First toothie, and lots of photos again!

Did I say I loved hormones?! I think I am about to have another really short luteal phase again, because I went from "Ohhhh, aren't hormones just the best?!" to "If you exhale again at that volume I will not be held responsible for the consequences!" in like 2 days flat! I have gone straight into big-time PMS right after ovulation, and my temperatures on my chart are really NOT good for post-ovulation. They are very similar to the ones I had the first couple of cycles after Arthur was born though, so that's reassuring! Anyway. I am 4 days past ovulation today. My guess is that I'll get my period within the next few days. I had an 8 day luteal phase last cycle. Joy of joys.

But apart from being tired and crabby, everything else is fine! :) Thank you SO much for the lovely comments after my "Arthur" entry! It's so nice to hear that I'm not odd for stealing from my sleep to get some "me" time! Not sensible, but not odd! Thanks for reassuring me! And Meg, YES PLEEEEASE!!! I would love a Meggie visit!! Just say when! :)

The main reason I'm writing tonight is to say that Matthew got his first tooth today! I know I had another entry a few months ago titled, "First toothie!" or something like that, but that was soooo weird back then - a brief appearance of a lil white toothie edge, only for it to be swallowed back up for several more months the very next day! How weird. But it's definitely here now. It's so much harder to tell with Matthew than it was with Arthur, because they have completely different mouth shapes. Arthur's is broad and naturally "open", and when he smiles, alllll his teeth and gums are visible. He almost never stopped smiling as a baby so it was VERY easy to tell what was going on with his gums at all times!

Matthew has Neil's exact mouth-shape (although, Arthur doesn't have mine, and his is totally different to Matthew's! I think Arthur's is exactly like Neil's dad's mouth shape, but Matthew's mouth is like Neil's mum's (as is Neil's) - is that even possible?!) and it's smaller and narrower. When he smiles his lips and tongue tend to mostly cover his gums - mine do that (Neil's don't) so I guess he gets that part from me! But anyway, the point is, it's very hard to see his gums at any time, even when he's smiling! And he is not a fan of me poking around trying to see/feel his gums either! So it's hard to know. With Arthur, I could clearly see a dark sort of "eroded" spot on his gum exactly 3 days before a new tooth came through it. It lasted the 3 days, and by the end of that time, there would be a sharp little something just touchable on that spot, and only a few hours later you'd be able to tell that the something was white. I can't see if Matthew's gums have that dark patch to them in time to predict the toothie so that's a shame. It was nice to be able to tell with Arthur's teeth!

Anyway. In the middle of the night last night, I nursed Matthew as usual in the dark in my bed, and then went to sleep. The next time he woke, I sleepily lifted him into bed with me and put him to the breast, and when he latched on, I thought, "Ow!" Not from something he was doing, but I was just sore like the previous feed had caused some irritation or something. The next feed felt exactly the same way, and then in the morning when I nursed Arthur, it hurt the same, but only on that side. So I wondered if perhaps Matthew had finally cut a tooth and in my sleepy state one time, maybe I'd let Matthew sort of drag himself off that breast (a habit that he has all the time and which I now HAVE to stop!!) at the end of a feed. I'm surprised I didn't notice it hurting at the time, but I was soooo sleepy.

I tried to see his gum down there by getting him to laugh a lot, but he never really moved his tongue out of the way. I felt with my finger and could feel like a little rough sharp grain-of-sand type thing on the smooth gum, so I thought, "Ah-ha!" :) I knew it was a toothie, but onnnly just. Later on, I let him bite my finger for a moment in some good light and just whipped his tongue up with another finger, and WOW he has a huuuuge dark sort of crater-y patch on his gum, with a little rough toothie edge just visible in the middle of it. It looks massive against his little mouth! Neil had to have LOTS of teeth removed when he was young because he has a very small mouth and not-so-small teeth. I think it's fairly probable that Matthew will have the same awful situation, given that he has the same little mouth :( How awful for him!

So Matthew's first tooth is the left bottom middle toothie! I think that was Arthur's too. I must write it in his baby book! At 7½ months, he is exactly one month younger than Arthur was when he got his first tooth. The tooth next to it looks like it might not be far behind, though I didn't get chance to see if there was a dark patch starting there yet. Arthur used to teethe mostly in pairs. His second tooth came 3 days after his first, so we'll see about Matthew's! I hope he gets a break from teething soon. He has suffered horribly with teething (the rashes, diarrhoea, 24-hour pain, etc) for nearly 3 weeks now, poor sausage. That seems rather excessive for just getting a tooth! I was starting to hope it would be this bad because maybe he'll get LOTS at once, then that would make it worthwhile, and get several out of the way. His top front teeth look "active" so they surely won't take a long time now? I hope not.

I can't believe my tiniest boy is getting TEETH! He has also spent the entire day pulling up to kneeling on everything. He is so pleased with himself because he can reach a whole new load of stuff "standing up" on his knees. He can push the button on the Fisher Price ball blast and just bop away at it whilst clinging on for dear life! Did I mention that he knows how to use the toy garage?! I watched him a few days ago, and he crawls over to it, grabs a toy car, and purposefully swings his arm up until it's wavering around above the top of the curving ramp (this sometimes takes him a few tries to perfect, as he usually does it from lying on his tummy, which is hard to do since it's above his head-height then!), and then he drops the car onto the ramp! The car then whizzes down the ramp and under the garage, and Matthew ducks his head to watch it zoom out at the bottom, and then grabs it again and puts it back on the ramp! He LOVES the garage and will spend a long time (5 minutes straight sometimes) just doing this over and over. I need to get that on video.

This evening he was kneeling at the garage, and he used the tower part of it (which is next to the ball blast toy) to cruise on his knees, doing funny little side-steps, to the ball blast!!!! Yikes! I think he must have nooo idea of the concept that he can one day pull to STANDING and use his feet to cruise, because otherwise I'm sure he would have tried it by now! He's soooo eager. I hope I am RIGHT there the moment he discovers that he can get to his feet :) His face when he managed to haul himself to his knees, steady himself holding onto something and look around, was priceless - soooo amazed and excited all rolled into one look! He was hauling himself up to peer over a big box of Fairy washing powder that I'd used as a barrier in front of a pile of dirty laundry which was in front of the washing machine yesterday, so he wouldn't get to the laundry when he went over to gaze lovingly at the machine! He kept going back there once he'd figured out that he could kneel and watch the machine over the box - it was so cute :)

Matthew is sleeping soooo well in the day at the moment. I don't want those to be my famous last words (!!) but I don't think I've mentioned his sleep for a while and the difference between him and Arthur is INCREDIBLE for day sleep. I am just constantly boggling at it! I don't know if it's the boys themselves, or something we've done differently, since BOTH are different factors. I do fiercely safeguard Matthew's day sleep though. To the point where we don't go out and do playgroups or other activities for Arthur because Matthew's naps co-incide with those things. Earlier on, I tried just carting Matthew with me and hoping he'd fall into step with his sleeps, around our activities. It did NOT work. His naps got so awful and he was so cranky and tired all the time. When he did nap, he'd wake after 30 minutes (just like Arthur used to) and be cross and tired till the next 30 minute nap. With just a bunch of 30 minute naps all day, he ended up with WAY less sleep than a baby his age needed - usually 4x 30 minutes (so, 2 hours) total. I know babies vary in their needs, but at his age, on average, he should have been getting 4-6 hours sleep in the day!!! Arthur never did, because his sleep was DREADFUL all round, and he completely depended on me to get him to sleep. I found it impossible to keep him asleep once he woke. Urgh, it was so hard! He never improved on his sleep, and in fact he now sometimes actually takes 1 straight hour spontaneously for his only nap, which is an improvement on some of the baby days even! He most often takes 30 or 40 minutes and then wakes wanting milk and if I'm lucky he'll nurse back to sleep for another 30 minutes. But he's older now, so that's fine.

