Video of Alphie walking in Peoples Park

Alphie rocking his new walker.

Pogo Dancing

So I was in my front room wearing just a tee shirt and pogo dancing to Plastic Bertrand when a knock on the window brought me face (and a little more) to face with the Tesco delivery man. There was really little else I could do but answer the door and join with ‘Bill’ in studiously ignoring my being naked from the waist down. I feel my choice of music was almost the more embarrassing.

Phonse with his cousin Suzy leathered up and about to go biking

Alphie had been up since 5h30 and was continuing his musical education; we had been listening to a lot of SKA so the dance gene had been stimulated. I have no idea what brought the Belgian punk rocker into my playlist, in fact I am lost as to how I have it in my library. But http://youtu.be/PITnJAnmjqw  Ca Plane Pour Moi was rocking our early morning quite enjoyably up until Bill’s interruption.

Alphie is now walking, well with the aid of a walker Fischer price thing.  I am not a huge environmentalist but I do wonder about the carbon footprint the increasing amount of moulded plastic we are accumulating is making: two baby bouncers, one activity table and now a walker; the straight-line control of which he has yet to master. In fact, it’s hysterical to watch him looking one way while ploughing on in the opposite direction.

I remember sitting on my brother Dernan’s shoulders and controlling the direction he walked by turning his head. I do not remember pulling his hair, shoving my fingers in his ears or reaching round and scratching his eyes. I got a crew cut yesterday to foil at least one of Alphie’s tortures.  Dernan is an interesting name isn’t it. Not heard of it before? Well my father apparently made it up. He put a fada on the ‘a’, so that the priest that christened him would think it was Irish. Quite a cool thing in 1948 to be making up a name for your first-born son. We have a pretty good idea what we are going to call the next O’Toole who, thanks to breast feeding, is not as previously announced going to arrive on Christmas day but a few weeks later on Jan 9^th we are informed.

a selection of relatives from about 6 months ago

ON a totally unrelated aside, my friend Ben has started a blog. He has seen and written about more movies than most, his views being most singular and distractingly entertaining. http://wp.me/p1MbTJ-8

On final news, I have replaced my pants, my musical taste and my dance stylings and now I am looking forward to teaching Alphie how to crowd surf when I get home.

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Walkin’….sort of.

Free standing, 7.. 8.. 9.. 10… and down he goes.  Alphie is a nano step away from walking. All this week he has been surfing.  Each time he hops a carpet wave he lasts a few seconds longer.  We bought him a new activity-table ‘fisher price’ thingy. Now it is no doubt great fun, but it is mainly being used as a push walking  tool. He is looking like a miniature version of his Granny O’Toole. (in her declining Zimmer years) except ‘Keystone Cop-like’ speeded up.

I am in two minds as to this new found ability, suddenly a whole new range of dangers have opened up.  All the most dangerous stuff seems to be at toddler eye level: chair corners, table edges, drawer handles, ninja death stars, chariot spikes – you call them whatever you like but they all seem to be designed specifically to impale my son through the eye and out the back of his head.

Musical education is continuing; yesterday we listened  to  ‘The Clash’.  Today it’s a Pink Floyd day until his Mum gets up and plays some trendy hipster ‘yute’ music . He still only really dances to Beyonce and the ‘two two two two twwwwwoooo’  phone information ad on telly with yer man from ‘De Unbelievables’ .

(On a  side  note, Alphie is asleep in his buggy behind me and has just started to snore)

The big playpen is working just fine, all his toys are inside and he ,of course plays outside, occasionally going back in to retrieve something new.  So product information bit, what works and what doesn’t. In general the fisher price sit-into things are worth every expensive penny. You really need a variety of things to keep him occupied and away from chariot wheel spikes, the more distractions he has the easier life is for you.  Fridge magnets are currently all the rage, nothing like a good crawl destination with something to rip off and shove in your mouth at the end. The Huggy Nappy box is brilliant as a walking aid and doubles up as a cave. All my facial orifices are fascinating and on that get a good baby nail clippers, his Helen Keller explorations can be painful.  The cat has been a constant hit since she was first focussed on, the daily chase is going to end up in tears someday – but not for a while yet. Books, books, books, Alphie loves them. Very handy for the falling asleep pre bed stages, the current favourite is ‘Busters Day’ by Rod Campbell,  it’s a lift –the-flap book.  Running second it ‘The very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle.

