Financial stuff (sorry, rather dull!)

Oh my gosh, it has been way too long since I updated!!!! I keep wanting to but there just isn't any time. Or there is but I need to eat or sleep. Or I use it to update my pregnancy diary instead.

But sooooooo much has been happening. Thank you so much for all the messages and notes since my last entry, esp those about the photos and videos of Arthur's party! :) I'm so glad you enjoyed seeing them!

Neil took Arthur to church this morning. I'm supposed to be resting, but I suddenly want to "get things done" - tsk! I want to sew and bake but I'll do that another time. I REALLY need to write some stuff here! I will try to be to-the-point - a rare achievement for me, so we'll see, hehe!

Okay, first thing - we are not moving after all. Neil got offered a job in Ipswich, big pay cut, clean air, more affordable housing, job that wasn't exactly what he wants to do but which might get him there eventually. We prayed and prayed about whether we should go or not. EVERYTHING in me was screaming NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, don't go!!! I can't explain why. I talked to Neil about it, but the only explanation we could come up with is that I basically didn't WANT to go. I wanted to stay and nest and have a baby where I feel familiar. I did NOT want to start fresh in a town I don't know, and where I'm not even sure I want to live, with no family or friends for MILES and MILES. Nooope. I got scared. I felt like I barely coped at times with Arthur when he was in his first few months. The health visitor gave me support visits because she felt I was depressed. Suddenly I feared for my sanity doing it all over again (where EVER we are!) and moving to a new place all at the same time. At least here it is my familiar home and a couple of parts of my family are nearby, and my church who we know so well were around to support us. Without those things I feel like I might not make it through without some real problems. Suddenly moving to Ipswich seem like a CRAZY NUTS thing to do.

So we prayed. But didn't feel God was leading us in one direction or the other at all. We kept on praying. Neil's deadline for accepting or declining came, and he stalled them a week, as we had not had sufficient time to work all the financial stuff out.

Oh, that's another part of it. See, somehow we find ourselves really in a mess, financially. If we had moved to Ipswich we would have cleared debts and fixed it all in one swoop, so that was a big pro for going. We made a pros and cons list but it was too equal. Tsk!!! Nothing was helping us choose!

In the end, the second deadline came for Neil to make a decision, and he said, "Okay, let's just go" And that was the point at which I thought, "Ah. In the light of this reality.... I absolutely know I can't do it." I felt bad saying it because I felt selfish and like I wasn't yielding to Neil as the head of this household (which I feel strongly about him being), but I can not explain it. The urge to stay was absolutely uncontrollable. We talked about it a lot, and Neil said wouldn't I just feel this way about ANY move to ANYWHERE at any point in the future? Because we HAVE to move out of London sometime in the next year or two. We can't afford to stay - the houses are just too expensive, and Neil won't get a job in the field he longs to work in, in London. Also we need to find a place to settle and bring up our children, a place where they can be all ready to start school and live in a home that feels like the kind of family home your children will have cosy memories of, one that you can stay in for most of their childhood because there is enough space, and you can have several children before you have to move again.

I think he's right, I WOULD feel this way to a large degree. I am just a home bird. This is my home, and I am just the type of person who hates - HATES - to relocate and have things change. But I know I have to suck it up and get on with it eventually. But the timing.... I figured with the pregnancy and all, it would be better to stay for now. I don't need the stress. I feel so selfish, ugh.

But anyway. Neil's mum felt that it would be a step of faith to GO because the door was open. Neil kind of felt that way too. But, here's the weird thing (or is it? They have both been Christians sooooo much longer than me and so I feel a bit.... like they know better than me or something) - I felt like it was almost a step of faith NOT to go. Neil said he never heard of seeing a door open, having no major reason to stay, and choosing to stay anyway, as a step of faith. He said that sounded faith-LESS. I struggled with it, because maybe I just wanted to stay sooooooo much that I was willing to pass it off as ANYTHING so that it would get us to stay! I really did want to stay that badly.

Urgh. Anyway, Neil turned the job down. RIGHT AWAY, both of us felt fine about it. Neither of us gave it any more thought at all over the next week or two, so that felt good, because if it had been a mistake, I'm sure numerous things would have brought it to mind. It really didn't feel like a mistake to me. It felt like a blessed relief! I felt physically lighter!

BUT. We are right up a certain creek without a paddle, as far as finances go. We exceeded our overdraft limit. Neil's salary NEVER gets us in the black, we always stay in the red even with a nice big lump of money going in once a month. We have crazy credit card debts - I don't even know how they got so scary. Two weeks ago we couldn't make the repayments on the credit cards because we were over our overdraft limit and getting charged crazy huge amounts of money for it. So now our cards are frozen. Neil got paid 2 days ago - hoorah, because at least that frees up some money, even though we are in the red. Every month our outgoings exceed our income so we reach the overdraft limit quicker. Last week we had no money for food at ALL, until Neil unexpectedly found some euros from the last time we visited my parents, and walked two miles to the nearest Exchange Bureau with Arthur in the pushchair, and came back with £136.54p!!!!! Yay! That gave us lots of groceries and a winter hat for Arthur (whose head seems bigger than his age, so the 12 month hat I had ready for the cold weather does not fit him at all!).

