Discipline issues and more clips and pics

I have about 0.2 seconds to write because Matthew is napping and will wake in about.... 0.2 seconds, probably! I just managed to get Arthur to take his nap, and it's 2.45pm. Urgh.

Today is a bit urgh, in the small people department. They are both teething, and grumpy about it I think. They both had an amazingly late lie-in this morning, how weird that it's odd for BOTH of them and yet they did it on the same morning?! Arthur slept till 7.40am - absolutely unheard of for Arthur!! He's usually up and about by 6am. Matthew slept till 7.50, which is unusual for him too. He is often up by 6.30 these days, but sometimes might sleep till 7ish. But they haven't been all that cheery for the extra sleep, unfortunately.

The last few days and weeks are beginning to get a little... different, shall we say?! With Arthur, that is. He has been somewhat of an energetic handful for a good long time! But lately he seems to be getting more "two-ish" or something. He's doing loads more things that require discipline, and he's responding angrily to discipline a lot more now. He has a lot more angry or frustrated outbursts at things - toys, being told he can't do/have something when he wants it, feelings he can't figure out how to express, etc.

Discipline is still the naughty chair, and we have a few house rules that mean he goes straight to the naughty chair if he breaks one, without a warning. Everything else, he gets a warning first and then if he does it again, he goes to the naughty chair for 2 minutes. If he gets off, his 2 minutes start again. He gets off A LOT. Like 20 times, sometimes. But I think he's beginning to get the picture. Our house rules are things like, no hitting, pushing, or biting people. He doesn't do these things out of malice, but he gets over excited/frustrated/enthusiastic over things and will thump Matthew with his fist on his back, or push too hard on him so that it hurts him. He doesn't bite. But it's a rule all the same, just in case he ever does! If he thumps gently enough so that Matthew is not hurt, then we warn him first, but if he just goes up to him and wallops him then it's straight to the naughty chair. We haven't had many of those incidents, but I am noticing a few more lately than before. Hmmm. The other morning he walked up to Matthew, who was lying on the floor mat on his tummy looking around, and kicked him in the head! Neil said he nearly walloped Arthur, such was his instinctive surge of feelings towards Matthew, but he didn't. He went on the naughty chair.

Arthur is doing stuff that is just a real pain to deal with, and when I'm particularly sleep deprived or knackered, I find it very hard to deal with. Especially if it's one thing after another (after another, after another). Jemma's entry about Jaya's monkey morning really made me smile - though it was HARD for her! It sounded so familiar, and I could relate so much. It's so odd in some ways, to have been reading all these diaries at Diaryland from when Arthur was born - some from during my pregnancy with him - of other mums with their little ones the same age, and see that they are all turning two and becoming rather a handful! It makes me feel better somehow - though I think Jaya has got the edge on most troublesome two-year-olds! ;)

I am not sure the naughty chair is working all that well, but I don't know what else to do really. Arthur has had a few smacks over the last few weeks, but I do NOT want to do that. I don't think it's the right way to go about it, and I don't want to hurt him in disciplining him, physically. Yesterday I put him on the naughty chair when we got home for something he did in the car park in town, and when I sat him there, he crossly smacked me in the face and nearly knocked my glasses off! He got an instant smack on the leg for that, even though that feels completely the WRONG thing to do (what does that teach him?!), and immediately whacked me in the face again. He did not try it again after the second smack, and I then followed through with the naughty chair thing as planned. I just didn't know what else to do to absolutely GRAB control of that situation and let him know that I would not tolerate that for even ONE SECOND. It had to be dealt with instantly, and very firmly. I do explain to him in no-nonsense terms, when I smack him - I don't just smack him and say nothing. But it does not feel right. I just don't know what else to do. He was already on the naughty chair and I can't be looking like I'm not sure how to handle it, when he hits me. But I don't know. Smacking doesn't have a great track record for actually WORKING in the long run, unless you have a child who is the type who'll respond to it well. I don't think it will work for Arthur. Some things depend on the type of child.

Arthur is like I was - a real handful (apparently it gets worse before it gets better, according to my mum!), and I got smacked a lot for stuff, and it had no apparent effect on my behaviour. I wasn't naughty, as in, a horribly behaved child, or anything. I just was like Arthur. Too much energy and very stubborn and independent with my mother! Apparently Mummy was the same, hehe. She told me that her own mother once had a friend tell her that if she had another like herself it would kill her! I think her mother was the same way when SHE was a child though. Mummy tells me it will "stand me in good stead" to deal with Arthur, but so far I am not noticing the benefits. If anything it just seems to make me more irritated by his behaviour! She also told me that a spirited child is WELL worth the hard work ;) Which does make me feel better! I already know he is worth any hard work, of course, and I love him to bits, but urrrgh he is hard work right now. I have a sneaky feeling he is just getting warmed up as well. I need some new ways to manage - both Arthur and myself.

He bangs his head like CRAZY at the moment. I hate it when he does that!

Oh Matthew is awake. I'll save this to Word and finish it later.

It's 9pm now, and Oh My Gosh I am so exhausted. I just feel like the flesh is hanging heavy on my face, I feel so so so wiped out today. Neil has gone for pizza (not that we should be spending the money) but I still feel like I'll be too tired to eat it. I just wanted to finish this a bit so I can post what I wrote earlier. There's still so much more that I wanted to write but I'll just have to try again another day.

I was going to write more about Arthur and the things he has been doing lately that are driving me crazy. Maybe there's no need? But I had wanted to get some of it off my chest, and also partly to make note of it so that one day I'll be able to read it back and laugh about it! I'm sure that day will come, and he's a COMPLETE sweetie pie outside of these maddening things, so it's okay!

Twice this week (it's only Wednesday), Arthur has emptied a full glass of water over the bookshelves with the hi-fi and all our videos on them. Yeurgh. He does it when I'm upstairs putting Matthew to bed. He climbs on anything, usually the laundry basket turned upside-down, to reach all sorts of things in the kitchen that he shouldn't have access to. I just don't know what to do about it! We have too little space to store all our things under lock and key, or too many things, but we pretty much need all of them, and our loft is just groaning from all the stuff in it that we can't throw away. At least he isn't climbing over the stairgate yet! I'm dreading that one.

He has taken to shouting, "Oh no! HELP!" when he thinks he's having trouble, only he pretty much cries wolf most of the time. I used to come running as he sounds so urgent with his shouts of "HELP! HELP!!" only to find him in a perfectly easy position for him to get himself out of! Sometimes ridiculously easy, like say he has one foot up on the sofa and the other on the floor! Cheeky monkey! I think he gets himself into situations just so that he can call for help to get out of them sometimes. He climbed into a little space on the shelf with the hi-fi (no idea how he managed to!) and got thoroughly stuck and shouted for help.

Every day he pulls all the videos off the shelves and takes the covers off. He has been doing this for maybe 7 or 8 months, but he really goes to town on them now. We just have nowhere else to put them. At all. Two videos are in the bin from having their insides pulled out, and nearly all of our blank videos (with things recorded on them now, obviously) have had their boxes ripped to shreds by Arthur. I feel like I should be taking a stronger line with him over it, but then they're right there for him to meddle with. I should put them away, but we've been over and over where we could put them, and there just isn't anywhere. We need a bigger house! Ours is tiny, but still lovely. I will be sad to leave it, but we were definitely outgrowing it before Matthew was born, even.

Yesterday he got poo out of a dirty nappy and dropped it on the living room carpet while I was putting Matthew to bed. Urgh! Oh, that reminds me - he shouts "HELP!" when he's pooing in his nappy, too. He gets anxious and tenses up, and shouts, "HELP! Poo! Mummy help!" He isn't constipated so I can't understand why he does it.

The other things that are bugging the heck out of me at the moment are screaming, shouting and spitting. I hear you all gasp in horror after all the sweetie-pie things I say about Arthur and how lovable he looks in the photos! ;) But yes, he does all of the above, and more these days than he used to. And I can't. Stand. It! It's a discipline thing - does this mean I'm not disciplining him right or something? I just feel like I have NO idea what I'm doing, none at all, over this aspect of parenting.

Sometimes when he's on the naughty chair, he SCREAMS like nails on a blackboard for as long as he can hold it, with as much force behind it as possible. It makes my ears wow and smart. And yet as per naughty chair rules, I'm meant to not bat an eyelid and keep ignoring him. It's sooooooo hard! Matthew used to be so frightened by his loud noises, especially a shout or scream. He would cry inconsolably, but now he is getting used to it! He just lies on the floor a few feet from where Arthur is sitting on the naughty chair and stares at him with a confused/intrigued/slightly disgusted expression while he screams his head off! So that's something at least - Matthew has been able to get used to it and isn't scared much any more. I usually pick Matthew up and remove both of us from the room that Arthur is in. I sometimes just wish I had a mute button, for a moment of peace! But especially when he screams or shouts. He often screams or shouts like that at random times, as though he has too much of something that is pent up and he's letting it out. He has sooo much energy all the time. It's like he doesn't know what to do with himself, and I don't know what to do with him either.

He shouts a LOT, just long wordless yells. I think he lets off steam doing it, or sometimes he is over-excited and has to shout and shout or it looks like he'll explode! But I hate it. I just don't want all that NOISE around me. I know kids make noise, and maybe it's wrong of me therefore, but I just can't stand all this forceful LOUD noise. I can't speak to him over it, so he can use it to effectively mute me when I'm trying to tell him not to shout or whatever.

Urgh. It feels like a bit of a battleground lately with Arthur. On and off, in between times where he's lovely and sweet and cheery and happy. He seems happy all the time, as always, but he gets frustrated at the drop of a hat more easily, and angry or pent up more easily. Is that just his age? I figure it is, but maybe I'm wrong. I'm not sure if I know anything about kids or parenting right now!

He spits just to see the drool hang down and pool somewhere, yucky boy! I hate hate hate it when he spits, and always warn him not to do it or else he goes on the naughty chair. I tell him it's not nice to spit and that Mummy won't tolerate it. He very rarely actually minds me, whatever it is I'm asking of him, which sucks and makes me feel embarrassed of either myself as a parent or of my own child. 'Cause either it's me doing something wrong or else Arthur is a little horror. What else could it be? My mum tells me that he's lovely and I'm not a crappy mummy, but that I have a LIVE one here and difficult ages are going to be all the more difficult because of that.

On Monday when he was on the naughty chair for something, after he had done screaming and got nothing out of it, he started spitting down the back of the chair. He didn't get off the chair, so when his two minutes were up I was meant to let him down if he apologised. But I told him the time was up, but I was not going to get him down from the naughty chair while he was spitting, because it was disgusting and I did not want him doing it. He didn't like that, and stopped right away. After he said sorry to me for the original mischief, I was giving him a cuddle and a kiss when he turned to the naughty chair and said, "Soy, tair, sbipping!" (sorry, chair, for spitting!) He has started to spontaneously say sorry to other things after he gets down, like if he threw a car across the room near Matthew then he goes and says, "Soy car, fwoah" (sorry, car, throw). He says sorry to Matthew nicely if he has hurt him. He just can't stay out of mischief for long, and so it seems like he's always on the darn chair. I am not sure about whether it's meant to be this way?

