Birthday and potty training (?) and photos

Soooo much longer than I meant it to be, again! Also, soooo much to write, once again. Photos galore, also.

I guess I need to bullet-point it again this entry, otherwise it will get craaazy.

* Thank you for all the sweet birthday greetings! :)

* My birthday was fairly crappy, though. I was going to enjoy a blissful lie-in and a relaxing day, since Neil had taken a day off work to let me do this (lovely Neil!), and also go for a walk by myself, and maybe go out with the boys and Neil as well, at another time. At 8.30am, I was woken by the next door neighbours having PVC windows and doors fitted throughout their house. Ugh. What are the odds?! They've lived here for like 12 years! Tsk. Of course that was a noisy-beyond-noisy job that lasted 8 hours straight. Ugh ugh ugh. By 9am I had a headache, and that headache went on to take its place in the Headache Hall of Fame. It lasted 12 hours, scoffed rudely at the three doses of co-codamol that I took over the course of the day, and meant that I could hardly do a THING, let alone anything nice or relaxing. I couldn't go to bed to get better, because of the awful noise. And it was sooooo sore that at times I couldn't even look at my little ones or smile or break into any sort of facial expression. I NEVER get headaches that bad. Except, I used to get headaches that bad (almost identical too, with the ignoring-the-painkillers thing, and the length of time it lasted) the day before I got my period, before I had any kids. I stopped having those after I had kids (thank goodness!). Hmmm.

I am currently on day 25 of my latest cycle and no signs of ovulation yet, so it's dragging out for sure. I wonder if my body is getting confused! I never ovulated this late, even on other postpartum cycles. I figured maybe I was not going to ovulate and I'd just get my period and my body was NOT happy about it! But, I had that headache again the next day, AND the next, but it was milder each day. The fourth day (yesterday) I had it in the morning but it was very mild and then it cleared up and didn't come back. And no period. Weird.

Anyway. So my birthday kind of sucked really. I DID get some cards and a seriously HUGE amount of my favourite type of chocolate biscuits though! Neil had a headache the night before my birthday, which was when he had planned to go out and buy the few other things he wanted to give me on my birthday. So he said I should have a "second" birthday on Saturday, when I felt better, and he was home from work, and he'd had an opportunity to go shopping! :) But it didn't happen, in the end. Eventually it will though, and I'm looking forward to it! I felt REALLY bummed on my actual birthday, but I don't feel so sore about it now. My birthday has been and gone, and oh well, these things happen! I'm happy and healthy and have all that I have ever wanted (my babies!) so I did not stay blue about it for long. It WAS lovely to come here and read my birthday greetings that you guys left though, in light of how rubbish the rest of the day was! Thank you! :)

* Neil had bought me a Marks & Spencers birthday cake!!! I have yet to find a more delicious shop-bought cake than M&S birthday cakes. In my late teens, I used to ask my parents for one 'specially, when my birthday was coming up. It was a really pretty cake. When the boys were ready for bed that evening, my headache was starting to ease off, so Neil and Arthur went into the porch with the door closed, so that I couldn't see, and they put the candles on the cake and Neil lit them. I kept hearing these muffled squeals and squeaks of excitement from Arthur, hehe! I sat on the sofa and held Matthew, who was way too wriggly to hold, since he knew something was going on in the porch and wanted to investigate! They turned out the light and came in, Neil carrying the cake and singing "Happy Birthday", and Arthur just soooo excited that his feet seemed to barely touch the ground at all for all his jumping and hopping about! He blew the candles out for me, of course :) Here are some photos of afterwards:

So, you can see, my birthday ended on a good note! :) The neighbours chose HIDEOUS windows though. *sigh* But never mind.

* I don't think I can deny much longer that Arthur is basically ready for potty training. Yeurgh! He has asked to wee on the toilet once since the time I mentioned last entry (was it last entry?). We can't get rid of the noisy fan in the bathroom, as the bathroom is in the centre of the house and has no windows, so it has to have that vent with a suction fan. Mummy suggested that maybe we could take him to the toilet if Matthew isn't napping, and have him use the potty when he IS. I wondered that too, but kept thinking maybe it's holding him back a bit, to refuse him access to the toilet once he's potty trained! But I do not want to mess Matthew's sleep about. Neil and I either don't use the toilet while Matthew is napping, or else we go but we don't switch the light on (or flush till he wakes, yuck!). So it's not like this would be an exclusive rule for Arthur that we're not adhering to ourselves. We just neeeed a bigger house. Well, not NEED, but our little home has been feeling very cramped for a long while now.

Anyway, I am wondering about getting Arthur a potty that has a proper loo-seat type thing, and a lid. I don't know what to do really, and nor does Neil.

On Thursday, Arthur was trying to poo in his nappy. He's a bit more constipated since we have been having family meals (that I cook) because he won't eat them and so he's not getting a balanced diet as a result, like he used to by eating jarred toddler meals. We are still persevering! I would worry if he wasn't still breastfeeding - how I LOVE basically everything about breastfeeding my toddler! :) Anyway, so he'd been trying to poo a few times that morning and eventually getting cross and saying, "Not working!!" Then later, I was in the kitchen putting some clean nappies away on the shelves above the tumble dryer (which is where the nappies live in our house!), and Arthur was clinging to the highchair leg and straining again. He was sounding very annoyed about things (!), and then suddenly he said, "OH!" and stood up with a shocked expression and his hands turned palm-upwards. There was a pause, and then he said, "What happened there poo?" So I thought, uh-oh! And asked him what DID happen. He looked like he was trying to find the right words to describe it to me, and finally said, "Poo went.... BOOF!.... inna nappy!" and he punched his fists forwards hard on the word "BOOF!" to emphasize his point! Hehe! When I told my mum that, she said, "It sounds like he's definitely ready for potty training!" She said if he can communicate such precise details so clearly with me, then it's definitely time to start. The checklist (of readiness) says about the child being able to tell you when they have pooed or weed, and also that you can tell when they are doing a poo by their behaviour, etc. He has been doing those things for many many months, but this is pretty clear!

(p.s. his description definitely looked accurate to me when I changed him a few minutes later!)

Yesterday I sat with Arthur folding clothes from the tumble dryer (still his favourite activity EVER, even over playdough or painting, or anything on TV!), and while we folded I started to talk to him about potty training, just to sound things out. Here's how the conversation went - it started when we were folding some of Daddy's pants (UK for underwear, not trousers!):

Me: Arthur, did you know... in the shops you can buy pants that are Arthur's size, just like Daddy's?

Arthur: Ohh yes?

Me: Did you know... you can buy pants that are Arthur's size, with Thomas the Tank Engine on!

Arthur: (awed silence)

Me: You can buy pants that are Arthur's size, with Bob the Builder on, and Postman Pat, and Underground Ernie. Would you like to wear some of those pants?

Arthur: Oh yes pleeease!!!

Me: Those pants are for big boys, and Arthur is getting to be a big boy now. But d'you know what that means? It means no more nappies. Would you like it if you wore no more nappies?

Arthur: Oooh yes pleeease!!!

Me: If you don't wear nappies like a big boy, then you have to do all your wee-wees and your poos in the toilet or in the potty. Would that be okay?

Arthur: (very matter-of-factly) Ohh yes.

Me: (emphasizing carefully) It means you don't do your wee-wees and poos in your nappies any more. You wear big boy pants and you do all your wee-wees and poos in the potty or the toilet. Are you okay with that?

Arthur: Yes! I wanta do it NOW! (gets up) I wanta go out shop and buy some peshal (special) pants NOW!

Which we couldn't, right at that moment! But you see, things are definitely rolling along, and I think *I'm* the one who is dragging her heels, not my toddler, like I always thought it would be! I know our days are numbered with Arthur in nappies, and I feel sad and wistful when I look at his cloth nappies on their shelves, or when I fold my favourite ones onto their piles when they come out of the tumble dryer. I can't remember a time since we knew we were getting ready to try for our first baby, that I wasn't MADLY excited about using cloth nappies! I was sewing them from January 2003, almost two years before Arthur was born! That's four years that I have thought of cloth nappies when I think of my children. I NEVER once thought of my own children NOT wearing the lovely things. I just never thought far enough ahead to consider them when they were potty trained and out of nappies. I'm so sad that this exciting time is coming to an end with Arthur! Yes, I did just call the nappy-wearing stage an exciting time ;) I just feel this weird sense of... relief that I have another baby already and he will be wearing their lovely cloth nappies for a good while yet! I am in the middle of several sewing projects that I never get chance to finish - nappies for Arthur that are half-sewn, wraps that are bigger than the usual toddler sized wraps, because Arthur is toddler-sized but is long in the rise, so most toddler wraps don't fit him any more. I just sew him ones that DO. I picked up a half-finished wrap today and went to sew it, and got this huge wave of sadness just looking at it in my hands, because maybe there's no point in finishing it for him? He might never get to wear it, or get much use out of it now. Matthew will, one day, but it's not about that, it's just this sadness that the JOY of cloth nappies is nearly over with my first child. Not that I wanted to keep him in nappies forever! It just feels a bit like an empty hole, looking at his enormous collection of nappies on the shelves and knowing he's done with them. Or will be soon. Boo-hoo!

Anyway. Other than that, I guess it's great that he seems ready and excited! I don't know WHAT I'm doing, of course. I'll take him to buy the big boy pants this week, and perhaps we'll get stuck straight in and start using them? I'm not sure whether to just GO for it and ditch the nappies except for night times, or take it more gradually, yet. I'm nervous to GO for it, because I can't be on with the accidents, if I'm honest. I would never blame Arthur for accidents - they are part of potty training and absolutely sure to happen! But I just don't want to deeeal with them right now. Our carpet is full enough with poo and wee as it is right now (yeurgh!). Or maybe we should just get the accidents over and done with as fast as possible and THEN get the carpet cleaned?! ;)

Anyway. That is the latest on that.

Matthew is letting go when he has pulled up to standing, and can stand alone for a couple of seconds at a time before thumping down on his bottom! At first I thought it was just a fluke, but he does it a lot now, so I'm pretty sure he's trying to do it. His two new teeth at the bottom are starting to really show now, though they're still only a few mm above the gum yet. No sign of any more yet, but he's still biting on things really hard and drooling like crazy.

He has taken to biting my NIPPLE lately. Several times a day I am nipped by those RAZOR sharp new toothie-pegs! Yowch! I am starting to recognise that it's happening more when he's had enough to eat, so I need to pre-empt him and take him off the breast before he gets nippy! I'm trying to react strongly enough to deter him, but it's not working so far! I make a sudden noise and pull away from him, saying, "NO biting!" and then that's the end of the nursing session. He just smiles. *sigh* I know that once he gets those top teeth, I will NEED to do something about it, otherwise I'm going to get actual bleeding injuries! This is where almost everyone I know says that it's time to wean when they get teeth and start biting. But I know that's rubbish, so I'll persevere! Arthur was not a biter. I don't think he EVER bit me, with any of his teething or anything. He was much more interested in the MILK, hehe! Matthew has always been less interested in the milk than Arthur. I think he'll self-wean much younger than Arthur for that reason. Another sad thought for me! But I do know there are things to try, to stop a biter from biting at the breast. So I'll try those things and we'll carry on!