Matthew seemed willing and happy to sleep well if only I'd enable him to do so. It started to seem unfair to not give him that opportunity, even though it then seemed a bit unfair that Arthur didn't get to go out as much and do things. I had to choose one of them to prioritize for this time in their lives. My friend Katie has prioritized her toddler who attends playgroups all over the place and gets out of the house for walks or activities twice a day, every day. Arthur would love to do that, I know. But her baby (the same age as Matthew) is constantly crying and miserable and rubbing her face. She always has been like this whenever I've seen her. She falls into exhausted sleep randomly while being held or in the car or pushchair, for 20 or 30 minutes at a time before being woken by something and crying again. When they do get time at home for a few days, the baby sleeps really badly anyway. They have real trouble with her sleep in general. Katie knows she's overtired, but she hasn't got much choice other than to go with the flow, because her toddler needs to be out and doing his stuff. We both agree that it's horribly hard to have to prioritize one child over another for things like this, but that there really doesn't seem to be any way around it when neither of your little ones go to any activities without their mummy.

I chose to prioritize Matthew because, well, babies need their sleep, and I read an article that said that growth hormones in babies are not even secreted till they've been asleep for about an hour! So that did it. I started making sure he got to nap properly, and took quite a few weeks (maybe even a month or two) enforcing longer naps - doing a ton of stuff to get him back to sleep if he woke too early. We used to use a dummy with him, remember that?! It seems like a whole different lifetime, Matthew's tiny baby days. That's crazy, because he's only 7 months old, but honestly, remembering the things he did or the equipment we were using for this or that back then REALLY feels as distant and detached as remembering something from when ARTHUR was a baby! It's so strange how that happens.

Anyway. I don't know how the dummy disappeared, but I think he pretty much stopped using it by himself. We only gave it to him if he was colicky or fussy, or if he got tired and needed to calm down to sleep. After a while I would only give it to him for a short bit, while I cuddled and rocked him before putting him down. When he had dozed off, or was just about to, I popped it out of his mouth. There were a few occasions where he got annoyed and refused to take his dummy when he was cranky and needing to settle for sleep, and after trying to get him to for a while, I thought, "What am I doing?!" and stopped trying! We used it on a few random occasions, but less and less, and then suddenly one day I found a dummy down the side of the bed and that's when I realised it had been ages since I'd picked one of those up or used one with Matthew! So that was that.

So anyway. His day sleep still varies a little in how long he'll nap for. He's fairly predictable though - something amazing in comparison with Arthur! And the AMOUNT of sleep he gets is also very different to what I "achieved" with Arthur. He takes two naps, having dropped the third a few months ago. He started refusing to go down again for a late afternoon nap if he'd already had two naps that day, EVEN if he was exhausted and it had been way too long since his last nap, and he'd NEVER make it to bedtime! He just was having nothing of it. A few times he was so tired and cranky that I just left him in the cot hoping he'd drop off while I made Arthur's tea. He sometimes lay there without much fuss for a whole 30 minutes, which was how long I expected him to nap, so I would just get him up again after that! Then I stopped trying to put him down for 3 naps, and spaced out the timings of the remaining two - this is when playgroups and stuff went RIGHT out of the window.

He gets up between 5.30 (uggggggghhh) and 7am most days. It varies hugely, but most often it's around 6am, like Arthur. He needs to go back to bed after he's been awake for 2 hours or so, so his nap start-time depends on his morning wake-time. Lately he goes down for a nap just after Neil goes to work, about 8.45am maybe. He sleeps without needing me to resettle him or anything for at least 1½ hours! Amazing. Occasionally it's only an hour, and he will NOT go back to sleep for anything these days, when I try to get him to. I just get him up and think of it as extra time for a morning outing for Arthur, and hope that he'll make it up in the afternoon!

Often he will sleep 2 straight hours in the morning, getting up sometime just before 11am. Then he needs another nap after 2 or 3 more hours have passed. The afternoon nap is rather structured by me, and always has been. See, I discovered that if I don't get my children to sleep at the same time at some point in the day, then I go CRAZY! I'm just so thankful that my older child is still young enough to need a nap in the day - I have no idea how I'd manage otherwise! I need a gap in the day, even 30 minutes, where the house is quiet and I can eat some lunch without stress or little grabbing hands! Arthur needs a nap any time from noon, after he eats lunch. It varies for him depending on how tired he is. But I make one or the other of them wait until the other boy is ready for a nap too. If Matthew wakes early in the morning and takes a morning nap from 8am or something, and then wakes at 9.30am, he has a LONG stretch till I let him nap again! It sounds so mean of me! ;) He will be up for 3-4 hours until Arthur has eaten lunch and seems more tired for his nap. But if Matthew's nap has started late and gone on till 11.30am, Arthur will have to wait till 2pm or something, for his nap, because Matthew won't be ready for his nap till then. Poor boys ;)

It's soooo worth it though! When it comes to nap time, I change both their nappies, and then take Matthew upstairs while Arthur watches Thomas the Tank Engine or something, and I nurse Matthew in my bed and then put him down in his cot. Sometimes I have to rock him a bit first and pat his bum once he's in the cot until he's closing his eyes. This week he's driving me crazy fighting me when I try to put him down for a nap - he flips over and giggles at me, so everything gets very drawn out as he gets noisy and so I try again, and he resists with cheeky laughter, and so I leave him to it again, and so Arthur waits longer :( Today they didn't go to sleep till after 3PM! I don't want to repeat that again, so I'll try something different next time.

After I leave Matthew dozing off, I go down and fetch Arthur, and take him up to bed as fast as possible. I nurse him to sleep (he ALWAYS needs to nurse right to sleep, and has never been able to sleep for day naps any other way) and then check on Matthew, who is always fast asleep. The difference between getting Matthew to sleep and getting Arthur to sleep is usually about 10-15 minutes. That way, if either of them wake at the 30-minute mark (which both can tend to do, but especially Arthur), I still get to have 15+ minutes to totally relax and be "off-duty"!! Once I know a boy has reached the 30-minute mark, even if they stay asleep, I can't relax as much because I know they could wake at any moment. If Matthew wakes that soon, he always wakes crying and that tends to wake Arthur, and then I'm in trouble! Both awake and crying and needing Mummy to fix it! Which, no can do. So it's not good if that happens, and I can't relax because I need to be ready to sprint to either boy's side in 0.56 seconds and stop the crying with breast or reassuring cuddle until they sleep again!

When Neil is here at the weekend, the urgency isn't so great. When someone else is around, if one boy wakes and his noise wakes the other, there is one person to tend to each boy, so it works fine.

Anyway. So I get a blissful 15 minutes or so, and manage to eat something in that time usually, though I can't cook anything because it takes too long. I usually eat a sandwich or toast or something and just flop on the sofa with my ears pinging joyfully at the "noisy" silence around me, hehe!

