Lonnnnnng update and photos!

Ohhh my gosh, TWO WEEKS since my last entry! This will never do! I seem to have no time to update, or when I do, I am too tired. But now I just have waaay too much to write about in one go! Neil and Arthur are taking a walk in the park, but not for much longer, so I have a little window of time to start a diary entry.

Let's see. I will have to try and summarise briefly or something, and then get on with photos and more detailed stuff! I have toooo many photos to post this entry, seriously. Maybe I'll have to split it into two entries? We'll see.

Okay so what has happened in the past two weeks?

Arthur and I went to Playgroup, not last Wednesday but the one before, as he had just got over the cold he caught from the time we went before. He had a nice time, but got cranky during song time, which seems to be an increasingly common thing for Arthur. He just LOVES the toys and running around so much that he hates the bit where you have to sit still, even for singing (which he actually loves)! Arthur runs EVERYWHERE now. He has totally got the hang of it. It's still a cute stumpy little toddler's run, but not so stumbly anymore - he doesn't look like he's about to fall down at any second like he used to! He loves to run and does it complete with exaggerated fast breathing too :) He gets so excited about the speed he's going at or something, bless him!

Anyway, Playgroup was good. I got brave and took the camera, and ignored the attention I created every time the flash went off! I just want photos of my lil man doing stuff that I know I'll be wistfully remembering in NO time at all! So here he is during drink-and-biscuit time. He is sat right at the back on the far right, contemplating his biscuit and the kids in front of him! He never looks for me. He didn't even notice I had slipped off to take his photo, or that I had come back again! This was about half the children on this particular day. There isn't enough room for them all to have their drinks and biscuits at once:

As soon as he'd finished his biscuit, he climbed out of his chair (he doesn't like to hang around!) and rushed off to the big hall to play. It was nice and empty with most of the little ones having their snacks. Arthur did his usual thing, walked around looking at all the toys until he settled on one or two that he chose to play with, and never looked for me once! Here he is pushing a wooden trolley thingy, and playing with a toy hoover. After that he ran out of the hall and I followed, and that was the end of my photo-taking opportunities! But it was fun :)

Except that by the weekend Arthur had ANOTHER cold, ugh! This brings his total since the beginning of January to 4 colds and a viral cough! Before that he had like ONE cold in his whole life! Or was it two? Anyway, it's a completely different picture this year. He is averaging a cold every other week! It's not nice for him and it makes life more difficult for Neil and I, but I'm not too unhappy about it. It's great practise for his immune system (which he really needs) and I just thank God that it hasn't been vomity bugs all this time. Colds I can handle! The only other thing that makes me curious is that the first week of January is the exact same week that my breastmilk dried up. He hasn't had any since, although he has continued nursing. That totally coincides with the start of all these colds (to the week!). I think my milk must have been playing a much bigger part than I thought in protecting him against colds and stuff. I read that it's true, but I didn't really believe it somehow! Also I know lots of people who breastfeed and their babies still have a ton of colds and bugs. But I guess in our case it really HAS been true that my milk has made a big difference, immune-wise for Arthur. He has had a little more exposure to other children in the same time-frame though, so it's probably partly that. And the time of year, etc. In the last week or so, I have started producing colostrum ready for the new baby, and I can't even DESCRIBE how excited I am about it!! Arthur is getting some goodness from me again, and I'm thrilled! He nurses as much as always, and showed absolutely no signs of registering the arrival of colostrum! He is just like that with breastfeeding. I am so excited to be able to officially call it "breastfeeding" again too! :) I felt funny about calling it that when I had zero milk, but now he's getting something, I am "feeding" him again :)

Anyway. So he has had a cold. Neil and I both caught it this time and felt crappy for a few days, but we seem to have thrown it off pretty quickly. Arthur is almost better. Still a bit snotty but it's a week since it started so he's well out of the woods now :) I am taking him to the doctor tomorrow though, because he keeps having miserable moments that aren't like him at all, and we wonder if he's hurting somewhere, so we give him Calpol and he's right as rain within 30 minutes. I wonder if he might have an ear infection or something? He has no temperature and is eating and otherwise fine, but it's best to get these things checked out, so I'll take him. He is a PERMANENT teether though, so it could always be teeth.

Oh this was meant to be a summary! Whoops! What else has happened lately?

Oh my parents came to visit!!!!! Yay! It was soooo nice to see them! Arthur doesn't get to see them often, but he seemed to actually remember them (I wasn't sure that was even possible at his age, since he last saw them at 13 months old - surely before he can do that kind of long-term memory?) and loved every second of their company! I did too :) Mummy spent a whole day with us on the Monday, and then she and Daddy visited us together for a couple of hours the next day. Here is a photo of Arthur and my Daddy, just before Arthur went upstairs for his nap and Mummy and Daddy left:

Arthur just seems so relaxed with my parents, which I'm so glad about as I thought it might be the other way around since he rarely sees them. He is a particular fan of Grandy (my daddy) and posed for the above photo without any arranging from us! I just grabbed the camera :) Their visit was over far too quickly, but they are coming back in a week or two for a couple of days :) They came because Granny had a hip replacement and they wanted to help out and visit her in hospital and stuff, and they're coming back to do similar stuff again. Her op went really well and she is at home and doing great, so I'm really happy and relieved about that. Arthur and I are going to visit on Tuesday :) Arthur drew a picture with his crayons and I made it into a card for Granny. She loved it! I love that Arthur is really getting into drawing more, though he presses sooooooo lightly with pens/pencils/crayons that you can hardly see anything on the page! He is getting the hang of dotting (well, banging!) the crayon onto the paper and making dots and lines that way, which are much more bold and he likes to see what he has drawn. He likes to use ALL the colours on one drawing, not just one or two! I'm relieved that he has finally stopped trying to eat the crayons! He is more interested in sorting them than drawing still. He sorts EVERYTHING. It's his passion ;)

He had his wooden bricks out a week or so ago and was playing with them for ages really quietly. When I stopped to see what he was doing, I found he was sorting them into shapes and had already built two long lines of different types of shapes along the carpet! I took a photo, and he didn't even bat an eyelid, he was that engrossed! He usually stops whatever he's doing to get hold of the camera, but lately he has started to find things too absorbing to bother with the camera. Here he is with his sorted bricks (thick rectangles and thin rectangles), and you can see he is busy working on sorting the arch-shaped bricks and putting them in a line too :)

Last week, Arthur and I went shopping in town as he desperately needed new shoes again. He is now in a Clarks size 4.5G, but a 4G in Startrite. I am picky and those the only two brands I will consider for him. Good shoes with the right fit are soooo important for little ones. They have to be good quality for their growing feet, and to support all the new things they are learning to do properly. In Arthur's case, he especially needs good shoes with a perfect fit because of his previous troubles with his feet. The physio had told me I should buy him new unused shoes, not ones that someone had previously worn, because his feet are a different shape to most, and he needs a brand new shoe to mould to his own foot shape. Urgh. She's absolutely right, of course, but we can't afford it!! We have just NO money at the moment, and good quality baby shoes are so expensive, and he outgrows them every other month at the moment. But we decided it's a priority. I keep my eyes peeled at eBay constantly, because occasionally someone sells a brand new, unused pair of Clarks or Startrite shoes in his size. But I could barely squeeze his previous shoes on his feet last week, so we had to go shopping.

After MUCH deliberation, I bought him a pair of leather Startrite shoes that should hopefully fit him for another six weeks. They were £31!!! But fantastic quality and well worth the money. And they fit him wonderfully :) He had a few days of tripping over the toes every few steps but he's used to them now. Oddly enough, some of the Clarks and Startrite shoes that he tried on in the shops didn't fit his foot shape well at all. I had presumed if one design in that brand fit him, they all would, but the sales lady said that all the designs are shaped a little differently, even for the same brand. Who knew! There is so much detail about children's shoes, and it's harder than I thought to get the fit just perfect for the individual little one. It's also good to know because now I need to be careful I don't bid on a new pair of shoes on eBay that is in a design I haven't had him tried in, as it might not fit him well after all.

Hmmm, where are those boys? It's past Arthur's tea time.... I should think they walked further than they expected and will probably be home any minute. It's raining so maybe they are drying off or something?! Arthur doesn't seem to mind walking in the rain, and we have a sweet little red raincoat for him so he keeps nice and dry :) When they get home I'll have to stop this and finish it later if I have the energy. Evenings are just pfthth at the moment.

Oh but when we were in town, I decided to splash out (!) and buy Arthur some Stickle Bricks! They're not enormously expensive and I have wanted some for him for months, but lately I can see that he would REALLY get so much out of playing with them - they are just the perfect kind of toy for him right now, with how much he loves building and sorting things. They are different from any of the building stuff he has played with so far. I really wanted some for him. My mum wanted to buy some for him when she was here, but she couldn't find any in the shops, so we went hunting for some last week! I finally found some in The Entertainer :) When we got home from town, we were running late for Arthur's lunch. He usually does NOT tolerate this well!! He likes his lunch on time! I went straight to the kitchen to prepare his lunch, but Arthur was clutching and fussing around the new box of Stickle Bricks, which he had pulled out of the shopping bag. In the end I took the packaging off it for him, helped him take the lid off the box, and left him to explore it while I made lunch.

I called him from the kitchen when it was ready - usually if he isn't already in there clamouring for his food while I'm making it, he comes running when I call him for lunch! But he didn't come! So I went to see what was keeping him. He was absolutely engrossed in playing with his new Stickle Bricks! I told him it was time for lunch and he didn't even look up! I honestly never saw him so enthralled with a new toy before, even his iron, which is saying something! Although his iron was slightly different - he was just plain THRILLED and excited about it! With the Stickle Bricks, he was instantly absorbed and nothing could tempt him away! He had already started sorting and pressing together the various shapes and colours. I sat with him for 5 minutes and took some pictures. Here they are :) He had already sorted the blue squares into one sticky bundle, and the long red rectangles. And the little bundle of circles in front of him, with all different colours. He was working on the green rectangles when I was sitting with him, and he was soooo pleased with himself when he finished sticking them all together!...

