Thank you so much for the messages after my last entry! I really was surprised to get any - that was a pretty dull entry! ;) Thanks for the sympathy over the money issues, and also for reminding me that God will make everything right :) I know he will too. He's good like that!
Michelle, I WISH we could have tea too! Why oh why does an ocean have to separate me from all my lovely online friends (well, except for Jemma, of course!)?! Tsk. Thank you
Jemma for reminding me to have faith in my husband. He has never steered me wrong before, you're right. I had to trust him completely over moving to the house we're in at the moment because I was still housebound with M.E. and wasn't well enough to even go and view the house. But it just FELT right to me, and he was so confident. I had such peace over it, and we had looked at a LOT of places and I never had that peace over it as I did with this one. But this time seems different. I had the exact opposite feeling to peace, and Neil himself didn't know what to do, so it wasn't like he had made a decision that he felt good about and I could have gone with that. He was dithering about just as much as I was - we're quite a pair for dithering!! ;) In the end he just picked one option out of "Go" or "Not go", just at random. So I didn't have anything much to put my faith in!
Anyway I am so glad we stayed. But I am constantly distracted by thoughts of this new job that he is going to apply for. In a good way though - I keep thinking about it because I feel sort of excited, like I almost WANT it to happen, even knowing that I'll hate moving and starting again in a new place. Neil is nervous about it because he is worried he can't do the job, but he ALWAYS thinks like this about new jobs that require a little more of him than his previous role. He has always had such low self-confidence :( He is so bright though, and always rises to the challenge. He is almost panicky for the first few weeks in a new role, constantly coming home saying he can't do it and he'll never learn everything, etc, but he always does. I always remind him of this when he next has worries about an upcoming new role. So I know he'll be fine, IF he gets the job.
It IS a step up from what he has been doing, more towards management, but he has the relevant experience. It's a bigger salary than he's ever had, and based in an area where the cost of living (and housing) is markedly cheaper than here, so if he gets the job we would know without a doubt that it was definitely something God meant us to do. And we'd go. No matter what else was happening. I am excited about moving to this particular city. It's one I have always felt comfortable moving to, and I have all these (probably unrealistic!) mushy dreamy fantasies about raising our children there and stuff. So Neil will apply for the job. The closing date is December 12th and I will keep you posted! If he doesn't get it, we will not have lost anything.
Well, Arthur is having his morning nap and I neeeeeeeeded to take this opportunity to update my diary, or at least, get as much crammed in as I can in his half hour and then leave it open to finish it during his afternoon nap! I totally meant to update again the next day after my last entry but the time just isn't there. I am so tired lately. Yesterday evening I had planned to update my diaries ALL evening if that's how long it took! I told Neil that's what I would be doing and everything. Then I put Arthur to bed, and was almost too tired to even go and brush my teeth before falling into bed myself. Not that I feel any less tired for it today, but oh well. So my opportunity disappeared yesterday too. I am soooooo behind on my favourite diaries yet again! That sucks, I love my diary reading! Pah.
Anyway there is so much to say about Arthur! I don't think I've talked about how he's doing and stuff since before he turned one! It seems too strange to me that he's 13 months old next week. Where did that month go?! It seems like time is speeding up more than ever before. This week I got my update from Babycentre for his last week as a 12-month-old, and after this they stop being weekly and become monthly updates :( My baby is growing up!
He must be doing new things since I last wrote about him.... He is walking a lot. He walks more than he crawls, but he still cruises a lot. He toddles about in such cute little tottery steps! I love to watch him. He crosses rooms and walks to his toys and pauses mid-way across the room to think where to go next, etc. The latest thing he has been working on with his walking is changing direction by pivoting on one foot. He is getting really good at that now and changes direction all the time, almost just for the fun of it sometimes! He can also trample though toys that are in his way rather than trip over them and fall down. He is getting much steadier.