* Photos! I have to go to bed, as Matthew has been awake and breastfeeding, and now it's got late. But here are some photos, taken today, of my little mobile man - a rare opportunity to take the kind of photo that I used to take of Arthur ALL the time when he was tiny, because Arthur and Neil were out at the park :) He is SO lovely! He just stood and patted my knees and explored a bit, and we listened to Elgar's Enigma Variations :) I LOVE that music. It gives me such a swell of patriotism! And there's a particular part that always makes me ache with... something, until I get teary. MUCH more so when I am looking at my precious little one whilst listening to such moving music. Anyway, here is my sweet little Mathsie (which he still gets called most of the time by me - I don't know why!). You can see a gleam of white on that bottom gum in one or two of the photos! And see his sofffft soft hair! It's as soft as it looks, perhaps even more so! It's GORGEOUS, I can't even describe how it feels to stroke! I love him sooooooooooooo much. So much.

And, not forgetting my other little scrumbly boy! Here are the photos I mentioned last entry, of Arthur with his new haircut and wearing his new big boy (no poppers in the crotch) dungarees - which I've just realised will be useless for potty training. Pfthth. Oh well! Here is my sweet (and ever-energetic!) Boo-Bean:

Isn't he lovely?! I am just continually SO besotted with my little boys. I just want to sigh and sigh with how happy they make me! I am so blessed. Thank you Lord!

Arthur-talk, photos and monkey boys!

Thank you all so much for the comments and notes after my questions on cows milk and potty training!!! You guys are wonderful! The things you wrote were so helpful and interesting, and I will definitely refer to them later.

BUT tonight I have such a lot to write, as I haven't had chance to write for the last two evenings - Neil has been on the computer more those evenings and I have only had the chance to check my email and messages before bed.

It's my birthday tomorrow!!! Yay! I can't believe when someone asks me how old I am, that I am now saying (or will be, from tomorrow), "Thirty-one" That's just craaaaazy! It really does just become a spoken number, that's all, after enough birthdays. I remember the day when saying my age made me FEEL that age, if that makes sense. Like, "I'm sixteen.... Oooh, I'm really SIXTEEN, how cool! Yes, now that I think about it, I really DO feel like a grown-up sixteen-year-old now, and the more I say it, the more I feel like it describes ME!" I will never nevvver NEVER feel 31. Or thirty-anything, probably. It's just a number to me. I can no longer tell you which age I DO feel though. I just feel... me! I sometimes feel quite surprised that I'm really a "woman in her thirties" because that's like MY PARENTS, haha! Or at least, how the 30s looked to me what seems like only yesterday. How strange that it's me now. I like it. I really do LIKE it. It feels like a warm and comfortable pair of slippers, like I'm comfy and settled, being in my 30s. I guess it's because I pretty much looked forward to my 30s all my life, with the whole parenting thing that it was sure to bring. And here I am! Anyway, another year into this lovely decade, yay!

Neil has taken the day off work tomorrow (at my request!) and I'm getting a lie-in (ahhhh!), and I'm wondering about the possibility of going out for an hour or so on my own in the afternoon. I know most people on their birthdays might want to spend time with their loved ones, and I am ALL about that, it's something I've always wanted to do MOST on my birthdays. But this year I am still coming down from having 2 children under 2 and feeling somewhat frazzled and demanded of! So a blissful scenario for me would be some time alone, just peace and quiet, but OUT of the house. Just something so different from what I usually get to do. I LOVE my boys (all three of them!) but I do miss my own space sometimes. So far this has been a really difficult week with the boys, and I'm distracted with excitement over the luxurious possibility of walking out of my home tomorrow on my own, just to casually stroll and spend some time in peace and quiet, just taking in my surroundings and breathing deeply and being able to hear my own thoughts, etc. I know it will be a time that I end up spending close to God as well, which would be lovely.

I can't decide whether to go shopping or for a walk somewhere naturey. I'm thinking the walk would be better for my soul. Shopping would be great, but I always end up not knowing what to buy (plus the no-money situation) and missing the boys, and then buy them something (and not me!) and come home again! I connect with God INSTANTLY when I walk in a nature setting. It has always been my most natural connection with God, through nature. Through worship follows a close second, but I don't have to make any effort at all when I'm walking and walking on my own with trees and grass, or even junk yards or whatever, so long as it's space outdoors and I'm alone. So I think I'll do that. I DO feel guilty that Arthur loves to go to the park and I never take him. Neil does, while I have my lie-ins at the weekend. He would love to come with me tomorrow if I go, but I want to be on my own. That's the only thing that hurts my heart about going. I feel horribly guilty about that. I love Arthur so much.

HARD week this week, and it's only Tuesday night! I have lost my temper a lot and found it hard to manage things, which is NOT good. Arthur has been difficult, but only in the usual ways. The difference is that Matthew seems to be.... joining in, for want of a better description! He is developing quite a monkey personality already, even at 8 months (ohhhh gosh!) and has recently started purposely doing things that make life difficult, with a glint in his eye as he looks to see my reaction while he's doing it. If I get frustrated or exasperated, he giggles and does it even more. They don't play off each other to wind me up YET, but have this sinking feeling that it's gonna happen, and not too far from now either! How on earth I'll manage that, I don't know.

Matthew is a menace at nappy change time. He twists his body so that I can't wipe him, or put a new nappy on him, and clutches himself when he's caked in poo. He isn't just cooing innocently and doing those normal baby flings with his arms and hands, he's making a very concerted effort to get his hands to his crotch BEFORE my hands get to his, within the shortest time after his nappy comes off (ie. 0.45 seconds - he is FAST!) - he will even swat and clutch at my hands to try and stop me catching him before he achieves his goal! And then when he DOES get his hands past mine and in the poo, he gets such a monkey grin on his face, with a look in his eye that is definitely saying, "Ha-ha, I got you! That was fun!" *sigh* I am NOT finding it fun! He's just as bad when I try to change Arthur's nappy. He can be over the other side of the room with his back to us, playing with some Duplo, and I'm as quiet as I can be when I am starting to change Arthur, but he has this radar and drops the Duplo, turns round and POWER CRAWLS (60 miles per hour) towards us. I need 8 more arms when he arrives, because he seems just determined to clamber over me and actually sit on Arthur's dirty nappy, or something, as I'm trying to remove it! I use my arms and legs (all at once sometimes!) to try and prevent him, but he uses SO much effort. It's horribly irritating when I am cleaning up Arthur's poo and he's climbing all over me - I have NO hands free, a baby who wants at the poo, and a toddler who will quite happy get poo everywhere too if I don't watch him!

I sometimes pick him up and put him over the other side of the room, but honestly, this boy is so fast at crawling now that he's pretty much back next to Arthur by the time I am! He reaches frantically for Arthur legs and clutches at him, or his hair. Arthur has taken to shouting anxiously, "Oh NO, Mashew coming!!!" and holding his hair down (hehe!) when he sees Matthew start to crawl over during his nappy changes! Matthew has also found a way of figuring out if the item he's interested in is something I do not want him to play with. Maybe it's a monkey baby's sixth sense or something?! Even objects he hasn't seen before. He sees a tissue, for example, which has found its way to the floor on the other side of the room to where we both are. As he sees me clap eyes on it, he gets this determined expression and does his 60mph power crawl towards it. If I break into a RUN (I am not kidding), I can beat him to it, but even then I will likely have to prise the shreds of it out of his little clenched fist, because he'll make a good grab for it anyway and is getting pretty accurate at grabbing and picking things up quickly.

This last week, he has been pulling up on the sofa or other places, and seeing something that's been left there that he shouldn't ideally have. Let's say it's a tissue box again, or something like that. Straight away, he will put his hand on the box, and then turn his face to find me. When he sees me, he waits till I meet his gaze and then changes his expression (mischievous eyes and slight smile) to one which says, "Ho ho, see me actually TOUCHING this box!" and his eyes are full of communication. His expressions are so descriptive that I can almost translate them into words and sentences sometimes. He asks me with his eyes a question that is a combination of, "Mummy, can I play with this?" and "Mummy, I'm about to play with this, and I know you don't want me to! Whatcha gonna do about it?!" I can't figure out which it is. I think it's the first one, but it is too cheeky a look for a simple innocent question!

Anyway, the main point is, the boy KNOWS what he's doing suddenly, and he is doing what he can to be a monkey boy. Already! It worries me a bit because Arthur was not anything like this monkeyish when he was 8 months old, and look at him now! I dread to think what Matthew will be like at two! When the two of them are being somewhat difficult, I am find it hard to manage things again.

Today, Matthew pooed on the carpet again. Urgh. I took his nappy off and he flipped and crawled away, as usual. Before I could get to him, there was this awful sound, and, yes, poo everywhere on my carpet. And the little boy's legs. Of course, startled by the sound, he turned from his crawling position to see what had made it (bless!) and sat down in his poo. Instinctively I lifted him off the floor under his arms, but from the angle I was at, I could only just hold him above the floor like that, and he used that opportunity to stomp stomp STOMP in his poo-poo with his bare feet. The afternoon was not a pretty one. It was about the last straw for me, for various other reasons, and I am not proud of how snappy and horrid I was with the boys while I tried to clean it up and keep them away from what I was doing. I made a barrier of toys (oh for the space to put up a playpen - who'd have thought I'd ever yearn for a playpen, hehe!) across the living room that Matthew couldn't climb over (big toys like the toy garage and stuff), and they played behind that for a while. Arthur could climb over, but WOE BETIDE anyone who crossed Mummy's path at that time, so he stayed back after he got snapped at enough. Urgh.

I scrubbed that carpet with disinfectant and a stiff brush for literally thirty minutes straight, only pausing to blot it with an entire kitchen roll and re-soak it again, and I still can't quite get the yellow stain (and accompanying bleurghy smell) out of the carpet. Finally I gave up. It was 3pm, I had not had lunch yet, the boys were WAY late for their naps, and Matthew was only dressed in a nappy, and Arthur needed changing too before naptime.

I took Matthew up to bed, nursed him and put him down. He crawled excitedly all over the cot so I left him to it and came back down to get Arthur changed. When I got down, Arthur had found a bowl with about an inch of yucky pooey water (how on EARTH I could have been so stupid as to leave that within his reach, I do NOT know. Thank goodness I had put the mainstay of the stuff up out of his reach!) and was "cleaning" the kitchen table and floor with it. He was soaked with it too. I stripped him down and washed him, and then changed him for bed, while Matthew cried and cried upstairs. He was crying so much by the time Arthur was ready, that I told Arthur I would just pop up and re-settle Matthew for a couple of minutes and then I'd be back to take him up for his nap.

I went up, picked Matthew up and was rocking him and shushing to calm him down, when there was this thud-thud outside the bedroom door and ARTHUR ran in! Another moment of immense STUPIDITY - I had obviously forgotten to close the stair gate. I can't think what was the matter with me today. *sigh* I reacted with shock, and Arthur turned and took off again for the stairs (open stair gate!!!). I ran after him with Matthew in my arms, shouting "STOP RIGHT NOW!!!" (what our neighbours must think of me/us today, I do not know) and he did, thankfully. I shut the stair gate and squatted down next to him to tell him he must never run near the stairs, and he took off running back to the bedroom. When I caught him up, he was jumping on my bed (next to Matthew's cot) and squealing with glee. I just thought, "Right, that's IT!" and plonked Matthew on the bed next to him, grabbed Arthur and swung him to the floor, and then turned to pick Matthew up again, to find that he was already in mid-flight to the floor, where he landed heavily on his face and his body flipped back over himself, bending his neck in a way that scared me to DEATH. I swear he could have broken his neck. He screamed and cried instantly and I was so scared and desperate to grab him up off the floor that I just grasped his clothing on his front and hauled him up by it onto the bed!

