Night weaning :(

Ohhh I am so behind with Arthur's news!!! I hope he naps well this afternoon because this is the only chance I'll get!

Thank you for all the messages and notes about my big news!!! I still can't quite believe I am expecting another baby and that Arthur will be a big brother! I think he will be a wonderful big brother. He is so interested in little babies, has no problem seeing me or Neil holding them, and instinctively seems to want to touch and kiss them gently. He has the kind of nature that will make him a wonderful big brother too. We thought that right from when he was tiny! I plan to stay as attached as I can to Arthur during my pregnancy and afterwards, because I'm desperately hoping he doesn't have any jealousy issues. Or at least nothing major. I was insanely jealous of my little brother, and it seemed to twist me up inside for my entire childhood. Even my teens. It only eased off when we both left home in adulthood. That's so sad, and I remember a lot of times being quite miserable and angry because of it as a child, so I desperately don't want that for Arthur. I will do what ever I can to help him with the transition. I would move heaven and earth if I could, for my lovely boy.

One thing we have decided to do right away (which totally contradicts the above paragraph, tsk!) is to begin night weaning :( As you know, I have already been too exhausted with Arthur's frequent night-wakings for many months, but now it has reached a new level. Now that I am pregnant, I am just soooo tired, already. I know I'm only JUST pregnant, but I figure if morning sickness is going to kick in like it did last time (just before 6 weeks) then I had better improve my sleep before then! When I am tired, nausea is soooo much worse. I know I would feel like being sick every time I woke to nurse him in the night. I don't want that!

I know he does not need my milk for nutrition at night. He wants it for comfort, and that has been fine. I wish it still WAS fine, but I need my sleep. It will benefit Arthur too, because he will sleep longer and deeper and be more refreshed hopefully. And obviously Neil too.

We talked a lot about how to go about it. We had tried lying with him and letting him cry and stroking his back, but that just seemed to mean a lot of CRYING and not much improvement in his sleep patterns. We also never tried that at night, when he is way more sensitive and easily upset when the breast isn't right there for him.

I read a lot about the different methods of gentle night-weaning. I won't entertain the direct cold-turkey cry-it-out. But there appear to be quite a few other methods that are more gentle. In the end I decided on a mix of a few different methods, because I thought it would suit us best.

A method I liked was to take a window in the night, say 11pm to 6am, and offer no nursing during that time, but comfort the baby back to sleep in other ways. Eventually they should stop waking if they are not getting the breast. I liked that, but I didn't like the cold-turkeyness of a whole 7-hour block from the start. I also didn't like that it would mean a lot of upset crying, despite the comforting back-rubs, etc. I read another method that suggested offering the baby water from a cup every time they wake, and of course since it's not water they're interested in, they eventually stop waking. Our health visitor suggested having Neil settle Arthur back to sleep, with me out of the room, so that he didn't even see the boobie-woman there (!!) to torture him further!

In the end I have decided on taking a smaller window to start with, and for Neil to settle Arthur back down with me not there, but to rock him to sleep if he is upset. Neil was involved in this by the way! He didn't just hear it from me and comply! ;) He is so wonderful taking on so much to help Arthur learn to sleep so I can get some myself.

Another thing we decided on was that the first thing Neil does when Arthur wakes is offer him a BOTTLE of water. Arthur has never had a bottle of anything offered to him before in his whole life! I know he is at an age where normally it would be a good idea to start weaning a baby OFF a bottle and onto a cup, but I don't feel that Arthur is at any risk of developing an attachment to a bottle. I still nurse him throughout the evening if he wakes, at bedtime, at 6am, for naps, and after every meal. Also he usually has a playtime with me on the floor for an hourish in the afternoon where I double as a snack bar (!), making the breast available for him to snack between activities :) I like that. So he has a LOT of milk, and plenty of snuggly nursing time still. I can't imagine him thinking much of a bottle in comparison!

I wanted it to be more soothing than a cup at night, and it's something that Neil can offer him cuddled in his arms. It has a soft teat which leaks fluid if he plays with it or sucks it. Better than a cup for being of comfort to a little one who is missing his night milkies from his mama.

Sooo we started on Saturday night. We chose a window of midnight to 3am. I nursed Arthur just before midnight I think, and then he woke at 2.20am. I heard Neil do all sorts of things to comfort him. He rocked him, and patted and rubbed his back. He offered him the bottle of water. Amazingly, Arthur was soothed by the bottle, although he didn't drink from it. Neil said he just bit the teat and played with it a bit in his mouth. He never got hysterical or cried so much that he sobbed, which I am so relieved about. But it was the bottle that seemed to prevent that. Every time he sounded like he was getting upset, Neil offered him the bottle again and he calmed down for a while. I watched the clock in the spare room, and Arthur took a whole hour to go back to sleep. Then he didn't wake again till 6am on the dot! After I nursed him, he went back to sleep till nearly 7, which is good because then he made up that hour.

The second night, I nursed him at 11.30pm when he woke, and he didn't wake again till 3am. I wondered about going in since it was the end of the window, but I heard Neil offer him the bottle, and I kid you not, the boy was asleep again without any fuss in FIVE MINUTES!!! He didn't wake again till 6am, and had a little more sleep after I nursed him!! Yay!

Last night he was way more wakeful, and in the evening too, when I was nursing him on demand. I think he is teething though. He just seemed restless. But since the previous night went well, we decided to extend the window to midnight-6am. I nursed him at 10pm and then 11pm. Then he woke at 1.30am and settled in maybe 5 or 10 minutes. He woke again at 3, 4 and 6am, ugh! Neil offered him the bottle and rubbed his back each time - I don't think he even needed to rock him - and he fell back to sleep within maybe 5 minutes or so each time. So it is definitely going better, but I think it was a rough night for Neil with all those wakings.

I am just so glad it is working without him being terribly upset. Even if he did get terribly upset, I think we would have to break our hearts and persevere. I simply have to get more rest now that I'm pregnant. I always knew that would have to happen once I was expecting again, but I guess I had kind of hoped it wouldn't need doing, or that it would somehow happen naturally before then.

Once he is sleeping through the midnight-6am window, we will phase out the midnight-ish feed :( I'm so sad to lose each and every nursing session, even though I am so tired from 10 months of it, and soooo longing for some longer stretches of sleep.

Oh he's waking. I'll see if I can get him to go back to sleep!

Nope, he's awake! Oh well, at least I got to write about his sleep changes.

Did I mention last time that we went to the baby clinic to have Arthur weighed and measured? I can't remember. Anyway he is 23lbs, 13oz and measures 76cm long (30 inches). That puts him at the 75th centile for weight and somewhere around the 85th for height. My boy must be getting a touch more lean with all his crawling and walking! He has only grown 1cm since his last check though, but he can reach a good couple of inches higher than before, so I think his limbs are really growing. His chub rolls on his arms (I love those!) are spacing out more. His arms and legs look longer to us, in proportion to the rest of him. My baby is gearing up to become a TODDLER!!! Yikes!

Let's see, what else can I add briefly before Arthur gets bored of the few toys he is playing with on the floor here? Ohhh he has been constipated for the first time recently :( Poor Arthur. He started to do a lot of straining, for like 15 or 20 minutes at a time (!!!) and then I'd change his nappy and there would hardly be anything in it. That happened twice in one day, and then later on he was standing against the sofa doing it again, when suddenly he looked at me like he was terrified, and started to cry this horrible high-pitched scared cry that sounded just like he was in pain somewhere. Neil heard it too and came running. I knew it had to be to do with the poo, so I held him and reassured him, but he seemed to be more and more in pain all the time. He sweated and shook :( Poor poor Arthur!

So we took his nappy off and he had a big ole poo stuck there. He was so frightened and distressed that we got some oil and um, applied it, and eased the thing out. Ahhh the things you do for your precious little ones!! ;) He calmed down pretty quickly once it was out, but he was bleeding pretty badly :( We went out and bought prunes, but he HATES them. Hates them. I think he ate maybe 2 tiny spoonfuls of them mixed in with his favourite (avacado and banana) though. We offered him a little more water than usual too. Next day he had THREE stuck-poo incidents, which involved oil and cuddles, but he didn't bleed and none of them were as bad. Neil offered him weetabix for breakfast, and we gave him a tea of just fruit. After that his poo was back to normal, phew!! Poor Arthur.

So I guess those are the two main bits of news from Arthur's point of view! Poo and sleep ;)

He's saying "mamum" all the time, and waving a lot. He claps constantly and seems very pleased with himself over it! He currently stands alone quite frequently for maybe 10 seconds, but the difference is that now he knows about it and seems to want to. Okay he has cruised right out of the doorway and off somewhere so I'm going to find him!!

I have a ton more to write about though. I'll try to get back here later, but I also need to update my pregnancy diary. Hopefully I'll be awake enough this evening after Arthur is asleep, to do both!

Update about Ella, finally!

Umm... you guys might want to check out my pregnancy diary. For unexpected news. Of a rather large nature! ;)

But I'll leave that for that diary, and do a normal update here. I have to catch up on Ella's visit and the photos!!! I am so behind, urgh!

Sooo Ella is so cute!! She is TINY! I can't believe how little a 3-month-old is! Although MY 3-month-old was never that small, so maybe that's why. She weighs just over 10lbs and is long and lean. She is breastfed, but SIL is doing this scheduled feeding thing (oh MAN!) and Ella's weight gain has been slow. Ella cried 2 hours and 45 mins after her last feed, but SIL held her and rocked her and made her wait. Yeurgh. But hey ho. Not my baby and all that.

She is so cute!!!! Arthur was so interested in her! He didn't mind at all when Neil or I held her. He just carried on as normal, cruising around and playing with toys and vocalising very noisily (and with great excitement!) at his auntie and uncle! He wanted to touch Ella a lot when she was lying on the mat on the floor having her nappy changed. Neil was ultra gooey over Ella, and lay next to hear making gooey babytalk sounds to her (he's such a softie!). Arthur crawled right up and lay next to Neil watching Ella's face very carefully, as though he was taking part too! It was very sweet. I'm so annoyed that I didn't photograph that part!

He wanted to touch her face and the top of her head a lot. He reached out for her all the time but we were careful over letting him actually touch her much, because he is a bit of a "scruncher" with his lil fingers at the moment!

When her daddy was holding her, Arthur kept crawling up to him, pulling up on his knees and trying to touch Ella. Over the course of the visit (a few hours), Arthur spontaneously gave her two real kisses! It was the cutest thing. I am amazed that he does that so readily. He kissed her very very gently on the forehead when she was on the floor to be changed. He leaned in so carefully and gently, he seemed to take such a lot of effort over it. He also kissed her when her daddy was holding her. He reached and reached, and finally I sat with him so that I could whip his hands back if he looked like he would scrunch her, and he just leaned in gently and kissed her face!

