Poor little Moo bear! He hasn’t been himself for the last few days – very lethargic, not interested in solid foods, and thirsty as a camel. Last night he drank over 200ml of milk (about 50ml more than he’d normally be interested in before dinner) and managed to hold it in for all of about three minutes, before he decided to see what our kitchen floor and cabinets would look like in pale shades of white. Turns out – not good; and they’d smell bad, too.

As luck would have it, Oscar had an appointment to see the GP today for something completely unrelated. Unsurprisingly, the GP was extremely concerned when Oscar’s temperature reading came in around the 40 degree mark, and she told Kristy that she should take him immediately to the Emergency Room at Holy Spirit hospital, for possible admission and IV antibiotics.

Eeep!

Thankfully, Oscar was seen almost immediately, and after listening to his conditions, the doctor decided that he’d need to order some blood tests, and an x-ray. Oscar was fairly brave given the circumstances, but there was a lot of tears, and a fair bit of screaming to boot. It’s a horrible thing to watch, and to feel so helpless; but at least we knew we were in the right place. I now have total admiration for the skill required to insert a cannula into a baby’s arm – their veins are so tiny!

Once all the tests had been ordered, a nurse administered some panadol (in a way that guaranteed he couldn’t spit it out like he normally does… *ahem*…) which worked rapidly to bring his fever down. Oscar was so exhausted by the whole ordeal that all he wanted to do was sleep on our chests.

About two hours later, all the tests came back, and everything was clear. This is overall good news – he doesn’t have a serious illness – but it also means the doctor couldn’t “treat” anything. Instead, it looks like he just has a virus, and with all the usual treatments – rest, plenty of fluids, panadol, and nurofen – he’ll hopefully be better in a few days.

Poor little Moo!

The little man has reached double (month) digits! Saturday the 23rd was the big day, though we got confused and thought it was Sunday. For that reason, here’s a photo of Oscar aged ten months and one day.

(I know it looks like we cheated to boost his height a bit, but it’s near impossible to get him to hold his legs still! But they were all lined up with Raggy’s legs – honest!)

So what’s happened in the last month? Oscar has started moving around the room, but for the life of me I can’t work out how. I can watch him playing, not looking away for a second, and honestly not understand how his funny little rocking motion from bottom to knees and back generates movement! But slowly and surely it does. Crawling is still restricted to going backwards.

Oscar spends a large part of every day laughing. Laughing when you walk behind him, laughing when you look around a corner, laughing when you make eye contact, laughing when he wants attention, laughing when he hears someone else laugh. It’s become my favourite way of checking if he’s still awake in the car. I can’t see him so I just do a fake laugh and wait to see if he fake laughs along with me!

We started baby swim lessons recently, and so far he seems to be having fun. In lesson two he put his head under completely, with no tears and minimal water intake.

Oscar switched to formula milk this month and coincidentally (or not) started sleeping through the night! He still cries out occasionally when he rolls over or has a bad dream, but settles himself back down in a few seconds. What a champion! I went nine months without getting into sleep deep enough to have dreams. I cannot describe what that does to a person’s body and mindset, though I’m sure some of you know from experience! Gerrod and I will never take sleep for granted again.

Oscar has funny taste in toys. Household objects are infinitely more fun than toys. My wallet. An ice-cream bucket. A rubber pastry brush. A newspaper. These and many other objects create hours of entertainment. A laundry basket is especially good fun, worn as a hat, used as a seat, or to play a game of peek-a-boo where he has to catch the worm (my finger) as it pokes through random basket holes.

As for real toys, he’s getting quite good at stacking rings, and balancing a ball on a stack of nested cups. He also has a worrying obsession with a little crab that hangs from his toy mirror. When we sit in his playpen he holds it with one hand and plays with toys in the other. I cannot persuade him to let go of it, and he cries when I unlatch his fingers to take him somewhere else.

Day by day our happy little boy becomes more and more fun to laugh and play with!

For the last goodness-knows-how-many weeks, Moreton Bay council has been redeveloping the play area in Lionel Burton Park, which is just at the bottom of our hill. Finally this week all the fences came down and it’s once again open for terrorising by the neighbourhood kids!

There’s a little cut-through path that goes from our street to the back of the park, and weirdly, the council decided to lay fresh grass from the path to the play equipment. I guess it will eventually take and become one with the rest of the grass, but at the moment it just looks like a very oddly coloured grass carpet!

Anyway – the new play equipment is lovely! I can see us spending many hours down there playing with the wee ones. We gave Oscar a push on the swings – he’s definitely a bit more balanced than he was on his first attempt, but he’s still a bit top heavy, and tends to lean backwards a little bit too much. But, he seems to enjoy it none-the-less!

Swings however are nothing in comparison to the slippy-slide! He’s still a bit little to stop himself from falling backwards and banging his head (or at least, we think he is; we’re not quite ready to risk it just yet!) – but I don’t think he’s far off!

Yeah, go little man!

Check out some more photos in the Fun at the park gallery!

Ah, it’s funny to see what kids find funny. It’s even funnier to laugh at what kids find funny. Especially when their laugh is as cute as this one.

Admit it – you’d laugh too if someone kept putting a little purple hat on your head. Actually you probably wouldn’t. I’m glad Oscar does.

The combination of Sunday’s gorgeous weather, plus my desire to obtain another Hard Rock Cafe pilsner glass for work (after mine was broken by the cleaners), made for a perfect excuse to head to the coast on Sunday.