BUT, his feet are still curving inwards and he has a high arch at the instep, so on Monday he will go back to the physio at the hospital and have the first set of full leg plasters put on again to set his feet straight :( I am so sad about it, but I know it needs to happen to really fix his feet. I just hate that he already had four sets of plasters when he was 5 and 6 months old and that was supposed to fix them, but it obviously hasn't. Now he is sooooo mobile and full of energy, and I'm dreading how the plaster casts will restrict him and how hard that might be for him. I hope it won't be a complete nightmare. He adjusted so wonderfully before, but then he was only rolling around back then, and not eager to get all over the place with a ton of energy to burn off. The casts will be bent at the knee just like before, but not as much as 90 degrees, so it will be very hard for him to even crawl on them. I think he will find a way of squiggling around the floor though. He's very determined!
Anyway. Last time the physio said one, maybe two plaster sets. I am pretty sure his feet won't be perfectly straight after just one, so I think we'll go back after the first week, have the plasters removed and need to put another set straight back on him. But I really HOPE two will be it. I am absolutely sure he'll be well out of them by Christmas though, and hopefully never to go back in anything to correct his feet again! Pesky gene.
Let's see, what else? Arthur has been asleep 30 minutes now so he will probably wake in like 10 seconds. He's usually like an alarm clock - exactly 30 minutes! When he wakes I'll leave this unfinished and post the (hopefully!) finished entry later.
Ohhhh there's just so much to update on! I am trying to remember what things Arthur was doing last time I updated about him. I'm sure he's doing so many different things now. He doesn't say many real words (though he babbles CONSTANTLY, and his babbling really sounds like proper language now), though Babycentre keeps telling me that my toddler is now using at least two other words besides Mama and Dada. He does say Mama and Dada properly now - for ages it was just dadadadada for Daddy, but he says "Dada" now :) Still adds a few extra syllables to it now and then though! I think he is saying, "Hot" because he points to the oven sometimes and says, "Uht" (usually dropping the 't') and gives me a look that tells me he is communicating a specific word to me. He says, "Wow!" because he learnt it from his musical toy (the one he was dancing to in the birthday video) - after the song finishes, a voice says, "WOW!" and he has started repeating it. He looks at me and says, "Aoooww!" except it doesn't sound a GREAT deal like "wow", more like a soft "ohhh" that starts with an "a" sound! But we know that's him saying "wow". He uses this sound to mimic lots of sounds we make now. Like for example, if I made woof woof woof sounds like a dog, he will make sounds back at me in the same rhythm so I know he is mimicking my dog sounds, but he'll say, "aohh aohh aohh!" and look very pleased with himself, even though it really doesn't sound like a dog barking! Such a sweetie :) He mimics sounds a lot now. If I snort like a piggy, the nearest he can make to that sound is to open his mouth wide and make a roaring sound. I guess an open-mouthed snort SORT OF sounds like a bit of a roar! He doesn't get that a snort is made by INHALING, and if you do the same thing and exhale instead, you get a roar!
He can finally point to his nose and ear! He points to mine first though :) He says, "Eeee" when he points to anyone's ear. That is definitely his attempt at saying ear, as he doesn't use that sound for normal babble much. It's so sweet to ask him where his nose is and see him put his tiny little finger on his cute little button nose!