For a week or two we have had big stressy discussions most evenings about finances. That has been one major reason why I have had no time to update. We figured we had no choice but to take out a loan, but the idea filled me with DREAD, since my parents have always taught me that a loan is a good way to financial ruin. You're always in debt and you're losing money the whole time. We decided to ask their advice, since they have been in all SORTS of financial crises over the time they were raising a family. Daddy runs his own (now very successful) company, and starting that up was hard financially. So we asked them. They were SO helpful, I mean, amazingly so. And so understanding. I'm so glad we asked them. They were totally non-judgemental, totally giving of their time and wisdom. Daddy offered to have Neil call him any time he wanted to talk about the stresses of finances and earning to bring up a family, etc. Neil has called him twice already! I love my parents :)

We all discussed our options, and when a loan seemed to be the only way, my parents told us that when they were at their most difficult point starting up the business, they took a loan from my dad's parents, which was offered to them with no interest. And they were so grateful and it made SUCH a difference to them, that they have decided to offer the same to us. We talked long and hard about it and decided to take them up on it. It comes with conditions, so that it's a serious arrangement, not just "Oh phew! Some money has landed in our laps! I'm sure we'll pay it back sometime..." We have to cut up our credit cards. Nooooo problem! I'll be relieved to! The only thing standing on our credit cards is the audioblog.com monthly bill - which is where I upload my videos so you guys can see them, and so that I can send them to my parents via email. Daddy said it's such a tiny amount that I should put it on his credit card and buy him an expensive bottle of wine every year, hahaha! ;)

Also we have to set an amount for monthly repayments to my parents, which we'll all agree on based on what we can afford. We have to sell a car - obviously. We are in no position to be a 2-car family. Neil has the little car he drives to work up for sale. I hope it sells fast, and I hope we get what we're asking for it. We need as much as we can get, because it needs to pay for our credit card debts. It may not cover them though. My parents will lend us the difference to cover our debts and overdraft. We still have to pay finances on our family car, but we need a family car. Neil will buy a bike with the first bonus he gets at work (hopefully soon!) so he can cycle to work and cut costs. We cut out some payments on our monthly statements. It broke my heart to cancel my sponsored child payments, but we just have to for now :( I have been sponsoring this child since my teens :( They were so nice about it when I called them, and thanked me for my long term support, and I told them I'll be back when we're more stable financially.

Soooo. That's it really. I can't believe this has taken me the WHOLE time that Neil and Arthur have been at church!! They are back - I can hear them pulling onto the driveway, so I have to go. Sorry this entry is so dry and financial! It was meant to have other stuff to lighten it up! I also meant to say that suddenly another job has come up that Neil could go for, with a HUGE pay RISE, and in the same town in Cambridgeshire that we originally had prepared ourselves to be moving to - one which I feel much better about moving to as well. Also it's right where Neil wants to be in terms of the type of work. So maybe THIS is of God? We have to pray. I don't want to pull a repeat of what I did with the Ipswich job if Neil goes for it and gets offered the job. I wish I had more wisdom....

I will try to write more soon.

Arthur's birthday party - photos and movie clips....

Oh my gosh, I am just so so so sooooooo behind!!! I have so much that I need to write about here, and I can NOT believe I have left it ELEVEN days since I last wrote! Yeurgh. I didn't even write about Arthur's birthday party, which feels like ages ago now :(

Thank you all so much for the birthday wishes for Arthur, and the lovely comments on the photos! Also I meant to say before, thank you all for the helpful advice or even just sympathy (!) over his constipation issues. I need to write about EVERYTHING at the moment. But no time. I will make this entry about his party, and then hopefully update again soon about other things. Maybe it will take me several entries to get it all off my chest?!

Okay, Arthur's party went great! I had not expected a BAD party at all, but somehow it was way better than I even imagined it would be! :) My grandparents and my parents were there, and my brother and his Sarah, and Neil's sister and our little niece, Ella. Neil's brother couldn't come because of work, and his parents obviously can't due to ill health and living miiiiiles away. But it was lovely!

We were so behind on getting everything ready, and my parents offered to come round in the morning and help (the party was 3.30pm). It took us till almost party time to get everything done! I'm sooooooooo grateful for my lovely parents' help. My daddy put balloons up all over the ceiling and a bunch on the front door with shiny ribbons :) They all had "Happy 1st Birthday" printed on them :) I love having balloons on the front door at a little one's birthday party. It tells the whole world that it's someone special's birthday! Anyway, we put 20 balloons up. Neil blew them all up the night before (well, I blew 3 but got exhausted!). Then we put up the multi-coloured fairy lights that Arthur loved SO much as a tiny baby! I was excited to see those up again. It made me feel nostalgic! They first went up in preparation for my homebirth. Ahhh, such special memories! :)

I decided we didn't have NEARLY enough fairy lights, hehe! So Neil bought TWO HUNDRED more coloured fairy lights when he went out to get some food and drink for the party! Wow! We had them all around the ceiling and the mirror. I LOVE fairy lights! They make me feel cosy and like a little girl again. Arthur loves them too. We still have all the decorations up and Arthur points to them constantly. He likes it when Neil gets home from work and lifts him high up so that Arthur can bop the balloons hanging from the ceiling! If the fairy lights aren't switched on, he points and makes sounds with direct looks at me, asking me to switch them on!

