Fourth toothie for Matthew! :)

Darn it, I did it again!! Sorry! Buddy lists will have shown me having updated. I really need to check which username I'm logged in with before I post entries!

But since I'm here.... Matthew cut his fourth tooth today! It's been stalling for EVER, so I'm glad it has finally cut through. I could almost see it through a HOLE in his gum for almost a week running and it never advanced at all in that time. Today it seems to have picked up where it left off, and has come through :) So he has his two bottom middle teeth, and his two top middles. A different order to Arthur, who got one of his lateral top teeth just before the second middle top one. I don't see any obvious signs of more on the way so maybe he'll take a break for now.

Tonight we had corn on the cob and Matthew managed to nibble some bits of corn off his with his new toothies! :) Arthur LOVED his, but wouldn't touch the lamb and potato pasty that went with it. He ate his own, finished Matthew's, and then asked to finish Neil's as well (he was allowed to)!

He seems better than he was, physically. I have tried to get him more iron sources in the food he WILL eat, and more frequently.

We're going out EVERY DAY and taking a packed lunch with us at the moment! We have been to feed the ducks at two different parks (on 3 different days!), been to the swings, visited Daddy at work for a few minutes after feeding some ducks at a park near where he works, and then driven to a different town so that I could look in a shop there (didn't find anything I wanted after all), and let Arthur run about on the big cricket green there. It was raining, so I put him in wellies and he had a blast. He ran and ran on the grass, chased pigeons, and spalshed, jumping up and down as hard as he could, in about FIFTY huge puddles, one after the other :) He loves "spwashing in puddoos".

He has just shouted out (it's after midnight), "HELP!" from a sound sleep. Neil is in bed with him already, but I think I will go just in case he needs me. He is awake because he's just followed that shout with a rather pitiful sounding "Need some hewp..." He hasn't really been having bad dreams since I prayed with him a couple of weeks ago or whenever it was. He had one during naptime a few days ago, and it was about "a man". But no others, thank God. I hate him having bad dreams. I think Matthew had one today during his afternoon nap. He woke with a start and cried SO hard instantly. Neil went to him and cuddled him, hoping he'd drop back to sleep, but he was absolutely distraught. I went in and he had tears streaming down his face. He looked visibly relieved to see me, and calmed down when I took him and breastfed him for a while. So I wonder if he had a bad dream? He's going through separation anxiety at the moment. Not terribly, but still. My sweet little boblet!

Meg is coming to visit on Monday! Yeep! I'm excited! She's staying pretty much all day :)

Neil is still applying for jobs like crazy, and interviewing with agencies too. He is really going for it this time. We need to move to a bigger house this year, so he has to, really.

I have photos, but alas, I haven't had chance to resize them yet. Will try to get onto that asap. Matthew stirring, must go to bed! Will try to update again soon.

Whoops!

Whoops, updated this diary instead of my alicesbaby diary and had to delete it from here straight away! Sorry - I know I will have gone all red on people's buddy lists, so I thought I'd just explain briefly!

In short:

Very late.

Lovely weather!

Arthur strokes Matthew's hair (ruffles it while looking into his face) when he's crying and says, "It's okay pweshus" over and over, reassuringly :)

Going out for Arthur-friendly outings EVERY DAY now it's warmer! Swings, and duck-feeding, etc - lovely!

Family meals going wonderfully. Arthur not eating, but seems okay at the mo.

Matthew getting toothie #4 - almost through tonight.

Matthew waved today! And then clapped himself for it! :)

Hubble is scrummy and ever so sweet to me.

Feeling happy.

Meg visiting on Monday!

That is all. Will update soon!

More photos, weight (mine), and nap-and-meal issues

Thank you for the lovely comments on my letter to Matthew! :) I'm glad to have recorded it here too!

No time for an update AGAIN, but I've decided that one way to approach keeping up with my diary better, is to make shorter, more random, more spontaneous entries, but entries that are less full and newsy. So, like, if I catch 20 minutes then I could update about the raisin up Arthur's nose (thanks for the reminder, Sam!) or post a bunch of photos and not much else, etc. Then at least I'd be getting SOME of the stuff posted here and there, and when I do eventually get time for a big update, I won't have soooooo much to catch up on? How about that? I think I'll try it.