He points CONSTANTLY at absolutely everything! At first it was just at interesting and obvious things, but now he points at absolutely anything he glances at, even for a second, and demands ("Aaht!") that I take part in his interest! I tell him what everything is, even the non-descript stuff ("Wall! Yes, Arthur, that's the wall!") but sometimes it's really hard to figure out what he's actually pointing at! I just guess on those occasions and point to what I think he's pointing at, and say what it is. If I'm wrong he shakes his head at me, no, and makes his eyes very dark and scornful and condescending! He has some wonderful disapproving expressions now, hehe ;) I get them a LOT every day, as he is really starting to assert his independence over things he wants. If I say no to anything he wants, or even end a breastfeeding session sooner than he would prefer because it's not a great time or it's too sore for me or whatever, he instantly has a melt-down. Melt-downs usually involve collapsing to the floor (where he might already be, but complete floppery is involved to make his point!), crying as falsely hard and noisily as he can, and sometimes headbutting the nearest thing, or banging his face on the floor - I hate that! It always leaves him crying more and with a red lip and nose :( He just seems to want to show ALL his frustration! At this stage though, it's pretty easy to distract him from melt-downs, so they never last long. I can usually distract him almost immediately and he's all smiles again in seconds. He is quick to please at the moment, which is nice while it lasts! :)
He loves me to sing, particularly action songs, but he doesn't really mind if they have actions or not. He just likes the singing, and he joins in with soft little waily sounds that go up and down. To ask me to sing, he says, "Roe roe roe..." and waits, looking me in the eye very directly. This started because I used to sing "Row row row your boat" and he loved it so much that he would make me sing it again by saying, "Roe roe roe" (I write it that way because his sounds are so much more vowelly than mine - he doesn't neatly finish off his words yet (which I wouldn't expect him to) with a consonant or tight lips like at the "w" in "row"). So now I am noticing that if I am singing a completely different song and I finish it and he wants more, he still says "Roe roe roe..." to get me to sing again :) Sometimes though, he is not in the mood for a certain song, and I get the dark disapproving look with shaking head! When I sing "Wind the bobbin up" these days, he immediately starts to try and do the actions even before it's time to do them! I have been singing that one to him the longest though. He likes the clapping parts :) He does clap a LOT.
He still has music on a lot of the time. I kind of like to have times in the day when we have a QUIET house, no music or anything, just our voices and playing sounds, etc. But he is pretty insistent on having music to listen to. I vary what we listen to a lot. At the moment we are listening to Kent Henry's worship CDs (I have 3) and I sing a lot to those which Arthur approves of! We have also been listening to very bouncy Kylie stuff and Arthur sings along to that mimicking some of the sounds she makes, especially the up-and-down sounds. We also have Mozart or my daddy's classical music on a lot. Arthur dances to ALL of it, even the gentle Mozart tracks, hehe! He just stands and bops! It's too cute :)
He has a pop-up orchestra musical toy that he loves. He will press a button and immediately start dancing to the song that plays. It's all classical music on that toy so it's funny to see him dancing to it! He now sings to most of the songs on it, and his "singing" is starting to sound strikingly similar to the notes and sounds of the music on it. Sometimes he even hits the right notes!
Oh my goodness, I have just realised Arthur is still asleep!! I don't even know how long it has been but I am thinking about 45 minutes so far! Yay! That's great. Lately he is back to getting up at 6am which is making him REALLY tired during the morning. I was putting him down for the morning nap very late in the morning as he was never tired enough earlier on, but now he is having to go down at 9am or so. Tsk. I wish he would just take the sleep he needs at night instead of waking tired at 6am! Neil is still a wonder-man and gets up with Arthur to let me get extra sleep until he has to leave for work just after 8am. I stumble downstairs blearily to be greeted by a beaming cuddle from Arthur, a quick on-the-spot breastfeed for him, and then stand swaying on the doorstep with Arthur on my hip, to wave Daddy off to work! But it's soooo worth it to have the extra sleep. I am amazed that I can sleep from 6 till 8 with all the noise Arthur makes playing downstairs! I am just so tired though.
We are working on night weaning once AGAIN. *sigh* I have been feeling so utterly desperate about it lately, and any attempts we make seem to make Arthur clingy and upset and scream for ages at night. In other words, they are not working for us. But the alternative seemed to me to be just continue with the night wakings, and I CAN'T do that any more. Pregnancy is just so tiring. I was already struggling before pregnancy with the tiredness that comes from such disturbed nights, but now it's harder, and I always have in the back of my mind that I absolutely can NOT night-nurse two babies when the new baby is here. So he HAS to wean at night and sleep through well in advance of the new baby arriving, and time feels like it's running out to get that done, especially since things don't seem to be working.
