And ANOTHER! He climbs :)

Noooo time to write an entry (yet AGAIN!) and sooo many emails to catch up on, but I had to write just a paragraph to say that I can't believe I'm writing ANOTHER new thing that Arthur is doing, but he climbed the stairs this evening to get to his daddy who was at the top running him a bath :) I just can not believe his progress! I sat behind him all the way up, and I kept my hand on his bottom as his slid up from each previous step, but he only slipped once. He pulled up to standing on each step, and quickly got his left knee up onto the next step before following it with his right knee (left knee led every time), and then once he was kneeling on the next step he would pull to standing and do it all again! He climbed to the very top - Neil videotaping him at the top by then - and pulled himself onto his tummy on the landing, and then of course Neil swept him up in a huuugearrific bear hug to congratulate him! :)

Right after that they got in the bath, and Arthur was constantly getting his left knee up onto Neil's leg to try and climb over the edge of the bath! Uh-oh! Now he has discovered the method for climbing successfully, we might be in trouble! ;)

I know I said it already, but my brain honestly BOGGLES at how much he has done in the past week and a half. It's crazy! I had no idea he would do new things so fast, and now I have a completely different baby to the one I had two weeks ago. Totally and utterly different. I'm not sure I'm adequately prepared!

He is tired today. Only two naps - the first was half an hour this morning, and the second one only 20 minutes around lunch time, then he would not go to sleep again for anything in the afternoon! So I left him to it and he went out on the breast in literally 2 minutes, completely unconscious, at 6.45, about 15 minutes ago :) Hopefully he'll sleep well tonight but his toothies are bothering him.

Okay that's it. I have to tidy up downstairs and re-introduce myself to my husband (who may have forgotten who I am lately, we have hardly had any time!), and then eat and sleep. I want to sew tonight, but I don't know if I will get the chance. I am soooo tired again today. We went shopping in town to pick up the digital camera prints that I took in to be developed a while back, and got a few things from The Early Learning Centre. I can never go in there and leave empty handed, it's terrible! One of the things I got today was Jaya's birthday present though, so that is GOOD shopping! I am so excited (and slightly nervous!) about going to Jaya's birthday party with Arthur!!!! I will be meeting Jemma and Jaya for the first time - eeek! Can't wait! :)

Anyway, will hopefully settle down and write more soon, but I had to update because it seems Arthur is doing new things so fast that if I waited till I had more time it would be old news or something! I'm glad I'm getting the updates in lately, for all the new things :) Okay, going now.

Standing, photos and video clips again! :)

I am in a great mood today :) I love that! It’s 7.40pm and Arthur has been asleep about half an hour. We are about to sit down to watch a movie with a pizza that Neil is just picking up, and salad, and chocolate brownie cheesecake (from Tesco) for dessert! Yay! I am hunnnngry.

I have loads to write, but no time yet again. Yesterday’s visit to Cameron’s house went well. Nathan (the littlest one) was napping the whole of our visit so we didn’t see him, but it was nice to see Cam’s 5-year-old brother. He is soooo like Cameron. I used to find that hard, but now it’s just lovely with just the slightest sting. And that’s okay. There are photos of Cameron all around still, and Michael talked me through them. I love hearing Cameron talked about by his family like that. It makes him alive again, sort of. And that is a wonderful feeling. I do miss him so much.

But we had to leave too soon, because I had to get to an osteopath appt. That went okay. My back is still giving me lots of trouble and I have had painful back spasms this week :( But oh well. I am getting treatment and I love my osteopath! And I need to continue with my exercises and start swimming. And stuff.

Neil is home. I will save this on Word as I’ve hardly written anything, and finish it later. I have video and photos to show you! :) Back later. Or tomorrow, I guess, if our evening is just too lovely to break away from! :)

Back, and it’s still this evening. We watched a couple of old Friends episodes instead of a movie, and had strawberries after the cheesecake :) But I have a tummy ache. I have had one for 2 days. I think it is my IBS playing up, urgh. But yummy food!

Arthur is just amazing to me at the moment. He is doing so much and never keeps still for a second any more! Well, like maybe a few seconds he will keep still to catch his breath or something! But he is so busy with all his new things. Interestingly, he isn’t quite as vocal as normal at the moment. He doesn’t say mama much at the moment, and last week he would say something that sounded suspiciously like “duck” when he grabbed his rubber duckie in the bath, which he hasn’t said this week yet. It sounds like a very staccato “DAT!”, which isn’t a sound he uses for anything else. He does still babble as much as ever though, and says dada quite a bit. I wonder if he has been soooo busy with motor skills this past week that he is not devoting as much time as usual to the verbal skills or something. He really is leaping and bounding away at those motor skills at the moment! He does understand “Where’s Daddy?” though. Even if Daddy isn’t home from work yet, if I say, “Wherrrrre’s Daddy?!”, he will get all excited and crane his neck to look at the front door, and if nobody appears in a few seconds, then he looks out the front window, bless him! It’s so sweet :) He knows that Daddy arrives home through the front door, and that he can see Daddy through the front window before he gets in the house. I always say where’s Daddy when I see Neil pulling up on the driveway, so Arthur is used to it now, and it’s lovely.

I can hardly believe how fast he is changing at the moment. He is so fast with all his new skills already. He goes from sitting to crawling in an instant, and seems to start reaching for things before he’s even quite reached them when he’s crawling, which shows that he is getting more used to crawling and feeling confident to think ahead rather than so much focus on how he’s moving himself with each crawl. He can kneel today without any support and stay there bolt upright grinning at me! I think it helps that he is not too keen on sitting, and sometimes gets cross now when I put him on the floor in a sitting position, because that makes him super keen to get out of that position as fast as possible! Where yesterday was a day of kneeling and starting to do a couple of new things, today has been a day of standing. I mean, the boy has stood up sooooo much today! He isn’t wobbly at all and holds onto things well. He is so happy and pleased with himself when he stands! I think he would be happy to stand and walk all the time if only he could maintain the balance, heh!

This morning he pulled to standing against his toy basket with me right there with my hand ready to catch him. I was so surprised at how quickly he did it. Here he is standing at his toy basket this morning :)

He didn’t really want to get a toy, he just seemed to want to get a good view on everything! Right after that he did a wobbly cruisey transfer to the armchair (still needs support from me for this):

And then crawled to the kitchen, where he watched me load the dishwasher and put some laundry on! It’s so nice that I am a little bit more hands-free to get jobs done around the house while he watches and stays with me, rather than having to dash off to get something started and then rush back because he’s upset that I left. He just follows me now, and is interested in watching what I am doing, especially if it is at floor level. I sort the laundry on the floor so he can get involved in that nicely. He did try to climb into the dishwasher though, which was not so helpful! He is such a CLIMBER these days! He climbs on me constantly like I am a climbing frame!! He likes to try to climb over me completely in bed, and makes such a lot of effort (complete with mountain-climbing effort noises, hehe!) to get over me! He pulls to standing on any part of me he can grab, and it’s pretty uncomfy sometimes to I try to deter him occasionally. He hates when I stop him climbing because he is soooo eager with all the new things he’s doing! Such a sweetie.

Anyway, he watched me put laundry on, and then lay down on the kitchen floor with his chin on his arms to watch the machine go round! He has always loved watching the washing machine. So many of the things he’s doing now make me look at him and think how I can’t believe he is getting so big and so grown up. I know he’s still just a little baby but he’s so “grown up” for a little baby now! Anyway I walked him to the machine and he stood there watching the washing for aaaaages. He likes to reach up and try to “work” the machine with the buttons and dials, especially if the cycle stops going round and he gets impatient for it to start again, hehe! He’s so funny :) I think he thinks he is making it go, because he will watch it with excited gasps and “oooh!” sounds, and then it will have a pause in the wash cycle and the washing stops going round. He stares at it so still and quiet that you could hear a pin drop, and then when nothing happens after like 5 seconds or so, he reaches up to the dials and pats them gently, with his fingers making fiddly movements, and then looks down at the washing expectantly! Of course this takes about the time that the cycle normally kicks in again, and the washing goes round again! He does it every time, and every time the washing “responds”! It’s soooo sweet. I’m sure he thinks he is making it work :) Little love.

Anyway, here he is standing at the machine watching the washing, and reaching up to make the machine work!

He wobbles when he reaches up, so I had my hand on his back for that photo. But he stands so well now! This afternoon I had put something yucky in the kitchen sink to soak and then forgot about it, so when I remembered, I put Arthur down in the living room lying on his back on the carpet with some bricks and toys around him to play with. He was in front of where the TV is, across the room from his toy basket (and facing away from it too). I rushed off and emptied the sink, rinsed off the thing I had been soaking, and started to refill the sink with hot water. While it was filling, I suddenly thought, “I know it has only been like 60 seconds, but I had better just check on him” and when I came to the kitchen doorway, there he was standing bolt upright holding onto the edge of his toy basket! In that tiny space of time, he had rolled over, crawled to the basket, and pulled himself to standing on it! I totally never expected him to pull himself to standing, otherwise I would have stayed with him, because I am still nervous of him falling, or that the basket would not be full enough to counter his weight and might tip over when he tries to stand against it. So my heart leapt into my mouth when I saw him there, but when he saw me, he gave me the MOST enormous smile and let go the basket with one hand to stretch his arm out towards me, as if to say, “Look at ME, Mummy!!” :) He is just soooooo pleased with himself lately! And rightly so, I am so proud of him! :)

His favourite thing to do is still to be walked around. He just LOVES it! I am so relieved to be able to do this with him now that he’s pulling to standing, since that’s what the physio said I should wait for before letting him take much of his own weight. Yay I’m so glad he’s doing it himself! So now I can “walk” him as much as we both like! He would like to be walked ALL day long, seriously. I hold him under his arms or by the hands, and he just starts lifting his little legs out in front of him and off he goes! He changes direction quite suddenly as the mood strikes him when he sees something that distracts him, and he pays no attention to toys or things in his path! He just tramples right over them, hehe! He has his eyes fixed on what he’s interested in. I made two new video clips that I wanted to share with you guys. I have wanted to make one of him doing his “walking” for a while, since I know it will just be a cute memory soon enough and I love his eager funny little steps when he does it. And the other one is shorter, just of him crawling after me into the kitchen like I described last entry :)

Arthur walking with support!:

Arthur crawling into the kitchen!:

Oh I don’t think I said before, but we won a free photo session at a Venture photo studio!! I was shopping at Sainsbury’s a few weeks ago with Arthur and they were doing a promotional thing for Venture out the front. Of course I got accosted by one of their reps, and said no thanks to their discounted offer, since we have a quarterly thing going with Olan Mills at the moment (well, just for Arthur’s first year, anyway). Which reminds me, we are due our next session within the next month. Anyway, but I filled out a questionnaire and that entered me for some draw, and what do you know?! We won :) I think more people “won” than they let on though, because obviously if you think you won and you get a free session, maybe you’ll be more likely to pay a ton of money for the actual photos. But anyway. We had our free photo session on Saturday, and the studio is really local (like 3 minutes in the car!) which is FAB compared to an hour plus traffic for Olan Mills. Venture are very different though. Olan Mills is very traditional – family portraits, cutesy photos of kiddies with slightly nauseating props, etc. Kind of cheesy. But we wanted some traditional photos of us as a new family. I am not planning to let them set Arthur up with cheesy props as he gets older though! Yuck. Last time they wanted him sitting on a little wooden car thingy. I find props a bit repulsive, especially in children’s photos. I just want photos of my children’s FACES, not sitting on some tricycle or posing cutely next to some stuffed bear. Yeurgh! I know that soooo many people find this cute, but I am not one of them! Over-posed children make me want to squirm! Especially the very little ones I think. Anyway. But Venture are completely the opposite. They are contemporary and shot at unusual angles against a white background. They ask you to wear bright clothing if you have it, and go barefoot. There are a LOT of action shots and ones where you’re just interacting with each other and pretending the camera isn’t there. There are shots of like, just your feet. Or ones in black and white where your sunglasses are BRIGHT blue! That kind of thing. Verrry different.