Annnnyway.

Some NICE things about Arthur! I love him sooooooo much. He has the cutest cheeks, which are being closely rivalled by Matthew's little cheekie-poos! My cold sore FINALLY bit the dust yesterday, and today I swear I nearly cried with the blissful relief and joy of plunging huge smoochy kisses into those soft little cheeks again! I have missed kissing my boys SO much! I could EAT Matthew alive. I kid you not. He is almost edible ;)

Arthur says some sweet things. He says, "Don' wuwwy!" in such a sympathetic tone that he must have heard from me, if something is going wrong, or he'll say it to Matthew with a hand laid on his back, if he's fussing or crying. He says, "Hang on!" at appropriate moments, when suddenly thinking of something or looking for a toy, or something like that. It's his sweet tone of voice that does it, those serious tones spoken in such a tiny chipmunky little voice! So cute.

He loves counting TWO of things. He says, "One... TWO!" and gets excited. He uses the word, "sy-tin!" (exciting) all the time lately! He says it with his shoulders hunched up and his fists balled up under his chin, huge gleeful grin on his face! Sometimes he SHAKES with the physical tension of such excitement, hehe! The thing he says, "sy-tin!" to most is breastfeeding :) How sweet! He'll nurse and then pop off and ask, "New bwest?" (asking for the other side), and while he waits for me to undo my bra on that side, he scrunches up with glee and whispers, "Sy-tin!!" He also says it when I am making him tea, especially if it's toast or soup! Or when I say we're going out in the car :) He also finds church "sy-tin!" which is sweet.

It was so nice to go to church on Sunday. First time in a few weeks again though. I WISH we could pull ourselves together to go more regularly. I miss feeling fully PART of a church. We're embraced as though we are, and we're members, etc, but WE lose that feeling if we don't keep attending regularly. We miss out. Did I mention that Arthur went out to run after the service, with Neil, and ran into a deeeeep puddle? He loves puddles, as you know! This one was like a LAKE. He was wearing his wellies, but that didn't do much good when he fell BACKWARDS and lay down in freezing mud and water, gasping at the cold! He got soaked, and I'm so glad I always take a full change of clothes and nappy for him everywhere I go! He did not seem impressed with getting that cold and wet! He just can't resist puddles though.

He tells me what Matthew is doing if I'm busy in the kitchen making lunch and I can't tell what's going on in the other room. I will call to him, "Arthur, are you okay in there?" and he calls back, "Yeah, okay now!" ("now" is added to many phrases, if they relate to RIGHT NOW for Arthur, eg. "Watch twain now" if he wants to watch Thomas the Tank Engine). So then I call, "Can you tell me what Matthew is doing? Is he okay?" and the reply comes, "Okay now!" I call back, "What's he doing?" and Arthur says, "Ma-Ma pay car, Ma-Ma bite!" which tells me that Matthew is playing with one of Arthur's toy cars (the safe ones for babies) and is biting it! So that is very helpful, and he likes to help me by telling me what Matthew is doing. He keeps up a running commentary on things like that anyway, even when I'm in the room, and he talks to himself and his toys during his play now too, which is really sweet to listen to! His little voice sing-songs up and down as he chats away cheerfully. It always makes me smile as I go about other things and listen to him playing and chatting! If Matthew is crying in the car, Arthur will leeeean out from his car seat as far as he can to touch Matthew's hand with his, and he says, "Oh Ma-Ma! Okay now..." He's such a sweetie. I think I say that a lot, now I come to think of it - "It's okay now" when the boys are crying over something and I'm intervening to make things better.

Okay I am talked out, and knackered, and I feel better for writing it all down and especially for finishing with LOVELY things about my little monkey boy! He is hard work. But also so precious, and I couldn't be without him, difficult stuff and all.

Oh, I almost forgot! I must post those video clips and photos that I kept forgetting to post the last couple of entries, otherwise they'll get too out of date to post. First of all, here is one of Arthur while I was getting his baked beans on toast ready at tea time this evening. I took it to use up the last 80 seconds or so on the camcorder tape so I could load it with a new one. Arthur likes to see himself ("See Ah-yah!") or me while I'm filming, and the camcorder has a rotating mini screen that I can turn towards him so he can see while I'm still filming him :) Also, you get to see our hideously messy kitchen. Note that I am not going to show you the surfaces though! The laundry piles are so awful - Arthur climbs on them like they are mountains. But at least they are CLEAN washing waiting to be folded! Anyway, here he is this evening: [edited to add: stupid audioblog keeps making this the wrong clip - one I have posted further on in this entry. I tried to change it back so hopefully it's this evening's clip again now]

The weekend before last, we decided it was time to re-decorate our little porch. The horrid old wallpaper from the previous owners was peeling off (not helped by Arthur, who pulls at it constantly!) and it was just long overdue. So Neil got Arthur to help him clear the coats and shoes from the porch, and then pull the paper off the walls! He was so thrilled to help! Tidying or clearing, and pulling paper off walls are exciting things for Arthur! ;) I took two video clips - one where he's helping to clera the coats, and the other where he's helping to pull the paper off. Also three photos of him pulling paper off with Neil. I love how he says, "Ank-oo Daddy!" every time Neil hands him a coat to put in the living room! For all his difficult behaviour lately, he actually is a really sweet polite little boy. His difficult stuff is reserved for us mostly. He says please and thank you nicely, and thanks people by name without prompting, unless he's toooo shy to even talk to them. He'll thank them if I ask him to though. Anyway, here are the photos and clips - the "clearing out" clip first and the "pulling paper" one afterwards:

And lastly, for now, here is the monkey boy playing a slightly crazy version of one of his favourite games - phones! He loves to snatch something to his ear (or neck, as it usually turns out!) and say, "Ah-row?!" (the way he pronounces "Hello" for the phone!). Then he says various conversationy things that he obviously hears when I am on the phone and does some fake laughing, and says, "Bye!" and puts it down again. One day last week, he was doing this, and suddenly it was like he went into overdrive and started picking up one item after another, having a quick conversation (they got faster and shorter over time!) and then putting it down to snatch another up! His conversation got narrowed down to "Ah-row?!.... Oh no!.... (short and weird sounding fake laugh!).... Bye!" He got so focused on it, and wouldn't even stop to tell me who was on the phone when I asked him. He usually says, "Nana!" :) I filmed him. He didn't even stop to try and get at the camcorder!

And right after that he played with his Wacky Stick with Matthew, telling me "Ma-Ma like!" which he says ALL the time for everything at the moment, and it means, "Matthew likes this!" He says, "Ma-Ma like bowl!", "Ma-Ma like bow wah-bees!" (Matthew likes me to blow raspberries on him!), "Ma-Ma like Pubbie" (Matthew likes Teletubbies) - the list is endless! Anyway, on this occasion it was the Wacky Stick ;) I really hope all those clips work - that they're the ones they're supposed to be. I'm having trouble at audioblog with that kind of thing at the moment. Clips keep replacing each other and not being the ones they're supposed to be, which is very annoying! I should move to You Tube, or whatever it's called.

[edited to add - this one might not be working either, tsk! It keeps changing with the one of Arthur from this evening.]

[edited again to add - it didn't work, so I joined You Tube and here, I hope THIS works!... It might take a while to finish uploading before it's viewable, but it's too late for me to wait up to confirm that it has worked, so I'll just have to go to bed and post this entry and be done with it!]

I have sooo much more to write! Oh well. But here are a couple of photos from 2 weeks ago - Matthew "reading" his book, and Matthew eating his toes - something Arthur NEVER did. He never played with his feet at all, maybe because of his time in plaster casts over those early months? Matthew is crazy for holding his feet and stuffing them in his mouth! Here are those photos:

And guess who went up onto their hands and knees today and looked just like a little square table?! Yup. He is soooo eager to move. He worked for ages to get his balance with his knees under him good enough to draw his arms up, and for all his efforts, he only managed it once. He tried to lift his head once he was on all-fours, to see ahead, but the combination of muscular effort seemed to be too much too soon, and he flopped back down. He is so gonna crawl before I'm ready! And 2 weeks till solids! I think I'll get him weighed next week. He's getting so big so fast!

I have more photos for next entry. I'll try to write again soon. Mallory, an email with photos is coming your way SOON! Thank you for the lovely lovely package for the boys! xxx

Sitting Boo! And other updatey stuff...

At last, a moment to update again! It's already late so I'll just hurry up and get on with some news and photos!

Brief family news:

Neil: Applied for a job today!!! We're back to that thing we put on hold, where Neil gets a new job in a whooole new career, and we move house, and completely relocate to be where he gets a job. And I get mightily scared and need lots of prayer and stuff like that. But the job sounds SO great, and we are feeling optimistic! It's the exact same job that he got OFFERED when I was early in my pregnancy with Matthew (hence why we decided that he'd turn it down and put new job/moving house on hold), except that it's in a completely different part of the country. SOUTH of London though, which for some reason always makes me feel more easy in myself.

Alice: For the first time since Matthew was born, had enough time on Sunday afternoon to SEW part of a nappy (night nappy for Matthew), make a chicken casserole and set it to simmer comfortingly all afternoon, and baked a rather good chocolate cake complete with overly gooey chocolate fudge icing!! :) I even did a little bit of tidying in the kitchen (which still looks a dreadful state). All 3 boys were napping upstairs and I just felt sooooo.... warm and cosy and Sunday-afternoonish, and housewifey! :) It was lovely!

Arthur: Was left somewhere without Mummy or Daddy for the VERY FIRST TIME yesterday!!! Not intentionally. We went to church (yay!) and Arthur was tearing around the building energetically as usual. When it came time for creche, Neil picked him up and carried him there, and a lady whipped him out of Neil's arms and put him down with the toys, and when he looked for Neil and asked for Daddy, she told Neil to go and sort of stood in the way to block Arthur's view. So Neil went, and came to find me in the service, where he whispered unhappily about what had just happened, and how he didn't like it. I didn't like it either. I mean, everyone thinks we're nuts for always staying with Arthur in creche, but that's our choice. We're not always going to do it. He has gained security from having no concept of us ever NOT being there if he needs us, before he's ready to make that break. Anyway. I love that Neil and I both feel the same way about it :) But also, neither of us feel ready to "let go" of Arthur in that way!

