13 and a half months

Justin is finally up-to-date with his immunizations! I had to take him to the doctor on Thursday and the poor little guy started tensing up when he saw the doctor getting the needles. But he was such a champ, he didn't even cry and not even 2 minutes later, he was walking around the doctor's office with a big grin, helping himself to her specimen bottles. Yay, no more immunizations until Justin's 18 months old. 

Justin is now walking everywhere and learning to climb up stairs, he no longer crawls around. He loves to walk and can walk on his own without worrying too much about where Row and I are. We take him to the Entertainment Quarter which is where they have weekend markets with lots of food stalls and there's a nice playground and a big plot of open ground. We'll go there to buy lunch and sit on the grass while Justin walks around. Even though he's walking a lot, he's still a little wobbly, especially when he's in a hurry. Our garage is below us so we need to walk down two flights of stairs and Justin now insists on climbing up the stairs when we come home, he refuses to be carried. 

New tricks....Justin can "wink", closing both eyes at the same time! After I change his nappy, I'll ask him to throw his nappy in the dustbin and he'll pick it up and throw it in the bin. He's also learnt to move our step-chair to the cupboard so he can stand on it and get whatever his little hands can grab off the shelf. Justin's fine motor skills are developing nicely too; he can twist lids open and he managed to do this with his tube of face cream, luckily I noticed before he could squeeze the cream out. I'm still so amazed at how quickly they learn things.

Justin loves watching videos of his friends Emma, Nora and Ben so thank you to Anths, Cindy and Sharon for entertaining my son.

It's all gone awry!

A few months ago, Row and I were sleep training Justin and it was going really well, he was sleeping through the night. We even got his daytime naps into a routine and he'd have a short morning nap and a longer afternoon nap. Well.....it's all gone awry! Last Friday evening, or early Saturday morning at 3am, our inconsiderate, selfish neighbours decided to have a chat and a smoke out on their balcony which is right outside Justin's window. Their laughing and talking, not even quiet talking, woke Justin up and he couldn't go back to sleep. At 4am I opened Justin's window and asked them if they would mind keeping it down, it's 4am. Their response...."we're just having a cigarette!" Our neighbour came out onto the balcony and said they would keep it down....half an hour later, they were singing Sinead O' Connor's "Nothing compares to you"....that's how loud it was, I knew exactly which song it was and was even singing along to it in my head in my dreamlike trance. Being winter and freezing, I couldn't stand next to Justin's cot any longer and put him in bed with us where he was able to sleep for another 2hours but that threw his whole routine out and he was tired and cranky the rest of the day. Row did have a chat with the neighbour who admitted that he had a bit too much to drink and said it wouldn't happen again...yeah right! And then he had the cheek to say that he sometimes hears Justin crying in the morning!!!!!!!! 

Anyways, since that morning, Justin has been waking up in the middle of the night and for the past 2 nights, he's been waking up every 2 hours, like a newborn baby! For 2 nights, I resorted to giving him a bottle just to make him go back to sleep without too much fuss. It's been a week now and I'm wrecked!

It doesn't help that he's learning to walk and developing all sorts of other new skills like winking and feeding himself which could also be the reasons for his sleep regression. Let's hope this passes soon!

I feel better now that I've had my rant, maybe I should go have a nap since Justin is at daycare :)

World Cup Fever!

In anticipation of the start of the 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa, we were reading everyone's Facebook statuses to find out how the excitement was building up at home. Reading about the blowing of the vuvuzelas at 12:00pm in support of Bafana Bafana, attending the parade in Sandton, learning about 'Ayoba', 'Gees' and 'Waka waka' made us homesick and proudly South African, wishing we were there to share in this moment. But alas, we shall have to live vicariously through all the Saffas at home. Thank you to everyone who has been sharing the excitement through emails, Facebook and photos so please keep them coming.

Justin is in quite a predicament as he has 2 homes, South Africa and Australia...who to cheer for....Bafana Bafana or the Socceroos? The solution...just cheer for both!

On a different note....is it built into boys' genes to have the ability to just climb up things, onto things, into things? Lately, Justin has been standing on the air mattress to give himself a leg up onto the chair so that he can play with the light switch. The only thing is that he can't get back down without falling....eish, many a bumps have been happening lately.

Slowly but surely....