If Matthew wakes at all, it's at that 30-40 minute mark, like Arthur, but because their naps are staggered by about 10-15 minutes, Matthew doesn't usually wake Arthur at that stage, because Arthur is only about 15 minutes into his nap and that is a time when it's really hard to wake him :) It just works really well for us to do it that way. I resettle him without trouble, as he desperately wants to get back to sleep, and then he sleeps a longer stretch. All in all, he tends to take about 2 hours in the afternoon as well!!! It's just amaaazing! I still feel anxious about waking him, because once he's awake he can only make it 2-3 hours before needing to go to bed for the night, and if he wakes (or is woken) earlier than 3.30pm he will be cranky and overtired before bedtime arrives. If I put him down for his afternoon nap earlier than 1.30pm he is guaranteed to wake no later than 3.30pm. He almost can't quite make it with just 2 naps, but he WILL NOT take a third, and I don't think he actually needs one anyway. He's just stretched. If his naps were shorter, he'd take three, probably. Otherwise he'd never make it through the long gaps till bedtime!

Today he slept especially well - I wonder if it was teething-related? He napped a straight 2½ hours this morning and then a very unusual 2¼ hours this afternoon. I use his nap times to do lots of one-on-one stuff with Arthur - crafts or playdough, but often housework like folding clothes from the tumble dryer, which is Arthur's absolute FAVOURITE thing to do in the whole world at the moment! There's always plenty of it to be done, so it's a good activity! It's also quiet-ish, which is something I like since Matthew is sleeping.

Matthew only sleeps on his tummy. He has only slept on his tummy since he was tiny - I can't remember now how old he was when I first started putting him down for naps on his tummy, but it was very early on. I don't like that he does really, since it does carry risks, but he wouldn't sleep on his back. At night he would, though he'd wake a bit more, but in the day he got so that he wouldn't sleep, or else he kept waking. He slept great on his tummy so I put him like that for all his naps. Then he started getting hard to keep asleep past 4am at night, so after that feed he would go onto his tummy, and gradually the night sleep got phased into tummy-sleep rather than back-sleep. I was really anxious about the night sleep on his tummy, and would pray over him every night before I got in my bed. I just felt scared every single night, knowing he was on his tummy and I was dropping off and not able to watch over him, so it was a relief to pray about it. I still sometimes feel nervous about it, even though he's been sleeping that way for so long. He still wakes 2-3 hourly at night all the same! But his day naps are GREAT. I love his one extra-soft-and-warm red cheek when he wakes :) That is just about the cutest part of having a baby who sleeps on his tummy! I kiss it and kiss it and kiss it and KISS it when I pick him up from his cot. It's going in my sensory memory treasure trove along with things like popping bubble-wrap, and hearing rain on a canvas tent above my head, etc. I could EAT that boy, he is so scrumptious! :)

Of course he has been able to roll himself from back to front and front to back since about 3 or 4 months old, so that took some of the worry away, as he would probably have started putting himself to sleep on his tummy anyway and I couldn't have done much about that.

Wow, what a lot of detailed waffle about naps and sleep!!!! DARN IT, it's got late again!!! I never notice when I'm writing here. Tsk.

Okay, must post a few photos to try and catch up. What else to report before I go? Oh, our dishwasher broke today :( It had a horrible burning metal/plastic smell and now there's no heat to it :( So it's not working. And I was NOT keeping up with the kitchen and dirty dishes even WITH a dishwasher. I don't know how we'll manage without one! Urgh. We have no money (again), in fact, less than no money at the moment, so repairs or - the worst-case scenario - replacment does not sound good right now. Also, do you remember when Neil went shopping a couple of weekends ago and 3+ pints of milk spilled all over the inside of the car boot? Well, he took the carpet out and it's STILL in our back garden, grrrrr! But the milk also seeped into the works of the car, and today when I opened the door to put Arthur in his car seat and lifted him up, I was hit with SUCH an awful smell! I actually took Arthur back inside and took his coat and shoes off, got a nappy together and took his nappy off, only to discover that he HADN'T done a poo at all, and the smell had to have been coming from the car itself - YUCK! It smells like rotting poo. I kid you not. It's absolutely disgusting. The next thing I hunted for was a forgotten package of sausages or something that might have fallen out of a shopping bag in the boot, but I found nothing, so I guess it has to be the darn milk. Urgh. I have NO idea what we are going to do about that. The smell is awful, and I don't think it's going to go by itself. Neil is soooo depressed about it tonight. He's had a hard day at work, and the car stinks, and the dishwasher is broken and we haven't got any money. Poor Neil.

Happy News! My parents are doing a flying visit tomorrow!!!! They are coming to bid on some furniture at an auction somewhere, and they are travelling overnight tonight and going back tomorrow night, so no stop-over. They plan to visit us for a few hours in the afternoon tomorrow - yaaaay! I can't wait! Arthur seems excited too. He keeps saying, "Nana coming sooooon!" and "Out Nana walk!" (he wants to go out with Nana for a walk), and "Fold clothes, Nana!" and "Do tlay-dough, Nana!" ("tlay-dough" is how he pronounces playdough!). He loves Nana! So do I :)

Yet again there is sooooooo much more I wanted to write and that is pressing to be caught up on! But it's too late again. I'll post some photos of the boys playing together and stuff now - I've been meaning to catch up on those for a while, and there really are SO many of them playing together now. They spend accumulative HOURS each day playing with each other now, and they enjoy each other so much. They like the same things (cars, trains, building blocks, etc) and I am just beginning to notice that I can go in the kitchen and do a bit of housework while the boys entertain each other!!!!! How wonderful is that?! I'm so happy about it. If they want me, either of them can come in to me independently now, as Matthew crawls everywhere. If Matthew gets something he shouldn't, I hear Arthur say something about it so that alerts me (plus I look in to check on them very frequently, or I call to ask Arthur if they are doing okay) - he'll suddenly say, "Oh Mashew! No no no!" or a very wary-sounding "Ohhhh no!" and when I call out, "What's Matthew doing, Arthur?!" the reply will come back, "Mashew eat paper!" or "Mashew got phone cord!" and then I come dashing in to prise things out of Matthew's hands/mouth and put them away! I have no idea how he finds some of the stuff he gets hold of. Anyway, photos! They are all from about a week or two ago:

That's probably PLENTY for one entry! I still have so many MORE!!! I'll try to write another entry soon!

The latest on Arthur-Bean!

I am going to TRY to make this entry (I've been wanting to write about Arthur a bit) as quick as I can, as it's getting late and I am so so SO exhausted these days. I have been averaging 3-4 hours sleep (and not a solid block either) per night for about a month now, urgh. I am starting to really feel the deeper effects of it now so I must try to go to bed earlier. It's so hard to fit in time for myself without staying up late, and I REALLY need that time for myself at the moment. Matthew still wakes 3ish times a night, and once during the evening, and he often has patches where he wakes RIGHT up and won't go back to sleep for an hour. Which means I am up for an hour in the night, and the whole thing is just knackering. I don't particularly want to cut down his wakings yet, because I'm not complaining about those specifically - I still love those sleepy moments in the dark with my tiniest Boo! But I AM tired of the exhaustion. My eyes sting all the time lately, and I feel queasy and giddy a lot. I have been having to take painkillers in the morning for headaches every day for a while. I don't have any energy to take the boys out, most of the time. It's so bad of me :( I need to just GO TO BED and give myself a chance to get some decent sleep, for the boys' sake as well as my own. But by the time Neil comes home from work, I am just desperate to get to the part of the evening where the boys are asleep, we've eaten, and I get to unwind doing things that are just for ME. I can't seem to get a feeling of satisfaction over that, or relax enough if it's only 30 minutes or an hour. I need like the WHOLE evening lately. If the evening doesn't start till between 9 and 10pm because the boys have been difficult to settle and then I've picked up toys downstairs and we've cobbled together some dinner and eaten it, then I can not find that sense of "phewww, that's better!" from my own time if it's less than say 2 hours. So I'm always always up past midnight. Matthew always wakes to breastfeed between 9.30 and 10.30pm and sometimes Arthur wakes in the evening too, but he's very easy to settle, and it doesn't always have to be me. Everything can get strung out, anyway, and I can't seem to get to bed (without feeling like I haven't recharged for the next day) before 1am usually. Sometimes quite a bit later. I probably sound really stupid. But I don't know how to fix it. This yearning for enough "me" time after a long day with the little ones is so strong, it kind of feels stronger than hunger and more like oxygen, or something. I can't just squash it or ignore it. I tried once or twice but it just made me feel depressed and less "fresh" for the boys the next day. I was more impatient with them because I just felt crowded by them more, if that makes any sense. I need time to be me!!