So, tonight it's already after midnight and I REALLY wanted to update, but hey ho. I had a lovvvely luxurious bath and read a bazillion posts at Fertility Friend (something I haven't had chance to do for aaages), and that has pretty much used my whole evening up! Yesterday evening I re-hemmed 3 pairs of cords. Oh, I will just say this (who out there is rolling her eyes, knowing full-well that I'll still be typing this very long and very normal-for-me entry in like 2 hours time? Hehe!) - my scales need new batteries (they're digital) so I can't check my weight, but I am pretty sure it's still falling off. My parents dropped by on a visit this week, just for a few hours because they were only in England for one day (!!), but Mummy said I look thin in the face and she reckons I'm about 8 stone now. I was 8 stone 4lbs (? or something) last time I weighed myself but that was a good while ago now. I know that my size 12 jeans and trousers are too big on me now, in the last few weeks. I never went below size 12 trousers after having Arthur, before getting pregnant with Matthew. My pre-babies jeans size was a 10, and I've NEVER taken a smaller size than that. I have been size 8 on the top, but I had hibernating mammary glands which will now never be the same size again, hehe! Well, as long as I'm breastfeeding they won't :)

Anyway, so I have had to get the pre-ARTHUR box of clothes down from the loft and dig out all the jeans and stuff. Fashions have changed since then, seriously! All the waists are soooo high on those jeans! Which I don't care about all that much, but my WAIST is not the same as it was. I can't do the button up, but I fit the hips and legs well. So I bought a couple of pairs of cords (I heart cords right now) at eBay in size 10 recently, and they fit me perfectly with a lower waistline. When they fit me like a dream I bid on another pair and now I am set up nicely! I have a couple of pairs of jeans, and cords in brown, beige and dusky pink. Which I like :) But my legs are ridiculously short, so I had to take ALL of them up - the dusky pink ones went up FIVE inches, haha! I have a 27 inch inside leg. I'm a shortie :) My top half is all out of proportion and I'm the tallest at any dinner table, even amongst men! I look odd. But hey ho.

Anyway. The last couple of days, I have started to notice those new size 10 things seeming just a tad generous in size. So I'm worrying about my weight a bit. I DON'T want to lose too much weight. I really didn't want to go below 8 stone after having children. Before Arthur I was 7 stone 10lbs and I don't want to be that light again really. I feel healthier above 8 stone, and I have more energy. I'm eating and eating, and I eat high calorie things. I indulge my passion for chocolate a LOT at the moment and we eat desserts with every evening meal - though some are fruit salads and light things. I drink whole milk, and lots of it - last weekend I sat down and calculated how much milk we are using so as to get an idea of how much to buy on a weekly basis when I go shopping. I was AMAZED to discover that I needed to put FOURTEEN pints of milk on the shopping list, and it felt weirder than weird to actually load it all into the shopping trolley and pay for it! But we haven't wasted it. It's Friday and I go shopping again this weekend. We have about 2-3 pints left, which is about how much we need to get through Saturday and maybe Sunday morning. We don't even have kids who drink milk yet! Arthur has some on his cereal in the morning, and I cook with milk quite a lot, but yeah - we drink a LOT of milk!

But I don't know what else to do about keeping my weight up. I am still tandem nursing and my boys are very active at 9 months, and 2 years and 4 months. I don't EVER want to have to wean or reduce their feeds for my own gain, even though if I really DID have to, it wouldn't be "for my own gain" as such. It would just be necessary, for everyone concerned. But I hope it never gets to that. I do have a big appetite these days, but I don't suppose I eat that well during the day. I eat fine at dinner time, but my lunch leaves a lot to be desired, since I grab a sandwich while doing the same for the boys, and it's not a hearty one either, just marmite usually. I don't have time to make (or eat) anything more hearty, and some days the first chance I get to eat lunch is about 3.30pm, if I am having one of those difficult days with the little ones! So I guess I could change lunch, if I could figure out how. Hmmm...

ANYWAY! I can't think why I went off on another subject when it's this late and I only meant to come and post photos! I have a ton of photos on my camera to upload (will try this weekend) but there are still some from before on the computer to post here, so I wanted to get them in my diary before I upload the new stuff from the camera. There are a couple of big sets of photos of the boys playing together. I just see them playing and grab the camera and snap and snap and SNAP!!! Hehe! Lots come out blurry, and many seem kind of samey, but it's worth it for the nice ones and sometimes the whole set it worth posting because of the "progression" of the photos. So I have a couple of sets like that which I wanted to post. I particularly like them because Matthew is getting SO stuck in with what Arthur's playing with (a very frequent occurance these days), and in BOTH sets, Arthur ends up getting frustrated and just making this frustrated yelling noise with his hands all rigid with annoyance! This seems like a mean thing to photograph, but it's such a normal scene here at the moment and it's a stage of their brotherhood that I wanted to capture so I don't forget! It's very "Two" of Arthur as well, hehe! Bless him, Matthew just looks at him with calm innocence while he yells like that :) I DO intervene gently, and it's always resolved happily in no time. It never gets nasty, so I find it quite a sweet thing to witness at the moment :)

Here are the photos - I took out the more blurry ones to keep the selection here more compact!

