Daddy Day Care Days

I have been back at work now for almost 3 months, working two days a week (Mondays and Tuesdays) and I am enjoying it a lot more than I did when I was full-time.  I am helping out in the Admin Department now and have happily left my old job as Travel Co-ordinator to Jen (who was filling in for my maternity leave).  Luckily Murray has a really good roster at his security job at Sanctuary Cove (4 days on then 4 days off) so the majority of the days I am at work, he has Jasper and it's "Daddy Day Care".   It's great that Murray is able to spend so much time with Jasper as I know that many Dads usually are lucky to spend one or two days a week at home with their kids.  They have bonded so well and I love watching them interact as Jasper just adores his "Daddy". 

Murray is the biggest kid I know so they obviously have a lot in common.  They both love playing on the swings - in fact I think Murray is secretly happy that he now has a good excuse to play on the swings.  They both love having a chat.  They both stick their tongues out all the time...and they are both very cheeky!

Murray usually takes Jasper out and about each day it's "Daddy Day Care", whether it be to a park, to run errands, or to a friends house and he always has a story at the end of each day about some funny "incident" that happened during the day.  Today's story involved an incident with poop and cat food!  Murray was changing Jasper's poopy nappy, and as Jasper is a squirmer he kicked his foot into the poopy nappy and then as Murray was trying to get some new wipes out of the box to clean it all up, Jasper kicked his foot into Murray's head and got poop all over his face!  Murray was quite horrified by his predicament but managed to clean it all up and then let Jasper crawl around on the floor for a minute while he got rid of the dirty nappy.  Unfortunately Murray didn't realise that there was a "breach of security" in the dining room at the time and the catfood bowl was still on the floor so upon his return he found Jasper happily crunching up a mouthful of catfood!  At least it was premium catfood and Jasper shouldn't have any kidney or urinary problems anytime soon!

Murray mentioned tonight that he might even start his own blog to record some of his funny Jasper stories, so watch out blog world, we may be hearing from him soon!

Aside from a few "breaches in security" Murray really takes great care of Jasper (and me).  He is really hands-on and cooks most of Jasper's (and my) meals, knows how to pack Jasper's baby bag for day trips, can get Jasper to sleep way faster than I can, and even shares the washing duties of the cloth nappies, so we are very fortunate.  We love you Husband/Daddy xox

Jasper xox

Well my gorgeous boy just turned one almost a month ago now and it just amazes me how quickly he is learning things now.  A couple of weeks ago he started standing on his own without holding onto anything and he is now getting quite confident and standing for longer periods of time.  Two days ago he just took his first steps.  Yes, it was only two steps, but it definitely counts!  We were sitting out on the patio having lunch and Jasper was standing up as Murray was offering him some peaches (one of his favourite foods at the moment) and Jasper stepped over to him, much to our surprise!  Unfortunately I didn't get the best view of it as there was table in between us, but I will be hovering around him with a camera in hand ready to capture it the next time he decides to do it!

Jasper James Dew - 1 year old

Jasper is also getting very chatty now and is constantly mimicking what we say.  His first ever word was "Dadda" and he said that when he was a week away from 6 months.  He took a lot longer to say "Mumma" (even though I was constantly coaching him to say it).  He still only really says it now when he is crying, but anyway it still sounds super cute!  Some of the other words he says are "duckeye" (not really sure what this one was about, but he used to say it all the time), "Scoobs", "ball", "uh oh", "uh uh" (as I am constantly saying this to him to try and stop him from getting into mischief), "nana" (short for banana - another one of his favourite foods), "cool", "crap" (which I think is his version of "Scrappy" - well I hope it is!), "Ruby" (I haven't witnessed this one yet, but Auntie Amanda swears he said it) and "bye" (which is usually accompanied with super cute hand waving action).

Auntie Amanda had Jasper for the day last week when I was at work (most of my work days Murray has him, but on occasion we have to rally in the troups to look after him when Murray has to work as well) and Jasper got into a bit of mischief at her house.  Jasper kept on picking up her telephone and putting it to his ear and having pretend conversations with himself - well we thought they were pretend!  He obviously is a child genius as he actually called our home number and left us two messages on our answering machine!  Actually, he really just got lucky and must have pressed "rediall" and we were the last number Amanda had called.  The messages are so cute, he is having a lovely little chat (now we just need an interpreter to work out what he is saying!).

Another thing that happened last week - Jasper got a black eye!  Jasper was playing in the bath with his new basketball hoop bath toy, and he was standing up trying to slam dunk (obviously he is going to be a basketball superstar when he grows up, as well as baseball, golf and soccer - no pressure Jasper!).  Anyway, as he was standing up holding onto the hoop, the hoop came off the wall and poor Jasper slammed his head into the edge of the bath, and the corner of his eye copped the full brunt of the fall.  It immediately came out in a black and red lump.  We tried to put an icepack on it but he wouldn't let us touch it.  He didn't cry for very long (thankfully he is still breastfeeding a bit so that definitely comes in handy when he needs to be calmed down).  The swelling went down by the next day and it is now more of a "rainbow eye" as it has every colour of the rainbow in the bruise now.  As much as we hope not to draw attention to the fact our son has a black eye, unfortunatley every piece of clothing we put on him at the moment seems to highlight his eye as the colour of his clothes always matches some part of the bruise!

Jasper about 15 minutes after the bath incident (eating the icepack!)

Jasper's lovely rainbow coloured eye (with the offending bath toy in the background)

Still has some cheeky smiles even though he has a shiner!

Actually in the last month and a bit he has been in the wars a bit as he had a very nasty middle ear infection just before he turned one.  It was the worst we had ever seen Jasper as he was so listless and had high temps for a few days and all he wanted to do was sleep on me.  The poor little tike must have been in so much pain from it.  Both ear drums ended up bursting from the pressure (there was a lot of gunk coming out of his ears when this happened) and after that he seemed to improve quite a bit.  We had Medcall out a couple of times during the week he had the ear infections (we love Medcall) and we also took him to our GP and to an Ear Nose & Throat Specialist just to make sure there wasn't any permanent ear damage.  Luckily everything seems to be OK.  Hopefully that's the end of the ear infections (fingers crossed!).

No more ear infections!

The week after Jasper's first birthday, he came down with a nasty gastro bug.  He had woken up around midnight and we had brought him into bed with us (as I usually feed him back to sleep and then I fall asleep so he ends up in our bed).  An hour or so after that he started coughing and I could feel something wet.  I turned on the light and he was covering in chucky spew, all over his clothes and all through his hair.  The poor little darling ended up spewing almost every 30-40 minutes for the rest of the night.  We were constantly changing sheets, towells and clothes (his and ours).  At one stage he coughed a bit of spew into Murray's mouth and then turned over and spewed all over me, all down my top, so it was a fun night!  Jasper was a real trouper through it all though, he even was giggling some of the time in between spews.  A couple of days later I ended up with the gastro bug and suffered the same fate throughout the night.  Murray also came down with it the same night, but held off spewing until the morning, and luckily only spewed once (which was right after he changed an exceptionally stinky nappy of Jasper's).  So we were feeling a bit sorry for ourselves that day!

They say things come in threes, so hopefully that's his three things and he will be all good for now (fingers and toes crossed!).