Anyway, we both left the service and crept up to the creche door (which has a panel of glass in it so you can see through) to peep through and see if he was okay. I looked first, and I was pleased and proud to see that he was perfectly fine. He was sitting at the play dough table with two other toddlers and an adult helper, and he looked very much in-charge, hehe! I couldn't hear sounds through the closed door, but I could see him pointing at the other kids' work, and working hard on his own play dough, and all the time his little mouth was opening and closing in continuous chatter! I saw him engaging cheerfully in conversation with the adult helper. He looked happy and confident and cheerful and enthusiastic. I felt happy and proud and pleased, and then as I stepped away to let Neil see, I felt a twang of a sort of left-out-ish feeling :( It's so hard to let go of being a part of every second of his life, and not be there to hear and see every little thing that he says or does. Everything in me wanted to go in there and take part with him, but I knew we had to take our baby boy and go back to the church service, because our BIG boy was doing so great without us. Boo hoo! But YAY for Arthur! I went in with Matthew once he got too noisy for the service, about 30 minutes later, and Arthur was having a great time. I got glowing reports on him and also many comments from the helpers about how he stood out clearly from the 6 little boys his age as a real "live wire" that you need to keep your eye on, hehe! He has like a double dose of enthusiasm and energy for everything. He goes at twice the speed. He was just having a lovely time! Since he did so well, we plan to leave him every time now. Church creche is a great introduction to this step towards independence for Arthur, because it's in a familiar place where we've always been there with him, it's only for a short while, and we're in the same building if he needs us. Neil and I have been asked if we'll go on the rota for helping at the creche, probably once a month. So we'll be with Arthur on those occasions. We think it's time we could leave him without us on the other occasions. I am going to leave strict instructions though, that if he hurts himself even a little bit, or gets upset asking for me, I want them to come and get me RIGHT away. I see them hold sobbing kids for like 10 minutes before they go and get the parents, and I don't want Arthur to be made to wait for us that long, if he needs us and is upset. I also still want him to have milk if he has hurt himself and asks for it.

Matthew: He is doing great! He is 5 and a half months old tomorrow. Two more weeks till we start him on solids!!! I know he'll be EAGER! He is already very obviously ready for solids, except I have no idea what he weighs. I will get him weighed next week maybe - the appt only clinic that I want him weighed at is on Wednesdays, so I'll have to hope they have an appt left for next Wednesday.

Matthew has very good hand-eye coordination (another thing that we were proud to receive a comment on at church yesterday!) and can pounce (!!) on something very accurately with little warning. He is like a little cat sometimes! He watched me eating a custard cream biscuit the other day with absolute calm and stillness, back and forth to my mouth, and then SUDDENLY swiped with his hand and literally grabbed me by the wrist and pulled my biscuit-laden hand to his mouth before I could even react and pull it back! He is strong when he wants something too. He did not get the biscuit though ;)

I have been giving him "touch tastes" of apple whenever Arthur and I eat an apple together (we always share - he likes a few crisp slices from my apple, which I prefer to crunch into with my teeth!). I put my finger onto the juicy part of the apple, and then touch his lip. He grabs my finger with both hands, opens his mouth with tongue ready to taste, and sucks for all he's worth! You should see his eyes - round like saucers! He loves the taste of apple. I give him as many touch-tastes as there are to give him until we've finished our apple. He never gets tired of it. He has tried to squiggle and roll his way to Arthur's sippy cup when it was left on the floor near him too. He is sooooo ready for solids!

I am not going to bother with that crappy rice cereal this time around. We're going straight to veggies and fruit. I can't decide which to give him first, but I am thinking either apple, banana or sweet potato. I can't WAIT actually! I'm quite excited about it! I'll still be glad to wait till 6 months, but I'm excited all the same! Today I bought some new little food bowls to feed him from, and that was exciting :) We are getting rid of Arthur's highchair, as it was a bit of a nightmare in the end, though it looked all nice and cheery. We want something much more adjustable and with a tray that removes. We're going to buy a really nice one and use any money that we're given for him by family at Christmas, to reimburse ourselves. So the highchair will be a gift from family, but we'll get to use it now. Or whenever I find the perfect one and buy it! Which needs to be soon!

Matthew is now rolling over and over with ease in both directions. He shoved himself forwards a foot last week, whilst on his tummy, and a few days ago Neil and I watched with our chins on the floor as he used his toes and elbows to scrobble along the floor about a foot, to reach a toy that he had his eye on. He was on his tummy, and he used his elbows in a sort of army crawl with his head up, looking ahead at the toy. He dug his toes into the carpet and pushed, bending his knees and re-applying his toes to the carpet now and then! Yikes! He hasn't done that since though. But it did make me feel awfully panicky when I watched him! I suddenly thought, "Oh my goodness, it really is going to be no time until he's crawling everywhere, and THEN I'm in trouble!" Arthur's hard enough to keep an eye on with my TWO eyes, and I have no idea how I'm going to keep track of two little eager explorers with plenty of mischief to be made around the place! I just think he is SO eager to get hold of things that he's interested in, that he's just motivated to MOVE! Here's a photo of Matthew being eager for a toy that's juuust out of reach:

Success!! :)

For the last four or five days, I have been trying to give Matthew a bit more practise at sitting, because he doesn't really get "sat up" much. And he's strong and eager. Arthur was doing leany unsupported sit for a few seconds at exactly Matthew's age, so I thought I should at least give Matthew the opportunity to build those muscles up and practise balancing a bit. He started like this:

And got a bit better over a couple of days:

And playing with Daddy helped too:

I could let go for maybe a couple of seconds before he leaned too far this way or that. Then yesterday he was having some naked time on the floor mat before bed, and I sat him up without a nappy in the way and he SAT, although he was kind of leaning over his legs quite a bit. He didn't fall, until he suddenly lurched to the side to reach a toy, but I caught him in time. After I put his nappy on, I sat him up again to see if the nappy made any difference, and apparently it did NOT, because here is Matthew SITTING on his own! Slumpy, but independent, hehe! (please excuse the smudgy photos, but somebody's little fingers had been all over the lens without me realising till just now, when I uploaded about FIFTY smeary photos! Tsk!)

Yay for my clever sitting Boo Bean! I know he's going to be so happy to be able to sit and look around better, as he gets used to it and stronger too. And it'll be so much easier for me to just plop him down sitting. Today when I have sat him down, he has sat well but used his arms in front of him to prop himself. One time he saw a toy about a foot in front of him that he wanted, and he walked his hands further and further forwards until he was folded right over onto his legs! If he knew how to push his legs out from under him as he went forwards, he would be able to work on crawling and going from sitting to crawling. I know that's going to happen WAY too fast for me anyway!

Oh I have run out of time to write any more! I soooo wanted to write more stuff, there seems to be so much to catch up on all the time. Arthur is saying more and adding new words every day and it's hard to keep up with his funny little phrases and the tones of voice he uses as he says certain things. I also still have a few video clips to post here, and some photos from last time that I didn't get chance to post.

But for now, here is Matthew being scrumbly:

And my sweet lil boys - another Arthur-requested photo session! He was pressing his nose into Matthew in the first photo - something he does with toooo much vigour to anything and everything, and the reason we tried him on antihistamines for a week (no joy). He bangs his nose as well, really hard. He says it itches him. The doctor hopes it's his teething. We're always having to tell him not to press too hard on Matthew with his nose! He was watching Thomas the Tank Engine (quelle surprise!) and Matthew is beginning to look at it when it's on too, and he stops and smiles when he hears the theme. *sigh* The theme drives me CRAZY! It's nice, as far as themes go, but still... Here's what I sing when Arthur asks me to "sing trains":

They're two, they're four, they're six, they're eight,
Arthur thinks they're really great!
Gordon is his favourite train,
but to me they're all the same.
He wants to watch them all day long,
so constantly I hear this song.
Driving parents round the bend,
Thomas and his friends!

I know, I'm silly. But re-wording songs keeps me sane, sometimes! ;)

Anyway - photos of my sweet boys being all relaxed together, one blue-eyed and one brown-eyed! They are so precious! I love them so much :)

Decision, video clips, and recent Arthur stuff

I absolutely do not know what to say! I am so touched by all the lovely messages and emails that I have received since my entry about the Sucky Care Hospital thing. Thank you soooo much for being wonderful and supportive! And for the great advice. It really helped me feel better about things and see my options more clearly. I decided I am going to go to my GP (I moved GP surgeries since it all happened so I don't see the same lovely doctor who knew all about it at the time) and tell her all about it. I am definitely thinking about whether to just give her a thing to READ so that I don't have to talk about it in detail again, but then she still gets to know all about it. And I am going to ask her what she thinks. I suspect there won't be any other places in my area that offer the stress management course, but I'll see what my GP suggests.

I did want to talk to her about the possibility of needing some further counselling about it, and maybe I still will, but I do feel better for my "splurge" here. I don't know if it's because I have now managed to shut it all away again though? I did not feel better at first. It took me two days to actually get over writing about it, which can't be good! I did go and eat a nice meal and watch Friends after I wrote my diary entry, but I couldn't relax properly even though I enjoyed it. Neil said he knew I was stressed because my whole face was taut. I had such a megarooney knot in my shoulder blade that Neil had to try and massage it out for a while before I could go to bed.

The next day I got a cold sore - my first one since early in my pregnancy with Arthur! I used to get one every year or so, but it has been 2.5 years since my last one. For me, they nearly always come when I am very run down, either physically or emotionally. I have had lots of stress-related ones before, but then I'll get one that arrived because I was out in the sunshine on the first really sunny day in the year - direct sunlight is a common trigger. Anyway, for me, that was a very clear sign that rehashing the Sucky Care Hospital stuff had really wiped me out, emotionally. I hate cold sores! I can't kiss my children, and I was simply NOT prepared for how terribly hard that would be! I didn't realise how much kissing them seems to be a part of my very language towards them. Now that I can't do it, I have become aware that I have been kissing them constantly! Especially when they are crying or looking vulnerable or wanting comfort. I can't resist just kissing them when I am breastfeeding them or snuggled up to them. It's like an instinctive reaction - little head against my cheek: MUST kiss the head! But I can't. My boys happen to have the cutest, softest cheeks of all time. They are BEGGING to be kissed - not just a lil peck, but a real mash-those-lips kiss, hehe! But I can't kiss them. I have to content myself with just stroking their cheeks instead, which isn't NEARLY satisfying enough! ;) Not kissing my little ones is driving me craaazy. Today I kissed Arthur on the cheek when he was really crying over something. I was so caught up in feeling awful over it that I didn't even think. Poor boy got his cheek scrubbed vigorously with a wet cloth! I hope that's enough. I would hate hate HATE myself if I ever passed these vile things onto my little ones. Some crappy 14-year-old boyfriend of mine passed them on to me. Nobody had told me at 13, that if a boy's lip is kinda scabby, DON'T let him kiss you! Yes, of COURSE I think it's totally gross when a boy has a scabby-looking lip, but I didn't actually "let" him kiss me. Which is another reason why I hate the cold sores. They remind me that I let someone push himself on me. Ugh. No, this is not "Trials from my Life" Week ;) I'm done talking about that one.

Anyway, I am using that Zovirax stuff on it and that usually makes it a 5-day bugger rather than a 2-week one. And a bit less painful, so yay :) Matthew is waking up. Back after I give him a snuggly feed (no kisses!)...

Back again! So where was I? Oh yes, the cold sore. And I just felt distracted and anxious and tense all the time over the next day or two. It kept being on my mind whenever I had a moment to myself. Now it's not so sharp in my head and that combined with the fact that I have recently released some feelings about it all, seems to be making me feel a bit better about it now. I don't want to think or talk about it again though. I don't want to go back to that hospital, even for therapy that I need. My mum is worried that someone there will recognise me and that I won't be safe there. I hadn't really thought about that, but it's a possibility I guess. It's a small hospital.

On a different health-related subject - my ulcer symptoms seem to have gone away, pretty much. Huh? But yay, because it's so nice not to have the anxiety-provoking pain any more! I will talk to my GP about that as well, because mayyybe I don't need the endoscopy if my symptoms are going? I'm sort of hoping that's what she'll say, but I know it would be a good idea to have a look in there anyway, to know exactly what's what.

