Tag: parenting

The strangest thing happened today.

Maxim and I went for our usual walk in the park. But we started off a bit later than usual – around 10:30am. I walked him around and than went to our usual spot, which is a small area covered by shadow of grape leaves. It has about eight benches there, but usually these all are empty.

So, we were sitting there, enjoying the fresh air. Maxim was in a mood for some baby talk. I made him company. We were talking for about 5 or 10 minutes. I got so carried away, with my head mostly in Maxim’s cradle, that I didn’t notice how some people came and occupied other benches. When look around next time, I saw that I was surrounded by young moms, brestfeeding their babies. I’m serious! There were three of them – each on her own bench a couple of meters away.

I moved my head back into Maxim’s cradle, thinking that I am imagining things. I than looked out once again and made sure that I saw what I thought I saw. Yup. Here they were. All three of them, with their brests out, feeding their kids, like noone was there.

Stunned…

This is just a quick note to inform you all that Vladimir lended me his camera for a few days. Olga and I will be filming Maxim for historical reasons. I lack any tools for real movie productions, but I’ll use all my photography skills to make this clip as good as I can.

It will, of course, be uploaded to this site as soon as I see it. Stay tuned.

For a few days now Olga is obviously thinking about things she’ll be missing in the future. I know that because she shares her worries pretty often. I have to say that I am often thinking about the same issues. Most of these things to be missed have, of course, to deal with Maxim. Small stutf, like when he joins his hands, and puts them on his chest. He can do it easily now, but it still requires a certain amount of concentration from him. Very soon he’ll be able to do it in split second and with his eyes shut. And we’ll miss it. Another thing is that now we can pretty much do whatever we want with him. We can pick him up, hug him, kiss him, baby talk with him. It’ll be too soon when he’ll be embarassed by this sort of behaviour. All kids are. We’ll still want to do it, but he won’t let us. And we’ll miss the times when we were in control. Which are the current times…

Maxim amazed us today. Actually, it started yesterday. He ate around five in the afternoon. We tried to put him to sleep, but couldn’t because he wasn’t feeling well. Around 9pm, when it was almost the time to eat again, he fell asleep. He was very tired, so we decided to let him sleep. We thought he would sleep for an hour or so. 7 hours later, at 4am today, we decided to wake him up. Olga couldn’t hold up all the milk and we were also worried for the guy.

7 hours of sleep! Can you believe that? 11 hours without food! Is he growing up or something?

Maxim’s daily schedule is variable. Both Olga and I are trying to keep it as constant as possible but it moves around alot anyway. We try to bath, walk, feed, play, and put Maxim to bed at the same time every day, but he gets to choose on how closely to follow the scheme. He gets that choice by sleeping. We don’t ever wake him up. If he wants to sleep 4 hours instead of 2 – let him do it. If he decides to skip some sleep – again, the choice is his. And this seemed to work just fine.

But for the last couple of days, the routine changed noticably. Maxim decided that he needs more sleep. So he eats his dinner at around 18:00, than stays awake for an hour or so, and than falls asleep and does not wake up until just after the midnight. We used to bath him at around 21:00, but now we have to sit and wait until he wakes up. At midnight he opens his eyes, has a bath, eats and than immediately falls asleep and sleeps until roughly 04:00am. At that time he eats once again and falls asleep quickly to continue his dreams until around 07:00am. This time he eats, and goes for a walk in the park or on the seaside, where he decides wheather to sleep some more or stay awake and enjoy the outside.

With this new schedule he sleeps straight for 13 hours with a couple of small breaks. That’s a lot. On the other hand it is supposedly good as it gives us more free time. Because the schedule is rather new, neither of us knows what to do with this time though. I am still afraid and not trying to get used to this scheme as it might change in the next few days. I’ll be disappointed than.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes from here. For now I’ll go have some sleep…