Hehe! After that he stuck the long thin orange ones together and then worked on a few more circles:

He loves those Stickle Bricks soooo much! I am so glad I got them for him, and that I was right about them being a great buy for him right now. He has played with them such a lot already! I wish I had bought them for him around his first birthday when I initially wanted him to have some, but we chose set things to spend the money on and planned to get him some later. Oh well. Better now than not at all! :) They keep him happy in the car if we are sitting in traffic or going on a longer journey than usual, he just loves them! I love to watch him play with them. He has such cute expressions of extreme concentration! I love to watch him concentrate on stuff.

Okay I hear the car pulling up, so I will finish this later and get my lil man some tea! :)

Back, and Arthur is asleep for the night. The clocks went forward last night but he is so far following all the normal times even with the change, which is good (so far!). It's 8pm now and he's been asleep for 10 minutes or so, which is even a little on the early side for Arthur! He woke up at his normal 6.30am today but our clocks said that was 7.30am. I hope he doesn't get wise and adjust!

We are in the process of making some big changes to our two bedrooms in preparation for becoming a family of four! We plan to all sleep in our bedroom (the bigger one), as that's what we do now, and I don't want to be separated from my little ones at night anyway. Well, that's awfully hypocritical of me, considering that I have been sleeping in the other bedroom (on my own!) for most of my pregnancy!!! But Arthur and Neil sleep in the big family bed. I sometimes sleep there with them, but mostly I have soooo needed extra sleep since getting pregnant that I have had to sleep in the other bedroom. My sleep gets so much worse when I'm pregnant, and I have always found it hard to sleep with Neil when I'm having a run of bad sleep! He's so noisy - not snoring, but grinding and chomping (!!) and snuffling and doing these ENORMOUS deep breaths that sound like all the air being let out of a balloon. Loudly! It drives me crazy. He tosses and turns a lot too, but remains dead to the world throughout, somehow! I, on the other hand, get disturbed a lot by his fidgettiness. Add to that a toddler who still likes to wake and be resettled by Mummy between 1 and 4 times per night, and I just end up with no choice but to sleep away from them while I'm pregnant so that the little sleep I DO get is at least decent quality! But I miss being all close and snuggly with them. I am just not a good sleeper.

I don't think Arthur is disturbed by Neil's fidgetting though. Sometimes I hear Neil from across the hall (!) and Arthur always sleeps soundly through it. He tends to wake at vaguely predictable times, like he is just in the habit of waking around those times, and even me not nursing him has not managed to break that habit. I don't know what else to do really. We are more sure than we have ever been that we will not CIO. He does roll all OVER the bed though, and sometimes that's why he wakes. He ends up in the corner or out of the covers along the pillows! I think we really need to get going with our plan to transition him to the single mattress part of the family floor bed, as that will restrict his space and hopefully lead to less rolling around and getting stuck or uncovered.

Anyway. We aren't sure about co-sleeping with Matthew, because it has just been SO hard with Arthur. I desperately want to co-sleep, as nothing else feels natural to me. But with Arthur still so newbornish in his night-waking patterns, and the worry about Matthew doing the same thing, we are just simply nervous about how we'd manage. So far we are thinking to have Matthew sleep in the moses basket at the foot of our part of the bed. That way Arthur wouldn't have any access to him in the night, or at least none that wouldn't wake us up as he clambered over us! Realistically, I think I will end up with Matthew in the bed with us plenty anyway, because it's infinitely easier to breastfeed at night that way! So we'll see how that pans out. By the time he outgrows the moses basket, we'll know whether to move him to the bassinet part of the travel cot and maybe the cotbed after that, or co-sleep with both our boys :)

The only thing I was anxious about was if it was a total disaster for all of us to be in the same room. Like if Matthew was colicky or hard to settle at night, and woke Arthur a lot in the same room. I'm not trying to be pessimistic about things, but we have had such a difficult time with Arthur's sleep from the start, that I think it's the most self-preserving way to think! If I think we might have the same troubles, or worse, then I'll be prepared if that happens. If they don't happen then it's a WONDERFUL bonus! My mum has always said that it's a blessing to have your first child be a difficult sleeper. That way you're "toughened" to it (!!) and when you then have a child who sleeps well it is just bliss! She had so many friends who had it the other way round when my brother and I were little - their first babies were little angels with sleep and stuff, and then it was like they were hit by a mack truck when they went on to have a child/children who were difficult to manage with sleep. They all agreed that it would have been easier to deal with on the first child, so she keeps reminding me of that! Obviously I was the difficult sleeper in my family, and the firstborn! My brother started sleeping through the night at 10 weeks old!!!!!!!! My mum didn't know what to do with herself, hehe! I HOPE it's that way for us, but I feel slightly depressingly like we won't be that lucky.

Anyway so I was starting to get anxious about having a "Plan B" in case it all went horribly wrong! We decided that Plan B should involve me and Matthew sleeping in one bedroom, and Neil and Arthur in the other. Neither of us want to put Arthur or Matthew in their own room yet. They will still be soooo little, and Arthur seems to benefit enormously from all this constant proximity to us. I feel so proud that he's 16 and a half months old and has never been separated from us (well, me, but Neil too with the exception of work hours and one or two nights) for more than.... I can't even think. An hour? Maybe not even that! If he's on his own in a room for longer, it's because he's sleeping in our bed during the evening while we are downstairs. But that is the extent of his separation from us so far. It means we don't go out, don't get babysitters in... I can't even think what else we don't get to do, because to be honest we never really do that stuff anyway, even before Arthur came along. We're not big go-er outers. The only thing we used to do that we can't do anymore while we go with our guts to stay close to our little ones, is evening housegroup at church. We were a bit crappy at attending it anyway, though I do miss it sometimes. I go to the fellowship group during the day with Arthur though.

LOTS of people are starting to think (now that Arthur is getting older) that we are doing him harm by sticking so close to him, and by the fact that he has never even had a grandparent take him out for an hour or two without us. Arthur doesn't have grandparents who live locally, in fact you can count on your fingers the number of times he's seen them in his life. We haven't been blessed to have close friends and family around locally to support us, which has made it a much harder job for us than many. But it's okay. We already knew we did not plan to leave Arthur during his first year at least, as in to go out for the evening and get a babysitter in, or to leave him in creche or something for a couple of hours. It just didn't feel right to us, for the way we wanted to do things with Arthur, so that's why we chose it. People are always saying we ought to just do it, that we "deserve" time out, and that Arthur will probably be fine with it. But they don't get it at all, because none of that is the point. I am not sure when we WILL leave him for the first time, but I can't imagine doing it any time soon, especially with Matthew on the way. Delightfully, Arthur has proven the Attachment Parenting theories right in his case, being a completely secure, happy and independent little boy from very early on. He has never had to wonder where his Mummy is or become anxious about anything without me there. He doesn't even consider keeping an eye out to make sure I'm still there when we're at Playgroup or places full of people. He is just 100% sure that I will be, and I always am. He is already taking steps of confident independence away from me that *I* don't feel ready for, hehe! We'll do the same thing with Matthew and any other children we have, for sure, even if that means we don't get time out much for many years. We're lucky that we're the kind of couple who don't actually LIKE going out! ;) I hate pubs and drinking. We aren't crazy about parties. We have never been social climbers as a couple really. We like movies on our own TV and pizza for a special evening together, or a nice meal in our own home. I don't like eating out anyway. I DO sometimes think it would be nice to go to the cinema together if there's EVER a good movie out (rare, it seems!), but oh well. It doesn't matter, we just rent it when it's out and enjoy it just as much :) Also we can't afford to go out in any case, so we're saving money, hehe! ;)

Wow, that was a big random waffle! I can't even remember what my point was when I started that! Ohhh yes, sleep and separating from our little ones! So, to summarise, we don't want to do that! We're happy with the back-up of temporarily having me and Matthew in the smaller bedroom, and Neil and Arthur in our room where they have always been. BUT, the small bedroom is a big dumping ground for furniture, and the room where everything gets done that can't be done anywhere else in the house (if that makes sense!). So it's CRAMMED with furniture, so that there's hardly any room to actually move about. And the computer is in there, where I'm sat now :) And my sewing stuff (masses of it), and all our books. And clothes storage for Arthur and Neil. We needed to clear some furniture out of our bedroom when we made a big family floor-bed, so this is where it ended up. But I couldn't possibly be in here with Matthew the way it is. We talked for ages and made a plan!

I decided we needed to put up more shelving on the walls for books and fabric, and get rid of the enormous free-standing bookshelf that took up so much floor space and room. Then dismantle the wardrobe that is used for storing all of Arthur's clothes. And acquire a double chest of drawers or something similar, because something like that will be the entire clothes storage for both our boys, and they'll probably share a room when they're older too, so it will still be in action for them for YEARS to come! We also needed to put the bedside tables and a blanket box in the loft, because they were taking up room without much useful storage space. And in the end I want to dismantle and store both of our normal sized chest of drawers, and replace them with one single "slim Jim" thingy, you know, the tall narrow chest of drawers that are like a reeeally tall bedside table full of drawers. I reckon if we make better use of the storage space in our big wardrobe (in our bedroom) and get ruthless on which clothes we keep and which we give to charity, we should be able to cope with just the tall drawer thingy instead of two chests of drawers! That will take up WAY less space. And finally, store away the current computer desk (it's enormous) and acquire an old fashioned dressing table - the type without much depth to the surface so it doesn't stick out from the wall very far, but which also has two sets of drawers either side of a space to sit at. That way we'd have more drawers to store things in, and still have a computer desk, but one which didn't stick out so much and take up so much space in a small room. Phew!

