Little Man is in the unenviable position of having colic and starting teething, which means he is a mega grumpus on a regular basis. Something that has always seemed particularly unreasonable about his behaviour is that he will regularly stop crying and chill out if he is picked up and walked around the house (especially if he goes on his dad’s shoulder, which is good absolute favourite place to be), but the second we sit down with him, he starts crying again.
Up until now, I was under the impression that this was because he is a deeply uncooperative child, but I discovered entirely by accident that THIS IS AN ACTUAL THING THAT ALL BABIES DO BECAUSE OF SABRE TOOTHED TIGERS.
Why do babies stop crying when they’re being carried?
It’s proposed that this reaction has the evolutionary function of increasing survival chances if the mother needs to escape from a situation with her child.
Unfortunately for parents with grumpy babies, the soothing effect only works for as long as the baby is being carried around. So if baby is grumpy because he was upset by a loud noise or sudden pain (like immunisations), then carrying them around will soothe them. But if the reason they’re crying is something that’s still ongoing when you try to sit down or put them down (such as hunger or painful wind), they’ll just start crying again straight away. Great.
OMG being in lockdown can be boring! As I can’t take the baby out and about, I’m trying to keep busy even while he’s curled up in my lap. And a lot of the time, he refuses to chill out anywhere else. But what to do?
1. Learn A Language on Duolingo
Duolingo is a great app that lets you learn a new language or brush up on an existing one – for free! You can practice for a few minutes a day and set up reminders so you don’t forget. I’m trying to learn some basic Japanese, to help us when we’re in Japan visiting my husband’s Japanese family. And I’m also trying to remove the cobwebs from my dusty old German skills. It’s easy to fit in a few minutes when Little Man has a catnap.
2. Read and Drink Tea
For Christmas, my father in law bought me a subscription to the Tea and Book Club by Bookishly, kindly suggested by my husband on the quite logical basis that I love both tea and books. It’s great getting a classic book and delicious fancy tea through the letter box every month, and it’s a simple pleasure that can be enjoyed while baby is napping on me (because obviously napping in his basket would be ridiculous). Bookishly are still open for business during the pandemic, with appropriate social distancing measures in place, and I can highly recommend them.
In these times of quarantine, I should probably be trying to read books to improve my mind, but other than the Bookishly classics, I’m mainly reading a tonne of Agatha Christie, because I’m a sucker for a good murder mystery!
3. Bake
“But you can’t bake without putting down the baby!” I hear you cry! Oh, but you can. Sometimes Little Man is happy to chill on his mat in the kitchen with me while I bake, but if he doesn’t want me to put him down, I just pop him in his baby carrier and carry on baking! I can’t really do anything involving the stove while he’s in his carrier, obviously, but all the mixing of cakes etc. can be done just fine. So far we have made banana bread, brownies, blueberry muffins and raisin and oatmeal cookies. His dad is gluten intolerant and can’t eat a lot of baked goods from the shops, so it’s nice to make gluten free versions at home!
Quarantine tip: a lot of baked goods can actually be frozen for later, if the batch you make turns out to be too big for your household. If they have a high fat content they usually freeze well.
Baby naps while mama bakes
4. Play Catan Universe
This is the app version of the board game Settlers of Catan. It’s not free, but there is an extensive trial version so you can try before you buy! It’s perfect if you have a baby, because you can play a game against the computer slowly over the course of a day and just put it down if he starts fussing and needs attention. I recommend, especially if you’ve enjoyed the board game version.
I should probably also give an honourable mention to my husband’s app game of choice, Football Manager, which he loves and which is on my ‘to try’ list!
I’m hoping at some point I might manage to fire up the PlayStation 4 and finally get around to completing The Witcher 3, but thus far I’ve not worked out how to do that with a baby in my lap…
5. Write this blog
I’ve really enjoyed starting this blog and again it’s given me something to do that I can easily pick up when Little Man is chill enough, and put down if he starts kicking off. I used to have a blog (Pituitary Ademoaner) about my health issues years ago, and it’s great to get back to writing again. This is a free site on WordPress, so if you’ve ever thought of starting a blog, why not?
6. Watch Netflix
I’m not made of stone, obviously all this mental activity is pretty exhausting and sometimes me and the Little Man just want to zonk out in front of the TV. I’m currently watching Gilmore Girls for the first time and loving it, but I’ve also watched a lot of Friends and Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Tiger King (obviously) and loads of nature documentaries.
So ever since Little Man arrived in the world, we have been wondering whether he’s going to be right-handed or left-handed. I’m right-handed, but there are lots of lefties in my family. And my husband is sort-of left-handed (he writes and eats with his left hand but uses his right hand for racquet sports in an ambidextrous sort of way).
I was initially convinced Little Man was a leftie-in-waiting, because at first it always seemed like he flailed around at us/hit his dad in the face with his left hand. Then, about two days after I’d mentioned this to my husband, he suddenly switched and started using his right hand more instead. Then he went into a phase of really switching from preferring one hand one day, and the other hand the next. So I started to wonder – at what age does our dominant hand become fixed?
So I started Googling, and found a stack of contradictory information. Some places say hand preference is set by 5 – 6 years. Others say it’s set by 18 months. This article, on the other hand, says that “Hand preference is the product of multifaceted developmental processes that begin before birth and expand during early infancy”, which quite frankly is not the kind of simplistic answer I was looking for.
Different babies apparently develop hand preference at different rates, which makes sense, because they develop everything else at different rates too. Something that is interesting from the article I linked is that apparently left-handed preference doesn’t develop as strongly as right-handed preference, and they think that this could be at least partly due to right-handed mothers unconsciously engage their children’s right hands more during play. So now, I’m going to try to make a special effort not to specifically pass objects to one or other of Little Man’s hands, but let him choose for himself.
We had big plans for Little Man’s first Easter. We were going to go stay with my parents. My father-in-law was going to come along too, as were my sister and auntie. On the Saturday lots of other aunties and uncles were going to visit to get their first chance to meet the little dude. And as my parents live in the countryside, we were going to chill in the garden, go for lovely walks, visit the local pubs… Etc etc. Then coronavirus hit and instead we’ve had to spend Easter at home, just the three of us.
So it wasn’t quite what we planned, but we still had a fabulous time. Some of my highlights were…
Little Man’s First Easter Egg Hunt
Martin and I took it in turns to hide eggs in the garden and then search for them. Little Man was absolutely useless at finding eggs. He spent most of the time just squinting in the bright light and dribbling. He’s seriously going to have to up his game for next year.
Eating, Drinking and Baking
We’ve had some really great food and drink this weekend! Particular highlights: Martin made me a fabulous gin and lemonade with mint leaves on Saturday, and made incredible lamb neck fillet kebabs on Sunday. He put a dry rub on the meat and let it marinade overnight and it was dreamy!
I baked a delicious gluten free Easter chocolate cake from this Nigella Lawson recipe, which I highly recommend! I also think it will be fabulous in the summer with raspberries instead of mini eggs.
Family Video Calls
We had some lovely video calls with family over the weekend and it felt like we had fun together despite the lockdown. We chatted to family in Japan on Saturday morning while they had their dinner, and it was their first chance to meet Little Man albeit remotely! It’s crazy how our nieces in Japan grow so fast, every time we see them, they seem to have grown so much. Another highlight was family Easter quizzes with my family over WhatsApp/Kahoot, masterminded by my awesome sister. It was fun to do something different and interactive together.
Playing Dress-Up
Obviously Easter means bunnies, which means a great excuse to dress Little Man up in an adorable costume! He was our Easter Bunny for the day on Sunday and it was ridiculously cute.