And a smaller set:

Matthew is SO interested in everything in the whoooole world right now. Everything that Arthur's playing with is something to make a beeline for! He is also being totally amazing at independent play lately, even at 9 months old! Yesterday while I made the family meal before Neil got home from work, I set Arthur up watching Shrek 2 (he LOVES this movie right now) because it's a nice time of day for him to watch something and wind down, and it means ZERO trouble with Matthew or general monkey business while I'm cooking, or constant interruptions for me. And he loves it. So that's what we do. Anyway, so I set him up watching Shrek on the sofa, and then I went in the kitchen to sort out the chicken casserole and make a chocolate pudding with custard (yum!). I also had to do some serious cleaning and tidying before we could eat in there, so I knew it would keep me away from the boys a while. I usually let Matthew just crawl around in the living room, because there are toys EVERYWHERE and he likes to explore them all at the moment, which keeps him busy for little bits at a time. In between that, he stands at the little makeshift barrier that I put at the kitchen doorway so he can't come in while I'm cooking, and cries and yells at me and stuff. Which is wearing. And I respond to him when I can, but he does stop and play with something for a while, now and then, too.

So yesterday, Arthur watched Shrek, and Matthew played with enthusiasm and interest on his own for A WHOLE HOUR!!!! I couldn't believe it! I mean, there were one or two occasions of about 5 minutes each where Arthur got down from the sofa and played with Matthew when he was distracted by something interesting that he was playing with, but otherwise he was totally playing by himself! I kept putting my head round the doorway to see if he was okay, and he was always enthusiastically rattling a rainmaker, or bashing plastic cups together, or emptying a box of plastic fruit and veg and then pulling each piece apart and shoving the pieces around on the floor to make a nice noise. Or he'd run toy cars around the floor and tables - he seems so much more advanced about "vehicle-based play" than Arthur was at this age. I think it's because he is REALLY interested in the toy cars, and he has a constant role model in Arthur, who he watches playing with the cars for many hours each day! He knows just what to do with them therefore, and he loves to do what Arthur does. He finds toy cars and crawls with one in his hand till he reaches a low table, then pulls up and drives the car back and forth (forcefully and eagerly enough to practically wear marks in the table top!) over and over for ages! He also pushes them around the floor while he's crawling, and chases after them if they go out of reach with a particularly strong push. He loves to roll and throw balls too. There are just so many stimulating toys for him just lying around all the time, especially ideal for his particular age. He's very interested suddenly in finding out how things work and what he can DO with them in his hands. So that was what he did, but I just couldn't believe he was happy playing like that and occupied with it for as long as an HOUR! It did help that I nursed him right before I started cooking, and he'd had a good afternoon nap.

Matthew naps in the day this week have been difficult, and I have found it hard to manage them really. He is suddenly fighting going down for his naps, even when tired enough. I need him to sleep a little more independently in the day, because he is very dependent on me to get to sleep at the moment, especially in the day for naps. And that is hard to manage when he decides he's not going to sleep (even though I know he's tired and needs a nap, and it's nap TIME anyway), because then I have to stay to persevere and get him to sleep. And that is taking AGES lately. This week I have taken like 40 minutes to get him to sleep. It is NOT worth giving up and having him miss a nap. And I can't seem to get him sleeping any other way. I have to be there for Arthur, and 40 minutes upstairs with Matthew is not okay when Arthur is on his own downstairs. Apart from anything else, it's just not fair on Arthur. It's even worse when it's the afternoon nap, because Arthur has to wait till Matthew is asleep in order to get his own nap. He nurses to sleep so he NEEDS me to help him nap. It's too late to change that now, and I'm not about to try, but because he needs me to do that for him, he has to wait till I've got Matthew to sleep first, otherwise Matthew will cry and make a ton of noise while I try to settle Arthur, and then Arthur can't get to sleep even on the breast. It's so hard to juggle!!

Sometimes it gets so late and Arthur is so tired that I just shut the door on Matthew and take Arthur to bed, and shut his door too. I nurse him to sleep as normal, but Matthew cries and cries and CRIES and it is just unbearable. Today was one of those days. He cried for 20 minutes while I changed Arthur's nappy, took him to bed, and nursed him to sleep. I couldn't go back in to reassure him even, because I was just rushing to get poor Arthur to bed (it was 3pm already, and I'd been trying to put Matthew down for his nap from 1.15 - poor Arthur had been on his own downstairs much of that time). So Arthur did get his nap, but Matthew was so absolutely distraught by the time I got to him. He was just hoarse and crimson and his clothes were wet with tears and he was doing that rhythmic gaspy sobby cry, and his face was a picture of fear and distress and it was HORRIBLE. He wouldn't calm down until I breastfed him and then he absolutely passed out on the breast from exhaustion. This has now had to happen a few times, and it frustrates me to tears. I don't know what to do to fix it!