So anyway. Tired, must go to bed. It's 10.55pm now, and Matthew has had his evening feed. I have had a bath and a nice dinner so that's a good start! I think I'll just write this entry and go to bed - that will still be a much earlier night than usual for me. Unless I write for HOURS, of course! ;) Which I will try not to do!

Thank you so much for the sweet comments on my last entry! I was a bit worried at first that I'd been TOO personal with my writing but I was encouraged by people's comments :) Thank you!! And thank you for the compliments on my sweetie-boys! :)

I wanted to write some stuff about Arthur, and post some of MANY photos that have been building up for a while. His speech is just continuing to develop SO fast, and I am missing making a record of it as it happens by not keeping up here. I love what Megan does when she writes things that Alex is saying, by putting them in a different colour so they're easily seen in the diary entry :) I think I'm going to do something like that. It will help me find things he was saying easily, when I skim my entries in the future looking for sweet nuggets of nostalgia!

I jot things that he says down on paper during the day, but then it only takes a few days before he's saying things in better combinations or new phrases. It's no longer about new words with Arthur, it's all phrases and sentences and sayings now. He has so many words that I don't really notice new ones any more - I'm sure he is still finding some, but I'm more quick to notice the way he puts them into context in sentences or something, rather than the actual words. His sentences are getting more grown up in their structure. He has started saying "I" instead of "Ah-yah", and he says "ing" words instead of the short version. Today, the boys were sitting on the kitchen floor eating apple rice cakes. Arthur sat himself RIGHT next to Matthew, squished up as close as he could get, and then beamed at me and said, "I sitting next to Mashew!"

There are only a few little words missing from some of his sentences now - like "I'm" instead of "I", or "it" (or "it's") - that gets missed a lot still. He has rapidly gone from a week ago, saying something like, "Wotsat?" with his finger on his ear when he hears a sound, to today: "What's that sound?!.... I think a pussy cat!"

He'll say a run of things now - I can't explain the kind of thing I mean, so here's an example: Today he was opening various pots of playdough (we pretty much do playdough every day), pulling off the lids to see the colours inside. He would hold a pot gleefully and say, "What could be?!" and then suddenly grab at the lid, saying, "Let's find out!" Once the lid was off, he'd peer inside and then announce to me with great fanfare, "It's.... TUR-GOISE!" hehe!

Today he came to me holding out his finger, and saying, "Hurt my finger, I need cuggol (cuddle)" Then it seemed to dawn on him that he could ask for MILK because I will give him milk when he gets hurt, if he asks me for it! So his face suddenly lit up and he said, "I need MILK!" with a huge beaming smile, hehe! I'm pretty sure he didn't actually need milk, but he got some anyway, just for being cute, hehe ;)

He has a lot of playdough cutters, as I bought a whole load from someone at eBay when I first started stocking up on playdough stuff for him to use at about 18 months. This seller had accumulated LOTS of cutters and accessories during her time with little kids in the house, and was selling them as a big lot - lucky me! So we have a fantastic set of playdough stuff for very little money :) Some of his cutters are dinosaurs, and since before he was two, he has been picking out the - uh-oh, here's a challenge to my spelling skills (or lack thereof!) - pteradactyl? Wait, I'm so anal about these things that I need to spell check it before I can continue ;) Only one letter wrong, go me! Pterodactyl, then. Anyway. It's the only one of his dinosaur cutters with wings, and he calls it "ter-dac-tyl". He did that as usual yesterday, as he pulled the cutter out of the box, and it hit me that it seemed crazy to have him pull out the other four dinosaur shapes and just say, "Di-saur!" (like George from Peppa Pig, hehe!), just because I had only taught him that one word for all of them. So I told him the actual names of the dinosaurs as he pulled the cutters out one by one.

TODAY, the first cutter he pulled out of the box when we were doing playdough was a dinosaur, and he brandished it at me and declared, "Triceratops!" clear as day!!! It WAS a triceratops too, although he might have sounded it slightly like "TWY-ceratops" but it was almost exactly the right pronounciation! I was amazed. He also remembered stegosaurus, but only when I prompted him by reminding him that it had spines on its back. Diplodocus he didn't remember until I told him again. I love how he pronounces that - "Dip-pop-oh-lus!" or something similar, hehe! The other dinosaur cutter is Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is a bit of a mouthful! He definitely didn't remember that one from yesterday, and it came out a big jumbly disintegrating word starting with "ty" and then a victorious, "REX!" punched on the end of it, hehe! The other thing I loved was that, if he didn't know the name, he simply said to me, "I don't know name!" :)

There's more talk-y stuff, but I must post some photos before a boy wakes and time runs out, or something!

We had SNOW last week!!! Yay! Our first snow this winter! It was about 2 inches - more than we'd usually get, but it melted within half a day. By the time I'd sorted the boys out and had breakfast and put Matthew down for his morning nap, it was starting to really melt, so I knew we wouldn't be able to wait till the afternoon to go out and see it properly. The back garden didn't seem to "take" the snow very well - it just sat about in white clumps on a very muddy lawn, so I didn't really want to send Arthur out into the back garden. But the front driveway was better. The car was parked on it and it still had an unblemished blanket of 2-inch thick snow - plenty for a little person who was new to snow! The actual driveway was mostly just wet rather than snowy, but never mind. So we went out on the driveway and I kept popping in to listen for Matthew (he never woke and took a lovely 2-hour nap!).

We bundled up, but it was sooooooo cold. Arthur refused to wear gloves or mittens. He wanted to TOUCH the snow and feel what it was like. His hood kept falling down and he refused his hat. We were only on the driveway and I had every intention of whipping him back inside quickly because I was freeeezing! I kept asking if he was cold as he busied himself carrying bits of snow back and forth, and he'd say (rather impatiently), "NO! I alright!" hehe :) If I said, "Mummy is reeeally cold! Can we go back inside now?", he'd reply (every time), "Jus' lilloo bit longer?..." That's one of his key phrases in life actually! He uses it for EVERYTHING - a bit more milk, staying at some activity a bit longer, when he doesn't want to go downstairs right away after waking from a nap, etc. It's so earnest and irresistable, and I think he knows it! ;)

We built a teeny-tiny snowman on the driveway, from snow that we took off the car. We took a couple of plastic bowls with us to make shapes in the snow, and to fill with snow, etc. One of those ended up being the snowman's rather oversized hat! He had little stick arms and some stones for a nose and eyes. Here is Arthur helping to build it. He was so excited to carry the snow in the bowl from the car! He got all business-like about it, and kept saying to himself, "Now, FIRST thing I do..." - it's probably something he hears me say to myself a lot as I struggle to organise my brain each day - "Now, the first thing I've got to do iiis..." hehe!

