Holiday in Cornwall

At the beginning of June we headed out for our much anticipated holiday in Cornwall with my family. Unfortunately, Cornwall is in England, and so we were greeted with traditional English weather for most of the week we were there.

Lydia with her bucket of seawater

I wasn't looking forward to the flight over to Bristol (see the article Travelling with Babies for my reasons why). I fully expected Lydia to be fidgety and restless, generally screaming us into insanity. To my surprise and delight, she was (almost) as good as gold. Apart from a mini-whinge, she slept on Chris, and so our flight passed without too much drama.

We landed in Bristol on time, then picked up our rental car and started the 3 hour drive down to St. Ives in Cornwall. Well, normally it would have been a 3 hour drive, if it wasn't for ridiculous amounts of traffic on the M5. We were crawling along bumper to bumper in 3 lanes of queuing traffic for what seemed like forever - after about an hour of driving we had managed to move approximately 20 miles away from the airport. With Lydia showing clear signs of boredom, we pulled off at the service station and had a coffee, giving Lydia her evening bottle of milk.

Having rested for around half an hour, we plucked up the courage to head back to the car. Fortunately, whatever was causing the traffic jam on the motorway seemed to have cleared, and we set off at normal speeds to finally kick-start the journey to Cornwall.

C'MON ENGLAND!

With the kick off approaching for the Euro 2012 football championship, I've been coaching Lydia to support her English heritage.

Lydia getting behind the boys from England!

Fortunately there hasn't been any conflict of interest with her Swiss family, as the Swiss national team won't be involved in the tournament (partly thanks to England beating them in qualification). I've therefore been free to drape Lydia in the St. George flag as much as I wanted to!

My little England supporter

We might have a weakened squad, and I can't really see us beating any of the big teams (Spain, Germany, Italy and Portugal, maybe not even France!) but Lydia and I are ready to give our full support to the English team.

C'MON ENGLAND!!

Now there's no stopping her!

On Saturday 19th May, Lydia took her first real solo steps.

We'd gotten used to her taking a few steps between objects or people, but this never lasted more than maybe 10 steps or so. We were constantly encouraging her to do this, getting her to practise at home and elsewhere. We had also gotten a bit tired of wondering when she would actually start walking on her own, given that we had been waiting for the day for so long.

All of a sudden, it happened.

A week in Nax

The Canton of Valais in Switzerland is a very nice place indeed. It's incredibly scenic, given that - as it's name implies - it is a valley running between mountain ranges. Rivers, lakes, quaint little towns and villages, and of course mountains, it is a photographer's dream come true.

It's also a very nice place to spend a week's holiday, which is exactly what we did in May.

Together with Chris' parents, we stayed in a chalet in a small village called Nax, approximately 15km or so from the Canton of Valais' capital, Sion. Nax has a population of around 400, and an area of roughly 25 square km (thanks Wikipedia!). What drew us to spend a week there was the setting.

Lydia's 1st Birthday

A child's 1st birthday is generally a pretty big milestone.

For the parents, it signifies the end of the first full year of being parents. A time to reflect on all the highs and lows they've been through together with their child since the birth. The screams, the laughs, the messy bits and the intriguing process of getting to know your child. A process which, although ultimately rewarding, can also be incredibly frustrating.

Lydia in her birthday
dress

It is only when I look back on the last 12 months of being a father that I truly appreciate the wonder of how quickly a child develops. The tiny, wriggly pink thing that the nurse placed in my arms on the 21st April last year somehow managed to learn how to eat solid food, roll over, sit up and crawl, not to mention smile, laugh, frown and cry in frustration, all by herself. It's amazing to think just how much a baby develops in their first year outside the womb, learning through copying his or her parents or simply by trying things out themselves.

For the child, it's just another day. At this age they do not understand the concept of birthdays or presents, or why people would suddenly fuss over them. They would wake up in the morning and expect to do whatever they would normally do - go to the park, play with their toys, make a mess with their lunch, and so on.

Unbeknownst to the child, the parents often have other ideas, and this was the case for Lydia.

Travelling with babies

For Easter this year we headed over to England to spend a long weekend with my family. It was fantastic - lots of fun and good food, and it was great to spend some quality time with the family I don't get to see very often.

Unfortunately, it also meant sitting on a plane for one-and-a-half hours each way with a restless, fidgeting baby.

My little globetrotter

This wasn't the first time Lydia had been on a plane. In fact, it was her fourth trip to England in less than a year. I first took her to England in June last year, when she was a tiny baby of just seven weeks. On the flight to England on that occasion, she slept for the entire journey. On the way back she was awake, but calmly laid on my lap without making a fuss.

