Jaan enjoying the sunshine.

Jaan and I were out in the park, me reading a book, Jaan snoozing and playing with his new buggy toy. Thanks for the sunnies and the toy Nayyar Nani!!!

Jumparoo Jaan

Jaan was a super bouncing baby today in his friend Morgan's Jumperoo.

Video below.

Jaan in his friend's Jumparoo from Nadiya Midgley on Vimeo.

Jaan in Morgan's Jumparoo. Look at him go! He was jumping about and laughing not long before I got my phone out to take this clip. March 12th, 2009.

Jaan in his Baby Walker - super DJ!

Jaan in his walker from Nadiya Midgley on Vimeo.

Jaan's a super DJ, eh? Look at him making music!! He certainly values his independence.

He loves standing in this thing making a racket, watching TV, watching us do housework, etc. Sometimes he makes it move (he 'walks'), sometimes he just bounces up and down. I can feed him while he is in it sometimes too.

March 2009.

Jaan at 5 and a half months +

Well the feeding situation is more complex now, and involves a bit more mess at times!

He eats a lot of fish, chicken, lentils, spinach, some rice cereal, quinoa and amaranth flakes, fruit and squashes/pumpkins/carrots kind of stuff. A lot of it is Plum Baby or Ella's Kitchen stuff ... he likes the tasty stuff! He adores the cheap and cheerful Orchard Chicken from Cow & Gate too though! His formula of choice is SMA, he has the White one now, for hungrier babies ... and he seems to like the Tommee Tippee bottles best of all - so much for the Adiri bottles I got for him ... he loves them, but to play with and chew on!! Not so much to drink from. I made him some rice pudding, millet pudding and quinoa pudding and froze it all in cubes. He has them, but definitely prefers the desserts made by Plum Baby. He like the Ella's Kitchen fruit range even less than my efforts! Go figure. A mashed banana in his cereal goes down quite well sometimes.

Jaan will eat 3 meals a day if he's offered them ... I try and encourage just 2 meals a day and extra breast-milk or formula ---- he's not quite 6 months yet and while he has the motor skills to eat even lumpy chunky stuff - meat off our plates, fruit, fishcakes and the like, his gut and digestive bits and pieces are still very young, who knows what they can and can't do. I can wait, and Jaan will have to wait. 

He looks at everything we eat and tries to have some. He looks a bit hurt when he is not offered any! 

On the teething front, he complains of gum pain (holding his gum and pointing and crying!!) for a few nights every week or so. Then settles down again. 

He's taking to his cot a lot better now in the daytime. He spends at least half the night-time sleep with us in the new super-king-sized family bed (yaay our first own bed ... we've always had a borrowed once since we got married).

TV is attractive to him - he loves Lazytown and watches the Tombliboos on In the Night Garden. We cuddle up together in the late afternoon and I feed him and pat him while he watches, hoping he will relax and then sleep. It normally works. Jaan is very intent on his latest project - mobility. He rolls from his back over to his front, but can't move back the other way. He tries and tries to roll and roll, he does it good naturedly. When he is tired, he stops for a few moments, drops his head, then when he has rested, raises it again and carries on trying. It takes quite a while before he gets so tired that he gets cranky and frustrated. I help him turn over then, but he often feels bad that he's not on his tummy anymore - hugs and cuddles and wiggle-wiggle action tends to sort the tears out though! 

Mostly though, Jaan laughs and smiles all day, every day, all the hours he is awake, and sometimes in his sleep. He does cry a bit in his sleep too .... perhaps he needs to pee, perhaps it is dream-related. Jaan likes to sleep through the night and have a long sleep in the morning too. His afternoon nap and late afternoon naps are now shorter, about an hour or so. He has a lot of playing to do all day after all! Plus he has a lot of 'walking' to do in his baby walker.

In terms of the kidney mystery - we now know he just has one for sure, and that is a good, healthy kidney, but that the pipework associated with it is dilated and needs to be watched. Every 6 months we'll have to take him for a scan, he'll have to stay on antibiotic prophylaxis indefinitely, and we'll have to keep a close eye on him as we have been doing. Iain is pleased as punch that it is nothing worse, and my parents urge me to be thankful to Allah. Personally I try not to think about it. Iain does the medication now. We found a manufacturer that makes the Trimethoprim without the strong taste.