I bet sharks don't have this problem

So we have teeth. Finally. For all those who wonder about teething, I’ll have you know that it took approximately three weeks for those little fuckers to come through. Most ‘experts’ will tell you that teething doesn’t take this long. I can assure you that sometimes it does. And it wasn’t this magical tooth fairy thing where one day the teeth aren’t there and the next day they are. We saw those things under the gums and swollen for at least a week and a half. We then felt the teeth but could really see them properly for another week and a half. Finally, they are there in all their glory and oh my god is it impossible to brush little teeth - but that’s an entirely different story.

Because it took so long for those little bottom teeth to come through, Henry’s sleep schedule is no longer, well, effective. For three weeks he work up almost every hour on the hour and now he just does it because that’s what he’s used to. No longer can we put him down at 6:30 PM and break out the Sambuca and stripper pole. We barely get the screws tightened in the ceiling before he starts screaming. For the last few nights Andy and I have taken turns sleeping with him on the couch as it’s easier than fooling yourself 7 times a night that you’ll actually get to sleep in your own bed. I finally broke down and bought a book called “The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers”. I felt really idiotic buying the book as I felt at the time it’s the equivalent of buying a book called, “If You Don’t Feed Your Baby Everyday, It will Probably Die.”

The book arrived today and I read through all the bits that actually pertained to us. What I paid almost 8 pounds on a book to learn was that we’re idiots, we’re doing it all wrong, and it’s going to be weeks of pain and suffering to correct the problem if we even have the will power to do correct the problem in the first place. Basically, we’re supposed to sleep train.

Sleep training (according to the book) involves a variation of the Ferber Method. I can’t be assed explaining it to you here (read: I’m too damn tired) so if you are interested, click the link. The long and short of Total Parental Impact is, after about a week baby sleeps. Before that magical time happens, TPI is 7 days of listening to your child cry while you never sleep. You know, like turn yourself into a robot. Wee! Andy and I have approached the subject in the same way we approach the subject of cleaning the bathroom.

“We should really clean the bathroom.”

“Yeah, it’s gross in there.”

“We should clean it then.”

“Do you want to clean it now?”

“Hmm, maybe after this show is over.”

“OK, the show is over, shall we clean the bathroom?”

“We should clean it, shouldn’t we?”

“Yep, we should.”

“I don’t feel like it though. How about we clean it tomorrow?”

“Fine by me.”

Obviously the bathroom gets cleaned eventually and eventually we will do this sleeping training business. Until then, I will just bitch about Henry’s bad sleeping habits here while I sulk at the couch for giving me a sore neck last night.

Henry catching some flies.

As always, it’s not all doom and gloom around here. I might have mentioned that Henry is properly crawling now. We had to step up the security measures by way of a baby gate and continual reinforcement that the cat food is in fact “yucky”. He’s very cute the way he follows us room to room. He’s also managed to stand once or twice without any assistance. From his current skills on the baby walker we got him, walking shouldn’t be too far off either. He’s trying to talk but not having much luck with it yet. He says “mama” on a never ending stream and tries to say “hello” but it’s all still babble. Andy insists that this is fine. For him to work in the mines by the time he’s three, he only needs to stand and swing a pick axe – no need for conversation.

We also had our first proper family day out yesterday. Since Andy is off of work this week, we decided to go to the Blue Planet Aquarium. Henry wasn’t terribly interested at first – he was more excited about kicking the glass and having a crawl then looking at the fish – but after we fed him lunch, he got really involved. There was a big tank filled with tropical fish. The Henbot didn’t quite understand the concept of “things behind glass” and kept trying to grab the tail of one of the bigger fishes that kept swimming by. Andy and I laughed our asses off at that. Henry also really liked the underground walkway with the sharks and things swimming above us. For the record, the teeth on the sharks at Blue Planet have to be the scariest I’ve seen in any aquarium…I think the staff purposefully pull back the sharks lips.