We stopped off at Al and Suz’s place for morning tea on our way through. We also got to meet Al’s Mum who is out for a four week visit from Scotland!

Shortly after, we hit Surfer’s Paradise – oh my, how long has it been since I was there? Much has developed, and yet at the same time, nothing has changed. The food at the HRC was up to it’s usual standard – I can highly recommend both the pulled pork and beef brisket sandwiches – they’re awesome!

We strolled down the mall to the beach to check out the Surfer’s Paradise festival, however there wasn’t too much happening – in fact, most of the stalls had already packed up and gone home for the day. Still, Oscar seemed to enjoy our stroll along the boardwalk, and a happy little man makes for happy parents!

Wow, we’ve fallen behind with the blog! Oscar hit the nine month mark last Thursday!

We missed out on his eight month photo with Raggy because we were in Fiji, and there’s been loads of developments since month seven! Oscar now has six teeth – four on top, two down the bottom. And that’s not all that’s new – he’s also learned some sweet new skills! About two weeks ago, he spontaneously started clapping, whilst he was standing on Poppi’s lap. Better yet – this skill also translates to giving high fives! Possibly the most important life skill already conquered before his one-year birthday. Nice!

Oh and about five minutes after his first bout of clapping, he waved goodnight to everyone! (Yes, waving is a new skill. Yes, waving counts as a skill.)

He’s also become rather a chatty little man – an early indication that he’s definitely his mother’s son. For the most part it’s babble, but he’s pretty good at “Mummum” and “Daddad”, as well as “Bubbub”. One morning, Kristy passed him over to me and I said to him, “Hello Oscar!”, to which he very clearly replied, “Hi Dad”. Now, I realise it was just a random string of noises that coincidentally sounded like the right thing to say, but both Kristy and I heard it, and for a moment we were both stunned! Logically, we then repeated “Hello Oscar!” to him over and over again, in the hopes for a repeat performance, but he just smiled at us like we were loonies. If I could have read his thoughts, I’ve no doubt he was thinking, “Why do they keep saying hello to me? People are weird; better just keep on smiling at them.”.

Ahh, what a little champ.

When Oscar came home from hospital, we planted a lime tree for him in the backyard. It was an optimistic project, given our complete lack of competence to grow anything. As such, we cheated a little bit – instead of starting with a seed, we started with a small, established plant. Also working against us is the fact that the soil in our backyard isn’t great – actually, it’s mostly clay – so we used some gypsum to help break it up, and we’ve mixed in loads of compost to try and enrich it a bit, and to keep in the moisture.

So far, it’s going ok – the tree is still alive, though its lost all of its leaves now that winter is approaching. It also managed to get a disease of some sort, which we’re treating with white oil.

But, with everything working against it, our little tree has still managed to produce one small lime! We’re hoping it’s not a case of “the first and the last”, but just in case it is, at least we’ve got evidence that we had a very minor amount of success!

Not much going on this week, after our second long weekend of just chillin’. I have to say, I could easily get used to working less than five days a week, and I dare say it will be a rude shock to have to go to work on a Monday! Hopefully I’ll find it novel, though I’m guessing I probably won’t.

Anyway – after a lovely breakfast with the Dahl’s on Monday morning just gone, we rounded out our long weekend with some boules with the Threebie’s in the afternoon. Ted was eager for a push on the swings, so we decided to jump on the bandwagon and give Oscar his first ever swing.

I can’t say that he loved it, though he didn’t really hate it, either. His weight didn’t seem to distribute properly – he seemed a bit top-heavy, which caused him to tip backwards quite a lot. This is more than likely from his enormously advanced and therefore heavy brain, which will no doubt be beneficial to him later in life; but isn’t really ideal for a Monday afternoon on the swings.

Seven has always been a favourite number of mine, which I think is the same story for most people. However, contrary to most people who seem to say, “It’s just such a great number” or something equally lame, I actually have a basis for it being my favourite! “G” is the seventh letter of the alphabet! Yes, my reason is also pretty lame, but what better one have you got?

*ahem*

Oscar hit the seven month mark over the Easter weekend!

In comparison to his six month photo, he doesn’t appear to have grown up all that much this month, but he definitely looks a bit stockier. This is actually really great news for us, since he’s never been much of a fan of eating – in the liquid form that is; solids definitely pique his interest a bit more.

Actually, since our Melbourne trip, he’s gone right off most of his solid foods too – though he’s happy to eat banana porridge until the cows come home. To make it a bit more nutritious, and to ensure he’s still eating some vegetables Kristy tries to sneak various add-in’s into it, which for the most part is successful… but she got totally busted a few days ago when she attempted to infuse some peas. I let him off the hook for that one though; Daddy doesn’t like peas, either.

By far though, Oscar’s best new trick this month is sitting! I was almost worried that he’d never sit, as every time we tried to get him sit him up, he’d push backwards in an attempt to stand instead. But lo and behold, one day, out of nowhere, he pulled out a perfect sit, and stayed that way happily for quite some time. Bam!

Ah, so studious!

Oscar is quite a social baby, but by far his best friend is a little person who looks an awful lot like his twin brother. We call him, “Mirror Baby”, and Oscar is always ludicrously excited to see him.

Blah blah blah, ridiculously good looking; yes, I know. Oscar is pretty cute too, don’t you think?

Anyway, until Kristy introduced me to mirror baby, I had been wondering why on earth our bedroom mirrors had so many tiny little finger smudges all over them; especially given that they were at hard-to-reach-for-a-baby type of heights.

Now I know.