I have noticed that he has only ever kissed girl babies so far, hahaha! He has socialised with plenty of boy babies but only kissed the girls ;) He has kissed Hannah at church, Jaya, and now Ella. My sweet boy :) He IS extremely affectionate, and I love that about him.

Anyway, here are the photos:

Neil and his sister with their firstborns!...

When they were getting ready to go home - Ella was in her car seat ready for the journey. Arthur looked so grown-up to me, standing there holding onto a car seat with a little baby inside!...

Biting the handle of the car seat (he never stops biting things at the moment - more teeth on the way methinks!):

My big boy being not-the-only centre of attention! ;)

A better photo of Ella with her mummy (note a very busy Arthur in the background, as usual, hehe!):

It was soooo nice to see them all. We had a nice time chatting with them and holding Ella. I felt so broody! She was so little and wobbly! I think there are some definitely similarities between Ella and Arthur. Her eyes are blue though. Arthur's eyes were never going to be blue! It was weird to be all veteran-parents-y with my BIL and SIL. They were asking us all these questions about things Ella was doing, and we were going, "Oh yes, I remember that with Arthur! We just did X, Y and Z." etc. It weird. I can't believe I am actually a mummy sometimes, let alone a mummy who has a baby old enough so that she has experience that mothers of little babies don't have yet! It's weird.

Okay I have to go. My boys have been to B&Q and now they are home. It's Arthur's lunch time and we need to phone Neil's mum :) Will try to update again soon.

Oh but just quickly, we went to the baby clinic yesterday and Arthur weighs 23lbs 13oz (75th percentile) and measures 76cm long (85th percentile). He is doing great! :) Will write more soon.

An entry.

An entry. Just so that the last one isn't the latest one anymore. I deleted the comment I made in my pregnancy journal. And I don't want to talk about it. Thank you Megan and Kat for the lovely guestbook messages! Jemma, I appreciate the message you left too. I'm sorry my comment got aimed at you too. I think I am doing okay about Cameron. Mostly the memories of him ARE fond and happy, but at times like this - his birthday and the anniversary of his death, I think it's normal to be grieving again to some extent. I don't really think I need bereavement counselling. I'm not sure anyone can say that someone SHOULD be feeling a certain way about a loved one that they lost, after a set amount of time. Everybody grieves differently, and depending on the intensity and nature of the loss, I think it must take different lengths of time for painful feelings to lift. I think it's okay to still be hurting after two years. I don't hurt all the time, or even much of the time, so I think I am managing really well.

Maybe it is hormones. I do not feel better this morning. I feel sad and weepy and vulnerable. I feel anxious to check my emails and messages online in case somebody has challenged me on something. Crazy, even a friendly challenge upsets me at the moment, which ISN'T anyone's fault. I just seem so sensitive and I can't seem to get over it at the moment. Probably hormonal then.

Neil and I have had petty arguments about stupid things over the last few days. Reeeally silly ones, about insignificant things like whether I WAS or WASN'T asleep when Neil said my name this morning (wha???!!) and then they go on and on and ON for ages, round and round in circles. Blah. It's so irritating. I am fed up of petty arguments. Neil says he is too. But we still bicker. I know he thinks my hormones are responsible and that it's all my fault that we are arguing. I know it's probably mostly true if my hormones are making me this weirdly sensitive at the same time. But he is pretty sensitive and easily argumentative too at the moment. I hate when it's all my fault and Neil won't acknowledge his part. I think it must be because he is starting to get stressy waiting to hear about his job next week. He says he isn't concentrating well at work at the moment. We are both utterly tired out from the wakeful nights. That doesn't help. And maybe I am more sensitive, due to the time of year, than I realise?

Anyway.

Arthur is napping. He won't be much longer. His naps are 30 minutes long these days. You can set a clock by him. He doesn't nap for 29 minutes, or 31, nope. He naps for 30 minutes exactly! Occasionally I manage to nurse him back to sleep for another 30 minutes. He is always so tired after just a 30 minute nap so I always try.

Yesterday we went to the last 30 minutes of our mother-and-baby group, which was nice. Arthur's naps prevented us from attending the rest of it. He went back to sleep for another 30 minutes, and then I took too long getting us ready to go out. But it was nice. There were lots of other mothers and babies there. All of them are older than Arthur (some by only a few months though), except for two. One is 5 months, and the other 3 months. We got there in time for Story Time and then singing with some noisy instruments. Arthur just chews the bell-thingy he uses for the instruments time! After that it was free play time for 15 minutes and then clear up and go home time. They have a big hall with ride-on toys and ball pits and stuff, and the sounds echo off the walls like CRAZY! A bunch of toddlers squealing in there is enough to rupture your eardrum! Arthur did his usual thing of sitting motionless on the floor with his jaw hanging open (!) for the first five or ten minutes. He always does this at a new place, or around new people, even if we've seen them before. After that he warms right up and acts like normal Arthur.

He crawled round everywhere getting underfoot and nearly getting out of the door when people were leaving, etc! He is so fast now. People were commenting on how fast he's crawling these days. He crawled into the hall with the toys, and once in there he wanted to hold my hands and walk. I figured he would walk to something he was interested in, then sit and examine it. Or maybe just walk for a while and then sit down for a break. That hall was so big. I don't think he has ever had a chance before to walk and walk without coming to a wall or something after a short distance! Anyway I was amazed because Arthur walked at a normal or fast (nearly running at times!) pace for TEN minutes without stopping! I kid you not! My back was KILLING me from having to bend over slightly to hold his hands as we walked! He just did not want to stop. I had to stop him in the end because of my back. We had to leave the hall even. He just crawled to the nearest wall and cruised along it till he met someone, then engaged them in some earnest conversation (!!), before cruising off round the walls to the next random person!! He was so funny! I got a lot of comments on how strong he is and how he's going to be walking by himself in no time, etc. I'm not sure though. It still could be a while, even though he is great at walking with support.

He tries to run along the furniture with side-steps! He is so funny to watch! He frequently treads on his own foot and goes down with a crash, poor love! He lies there on the floor looking so confused, as though he doesn't understand what went wrong, hehe! He is really eager to be moving.

I think his major motor development has slowed down though, now he's got so much new stuff done, because he has started working on communication again. He is signing milk again, and saying "mama" CONSTANTLY. When he was hungry and wanted to go home at the group yesterday, he crawled directly up to me, saying, "Mmmama? Mum? Mamum?" and rubbed his face to show me he was tired/hungry. I took him straight home and gave him lunch :) This morning before his nap, he rubbed his face and looked at me and signed milk. So I took him up to bed and nursed him :) I like that we are back to communicating again!

Ohhh he's awake. Okay, I have tons more to say, and photos. Let's see, can I leave a photo here now, and post the others later with all the news about Ella's visit? I think I will post a couple of random ones to get those up here, leaving me fewer to post in one go next time!

Here's one of Arthur playing with his beads on his activity cube. He has really got the hang of it now. He loves pushing them round the wires and rattling them. He can still spend ages playing there:

And here's one taken yesterday - of Arthur being very pleased with himself over opening the glass cabinet door on the TV unit - he is always soooo pleased with himself over this. I think it's time we somehow fixed those doors so that he can't open them!

Oh poor Arthur! I just went with him to the landing to look in the full length mirror, and he pulled it over! Ugh. I feel like we are being so bad for not having babyproofed enough. He fell backwards still holding onto the mirror and it came down on him. Thankfully I was sitting right behind him so although he got bumped a little, the mirror landed on MY head (ow!) - thank goodness. Poor Arthur was all shocked and upset though, and he has a red mark on his forehead so I guess it knocked him too somehow. I need to be more careful for him.

Okay I will go now because Arthur is bored and I think we'll go out and get a change of scenery before lunch. I'll write more later if I can, with the rest of the photos.

Blah. Ugh.

Ugh, I am not handling life very well lately. Arthur's sleep is just... not something I am dealing with very well. I know I finished my last diary entry so upbeat and focused on God, but yeah, the next day I had lost that, and didn't get time to take time out and focus back in again, not once in the whole day. Arthur slept 20 mins in the morning, and 30 mins in the afternoon. He was fussy, and I was stressy the whole time. I am just so exhausted, and there's no way to fix it.

At the moment I have been very sensitive and weepy and I guess just hormonal. I don't know if maybe it's PMS though, because I don't know when to expect my period these days after ovulation. I am almost a week after ovulation today. Anyway that is for my other diary, but I just wanted to mention my moods here too. I well up at the TINIEST things! It's crazy of me.

Tonight someone left me a message that really hurt my feelings. I feel like crap about that. Never mind the reasons right now. I emailed her and all that, said my apologies for the part I am supposed to have played, etc. I am just so upset. Somebody who reads my life at Diaryland for over 18 months takes the time to tell me she won't be reading me anymore. Not forgetting the careful mention of the biggest most emotional things in my life over this time - TTC, having Arthur, and Cameron's death. It should not matter to me in the least whether someone chooses to read my diary or not, but this somehow stings so much.

I am just raw upset and tearful about it. It's like a real slap in the face that someone tells me they have "been through" such things "with me" and then effectively tells me they don't give a crap about me anymore, just like that. Okay so apparently I said something wrong, my words weren't the best choice over something in my pregnancy diary, and I see that and apologised for it. But man, to just cut someone off like that?

Ugh. I guess I shouldn't even be writing about it here. Yeah, that's wrong actually. I think. I have emailed her. I am still so hurt and upset. I wanted to offload. I felt hurt originally but I can't shake it from my mind, and now I find myself feeling so ANGRY that she mentioned Cameron. Like, how DARE she bring Cameron into it, use him like that. It is 4 days till the anniversary of his death and any mention of his name is painful to me right now. I know that I have readers who have been there with me when he died and throughout my grief over it, but nobody, NOBODY has "been through it with me". Nobody can possibly know how much it hurt me, whether my words were clear enough to convey my feelings at the time or not. When Cameron died it was like my insides were physically ripped apart and then someone kept rolling them back and forth through an old fashioned mangle. The pain was out of this world. Anyone else care to admit to feeling like that about Cameron, just because you've read my diary? Hmmm? Can anyone simply reading my diary, comfortably removed from the actual reality of it, claim to have "been through it with me"?! I have wonderful supportive readers who I know must have felt wrenches of pain as they "read along with me" through that time. They let me know their support in so many wonderful ways.

