An Overdue Update

Now with two kids it is becoming more interesting. With the first it was all about ‘what can we do?’ and ‘what do we do?’. Thankfully my wife is great at this stuff and she has done some terrific work with our two daughters.  So where are we at?

A) Sophia. She is now almost 2 ½ years old. She is reading sentences when she concentrates on reading one word at a time. We achieved this by starting with the YBCR program and reading books to her. We have always made sure that we underline the words are we read them with our finger so she understands that we read left to right, top to bottom.  At this stage it is about encouraging her to read. We now give her 30 minutes after she has gone to bed where she can have the light on and read books to herself with the door shut. To be honest I am not sure if this is working, but it has made bed time a far more peace proposition and you can hear her talking (reading?) to her teddy bears. And her reading has improved in teh last week or so. She is also expressing a strong interesting in writing. From time to time she can draw an ‘O’ or a ‘D’. My wife bought some writing training books which are great. They show Sophia how to form letters and loves to trace them, although her fine motor skills are not quite up to the job just yet.

B) I have also been focusing on physical balance with Sophia. When we are the playground I am encouraging her to climb over things. Climbing up and down is easy, but over is a lot more challenging. I have been showing her how to place her feet and hands to achieve what she wants to do. Sometimes it works, and sometimes not – there have been a few falls!

C) Oh and we just started toilet training with her too. That is another blog entry altogether!!

D)Anneliese. She is now 2 months old. She is very alert and is tracking visually and aurally. She can distinguish important voices (mummy, daddy and Sophia) and this week has starting batting some of the hanging items over her bassinet. My wife (and therefore myself) has been making a concerted effort to make sure she spends a lot of time on her tummy. This is paying dividends as Anneliese has very strong neck muscles. I have also been encouraging her to stand up on my lap to help build her leg muscles. She is doing very well – she can stand for 2-3 minutes at a time while I hold her hands/arms. And she loves it! She is also smiling a lot, cooing and has a rudimentary laugh which we are hearing more frequently.

So with Sophia it is about reinforcing the reading – encouraging her, guiding her and helping her. That, and making the dunny water green/orange. As I said earlier, that’s another post…

Day 14 - 20th Dec, 2010

I had a sleep in today! First time in a while - many weeks. If you are a new dad for the first, or subsequent time, I highly recommend getting a sleepin when ever you can. I felt like I had energy today, particularly this morning. Since I am a night person I am awake at night (der!), but struggle without several cups of coffee in the morning. Add sleep deprivation to that and it's not a pretty sight!

We have continued the basics with Anneliese. Having spent a large portion of the day out of the house I have not shown her the B&W presentation I made. I might fix that directly, as she is awake for the next hour or so.

This morning I gave her some more tummy time and held my hands behind her feet so she can push herself along. At this stage of the game it is very much a reactionary movement, but she needs to learn what the effect of pushing with her feet will have. The mobility aspect of it helps increase blood flow, increase muscle strength and helps develop the sense of self. Apparently. It makes sense to me and it is what my wife is saying as she walks around the house! You can read her blog here intellikidsdownunder.blogspot.com . She has read a lot of books on early learning and is quite knowledgeable on the subject.

Anneliese is almost 2 weeks old and is starting to change her habits. Her feeds are starting to become more spaced out (we got 5.5 hours last night between feeds - BLISS!!) and she is starting to spend a bit more time awake. This is great because I can sing, play and generally spend time with her more. She can also watch what I do.

When I doing things around the house I try to involve Anneliese (and the eldest) as much as possible. For example when I am doing the dishes I place her in the bouncer on the bench so she can see exactly what I am doing. I then talk to her about what I am doing and why I am doing it. This gets a bit repetitive night after night, dad after day, but I believe it helps Anneliese makes sense of the world around her and helps her understand that (in this case) cleaning is one of the things that we all have to do. I did the same with my eldest. I got her involved in assembling furnisher (see pic), or what ever it is I was doing at the time to keep her involved.

It also helps build a bond between father and child, and this is extremely important to me and has been shown to improve the quality of life for the child.

Day 9 - Dec 15th, 2010

Saw an interesting debate on twitter today about immigration into Australia after it was reported that several people died in a boating crash trying to gain entry into Australia. I have always thought that one of Australia's key global competitive advantages is it's low population density. This affords the country a high standard of living as the wealth is able to be spread more evenly amongst fewer people.

It then got me thinking about my contribution to the population with our new born. It used to be said that parents should have 'one for mum, one for dad and one for country'. Of course this was while Australia was trying to build up it's population and skill base after WWII. Now it's a slightly different story. Australia is looking for skilled labour. The days of opening the country to the dislocated and therefor poorer, low skilled labour are gone. We have plenty of low skilled labour of our own now. And for the record I think two is enough. My wife is not so sure, but that is another discussion ;-)

I have observed in the past that immigrant family's that came to Australia in the 50 and 60 worked hard to give their kids everything they never had. But (and at the risk of stereotyping, I generalise here) their off-spring thought life was easy and so never worked too hard, either participating in anti-social behaviour or relying on welfare in some way shape or form.