So that is my follow-up on the last entry. Thank you all so very much for your loving support and for making me feel so proud of what I did, and for THANKING me! It really means a lot to me :)

Okay, back to more normal musings! :) I feel happy and normal now so I can get on with writing normal stuff again! Yay!

Arthur has the first corner of his first 2-year-old molar through this week - the bottom left one. That is toothie number 17 out of his 20 milk teeth. I'm impressed that it waited till he literally just turned 2 before making its appearance, hehe! I know it's gonna take like till his NEXT birthday to finish coming through - these molars are so enormous and seem to take such a long time to finish coming in. No signs of anything on the gums over his other 2-year-old molars though, but he is definitely teething. He has puffy cheeks at the moment, poor love. His teeth are getting very crowded. His canines just finished coming in properly and they are SO massive for canine milk teeth!! They have already started to turn kind of sideways on to fit in the space, and the ones at the front are overlapping and turning a little too. I'm sad because that's BEFORE his big 2-year-old molars are even in, and I don't want his teeth to be all scrunched up together for his childhood. He has such a lovely smile! I don't want his teeth to let that down, y'know? He has inherited Neil's mouth shape, which is basically weirdly too small to hold the number of teeth that a normal human being produces! Neil had to have teeth removed as a child so the rest could even fit. Urgh. To top it off, Arthur seems to me like he's inherited MY baby teeth. My baby teeth were huge. My baby molars were BIGGER than the adult molars that replaced them (hence why I didn't end up getting those braces that the orthodontist swore I would need before my baby molars fell out!). Arthur look so big too. I feel sure his mouth can't possibly fit his teeth in together. I am pretty sure he'll have to have teeth removed to fit them, and I hate that thought. Poo.

Talking of dentists, I have booked Arthur in to have his first ever dental check on Monday! It's an NHS dentist (hooray!) so it's free. When I went there during my pregnancy with Matthew (concessions, yay!), they briefly checked Arthur after I was done, but they told me they usually see children from the age of two. So he's two, and he's going! He isn't great about opening his mouth to let anyone look inside, so I'm not sure how it will go. Possibly rather badly! But we'll see. He told me his mouth hurt the other day. I am hoping to goodness that it's that molar that was hurting him, and not toothache. He has fluorosis still (too much fluoride) so we only brush his teeth once a day with a smidgen of toothpaste, but I still worry that it won't protect him enough from tooth decay. I'd hate for him to need to have work done at such a young age. I know it would be terribly traumatic. Let's hope all is well (and easy to see!) at Monday's appointment!

On Friday he has a hair appointment. His hair grows soooo fast! Again, Neil's. I was still practically bald at Arthur's age, haha! Neil told me that last hair appt was the first one where Arthur seemed rather unimpressed with sitting to have his hair cut, and it got quite difficult to finish! Yikes! I will have Matthew with me as well so I hope it all goes well and Arthur lets the lady cut his hair nicely!

I have just uploaded THIRTEEN video clips from the camcorder!!! It has taken all evening to get them up as some of them are a few minutes long. I can't believe how behind I was getting on those! There are four from his birthday which I said I would go back and add to the entry about his birthday here. So I have added them, if anyone wants to see them. There are three from our trip to the farm, all pretty short - one of Arthur walking up a little hill, another of him looking at the piglets, and one of him standing on the wagon frame and helping me eat my apple! Also in that entry is the promised video clip of Arthur laughing and laughing at me sitting on his whoopee cushion, moments after he unwrapped it on his birthday! I love to hear/see him laugh! It warms me right up :) You'll have to scroll down and look between the various photos for the little audioblog buttons to click on.

There are just too many to post all in this entry - they each deserve a mention by themselves really. So I'll post Matthew doing a little example of his rolling (the method by which he can cover like 12 feet in a matter of seconds, sometimes!), about a week ago:

And also, taken the same day, Matthew being all interested in Arthur's toy garage. He just LOVES that thing. The way he looks up at it as he frantically claws his way near to it, makes me feel like there should be some heavenly chorus playing - you know that one where a million voices go "Ahhhh" in harmony, as someone gazes up at something magnificent?! Well that's the look that comes over him when he sees the majestic curves of the mighty plastic garage, hehe! He just thinks that thing is the most wonderful thing he ever saw. He longs to sit or stand and play with the cars on it, I can tell. He gets all grapply and frantic when he's near it, and I know that if only his body would comply, he'd be sitting by it all day and whizzing cars around on it. He loves to watch Arthur do so.

One time while Arthur was napping and Matthew was awake, I was having a rare one-on-one time with Matthew, and I thought he would like to just sit without interruption and marvel at the garage, if I could hold him near enough and support him. So I set up the camcorder to film his cute little eagerness, and sat with him at the garage. It's kind of a shame I had to shush him when he was making loud noise with one of the cars at one point. He should NEVER have to be shushed with interesting noisy play, but Arthur was napping badly and I reeeeally wanted Matthew and I to have a break for a bit longer! Anyway, here's the clip:

And, not forgetting Arthur, here's a short clip of him when he was watching Thomas the Tank Engine in the week after his birthday. He was learning the engines' names and wanting to tell me them as he saw them on the screen. It was cut short because Matthew woke from a nap. His favourite engine seems to be Gordon. He is always asking to "see Gor-nin" when an episode starts, and he gets excited when he does see him.

More videos next entry! I'll try to make that soon, because otherwise they'll get out of date. I even have a video that I took of Arthur today, at the park. That should be here in this entry, but I really don't want to overload the entry with all the videos at once. The older ones should come first!

Arthur is saying all sorts of funny little phrases now. He has recently started really injecting some humour and irony and other such things into his speech lately. He says odd little things that I guess he hears us say, like, the other day I watched him trying to stuff something that was too big into a box that wouldn't contain it. He persevered with lots of frustrated effort noises for a long time. Finally he stopped, sighed, tossed the thing on the floor, and said, "Oh maaan!" hehehe!

He says things like, "See y'ater!" (see you later!) after saying goodbye to someone or something, and "Si-yee Daddy!" (or Mummy, or whoever has been si-yee - silly!). He says, "wait see..." ("wait and see..." when I tell him that there will be no more Thomas after this episode finishes.

I am noticing that he's "telling" me things a lot more these days. He tells me what happened, for example, when I hear him crying while I'm upstairs with Matthew, and I come running down. I can now have an actual conversation with him to find out what happened. So I'll ask, "What happened, Arthur?!" and he'll sob, "Ah-yah fall down" and points to the TV unit (tsk!). I ask him, "Did you hurt yourself?" and he'll cry harder and say, "Yeahhhh!" If I ask him where he hurt himself, he first tells me where in the ROOM, not on himself. He says, "Here" and points to the corner of the TV or pats a specific spot on the floor or something. It took me a while to teach him to tell me where on HIMSELF he had hurt, rather than where in the room! He still wants to tell me where in the room, first, and then he says, "Nose, bang!" and points tearfully to it. Before the crappy cold sore, I would always ask if he wanted Mummy to kiss it better, and he would always sob, "Yeahhhh!" and tip his little chin up to "offer" me his nose to kiss better. Aw! After I kiss it I ask if it's better now, and he always says, "Yeah!" and gets up more cheerfully :) But he always asks for milk if he has hurt himself, and I always give it to him. It's just so nice to be able to converse with him at last!

We are consistently using the Naughty Chair technique for discipline, at last, now that he's two. We used it for a while a few months back but it didn't seem to be working and the books said not to use it before the age of two, so we waited. It's amazing how those few months have made such a difference! He really GETS the Naughty Chair now. He mucks around on it, so it has changed from being the sofa (where he could play energetic games of trampolines or belly flops during his punishment time!) to a hard dining chair over by the wall in the living room. There, he has nothing to do but sit, and he can't reach anything fun to do. All he can choose to do is sit, or get off the chair. If he gets off the chair, we simply place him back on it without talking to him, and his 2 minutes start over again. He gets off a LOT. It's rather frustrating, but we're persevering! He also screams fit to break windows while he's on it - anything to get our attention I suppose. He bangs his head on the wall behind the chair. We ignore him completely. He usually gets off the chair about 20 times before he does his 2 minutes. *sigh* He can be kind of hard work, this boy! He's energetic and spirited, like his mummy was when she was his age, so it's just his genes really. But he needs to be taught boundaries all the same.

Today I had to discipline him over something in the park and I was absolutely pressed over it. It was pouring with rain, none of us had waterproofs, except Matthew had the raincover over his pushchair, and Matthew was SCREAMING. He had been crying for 10 minutes straight and we were a good way from the car. Both the boys were late for food and sleep, but Arthur would not come. I could not physically carry him to the car, and I couldn't push him up the hill in the pushchair while I carried Matthew either. In the future I will take the tandem pushchair instead of Arthur's all-terrain single, when we go to the park. But it rained heavier and heavier and Matthew cried harder and harder until he was making these chokey noises. I had taken him out to cuddle him earlier but he didn't seem happy about that, and now it was raining so I couldn't. And all the time I was calling to Arthur to come here NOW because we had to get back to the car quickly. He just would not. He'd take 2 steps, then stop and look around. It was driving me crazy, even though he wasn't actually doing anything wrong in his behaviour - just the fact that he was not obeying me when I told him with seriousness to come NOW. I tried everything verbal. I tried explaining why, being playful and asking him to run, shouting my head off at him from way ahead where I was waiting (also crap of me), etc. I couldn't do any sort of time-out because we just had to get out of that rain and fast, and I couldn't physically haul his butt back to the car. It ended up being one of those HORRIBLE rare occasions where I just went and smacked him, and then took him by the hand and said, "Now COME!" and headed off briskly with him. I HATE that I did so, and that I was soooo UN-gentle with him. But he needed to know that he could not just stand there while Matthew cried and the rain poured, and Mummy asked him to come so that we could all get out of the rain and Matthew could get home for the food and sleep he needed. He needs to know that when I am dead serious and tell him to come NOW, he needs to come NOW and not do anything else. If I didn't smack him, I could not think of any other way to get those things across to him and take control of the situation. He would have been in control and I would have had to wait in the rain for him to call the shots. Which would NOT have been okay.

Poor Arthur :( I hate smacking him. I rarely do it - never, now that we are using the naughty chair. I warned him before I did it, that if he didn't come right now, I would smack him. But he cried soooo much when I did, and said, "Hurt!" I'm so so so sorry that I hurt him :( I know I was pretty stern with him in my hurry to get him back to the car. He cried hard all the way back, and I just blindly pushed the pushchair with one hand, pulled Arthur along by the other hand, and bent my head against the rain. Both of them were crying at the tops of their lungs, and we were wearing no waterproofs. Arthur had fallen in a muddy puddle earlier and his jeans were soaked with mud. We got some very sympathetic looks from passers-by!

