11 thoughts from my 11th month as a parent

February 24, 2014

It’s time for my monthly feature about what I’ve learned about parenting this month. This edition is about hail storms, sleep and phone books…

1. Our son experienced a hail storm for the first time recently. He didn’t really like it, but calmed down after 10 minutes of playing peek-a-boo in the back seat of the car before leaving the supermarket car park.

2. I think that are son is getting the idea about sleeping in a bit longer on Sundays. One weekend recently he decided it was time to get up at 5.30am on the Saturday and 6am on the Sunday. Think we may need to keep working on this one 🙂

3. Our son has recently started crawling. As this picture of him at one week old imitating Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt demonstrates, he’s been keen to start moving for a while!

4. I think that my approach to grammar may soon need to be extended to not letting our son wear a baby grow on which an apostrophe has worn off.

5. A company that I criticized a while ago for not focusing on dads within their parenting materials recently contacted me about potentially doing a review of a safety gate that is normally used to stop small kids from going down stairs. As it happens, we live in a bungalow.

6. One of the things that I’ve enjoyed most about being a dad recently has been being able to make our son laugh. Often, it doesn’t take much. Some people would say that it’s good that the bar isn’t too high given some of the dad jokes that I mentioned in a recent blog post on here.

7. As I’m from Scotland, I’m pleased that our son enjoys eating porridge and vegetarian haggis. His recent food throwing capabilities suggest that it may soon be time for him to start training for the traditional Highland Games pursuit of caber tossing. I think I’ll make him watch the video below of the current world champion so as he knows what to do.

8. As I’ve just said, being a Scottish dad is one of the reasons that I’m delighted to see that our son enjoys eating porridge. I just wish he’d stop trying to eat it with his hands and let mummy and daddy feed it to him on a spoon. Breakfast time can get quite messy, especially when he seems intent on trying to use the porridge as if it were some sort of exfoliating facial scrub.

9. Our son recently tried to brush his teeth himself (all four of them!) during a bath. He has recently started to chew the wrong end of the toothbrush so it may well be that he’ll end up deciding against a career in dentistry.

10. Our son currently enjoys playing with the phone book (see below). I just hope that we won’t have to read to him as a bed time story in the near future. His other books are all so much more interesting.

11. In addition to crawling all over the place, our son has recently had his first go at standing up on his. A new phase of parenthood is about to begin!

What do you think of this post and what do you remember from your first year as a parent? Please feel free to share your views in the comments section below or on the ‘Dad’s The Way I Like It’ pages on Facebook or Google+.

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6 things I’ve learned in 6 months as a parent

7 thoughts from my 7^th month as a parent

8 thoughts from my 8^th month as a parent

9 thoughts from my 9th month as a parent

10 thoughts from my 10th month as a parent

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I’ve linked this post up with the following parent blog linkies:

rcrown2
Feb 25, 2014 @ 04:38:16

I’m still working on my first year as a father; only 3 months into it so far. I keep thinking how I can’t wait to take part in preparing food for our daughter and not just feeding breast milk from a bottle, but I think I forgot about the food throwing part. Thanks for helping to bring me to my senses and brace me for what’s to come when that time does come!
Sounds like, overall, you’re doing a great job and enjoying it! Best of luck on month 12!

Jonathan
Feb 25, 2014 @ 23:23:49

Thanks four your comment and good wishes. I’m loving being a parent, even though it does bring a few challenges along the way. It was amazing to see our son start to get curious about food and start eating various different things.

Tom
Feb 25, 2014 @ 09:02:00

Uh oh, move everything up one shelf now while you still can – he’ll be helping himself to the contents imminently! Don’t know whether I should tell you this, but our younger son (nearly two) still hasn’t cracked the whole sleeping lark – hope you have better luck than us!

Jonathan
Feb 25, 2014 @ 23:22:31

Thanks for commenting, Tom. I was apparently just like your older son when it came to sleeping through the night, and woke up a lot. Thankfully our son doesn’t do too much crying. He just seems to often want to get up pretty early and have a couple of feeds during the night. I’m sure that there are plenty of parents who have it tougher.

Leanne Rain
Feb 28, 2014 @ 20:26:28

Haha… I love your 11 month review. My daughter (3rd child) is 10 months old and the crawling has commenced! That’s it now, she’ll be climbing up the curtains like a spider cat in no time!!! 😀 #PoCoLo

Jonathan
Feb 28, 2014 @ 22:51:15

Glad you enjoyed it, it’s a fun post to put together every month too!

Kim Carberry
Feb 28, 2014 @ 20:44:55

Lovely to read…..Jeez my first year as a parent was 11 years ago!
Enjoy every moment they grow up far too fast x

Jonathan
Feb 28, 2014 @ 22:50:36

Thank you, it’s so true about our son growing up really quickly. With these monthly posts, I’ve tried to chronicle this in a light hearted way.

The Monko
Feb 28, 2014 @ 20:49:36

I like reading your monthly ‘thoughts’ posts as they remind me of the stuff my son was doing at that age. I’m featuring your post on this weekend’s Sunday Parenting Party

Jonathan
Feb 28, 2014 @ 22:49:27

Thank you for commenting and featuring this post, I’m glad that you like reading these monthly lists of thoughts. I quite enjoy just putting together these silly little ideas every now and again.

Victoria Welton (@VicWelton)
Mar 02, 2014 @ 19:29:33

It’s amazing how many milestones are starting to get touched on at 11 months – you must really be noticing it now 🙂 Thank you for linking to PoCoLo x

Jonathan
Mar 09, 2014 @ 17:45:18

It’s amazing how much our son has been developing over the last few weeks. One of his recent things has been not napping as much and not going to bed as easily. Fingers crossed he’ll re-learn the taking naps and going to bed thing!