Obviously we can't afford new furniture, but we started looking on eBay right away, and I found a FANTASTIC double chest of drawers with children's animal handles! It's beautiful and in wonderful condition, and enormously spacious. We bid and won for £50!!! I had just made £54 selling a few maternity clothes and bras on eBay a few weeks ago, so we felt GREAT about that! Neil had to hire a van to pick it up though, so that was extra cost. He got it yesterday from North London, and somehow we got it upstairs. Neil took the wardrobe apart and stored it, and the blanket box and bedside table, in the loft. So now the small bedroom already has SO much more space in it, and a huge and beautiful piece of furniture full of both our little boys' clothing! It is so lovely to open drawers and see clothes for Arthur and teeny tiny clothes for Matthew! More and more, we are feeling like we really do have TWO boys, even though one is not quite here yet!! It's lovely :)

Now we are looking out for a cheap dressing table. And I have moved my fabrics. After all that, we have to look out for a tall drawer thingy and store our chests of drawers, and then there will be lots of space for the travel cot or moses basket to go right up against the single bed in the small bedroom, for me and Matthew :) I'm so pleased we worked it out, because I was getting antsy about it before, and also it has filled my yearning for some nesting and decluttering, which I haven't been able to tend to for a while lately!

Wow, that was long and drawn-out! Sorry! But that and the cold have been the reasons I haven't had time or energy to write for a while. I hope things will settle down soon!

What else can I say about Arthur? I need to get his hair cut again! Already! I keep putting it off, but it is getting longer and it gets in a terrible tangle at the back after he naps now! He has permanent fluffy-head at the back, hehe! It's so sweet :) But I can't seem to comb it out so I think I ought to get his hair cut so that it's easier to deal with or something!

Ahhh, he's so cute :) I love him so much!

He continues to be a little monkey, testing me all over the place! He climbs everywhere now, and puts toys at the foot of pieces of furniture specifically so that he can use them as a step-stool and reach whatever is on the surface! Just this morning he set the tumble dryer off, put a clean wash load on a spin cycle (when it didn't need it!) and switched the dishwasher off mid-cycle! He was getting into the freezer SO many times per day that in the end I went out and bought our very first real baby-proofing device (other than the stair gate of course!). It's a freezer lock and I LOVE it!! It didn't need tools or fittings to fix on, it took seconds to apply, and now Arthur can't get in that freezer no matter how hard he tries! He was a little frustrated at first, but now he has started concentrating quietly when he fiddles with it! We are kind of nervous that he'll figure it out! He already somehow knows to push the button that releases it (he has never seen us open it!) but so far hasn't figured out that he needs to slide it across once the button is pushed in. Hmmm. I hope he won't figure it out, as I was planning to get another one for the cleaning cupboard under the sink, which is currently tied closed (even from Mummy and Daddy!) with tight rubber bands!

Arthur particularly likes to climb on things that he KNOWS he isn't allowed to climb on, of course! He likes to be found by me, doing it. Or to be daring enough to try it in front of me and watch my reaction! Monkey boy! Here he is on my return from emptying the poo from his nappy down the loo the other day during a nappy change (please excuse the Teletubbies - I hate them SO, but they are a wonderful distraction for Arthur at wriggly pooey nappy changes, I have discovered!):

See his fluffle-hair that I was talking about?! Poor Boo! But *I* find it cute, anyway :)

Arthur has discovered the joys of actually riding his sit-on car now! He used to just push it about, walking behind it, with a huge smile on his face. Now he likes to climb on it and sit, saying, "Brum! Brum!" He does push himself around on it with his feet, but not very fast yet. He also likes to climb onto it and stand on the seat, and try to jump up and down. Urgh. He suddenly took to it when the Grand Prix was on a couple of weeks ago! He wanted to watch it with his daddy, but sitting ON his own car :) Here he is doing that:

Matthew has hiccups :)

Arthur is getting so good at sorting the laundry with me! It's something he really loves to do. I dump everything into the basket from the dryer, and drag it through to the living room, where we sit and sort. I start a pile for Daddy and a pile for Arthur and a pile for Mummy. Then there are piles for cloth wipes and for nappies and inserts. He will pile the wipes and inserts himself on the correct piles, but lately he has started pulling clothes out and holding them out to me with an "Uh?" question. I tell him, "That's Daddy's T-shirt! It goes on Daddy's pile!" and he will put it on the correct pile :) He loves when I push the basket from room to room, and spends plenty of his own time each day pushing, dragging and carrying the empty basket from kitchen to living room and back again!

He understands so many instructions now - that sounds weird but I can't figure out better wording! I mean, he can understand and act on two-part commands. Like if I say, "Go and get your drink and bring it to Mummy" then he will do it right away. Or if I say, "Where's your drink?" he will look around the room for it. If it's not there, he holds his palms up to sign "all gone", heh. It's so sweet. He looks so concerned at the same time :) So I tell him, "Your drink is on the chair in the kitchen" and he goes straight to the chair in the kitchen and gets his drink. He has a play toaster and loves popping the toast in and out! When it was time for his bath with Daddy one evening this week, he was playing with the toaster and when Neil said it was bath time, he got up with the plastic toast still in his hand and toddled eagerly to the stairs, ready for his bath. I called out to him and said, "Can you put the toast back first, Arthur?" and he actually stopped, looked at the toast in his hand, and walked back to the toaster and put it in, before going back to the stairs! He is getting much better at things like that. I think he can understand pretty much everything we say at the moment. He understands and responds to soooo much but doesn't really say much at all yet. He will choose between two things if I offer him the choice. Like he has two coats, one beige and one navy. I hold the two out to him and ask him which coat he wants to wear, and he usually picks navy :) I do the same with his bibs, and he likes to choose which one he wears.

If I split all his plastic fruit and veg into their two halves and mix them up, he now likes to play a match-them-up game. He picks one piece out and I ask him where the other part is, and he searches the pile with such an earnest expression, and finds the other half :) It's so exciting doing new things with him as he learns and expands his knowledge of stuff!

He has made up his own sign for "please", which is the cutest thing! I don't know how he started doing it, and it's not something we ever do. It just seemed to be something he made up himself. I need to take a photo of him doing it, somehow. It's one I NEED a photographic record of, just because I know I'll be sad the day he stops doing it and it's just a memory! If he wants something, he points to it, but now instead of just pointing and saying, "Uh!" in a demanding or questioning tone, he does this funny little clasp of his hands with one on top of the other, at the same time as shrugging his shoulders right up to his ears and grinning his most winning smile, the type that makes his nose wrinkle up :) If he asks for something and I ask him if he would like the whatever-it-is, he does his please sign then too :) I love it! I will try to get a photo.

Okay there is sure to be a ton more but I have got the WORST indigestion and can't sit here any longer! Plus it's late so I should get some sleep when my tummy gives me a break! My morning sickness seems to be back somewhat lately, which is a bit sucky, but oh well. It's Mother's Day today, and Neil forgot. I don't tend to make anything of Mother's Day because my mum never did. So I shouldn't expect anything! But I guess lately I feel sooooo tired and pushed to the end of my own limits, purely as a result of being a mother! And I guess it would have been nice to be congratulated or something for being a mother today, as a result. Instead I had to remind Neil to ring his own mother (who DOES do Mother's Day!)! I felt kind of silly about it earlier, but there's really no reason to. I am a blessed mama all the time, even when it's hard work! I have a precious little boy who snuggles with me and loves my presence still, and a tiny hiccupy squirmy boy who I get to have the joy of meeting and doing it all again with, in just a couple of months! I have a lovely, kind, scatterbrained husband, haha! ;) And lovely Meg whose Happy Mother's Day message today really cheered me up :) Thanks Meg! xx Happy Mother's Day to all the UK mummies!

Much better :) And 16 months old!!

Just wanted to update (supposedly briefly, as it's nearly midnight!) to get a cheerful entry up instead of the last one, and also to say thank you SO MUCH to you lovely people for the uplifting and reassuring notes and messages! And prayers. I reeeally appreciate prayers :)

I had no idea so many others completely identified with the way I felt when I wrote the last entry, and I'm so grateful that you took the time to let me know it! :) It really helped me. Time helped as well, because I felt less raw about it by the evening, and even less so the next day. It was just a baaad day, and although I was slightly nervous about the next day being just as bad, it really wasn't. It was so much better. I had a better night's sleep. I just FELT more together that day, and Arthur seemed in a mood to cooperate instead of the way he was being the day before! So it was way better, and that helped me feel better about it all too :) So, phew! I don't feel like I am a horrible mummy any more.

It is weekend and I love the weekend! It means I can lie in because Neil does stuff with Arthur during the morning, and it means a BATH - how GROSS is it that I only get to take one single bath every week?! Uggggh. I hate that. I feel like the most revolting person ever, but yeah, Saturday is the only day I get a chance to bath. I have been washing my hair at the kitchen sink (also very gross of me) during the week while Arthur plays with saucepans on the floor, but my bump is getting too big to bend over the sink now. Neil and I keep talking about how we can arrange for me to get the chance for more baths, hehe! It sounds so ridiculous! But I barely get to sit on my butt, let alone relax or take a bath, in the day time when Arthur is awake. He naps too inconsistently for me to bath while he takes a nap. Evenings are so precious and short, and I tried an evening bath twice before, but both times I woke Arthur and then he was inconsolable with Neil while I hauled myself out of the bath and dried as quickly as I could. So hmmm. I even tried bathing in the DARK during the evening, in case it was the bathroom light or fan that woke Arthur, but he woke anyway. He is just kind of wakeful. It's potluck as to whether he will wake during the evening or not, and how much. He needs me to resettle him every time at the moment, but we need to help him change that before Matthew arrives.