After that we made hand and shoe prints in the measly bit of snow left on the driveway....

.... and then stood around looking at things for a while and ferrying more bits of snow to nowhere in particular (!) and then I made my reluctant boy come back inside, as it was just getting too cold. His little hands were all red so it was long time we went and warmed up. He went straight to the window and watched the snowman :) We had made him facing the house so that he and Arthur could "see" each other when Arthur looked out of the window. Arthur kept waving and saying, "Hello fnowman!" (he still pronounces "sn" sounds like "fn" which I think is soooo sweet!), and sometimes he would exclaim in surprise, and whip round all shiny-eyed to say, "Fnowman waving Ah-yah!" I explained to him carefully that the snowman would melt soon, and about what it meant when things melted. The snowman lasted about 6 more hours - long after all other traces of snow had vanished - but he was only a little lump with a huge bowl perched on top and a couple of stones lying in front of him by the time Neil got home to see him!

When Arthur woke from his nap that afternoon, the first thing he said through mega sleepiness was, "Build fnowman 'gain?" I explained that there was no more snow, and then Arthur wanted to go to the window and check on the snowman (who was nearly melted away). He stood watching him for ages, saying things like, "Oh no! Fnowman arm falling down!" He didn't seem too distressed about it though! It was such a sweet first experience with a bit of snow for him. He has seen snow before but he won't be able to remember it, as he was too little.

Let's see, what else has Arthur been doing? Oh, he has got the hang of jumping with both feet recently. He's been bouncing fit to jump for ages, and could jump into the air with both feet if he was on something bouncy like the sofa or a mattress, but he can now purposely launch into a two-footed jump from the floor, leaping up and landing smoothly. He can also jump continually, up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down (ad infinitum). He is SO excited about this new skill, and practises it endlessly around the house! *sigh* He makes me tired just sitting still and watching him, but he NEVER seems to use up any energy! He jumps with such glee and so much tension in his little body due to all the excitement, and calls out constantly as he jumps, "Ah-yah DUMPING!" He's soooo proud :)

Lately I've been looking online for some good activities for toddlers to do at home. We don't get out as much as would be ideal for Arthur, so I want to make sure he has lots of stimulating activities at home. Plus I love to do them with him! I'm vaguely intrigued about the idea of home-schooling (no further thoughts on it for now, other than - hmmm, I'm vaguely intrigued!) and figured since he's eager and bright and I'm interested and find it fun, I might as well start some of the home-schooling ideas for pre-schoolers with Arthur now. I have been looking around online for ideas. This is stuff I would probably write more about in my new diary to see how it pans out before sharing a ton here, but I'm happy to write about what we HAVE found a success so far.

Here's a great idea for toddlers. It's messy, but at least it's DRY mess!

1. Buy packets of various dried whole foods from the supermarket - we used orange lentils, red kidney beans, macaroni, sunflower seeds, black turtle beans, and chick peas:

The lentils aren't in the photo because we'd already bought them a week before and just used them on their own, to pour and sprinkle and spoon and so on:

2. Pour into various pots and bowls, and provide other empty containers and different sized spoons and hand-whisks and stuff. I didn't get a photo of this because Arthur was enthusiastic and started tipping and mixing before I could whip out the camera!

3. Let your little one tip and mix and stir to his/her heart's content!

4. After he had fun for a while, I sat with him and talked with him about the textures and the sounds the grains made as they tinkled into containers, etc. We decided the lentils sounded like the rain! I also showed him how he could sprinkle them gently using his fingers, and things like that.

5. Invite a couple of favourite friends for tea and play cooking with the grains!

6. Finally just let the whole thing dissolve into MESS (I had the train-track set up around him for a reason!!), and provide even more fun with just messing great swathes of lovely-textures seeds and bits around on the floor with your hands!

7. Involve happy little helper in the tidy-up! Arthur loves this part, because he gets to use the dustpan and brush. He has his own toy one, but he much prefers the real authetic one! I didn't get photos after the big mix session, but I did after the lentils:

And there you have it! Arthur LOVES this activity. He was actually silent for like 10 minutes straight at first, just pouring and tipping and mixing - he was that enthralled! And that is unheard of for Arthur! He talks every 10 SECONDS, I kid you not. He never seems to stop! It kept him busy for almost an hour, but it did get pretty messy and he got more "flingy" with the stuff near the end! Always a good sign that it's time to pack away and move onto something else!

It's also NOT a good activity to do with Matthew around, as he crawls so fast now all of a sudden, and his eyes nearly pop out of his head with excited curiosity when he sees little bead-type-things strewn all over the floor! He can hardly wait to practise his pincer grip on them and get those bad boys into his mouth. *sigh* So, we do this when he's napping! I also have to make VERY sure that I've picked up every last bean or seed. He'll be sure to find that one stranded chick pea, and then there'll be trouble! I'm working on re-claiming my kitchen floor from the hideously messy state that it's been in for so long - though you can see that I'm not getting anywhere in the above photos!

Today I have almost my WHOLE kitchen floor clear and swept!!! Yay! The boys have spent almost the entire day in the kitchen, such is the novelty, haha! We have been able to use floor toys that don't work on carpet - the type that you press and they go, or you pull a string and they flap along the floor. Since we only have hard floor in the kitchen, and the kitchen floor has been horribly messy for many many months, it's like a BRAND NEW activity for them to have floor toys on hard floor! They have never conceived of such a thing, hehe! They found it so exciting and played together happily for ages in there.

Okay, it's getting late. A few more photos and then I MUST go to bed.

Arthur is really trying to dress himself a lot, usually on the spur of the moment when he spots something to put on, and he already has clothes on! Here he is putting a top on inside-out, and a pair of jeans, despite already having a pair of pyjamas on! He didn't succeed with the jeans as they're quite difficult, but he did soooo well with the top! He is always so smiley and proud of his achievements :)

Here's a picture of tired-and-slightly-dishevelled me with my alert and happy monkey-boy, after my lovely jubbly lie-in one weekend a couple of weeks ago:

Arthur has such a sparkly little personality! I love him soooo! He is just a bundle of spark and mischief, and he's getting clever with some of it, which is more of a challenge for Neil and I, hehe! He is still doing lots of monkey things when I'm otherwise occupied ;) Pretty much every day he does something monkeyish while I'm upstairs putting Matthew down for a nap. One day it was an entire box of my panty liners, with their individual wrapping and interesting sticky peel-off stuff strewn everywhere, and panty liners stuck here there and everywhere!