Oh it was awful :( I ended up yelling at Arthur to GO AND LIE DOWN ON YOUR BED and then just holding Matthew close and rocking him and trying to calm him a bit before I pulled him away to look at his face and see how badly hurt he was. He was crying too hard at first. When Arthur ran back just as Matthew was calming down, I sent him away again and shut the door on him :( At that moment, there were just TOO MANY kids to deal with, even though there were only two. I needed to focus on Matthew. He was clutching at his nose as he cried, as though it was hurting him, but he had a big red mark on his forehead. I think he did hit his nose too, but there was no blood or major swelling. After that I lay down with him in the bed and breastfed him, and he eventually calmed down enough to nurse to sleep. Arthur tried the door a couple of times and then started banging his head on things and crying and crying and CRYING. I feel awful that I ignored him out there, but I couldn't have done anything for him unless I left Matthew, and he needed me at that moment. It was a good 10 minutes of head banging and crying though, which was so awful for him (and me!).

I really feel that Arthur needs to be disciplined better. He doesn't mind me, and he SHOULD, especially over safety issues, and no should mean NO, and that's that. But every event this afternoon was actually my own doing (how awful) so I can't blame him for it all. He got yelled at more than enough, and I'm ashamed to say that I was rougher with both of them than I should have been at times. Urgh.

Once Matthew was asleep, I went through to Arthur (who was lying on his bed, just like I'd asked him to - the good boy!). He was crying and upset and when I came in, he reached for me and I lay down next to him. He said to me, "Mummy say sorry be gwumpy with Ah-yah!" ;) And so I did say sorry about that. I WAS sorry for that. And then he said, "Mummy say sorry go upstairs with Mashew!" So I started to talk to him about how it made him feel. I figured he was trying to tell me about how cross and upset he felt about the whole thing. I asked him if he felt sad, and he said yes, and I asked him if he felt disappointed, and he said yes. He told me, "Need milk for it!" which is his latest saying over a hurt or being upset about something, hehe! So I nursed him to sleep for his very late nap.

I have been using big words to describe feelings with him for quite some months, and I'm so happy that it's paying off, because he will now tell me very clearly how he's feeling about things. My mum says it's great that I've given him a tool to express his feelings to me, and I hadn't thought of it like that before, but I see it's a great thing now. I'm glad to have helped him with that. If he can't have any more milk, he will look miserable and say, "Aooowwwww!" and then sit up straight again and say to me in a small voice, "I sad!" So I ask him, "Are you sad that you can't have any more milk?" and he says yes. Then there's a pause and he'll say, "I disappointed!" (he pronounces it very clearly) and then add, "It's shame...." ;)

So that was today. I phoned Neil at work and he was very reassuring (lovely Neil!) and then I finally had some toast and marmite for lunch at 4pm. I was soooooooo hungry! Matthew woke before I had finished (after only 30 minutes sleep) and cried so I ran up there, but he'd already woken Arthur, and when they're both awake, I can't possibly get them both back to sleep. Knowing Arthur might run in again, I took Arthur downstairs, set him up with Shrek 2 (a new favourite for Arthur recently) and with Matthew hysterical upstairs, I had to leave Arthur crying downstairs. He was crying for me and for milk. He hates to be woken early and is always clingy and whiney when he wakes from a late nap :( I got Matthew back to sleep but Arthur cried a lot while I did it. Then I came down and nursed Arthur on the sofa for a while.

When Matthew got up, I tried to phone my mum to talk to her about my day. It was just one of those days. I needed to talk to my mummy about it, even just briefly while I played with the boys. But Matthew climbed everywhere and messed with the toys Arthur was playing with, and Arthur pushed him (something he never does) and so I had to stop to field that, and Matthew would NOT stay on his side of me (I was the human barrier between the boys while I tried to talk to Mummy!). In the end, Arthur was screaming at the top of his lungs for Mummy to PUT PHONE DOWWWWWWWWN HELP AH-YAH BUILD TWAIN TWAAAAACK!! And I do mean horrible tantrumy screaming. Ugh. By the time Neil came in the door I was about ready to chuck the pair of them out of the window and bang it shut behind them, and then I saw Neil was all pale and he told me he had one of his headaches (where he needs to go to bed straight away). I cried. I know it sounds selfish in light of his poor headache, but I couldn't help it.

Anyway! It turned out okay. The boys went to bed. Neil took painkillers which made a lot of difference, and he was able to help me put them to bed. He went to bed right after, and I ate pasta with sauce and cheese, watching some TV, and then came up to write my diary.

I am SO glad to have a birthday tomorrow so that I can hopefully have a day that completely contrasts this one!

But the weirdest thing is, I seem to love Arthur and Matthew all the more intensely for all the difficulties of the day - I can't fathom that, but there it is. I feel fidgetty with them sleeping in their beds, and keep wanting opportunities to rub my face against Matthew's soft fluffy little head, or kiss Arthur's little round cheeks as he sleeps. I just love them so so so so so much, I can't even describe it. I still feel COLD about Matthew's fall today. He had another one this morning when Neil was watching them - he fell sideways against the TV unit and hit his temple on the cabinet handle (sharp-cornered)! He has such a nasty raised bruise there, and he cried so much, poor lovey. His little forehead is so bruised! There are little bruises of all colours and stages here and there, from all his falls that he keeps having now that he's standing so much of the time and starting to try cruising.

Arthur fell HORRIBLY yesterday. He was running towards the TV unit and tripped on the Fisher Price record player. It was about the length of his body-height from the unit, and he fell down flat, so fast that he didn't even get his arms out to protect his fall. His forehead caught the shelf on the TV unit, and he has the most awful raised line from the edge of it just above one eyebrow, longer than his eyebrow too. It was so swollen at the time. Thank goodness it didn't break the skin though. He cried and cried and his lips went purple, and I grabbed a cold pack from the fridge and breastfed him while he rested his poor eyebrow against it (which was also against my breast, brrr!). That's the only way I can get him to keep a cold compress (we use foil pouch drinks!) against an injury for more than 2 seconds - to have him breastfeed whilst using his position at the breast to lean him against the cold compress. He eventually breastfed for 10 minutes like that, so I was glad about it. I kept him up for 30 minutes (he had been due a nap) to observe him, and he was fine. I kept asking him if his head hurt, or if his tummy felt okay, or if things looked funny, and he cheerfully answered, "No, I alwight!.... Head not hurt.... Tummy alwight (patting it).... Things not look funny!" Today he has a nasty purply-red line there but it's not swollen so that's a relief. I hope the cold pack did a lot of good.

Matthew seems okay tonight. He is sleeping fine and his forehead looks a lot better already. I stubbed my little toe on the highchair when I went downstairs after nursing Arthur tonight, and my nail is going black. It hurt SO much!

What a day!

And now it's 1am and I do NOT want to be knackered on my birthday (which it sort of is already - yay, Happy Birthday to Me!!), but this entry has been a bit gloomy and dramatic and I didn't want to end on that note! Plus I still have a lot of Arthur's sayings to write, and now that I've left it this long, some of them are already out of date :( I knew that would happen, tsk! I should have written them at the time, like I wanted to! Oh well.

Arthur's speech is coming on so fast. He often talks so clearly and in such complete sentences now, that I sometimes feel like I'm talking to an older child, well, you know not OLDER, but like a 4-year-old or something. He doesn't talk like a 4-year-old yet, but you know what I mean? He understands too many language concepts to count, and uses them well in context. He uses all sorts of tenses, like, "I should have", "I have been", "I will be", "I am going", "I was thinking", "I might go", and others. He commentates on his every activity throughout the day. He NEVER stops talking! He talks to me, to Matthew, to Neil, to himself (quite a lot), to toys, to thin air even! He seems more fluent lately, in his random comments, as though he doesn't have to stop and think how he'll phrase something any more, or try it and then have another go when it doesn't quite come out right the first time. It's just little things that demonstrate it, like at the table a few nights ago, he was eating his fromage frais and twirling the pot around with his spoon in it, and he said, "I spinning it around!" as he did it. He used to have to focus on the action and then try to comment on it when he wasn't so intent on what he was physically doing. Or he'd have to stop to TELL me what he was doing, instead of just casually commenting on it while he did it. Now it seems effortless, like he has the words right there at the tip of his tongue to use.

I will write out as many as I can of the huge list of his latest phrases that I have been jotting down! The latest ones are downstairs so I'll have to add those another time. I just don't want to miss writing them here. The bits of paper will get lost or thrown away, and my memory won't hold up to the task, so I need to write them here if I'm going to preserve their cuteness! :)

* He's pretty clear about things he wants to do now. If he wants to open the tumble dryer, he'll tell me, "I wanta open tha tummle dryer!"

* He has this cute thing where he muses thoughtfully about the past, as though he's suddenly a wise old man with a lifetime of experience, haha! Last week, he saw an advert on the TV for Little Red Tractor, which he loves (anything vehicular, of course!), and he got this distant look in his eyes and tapped his chin thoughtfully, saying, "I wonder when Lilloh Red Tractor on? I never seen it aaaages!" Funny boy! Later on he did the same thing when I asked him if he'd seen the dustpan for the dustpan-and-brush in the kitchen. He went all thoughtful and said, "Hmmm, I never seen it aaaages!", hehe!

* He has since improved this type of sentence. The other day I asked Arthur if he'd seen the facecloth I'd put near him to use, and he said, clear as day, "No, I haven't!", which was one of those "older child" moments for me, because it was absolutely adult in the way he pronounced it and in his intonation. His tone was very concerned, like he wanted to help me find it (which he did!).

* He has developed a real love for the Dr. Seuss books - yay! I loved those when I was little, and I even still have my battered copy of Green Eggs and Ham! Arthur got a box set of 6 Dr. Seuss books for his birthday, one of which is Green Eggs and Ham. I read them to him every day (not ALL of them, goodness! My voice would be hoarse all the time - they really take it out of you in the voice dept, don't they?!) because he brings them to me and asks me to read them. He giggles at the silly words and sounds. Last week he was sitting at the table with us, rejecting yet ANOTHER family meal, and he said crossly:

"I don' want 'weetcorn,
I don' want peas,
I don' want cawwots
I don' want mince meat,
I don' want ANYWHERE!"

* He also reads the Dr. Seuss books to himself, which is the sweetest thing! He sits with his legs all stuck out in front of him, big book open in his hands in front of him, saying, "I am Sam!.... I don' like geen eggs HAM!" with such funny little rise-and-fall tones in his voice, as though he's been ultra serious about trying to read it properly like when I read it to him!

* He is giving various examples of "parenty" talk to us, which is very amusing! Neil overloaded his fork with pasta the other night at our family meal, and as he lifted it to his mouth, Arthur spoke up sternly, "That's TOO MUCH, Daddy!" :)

* Another example: I dove in to nibble on his neck the other day, and Arthur straightened up and gave me a very serious look, and said, "No, thank you!" in a very well-to-do tone, hehe!

* Gross example: We were all in the car the weekend before last, on the way to my grandparents' house, as it was Granny's birthday, and Neil's nose was running as he was driving the car. I said something like, "Urgh, wipe your nose!" and looked around for a tissue, and Neil - the revolting man! - wiped it on his sleeve!!!! Immediately this little voice piped up from the back in an absolutely perfectly appropriate tone for what it was saying: "Oh NEIL! Tha's disdusting!" We laughed so much that I was literally crying!