Anyway. At the weekend I get time for a bath. But it's definitely not good enough! Especially if I can't wash my hair at the sink anymore. I can't take Arthur into the bathroom with me because it is tiny and he is drawn like a magnet to the toilet, which I don't want him ANYWHERE near! And throws toilet paper in the bath. The whole roll. Unravelled carefully first. Also I can't take him into the bath with me. I can't wash myself with a (very) squirmy boy to handle, and I don't trust my balance getting out with him now. I am thinking I will have to have a quick bath when Neil gets home from work, but that is when Arthur has HIS bath and then goes to bed, so it might put Arthur's bedtime off. Hmmm. So frustrating!

I can't believe I just wrote about this. I am so ashamed of my poor hygiene! Why on earth would I just broadcast it to the world?! Urgh. By the way, I DO wash and deoderize on weekdays!

Anyway, but yay, I am cleeeean right now! :) Don't you just love that freshly-bathed feeling, in clean pyjamas with clean hair and clean bedsheets to climb in between at bedtime?! Heavenly.

Also I just LOVE my lil boy. I always do, but you know sometimes you just get a surge of the feeling, and it just overwhelms you? I have had that a lot today. I love his laugh, and his funny serious expressions, and his little voice as he tries out words (he still isn't trying many yet!), and I love his little staggery run and his purposeful walk. I love the way he smiles with his whole face and his eyes sparkle when I sing action songs with him. I love how soft and springy his hair is, and how WONDERFUL it smells all the time. I love how soft and squidgy his cheeks are, and how I have to stop myself from kissing them sometimes because once I start, I honestly can't stop. He gets fed up with it if I go on long enough, or else I am kissing his cheeks while he's asleep and I have to make myself stop so that I don't wake him up. I love soooooooooo much about him, and about being his mummy. I think if I decided to write each and every thing, I would never stop writing. He's the most wonderful little being I ever knew!

Today we all went to Homebase to pick up some wall plugs to refit the stair gate that came away from the wall a few weeks ago. It was a great chance to let Arthur run around in a large space and see lots of people. He had a GREAT time, hehe! He got soooo many fond looks from people as he toddled around the place with the most enormous smile on his face! He always looks so happy as he walks along. He is such a happy child, and I'm so thrilled about that. He smiles ALL the time. People even ask me if he does, and I have to say yes! He just seems so thrilled with life and all the new things he sees and does. He loves to be around people.

We got wall plugs and came home, and Neil fixed the stair gate, so Arthur had a rather hyper time after tea having a completely free rein upstairs for the first time since before his last plaster cast! We all played pounce-and-tickle on our big floorbed :) I love family moments like that. We should have more of them. Arthur squealed and giggled and rolled and crawled and dodged and got hiccups :)

The other day I went to the loo and when I came down, I found Arthur sitting on the sofa (he had been playing with toys on the floor before) with the box of teething powders, which he must have got by climbing up to the bookshelves and taking them down from a place we thought was "out of reach"! He had already chewed the cardboard box into tiny pieces, which were scattered around him all over the sofa, and was working on his first sachet of teething powder! When he saw me on the stairs, he didn't stop, or look guilty or anything. He just gave me the most enormous smile and signed medicine frantically over and over for 30 seconds without stopping! Hehe! Funny boy :) I love when he can communicate with us, even if he is being a monkey in the process! He seems so pleased to communicate.

He doesn't say much still. He babbles and "chats" CONSTANTLY, he is hardly ever quiet. He talks to himself in a shouting voice in the mirror (quite funny to watch!) and talks to the toy doggie in woofs :) He cheerfully attempts all sorts of words and sounds that we make, but isn't ever consistent at saying them the next time we do. He did have a pretty successful go at "ladle" the other day though. He likes to play with the plastic ladle and stirs imaginary stuff in the saucepans with it. If I say, "Ohhh you've got a LADLE!", he will cheerfully sing out, "Day-lay!" and wave it at me before continuing his stirring game :) Mummy says that my brother started out with quite a few words that seemed back-to-front at first. He pronounced my name, "Ashil", which is how I was known for a few years when he was very little!

Arthur says the starting sounds for a few words now, but they don't resemble the words yet. I know he is attempting them, but only because I am around each time and can hear that it's the same sound consistently, every time he refers to the item. "Bib" is just "B", for example, and duck is often "D". He makes such cute little animal sounds, and also sounds for some household items and other things like sirens, steam irons hissing, etc. The other day he had a musical toy playing, and I was absent-mindedly lah-ing along to it. He started to mimic me singing la-la-la to the tune, and now he really loves lah-ing to that toy! I LOVE when he does it, because he is just so cute at it! He lahs so sweetly, and his voice is so tiny and chipmunky, and he is so exaggerated with his tongue, which sticks right out and curls up onto his lip each time he lahs! :) So cute!

Arthur is 16 months old!!! Where is the time going?! I can't believe how big he's getting or how much he is changing from just a few months ago. He pretty much never walks any more, at a normal pace anyway. He seems to go everywhere at a race-walk! He does a funny little stumbly staggery run if he is in a particular hurry, but sometimes that results in a tumble. If he is REALLY eager to get somewhere, like into the kitchen the instant he hears the dishwasher being opened (he is obsessed with that thing!), he does the funny little stumbly run with his head down and his elbows pumping up behind him, almost as high as his head, hehehe! He is so funny :) He walks WAY more steadily outside than he did a month ago. He doesn't really take any falls now, even though he sometimes walks with his head literally turned 180 degrees behind him! He just stares and stares at whatever catches his interest, and can't tear his eyes off things, but still keeps walking all the same. Of course he veers off course and nearly walks into walls and all sorts! I do a lot of steering at times like this, and seem to say, "Watch where you're going Arthur!" a lot now! But he doesn't fall nearly as much. His footing is way more steady in outdoor shoes and boots now. Anyway, he never keeps still, indoors or outdoors. Unless he is sitting down playing with something he's really interested in, it's almost impossible to get a photo of him these days that isn't in motion in some way!...

We went to Playgroup on Wednesday but it wasn't the best time we've had there really. Arthur was tired out before we even got there, and we only went for the last 45 minutes anyway. He wanted to paint as soon as we were there, and even sat on a tiny chair near the painting table, staring wistfully, but every seat was taken at the time. He lost interest after a while and when I brought him back to it later, when I saw it was free, he didn't want to paint any more. We have lost his first painting! I don't know where it is! When I went to bed, it was on the fridge door. The next morning, nada. Just gone! Neil had been up with Arthur an hour or so by then, but he said he didn't move it and didn't see it lying around. It was waaaaay too high for Arthur to reach, although he could have grabbed at it if Neil was carrying him past the fridge. Anyway it's totally gone. I am so sad! I hope we find it, but we have looked everywhere. I guess Arthur must have found it on the floor somehow and has done something with it. I really hope it turns up. I'm just glad I scanned it!

Anyway, we had to come home from Playgroup before the singing time finished at the end, as Arthur was just getting cranky and miserable and tired. Very unlike Arthur, but he was at the end of a yucky cold, which has allllmost gone now (and I didn't catch it, yay!) and seemed to get extra tired by it as he was getting better. He had a 3 hour nap one day this week!!! Wow.

I am ultra nervous about Playgroup (and other social things) again, as I overheard some mums talking about the horrible stomach bug their kids had had during the week. One was saying her child only got better yesterday! Yikes! Don't people know that vomiting and diarrhoea bugs are still contagious up to 3 days after all symptoms have stopped?!?!??! It drives me crazy. Of course the instant their kids seem better, they take them back to mix with other children. No wonder these bugs spread like they do. Urgh. And Jaya and her daddy have had a HORRIBLE sounding tummy bug so it makes me nervous that these things are "about". I spent 2 days all anxious wondering if Arthur or I would come down with anything pukey after Playgroup, and finally relaxed today - 3 days afterwards and still feeling healthy! :) I hate being fearful about this. Roll on non-germy season!

Ohhhh I forgot to say before - Arthur and I went to visit Cameron's mum last week! I phoned her because I hadn't spoken to her since the end of last summer, and that was the last time we saw her too. We didn't get to see Nathan (Cam's youngest brother) that time either, because he was napping, so the last time I saw him was when Arthur was a newborn and Nathan was 14 months old! Anyway we had a lovely chat on the phone and she was delighted for us that we are expecting another baby boy! She invited us for an early lunch on Thursday, and so we went! I think it was FINALLY the first time that I felt happy pulling up in front of their house and going in, since before Cam died. I mean, going there didn't fill me with longing for him or that weird jangly "something's not right" sadness that he is missing. Maybe enough time has passed now that it feels normal that he is gone. That seems a sad realisation, but I suppose it is inevitable.

It was a happy time though, and I really enjoyed taking Arthur there. He was charming and confident and Cam's mum was really taken by him :) She couldn't believe how big he was (he's as tall as her little boy who was 2 last October!!) and how much he has changed - obviously, since he was only weeks old when she saw him last! Nathan is gorgeous. He reminds me of Michael (Cam's other brother) more than Cameron, which perhaps made it easier for me to not focus on Cam while we were there.

We had lunch (I took Arthur's there with me) and Arthur sat up to the table in Nathan's tray-less high chair! He LOVED that. I loved it too. Arthur's own highchair has a tray that won't remove, and we are seriously contemplating replacing it with a better one that has a removable tray and can go up to a table when the little one is big enough. He seemed soooo much more involved in our meal, and for the first time EVER, he fed himself his whole meal with his spoon, absolutely perfectly, without spilling anything! Cam's mum told me that can be quite normal when you take your little one out to eat with friends, and that he might not necessarily do it at home! He hasn't fed himself quite as well at home since, but he is feeding himself quite consistently now with his little toddler spoon. He is very accurate at getting all the food into his mouth, and doesn't slop any down his front. I always feel amazed when I watch him feed himself so well. It's like, I can't believe he is doing that! He was only just starting solids YESTERDAY, or something! It's crazy how fast it goes.

