Oh my bob, it has been way too long since I wrote an entry! I never mean it to be a week or more between entries but somehow it keeps happening!
Did you know? Tomorrow is the 7th of May, so I only have one month left until my due date. Life has recently turned into a whirlwind of lists ("to-do", "sorting", "packing", "shopping", etc), Braxton Hicks (and other assorted pregnancy niggles) and a toddler who is DEFINITELY on the ball about The Big Change around the corner. The lists and preparations and stuff are becoming more and more frenzied, and today I had my first major hormonal sobbing meltdown about how there is toooo much to do and just NO time left to do it! Plus I am just so exhausted, physically more than anything else, and so HUGE and uncomfortable, and increasingly unable to cope with little irritants - which often come in the form of Arthur being more and more demanding and clingy these days. Urgh.
Neil is wonderful and supportive as always, but he is tired and snappy too - it's a big psychological upheaval for both Mummy AND Daddy when there's a new baby about to arrive! - and he is totally snowed under at work at the moment. He has to bring the laptop home and work in the evenings sometimes, and still doesn't get done what he needs to. Poor Neil. He still does a lot with Arthur - currently settling him in the night in the hope that Arthur will stop his night waking, or at least learn to settle more quickly that way, and also he still gets up with Arthur at around 6am so I can sleep till 8am. He is wonderful. I annoy myself enormously because I somehow still manage to find Neil irritating and find fault with him all the time! Yuck. I could blame hormones but maybe I'm just being plain unreasonable. I feel so cross with myself that I don't feel "nicer" towards Neil sometimes, because I feel defensive of him too, that he isn't blessed with an easy-going wife!
Neil is doing okay over his father's death. He says he sometimes feels like he thinks more about his dad in recent days and weeks than he did around the funeral time. I hope he is okay on the inside. It's hard to find Neil's inside, as he is stubborn about sharing it when it comes to emotional stuff. He does tell me about things he thinks about though, and that gives me a clue, and then I will ask him how it makes him feel, etc. He isn't that good at knowing how he feels about stuff though. Lately I worry that I'm neglecting him on that front, since everything is just... I don't know... "too much" for me to contain in my tired body and head, and I don't seem to get past my own needs to focus on anyone else's. Urgh, I hate even saying that, it sounds so horribly selfish. But it's true. I feel sometimes like I'm hanging on by a thread with how sleep deprived or physically exhausted or toddlered-out or desperate for someone to focus on ME I am.
But anyway. We'll be fine! It's just a difficult stage of life at the moment, that's all. We have a demanding toddler, a baby due in a few weeks, and happen to be stretched to the max in a few stressy "life" areas like work and family and stuff. So we're sure to be feeling like we're only just hanging in there, but this too shall pass. Neil says, "out of the frying pan and into the fire"! Which I think will be true to some extent when Matthew is born, as life with all those things PLUS a newborn will be.... I don't even know a word for it! I hope we survive! ;) Sometimes I really mean that. I hope we get through it okay. But if we do then it will all be wonderful in the end, and the difficult patches will pass, so I know it will be okay. Plus God is with us. I forget that sooooo easily these days. *sigh*
Somebody's foot is sticking right out of my side :)
Arthur's climbing antics have rapidly gone from cute to not-so-funny-any-more! He won't listen when I tell him not to, even if he's in danger and I'm trying to use a "DANGER" voice! He just thinks that's extra funny, urgh. He is really into practising balancing at the moment. He climbs onto small things, whether they are far off the floor or not, and sticks his arms out on either side and does "balancing" for fun. He balances on a piece of paper on the carpet, bless him! Or on a plank of wood, or basically anything. Tubs full of bricks (either on the empty tub or the unstable mountain of bricks inside it! The arm of the armchair or sofa - that one is my LEAST favourite. He climbs onto the sofa and then onto the arm, and gets himself upright on his feet (using the method illustrated in my last entry!), and then balances on it for as long as he can, shrieking and yelling with joy and pride the whole time! Soft or uneven surfaces are tempting him more than stable ones these days, as they pose more of a challenge or something. He is also starting to try STEPPING off the edge of the sofa onto the floor (waaaaaaay too large a step!) instead of sitting down first, almost as if to see what might happen. What does happen is that he falls down pretty hard, but he unless he hurts himself badly, he makes this expression like, "Hmmm, that was interesting and intriguing..." and immediately climbs up to try it again! This boy has no fear. Except when it comes to the hoover, and then he's terrified and cries and cries. Even when I tell him Daddy is going to hoover the carpet later, he starts to cry! He isn't crazy about the hair dryer either, but other than that, he has no fear of anything!