So the photo session was GREAT fun!!! We had such a great time, and Arthur was so good. He didn’t fuss through the hour-long session even though he was very late for a nap, and he did everything the photographer hoped he would do, except crawl. But then he was only just starting to crawl and he was too interested in the studio to bother crawling places.

Today we went to our viewing appt to see the photos. It was such a buzz!! They showed them on a big screen and dimmed the lights, and played them in a slide show to funky music!!!! It was too cool :) The photos are fantastic. I have never seen any of us portrayed like that before, and I like what I see soooo much. We look so happy and relaxed, and when I see them I think happy thoughts and think what a lovely family we look like :) The music was upbeat too and it was great to watch them like that. Neil and I both felt like we had been to see a great movie that had made us feel happy and excitable when we got home! Boy do they know how to sell their products!

The worry was that they are SO expensive, we can’t really afford to get any photos. With such a great selection and the way they sold them to us, it was going to be hard not to walk away with a second mortgage taken out on the house! But we did okay. We ordered three framed prints. They only sell them framed – you can’t buy loose prints, which I am SO sad about because there were at least twenty fantastic photos of us left after we got rid of a whole bunch that were not quite so perfect as the others. Lots of Arthur on his own, but family ones too. We aren’t looking at the camera in any of them, and some are at very weird angles. Arthur is looking at the camera in some of them though. The photographer was so clever in the way she took them. I am soooo impressed! Anyway, we have 3 family shots for the wall, in 3 identical frames. They are going to fill the gap above the 3-seater sofa – one above each seat-back. And we got a free framed 7”x5” which I chose, of Neil holding Arthur, off-centre in the shot. I hope we can take them out of their frames when the arrive and scan them because they are soooo lovely. I love them! We have to wait 2-8 weeks for them to be processed. I can’t wait!!!!

Anyway. I had a great day today. I feel upbeat and happy, and that’s a nice way to feel. I haven’t felt that upbeat in a while so I am enjoying it! I need to update my pregnancy diary which shouldn’t really be called that anymore! But I will do that tomorrow or something, because it’s getting late now and I’m tired out. Arthur has slept badly lately, but the last two nights were a bit better. I am just wiped out these days and feel dizzy a lot in the day. I am waaaaaaaay behind on sleep, and maybe I will never catch up now, but I should at least go to bed before it gets too late! I sleep all night with Arthur now and I love it. Love it love it love it. I am finding that I am relaxing more and more with him next to me, now that he is sleeping a bit better and I’m not so nervous about waking him up. It’s lovely.

Arthur is working on more teeth, the poor lil chap. He woke and cried so many times yesterday evening and seemed in pain a lot, even whimpering in his sleep occasionally. We finally got the Calpol all ready to give to him, but he cried soooo much when we tried to put anything in his mouth, so I nursed him to calm him down and he went to sleep, and didn’t wake again till a normal night feed. This morning I noticed his gum is swollen over his two top front teeth and the tooth next to the two that came through at the bottom, but on the left. The right one doesn’t have any swelling over it. Also I noticed that his RIGHT top front tooth has the now-familiar whiteness to the gum that indicates pressure from the tooth, the same thing that happened about a week before both his other teeth came through. I don’t know why I was looking to see the left one appear first, but it doesn’t look ready yet. We’ll see what happens there over the next week or so.

Okay I must go to bed! Will write again soon, when I get some time! I have so much I am behind on at the moment, and the highest priority is getting the house more baby-proofed. I did the kitchen, but the living room still has patches that aren’t really safe for Arthur to explore, so I must get onto that tomorrow! Back soon!

Yet more to report!

Thank you for all the congrats to Arthur for his crawling, and the comments on the video and photos! :) I am so proud of my lil Boo!

Yet again this is going to have to be as quick as I can make it, because Arthur is napping and who knows how long I might have! Probably only about 10 more minutes but we'll see. We are going to spend a few hours with Cameron's mum and his two little brothers at their house when Arthur wakes up. I haven't seen them since Arthur was all tiny and new when they came to visit, so it will be good to see them again. I find it so hard to visit their home though. Cam should be there at the window all excited to see me like he always was. But anyway, I will not get into that right now. I have to update on a few more things and I have hardly any time!

Hardly any time is a new thing now that Arthur is crawling! He is getting everywhere now! He follows me into the kitchen every single time I go in there - it's the cutest thing to go in to get a drink or something and then his cooing and toy-sounds stop out there in the living room, and there's a short pause, and then I can hear these little grunts and heavy breathing getting nearer and nearer, hehehe! It's so cute! Finally he reaches the kitchen floor and then I can HEAR him crawling because he's on a hard floor and his little hands go slap slap slap as he makes his way to me. Then his little face appears round the corner of the fridge-freezer, and he looks ultra cute pausing to peep round and see where I'm at! I love this lil boy :)

He is crawling so much now that his little knees are getting red :( Although yesterday and today it has been much cooler weather, so I have been able to put him in trousers to protect his knees some of the time. Right now he is wearing pyjamas. He looks such a big boy in pyjamas!

Okay I need to hurry up. Arthur went to sleep by himself just now! Well, almost. Yesterday I gave him his first "meal" type of thing for lunch - another Heinz simply organic jar, but this time I thought I would try him on something with meat and veg in it, like a proper meal, to see what he thought of the flavour. I got chicken, parsnip and carrot, and beef, parsnip and something-or-other. I opened the chicken one yesterday. It tasted really nice to me, but bland, obviously. Anyway Arthur really liked it! He actually opened his mouth for more!!!! So this has enabled me to start working on his next sign with him - "more". He loves it when I sign more. I think he finds it funny or something to see me banging my hands together like that, heh.

So I think he has taken a little more solids and a little less of my milk yesterday. I know this is how it's eventually meant to be, but I'm sad about it.

Ohhhh he's awake and I have soooo much more to write! I'll go and get him and see how much more I can get done...

Okay I'm back, and he's in the playnest ring thingy over there. But he hasn't been in that for ages and I am pretty sure he could be out of it in a second if he decided to! Hopefully he'll be distracted by the activities and colours and stuff for a few minutes!

Anyway I did not notice him taking any less breastmilk than normal yesterday, but I guess he must have because during one of his night feeds I noticed that my right breast was engorged! Yikes! So I fed him from that one only. But this morning when he woke at 6am it was engorged again! And it ached all morning, so I fed him from it just before his nap which felt a lot better, but it still aches. Now the other one is starting to ache for lack of being used! Should I not have stopped having things like engorgement by 8.5 months?!! So I have offered him the breast very frequently this morning just to take away my own discomfort, but he has been quite happy about that! The thing is, surely this will not leave him much room for any solids? Urgh. Do I have to pump? Or just go through the engorged thing and let my supply go down a little? I don't know. The volume of milk that Arthur is getting from me each day must be astounding! I think he must get close to 2 pints each day at the moment.

Anyway so I had nursed him full to bursting already this morning by the time his nap came around! So he wasn't hungry enough to take the breast and have it spout milk down his throat that he simply wasn't hungry for, poor thing! Which left us no option but to try something different. I lay next to him and put my hand on his back and shhed him till he fell asleep! Yay! It took a few minutes, that's all! I'm so pleased for him :)

Okay he is standing in that ring so I'm going to make his boundaries slightly safer before continuing!

Aw he is so pleased with himself :) Such a cutie! I have more milestones to report! Arthur kneels so well now, and he gets into that position very easily. He can now kneel against something, like his toy basket, and use both his arms to rummage around to find the toy he wants. Here he is yesterday morning, doing just that (of course the perferred toy was Monkey!)

It's so nice for him to have so much extra freedom to do things now!

Yesterday the health visitor came round for that follow-up appt I arranged about weaning. She said he is doing fine, but I should try him on lumpier foods now, and more finger foods, which is fine by me! She reassured me about the gagging and retching thing and said he will get used to it. Phew. He loves melon in his baby safe feeder now. I give it to him frozen to help his gums as he bites on it, but he eats it when it has thawed :) He also loves a nice lump of cheddar cheese (organic of course! :) ) and ate one nearly all up yesterday! He did his first cheese poo yesterday too. Urgh. You didn't need to know that, but it deserved a mention for the record! It was THAT bad! Eww.

He is climbing out of that ring. I need to rescue him, but I will be back!

Back again, but I can't be much longer! Poor Arthur! He is happily munching a bright coloured plastic thing for the moment. He's a very cheery boy these days, but then he always was a happy baby :)

Sooo the health visitor weighed Arthur and he has gained another lb since he was weighed 2.5 weeks ago!!! Yikes! He now weighs 22lbs 11oz!!! He is growing well :) He is still on the 80th percentile, thereabouts. She said he looks really tall, but didn't measure his length this time.

While she was here, he showed her his crawling skills, his two new teeth (many big smiles!) and then pulled himself to standing on the sofa and started CRUISING along it with little sidesteps!!!!!!!! Can this boy change any faster?!! I am starting to wish he would slow down a little, because I want to savour each stage and I sort of want him to stay my little baby for a while longer! But he's so clever :) I am so proud of him! He cruised a little bit again this morning, but he was quite shaky in his movements.

Bright plastic thingy has been discarded and Arthur was standing in the ring again, looking rather dangerously like he might fall over the edge (!) so he's now on my lap, which means this will get rapidly harder to understand and I'll have to finish v. quickly!

Okay but I just wanted to add that Arthur went from sitting to crawling yesterday morning, and has done it every single time I havemn msat h9im down (yes, he's helping now) since!!! He doesn't seem to find it difficult so maybe he just needed to get crawling before he could get on with moving out of a sitting position? anywya I am so glad bcausee it makes life easier for us both again.

Ojkay I'm sure there was more but we have to go now, or we'll be late for visiting Sharon and her boys! Back again soon! :)

He crawls!! (for your viewing pleasure!)

Thank you so much for the lovely messages and emails!! You guys are so lovely (again!)! I do feel more upbeat now so that is good!

This has to be a quickie entry because dinner is nearly ready, but I just wanted to post two photos and the promised video clip of Arthur CRAWLING, as he is finally doing it more and more today! Yay! The clip and photos were taken this afternoon. Here is my clever big boy!...

He is soooooooo pleased with himself! And getting into a LOT more mischief than a couple of days ago, heh. Here he is in action:

Arthur crawling:

He was crawling to that little musical toy that was Neil's favourite when he was little. It's in its box (open at the front) to preserve its ancientness, hehe! Arthur LOVES it, and we knew it would motivate him to crawl so we put it a few feet away from him and off he went! He isn't eagerly motoring everywhere yet, but he'll crawl quite well and much less doddery-ish to get somewhere he feels like going to.

Also, ANOTHER new milestone! That boy is changing so fast at the moment! He pulled himself to standing from lying on his tummy today!! Three times!! Twice against me and once on his basket of toys. *sigh* He is suddenly growing up so fast.

And is suddenly awake, so I need to go. Back soon to write more though! :)

Blah.

I know a secret! :) Yay, it's a fabby one! But also I feel a bit deflated for some crappy reason. Will not talk about that for now.