There are photos of Cameron all over their house. I love that. There's one of me and him from my wedding day on their mantlepiece :) It's getting much easier to talk casually about him with his mum now. She always did just talk comfortably with others about him. Maybe she felt less comfortable underneath? I always did, but I tried to do the casual chat about him all the same. Now it's not such an effort to do. He has been gone.... well, as long as Nathan is old. Nathan was born the day before Cameron's funeral. It feels like MUCH longer, but then soooo much has happened to me since then!

Arthur put all the shapes through Nathan's shape sorter and his mum was amazed! I think he must be ahead for that, but when people say so, I just say that different children seem to develop different things at different rates. I AM pretty proud of him for being so good at that kind of thing early :) But I don't want to be all arsey about it (sorry, that's such a crass word, but I can't think of a better one right now!) though, and it's TRUE that he's just working on some things early and not so much on other things. Alex (a few weeks older than Arthur) is saying EVER so many words, the clever girl! And Arthur hardly says any. So it evens out. They can all do ALL these things the same in a year or so anyway, so it doesn't really matter what order it's in for now. But he IS good at dextrous things at the moment.

He is currently working on building bridges with bricks, and building Duplo into multi-coloured towers - no longer same-coloured towers like he was doing a week ago. He specifically makes stripey towers out of the same two colours, say blue and green. One green brick, one blue, one green, one blue. He is really trying new things out. He can put the tumble dryer on for a specific programme - not that he knows which one he's choosing of course! The other day I found it anti-creasing an empty load after an "extra dry" cycle, hehe!!

He loves to help with any household chore. He sweeps the kitchen floor with his little broom, vigorously and with a very serious expression! He sweeps so hard that he nearly loses his balance sometimes, hehe! He prefers the real dustpan and brush to his own toy one, unfortunately! He puts any piece of rubbish he finds - even a single crumb or tiny piece of thread - into the bin. If I give him a wet cloth wipe, he loves to clean his snack table (a small low table at perfect height for Arthur in the living room, that we put his snack on mid-morning and mid-afternoon), or even the carpet! He blew his own nose this week!!! I was on the phone and he was blowing his nose gently with his chin out in my direction - an action that means, "Mummy, my nose is all snotty and it needs blowing please!" But I couldn't stop right then and do it, so after a few seconds he just walked over to the box of tissues, pulled one out, put it to his nose and blew gently! He pulled it away to examine it, to see if he had achieved anything (he hadn't), and then proceeded to wipe his nose carefully back and forth from side to side! He got plenty off that way, and then I was able to help him finish it off :) I was so proud of him!!! I made sure to praise him LOADS over it!

Neil has a new bike, which he is starting to use to cycle to work. But it felt too long for him, and sure enough when he checked the measurements he found that the bike shop had sent him the wrong size! So he had to dismantle it ready for them to collect it and leave a replacement that IS the right size. He took it apart on the doorstep as soon as he got home from work the other day. Arthur was absolutely ecstatic to be allowed to watch and even HOLD part of the bike while his daddy took it off the main frame! He just loves helping Daddy with DIY-ish things :)

Arthur's main fun thing to do is still playing with saucepans (and ovenware - some rather breakable, though sturdy!) on the kitchen floor. He empties out the WHOLE cupboard of this stuff and will play happily for up to an hour (!!), stacking and sorting the pans and bowls, and stirring them with spoons and stuff. I am amazed that they keep him so busy for so long, but he loves them:

My parents are on their way to England! Yay! I am so excited! They are only coming for a few days, and I don't know if we'll see them much, but I know I'll get to see them at least once, and I can't WAIT!!!! My lovely Granny had a hip replacement on Wednesday (her third - not that she has 3 hips (!!), but one replacement has already been replaced, if you see what I mean!) and they are coming to help Grandoug prepare the house for her return from hospital, and to bring her home, if all is well, next Wednesday. Her surgery went really well and she seems to be recovering well too, so I am relieved and thankful. She isn't in pain, but she is having a hard time with the physiotherapy which has already started. I know my parents will be visiting her a lot and spending time with Grandoug while he's on his own, as that's the whole reason for their visit. BUT, Mummy is coming on Monday for sure, to spend most of the day with me and Arthur!!!!!!!!! I am so excited!! I can't wait for Monday! I love my mummy sooooooo. I can't wait for her to see Arthur again. I know he will have changed so much, and she will love him soooo much and he will enjoy her company loads. I just can't wait :)

Okay, I've done it again, and it's stupidly late, so I am going to bed! Oh, I almost forgot - I updated my breastfeeding milestone blinkie to 16 months!! :) And I added a few more blinkies that I found that I love (so sorry!) - the tired mama one is GREAT, hehe! And I thought I should make reference to Matthew in my blinkies at this diary now too! So there they are :) Now to bed! But I will update again soon, and thank you again for the loving support you guys give me here :) xxx

Crappy Mummy :(

Having a really really really bad morning :( Arthur is sleeping at a weird time for his nap and I need to offload/confess/something-or-other.

I think I hurt Arthur :( I have no excuses other than I am just a horrible mother. I know most of the time I am not a horrible mother but you can't use that as a make-it-all-better phrase if you hurt your child, can you.

Last night I had just about THE most crappy and painful night's sleep yet this pregnancy, and it wasn't Arthur's fault that I woke a million times and couldn't get comfy. He only woke once actually, around 3am, and then he was up for the day at 6.30. A pretty good night for Arthur.

Today I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooo tired and have about this > < much patience. That's not Arthur's fault either. It hurts me to get up and down from sitting (in my pubic bone, which is suddenly shouting the joys of the third trimester) so much so that I just want to stay sitting as much as I can, especially just after getting up. Arthur uses his time to climb on furniture and switch the TV and stereo on and off and on and off and on and off, ad infinitum, and he opens and closes the freezer door, loads POOEY nappies into the washing machine from the nappy pail, climbs on his toy garage that will most definitely break pretty soon if he keeps doing it, bites everything in sight, etc, etc. These are all things I have told him 50 thousand times NOT to do, and he knows it. I know it's normal that he's testing me but when I feel like this I absolutely can't stand it. He doesn't even register me telling him not to do something, just carries on without even hesitating. I feel like I am talking to a brick wall, and it's more frustrating because I KNOW he understands me and hears me. Of course he leaves me no choice but to get up off my sore butt and physically remove him from the place where he's causing mischief. Then I sink breathlessly back down on said sore butt and about 0.3 seconds later, Arthur is doing another thing he shouldn't do, and after several, "Arthur, don't touch that please.... Arthur, Mummy said don't touch that! Arthur, no!" I have to get up and remove him again.

If I don't, then surely that is no good because it isn't consistent and I know I need to be consistent with teaching him what is acceptable and what isn't. Although lately I admit that there have been times when I simply have not had the energy to keep getting up and moving him away from stuff he shouldn't be getting into. I can't lock everything away or child-proof EVERYTHING he's into - we just don't have the space to relocate items or put him in a place that isn't closed off. Our house is too small. I would have to use a playpen or something and there is noooo way I want to do that. Arthur would hate it anyway.

He needs to learn to mind what Mummy says, but so far I am persevering and it totally isn't working.

Anyway. We had Fellowship Group this morning, which I always look forward to because it's just such a nice group of ladies with their little ones at one of their houses. It's such a shame it's only every other week. So we were running a bit late for Fellowship Group and I had to change Arthur's nappy because I could smell poo. Nappy time is getting to be a nightmare here. The instant that nappy was off, despite distractions that I'd arranged for him while I did it, he grabbed his bits (pooey) and when I tried to get his hands so I could clean them, he twisted and writhed and tossed his legs this way and that, just doing ANYTHING so that it would cause me maximum difficulty in getting his nappy off, bum cleaned and a new nappy on. He does this a lot but it's awful when he has done a poo. Of course I am constantly telling him to be still, listen to Mummy, don't do that, etc. But asking him these things just seems to make him more vigorous than ever in his movements and if I start to get angry and raise my voice (which I NEVER wanted to do) he laughs and laughs while he's wriggling. It. Drives. Me. Crazy. I usually get through it but today I just had no rope left at all. Sometimes if he's really wriggly I pin his legs down with my ankles (!) so that I can keep him in one position and hold his hands with one of mine, and clean his bum with the other hand. It's a palava but it gets it done. Arthur doesn't like it, but hey ho.

Today I went to do that same thing, because poo was going everywhere and Arthur was just being as difficult as he could be. But I was so angry that I pinned him down too hard. I think I wrenched his hips when I shoved his legs apart and onto the floor to put my ankles on them :( He was laughing at my annoyance at the time, and in an instant his face changed to a pain reaction and he cried and cried and barely breathed between crying :( He also stopped all his wriggling. I just let go of him like he was a hot coal. I felt terrified that I had hurt him. I cleaned him up as quick as I could, and picked him up without a nappy on to cuddle him. I felt so so so so terrible and so sorry that I had caused him pain.

How can you make that up to your little one, if you have purposely hurt them when they have never had that happen to them before? You can't. He cried for so long, even in my arms, and I cried too and told him over and over and over how sorry Mummy was for hurting him. But that doesn't work either. Saying sorry doesn't make it better. People who actually abuse their children often feel remorse and will try to make up for it afterwards, but they are still people who abuse their children.

I feel absolutely indescribable. Sure, I feel terribly sorry and I love Arthur beyond measure, but how is that different from parents who abuse their kids? I am just a terrible mother today. Not just, oh I'm so crap. I am a genuinely terrible mother today. I hurt my child, and it wasn't really an accident.