Neil got some chocolates for his birthday - he loves mint chocolates. They were up on the kitchen surface near the back, way out of Arthur's reach, but he knew they were there and kept bugging me - "I like eat Daddy's cuh-cuck! Ah-yah need cuh-cuck!" etc! Of course I said no and that was that, but later I had to go upstairs and put Matthew down for a nap. All too quickly, that familiar "too quiet" silence came from downstairs, and Matthew settled down quickly so I tip-toed down carefully to see what Arthur was doing. As I got about half-way down the stairs, I heard this excited whisper from the kitchen in THE most mischievous tone I think I've ever heard him use: "Ah-yah EAT cuh-cuck!" It was a whisper soooo filled with excitement that it was almost a silent squeal! He repeated that sentence a couple of times, and then I arrived at the kitchen doorway to see him carrying the big laundry basket, juuust about to PUT IT AWAY where he'd found it! That's the first time he's been sly about something like that! He often gets it out and puts it against the cabinets to climb on and reach something that he shouldn't from the surfaces, but he ALWAYS leaves it there and so his secret is revealed to me when I come back downstairs! He knows he is not to get the basket out in the first place, and I put it where it's difficult for him to reach and get it out. So, he'd done that anyway, and was actually about to put it back so that I might never know he'd done it! He'd climbed up, unwrapped a mint chocolate and left the wrapper in the box of chocolates, and then set off (mouth FULL of gooey chocolate!) to put the basket back where he found it! Clever little monkey! He looked visibly shocked to see me, but he couldn't seem to help this HUGE grin spreading in a rather chocolatey way across his face! His eyes were shining in that "I've been mischievous and I'm LOVING it!!" kind of way that I see so often these days! I love my monkey though :)

Here is another sight that I came down to after putting Matthew down for a nap, a week or two ago:

Hiding behind the bread will NOT make it all go away! ;) He still had to get told off and help me to clean the bread up. He had taken a bite out of most of the slices. Just one bite per slice, of course! ;)

Okay there is still sooooo much more - stuff that's sitting here on my note paper that he's said, and also quite a lot more photos, but Matthew has just woken and had a long snuggly breastfeed in bed, and I've just noticed after all that, that the time is nearly 1am! Tsk. I DO feel better for the "me" time though, as always. It feels worth it for that, but I always feel pretty crap for it in the morning! I can function surprisingly well on this little sleep, once I am used to it, but that isn't good all the same. And I'm starting to not do so great. So I'm going to bed right this minute and hoping for a not-too-disturbed night with the boys! Maybe tomorrow I'll go to bed earlier? We need to go to the supermarket tomorrow and I want to bake a couple of banana cakes before our bananas completely expire and get wasted.

I'll be back soon to finish the rest - I hope! :)

Personal stuff.... and lots of photos!!

Hello, hello!! I'm still here! Thank you for all the sweet messages after my last entry! It was so nice to receive so much support and understanding about my big changes that I want to make and my new diary thing (don't worry Megan, I haven't been posting more there - in fact I just haven't had time to update either diary). All the advice or thoughts about Matthew's rash were much appreciated, thanks!

We looked at the photos of Jove's rash (thank you Jemma!) and Neil said, "That's it!" but Matthew's rash actually was much milder still, than Jove's rubella rash. So hmmm. I took him to the doctor and of course it all but disappeared in the WAITING ROOM before we went in (you know how these things happen with kids and the doctor!), so I looked kind of silly. There was the faaaaintest remnant of it there, but nothing really to show her. Anyway, she said maybe it was viral - like a couple of you mentioned. That sounds like the most likely thing to me. BUT my GP turns out to be one of those who believes in teething causing all manner of symptoms. Some doctors that is totally not true, so it's hard to know which is right. Anyway, she said teething could cause horrible diarrhoea for ages, till the teeth broke through. Her son (who is 21 months) had exactly that experience every time he got a tooth. Her first child was nothing like that, so she was surprised, but now she knows better, she says. Also she said it's possible that the rash might just be teething related too. I am a bit doubtful about teething causing a generalised body rash, but hey ho. She checked him over and felt his gums and said his bottom teeth are RIGHT there about to break through (still nothing yet though, 5 days later). She said to presume it's all teething-related and not to keep him away from other children, and to give him solids as normal. So there we go. She was pleased with his abcess. We can keep using the antibacterial cream instead of oral antibiotics - yaaaaaaaay!!! It still hasn't cleared up though, so I hope it's actually GOING to. We're still using the cream.

Matthew seemed better in himself the next day, but he is still doing some horrible poos. Not nearly as frequently, but some days he'll still poo like 8 times a day and mostly he has diarrhoea. I just hope he gets some teeth fast so that we can see if it really will get better after that happens. I thought Arthur teethed badly! Poor Matthew. He is absolutely beside himself all the time with his gums and his mouth in general. He has the rough chin and the red cheeks now too. He needs Calpol pretty much every day, sometimes more then one or two doses a day, and this has been going on for several weeks now. The doctor said I can continue giving that to him for as long as it takes to get his teeth, even if I end up giving him the maximum 4 doses in 24 hours some days. Today he doesn't seem all that much improved for the Calpol even. He just bites frantically on his hands (or anything else he can find) until he shakes with the effort :( The Bonjela and teething powders have seemed completely useless for a while now, but he still accepts them readily, and I give them anyway in case they provide him even a little bit of relief. I've been giving him a cold wet towelling wipe to chew on and he likes that too. Poor baby Boo!

So that is the update on Matthew.

Neil's birthday was the day before yesterday! He turned 33. It was a pretty normal day for him. He went to work, came back tired, and then he (well, mostly Arthur!) opened presents and cards, and we lit four candles on a birthday cake (not homemade, sadly) and sang Happy Birthday, and then ARTHUR blew the candles out! He couldn't do it at his own birthday 2 months ago, but he blew them out absolutely perfectly this time, in one go! He wanted to do it again and again, and so we have done the birthday cake thing all over again today when we sat down to eat some cake this afternoon!

Goodness knows what is happening with my cycle! I've had major fertile signs for TWO WEEKS and still nada. Although, the majority of that time the key sign (or so it seems to be for me these days) was missing - the big parsnip drive. That showed up a couple of days ago at last and has gone now (along with all the other signs, literally overnight), so I'm thinking I might have just ovulated. Now I watch and see if my luteal phase is improving. I love watching my cycle! I am charting properly and it's just so much FUN!! I'm silly :) I just like it. My chart says I am 9 days past ovulation though. Stupid chart. I am NOT 9DPO! I will over-ride it if it doesn't pull itself together in a few days, once I know when I have ovulated. Tsk.

Also, postpartum parsnips at LAAAAAAAAAAAST!!! ;) Seven months, gosh. Actually the last time we had parsnips was when Matthew was CONCEIVED (can you believe that?!) so we're talking sixteen months. Oh my goodness!! I have a wonderfully patient husband ;) However, I am glad not to have followed my guilt-trippy feeling about how we ought to be doing stuff again by now, and what's wrong with me? etc, etc. I am just one of these people who is not ready till I'm ready. Before I'm ready, it is NOT a great experience. When I'm ready, well... I wish I had a locked diary for such talk! ;) My new diary isn't actually locked, it's just private-ish because I haven't told anyone the name/url so nobody knows where to find it yet. It's specifically for writing about those four main roles I talked about last entry, so it's where I'll write about moving forward in keeping house, following Jesus, and bringing up my children - it's not another personal diary like this one is. It's written as personally as this one, but it has a specific subject matter. This diary here is my general personal diary. I don't like to lock diaries, personally. I like people to be able to find me. But I do sometimes find it exasperating when I WANT to talk more about parsnips (NOT a blow-by-blow account, of course, hehe! I mean, about the feelings and thoughts related to specific things) but I have NO idea who all reads here.