The main worry about Arthur's climbing right now is that he has finally bypassed our pathetic attempt to block the stairs off. We have no bannisters on our stairs and there is no post at the bottom to which we might fit a stair gate. So we have been wedging a large suitcase in the annoyingly-too-small gap between the armchair and the bottom step of the stairs, and he can't physically move it out of the way, and it's too tall for him to get over. And too well wedged for him to get round it. So it has worked well! But now he has started climbing on the armchair and onto the arm, it's a completely different story.
Two days ago I was upstairs doing something or other for a couple of minutes - probably one of my many wees that I have to keep doing these days! But literally like 60 seconds or maybe double that at most. Arthur was playing with bricks in the living room. I was washing my hands and I heard thump-thump-thump on the stairs, and when I looked down, he was climbing them! The suitcase was still wedged and I couldn't think how he had managed to get around it. So I took him back down and told him he must not climb the stairs without Mummy or Daddy with him, and went back up and waited just out of sight at the top. I peeked round and saw him go straight to the armchair, climb up on the arm, and with absolute EASE, swing himself over the suitcase (which stands a foot higher than the arm at least and has a big drop down to the stairs on the other side!!!), and start climbing the stairs again! Monkey boy! He didn't have to make any effort sounds or anything, and he was very quick. So I wedged his activity ring between the suitcase and the stairs, somehow, which made an even taller obstacle for him to climb over, just to try and deter him for the rest of that day. It made nooo difference at all! He just climbed over the lot and started up the stairs! When I told Neil that evening, we decided we would have to do something about it at the weekend.
Yesterday he was even more bold about it though, and it got me so worried at times! I changed his nappy in the living room and went into the kitchen to wash my hands. How long does it take to wash hands?! All of about 20 seconds or something. I had left Arthur lying on the floor, seemingly happy to entertain himself with some Duplo that was lying about on the carpet. As I switched the water off (literally 20 or 30 seconds later), I heard the floorboards ABOVE MY HEAD juddering and clunking like someone was up there running about! Which, of course, was the case. How on earth is that even possible, for ANYONE to climb over all that stuff AND get up the stairs in 30 seconds, let alone a small toddler?! I rushed up and there he was, absolutely zinging with excitement over his achievement, running up and down the landing with the shiniest eyes and the most enormous smile I ever saw! That one scared me because what if he had decided to come back down again? He can't climb downstairs, he doesn't appear to understand the process at all! He just launches himself off each step and doesn't appear to have any idea of the consequences, were Neil or I not there to catch him! So he would most definitely have a horrible fall if he tried to come back downstairs.
Later in the day we were going for a short walk, and I needed my summer shoes (it got hot this week, all of a sudden, right on the back of about 8 months of winter!) so I gallumphed upstairs in a very undignified manner (the quickest way I could get up them in my condition!) to rummage in the wardrobe and find the shoes, leaving Arthur wearing his shoes and all ready to go out, busily fiddling with things in the porch. I was wedged between piles of stuff that should have gone into the loft AGES ago, and the wardrobe, when Arthur appeared noiselessly at the top of the stairs!! Yikes! He came into the bedroom all smiley to see what I was doing, and after a quick 0.23 second glance, he turned around and headed back towards the stairs!! I was absolutely stuck and couldn't get myself out fast enough to grab him. I felt in such a panic! I just yelled at Arthur like a fishwife (I'm ashamed to say!) to stop and wait for Mummy, and basically threw every word at him that he might associate with stopping if he heard it, while I scrambled to get out of the piles of stuff around me. Thankfully Arthur DID stop, but only long enough for him to give me a very unsure look at the way I was yelling at him, and then start off again - by which time I was able to get to him. Urrrrrrgh that was so scary.