Right now I just feel so raw. I feel like I lost Cameron all over again. Stupid though, because I know I didn't really. I feel like that wound has just opened a tiiiny bit again. Maybe it's simply because of the time of year. Maybe it's a thoughtless (or, let's face it, maybe even well-thought-out to hurt me?) comment that brought the memory of losing him back again. Anyway I am sure it will probably just go away again before I know it. I know my major grieving is done. It has been almost 2 years. Imagine that, 2 years.

I think about him at night. I think about him in the daytime. I don't feel confident enough to phone his family at the moment. I don't want to make them feel sad or be insensitive with my timing. They only know me because of Cameron, and even though we are friends aside from Cam now, he is still our connection. If I phone them, it's a sharp reminder of him. But I don't know if that would be helpful or harmful at this time. I just don't know. And I don't know what I would say if I DID phone them.

Little-known secret: I am scared soooo much that something will happen to Arthur one of these days and I will lose him too. I know that kind of fear is probably normal as a new parent, confronted for the first time with the most overwhelming love that a person can feel for another person. But I am extra scared because of Cameron. Arthur is so healthy and strong. But I have read the lives of too many healthy and strong children who have been struck by cancer and lost their lives. I still keep up with lots of Caringbridge diaries. Sometimes I can't breathe when a thought sneaks into my mind about that happening to Arthur. Or anything happening to him to cause him to leave me, whatever that might be. I know, I know, I'm crazy and stupid and I should pull myself together or get professional help or whatever. But I'm just saying. I'm so scared. I feel like I barely survived Cameron's death. I know I couldn't possibly survive losing Arthur. Please God don't let that happen.

I don't know why my emotions are so raw this evening. I know that darn message triggered it off. I wish it hadn't because I hate feeling like this. I miss Cameron so much all of a sudden. I want to hold him. My arms feel achy that I can't wrap them around his frame and hug him to me. I am trying sooo hard to preserve the memory of how that felt. I do still remember it clearly. I am scared to forget things like that over time.

I have so much to write and so many photos to post. Like dozens, or something! But I can't do that now, not after what I've written. I need to go and do something. I don't know what. Maybe I should pray? But that feels sooooo much effort right now, that it just makes me ache more. Also praying when I am hurting sometimes feels so hard to start doing, because the hurt is so much more raw when I am spilling it out to God. I know that's the IDEA, and God comforts me then, but the initial spill. I don't know if I feel like doing that. I want to stuff a few heavy cushions on top of my feelings and then bang a lid on top and put a heavy book on top of that incase it pops open.

I need to go and get an appetite. It's after 9pm and I should eat. I have a tummy ache right now. I think Neil is napping on the sofa downstairs. He dozed off when I was nursing Arthur to sleep, and then when Arthur woke after his first 30 minutes sleep, Neil woke up and said he felt tired out. So between the two of us, I don't know what we are going to make to eat tonight. I don't want to eat at all, but I know that's probably just feelings. I have been extra hungry today and yesterday so I should eat.

I know I will feel better and be back again really soon with those photos and a newsy update. We saw my BIL and SIL at the weekend and met my niece Ella for the first time! I have photos. And soooo much to write about it, and about my lovely Arthur, and other things. But I will come back afresh with a better mood to do that. It doesn't fit here with this other stuff. Sorry to be so down. I really needed to purge. Maybe I'll even feel better after eating and watching something lighthearted on TV with Neil. And then maybe I'll feel so much better that I'll write again?

Okay Neil is stirring downstairs so I need to go and figure out with him what to eat.

Woes and rejoicings

I got tagged for a quizzy thing but I don't feel like doing it right now. Maybe later.

I am feeling really pfthth about Arthur's sleep at the moment. I will be more cheerful in a minute, but first let me vent!

I don't know what to doooooo. It was all going so much better. Now it's fifty million times worse than BEFORE we made changes. I can't understand it, and I can't deal with how it is at the moment. Basically, Arthur stopped taking wonderful long naps almost as soon as he started. Well, maybe after a few blissful days. Now it's back to how it was - 30 minutes if we're lucky, and then a total nightmare getting him to go back to sleep. Of course he MAY just not need any more sleep than that, but I know he's tired without more sleep. And if by chance I manage to help him fall back to sleep after the first 30 mins, he can sleep for AGES and be soooo cheerful and refreshed when he finally wakes. Why won't he do that himself? Why does he fight it so much? Although he doesn't act like he's "fighting" it. He just doesn't want to go back to sleep. Like he doesn't understand that he needs to, even though he's giving me the signs I recognise, that tell me he still needs more sleep. It's seriously doing my head in.

Night time is the same as ever. He wakes roughly 5 or 6 times over his 11-12 hour night period. Four or five of those are usually over our sleep time (one being when we go to bed). I am just soooo tired out. I have no energy to DO anything with him at all. Ever. It's no better with the lying-next-to him-and-letting-him-cry-a-bit thing. He isn't crying any less, and he isn't sleeping any quicker or better. In fact, these last 3 days he has done the opposite. Today has been the absolute WORST day for it yet. The situation now is that I take him off the breast when he is finished "feed" sucking and into "comfort" sucking. I did this quite a lot before the crying thing, but usually I would wait till he was alllmost asleep before I did it. It worked okay then, but I kind of felt like I was still breastfeeding him to sleep. If he woke after I took him off, I would just nurse him till he got sleepy again and take him off again, over and over till he went to sleep. Sometimes I did nurse him till he was pretty much asleep, but not usually. Since the crying thing, the plan has been to take him off and if he wakes, not to give him the breast again, but to let him go to sleep on his own, even if he cries through that.

Anyway. Now I take him off the breast after he is definitely done feeding and has had a little comfort suck. He instantly gets hysterical. I do mean instantly, and I DO mean hysterical. He no longer goes to sleep if he cries for long enough. Today I put him down for his nap at 9.15am (normal). He nursed from both sides, so plenty of milk, and then when he wasn't feeding any more I took him off. He cried sooooo much for so long. He never seemed to get tired of crying. At first I figured he wasn't ready for bed, so I got him up again for another 40 mins. By 10.20am he was REALLY tired. Rubbing his eyes, yawning, laying his head on me, moaning, etc. So back to bed we went, and I nursed him till he was comfort sucking, and then took him off. He cried till 11.45. Which is lunch time. So, he had no nap, and hours of crying, followed by lunch. I feel strongly like what I'm doing is WRONG with him crying so much. He is a totally happy baby and honestly, these days his crying time totals hours if you add it all up. In his first 9 months I swear his total life-time crying time was only HOURS if added up. He is such a happy baby normally. With that in mind, how on earth can this be right, to make my baby spend so much of his time crying. He obviously must be angry when he cries, because he wants something I am not giving him. But it's also more than that. I can hear it in his voice and his crying. I am sure he also feels distraught and unhappy, and I cannot fathom any possible reason why it should be right that this continues, if that is what I'm putting him through. He sobs and sobs. Even in the past when he has cried for other reasons, he has never really had to get to the point where he's sobbing about anything. I never heard him cry before like I'm making him cry now, in his whole life. This CAN'T be right.

Of course, I am desperate. Desperate for sleep. Desperate for time for myself. Desperate not to get any more resentful and snappy and intolerant than I am finding myself today. I hate being like that. I just feel almost at the end of my tether over it today. It's Friday though, and I am always finding things difficult by the time Friday is here. That is also not good, and I feel like a failure for it in a way. I should be managing better. Pfthth.

After lunch he was tired (obviously) and I figured he should have a lunchtime nap since he had no morning nap, so he went back to bed. Same scenario, except that he fell asleep quite by accident when the crying and sobbing paused briefly to deal with a lot of coughing and choking :( The break in the crying seemed to be the window his exhaustion needed to trick him into suddenly falling unconscious. He only slept for 45 mins though, and I went back and nursed him again (followed by sleepy (and therefore half-hearted) crying). He slept 30 mins. When I went back, he looked so tired still, so I repeated the process and after a bit of crying he went back to sleep for 40 mins. That was his only nap, as it was in the middle of the day, leaving not enough time for an afternoon nap. He has been tired all day long.

Tonight at bed time I nursed him from both sides till he was so full that he took HIMSELF off the breast. But he somehow still wanted to go back to it after rolling around a bit. By that time I had covered up again. He gets so upset the instant he sees T-shirt where he wants to see breast. He just looks at my chest and bursts into tears :( It isn't angry or half-hearted or forced or tired crying. It's that kind of crying and sobbing that sounds exactly like the type you might hear from a little child who has lost their mummy at a crowded event. He sounds just heartbroken, and I can't console him by cuddling him or using a soothing voice or anything. I don't know what I can do.

Yesterday I talked to Neil and said that I felt like I was starting to lose my sanity a bit over it. I felt like it's a 24 hour job (which obviously, parenting of any sort is, but this feels so difficult at the moment), because it is hard to spend a large proportion of the day struggling with Arthur's sleep and getting increasingly stressy and frustrated and upset about it, and then bed time is the same, even though Neil is home and helping with the bath and everything by then. But all the sleep related stuff is down to me, because I have the breasts. But I just can't take any more of the crying, lying there next to him and listening to him cry, and watching him writhe about miserably for so long without being able to make him better. Then there's a small window in the evening where I can be "me", but to be "me" I need to do things like come online and write in my diary and stuff. So those things mean I don't really get to see my husband. And then before I can believe it, it's late evening and I am kicking my own butt for staying up so late. Neil is driving me crazy constantly nagging me over staying up late at the moment. I know it's because he's concerned that I'm so tired, but he just does NOT seem to understand my need for sanity time. If I don't get it, I will start to lose it. Unfortunately, the evening never gives me enough hours of "me" time to start to feel cheerful or normal again, like I have recharged a bit. So to try and compensate I stay up late to get some extra time in. Which further compacts the exhaustion issue.

The night is all me. Neil sleeps in the spare room at the moment, because he might as well. Someone might as well be getting some sleep around here, and he works, so he needs his sleep. We still don't have that new mattress to lay next to our big floor mattress so that we all have room to sleep in our family floor-bed, and to do that we have to go and buy one (obviously), and declutter a LOT in the bedroom to fit it in. Neither of which are ever gonna happen the way things are going. So it's me in the bed with Arthur. Which I LOVE. I love co-sleeping with my lil Boo! And anyway, when he wakes it's me he needs, the one with the breasts! So it makes sense to do it that way. But I am beginning to find it hard and feel like it's all on me to cope with everything involving his sleep 24 hours a day. Neil is willing to help, but what can he do?!