I highly recommend bargain hunting in charity shops, church fetes (prod ones best, their tat is better than papist tat) and car boot sales. Occasionally things you find are fantastic, if you can get over the second hand nature of stuff – we put all purchases through some serious washing and sterilizing before use. The advantage is you  can pick up toys for a euro or two, put them through the Alphie test,  after a day or so playing you find out if he likes it or not and you haven’t wasted 10 or 20 euro on a moribund mop puppet. 

Dads Rock

Today is a bit of rant, now it used to piss me off as a childless single person, and I find it still hacks me off as a married Dad type person; namely Dads who let you know what a great job they are doing. You know the ones, the raised voices narrating every move of their caring. “Oh baby’s dropped her toy! Shall daddy pick it up?” “Will Daddy pick you up now?” “Isn’t Daddy great?” “Behold people not only are my loins fruitful but I am caring and loving too” “Other children nearby don’t you wish I was your daddy” “Women am not I a better father and husband than the one you have” “Look at me caring, listen to me caring”.

Ah nothing like ironic quotes to sledgehammer a point home.  They are the same sort of feckers that talk into their mobiles at full volume on the dart, “I’m a very important man, listen to me everyone listen”

Playground etiquette is an interesting thing to be a part of. The smallest swings are the only thing that Alphie and lots of other ‘we can’t walk yet’ toddlers can use. Alphie loves it. When we arrive they are usually being used, so we sit and wait our turn. It seems that 10 minutes is about the correct unofficial time limit. One mother the other day arrived after me, and decided the two polish men who were ‘on swing’ should move on. If looks could teach English these guys were fluent after 60 seconds of her glowering at them. I have seldom seen the word ‘cowering’ in action in real life but Patryk and Karol were soon on their way. I was next in line but was ignored as Mum occupied the ceded territory. (If she had been German this would have been a perfect anecdote but she was Irish, 100% of polite tolerant Southside Dublin classiness)

On Alphie news, he can now stand. He walked two steps un assisted this morning and has perfected the word ‘Bababababababababababababababababababbaba’ and  ‘Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh’ . He has learnt to wave but refuses to do it to queue preferring to wave at odd things like walls, doors  and yesterday to the ceiling.

On sleep, we are still deprived, but it’s part of the gig – I do know that the next one is going to be cribbed from the get go. Our bed just isn’t big enough.

Alphie can crawl

Short and sweet today, this was Alphie in the Peoples Park in Dun Laoghaire on Sunday morning. I’ve bought him a huge playpen to limit his range at home. Really wish the summer came so that we could do some serious park exploration.
(video dosen’t seem to work on mobiles 😦

My Sister and Alphie’s Aunty

Helen has cancer. She asked me to send her site link to as many people as possible. It outlines the history of her fight over the last many years with the disease and how this month she unfortunately has had to return to Germany for further experimental treatment.

Typically she has called her site www.thecancerbitch.com

Here we go again!

First you have the conversation.

“It’ll never be a good time”, and “sure it will be great for Alphie to have a little brother/sister” not forgetting “you aren’t getting any younger”. It is at swim with ideas like this that an idea was conceived and then the real thing .

So this blog is proud to announce that Alphie is going to have a little bro/sis.

The title won’t change but the sub title may now be read as: A new dad at 47 (soon to be 48) deals with a second pregnancy while still getting his head around the first one.

We are at once incredibly delighted, not a little nervous and of course continuously tired…always tired.

First answers first, no we don’t care what sex it is so long as it’s healthy. It’s a cliché for a reason. Secondly, we are due on Christmas day this year, now this bears a little more chat – Not just a Christmas Baby but a bang-on the 25^th baby! And no, Noel Edmund O’Toole is not an option, however tempting.  The mad thing is his Mum, Danielle, was born on the 23^rd, his Grandad  Michael  the 24^th, I am early January. There must be something in the O’Toole/O’Donovan genes that get/got us and our parents ‘special hugging’ at the same time of the year.

So to sum up, we aren’t putting any of the toys away and I had to re-download a pregnancy app for the phone, it tells me it’s the size of an olive ! not yet like the picture below.

This was Alphie’s first trip to the beach.

The Pier

Now it could be any local traffic free thoroughfare but this 1290 metre long finger of Dalkey Quarry granite, stretching into the Irish Sea, is a special place and the prime location where the Saturday and Sunday morning Dun Laoghaire dads proudly march to the tune of their offspring: namely the East Pier.

