I know that by this point, you’re probably thinking one of two things; either, “Hey, awesome idea! You’re awesome!”, or, “Why? You’re a dork!”. Likely it’s the first one, but for the haters in camp two, let me answer your question with another question: “Why not?”. Kristy also agreed that at least one of us should know how to juggle, just in case such a skill should one day be needed to save our lives, and to this effect, she bought me a set of juggling balls for Christmas.

You may think that a handsome young father of a toddler (such as myself) would be somewhat short on time for juggling practice, but as it turns out, it’s completely the opposite! You see, said toddler has never been motivated by food – something we really should have seen coming – and as such, we’d do pretty much anything to get him to eat. And now, with juggling practice on the books, we have one extra distraction to use while the other person quietly encourages food into his mouth in the background.

Actually, his comprehension is getting amazingly good, to the point where eating has now become a negotiation. “Oscar, if you eat that quarter of ravioli, Daddy will juggle for you”. Yes, we realise that negotiating a child to eat probably isn’t something you’ll see on Supernanny, but since Oscar would be pretty happy to skip solid foods entirely, we don’t feel like we have much of a choice. Worse, I fear that we could be setting him up for long term disaster in his adult life, whereby every time he sees someone juggling, he feels a sudden urge to eat pasta.

Worse still, it’s not even the juggling that entertains him; it’s the failure at juggling that really makes him laugh. The whole time I’m delicately managing three balls in the air, he’s staring at me, just willing one of them to go astray. Thankfully though, he’s such a lovely, helpful little boy, that when he’s not strapped into his high-chair, he’s only too happy to go and fetch the fallen ball on my behalf.

Ahh, service with a smile!

Yep, the tricycle is a huge winner!

Admittedly, the first few months of lessons were centered around self control during periods of loud noise, and I can now happily report that Oscar no longer bursts into tears when the coffee grinder is turned on. Success!

Since then however, we’ve moved on to more hands-on exercises:

You don’t have to say it. I know he’s awesome.

(Ok, you can say it.)

As you can see, Oscar was rather chuffed with the whole event, and quite enjoyed his little splash about!

G: Spoiler alert: There’s videos.

Oscar’s had the coordination, but not the inclination, to wave for some time now. He restricted his waving to his favourite person: mirror baby. But days into his eleventh month he started waving consistently. He won’t wave on command mind you, unless the context is appropriate. Goodbye, hello, goodnight are all ok, as is “Mummy’s carrying me out of the room, so just in case I don’t see you again…”.

His shuffling has also become much faster. His technique is to sit upright with one leg crossed beneath him, and one foot on the floor with knee bent. Then he leans forward, puts his hands on the floor and uses his standing foot to propel himself forward. It looks a little gorilla-like and has elicited some laughs, especially from Aunty Chellsie. This opens up all new play opportunities like Marco Polo, where he has to scoot around the house until he finds us, and chasey with older children. He shows no interest yet in crawling ‘properly’. He’s also pulling himself to standing occasionally, and practices putting his water bottle up onto the coffee table and taking it back down again: just because he thinks he’s super talented for having worked out how to do so.

Swimming is going well, and he’s determined to impress his teacher (crush, perhaps?). Everytime he comes up from underwater he turns to her for some praise! “Did you see that, Heidi?”

Oscar’s pointing has come along in technique and emphasis. Where previously he would gesture with his entire hand (“Behold!”) he now extends his pointer finger. Sometimes it’s to mark his interest in an object, chiefly ceiling lights and fans, and other times it’s to demand that you take him to see something. He enjoys visiting the lime tree we planted for him in the backyard, points to ask you to take him there, then becomes disappointed and confused to find the tree is now bare. He points to the wall clock to be held up to hear the “tick tock”. He points to the bees that Nonni has stitched onto all the pillows in the house. It’s a bit like an easy game of Where’s Wally.

When you click your tongue, Oscar smiles excitedly then starts clicking his tongue back at you. Sometimes it seems like a secret language that he enjoys speaking in. He’s also experimenting with new vocal sounds like “Ba-jeh” (Bonjour, perhaps?). He’s good at making kissing noises and gets a bit cranky if you don’t respond in kind. As for actual kissing, he kisses the teddy bear in his book when he reaches the last page and the last line “Goodnight!”. Consequently, this page will wear out much faster than the others. He also kisses mirror baby who doesn’t seem to like it and occasionally head butts Oscar in response. Mean mirror baby.