Recently we were trying me breastfeeding him but leaving him awake, and then Neil taking my place next to him and just patting him and comforting him till he went to sleep. That way Arthur was supposed to learn to go to sleep every time without breastfeeding to sleep, and I got to "escape" and feel some relief from the responsibility of getting Arthur to sleep, which sometimes takes ages, especially at bed time. But this method seemed to absolutely traumatise Arthur. He would scream (and I do mean SCREAM, like nails being scraped down a blackboard, till he was retching) for an hour and a half. That is tooooo awful.
It didn't seem to improve either, and we got more and more worn by it. I felt more and more like a horrible mother, and spent more and more of his "trying to get to sleep" time with Neil, crying my own eyes out at a safe distance from the awful scene and getting all in a state about it. Eventually I was talking to my mum about it and she asked what the actual plan was that we were following. It's this one, for co-sleeping parents by Dr. Jay Gordon, that I found online once. I found it months and months ago but it strongly suggests waiting till your child is at least 12 months old so I waited. Waiting was so hard sometimes, but I just want to do what is right by Arthur at all costs, and I felt that the reasoning behind waiting was right. Anyway I thought we were basically following that plan, but had actually started to stray from it a bit by leaving Arthur to be settled by Neil. Really, I need to stay with Arthur and be the one to comfort him till he learns to sleep without the breast. He needs me so much at the moment. He isn't incredibly clingy, but when he needs comfort, absolutely nobody else will do but me, which is normal and actually quite lovely :) But demanding at times like this.
So I have been making an effort to be the one to settle and comfort Arthur at night and we are following the plan properly this time. It's really starting to work! We have done 5 nights so far. The first 4 nights are meant to be breastfeeding whenever the baby wakes, but always stopping while the baby is awake, and then comforting and patting and stuff to soothe the baby off to sleep. It's based on always laying next to your little one, never leaving them alone to go to sleep. I like that. The only other thing I had up my sleeve was the Ferber method (increase crying time by 5 minutes each time after you go in, and always always always leave your child alone to cry and go to sleep) and no matter how many times I thought, "Right, we're just going to have to try this method!" I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Everything in me said that it just did NOT feel right to leave Arthur to cry in order to learn to sleep, no matter how successful it might be, nor how much the book promised he would never remember it or hold a grudge against me for it. Dr. Jay Gordon suggests any method where you leave your child to cry will cause some sort of close-down, however inperceptible or seemingly unimportant, between parent and child, and I believe him. It just makes sense to me. I think if I did it, I would swear there was no change in him, but I don't know.... I just don't believe there wouldn't be, on some teeny tiny level. I want to maintain our close attachment throughout, not remove a little of it to get him sleeping. Especially since it can be done without that removal.
Oh, Arthur is awake - after an hour's nap, yay! - so I will finish this later!
Okay, he's having his afternoon nap but I have used about 15 minutes of it going over what I already wrote, as I had forgotten where I was! So I may not have much time.
Sooo the sleep. Yeah so I always take him off the breast and then at first he would REALLY complain and cry and try and get up and pull my top, etc. But I just stayed sleepy and patient and quiet and consistent, and now he is already just going to sleep at night when I take him off the breast. Once or twice last night he didn't even protest, he just rolled onto his other side, eyes closed, and went to sleep! That is SUCH a change for Arthur. Bedtime is easier too, even if he was energetic before the breastfeed. Nap times in the day are the least affected so far. He is much less tolerant of being taken off the breast to go to sleep in the day, and will sometimes still cry for the entire hour, with me cuddling and patting him, until I call an end to the nap time and get him up with no sleep. I thought that would happen this afternoon but he just fussed for a few minutes and then went off.