I cried for an hour and my face was too swollen to show its sorry state at Fellowship Group, so we couldn't go. Arthur recovered okay. He is walking and moving fine and playing happily with his toys. He is very tired at the end of his horrid cold, and in the end he seemed like he needed a nap way before nap time. It was the same yesterday and I made him wait till the usual time, which backfired big time, so I put him down early today and he has slept 40 minutes so far. So here I am to offload, and confess. I wish Neil or my mum had been available when I was upset and wanting to tell someone what I'd done, but they were both on voicemail :(

I feel just horrible. Nothing can erase what I did today and nothing can make it better, even if Arthur is a precious little love who trusts and loves his Mummy and is happy to forgive and forget within no time at all. How can I forgive myself for it? My instincts towards Arthur make me want to tear out my own insides and stamp on them. But that rather conflicts with self-preservation!

I don't know. Anyway. Arthur is waking up. I guess I'll post this and write a normal entry another time - hopefully soon. Arthur is 16 months old today and I wanted to write normal happy stuff about him. I just love him so much. Maybe that's not enough? I need some self-control. Maybe I even need help? I don't know. I am really weepy at the moment but maybe that's just hormones, or the weight of what I have done today. I need some chocolate. And Arthur is definitely waking up. My face has gone down enough so I think I will give him lunch and then we'll go food shopping. We need milk anyway. It will be weird to go out when he is normally napping. Maybe I can get him to take another nap later this afternoon? Otherwise I have just buggered up the day for him sleep-wise. Hmmm.... although if he has a late afternoon nap then he might not go to bed well at bedtime? He has gone quiet again.

I wish I could rewind today and start again.

NOT colour-blind, yay!!!! :D

Just a quick entry (haha!) to say thank you for the comments on the pictures of Arthur last entry, and that I owe people emails which I promise I WILL get around to!! If that's you, then I am soooo sorry! I will get there soon! And also, I heart the BT man, who brought me a new modem today at no cost (!!!!!) and fitted it and showed me how to use it, and now I have lovely jubbly internet access 24/7 again! Yaaaaaaay! I hate when I can't get online.

And ALSO, huge congratulations to Jemma on the slightly early arrival of little Jove!!! So exciting! :) New babies, yay!

I am sooooo pleased because I think I have been given a fairly good sign that Arthur ISN'T colour blind this afternoon! It's a wait-and-see game, you see, because my mum is a carrier (girls carry, boys suffer, in general - unless both parents have it (father suffering from it and mother carrying), and that's the only way a girl could actually be colour-blind). My brother is colour blind (mainly red/green (and thus brown also) - he absolutely can NOT see a difference between the two, but also blue/purple to some degree) and I remember him colouring in a tree trunk green and the leaves red when he was little, and not knowing anything about it. It was a normal thing for him to ask me which colour pencil he was holding before he started using it, when we were doing our homework or something. I also remember he would get really picked on by "friends" over games of Space Invader or stuff like that. He could not tell the red baddies from the green friendly aliens and would shoot the wrong things or let the baddies get too close, thinking they were friendly :( His friends used to tear strips off him for it, and Bennie never stood up for himself over it, and I remember wanting to smack their heads in for it! He used to play Little League football (soccer) and his team wore red. If they played the green team he was basically in trouble! Poor Bennie. I felt for him soooo much over it. He wanted to be an electrician for a while but he found out he would not be able to, being colour blind. He is a computer programmer instead :)

Anyway. So Mummy carries the colour blindness gene on one of her two X chromosomes, and therefore her children each have a 50/50 chance of getting the X chromosome with the colour blindness gene. It's sort of luck-of-the-draw with each child therefore. My brother picked that X, unfortunately. I can't really know if I did or not. If I did, then all of my children will have the same 50/50 chance of taking my X with the colour blindness gene, like with my own mother. Any sons I have could be colour blind, and any daughters I have could be carriers to their own children. The only way to find out is if I have any sons who are colour blind. Then I will know that I did! If I only had daughters, I would have to wait until they had sons to see if any of THEM were colour blind or not. If I have several sons who are not colour blind, it's not definite, but I think I would assume that I didn't inherit it. Anyway, so Arthur is the test. I have been hoping and praying that he isn't colour blind since I found out I was having a boy during my pregnancy with him.

The health visitor told me they can't test for colour blindness until a child is at least 3, but they usually don't actually test it until primary school! That's AGES!!! I'm SURE it's possible for him to tell me if he can see a picture amongst the red and green coloured bubbles on those pictures BEFORE age three! But there we go, that's the way it is done. I planned to watch out for myself and see if I could tell one way or the other. I didn't expect to have any clue until he really knew his colours though, much later on. But amazingly, this afternoon the perfect opportunity arose! He was busy building towers of Duplo again in their individual colours. He builds red and green towers separately, and has not mixed them up yet, so I had wondered if that was a good sign, but I figured it was too vague a thing to pin it on, one way or the other. But anyway, today he was building a green tower, and searching through the pile of Duplo bricks for more green ones. The last green one was stuck together with a red one, and he spotted it, put his green tower down carefully, and pulled the red and green bricks apart. He didn't hesitate in putting the red one back on the pile, and sticking the green one on his green tower!!!! I know it's not 100% confirmation, but I feel soooooo thrilled and hopeful that he must not be colour blind if he did that! If he is colour blind, I know from my brother that he simply would not be able to see the difference between those two colours, and he picked them apart easily and with careful thought over which was which. I am soooooooooooooooo happy!!! I phoned my mum IMMEDIATELY and she said it did sound like he couldn't possibly be colour blind :) We were both so excited over it! Yay yay yay yay yay yaaaaaaay!

Of course, even if he ISN'T, it could still be that I am a carrier and he just inherited my X chromosome that DOESN'T have the colour blindness gene. So we will wait and see all over again with Matthew. I think I will relax a lot more if Matthew is not colour blind either. Anyway I am just so so so so so so happy about that! I had to write about it here :)

I am having a Braxton Hicks contraction. La-la-la.

Arthur has a horrible cold, poor love. Neil's cold is all but gone, already!! They are soooo obviously different colds. Today I decided to have Arthur take his nap with his head on a pillow like Neil and I sleep, to elevate his head and ease his breathing. He is soooo snotty and can't breathe at all to breastfeed or sleep. It's the first time we've given him a pillow to sleep on, so I wasn't sure how well it would work. But it went amazingly well! I checked on him a million times, worrying that he was face down on it and suffocating, but I know that he is old enough to sleep safely on pillows now, and would turn over in his sleep if he couldn't breathe for any reason. I don't know if it was the pillow or just the fact that he isn't well, but he had a THREE HOUR NAP today!!!!!! He has never ever ever ever slept that long in the day before! Even as a new baby! I was hovering round the bedroom and worrying after 2 hours (typical!) and eventually I phoned my parents and Daddy told me not to worry - Arthur wasn't well and it was GREAT that he was taking extra sleep to help him get better. I should leave him sleeping as long as he needed, and not wake him up! Even if it meant bedtime was a little difficult. So I did, and he woke after 3 hours! It took him nearly an hour to wake up properly too, and he was quite unlike himself during that time, just lying on the floor on his side and watching TV all glassy-eyed :( I got worried again but then he perked up and was as lively and cheerful as ever :) I will be so glad when he gets over his cold! Of course in two days we go back to Playgroup again to seek out new germs, haha! I HOPE we do not come away with any this time.

He is sleeping on the pillow again now, and has been asleep for nearly 4 hours so far :) He is definitely breathing better for it, although he does have a cloth wipe soaked in Karvol (decongestant stuff for little ones) near him too, so that helps! We are thinking we might consider giving him a pillow of his own to sleep on at night now. But we'll see. He seems soooo much more settled and he doesn't roll around the bed so much, waking himself up when he gets wedged in the corners! Hopefully that might be a good thing for when we transition him to the single mattress. Wow, he is getting such a big boy! He sleeps on a full-size mattress under a full-size duvet cover, with his little head on a grown-up pillow! He looks sooooo tiny though, against the big pillow, and with his little shape humped up under the big duvet :) Sweetie-boy. I love to look in on him and see him sleeping peacefully.

Oh I forgot to say ages ago that we turned Arthur's car seat to forward-facing when he got his latest plaster cast on last month. We had no intention of switching him from rear-facing for a LONG time yet (see this fab article for why) but with his leg in plaster, he couldn't curl it up enough to fit against the back of the seat. So we had to turn him forwards while he had his cast on. I was not happy to do it though. Anyway it was soooooooo much easier to put him in and take him out of his car seat, and he loved seeing everything out of the front of the car, and we just haven't had the heart to turn it back to rear-facing yet. I am not sure that we will now. I feel that we should, for his best safety, but I don't know - I think he is so happy facing forwards that he would complain if we turned him around. Although he is pretty easy going about things so maybe not. And anyway, that's not a good enough reason not to. What IS a better reason is that I am now struggling to get him in the seat FORWARD facing with my growing bump, and I know I would just hurt my back trying to twist round to get him in rear-facing now. So I think forward facing will be better for ME for the rest of my pregnancy. But I wish he could stay rear-facing a bit longer. It's just the safest way for him to be, and he is a pickle for wriggling his arms out of his shoulder straps - VERY dangerous, but way more so if he's forward facing. I am buying this nifty gadget to stop him doing that though :) It's weird not to see him in that rear-view mirror anymore while I'm driving, but lovely to just glance over my shoulder when I'm stopped at a traffic light and see his whole self smiling at me :)

Neil has nearly got his new bike sorted for cycling to work. We have taken him to work a few times recently, which sucks somewhat, but I suppose it has its good points too, as we are then up and about (non-blearily!) earlier than usual and we are at the supermarket bright and early while the shelves are all bursting with fresh stocks! That part is fun. But I NEVER feel like getting myself and Arthur into the car that early in the morning to start with! It's probably good for me though. Anyway I will be glad when Neil has his bike ready. Then all that's left for me to do is worry like a crazy woman about his safety on the roads. *sigh*

