Jake at 4

Dear Jake,

It feels strange to say that I have a 4 year old at home, and your mum/mom and I were talking last night about what we ever did before you. We certainly slept more (though that's more to do with Sophie!) but we're not sure what the pictures were of on our cameras and who we spent most of our time talking about. You are quickly growing up into a delightful boy, one who is kind and caring, who follows the instructions, one who has a great sense of humour and one who we love to bits on a daily basis.

It's been a big year for you (and for all of us) in many different ways. I'm typing this with a cup of coffee at Nana and Papa's house where we moved to 6 weeks ago, listening to your baby sister snuffle in her sleep (as I'm sure you are too). The way that you've accepted and enjoyed these changes has been incredible.

I think you were born to be in America in many ways. You love playing outside, especially on the massive dirt piles that currently litter Nana and Papa's garden. I hope you don't get too disappointed when they get used up on various projects, but the number of those that are planned with you and the other grandchildren in mind will more than make up for it. You love the space of the house and it's fun watching you work out the routines and patterns, as well as where everything goes. Whilst you won't naturally tidy up by yourself, you take a delight in putting things away in their right places.

Your sense of direction continues to amaze us. You learned all the shortcuts on our routes home in Leeds and would routinely scold me for not going mummy's way, which you were convinced was quicker (as was she...). This has continued over here and you're beginning to tell me which roads go where, which boggles my mind as I'm still not sure how much you can see from the back seat. You also love to spot "papa trucks" (pick up trucks) and spent a fantastic afternoon driving around with me saying "yes" and "no" to the driveways, depending on whether they had a papa truck or not. You came up with this game all by yourself (with Hobbes, of course!), which is something you're getting very good at. Your mum and I could sit and watch you play for hours.

The other big change, of course, is your sister. At times delightful, at times annoying, you've taken her arrival in your stride. I think up till a couple of weeks ago you saw her as an intrigue, someone who took attention from you, but was cute about it, someone who sometimes woke you up in the night by crying, but smiles at you constantly. This is until she started to crawl. Her love affair with you (and your toys) is made much easier by the fact that she can now scoot across the mat and get up in your business, which can be annoying. You're getting used to fobbing her off with toys, or getting me or mummy to help distract her. Maybe we'll convince you that playing on a table is a better idea, but it's much more fun to play on the floor.

Finally, we love talking with you. Your vocabulary has grown massively this year, and you're able to discuss so many things with us, from your feelings about Hayden dying, to feeling shy about new adults, to preparing you for small-but-big changes like putting your dody in the mail. This last one is a big step, and one that we earmarked for your 4th birthday. When we tried getting you to give it up before, it didn't really work, but now that you can talk and think about things, you went to sleep without it tonight without a fuss. We love your dedication to logic, especially trying to work out who has driven where in which car, and catching mummy out in a lie when we both stayed home to sort out the house. You're a clever kid.

What a big year Jakey Bear. This next one will see you start daycare, get some American friends, explore more and move into our first house, and as always we can't wait to see what happens next with you.

Love you

Daddy

Jake at 3

Dear Jake/Jakey/The Bear/Bjorn/Menace,

Time seems to fly by faster and faster as you get older. I can still remember the creeping sluggishness of the days of your first week and wondering how you'd ever be a month old and suddenly you're turning 3 today.

I wonder if time passes so quickly because you're a fun kid to be around at this age and I spend most of my time with you fully engrossed in whatever bit of "playing time" we're up to. Weekends just seem to zip by in a flurry of park visits, reading books, rough and tumble and playing with your cars and bricks on our living room floor. Now that you're starting to speak more and more and string longer sentences together (Daddy no hat, Mummy and Jakey hat), these activities become so much more interesting as you invite me into your world and we can start have imaginary conversations. Even Hobbes has joined in on the action with his own distinctive voice, though I sometimes wonder if you use that dog as a testing ground for behaviours and words that you've found out about at nursery to see what our reaction will be...