At the end of June we'll have been in Sydney for 6 months and slowly but surely we're getting more furniture and little bits and pieces for our home. We bought a new rug for our lounge because it's tiled and so cold, we thought we needed to warm up our place a bit. Our couch should hopefully be arriving sometime this week or next; so excited about that, we've had to wait 12 weeks! Just a bit worried about the first stain that Justin makes on it.....eeeekkkk!!!!!!! But the most exciting purchase to date is our car...we finally have a car and it makes life that much easier. No more having to push Justin in his pram up the hill laden with groceries in the pouring rain....yay!!!!!!!!!! Good thing we got the car now because it rains in winter.

                       Father and son testing out the new rug

Life as a Toddler

Oh my word, Justin is no longer a baby, he is now a toddler! Where has the time flown to? On Tuesday I took Justin to our GP for his 12 month immunizations, what a champ! Due to us moving countries 3 times during Justin's first year, we've had to follow 3 countries' immunization programs and somewhere along the line, he's missed a few. On Tuesday he got his MMR and Meningococcal C, one in each thigh. He only shed a couple of tears and shouted out as the liquid entered his body but as soon as he recovered, the doctor jabbed him in his other thigh. Two minutes later, he was all smiles, walking around the doctor's office, opening and closing her cupboards. Even I'm getting better at this, guess I have no choice now that Row's working, I can even watch the doctor prick the needle into Justin's thigh. Poor boytjie, needs to go back next week for another 2 which he missed somewhere,  hopping from country to country. The good news is that his next immunization is at 18months and then only at 4 years old. On Thursday I took Justin to the Early Childhood Centre to check his weight, height and head circumference. This is a free service run by the government and the nurse is there to answer any questions from breastfeeding, to sleep, to eating, to play, etc. Justin is weighing in at 10kgs and is 77cm long with a head circumference of 46cm. He's all healthy and growing well.

As you can all see, Justin has started walking. But along with this major milestone, he's reached other ones which might seem not as important. We seemed to have taken it for granted and it feels like it just crept up on us but now that I sit back and think about it, it's like wow, this little boy sure has learnt some new tricks. For example, where did he learn to cling to us like a koala bear when he doesn't want to be put down? Or to close his legs around your waist and push himself up, like he's climbing up a tree, to reach something higher? Or to arch his back and push himself onto his legs and stand up when he doesn't want to sit in his pram or car seat or high chair? Justin's also following commands now; like at bath time, when I undress him, I say "shoes off" and I take his shoes off, then I say "socks off" and he pulls off his socks, "hands up" to take his t-shirts off and he puts his hands up. At the end of his bath, I ask him to pull out the plug. For his birthday, a friend gave Justin a pop-up book of the "Wheels of the bus" and he loves it, so when I sing the song, he goes and looks for the book and brings it to me so we can read/sing it together. He also knows where we hide his dummy so when he's getting tired and grumpy and clingy, he wants to be held and then he steers you to the cupboard so he can open it and grab his dummy off the shelf. Justin is also getting better at feeding himself, still a lot of hit and miss but we're getting there. And he's now drinking from a straw!

Justin still loves his music! We play "I gotta feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas and he'll start bopping up and down and even puts his hands up. The teachers at daycare even remark how much Justin loves music, always playing with the musical instruments and grooving to the tunes. He's also very vocal now; he can say "ma", "mum-mum", "ta" and "dada". 

I'll end off this post now or people will think I'm bragging about my son ;) and also I could write on and on about Justin but I started this post this morning and it's now 12:35am....so till the next post....good night!

Happy Feet!

Justin is getting steadier on his feet and is even multi-tasking now, drinking and walking all at the same time. He's really enjoying walking and is doing more and more and for longer distances. He still crawls around but that's only when he's in a hurry to get somewhere.

Family bonding moments

It's been nearly a week since mum and dad have left and we're back into a routine. One thing we really noticed while mum and dad were here was that Justin LOVES to go out! If you tell him that he we're going ta-ta (going out), he'll start waving at you and can get quite impatient to leave, so impatient that he'll keep waving at you until we walk out the front door. So while mum and dad were here, Justin had many opportunities to go ta-ta and he loved it.

As this was dad's first visit, we went to the usual tourist destinations like the Opera House, Circular Quay and Darling Harbour. We also went to Hunter Valley, BG took them to the National Park and they went to Melbourne for a few days.

Here are some pics of Justin bonding with his grandparents, his Kaufoo (uncle BG) and his mum and dad.