Day +34: My Busy Little Man

I seem to have developed a human shadow.

Sean's latest thing was to follow me around, all day long, barely letting me have even a minute to myself at any time of the day. In the kitchen, in the laundry, even in the toilet. The only time I didn't have a hip-high shadow was when Sean was having his nap. And it was exhausting trying to keep from stepping on my shadow, all the time.

One of Sean's favourite things to do at the moment was to snake around my legs while I was standing at the kitchen, either washing up dirty dishes and Sean's medication syringes for the umpteenth time, or preparing a meal for Sean, or preparing dinner for Jonathan and me. It made doing anything in the kitchen very hard when I had a little boy snaking around my legs. Much like a cat would do the "figure 8" around its owner's ankles, I had an 80cm tall toddler doing the same thing, butting his head into my groin or my butt every time he ducked between my legs.

We had a bit of a rude start to the day, with Sean waking at 5am, crying hysterically and needing a lot of cuddles. After disconnecting him from the milk pump, Sean came into our bed and I held him and patted him back to sleep. Jonathan got out of bed at 6.30am to shower, and left for work around 7am. Sean and I stayed in bed, both of us sleeping until nearly 10am.

All day long, Sean followed me wherever I went, right down to the toilet. I couldn't even have a minute to myself to do my business - had I closed the toilet door, with Sean on one side and me on the other, Sean would have become so hysterically upset that it would not have been worthwhile shutting that door. I took Sean out to the mailbox with me to check the mail, and he enjoyed walking down the driveway, and back up again. When we left the hospital, we were encouraged to go outside for fresh air every day. I have yet to resume going for afternoon walks with Sean in the pram, but I thought we could start with us walking around the complex for a short time every day for the time being.

Preparing dinner with my shadow was interesting. I wanted to make a sausage hot pot in the slow cooker for dinner, and I needed to brown the sausages before putting them into the slow cooker. My little shadow insisted on sitting on the floor right below the stove top, and it took a long time to negotiate a compromise. In the end, it was sitting under the stove, or pulling apart the Tupperware drawer. I figured the Tupperware drawer would not scar him for life if he was just pulling the containers out and tossing them all over the kitchen floor.

All day long, Sean walked from one end of the house to the other, carrying one thing or another around the house. His favourite toys at the moment were still the empty medication syringes - there were plenty of toys for him to play with, but he preferred to carry around the syringes. Go figure.

With our dinner bubbling away in the slow cooker, I spent the rest of the day chasing after Sean, and trying to keep him entertained. We enjoyed cuddles when he needed cuddles, and watched TV together during these quieter moments. With Sean's fairly strict medication and feeding plans, Sean must have wondered why he spent two-thirds of the day stuck in the high chair.

At least Sean was eating well. I was really pleased with the amount of food Sean was eating again. I may have to start making food for him again - currently, Sean was happy to eat all pre-packaged food that we'd bought from the supermarket, but the way he was devouring the food, it would be a lot cheaper (not to mention a lot fresher) for me to start cooking again.

Speaking of food, our sausage hot pot dinner was delicious. There was plenty of leftovers, and our fridge was starting to finally look normal again, with leftovers in boxes filling the fridge.

Sean's nose had been running non-stop for days, and every time I caught Sean today, I wiped his nose. Sean was also teething again, and he had taken to sticking his tongue and drooling heavily. We had to start using bibs again today, having packed them away months ago after we thought we were over the worst of the drooling. Sean's runny nose was blocking up overnight, which made sleeping through the night impossible. At last count, he had woken 3 times already as his nose repeatedly blocked up.

We have Clinic tomorrow, so it will be an early start. Please, Sean, please try and sleep for the next 6 hours!!! I hope we are done with Clinic by midday - I'd organised some professional cleaners to come to our house and give it a good clean from top to bottom, and they are due here at 2pm. I'm looking forward to a nice clean house!