You've also got the idea of sharing, whether it's in the cute way of bringing everyone a bar to eat when you're hungry, or stealing my couch or my apple under the name of "Daddy share". In either case, you're growing up to care for others and my heart filled when we went to see Granny earlier this year. She was crying because Baba had died and you told me "Granny sad" and went to give her a cuddle because you know that's what you do. There is nothing better in this life than a Jakey cuddle, especially now that you can put your whole body into it, and the number of bad days at work that you've saved by laying your head on my shoulder and having a squeeze are too many to count.

This year's going to be a big one for you. By the time that your next birthday comes around, you'll have a baby sister and a new house to live in. Both of these are exciting things, but will change how we are as a family. You seem to be happy with the idea of having a baby sister now (before, you just wanted a tiger!) so I hope that you love her as much as we will. It may seem at times that she gets more attention than you, and whilst Mummy and I will make sure that you get our attention too, I want to say here that our love for you will never waver and I still wake up each morning thankful that I get the honour and pleasure of being your dad.

Choices, choices

As Jake becomes more and more verbal, both in terms of speech production and his understanding (there is no greater feeling for me when I feel like I'm having a proper conversation with him!), I can see his personality growing and developing in front of our very eyes. Fortunately, this is a child who is filled with fun, a cheeky sense of humour and an already keen sense of fairness and sharing.

The teacher in me, however, sees this ability to interact through words as an opportunity to lay down some rules and boundaries, even at this early age. We're a few weeks away from Jake turning 3 and so far (knock on wood!) haven't seen much of the "terrible twos". Of course, Jake has shown that he is often late to developmental milestones, so it may all be ahead of us. However, I like to think that our choice led approach to situations of potential conflict have reduced stress. For example, in the morning, he gets to pick out which t-shirt he's going to wear that day, or a choice about which coat he's going to wear. By introducing the choice about the coat, there's no negotiation about whether he's going to wear it or not. Bath time is a great example. He's never keen on the thought of having a bath (even though he loves it when he's in), so our nightly conversation goes like this:
Me: Jake, it's bath time
Jake: No bath time, it's playing time
Me: Do you want a bath or a shower?
Jake: Bath please Daddy

And up we go. If he's feeling belligerent, I threaten him with a shower and he'll then choose a bath to avoid the horror of a shower. But it's still a choice, and one that he feels in control of.

This approach means that there's very few times that we have to put our foot down with him, and even those situations can be turned into choices, such as who's car we're going to take or which soft toy he gets to bring food shopping. It works well for us, and it helps Jake to feel in control of the world around him through choices that we're happy with him making. Long may it continue.

Week o'posts - Day 2 - Hobbes

2nd day in, another post! This is one is dedicated to Hobbes, Jake's favourite toy, companion and punching bag, amongst other things. I want to write this as a memory for him and his love for the dog as against a time that he finds something, or someone, else to be more appealing.

Hobbes (Hobby as Jake calls him) came into our lives soon after Jake was born as a gift from a freind of my wife at work, who had got him free with a new car. It wasn't until he started to be able scoot around and found him that the love affair started, but since then they've been inseperable. Hobbes sleeps with Jake, gets tucked into bed in the morning when he leaves for nursery, comes food shopping and generally goes wherever Jake goes. It's adorable how much he loves that dog, especially how often he kisses and cuddles him, whilst getting a smooch out of Jake is a rare talent and one that we still haven't mastered.

Hobbes has also been instrumental in Jake's development. For example, he wasn't a big fan of brushing his teeth, but as soon as Hobbes started getting stickers for brushing his teeth, Jake was all about it and now likes to have them done. It also gave rise to one of my favourite Jake and Hobbes pics:

Hobbes at the bottom of the slide, Jake skidding down, scooping up the dog on his way past, giggling his head off. 

Because Hobbes was free with a car, he's slowly disintegrating and whilst he smells pretty bad, we are loathe to wash him too often because he comes out with a few more threads showing. Hopefully we can keep patching him up, but a few friends have also suggesting writing to the car company to get a replacement. It's not a bad idea, but I wonder if Jake would notice the difference?

In the meantime, I hope that Jake's obsession with him continues for years to come. 

Twice the fun?