Another issue right now is Arthur and food. It's now been about 6 weeks since we started that approach where we serve him his evening meal (home-cooked), and if he doesn't eat it, he isn't offered anything else. He IS offered the dessert though. He doesn't eat a THING, not even the dessert usually. He is just faddy, almost panicky, about food that he's not familiar with. I do include foods that he is familiar with, but there are so few of those on his "acceptable" list that it doesn't really make much difference to him eating the meals. After 3 weeks the health visitor said we're doing great, and we should persevere because he'll come round soon. So we have done.

But now it has been about 3 more weeks and he ISN'T eating. He eats lunch (not a great one) and a bit of breakfast. He gets a lot of breastmilk, but is ALWAYS hungry for mealtimes, so the breastfeeding is NOT getting in the way of his food. This last week or so, Arthur is starting to seem a bit.... different. He gets pale moments in the day, and complains about being "just a bit tired" from about 10am every day. He often asks to go up to bed from late morning, but I don't let him nap till later because I guess I have been thinking, well, he's two, he doesn't need two naps in the day and if I give him an early nap then it's going to mess the rest of the day up. Maybe I should try letting him nap and see what happens?

Anyway. He has dark circles under his eyes, and he is whiney (and I do mean WHINEY) and over-sensitive to the tiniest thing going wrong during the day, just like I would be if I was ever-so overtired or run down. The only thing that springs to mind (he's not unwell or coming down with anything) is his nutrition, or lack thereof. And I'm worried, because I can't get him to eat, and it's NOT going like the books/doctors/friends who've been there and done that SAY. Six weeks and he still hasn't come round to eating what I cook for him. He WILL eat jars of toddler babyfood, but I don't want him on those any more. He will only accept like TWO different meals from those anyway, so it was definitely time to stop those and get him onto home cooked meals with the family.

I tried to phone the health visitor this week, but the first time I left a message and she got my answer machine when she called back. She hasn't called since and I keep getting their machine. Urgh. So that is an issue right now, but I don't know what to do. I'm thinking it's likely to be an iron thing, if he's pale and tired. He's not PALE, he is pink and healthy and the insides of his eyelids look very rosy, but he has these "pale moments" where he just looks WHITE and with those dark circles around his eyes. So I'm thinking iron. He gets very little now, with his crap diet. So for the last few days I have been trying to give him things that are good sources of iron, that he will actually eat. It's really hard, because he will not eat many things!

I'm giving him beans on toast every other day, because that's a meal with iron in it, as opposed to just marmite sandwich every lunch time. I'm giving him raisins a lot, which are a source of iron, but then he ate those before anyway. He gets iron fortified cereal in the morning, which he was getting before, and he only has wholemeal bread (higher in iron than white), which he has always had. Sometimes I give him an iron fortified cereal bar for a snack in the morning too. The other day I got desperate and started thinking, there have to be MORE THINGS that are sources of iron that he doesn't already eat! I have to increase his dietary iron somehow!! But I can't introduce anything new, because he will. not. eat. it. He WILL eat chocolate. And then I remembered that good quality dark chocolate is actually a good source of iron. So I made chocolate cornflake cakes with iron-fortified cornflakes. I just melted the chocolate with some butter and coated the cornflakes in it, then bunged them in the fridge to set. He LOVES those. I give him one for dessert every day, as well as his usual evening meal dessert (which he doesn't really eat). So that's a little extra.

I guess if the HV thinks it's iron, she'll want me to take him to the doctor to get his levels tested. That should be SO MUCH FUN! *sigh*

This entry has turned whiney, which was TOTALLY not the intention! And also it's turned into a proper entry - quelle surprise! Matthew is stirring and I'm going to snuggle his cuteness and then go to sleep, as it's reeeeally late now. It's weekend - HOORAY!! I love weekend :) We're actually going to church this weekend, because Neil is on the rota to work in the creche.

Katie and I are meeting at the new playground every week at the moment and I'm loving it! Katie is my friend from church who has Josh (Arthur's very favourite friend), and Bethany (who was born 11 days before Matthew). Arthur and Josh play wonderfully together and run about with sticks, and climb the climbing frames and slide down the slides together, and the babies sit and watch, and we mummies just talk as fast as we can for the short time we get to have some adult company (more importantly - adult company with TOTAL empathy!). I had no idea I would find it such a blessing, and in just two weeks, I am already feeling like my guard has dropped with Katie HUGELY and she seems like a close friend suddenly, to whom I might tell anything really. She tells me things I didn't expect her to, and that feels really nice, like the feeling is mutual. Which makes me feel special :)

Today it was FREEZING - it snowed yesterday and today the wind was strong, constant, and absolutely bitter. It just sliced right through us. The boys ran about completely oblivious, and we had bundled our tiny people up well in their pushchairs. Even with all our fast talking, our jaws still got stiffer and stiffer in the wind till we were having trouble forming words, so we had to leave in the end! But it was so nice all the same :)