* The other day Arthur was trying to build a tower of bricks in a certain way and it wouldn't work! He suddenly said, "I fed up!" So I asked him, "What's made you fed up?" and he answered, "I fed up tower not working!"

* He has started getting picky about how he looks lately. I expected this earlier (age-wise) but he has seemed pretty easy-going about stuff till now. I put him in a plain white long-sleeved top with blue jeans one day last week. He looked so sweet! He never wears white tops though, as he only has this one and I had forgotten about it in a drawer for ages. When I put it on him, he strutted about the room with a huge beaming smile and his chest puffed out, saying, "Ah-yah look GORDUS in white!" hehehe! Then, as he strutted around, he passed a mirror, and accidentally caught sight of himself in it. Suddenly he stopped dead and stared at his reflection, and his expression changed to this dramatic combination of horror and disappointment, hehe! He just stood there shaking his head in disbelief, and then finally found the words to say to me, "Don' like white! Take white top OFF!" Hehe, funny boy!

* Also he did NOT like his hair being all flat after taking his hat off when he came home from a walk one day a week or so ago. He did the same horrified frowning thing in the mirror and shook his head with his hands on his hair! Neil combed it with a neat side-parting (something he never wears) and he ran back to the mirror, only to be totally aghast at what he saw, with much horrified shaking of the head, etc! I fluffed his hair up so that it flopped forward like normal and curled up a little at the sides, and he beamed at his reflection and puffed out his chest, nodding at me happily! He's such a sausage! I suppose he likes to look like Arthur and that means looking like he always looks, not with any new hairstyles or colours!

* Oh but he DID approve of a new pair of jeans and a reeeally soft corduroy shirt that came in the post (eBay - 99p (!!!!) plus postage, "Next" brand as well!!) the other day. He hasn't had shirts before as such, and he was super thrilled to be wearing one, "Just like Daddy does!". Here's a rather blurry (ever-moving child) photo of him being delighted with it just after I finished getting him dressed in it:

He had a haircut the other day! It was long overdue. I have a couple of photos of him wearing another new item of clothing after his haircut, a pair of Next denim dungarees (£1.24 at eBay!!!!!) which I'm REALLY pleased with, but I haven't uploaded them yet. Neil took him to a different hairdresser this time. The lady at the one he'd been going to since his first haircut did a rubbish job, but it has to be said that he didn't keep very still while it was being done! So this time we decided not to take him back there. Neil drove him to the BARBER'S shop where he gets his own hair cut, near where he works! How grown up for our little man! Arthur sat in a grown-up chair, and had his hair sprayed with water (bit disconcerted at first, apparently!) and then cut, and blow-dried (again, bit worried, but reassured by Daddy!). His hair looks so lovely. It's just a trim, so the same style, but a nice length on him, and it's the nicest cut he's had yet. He will definitely be going back to the same place again! Probably in about a month, at the rate his hair is growing!

Talking of hair growing, Matthew's hair is really filling in! It still refuses to lie down on top, but it's getting long enough (a couple of inches standing up on top now!) so that the weight of it is juuust beginning to lean it over a bit. It's so thick, even though it's just downy and fine. These boys of mine have hair that any little girl would be desperate to have! I know I would have loved thick, fast-growing hair! You watch, I will have a girl next who will be bald till she's 2, haha! Matthew has started to play with his hair a bit, on top. He strokes and gently pulls at some of the soft sticky-uppy hair on top, when he's sleepy in his cot - how cute! :) *I* would love to stroke and gently pull on his lovely tufty soft top-hair as *I* fall asleep, if I'm honest! It's the softest substance EVER.

Okay there's more, but at least I've done the mainstay of Arthur's talking stuff! There's more from the last couple of days, downstairs, but I'll write those bits another time.

Here are a couple of sets of a few photos to catch up a bit! Both were initiated by Arthur, hugging his baby brother and calling out, "Mummy, take a picture!" :)

From a week ago:

From a few days ago:

Matthew's eyes are gradually starting to "grey" a little, which doesn't surprise me too much. I think they still tend to leave people with the impression that he has blue eyes, as they're still clear and light in colour, but they are definitely more of a blue-grey at the moment. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they went completely grey, and I'm thinking they might well get a hazel ring in the middle too. He has the verrry beginnings of a slightly yellowy centre, so I reckon that's what they'll do. Mine are exactly like that, clear grey with hazel in the middle. Mine started out blue as anything and my mum says the gradually "greyed up". The hazel ring didn't appear for ages - she says she didn't even know I had one!

Okay, more soon. Thanks for the lovely messages again! Will try to update soon, as I still have more to write and I want to write about my birthday while it's still fresh in my mind too. Arthur knows it's Mummy's birthday tomorrow and has already asked, "Ah-yah share Mummy's birthday?" hehe! He wants to "boh out candles" on a birthday cake! He helped to do that on the cake I made Granny for her birthday the other weekend - oh I forgot to write about that! It was such a lovely day! My parents came over from France and my brother and his 28-weeks-pregnant (how exciting!!!) Sarah were there too! Granny was 81 but she was in hospital on her 80th so we did a big celebration this year instead. Well, SMALL-big, we're only a tiny family, and we like our birthday-dos to be family only :) It was lovely!

We had roast lamb (ohhh yummmmmm!) and all the trimmings and Matthew chewed and sucked and ate of everything offered to him, including blackberry and apple pie with custard afterwards! Arthur ate peas and sweetcorn, and plenty of them! He wouldn't eat anything else, but he ate birthday cake and some yoghurt. He DID sit at the table and behave beautifully for the entire meal though :)

Photos of my mummy holding Arthur up to blow the candles out on Granny's cake - who was much more interested in watching Arthur blow her candles out than actually blowing them herself! :)

The cake was a bit of a rough impression of a patchwork quilt using very limited food colourings (!) and not that much forethought, unfortunately! Granny sews quilts as a hobby. Arthur "got at" the finished cake just before we left to go to G&G's and broke some of the decorations off the side, which I tried to repair, and all-in-all I think it looked pretty awful! But Granny was thrilled, and that's what counts :)

Here are the little ones just enjoying some SPACE for once, poor loves! Our home is so tiny and cluttered!

There's a lovely family photo of all of us that Sarah took with her camera set up somewhere, and if she gets time to send me it, I'll post it here. I don't think we've managed a SINGLE family photo with both Neil AND me and both the boys in it yet! Tsk! Must try and fix that!

Okay, definitely going now! Night night :)

Long. Milk, and potty training....

At last, a chance to finish my diary entry from before! It's 10.28pm already, but oh well. There has been no time before now, and I STILL haven't caught up on other diaries! :( I will try to do that later? Tomorrow? Soon, I hope! And emails too.

First, before I forget or a boy wakes and I don't get around to it again, here is a short video clip of my little ones in the kitchen a few days ago. Arthur was ducking around the highchair legs and making Matthew laugh, and I fumbled for the camcorder as fast as I could. I think I missed the best giggles though :( But here is the rest. We were waiting for Neil to get home from work:

Okay, I have SO much to write about! And so many photos again. I started a list during the week, which sits next to the computer, to remind me of things I meant to write about in my diary. Otherwise I forget them! Also sitting here are many sheets of paper with Arthur's latest phrases on them, which I jot down throughout the day as he says them! So I guess I had better start working through my list!

Food-related stuff first! I am soooo proud! I have been cooking a family meal for when Neil gets home from work about 5 days a week for the last 2 weeks!! Yay! This is a HUGE deal for me, having never once sat down to eat a meal with our kids before Arthur was 2 years old. And I never cooked for us as a family before this either. Arthur always had jarred food, or actually he did have some home-made stuff when he was tiny but it was just for Arthur, not part of a family meal, and it was pureed, etc. It's a huge effort for me to make such a drastic change, and I've been a bit hard on myself over some aspects of it, but I think I'm doing well!

The one thing that nearly always goes wrong is the timing. I am the world's most disorganised person (trust me on this one!) and never EVER attend anything on time. Even when I try reeeally hard. It's worse than ever now that I have two little people to get organised as well. Hence we don't go out much at ALL anymore. It always goes hideously wrong when we do, and manages to ruin the rest of the day for each of us. But that's another story. So I have been trying REALLY hard with timing the meals, because we have to eat right when Neil gets home from work (just after 6pm) otherwise the kiddies are late in bed. They both need to be asleep by 7.30pm, and Matthew will happily be asleep well before that time if we can organise ourselves to get him in bed earlier. When they have bath night, it's hard to do the meal as well, and because I can't seem to serve a SINGLE meal at the time I plan to serve it (ugh!), the boys have been in bed at very varied times lately. Sometimes it's just that the preparation part took me longer than I expected, which can sometimes be due to little people holding things up while I'm trying to cook dinner! And sometimes it's because I didn't notice the time and was late starting it. Or it wasn't quite done when the recipe said it would be. Or it WAS done on time, but there was some drama with a small boy and we all sat down to eat later than we had planned. Then the meal takes a while, which is lovely, now that we're all sitting at the table together. But it does add to the late bedtimes. The latest bedtime this week was 9.30pm for Arthur (well, sleep-time, he was in bed at about 9.10pm. That is NO good at all. It was after a roast dinner, which took an AGE to carve and serve and make gravy for, etc, etc. And the pudding (rice pudding) wasn't done when it was supposed to be. Neil says I am too hard on myself, but I feel like I am doing so BADLY most of the time with the meals. I have yet to get one completely RIGHT, but when I stand back (on a Saturday, when I'm less frazzled, hehe!) and look at the last two weeks, I think I have done well and I'm proud of that. I hope I can get it right in the end though. And I need to start planning menus. So far we are just feeling our way, and it would help me a lot to get a menu plan sorted each week, or maybe even for a whole fortnight. It's something I have been planning to do since before I started my new diary a couple of months back, for such things. I have a WAY to go yet on the home management thing, I can tell you! There is just an absolute mountain to climb and I'm still not sure I'll ever make it. But it's a start.

Arthur is eating NOTHING of any of the meals I cook - yet. He gets no alternative food. He DOES get offered dessert, which I try to make nutritious. I read that it's not a good idea to withhold dessert from young children who won't eat their main course. It's another way to get nourishment into them (if you make the desserts wholesome) and it teaches them that there's "good" and "bad" food if you start withholding food as a punishment for not eating other stuff. He won't even eat peas and sweetcorn if it's mixed in a sauce or a stew or a soup. He LOVES peas and sweetcorn, and will eat an entire plateful of the stuff, so long as it's not "contaminated" by other food! So he is going without food more than he used to. We are determined to persevere, and every source we read about it assures us that he'll come round. We don't make any fuss of him not eating, at dinner time. We make it light and cheerful, and chat to him about things he has enjoyed. We talk to each other about the food and which parts we really like. We enjoy Matthew's HUGE appreciation of my food, no matter what it is - he eats everything I cook for him with great enthusiasm! Arthur has a tendency to whine and whine and whine at the table constantly, about how he doesn't like the food and he wants such-and-such instead, and he wants to get dowwwwn, and so on. It's HIGHLY irritating but we're trying to be cool right now. We don't tolerate bad behaviour at the table though. He isn't allowed to bang or scream and shout (but he does it anyway, a LOT - I just mean he gets disciplined for it if he does it), and there are various other smaller things that we're teaching him too. Anyway. He will hopefully come around soon! I read that it takes toddlers 3-10 exposures to the same food/meal before they will accept it and try it. I am SURE Arthur will be at the far end of that scale, needing a good 10 exposures, and so far he's only ever had the same meal 3 times maximum. Most of them only once or twice. So we might have a way to go yet! Because we know about this statistic, we're being patient for now!