So the other night I asked if he would lie with Arthur after I took him off the breast at bedtime and he cried. This evening we did that, but Arthur cried SO much and got in such a state, and I couldn't bear to sit in another room and listen to him and not be there somehow, that in the end there was just no point. I went back in. I don't know how long I left it before I went in. I don't care either. I lay next to him and nursed him. I don't care. I don't know what else to do. I'm aware that if we're really DOING this cry-and-fix-all-sleep-problems thing then I just made it ten times worse by finally going back in and nursing him. But I am defeated. He was calm very quickly, but the sheets were damp with sweat from how upset he was, and he was snuffly and snotty and sobby for a while. I feel so bad about it. He nursed a short while, and when he was nearly completely asleep, I broke his latch and he rolled over and slept without a peep.

What am I supposed to do? I feel like crying about it, but there would be zero point in that so I guess I won't.

Ugh.

Well I have nothing more to say about that. I need to cheer up and feel good about things. We were supposed to go into town this afternoon and pick up the photos we took in to be developed yesterday. But I was just too tired. I had no oomph for anything at all. Arthur played round me lying on the floor or propped up against the sofa a lot and I felt like a crappy mother with no energy. Eventually after I gave him tea I pulled myself together enough to put him in the pushchair and take him for a shortish walk. It was COLD today!!! The first really autumnal cold day. It was only about 60 degrees maximum - yay! It has rained a lot lately - I love the rain! And today it was sooo windy. Really strong driving wind that was so cold it gave me earache. The ONLY thing I dislike about autumn and winter weather is wind. I hate wind. Especially cold driving wind. We nearly got rained on, but I took the walk at a brisk pace (nearly died from my lack of fitness!) and we just missed it. I am so exhausted from the walk, but I'm relieved that I actually took my child out of the house today. I feel so crap.

Anyway! Changing the mood now! I have photos to post. Those will make me feel zingy and wonderful, because they are of my precious little boy and I love him sooooooooooo. He always makes me happy. His smile is worth more than anything I can think of. Okay but I can think of something that God offers me that is worth more. Nothing can surpass God's love and grace and what Jesus did for me. I'm glad that I remembered that. Lately I think I might have missed that if I tried to think of "things that are of the greatest worth in my life". Well, as much as I love Arthur (and that is just indescribably much, as you know!), and Neil, and my precious family, etc, Jesus comes first. He is my first love. His place is on the throne of my life, as it should be. Although I am suspicious that lately I have been shoving my own butt in that seat a lot when God should be in it. Hmmm...

Well. Here are some photos of Arthur that I took the other day. He was exploring the upstairs a little. He gets around mostly by cruising these days. He does still crawl a lot, but he will cruise the walls and furniture until he reaches a gap, then crawl the gap, then pull to standing again and cruise. He loves to be on his leggies! Here he is in the horribly unbabyproofed and cluttered spare room, just being smiley and Arthur-ish :)

Next, he headed for the landing, which meant crawling through the doorway. I love this photo (except for hating the clutter!) because he always gives me those wonderful lively cheeky grins as he rounds a corner, and finally I captured a good shot of it! My cutie :)

Once on the landing, he went to the full length mirror – one of his favourite places to go when upstairs lately! He likes to smile at me through the mirror, and he likes to pat himself and smile at himself. He leans his forehead against his own forehead and stares and breathes heavily at his image! Funny boy! Here he is having just stood up at the mirror – showing me he’s there, and then checking himself out:

I took this photo yesterday, half way through changing him. He was wearing a pyjama top and a homemade nappy :) It’s not quite what I had hoped (although cute, which is why I’m posting it anyway!) because SECONDS before, he had his whole top half inside the tumble dryer! He was banging the empty drum in there and babbling cheerfully so that it echoed around the machine. When I looked from this angle he was so far inside that I could only see his nappy and his little leggies standing on tiptoe! By the time I got the camera ready he was back out and wouldn’t go in again. But he was still cheerful so I took this photo anyway:

I love my little man.

Neil’s job interview went well, and we survived without him overnight :) I was so glad to see him back the next day, and Arthur was too. In the morning when me and Arthur woke and Neil wasn’t here, Arthur stood against me on the bed, looking out towards the door, calling for his daddy! He always calls Neil in the morning (as Neil is in the spare room). I call him once by name, and then Arthur mimics me over and over, hehe! He stands there and makes a single short calling sound, like a raised voice that sounds just like when someone calls somebody’s name. Only his actual vocal sound is just an “Aaah…” or something else vowely. He makes it sound like I do when I call, “Neiiil….” though. So cute! Anyway of course Daddy wasn’t there, so I got up and took him downstairs to distract him with some toys and he didn’t get upset so that’s good.

Okay my dinner is ready (wonderful Neil!) so I’m going to eat. Then I will finish this later.

Back. I am drinking the apple juice that we bought last month when I was feeling distinctly morning sick. It was my magic cure when I was morning sick with Arthur – apple juice ice-cubes (NOT in liquid form). I haven’t had a drop of apple juice since then, so tasting it now brings back the most VIVID memories of being pregnant and feeling morning sick! How funny that memories work like that, with taste triggers.

Okay so Neil’s interview. He said he thinks it went well. He will get a phone call at the end of September to confirm whether he has the job or not. They told him they still have other people to see as well as those that were there on the day with Neil. The great thing is that Neil said he doesn’t think he could have done any better than he did – he absolutely did his best, prepared excellently, everything he could possibly have done. And it went well. So now it’s down to whether there is someone else out there who is better for the job than Neil. But mainly it’s down to God :) I’m glad we can wait knowing that God is in control and that no matter what the outcome is, God has plans to prosper us and not to harm us. I love that verse in the Bible. I call on it time and time again for reassurance.

I feel like I have been moaning a lot this entry. Things feel hard at the moment and I feel kind of down, but I feel like I am taking a lot for granted. I am so snappy and irritable with my husband lately, and that is not good. He is such an outstanding husband, and doesn’t deserve a snappy, irritable wife. He made me the nicest meal just now. He does soooo much with Arthur really, wherever he can. He is kind to me and loving towards me always, even when I am difficult to live with! He is so understanding and sensitive. I get my own way too much. I should count my (many) blessings. It doesn’t make the hard things any easier, but I don’t know, I feel guilty if I don’t try to be cheerful about it at the moment. I suddenly feel like finishing this entry like I used to YEARS ago, with ten things I am thankful for today, and a verse that uplifts me. What a great thing to do! I will write again soon, and maybe get to that quiz too.

First of all, here is a person who has uplifted me a TON today, despite everything else:

Ten things I am thankful for today

1. My wonderful, caring, loving husband, who provides so well for us all. Thank you Lord for matching me with my perfect partner.

2. My precious, funny, cute, affectionate little boy, who lights up my life in every way. Thank you Father for blessing me with a child of my very own to love and cherish and nurture.

3. Clean drinking water. Arthur is now drinking this instead of the boiled, cooled stuff, and he drinks it from a CUP like we do!! He much prefers it to a spout of any sort, and drinks a better volume and WAY more efficiently than he ever did with a sippy cup. I am so thankful that my baby has clean water to drink – water that won’t give him life-threatening diseases like elsewhere in the world.

4. Plentiful nutritious tasty food. Thank you God.

5. A warm and welcoming home after a cold tiring walk.

6. Cooler weather. And rain!

7. A family who loves me to pieces, no matter where I am or where they are.

8. Breasts full of milk. I never cease to feel amazed and thankful for them.

9. Health, and the energy and vitality to get up out of my bed every morning and take big clear lungfuls of air, and use my arms and legs to get things done during the day, and use my voice to communicate and sing and my eyes to see my little love, and my ears to hear the rain and the traffic and anything else with sound, and my sense of smell and taste. I pray that I never take these things for granted. I said I never would after I got healed from M.E. but you know, sometimes you forget as time passes. I never want to take my healthy body for granted.

10. My Lord and my God, the Lover of my soul, my friend and my Saviour, my heart’s desire. My Jesus. He should be first on my list, but I wanted to finish thinking of God.

Oh wow! I just spent AGES looking in my Bible (how I love my Bible! I always want to give it a huge squeezy hug whenever I take it out of the zipped denim Bible cover that I keep it in! Actually I nearly always DO give my Bible a big squeezy hug when I take it out :) ) and I just kept on finding verses mentioning breastfeeding – how amazing! Hehe! The verses I happened upon were all about being comforted like a child at his mother’s breast. Okay, example (from Isaiah):

”For you will nurse and be satisfied at her comforting breasts; you will drink deeply and delight in her overflowing abundance…You will nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” (Isaiah 66: 11-13)

No matter what I looked for, I kept on finding verses like that. Then Arthur woke before I could find “what I was looking for” (whatever that was – a verse to post at the end of my entry I guess), and while I lay there in the dark with him contentedly snuggled up against me, sucking away at my breast like the tiniest of babies in his sleepy state, the verses ran around in my mind and I became aware that I felt completely peaceful and contented myself. I feel so much better having just spent a little time focusing on God (which is always the way, but I NEVER think to do it most of the time!). And I realised that perhaps God is helping me to see that right now it is okay, and even the right thing to do, to comfort my still-very-little baby with my breasts. If he is crying and heartbroken, he is not being comforted. God blessed me with breasts that flow abundantly with milk, and the time and instinct to carry and nurse and dandle and love on my baby all he needs or wants. He knows it’s tiring and hard for me at the moment. But it’s okay to keep on nursing him to sleep right now. It’s okay to comfort him with what God has provided me. The Bible verses often seem to refer to “child”, not “baby” or “infant”. My baby is still just that, a baby. It will still be okay to comfort nurse him when he is a child, so it’s certainly okay now. I felt like God himself sat on the bed with me in the dark and told me it’s okay, you can do that, you won’t be doing anything wrong. I feel so relieved. I’m going to stop making Arthur cry to sleep now. Maybe we’ll come back to that one day when he’s older, if things get desperate. Maybe even not that far in the future. All I know is, for now, it’s okay for me to meet his needs and desires for a while longer. Even if I’m tired. What I need to do when I’m tired and crabby is call on God. He always provides for me, whatever I need. I know he’ll help me, even just to give me peace and give me strength. Or I know he can even fix Arthur’s sleep up, just like that. Whatever God chooses to bless me with, I know he will help me if I call on him. I love him so much.

And now, after all that time looking for the “right” verse to finish with, I suddenly have one immediately, in my head! Did I mention I love God? I do I do I do.

”I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live…. Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.” (Psalm 116: 1-2; 7)

Neil away, and various bits of waffle

Thank you Jenn for your sweet note! I think I wrote about Cameron here already, but mainly just linking back to my old diary. I forget sometimes that this is a “new” diary and I have new readers. I have been at Diaryland for soooo long now.

I have nothing much to say tonight really. I just feel like writing for a while.

