Journey to a New Life

07.00 :

Cesar woke up 15-20 min ago, I feed him, he doesn’t want to go back to sleep. I want to go back to sleep. It was a rough night, he woke up several times and would cry in his sleep. I let him crawl around on the bed while I lay closeby and get some extra bits of rest

08.00 :

I hear Cesar having a poopoo, so I get up and prepare the room to change the diaper and change his clothes

08.15:

I changed his diaper and clothes, it went well, he didn’t try to crawl away on the changing mat and we didn’t battle to get his clothes on

I need to pee but there’s no-one around that I can hand him over to, so I set up the bathtub seat in front of the toilet and plonk him in there while I pee

08.30:

I am going to have breakfast now, I put him in the jumparoo while I prepare and eat my breakfast. I also do some dishes and prepare some sprouts for the Parrots. Check my emails on my phone.

08.50:

Cesar is fascinated with the Bran box, he wants it.

09.00:

Cesar is showing signs that he doesn’t want to be in the jumparoo anymore. We move to the room, the Bran Box tags along. While he plays on the floor I start cleaning the room up and fold some laundry

Cesar is chowing down on the box, once in a while I have to remove some pieces that have fallen off from being saturated with his drool

09.20:

Cesar seems hungry so I feed him

09.27:

Cesar is done eating and is only interested in chewing my nipple and biting in my hand for pain relief…yay

When Cesar is all done I wrap him up on me so we can go for a walk and his food can settle before he starts playing on the ground again

09.40:

We smell something in the air, it smells good – we go check it out!

It’s pancakes!

While we are in the mainhouse we go check out the ‘baby in the mirror’ which Cesar thinks is hilarious

We hear a strange sound coming from outside. Cesar is looking for the source so – we go check it out!

It’s LJ working on the tractor. We check what LJ is doing and LJ explains to Cesar what is what. This is a vocabulary lesson for me just as well.

09.44:

We head to the orchard, where we go look at the trees and the fruits, and name the trees and Cesar can explore the leaves and fruits (and put them in his mouth). We say Hi to Blackie on our way

 
Cesar exploring a chinese guava tree

 

Cesar exploring a guava tree

And an apple tree

Grapefruit tree

Naartjie

Fig Trees

Papaya

Mango

We also say Hi to some of the other dogs

Gracy does some crazy moves, Cesar thinks it’s funny

Hi PooCase

10.05:

Cesar is getting fidgety in the wrap, looks like he wants to come out so he can move around so we start going up to our house

10.15:

We made a little stop by Cerise and her study gang where Cesar hung out.

That’s until his teeth started bothering him, so we went to the house to give him some of his (homeopathic) teething drops.

Cesar loves his teething drops, he’s all like “GIVE IT TO MEE”

10.20:

Cesar plays on the floor and I take a minute to check my emails and messages. Once in a while I go pick him up and move him back to the center of the playing mat as he crawls backwards to the outskirts and get to the tiles where he tends to hurt himself more easily when he’s being a monkey

10.30:

I need to go for a poopoo, the house is quiet everyone is still gone, so I take him with me, putting him in the bathtub seat. He is not very impressed playing with just the toys on the seat so I supplement his play with sounds and faces

10.45:

I gave Cesar a diaper change and put him back on the mat. I play some lectures on the History of Economic Thought to aid me with my studies for my exams. In the meantime I continue with the rest of the laundry. As I move around to put back the clothes I interact and play with Cesar.

Cesar is not very impressed with laying on his back when changing his diaper

He thinks it’s better if I change his diaper while he crawls on the mat
I explain to him that it doesn’t work that way, we’ve had this talk before – we tried it, it didn’t work
       Cesar is not happy with this

11.00:

Cesar is in pain of teething (and he just bit me in my shoulder again) – so giving him teething drops again

The misery of being a baby

11.10:

Cesar’s teething pain seems to really be getting to him so he is being totally encapsulated by the pain, so I play with him to direct his focus on something other than the pain he is in

Nomnomnomnom

11.30:

Finally done putting the laundry away. Cesar is hungry so I feed him

 

11.40:

Cesar fell asleep. I am going to leave him to sleep on my lap while I check an assignment. Don’t want to risk waking him up by moving him.

11.41:

Nevermind – internet is down, so I study instead

12.30:

Studying with Cesar on my lap is now rather uncomfortable. My back is hurting. I’m still a bit tired from last night so I move him and myself to the bed – that is , if I can get there without waking him up.