So today we have been trying to figure out what to do about the stairs. It can't wait even another day now. Today we watched as Arthur climbed the entire flight of stairs in under 10 seconds when he thought we couldn't see him, and it was SCARY how fast he was going. We NEVER see him climb that fast when he is with us, or knows we are there watching. Sometimes it drives me crazy how slow he goes actually!
We decided we had to bosh together some sort of post for the bottom of the stairs so we could attach the other stair gate we have to it. We will have to get rid of our armchair though :( It's part of a lovely 4 piece suite that Neil and I bought to celebrate our engagement (a crazy crazy whim that we would never do if we had our time again!), and there is nowhere in the house it can fit, so I think we'll have to get rid of it. I doubt it will sell on eBay, so I guess we'll give it to The Princess Alice Hospice. Then it's for a good cause and they collect furniture so it's less hassle for us to get rid of it. But we're sad to have to lose it, as we would definitely have space for it the next time we move house, and we'll be keeping the rest of the suite for yeeeears to come yet.
So this afternoon, when we had decided all that, we all went out to Homebase to buy the wood and fittings and stuff. But Homebase didn't have anything in the right dimensions. We wanted timber and stuff for a toy storage unit that is my latest crazy hormonally-influenced DIY project at the moment! I will not be held responsible for my actions if I can't get that unit built with my own two hands before Matthew arrives, hehe! I feel so crazily strongly about it - it has to be some weirdo form of nesting or something! Anyway, I have spent a lot of time this week researching and designing and measuring, and finally trudging out in way-too-hot-for-me temperatures with a similarly natured toddler (he seems soooo like me with hot weather, we both don't deal with it well at ALL!), and buying the containers that will hold the toys. And all that was left to do was buy the timber and fittings, have the timber cut to size, varnish it, and put it together! I am so excited about it. We are so over-run with toys in our living room at the moment - even Arthur thinks so, I reckon! See?...
That is just one corner of the room, and there are toys lining almost every wall in the room now! The other week I won him a massive lot of Duplo and a plastic chair which has a seat full of Mega Bloks (the one in which he was sitting, in the above photo). He loves Duplo and his little set of it seemed so small. He would put the five rectangular pieces together and then do the "all gone" sign and look all disappointed! Plus we need LOTS of building bricks and Duplo and stuff for two little boys who will be close enough in age to be interested in those things at the same time. So I bid on some on eBay, and won some incredibly cheaply! It doesn't even look used. Here is Arthur, about 30 seconds after we unpacked it when the postman brought it :)
He is soooooooo pleased with it! He has spent hours playing with it already. My brother and I had lots of Lego and Duplo when we were little, and I remember so fondly the times we played with it. I really want to complete the set for my boys with some Duplo people, animals, vehicles and maybe a couple of special pieces. And a couple of base boards. And then I will be very proud of their Duplo collection, hehe! Well, rather I'll feel happy that they have a great selection of Duplo to play with for years to come. So I just won an entire Duplo farm!!! I'm so excited for it to arrive in the post!! There are lots of animals, and fences and trees, and a tractor, plough, and trailer, and a big barn on a base board with a windmill :) *I* can't wait to play with it, hehe! I still want people and a couple of vehicles, and that will be it. I can NOT believe how cheap I have picked this stuff up on eBay. It is soooooo expensive in the shops, so I'm really pleased!
Arthur is now officially "into" playdough! We went to church last Sunday (gasp!) and Neil and I BOTH stayed with Arthur during creche. We just wanted to :) Oh, and I had a horrible headache so maybe that's why Neil stayed too? I can't remember. Anyway it went during the creche time and we ended up having lots of fun together as a family in creche :) There were only a few other little ones in there that morning, and Arthur spent ages playing with the train set that goes round all by itself, and then he looked interested in the playdough, so we sat him up to the table and he LOVED it!! He played with the playdough and, more specifically, the tools and bits that you can stick into the stuff, until the service was over! The last time I tried to interest him in playdough he looked bored and wanted to get down. He also didn't like to touch it, and acted like he had got his hands all dirty or something! But this time he loved it, yay!