Neil got through to the interview stage of the job he applied for!!! Yay! There were apparently around a THOUSAND applicants (wow!) so it’s quite something for him to be shortlisted for interview. He has to attend an “assessment day” tomorrow. Actually I think it’s just a half-day. He has verbal and maths tests, role-playing, group testing, personality tests, and a formal interview. Yikes! He is most nervous about the verbal and maths tests because he says he isn’t very good at either. He failed maths at school, but I maintain that’s because he was taught BADLY or in a style that just didn’t get through to him. I went over some maths questions with him last night and he did fine, once he relaxed and started having some confidence in himself. He isn’t that great at spelling or grammar, but I don’t think they will turn him down because he spells a few words wrong.

Anyway the job is where we think we will end up moving to, like I mentioned a while ago when Neil first applied for the job. Neil is staying overnight at the hotel that the assessments are being held at. I got the county wrong though. I thought it was Hertfordshire and it’s not, it’s Cambridgeshire. Same general part of the country though! Soooo this afternoon Neil came home from work an hour early, packed a little bag while I fed Arthur his tea, took a bath with Arthur and helped put him to bed as normal, and then once Arthur was asleep we prayed together about his journey on the roads, the night’s sleep for all of us, his assessment day, nerves, tension, headaches (which he’s prone to), and my morning with Arthur :) I love to give things to God!! And I LOVE to pray with my husband. It feels like we’re such a team, somehow, when we pray. Him, me, and God. Then I did the “Are you sure you’ve got everything? Don’t forget to brush your teeth tonight!” thing (!!) and hugged him and then hugged him again, and once more at the door, and then waved my lil husband off until tomorrow. Now, I know it’s noooo big deal for a wife to spend a night without her husband (who should be home by 4pm tomorrow after all), and most/many wives do this a lot. But not me. We NEVER spend nights apart. It feels so weird. I hate seeing him drive off knowing he won’t be home for bed. I get anxious about whether he’ll come back. So many accidents happen on the roads. Fires happen in hotels. I know that’s stupid, and I always do my best to find distractions to do so that I don’t think about that stuff, but still it’s there at the back of my mind. I know we prayed so I don’t dwell on it. God is faithful. That’s all that matters. I don’t know what I would do without Neil, and that kind of anxiety is intensified like a MILLION times since having Arthur. So yeah. I am soooo looking forward to when he’s home again tomorrow.

I haven’t done much this evening. Arthur was asleep by 7pm. He woke around 9.45 and I nursed him and then took him off so that he would go back to sleep by himself. He has stirred a bit since then but not woken up. Now it’s 10.30pm. I should go to bed, because I need to get up with Arthur when he wakes at 6am tomorrow, instead of what I’m used to – Neil taking him down while I get a little more sleep till 7.30 or 7.45. I am soooo tired, so I know that having to get up at 6am will HURT tomorrow!! So I had better go to bed while I have the chance. The house feels so empty. I put some laundry on, put the dishwasher on, made myself some dinner and ate it watching some rubbish on TV. We have a new TV. Our old one died. I mean, really. It started popping and snapping whenever we switched it on, and then it started switching itself off with a crackle (!), and then finally the colour went. One day the black and white image got darker and darker and darker right before our very eyes, and then we couldn’t see anything anymore. So we bought a new TV. We have no extra money to buy one, so we bought THE cheapest TV we could find. Man that TV is crap! It is too dark on darker scenes, so you adjust the brightness to see it properly, and then it cuts to a daylight scene or something and woweeeee it takes hours for the spots to clear in front of your eyes!!! So we are giving it to charity as the shop won’t take it back. I guess we could sell it, but it was cheap anyway and I don’t feel right making anyone PAY for such a crap telly. So we used the credit card (ugh) and bought a decent TV. It’s flat/wide screen. It makes my eyes feel funny, but hopefully I’ll get used to that. It looks stupid, like everyone’s faces are super wide. What is the point in widescreen TVs when they do that to a regular image?! Tsk. But yay, a telly that works :)

I woke in the night last night feeling sooooooooo sick. Bleurgh. I didn’t have time to panic about it though because Arthur woke and wanted my breast. After he was asleep again I got up and poked my tummy about a bit! Sounds crazy but I have suffered from IBS badly for yeeears. I know it so well, and when my tummy feels a certain way to the touch it usually confirms for me that it’s IBS. Since getting pregnant my IBS has been markedly improved. Before Arthur, I used to have pretty bad nausea every single day, and cramps and pain and bloating and yuckiness. Sometimes I got attacks which where honestly almost as bad as back labour (which I am now eligible to compare!!) but those were much less frequent. Recently I am noticing more IBS. Most days I have some bother from it. I wonder if it is tied to my hormones? Last cycle was a pretty good one for hormones, and that’s when I really began to notice it bothering me more. This cycle it has been bad every day so far, and I’m halfway through the cycle now. Anyway, I used to wake up most nights with bad nausea, and got used to just sitting up and patting my tummy to see what sounds it made (!!), and based on the sounds I got, I could immediately assess whether to feel reassured or get worried that it might be something other than IBS. I spent an hour some nights, pacing around downstairs till the nausea died down a bit. Urgh. It must have been a long time since that happened, because it felt very weird to be doing it again last night. Anyway so it was IBS, which was a relief! For a moment I was scared it was a bug or something. I have had heartburn for a week, and a tummy ache most of that time too, which is very reminiscent of pre-Arthur IBS. Pah. I can’t think why else it would be getting bad again, other than my hormones are settling back to normal now. Why would IBS be hormonally linked? And how can I ever fix it if that’s the case?! There aren’t any drugs that work on me, and endless dietician appointments have found that there aren’t any dietary changes that make any difference for me either. Oh well.

I am being boring, aren’t I? Broken TV. Irritable Bowel Syndrome! Oooh I can tell that there are people out there hanging on my every word, hahaha!!

Arthur is eating better today. He ate a normal lunch and then some tea. Not so much for tea but that’s normal for him anyway. No change in the gums, but he is drooling like I never saw him drool before! He has a string of it constantly hanging from his chin, no matter if I just wiped it five seconds ago, so he must be having some issues, poor thing!

He is so cuddly these days. He gives me hugs so frequently! He will crawl or cruise over to me, or pull up on me, and then reach and reach and climb until he can get his arms round my neck. He pulls himself into me with his arms sooo tight around my neck, and lays his cheek against mine, and then goes all still. I love his hugs. They are the best feeling ever! He still gives lots of kisses, sometimes at quite random moments! Today I was teaching him “nose” – “Where’s Mummy’s NOSE?!” (pat my nose, then take his finger and pat my nose with it) Where’s Arthur’s NOSE?” (pat his lil button nose, then take his finger and pat his nose with it). He was so intent on this new game, and seemed to find it lots of fun, as he kept doing this delighted smile with shiny eyes, and giggling now and then, the sweetie! But all of a sudden in the middle of it, he pulled my hand down and leaned in to give me a gentle kissie on the lips (still open mouthed though). He is so gentle and sweet. I love that he is such an affectionate little boy already. I had hoped I would have an affectionate son. I think it’s so important for boys to be affectionate and sensitive, and not get all macho and lose touch with their feelings. Men like that make me want to hurl.

Oh he is doing a new thing!!! He climbs down the stairs!!! He has spent ALL day practising it. He usually climbs the entire flight of stairs maybe 5 – 10 times every day, as it’s one of his favourite things to do, and he loves getting to the top and having a whole new layout of rooms to explore! He always crawls straight off in a very business-like manner, babbling away importantly, when he reaches the top. He never pauses. He is so energetic! He usually goes straight to either the bathroom and pulls up on the bath, or he crawls to the full-length mirror on the landing and pats his reflection and squeals and smiles and leans his forehead against “his forehead”, looking up as far as he can to see his face in the mirror. Funny boy! After those things he tries to get in the laundry cupboard, and then explores the spare bedroom, and then it’s usually another visit to the bathroom and mirror (and that laundry cupboard again!) before the grand finale in the bedroom, trying to pull the fan over and move the hoover about and climb on the bed and get as many items off the bedside table as possible! At this point, having trailed him all the way, I usually grab him and take him back downstairs, where he might play for anything from 2 minutes to 20 minutes before going back to the stairs for the whole thing to start over again!

But today he has only climbed all the way up to explore a few times. The rest of the ENTIRE day seems to have been devoted to climbing the first four steps (sometimes three), so that he can very deliberately practise climbing back down them again. He did this at least 10 times in a row, seriously. And then the same again an hour or so later. When Neil got home he showed his daddy what he could do twice in a row, but it was obviously just a brief example in Daddy’s honour, because he only climbed two steps, just to make it a quick example, hehe!

We are so proud of our little Boo! He climbs down so cleverly. We haven’t taught him going down at ALL, as we have been so focused on him going up, and we figured that he wasn’t nearly old enough to be able to climb down. He would probably just fall, so we always carry him down, or even catch him if he seems to be trying to go backwards. So I don’t know how he started doing it, or figured out how. He started yesterday, standing on a step for AGES, making sweeping movements with one foot behind him, as though he was searching for the edge of the step. When he found it, he moved that foot nearer the edge and then started sweeping around with the other foot. He toppled backwards a few times yesterday doing this, but I am always one or two steps behind him so he never falls. Today he has climbed the four steps, fast and easy, and then facing the stairs, he did a quick sweep of the step he was standing on as he moved his feet backwards, and then when he found the edge of the step, he simply placed one foot down over the edge (very carefully too) until it touched the one below, and then when he had lowered himself so that he was flat on that foot, he brought the other foot over the edge next to the first foot. Then he immediately started sweeping backwards to find the edge of that step, and so on! My clever boy! By the end of today he was doing this very well, climbing up the four steps and down them just as smoothly. I’m sort of amazed that he figured that out for himself. Anyway, we always clap and cheer when he reaches the bottom, and he smiles sooooo big with all his teeth showing! :) He’s so lovely.

I have heartburn. It’s 11.15pm! I should go to bed. I think I will eat something that will cool off this heartburn and then go to bed. I am about to ovulate. I got a positive OPK (ovulation predictor kit) today. I should write that in the pregnancy diary but that’s all the news I have for that diary and it is mighty dull of me to write a whole entry there saying just that! So it’s here instead. I feel achy round my left ovary so I think it’s accurate. I always ovulate from my left ovary. Isn’t that weird of me?! I almost never feel ovulation pain on the right side. But I know it’s common for women to have a dominant ovary that they usually ovulate from. I wonder what determines which one it is?

Okay, ice cream maybe? That seems cold and milky and soothing and yummy. Then I am going to bed. I hope Arthur and I will sleep well. Last night he woke fairly normally, around 1am, 3am, and 6am, after my bedtime. I kind of expect him to wake somewhere around midnight, for some reason. Or by 1am anyway. So I’m going to get some sleep while I can! I’ll update again soon :)

Random wafflings (points 'a' to 'k'!!!)

