This is for the grandparents. Jethro can walk now.

Voice in the video is me (that is, “Dad”). I sound like an idiot, but a proud parental idiot, so I suppose that’s normal under these circumstances.

Jethro joins a plethora of other babies, pushing trucks around on YouTube. I feel so common — but the grandparents are sure to lap this stuff up.

I wanted to post it with WordPress’s video service, but they want to charge me $60.00 for the privilege.  I’ll give that a skip, at least until I start my film production company.

Don’t worry. Jethro’s fine.

Jethro's Cake was less conventional than expected

Angie and I are rather proud of ourselves because we’ve managed to keep the little sprog alive, well and kicking (and now even walking, although only just a step or two at a time).

Jethro’s birthday flew by on Wednesday the 27th. Parties were scheduled for Saturday — two parties.

Um. Yes. Two parties. This doesn’t count the poker party I attended the same evening, but that’s another story that lies more at home in the Waffle Group.

At first we thought we’d have one epic party, inviting everyone imaginable. When everyone imaginable numbered over 35 people, we re-evaluated our plan and decided on only family.

But now, without the additional people to dilute the potential friction between Angie’s formerly married parents, we ran the risk of a most unpleasant birthday celebration. Our risk assessment complete, we opted for two parties, accepting the costs of additional admin in exchange for the benefits of a pleasant day.

It worked — with my parents obligingly agreeing to attend both parties in order to give each party a seal of authenticity. My mother even procured two Number One cakes — one cake for each party. Both cakes were similarly inaccurate in their depiction of the numeral under consideration, but both cakes were rather delicious. I ate a little too much cake that day, and there were sugar-rush/peculiar dressing implications.

I’ve split the pics into three galleries.

1. Before the party.
2. The first party — featuring Bill.
3. The second party — featuring Sandy and Winnie (and Megan who declared herself family, but we don’t mind)

Enjoy:

Jethro’s 1st Birthday

Jethro’s Birthday — Party 1

Jethro’s Birthday — Party 2

Lurking behind a door

I thought I published this a month ago. Seems it’s been sitting in drafts all this time. I was surprised there had been no comments. Fixed now. Happy reading.

One wouldn’t think that something as cute as the munchkin holding on to the door in the picture would be causing trouble at crèche.

That’s pretty much how we saw things, until we received an injury report from Tiny Town.

I wasn’t alarmed to discover that there was such a thing as an injury report. We have, after all, been receiving a daily log sheet ever since Jethro first started going to crèche. The daily log includes charming input fields such as “Number 1’s” and “Number 2’s ,” where the teacher on duty checks the time at which said excretory output occurred.  We encourage Jethro to save the Number 2’s for the crèche, but he doesn’t always cooperate.

The alarming thing wasn’t the injury report itself because accidents do happen and it’s good the parents are informed, it was rather that “Bite” is such a common injury as to have its own place on the list of possibilities, along side the more expected “Cut,” Bruise,” and “Graze.”

I found the injury report thing quite amusing  (have a look at it below). From my perspective, Jethro was pulling a little girl’s hair, and received fair retaliation for his efforts (he doesn’t have enough hair at the moment for the girl to pull back on). Angie didn’t see it that way. She went all motherly and defensive, vowing to kick the little girl the following day when she collected Jethro. A little morally reprehensible, I thought.

Angie calmed down though, and even if she hadn’t, I’m completely certain that she wouldn’t take to drop-kicking infants about the crèche playground. It would probably get Jethro thrown out of Tiny Town, and then we’d have to look for another crèche — and that would be real pain. And they’d probably warn the other crèches about us, so we’d have to move to another city and look for other jobs.

What actually happened when Angie returned to the crèche was that she discussed the situation with the teachers. It seems that Alexia and Jethro are a little obsessed with each other, and seem to like chasing one another around, with resultant hair-pulling and arm-biting. Certainly Jethro is instigating mischief as much as anyone involved.

Chasing after the ladies already? He’s going to need to refine his technique a little though, unless biting is what he’s looking for.

Injury Report. With Biting!

Daily log sheet (Why no No.2's Jethro?)

Just in case you assume I’m being a bad parent — proof that he liked it.

Sometimes, after dropping Jethro off at the creche, I worry that I didn’t actually take him to creche. I worry that, instead of taking him, I just left him at home in his cot and then drove directly to work.

It is disconcerting.

Jethro’s first tooth to break through his gums appeared on Saturday.

Excitement if you care about Jethro!
Otherwise not.

He’s quite coy about showing it at the moment, and is continuously flicking his tongue over it making it almost impossible to photograph.

Once he cooperates better, I’ll post a pic.

Jethro crawls, and he’s getting faster each day.

It moves. Its movement pleases it.

In contrast, his parents are getting more nervous each day.

And completely unrelated — some photos involving dogs:

Showdown

Kelty watching over Jethro -- as usual