First post of the New Year

Greetings from France!  In a moment of indulgence we decided to treat ourselves to a skiing holiday and I am typing this post from our friends chalet which we have taken over for the week. 

On 31 December I frantically scribbled down a list of New Year Resolutions, conscious that time was against me to lay down my priorities for 2014.  Somewhere amongst the random points on my messy wish list was written “weekly post on Alby’s blog”.

Messy maybe but the intention was true enough.  And yet it is now March and this will be my first post of the year.  Woops.  Oh well, better late than never, even if never is 62 days late. (That said, there is no internet here so it will be even longer until I get this uploaded).

There are a huge number of reasons why I haven’t blogged as often as I mean to.  Mark being home is the main reason but I think having a toddler in the house also has its part to play.  On the one hand as toddlers are just non-stop, but also because there is just so much to report on each and every day.  Babies change constantly but slowly: teeth take a month to push through, new sounds take a week to master, walking took Alby a good two months to really crack.  I’ve got dozens of videos taken over weeks as he slowly went from two steps to four steps to waddling across the room.

Toddlers live their life on fast forward.  Every day we get new physical skills: today he did “big jumps” as he bounced off a foot stool for half an hour in the living room.  Whilst eating breakfast he hung himself off the dining room table, kicking his legs.  Later he balanced himself between two sofas making an “Alby bridge” that I was forced to crawl under a dozen times whilst channelling the ugly troll from the “Billy Goats Gruff” and shouting “Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge” as Alby threw his head back and giggled manically.

We get new language skills.  Mark has taught Alby to say “Bonjour” and “Au revoir” and Bug finds great pleasure in standing on the dining table bench and shouting “Bonjour” as loudly as he can over and over again.  Ask him to say it to the nursery staff or shopkeeper however and our outgoing Trouble Monkey goes completely shy, hides his head in my neck and will either be completely silent or whisper “Bonjour” in a quiet voice we never get to hear at home.  (Despite Mark’s constant efforts and resulting annoyance Alby has yet to understand the different between “indoor” and “outdoor” voice). 

Alby is also now in the world of repetitive speech.  He can say the same words or sentences over and over for a good twenty minutes without getting at all bored.  Mark and I meanwhile are going slightly mad.  Try as you might it is very difficult to zone out a shouting toddler.  And when our attempts to distract him are unsuccessful (which is almost all the time) our levels of happiness plummet quickly. 

Not content with just random words or phrases, Alby also loves to ask “What’s that?”  It doesn’t matter if you have answered the question.  Nor does it matter if he knows the answer, he will just carry on asking.  Every now and then I find myself becoming my father with his “unask the question”.  “I don’t know Alby, what is it, you tell me”.  This strategy doesn’t work.  He will give the answer, finishing off his sentence with “what’s that?”

Today he stepped it up a gear simply leaning across the dining room table and shouting into my face “what, what, what, what, what”.  Toddlers are a joy!

People often talk about how quickly children grow up.  They comment about how you have to enjoy every moment as before you know it your little bundle will be an adult, off about the world without you.

And it is because of this that “writing my blog” was on my list of resolutions.  When Alby is older I want to be able to look back and see what he was doing at different ages.  I know I won’t be able to capture all of his new skills but I hope that I’ll be able to capture a few of them. 

I resent the idea that I have to enjoy every moment because there are times when he is challenging, when I’m fed up with my family and I just want to hide under the covers.  And I know there are times that they feel the same out of me. 

Now Mark is home it has been hard to have the same motivation to keep the blog going.  So hard it’s been over two months since my last post.  I’ve missed Christmas, my best friend visiting, work dramas, health checks and all sorts of daily giggles.  Finding the time is a challenge.  Posts take a long time to write and after a long day of work and childcare engaging the brain is no easy thing.  So my expectations are lowered.  I will aim to only write once a week from now on.  And I will aim to capture random moments.  I can’t do everything; there is too much going on.  But if I can fill in the bigger picture behind a photo then I know I’ll have very special memories and stories that I can share with Alby when he is that grown adult, off about the world.