I am really happy about things in that dept though. Surprisingly so. Here's new motivation for Neil to say yes to having more children (haha!): my hormones (and the things that function under hormonal influence!) seem to get better and more "normal" every time I have a baby. Seriously. Before Arthur - no EWCM. I just had this feeling that the lack of EWCM was delaying conception a little, though everything else checked out okay. I've had the "no parsnip drive" thing for EVER, well, since we've been married for sure. Years. We conceived using Pre-Seed, an EWCM replacement thingy. AFTER Arthur, things seemed to be kick started to more of a normal way to be, hormonally and parsnip-ly. EWCM and parsnip-drive when fertile, for the first time! And Matthew was conceived just like that, with poor timing for conception on the only incidence of parsnips that cycle. But then when I'm pregnant, I am WELL off parsnips.

But now, it's after Matthew. My period has returned and so I wondered what my hormones and stuff would be like this time. BETTER still! I am so pleased!! I am actually beginning to feel.... dare I say it?!.... NORMAL in the parsnip department for the first time that I can remember. I have had 2 weeks of EWCM (which is crazy excessive!) so that hormonal thing is definitely improved for having babies still! Although I think it's only that long because I'm still breastfeeding and my body is trying to ovulate and not quite getting there. Hopefully it's managed it now. And the parsnip drive is *blush* like nothing I've ever known! But only when I'm ovulating. I can't concentrate on anything else for that day or so! ;)Also, I'm always anxious about pain, since I have had that trouble fairly constantly since the start of parsnips way back when. After Arthur I was anxious about it, but it wasn't so bad as I expected. In fact, not too painful at all. This time, NO pain. Nada. Phew! :)

Neil and I are a good team, and we love each other, but without the intimacy it has been like a pair of close friends who live together, with a ton in common. That sort of thing. It's not the kind of love, or intimacy, that a married couple SHOULD have, and it always nagged at the back of my mind. I've long been concerned about how on earth to FIX that. It just doesn't come naturally. We had a year of psycho-parsnip (hahaha, that just tickles me!) therapy before I got pregnant with Arthur, and that was excellent and very helpful. But it just taught us ways to fix intimacy problems (not just the parsnips) and DO the "stuff" but it still kind of felt like we were just doing what we'd been told rather than being led by our feelings and desires. You know?

But I feel so amazingly levelled-out, after sooooo long, just from having had Matthew. My hormones seemed to have been thrown a bit out of whack for the first 6 months and that made me really struggle more than was healthy, I think. But then with the return of my periods, they seem to have fallen back EXACTLY into the right place, for the first time. So far it's still only a couple of days a month that I have a parsnip drive, but when I do, it's so very unlike anything I've known before. Urgh, this is sooooo personal - I don't know why I'm writing it, since it makes me feel a liiittle bit squeamish knowing that people are reading it! But oh well. This is where I write, and it's what I want to write about for now, so there we go.

When we had our therapy, we had to work really hard at kindling ANY sense of intimacy. Mostly it just felt awkward, because it had been neglected for sooooo long. I think we'd had no parsnips for over 2 years at that point, and gradually lost the other physical things like hugs and kisses. So sad :( But anyway, we had to really work at it, and even when we noticed that it wasn't feeling awkward, it still wasn't exactly coming naturally. We were happy enough with the way things were at the end of therapy, and just figured we'd never really be the type of couple who are into having parsnips - that's okay, our therapist told us, so we felt okay about that.

The way I feel now, I'm not sure that I am the same person I was back then, since having children! Who knew that having kids could do that for me?!

ONE parsnip, and it's like I have put on rose-tinted glasses. Neil and I could just spent HOURS just with our arms around each other, and we just spent the longest time with our faces like 2 inches from each other, just staring into each others eyes and smiling. I know, bleurgh ;) But not bleurgh, it was the most wonderful feeling. I just wanted to look at Neil for EVER. I never saw anyone look so lovely. He looked like I don't remember him looking (to me) since we were dating. He looked like a little boy, and my heart was just so tender with love towards his vulnerability, even though he's a man. I wanted to hold his head cradled in my arms and just stroke his hair for however long time lasted. I felt almost exactly the same kind of love for Neil that I feel for my little boys, like for that moment, he was MINE. Mine, mine, mine, and I couldn't get over how BLESSED I was! He was my boy :) I haven't felt that, "You're my boy!" feeling for him since we were dating, like I said. It feels so wonderful!!!

The sweetest thing was that he was feeling the exact same way, so it didn't get broken with "Whaaat?" or "Why are you staring so much?!" or stuff like that! I just kept on saying, "I love you" and he kept on saying it back and I could hear in his voice how much he meant it. I don't think we've even said those words for a long time. It has felt so WRONG, and so we are so relieved that things have changed. After ages of silence, just holding each other and staring into each other's eyes like that, Neil said, "I'm so happy!" and I said I was too, and we hugged and I could have half squeezed him to death, I was just feeling so so soooo happy.

*sigh*

One parsnip! Who knew?! :) So I have high hopes for things improving for us now, especially the role of being Neil's wife. I think it will help me greatly if I really feel so much in love with him and not resentful and other negative things. If I'm in love with him, I have that to focus on when I feel like snapping his head off, right? Maybe I'm being naive. I think we'll have plenty of irritable arguments and stuff, like normal. But I feel better about being plunged back into total in-love-ness again :) It's been so long, and it feels so RIGHT. Hooray! :) I'm so glad, because I SO badly want us to be good role-models to our children. My parents are completely in love with each other. They have always been openly affectionate with each other, and not for ONE SECOND have I ever been left in any doubt of their love for each other and devotion to each other. I never had any anxieties about it, as a child. I have since read that this kind of role-modelling is essential for kids in their home life. It makes a huge difference to their future relationships and to their happiness and security as they are growing up. It helps them to know what it means to be in a loving relationship. I WANT that for my kids. I am so happy that we'll be modelling that as my parents did for me! Yay!

At our recent "marriage MOT" that we did one evening, we discussed a few areas (God, discipline for kids, etc) and got so disheartened by what a mountain it all seemed and how we couldn't seem to fix it, that we just decided to talk about parsnips instead, haha! That had originally been the depressing subject that we avoided discussing, but it suddenly seemed quite an easy one to talk about! ;) We had made a plan to start implementing some of our therapy stuff again, and try to get some non-parsnip intimacy back again. And make sure we hugged and kissed in front of our children. But now things have changed already! I'm so happyyyyyyy! :) Yay for my hormones - they've brought me nothing but JOY since they settled back into place this time around!

Neil thinks we'll definitely have another baby, hehe! ;)

Okay, enough with the personal stuff! I have nearly two hundred photos! Today and yesterday I spent all my available computer time (and then some, I stayed up very late) uploading and resizing, and putting selected ones on photobucket to share here. There are still a darn heck of a lot! I'm not sure how to post them, as there are way too many for one or even two entries. Hmmm. I guess I'll just start. I'm taking a ton of photos all the time at the moment so more just mount up if I don't get the previous ones sorted!

I guess there are a lot of "new" ones of Matthew, because he's doing so much more than he was the last time I posted any photos of him (except the foody ones recently). Let's see....