He is very keen on crayoning now and asks to have his crayons (pointing at them with the increasingly annoying "uh-uh-uh-uh-UH!" sounds) several times a day. He still eats them, but he is learning not to. As I give them to him, I say, "Look at Mummy" so that he is holding eye contact with me while I tell him, "If you bite the crayons, Mummy will put them away. Okay?" and then he does some crayon-sorting and scribbling and he SNIFFS the crayons with one eye on me, but the instant he puts one between his teeth, I take it from him and put them all back in the box and they get put up out of reach again. I always tell him while I'm putting them away, "Mummy is putting the crayons away because you were biting a crayon. Remember Mummy told you not to do that?" He doesn't like that, so I think he is learning. But crayon time usually ends that way eventually.
He is generally getting more interested in craft-y things. He likes sticking stickers onto things and stuff. He can do all his lift-out jigsaws and it's time to get him some simple two or four-piece jigsaws I think. He loves jigsaw puzzles. He really enjoyed playing with a plastic farm set that belonged to a 2-year-old whose house we went to last week at Fellowship Group, so I know he is getting more interested in toys that we don't have yet. Some of his early toys are starting to frustrate him and he seems restless playing with them. Normally we'd be putting a load of outgrown stuff away by now and replacing it with stuff he's growing into, but Matthew is coming and he'll be into the very young toys before we can blink, so we can't really put them away, or not for long anyway. Soooo we are just swimming in toys! Hence the need for a serious storage solution! I looked and looked online but I couldn't find anything in our price range that would suit all our needs for storing everything, or be a small enough unit to fit in our over-cluttered house. So I ended up designing what I thought would be perfect for us right now, and I plan to build it asap. It's based on stuff I have seen online, the shelving-type-thing with plastic storage boxes that are angled outwards a little for easy access to the toys inside. We'll have enough of those in different sizes to accommodate his loose toys and bricks nicely, and then a set of different boxes with lids for crafts, and then a place for books and jigsaws. That's all I can make it accommodate if I'm going to keep the size of the unit down to a minimum, as we really have no space to put a new piece of furniture. Anyway, I am ITCHING to build it!
We went for the wood today, and the post for the stairs. But Homebase were out of stock of the exact piece of wood I had planned to buy. I HATE when they have every single other size of wood planks absolutely crammed into their space on the shelves, but the ONE size you want is completely empty. Grrrr! Also they had nothing we could use for the stairs. So we went to Wickes. Nowt there either. So we went to B&Q. Nada. And back to Homebase to dither over the possible non-options for doing SOMETHING to the stairs. After all that, we were exhausted and Arthur was needing to go home and eat tea. The poor love was so good the whole time! He was patient (for a toddler!) and didn't make a fuss at being dragged round 3 different DIY warehouses, but every time we got in the car to drive to the next one, a little voice would pipe up in the back, "'Ome... 'ome... 'ome?" Eventually we had to go home as his tea was going to be late. I hate wasting an afternoon and coming away with nothing, especially when it's precious weekend "family" time or when I use up every ounce of my energy. It's so depressing! I was so irritable by the time we left B&Q, it was crazy. Arthur was doing a lot of his usual "uh-uh-uh-UH-UH-UHHH!" pointing at everything and demanding that we notice and verbally acknowledge it, like every few seconds while we were trying to discuss what to do. He does it WAY more when Neil and I are trying to talk to each other. Sometimes it seems like we can't actually speak a sentence to each other without Arthur trying to interrupt us. I don't know why he does that. But anyway, it is annoying the heck out of me lately. And I'm not dealing with it the best I could be, I just get snappy. By the time we were leaving B&Q I felt like pulling my own hair out every time Arthur made those sounds. I wanted to scream, "SHUT UUUUP!!!!" at him and I felt horrible that I had such an urge.