Wow, it feels like forever since I've done this, but as I keep on thinking of things that I want to write about, I feel that I need to push myself to write. I spend so much of my time writing (either for school or for small amounts of money online) that it seems daft that I don't put more on here, so my aim is a blog post a day for a week to get my thoughts down, which will hopefully bring me up to speed and make me write more. Lofty ideas, but I have the 7 titles in my phone, so let's see what happens.

Today is full of thoughts about the second baby. It's always part of our game plan to have two and (with the help of the Clear Blue calculator!) we've timed it pretty well so that Jake will be just over three and I'll be able to use the summer holidays to stretch two weeks of paternity leave in eight.

I think the biggest difference to last time round is how quickly time seems to be going. The first 12 weeks with Jake seemed to drag by and I can remember the relief of having our scan so I could tell people. This time round, we didn't have the scan till 15 weeks, but it didn't seem as bad. In part this will have been because we told our close friends and family before, but also I think that life moves much quicker with Jake (and work, and friends) these days. For example, I can't believe it's February already, meaning that Jake is that much closer to being 3 and the PBE seems as far away as the Stone Age.

It's also interesting seeing how my wife is coping with it this time round. Of course there are similarities (she popped much earlier, but is still grump about being "chubby"), but this time there's been a lot less tiredness and morning sickness, and to be honest, if we hadn't taken a picture of the pregnancy test, I would have thought it was just a dream until our scan. Her cravings are different this time (sour cream and ice cold water at the moment), she still runs cold (she was constantly warm with Jake) and there's a lot more rage (she has a short temper normally, but now it's a few molecules wide).

We have our 20 week scan booked on the 10th February, and people ask us whether we'll find out (yes, it will still be a surprise!) and whether we want a girl or a boy. Last time round, we were pretty set on a girl, so I was pleased we found out ahead of time (still wouldn't trade Jake for the world!). This time round, I hate to sound cliched, but honestly I couldn't care less. It will save us money to have a boy as we've got all the clothes, but I've not been a father to a girl before. The only issue is that we can't agree on a boy's name (though we're getting close) but love the name Zoe for a girl (though I can't find the umlaut on here yet!). Either way, it's going to be fun to find out so we can start talking about Baby 2 as a person, rather than an "it".

On that subject, I think it will make it easier to get Jake used to the idea. At the moment, when we ask him if he wants a baby brother or sister, he says no, and asks for a tiger. Whilst this makes us laugh, I want to start getting him ready for the coming change. This manifests itself in many different ways. For example, my wife and I are starting to make a conscious effort to stop calling him a baby (he's now over 3 feet tall, so it's getting easier) and to call him a big boy or a big brother when he's doing something important (tidying, helping, eating with a fork). It's also a driver for us to get him to sleep in his big boy bed (another post this week) and to potty train him (another post this week). I guess in the end I know that he'll see Baby 2 as a challenge initially, but I want him to realise that the baby will need very different things from us, and whilst there will be times when he may feel left out, he's much more grown up and can do so much more. In an ideal world, he'll learn to love her/him quickly and want to help look after them, but knowing that reality may not work that way, we'll keep talking about it to prepare him as best as possible.

The final thoughts I have about Baby 2 is how we'll cope as parents. This blog has been a source of comfort and an interesting reminder of how much we learned with Jake and things we want to repeat/avoid next time round. However, I'm not looking forward to the sleepless nights again, the worrying about their sleeping and having a tiny person who can't really do much. I don't think we'll realise just how grown up Jake is until we have a new born again in our arms.

Familiar Faces

One of my favourite things about Jake growing up is his increased awareness of the world around him and the people in it. The sheer delight on his face when I go to get him up from a sleep still melts my heart, as does the little voice saying "'Ello Daddy!" and whilst he's currently calling my wife by her first name, he still recognises her as Mummy and goes to find her every morning.

Beyond that, his recognition of our friends and family is slowly increasing, but it's interesting to see who he remembers, which names he can recall and how he groups people together. For example, he now knows his 4 grandparents by sight (even through a grainy Skype connection!) and gets their names right most of the time. However, both Grandpa and Papa go by Papa, and when we went to see his great grandmother (going by the name Baba in the family) he initially talked to her as Granny, as being someone older with white hair. I have explained to him the brownie points to be earned by getting people's names right, especially grandparents.