I got my period today. Six day luteal phase. That is not good. But oh well. If Arthur wasn't nursing then I'm sure I would be all nice and fertile again, but obviously I want him to keep nursing more than I want to be nice and fertile again. It's hard because my feelings are going to clash more and more as time goes by and I want to have another baby. I will NEVER wean him so that I can get pregnant (at least, I say that now, but I HOPE I don't resort to that). But what if he nurses so much that my periods don't go back to normal enough for a pregnancy to occur for aaaaaages to come? I don't want to have any conflict in my head about it. I just want it to all happen nice and easily and naturally without the need for any stress. Ugh. I am nervous that trying to conceive again will = stress, because last time it was sooooooo stressful, and I don't want it to be that way again. It was hard. But here Arthur is! That should encourage me, right? It just feels like each new baby is a clean slate and I'm nervous. Not that I need to even THINK about it now, so I don't know why I'm writing about it. Also it should be in my other diary. Oh well.

I should have put "WARNING" at the top of this entry. I am feeling so down tonight. I should not write diary entries when I am feeling this way, but in the past I used to feel so much better by the end of them. I used to "write" it all out of my system or something. I don't really think that will happen tonight though.

Blah.

I hate writing depressed diary entries, because I LOVE reading cheerful entries or diaries written by people who are upbeat or optimistic, or who always have positive things to say about life. They are infectious people. I wish I was more like Robbi. There is just something so positive about her diary entries, even when she is having a bad day or writing about stuff she finds difficult. She is like a lil sunbeam :) I always wish I was that kind of person, but I just don't seem to be. I wish I was.

Last night we had a bad night's sleep. Well, it was okay at first, but I did not get to sleep till after midnight and then I was super crampy and couldn't sleep for a while. Then Arthur woke his normal once or twice around midnight and maybe 2 or 3am ish. But then he woke at 4am and nursed. And again at 4.30am and nursed. And 5am. And 5.30am. And then he was up for the day at 6am. He was restless between all those times. And then I got my period at like 6.05am! Heh. I was soooooo crampy so I knew I had it. I had to get up and take painkillers and get my hot water bottle. Definitely back to the old pre-pregnancy style periods. Yuck. Then Neil took Arthur downstairs so I could get some more sleep, which was lovely of him. But I was too crampy and then too awake, so no sleep for me.

I did not know what to do with Arthur today. Nor yesterday. He seems to no longer be interested in playing with his toys and stuff or being on his tummy on the floor for any length of time. He is crawling but only like a few brief times in each day, and even then it's only a few little crawls to get a couple of feet ahead and then he flops down to play with whatever he's crawled to. He doesn't seem that excited about crawling yet. In fact he seems way more interested in using a sort of hybrid movement he's developed since starting to crawl, which I call "The Seal Flop"! It looks exactly like a seal's movements, and it kind of resembles the butterfly swimming stroke without the arms over the top. He pushes up on his arms, does a quick raise-and-shove with his knees and flops back onto his tummy, about a foot ahead of where he was before. He can cover a bigger distance FAR quicker like this than when he crawls, so he seems keen to use it. He is very fast with it now, and can seal-flop several times over in a second or two to get a few feet ahead. He does still try to crawl but he uses this seal-flop thing much more at the moment.

Anyway, he seems bored and frustrated lately and it's like all of a sudden he has gone up a gear in what he needs to stay interested and stimulated. Today I am just exhausted and crampy and irritable and dizzy and yuck, so I did not feel up to doing ANYTHING with him! But a mummy does not get a day off, even a day off sick (not that I'm sick)!

Soooo I phoned my own wonderful mother again, and she suggested a few things. As I described his new ways, she said, "Ohhhh he sounds EXACTLY like you used to be!" Uh-oh. My mum was an absolute SUPER-MUM with me. I know I was a handful. Well, a challenge. Not in a bad way, but wow, I'm not sure I have the energy for a child like me! Mummy says I will have exactly what it takes, because I am genetically made to parent a child with my own genes :) She always knows just the right things to say. I love my mummy.

Anyway, basically I was an active toddler. All toddlers are active, but yeah. I would be a nightmare if I did not go out somewhere each day, and I needed to see different people each day too. Also every day we did cooking, crafts, housework together, garden play, etc. If I didn't have all those activities on every day I would be bored and restless. I am really looking forward to doing those activities with Arthur, but he is at an age where there's not a whole lot I can do with him but he's getting that bored and restless thing going.

Mummy said I should take him out for a walk. I did that yesterday and he got antsy by the time we had been out for 45 minutes. We came home about 15 minutes later, but I was knnnnnnackered and had absolutely no energy whatsoever to even play with him on the floor after that. I know I had my period coming and I do get absolutely wiped out in the couple of days before that, but still. Not good. I could be fitter, I think. Maybe I should work on that. It's just too humid and muggy for walking and pushing a pushchair up and down hills, however small the hills are!

So she also suggested we do water play some days, and try the wastepaper basket filled with interesting things for him to empty and play with again. Also she suggested I offer him some food as a different activity.

Soooo I got off the phone and since he was gnawing his fist again, I put a slice of frozen organic melon in the baby safe feeder, and handed it to him. He liked it!! He chewed and chewed - I've noticed that chewing is a new thing for Arthur. He chews everything he eats now, and mashes food against the roof of his mouth with his tongue. Before now, he was always just so aghast with having food in his mouth that he would either let it drop out again or hurriedly shove it to the back of his mouth to gag on and swallow! Anyway, he chewed almost all of the melon out of the bag after it had melted. Then I offered him a baby apple rice cake, and he took it eagerly. Last night I gave him one after our walk and he ate the whole thing up!!!! That is another first. He has never eaten something all up before. He enjoys feeding himself so rice cakes work well for him. But he did shove too large a piece in his mouth and I had to scoop it out. I keep a close eye on him when he is eating, especially when it's something solid that he's feeding himself, like rice cake. I broke the last bit into little pieces and held them out to him, and he used a very deliberate and perfect pincer grip to pick up every bit, even tiny crumbs, and put them straight in his mouth to chew and swallow!!! My clever boy :) I had no idea he had perfected his pincer grip, as the last time I saw him use it, he was still missing his aim on very tiny things like a little piece of thread on the carpet, etc. But it's great now!

Anyway. It's so cute to see him have a crumb on his lip and to see him take such pains over slowly putting his finger to his lip and pushing the crumb soooo slowly till it's over the lip and in his mouth! He's such a sweetie :)

Okay, gap for dinner there! I need to finish this now, as it's late and I need sleep.

Well I was just going to say that after the melon I gave him a rice cake, and he put a whole half in his mouth and shoved it to the back before I could grab it! I could see it on the back of his tongue in two bits, but I knew if I reached in there I would probably push it further back rather than being able to grab it. Urgh. He was not choking at all, but I knew he would deal with it and probably bring it forward by gagging and retching on it. The sad thing was, I knew I couldn't get it for him safely and that retching would be the only way to really bring it forward, so I sat with him and watched the rice cake in there while he gagged on it. Poor love. I felt so inadequate! It was stubborn and he retched enough times to start throwing up :( :( He lost his nice melon and the rest of his rice cake, poor Boo. But he didn't seem at all put off. He got wide eyes and looked at me for reassurance, and I told him good boy and kept calm and stroked his back. It's so silly how I STILL get shaky when anything to do with vomiting occurs. Even though that incident had absolutely no threat to me, I still got kind of panicky inside.

Oh, he's waking for a feed. Okay I will have to finish this another time.

Toothie photos! :)

Thanks Jemma and Megan for the guestbook messages! :) I will get a video clip of Arthur crawling soon, but today he is not really doing much on that front. He has done a little bit of half-hearted crawling to get to the cabinet (more banging of the doors!) but he did more flopping and lunging than crawling really.

He is kind of moany today. He seems to be having soooo much trouble with his teeth still. I don't know what is up with that. I felt his top gum with my finger and there's nothing going on up there as far as I can FEEL, so hmmm, I don't know why he still seems to be having so much teething pain. Bonjela and teething powders have done nothing for him today, and he is constantly gnawing his fist and whining when he does it. Could it be his new teeth still? Everyone keeps saying how he must be feeling so much better now they are through, but he's not. I haven't given him Calpol because I feel loathed to keep on posting it down his throat since it's paracetamol. Which, I know, is perfectly safe. But still. Should I be giving it to him anyway, as often as I think he needs it? If he's in pain then he needs pain relief, so I should give him some. I don't know.

Anyway, he had a nap this morning but when he was super fussy with his teeth I noticed he was rubbing his eyes a little, so I took him to bed and nursed him. He kept coming off the breast to gnaw his fist and cry, poor love, but in the end he fell asleep. He hasn't taken a morning AND a lunchtime nap for a while now, except actually he did this one day earlier this week too.

Today I just fed him his first Fruit Jumble yogurt! I chose the peach one. It was out of the fridge and he looked horrified when I put a little in his mouth, and he gagged on it a bit, so I let it warm up a bit to room temperature, and after that he seemed to really enjoy it. He mostly enjoyed licking and chewing the edge of the pot after it was finished! Not that he ate much of it really. He ate how much he normally eats when he has real food - about a heaped teaspoonful, not much at all. It's like he hasn't got any appetite for more than that, even though I thought he would be starting to increase his appetite for it by now. Maybe it's all the milk I keep feeding him?! Oh well. It's not important anyway, at this age.

Soooo now we will REALLY see what happens because he has had a real portion of dairy. So far, so good. I ate the rest of his yogurt, and it was yummy! :) I'm not surprised Stu likes them, Jemma!

Arthur has banged his head 3 times today :( Once nose-diving off the bed in the computer room (!!!), I caught him mid-air, but he banged his head on the side of the bed as he stopped when I caught him :( And cried. He had a red mark for a while, but he was fine when I cuddled him and nursed him. He banged it again on the same bed when he was looking at some books by the bed-end. Not a big bang though. Then he banged his head on the cabinet downstairs, but only lightly. He started crying as he looked at me but I said, "Poor Arthur! You're okay!" in a cheery voice and he stopped and carried on playing :) Yesterday he banged himself twice - once really quite hard on a toy on the floor, and he cried a lot :( And then we went shopping and he tried to put his mouth on the handle of the trolley he was riding in (yuck!) and nutted it with his chin, poor baby!

I guess we are reaching the age of bumps and bruises. He has quite a big bruise on the back of his left calf. I can't remember where he got it, and it doesn't seem to bother him, but I THINK it might have been when he was swinging his legs against the side of the chair when he was sitting on my lap at the computer the other day. I am dreading when he has accidents learning to pull-up and walk. I know it has to happen and it's fine for him to learn and make mistakes, but I know it's going to be so heart-breaking so see him get hurt. At least I have the wonderful privilege of being "Mummy" in all these situations, and being the one he will turn to for comfort. I will have the magic touch to kiss it better and cuddle his tears away, and I also have the joy of being able to nurse him if he's upset which is a great soother. I am so blessed!!! So it will be okay. But I am not looking forward to my little man getting hurt and bumped and things.

Okay this is just a short entry (for me!) because Arthur may wake soonish and I want to get my lunch going. Also I just wanted to update to post some toothie photos, which I finally managed to take this morning! His teeth are looking wider and bigger to me this morning, as at first it was just the outer corners that came through. Now most of the "flat" of the teeth have come through to the surface, so the whole tooth looks soooooo big to me now! My big boy! :) Here are 3 photos. The second one is the best for seeing his teeth - he was roaring at me so it was a great view and he wasn't moving so it wasn't blurry! I was roaring at him to try and encourage him to do the same for a good view of his teeth, and he roared back! The third photo is just cute :) See in the first one, how his eyes are still like half brown, half grey? They are just part brown and part grey, not mixed or anything. I wonder what they will do eventually!