When we got home, we gave him tea, and he was as sweet as ever, just very noisy. I can't explain it, but I could not take his noise a second longer. My whole body and mind and soul craved utter peace and silence for just a few minutes, and there wasn't any, and at that moment it was so overwhelming that I just cried and cried! How silly. Neil sent me out of the kitchen to sit down and rest for a few minutes, but I just sat and cried more because Arthur's noise was still jangling my nerve endings and making me want to claw my own ears off. And I just suddenly felt overwhelmed with how there is too much to do before Matthew arrives and just NOT enough time to do it. I mean, we COULD do it all, but both of us are just absolutely knackered and stretched to the limit already. We already won't have any more weekends to actually rest before Matthew is here now. There is too much to get ready. And even then we might not get it all done. And that's without the added palava of the stairs needing some miracle to keep Arthur from climbing them. The toy unit seems like an obvious one to strike off the list, but I can not emphasize enough how much I NEED to build the darn thing! It will stress me out endlessly if I have to decide not to do it. It seems to be my nesting focus for some reason.
Anyway. After tea it was better. Arthur was getting tired, and he snuggled up against me on the sofa and breastfed for 20 minutes while we watched the start of the bedtime hour on CBeebies - he loves this combination of breast and the bedtime hour :) We never watch it more than 20 minutes because it's always bath time by about 6.30pm and the bedtime hour is 6-7pm. But anyway, it was a relief because Arthur was so nice and quiet and snuggly, and it was soothing for both of us. Neil went upstairs and searched online for solutions for the stairs issue. He started Arthur's bath running and when he came down he said he had found a solution! Yay! We are going to buy a BabyDan playpen. I hate playpens and absolutely do not plan to put any of my babies in one while I do other stuff (although, I say that now, but I'll probably be singing their praises somewhere down the line when I've just popped Matthew in it for a moment and he's loved it and I've ended up doing some crafts with Arthur or some housework!). But the BabyDan is great because it can be used as a room divider. We're going to use ours to make a 90 degree angled fence with a gate in it, to completely block off the corner of the room with the stairs in it, wall to wall. It will fit close-ish to the stairs, but without having to be mounted ON the stairs. We still need to get rid of the armchair, but in a way, that will be a big relief to get some extra space in the room.
All of a sudden, from absolutely nowhere, we remembered we opened a savings account - well, a set of four within the same bank - yeeeears ago when we first got engaged. We put money in it at first but then never added to it again. We withdrew most of the money for something or other - our first second-hand car, I think - and then the poor accounts have been ignored and neglected since then! We don't bother with them because we know there's only like £1.50 in them or something, hehe! We still get quarterly statements but we basically just put them in the drawer and don't even open them.
When we checked them today, we found that the "home" account has a whole £5.64 in it! Hahaha! Not as embarrassing as the "holiday" account, which only has £1.61 in it, hehe! And the "car" account has £12 in it. But we were soooo happy and surprised to find that we hadn't touched the "baby" account - I remember that we were so excited to set that one up, allll those years ago (8 years, I think!) when having babies was just so far out of our imagination that it was just something to giggle about awkwardly. But it was exciting to make a "baby" account anyway :) We knew we'd want it some day. Anyway, we found about £600 in it!!!!! What a blessing!
The combination of finding that money and figuring out a solution for the stairs crisis just felt like a wonderful relief to all my jangly hormonal emotions from earlier. I feel so much better to know that we have a solution! Neil says he has noticed I am a lot more sensitive these days, and that everything is "important" to me - wisely worded, hehe! I completely freak out if something really really minor can't be done when I want it to be. Neil thinks my hormones must be peaking or something! Poor Neil. He does put up with such a lot, and I'm so blessed to have him!
