Yesterday: sent Ingrid and my mum off to town, to a puppet show. Today she had J’s birthday party to go to. And Adrian has been taking some of his naps in the bed (!) so Eric and I have had some peaceful hours with just one kid to take care of.

Yesterday I tried two small spoonfuls of sour cream with my waffles (with roe and red onion). That was more milk than Adrian could cope with. Not all-out screaming but still about 15 minutes of crying with distinct signs of stomach discomfort.

Adrian has been generally unhappy this weekend: low-level unhappiness pretty much all the time. He has a runny nose for the n^th week in a row. For two days now he’s been gassy, and pooping a little bit with every fart, so now his bottom looks red and tender. Today he got a slight fever, too. And finally I also discovered he’s getting another tooth. No wonder he’s not content.

Interestingly his 3rd tooth is not one of the incisors, but his top left canine.

A very windy day, it’s been hard to walk straight at times. I’ve been reading in the news now about trees falling and roofs being blown off. We’ve had nothing so severe here. Well, the roof of the bird feeder did blow off, twice, and Adrian was woken from one of his naps when he got a massive blast of wind straight in his face.

I’ve started weaning Adrian off the dummy, for his night sleep at least. Some nights it’s not a problem but other times he wakes every 40 minutes because he loses the damn dummy. So now I’m putting an end to that. Today was the second evening without a dummy and it is working pretty well. He responds well to Tracy Hogg’s “shush pat” approach, and to lullabies. He was most angry with me this evening when I turned him onto his tummy after nursing and then did not give him his dummy – he realized straight away that I was going to repeat yesterday’s routine. But 6 minutes later he was fast asleep, and he hasn’t woken in the two and a half hours since then.

After one of the really nice dinners at the restaurant Rustico in Maspalomas, I realized it had tasted so great because the fish was swimming in a little puddle of melted butter. Oops. I steeled myself for a bout of serious crying from Adrian – and it never came. Looks like a little bit of butter is OK. Perhaps his intolerance is improving.

When we were back home again, I took a deep breath and experimented with a bit of parmesan on my pasta one evening. Still no problem.

So now I’m thinking. If Adrian can tolerate a limited amount of milk protein, what should I eat? What gives me most bang for the buck, so to say? The most taste for the least amount of milk protein? Butter is a good bet I guess, because it’s mostly fat and should not have much protein at all. And it tastes SO much better than the milk-free spread. What else?

Decided yesterday that there will be no more long naps for me together with Adrian, since I came to realize that those naps probably contribute to the bad night sleep. We probably had a vicious circle here: he sleeps badly at night -> both of us tired in the morning -> we take a long nap together -> he gets too much sleep during the day -> he sleeps badly at night. Bye-bye naps. I will probably get less sleep in total but hopefully of a higher quality.

I am also trying to improve the quality of my sleep by not using the computer after 10pm. As you see it is not going very well yet (it is 22:15 already) but I promise I will turn it off after this post.

Instead of napping with him, I managed to get Adrian to sleep in a back carry in a sling – twice! The first time I couldn’t contort myself enough to get a dummy into his mouth so he slept restlessly and woke a bit too early. The second time went better. My previous attempts have failed but this time I tried a different type of back carry (the rucksack carry instead of the wrap cross carry, for the sling geeks among you) and it seemed to work better.

Bought new spring shoes for myself (delightfully comfy Hush Puppies) – the previous pair had a worn-out piece of lining that was giving me blisters.

Decided that I will start taking Omega-3 supplements, and bought some, since there seems to be a consensus among scientists about their usefulness. (I also plan to take vitamin D during the winter months, but have decided to skip it for now.) I still don’t believe in routine consumption of multivitamins since I believe my diet is sufficiently varied already. I’m also already taking calcium while I’m living dairy-free because of Adrian’s allergy, and glucosamine, which in my experience helps me avoid “clicking” joints.

I’ve finished putting up my backdated posts from the vacation. Here are links to all of them: Adrian six months, Ingrid fifty-three months; daily posts about the trip: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6, day 7, an observation, and some concluding remarks.

A trip to the supermarket in the morning, Ingrid cycling.

Next, a trip to town, primarily to shop for materials for some Easter crafts. We came home with plastic eggs of two kinds, coloured feathers, egg paint based on food colouring, and assorted other craftsy stuff that I suddenly realized we needed: paint, more narrow paintbrushes, some pre-stretched canvases, etc. On the way to the crafts store we stopped by a bookshop where we bought some children’s books.

Lunch at Pyttirian in Kungshallarna. Ingrid specifically asked for pasta bolognese and then hardly touched it; next time I’m choosing a restaurant based on my taste, and ordering meatless food for her so that I can eat what she leaves. (Now I left the restaurant still hungry – I need almost double servings of most food. No wonder Adrian is growing well.) Adrian happily gnawed on crispbread.

Some fresh bookmarks from delicious.com:

• what a programmer does for a living – If you're still wondering what I do at work
• Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie –
• The Blind Man Who Taught Himself To See – Daniel Kish has been sightless since he was a year old. Yet he can mountain bike. And navigate the wilderness alone. And recognize a building as far away as 1,000 feet. How? The same way bats can see in the dark.
• Americans smile all the time as if they are plugged in – Why do Russians smile so little (and Americans so much?)
• Pick a number from 1 to 10…for SCIENCE! –

Planned/sketched/designed a wooden deck for the rear of the house, to replace the veranda that got demolished. Now that I have measured the relevant bits of the house and the garden, I’ve come to realize that we will need a railing not just along one end but also along a part of the long side: there’s going to be a 60cm drop there.

Eric packed away the cot we’ve had standing next to our bed and replaced it with a mattress on the floor. I’ve been bothered by Ingrid’s roving arms and legs, so now Adrian will take her place between Eric and me, and Ingrid will be on a mattress to the side.

This morning we cleaned most of the visible construction debris from the garden: nails, shards of wood, piles of sawdust, handfuls of yellow rock wool, etc. Adrian was on my back in a sling and actually didn’t complain much about it, as long as he had someone else to look at. Eric also put up Ingrid’s swing again.

Then a long nap with Adrian (neither of us has been sleeping well during nights), while Eric and Ingrid went to the cinema and shopping for birthday presents for two of Ingrid’s friends. Then an ordinary uneventful afternoon.

Watched Inception in the evening with Eric.

Discovered that Adrian’s eye infection has now infected me as well.