So how do I stop my kids from becoming that way inclined? (Although I was born here, my parents immigrated from the UK in the 50's as kids) This is a key question of parenthood for me. I want my kids to be better and more successful than me - I believe that this is something that drives humanity forward. Early learning is, for me, a key method of attaining this. By instigating a love of learning at an early age I hope that my children will want to actively learn and be part of the community, bringing new thoughts and insights to help which ever part of the community they choose to be involved in.

And so this is how my modern family looks tonight, as Anneliese looks on while I blog.

Day 7 - Dec 13th, 2010

We've been home for two days now, or more specifically, two nights. The first night sucked big time! I think I got about 2 hours broken sleep. Last night was definitely a better night - I think I got about 5 hours broken sleep. We got up 3 times during the night to feed Anneliese - 11pm, 1pm, 4pm. It's now 6:49 am and she is still asleep (as is my wife). Shame number 1 got up at 5:55...

From an early learning perspective I am planning on making some powerpoint flash cards for Anneliese to use in the next few days. I am going to do basic shapes in black on white, and white on black. I am thinking of things like triangle, circle, oval, square, rectangle, etc.... I will post the file here for those who would like to use it.

Yesterday we lay Anneliese on her tummy on the floor. Most books and standard thinking suggest that lying on the back is better. It is certainly safer in the sense they the baby can't control her neck muscles yet, so it reduces the chance of SIDS death. But more contemporary thinking by Glenn Doman and others suggests that spending time on their tummies is great for neck muscle development and also helps the baby learn to move. The flailing of arms and legs can actually propel the baby along the ground - a form of early crawling!

Obviously do this supervised. The only issue we had yesterday was Anneliese banging her nose twice when she lifted her head, but then couldn't sustain it. A little ouch! I don't think she'll do that too often...

We taught our first born from a very young age that when she falls over she has to get back up and brush herself off. Works a treat - she hardly ever whinges about falling over, and I don't have to go and 'rescue' her either! We'll definitely be doing that with Anneliese.

Day 5 - Dec 11th, 2010

Well, been a bit busy over the last couple of days dealing with the first born. In terms of early learning for the new girl, Anneliese, we have been continuing the black and white visual stimulation. One of the books that we have is Art For Baby by Outset. They have collected a bunch of contemporary monochromatic art that is designed to reflect the real world. They also have freezes that you can hang up or, in our case, line up around the cot in the hospital.

There was an interesting comment by one of the artists featured in the Art For Baby book He said that they noticed their newborn was fascinated by a black and white painting that they had in their house. The other art work did not seem to register, but their newborn would stare at the black and white piece for long periods. So they started researching and found that this is a common trait for babies.

I also have been wearing a red shirt for the days that we have been in hospital. I think worked, as today, when my wife checked out, Anneliese seemed to identify with me more than any other males that have been in and out of her short life so far (grand parents, doctors, pediatricians, etc...). Now that we are home I don't think i need to do this any more.
 
Now that we are family at home I see my immediate job at hand is two fold: 1) Manage the expectations and reactions from Sophia (the first born) and 2) build a new routine with two daughters. I am giving myself a week to build this new routine. I think one of the first changes is getting my wife to put Sophia to bed so she can rebond with her. Kimba thinks that spending a week away from home has changed the relationship with our eldest. I can see what she means why Sophia's interaction with her mother - it's not quite what it was. We'll see how that pans out...

Day 2 - Dec 8th, 2010

A bit tired today. I got about 4 -5 hours sleep but it was broken up pretty heavily. With Anneliese waking for feeds, then getting too cold because my wife needed the room temp really low (I had three blankets and was fully clothed in bed and was still cold!) and therefore not sleeping after her 3am feed, and nurses coming in and out to do various tests I feel rooted. It is now 8pm and I see an early night for me.

Today was about getting the routine going with the new daughter and then spending time with the eldest so she doesn’t feel left out. The early learning for today was fairly simple – reversing the images that we have set up around her. We are using a fold-out book called 'Black & White' by Tama Hoban which has been great. We used it with the eldest too. I also spent time with the youngest today getting her to grip my finger and talking/singing (badly) to her so she can get used to my voice. She can definitely track to a familiar sound, albeit without much muscle control.

The other thing I did today was ensure that I was wearing the same coloured shirt that I had on yesterday (red). I did this because I had to leave the youngest and thought that the colour (shading) of my clothing might offer some consistency and therefore familiarity to her. Not sure if it worked, but them seems no harm in trying. Of course she can’t see colour yet, but certainly shades of grey, which is how red mostly likely appears to her at the moment.

Day 1 - Dec 7th 2010

Today our second child was born – a beautiful girl named Anneliese. She weighed 3.69 kg and was 51 cm long and is healthy – scored 8 then 9 on the Apgar rating. So the first part of any early learning was complete – we had a child!! Obviously at this stage she is very young and still coming to grips with being yanked out of the uterus. But the early learning has started. As you can see from the image we have placed black and white images around the crib for our daughter to look at.

We got this idea from an information session at our local Montessori school a few year back before our first daughter was born. The idea is that the black and white cones on the retina are the first to be engaged by the brain, so by providing black and white images we are stimulating the brains information processing development.

At this stage we will rotate the images from white on black to black on white each day, to add some variety. At about 6 weeks, or when she starts tracking with her eyes fully we’ll start adding in colour. But that is a few weeks away. I should also not that she did actually track with her eyes a bit today. Focusing on my finger her eyes followed it to her nose. But not regularly. Yet.