The next step is supposed to be choosing a window in the night where I want him to sleep through, like seven hours from 11 till 6am or something. And then I stop breastfeeding him when he wakes in that window :( I am dreading this stage. Partly because I know he'll have a hard time with it, and thus so will I. But also because I actually don't WANT to stop breastfeeding him at ANY time. It's just that I have to now. I need my sleep. He could go on like this for years, which is not wrong at all, but I am not able to keep up with it, and especially not with another baby coming. So I have to, but I hate that I have to. I love nursing him at night, it's so snuggly and lovely. And he gets more milk at night, as my flow is better.
I feel like that's a bit of a sudden change, so what I plan to do is cut down the length of the nursing sessions to like 30 seconds or something, which he'll hate, but deal with, and then it's not so harsh to suddenly not be giving him the breast at all. At the moment he's nursing for a while before I figure he's getting sleepy and take him off. Last night I tried shorter feeds and didn't notice much difference. He was all sleepy so that helped :)
I think I will choose a six hour window. Midnight to 6am or something? Just to see if he will initially sleep through that with this plan. He may then sleep through the evening too, and if not I can always stretch out the window if I am still not managing too well. Anyway, that is the latest on the sleep thing. It feels like sleep has been a LONG haul for us this past year! It has been the hardest thing by far. I love what we chose to do, but if you'd told me it would be like that at the start, I would not have been able to cope with the idea and probably would have changed my choices to try and prevent it. I had no idea he would wake so frequently past even 2 or 3 months old!! I remember thinking, "My gosh, he's 3 months old and still waking like this! I seriously cannot cope with this much longer!!" Haha. And here we still are! The very idea of the same thing happening with the next little one is more than I can bear thinking about, it has been so hard this time round. So I think we will make some changes next time, but I haven't decided what. I thought we wouldn't co-sleep, but actually I ADORE co-sleeping, even though it's so hard with Arthur's waking that we hardly get any enjoyment out of it and often don't even sleep together! But I hate the idea of my baby in a separate box to sleep in. If ONLY we had a bigger bedroom, I would definitely use a bedside cot, and would have with Arthur too, but there's no way we could fit one in with our big bed and our tiny bedroom! Also I don't know quite what the arrangement will be with where ARTHUR sleeps when the new baby comes. I think we will transition him to his own space, but not a cot. Either a toddler bed or a separate floor mattress of his own, but DEFINITELY in our bedroom, not his own. I researched and read that co-sleeping toddlers who have always been in their parents bed or room do not cope well if put in their own room once the new baby arrives and sleeps in with the parents. It would not be a wise move, and anyway I don't actually want him out of our room. I like my little ones close to me at night! He likes it too, so there seems to reason to move him out.
Okay, Arthur's half hour is up and I heard him stir, so unless he's going to do a relatively rare thing and resettle back to sleep (especially rare in the day time), I think he will call me in a minute and I'll have to leave finishing this till the evening. At least I am getting plenty written so far! :)
Ooh, he woke and I went in and nursed him again, and he went back to sleep!! Yay! We'll see how long for.
What else? Arthur seems like such a big boy since he turned one, to us anyway. He has made a few transitions due to his coming of age! We ditched the sleeping bags at night which were leaving him FREEZING cold no matter how we layered his clothing, and with great delight we now put him to bed under a nice snuggly duvet! His warmest sleeping bags are only 2.5 togs (one is 3 togs I think) which is cooler than a SUMMER duvet!!! I can't imagine how he'd keep warm and he was starting to wake more frequently and feel really cold. I sewed him some detachable fleece sleeves to wear with his sleeping bags to keep his arms warm, and that helped but his legs were cold inside the bag, even with warm sleepsuits on, etc. Poor boy! So I researched online and discovered that from 12 months it is safe to use our bedding, duvets and even pillows! Such a grown-up boy! I don't see a need for a pillow yet though, as it's perfectly comfy not using one - I don't use one myself if I am lying on my tummy and Arthur likes that position best. But I was so glad to cover him up in our big duvet covers and have him toasty and warm all night long! For ages, Neil and I have been sneaking peeks at our big boy looking so cute under the duvet in the evening, all fast asleep like a little hump in the covers with a dark little head peeping out at the top! Aww :) So that has made night times easier too. Duvets are soooooo easy.