Anyway so it all looked pwetty and festive! I baked Arthur's birthday cake and decorated it really simply. It was a plain vanilla sponge cake with raspberry jam for the filling, mmmm! I made plain white water icing for the top and just made a big number "1" on the icing with hundreds and thousands. And put a single candle on top, of course! We completely failed to take any photos of all the important things, tsk, but I took some rather grey and grainy still images from the camcorder, so here are a few - first just the cake (weird colours though - the hundreds and thousands are really bright primary colours), then Arthur being unable to resist touching the hundreds and thousands just after we sang happy birthday and blew out his candle, and then Arthur eating some cake with Daddy:

Also, for your viewing pleasure (!!), a rather dark video of the birthday boy receiving his cake to the tune of "Happy Birthday to you!" :) I wish you could see his face more clearly. He was so excited. I blew his candle out and then he did this cute shy smiley thing at everyone. It's harder to see on the video than I thought, sadly. But here it is!

Arthur opened his presents from nearly everyone, except there were so many that I think he would have been overwhelmed with all of them at once - he was so eager and excited about each one! He tore the paper off the presents himself (with my help) and immediately started playing with each new thing. It was hard to get him interested in the next present to open, so we decided to leave 3 of them till the next day - the ones from my parents and grandparents, who didn't mind a bit. He got a Mega Blocks Monsters building set and a GREAT book with jigsaw pieces in it from SIL, and simple jigsaws and a Meg and Mog hardback book from my brother and Sarah (I LOVE Meg and Mog!!!). He was so keen on the jigsaws, but he likes to take the pieces out (they all have a peg on each piece to make it easy to lift them out) and then pile them up or stash them somewhere! He loves stacking and stashing at the moment. He can stack 3 cups on top of each other, and stack the whole set inside each other one by one. We are constantly losing things at the moment because Arthur has 4 or 5 hidey holes around the living room where he likes to stash things! He likes to find a hole to drop things down into. He goes around choosing things to put in it, and makes several trips, hehe! It's so funny! I usually find several clean nappies, half the jigsaw pieces, plastic fruit, toy cars, and unopened mail down there. He has also started taking a chosen item all the way into the kitchen and depositing it carefully in the washing machine or tumble dryer! Funny boy :)

Anyway, so he loves his presents! He tries to put the jigsaw pieces back on the board they came from, but just plops them down on the board so far. He is also trying to put the shapes through the holes on his shape sorter, though without any success so far. He loves that thing.

Anyway, PARTY! I have to hurry up - Neil has gone to bed, and so should I. He has to go to work early in the morning so I will need to be up early too to watch Arthur when I would normally get extra sleep while Neil watches him. I am NOT a morning person, and I am also a pregnant person who is still getting up several times a night to nurse the little one. So I neeeeed my sleep! I'll get on with it!

The party was so relaxed. We laid out some snacky food that Arthur could eat - pretty healthy food for a party! We had fresh fruit salad, cucumber and carrot sticks, and apple rice cakes!! We did have bowls of crisps for the adults, but they were high out of reach of our little monkey! Arthur's tea consisted of the party food. He ate EIGHT rice cakes!!! He stood by the food table (low table just perfect for his height) for 40 minutes, grazing at stuff! He would pick up a rice cake, take a bite, munch it for a while, then put the rest of the rice cake carefully down in amongst the cucumbers. Then he would pick up another rice cake, take a bite, and - you guessed it! - put the rest down in the cucumbers! He did this with 8 rice cakes, and then started working his way through the discarded ones in the cucumbers! He loves apple rice cakes. He did eat some fruit salad and quite a bit of cucumber too. We forgot to peel the cucumbers but he didn't bat and eyelid. He just chewed and chewed on the tough skins like chewing gum, merrily getting on with socialising (!), and then spitting them out finally after like 10 minutes, when he had had enough of chewing them. He spits things out neatly, it's weird. He is careful as he does it and then won't budge till he has our attention to show us where the piece is, so we can dispose of it. Only then will he move on. He is such a tidy little boy! So unlike his parents, haha! My mum says he must know what he's been born into, and knows the task he faces!!! ;)

He loved the birthday cake! We didn't give him any icing or jam, but the cake was sweeeet and he LOVED it! :) He used the flats of his palms to shovel it into his mouth and eat as much as he could in one go! He never eats like that really, so I know he must have really enjoyed it :) I like that it was a nice birthday treat for him.

Everyone loved Ella - she is such a sweet little girl! She was almost 5 months old at the time of the party, and quite smiley at everyone! She is mostly on formula now, and Neil fed her a bottle which was nice. He has never fed Arthur anything other than solids, as Arthur has never once had a bottle. Oh but he did help with syringe feeding him when he wouldn't take the breast at first. Ugh. That was a hard time.