Okay, Matthew waking. Must go! Back soon! :)

A letter to Matthew

Just a letter to Matthew that "happened" unexpectedly after I finished nursing him back to sleep last night. The photo is of Matthew at 7 months - I don't think I got round to posting it here before, but it happens to be a picture of Matthew just as he was when I felt inspired to write him a letter last night. I had taken the photo seconds after slipping quietly off the bed. Our tummies had been pressed together until then, and his face (when facing me) level with my breast, to nurse. He takes himself off the breast in his sleep by lifting his chin riiight up like that, and then stays sleeping like it until I pick him up and cuddle him for a while before putting him (completely unconscious) back into his cot. I know he is nursing back to sleep as a habit now, but I really don't care! I love it sooooooooooo much, and it will be GONE before I can bear to believe it's happened.

I love that baby boy so much. Here's the letter I wrote him last night, just to have it recorded here too:

Monday, 19th March 2007
12.30am (20th March)

Dear Matthew,

About half an hour ago, I was breastfeeding you in my bed, after you woke. You usually wake in the evening after 2 or 3 hours of sleep, and then again at around this time. You wake again at least twice before getting up for the day between 6 and 7am. I don’t resent a bit of it! I just love being close to you and seeing your sleepy little self, and breastfeeding you.

This time, as I lay breastfeeding you, side-by-side in my bed with our tummies together, I started to think thoughts that compelled me to write a little letter to you. It has to be “little” because it’s very late and Mummy is tired and needs to hurry up and go to bed!

You are 9 months old. Nine months and 5 days. You are not my one and only baby boy, because I have Arthur as my other little lovely. I love you both equally, and more fiercely than you can ever imagine. You each came with your own individual “bag of love” – a chamber of my heart that stretches infinitely and never breaks no matter how full it is stuffed! These bags are always the same size. That’s just how they come. I love you and Arthur the same, and enormously much.

But when there are moments of just you-and-me, I get the opportunity to focus more on just you. I get the same moments with Arthur. As I said, I love you both equally. Arthur is still breastfeeding too, so he gets plenty of close moments with me, just like you do. I hope you both keep breastfeeding for a long time to come, because I love it so very much.

Breastfeeding you is so wonderful. I watch you and wish I could slow down time, or have the ability to just take in every tiny detail about you and savour each and every one before that moment passes. I can’t physically do that, but I always try. I am so IN LOVE with you! You have the softest baby hair. I love it so much. It is soft and springy, and more fair in colour than Arthur’s. It’s so long already! It stands up on top, at least 2 inches, and it’s starting to bow out sideways with the length and increasing weight. I love to stroke your soft hair. You don’t much like to be fiddled with when you are breastfeeding though!

When you are finished breastfeeding and you’re asleep, you pull away from my breast with a slurp, and raise your chin RIGHT up, so that your face is turned up towards mine. Then you go still for a while, just moving your little mouth now and then as you sleep. That is the very moment when I always always want to freeze time. It was the same with Arthur, and he had sweet little mannerisms at that moment that are different to yours, but oh it’s such a precious moment for me, when a baby comes off the breast and settles to sleep with their little face upturned to mine! I look at you and just LOVE you with every fibre of my being. You look SO incredibly beautiful to me as I watch you. I can’t help smiling because of the joy that surges within me as I look at your face. Your cheeks are so soft and such a sweet shape! I usually end up bending my neck as far forward as it will go without moving my body and risking waking you, so that I can put gentle kisses on those precious little cheeks. Your skin is softer than soft – baby soft. You are just perfect, Matthew. I look at you and think, in that instant of just you-and-me, that I never saw anything so perfect in all my life. Of course, because I love Arthur the same as you, I have the same feelings when I look at Arthur while he sleeps too! But I just wanted to write down the way I feel when I look at you, to tell you, one day, before I forget. I know it is going to pass so quickly, and this evening and others like it will just be a faded distant memory that gives me both a warm glow and a wistful pang.

Tonight as I watched your sweet face while you slept, I found myself whispering aloud to you. Just thinking out loud, really. That’s when I knew I should write the thoughts down, just so they don’t get forgotten.

Everything is unknown. I don’t know how long I will have you here on this earth. I read diaries online written by parents who have lost a child at a young age, unexpectedly. Now that I’m a mother, reading such things just makes fear clutch at my throat, because I can’t fathom how on earth I could ever live through such agony, as that of losing you, now that you are here. I don’t even want to think down that line of thought any further, because it is too painful to even try. But it does make me think – I don’t know how long you will be here. I just want to freeze every perfect moment and savour it. I want to pour my love over you as much as I possibly can for as long as I possibly can.