I should definitely NOT be starting a diary entry at 10.36pm when I am this tired! This is the first moment that I have really gathered myself to catch up with my normal online stuff though, and suddenly I just have this huge urge to write a diary entry. I should be doing one of the following instead: a) Sleeping (preferred option), b) Replying to emails, c) Smooching with my (also tired) hubby, d) Okay, sleeping again. But I just lurve Diaryland so much that I had to update instead! :)

I have soooo much random jumble in my head tonight. There is no way I could purge myself of it all before midnight, so I will have to content myself with venting a tiny portion of it. I will start right away. That way I don't waste any time!

a) Oestrogen (yes, the O) is my friend! I have come to the conclusion that I have been deficient in oestrogen for yeeears. Here's my theory - I went on the pill right before we got married (six years ago). It messed with me. I just felt weird and got weird symptoms in my cycle that I wasn't used to getting. So I stopped taking it a few months later. By then I had M.E. and so parnsips went right out the window anyway. Okay so M.E. can reeeally mess with your body. I think that changed my hormones a bit too. That and whatever the pill did. Since then I have had zero parsnip drive, no fertile CM to speak of (we used a substitutey type thing to conceive in the end), and yeah. THEN I had Arthur! I think pregnancy kick-started my system again, because I have fertile CM aplenty, and when I get to the part of my cycle where oestrogen rises (ie the fertile bit), I just want to jump Neil's bones. All. The time. As I mentioned before, we are officially NOT trying to conceive till the end of the year, but already there has been an oopsie. There only haven't been more oopsies because Arthur is teething and we are tiiiired.

b) Arthur's sleep is improved, especially in the daytime - yay! He now goes to sleep with sometimes a little cranky grissling, me lying right by his side, in a very short time, and then he stays there for 1.5-2 hours! Every time! He is getting almost DOUBLE the amount of sleep during the day than he used to. I always felt he wasn't getting enough nap sleep before, as he would be tired not long after getting up again. I'm soooo glad to see him getting better sleep in the day. Plus I get a little more time to myself. I cleaned the kitchen a bit today! :) We do the same thing at bedtime, and he goes to sleep fine. He does cry a little more at bedtime though. I am always right there snuggling with him. He sleeps all evening. He still wakes two or three times after we go to bed, but last night he woke at 1ish and then 5.30 which felt like a WHOLE NIGHT to me!! :)

But - c) - he is teething pretty badly today. I don't see any active bulges in his gums, but he is definitely having a hard time with them all the same. I have had to give him Calpol twice today. He has just been so miserable, crying and chewing his pointy finger over the gums next to his new teeth, and sobbing, "Oh-yo-yo!" over and over as he chews :( He smiles and goes very calm and quiet when I give him the medicine, and 20 minutes later he is right as rain. So he must have teething pain. I hope it won't be ages with no relief for him again. Anyway, the teething has meant he is off his food, although he'll eat a bit of lunch. I would say 95% of his intake is breast milk at the moment, which is lovely for me :) Also he isn't sleeping quite as great as he was. He has woken today after only half an hour of his nap times, and it has taken him a while to get back to sleep. This evening we gave him Calpol after half an hour and he hasn't woken in the last 3 hours. I'm glad it works for him.

But the last few evenings have been sooo nice! Arthur just goes to sleep, and we don't have to hang about wondering if he'll wake at the "half hour" like usual. We know he's out for the evening. Of course this has freed mama up to get some good lovin', hehe! It has been quite fun! ;)

d) I spent hooours this evening reading diary entries from my sheepdip diary. I didn't plan to, I just somehow ended up reading there. I nevvver seem to go back there any more, so it was weird for me. I read some of the early ones and it was strange and sobering to be reminded what it was like to have M.E. It was so so so hard to be so ill and isolated and housebound all the time. And to never know when it might go away again. I forgot how awful. But I read some entries, lots of entries, where I had such enormous faith in God, even on hard hard days where I didn't know how I'd get through. I stuck so close to God in those days. I read those entries and it was like reading someone else's diary, someone whose faith I admired and wished I shared. Only it was me. Is that weird/sad/shameful? I think it is. Which brings me to -

e) I miss God. Or more specifically, the relationship I had with God. I still have it, and everything is still just as available to me, but the passion is so dimishined. And I find that so sad :( I get bursts of passion for Jesus here and there. Church helps. Singing praise to God with others all around me doing the same, lifts me amazingly. I remember God, and that he's awesome and loving and mighty and just wow, and I remember how to lift my heart and my eyes and my soul to him again. And I do it. But then I leave and daily life resumes. But daily life should include lifting my heart and my eyes and my soul to God. So that makes me sad too.

f) (isn't this flowing nicely?!) We went to church on Sunday - yay!! First time in a month I think. Arthur napped so that we missed the first 20 minutes, but when we arrived they were still worshipping God and we got to sing two beautiful songs. One of them is going round and round in my head this evening. It's called "Unfailing Love" by Chris Tomlin. The lyrics are here. If you scroll down a bit you can hear a tiny bit of the song here (click on the song title). Songs like that just reach right into my heart. I don't even know what I mean by "songs like that" though. Songs like WHAT?! Some songs just melt me the instant I hear them or sing them. My whole heart soars. I can walk in the door having been miiiiles from God for weeks, and we're not even in our chairs yet, and I'm holding Arthur who is bug-eyed with awe at the whole spectacle of a hall full of people and a band and amplified music! And even then my heart is already worshipping God, my mouth singing praise to him. I LOVE to worship God while I hold in my arms the precious child he blessed me with. I feel so... complete, somehow, worshipping with Arthur in my arms. Arthur doesn't mind me singing at the top of my voice in his ear, hehe! He goes quiet and just takes it all in.

When I read my old diary entries I was reminded of the song all over again because my story just speaks VOLUMES of God’s unfailing love. I read the entry about when God healed me and I had forgotten soooo much detail. I’m so glad I recorded it all. My heart just leapt for joy reading it again!! God has been so good to me. I owe him my all. I just noticed (bit of trivia here!) that I was healed on November 10th 2001. Exactly 3 years (less one day) before Arthur was born. Good things seem to happen to me around that time in November, don’t they?! :)

What letter am I on?... Oh yes!

g) It’s September. I know it was before now, but amazingly it’s the middle of the month ALREADY (how is this happening?!) and so we are approaching another anniversary of Cameron’s death (the 24th). This is the second September without him. I have been thinking about him a lot lately. The light and the air and the leaves on the trees are juuuust beginning to make subtle changes that make me feel like a shadow fell across me when I see them, but I can never put my finger on why I feel that way. Until I remember (hours later, like when I’m in bed) that it must be that time of year when I was absolutely swallowed up in grief once. It’s so strange how it keeps happening each September/October. Like an echo from the past. October will be worse. October brings even stronger seasonal changes that I associate with Cam’s death. October was the worst time two years ago, because it contained the rawest grief, the funeral, the frequent sitting-at-the-graveside-and-crying, and I did not know how I would live. Thinking about it, sometimes I feel amazed that I survived and I’m sitting here fairly matter-of-factly, saying, “Oh another year since Cameron died.” How weird that is. Anyway. It’s not a year quite yet so I’ll stop talking about it for now. Maybe I won’t even mention it again. It depends how it makes me feel in a few weeks.

But, h) I am also highly excited about autumn approaching!! It almost looks to have arrived here at the moment! The days are cooler already, and it has rained a TON lately. We have had thunderstorms every day for 3 days! :) I love thunderstorms and rain. Also thunderstorms + parsnips = Yeah Baby!! ;) But enough about parsnips already this entry! Hehe!

Although, i) I am DREADING flu season. Make that flu/cold/bug season. Urrrgh. I know Arthur has to catch a zillion things just to be “normal” as he becomes a toddler, and the autumn/winter is THE time to do so. I am scared silly of getting a stomach bug and throwing up. I tried not to think about it most of the year, but I guess it has to happen at some point. I have not thrown up since I was 18. April 1994. I’m amazed I can’t date it more accurately for you! It’s a big big big fear for me. But how can you NOT once you have children? Sooner or later they are going to catch some tummy lurgy and then bleeurrrgh, so will I. Arthur and I could never avoid sharing any bug because we share so much saliva all the time, haha! He is constantly chewing his fingers and then putting them all drooly into my mouth so that I’ll pretend to eat them off and make him giggle. And he gives me kisses (open mouth avec drool aplenty still) all the time. Which is LOVELY!! I love Arthur’s kisses. And when he’s not kissing me, I am kissing him!! I mostly kiss his sweet cheeks or his head and his soft hair, or his forehead, or his arms and fingers, or his feet and legs. Or his tummy. Or his back and neck. But sometimes his sweet mouth too. Heck, I just KISS the boy! :) He’s so edible and I love him so much, I can’t help myself! So yeah. We will share bugs for sure. Urrrgh. I guess I will have to cross that bridge when I come to it. Oh but that brings me smoothly to –

j) Arthur was sick yesterday! It was weird actually. He was cruising along the sofa, and Neil was sitting on it with a sofa cushion on his lap. Arthur grabbed the sofa cushion and happened to overbalance, and he pulled all his weight on the sofa cushion, I guess he was thinking that it was as sturdy as the rest of the sofa, or Daddy’s knees. But it fell with him, so he fell hard, sideways, onto the floor. It’s carpet, but he still hit it hard, and his head hit the TV remote which was on the floor. We couldn’t find a mark at all afterwards, but he was so shocked or something by the incident that he did that crying where they use every single molecule of their breath, and then go PURPLE not breathing in for like 20 years, all the while flailing their limbs about and making their torso stiff as a board. I hate seeing him like that. His eyes look so terrified when he does that, and I can’t make it better in time for him. I also remember crying like that when I hurt myself several times when I was very little, and the main thing I remember of it is that I just felt absolutely overwhelmed by my nerve-endings. Not so much pain as the inability to comprehend the intensity of the signals I was getting, if that makes sense. It made me feel scared and like I didn’t understand what was happening, and not even my mummy could make it better for that moment. I couldn’t even bear for her to touch me or hug me while it lasted. Arthur was the same. I picked him up and held him close, shhing and saying soothing things in his ear, and rocking him better while he did the flailing thing, and then he regained his breath and his body went limp again, but right after that he just started throwing up everywhere. I really don’t understand why he did that. It took him a while to calm down because he was gaspy and pukey and then I could still feel his stomach heaving, although he stopped actually being sick. Weird. I was AMAZED how calm I felt though, aside from the initial slap of sick (nice!). Both of us were covered, and the floor too, but everything seemed calm to me because all I could think about was being calm for Arthur and making everything better like a good mummy. And I did. Neil was still freaking out 5 minutes later, and having huge guilt trips about the fact that Arthur was cruising on him when he fell. He was worried that Arthur was badly hurt, but by then Arthur was sitting on the carpet wearing just his nappy, crawling from toy to toy and merrily banging two cups together and babbling his loudest and most cheerful babble! So I knew he was fine.