Anyway Neil is very besotted with his niece! There was a cute moment near the end of the party where Neil took both Arthur and Ella on his lap. The babies just looked at each other and were very "respectful" towards each other! Of course everybody leapt up with cameras flashing ;) I got a few photos, and took a little video clip too, so here they are. Neil said he could get used to having two, and his sister said he would have to, haha! Actually I think that is on the clip. Arthur was so curious and lovely with Ella. He kept wanting to reach out and touch her, and see her face if she wasn't looking at him. He was sooooo gentle with her. Everybody said what a wonderful big brother he is going to make :) Anyway, here they are:

Arthur was not remotely tired of company by the time everyone left a couple of hours later. He was so perfect all afternoon, smiley and waving and clapping and cheerful. I breastfed him when he asked for milk, but I did it in the kitchen because there was no WAY he would ever manage to relax and nurse for any length of time in the living room with all the guests! He was so sociable. He kept cruising round everyone's knees, stopping at each person to smile and be charming, as though he was doing a receiving line, hehe! He seemed to have a great time.

The next day my parents were going back to France, but Mummy came round in the morning to see us and play with Arthur some more, before she went home. We opened Arthur's presents from them - this fab garage and cars! He LOVES it. It makes lots of different noises and has a lift that goes up and down, and he loves to shove stuff into the lift shaft (like plastic broccoli!). He has learnt to push the buttons for the sounds, and he makes such cute smiley faces when he hears them :)

I was so sad to see my parents go home again :( I always get that way though, no matter how long they stay. I just love them and miss them so much. I took a lovely photo of my gorgeous boy with my lovely daddy. They got on so well, and I love the fact that it has been so obvious on this visit that Arthur has inherited my daddy's hair. Did I mention that recently? Arthur has curly hair! I am kind of excited about it! Not the cute curl-ups that lots of babies have at the sides (though he has those too, sometimes), but the proper curly hair on top that won't lie flat and rolls back on itself like has been wearing curlers! It's the exact same type of curling as my daddy's hair, and his mother's hair too. Every other grandparent has straight hair, so I LOVE that this is a special and unique thing that Arthur has inherited from Daddy. I made a lame-o job of using the gene - my hair curled as a toddler but then was pretty straight, and from my teens it has had a natural wave to it. It's sooooooooo long at the moment - I have no idea HOW, as I had so much cut off it when Arthur was born! But it's a foot long at least. I need it cutting again. It's less wavy the longer it gets. Anyway, I am so pleased that Arthur is actually DOING curls with his gene, hehe! I am curious to see how curly he stays as the years pass. Daddy and granny had ringlets! Daddy had long hair in the 70s and it was all ringletty :) So, real curls! I hope Arthur has real curls too. I think it's kind of special. Here are the sweet "woolly" pair:

And last but not least, a photo of Arthur taken during his "wind down for bed after the party" (heh, yeah right!) time. He was still so wired, and didn't go to sleep for ages after he went to bed that night. I think he was up till 9!!!! Sooooooo late for Arthur! Anyway, he did a lot of walking at the party, just a few steps between people or to me mostly. There wasn't much room with all the people in our little living room! After the party he was walking towards me so I took a photo - the first one I have of him walking!

He wore jeans and a little shirt and waistcoat from Next at his party :) It had embroidered animals on it. He got lots of compliments :)

Oh I almost forgot, I have two more video clips to post - a teeny tiny one of Arthur on the morning of his party just after he got up, crawling cheerfully through a sea of balloons, hehe:

And the one I mentioned before, taken on his actual birthday, of Arthur with his Ball Blast toy that Neil and I got him, dancing to the music. That's my mummy who he is looking at, encouraging him to keep dancing. She was bopping about too, but stopped every time she thought the camera might be on her, hehe!

Okay, that has to be all for now. It's getting so late and I just nursed Arthur so it's even later than I planned to finish this. I will TRY to write more soon, maybe tomorrow, to catch up on everything that is happening here. Thank you so much Meg and Jeannie for missing me and asking if everything was okay! *hugs* I feel loved :)

Arthur's First Birthday!!!

Arthur is a big boy now!!! He is one year old today. I can not believe it. But also, it somehow feels normal. Some naive part of me had this idea that he would suddenly morph into a different child on the morning of his birthday - a "real" toddler, different from the little baby I have known thus far. But of course that was stupid and he's still exactly the same Arthur as he was yesterday and all the days before! Only one day cuter! :) And a big one-year-old boy instead of a monthy-baby!

Thank you so much for the messages and notes and emails (thank you for the lovely ecard, Jaya!!), and also to those of you who sent wonderful cards and even presents for Arthur!!! Also special thanks to Alex and Megan for the special birthday video for Arthur! It feels like the whoooole worldwide web is extended family to us! It's so lovely. Thank you all so much!!!

Arthur has had a really nice day!!! It's 9.30 now and he has been asleep for about 2 hours. He was really tired and ready for bed, rubbing his little eyes and generally acting like a birthday boy at the end of his big day!

My parents are here!!! It is so great to have them around. I love them and miss them so much, it's just sooooooooooo nice to see them in person. They spent most of the day here with me and Arthur yesterday, and today my dad had to go into London so my mummy spent the morning with Arthur and me and Neil, for Arthur's birthday. That was super special to me, partly because I love to share special occasions with my mummy, but also because she was there at Arthur's birth, and it feels like everything has come full circle to have her here again at the same time a year later. It felt really special. We watched the clock around mid/late morning, because Arthur was born at 11.28am. Neil or my mum kept saying, "Oooh, this time last year you were probably...." Neil insisted Arthur was crowning at 11.18am! Hehe. I told him there was no way he was crowning for ten minutes! It made it all EXTRA official when 11.28 had passed and he had definitely been in the world one whole year!