Anyway, here are the photos - I will update again soon :)

TWO milestones!!!!

Oooh thank you for the guestbook entries! Eiluned, so nice to hear from you! And thank you to everyone for the congrats on Arthur's first toothie!

Guess what?! That toothie has a new friend :) Toothie number two broke through today! Yaaaaaaaaay! His first tooth is now about a mm or two above the gum (soooo tiny!) and I only realised it had grown out a bit since it came through, when the 2nd tooth came in - just a little hard speck of white on the gum like that first one was just 3 days ago! I'm so glad he has two teeth only 3 days apart. Phew. Two down, 18 to go, hehe!

I noticed it this morning, but he is still teething badly this evening, so I don't know what's up with that. He has a bad nappy rash today. Hmmm. Maybe it's a food thing? But he IS having teething pain this evening that was bad enough for me to give him Calpol AGAIN (the teething powder didn't do anything this time) before his bath and bedtime. Poor sausage. I guess those teeth have to grow up out of the gum now, and that will not be comfy in his jawbone. Anyway. The nappy rash MIGHT possibly be something to watch re. food, because this dumb mummy, after being so careful about introducing different foods all this time, suddenly introduced a little bit of both dairy and wheat yesterday! D'OH!! That wasn't the wisest move, but oh well. I think he already has ingested a little bit of wheat in the form of a tiny bit of bread though, a week or so ago, and was fine. Yesterday - no actually, it was the day before - he gummed on the crust of my Dairylea sandwich (very thinly spread) on wholemeal bread. He seemed to like it, and he gummed two pretty good sized pieces of bread off the crust and swallowed them. He gagged, but I just kept showing him how to chew and eventually he did start chewing it!! Then of course it was pulp and he swallowed it with no trouble :) So yesterday I had a grated cheese sandwich, and I gave him a little tiny pile of grated cheese to play with. He didn't really eat any. Well, one grated sliver went down, but it got gagged on. So I cut him off a little finger of my cheese sandwich and he gummed on that. I think maaaybe he might have swallowed a tiny bit of bread. White bread this time though.

He has also tried a new Heinz simply fruit thing - apple and blueberry. Which he took fairly readily but with lots of faces. I tried it and found it soooo tart!! So I don't blame Arthur for making faces and finding it a bit much! It was nice though. Today I finished the rest of it after he had a tiny bit and refused the rest. Yum!

I found two more at the supermarket today - pea and parsnip, and pear and pineapple. We'll see how those go. I also found him two organic jars of actual meal-type-stuff, one with chicken and one with beef. We had turkey stir fry last night and if it had been organic turkey I wanted to save some for Arthur to try, but it wasn't. Need to buy organic food for us more. Once he has really got the hang of all these different flavours and of eating and chewing and stuff, I can't wait to get back to making him food myself, or having him share our meals if we omit the salt (which we never eat anyway, actually) and so on.

Soooo. I did buy an organic melon today at the supermarket :) I don't know what he'll think of it. I think it will be off-putting because it will be wet and slimy to hold, and he hates that. So I think I will freeze a few little slices to put in the Baby Safe Feeder for teething on. If he likes it, he'll eat it once it's thawed. He has had lots of frozen grapes in the feeder but he makes faces once they start thawing and won't eat them - he's so picky!

Today I suddenly realised in a sort of panic-stricken way (!) that I need to start cleaning Arthur's new teeth! I felt a bit flappy because he has had a tooth for 3 days now and we haven't cleaned it. Poor Arthur! So I started in earnest today. He has had a few tastes of my Yeo Valley organic strawberry yoghurt (sooooooo yummy!) two days running, and he seems to LOVE it, so I bought him some Yeo Valley fruit tumble yoghurts (from 6 months up) for his very own today! We'll see how he goes with them. Or if they make his rash worse. Hmmm... Anyway, yoghurts have sugar in (if they have fruity flavours, it seems) so it's extra vital that I clean his teeth. I use the Milk Teeth Toothpaste that we got a free sample of in my bounty baby pack at the hospital! I just smudge a teensy bit onto a soft towelling wipe, and massage it into his gums where the new teeth are. He doesn't much care for this! We will get started with a toothbrush once his teeth are more "out" and he has had a chance to get used to having the wipe method first. I figured it would be an easier transition this way. He makes faces at the toothpaste flavour (mint), but then once he is used to it, he opens his mouth for more, hehe! He also opened his mouth for more with my yoghurt! Yay! :)

But there's MORE news today! Arthur crawled today for what I think was the first time! A couple of days ago he made maybe a single full-crawl movement with all his limbs, before flopping back down onto his tummy, so I'm not sure whether to call that his first crawl, as he didn't go anywhere! But today he is moving. I expected him to just take off once he started, but he doesn't seem to be like that. He is so doddery and wobbly, it's so cute!! I wondered if he would army crawl first, on his belly, but he doesn't seem to have done that bit. Mind you, he has been on his hands and knees for a good while now, just waiting for motion to kick in! He is really taking his time with the stages of getting going, and not rushing off at all like I thought he would. In fact I wouldn't be too surprised if he forgot all about it tomorrow and didn't crawl at all! It's odd. Although now I think about it, he did do this with rolling too. He rolled and then seemed to have forgotten how for WEEKS, and then once he started again, it was just now and then for a while. For a week or so now, he has been moving his knees back and forth like he's crawling with them, but his arms stay locked straight and unmoving! He has been SOOOO frustrated with this, but hasn't seemed to know what to do with his arms, poor love! Then a few days ago he started lifting one arm waaaay up in the air and to the side when on his hands and knees, like he was practising balancing on three limbs or something! Then he started going through the motions of crawling, but at a standstill, like treading water but crawling! Funny boy. His hands went up and down, pat pat pat pat, and his knees scissored back and forth, but he went nowhere! Then finally today he started tottering forwards slightly with one hand, then the opposite knee would drag forwards an inch, then the other hand would be shakily placed next to the first hand, and the second knee would move forward. He did this maybe three times in a row with all his limbs and then he was at a toy so he stopped :) He did this twice more at different times in the day, but that is all really. He is also using his hands and knees seperately (but together) when he turns round on all fours now, whereas before he would just drag himself around by his arms when on all fours. So he's doing it! But slowwwwly.

He was able to reach the TV cabinet thingy today though - aaargh! He is fascinated by opening and shutting the cabinet door. It's right on his level and has an attractive shiny handle, which is annoyingly un-baby-proofable as it is just flat and smooth, not really like a handle at all. He can grip it and pull, but he loses his grip on it when the door is a few inches open, so it bangs shut again. Allll day long it has been - bang!..... bang!..... bang!........... bang!...bang! etc!! But I am finding it very cute at the moment :) I think I will make that cabinet "his" cabinet, and fill it with safe things for him to play with, as it's obvious that he's going to be opening it and exploring it a lot. At least if it's his, I won't have to worry about him getting into it.

What else can I tell you? I had my smear today at LAAAAAAST!!! First time in four years! Tsk. I am so pleased because it did not hurt :) I carried Arthur in with me though, and discovered there was nowhere to put him while I had my smear done. The nurse gave me two options - have a receptionist hold him while I had my smear (umm, NO!!) or sit him up on the lil bed thingy in the crook of my arm while I had it done!!!! I thought there was no way I would be able to relax if he was sitting against me, since I was sure he'd squirm and I'd have to hold him tight, but it was fine - he was a good boy :) It was the same nurse who gave him his vaccinations earlier in the year, but he didn't seem to remember her! His next one is MMR at 13 months. Which slightly scares me, but I will write about that much later on, because I haven't had chance to think about it yet really.

The nurse asked me about what contraception we were using, and I said I was charting. So she said, "Natural Family Planning?" and I guess it sort of is, so I said yeah. She asked what would happen when my cycles got more normal and I said we would be trying to conceive again. She asked if I got pregnant now, would it be like not such a bad thing, because NFP could be a bit unreliable when breastfeeding. So I thought about it, and actually yes, she's right really. I don't think it WOULD feel like such a bad thing. But we still want to wait for now. And we're still avoiding parsnips when I am showing fertile signs. For now. Anyway, my post-ovulation part of my cycle does not look good at all. It looks basically not fertile. So hmmm, I hope that improves! I'm currently at 5 days past ovulation, but who knows when my period will show. It could be tonight. Last luteal phase was 7 days, and the two before that were 4 days. So we'll see.

There MUST be something else!.... Ohh I know there is. But it's gone. My brain is blank. I need to go to bed. Oh I wanted to have photos for you but I haven't been able to get any good ones of Arthur's lil teeth! I will wait till I get a photo that will do the grandness of the situation justice!! Hehe! Then I will post it asap. If he crawls more I will try to get footage for you to see :) It seems that he's suddenly hitting so many milestones and changing so much all at once. Mind you, from what I see, it seems that this is quite the norm around 8 months for most babies.

I love my lil Boo. Soooooooooooooooo much.

First tooth!!

I am sooooo tired. I just can't get enough sleep lately. Neil is still sleeping in the spare room at night since his cold, and I sleep in the big bed with Arthur. I actually prefer it, as I love lying there next to him. I feel like I can relax better having him right by my side, and there's nothing better than dozing off watching his cute little frame so heavy and asleep next to me, and his lil side going up and down as he breathes. I love his sleepy face when he's sleeping. He is so lovely. Then it's wonderful (though sleeeeeepy!) when he wakes me up in the morning by rubbing his soft hair on my arm and then lifting his head and giving me the most lovely smile ever, or by rolling onto his front and putting his hand on my tummy :) I love this little boy.

BUT, I am so tired out. He still wakes several times a night. I am usually too out of it to check the clock so I'm not sure when he tends to wake, but he wakes for sure around midnight, and then he wakes for the day around 6am (although the last two mornings it was FIVE THIRTY!! Urrgh!), and he wakes usually once or twice in between midnight and 6am. Yeurgh. The good thing is that Neil doesn't need to get disturbed in the night anymore, as Arthur is definitely getting quicker and more efficient at settling back to sleep when he wakes. Like he will barely wake up usually - just enough to open his eyes and make whimpery noises that get crosser the slower I am getting to him! When I am sleeping next to him, the time it takes to get to him is like 2 seconds, so that is even better. But he will now nurse and roll away from me again in about 3 minutes flat, and then he seems to be instantly in a deep sleep. So that is good.

Neil still takes him when he wakes in the morning though, and I go back to sleep till Neil needs to get ready for work and go, at about 7.45 usually. So that is another good hour of sleep for me, which I am thankful for!

But I'm so so so tired. All the time.

This morning I napped with Arthur and I had no idea that any time even passed! I usually don't fall asleep nursing him, but then I did that yesterday too. He and I both went into such a deep sleep during nursing that when I came round an hour later, he still had my nipple in his mouth! Heh. Completely loosely though. Sweetie-boy.

Oh I have news. Arthur's first tooth broke through on Sunday at church!! :) All of a sudden, Neil said, "It's through!!!" and we looked, and there it was - a little white sliver of toothiness sitting above the surface of his gum! Yay! It has only come up a mm or so since then, so it's still just a tiny white line on the gum, not much to see. But people are noticing it now! They are saying, "Oooh he's got a tooth coming through!" and I say, "Yes, it's his first one, we're so excited!!" I am SO thrilled that his first tooth is finally here! My big boy! It isn't as sharp as I was expecting. I keep hearing other mothers say about the razor sharpness of those first teeth, but it's just a little hard tooth rather than a razor. I can't wait to see it grow up further and look like a real toothie! Shannon, you were right about them coming in twos - the tooth next to it is already a white bump right below the surface, and I think it will be through within the week. He is still acting like he's teething - appropriate awful poo, rashy cheeks, biting sooo hard and seeming in pain a lot. I hope it hurries up! Then maybe he will have a bit of teething peace for a while!

