To Buy Or Not To Buy

As Oscar approaches six months of age, we appear to be entering a new phase of 'stuff to buy'. I've been weighing up the pros and cons of various highchairs, stairgates and fireguards and trying not to get too distracted by the mind-boggling array of gadgets and gizmos described in the catalogues and baby magazines as 'must-haves' (now try telling a mother who lives in a mud hut with five kids that a baby wipe warmer is a 'must-have').
I seem to have developed a bit of a compulsion for teething toys. I see one that looks particularly interesting and soothing (sometimes I even fancy chewing them myself) then manage to destroy them promptly after purchase (I've discovered that boiling toys to clean them results in clowns with scary melted faces) or lose them (don't expect a baby to keep hold of anything whilst out in a buggy). By contrast, Oscar is quite happy putting absolutely anything in his mouth (my fingers, other baby's fingers, slightly-unwashed-looking-strangers-on-the-bus' fingers, in fact anything that carries large amounts of bacteria per square inch).
Then there's the vast bib collection. When Oscar started out on solid food, I put him in a neat little cotton bib, but his eating style is so messy that I rapidly progressed onto a larger vinyl-backed towelling affair, then one with wider shoulders, then one with sleeves, and currently we're road testing a contraption that goes down way past his knees and is best described as a waterproof cassock.
All this excessive consumerism coincides devastatingly with the end of my maternity pay, which makes me feel very guilty indeed. Time to put the baby monitor with infrared camera back on the shelf in Mothercare and back away very slowly...
My one guilt-free purchase has been a new set of cloth nappies which are working out very well so far, although Oscar's rear-end has doubled in size overnight. He's the J-Lo of Isleworth, minus the bling.

Dreaming of More Sleep

I must admit that five months into this parenting lark I imagined that I would be getting the odd night of unbroken sleep. So far this hasn't happened once (I haven't slept through the night since the start of my third trimester last September), and I'm beginning to fantasize about drifting off into an eight-hour slumber in a quiet, childless bedroom containing a large bed and fluffy pillows. Oscar is still having one long feed in the middle of the night, which is probably no bad thing as he's only just staying on his expected growth curve and almost certainly needs the extra calories. I don't have a problem with sitting up in bed for 45 minutes a night to feed him, but my patience is wearing a little thin regarding the four or five other 'sessions' of coaxing him back to sleep that Neil and I have to do each night. Oscar continues to be so blooming wriggly. He startles himself with is own thrashing about, which wakes him up (and the swaddling trick just doesn't work on a five-month old). If we put him in a baby sleeping bag he kicks around so furiously he makes himself sick. If you tuck him in with a blanket he catapults himself upwards until he's clear of it. Maybe parcel tape and a baby straitjacket is the way forward (before the NSPCC call round, I'd like to point out that was a joke). Heaven help us when he starts to crawl (which isn't that far off by the look of things) - he'll be off like a robber's dog if I so much as blink. Maybe a baby tracking device should be on my shopping list alongside high chairs and plug socket covers (and straitjackets).
Sitting up in bed in semi-darkness feeding my son at night makes my brain wander all over the place. I've started fretting about how I'll feel when Oscar becomes an astronaut (will I pack him sandwiches for his journey to Mars?), and I've been drawing up a list of modern day equivalents to nursery rhymes (Humpty Dumpty is suing The King's men for inadequate execution of first aid following an incident with a wall, Little Miss Muffet suspects her extreme phobia of arachnids is due to panic attacks brought on by lactose intolerance, etc). I also mentally draft ridiculous blog entries.

Little Dipper

A few weeks back I found myself standing sheepishly in a school corridor wearing nothing but a swimsuit, carrying a rather surprised neoprene-clad baby. This wasn't a bizarre dream induced by late night cheese snacking but the result of Oscar's enrolment onto a swimming course.
Five sessions later and he's quite the water baby, having swum underwater several times, learnt to float without support, started to hold on to the side of the pool and grab a plastic shark in the water (I think this is giving him mixed messages about sharks - grabbing real (non-pink) ones may not be such a great idea).
As a keen recreational swimmer (I spent a large part of my pregnancy submerged in chlorinated water), I'm delighted to see Oscar splash about fearlessly in the pool and develop skills that will keep him fit and safe around water in the future. So relaxed was he at the session last week that, rather astoundingly, he managed to fall asleep whilst floating on his back. Maybe I should trade in his cot for a flotation tank...?

Mealtime Fun

Oscar has recently started to show some signs of being ready for his first taste of solid nosh (waking up many times at night, doubling the length of his feeds, etc.) So about ten days ago we took the plunge and cracked open the box of baby rice. The phrase "like a duck to water" springs to mind - I think the little mite was a bit hungry - and polished off a large amount. Now my baby weaning book informs me not to expect my child to eat more than a couple of teaspoons at first, but fails to mention what to do when he gobbles down atleast 20 times that amount. Oscar has been enthusiastically demolishing large portions of pumpkin, sweet potato, banana, blueberry and apple, and he's now having two meals a day. Today's delights are carrot at lunchtime and pears for tea. Our kitchen has been transformed into a steaming baby food factory with a hob full of bubbling pans containing organic fruit and veggies, which are carefully divided up into ice cube tray portions and deep frozen for later use (Neil and I currently exist on decidedly non-organic, extra-GM takeaways).
Mealtimes come with predictably hilarious moments, involving spoons jammed up noses, blueberry in the hair, and sweet potato-coloured spit ups on the upholstery. Oscar's wardrobe becomes more colourful every day. I turned my head for a few seconds when feeding him one lunchtime and when I looked back he was dabbing the pumpkin off his face with one of his socks. He obviously objected to the fact that I had not supplied him with a monogrammed napkin.