I keep thinking of Arthur's birth at the moment. It was so hard. Weird to think that a year ago, ALL of yesterday I was in established labour, the ENTIRE night before I had not had one wink of sleep due to painful contractions every 10 minutes the whole night long, and then I spent last night in the hospital with stalled labour and a fever, and then finally spent all this morning pushing him out!!!! It seemed CRAZY when I thought about it in that context today and yesterday! It seemed such a long time to be in labour. But I absolutely cherish the memories I have of labour, the whole thing, even the bad bits - though they were mighty hard - and I LOVE to relive it in my mind. I feel so fond of the experience. I'm so glad of it all, that I have been blessed enough to experience it.

We were just talking this morning about how it was a hard night, and we were all remembering this and that about it (Neil and Mummy were right there by my side throughout the whole thing), and then Mummy said she couldn't believe it was a year ago. I said, "Well, we'll be there again in just SEVEN more months!!" (less, actually), and she said (with exaggerated dramatism), "Yes... You mad fools!!!" Hehehe! She said she could never have coped with a small gap between children. I am kind of excited about it myself! Although I know it will be hard.

Yaargh, what am I writing?! This is not my pregnancy diary! And I'm supposed to be writing about Arthur's birthday!! Well, it DOES have connections to birth and stuff. I love to think back on every nanosecond of Arthur's life with us so far. It has been the most wonderful time, hard or not. Wonderfully wonderful.

Okay so Arthur opened his presents from us today, and he will open presents from other people at his party on Saturday. He did open all his cards and loved them! He opened his present from Sharon (thank you Sharon!!) which was a GREAT book with flaps concealing farm animals (this is exactly the kind of book Arthur loves most at the moment) and the last flap in the book had a mirror under it. He was so surprised to see himself under the last flap! He pressed his nose to it and stared and stared, and kept surfacing to grin widely at us, hehe! He's so funny :) Thank you so much Sharon! I could not have picked a better book for Arthur myself!

He also opened a card and a lovely present that came from Frances (thank you Frances!) - a little boat for the bath that has a fish which you pull on a string at the back, and it makes the boat GO!!! He was too tired for his bath tonight so we'll test it out tomorrow. Thank you so much Frances!!!! Arthur loves the boat already, even without the bath! The package arrived at lunch time today and that made for extra excitement for Arthur, with the doorbell ringing and a postman bearing a package just for Arthur!!! We opened it straight away, and he has literally spent most of his birthday with the detachable sailor sticking out of his mouth, haha! He loves to bite on the sailor's head! It is definitely a favourite! :)

We got him a mini trampoline! He just loves to jump on beds, holding onto the headboard, so we thought we'd get him a real trampoline that is safe for little tiny ones. It has a handlebar for him to hold onto. We have to put it together tomorrow but I know he'll love it. I'm a bit worried about accidents on it, but I have seen other babies his age on them at the mother and baby group and I plan to always stay like 0.13 inches from him at all times when he's using it!

We were going to get him a rocking thingy but we aren't sure he'll use one much now. He is so active and doesn't sit still for anything! He likes to jump and bounce so the trampoline seemed more fitting somehow. We also got him a Stand Up Ball Blast which he absolutely LOVES!! In fact, I don't have any photos of him playing with it from today because he was always having so much fun with it that I was always joining in, instead of taking photos! I did take some camcorder footage of him with it though, because it plays funky music, and as you know, Arthur loves anything musical. He has not really been dancing or anything yet, but today he was standing at his Ball Blast thingy and pressed the button (over and over!) for the music to play, and he bopped and danced up and down and side to side while the music played! He stopped when the music stopped, pushed the button, and started over again when the music played again! It was too cute. He always danced with a huge smile on his face! He loves that thing!

We also got him Cut-and-Play Vegetables! They are supposed to be age 3-8 because they are pretend play items, but Arthur loves the fruits that he has had for months now. When he was 5 months old, I took him to the church creche and they had loads of cut and play food, and the main admirers of the things were BABIES, not 3-8 year olds! They were the first things I ever saw him automatically gravitate to and stay interested in for a long time without wanting to play with all the other things around. So I bought him the fruit package. They have had SO much use! He loves to pull them apart (they are in two or three parts, velcroed together) and chew on them, or roll them on the floor. Or put them in and out of cups, bowls, the toy basket, the brick bucket, etc! So I knew he would love the vegetables :)

He had some good meals and a LITTLE more to drink than usual, plus his mama milk whenever he asked for it (a lot). I gave him an Organix gingerbread man and he LOVED it! I have been itching to get him those since I saw Jaya having one when went to visit one time! They are not for babies under 12 months so he couldn't have one then. I am amazed they have absolutely no sugar in them, just flour, oil, ginger and raising agent!! They are really nice considering that! Arthur LOVES them, and has absolutely no trouble biting and chewing and munching them down, even though they are REALLY hard thick biscuits. It takes him ages to chew them up but he works hard at it, which shows me how much he really likes them! He is used to softer finger food. He eats toast and hard things well, but even those are easier than the gingerbread men!