Also we started him on cow's milk as soon as he turned one - the very day I think! Straight away he started having Weetabix with hot (well, warm) cow's milk for breakfast, and he LOVES it. He hasn't looked back since! He eats a whole weetabix for breakfast with lots of milk, and then some toast and a little marmite. He usually eats a couple of apple rice cakes after that. He is a hungry boy these days! We don't give him milk to drink yet though. He shares mine when I have some with my breakfast, and gets a big smile so I know he likes it. But he has a lot of milk on his cereal and that's enough for now. He still gets breastmilk (amazingly my breasts are still going at 13 weeks pregnant!) and eats yoghurt and cheese and I like him to drink water for the little he actually drinks during the day. His constipation problem went as soon as he started milk on cereal. I don't think it's necessarily the fibre in the cereal (though it IS good and fibre-ish!) as it's the same when he has cornflakes and those aren't high in fibre. I think it's the extra fluid. Or the combination of the two. He has a good amount of fibre in his diet already, and has done all along so that wasn't the issue before. But I'm so glad it's worked out without needing to medicate him. It's even better (or worse for me!) now that he's so interested in lots of new snacky finger foods. He loves raisins all of a sudden and will eat them like they are sweets, and cry like the world is ending when they are finished! They come out whole and um, unchanged (urgh!) at the other end. Bleurgh. I am so glad he waited on the raisin fetish for my morning sickness to ease off some! Yeurgh.
At lunch he still eats a jar of organic babyfood - it's soooooo much easier on me to give him that and it's really good food. I have my menu planner sorted out for making home cooked meals for us all, as we've been doing some budgetting with our food shopping. We discovered we really do buy WAY too much convenience food, and it's so expensive. We rarely actually cook a meal from scratch. I NEVER cook these days. Well that is going to change, and I'm quite excited about it actually! I do like cooking, but got into such a slump for YEARS now over doing it much. It will be way healthier for us if I make real food and we don't eat packaged food any more. No preservatives, no added salt or sugar unless the recipe calls for some, etc. Also it's fun to make a great meal, and satisfying to enjoy it at the end.
I have started already but the full plan is not really in place yet. We are still going to eat fish fingers, as I LOVE them and they are so easy. I LONG for pizza at the moment but they are way too expensive, so I have got some good pizza dough and topping recipes online and am going to try making my own! Yesterday I made the most ENORMOUS chicken casserole with a family bag of frozen chicken thighs. It was amazing value but I didn't really stop to think that there might be TWENTY chicken thighs in there!!!! Boy do we have some good freezer stocks now! ;) Tonight I am making sausage casserole (easy peasy) and tomorrow it's fish pie. It's so much easier than I had imagined, and nice to actually carve out a little time to prepare a nice meal before Neil is even home, so that the house smells wonderful of dinner when he arrives and he comes in saying, "Mmmmm!!! What's for dinner?!" I LOVE that. Makes me feel so housewifey, and that's all I have ever wanted to be, so I love it to bits :) Plus *I* love the smell of a good meal cooking, and knowing I made it and am giving it to my husband and son (Arthur will get mashed or chopped portions) too is wonderful. Like a gift I can give them or something :) Also I love making use of vegetables that I really like eating! I LOVE parsnips, love them, love them, love them. Which will raise a few eyebrows since it's also my code word for sex in my diaries, haha! But I do love them (to EAT)!