I made spaghetti the other day and chocolate pudding for dessert! I made it with cocoa and milk and stuff - it was listed as nourishing and full of vital nutrients in my baby cookbook, so I gave it a whirl! It was really nice! Arthur ate a tiiiny bit (he's just as picky about desserts - anything new really) but then didn't want it. Matthew ate some, but we are starting to notice that Matthew has a preference for savoury foods. With the single exception of fromage frais, he only looks vaguely thrilled by all sweet things. He absolutely inhales all savoury foods though! I sliced some banana and nectarine to eat with the pudding and he loved those! Arthur wouldn't eat the nectarine (new *sigh*) but he ate a whole banana.

Oh! I forgot to answer Mallory's question recently, about fromage frais. It's not yoghurt, though it's marketed as a yoghurt-type dessert and Arthur's calls it yoghurt. The boys eat both yoghurt and fromage frais, but we found some Thomas the Tank fromage frais recently and so that has been the favourite over yoghurt! It doesn't really taste the same as yoghurt, but I suppose it is similar. The texture is the same as yoghurt. It IS French, and it tends to be called Fromage Blanc there more than Fromage Frais. I haven't seen it sold in the States before, but it might be, somewhere? Here's a Wilkipedia link for more information, if you're interested! :)

On the subject of milky things, my thoughts have been all stirred up lately about milk for Arthur. He drinks organic whole milk, in fact, we ALL do now (except Matthew, of course!). Neil and I were drinking semi-skimmed (the same as 2% milk in the US I think, except that semi-skimmed milk is actually 1.7% fat here) organic milk but I am continuing to lose weight with all the breastfeeding and am past my pre-Matthew's-pregnancy weight now by a few lbs. I still have 8lbs to go before I am as light as I was before Arthur, but I was TOO light and do not want to get back to that weight again. I am putting out a LOT of milk these days, and I don't think that is going to change any time soon, so I am upping my calories! I could use the fats, to be honest. Neil LOVES creamy milk so he was thrilled to have an excuse to join in - though I told him he has to let me prick his finger to check his cholesterol now and then (he has a history of high cholesterol already). It has been fine for years and years, but it was high when he was a teenager and his mum changed her cooking to make things lower in cholesterol. So I have to monitor it for him, if he's eating high cholesterol foods. He has no sense of self-preservation, he's like another child sometimes!

THEN I read about the process of skimming milk being bad news, and lots of people saying how they are put off drinking anything but whole milk for LIFE now that they've read into it. So hmmm. There was a big debate on a parenting forum I post at recently, about milk for 2 year olds. I read the post because it was relevant to me, since I have a 2 year old. The question was asked, "What kind of milk are you giving your two-year-old?" and the responses varied hugely. What does everyone here think?

I am very sure of my decision on milk for Arthur and my reasons behind it, but I'm curious, after reading all this stuff. I will probably NEVER give Arthur (and Matthew) anything but whole milk. Before I read all this stuff, I just had this gut feeling that I did not want to be messing around with different amounts of fat in milk for children. The guidelines here are very strictly laid out (as in, advice from your health visitor or dietitian, etc) - do not give your child semi-skimmed milk before the age of two, and do not give them skimmed (0.1% fat) milk before the age of 5, as they need the energy from the fats in milk. With that in mind, I had pretty much decided that whole milk is the way God intended it to be consumed (as in, straight out of the cow and not fiddled with!), and that fats for children are a whooole different ball game to fats for adults, in terms of whether they are a good thing or not. Fast food and sugary-fatty junk for kids is a whole 'nother story for kids, but whole milk is surely a good nourishing thing to ingest?

When I was very little, there was only whole milk around. Semi-skimmed and skimmed started in the 80s, I think, and we didn't bother trying it out till I was in my teens. We always got our milk delivered to our doorstep in glass bottles, by the milkman. The cream sat in a lovely thick yellow layer on top of the milk. These days milk is so mucked about, that it makes me wonder whether there are any adverse affects by doing so (there usually turns out to be something when it comes to changing a food from the way it comes naturally). Milk is homogenised a LOT these days. You don't see the milk with its cream on top any more, thanks to homogenisation, which serves to whizz all the fat into tiny particles so that it's evenly distributed throughout the milk. It also removes some vital nutrients and enzymes from milk - ah-ha! I checked our milk in the fridge and it's homogenised AND pasteurised! All milk is pasteurised here, but not all of it is homogenised as well. I am now on the hunt for some organic milk that ISN'T homogenised. I don't see the point. I'm happy with cream sitting on my milk (it shakes or stirs in fine) and with those homogenised-out components BACK in my milk thank you! I think I have found some that I can buy at Tesco, called Country Life organic milk. It's only pasteurised. Which, by the way, is a process that buggers milk up aplenty itself. I was fascinated to read about it when I googled this evening. Did you know, pasteurisation takes the lactase out of milk?! That's crazy! Lactase is needed to digest lactose, which milk has a lot of. It's a wonder anyone can digest pasteurised milk at all! Also interesting is that most lactose-intolerant folks can cope with raw (unpasteurised) milk just fine. It starts to make me feel cross that foods like milk are being so messed with. There is WAY more than just the lactase thing, but I don't want to rant on about it any further than I already have here.

Anyway! Back to my point! I just feel like milk is one of those foods that's best left alone, or at least left as close to the way it came out as possible. It's a healthy food! And really, whole milk is 3.7% fat - that's ALL! That is 96.3% fat free!! I do understand the reasoning behind some people wanting to have reduced fat milk for dieting or cholesterol issues. But there seems to be a whole "fat phobia" (with foods) thing going on, and some of this discussion online was about how it's completely unnecessary to give children reduced-fat milk, and some were suggesting it was just bringing the adult "fat-phobia" issue into what we give our children. Some said they gave their kids reduced fat milk because they were over 2 now, and they were chunky kids anyway so they figured they didn't need that extra fat. One lady was giving her 2-year-old skimmed milk (ie. that white water stuff) because it was what she drank and it was easier, and he probably didn't need the extra fat in his body. Others had the same reasoning for why they kept their 2-year-olds on whole milk (for those with lightweight toddlers!). So many people were busy "consulting their peds". The whole thing just seemed blown out of proportion to me, as I read it. Children's bodies' needs for fat are completely different from an adult body's need for fat. They use fats as energy and all sorts, that we don't use it for. But that aside, suddenly it seemed crazy that we're all asking advice and going by "the appropriate age" to change the fat content in our children's milk! Suddenly it just seemed nuts. It's milk. It comes out of a cow just so. It's good to drink and highly nutritious. Why change it, and especially for children? Anyway, that's just what my view was on it, after taking in everything that was said, and reading up a little online.

I think I was one of only a few whose 2-year-old was still on whole milk, and definitely a minority as someone who does not plan to introduce reduced or non-fat milk to her children at any stage. Maybe when we have teenagers we'll think again, or maybe we'll find out somewhere along the line that one of our kids has high cholesterol (if it's an inherited thing, for example), and then we'd alter things accordingly. But I guess I'm this tiny minority who thinks whole milk is good for kids of all ages. It's not going to make kids obese now, is it?

*sigh*

Anyway, I WAS interested to hear what other mothers are thinking (or doing) with their little ones and milk, but now that I've ranted from the highest point of my soap box (!), nobody probably wants to share that information with me, haha! But I've said my bit and don't intend to debate any further :) I just wondered if anyone else out there thinks like me or if the discussion online was a pretty accurate representation of any group of mothers. Do any UK mothers reading this feel differently? This was a US forum where the discussion took place, and I do think that there is a different feeling about fats in foods over there, to here. Anyway I am just curious....

Wow that has taken WAY too much of my diary-writing time!! Whoops!

The next thing on my list on my notepad is "potty training"! Haha, what a relaxing and non-confrontational entry this is! ;)

Again, I wanted to pose a question to people reading here: Am I the ONLY mother of a 2-3 year old who is NOT potty training at the moment?! ;) I have been reading lots of diaries (well, up to about a week ago) here at Diaryland - ones that I have been reading regularly since Arthur was born, most of which are written by mothers who have little ones who were born around the time that Arthur was. So far, it seems like ALL these other mothers are potty training (or almost done potty training!) their little ones who are Arthur's age. First one started, and then another, and another, and now I'm not sure if there are any left other than me!

I don't know what to think about potty training. I mean, I reeeally don't know what to think, or say here, even. I have some thoughts about it (mostly things like, "I don't want to do that for a while yet!") but then in light of everyone else's adventures, I am beginning to feel like I'm not.... right? in thinking those things now. I mean, I know it's about Arthur's readiness, so this stuff isn't really relevant (or shouldn't be, I suppose), but I still wonder if my attitude isn't right or something. Everyone else is like, "Wayhey, we're POTTY TRAINING!" with sleeves rolled up, ready to attack the process with gusto! They have been for months now. But I just don't feel that way. Is this another thing I'm being too lazy/disorganised about? And that's another thing - I read that for potty training to be well-timed and successful, the potty trainer (that's me!) needs to be organised in herself. Which I am NOT. So, oh my gosh, how am I meant to do this?!

And also:

I DO. NOT. WANT. TO DO IT!

Is that wrong too? Nappies are soooo easy. I dread the process of nappy training. I get so that I wonder what the point is, in getting it done already? I know the point is that Arthur can use the toilet independently (albeit with my help), and doesn't have to wear nappies any more. But is that all? Am I missing something else? Because I heart his lovely cloth nappies, and I don't mind changing them, and HE doesn't seem to mind wearing them most of the time, and they are just so much easier than dealing with potty training. And he will obviously use the toilet independently one day, whatever happens, that WILL be the outcome. But the benefit of him doing so NOW instead of in 6, 12, or more months? I can't figure one out. I fear that I'll let him down when it comes to getting him to a loo when he needs to go, outings will be soooo much more difficult than they currently are - and trust me, outings of any sort are currently SO difficult that we stay in the house 90% of the time, if not more, these days. That is NOT the intention, and lots of the time it's because Matthew is napping (he naps long and gooood these days, twice a day), but that's how it seems to be at the moment. The only real difference I can see right now is that when he's using a toilet instead of his nappy, he's going to have way more opportunity to get germified. Not a healthy thought, I know. But there it is.

I am wondering, is everybody potty training because they dread it and want to get it over and done with? Or because they feel it's "time" given their child's age and the fact that society has this "age" whereby potty training is supposed to commence? Or does anyone's little one dictate it with some major signs that they want to leave nappies behind for good? I honestly have no CLUE about all this, and I'm wondering what the catalyst is for the process with other mothers out there - is it YOU, wanting to get your child potty trained (and why, out of curiosity?), or are your 2- or 3-year-olds making life difficult because they don't want to be in nappies any more, and thus the process needs to start in order to make life more bearable again! I don't know whether I'm "meant" to take the bull by the horns, or whether I'm meant to wait for Arthur to show me signs that he's ready and willing. Or do some people choose to go for it, and others choose to wait for signs? Does it matter?

