Shoes

Kaleb got his first pair of shoes yesterday. We got into St Albans for 9am (no thanks to the trains), and learnt about baby foot development before measuring up Kaleb's feet. His size are around the smallest that they do shoes for, and we got a nice pair for him to wear to his Aunty's wedding.

He was happily rolling around the floor, being popular with the staff (standard Kaleb really), but got a little upset when he tried a pair on and I held him up to see whether they fit ok or not.

The second pair he tried on didn't seem to bother him as much, so we kept those on and brought them.

We got a little photo of 'baby's first shoes' too, and a card to track his feet sizes.

Transitions

The biggest transition I've gone through recently is going from not being a parent, to becoming a dad. Pretty big transition. Kaleb is only 9 months and he has been through many more bigger transitions than my one.

Aside from the obvious huge one of living inside Liz to becoming his own entity, he has had a number of major changes in his life - drinking only milk to also eating solid food, not being able to move to learning to roll over and then crawl along the floor are quite massive changes to go through. Having no teeth to having some pop out your gums is probably the most painful transition I've seen him go through.

Learning all these new things aren't all major changes, some are small on their own, but together indicate a big change. Earlier today Kaleb was having fun crawling round his room. He's still doing his "commando" style crawling instead of the conventional style and for a while has been able to go from sitting to laying on his front to crawl. Today, however he went from crawling to pushing himself up so he was sitting again. Before he could only transition the one way, but now it turns out he can do both. A fairly small change, but part of the bigger, and still ongoing transition of starting still to moving about on his own.

One thing I am glad about is that I don't see being a dad transitioning away from being interesting any time soon

Baby show, one year on

Last weekend, Liz, Kaleb and myself went to the baby show at the Excel center in London. I had been to this one before with Liz while she was pregnant with Kaleb, so this was the first time for Kaleb to come along too.

We went with a similar set up to the last baby show, me carrying Kaleb in a cloth wrap, him facing outwards so he could see where we were going. We brought a big rucksack too so wouldn't hurt our hands carrying too many carrier bags.

We went on a Sunday this time, so have now gone to a baby show on each of the days of the week it is on. We got the train from Flitwick, noticing one benefit of a Sunday trip to the Friday one was the ticket prices being half the Friday fair...

Into London and a couple of tube rides later, we arrive, discovering due to train announcements that there is a beauty convention and a comic convention happening at the same time.

Starting our first walk round the stalls, we learnt from our last trip that while marking down which stalls to go back to at the end so we're not carrying round a lot of bags all day, we should use the map in the guide and not the map that becomes part of a competition entry, so we don't risk not having the map when we want to use it (again).

We marked down a couple of places and then Liz entered a raffle, winning a fairly decent prize which was lucky of her. We signed up to some child development research from a uni that was there, and continued making places.

First round done, we got some lunch and reviewed our stall markings, putting extra stars next to the ones to go to first. Liz went to feed Kaleb, so I had a quick wander on my own, finding something else to look at later.

We did the second round, picking up what we wanted pretty quickly. Some reusable face wipes, gates for the stairs and kitchen door, swim towel, and a cape style towel with a hood and felt spikes down the back so the wearer looks like a dragon. Hopefuly Kaleb will like that when he is old enough to wear it.

Liz was starting to struggle with the bag getting heavy (she came down with the flu the next day which might explain it), so we got our final purchase that I spotted earlier - a cheap stroller. One benefit of the Sunday seemed to be extra discounts on the special show prices. We wanted to get a spare pushchair that folded up a lot smaller and was easier to travel with, and I had found one that looked alright and was quite cheap, so we brought it and asked one of the stall assistants to help up unpack it as we couldn't take it boxed, so Kaleb got a ride home in it.

I think he liked it, and enjoyed the day overall as he was a little tired on the train home...

Nine months on

Just at the end of February, Kaleb turned nine months. He's still happy sitting on his own, and seems to have settled on a commando style crawl as a preferred method of getting around by himself.

His feeding is getting on well; he even stated letting us feed him for a change (he has always wanted to feed himself), although that is mostly for yogurts which he can't pick up with his fingers all that well...

He started going to nursery so Liz can go to work one day during the week and enjoys himself there. We went through all the clothes for the next size up people have brought him and it looks like we have most things we're going to need which is handy. It's currently in a pile in his room ready to replace his current clothes when they start getting small, but as some are still fine now, it'll likely be a gradual replace when things get small.

Liz got him weighed the other week too, a good 8kg, and apparently  about as tall as a one year old so he had to sit on the scales instead on laying as he was too tall.

Recently we went to the baby show again to get more Kaleb related items, notably some items to Kaleb-proof the house, now that he is more mobile...