I need to sewww. But I haven't got the energy. And quite honestly, squatting down to cut templates out of fabrics on the floor is wreaking havoc on my oesophagus, due to pregnancy-induced acidy-type-issues! I am getting too big to faff about on the floor now, but we don't have any surfaces big enough for cutting fabric. But the sewing urge is not being met therefore. I sense the impending surge of another Sewing Bug where you will not see hide nor hair of me for DAYS while I sew like crazy and get nowhere near enough sleep, hehe! It usually comes to a head like that if I don't get my sewing urges dealt with ;) Plus I am expecting another shipment of luscious fabrics (and a new nappy pattern!!) THIS WEEK from the States, so that will settle it. I will HAVE to sew :)

Another Braxton Hicksy thing. I need to go to bed. And drink some water first! Vitamin C too. I felt really achy around my glands yesterday and yucky, as though I was coming down with something, but I took extra Vit C before bed and I felt okay again in the morning! I feel kind of achy again now so I think I'll do the same again. There is no way I have missed being exposed to Arthur's cold, as we are still sharing saliva (nice!) just as much as ever - he feeds me his food from his spoon, and gives me rather wet kisses, and he is SO drooly at the moment anyway with that new molar coming through, that it's hard to find anything (furniture, clothing, utensils, etc!!) WITHOUT cold-germ drool on it! So I will be very pleased if I somehow manage to fight this cold off without getting it. I am going to take more Vitamin C and go to bed! And I neeed to update my pregnancy diary soon. Tomorrow is the last day of my 2nd trimester - can you believe it?! Matthew will be here before I know it... Which is kind of scary. But WONDERFUL too!!

First painting!!! And other stuff....

Our NEW modem seems to have snuffed it. I can’t understand why our modems keep on being useless (when they were previously working perfectly), and yet when the BT bloke comes to test them, they check out fine. He gave us his own one last time which has managed to work for a few months, but it has suddenly stopped working this evening. It gives random windows of about 60 seconds connection here and there, but it’s definitely getting worse as the evening goes on, so I am not really able to get online at all. Tsk! I am writing this on Word in case I get a few seconds to post it sometime.

It’s late so I can’t write for long.

We had a busy week – I don’t know where it went! On Tuesday we went to the last hour of a mother-and-toddler group that we haven’t been to in months. My friend at church runs it (one of my pregnant friends at church!) and we had planned for her to come home with us afterwards for lunch. We missed most of the activities but got there in time for some singing and then free-play time in the hall with the trikes and floor toys. Arthur loved it! He rode a trike with my help but didn’t seem that crazy about it. He played in the play kitchen and opened and shut the windows on the play house a MILLION times, over and over! He also jumped on the trampoline properly for the first time, and he really liked that. We did buy him one for his first birthday but never put it together (how terrible of us!) as we just can’t find space in our tiny house to put it when it’s up!

Arthur had his first bad fall in the hall that morning :( He was pushing a tricycle around the hall for ages, and then he tried to push it sideways on, and overbalanced and toppled right over it. His legs just flipped up in the air and his head went down, and the hall has a hard floor. He landed on his nose and mouth and couldn’t move as his legs were stuck on the trike, poor baby! I didn’t see it happen properly as I was just turning to see what he was doing at the very second it happened, so I just saw the flip-crash move happening as I turned! I also saw every single mother in the whole place react as one, it was so uncanny! They were mostly with their own children, scattered around the hall, and others were chatting with each other. But ALL of them saw Arthur’s accident and they all seemed to lunge forwards in his direction with one accord! I felt touched by the raw concern on their faces, but I know it’s just instinct and I would have done the same for any of the other kiddies there who might have had a similar accident. It was one of those occasions where I felt so proud to be “The Mummy” and everyone fell back while I (THE Mummy!) stepped in to help Arthur and comfort him. I felt so sad for my poor little love as he really hurt himself. He cried a lot and I held him close and kissed him, and I wasn’t actually shaken by it until someone pointed out that he was bleeding. He got a nosebleed from landing on his poor nose and his lip was a little cut and swollen. It’s the first time he has ever got hurt and drawn blood properly in a fall, so I guess that’s why I felt really quite shaken by it after that. I just took him to a quiet area and cuddled him on my lap, and held one of our convenient cloth wipes that someone kindly wet for me under a cold tap, under his nose. He recovered long before his nose stopped bleeding and was smiling and trying to get back in the big hall just a couple of minutes later, with me trailing after him saying things like, “Let Mummy just check your nose, Arthur….” and similarly feeble things! He didn’t have a bad nosebleed, and he was as cheerful and energetic as ever just minutes later, and not remotely put off the trikes or the big hall full of toys and children! He makes me so proud :)

We did have my friend here for lunch and it was lovely. Arthur had his lunch and then napped TWO HOURS through her visit, so that was wonderful!! I did have to resettle him after the first 50 minutes but he surprised me by going back to sleep again easily. He has started napping WAY better all of a sudden, just this last week or two. I don’t know why. He has had patches like that in the past but they seemed to coincide with a growth spurt or something, and never lasted more than a week. So far he is still napping well in the day, and dropping off very quickly as I nurse him, even when he had been excitable and energetically playing just minutes before! I am tending to stick to a time that he has his naps now, rather than play it by ear and see when he looks sleepy, as that doesn’t seem to work so well with Arthur. Either I don’t read the signs well and miss the ideal window for him, or he naps too late in the day and that messes up bedtime. Or I see him looking sleepy really early, and act on it, and then he is cranky and tired through the long patch of the afternoon. So now he has much more of a routine, which seems to be suiting him way better. Neil gets up with him and gives him breakfast in the morning, and I get up when Neil has to go to work. We always have to go out in the mornings now. Arthur is so energetic and eager to see things and go places that he goes crazy if I don’t take him out at least once a day! We tend to go for a walk round the local streets before his lunch, when we don’t go to Playgroup or something.

Lunch time is pretty much always 11.30 on the dot. Arthur likes his lunch on time! Sometimes I’m disorganised and it comes 15 minutes later, and when we go to Playgroup or other groups, we don’t get home till noon or even 12.30 sometimes, so then he has lunch later. He NEEDS a substantial morning snack these days. Not huge though, just something like a yoghurt-covered cereal bar or a banana and some raisins, or cheese biscuits, etc. If I know he’ll have lunch later than he’s used to, I give him a slightly bigger snack, or offer it to him a little later than usual. He goes to the place where I keep his snack things when he wants a snack, and shouts, “Dack, dack!!” enthusiastically, hehe! “Dack, dack!” is also the same “word” for snap (as in poppers – I tend to call them snaps like they do in the States, because I just prefer the word, and also it makes more sense for Arthur because they really do just go SNAP! when I put them together or bang them onto a new nappy or something! So he has learned to call them “Dack, dack!!”s :) )

So after lunch, it’s usually somewhere between 12 and 1pm, and I give Arthur maybe 15-30 minutes before putting him in bed. Sometimes he has had lunch later so I put him down straight away, or he’s sooo tired during lunch that I put him down as soon as he’s finished. Usually I like him to digest a little first :) He perks up after lunch and can play very energetically, but I still take him up when I think it’s a good time, and he always responds to it, so I think I must be doing something right at last! He sometimes goes to sleep within SIXTY SECONDS, which used to be just unheard of for Arthur! And he is right out after that. I don’t have to creep away carefully, or tiptoe around the house, and he sleeps for much longer. So it’s working well.

Bedtime is NOT working so well, and it is still taking us a very frustrating hour to get him to sleep. He fidgets and nurses on and off, and gets up at least three or four times for a drink of water, and eventually I am toooo sore to nurse him anymore, after which time he just cries and fights our efforts to put him to bed. Urgh. He usually falls asleep by accident after a physical struggle to keep him lying down on the bed, which is NOT the way we want it to be. He is also waking aplenty at night, despite there being no nursing at night and all the “experts” assuring me in their manuals that my baby is now peacefully sleeping through the night – how frustrating is that?!!! It is driving me absolutely crazy as I am soooo tired and can’t fathom why he is still so wakeful and dependent on me to go back to sleep. I absolutely don’t want to leave him to cry though.

I have a new plan. I went back to the Dr. Jay Gordon method for changing the sleep pattern in the family bed (can’t link it as stupid modem not working to allow me to find the link, sorry!) to see if I had cut any corners or done anything wrong the first time around, and I think I HAVE. I was not nursing him and then putting him in bed AWAKE. I still lay next to him to nurse him and just detached him gently when he was dozing off to sleep (though not entirely asleep). This method says I have to make sure he’s fully awake and then put him in bed. So I guess that means an end to snuggling on our sides tummy-to-tummy to nurse :( I am sooooooooo sad about that, as we both love it and would never want it to change, but something desperately needs to happen with his sleep and his dependence on me to get him to sleep, before Matthew is born. We still have our big family floor bed with the new single mattress up against our kingsize. We are going to put the mesh bedguard on the open side of the single mattress (even though it’s on the floor, to save him rolling right off the bed, as he’s very rolly in his sleep!) and then separate the single mattress from the kingsize one by placing one of my long maternity pillows down the bed where the mattresses join. It will still be a big family bed, but he will be in his own space in it, and it will be almost an enforced separate space really. I don’t like the enforced bit, but oh well. Anyway, so I will nurse him on our mattress and then PUT him into bed in his single mattress, and start the Dr. Jay Gordon plan again by sitting with him instead of lying next to him. I think it will be HARD for a while, as he does not do well without me snuggled up next to him, and cries a lot for a long time. But I think it’s time that he learned that he can go to sleep by himself, and that Mummy will not leave him while he does so, and that this is how it is now, in our family – Mummy and Daddy sleep in their own space, and Arthur in his own space, even though we are all staying right next to each other. I don’t personally WANT any more distance between me and my little one than that at night, so I wouldn’t consider moving him to his own room unless it became necessary, say if he was being disturbed by us at night (which MIGHT happen when Matthew is added to the equation!). Anyway. I am just waiting on the delivery of a waterproof single mattress protector (should be here in a few days) and then we’ll start. Urgh. I am dreading it, and too unconfident to hope that it might work, as I have always hoped before and NOTHING has worked, but it needs doing and it’s well worth a try. I just hope it won’t be too awful!