Watching you sleep this evening, with my face inches from yours, I hoped that I would have you here for as long as I live. I hope I will outlive you, not because I WANT you to go through the pain of losing your own mother one day (something I haven’t yet experienced, but which is another thought that I find too painful to dwell on), but because I know I could not BEAR to lose you. I hope I will get to see you grow up into a man, and it seemed a crazy thought to look at your soft springy baby hair and wonder if one day I might see your grown-up hair starting to turn grey. I wonder if I will see you with your own children much older than you and Arthur are now. I have a lovely memory (captured in a photo, too) of Granny watching Grandy with a smile as he cuddled Arthur on his lap one time, when Arthur was about 16 months old. I thought how amazing it was that she was watching her own baby boy with greying hair, cuddling his baby GRANDSON on his knee, right there in front of her! I wonder if I will ever have that chance to see you do the same? I can’t imagine it now, of course.

Matthew, I pray that you will give your heart to God, and let him lead your life. I so hope that you will live a happy life, and feel fulfilled and satisfied with everything that you do. I hope you are never lonely, and that you will always be surrounded by people who love you. It is my longing to help provide that network for you, by blessing you with more siblings in years to come. I hope that a large family (if we do end up having one) will be a blessing to you and that you will have happy relationships with all of your siblings. I know that these things don’t always come naturally, but it’s my longing for you, because I love you so much.

Your name means, “Gift of God”. There is no name more fitting for you, Matthew. You have won my heart. You are such a precious little love, and I praise God for bringing you into our lives! I think there will be times when I am stretched to the limits (and beyond!) of my patience with you, as you get older, as I am starting to see little signs of some serious monkey-ness in you already! You are playful and eager. You enjoy company and love your brother. You like to be noticed, and to have attention when you want it (which isn’t all the time, but when it IS time, you must have it!). You are so like me in these things. You have a real mischievous sparkle, and you love to be tickled. I LOVE to tickle you, because you giggle and giggle, and that is one of the most precious sounds to my ears right now.

Every tiny part of your being is precious to me, and I get frustrated sometimes because I can’t breathe you in like I so want to, and I can’t get time to slow down so that I can keep you this way and never let you go. At the same time though, I am looking forward to time moving on, so that I can embrace everything you’ll do and say and think in the years to come. I just love everything about you. I could eat you up, and kiss you all over! You are so deliciously scrumptious! You just cut your first top front tooth. It’s your third tooth, after the bottom front two. I feel a mixture of sadness and excitement over the thought that your smile will soon be changing for good, from how I have known it so far. No more sweet gumminess! But I can’t wait to see your sweet baby teeth and your “new and improved” smile as all your teeth come in.

I really could write this letter for hours and hours on end, as I never run out of things I want to say about you, and writing about how much I love you. But you are sleeping in your cotbed behind me, just a couple of feet away, and it is late. I can hear your regular breathing, and now and then it changes speed or rhythm as you stir or dream a little. I need to climb into my bed, against the end of your cotbed, and fall asleep, so that I am able to deal with the busy day tomorrow, at home with my sweetest little boys! I do love you both so very much.

Perhaps one day I will write again, when my feelings overflow and I get that urge to write them for prosperity. Maybe one day you will read this letter? I can’t imagine that! For now, you are my tiny baby Mathsie-woo, my lambie-loo who grew in my tummy only very recently! I will continue to savour every second that I can while you are tiny and squidgable and MINE! I love you so much, and I enjoy being your mummy more than anything I ever imagined.

I love you, my sweet love.

Mummy xxx

Weigh-ins for the boys, Arthur's "talk" and other newsy stuff...

It keeps being too long between entries and it's starting to drive me crazy! I always feel like I have SO much to write to keep up with everything, and lots of photos to post too. This weekend I've had several opportunities to write my diary but I just haven't wanted to. It sometimes gets so that it feels like a chore to update, because there is so much to "get done" in an entry that I can't just enjoy writing for pleasure like I used to. I just ended up flopping on the sofa in front of the TV for the last couple of evenings instead, and was surprised that it felt like a blessed relief. I don't know why it gets so that I feel like my diary is a source of actual pressure. It's not other people, it's me. I SO don't want to miss things here. I want to record everything that means something to me. Which is tooooo much stuff to keep up with at the moment! If I let some of it go, then when I next update, I feel like I can't write the latest stuff till I've filled in the gap with the older news first. So I write that, and then it gets too late or my entry gets too long, and so the latest news gets put off till next time. And by the time I write again, it's OLD news and I have more "latest news" which has to be put off for the old news, etc. It sometimes feels like I'm chasing my own tail, but I CAN'T just decide to not write my diary! I don't know why, even. I just can't imagine not writing my diary. I know if I didn't write here, whole CHUNKS of my life with my little ones would vanish out of my memory (within a scarily short space of time) and I don't want that! I just can't figure out how to record the memories without the huuuuge-o task of doing so, and the subsequent pressure/chore feelings. It has been so nice to just put my diary out of my head and RELAX in front of some comedy programmes and a movie for a couple of nights. I think I would like to do that more often, but when I'm updating my diary, it takes me HOURS - at least three solid hours when I'm writing a long update (which I always have to these days, to keep up). And the times when I'm NOT writing my diary, I'm thinking how I MUST write my diary soon because I'm getting crazy-behind. Urgh!