I am excited that he's old enough for Stage 3 baby food now! I bought one single jar of stage 3 spaghetti bolognese the other day, just to see what it looked like in comparison to the stuff he has had for months. I think he will manage it just fine. He eats very lumpy food that I make him. If he particularly doesn't want certain lumps then he just spits them out!

I am getting off track! So he had good food today. He had a great afternoon nap, which was a relief because Neil and I were sooooooooo tired. We were up so late last night wrapping Arthur's presents and talking about Neil's job thingy and whether he should accept it or not. I need to write about that, but this is not the entry for it. Today I have just felt breathlessly tired and had a bad headache by the afternoon, so I'm really grateful that Arthur slept well. He napped an hour and a half without stirring, so Neil and I got about that much sleep too. Neil took him downstairs when they woke and didn't disturb me, so I got a little longer.

Arthur loves the outdoors so we wanted to take him out somewhere today. We especially wanted to go somewhere with lots of birds flying about, because one of Arthur's favourite things ever is birds. He just loves them. He likes the ones on water that swim and waddle up to the pushchair, but he MUCH prefers watching more nimble birds, ones that flit and fly and flutter about. So we wanted to do things he loves on his birthday. But we just couldn't think of a good place with lots of birds that was nearby, and then the day just got filled up and I got headachy, and so on.

In the end, we all took a sunset walk just around the corner at a small park, and that turned out to be lovely! It was soooooooooo cold!!!! Arthur loved it, he was cheerful and smiley and chatty and pointy all the way. When we got back our ears were hurting from the cold! We had hot drinks, and Arthur had warm mama milk direct from the source!!

Neil and I didn't buy him a birthday card, because every time I looked in the shops, I didn't like what I saw. Any nice cards seemed to me to be ones that anyone could get for him. I wanted something more personal, that only his mummy and daddy could get him. But the ones like that all said things like, "For you, Son!" and similar messages that irritate the heck out of me, and aren't "us" at all. We never call Arthur, "Son!" so we could never buy a card saying that.

In the end, after our walk, we got out card, glue, paints, glitter, sequins and shiny paper shapes, and made him a birthday card! Arthur was quite upset when I had the paints out because he thought I was going to paint his hand. We made his party invitations last week and they involved me painting his hand with blue finger paint, and then printing his little handprint onto blank cards. I put sparkly stickers on next to the handprints! Inside I wrote in different coloured crayons, "Dear Nana and Grandy (for example), Please come to my party on Saturday 12th of November at 3.30pm. Love from Arthur xxxxx" I wrote letters to go with them, with more details in them. Here's a finished one:

Anyway, Arthur HATED the painting!! I had to do it sooo fast once I realised he hated it! He just hates to have messy hands. It seems he remembers the traumatic incident well, because he cried like he was terrified any time he saw me with a paint pot!!! Oh dear. I have traumatised my little boy with paint on his birthday! Neil had to take him in the kitchen till I was finished with the paints!

Our card is really pwetty! It sparkles and says, "Happy 1st Birthday Arthur" on the front, and inside we wrote that we can't believe he is already one year old, and that it has been the best year of our lives. That he is our sweet little boy, and we love him more than words can say. We both signed it, from, "Mummy and Daddy". I think that is the first time I signed anything, "Mummy". It felt strange, but WONDERFUL!!! I only ever saw those words on cards TO me, from my own parents before. How weird and wonderful that *I* am the mummy now!

Okay, Neil has gone to bed and just came out to complain that he can't sleep with my rattly typing! So I have to cut this short (haha). Here are all the photos from today - hopefully they'll be pretty self-explanatory now that I have written about everything we have done! They are in chronological order...

Arthur with some of his presents this morning...

Opening his birthday cards and reading them! :)

Helping Daddy put the Ball Blast together. He was sooooooooo keen to help hold the screwdriver, it was so cute!

Unwrapping his cut-and-play vegetables (very keen!)...

Into them at last, and happily munching on a plastic avocado! :)

A not-so-great photo of the sunset on our walk:

Arthur watching the sunset and being generally happy and excited to be out on his birthday!...

Arthur and Daddy playing a game that Arthur LOVES - I go ahead and then they RUN towards me, with Arthur squealing and flailing about with joy, and I suddenly rush at them as they get close and we all stop with my nose MILLIMETRES from Arthur's little nose! Arthur loves this game :) Um, the photo is rather blurry, but what can I say?! It was live action! ;)

And finally, a perfect end to a perfect day, mama milk and cuddles :)

So that was Arthur's very first birthday. We sang him happy birthday and just gave him as much love and attention as we possibly could today. We love our little man sooooo much!!! I would love to write more about the feelings and things, but I must go to bed, and let Neil sleep too! I have been writing for an hour now and Arthur still hasn't woken. I think he will probably wake soon though.

Today has been so special. My baby is one year old! I feel like I just graduated the first year of Mummy School or something! ;) It's a wonderful feeling. I will finish this entry with a bit of nostalgia...