At the car, I figured Matthew had been crying for like 20 minutes by then, so a few more wouldn't make much difference. I HATE to let my baby cry for even 30 seconds, but I felt I had to prioritise Arthur for a moment, just to calm him down once we were at the car, and cuddle him and explain again, before I put him in the car seat to go home. I didn't want him to feel hurt and punished all the way home. So Matthew sat in the pushchair some more and cried and cried and cried, while I sat Arthur on my lap in the front seat and took his muddy things off and wiped his eyes and nose, and told him how Mummy does not like to smack Arthur, and she's sorry she had to. I think I told him that it was wrong of Mummy to smack him, but my mum thinks I should not have said that. I just FELT it was wrong. But I guess it might confuse him to tell him that and then maybe one day smack him again sometime? Not that I plan to, but then I didn't this time either.

Urgh. He calmed down. At bedtime tonight while I breastfed him in bed in the dark, I talked to him quietly about the day and reminded him about the time on the hill when it was raining and Matthew was crying, and Mummy smacked Arthur. He stopped sucking for a moment while I remembered it for him, and then I said again that I was sorry to have hurt him and that I did not like to smack him, and that I love him sooooo much. And he continued to nurse. I told him my favourite things today were seeing Arthur splash in the puddles at the park, and picking up leaves with Arthur at the park (we really did have such a nice time before it all went horribly wrong, which makes it even sadder that I ended up smacking him). I asked him what he liked best about today, and he popped off the breast and said, "See horse!" I said, "Oh yes! We saw a horse, didn't we?! Did you like that the best?" Arthur said, "Yeah!" and happily latched back on. I honestly do not know what I would do without breastfeeding Arthur still. It's just so wonderful for both of us.

I put the leaves that we picked up into a press. I chose different colours, red, orange, brown, green and yellow. There are so many colours out there at the moment, it's so pretty! I am going to do a new craft with Arthur when they are ready, maybe even tomorrow? I'm going to draw a big tree-trunk with brown crayon or pen, on a big piece of paper, and then we'll stick those leaves all over the paper to make a tree! I think Arthur will love that. I will too :) If it works well, I think we'll pick up as many leaves as we can, every time we go out, while there are so many to have. The other day I introduced him to glitter shakers and glue! :) He made a lovely picture on some black A4 card that I had bought a while ago, and he was very excited about shaking the glitter on and seeing it all sparkly. Every day, we have something to show Daddy when he gets home from work. It's usually a painting that Arthur has done with me, or a drawing. One day it was a BIG leaf that Arthur found near the swings, and we took it home especially to show Daddy later. Last week I let him paint a kitchen roll tube while I held it carefully, and then when it had dried, we stuck stickers all over it. That was a "snake" :) The next day I used various bits of paper waste from the living room bin - junk mail and envelopes and stuff, fashioned it into a snail shape, and wrapped it around with kitchen roll. Then Arthur painted it, and we stuck stickers on it after it was dry. He was SO excited to show Daddy his snail! It was the cutest thing. He was literally shaking when Neil came in and said, "WOW!!!" as he saw the snail in Arthur's outstretched hands!

Two days ago I showed Arthur how to make circles with paints and various circular shaped things, small bowls and tube ends and cotton reels, etc. He liked that too, but he seems to enjoy making actual "things" or using stickers or sticking things ON best. He is very into circles at the moment, and points them out everywhere. He also knows square and triangle, but he doesn't make note of them unless I ask him what shape something is. He likes to draw circles, so much so that he'll draw circles with yoghurt on the table at tea time, etc, saying, "Daw circoooo!" excitedly!

Okay there is SO much more to write, and lots of photos, etc, to post, but it's getting very late so I must stop for now. I think I will post that video clip from today at the park after all, as I've talked about it so much this entry. We had literally been at the park 3 minutes or something, at this point! Arthur got straight out of the car and jumped in a big puddle with his shoes on! I was just getting the wellies out as well! I put him in his wellies and let him go and jump in the next puddle he saw, and I filmed him doing it :) He fell in it, of course. *sigh* It was cold and he must have been SO uncomfortable. I can not believe I forgot a change of trousers for him. I explained that if he was too uncomfy we needed to go home to change his trousers, but he did not want to go home. He wanted to walk a bit more, and then his trousers dried somewhat, so he carried on as normal. I wasn't happy about him walking on in those wet jeans, but I don't think he would have been happy to leave right when we'd just arrived and he had been SO eager to go to the park.

Ugh. I feel so bad that I spoiled it by smacking him. I just wish he had done what I asked of him, and come quickly so we could have got home without trouble. Next time though, I'll take the tandem. Then I'll just plop him in it and that will be that - Mummy in control!

Anyway, here is the video clip. And a couple of photos of Arthur on the way down the same hill where we had crying/rain/smack on the way back. See his teethy cheeks? :( And Matthew, during that pleasant part of the walk!

And that is all! Except I have 36 bites on my back and shoulder. Ugh. Some pesky little bitey thing bit me in my sleep last night. Tomorrow is Fellowship Group. I can't believe I am nuts enough to be up this late. Night night!

Horrible thing from the past (long)

Thank you all SO much for the lovely compliments on my littlest boo's photos!! :)

There's something I want to write about that isn't that cheerful and it isn't about the boys. It will take me AGES to write it allll down and I am dreading doing it. It's something from the past that has unexpectedly been brought to the surface again, just a little bit, and I'm not sure what to do about it. So I wanted to write about it here. But to do that, I should write the background so that it makes sense. I just trawled through a million posts at my old diary, the one I started in January 2001 to write about my life as it was, when I was housebound with M.E. I was hoping that I wrote about it there once, so that I could just post a link to an old entry and that would explain everything, rather than me having to churn it all up again. I can't BELIEVE I never did. I'm frustrated that I didn't because it makes it harder now, but not too surprised, because a) I did not like to talk about it because it was upsetting, and b) I wasn't sure what to mention and what not, since there were legalities involved. I did find an entry with some reference to it, which I'll put a link to in a bit because it might mean I get to write/think less about it for this entry. But I have this horrible feeling that once I start to talk about it, I'm going to not want to stop till I'm all purged. Ugh. And that will FILL hours with difficult-to-think-about stuff, and I don't want my whole child-free evening used up with that, but I DO want to write about it today. So I am starting now - it's 4.20pm and Matthew is having what I presume will be a short nap - just for a little while, so that I might have less to write later and thus some time to do something cheerful at the end of the evening. I hope.

I know it sounds like I REALLY don't want to write about it. I don't. I hate even thinking about it. It will stress me and upset me and throw up feelings that I buried years ago and stamped on for good measure. But somewhere deep down, I probably DO want to just clean things out a little, and getting this down at last after all these years at my diary will probably help that. Or something. At least if I ever need to talk about it again, I can quickly refer to this entry! Tsk. I wish I had done one already, years ago!

Anyway. If you've read me for YEARS (as in, from the sheepdip diary days) then you may know about it already. But I didn't talk about it much or in any depth.

In February 1998, Neil and I got engaged. We had been going out for 18 months, but I knew I was going to marry Neil for a couple of months before we even started going out! Heh. Also in February 1998, I turned 22, and I started a 3-year nursing degree that same month. It was my path to midwifery, since the local university didn't do a direct entry midwifery degree course at that time. They do now, and I had previously completed one year of three on a direct entry midwifery degree course at a university in Central London, but I had to defer (and eventually didn't go back) because I was suffering from long-term depression and was kind of suicidal by the end of that year. So I had to have a break and go on medication.

I wanted to study and live at home with my parents but NOT have to do the horrible commute into London that I had been doing before. I was quickly accepted on the nursing degree course in my hometown two years after I dropped out of the midwifery degree, and it started in Feb 1998. Obviously you guys probably know that I never finished it (sigh, another unfinished qualification), but this time it was because I got M.E. I was married in August 1999, halfway through my degree, and in September I started having the symptoms that turned out to be M.E. It got worse over the months, and then a hefty bout of particularly horrible influenza in December meant that by February 2000, I was completely housebound by my symptoms and had no choice but to drop out of my degree course. Part of me hoped to go back when I got better, but with M.E. you just don't know how long it's going to last. It could have been a year or so, if I was very lucky. Or ten years. Or so. It was a scary and horrible time. The other part of me did not want to go near nursing ever again, even if I did get better fast. The reason for that, and indeed the trigger for my M.E. in the first place (well, that plus a couple of viruses), is what I want to write about tonight.

Matthew is awake and so I will have to have the joy of writing about the crappy stuff later. I had better save this to Word. I will SOB AND CRY if I get it all written and lose it all to some freak internet blip as I'm writing the last sentence! Back later, once the boys are asleep for the night.

Okay, 7.45pm, the boys are asleep and I just put a chicken in the oven to roast and the potatoes are peeled and ready to roast a bit later. Neil's going to put them in at the right time and do the veg so I can just keep on with this till I have to go and serve and make the gravy. I heart roast dinners!! :)

So where was I? Oh yes. So my nursing degree. In... hmmm, let's see... February 1999, there began a block of practise placements in one long lump for several months. We had to cover all the different areas of nursing in these placements, before progressing to the second half of our degrees, specialising in the field we had chosen. I had chosen general adult nursing, because that's what they ask for if you're going on to do midwifery. Each different placement was a four-week block. First I did four BLISSFUL weeks of midwifery, on the labour ward for two weeks (at Big London Hospital, oddly enough, where I went on to have surgery at 36 weeks pregnant with Arthur, to remove that horrid noggin in my nose! And where my brother and his Sarah will have their baby, since it's their local hospital), then two weeks on postnatal.

Then came 4 weeks on a surgical ward, which mainly specialised in gastro-intestinal and vascular surgery, but also had a few amputations and other more medical cases (strokes, cancer, etc) that there were no beds for on the wards that specialised in those things. I had The Time Of My Life on that ward! It was hard hard HARD work and my feet burned all day with how rushed we always were and how I never got a second to sit down! But the work was wonderful. The sister was wonderful. The staff were wonderful. The patients were lovely. I hated the early starts and the hideous twelve hour shifts that had just come into play on that ward. But it meant more days off each week - three days on and four days off, or something like that. Or was it four days on and three off? I can't remember. Anyway. Those things sucked. But everything else was just so fab. I loved it so much that I even started to consider surgical nursing instead of midwifery, and that is REALLY saying something for me! I have wanted to be a midwife for a long time. I got to go with patients I had cared for and watch their surgery, standing right there next to the operating table. That was awesome. Surgery only made me feel odd if I remembered the person. So long as I zoned in on the actual surgery and viewed it as "surgical technique on leg" or something removed like that (!), I had no woozy feelings and enjoyed it immensely! Sometimes a patient was conscious and going through keyhole surgery with local anaesthetic. So then I had to be fully aware of the person, but it was different because they were as nervous as heck and it was my job to keep them reassured and okay with everything. So long as I had a job to do that was okay too, and I enjoy putting people at ease so I felt good about that part of my work as well.

I learned sooooo many things, and I know I did them well, and the rush from doing all these new skills WELL in that kind of environment was just sooooo great!! I just had such a good time working there. That was the last time I enjoyed anything about nursing, so I'm glad it was such a GOOD experience.