So that is exciting news! Long-awaited too! I will get a photo of his lil tooth when I can, but there is not much to see yet.

Talking of photos, here are a couple of Arthur finishing his (vile) broccoli and cauliflower the day after the video clips were taken:

Just because he's a sweetie and a messy one at that! :) I basically gave him a "painting" session with the rest of that food. He didn't like it and it needed using up in some way, or be thrown in the bin, so I figured I would lay towels and plastic sheeting down and strip him off and let him paint with it. He loves doing that so much!

We saw the paediatric physio yesterday. His feet are okay. The one that was doing great is starting to curl a bit again - boo! She said she wasn't unhappy with how they were doing, but it's possible that she might want to use one more full-leg plaster cast on that foot at some point. I am DESPERATE for this not to happen!!!! For one thing, he hates it so much, and for another, it's a whole different ball game now that he is older and completely on a different page developmentally. I think even a week with a leg in plaster would be an absolute nightmare for him (and me!). Please pray that his foot will straighten out. I will keep stretching it, like she showed me. I hope it improves.

She watched him standing and walking with support, and said he is really too young and too big to be walking like that yet. She said he is such a big baby that it is too much for his bones to take all his weight or try to walk at the moment. It's not ideal. I can let him stand and walk if I take most of his weight though, so I'll keep doing that. He wants to soooo much, and gets frustrated when he's just sitting or lying down! He is now trying to pull himself up when sitting next to me. He did this on the physio's arm and she said he was trying to pull-up and he would probably be doing it in no time. She said that once he is pulling himself to standing, he will probably be ready to take his weight and walk if he wants to try it. Before he can pull-up, I have to take most of his weight.

She said in her experience, big babies tend to do everything early, or everything late. She hopes that Arthur will do everything early, because walking and standing will really help correct his feet, and if he did those things late, it would have a detrimental effect on his feet, which might need more intervention :( She did say that she thinks he's going to walk early though, so that's encouraging!

This morning we went to a mother-and-baby group - well, just the last 30 minutes, because Arthur napped longer than I thought, and I'm not about to compromise his naps to get to things. He needs his sleep! I think we'll be able to attend things like this more when he's a bit older and his naps have changed a bit. It was the last one before the school summer holidays, which start this week, so the next one is in September. It was quite good. We were there in time for story-time and then singing with noisy instruments! There were two mothers and babies there that I know from church, so that was nice.

Okay I have to wind this up, as Arthur is down for a nap that I totally didn't expect him to take, being so soon after that last one! But he was so sleepy. I think he might wake any time now, as he's been down for 40 minutes-ish so far.

I just have to say (again) that I am super behind on emails and life in general. I feel kind of deflated and sensitive these days. I don't know why. Maybe it's hormones? My FF chart says I ovulated 4 days ago (in which case I could get my period any time due to my short luteal phase) but I am not convinced that I ovulated, since my temps are so weird and low. I don't know. But anyway. Maybe I'm just tired out? Or hormonal. Or something. I haven't got any oomph to get anything done, and the house is messy and I am updating my diary when I SO need to be emailing some lovely friends and stuff. I feel like I would just like to close the curtains and shut the world out, and stay inside with my lovely baby. But that wouldn't be good for my lovely baby. Or me. So....

Speaking of whom, I hear waking sounds! I will go and snuggle with my Boo for a while. Thanks for the guestbook messages, and to Jemma and Kelli for commenting on the video clips I posted last entry! I was beginning to wonder if anyone had seen them at all.

Water play and teething and video clips!!

Thanks for the lovely guestbook entries again! :) It’s nice to know that other people have the same feelings about having another baby. Phew! I guess it will be fine, whenever I have another one. Thanks Liz for reminding me that God is in control! :)

Okay I have been busy busy! Well, not that busy, but busy for me, y’know?! Neil is a lot better with his cold. He has had to work late two nights running and then today (Saturday) he had to go in to work this evening to check something was working right. It’s his first week in his new role and he made a couple of errors on something computery, so he worked extra hours to try to fix it. He’s so good. He always works hard and they never even know the extra hours he gives them (they don’t pay overtime) to meet one of their not-doable deadlines. Tsk. Anyway. He is home again now and it’s nearly time for bed. He says he has to go in again for maybe 2 hours tomorrow and then it should all be fixed. Poor Neil.

Arthur is getting a tooooooooooooth!!!! This mama is so relieved!! I wanna dance the congo round the house every time I think of it or see his lil gum!! Yay!!!! We have been waiting long enough for this toothie, with all his pain so far! It’s the left one of the two bottom middle ones. I can see it clear as anything, white and ever so slightly wonky in alignment (nothing to worry about), just under the surface of the gum. His gum over the two bottom middle teeth is red and swollen, and just over where I can see the white toothie under there, the surface has like a brown dip in it. Sounds weird, I know, but I happen to know that means that tooth is RIGHT about to burst out triumphantly! Teeth don’t “cut” through the gums, there is some sort of enzyme release that causes the gum cells immediately in FRONT of the rising tooth to die, and so the tooth moves into a space without any sort of cutting. The pain is from the jaw bone. And that kind of pain is naaasty. My poor boy. But he is doing okay. He is hurting a lot on and off, and he did a particularly nasty poo yesterday, and he has a bit of nappy rash when he NEVER gets nappy rash really (except sometimes in the heat) because of his cloth nappies. He has needed a lot of Calpol these last two or three days, and I have not worried about giving it to him when he’s upset and won’t be consoled, and it’s obvious that his tooth is hurting him. When he’s like this, the other remedies seem to do nothing at all, and he is obviously in pain so I will give him the necessary pain relief till he no longer seems to be in pain. I think it can’t be long before the tooth comes through. Every morning and afternoon it looks different, so every few hours it is making more progress! Anyway, the brown dip is the last layer of gum cells that have been zapped before the surface, so yay!! After they die and the tooth moves through that area, it will be out!! I can’t wait to see his first lil gleaming white toothie! I got so excited today because he was biting on my elbow (?!) and I felt this terribly sharp sharpness, but it turned out to be a fingernail being bored into my elbow next to his mouth! I cut those shortly afterwards!

Anyway, yay! The tooth is coming!!! I am so excited, after all this time! I will take a photo of the new toothie when I can after it’s through.

Talking of photos, I have quite a few to show you, of a new thing we did today, but I’ll post those in a minute. Arthur has had the best day! He has been happy and smiley all day. This is normal for Arthur, but I just know he has felt especially happy. He had both Mummy and Daddy around all day, and he got enough sleep in his nap times. He got medicine which took away his pain when he was having toothie trouble, and now that Neil is no longer germy, he finally got to take a whole week of pent-up raspberry blowing and rib-munching out on poor Arthur!! So Arthur has spent much of the day squealing and giggling :) I LOVE to hear my little one giggling and happy so much of the time. He is the most lovely baby, and we are so blessed to have him. He’s an absolute delight. He laughs all the time, not just giggling and smiling these days.

I sorted out the camcorder memory card and now I can upload video clips again, yay! Which is good because I have two great ones taken today to show you! The first one is of Arthur having his first taste of broccoli, cauliflower and parsnip puree! We’re still on this experiment with new flavours, using the Heinz organic fruit and veg purees to get him used to a wider variety. I am not sure what he made of today’s combination – I don’t think he liked it, but at least he is much happier taking food into his mouth, munching it a bit and swallowing it, which is the idea. Anyway, his faces were so funny! Neil took some footage of it, and I made this one minute clip for you guys to see :) These clips are also on Arthur’s Video Clip page. Here is the first one:

Arthur and the broccoli-and-cauliflower puree!

Poor Arthur! We just found his faces so funny that we couldn’t help but laugh! He didn’t seem to mind though :)

Okay, the next one is the one I am sooooo glad to have captured! It’s a good example for you to see of how much Arthur is laughing these days. He laughs like this alllll the time, he is the most lovely happy baby ever! Arthur was playing happily on his tummy with a load of his toys out around the floor, and Neil got one of his squirty bath balls and started bouncing it on the floor as hard as he could to see if it would bounce off the floor and hit the ceiling – for his own amusement, I might add! Anyway, we had no idea Arthur would find this funny, or even pay attention, but suddenly he was absolutely cracking up, and it was soooo cute that Neil kept going and I rushed for the camcorder! Of course he got the hiccups, laughing that much :) Here is the one-minute clip of my precious cutie-boy laughing at the bouncing ball…

Arthur laughing at the bouncing ball!

Soooo precious. I love him so much, I can’t even describe it. He’s just infectious. I will never recover! :)

Okay so he had lots of lovely giggly fun today. I played Ruff with him twice and Neil nearly ate him right up several times, so he used up lots of laughing energy, which is nice! :) I held him a lot more than usual today. I did yesterday too. I don’t know why. I guess I just want him close to me all the time. I can’t cuddle him enough these days, it seems. I just want him squdged up in my arms all the time and his little soft head close enough for me to kiss it a hundred times, any second that I feel like it. So I hold him. He loves to be held, and just leans or reaches for where he feels like going in the house, or for something he wants to explore. Yesterday my friend Michelle (from school) and her husband came to see us, and they LOVED Arthur and complimented me on him tons (which I always love!), and I held him most of the time they were here, which was a couple of hours. He was on his tummy on the floor for maybe 10 minutes in total, on and off, and Michelle held him for 15 minutes maybe. He enjoyed the social contact and gave them lots of big smiles and chatter! They seemed very taken with him. Michelle is pregnant!! She is 12 weeks, but said she couldn’t tell me any earlier because they had a rough start. At 6 weeks she bled heavily (needed hospitalizing) and when she had a scan it showed an empty (miscarried) gestation sac, and another one with a baby in it! So she was pregnant with twins and lost one. All seems well with the other little bean but she is still on some restrictions with her activity until her scan next week. I think it sounds awful what they have been through, but they are so positive and just say how blessed they are that there was another baby in there. I have a strong feeling that everything is going to be fine for them with this little one. Twins run strongly in both sides of their families so it’s not too surprising!

Anyway, so I held Arthur nearly the whole time, and he eventually went to sleep in my arms, which I always love. Better still, when I took him upstairs and lay him down in the bed, he opened his eyes to look at me, smiled, and then they drooped shut again and he slept for 40 minutes :) That was lovely! Of course he was HUNGRY when he woke, because he was due to nurse and he normally always nurses for naptime!

Anyway back to today. So he has been held and cuddled a lot. I think he has been a very happy boy today! He got a little bored late in the afternoon between a nap and bathtime, as Neil went food shopping and Arthur seemed kind of bored with his toys. I phoned my Mummy to chat, and she said I should go and have some water play with Arthur on the plastic/sheet mat I sewed him! So that’s just what we did! And he LOVED it!! I sat him in front of a washing-up tub of water, and put a few plastic toys in there, and all his stacking cups – which are great because they have holes in the bottom to let sand or water fall through. And after we played with that a while, I added a squirt of baby bath bubbles to it, and blew bubbles in the water with a straw! He loved the bubbles. I packed him round with a lot of thick towels because even though he was on a waterproof floor-cover, he was lifting cups FULL with water out of the tub and dumping the water on his lap! And although it is hot today, there is a nice breeze which was fluttering in through the open window, and I didn’t want him getting chilly with extended water play. I wanted to keep playing as long as he stayed interested, which could be a while! We played for about 30 minutes, and he loved every second of it! After that, Neil was home and then he got tickled and eaten some more, and after that he was sleepy so it was bathtime and then time for bed. He has had a nice day and I feel so great to be able to give him happy times!

