Half term simple pleasures

You can tell that I'm on break from school by the fact that I've managed to write two blog posts in the space of a week after a gap of almost 2 months! This week is half term, a break in the longest term of the school year, and whilst it's still a busy working week for me to get fully ready, it's also a time to reconnect with Jake whilst my wife is at work. In amongst the daily pleasures of his big smile when I go to get him once he's woken up and playing peek a boo in the bath, these are some of the simple pleasures that are particular to this week:

• Family dinner times. I think because Jake is slowly learning to feed himself and wanting to make the most of both the time before and after he goes to sleep, we find ourselves cooking and eating once Jake has gone to bed. Not being at work this week means that I've got time to cook again and Jake isn't completely wiped out of energy by 6pm after nursery. This combination allows us to sit and eat together as a threesome and I think we all get something from it. Jake appreciates the company and the modelling of good eating habits, whilst my wife and I love watching him, chatting to him and catching up with each other.
• Walking with Jake. The normal speed of school life means that there's not a huge amount of time to be spent at Jake speed, especially as he's slowly gaining confidence on his feet. My wife will often hold his hand and walk from the car park to the house, but I always seem to be out of time in the mornings. This week has been different. There is something quite magical and heart warming about holding your child's hand and have them take their first stumbling steps alongside you, knowing that this is something that we'll do together many times over the coming months, years and decades. It requires time and patience, but the steady stream of smiles and babbling that goes along with it means that I never want to actually get to the car.
• Playing in bed. My wife isn't always the best at waking up in the morning, but there's always one way to make sure she wakes up with a smile. Jake loves to play peek-a-boo around door frames, and this is especially true when he spies Mummy, leading to gales of laughter. It's wonderful to then have the time to bring him to bed with us and rough and tumble him around. He sees the bed as a climbing frame and will happily crawl, pull and shuffle himself around, giggling all the while.

I guess the theme running through is having some time to slow everything down and appreciate the here and now. I know that teaching may not be conducive to this way of life all the time, but I think I will appreciate the breaks in between even more than before.

One small step for Jake...

I think it started with the walking up the stairs. This quickly became his favourite game, and part of his night time routine is that we'll put him down at the bottom and allow him to walk upstairs to the bathroom. It's very cute, but we have to be firm when he starts trying to come down again!

This turned into cruising where he pulls himself up on just about anything and then totters along, holding onto the side of whatever object he's near to. He finds this hilarious and you can track his movements from another room by the sound of the giggles as he moves round.

This in turn turned into supported walking behind Hurry Scurry (a dog on wheels courtesy of my older sister) or his car. The car was an inspired £10 purchase at a nearly new sale and has been useful for all stages of his walking development. The new favourite game is to walk to the front of the car, press the music button and bounce and dance along behind until the music stops, then repeat. The dancing cracks us up as well and puts a big smile on Jake's face too.

This is slowly coming into independent walking. The first sight we had was him standing up by himself in the middle of the living room and giggling maniacally as he fell down pretty much straight away. He then started taking one or two wobbly steps every now and then before dropping to his bum and shuffling the rest of the way.

My wife decided that to encourage this, she'd start walking short distances from the car to the house and from nursery to the car which I've been doing for the last couple of days. It does mean that it can take 5 minutes to cover the 50 yard distance, but the little puffs of effort and giggles from Jake holding onto my hand fills my heart with so much joy that all other worries fade away.

This decision to help him practice was compounded when I went to pick him up at nursery tonight. Normally he hears my voice, smiles and shuffles over as quickly as he can. Today, he heard my voice, smiled and took over a dozen steps towards me. It was such a wonderful sight to see, one that I know will stop being magical at some point, but one that for right now changes everything in the most wonderful way.

I can't wait for half term next week to do some more practicing!