Right after that placement came my mental health placement at a different hospital. Let's call it Sucky Care Hospital, since obviously I can't name it, and it's a fitting name for it. I was placed on a ward for "elderly long-term care", which they basically explained as, "they have deteriorating mental conditions which won't go away and they're here until they die". Some of the patients had varying types of dementia and some had Alzheimer's. They were all elderly, obviously. Because there weren't that many mental health wards in the area, they put two students to each ward for placements. Thank God they did, because I could not have endured it without L. She was from Ireland, and she had THE most confident, assertive personality that I ever came across. She didn't take any nonsense! I bet she's a sister already, somewhere out there! ;) She was just a BORN nurse.

Anyway. Ohhh I don't want to talk about it. Now that I try and think of details, I can't remember as many as I thought I would. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough. But then maybe the details are best forgotten. I have done my utmost to push them HARD out of my memory, so maybe that is paying off at last? It took us all of about a day to see that the patients were not being well cared for. The staff didn't care one jot for them. They seemed to even dislike or hate some of the patients. None of the patients could do anything for themselves. Most made no sense at any time. Some needed help getting about, or going to the toilet. Many needed help eating and getting dressed and stuff.

We saw that there were no organised activities for the patients at all. They were dragged to the day room and sat none-too-gently in the chairs that were around the walls. We were pretty appauled, but things got WAY worse. As the days passed on our placement, we saw patients being taunted till they cried or screamed out hysterically - such was the nature of their condition. The staff got a kick out of what they were doing. It looked like they were bored out of their skulls and picking on the patients was something fun to do. Otherwise they pretty much sat and ate biscuits in the staff room thingy. L and I sat with the patients and tried to do stuff with them. It was hard to talk to them about things because we had no clue about working with people with severe mental health conditions and who were confused all the time. I felt shy and nervous about being amongst them at all. I didn't know what to say or how to act, and there sure as heck weren't any role models amongst the staff. We didn't get taught or shown anything. We got assigned a staff member to "mentor" us but nothing actually happened between us and them - it was just a word to write on our various forms and papers at the end of our placement.

Oh God it was awful. The way the poor patients who couldn't feed themselves were fed by some of the staff.... They were handled roughly and you could walk past open doors and see half-naked patients on the toilet calling out for help. There was more, there was so much more, and some of it is starting to come back into my head as I write this, but I need to stop writing about it. That last sentence about the half-naked patients just seemed to do something in my head, or somewhere inside me. The rest I typed as fast as I could without really feeling anything. That sentence made me SEE it as I typed it, and maybe it doesn't sound like much to see someone like that and just think to yourself, "My goodness, that poor person! This place is crap!" and it might seem like I am over-reacting emotionally, but after you saw that, you would then see twenty other things like it throughout your long day on that ward with nothing else to do but watch it happen, and perhaps anxiously ask a staff member why they were doing such-and-such. I felt so scared to question the behaviour I saw, in case someone was mean to me or made life hard for me, or something. I had three more weeks to get through, and it was clear that the whole staff were on the same "team", so to speak. L was much more upfront and did most of the questioning. But we got answers like, "Because she deserves it" or "Because she's irritating me today" or even, "Oh she's fine, we just leave her there till she calms down" etc.

Ugh, I can't do this. I am shaking right to the pit of my stomach and that is making all my ribs quiver and my breathing shake and my stomach feel sick. It affected me so badly because, well, try seeing it day after day after day, and then try being someone (most people are, but I guess not all) who begins to develop attachments and compassion towards patients after being with them a few days, and THEN watch them continue to undergo this awful treatment.

We both found it so hard to cope with being there day after day, and we would ask to spend a day on this specialist ward (for the "experience" or that community day centre, etc) just to get away from it. We spent our free time just being shocked with each other and talking about what we saw, and trying to think what on earth to DO about it. I asked advice from two friends who weren't nurses. They both said not to get involved. To this day, I can't believe they gave me that advice, even though I love them and trust them and they have always seemed like compassionate, loving people to me, and still do. But how could I ever live with myself if I just ended my placement and wiped my brow and said, "Phew, thank goodness that's over" and walked away and did nothing? We both felt we had no choice.

I can't even remember how the next stage happened. I am pretty sure it was L who started it. She spoke to someone high up - I am not sure how she arranged it, but she did. And they approached me with her allegations, asking if I agreed with what she said. And I did. Our placement there was cut short by one week, but for our last week there, I was just completely terrified all the time, because we had been advised to document everything we saw happening that was not right, and I felt sure that there would be some "leak" from the high-up person and the staff would find out that we had made these serious allegations which might ruin their careers, and oh I don't know, maybe they'd kill us or something?! I don't know. I was really scared. But I stuck it out. That week I suddenly developed hayfever for the first time in my life. I never had allergies like that before then. It was an incredible strain on me, physically, and I had never known emotional strain that affected me so physically before.

Hate this shakiness - why after all these years?! I am only writing about it, it's not like I am having to DO anything to do with it again! I am not writing anything else about what I saw. I just want to finish writing about the whole thing. There is stuff to write about yet that was more upsetting to me, so urgh. I just want to get it written before dinner. Then I can try to relax again and eat, and I won't have to think about it any more. Sort of.

We went off to our next placements - more mental health but a different type of placement. I had four weeks on my own in a community home for young people with physical and mental disabilities. It was lovely! I had fun things to do and the people were so nice, and it was OUT in the community so I got to drive down residential roads in a nice area and spend my time in a lovely house that had been transformed for the needs of the people there. And go out with them to their activities, like art classes and gym and stuff. It was so nice and light after what I had seen. But everything seemed under a dark cloud all the time and I had to take time out from that placement on two seperate days to go and spent SIX hours solid at a table with L and a lovely guy who had been appointed chairman of the case that had been started by us, and tell him Every. Tiny. Detailed. Thing. that we had seen. We wrote it all down and went over it all again. We each wrote the incidents we had seen in detail. My handwritten account of the incidents I had seen filled 13 A4 sheets of paper, both sides. We had to convert them into official statements and sign and date a lot of stuff.

Ugh, I feel sick :(

The hearings took their sweet time in arriving, and were hanging over us always as something that could happen at any time. We were kept informed by the chairman. They finally happened in September 1999, five months after our placement. During that time we were not allowed to talk to anyone about it, which was REALLY hard. We had to keep taking days off, and the other students and staff were kind of funny about it but we couldn't tell them why. We had a WONDERFUL teacher who was assigned to be our "university based" support, and she was filled in on everything. After that, if any placement staff member asked questions about why we were taking time out without explanation, she would simply say to them that there was a good reason and that was that. It was a big help. She was a senior nursing tutor and what she said carried a lot of weight - people were happy with her authority over it.

We had to carry on with our studies and our placements, and do essays and meet deadlines and study for exams. And then in August - would you even believe it?! - both L and I got married, on THE SAME DAY!! Her in Ireland, of course, and me here. We both reeeeally did not need the stress of the Sucky Care Hospital abuse case hanging over us during the time preparing for our weddings and studying. We only had August off - students doing a nursing degree do not enjoy the humongous holidays that other university students get! We got four weeks over the summer, and we both used that time to get married and take a honeymoon. Even on my honeymoon I got a call from my dad who needed to tell me that the chairman had to tell us that the dates for the hearings had been changed to ONE WEEK after we got back from honeymoon! Yuck.

So. The hearings were just the most awful thing I ever want to do again. Face to face with the staff members that we'd accused. Tense and serious atmosphere. Sitting to wait for our turn in there, in a cramped little office or box room (depending on the location for that day's hearings). Sue, the lovely tutor who had been assigned to us, came with us and sat the whole day in that box room waiting with us and for us while we were in the hearings. The hearings lasted two weeks. The staff lied. To our faces. They said we made those things up out of vengeance because of some incident between us and a staff member that was totally fabricated. It was our word against theirs, and they had lawyer-type-persons next to them who did what lawyers do and stood and challenged us over our very existance (or so it felt), and suggested what they think had happened, and made us out to be horrible, lying people. I tried to fight back when they did that, but you know how they are. I got cut off mid-sentence a lot and my words got twisted and used against me.

In the second week, I got some fluey virus that made me feel really ill and weak, and the doctor - after listening to my long account of my involvement in the Sucky Care Hospital Case, which he had some outside knowledge of, but had not known that I was one of the "whistle blowers" - was wonderful and so supportive, and told me I should take time out from the hearings and wrote me a note to say so. But it just seemed like that would complicate and prolong things, and I wanted to get it over with. So I went. Sue dosed me up with decongestants and painkillers and stuff, and I did it. I had no voice but a tiny raspy squeak one day of the hearings, and that was a day that they were particularly hard on me in there. All that time I had just sat there meek and frightened and tried to do as I thought best, to answer questions and defend myself a little if I felt under fire. But I wasn't very good at that I think. On that day, I finally snapped when they were angrily questioning/accusing me. I told them again and again what I saw and they kept on suggesting that I didn't see what I saw - it was something horrible that I don't want to talk about - and finally I just yelled and shouted. I had been told not to lose control in such a setting but I couldn't help myself a moment longer. I can't even remember what I said. I think I said again what I saw and how horrible it was to see that, and how much I was being harrassed at this session and did they really think I was going to put myself through all of this for something I'd made up? Etc. My voice didn't really go the distance of my entire outburst, and when I had finished, I just stood there shaking and the room was silent and everyone was looking at me, and nothing seemed to happen for an ETERNITY, and so I just burst into uncontrollable tears and stood there feeling overwhelmed by my anger and grief (not sure why grief, but it was definitely what I was feeling) and hurt and just too many feelings to squash down any longer. I felt like being swallowed up by the floor because of how I HATE to get emotional in front of people, and the room was full of strangers in a certain setting, and they were all looking at me, and nobody was doing anything to take my embarrassment away and the room was silent except for the horrible sound of me doing THE loudest sobbing and crying ever. The type that just racks your chest and you can't stop it. Urgh. After about 50 thousand years, the person leading the hearings said that I should "take a moment" and called for a break, and I was led out by someone who treated me kindly. The secretary, I think.

It was. So. Awful.

After the hearings were all over, and I finally threw off the virusy thing, I never quite felt well again. I got tired too easily, and I did not cope at all well with my next placement which started in October and lasted till Christmas. I hated it, and felt like I did not care to learn a THING about nursing ever again. I had to take a day off work because I just was too exhausted to go one day. And then the next week it happened again. And finally after I talked to Sue, she arranged that I would do the traditional "early" and "late" shifts instead of the gruelling 12 hour shifts, to make it a bit easier for me to recover from them. But it didn't make it easier. So she arranged for me to do 3 days a week instead of 4. I didn't really finish that placement. There were more things to do with the hearings - follow ons and stuff that I'd rather not remember, but nothing so ghastly as those hearings. I had time to make up after Christmas, but my health was going downhill so fast by then, as I'd had flu badly in December. By February I was behind in all my assignments and had not been able to attend some exams, as well as the placement that had to be finished, and another placement block was coming up. On my birthday, I walked into Sue's office after not attending the morning exam, and just sat and cried and cried and cried at her desk. I told her how I couldn't cope with anything and I was feeling so ill all the time and I had no energy and it was just getting worse and worse and I couldn't catch up with my assignments, and, and, it was my bi-r-rth-day (sob)!! She was sooooo lovely. She told me to see the doctor and take some leave and think about it all when I was feeling better. But I did not feel better, and within a week or so after that meeting I was no longer able to go out of the house at all.