Here are some photos of the water play! He liked to watch me hold the cups up so that he could see the water fall through them. He loved to reach out and touch the water too:

Here he is enjoying the bubbles that I am blowing for him (after he noticed that’s what I was doing, anyway!)...

And this is why he needed all those towels over him!...

But there was not one single drop on the carpet after I cleared everything up! :) I am really glad I sewed that plastic/bedsheet thing.

Arthur has started saying things that sound more and more like proper talking. His babbling sounds very different to how it used to. He uses tones just like we do when we’re talking, that vary greatly depending on what he’s commenting on. It’s so interesting to watch and see how his vocal stuff is developing. He comes out with individual words that are not actual words at all, but which he is using to specifically convey some meaning or other. Like the other day, he was fussing as I was putting him down for a nap, and I lay next to him and nursed him. He nursed all gulpy and fast for a minute or two, then suddenly came off the breast with a huge slurp, as though he’d just suddenly thought of something to say (!), rolled over onto his tummy as fast as anything, lifted his head, looked me right in the eye, and said, “Neeg?” Then he waited, with a serious expression and raised eyebrows, head slightly on one side, I guess for some sort of response to his question (or statement) that obviously was packed with meaning that he expected me to understand!!! So I said, “Neeg!” And he gave me THE biggest smile ever! It was so cute :) I don’t know what he said, or what I said, but I obviously gave him the right answer, hehe! He’s such a cutie :)

Today he said, “Howyadoin’?” when Neil greeted him hello! Hehe! Well, that’s exactly how it sounded, but it was really just coincidental babble! This afternoon he said, “Don’ do it!” when Neil was about to tickle him, but again it was babble that happened to sound exactly like the words, it was funny! But this is how his babbling is changing. It sounds so much like words that we speak, but it doesn’t make sense.

He is showing signs of understanding a word other than Mummy and Daddy! Well, and other than medicine and milk, which he knows from signing. He seems to be understanding the word “kisses”!! We kiss him all the time, and if we ever go to kiss him on the mouth, we prepare him in advance (so he doesn’t get the shock of his life, hehe!) by saying, “Kisses…” and leaning in to kiss him. The singular form seems to have become “kissie” and he seems to understand that too. He gives us kisses all the time now, usually by grasping our face in both hands and dragging it towards his open mouth! Arthur’s kisses are nearly always big open-wide ones at the moment! He can purse his lips and kiss though, but he doesn’t usually. He has started to show more affection with us in recent weeks, just in time for me to read in my latest Babycentre email that my baby will start to show more affection and emotional understanding around now :) He spontaneously gives us kisses, often when he’s had a particularly close moment with one of us, like after he nurses or after he has cuddles with Daddy or gets half-eaten by him! ;) It’s so lovely. Today he was sitting on Neil’s lap having a cuddle, after his water play, and he was happy as anything and chatting away. He was facing away from Neil, but all of a sudden he twisted his head round and planted a big open kissie on Neil’s mouth, the lil cutie :) Then I said, “Arthur, give Daddy a kissie!” AND HE DID! And then looked back to me, and I said it again, and he turned and gave him another one! So I think he is really starting to understand “kisses” now. He does look like he understands what we’re saying when we use the word and go to kiss him. He knows what’s coming.

Ahhhhhh he’s just so precious. I loooooooovvvvvvvvve hime. Love him. Love him. Love. Him.

Here is a photo of Arthur giving Daddy a kissie, one of those times when I asked him to:

And now he is in bed sleeping, and I wish I could snuggle him up and kiss him all over, but that would wake him up so I can’t! I just have Arthur-fever at the moment. He is all I think about. I can scarcely breathe for how much I love him. I can’t believe it is only going to get better and MORE love will happen. How can that be? I never felt anything like this in my life before. I wouldn’t change him for the world. He IS my world!

Well, I am going to get another glass of water (sooooo thirsty today!) and maybe snuggle with my hubby if he’s not watching something violent on TV (tsk!), and then go to bed I think. It’s late and I want to go to church again tomorrow. In fact, I’m really looking forward to it! Will update again soon :)

[p.s. Megan and Julie, I am soooo sorry I haven’t emailed you guys back yet. Will do so very soon. Sorry to leave this message here, but have run out of time tonight. Love you both! :)]

Survey thingy and stuff

It's tooooo hot and I'm in a bit of a flump, so when I read Megan's diary and found a survey there, I thought I would put my answers in my diary to amuse myself :) Then if Arthur is still asleep after I'm done maybe I'll write a bit of normal stuff.

1. What is your full name now? Alice Victoria Surname (no, that is not my surname, heh)
2. What color pants are you wearing? Uhm, it's hot. Nuff said!
3. What are you listening to right now? The sound of the fan in the bedroom where Arthur is sleeping.
4. What was the last thing you ate? Honey nut cheerios and semi-skimmed organic milk :)
5. Do you wish on stars? Nope. I pray to God instead. But I think I did wish on a star once at Disneyland when I was 15! Best place to do it! :)
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Ohhh this type of question is so hard!! I don't know. But for some reason I think rust red.
7. How is the weather right now?Hot and sunny (88 degrees so far today!) and humid and sticky. Blech.
8. Last person you spoke to on the phone? Mummy, this morning.
9. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Nobody actually sent it to me, I read it in a diary, but I love Megan :)
10. How old are you today? 29 years and 5 months. Nearly.
11. Favorite drink? I'm a water girl. But lately with the heat, my current favourite is Volvic's hint of fruit still water with lemon and lime.
12. Favorite sport? Not really a sport fan, but I guess I love watching tennis, but only at Wimbledon. If you're talking DOING a sport, then ice-skating, without a doubt.
13. Hair color? Brown. Why does that sound so much duller than it is?! I like my hair colour :)
14. Siblings? One younger brother (by 2 years, 10 months), Bennie.
15. Favorite food? Ummm.... Roast dinner probably. Winter one though, like roast beef and Yorkshire puddings and all the trimmings. Or roast lamb. Has to have roast parsnips with it. My mouth is watering.
16. What was the last movie you watched? Shrek 2, last night! Soooo funny!
17. Favorite day of the year? I don't think I have one. I guess Christmas Day or my birthday, but they are only favourites depending on what happens on the actual day! Maybe November 9th will become a favourite, since it was the day Arthur was born?
18. What was your favorite toy as a child? Emma, my teddy. I was still sleeping with her after I was MARRIED, hehe! And she went everywhere with me. I don't know where she is right now. In the bedroom somewhere I think. Poor neglected Emma...
19. Summer or winter? Winter, definitely!
20. Hugs or kisses? Hugs.
21. Chocolate or Vanilla? Oooh both!! For ice-cream though, I like vanilla better. But I'm a chocoholic in any other capacity!
22. Do you want your friends to respond with their answers? I like to see other people's replies to the same questions, but I guess it would be easier done in emails or in their own diary entries than here in my guestbook. So I don't mind :)
23. Who is most likely to respond? Oooh, I don't know. Jemma?!
24. Who is least likely to respond? Hmmm, don't know that either. Anyone and everyone probably!
25. Living arrangements? Little two-bedroom terraced house with my husband and baby boy.
26. When was the last time you cried? Friday, 6 days ago.
27. What is under your bed? Thick dust!! And two huge under-bed drawers full of books that we never unpacked properly when we moved here (nearly 4 years ago!!!). And old shoes of Neil's. And some other stuff that has fallen down the side probably.
28. Who is the friend you have had the longest? My mummy. She is my best friend.
29. What did you do last night? Emailed Julie and Jemma. Phoned my school friend Michelle, to give her directions to come and visit us tomorrow!! Yay! And watched Shrek 2.
30. Favorite smell? Rain. Parma violet sweets. Arthur. Who is awake now, so I will have to finish this a bit later!

Back again! Not for long though, as it's a few hours later and Arthur is already looking bored watching me write this! Okay, where was I?

31. Favorite tv show? Neighbours, The Lenny Henry Show, any baby or birth related documentary.
32. Happy In life? Generally very very happy, yes! I have my blips, but Arthur is such a joy, and God is so good, that I am nearly always happy! :)
33. What are you afraid of? Being sick. Other people being sick. Other people feeling sick. Other people knowing someone who knew someone who was feeling sick last week. Etc. I am afraid of a lot of things. I hate that, but it would take a whole diary entry to really talk about them all, so that is all I will say for this answer.
34. Plain, buttered or salted popcorn? Uhm, none of the above, I think. I prefer sugar on my popcorn, or even that slightly sickly toffee coated stuff! But then again, I only eat popcorn like once every 2 years or something!
35. Favorite car? I currently LOVE our Citroen C5. It's sooooo comfy and quiet and looks fab :) I heart my Citroen!
36. Favorite Flower? I LOVE flowers. My particular favourites are freesias and roses, for their scent. I am an old romantic so I prefer red roses, or white ones. I had both in my wedding bouquet :)
37. Number of keys on your key ring? Which key ring? House key ring has two on, and the car key ring has two also. I know, I know, I should combine them and be more organised!
38. How many years at your current job? Hard to define really! I have been a Mummy for 8 months and 5 days. I have been out of work or study for almost 5 years and 5 months, but that was because I became housebound with illness. When I got better (healed!), I stayed home. I don't know when I would say I took on the "job" of being a housewife/homemaker. I feel like I never really did too well at that so maybe never. Maybe I am "currently without occupation"? Except of course for being a SAHM!!
39. Favorite day of the week? Friday. Neil is home for the weekend on Friday and I feel relieved about that! :)
40. What did you do on your last birthday? Went to France with Neil and Arthur to visit my parents! I can't think of a better treat :)
41. How many cities have you lived in? Just London!
42. Do you make friends easily? I don't think so. I am too shy and increasingly unsociable these days. I used to though.
43. How many people will you be sending this to? Nobody!

Yay, all done! Took another mini break there because Arthur got antsy and I put him down for another nap, so that's where he is for now.

Arthur is driving me crazy today. I guess that's the first time I have ever written that, and I'm sure there will be more occasions like it, but I feel sad to write it when everybody else seems to be blissfully enjoying every second with their little ones. He is driving me craaazy. It isn't his fault of course. It's the poxy beepity hot humid weather. He hates it so much, and so do I, so I guess I have less patience than normal anyway. Also he is teething something awful. I still find it so annoying and frustrating that he has had soooo much awful discomfort and pain since ELEVEN weeks old, and here he is eight months old and not one tooth to show for it! It isn't fair. BUT! Finally I think his first toothie is coming. The past two nights he has woken sooooo frequently. Unfortunately for me that has coincided with Neil being unwell and sleeping in another room to get some extra rest, so I am just knackered at the moment. Knackered. Like last night, he woke FIVE times between 10pm and 11.20pm. Each time he was properly asleep when I left him, but he just kept on waking and crying. He has taken to staying awake for over an hour in the night, once from around midnight to about 1.30, and the other time from about 1.30 to 3ish. He isn't happily awake either. He screeches and wriggles and rolls and moans and kicks and so on. Last night we couldn't tell if he was being bothered by his teeth, so we gave him teething powder and then Bonjela, and still he was really screechy and annoyed about something. We gave him Calpol in the end and he was much better after that.

