For the first 6 months of a baby’s life no solid food is supposed to pass their lips.

By the time P got to 5 months he was showing a lot of interest in solid food. And by “a lot of interest” I mean watching the food Mrs C and I were eating like a hawk and occasionally trying to grab it.

But as with so many other things in a baby’s development, you can’t just sit them down in front of a four course meal and expect them to get on with it. They have to learn to chew food.

Makers of baby foods know this so they label their food pots up with helpful information such as “Stage 1″, “Stage 2″, and you’ve guessed it, “Stage 3″.

Or at least this would be helpful information if I could remember for the life of me when each of the stages began and ended. But in essence, the stage number refers to the purée/lumpiness ratio.

P is at the age now when puréed food is a little beneath him. When it comes to a meal he wants a little more chewing action.

So we started him on finger foods. Mostly Oragnix rice cakes which all went down very well. But they’re a little on the expensive sid so we’ve been trying him more on fruit and veg.

Last night’s experiment was with mango chunks.

As I held P in my arms Mrs C offered him a piece of mango from a fork. However, instead of biting a piece off as we’d expected him to do, he put it all in his mouth and sucked it off the fork.

He sucked it so hard of the fork that it went straight to the back of his throat.

“He’s choking!” Mrs C said to me.

If you have a choking baby the advice is to lie them on their front, over your knees and slap them on the back until the blockage comes out of their windpipe.

OK, action stations! I’ve dealt with this before, I know what to do.

Three slaps in and nothing had come out of P’s mouth. And worse, I could see that his face was getting red. I managed to control my panic but I was genuinely worrying about what to do if this didn’t work.

2 more slaps and P tries to cry.

Another 2 slaps and the piece of mango fell onto the floor and P lets out a giant cry.

“Thank God,” said Mrs C “I don’t think I’m ever giving him solid food again.”

“Yep, and I won’t ever complain about hearing him cry again!”

2 minutes later when the crying hadn’t stopped I looked to Mrs C and said:

“I wish he’d stop crying”

“Rice cake, is it P?” she offered.

I’ve always been fairly healthy.

I eat well, do a bit of exercise, never really had anything major wrong with me - you know, apart from the obvious.

But that all changed about 3 months after P (I’m officially dropping the ‘Little’ as I nearly put my back out trying to pick him today) was born. Since then I’ve fallen in to a cycle of coughs, colds and sickness.

And currently, I’m in the middle of a cold that has lasted, ooh, since just before time began, or so it seems. I just can’t get rid of it. This isn’t unusual either, I have a perpetual cold (if only science could harness th epower of my perpetual cold we need never rely on oil again!), which is starting to get more than a little annoying.

As I’ve already implied I get a feeling I know why I’ve always got a snotty nose at the minute, it’s all P’s fault.

It’s probably a little hard of me to lay the blame for my constant illness solely at the door of P. He can’t help the fact that he gets colds at nursery then passes them onto me. Him catching colds is all part of his immune system developing its defences and at the rate he’s going I fully expect his defences are going to be strong enough to hold of the viral Normandy Landings by the end of the month.

As a side note, this is one of the things that really pisses me off about having a sick baby - people telling me it’s “good for him”. A sick baby means a baby who doesn’t sleep properly. It means a baby who is grumpy all day long (I wonder where he gets that from). It means a baby who does shits the consistency of coffee (the drink not the bean) that more often then not cover him head to toe. It means I’m worried and knackered all the time.

Telling me “this is good for him” may well be true, but it’s not something I want to hear when he’s sick. Alright? Glad we’ve cleared that up.

Where was I? Oh, yes.

Nursery is definitely where P gets most of his diseases from. We fully expected this. We watched my Brother-in-law come down with everything from conjunctivitis to hand, foot and mouth after he put his son into nursery. It’s all part of signing your child up to nursery and it’s impossible to avoid - kids mix with each other and pass things on. Then when P gets home and pokes me in the eye/slaps me in the face/punches me in the mouth (as he’s becoming inclined to do) he passes it on to me.

Tiredness also plays a major part in this illness merry-go-round. When you’ve spent the week looking after a child who wont sleep (day or night) and needs constant attention, just because they feel so miserable, it wears you out. Having your sleep pattern interrupted again after it’s been pretty stable for the last 9 months, makes you question how you survived without sleep when your child was first born. Being run down makes you more susceptible to catching things - so when the tiny hand grabs for your mouth, the deal is made - you’re getting this cold too Dad.

But as a parent to a small child there’s never any time to get over things. You can’t just have the day of being a Dad.

So I’m sat here at the computer with my toilet roll stuffed with snotty tissues and my multivitamins, hoping this cold will go away and waiting for the next one to come.

Norman Fowler and I have a lot in common.

We’ve both quite high profile jobs beneath the glaring spot light of the media whilst serving in Maggie Thatchers final Government.

On second thoughts, maybe we’ve not got so much in common.

Still, here’s an interesting piece from Saturday’s Guardian about Norman putting his family before his job.

Hello and welcome to the new Dad: About the Boy!

Some eagle-eyed readers might think that the content of DATB looks a little familiar. Almost as if it’s been copied from somewhere else… well, that’s because it has been.

DATB is the new home of the my previous parenting blog “The Expectant Father”.  Despite the obvious flaw in the title of that blog (it really only had a 9 month life span, didn’t it) it was really a lack of time that killed it. I just couldn’t fit in writing about being a dad with actually being a dad. There were just too many bottles to make up and too many bottoms to clean. And most of all there was just too much sleep to be deprived of that it just dried up.

But Little P is a bit older now (in 20 days he’ll be a year old) and he’s gracious enough to give us a little more free time at the moment.

Which brings me to (and you too) Dad: About the Boy.

Yes, it’s title is a terrible pun.

Yes, it’s title is potentially as limiting as The Expectant Father was - will I have to change it to Dad: About the Boys or, God forbid, Dad: About the Boy and Girl? I just don’t know people, I just don’t know.

And I can’t make any promises about how often I’ll write but I will try and do it more than say, ooh, once every 7 months or so. And who could, or in fact would, want more than that?

So sit back, and enjoy the horrors of being a dad with me.

Cheers, Ian.