After that, k) we went to visit my brother and his Sarah. I figured it would do us all good to get out of the house, and I knew they would LOVE to see us at the drop of a hat! Plus it’s Sarah’s birthday today, so we took a card. We had a lovely time, and we stayed an hour or so until after Arthur’s bedtime! He was in high spirits and crawled and cruised all over their flat. He banged a plastic bowl and chewed a wooden spoon that they got out for him, and he sat on Sarah’s lap and listened to half of “Green Eggs and Ham” (man, I love that book!), and then they lifted the lid on the piano (they are “housing” my dad’s old piano which he couldn’t take to France. It’s a GORGEOUS one and he has a baby grand now, so I’m HOPING he/they will let us “house” it (!!) when we move to a bigger house!) and stood Arthur on the piano stool. He has never really seen a piano before, and we all wondered what he would make of it. He LOVED it!!! He immediately bent himself over the keys and bashed them with both hands, black keys and white keys, and he went up the scale to the high notes too. He made a lot of noise! He only paused for like a second or two to look up at us and do a big smile showing all his teeth! Sometimes he was so focused on the keys that he had his tongue out the side of his mouth with the concentration, it was soooo sweet! We just watched him and laughed and enjoyed his eagerness! In the end we had to take him away from it, because he showed no signs of stopping, and they have neighbours through the wall who just flew back from Canada the night before!

I am really happy that he had such fun making “music”. I feel sure he will be very musical. He has two musical parents, four very musical grandparents (and Neil’s mum is a piano and singing teacher, and my dad a composer/pianist by profession), and every single member of his close and extended family plays at least one instrument, so I think he might have the potential to be exceptionally musical. Or at least to really enjoy music. Which I promise NOT to exploit! I want him to find his own pleasures in life. I don’t want to be ramming piano lessons down his throat at age 3!! He might not even play any instruments. But that would surprise me. I can’t wait to have a piano in the family home. That’s how Neil started piano, because he just had one in the house and started tinkering for the fun of it. I guess I did too, but my parents started me on lessons when I was six, as more of a thing for my brain to do than something I was eager for. Hence I refused to practise and eventually quit till I was 12 or 13. I love playing the piano, but I am so sad that I didn’t practise more when I was younger. I passed my grades up to grade 5 but then stopped lessons when I left school. Pfthth. I wish I had carried on. I will be so happy to have a piano around for ME to play, let alone Arthur and Neil!! Neil plays piano. I think he has grade 8. Or 7. Or something. He also plays violin and viola, neither of which he has touched for years. He was pretty good at those though. He played them in an orchestra over his school and college years. He is the only one in his family who doesn’t play a wind instrument. His brother plays clarinet and saxophone. Rosemary (his sister) plays clarinet and flute and bassoon. Although his little sister plays piano and violin, so he’s NOT the only non-windy person then. I played the violin at school for a while, and clarinet for a short while later on. My dad plays clarinet very well and he taught me on his own instrument. He plays the saxophone too. Mummy plays the violin and the piano. My brother plays the bass guitar (sooooo well, I am a proud big sister!!) and a couple of other types of guitar and the double bass. All these instruments!! I am so proud to be part of such a musical family. My favourite instrument to “play” is my voice. I LOVE to sing. I could do nothing else but sing. My voice is crap and rusty though. But I love to use it. At school it was nice and I sang a lot of solos at the Christmas concerts, etc, but blah, I guess I let it sit and vegetate too long. I sing to Arthur every day though :) He has no choice in the matter, hehe!

Oh my goodness, it is 12.39am!!!!!!!!!! I’m so bad. I am going to bed right now. Will update again soon!

My TEN month old!!!

Thank you all so much for the messages and notes and emails about the sleep stuff, and for being so encouraging despite my strong feelings and the way I wrote about them. I appreciate ALL the advice soooo much! Shannon, your message particularly lifted me because of how you reminded me so clearly that God would guide me and that Arthur would grow up just fine. Phew! Thank you :) And then Julie, your message just reinforced those things for me. But I feel so blessed by ALL the messages left for me. Thank you so much! You guys are so lovely :)

Well I feel so much better about it all today. I am surprised about that actually! Yesterday morning Arthur did not have to cry at his nap because he fell asleep on the breast. He did the same in the afternoon but he did wake twice over an hour and a half, each time tired and wanting to go back to sleep. I didn’t have the heart to make him cry so I nursed him and back to sleep he went. He was so tired yesterday, and kind of unsettled.

Last night we were disorganised and had not kept up with the nappy laundry (unusual for us). So when I came to stuff a night nappy for Arthur, I found that there weren’t enough clean inserts – aaargh! Sooo we had to put him in a day nappy and change him at our bedtime. We haven’t had to change him at night in MONTHS, which feels so strange now when I remember how it felt to always have to change him and wonder if it would ever be any different! When we changed him he woke up pretty fully. I nursed him back to sleep. That was about 11.30pm. He woke again at 1.30, and I had not been to sleep yet – tsk! This time he got full on the breast very quickly, and then started chatting and babbling and crawling around (despite being enclosed in a sleeping bag!). Neil rocked him, but Arthur got cross and pushed against Neil to try and get down. So Neil lay with him. Arthur started to cry of course. I lay on the floor next to Neil (where the darn new mattress ought to be, if we ever get around to buying it!!), and we waited. Arthur cried and cried. I had heard him cry like that the other day, and he was only just starting to sob, not anywhere near as bad as he was crying before. I was surprised at how calm I felt about it. I just knew he had to go to sleep by himself, and I knew he COULD, and I also knew we needed to give him the space to do it.

How weird is that, for me to say?! :)

So after very little time of this, Neil suddenly picked him up and started to rock him. I said, “What are you doing?!” and he just rocked him. I told him to put Arthur down, but he just rocked him. I thought, uh-oh, he’s had enough of trying to leave Arthur to cry and go to sleep, and now how am I going to convince him to put him down?! But then Neil said that he thought he would just see if Arthur would like to be rocked. At this point, Arthur was bug-eyed with curiosity about why Mummy and Daddy were talking in a raised whisper, standing up in a dark room with him held in the middle of it all! Hehe! He didn’t make a peep, or move a muscle, he just stared and stared at us over Neil’s arm, the cutie :)

Anyway I said to Neil that I thought it wasn’t fair on Arthur to let him cry and get so upset and then pick him up and rock him, when I knew we might expect to let him cry again to try and fall asleep. I said we had to be consistent. Either we don’t let him cry at all and we rock him and nurse him and do whatever it takes, or we stay consistent and help him learn to sleep by himself. It just isn’t fair to mess him about doing both. Neil put him back down and I lay with Arthur, with Neil beside me. Arthur seemed much more calm with me next to him anyway, and he did cry a little for a while, but not anything like the last time. Then he went quiet but still awake. My face was inches from his and I kept my eyes on his face the whole time. He would keep locking my eyes with his gaze and just look into me in silence for a while, and then let his eyes roll shut and mooch his little mouth the way he does when he is falling asleep. Then his eyes would open again and we would hold each other’s gaze until his eyes rolled shut again. Eventually he fell asleep. Somehow that was just so peaceful compared with the last time. Last time, his eyes were either screwed shut in despair or else full of misery and pleading with me to do something for him. This time there was a lot of trust and calm, I think, which really surprised me for some reason.

He finally went back to sleep at around 3am, and woke again at 5.45, when I nursed him. He went back to sleep till 7.15am, which is really late for Arthur! But I think he must have been tired from the night. Today he got full of milk before falling asleep for BOTH of his naps. For the morning nap, I just let him stand and crawl in my “fenced off” area that I made with my body, and when he was tired of that he got kind of upset and cranky. He cried, but never got so that he was hysterical and sobbing like before. Then he went quiet and took his time (about 10 minutes maybe) to fall asleep, lying down on his tummy and mooching his sweet little mouth on and off till he fell asleep. He looked at me now and again and that seemed to reassure him. I always like to stay very close to him and keep my eyes open and looking him in the face/eyes, because then I am making myself as “available” as I possibly can to him, and I hope he can sense that. I think he does, you know.

So I left him on the bed fast asleep, without having had anything to do with it! How amazing! And he did not wake for TWO HOURS!!! Yay! He slept 9.50 till 11.50, and then he woke up and we played for a while, and then he had lunch. He was acting tired again just before 2pm, so up we went to nurse in bed. He got full and then cruised along my body as I lay there, shouting and babbling cheerfully (he’s so cute!). When he got tired of that he got cranky again, but this time he only grissled, I wouldn’t even call it crying. Then he went quiet again and did his moochy-mouth, watching-me thing for maybe 5 or 10 minutes before falling asleep. He woke after 30 minutes but seemed really tired still, so I nursed him again and he fell asleep on the breast for another hour. The phone rang and woke him but when I got to him after quickly getting rid of the offending caller (!!), he was asleep again! :) So I am really encouraged.

This evening we did the normal bedtime routine and I nursed him in bed at the normal time (sometime before 7pm). He got full. Neil asked if he should rock him, but I felt so confident. I said no, and lay next to Arthur and waited. He cried more than in the day, but never got hysterical or sobbing. I just kissed his head and patted his little back now and then, or told him it was okay and he was such a good boy, etc. In the end (maybe 20 minutes?) he went quiet and then fell asleep, on his tummy again. He woke after we left the room though, and cried like his heart was breaking :( I went back in and sat near the bed, but he rolled around the bed and cried so much, that I got back in with him. It was amazing, because IMMEDIATELY he rolled himself onto his side so that his tummy was pressed against me, tucked his little hands up under his chin, mooched his mouth a while, and was fast asleep! My little sweetie. He needs his mama. I love how he wants me close to him. I love BEING close to him. I love him sooooo much.