On Wednesday this week we went to the big playgroup again, yay!! It’s only the third time we’ve been, and Arthur caught some lurgy both of the other times. I guess it’s inevitable with the enormous amount of toddlers (75 last time!!!) there, but it’s a good thing for his immune system I guess. Not mine though – I seem to catch his things too! In fact the first time we went, it was ME who caught a cold and passed it to Arthur! Tsk.

Well, Arthur LOVED Playgroup, as always. He could barely keep still enough for me to take his coat off when we arrived, and dashed off to get involved in the activities the second he was free of it! He pushed a plastic chair around the place for 15 minutes without stopping, hehe! Funny boy :) He built a huge tower of those Lego Quattro bricks – the REALLY big ones that are softish. I had to lift him up to put the last few bricks on top, as he was so determined and it was far too tall for him to reach. He built a tower all by himself that was a foot taller than he is!! He is soooo into building things. He builds his Duplo for ages now, completely absorbed in it. The other day he surprised me (again) by sorting the Duplo into colours and building a single tall tower out of each colour – a red one, a blue one, a green one, a yellow one, and a black one! He likes to do that a lot at the moment. He also sorts them and builds them by shape, building towers (colour-specific) out of only the square bricks, and then a multi-coloured tower out of the few rectangular bricks in the set. He understands some colours, for example if he is stacking his rings on their stick and he goes to put the blue one on before the yellow one (which needs to go on first), and I say, “Can you put the yellow one on first, Arthur?” – he will drop the blue one and look around until he finds the yellow one, and put that one on instead. He seems to have a preference for the colour pink – he loves pink things! He also seems to be less than excited about the colour blue. It’s fascinating to watch him choose preferences for things, just out of his own interest and leanings. I like to learn new things about my lovely little boy!

Arthur did his first ever painting at Playgroup this week!!! He has seemed completely uninterested in painting and drawing until very recently, and at Playgroup he walked right up to the painting table (walking right past the playdough table though, still not ready for that yet!) and hung about looking interested. A lady asked if he would like to paint, and I said he had never tried it before. She got him an (enormous!) apron and I found a piece of paper, and we sat at the table and painted!! I handed him loaded paintbrushes one at a time with different colours, and he actually dabbed and blobbed them onto the paper in front of him with interest! Yay! I have been looking forward sooooo much to when he gets interested in painting and craft activities and stuff. I am really looking forward to doing things like that with him. I had SO much fun with my own mummy doing that kind of thing when I was very little! I still have fond memories of it, going back as early as before my brother was born (I was nearly 3 then). Arthur also painted his free hand (he painted with his right hand, incidentally) and stared at it unconvinced until I printed it onto the paper to encourage him to finger paint. But he isn’t crazy on finger painting. He just wanted to use the paintbrushes. After I gave him the blue paint, he lost interest, haha! I washed his hands (he LOVES having his hands washed with actual soap these days!) and hung his apron up, and he had already run off into another activity room by the time I was writing his name on his painting and putting it on the rack to dry with all the other children’s paintings – and I can tell you, that was a tearfully proud moment for me :) It’s one of those “Mothering Firsts” that gives me a lump in my throat :) My little man’s first big-boy painting!! And here it is!

And in pride of place as the first piece of artwork by any of our children, on our fridge door later the same day :)

Isn’t it lovely?! Well, I know I’m biased, but still!! ;) The sort of dotty part on the left is where I printed his painted fingers, but he painted the rest himself :) He liked to paint colours on top of other colours. I just love being a Mummy! Suddenly over moments like this it just overwhelms me. I love it so much.

Also at Playgroup I was feeling really tired out and heavy so instead of tailing Arthur everywhere, I decided to go with him into the big hall full of floor toys and just sit on one of the chairs around the edge. That hall is absolutely enormous, and so noisy with all the children playing. You can’t hear someone shouting across it from the other side! I wanted to see if Arthur would just be fine getting on with things without me nearby. He has never shown any sign of having a problem with this, but I always stay near anyway. I made sure he knew where I was, and then just sat and watched him do things. He pushed toys around and played in the kitchen. He watched children climbing on the big wooden climbing frame that he is still too little for really – the kids on there are sooo much bigger than him and it’s such a crowded piece of apparatus. He approached several children and just smiled at them or looked interested in what they were doing, and he examined some small toys here and there. He never once looked my way! I watched him for ages! After a long time he tripped on a toy and fell to his hands and knees. I knew he wasn’t hurt, but I like that he looked up at me right away, from where he was on his hands and knees. I called out (completely muted by all the noise!), “You okay Arthur?” and his expression changed to happy again and he got up and toddled off to play with something else :) That was the only time he looked over at me, so I’m thrilled that he’s so confident. And reassured that he knows where I am if he needs me, and WILL look for me if he wants to.

The only bad thing about Playgroup this week is that – you guessed it! – Arthur has come down with a cold in the last 24 hours. I am sort of relieved because he has had two AWFUL nights where he was waking hourly – HOURLY folks!!!! - and being really unsettled and making me want to cry with exhaustion by the morning. I am hoping it was just down to the cold coming and he’ll sleep a lot better after it clears up. I expect we will have some crappy nights till then though. He woke five times yesterday evening alone, between 7.30 and 11.30pm. Urgh. I think he must have had a sore throat. They are the WORST. I would be that wakeful too, if I had one. Neil came down with a cold the same day, but I’m pretty sure he has a different one to Arthur’s – urgh, let’s hope they don’t give each other their colds (or both to me!)! One cold at a time is enough I think! Neil said everyone at work seems to have a cold at the moment, and he couldn’t have caught the same cold as Arthur since he wasn’t at Playgroup. If he has Arthur’s cold, it would have shown up later. I am taking lots of vitamin C. I reeeally don’t want a cold right now!

Another culprit for the bad sleep was probably the fact that we discovered a little shiny corner of Arthur’s second molar peeking through his gum yesterday! So that is toothie number 9 for Arthur. It’s a top molar, to match the one he has on the other side at the top. He doesn’t have any bottom molars yet, but that’s the order I got my baby teeth too, apparently. The other molar at the top is now just over halfway in – one whole side of it. It’s sharp and he uses it much more to chew food now. Poor Boo, having big ole molars grinding through his gums at the same time as a poxy cold starting :( But he’ll get better soon, I hope. Just in time for another trip to Germ City, uh, I mean Playgroup! ;)

Arthur now makes the sounds for a siren :) What a nice area we live in, that he puts his hand to his ear like five times in one afternoon to sign to me that he can hear a siren outside! But oh well, we use it to learn! I tell him it’s a siren, and mimic the wailing sound of it. Now he signs that he can hear something when he hears a siren, even a reeeally distant one that I wouldn’t have noticed, and then he makes such a cute high-pitched aaaooowwwaaaoowww sound to mimic the siren :) He is so sweet!

He has fallen in love with Neil’s stuffed fluffy toy dog in our bedroom! I bought it for him in the early days of our relationship when we were nauseatingly cutesy with each other, haha! I have a big stuffed grizzly bear toy in the bedroom too, that my brother got me years ago for Christmas. Arthur started pointing to the bear and saying, “Uff uff!” (doggy sounds), so I told him it was a bear and made a growling sound, and showed him the dog and made the doggy sounds. For ages he would still point at the bear and say “uff uff!” but now if I say “bear” he growls. But in the process of all this, he has fallen for that stuffed doggy BIG TIME! He loves it, and likes it when we make it gallop up to him and eat his neck and tummy, “woof, woof, woof”ing all the time! The cutest thing about it is that he spends ages sitting with the doggy, holding its head in his hands right in front of his face, and talking to it in doggy sentences (all made up of “uff”s!). It’s the cutest thing I ever saw.

Ohhhh it’s so late, I am so stoopid! Okay I have to go to bed. I hope the modem is working enough for me to post this before I turn in. It’s driving me crazy! Oh but I have a few photos first! I took some pictures of Arthur yesterday before he got all cranky and miserable and snotty. It’s hard to get photos of Arthur at any distance any more, because he always likes to get as near to the camera as possible while I’m trying to take them! So here is Arthur leaning on his bump of a brother and looking up at me:

His eyes look so brown in that picture. There are still quite large areas of grey to his eyes. I still can’t figure what they are going to do eventually! I love them though, they are so unusual and suit him so well :)

Arthur likes my hairbrush. He likes to brush his hair with it, and is actually getting quite good at it now! Excuse the horribly full-of-hair hairbrush, ugh…

He also likes to wear my glasses. I am sure this can’t be a good idea – I get worried it will weaken his eyesight or something, looking through someone else’s glasses! But he just gets so excited to try them on, and smiles and smiles soooo big when he is looking through them. So occasionally I let him for a few seconds. He looks so cute and funny in my glasses! Here he is wearing them yesterday, still brandishing that horrible hairbrush! I love these photos. They make me want to go and kiss his soft cheeks and breathe him in till I stop breathing altogether, I don’t know why. I just love him so much, and he’s so gorgeous and such a cutie, and I just CAN’T believe I am this blessed and he is MINE! Thank you Lord for my precious baby boy. Baby boys!! Thank you Lord for blessing me AGAIN with another wonderful baby boy to love! I just feel so happy with what I have been given :)