I need to get him weighed again soon. It's been 6 weeks or so. He's not eating much in the way of solids, just chewing on it and stuff. He swallows more bread than anything else, and crackers. And rice cakes. He chews on other stuff but stuff falls on the floor or he'll spit out a big lump or something. So not as much goes down. I'm not worried about his actual intake, as he should be on 95% breastmilk till he's 12 months really, but I know his weight was low on the percentile chart before. I hope it isn't slipping down. Anyway, he's healthy! He is still a tiny boy but he is definitely growing! He is currently filling size 9-12 month sleepsuits well, and has definitely outgrown the 6-9 month ones, even over a slim day nappy. The feet are too tight on him even. His other clothes are pretty much all 6-9 months. He still wears a few tops from Next that are 3-6 months as they do generous sizes, but even those are a bit short on the arm for him. He has his daddy's incredibly long arms! Neil's sleeves are always too short :)

He's so interested in everything. He is actually a bit of a nuisance around the house now, as he crawls to anything he shouldn't have! He seems to have some sort of radar. We have literally got WALL-TO-WALL toys scattered everywhere, of all types, and other stuff he can get at that's safe, but noooo - Matthew is like a heat-seeking missile for that piece of fluff under the sofa, or the phone cord, no matter how well it has been tucked away, or he'll scratch and scrobble away at the join in the carpet at the kitchen doorway till his work shreds off a few bits of carpet, and then EAT them. Ugh. He'll gravitate towards those little gobs of hair that cling to things when they come out of the tumble dryer, and a loose 2-inch strand of thread on the carpet. He is desperately trying to perfect his pincer grip. I think that's an 8-month milestone, and he hasn't got it yet, but oh gosh I'm not looking forward to when he has! He spends ages on the floor just focused and silent, intent on some tiny crumb that he carefully closes his fingers and thumb on, over and over again. He never quite gets it, but he just practises so faithfully. He is able to pick up larger crumbs and threads and stuff now, urgh. He has a passion for anything PAPER, and will eat mail, tissues (they are his particular favourite), DVD covers, leaflets, packaging, ANYTHING he can get his little mitts on. I always check the floor and put any paper out of his reach, but somehow he still finds something or other. If a tissue finds its way to the floor by accident, I see him drop whatever he's doing on the other side of the room and get this scary eye-popping focused look (!!) in his eyes, and then he'll crawl hungrily towards it as fast as he can go and stuff it into his mouth. He seems to do it as quickly as he can as if he knows I'm already coming to take it away from him and prise his mouth open to whip out the torn off bits! He's an absolute menace with this stuff lately.

We are trying to keep the floor cleaner, or at least crumb/hair-free lately, but this is definitely big motivation for me to get that housekeeping stuff into gear and start something that will mean my home is clean and tidy all the time, and the floors are regularly cleaned and hoovered. Then he can roam to his heart's content. Of course, by the time that's sorted, he'll be cruising and into all sorts of new stuff!

He is sitting wonderfully, and he has been for a few weeks already. I didn't expect him to sit this well till maybe 8 months. I already can't remember when Arthur sat this well, but I do know we had cushions behind Arthur for the LONGEST time, even ages after he could actually sit, because he would still tip back and fall down with a thump. Matthew has NEVER done that, not once. He is too eager to move on and see the next thing, so if he ever falls while sitting (very rare now as he has excellent muscle control if he overbalances, and always manages to steady himself), he just twists as he goes, rather like a cat! He lands on his front or side and immediately flips into crawling position and sets off. Here are various photos of Matthew sitting. I took lots because at the time, sitting was new for Matthew and I was all excited! Now it's a few weeks later and it's rather old news! But I wanted to post my proud Mummy photos anyway :) These were all taken from 6 months and 3 weeks old to 7 months and 1 week old (last week):

Here he is last weekend, upstairs. He was cranky that morning so I took him upstairs to give him a change of scenery. He was VERY pleased! :) He looked around and got very interested in the bathroom as there are lots of bath toys under the sink:

Another thing he liked was the long mirror there - I remember Arthur liked that too (and still does!) but not till he was 10 months - I guess because he wasn't crawling till later or something? Matthew likes to crawl up to it and look at himself (and me):

Matthew has this thing he keeps doing, where he does like a push-up on his hands and TOES. He likes to push his bottom up in the air and straighten his legs out and holllld the position for ages! I don't know why, but he keeps doing it all the time. He'll pause in his crawling to do it, or just go from sitting or lying to practise it:

Funny boy! He also eats his feet a LOT (Arthur never did) and loves it when his brother runs around in circles - something that happens a lot since Arthur is highly energetic and keeps wanting to do such things! ;) He squeals and laughs and just LOVES it!

He is showing signs of wanting to pull up on the furniture (aaargh!), usually because he wants food if we're eating a snack sitting on the sofa, or drinking something, or if we have PAPER up there, hehe! He has tried quite a few times to pull up with his hands. He doesn't quite get his knees close enough to the sofa. Once he figures that out, he'll easily be on his knees peering over the seat. He has done that once, a couple of days ago, but the rest of the time he only gets this far:

I'm somewhat nervous about him cruising! But he's so much steadier than Arthur ever was. I know there'll be the usual bumps and bruises, but I feel okay about him - I know he'll be fine learning to do this new motor skill, etc. I just get anxious about the stuff this eager boy will get into! I just know he's going to be the child whom I come in from the kitchen to find standing on the arm of the sofa one day when the day before he was just crawling about! ;) It makes me nervous...

Now that he's really crawling everywhere and exploring at his own pace, he has discovered that if he crawls through the living room doorway - guess what?! - a whole 'nother world opens up, and he's in the KITCHEN! I love the sound of little hands slapping into the room behind me as I wash my hands at the kitchen sink. I remember LOVING that sound when Arthur first started crawling into the kitchen. I'm so happy to have it ringing in my ears again :) It's such a sweet little sound!

Matthew has therefore discovered the fascination of the washing machine, just like his brother before him :)

And said brother was only too delighted to show him the ropes, being the experienced pro that he is with these things! ;)

I have endless "boys playing together" photos, and also more of Matthew. I haven't really touched on Arthur this entry properly, so I'll save his photos for another entry. Arthur got his second 2-year-old molar this week. His first one is now half-way through and the first corner of the second bottom one is showing now. He is teething a lot this week and twice he has told me his teeth hurt and asked for Calpol. Usually if I ask him if his teeth hurt and he says yes, he refuses Calpol, so I know if it's really hurting him because he asks for it. It's odd to have two children teething so badly! Arthur has really chubbed out cheeks at the moment with his poor teeth. He is drooling like crazy as he constantly has something in his mouth, chewing - mostly his hands or a toy car! He is a bit off his food and wants breastmilk over meals at the moment, but I'm still encouraging him to eat meals. He isn't having much variety right now, and he usually doesn't eat even half of what I give him. But he snacks healthily and gets a lot of breastmilk. I hope he feels better soon! I hope they both do!

Okay I am going to stop for now because this entry is getting toooo long with all the photos and everything. I need to write another one to catch up on lots of stuff, and post more photos. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow? Although, I always say that and then never actually do it! Tomorrow is church - haven't been to church in weeks, as there always seems to be a reason not to lately. Neil often takes Arthur though. I am usually too tired, and weekends are the only times I can sleep in. It's just too precious a time to cram in some desperately needed sleep. But I hate that it's like that. I hate to put anything before God. And it's not about being legalistic about attending church - I KNOW that going to church blesses my relationship with God and draws me closer to him, so I NEED to do it. If I don't, it's harder. Not impossible - I didn't attend church for YEARS when I was housebound with M.E. but I have never ever ever been so close to God in my life before as during that time. But when I'm already struggling in my walk with God, it's a good idea to come alongside other Christians and get exposed to worship and wisdom from the Bible and so on. I just need to get up and go. It's so hard when it comes to Sunday morning though.

Anyway, so maybe we're going to church tomorrow. I can't believe the weekend is going to be over already! It's only just started! But I'll try to post again before the weekend is over.