So, you see that has been extremely hard for me. I feel sure that without the darn Sucky Care Hospital Case, I would not have lost two years of my life to M.E. I know the timing of that virus was probably the key thing, but I could have kicked that virus's butt if I wasn't stripped to the core over the stupid case. I felt so angry about it for so long. The only person to ever thank me for what I did was my GP. He even hugged me. Now I feel less "sharply" about it. In January that year, 8 staff members were suspended from the ward I had worked on. Three were later reinstated but they had to do some retraining first. I know the case has continued on, and the next stage was hearings to decide whether some of the nurses would be struck off the nursing register. The final stage would be criminal prosecution, but I don't know if it ever went that far. I couldn't cope physically (never mind in any other way) with any further involvement, although I felt guilty that I didn't, because that put it ALL onto L, and although she was fighting angry about it still and raring to go with or without me, it was still a lot to shoulder her with. And without that, the case would collapse I guess. Or. I don't know what happened.

One thing that happened over the next couple of years that I am IMMENSELY proud of, is that mental health care in my entire borough has been reviewed as a result of what we did for those patients. Policies have been re-written and changes were made to the ward I was at, to re-staff it and make it a nice place for those poor people to be. That is a huge relief and I'm glad to have helped bring that about.

The whooole point of me having dredged this up to explain it, is that today I finally got my referral through for my stress management course - the one I was waiting for after I was diagnosed with an ulcer-type-thing a few months ago. Guess where the sessions are being held?

Sucky. Care. Hospital.

I need to do the stress management. But I don't know if I can go back there again. And it's the only place on offer. It's group therapy and there's a long waiting list for being seen individually, but I have to respond soon and tell them what I want to do, otherwise they'll discharge me back to the GP. What do I do?! I feel all panicky and fidgetty about it. I hate that horrible place! I wish I had never gone there and seen what I did! But then, maybe things wouldn't have happened for those patients and more would have suffered. L would have prevented it though, even without me. I just went along with her strength and ended up all weak and crappity as a result. Ugh. I feel so much HATE and ANGER over what I went through, still. At nobody I can put my finger on, but still, it's there.

And now I feel so crap and sick and shaky and stressed, that I am going to put it all back in that little "under the carpet" box where I got it out from, and try to forget about it all over again. I did have some counselling but yeah. I just don't want to talk about it any more. I don't want to THINK about it any more. So I don't want to go back to the hospital again. But then, no stress management course....

I am going to make gravy while Neil carves, and then hope to goodness that Friends is on or something, because I need to relax and laugh now. It's probably not healthy, how I've handled the stress of this, but I can't bear to go back and change that now. I just want to make it all go away. I want to go and eat when my tummy relaxes a little, and laugh the tension all out, at some funny lighthearted comedy. And then read Little House on the Prarie. Or something. And revisit the decision I have to make tomorrow. Please help me know what to do. I just don't know!

I need a hug :(

Matthew is 5 months old!

Yay, an entry all about Matthew! :) I am soooooooooo behind on photos of Matthew, and right now I have about THIRTY (not kidding) from the last two weeks that I'm trying to reduce to a reasonable number to post here in one go! Some of them are quite samey, but I can't decide which to NOT post! Here he is being all 5-months-old this afternoon!...

Matthew is just.... I don't know how to describe him, or how I feel about him. It all comes out in puny, almost childish words, like "scrummy", "precious", "soooo lovely", etc. No words actually describe, or even remotely give any idea of how completely and utterly I am in love with him. Both my boys, obviously, but the same fierce love somehow reflects slightly differently on their different ages and the different "challenges" they pose for me at this time! Arthur is quite demanding and exasperating sometimes, and I can swing from wanting to... I don't know... lock myself away from him in a soundproof booth (!!), to just feeling absolutely swallowed-up with love for him. I just wish he would keep still long enough for me to hold him and breathe him in to satisfy how I love every fibre of his little being.

But Matthew, for now he is different to Arthur. He isn't pushing all my buttons to test the boundaries, and he is soooo much quieter than Arthur for now! He screeches and cries and other noisy sounds, but oh my gosh Arthur is so noisy ALL the time that he's awake! I just crave a few minutes together of peace and quiet by about mid-afternoon! Okay, mid-morning, but mid-afternoon is REALLY getting desperate, hehe! Anyway, Mathsie is just at that age where he completely ADORES me and all he seems to crave is my attention so that he can smile at me like the whoooole sky lighting up (or at least it feels that way to this besotted mama!). He beams hugely the moment he sees me when he wakes up, he can't stay on the breast for a full feed most of the time because he just can't resist pulling off to look up into my face and smile with these soft happy little "hee" breathing sounds, and then start some earnest "talking" because he just wants so much to be communicating with me. I mean, if you already love a tiny person so much that you just IMPLODE with it, how much more does this stage amplify those feelings?!

Ah he's just so completely precious.

I wrote about him a fair bit last entry, with the weight and feeding and stuff, but I'm sure there's more to write about with how long it's been since I REALLY wrote about how he's doing. Oh but thank you SO much for all the comments on my last entry, about Matthew's weight and stuff. That was really helpful to have people reassure me over my instincts! :) Matthew IS a completely different build to Arthur (and oh my GOSH, Mia, how is Liam FOUR?! I read your pregnancy journal for him!!), in fact he is quite the opposite to Arthur in build. Arthur has a large head (bless him, hehe!), and short legs. And normal-length arms, and my long torso. He sounds quite the odd-bod, the way I describe him! But he does still look like a reasonably normal human being ;) All those features are mine, except that I think I have a combination of my mum's little head (she wears children's hats!) and my dad's large head (very few hats fit him!). Arthur seems to have missed me out and gone straight for inheriting my dad's head! Matthew, on the other hand, has a tiny little head, thin to look at straight on, in the face, and long from front to back (Neil's exact head - like a little carbon copy). And he has longer than average arms, I think. Neil has oddly long arms. Shirts and suits are always too short in the sleeve on him. Aren't we weird?! ;) Anyway, he has average leg length and my long torso again. He pretty much has Neil's entire build, except for that long torso. Maybe with that combo he will be tall, taller than Arthur? I wouldn't be surprised actually. So, they are completely different builds. Here they are wearing the same outfit at the same age - Arthur at 4 months and 10 days old, and Matthew at 4 months and 3 weeks old:

So, it isn't too surprising that Matthew isn't following Arthur's weight pattern in the slightest. It could ALL be down to their builds really. But it's also good to hear that it's not abnormal for babies to wait ages before doubling their birthweight, and that there are other healthy babies out there who dropped right down on those charts and were absolutely fine - that made me feel better about Matthew! Thanks also to Carla for reminding me about the pacifier medicine dispensers! I had forgotten they existed, and that might be JUST the thing for Matthew! He still uses dummies so he'd probably take to that fine. I must buy one!

At the moment I am offering Matthew the breast after it has been a couple of hours-ish since he last fed, and he's mostly accepting it happily - sometimes eagerly, and sometimes rather half-heartedly. I am trying to listen to his cues better, and I know that if he waits till 3 hours have passed then he lets me know about it! Unless he's extremely distracted by something interesting. I have been nursing him upstairs with Arthur downstairs, but there have been a few near-incidents downstairs, so hmmm. I am offering him the second side EVERY time without exception, and he nearly always has some of it. Sometimes he has a lot from the second side, so I'm glad I'm doing that for him all the time now. I feel kind of bad that I wasn't always doing it before :( With his teething lately, he has been waking a couple of times during the evening and more at night, say 3 or 4 times from my bedtime to 6am. Not DREADFUL, but kind of tiring nonetheless. But it has been a great opportunity to breastfeed him more, and actually, I know I am going to sound crazy but I very very rarely actually MIND his night-wakings. I remember with Arthur finding it like fingernails on a blackboard to have him wake A.GAIN for the fifty millionth time that night, EVERY night. I spent my whole time complaining about it from when he was about 3 months old, mayber earlier. But he DID wake much more frequently than Matthew ever has, and it was night after night for EVER (or so it felt!), and I guess some crazy section of society had instilled in me this expectation that my baby would start sleeping better any day now, and that I should be able to fix it if not. So yeah, that wasn't true. And I found it hard and got resentful of being woken.

But the wonderful thing about that was, I seem to have been conditioned or something! ;) Because Matthew's 4+ wakings over his 12 hour night do not bother me in the least. I love it when I hear him wake. I can't wait to scoop him up - I love the word "scoop" in my head as I reach over him to pick him up in the dark. I don't know why. I just look at him and think, "Oooh I'm gonna SCOOP you up!" like he's a delicious lil ice-cream or something :) Last night I even said out loud, "Scoooop!" as I picked him up, without even meaning to! I'm crazy ;)

He's just so scrumptious, and more wonderfully, he is so scrumptiously MINE. I totally GET that when I lift him into my arms and nestle down with him to breastfeed him at night. Just how MINE he is, and how perfectly wonderful such a concept is. I love that it's dark at night, and we have no lights on anywhere in our house, except one of those plug nightlights at the top of the stairs. But there's no light from that in our room. "Our" room is Matthew's and mine. Neil and Arthur share the main bedroom - the TRIPLE mattress on the floor. I never meant to leave them to it there, but I needed my sleep during my pregnancy and Arthur was so wakeful that it became necessary to night wean him after he turned one. So I moved to the spare room (which is small and has a single bed) for that, because the plan was for Neil to resettle him when he woke during the phase where we were night weaning him. I slept SO much better in my own space (Neil disturbs me at night as much as Arthur actually!) that I stayed there for the rest of my pregnancy, as I was needy of sleep then. By the end of my pregnancy we had decided that I should stay there during the early weeks and months with Matthew, because I'd be up breastfeeding him a lot and Arthur was easily disturbed at night, so it would not have worked to have Matthew in with us. And we did not want to banish Arthur to his own room right when we were bringing a new baby into the family, and with Arthur still only 19 months old. So there I stayed. And it has worked so well for us, and Matthew is still wakeful at night, so I am still here! Of course we have no need to worry about conceiving any more babies in the near future, haha! And it's not exactly the perfect picture of a healthy marriage. But right now, it works for us and we are both happy with the arrangement. We need to move house in the next year, and we're planning it as best we can already. We need a third bedroom. Then things will be better at night for us, I hope!