Oscar likes to crawl right in front of Gerrod’s giant speakers the moment they’re turned on, and bop along to the music. It doesn’t matter if it’s Pearl Jam or KT Tunstall, he’s happy to rock on. I’m a little bit concerned about what this means in terms of his future moshing and ear damage. Similarly, if a toy plays musak, or you tell a story rhythmically he’ll have a little bop. Must be his Jamaican roots…

G: I really need to learn how to video on the 5DmkII properly. So much potential!

If I hide a toy in the palm of my hand and turn it over to conceal it, he has a great time checking each hand in turn, finding the toy then handing it back with a grunt that I interpret as “Again!”. His favourite toys continue to be household objects, chiefly fridge magnets and an empty box of Uncle Toby’s oats that has a cool cardboard pouring spout. Spinning desk chairs are also pretty cool, to sit in or to sit near and push around. He’s also invented a game where he sits on one side of the playpen wall and I sit on the other while he passes toys in and out of all the different shaped openings. For some reason, this is hilarious to him!

Oscar has enjoyed some great time away with us this month, at Caloundra with Nonni and Poppi and at Mt Tambourine with the Durhams. He loves having lots of people around to play with, especially crazy head-shaking David.

On a slightly less positive note this was also the month of projectile vomiting, blood tests, chest x-rays and an emergency room visit. Oscar has had colds before, but never with fevers, loss of appetite and lethargy. We had a few scary hours there, where taking his raggy rabbit photo was furthest from our minds, but he’s on the mend now and photogenic as ever.

Happy month-day little man!

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.

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.

In this light, here’s a video of our trip to Cinque Terre in May last year. We did a lot of walking! And don’t forget – Kristy was five months pregnant at this point!

Music:
The Getaway Plan – Where the City Meets the Sea
Rise Against – The Dirt Whispered
Jimmy Eat World – A Praise Chorus

So first things first – there was one major disappointment to the evening. Al and I thought that the support act was Biffy Clyro, but as it turns out, they’re supporting all of the Australian shows except for Brisbane. This was a total bummer, as I’m a huge fan of their work! Instead of Biffy Clyro, our opening act was Dead Letter Circus, and to be fair to them they were quite good – but they weren’t the band we were expecting.

Anyway, Muse exploded on to the stage around 9 PM, with each of the lads standing on a platform about 20 metres above the stage, each in the middle of their own cage-like tower. The towers were all projecting various images throughout the concert – lots of the time, these were live feeds of the lads playing on stage, overlaid with huge amounts of video processing. Plus, the platforms were raised and lowered throughout the show, so that the band members could wonder around on stage, or so that the instruments could be changed (Matt had a full size piano on his platform for one track!).

Did I mention the greatest laser show that I’ve ever seen?

Yes, it’s overall a bit hard to describe, but here’s a video that may explain it better than I can! Unfortunately, it was taken on my phone, so the quality isn’t amazing, and the sound was far too loud to record successfully, but don’t let that put you off!

It was so much more than I’d have imagined it would be, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I suspect we have a new contender for “best concert ever”!

We stopped and enjoyed a delicious champagne picnic for lunch on the grounds of Oakley court. We chose the spot based not only on the lovely scenery, but also on the sign which clearly stated that non-guests were welcome. It was only when we pulled away after lunch we read the other sign which said, “mooring for hotel guests only”. Whoops!

We also had to master the art of “locking”. OK, admittedly it wasn’t exactly difficult to master, but it was still a big part of the experience! We went through three separate locks on our day trip – I wonder how many you’d have to go through until you made it to Manchester?

Here’s a short video of our day on the water. Note that the maximum speed of our boat was a hair-raising 8km/h (or perhaps 9km/h when we were going “downhill”); consequently, parts of the video have been sped up for your viewing pleasure (including the 6 minutes of footage of one of the locks draining!).

View the Boating along the Thames album on Picasa or Facebook.