Her second trip, for my brother James' wedding to Kelly (see this blog entry), was at the end of July 2011. By this time, she was three months old, and had obviously developed a lot since the June trip. Once again she stayed calm on both flights, although we had to work hard to keep her entertained by playing with her and reading her the in-flight easyJet magazine.

The world through Lydia's eyes: Waking Up

It's dark. Very dark.

They must have closed those metal things over the window again.

I can see pretty well though. Over the last few months, my eyes have adapted well to being in the dark. Wonder if that's down to all those carrots I've been eating?

[big stretch, cough, small burp]

Ok, quick status report: I'm in my bed, lying on my side. For some reason my head is at the wrong end of the bed, again. Who keeps moving me during the night? I'm tucked up warm in my sleeping bag. I'm hungry.

Right, let's have a look around-- AAARGH!! What the hell is that??!?

Living our dreams through our children

Recently I did some research on the Internet to find ways of encouraging a child's creative side, boosting their imagination and skills at the same time. I also looked for ways to help a child enjoy sports and being outdoors. My motives were to ensure Lydia's future could be whatever she wanted it to be, and that she wouldn't be stuck inside playing video games and watching TV while the world outside passed her by.

During my research I found countless articles about pushy parents, those who practically force their own children to do a ridiculous amount of activities outside of school, often to the extreme of depriving them of being a child. Examples of this include parents forcing their children to have insanely busy after school schedules, with ballet lessons, soccer practise, piano practise and various other musical or sporting lessons.

I read an article on the Psychology Today website (which you can read here) on this very subject. One parent in question wondered why her 9 year old son was complaining that he was tired all the time, despite the fact that she had set up a series of extracurricular activities for him that included "three team sports, church activities, scouts and ... piano lessons twice a week". When the psychologist mentioned that this might be the cause of his tiredness, she said she was simply giving her son all the opportunities that she never had when she was a child. This is probably very reasonable thinking, as we all want our children to enjoy their lives and have every opportunity available to them. However, this kind of thing has to be done in moderation.

Oh, to be a kid again...

It seems like such a long time since I was a kid. The carefree days where the only worry was what mischief to get up to next, in a busy schedule of constant playtime interrupted only by silly things like eating, sleeping and school.

Those were the days.

The world seen through the eyes of a child is a wondrous, magical place, until we get older and the daily grind dooms us to a life of monotony and responsibility. The end of every school day brought such happiness to our young selves, a delight in the possibility of playing with our latest toy, or making houses and forts out of boxes and bedsheets at home.

The older you get, the less interested you are in playing with traditional childrens toys. The action figures are replaced by computer games, the Barbie dolls replaced by makeup and the latest fashion. The world becomes less a place of wonder and more a place of opportunity mixed with fear. Exams at school, going to college or university, finding a job or starting a career, moving out and beginning to act like an adult. It's a big, scary place out there, once you finally fly solo from your parents' nest and attempt to stake a claim to your own little piece of the world.

We never appreciate how great it is to be young until we become adults. As kids, we long to grow up quickly because we want to do what the big people do. Teenagers want to be old enough to drive and gain their freedom, and also to legally buy alcohol, whilst learning more about the opposite sex (once you get past the "ewww, girls have cooties" phase, that is). We want to be older so we can do the things that we think are the best parts about being a grown up, without considering all the extra burden the adults carry on their shoulders. Everything from bills to taxes to buying food and clothes, all things that children don't have to think about.

Crawling, crawling, crawling

I finished work for the Christmas holidays on the 21st December. Aside from the upcoming festivities of Christmas itself, the 22nd December looked like being a day like any other. Until something unexpected happened...

On my first day off, I was sat on the carpet with my 8 month (and 1 day) old daughter Lydia, trying to get her to play with one of her many, many toys. Christelle was sitting on the sofa next to us, and we both watched as Lydia propped herself up on her hands and knees and did her familiar bobbing motion. She had been doing this for a couple of weeks now, but would always end up rolling onto her back (and then usually giving out a cry of frustration). She couldn't seem to master the coordination required to actually move herself forwards.

So, we sat and watched as she continued bobbing on her hands and knees, expecting her to get annoyed at any moment. What we didn't expect, however, was to see her suddenly crawl several steps forward and reach out to grab the Christmas tree. Christelle and I looked at each other in surprise, both unsure if what we had just witnessed had really happened.

We quickly congratulated Lydia and then tried to encourage her to do it again. To our continued amazement, she crawled again. Tears of joy and pride welled up in both our eyes. Our little girl had worked out how to move around, all by herself.