Anyway, yay, because now we can easily afford a BabyDan playpen, so this evening I went to good old Kiddicare.co.uk, where we have bought loooads of stuff in the past, and ordered one! :) I feel so relieved to have that sorted. It will be here during the first part of the week, I hope, and then we can fix it and Arthur will be safe around the stairs again. We'll phone the Princess Alice Hospice on Monday about the armchair I think.
Now that it's getting warmer, I am frantically trying to get summer clothes for Arthur on eBay. There always seems to be something that needs buying! We do it as cheaply as we possibly can though - nearly every single item of clothing that Arthur has ever worn has come from eBay! It's great, we have saved sooooo much money. Even though I'm still managing to spend perlenty with all my bidding, hmmm! It's so addictive. But I need to think of our bank balance a bit more! I love it when we actually NEED to buy things, because then I have a good excuse to bid on things at eBay :) Like now. Arthur needs summer clothes. He is not a heat-happy boy, and he has no cool clothes. My wins are starting to come in - he has a pair of short denim dungarees that he looks scrummy in, although he was still sweating like crazy in those on our 80 degree day this week. It's cool and rainy again now, of course, after a 2-day burst of warmth!
I can't imagine WHAT I was thinking, having a baby in June! I hate the heat sooo much. It's 50 times worse when heavily pregnant (thank goodness it's just June I'm due, not later in the summer!) and as much as I love breastfeeding, I am slightly wary of the sticky closeness of it when it's just too hot for comfort over Matthew's first couple of months. I just feel ill when it gets to hot or humid, it's not just that I dislike heat. It makes me feel physically horrible and headachy and cranky and heatrashy, and urrrgh! Arthur is the same. I hope Matthew likes the hot weather! Neil is fine with it though. We need another fan for the house. We only have one, and Arthur will need it on him when he naps or sleeps during the evening, which will leave me sticking to my smallest son with no moving air around us. So, another fan. Oh for air-con! But that is just COLD and drying, so maybe not. Anyway, I am kind of hoping for a crappy British summer! Those are so much more bearable :)
Oh it's sooo late. But I didn't want to forget to mention that Arthur came with me to my first dentist appointment in ages, and ended up having a bit of an examination of his own! I had some toothache so I found a local NHS dentist (I get free treatment on the NHS while I'm pregnant, so it made sense to ditch my private dentist, haha!), and made an appointment. I was nervous though, because I didn't know what to expect. BOY was it great!!! Apart from being free, it was a lovely waiting area, nice receptionists, no long waits, and we saw a REALLY nice young dentist with an equally nice young dental nurse. They gave us all the time in the world and seemed really knowledgeable about everything - some dentists just don't give me that vibe, y'know? They were so ultra friendly and thorough too. Arthur was such a good boy :) He stood at the foot of the dentist's chair which I was reclining in, and held on to my feet while the dentist examined my teeth and stuff. I don't have any signs of decay - hooray! I DO have very annoyed pregnant gums and teeth that needed professionally cleaning to stop the pregnant gums being so irritated. So he gave my teeth a proper cleaning and a polish :) And I got a free prescription for some mouthwash that will fix my sore gums. Arthur watched and watched, and didn't make any sounds at all. The nurse picked him up and held him up near my head so he could see, for a while. And she sat him on her swivel chair and spun him round slowly - he LOVED that!
After I was all done, I asked if I could ask a few questions about Arthur's teeth as well. The dentist was so nice, and gave me loads of time to talk about Arthur's teeth. Arthur has been getting white mottling on his teeth, especially the top front four, and I read online that this is called fluorosis, which is due to too much fluoride (ie, too much toothpaste). Everywhere recommends no more than a pea-sized blob of baby toothpaste, twice a day, for toddlers and young children. But Arthur doesn't even get that. We use a smudge of toothpaste, not even QUARTER of a pea! And often I am crap at brushing his teeth in the morning. We do a good thorough job at bedtime, but we really don't use much toothpaste, especially after I read that stuff online. But I got worried that I wasn't doing ENOUGH for his teeth and that he would get tooth decay. So I wanted to ask the dentist.
