We celebrated our little man’s first birthday yesterday, it was a quiet affair but that's just how we like things. The girls got to pick out a cake, balloons and candles. There were a few tears after he burnt his fingers on the candles but after he got a taste of all that sugar things were looking up.
Well we survived his first year. Having a newborn on board was harder than we thought from the noise from living in close quarters to handling the extra laundry. Babies have A LOT of laundry. Our little guy has gone from co-sleeping with us, to the bookshelf, to a home built crib behind our door, to a portable cot in our room, to portable cot squished in a bunk and now finally to a bunk with a full lee cloth with zipper hole. All that moving around I’m not surprised that he’s STILL NOT SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT.
We’ve also had to deal with doctors check ups in different locations, being refused in different countries for vaccinations (thanks Canada) to free health care in undeveloped countries. We found that we need to think ahead a little more with him. For example right now he has a cold and 3 teeth (including a molar) coming in, he is grumpy grumpy grumpy. We leave tomorrow on a 3-4 day passage north and to be on the safe side I took him to a clinic today for a check over and as I thought he has an ear infection. I sensed the ear infection and wanted to get him on meds before we left, you know how it all goes, his ear drum would probably burst with a crazy high fever and I would be freaking out offshore. Better safe than sorry.
We haven’t really baby proofed the boat. We put a few plug covers in low outlets and on the stairs we had to cover up the first step with mesh. He can’t walk yet but he can climb all the way out into the cockpit in a flash, underway in a swell too! He gets all over the boat and likes to play in the toilet, like all babies.
We started out with cloth diapers and quickly switched to disposable, I just couldn’t keep up or get the pee smell out, it was horrible. We have a washing machine now so that helps immensely with the work load. Still he makes sooo much mess. Drinks are constantly getting tipped over, he’s left a poopy mess from one end of the boat to the other (twice), everything has had spit up on it, when naked he likes to pee on all the walls. Everything gets sucked on and spat out.
All in all he’s a pretty amazing kid, he doesn’t cry and has a huge grin plaster on his face at all times. The girls beat the crap out of him but he’s one strong kid. Baby Crew, you weren’t planned and I did cry a bit when I found out you were to be but I/we are soo glad you are here. You’re our little sunshine when everything else is full of emotional, borderline psychopath screaming little girls.
I got the idea from Brittany with Windtraveler for the bunk enclosure, if it can keep twins it's a winner.