I have no idea how to solve this! Any advice?

Well. For now, I will continue as normal! I don't want to miss stuff if I can help it! The stage of life I'm at now is absolutely crammed full of precious little nuggets of experience that can't, can't be lost in the mists of time!

Matthew cut his first top front tooth yesterday! It's toothie #3. The other one is about to come through. I reckon it might be through tomorrow, but we'll see. He has that grey dent/hole type thing in his gum, which always starts from 3 days before the tooth comes through it, and it's been there about 2 days now. He's doing well with them so far - MUCH better than when he cut his first tooth, thankfully! I can't imagine him with a toothie grin, top and bottom! His little baby bottom teeth are soooo cute, sticking up out of his gum like they do! They are such teeny weeny little teeth, and they have a tiny gap in between them. I don't think I ever saw such tiiiny teeth before! Everything about Matthew seems so tiny to me.

Speaking of which, FINALLY I get to update about his 8-month check! It was done a couple of weeks ago, at 8 and a half months. He passed all the things they check at that stage with flying colours. He crawled to the door to meet the Health Visitor, and she said as she stepped into the house, "Crawling beautifully! I can check that one off then!" :) He sat and stood with support and all that stuff just while we were chatting, so she didn't need to ask me about those things as she could see them for herself.

He was weighed and measured - oh bum, I've left his red book downstairs! I can't remember the exact stats, so I'll just get it....

Okay, he weighed 17lbs 1oz at 8.5 months. He is STILL dropping on the percentiles chart, urgh. He is now at about the 7th percentile. But he's happy and healthy and reaching milestones early, etc. So the health visitor was not worried. He still nurses about 4-5 times during his "day" and about 4 times over his 10-12 hour "night". He eats anything and everything, as you know! He actually ingests a lot, much more than Arthur ever did at this age. I don't give him big portions yet because he will EAT it, and despite his weight being on the low side, I want his nourishment to be at least 90% breastmilk till he is 12 months old. He has no shortage of breastmilk and is still fed on demand there, day and night. So I'm not worried about his weight really. He's my little peanut!! I love his littleness!

Arthur has his 8-month check late, at 9.5 months, but he was weighed at exactly 8.5 months too. For comparison, Arthur was 22lbs 11oz at 8.5 months!!!! He was at the 80th percentile, taking barely ANY solids (he only started tiny tastes of solids for definite at 8 months)! My diary says that he had gained a whole pound since his previous weigh-in TWO WEEKS earlier!!! And by his "8-month" check a few weeks later, he weighed 23lbs 3oz! These boys are SO different!

Matthew measured 69cm (27 inches) long, which puts him at about the 20th percentile. He is pretty much keeping to his percentile curve on the chart for length. Arthur was 75cm (29.5in) at his late 8-month check, putting him at the 80th percentile again.

For head circumference, I felt a bit shocked to discover that Matthew is at the FIRST percentile - exactly halfway between the 2nd and 0.4th percentiles on the chart!! His measurement was 43.5cm (17 inches). But, I did know that he has such a tiny lil head :) So I suppose it shouldn't be such a huge surprise. There's just something about figures and stats being a bit shocking when they are at either extreme on the chart, I suppose. He has only had two other measurements for head circumference, and those were both RIGHT on the 25th percentile, so I'm not sure why on earth he's dropped right down like that. It makes me nervous, though I don't know why it should. But the health visitor didn't comment on it at the time, so maybe it's okay? Arthur's head circumference was nearly 2 inches more than Matthew's at his age! But then, it's obvious that Arthur has a completely different head shape to Matthew anyway. Arthur has been wearing age 3-5 hats over the winter!!