My, so many questions! ;)

Last week sometime, Arthur said to me, "I wanta do a wee in tha loo!" and went to the stairgate, waiting for me. I feel almost ashamed to say here that I had a huge sinking feeling and did not take him up to the loo to try a "wee in tha loo". Matthew was up there sleeping, with only a thin wall between his cot and the toilet, and I knew taking Arthur up would mean switching on the noisy fan that comes on when you switch the light on. And then noisy-enough chat and bumpings to wake Matthew, if the fan hadn't already. And then mucho fiddling about with the toilet and unravelling of toilet rolls. And in the end, probably no intention of doing a "wee in tha loo" at all, and back down we'd go, collecting a sleepy and disoriented boy on the way, who should have had a lot more sleep than what he had. So I suggested if he wanted to do a wee, maybe he'd like to sit on his potty and do it? But he said no, he wanted to do a wee in the loo. I said not today. But I feel dreadful about it, and I keep on thinking over it again and again.

In lots of ways it seems like I am being unfair to Arthur in favour of Matthew. I fiercely guard Matthew's naps. That is the main thing. Matthew naps 2 hours in the morning and another 2 hours in the afternoon, sometimes a little longer both times. He naps wonderfully in his cotbed, but very poorly anywhere else. He naps from roughly 9-11am, and then 2-4pm, but this varies so much that it's usually 11.30 (or even 11.45 sometimes) before he's properly up from his morning nap, and it can take him a while to actually go to sleep these days as he likes to force himself to wake up juuuust as he's about to drop off, to practise pulling up to standing and crawling around his cot, etc. So after he's done that and finally gone to sleep, add on his 2+ hours of sleep and it's like a 3 hour process sometimes. If he's up nearer noon, that puts off the afternoon nap a little, and the end result is that we have a small window where both the boys are up until about 8.30am (when Matthew gets nursed in bed in preparation for his morning nap), and then another window over lunchtime, after which Arthur is getting tired for his nap and things are winding down a bit, and then the next window where they're both awake is usually not till 4 or 4.30pm. I used to try and take them out somewhere for a short while after that, but my complete inability to organise myself usually meant that I couldn't get them both ready and out of the door before it was practically 6pm and time for Neil to get home from work. And dark outside. These days, that window is out because I have to cook the family meal from about 5pm.

All of which leads to NO time for outings. Poor Arthur. He does need his outings, to burn off energy. Sometimes we go in the garden and he runs, but it's sooooo muddy in there right now, and it has been raining recently too. Sometimes we do it so that when Neil gets home from work, Arthur is ready to go out and he goes for a walk with his daddy for a short while. He loves walking with Daddy "in tha dark!", but it's still such a short outing. Some days I take them out in the lunchtime window, and make a packed lunch for Arthur. We get the supermarket shopping done, and this week one day we went into town and bought a couple of things. Arthur mostly walked but he went in the tandem pushchair with Matthew after he stopped listening to me when I asked him to stop (near roads, etc!). Or we might go to the park. But whenever I use that window to take them out, it's ALWAYS a disaster for their sleep (and food, pretty much) afterwards. I haven't managed to sort it any other way yet. Arthur eats fine in the car, but that's not exactly ideal. And it also means that Matthew doesn't get lunch, because he can't eat in his car seat like Arthur, all tipped back in his rear-facing seat. He gets breastmilk on demand, so he doesn't go hungry on those occasions, but again, it's not ideal. And then we are always home WAY late for their naps in the afternoon. They are usually tired out, grumpy, and Matthew might have fallen asleep in the car (thus making a nightmare situation for getting him in the house, nappy changed, and convincing him he needs to go back to sleep in his cot after all that!) and takes AGES to settle for sleep once we're home. And I can't get Arthur sorted for his nap until Matthew is down, as Matthew just cries and prevents Arthur sleeping if I just leave Matthew and go and try to settle Arthur for his sleep. So I HAVE to get Matthew down first. Urgh. Then poor Arthur is waiting till like 3pm before he gets to nap that day! He sleeps deeply and wakes VERY cranky and clingy, and then his late nap off-sets his bedtime and he mucks about for literally hours in bed that evening.

I feel a bit of a failure in these ways at the moment - various Arthur-related things like outings, sleep, etc, and whether I'm letting him down on the potty-training thing. And the darn family meals that I can't seem to get right yet. I hope I get better at them. I can't figure it out most of the time. I just feel clueless and dumb and stupid about it all, like even when I try reeeeally hard to figure out what's best for my little ones, I STILL can't do it, and so I bumble along and seem to be stuffing things up a fair bit along the way. But then I don't seem to be learning from that, really. Which is frustrating/disappointing/upsetting.

Anyway. So outings are affected by my decision to prioritise Matthew's naps. And now the weeing in the loo thing too! But I have done it the other way around and it has NOT worked. Matthew NEEDS his sleep, and we all suffer if he doesn't get it. If he's awake, he's cranky and miserable, and I have to tend to him more. So Arthur gets less of me. If we're out, he's soooo miserable that we have to cut outings short and come home, Matthew crying the whooole time. That's no fun for Arthur (and definitely not for me!). When Matthew has short bits of naps throughout the day, as a result of being taken out a lot and losing his pattern for good long naps, he is cranky between naps, and I have short, unpredictable periods to spend doing special things with Arthur.

THIS way, Matthew is wonderfully contented, well-rested, and happy at all times (seriously! He is such a happy baby), I have absolutely predictable times when we all know Matthew will be napping, and I get huge blocks of time to do things with Arthur, just me and him. The one-on-one time with Arthur is SO important. I would even say it's more important to Arthur than going out. He would not get it nearly as much if I tried to take us all out more often at the expense of Matthew's naps. It's SO HARD to juggle more than one child sometimes!! Often you just have a situation where you must choose to prioritise one child's need over another's. You can't do both, a compromise wouldn't make that much difference either way, and so you must choose - do you prioritise your baby and let him get the sleep he needs while your toddler doesn't get to do much outdoor/social stuff? Or do you prioritise your toddler and fill his life with wonderful stimulating fun activities, while your poor baby gets exhausted and sleep-deprived?! It's so hard. I tried both ways and chose this one. I didn't have the luxury of a baby who WANTED to sleep the first time around - I'll be jiggered if I'm letting the opportunity slip through my fingers this time! ;) I think I said this before, but my friend Katie chose the opposite to me with her little ones, and her toddler gets out every day and goes to different mother-and-toddler groups 4 days a week. He gets everything he needs and is loving it. But her baby girl cries all the time and seems tired all the time, and naps in tiny bursts with no predictability, mostly on the go. She's a couple of weeks older than Matthew, and he's crawling all over while she isn't sitting unsupported yet. I know babies vary hugely in their development and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with anything. But it made me curious, that's all. Both Katie and myself said how hard it was to have to prioritise (I HAVE said this before, here. Oh well!) but we just had to go with what felt right. She couldn't bear the thought of restricting her toddler. I didn't want to think of forcibly sleep-depriving my baby (!) when he was so obviously asking me to help him get the sleep he needed, and it wouldn't be the End of the World if my toddler did activities at home more than anywhere else for a while.

I figure one day in the not-too-distant future, Matthew will drop a nap, and then we'll have a HUGE window in which to start gallavanting about to mother-and-toddler groups (with TWO toddlers by then, yikes!) and other fun stuff. The only thing is, what if I get pregnant again? I can't make my head work to think what will happen. I think I'm too tired, or else losing more brain cells again ;) Ohhhhhhhhh my Bob, it's 2.30am!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had no idea! I honestly thought it must be around 12.30 or something! Yeeuuurgh! I guess that's what happens when I get carried away on topics that I have "opinions" about! Oh dear. No wonder my brain feels like soup. And I had soooo much more (nicer stuff, I promise!) to write as well. And photos! Phooey.

At least I have got the heavy stuff out of the way this entry! I have some much more light-hearted stuff to write next time, and all the photos too. Sorry the entry is so long and heavy-going!

Here are a couple of photos to finish (less to post next time, therefore!) of my sweet little boys playing together during the week:

I'll try to write again tomorrow, if I get the chance, although Neil might need to use the computer in the evening... maybe if I have a bit of a window during the day? I really want to catch up and get rid of this list on the notepad before it gets to be old news! Okay, going now :)

Eight months old, and toothie number 2...

It's Valentine's Day, but it's NOT a big deal here. I mean, it's a thing that people do but not overly much I think. It's not a kid-related holiday here, or at least it never used to be when I was little. I don't know about these days (oh I'm so old, hehe!). Neil and I have never made a big thing of it, ourselves. We even said yesterday how we wouldn't do anything this year - no cards or anything. It just doesn't seem like it's worth the fuss (or the money, for that matter!), for us, anyway. But my sweet husband came home from work with a MASSIVE bouquet of flowers all the same :) He spoils me, and he really shouldn't! But I do love getting flowers! I wish he wouldn't buy into the commercial-ness of Valentine's Day though. I love flowers any time of the year and I don't mind a bit if it's not on Valentine's Day! He's such a sweet man :)

The flowers he got me are red roses, white roses, red and yellow freesias, and some other red flowers that I don't know the names for. And some gypsophila. All but the red flowers that I don't know the names for were in my wedding bouquet - except the freesias were white in that. It's so sweet of him to always remember my favourite flowers when he buys them for me! *sigh* I'm so blessed to be his wife.

More important (to me, anyway!) things about today are:

Matthew is 8 months old today!!!!! I can't believe my baby is two-thirds of the way through his first year already. Boo-hoo! It seems to be just slipping away toooo fast. I am just amazed when I look at him, that he's actually EIGHT months old. He seems way too tiny for that big number of months, but then I'm used to a toddler as well now. I'm sure when Arthur was 8 months it had taken FOREVER for those 8 months to pass, and he was like twice the size of Matthew, hehe! Which was probably near-enough true ;) I need to get Matthew weighed and measured. It's been 2 months now, and I'm curious, if nothing else. If I remember, perhaps I'll take him to the drop-in clinic on Friday? I avoided them the last time, because they were stressing me about his weight dropping on the percentile chart, and pressing me to start solids. Well, now that he's started solids, I have no reason to worry too much about his weight. If it's dropping still, then oh well. He's perfectly healthy. I mean, it's obvious! He LOOKS healthy and is very happy. He is crawling and pulling up and starting to cruise, and all before 8 months of age, so he's certainly meeting milestones fine. So I think I'll take him to the drop-in clinic this time. It's every Friday and I don't have to make an appt so that suits me better.

Matthew cut his second tooth yesterday, yay! It's the other bottom middley. Thank goodness he hasn't had that awful trouble he had before cutting the first tooth, but he HAS been fairly miserable and needed Calpol a couple of days running. He can really nip me now with that first one - it's peeking up nice and white and clear from his gum now, but still only a few millimetres of toothie! I can't imagine him with a toothie grin, just like I could never imagine Arthur with one. NOW I can't imagine Arthur without a toothie grin - it's one of his defining features! ;)

Talking of which, here is my monkey boy being thrilled at me discovering him wearing my new jumper (Gap, but SUPER cheap at eBay again - woohoo!) - he had put it on himself and was excitedly whipping the sleeves around and around where they hung miles over the tips of his fingers!

His hair must must MUST be cut!! I just keep not getting around to it, and meanwhile it grows longer and lonnnnger. If he was a girl and I was doing the long hair thing, I swear it would be right down his back already! He has Neil's hair gene. Neil NEEDS a cut every 6-8 weeks. It's really shaggy beyond that, no matter how short he got it cut in the first place. Arthur also seems to have that 6-8 weeks window before it has grown a couple of inches and needs a trim. I wish I'd had hair like that when I was little! Mine took like TWO years to even start to grow out of my head like a proper little girl's haircut, and then it grew evvver so slowly for the rest of my childhood. I never had it cut (length-wise) until I was 11, and it was only 4 inches below my shoulders and rather split-ended by then! Eleven years! I think I must be making up for it as an adult though. My hair has gotten crazy long since having Matthew. I think it must have grown 8-10 inches since I had it cut just below my shoulders in the middle of my pregnancy - but it's hard to estimate. I might be way off and it's much less than 8-10 inches. It seems like a LOT, anyhow. I need it cut! Granny offered to trim it for me in a couple of weeks, so I think I'll take her up on that. It's occupying the boys while she trims it, that's the problem!