Arthur is stirring a little and it has been another 30 minutes so that's great for him! Yay! I feel like this must be a terribly long entry already, but I STILL have so much more to write! Maybe I should post it and then continue in another entry? But if I do that then I'll just never get it done, so I think I'll continue, even if I do so later if Arthur is about to wake. I need to change his nappy when he wakes and then it will be his tea time and I need to start the casserole while he's eating.
Oh yes, food - so for lunch Arthur has jars at the moment still. He is on stage 3 toddler meals! :) He had noooo difficulty going from stage 2 to stage 3, just as I thought. When I make food for him, it's lumpier than stage 3 jars and he takes that fine. He eats a lot for lunch too. Today he had pork and pasta with tomato and herb sauce, and then pancakes with apple and cinnamon sauce (mmmm!). And THEN he had strawberry yoghurt. And then he was eager to have a gingerbread man. Then Grandoug phoned and talked for ages and Arthur was getting so antsy so I gave him a rice cake and he gobbled it down! Hungry boy :)
For tea he always has the kind of thing I had when I was young. But I can't give him the kind of range of stuff that I had yet. It used to be things like egg and soldiers, or sandwiches and fruit and yoghurt, or fish fingers and that tinned pasta in tomato sauce, or cheese on toast or something. The main meal was always lunch so tea was always lighter, but still substantial enough. So I want to do the same for Arthur. He is seriously crazy about baked beans, so much so that he began to refuse ANYTHING other than baked beans, so I have had to take them off the menu for the time being, till he is enjoying a wider variety of new things! It's a shame because baked beans are really nutritious and it's great that he loves them - I want him to eat them! But not at the expense of everything else. So he also has cheese on toast, but sometimes shakes his head and won't have any. He likes grated cheese sandwiches which I cut into inch-sized squares and he feeds himself. I like tea to be a meal that he basically feeds himself, since I spoon feed him lunch still. I offer him the loaded spoon to hold a lot and he sometimes takes it and puts it neatly into his mouth, so he is fine to do it, but usually he shakes his head at me and opens his mouth for me to feed him! So that is fine with me for now. He is very good at feeding himself finger foods.
I like to offer him the gingerbread men in a tupperware box and watch him peer over the edge with big eyes and a little smile, and stare at them all for a moment before reaching in and choosing one. He takes it out almost in a state of awe, as though it's a treasure, and then gets on with eating it :) I love all the little things that delight me about raising a little one!
He has this thing where he crams as much food in his mouth as possible, it's awful! Then he can't even close his mouth for how full it is, and he used to gag and spit it all out, but now he doesn't do that so much. He just works on it for ages and eventually chews it up and swallows it. At first I used to want to stop him doing it, but I read that it's a very normal stage at around a year old, and I'm right there. He deals with the huge mouthful very well now, and he would be sure to learn if he didn't, plus I would be there in an instant to help him. So I am leaving him to it. If he is going crazy stuffing his mouth with every square of sandwich on the highchair tray then I limit him to 2 or 3 on the tray at a time and just put more on as he eats them. But I can't do much about him stuffing the whole gingerbread in his mouth, and I don't want to be saying, "No, don't eat like that!" all the time. Especially after reading how common and normal it is for him to be doing it around now. I don't really like to watch him do it though!
Arthur is STILL asleep!! That's 45 minutes now, on top of his 30 to start with! Wow. It's nearly tea time as well! I'm so glad. He looked so tired this morning.
So he also has pasta with tomato and vegetable sauce for tea. I bought a jar of the sauce (it's Peter Rabbit brand, organic baby food) to see if he'd take it, and when he did, I planned to make my own version when it runs out. He's having that tonight actually :) He also has fish fingers and mashed potato and things like that. At first I went crazy mashing it all up together, but he MUCH prefers it cut into pieces and to feed them to himself like with sandwiches. He eats a whole banana after his tea usually, and any yoghurt that was left from lunchtime.
