"Where's daddy's tummy?"

"Where's daddy's tummy?"
Originally uploaded by Trevor Coultart

Oh dear - once again it's been far too long between posts. I have a couple of things in mind to write about, too, but time keeps running away with me somehow. (Spending too long reading other people's blogs and not enough time thinking about this one!)

For now, here's a fun moment caught on video by no less a filmmaker than my very own mother. Well filmed, Mum!

Wheeee!

Singing, Signing, Sliding and Sand

Now there's a tongue twister title for those of you who can talk!

I just thought I should report that my singing is really improving and it is great for getting off to sleep. I particularly like it a Music Train when we do the loud stuff - I'm really good at that. I do sometimes do the quiet stuff, but only at home with Mummy and Daddy. The instruments at Music Train are great too. Recently we've had these long tubes to bash on the floor and hit together - they make a great noise!

I'm still working hard at copying Mummy and Daddy's words and sometimes they get very excited when I mimic them quite accurately, but best of all is signing! It really works! The other day daddy was having a cup of tea but it wasn't his normal mug, which has pictures of birds on it. I had to let him know he'd made a mistake, so pointed at the mug and signed "bird" and "where" repeatedly until he'd understood. And yesterday I added 'hippo' to my repertoire. Perhaps not quite as useful as 'more', 'eat', 'drink', 'thank you' or 'finished', but Daddy was very impressed all the same. Other people have started to notice my signs too and that makes Mummy feel very proud.


Careful with the sand...

Finally, I wanted to tell you about my new sand tray (which sometimes has water in it too!). We bought it from a big shop with lots of toys in, but it was the absolute best thing there. And the lady from the shop had to help us get it into the car because it was so big! Mummy really likes the fact that it has a big umbrella over it to keep the sun off me, Daddy really likes squashing the sand into funny shapes, and I really like tipping the sand from one section into the other. Daddy taught me how to scoop it up carefully and pour it out accurately, so now I am expert at it. And all my friends love to play in it when they come to visit! I should also add that I have now successfully mastered going up and down my slide on my own, so the garden is just the bet place to play at the moment.


Not so careful with the water!

Sleep

It has been a little while since we mentioned the dreaded subject of sleep, but at last we have good things to report! The boy sleeps well! I did read more of the 'No cry sleep solution' and tweeked his bedtime routine as a result. This sometimes involves him actually going into his cot awake and 'singing' himslef to sleep, or he puts his teddy (Honey) into the cot and falls asleep on his bottle as before. Either way, he is going down at 6.30 and sleeping through until 5.30'ish with only one or two wakes that need our assistance. And this has been the case for about a month now! Added to this, he is sleeping a good one and a half to two hours in the morning, which is great for getting stuff (like school work) done.

What a champ!

The Cycle of Life

Every day I look at Ainsworth and marvel at the miracle of life. He amuses me, frustrates me, exhausts me, leaves me feeling guilty, perplexed and amazed. I love to discover something new that makes him laugh and watch him discover something new in ordinary everyday things. (Today he spent half an hour climbing up and down the hill at the back of our house and another twenty minutes putting stones from the road into the recycling box!)

Reflecting on our little bundle of life has added another dimension to my grief over the tragic loss of my brother five years ago and my Dad two and a half years ago. I'm struggling to articulate how his life has put a different perspective on their deaths, but it has. In some respects it has intensified my grief - they would both have loved Ainsworth so much and I would have loved to see him with them. The fact that this will never be so pains me to the core. And yet, in another way, his life coming after their deaths was very restorative for my soul. It was proof-positive of the the never ending cycle of life, and that was strangely reassuring.

I'd like to think (perhaps somewhat naively) that Dad and Dan have some concept of what is going on in our lives and are enjoying Ainsworth from afar. Dan was always on at us to have children because he believed it was the best thing he'd ever done - and I know where he was coming from now!

What's in a name? Part 2

Some months ago I wrote about how we chose Ainsworth's names.

Before choosing Ainsworth I asked my brother how people had responded to his son's name, which is also unusual, and he said that the response had been "almost universally positive". Well, looking back over the last 15 months or so I'm pleased to report the same. The "oh, wow" that we hear when people first hear the name is a positive one. People tend to like it, and it's been described as very English and very refined. They often ask if it's a family name (it is, but we're not aware of it having been used as a first name before).

A few folk have taken to shortening it to Ains or Ainsy, which doesn't surprise me, and almost inevitably there have been a couple of people who've thought it was Ainsley. One or two call him AJ, which we said we'd use but in fact don't often. What do we call him day to day? We call him Ainsworth.

My one concern about the name Ainsworth is this: I don't pronounce it very well. My enunciation isn't brilliant generally, and this is just one of those words that doesn't easily come out right. "Ains" is fine, it's the "worth" that gets twisted. I've heard myself saying versions that sound close to Ainsuth, Ainswoof, Ainsvuth, Ainswuss and Ainzuss.

I guess I should work on it, because I'm sure I'm going to saying it a lot for the rest of my lifetime.