Given that man can’t help getting involved in pissing competitions, the comparison game is in full operation, mine has a better buggy, scooter and/or bike, he looks way more tired than I do, that kids eyes are way too close together, where does one buy Northface jackets?

People nod hellos to each other in passing. There is a kind of camaraderie, similar to that which exists between men being dragged around IKEA, but without the helplessness. For the brief time that we push the buggy down the pier we are ‘Dad in charge’, nobly allowing our wives a sleep in. Some dads, like me are ‘newbies’, some have a warren of offspring, some are young, some old, few are as old as me – but all the ‘newbies’  really look like they are.

Once the walk is over, if it’s a Sunday, then we stroll up to ‘The Peoples Park’  not a socialist playground as the name might suggest but almost completely the opposite. It is here that the young and trendy buy their overpriced organic veg, and their ‘I’d never go to MacDonald’s’ fast food. It’s really not all bad there is an excellent butcher that I buy lamb from and a couple of really good stalls and it’s a nice place to wander around, but give me a good car boot sale any day.

The real reason for going to the park is the children’s play area – where dads can be seen with one eye on their charges and the other on their mobile phones texting to find if they can come home yet, their mornings work over?

Some days it’s a little busy.

MMMMMM Chicken!

Baby led weaning; http://www.babyledweaning.com/  is the route we decided to travel along and it is, in a word, messy.

The Chicken is on the floor

The idea is that you give the baby whatever you are eating and let them feed themselves. Thankfully, I am not present every morning for the yoghurt fest, but so far, it has been working really well. One advantage is you don’t have to prepare mushy baby food and do the ‘here comes the aeroplane!’. From the get go you put small manageable pieces of veg, meat, bread, etc in front of Alphie, when he wants to it he does, when he doesn’t he plays with it – but by and large a big part of it goes into his mouth, is chewed or sucked into submission and swallowed. The proof as they say is in the poo. Yesterday for dinner, he ate two big pieces of chicken breast, several mange tout, a couple of carrots and two or three huge bits of pasta, all rounded off with a piece of sugar free banana cake topped with a cream cheese icing. It was the biggest meal he has eaten so far.

Future number 8

Other baby essentials are toys and activities that keep him occupied. Talking last night about whether or not we really knew what we were letting ourselves in for with Alphie we both concluded – yes…sort of. We conceptually knew what it entailed but the one reality that you can’t prepare for is the non-stop nature of the beast. So, you need distractions. The first essential we go was a baby bouncer, we got a battery-powered one that does the rocking for you and that was nice! The next purchase was a harness to carry him, essential. It is still his favourite thing in the world; it can leave your back screaming but is worth every penny. Last week I also bought a backpack carrier, but he still much prefers his front-loading one. http://www.babybjorn.com/ The Baby Bjorn is the one we got from friends and it is brilliant.

A jungle gym is another essential, I know I am sounding like a rep for Mothercare, but the more things you have to occupy him with the better, when he gets tired of one thing you can try the next. I looked after Alphie last Monday for pretty much the whole day. He is now nearly 7 months and is a wriggly bundle of energy that is teething and a head lift away from crawling. This is how the day goes. Up at seven, which wasn’t bad, bit of a feed from his mum then nappy change and cuddles and sit on knee play. This gets tired pretty quickly, but he is in morning form which means his tolerance levels are high and he puts up with me for a half an hour or so. I then put him into his Bumbo baby seat, http://bumbo.co.za/ , something we bought for him ages ago but is only now coming into its own, and is taking over from his recliner.  He then comes into the bathroom while I shower and play peeka boo, He seems to know this is not the time to kick off and is positively Phonsie about waiting, he has a few toys to suck and bang on the Bumbo table. Then we get both of us dressed, and a second nappy change if needed. Danielle has started giving him his bath at this time but I wasn’t really in the mood and he was clean enough – breakfast hadn’t happened yet! Okay long story short, baby bouncer, baby dj centre, walk around in the Baby Bjorn looking at the other baby in the mirror, three-hour mark, give to mum for a feed, then some breakfast quick clean up then pram and walk the pier. He is asleep in 3 minutes. Back after an hour or so, he’s awake. And so on ad finitum for the rest of the day. This is a constant all consuming day, there are no breaks, and there is no escape. Not that you really want one, it still beats anything I’ve ever done for fun – hands down.

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