He said white mottling WAS fluorosis but when he heard how little toothpaste we were using, he said maybe we should just brush his teeth once a day with a tiny amount of toothpaste, and then just water the other time. I asked if it would be enough to prevent tooth decay and he said yes, so long as we were thorough with the brushing and he wasn't eating sweets and stuff that's basically all sugar. So we're doing that. He doesn't have any mottling to his teeth now, but it was always a bit on-and-off before anyway.
Anyway, he said they usually see children for their first dental appt from the age of two, but he asked if I would like him to take a look at Arthur's teeth now! So we put Arthur on the big chair and he smiled and smiled, but stopped smiling when latex-covered hands approached his mouth! He didn't fuss or seem anxious, he just did not want to open his mouth. Eventually he opened it a teensy bit and the dentist could see his molars coming in, and told me his teeth look really good and healthy right now :) When Arthur got down, the nurse offered him a sticker for being a good boy! My big boy! He just looked at the page of stickers like he didn't know what to do, so I pointed out one with an apple on it, and he looked interested suddenly (he loves apples) and pointed at it. The nurse stuck it to the front of his little hooded top that he was wearing, and Arthur watched it being stuck on, with his little chest stuck out to help him see. I just love watching him when things like this happen, just to drink in his every mannerism and response to things! It's so wonderful to watch, I don't know why. I could do it forever.
He looked up and seemed so pleased with the sticker being there on his chest. He kept touching it and smiling! Then the BEST bit came - well, it sounds not-that-exciting, but it really was to me! I said to him, "Say thank you, Arthur" and he looked up at me from staring at his sticker immediately, looked over at the nurse, and said clearly, "Ank-yooo!" It was SUCH a proud moment for me, I can't tell you! I am so thrilled that he has learnt to be polite and say thank you so nicely even though he really doesn't say much else at all. I especially love that these days, I just have to say, "Say thank you to the lady" or even "What do you say?" when someone has given him something, and he INSTANTLY gives them a charming look and says thank you nice and clearly. It has happened a lot more since the dentist's too. He is also starting to thank me for things spontaneously, like when I give him a cereal bar for his mid-morning snack when he has pointed at one and asked for it. I open it and roll the wrapper down, and as I hand it into his eager outstretched little hands, he says, "Ank-yoooo!" Bless him. He's such a lovely little boy :) I'm so fiercely proud of him! And of course it makes my day when he gets the huge response that he always gets, for being so little and cute AND saying thank you so sweetly, like he did at the dentist :) Absolutely every member of staff in that dental surgery was cooing over him by the time we left! ;) I love when people love my little boy! It's such a wonderful feeling.
Arthur is saying a few more things, I almost forgot. He says, "Boo" when he sees Boo on CBeebies (from the programme, "Where's Boo?"). He also says boo if he sees someone hiding their face behind their hands! If I am eating a cheese sandwich, he will put his finger on a piece of my cheese, and say, "Deee!" or "Deeez!" So he definitely knows, and is trying to say, cheese. He also says, "Deee(z)!" for beans and peas though ;) He says, "Oooo" for shoe, and sometimes gets a not-quite-pronounced "sh" sound in front of the "ooo", especially when Neil says it over and over with him while they're putting shoes on. He also says, "yay", "there" (sounds like "dare"), "that" ("dat!"), "ow" (not as great as it sounds - he'll say, "Ow!" with great glee as he wallops us with a toy or something! We're working on this one!) and "hi"/"bye" (sounds like "eye").
Last week he asked us to give him some medicine spontaneously for the first time, using the sign I made up to mean medicine a while back. It was bedtime and he was fussing and being cranky, and I figured it was because he was doing his normal bedtime fussy thing. He WAS chewing on his fingers a little more than usual, but sometimes he does when he's being cranky. All of a sudden he rolled onto his back, stopped fussing, looked me right in the eye, and signed medicine to me! I said, "Do you need some medicine?" and he gave me this relieved, happy expression and stopped signing :) We got him some teething powder straight away and after that I rubbed teething gel on his gums, and then he settled right down to sleep. I love that he can tell us when he needs medicine now! I wouldn't even have thought to give him any if he hadn't asked for some. His fourth molar has been through a week or two now. He has all of his first molar through, nearly the whole of his second one (both the top ones), three corners of his third one, and one or two corners of the fourth one. He is doing okay with cutting the molars, which is surprising considering how awful he finds it when he's cutting much SMALLER teeth!