This morning he was absolutely inconsolable by 9am. His screeching is driving me up the wall! He takes a deeeeep breath, then using all his might, he forces out a cross between the loudest shout he can muster and the highest pitched shriek he can reach. It makes my ears buzz and distort and actually HURT. He does them one after the other after the other after the other. It's as thought he's super angry and letting us know, it's not like an odd type of cry or anything. Neil and I can't communicate with each other at all for the noise, and I can't think straight. After two or three screeches, I admit I just want to scream back at him with all MY might, and walk out of the room, slamming the door behind me!

Urgh.

Anyway we had to go out to the baby clinic for his 8-month hearing test this morning, and he wouldn't sleep before then so he had to wait till almost noon for his first nap. I caved in and gave him Calpol AGAIN this morning, and he has had another dose just now. He just gnaws things with the most pitiful moaning sounds, and then cries without any apparent cause. I phoned my mum this morning and she said give him some Calpol, since it worked so well in the night, so his issues are probably painful. So I did, and it did make him a LOT better.

After his nap, when he smiled at me I could see a white patch on his bottom gum in the middle, over the left tooth, as though the gum is under pressure and the blood has been forced out of the way. A-ha! Anyway this afternoon he has been pretty good and played naked on the plastic thingy with a blanket on top. He is just so sweaty and sticky today that it's hard to hold him right without hurting him.

I fed him a new food today, a Heinz fruit thing of nectarine, mango and banana. He hasn't had citrus before, and the books say it's a high risk for allergy, so I'm interested to see how he goes. He made lots of faces and gaggy sounds, but took a good couple of teaspoonfuls in very tiny bits. After that I soaked a terry nappy with cold water from the tap, and we played peekaboo (a game he LOVES!), where I chucked the towel over him and he pulled it down to see me with big smiles! This cooled him down wonderfully. He did lots of gasping when the towel went over him, poor love! Hehe, mean Mummy! But he seems to love being shocked by anything, even coldness. He loves to be made to jump by a sudden loud noise (makes him giggle), and for months he has loved it when I pretend to drop him. He seems to be emerging as a real rough-and-tumble boy! His favourite game with me is affectionately known as "Ruff", where he lies on his back (preferably without clothes) and I transform into a doggy that keeps making sudden "Ruff!.... Ruff!.... RUFF!" sounds (each one louder and more full of anticipation than the previous one). Each sound makes his eyes shine and he smiles so big! It means that any moment now, Ruff the doggy is about to have a mad moment and suddenly ruffruffruffruffruffruff without stopping at the same time as eating Arthur alive, starting at the ribs and neck and tummy! Ruff is so scary that these days the game involves pinning Arthur's arms to the bed a second before the manic stuff begins, so that he just has to squirm and shriek with laughter and scrunch his chin into his neck in an effort to protect himself! Haha! But he LOVES Ruff. It's his favourite thing ever. He laughs soooo much, and is always breathless and shiny-eyed afterwards :) My lovely boy.

But this afternoon he wouldn't nap, even though he was tired out. He just rolled and rocked on his hands and knees on the bed, and cried and screeched, etc, etc. He was biting his fists so hard that his head shook with the effort, so I gave him more Calpol. He was fussy for maybe 15 minutes longer and now he is asleep at last. Hopefully he'll have at least 30 minutes and be feeling fresher and happier when he wakes.

Neil is starting to feel better, and he's back at work today. So far Arthur and I don't seem to have caught his cold, thank goodness!

Tomorrow my friend from school, Michelle, is coming to see us with her new husband! We went to her wedding in late September when I was 8 months pregnant! I know they have been trying for a baby now for a while, so I wonder if she will have any news for me? If not, I hope she will feel able to talk to me about it if she wants. I know it is so hard to wait.

Arthur's hearing test went well! He heard all the sounds across the frequencies and turned to see where they were coming from, so he passed with flying colours. But I have to say, I wasn't worried in the least! He is soooo hard to creep away from when he is finally asleep, as he seems to hear every tiny little creak of the floor! We were given a bag of books which is part of the initiative to encourage parents to read with their babies. I haven't looked at them yet, but I'm excited that he has more books! He seems to love books, although he does still want to chew them, but he's getting more interested in the pictures and stuff now. I don't know if he's that interested in what I'm reading to him because he doesn't appear to be paying much attention! But I read to him quite a lot.

He's awake suddenly and crying so I'll go. Back another time.

Changing boy, and back to church!! :)

Thanks for the sweet guestbook messages about Arthur’s photos! :)

My lil boy is changing so much, so fast! He is doing something new every single day with his mobility at the moment. Just little changes, but so fast, every day it’s something new. Today he spends most of his time on all fours, arms and legs absolutely like table legs, they are so vertical now, instead of out at an angle to the floor. He isn’t rocking so much anymore. Today he has been moving his knees back and forth one at a time, as though he is crawling and then putting his knees back where they were to start with. He can do the crawling motions with his arms, and now he has perfected the legs, but he seems to be all jumbled about co-ordinating the two! He spent a while pumping his knees back and forth in a sort of scissor motion on all fours, and then finally leaned himself way forward on his knees, and took a hand off the floor to place it down ahead of him (ie. crawling!) but that threw his balance and his face went thunk onto the floor :( Poor baby! He will get it soooo soon, he is so close! He can crawl backwards but that doesn’t interest him because he has other ways of moving backwards. He just seems so eager to learn to move himself forwards, as he doesn’t have any good ways of doing that yet. He can now lunge himself forwards at least a foot in one go, from a crawling position, if he desperately wants to reach something. Yesterday he wasn’t doing this, so he is changing each day! Every day I am sure he will start crawling. It really could happen tomorrow! But I think that every day. In some ways it would be good if he didn’t, because I am working on the living room at the moment and have a couple more days before the carpet will be nice and clear. Now that it is getting more clear, I am noticing how horrible it smells! Yuck. We need a serious carpet shampoo service. We hoovered (tsk, stop correcting that to “hovered”, Word!!) it but it still stinks. It smells like feet. One of the smells I hate most in the whole world. And mine don’t ever smell, so somehow the fact that it’s not MY smell makes it even more yucky to me! I am weird.

The other thing that Arthur is doing better and better each day at the moment is walking. I just loosely support him so that he balances and doesn’t crumple at the knees if he has a random moment of crumply-knees (!), and he now immediately gives the room a quick once over, selects the most interesting thing to him at that time, and sets off for it, lifting a very purposeful foot, raised up almost knee-to-stomach, and plonking it down a huge stride ahead of his little body! He really means business, hehe! He walks so purposefully and his legs make such huge strides and high-knees that it looks like he’s doing an exaggerated walk or something! It’s so cute and funny :) Once he is off (with my hands holding his or loosely under his arms), he doesn’t look down, but straight ahead at the target destination, and he makes those huge strides so fast and accurately! I am so impressed by my little man! His steps are like one or two per second, steady and regular, if he is eager to reach something or someone. If he’s not sure where he’s going, he’ll be more picky and irregular with his steps, and he might get distracted by something else on the way, and change direction (his latest thing – a huge sweeping swing of the leg to one side instead of ahead of him, followed by him pivoting on this foot once it’s down, so that he’s facing another way, then he just keeps going!). Or he might walk by a toy that attracts his attention so he changes his mind and lets his legs fall into a sitting position, and plonks down on his bottom next to the toy to play a while. Yesterday his steps were steady but sometimes wobbly. Today they are already soooo much less wobbly. He has always loved to stand, and it seems he is super keen on walking too. He gets places so fast and easily, and crawling is vexing him still, so he seems delighted when I hold him upright so he can motor off somewhere! We absolutely HAVE to get this on video sometime very soon. I want to show my parents in France and the only way to do that is by uploading a short video clip to the internet. And we should capture it now anyway. He will be so much better at it soon, and this lovely stridey cute walk will disappear and be just a memory.

Oooh ooh, and today on the bed after a nap, he tried and tried to go from all-fours to sitting! I never saw him attempt that before, it’s like he hadn’t even thought of it till now. But anyway. His torso was always leaning away from his butt at too wide an angle to push himself fully upright, even though he got his legs under him and onto his bottom. He fell a few times. Then I gave him the tinest nudge on one arm as he tried to push up, and he was up and sitting easily :) I know, I know, I should have let him keep trying by himself, but I couldn’t resist! He was sooooo pleased with himself once he was sitting! He slapped his legs with joy and beamed a huge open-mouthed smile at me :) Cutie-boy. Of course he can’t get down from sitting yet, so the only way is to launch himself backwards, and that means hitting his head on whatever is behind him. On the bed this doesn’t matter as it’s soft enough, and the carpet downstairs always has a doubled-up fleece blanket on it, but it’s still hard enough for him to cry if he hits his head on it. I don’t think he gets hurt as such, because there is no red mark or lump, but it must jolt him and shock him so he gets upset, poor boy! I hope he figures out how to get out of a sitting position safely soon! I watch him carefully and have my hand ready to grab him when he’s sitting, if he goes backwards. He never falls from sitting anymore, it’s just that he will keep launching himself in order to get out of a sitting position.

It’s so hot and sticky again. Today was lovely actually, though too hot. Blue skies all day, and a slight breeze to make it all worthwhile. But hot. 85 degrees I think. Definitely hot enough for me without air conditioning! The car has A/C though. Praise God for the invention of air conditioning! Arthur’s new car seat is fabulous. It seems so much cooler and comfier than his old boxy one. He looks so good in it! I must take a photo some time.

Which reminds me – yesterday we went round to the post office to post a package (my first big item to sell at eBay (a Wilkinet baby carrier) – yayyy!!) and it was hot and sunny, so I put Arthur in the pushchair with a ton of suncream on, a hat, a new summer romper, and his new Baby Banz sunglasses!!!! He looked so cool! :) See?...

He tried to get the sunglasses off for a while at first, but then I put my face right in front of his and made funny faces and waved and other silly things (!), and he started smiling at me like I looked reeeally weird through those glasses, hehe! He left them on after that. I am glad, because they are 100% UV protective, and I want him protected from the sun as much as poss when it’s this hot.

He is doing well on the food front, I am pleased to report! He isn’t that convinced, but we’re persevering and he’s taking it. He prefers to feed himself, and he is surprisingly good at it. He grasps the spoon well, right below the head, and keeps it the right way up. He gets it right in his mouth with the first aim, and seems to be able to control whether he has a little taste from just the tip or shoves the whole thing in to empty the spoon! I do keep hold of it as well sometimes though, because when he’s had enough, he just flings it roughly behind him, and that makes my clean-up job so much harder, hehe! If I see him about to do it, I can tighten my grip and prevent the spoon from becoming a sling shot!

