sure she's already starting to track objects and points in space. You can play an interesting game carrying her around being guided by the position of her head. A head she seems to be able to keep upright most of the time by herself although she still hasn't mastered the art of pushing up when on the play-mat.

As she is currently not self-propelling the day to day handling is fairly simple. However preparation is the key to success here:

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I'm sure all too soon she will become self-propelling and then our lives will become a lot less sedentary. In the meantime we are feeling quite pleased having made it out of the house several times. We've managed a brief trip into town, a tea-morning and a couple of trips to the pub. Ursula certainly seems to be happy to drop off when ever she is put in the car seat and driven anywhere. This tendency also translates to the car seat being "fitted" to the shopping trolley.

One area we have struggled with is the pram cot which she doesn't like at all - tending to kick and scream while at the same time divesting herself of the layers of warm blankets to shield her from the environment. While wheelies seem to briefly calm her down it's not a long term practical solution. I wonder if she is developing Minbari sleeping habits?

As it has been almost impossible to get her to sleep in the mosses basket we've already taken our first major parenting decision to keep her in the bed with us. It has improved on the amount of sleep we actually get and it makes feeding her fairly non-distracting. We do worry about the advice against co-sleeping but feel the size of the bed makes it a little more practical and we've developed fairly light sleeping habits quite quickly. The feedback from others has been interesting though, ranging from warnings about making a rod for our own backs later to encouragements to go with what works for us. At some point we'll have to encourage her to sleep on her own but it's a bridge we'll cross later on when she's sleeping longer hours.

I've been back to work a few days and have the next two to look forward to until I break for Christmas. I'm already looking forward to what month 2 brings. I'm hoping just a little more sleep and a lot more activity from Ursula.

We'll always have Paris

2011-09-13T13:06:00+01:00

We spent a rather spiffy weekend in Paris on the occasion of Fliss' Mum's birthday. We were a little out of the centre but in a rather plush penthouse flat kitted out with a full projector based home cinema system as well as a hot tub and roof garden wet-room. I posted a video of the set-up on my Google Plus account for the curious.

We didn't really spend that much time straying from the local base but spent a fair amount of time with the family. It was a lovely long weekend and we are both pretty relaxed on our return. I'm hoping it takes a while to wear off.

In the meantime preparation for B-Day continues. We are now enrolled in the state supplied [STRIKEOUT:indoctrination]education program known as Parent Craft. So far most of the information has been about what to expect on delivery day so I'm still waiting on the section on keeping them alive and raising responsible well-adjusted kids. I suspect I might be expecting a little too much from them.