Something new

Last week we decided to introduce Riku to a potty- we're not potty training, we just wanted to see how he would react to a potty and let him get used to sitting on one if he was happy to.

For some reason he really enjoys it- two out of three times he just sits there and the potty is still empty when I take him off it a few minutes later, but that's fine, for now it's just for fun.

I had wondered why I had seen potties in the shops with handlebars or even steering wheels on the front but now I know- Riku loves holding onto the handlebars on his. The handlebars also help preserve one's modesty if one's parents are taking photos!

All these photos are so cute I couldn't decide between them- not the best quality unfortunately since it is hard to catch him being completely still these days! Yes, he is wearing legwarmers- we can't let the boy freeze while he is sitting there! ;)

How do you get this thing to change direction?

Riku enjoying being Riku

For the last two months lying down to get dressed or have his nappy changed is not Riku's favourite thing to do- he'd much rather be exploring so he tends to protest when I lie him down and roll over and crawl away as soon as he possibly can, but yesterday he must have felt that lying on his back wasn't such a bad thing after all, or maybe the cow print nappy put him in a good mood :)

If the video above isn't working, here's the link

Riku's baths

Like a lot of newborns, Riku didn't particularly like baths, especially having his hair washed- here he is showing his displeasure:

He soon grew to absolutely love baths though- I would say it is his favourite time of the day. Even though it's not strictly necessary to bath a baby his age every day, especially in this season, he enjoys it so much that I don't want to deprive him of it, so he gets a bath every day unless we get home after or too close to his bed time after being out for the day.

Before Riku was born I bought him an inflatable bath tub. Since we don't have a huge amount of space, I thought this would be the best type of bath to have as we could easily store it until the next baby (possibly!) comes along. He used this in the kitchen sink for his first two months.

About 10 days old

Once we moved to our current house it took me a while to find the bath and blow it up again so in the mean time he had baths with his papa, which he also enjoyed, and then once his bed time got earlier in the bathroom sink. By about 5 months he was pretty much outgrowing the sink though and was learning to splash, so in order to contain the floods of water he liked to create I finally found the inflatable tub again and started using it next to the big bath tub.

About 6 months old

Recently when we went to Thailand I thought at first I would take the tub with us and deflated it but decided at the last minute it was a bit bulky and left it behind. In Thailand we tried him in the shower at first, but for Riku shower=torture so even though the bathroom sink was only deep enough to cover him up to the hips I bathed him in that the rest of the time we were there.

When we got back I blew up the green tub again but after Riku had been in the bath a couple of minutes it had collapsed about halfway already and the water was pouring out the sides. Tried again the next day- same result, so there was obviously a hole in it somewhere. I had a fairly good look over it and couldn't find out where it was leaking from, so decided since he is getting to be quite a big boy now Riku could try the big bath! Well, Riku does not like the big bath, even if I get in it with him. He likes his little bath much better.

To be honest as well as Riku not liking it, it is quite tricky to bathe him in the big tub from outside it because it is extremely deep even by Japanese tub standards and the bottom of it is well below the level of the shower floor, where I have to sit if I don't get in with him. Getting in with him has some logistical difficulties as Toru needs to be there so I can pass Riku out- this won't be possible every night with Toru back at work from tomorrow.

So on Friday we ordered a new inflatable bath for him, and it arrived today. It says on the label that it is suitable for babies up to about 6 months, but Riku doesn't care about that, he's perfectly happy in it!

10 months and 9 days old

Riku at 10 months!

The first 6 weeks of this year have gone past in a blur so I managed to miss Riku's 9 month post completely. There have been so many developments and changes in the last 2 months that it will be hard to document them all properly, but I'll list some of them here in bullet point form:

• He is now cruising around furniture like a pro and has no problems letting go, sitting down again and crawling off after whatever has caught his eye. We got him an activity table and he loves to stand at it and push or spin things.
• Just a very few times he has used one hand to pull himself up and then tentatively let go- he can actually stand by himself but doesn't seem to like the feeling much or perhaps lacks confidence so he always sits back down very quickly. It won't be long though I'm sure!
• About 3 weeks ago he started pointing at things that interest him- these are often mobiles or other things hanging from the ceiling which he is particularly interested in at the moment.
• His "vocab" has increased a lot in the last month and he has really branched out from the "dadada", "bababa" and "mumumum" which were 95% of his repertoire at the end of last year! He has also started "singing" and has quite a wide vocal range :)
• He is finally starting to show more of an interest in food- he is particularly fond of rice and scarfed down huge amounts of sticky rice while in Thailand as well as scrambled eggs, dragon fruit, mandarins and fruit shakes. He also likes onigiris, sekihan and risottos which he has been managing to feed to himself with a spoon quite successfully the last week- he hadn't eaten from a spoon for quite a while because he refused to be fed with one and if I gave him the spoon less than 1% of the food ever made it into his mouth, so I decided to wait until he was a bit more coordinated to try again and just let him have finger foods until then. Well, finally he has reached the point where he can hold a spoon in more or less the right direction and get a lot of the food into his mouth!
• He now has both "vampire teeth" (actually lateral incisors) but they are coming through quite slowly so I think his left front incisor, which started coming through about 2 weeks ago, will catch up soon and the right one won't be too far behind.
• He is getting a lot more agile in general and especially in the hotel room in Thailand showed a lot of skill at climbing on, off and over things. Perhaps because of the bigger bed at the hotel or the warm weather he rolled around a lot more at night there and sometimes even slept on his tummy, which he hadn't done since he was a tiny newborn. He has started flopping over backwards from sitting when he knows he is on a soft surface- he thinks it's hilarious and it makes a good game to play with him, as long as he doesn't try it on the wooden floor!
• I have seen him try to put the plastic shapes into the holes in his shape sorter ball even when playing by himself, and if I help him he will make quite good attempts at it- this kind of thing really makes me realise how quickly he is growing up!
• He can roll a ball back to you if you roll it to him- even a month ago he would just randomly bat the ball in any direction but now he can roll it consistently back towards the person opposite him.

I'm sure there's more but that's probably enough for now! We are also going to baby signing classes this year which I'll do a separate post for soon.