My parents dropped in for a quick and unexpected visit a couple of weeks ago! They came over for a day and didn't even stay overnight! They took the overnight ferry here and then back again the same day! They came to go to a concert in London and it was so nice that they dropped in on their way back to the ferry :) They brought two hand-knitted jumpers that two ladies in their little French village had knitted for Arthur! The people there are so lovely. Mummy says they see Arthur as one of their own, or something! One of the jumpers is waaaay too big, and that's good because it's going to be too warm for him to wear it till next winter, but the other one is only a little bit too big, and I put it on him to take a photo or two for the lady who knitted it, a week ago before it got all hot:
Cutie boy :) He does have a thing for chewing wool though! I can sort of relate, as I'm sure I can recall liking the consistency and squeak of wool between my teeth when I was very little.
Okay, it's way too late, so here are the last few photos I meant to post - one of Arthur "reading" to himself the other day - he loves climbing up on the sofa, surrounding himself with cushions ("deee"s - I have no idea why cushions are deees, but they are!) and spending ages looking through his books and pointing at the pictures and lifting flaps, etc. He likes to do it on his own sometimes, and other times he brings the books to me and asks for a story :)
Arthur is breastfeeding like CRAZY these days. He nurses so frequently, and seems to be constantly signing milk in a frantic way, begging to nurse. He does it at night when he wakes, and I am starting to nurse him to sleep again at bedtimes, though if he fidgets for ages I stop the feed after maybe 10 minutes and say it's time for sleep. Other nights, he nurses to sleep in that time. He seems clingy and needy at the moment, and is very sensitive about me being close to him when he wants me to be. He has increased his nursing frequency so dramatically that I feel he must be aware of the big changes coming up and needing extra security and closeness with me. So I will nurse him to sleep if he needs that extra closeness, and I have always nursed him on demand in the day anyway. He still nurses to sleep for his naps without any problems, and sometimes if he's sleepy he has started breastfeeding on the sofa late in the morning and dozing off sitting up while he's snuggled up to my side breastfeeding! I just lay him backwards after I take him off the breast and he stays asleep on the sofa for 30 minutes or so and has a little nap there! Here he is last week after breastfeeding to sleep one morning on the sofa :)
My mum wondered if I am making milk enough for him to want to nurse more often, but I'm not. I AM making plenty of colostrum, but even "plenty" of colostrum is still only tiny amounts. It hasn't changed that much in recent weeks so it can't be that. Arthur now breastfeeds for 20 minutes sometimes, easily 5-10 minutes in the day most times that he feeds, and that is the biggest change. For many months now, he has been nursing whenever he likes in the day, quite frequently I suppose, but sometimes only taking a few sucks, or staying for a minute or so before going off to do something else. Now he wants to snuggle close and suck and suck and suck and just be all quiet next to me. He is very... I can't think of the right word... he seems very needy of me at the moment. I know he is heading for a big transition, and if he is aware of that then I wouldn't be surprised if he's feeling kind of uneasy about it. Poor little love. It makes me feel sad to think that he's only 17 months old and already he is feeling insecure about some big life event! It seems so young to have such worries. I am letting him be as close to me as he needs to be, as often as he wants - except that we are still trying to have him settle back to sleep at night with only Neil, and I don't go in at all. He cries a lot. Neil says he signs milk the whole time :( But what if he's doing that when Matthew is here and equally needy?! I can't be in two places at once, so we are persevering a bit at night times.
Anyway, he generally seems cheerful and confident and energetic. I soooo need to go to bed! Here's the last photo - I put Arthur's activity ring up against the sofa to get it out of the way for something, and later I found Arthur sitting in it taking a little breather, hehe! He looked so sweet, I had to take a photo!