Mission accomplished, he did not wake up. Now I rest.

13.30:

Cesar wakes up on the bed. He has a bewildered and confused look on his face. It says ‘This is not where I fell asleep’.

As he realizes what happened and that he is okay – everything’s soon monkey business as usual.

  With some hairpulling… 

13.45:

We go have lunch, but first a quick pee.

I put him in the jumparoo, he watches how I make food and I show him what I do and what I use. I mash some plain avo for him while I make my own lunch.

After a while Maite comes out of her room. She has been secluding herself in an attempt to avoid and resist being mesmerized by Cesar’s amazingness as she really has to study. But one can only resist Cesar for so long. So she came out and fed him some of his avo.

15.00:

We had lunch and did our dishes. While doing dishes I reflect on how it always looks like I get ‘nothing done’ through my day and start going into Adam Smith’s theory of productive and unproductive labour and how this relates to motherhood. This is a bad sign.

I had to review something for someone so took Cesar with me to do that. Now I am having something to drink, after that I feed him again, change his diaper and spend some time outside with him before I go to horses and Maite takes him over from me.

15.25:

We’re at the spending some time outside part, he is not happy with his teeth, rubbing his mouth and gums against my chest as we walk.

Not so happy baby, we go and name more things
weird caterpillar home in tree

Ba Na Na Trees

Berry Brush Bush

Chickens

Chaaaarlieee

16.00:

I go to horses to exercise Charlie, bandage him and give him food so I handover Cesar to Maite

17.30:

Back from horses, looks like Maite has been watering the plants and trees outside with Cesar.

17.40:

Playing with Cesar on the mat while trying to open an assignment with incredibly slow internet

18.00:

Feeding Cesar again at my desk while I study

18.20:

Cesar dozed off while eating (or what I call ‘sleating’ – where he sleeps and eats at the same time). He is up now.He cries, he sliced his face with one of his nails. Sometimes he acts like Cesar Scissorhands. I go change his diaper once he settles down.

Prune his Scissorhands

18.40:

Gian comes home from work. He holds Cesar for a moment before he goes off to do more work.

I change Cesar into his evening attire, he almost threw everything off the changing table in the process – but we survived.

We go and hang out with the dogs

19.15:

We have dinner and feed Cesar some food that I defrosted for him earlier.

19.40:

We are done eating and go to Pony Treats

20.00:

I have to attend a chat, I put Cesar down on the mat and hope he can entertain himself for long enough until the chat is over.

20.20:

I put Cesar on my lap as he’s done entertaining himself, I play with him while still chatting.

20.30:

I feed Cesar again, he likes to eat more frequently for shorter amount of times when the teething pain increases, it helps take the edge of. I keep chatting.
After he is done eating he bounces around on my lap and I take turns entertaining him and typing.

21.00:

I change Cesar’s diaper and put him = in the glider as he looks exhausted and quickly falls asleep. I check and respond to some emails.

21.30:

Gian is done working, Monkey is sleeping. We decide to take a short bath together to relax, get clean and catch up on each other’s day. We give the baby monitor to Maite and LJ so they can take care of Cesar if he wakes up.

21.40:

We hear Cesar cry from the bath. It’s the kind of cry where we know he is in a lot of pain. There’s a pause – we look at eachother – we get out of the bath, I wrap a towel around me and go check on Cesar. I go into the room and LJ is holding him, he is still crying. Me and Gian linger around in our towels watching Cesar by Maite and LJ to check whether we should abandon the bath or whether Cesar is ok enough for us to go back. He seems alright after a few minutes so we resume our bath. After a minute or so Maite lets us now he is ok to assure us while we are in our bath.

22.00:

Cesar is crying but doesn’t seem too bad, after a while it escalates and Maite comes knocking saying it’s time to come now because he’s probably hungry now as well. Get out of the bath and get dressed and ready.

22.15:

I get Cesar and feed him.

22.40:

Cesar is almost sleeping, I leave him on my lap a bit longer until he is sleeping nicely, then I move him to the bed. Then I study again.

24.00:

I go lay next to Cesar and read a bit from a book so I don’t fall asleep dreaming about economics.

00.30:

I put the book away, change Cesar’s diaper while he sleeps and then go sleep myself. Hopefully this night’s better than the last.

THE END

(Not really, he wakes up a few times and I feed him, he cries from his teeth during the night and we restart our adventures the next day:) )