When it comes to aunts, uncles and cousins, he's less confident. However, he knows the names of my sister's kids and found pictures of them the other day at Baba's house and came running in calling their names. He also picked them out during a family Skype conversation and delights in their company every time we see them. It may be that they spend a significant amount of time playing with him whenever we get together, or that they're closer in age to him so are that more interesting to be around. In either case, it's cute to watch. He's aware of his Aunts and can just about do names, but definitely recognises them on sight as people who will adore him and play with him (which also most of the rest of the world). Uncles he's a little less sure about, but that's also probably because we don't see them as much.

Our friends are an interesting mix as none of the ones we see regularly have kids and even those who we see on a frequent basis, Jake still takes a little time to remember who they are and that they are nice people to be around. On the whole, he tolerates their presence in our house but will definitely play with them if they get on the floor with him. There are a few exceptions, especially on our softball team, who he actively smiles at when we get there and who he will seek out as playmates during the game. There's a certain amount of Jake's trust to be won through reciprocity and engagement, but the rest must be down to the smell, or small body language cues, as he has been known to lend Hobbes (a sign that you've joined his inner circle of trust) to effective strangers and withold his affection from some of our closest friends for months.

As his language and communication skills continue to develop, it will be interesting to see if the way in which he engages with our friends and family also changes.

Speech and language

More juice. Ank oo Daddy. Papa truck gone? Just a small section of the daily burblings of Jake who after mastering walking, pocket use and climbing stairs is now tackling mankind's biggest achievement - language. The drive to communicate has always been there, whether it's a cry in the night for food or comfort to tugging on trouser legs (or in Jake's case physically pushing and pulling people) to get what he wants.

Words slowly form out of the babble of noises, though we're not entirely sure what we'd count his first official word to be (we think "up" or "more" though they don't make for interesting stories like my wife, whose first word was her dog) and he's now starting to stitch them together into short sentences. At this point, he still has a small number of clearly defined words, though "Daddy" and "Hobbie" (more on Hobbes in another post!) are a couple of them. However, he's learning more and more each week and working out how to put them together to express more ideas. For example, he's slowly starting to learn the names of people close to us, and sticking the word "here" after their name shows his delight at their attendance. He's also got the idea of rising intonation and a head tilt to ask a question, so after seeing my parents on Skype the other day, he looked at me and said "Grandpa here?". All sorts of interesting connections being made every day.

We've recently taken him for a hearing test (slightly undermined by the fact that one of the objects they used to get his attention was a train. Jake. Loves. Trains. At that point, the test was over as all he wanted to happen was for the "choo choo" to light up) as we're concerned that he's slurring some of his sounds and doesn't appear to make others. The results were inconclusive but we think that two things will make a difference: Firstly, he's moving up to the big boy room at nursery, where he'll be surrounded by verbal children up to the age of 4 and given how much he learns simply by watching and copying, I think his vocabulary and speech clarity will dramatically increase.

The second, and harder change, is to get rid of his pacifier. We've always used it as an alternative to having him suck his thumb for comfort (there's enough bad teeth genes that we figured he doesn't need any help!), but the speech lady said that it can cause noises that only he can here that may be blocking out some of the letter sounds that he's struggling to produce. We've decided to only give him his pacifier at night to help him sleep and to be fair to him, each of the last two mornings he's woken up the first thing he's done when I've gone in to get him (after saying "hello Daddy") is to hand me his pacifier. It's been a tough couple of days as when he's calm and happy, it's not an issue, but when he starts to get tired or upset, he starts calling for it and gets frustrated when we don't give to him. As always, we aim to distract him, which works most of the time, and he's starting to ask for it less and less each day. I guess it's a question of being brave enough in ourselves to trust our judgements and ride out the tantrums (and explain to our friends and family what we're trying to do and not that we're just trying to piss off our child!) until he finds other ways to calm himself down.

Hopefully, both of these changes will impact on his speech and he'll continue this amazing acquisition of language unhindered and with the same delight that he learns all of his new tricks.