Today is also one week till my birthday. Where did that sneak up from?! I remember the day when I would be hardly able to BEAR the suspense of the time dragggging by till it finally got to February and I could start counting LESS THAN 20 DAYS till my birthday, hehe! Of course, I was 9 then, but anyway! Every year time passes faster and faster, and nothing accelerates time like having children, it seems. I thought it went faster after having one child, but it definitely doubled in speed after having two. Neil asked me what I wanted for my birthday (yesterday) and I was like, "Wha? It's my birthday?!" I'm a "birthdays are a BIG deal" kind of girl, so that's a weird thing for me to ever say!

I'm going to be 31. That seems kind of snoozy compared to Turning Thirty! like last year. Also I always prefer to be an even-numbered age (aren't I weird?!). I don't know why. I just feel more comfy with a nice soft round even number as my age.

Oh bums, it's after midnight AGAIN! I am so tired today. I feel very.... PMS-y, actually. But that is too weird, because I'm right where I shouldn't be PMS-y. I am mid-cycle and getting near a fertile time. Hmmm. Maybe it's just some weird hormones. My cycles are definitely wacky these days, but who could blame them?! Anyway. For three evenings running, I have brought that day's piece of paper with special things that Arthur has said on it (I jot them down throughout the day, otherwise I forget them) and sat at the computer meaning to write them all in a diary entry. But then boys wake or I get side-tracked online or something, and it gets too late to write. So now I have three pieces of paper in a pile by the computer, each covered on both sides with Arthur's sayings, AND I have a list on a notepad next to those with some bullet points of things I need to remember to write in a diary entry! And I've only covered a few of those in this entry, urgh. I so need to catch up. It's the first time in a while that I have let 5 days or so go where I haven't kept up with people's diaries, and I HATE that because I know from experience that it's a slippery slope to MONTHS of having no idea what is going on in my favourite online peeps' lives! I must try to catch up again before it gets out of hand! Nobody write any diary entries till I do, okay?! ;)

Arthur was conceived 3 years ago yesterday! I met my big milestone of 3 years continually pregnant, breastfeeding, or both, as of yesterday! GO ME! :)

Okay, quickly, a few photos:

Grainy and slightly blurry (and a bit odd in colour?!), but here's my cutie pie 8-month-old this afternoon:

All this standing that Matthew's doing is leading to mucho monkey behaviour, more and more of the time! I have to have eyes in the back of my head for TWO monkey boys who are able to move about under their own steam! Matthew has a new fascination with the little table by the toy unit that is home to the Yellow Pages, my address book, and the phone, which is perched on top. Methinks I need a new home for it all, but since I have not one scrap of space anywhere at the moment, it will have to stay where it is and be regularly disassembled by Matthew! He LOVES the Yellow Pages:

And this is his main aim....

It all reminds me VERY much of another (considerably chunkier!) 8-month-old monkey boy I once knew....

They both have standy-up hair! Arthur's definitely curved backwards more strongly, but Matthew's is just as standy-uppy. I am letting myself hope more and more that I will have two curly/wavy haired boys! I love Arthur's curls :) They are the same type as my Daddy's and his mum's, and I love that!

Urgh, I just got that feeling like I was being watched, and sure enough, there was Matthew silently watching me over the edge of the cot! He woke and stirred sooooo quietly that I hadn't even noticed, which is a rare thing. He BEAMED with huge bright eyes when I turned and saw him. *sigh* So now I have nursed him and he has tried to play "I'm wide awake!" games with me, and I've rocked him and nursed him some more, and he's juuust about asleep enough for me to conclude this entry. But it's after 1am. I'm soooo tired. So I have to stop, and hopefully I'll write the rest tomorrow. We'll see! :)

Snow again, cookies, standing, and food!

Well, it's after midnight, and I'm just starting a diary entry. *sigh* I know, I'm crazy. But oh well. I have some photos that I reeeally wanted to post yesterday, and some Arthur-sayings too, but I didn't have time yesterday. I actually went to bed BEFORE midnight yesterday!!! Gasp! I was just too tired and for once I didn't have this burning urge for some extra "me" time, so I went to bed :)

I wanted to post some photos of Arthur in the snow we got yesterday. Tonight I was all ready to post them right after we put the boys to bed but then Neil and I went and had a huge argument, ugh. About "me" time, no less. Neil is just about THE most understanding husband, but I still don't think he'll ever understand my need for "me" time. He SAYS he does (and thinks he does, more the frustration), but he doesn't, or else he wouldn't say stuff like he does when we argue about it. We rarely really argue or say hurtful things, but Neil got angry and said something this evening that really really hurt my feelings and then he calmed down and wanted to talk more rationally. I was just a "squish" of raw jangly feelings and couldn't answer any of his calm rational questions. I hate that. I am just the jangly instant-stomach-ulcer type of person (!) and if I get upset then I feel like my emotions are physically burning a hole in my torso somewhere. A really big hole, and it's all I can focus on once it really hots up. It always burns in my chest and stomach and makes me nauseous when I am trying not to cry and compose myself. Which I DO try to do, because I am just crap at crying in front of anyone, even my own husband. I mean, I DO cry in front of Neil, but I just hate to let my guard down like that. I like to retreat into a dark hole to cry, which is all I wanted to do, but... seeing the argument through, and questions and answers, etc.... After I squash all those feelings down I just feel number than numb and all my answers are a flat, "I don't know..." or "What does it matter anyway?" and so on.

Anyway. We resolved some issues and Neil was calm and nice allll the rest of the "discussion", but the hurtful thing is still stinging for me. He went to bed, probably thinking, "Well, that was well resolved then!" I should probably forgive him right here and now for hurting me and pray about it, and then it's done and finished, but I DON'T WANT TO. I want him to know he's hurt me. I don't want to be childish and be all funny around him tomorrow. But I just don't feel like being the grown-up about it and letting it go. He hurt my feelings! What he said was wrong too, and I want him to acknowledge that and at least apologise. Ugh.

Pffthth. I did NOT mean to write about that.

So. We got snow overnight again, the night before last! Yay! Even more than last time, well, not a lot more but it's pretty unusual for us to even GET snow worth playing in, so it's exciting! It's kind of sad that Matthew doesn't even have a concept of snow, because he's always napping when Arthur and I go out in it! It's all gone today, and I have no idea if we'll see any more this year even. I hope so, because Arthur LOVES it! He was so excited to see snow outside - we let him come downstairs and climb up to the window to see it for himself instead of telling him it was there, and he gasped out, "Snooooowwww!!" when he saw it!

After Matthew was down for his morning nap, I bundled him up (and me!) and we went out in the back garden this time - there was a better covering on the lawn than there had been the last time. We left the kitchen door open with the monitor just inside to hear if Matthew woke, but he slept over 2 hours and we had all the time we wanted, which was lovely :) It did take me the best part of an hour to get us ready to go out though! Arthur wore his normal clothes, a thick winter coat with a hood, mittens, a hat, and a fantastic pair of waterproof dungarees (bought at eBay!) over the whole lot! And his Thomas the Tank welly boots :) I figured that way he could do ANYTHING he wanted without getting wet or cold and having to come in early because of it.

It was still snowing when we went out, and Arthur just stomped around the lawn making "footpints":

After that he rode on his wet-and-snow-filled car (LOVE those dungarees!!) for a bit:

And then I asked him what he wanted to do next, and he said, "I liiiike.... biwd a snowman!!" :) I'm SO sad, since the last snowman (only a week or so ago!) he has improved his pronounciation and it's now "snowman" instead of "fnowman", which I loved soooo much! :( His 's' sounds are getting better, but he still mispronounes a lot of things with 's' sounds. I love them mispronounced!

This time we had more snow, so our snowman was a bit bigger! I think I had WAY more fun than Arthur, building that snowman, hehe! It made me feel like a little girl again! Arthur fetched me bits of snow from around the snowman. We went inside and got a leftover scrap of my nappy-making fleece fabric for a scarf, and then put an odd little shape from a shape sorter (!) on his head for a hat, and we found some good stones for his nose and eyes. And a couple of weird looking twigs for arms! And then he was finished!

Arthur was really pleased with him. The snowman is the only surviving snow out there today (though he has lost a lot of weight overnight - not to mention an eye and his nose!) so Arthur has been watching him from the window all day today, saying, "Wooooowww, look at snowman!" When Matthew woke from his nap this morning, I brought him down all sleepy and bleary-eyed and sat him on the floor. Arthur RAN up to him and sat next to him, and he was so earnestly talking to him about the snowman outside. He said to Matthew, "Mashew, snowman mewting, snowman MEWTING!" and then when Matthew made no response (!), he looked at me and explained, "I telling Mashew all about it!" Funny boy :)

After that, I showed Arthur how to make snowballs and we chucked some at the fence to make a nice "boomph" thudding noise and see the snow explode as it hit the fence. Arthur LOVED that and it made him giggle and giggle. I couldn't throw snowballs AND take a photo of that lovely moment, but here he is still laughing about it a minute or so after we finished - he was even hopping from one foot to the other with glee in this photo! :)

After that I asked Arthur what else he would like to do in the snow, since we would have to go in pretty soon. He looked thoughtful and then said, "I don' know what do!" so, thinking that it would be a good idea to burn off as much of his energy as possible, I suggested a running game on the lawn. It was mostly packed snow and clumps of grass after we'd been trudging all over it and gathering snow, but it was soft and he was WELL bundled, so if we ran and fell then it would be okay. First we just played running up and down the garden as fast as we could (well, me pretending to go as fast as I could and letting him beat me!), and then we played follow-my-leader. I ran in circles and so did Arthur, giggling all the way. I ran criss-crossing all over the garden randomly, and Arthur followed, giggling almost too much to run. He fell over lots, and got really snowy but he just found that more hilarious and was too well wrapped to hurt himself. After that I was puffed out and my lungs were burning with the cold air. I felt like a child again, running about in the snow! The feeling of my nose prickling and my breath heaving and my pulse thundering in my ears was like an old familiar friend, if a little uncomfortable! I don't suppose I've done that much since I was little, and there's a certain way that it feels to run in the SNOW, rather than running in any other conditions.

While I stood and gasped and waited to catch my breath, Arthur threw himself on his front on the snowy lawn and declared, "Ah-yah swimming!" and proceeded to do this sort of breast-stroke/army crawl thing over the entire length of the garden! When he'd finished, he ran back to the end of the garden, flopped on his tummy and did it again! He had so much fun!

After that we came inside and then Matthew woke up. We stayed toasty warm under all our wraps, and Arthur wasn't even DAMP anywhere, let alone wet from all his frolicking! Yay for those fab dungarees! :)

The day before the snow, we made sugar cookies!!! I got curious about them over Christmas, reading American blogs and diaries and seeing EVERYBODY making sugar cookies as a traditional Christmas thing. I don't know them over here, but they sounded nice and I wanted to make cookies with Arthur that would be good for using cutters and keeping their shape. He has a TON of lovely cutters in his playdough collection, so I thought we could wash and use those. I found this recipe online, and used it because it had the conversions from cups (which we don't have here).