Soooo that is the sleep situation updated!! I am feeling so much better about it now, and so encouraged. I feel that this IS the right way to go, and that it is the right time. I am also surprised to discover that I feel quite a sense of freedom to be flexible with what we’re doing, at any given time, depending on how I judge things to be going. I feel confident in myself again. I feel like I can read the situation with Arthur really well, and act on it accordingly. Like this evening after he had been asleep an hour, he woke crying, and by the time I got to him he was sitting up in bed in his sleeping bag (not as easy to sit and crawl in!), face in his hands, sobbing his little heart out! My poor baby! I went to nurse him but he gagged and burped, so I scooped him up and held him close to me to burp him a little. After that I nursed him to sleep. See, that is fine, because I felt able to judge what was required in that specific situation. I seem to have lost my fear of making a “wrong” decision. I am not so scared that there IS a wrong decision now, and that is hugely liberating. I think he had a tummy ache because while I was nursing him he did the most enormous farts! And not just one or two either! Poor Boo. He seemed a lot more settled after that, and he hasn’t woken since.

OKAY! Nuff talk about Arthur’s sleep! I want to talk about something else!!...

Arthur is TEN months old today!!!!! Thank you Julie for wishing him a happy 10 months! I am so bad at remembering to other Diaryland babies’ special dates! Thank you for remembering Arthur’s! :)

My BIG boy! He is in double figures on his months, can you believe it?! Here he is this morning, 10 months old, with my hat on his head :)

I had my usual proud moment of changing my breastfeeding milestone blinkie, this time to 10 months! :) I like this blinkie. It’s prettier than the previous ones. Also, I know I’m over-obsessed (!), but I found another blinkie that I couldn’t resist adding – “I am a child of God” What a cool blinkie! And I love declaring that truth about me! And it’s pretty anyways :) BUT you’ll be glad to know I have actually removed two blinkies! So maybe your eyes will be less sore, hehe! I removed the “No CIO here!” blinkie because it’s just not true anymore, but that’s okay. I am at peace with stuff now. And I removed the FLYbaby blinkie. I am soooo not FLYing right now. I even unsubscribed from the FLYlady emails. Urgh. But that is another story, and I want to talk about my TEN-month-old at the moment! :)

Arthur has had a good day on his 10-month birthday! He has had a lot of sleep. He enjoyed lunch (homemade, yay!). He didn’t really want breakfast or tea, but he has done that a lot this week. I’m not worried about that. I just offer it, and breastfeed him when he wants it anyway. It’s probably just a phase or teething or something. He is chewing his hands a LOT today, and drooling on everything, but I still don’t see anything obvious going on in his gums yet.

He is so vocal these last few days! This morning he was cruising around on the bedroom furniture, saying “Oh-ho-ho? Mmm-ho-ho?” over and over, almost absentmindedly! It was so cute! He babbles constantly, but lately it sounds a lot more like he is talking in complex sentences but I don’t understand the language. His favourite words seem to be anything that starts with B! He makes these words short and sharp, and his tone is all confident and like he’s declaring something, almost authoritative! He uses these B words most when he is doing something adventurous like climbing the stairs, or on a mission to find Daddy somewhere in the house! His most often used B words are things like, “Bap!”, “Babb!”, “Bam!”, “Buv!” and “Bag!” Anything with a B to start and a good solid consonant on the end to make a nice punctuating sound. He sometimes just shouts one of these Bs randomly at important moments (ie, he’s just spotted Daddy round the corner and doubles his crawling speed to reach him!), or else babbles them as he cruises or climbs, like “BahBahBahBab!!” Or he makes funny sentences with them (also while cruising or climbing), like “MmmBabb! Babmmbapbap….AaaBuvBuvBap! BagBapmmBuvBap!” It’s so cute to listen to! He always sounds so serious and his expression is too, when he uses his most “important” words in sentences, hehe! He uses other “words” in his sentences too, with all sorts of sounds and vowels and starting sounds. My favourite “word” of his is “Mmdiggle!” (usually followed by a pause and then, “Ah-DIGGA!!” as though something triumphant just happened!). He has a fairly new word (last month or so) that he uses in interest or curiosity, often while looking at me or Neil if we are showing him something interesting. The word is “Det” or “Deh”. I wonder if that will turn into the “Dat” that Alex is using when pointing at things? It’s like an early version of “that” I suppose. He doesn’t use it with direction yet though. Just as a random comment so far!

His most irritable words are, “Laylaylaylay!” or “DAY!” or “RoeRoeRoe!” all repeated with very annoyed tone! He uses these when he is cross with me in his highchair because he wants to get out and I’m still cleaning him, or lately when I am not nursing him or rocking him to sleep, before he gets to the crying. He always lets me know he’s cross about it first! Now I think about it, “Lay”, “Day” and “Roe” have been specific words he has used when cross since he was first babbling with meaning at around 4 or 5 months. Funny how he still uses the same sounds for angry communication after all this time!

He hasn’t said mama or dada since he started crawling at 8 and a half months. He was saying them ALL the time, but it suddenly stopped with his big increase in motor developments. I have just recently read that this can be normal – one type of development can get put to one side as another big development gets going. He has said dada once or twice, but nothing compared with before. Anyway that is fine. He has plenty of time of course! I miss hearing his little chipmunky voice calling me Mama, but he’ll get back to it again. He has developed so fast and suddenly with his motor development, and really that was so important for him with his curly feet. They are looking so straight now! I am so happy about that. His big toes still want to curl in, but the foot itself is soooo straight! I can’t wait to see the physio again to see how thrilled she is with him! Yay! :)

Okay here are some more photos of Arthur today. They were all taken within 15 minutes after his afternoon nap. That boy is keeping me busy these days!

The wardrobe was all his own work! He cruised a chair and a chest of drawers to get to it, then opened both doors, pulled all his jumpers out, sat down and opened the drawer (HOW?! It is really stiff to open!) and started yanking all his socks and mittens and miscellaneous items out of it! Little monkey! ;)

He keeps on heading off to the stairs as fast as his little knees and hands will take him there! Like every 5 minutes sometimes. I block the bottom of the stairs off sometimes with his inflatable activity ring. It is impossible for him to move when I wedge it between the furniture and the stairs. He gets kind of annoyed when he sees it there sometimes, but then I just distract him with a story or build him a tower of bricks to knock down. He is still LOVING his stories. I read him half a dozen a day, something like that. He just goes so quiet and concentrates so hard on the book, or on the book and my face, depending on whether my face does funny things or makes funny sounds if those are called for in the story! He turns the pages and closes the book at the end. He loves to turn the pages. A couple of weeks ago his books were frustrating him SO much because he kept trying to separate the pages (hardboard) but couldn’t manage it. Now he can pick them apart and turn them, and he can crawl to his book pile and sit himself down and look through a book if he wants to. I often see him doing that completely independently, even without me reading to him! He loves the pictures in the touchy-feely books. He has four or five fantastic touchy-feely books with some great textures and illustrations to explore. I read those eleventy times a day sometimes. He likes to open those and use his pointy finger to poke the textures :) He’s such a sweetie.

He lauched himself off the top step of the stairs this morning! Yaargh! I was seconds behind him, but it’s so weird because he suddenly sped up as he reached them, as though he WANTED to fall down and get a few greenstick fractures! I have visions of me trembling with anxiety every other weekend while my teenage son insists on going bungee jumping off the cliffs of Dover or something crazy! As I saw his top half disappear off the top step, I just grabbed at his bottom, screeching, “Noooo!!” (poor Neil nearly died, hearing it from the bathroom about 2 feet away!). It was just instinctive. My grasp caught him by the bright orange Fuzzi Bunz he was wearing, thank goodness, and he stopped mid-air, and brought his hands down to rest on the third step down, so it looked as though he was doing a hand-stand on the stairs, only with me hanging onto the back of his nappy for dear life, hehe! He was completely UN-bothered! Which worries me slightly! He seems to have no fear about doing ANYTHING! Mind you, the health visitor DID warn me as much at his late 8-month check. I just didn’t expect him to speed up. I should be more careful next time. His nappy started to slowwwwly pull down so I yelled for Neil and he rescued us :) I remembered Jaya falling down the stairs recently and how it sounded like she started off in a similar way, just launching herself over the top! It made me feel quite breathless at the thought that Arthur could so easily have fallen right down. We have nasty stuff for him to get hurt on at the bottom, with the corner bend and a CD storage unit there. It doesn’t bear thinking about! I need to be a NANOsecond behind him when he is near the stairs, not a second or two.

It has POURED with rain today! Yay! I love the rain! We have had torrential rain and thunder and lightning all afternoon and evening. We sooooo needed the rain. It fell so hard like sheets, and we flung the window wide open (it was falling too hard to go anywhere but directly DOWN so it didn’t come in) and watched it. Arthur seemed fascinated by it. We watched it for ages. He reached and reached out of the window. He loves water though. He will reach with all his strength to touch the running tap water when I am holding him on my hip whilst rinsing some cloth wipes for changing his nappy, for example.

I have discovered a few new things that get Arthur laughing like crazy lately. Today he was in his highchair after his tea and getting very cross with me for cleaning him up (as usual!). He was wearing his very best frown and giving me very dark looks (hehehe, I can never help smiling at those – he means them so sincerely that it’s just funny!), and crossly saying, “RoeRoeRoe!!” at me over and over. I started to sing, “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…” and his face relaxed into a smile when I was saying “his” words too! I like the version I heard when I worked with nursery school kids years back that finishes, “If you see a crocodile, don’t forget to scream – AAAAHHHH!” So I did that with Arthur, and you know he LOVES to be made to jump, especially by sudden sounds (crazy child!), so he just loved that song. I took him out of his highchair and carried him around singing the song over and over, and every time I got to, “If you see a crocodile…” he would start gasping and squealing in anticipation! When I did the scream I would also pretend to drop him, so he was absolutely hysterical after a few rounds of this, as those two things are his favourite funnies!

Yesterday I was sitting on the carpet in the living room amongst his toys, and he kept pulling up on me and then cruising round to my back, where he stood and patted my shoulder blades with gusto! I would twist round and say, “Whatcha doooiinng?!” and he would giggle and bounce with glee. One time I suddenly surprised him and whipped my arms back behind me, clutched his whole body to my back with them, and stood up, bending right over so that it was like he was riding my back sitting upright (if that makes sense). I galloped around the room making assorted silly noises, and stopped and started suddenly now and then. Arthur laughed sooooo hard! He got hiccups in the end! As I bounded around, his giggling shook with my movements! It was the funniest cutest thing :) We showed Neil when he got home, and he just watched us and laughed. Arthur is so much fun to be around. When he finds something funny, it’s infectious. You just can’t help laughing with him.

Well I could waffle on with many more examples of things Arthur finds funny, or little things he does, but I have just noticed that it is late and I really need some extra sleep tonight.

I can’t believe there are only two months – two months exactly! – until my baby boy is one year old. That suddenly seems so close. Wow. I just love him completely. I need to update my pregnancy journal. I think we are going to hold off on the baby-making for a while. But I feel at peace about everything. Thank you Lord.