The last couple of days he has had Heinz organic banana and passionfruit puree, which he seemed to like. He made lots of faces, but still accepted bits of it. He ate about a teaspoonful or two each time, which is pretty good for him. Yesterday it was so hot and he was so sweaty that I offered it to him right out of the fridge. I knew it would be icy cold, and I wondered if he would totally hate that (and let me know it!) or be glad of something to cool him down. He turned out to be glad of the coldness, so I’m happy I tried it out! He was much cooler after his meal :)

Today I opened a jar of organic butternut squash puree with potato and rice! A bit more “real thing”, and I didn’t know if he’d take it. It seemed a bit thick for him so I hand-expressed some breastmilk and stirred it till it was smoother, and then offered it to him warmed up. He made faces, as ever. But he did take it. He had maybe two teaspoonfuls in total. Then I was about to clear away and he was making lunges for the little plastic cup thingy that I had the food in. There was some left, and I thought he was going to turn it upside down and dump it out on the towel he was sitting on (in the living room, too hot for the sticky plastic-y highchair in the kitchen), so I was keeping it out of his reach, but then I thought he could touch it if I kept a good hold on it. When I gave it to him, he did the weirdest thing! He immediately held it like a cup (a pretty good hold too, especially considering he has never been offered a cup to hold before!), put his mouth on the rim, and tipped it up!!!! Funny boy! He just stayed like this, tipping it up and up, and I could see the contents rolling up to his mouth. I thought he would hate it when it reached his mouth, but it was almost like that was his plan, hehe! Once he had a mouth FULL, he took the “cup” away and gave me a very satisfied open-mouthed beam (food leaking from it like crazy of course!). Then he gagged a little on the sheer amount of it, and swallowed, then tipped the cup back up to his mouth again! After a while I stopped him, because, should he really be DRINKING his purees?!! And also he started to retch a bit after the third big mouthful, and I did not want to see it all rearranged on the towel after he’d ingested it.

Anyway, he was so funny with this! I took a couple of photos. Here he is “drinking” his butternut squash, potato, rice and breastmilk puree!!....

And here he is with the resulting food moustache a few moments later, absolutely thrilled with his achievement!!

Isn’t he so cute and funny?! My lovely boy :)

Okay it’s late and I need to go to bed. Oh but I forgot to update on a few things from last entry. Neil isn’t well at the moment :( He got a sore throat on Friday evening, and by Sunday he had started a cold. What is it with us and colds in the MIDDLE of the summer?!!! Tsk. It’s nothing to do with having little ones around now either, as this cold is not from Arthur, and the last one was a bit random too. Today he is really poorly with it and he had to come home from work early. I don’t think he should have gone in at all today because he really is poorly, but he said he had to finish some things off if he was going to go off sick. He isn’t going in tomorrow. I’m glad. He needs to recover. I really hope Arthur and I don’t catch it. It has only been a few weeks since we were ill with the last nasty cold. Maybe this one IS our last nasty cold – Neil didn’t catch it then – and it’s just doing the rounds and we have already had it so we won’t get it again. I hope so. We do not need to get ill again right now. I hope Neil gets over it quickly.

He wasn’t up to going to church on Sunday so I went with Arthur on my own. It was soooo nice to be there!! We were late for the service due to the unforeseen time-consuming details of going out for the morning with a baby (!!), so there were only 4 songs or so left to sing by the time we arrived, but I sang them with gusto and enjoyed it so much! I felt tired out holding Arthur, standing, singing and moving to the music all at once though! I had to sit down when it came time to pray. Which was very touching, incidentally, because we spent quite a while in prayer for the victims of the London bombings and their families. And anyone else affected. It was so moving, and soooo good to come before God with it all. So soothing somehow. People prayed aloud, one by one, as they felt moved to pray. Many people prayed in tears. One man cried as he prayed to God for his good friend who was still searching for his sister, missing in London after the attacks. It feels so close to home. The missing people thing is so heartbreaking. You just know they are missing for a reason, and not a good one at that. And yet the poor families can’t get the closure they need. Oh it’s so awful :(

But the service was lovely. After the prayer time I took Arthur to crèche, because he started to get a bit vocal and fed up with the lack of interesting music after a while! He loves the worship time, but I guess babies do because it’s loud and bouncy music mostly. The quiet songs seem interesting to them too. Everyone is moving and singing and he just stared and stared around at everyone. I like that he finds it interesting. I want him to become really accustomed to seeing people worshipping God. He is pretty much accustomed to seeing me do that at home, but I like that he is getting some experience of being in a church service regularly. Or he will be, as I plan on going to church much more regularly now :)

Creche was quite good. Weird in some ways though. I feel so different from everyone else when I’m there. I’m the only one who stays with their baby without any intention of doing otherwise. There are other parents in there sometimes, but they are in and out, and the intention is to manage to escape back to the service as quickly as possible without their little one getting too upset. It’s a small crèche and this week there were only six babies and toddlers, and two of them were absolutely hysterical for want of their mothers most of the time. One parent came back and stayed till the little one was distracted, then left again, and then had to come back when the screams got too loud for the service next door. The other was more direct about it, and said goodbye and went back to the service. The two mums who were running crèche this week held her 16-month-old for half an hour while he sobbed till I was sure he would throw up and wailed, “Mummy! My mummy!” over and over. It was so heartbreaking. The one who wasn’t holding him would engage me in cheerful conversation over his wails, but I kept being distracted and missing things she was saying. Not because of the noise, but because my whole heart scrunched and ached for the poor little boy, longing for his mummy like that. Of course the process “worked” and he calmed down eventually, and the mums distracted him with a toy plane and excited tones, and then he played happily but for a few sobs now and then, although he did occasionally look at the door and say quietly to himself, “My mummy…” I don’t know. I can see why that works, and the mums were saying it was good for him because it teaches him that his mummy always comes back, even when she has to leave him for a while. But it did not sit right at ALL in my heart. Not one bit.

Arthur played sitting on the floor-mat happily, ignoring the noise and the crying, and chewing on various toys set in front of him. He graced everyone with beaming smiles and showed off his “walking” and nursed beautifully when the other toddlers and babies had snacks. He did have an apple rice-cake but gummed it twice before dropping it on the floor, uninterested. I knew it was time for him to eat something so I nursed him there and then. It’s so great to be able to do that. It’s so convenient and easy! I am always proud to nurse him in public :) At the end, the mums said to him, “You were SUCH a good boy today! Maybe now you know us, next time Mummy can go back to the service while you play here?” I just smiled, but I basically thought something along the lines of, “over my dead body”!!! I have no intention of ever leaving Arthur on his own, happy or not, for a good while yet. I am slightly nervous about that subject coming up in conversation, which it is sure to when they suggest I go back to the service because Arthur is happy playing. I DO want to hear the sermons, but that is not the point. I think people will think I am spoiling him, or overprotecting him, stifling him maybe. They all seem to think it’s vital to teach children independence by experience. I come from a very different viewpoint – a more “attached” one I suppose. My intention is to teach Arthur about independence by making him SO secure in my constant presence that he initiates his own independence from me at his own rate. I know that this works, from reading up on it, and from seeing other mums tell of it on attachment parenting forums. But I know nooobody at church who thinks like that in any way, shape or form. So I think discussing it or even just stating what I will do could be debate-provoking. And I hate debates. I hate the idea that people think I’m doing things wrong, or in a silly way. I know it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. But I still wish I had a few others at church who saw things from the attachment parenting viewpoint like I do. They all seem to be so busy trying to detach from their children – I’m sure that isn’t how they perceive it, but it’s how it is. Children grow up so quickly. I don’t want to rush it further by trying to speed up processes that would happen more gently on their own. I care much more about Arthur’s security in me than I do about hearing the next 6-12 months of sermons. If it starts to matter that much to me, I know Neil is happy to take turns in the crèche with Arthur, and I can get the sermons on CD in any case. I know I can still ask somebody to pray for me after the service if I am missing the ministry time. Even if I were to miss all that, I would STILL want to sit out in the crèche with Arthur rather than leave him on his own. He might be happy and not even notice I was gone. But I don’t care to test that out. I would rather he was happy with me sitting there nearby, even if he would still be happy with me out of the room. I don’t think he would be happy, but I want to be there anyway. Whether he’s happy or not is not a reason for me to want to leave him. I still want to stay if he’s happy!

I do slightly dread conversations at church, now that we are back for more regular attendance. I know people are already asking, “Oh how’s he sleeping? How’s he eating?” and I am already saying he is not sleeping so great and he’s just starting solids now. People go wide-eyed at the solids thing, but with the sleep thing the conversations haven’t been long enough to get into what we’re “doing about it” or what our sleep situation is. Not many people know we co-sleep. Sue does. On Sunday she approached me with a certain air and I thought, “Uh-oh…” Heh. A quick greeting and she launched into, “How’s he sleeping?” Not so great, said I. Cue negative tone and slightly condescending look with head on one side, she said, “Is he still sleeping with YOU?” I smiled confidently and said yes. She then informed me of the articles in the paper last week that PROVED co-sleeping was terribly DANGEROUS (emphasis, hers, on the capital lettered words) and didn’t I KNOW about it?! Ugh. I am so exasperated. Articles can be so biased. Which I said. She said oh no but this time it’s real research!! I said there is an awful lot of research to show that co-sleeping is actually safer in many ways than putting a baby to sleep in a cot. In any case, whether that’s true or not, there is definitely a TON of evidence to show that co-sleeping is not dangerous, so long as you follow safe-sleeping rules. Sue was so negative and her looks so belittling about it. She made lots of noises that let me know I was being irresponsible, and silly to have even tried such a thing in the first place (which I had already gathered from her previous conversations with me about it from before and just after Arthur was born). In the end I did something I never did before with Sue. I stood up for myself! I made my tone very definite and confident, and said, “Well, Sue, I am not going to stop co-sleeping.” And just returned her gaze without faltering till she went tight-lipped and huffed a bit before changing the subject. The whole thing left me feelings yucky inside, but I did feel proud of myself for finally standing up for myself on what I have chosen to do. Sue often makes me feel like I should be doing something about things, that I’m not doing yet, or that I’m not making the right choice, and I feel so small about it, and just respond so weakly and neutrally, rather than confidently declare my decision about something. Tsk. I have been annoyed at myself for this for a long long time over the years. But anyway, I stood up for myself :) GO me!! But I still felt bad and yucky after that discussion.

I asked online and found some things about that article. I don’t know what to think about it really. But basically the research was on babies younger than 11 weeks old, so it doesn’t even apply to Arthur anyway. I wish people would just butt out of other people’s parenting choices. It has nothing to do with anyone else how our family chooses to sleep at night!! Uggg.

BUT, I did enjoy Sunday at church :) It was lovely to see people again, and I had dozens and dozens of conversations with different people, all asking how we were doing and pleased to see us :) That’s so nice. Arthur got whisked away by a broody young lady (babies always are at my church!) and one minute I was handing him over for a quick cuddle while I said hello to the lady next to me around the coffee and biscuit area, and I literally looked away for 2 seconds, looked back, and they had gone!! Hehe! After a few minutes I figured he might get a bit antsy that he couldn’t see Mama, but then I spotted them over the heads of about 50 people on the other side of the church. He was still being held by Broody Young Lady (!) and they were surrounded by at least 5 more broody young ladies, hehehe! He was agog with all the attention, bless him, and they were all just mushy and goofy and making silly faces and high pitched voices at him! I felt so proud! I used to be one of the Broody Young Ladies at my church, and now I am blessed to have the little love that they are all desperate to cuddle! I watched one of them toss him in the air a few times, and saw him smile at them. My heart melted and my throat ached. I don’t know why that was such an emotional moment for me, but it really was. I could have watched them for ages. I wasn’t at all bothered that he was taken off my hands, it is so nice to have such a family feel at church. I love my church! :) Anyway, eventually he did start going, “Mmmm… MmmmMMMmm!!....” in uncertain tones, which is always closely followed by, “Mmmmama!! MAMUM!!” and then my presence was required :) I love that. Being wanted by my little one. It’s so wonderful.

Okay, it’s soooo late and Arthur is making stirry sounds, so I’m going to finish this for now. I am behind on emails these last few days, so if you are waiting for one from me then I apologise!!! I will catch up when Neil isn’t in the “sick” room (where the computer is) so much, hopefully tomorrow! I’ll update again soon!