We cleaned the kitchen table and sat there to do the cookies. I had made the dough earlier and it had been chilling in the fridge. It's nice when Arthur helps me mix up things to bake, but I knew he'd enjoy the actual cutting and he would get frustrated about waiting for the dough to chill once we'd made it. Also I didn't want too long a project, as we had to fit it in when Matthew was napping, with time to be all cleared away before he woke again. I had to supervise so much with the flour and the huge rolling pin and so on, that I didn't get to take any photos of the actual cutting of the cookies :( But he enjoyed it until the dough started to warm up and then he kept grimacing and saying, "Sticky, don' like!" and other such things!

Arthur helped me wash up at the sink afterwards - he almost enjoyed this part better than cutting out the cookies! Please try to ignore the hideous state of the kitchen, ugh. Also, look at his hair! I have to get it cut, when he's having a day where his curls sort of drop out a bit, it looks kind of long on him, hehe!

Here he is helping me put the trays in the (cold, don't worry!) oven:

After all that, he didn't like the cookies! He's soooo particular about what he'll eat. He liked the shapes, and he especially likes choosing which cookie I should eat (which is a FUN activity for me, and I encourage it, haha!), but he just does his disgusted back-of-the-throat sound and shakes his head, and says, "Don' like cookie" and that's that. Oh well! Consequently I am eating myself silly on sugar cookies. They are really delicious, and soooo more-ish! But then you get super thirsty and you never want to look at another cookie again, until the effect wears off a few hours later. *sigh* It will be a good thing when they are all gone, but I DO like them! We didn't even ice them like they are supposed to be done, but I think I'll do that next time I make them. Yum!

A few things that Arthur has been saying over the last couple of days:

* "I having twubble! Mummy hatta help!" - shouted through from the living room while I was in the kitchen! His line of cars was falling apart and he couldn't fix it by himself :)

* He has some jigsaw books of Mummy and Baby Animals. He was holding the mummy elephant this morning and looking round the room seeming perplexed. I went into the kitchen for a minute, leaving Arthur as he was and Matthew sitting on the floor near Arthur, and then I heard, "Mashew, ha' seen tiny effunt eh-where?" I thought that was soooooo sweet! He is always trying to involve Matthew in conversation or activities, and I thought how sweet it was that he was asking Matthew such a grown up question as if he might even pipe up and say, "Oh yes, Arthur! I saw it behind the shape sorter only yesterday!" hehe!

* Today I napped with Arthur while Matthew napped in his cot - yay! I got about 40 minutes sleep, which was lovely! When we woke and went downstairs, I felt like snacking on something, so I went into the kitchen and opened the "snack cupboard", and then paused in front of it, saying to nobody in particular, "What shall Mummy have for a snack?" As if by magic, this small person appeared at my side, saying, "Mummy sood have summa Daddy's cuh-cuck!" - pointing up at Daddy's mint chocs in the corner of the cupboard, the cheeky monkey! :) He knows that if I have a snack, he gets to share it! We did NOT have summa Daddy's cuh-cuck! ;)

* He's getting more defiant and letting us know JUST how he feels when disciplined over things! The other day he was put on the sofa and not allowed to get down for a bit, to "think about what he'd done" - something to Matthew, I think it was. He was so cross about it! He kept on saying, "I don' WANTA think, I wan' get down!" and scowling at us crossly! We ignored him but it was hard to keep a straight face at times! ;)

* Describing his family: "Mashew only liddoo.... Ah-yah big boy.... Daddy HUGE! (giggling).... Mummy huge too!" Hehe!

* This evening while Matthew and Daddy were in the bath, Arthur was playing with his trains and cars on the living room floor, and suddenly he heard Matthew squeal and splash upstairs. He stopped playing and sat up with his finger to his hear, saying, "Listen!... What's that sound?!.... Sound like Mashew in tha bath wi' Daddy!"

His sentences are getting more complex all the time and I love to hear him coming out with new things and cleverer ways of saying things! One of the things I love best is the way he chats to himself as he plays by himself. He is great at playing alone, though he prefers to choose when he does that, rather than me directing him and him thinking it's a marvellous idea! When he does play on his own, he generally plays with toy cars or his Thomas trains. He sometimes builds towers out of Duplo or wooden bricks, and he often gets books down from the shelf and "reads" them, or his jigsaw books - he loves those. He prefers running cars around the furniture and floor, and his toy garage. He usually combines cars and Thomas trains in the same gameplay. Often there is a cwass (crash) or a race and usually someone has to come "a ressoo!" (to the rescue), only to get embroiled in the "tebbul cwass" themselves - as Arthur has picked up from me: "Oh no! What dizarser!!"

This evening while Matthew had his bath, I grabbed a pen and paper and tried to keep up with what Arthur was saying while he played with his trains and cars. I only had 2 minutes till I had to get Matthew and dress him for bed (while Neil then bathed Arthur), so I didn't get much of it, but here's what I wrote - the dots represent pauses of only a couple of seconds each time:

(Pushing lorry on the floor) "Lorry gotta go home... neal (nearly) tea time a Lorry!.... (Turning to James).... "Dames! Don't go that way, come that way!.... (grabbing James and Bertie the bus, one in each hand)....Are you ready?... GO!.... (looking over at Bill - the train).... Beew! Come baaaack!.... (spotting a tiny piece of spaghetti from tea on the floor)... What's that? I sink summa Daddy's.... TEA! (Looking around again)Where'd Bertie go?.... (seeing Matthew's teether toy near Bertie on the floor)...I got the toy - I missed one (means it had been "missed", ie not noticed before now)... Gotta tidy 'gain, in there.... (puts the teether in Matthew's toy box on the toy unit)... Oh!... (finger to ear again)... Oh, I think Mashew inna bath wiz Daddy... I sink so!.... (back to trains, holding one in each hand on the carpet)... Are you ready?... GO!... Here Thomas!"

I LOVE to have the time to sit watching him, and listen to him play :) He's such a busy bee, and he NEVER stops talking. He chops and changes in his chatter and his play every few seconds, and it's hard to keep up. I guess his mind just flits from this to that, and he just follows the flow. That's a nice way to be :)

Okay, just a few more things! Matthew is standing all the time, and MIGHTY pleased with himself - if I didn't know better, I'd say he even poses for photos now, he seems that pleased and proud about his standing, hehe! Here are three such photos - two from yesterday and one from bedtime this evening:

We need to drop the mattress again on his cot, as I think he isn't quite safe now that he can stand in the cot. He has only pulled to standing in there since yesterday, but he LOVES to do it now he knows he can! He rattles the bars like nothing else and squeals and skwawks with excitement. He's such a sweetie pie!

Today he has been having a go at letting go while he's standing, but I don't know WHY, because he's toooo little for that yet! I'm sure he can't manage it, since his leggies have only just started standing with support. The sweet thing is that he seems very confident that if he just lets go the sofa whilst beaming delightedly at me, then surely he'll stay standing - why not?! So when he thuds down onto his bottom a millisecond later, his face falls and he looks utterly confused, bless him! He looks like he can't understand why that didn't work ;)

For the past week I have been doing really well (pats own back) at making my family a meal for when Neil gets home from work. The boys are eating later than usual (about 6.30pm) and thus getting to bed later - especially on bath nights, which we have just tried out once or twice this week. They are usually in bed for about 8pm with the new routine, but tonight was a long tantrummy meal ("I don't LIKE it! Don't want it, want cwacker instead!") followed by a bath, and Matthew wasn't asleep till 8.40pm, and Arthur not till 9pm. Ugh, WAY too late. So I need to fine-tune things.

But I'm so pleased and proud that I'm even MANAGING to do the housewife thing a bit. I am making all the meals from scratch - no jars or bought stocks, etc. So I'm crying over onions, squishing garlic in a press, chopping veg, stirring in tomato puree, making milk/flour-based sauces, etc. It's LOVELY!!! I feel great cooking real meals for my little family and putting them on the table for Neil to get home from work. I run late most days so far and I need to fix that, but otherwise it's going great. Along with this, we're doing a thing with Arthur where he gets the same food that we eat, but he doesn't have to eat it. If he doesn't eat it, there is nothing else and he goes hungry. We always have a dessert with every meal, and my family cookbook says that you should never withhold dessert from a child who hasn't eaten the first course, as it will only teach them that there are good foods and ones to avoid. If you make dessert nutritious, it's another way of getting nourishment into them, sweetness or not, it doesn't matter really.

We also try to have bread on the side (which we don't really want to have ourselves) because Arthur will eat bread and that means he eats SOMETHING whilst feeling like he's partaking in the family meal, since we've all got bread to eat with our meal.

We have had beef stew; sausages, mash and beans; macaroni cheese; chicken casserole; fish and home-made oven chips; and today I made spaghetti bolognese. Arthur has eaten NONE of any of it. Neil thinks he's losing weight. He DOES look a tiny bit thinner in the face to me today, but he isn't losing weight as far as the scales go (with clothes and nappy this morning, he was 31lbs, perfectly healthy!). And if we persevere, he WILL start to eat. Apparently. We tried this once before but we didn't really have the heart to persevere. This time it's much easier because we're eating a family meal and he has to eat what we eat. He does eat peas if there are peas (but not if mixed in with the sauce or stew), sweetcorn (same applies), bread (no butter), baked beans, and he'll eat banana or apple or yoghurt or fromage frais for pudding, if that's what we're having. We had banana and vanilla ice-cream tonight and he liked that a lot! I want to start making proper puddings when I am better in the swing of things, like puddings and custard (pies, sticky pudds, etc), rice pudding, and other things yummy! I don't think Arthur will eat them, but he'll come round eventually.

Matthew, on the other hand, absolutely loves everything I put in front of him! He immediately shoves a handful of it into his mouth, whatever it is. He eats any texture, any flavour, any sized morsel. I LOVE love love that we did baby-led weaning with Matthew. I can't imagine I was so anxious about it before, and that I never did it with Arthur! It's the easiest thing on the PLANET to do, and it just seems so natural. Pureeing foods seems a crazy notion to me now. I don't think I'll ever do it again, since I will definitely be doing this method with any other children I have. It is MESSY though! ;)

Here's Matthew trying out macaroni cheese for the first time (first food with actual cows milk in the sauce - no problems, hooray!):

And today, his first try of spaghetti bolognese - ohhhh the mess! Thank goodness it was bath night, and he could go straight from the highchair to the bath, hehe!

He always ends up sitting on the most revolting mound of squished food, as he drops it down his sides! Yeurgh! He also likes to stockpile in his bib :) But he EATS quite a bit of it, judging by his poos. Arthur is quite perturbed, watching me change Matthew's nappy after he has pooed, saying, "Mashew dunna poo!... Got PEAS!.... Got peas inna poo." He seems a bit worried about why his favourite food is in Matthew's pooey nappy, hehe! I have had to start explaining what poo is (what a delightful subject!) and WHY there are peas in Matthew's poo! Mmmm!

On that lovely note, I think I will leave it there for tonight. It's 2am probably, but thank GOODNESS it's weekend and I get a lie-in in the morning :) Yay for Neil letting me lie in. I have forgotten all about my hurt feelings, writing this entry, so it's been worth staying up this late :) I'll finish with a photo of my little boys, taken yesterday (see Matthew in that (albeit small for its size) 12-18 month sleepsuit?!?!?!!) - one of the many moments in the day when Arthur sits down next to Matthew and gives him a cuddle or a kiss. He LOVES his brother! :)