We just started him on citrus, as it was something the books said to wait on until he was 12 months old due to high allergy risk. He wouldn't take the satsumas I bought for him at first, and as a result I discovered a hidden craving for them in myself! But he was less resistant the next day and ate half of my satsuma with no ill effects :) Yay! That's another thing off the list! Now we just have strawberries, eggs and nuts on the list to go! The strawberries and eggs are safe to start now, according to the charts and books, and stuff, but the nuts not for another year or so. These guidelines are for children with potential allergies though, and I have stuck to those throughout because there is the odd food allery in my family, and Neil and I both have hayfever, and he has asthma. That is well enough risk for Arthur to potentially develop food allergies so we thought it best to play it safe. I consulted charts of timings on introducing different foods to a baby's diet online, and started from there. So far he has had no problem, so I'm thrilled! I am nervous about eggs though, because I felt sure he was reacting to me eating eggs in the early months of breastfeeding. So I am in no hurry to start him on those, but I do hope he'll be fine with them, as I plan to give him plenty of egg in his diet! He did have birthday cake with lots of egg in it and had no trouble with that, so he's obviously not going to have a bad allergy to eggs, if any at all, which is good.
Arthur really enjoys stacking cups and bricks at the moment, a new thing since I last updated about him. He can stack 3 things on top of each other, which is pretty good for his age I think. I read that is something they look for at 18 months (I think?). He loves stashing things in weird places, and the BEST place to put anything is the washing machine! He loves to take a cloth wipe from the pile or a clean nappy from the radiator, or the tea towel that was hanging on the back of the kitchen chair, and toddle round with it to the washing machine, screw it up in a ball, and throw it in there! He sometimes takes toys and puts them in there too, and he has tried taking tins of food out of the cupboard too! He likes to stack the tins, but they are heavy. The tins of sardines (Neil's thing, yeurgh!) are flat and light, and good for stacking, so he loves those.
He is such a tidy boy still! He helps me with the laundry, and "cleans" with a cloth wipe - his highchair legs, the kitchen chair, the walls, anything! He usually puts the used wipe in the washing machine afterwards too, bless him! The other day I opened a letter that arrived in the post, and absentmindedly handed him the envelope as he was clinging to my knees and reaching for it. When I looked up he was struggling to reach behind the armchair where we keep the wastepaper bin!!! I had no idea he knew it was there or what it was for, but he put that envelope right in it! He is amazing with his tidiness, since Neil and I never seem to model anything for him to pick it up from!
Okay I'm sure there is more and I'll get downstairs with Arthur and go, "Tsk! I KNEW I should have mentioned such-and-such!" but oh well. This entry feels too long if I go on any longer, and Arthur is still sleeping so I need to think about his tea and whether or not to wake him soon. I only have two photos to post, mainly because I haven't been taking many lately - something I am trying to fix from today! But also because I have a few that I haven't had time to resize yet, so I'll do that later hopefully and then post them next entry. Also I can't take any video footage of his new walking because we ran out of tapes after his party and can't afford to get more at the moment. But we will, and then I'll take a clip and post it.
So here are two pictures of Arthur enjoying his favourite sugar-free (amazingly!) snack - gingerbread men and a drink of water!
Urgh, I really do have a ton more to write. I will have to make a few notes so I don't forget for next time, and then try to write again very soon. I need to update my pregnancy diary, but maybe I can get that done later. I think I should wake Arthur. He is totally silent in there and has now slept an hour on top of his half hour, so I wonder if his body has decided it's night time - he only ever sleeps like this in the evening. It IS very dark out already, so maybe that's it?
Anyway, I have soooo missed writing my diary lately! I will try to write more often, even if it's just a short entry. I just hate writing short entries though! They don't make me feel adequately purged! ;) Oh, thank you Emma for checking out the photo thing for me - yikes, I didn't realise you could still get to my pics even with the right click disabled! Marking them is such a faff though, and I don't even know if I have the stuff to do it. So I don't know. But thank you so much for checking it and letting me know! :)
Yay, Arthur wakes at last! I'll be back! :)