Anyway. So at night it's just me and Matthew. Nobody but us. We don't co-sleep - Matthew's cotbed is pressed up against my single bed, and I can reach him through the end of it if I need to. I sleep SO much better in my own space. Better even than when it's just me and NEIL in the bed, no kids at all. I wish it was "okay" for me to sleep in my own bed! It's just not how it's meant to be, when you're married. You're suppposed to sleep all smooshed up next to your husband and it's meant to be all romantic and parsniply-charged and that (sorry if you are new here and don't know about the word "parsnips" - I have used it in my diaries for a long time in place of the word "sex" to try to minimise gross googlers and the like - I just chose a silly word that seemed fun to use, and now it has stuck!). But I have never really done that because I just Like My Space! I get restless leg syndrome fit to drive me CRAZY at night and need a ton of space to do the Highland Fling in bed (or similiar amount of leg-flailing). I hate the feeling that I'm disturbing someone else on the same mattress with jolts and bumples from my restless legs jiggling all over the place! It distracts me right back. So I wish I could sleep in my own bed all the time and for that to be OKAY even though I'm married and supposed to be having parsnips. Which I'm not. Because, hhhhffft, it's such a FAFF and I'm sure it'll hurt and there's no time or space or energy and I have a major thing about freshly-showeredness and when do either of us ever get chance to shower, let alone showered within the same 24 hours as each other?! And. It's never been the highest thing on my list of fun things to do, but for me, breastfeeding hormones quadruple that feeling and that leaves me thinking that parsnips is about as appealing as having my teeth polished at the dentist. Which, although not dreadful, isn't exactly something I'm longing to go and do. The same hormones seem to happen while I'm pregnant, so 14 months of no parsnips isn't really a good thing in a marriage, is it? I do know that once I start getting proper ovulatory cycles again, I start to feel differently, so I know it's largely hormonal for me. How d'you think Matthew happened?! ;) He was an "oops" which was entirely due to me jumping Neil's bones in hormonal heat, haha! And I'm sooooooo glad now that he's here!

Hang on! This entry was meant to be about Matthew! Tsk. I shall resume.

So I love him to little tiny bits and pieces. I LOVE sharing my nights with him and having him make these ultra cute little snuffly snorty sounds as he blindly mouthes around for the breast after I snuggle him close to feed him. He is just soooo soft and sleepy at night! I will be sad when these precious moments are over with, though I know I'll also be SO thrilled to get a solid night's sleep again! It will pass so fast though, and seem like it lasted no time at all when I look back. Time with Matthew is whizzing so fast anyway. I actually feel I want to hang on to the lovely sleepy night feeds, just him and me. Nothing like how I felt most of the time with Arthur. It's just SO much easier already than it was with Arthur, and I also get my own space to sleep, so it feels better. Sometimes when Matthew wakes at around 2am to feed, I can't stay awake as he's feeding and when I wake up again it's 5am and he's sound asleep all snuggled up next to me. I LOVE when that happens! If we sleep together by accident then it's wonderful. It's if I PLAN to do it that way that I struggle to get to sleep or feel comfy, and end up feeling like I have no space for myself. Matthew is happy in his cot bed and sleeps well in there, but he is equally happy next to me if we doze off together. He doesn't complain if I feed him when I wake and then put him back in his cot bed though, which is nice for me.

Oh! You know that big fanfare about his first tooth?! Well, it has disappeared again! I would feel completely stupid/embarrassed except that Neil felt and saw it too, and then the next morning his gum felt kind of puffy like he was doing some active teething, and I couldn't feel the little sharp corner that I'd felt before, so I figured the gum had just swollen around it a bit. But later it had gone down and taken the sharp toothie with it! Or something. Is that even possible?! I don't really think it is. Yesterday I saw a white corner of the OTHER bottom middle tooth, and it felt hard but not sharp like it was quite through the gum yet. And today, nada. Just pink gums that are obviously still bothering him, although he won't really let me get a good look at them to be 100% sure of what is going on in there. But what is up with that?! I am confused. So, no first toothie for now, I guess. How weird!

What else can I write about Matthew before I post fifty thousand photos? Today he rolled the other way! He went from back to tummy, I think. So now we are in trouble! He is already surprisingly mobile just rolling in one direction, and has figured how to get all around the room to all four of its walls just by doing that! So now that he's starting to roll the other way.... I wonder when he'll start crawling. I feel like it will be sooner than Arthur did (at 8.5 months), just because he has always been so much stronger than Arthur and ahead of him in the motor skills so far, and because he is just so EAGER to be able to get himself places and follow Arthur in everything he does, etc. I know he is just longing to get mobile! He shoves and scoots a little now, on his tummy.

He sits well with support, and if I sit him on the floor (in a not-overly-bulky nappy!) in front of me and then let go when he's fairly stable, he won't topple for a few seconds. He pretty much only topples forwards, because he is CONSTANTLY fascinated by whatever he can see in front of, or below him. He LOVES to grab, eat, and play with his feet. Arthur was never interested in his feet. They are so different! We still sometimes sit Matthew in the bouncy chair, which he should definitely not sit in anymore, because he instantly crunches his abs and leans way out to the side to look at something on the floor, or sits forward to try and chew the harness that holds him in the chair - and today he even flopped himself RIGHT forwards to examine the colourful pattern on the seat between his legs, hehehe!

So it is definitely time to put that chair away! The Bumbo does not seem to work too well for Matthew either, though he has only just come into the alleged suitable age-range for it. He seems uncomfy sometimes, and he can also simply twist his torso and almost flip himself out of it by skewing one leg almost out of one of the legholes! He just needs to learn to sit and then he'll be soooo much happier! I should give him more time supported by that maternity body pillow, or maybe I should get that activity ring out and sit him in that? I'll have to watch Arthur around him though, he's somewhat boisterous with him, and it's too risky with him learning to sit.

Arthur and Matthew LOVE each other still! Matthew gives Arthur these adoring gazes and smiles that aren't quite the same as the ones he gives Neil and I. If I'm holding Matthew on my lap on the sofa and Arthur is running back and forth past us, arms flailing and making lots of noise, pretending to be a fire engine or runaway train or galloping horse (something he seems to have the energy for a LOT these days!), Matthew just watches him intently with his head moving like he's watching a tennis game - following Arthur back and forth, all the time with this huge smile on his face like he never saw anything more entertaining or fun in his LIFE before! And as Arthur gets really near to us, he reaches both his arms out towards him, and then they drop again as Arthur gets further away, and as he runs back, Matthew's sweet little arms go up and out again towards Arthur. He never tires of trying to be near him or join in with something Arthur is doing. I find it just the sweetest thing ever, to watch :) I think they are going to be sweet little friends together, which is so nice! Lately, Matthew is VERY interested in all of Arthur's toys - even the ones that are way too big or complicated for him to use yet. He just watches with that eyes-popping, wistful gaze! Arthur made a long train out of his cars that magnet together and left them lying around in the living room after a while. Later on, I put Matthew across the room on the floor mat, and he spotted those bright colourful cars and wriggled and rolled and squirmed his way to them. Arthur was watching Thomas the Tank Engine (quelle surprise!) when Matthew's outstretched fingers finally made contact with the cars, and he grappled at them and it made them clatter and roll a bit. Arthur got so excited! He stopped watching Thomas the Tank straight away and leapt up shouting, "Oooh! Ma-Ma play!" and ran over to help him with the cars. It was so sweet. Arthur rolled the cars back and forth and Matthew just watched and occasionally reached out and touched them. Sometimes they just looked up at each other and smiled and then looked back at the cars. My heart just gave a creak as it stretched that bit bigger than before. Ahhh, my sweet boys! I took a photo but it totally does NOT capture the atmosphere at all. But here it is all the same:

Here are a few photos of Matthew on the floor mat - the first one he was being very interested in Arthur's Thomas the Tank Engine that he got for his birthday (he actually LOVES that toy and fiddles with it to make it play the tune if he can get a moment alone with it!):

I can't think what else I meant to write about him. It's getting really late now as I've just stopped to feed him and now that he's settled again I'm continuing, but I must go to bed. I have a lot more photos to post, but they're all from the same huge photo-session - a rare one when Arthur was asleep so I could take my time to play with Matthew and put him somewhere that wouldn't work for photos if Arthur was around! And just snap a million photos of him looking thoughtful or calm or just focused on the camera - none of which would happen if Arthur was around! I'll post those at the end in a minute.

Matthew LOVES being tickled! He is soooo ticklish. He likes having raspberries blown on his tummy and giggles and does whispery squeals, but he reacts the MOST when it's Arthur blowing the raspberries, which of course he loves to do! I have to wipe Matthew down after Arthur has been blowing raspberries on his tummy and chest - he's so drooly in his enthusiasm, hehe! Matthew is especially ticklish under his arms and round his neck under his chin, so obviously I eat those areas regularly :) I LOVE to hear him giggle and hear his soft little "hee" sounds in his breathing that he gets when he's amused or excited about something. He's just so so sooooo lovely!

Matthew likes attention, and can screech louder than I ever EVER heard Arthur screech when he was a baby! He'll screechy-shout for attention if there are people talking in the room and he would rather they were talking to HIM! He likes to be part of conversations and anything social, and he lets you know about it! Sometimes his noise is so great that it pierces my whole head and I can't think at ALL. Yeurgh. He's just a screecher. Arthur never was. I always affectionately call him my noisebox when he does that - I started that when Matthew first started these loud screechy noises and they scared Arthur, so I wanted to comment on the noise for Arthur in a relaxed and cheerful way. Now when Matthew makes noise like that, Arthur just looks at him, smiles at me with a knowing look and says, "Ma-Ma, NOISE!" as though we're BOTH the adults saying, "Oh, isn't he noisy?!" Sweetie boy.

Matthew is currently wearing medium fuzzi bunz, though he also fits at least half of Arthur's size large ones that he just grew out of, on the closest setting! Some of Arthur's larges are generous sizing and others (from a different batch, I guess) are quite stingy in the fit, and those ones fit Matthew really well on the closest snap setting. He wears homemade stuffable night nappies at night with a large ME airflow wrap, and he now wees as heavily as Arthur overnight so they both need two hemp inserts and two microfibre inserts in their night nappies! That's a whole lot of wee, people. It makes me feel dehydrated just to think about it, since most of it is directly from MY body fluids, hehe! *I* don't pee that much overnight! Which is probably not surprising considering how much is going out of my breasts instead! I need to drink more water. *pause to chug down the entire glass of water next to me*

Matthew also wears size 2 Kissaluvs with a microfibre insert and a medium ME airflow wrap during the day, but although he fits them on the closest snap setting, they are starting to look a bit small in the rise already. My boys are both long in the rise, nappy-wise. The other night I didn't have one of Matthew's 2 night nappies clean (sooo need to make more!), so in a pinch I put on him one of Arthur's Wee Notions XL toddler-size microfibre nappies, with an extra hemp and microfibre insert in the pocket. It is extra long in the rise for large toddlers, and it FIT HIM on the closest setting, rise and all!!! So, he may be lightweight but boy is he growing in other ways! We have to get the 9-12 month baby clothes down from the loft at the weekend, because he has officially outgrown the 6-9 month sleepsuits for overnight with his big night nappy on. Yikes.

Okay it's toooo late. I hope I remembered everything I wanted to write today. Here are the many photos from the little photo session I had with him yesterday. His eyes are still so blue. He has one tiny brown speckle in his right eye, just above the pupil but like a pin-prick - too tiny to see in a photo, and the rest is just bluuuue blue. In the first few photos, he was chewing on a clean cloth wipe to help him with his teething. He loves chewing on cloth wipes! In the last one with the wipe, he got it kind of wedged in his mouth, hehe! He looked so put out! I had to take it out for him and then he wasn't so keen on it, so I gave him Arthur's monkey to play with a bit. He loves Monkey and Arthur seems happy to share for now...

My sweet lovely little man - five months old already. Wow.