The weird backgrounds of a cartoon Gecko and a silly clown, told in less than 10 paragraphs and not including the poop video. You are most welcome.

 Its been a tiring, but overall a good few weeks in the house of the rising Daveys.

Hannah and Oliver have been generally good - although the fact that Oliver is going through the '4-month sleep regression', means we are getting even less sleep than normal. Some nights he was up at 2, 2 4.30 and then after 6am he is just up! Between these wakes sometimes it takes 45 minutes to feed him and get him to go back down. Anyway - you have heard enough about raising these two over the last few posts so today I want to talk about something different (Kind of). The weird shit that you discover or realise when raising kids. 

Firstly the moment you look at your wife, and then at a soother or a baby bottle and realise that you have at least 30 fake nipples in your house. Different sized, fake nipples, all made to go into a child's mouth. In different circumstances, the idea of a box of different sized and fake nipples could be faintly erotic classed as some type of weird (or completely normal) fetishism, but now it's just something else that needs cleaning or replacing whenever a small person hides it in a cupboard or pocket to be found in 8 - 10 years. 

Laundry is also a thing right now - we are making it double hard on ourselves because we are doing cloth diapers for the second time. So every day there is either two days of baby and toddler clothes (complete with fake nipples hidden in pockets) that needs to be washed alongside our own pants and shirts with spittle covered shoulders or there is a huge pile of cloth diapers complete with inserts and extra padding to be washed through two cycles to get them clean (First cold and then hot). At least the basement is always warm now because we leave to door to the bathroom open so the drier (constantly on) warms the play area down there.

We have also discovered a few things about some of the 'child entertainers' that are popular on youtube and the internet. 

One of Hannahs favourites is Geckos Garage - An animated show about a Gecko who runs a garage ( If that wasn't already obvious from the title (Geckos garage isn't going to be about a giraffe that runs a fucking cinema is it!) and fixes trucks, diggers and busses). It's a nice little online show and Hannah loves diggers so watches that episode a lot. She also likes a lot of the songs that Gecko sings. 

However, we discovered that the voice of Gecko is a British 'artist', called David Firth. He also has his own video channels on youtube, for adults. Some which you may have heard of are called 'Salad Fingers' and burnt face man. 

So follow through these three links.....Take a quick look at Gecko, then Salad fingers and finally burnt face man. All by the same fucked up mind...makes you wonder a bit about children's entertainers and what is going on in their minds. 

If you watch these first two videos one after the other, there is no doubt it's the same voice!

Gecko....

Salad Fingers...

Burnt Face man

Another entertainer Hannah seems to like is Blippi. He also has an episode about diggers that Hannah likes. He is played by an ex U.S. military loadmaster called Stevin John. When in character he dresses in garish clothes and acts childlike and curious about the vehicles and places he visits as well as the people he meets. Its generally a good show with a good insight into normal everyday things. Heres the link to the digger episode...

Now, I don't know how I found this out, but Stevin, also used to be a gross-out comedian called Steezy Grossman. (A boy who was born as poop after his parents had anal sex, according to Wikipedia)  Stevin has done a few videos as Steezy Grossman, but has become internet famous for one in particular. I am not going to describe what he does in the video apart to say that it's toilet based and pretty disgusting. If you really want to know do a search for 'Blippi Harlem shake'. The video itself is pretty hard to find, but after a bit of sleuthing, I did find a copy from Russia and to be honest, its pretty crap. 

My whole point about these two entertainers is that you just don't know what people get up to when they are not in character. I'll be honest that neither of these things bothers me and I won't stop Hannah or Oliver watching any of the children's style videos and songs made by either of these two entertainers. Everyone has a past and everyone has weird stuff about them if you want to find it. What's important to me is the stuff that I sit and watch with Hannah is entertaining, interesting and educational as well as fun. There are no guns, fighting or rudeness in any of these children's presentations and to be honest I quite like that both of the actors have a background - It kind of makes watching them a little more fun!

For any of you wondering about my last post and how things are going - Buffy and myself are always chatting and checking on each other. We are still tired and we still need breaks, but together we are coping much much better. Both kids are awesome at the moment for 99 per cent of the time, Hannah does have her little tantrums, but they are few and far between and apart from suddenly being a little scared of the dark, she is doing really well. We have allowed her to keep a sidelight on in her bedroom and have the door open, so she doesn't get afraid. Its really heartbreaking that she had developed this little fear of the dark, but after consulting Dr Google and his internet of facts, it appears to be completely normal for a kid of her age. To help her feel a little safer she now has a little safe net canopy tent over the end of her bed too, which helps her feel safe and secure at bedtime. There is a photo of it later in the post.

Oliver is still 'Smalliver' -he is growing all the time but is still a tiny little nearly 5-month-old. He is also 'Jolliver', gurgling and giggling a lot and could also be known as 'Rolliver', as he has just learned to roll over from his belly to his back. Hannah loves him to bits and it difficult to get her to stop hugging and kissing him sometimes. A couple of days ago she read him a full book ( Snuggle puppy) while me and Buffy stood and watched. She is going to be a crazy good big sister and we can't wait till they can play together. Although it will probably drive us all mad when they do!

Here are some highlights from the last few days and weeks.

Oliver turns over (slowly)

Hannah reads to Oliver

Hannah climbs

Dribbling Buddies

Cuddles

The new tent/net thing

They love each other!

Oh yeah, we also got a new 'Vintage' glass panelled front door. It lets in so much more light than the old one and now it's finally fitted we are very happy with it!

I think I will leave it there for today. I have been working all afternoon getting the door aligned and set up with the knob, strike and bolts all set up correctly. So I think for a change, I will head to bed really early and try to get more than 5 hours sleep! That would be bloody lovely!