My teeny tiny boy as he was on this day a year ago! And now as he is a year later:

What a wonderful, terrifying, thrilling, crushingly exhausting, heart-expanding, joyful, exciting year! It has pushed me through my pre-existing limits of my capacity to love and of my ability to cope. Arthur is the most wonderful gift from God EVER. He is my precious little Boo, the absolute treasure of my heart. I love him so so so so very much. Thank you Lord for blessing me with Arthur, and for guiding us through our first year as a family! I pray for many many more, just as happy and special! Thank you Lord!

Due-date-iversary, and monkey man...

"Remember, remember the 5th of November!"

It's Fireworks Night, yay! The noise outside is unbelievable! It has been constant for hours now. Arthur is amazingly sleeping through it, and he even fell asleep while enormous explosions rocked the house from right outside our window! Amazing. He is sleeping sooooooo badly otherwise, so I'm surprised at how well he's taking the fireworks!

The thing I most remember about November the 5th, though, is that it was my due date this time last year! Arthur was due on Fireworks Night. He didn't show up till 4 days later, of course! Only four days till his birthday. That's just craaazy. I have been reading my pregnancy diary to relive those last few days of pregnancy, at this time last year. I feel so nostalgic remembering it all again! I am still so caught up in reliving Arthur's birth in my mind. All this time since he was born, I still daydream about it. It was so wonderful! So painful and soooo hard, but so so so wonderful!! I know I can never have it again, even if I have other births and future children. ARTHUR'S birth will never happen again. My firstborn. The first time I ever gave birth, or experienced labour, or held my own child for the first time. The first time I was ever a mummy. It's such a precious thing. I try to keep the memories alive and kicking, and anyway, I love to think about it!

Sooooo now I have an almost-one-year-old! He is doing lots of walking. He tries to run on his tiptoes and falls easily when he does that. I took him to get fitted for proper walking shoes, like the physio suggested. I figured it must be time, since he is definitely walking now. He still cruises and crawls a lot, but he's definitely a walker at last. Shoe-fitting went fine! I was worried that there might be trouble fitting him after what the physio said, with his wide curly feet and all. But it was fine. I asked for a stiff flat shoe. Ugh. They were tempting me with flexible cruising shoes, but I told them about his feet and that the physiotherapist said he must go into stiff non-flexible shoes. But thankfully they had some nice ones :) He is a size 3H - really wide! But at least they make H widths in normal baby shoes. He walks fine in them, though he turns his feet in just a bit, and sometimes falls over his toes when he does that, and he fits them well. They are so easy to put on his feet - what a difference when you actually have shoes that fit him! They cost a bomb though, ugh. I need to get him refitted in January, as he'll probably be a size bigger by then. Wow, their feet grow so fast! I think next time I will get him fitted to find out his size, but somehow NOT buy any shoes, and then find some next-to-new ones in the right size at eBay. I wish I had done that this time.

Arthur is behaving.... differently, lately. I don't know what to make of it, it is really perplexing me. He pushes all my buttons and watches for my reaction. I am so tired and hormonal lately and I find it hard. I guess I snap at him more, and feel dreadful about that. Maybe he is picking up on that? How awful :( He waits till I am indisposed (a rare thing, since I spend nearly every waking second doing stuff with Arthur, not my own thing or the housework), like maybe I am so nauseated that I HAVE to sit down and eat a meal. Or I need to fill in a form to get it in the post asap. While I am doing these things, he immediately starts doing every single thing that he knows we would rather he didn't do. He climbs around the sofa to pull videos off the shelves. He opens the glass cabinet doors and rummages in the video machine. He pushes the button on the TV to switch it on and off, on and off, on and off. He cruises to the door to the porch and opens it and closes it and opens it and closes it and opens it and closes it, etc. He finds outdoor shoes and tries to eat them. He tries to push the barrier out of the stairway so he can climb them. He opens all the drawers in the merchants chest and pulls out the financial paperwork, watching me to see my reaction with every individual sheet pulled. He cruises to the big mirror which he isn't allowed near as I'm worried it could fall if he touches it (I think I'm over-worrying, but anyhoo), and bangs the flat of his palm on it over and over, watching me all the while. If he can find any piles of clean clothing, he pulls them down, watching me of course.

I have to get up fifty million times while I am trying to eat a simple baked potato, and take him away from things or redirect him. He does not listen to anything I say, though I know he understands "no" and various other redirections that I use instead of "no". He is just really testing his mummy and daddy out at the moment! Little monkey! I hope this is just a phase!

Also he is super clingy and whiney. This is sooooooooo out of character for Arthur, I don't understand it. He wants to breastfeed ALL. DAY. LONG. I let him, because I don't want to restrict him if he wants to nurse. It's easier if we go out, because then he's distracted and doesn't ask. We should go out more - maybe he's bored? - but I just can't do it. I feel too awful all the time, and too tired. He is a busy boy in the house and stays very active, but maybe I am falling short because I should be doing more for/with him? Urgh. Some mornings his longest gap where he ISN'T breastfeeding is literally 10 minutes. He is off and on between playing and things, but he wants me close all the time, and preferably topless, hehe! He hates to see clothing covering my - correction, HIS! - breasts. He even hates my bras. Anything in the way gets pulled and frowned at, usually with some degree of whining.

It's so strange because he has never been a whiney boy. He is a happy, cheerful, laid-back boy! But he isn't being much of that lately. He still smiles and laughs a lot, but he is ultra grumpy the rest of the time. I keep thinking something must be wrong, as it's so odd for him, but I don't know what.

Also, he is waking like CRAZY at night at the moment. Every 2 hours or MORE. Uggggggggh. I can't, CAN'T do that. But suddenly he is completely intolerant of anything other than me and my breasts at night. He is also like this at nap times in the day. I don't know what to do! I can't nurse him till he falls asleep any more because it just hurts too much now that I'm this pregnant. I don't really WANT to anyway, as I think it is definitely time he learnt to sleep without going off on the breast. So I stop when he's sleepy, or before then if I can't bear the pain any longer. And he gets hysterical. Really hysterical. I stay with him. I sometimes cuddle him if he's really upset, but otherwise I play "asleep" - that seems to work best - or pat his back a little. That used to work, but now he just sobs and screams (REALLY screams, angrily) until he is nearly sick. He can keep this up for over an hour. If he starts retching I put a stop to it. I nurse him or I get him up, so sometimes he has no nap. Lately he is sometimes taking one nap a day and sometimes two, depending on whether he will let me put him down for a morning nap or not.

Ugh. I just don't know. He seems so.... like he is fighting me all the time at the moment. I don't understand why. He has plenty of lovely times when he is just like himself, but SO many times when he isn't now, and I feel kind of upset about it, in case it's my fault or it's getting worse because I am neglecting him in some parenting area, or something. Am I doing something wrong?

I took him to the doctor yesterday in case he had an ear infection or something wrong with his tummy, etc. Once or twice at night he has screamed and cried even when I offered him the breast, which is just totally all-out WEIRD for Arthur. But he was given a thorough check-up and seems perfectly healthy. His ears are fine, his chest is fine, his tummy is soft and fine. I don't see any changes in his gums, though he drools all the time anyway.

He is having serious problems with constipation. I finally got some advice from the health visitor and after a long discussion she said he has a really good healthy diet (yay!) but nowhere NEAR enough fluids. He has breastmilk all the time, and I still have plenty, but it's not enough with all his solids now. He simply refuses to drink though. He will take sips of water at mealtimes and when we offer him a drink throughout the day (which I try to do ALL the time to get him to drink), but after a tiny sip or two he pushes the drink away and refuses to let it near him again. We fill a sippy cup with water each morning and it never seems to have gone down at all by the end of the day.

The HV suggested diluted fruit juice - apple was her suggestion, partly in case it made him want to drink it more, and partly because she has seen fruit juice help sometimes with constipation in babies. So we did that for a few days. He makes a face but still sips it. But the level doesn't go down any more than it did for water. When we saw the doctor yesterday, she said she didn't like the idea of giving him fruit juice as it can cause cavities in babies' teeth. So we switched back to water. She prescribed him lactulose, but said that it needs to be taken with plenty of fluids - um, hello?!!! So I'm not giving that to him. It will make matters worse if he isn't getting enough fluids. Urrrrgh! So frustrating!

Today we happened to discover a new absolute favourite food for Arthur - we gave him baked beans on toast for tea, and he LOVED it!!! He ate the whole lot eagerly, and the BEST thing is that this meal makes you very thirsty! So we offered him water after every 2 or 3 mouthfuls and he took more water than he ever has before! Yay! I think it was because the food was thirst-making though. The water went down a centimetre!!!! Woohoo! But that is still pretty bad for a whole day's fluid. Poor Arthur. It is making his poo very difficult for him. He sweats and shakes and cries when he poos :( Sometimes he bleeds. Often we have to rescue him if it's a bad one, by actually applying OIL to the completely stuck poo so that it will come out without making him scream in pain. Poor poor baby :( Sometimes he has a normal poo, and I don't know why because he never has much fluid to drink. I know it's really important to fix it because apparently untreated constipation in young children and babies leads to them losing the urge to poo, and they can need professional help to start again. Yikes. I don't know what to do though, because he just WON'T drink. And it's the fluids that are the whole issue.

If anyone knows what to do, please let me know!!! Otherwise please pray that he suddenly LOVES to drink and it all gets better :)

I have a TON to write about moving and stuff, because it's all up in the air at the moment. But I can't now, I am feeling really sick. I think I will go and eat something. It's too noisy outside for an early night, but that is fine with me because I am just longing for a snuggly evening reading in bed by some cosy lamplight!

I'm sure there were millions of other things I meant to say.... oh well. I can't remember them now anyway. I will try my best to update a little more over the coming week, as I want to get some of my thoughts down about Arthur before he turns one, and of course to write about his birthday and the family stuff afterwards!

I do just want to say that I LOVE my lil precious Boo. I hope I didn't come across too complaining about him. I just love him to bits. But I feel so worn and strained by stuff lately with Arthur. I wish it would all just get better and not be a problem, because I hate having any time at all where I don't feel wonderful about him at every moment. But I love him, love him, love him.

Here are some photos of the mischievious monkey man himself!...

Love him. To bits :)