So, my little Mathsie-peanut!! He's SUCH a tiny boy compared to his brother! Can you imagine if they had been twins or something?! I come across non-identical twins from time to time who are just SO completely different in body type, etc, and it's just amazing to think that they're twins at all! But then, the same differences occur in different-aged siblings and not so much notice is taken. If Arthur and Matthew were twins (obviously not a realistic possibility, but still!), they just would have been amazingly different babies to see side-by-side. They are teething at about the same rate (Arthur's first top front tooth came through within the same week that Matthew's has) and at 9 months both were doing the same things, motor-wise, pretty much. Arthur didn't start crawling till 8.5 months, whereas Matthew was 6.5 months, but Arthur literally went through crawling, pulling up, cruising, and climbing in a 2-week period! Matthew has progressed more gradually, so that at 9 months, they have pretty much been at the same stage. I think Arthur was already doing MORE than Matthew, even! He caught on SO fast, that boy! But wow, they would have been SO different to look at! Anyway. I just found that interesting :)

Matthew was due a nap before the Health Visitor had finished, and was getting tired and cranky after being weighed and measured. He was too upset to pay attention at the fine motor skills tests - even picking up a raisin did not tempt him!!! But the Health Visitor asked me if he was doing those things and I told her he was. He did pick up a raisin just before she left, so she got to see him do that one. He transfers objects from hand to hand to explore them, and he tracks objects out to his peripheral vision, etc. She wasn't sure if he might have a slight squint in his right eye (well, the right eye as you look at him, so I guess that's HIS left eye). I was totally surprised by that as I've never noticed any sign of one, and I remember I actually thought Arthur had a squint when he was a few months old. I took him to the HV and asked her about it, and then to the doctor, but he was fine. So I was surprised not to have noticed anything and to have someone suggest that my baby might have one this time around. She said she might be wrong, and she can't actually confirm it with her test - it's that slight - because he was very active and moving about a lot. Usually she would refer to a doctor for a squint at this age, but she's not sure so she wants to re-check it at 12 months. She also wants to weigh him again at 12 months, and do his head circumference again too. I KNOW he's a healthy baby but I DO hope he's picking up a bit on those charts by then. It makes me feel like they're watching and he "should be" moving up or else something isn't going right. And I don't like that feeling. Something deep down just automatically feels like "something" is my fault. Probably just a normal way for a mother to feel, but anyway. I don't like it.

When the HV checked his hips, they were fine, but when she turned him onto his tummy to check that his leg creases were symmetrical (which would indicate no hip problems, when holding the legs straight and knees together), they WEREN'T at all. When he was on his back, his creases were symmetrical, but not on his front. She suggested seeing the GP just to double check, as it MIGHT indicate a slight mis-alignment with his hips that would need looking at and treating. But when you put Matthew on his tummy, he INSTANTLY gets mobile and tries to wriggle away if you hold him. He did this with the HV, but then went still for a few seconds as though he knew he was stuck (!) after she didn't let his legs go, so that's when she checked his creases. At the end of the visit, she put him on his tummy again and I put a toy in front of him. He didn't try to move away and his creases were perfectly symmetrical :) So the HV said not to worry about seeing the GP after all, and that he was obviously very eager to be mobile all the time!

She weighed Arthur too, but with clothes and a nappy, so not awfully accurate. He weighed 31lbs which put him at the 75th percentile, and measured 93.5cm (37in - just over 3ft tall!), putting him at the 80th percentile for height. I reckon his weight would probably be around the 60-70th percentile if he had been weighed accurately, and that would actually be right in line with his normal weight. Since I got pregnant with Matthew, his weight went down to the 60th percentile (I was worried it was because my milk dried up during pregnancy, but they told me it was much more likely to be due to the fact that he started walking around the end of my first trimester) and stayed there. So he is following his curve well, which is nice to see! :) I am so annoyed because I have lost Arthur's red book with all his previous chart stats and stuff. I know it's in the house somewhere (ugh, it's such a DUMP!), but I haven't been able to find it for months. The Health Visitor wrote his latest measurements on a slip of paper and put it in Matthew's book instead. Anyway, it's recorded here too, for prosperity!

My desk here is literally AWASH with pieces of paper with things that Arthur has said, written all over them! I am so behind on recording these precious little memories! I keep not getting around to putting them on my diary, so the pile of papers gets bigger and bigger! Some if it is sadly out of date now, and I guess I won't get to record those things. But so that this doesn't happen again, I'm going to get started on some of the things Arthur has been saying recently!

* Looking at photos of Matthew when he was only a few months old: "Awww! Mashew tiny in this picture!" :)

* Driving past a HUGE display of beautiful daffodils one day - we'd previously been discussing about flowers and trees and stuff that God made, etc: "Look at orla (all the) daffo-deews!! God made the daffo-deews! Thank you God for daffo-deews!" We drove round them FOUR more times, he loved them so much!

* Bennie (my brother) and Sarah came round to look at slings and cloth nappies (32 weeks now, wheeee!!), and Arthur took GREAT joy in showing them our entire collection of newborn sized cloth nappies (about 50, plus wraps!), one at a time! He knew much more about them than they did, and handed each one to Bennie in turn, saying, "Dis a wrap.... An' dis is a nappy.... Dis is an insert..." etc! In the end, Bennie was half buried in nappies, and suggested to Arthur that they put the nappies back in the box. Arthur took the first nappy from him, saying, "Good idea, Bennie!" hehe! He sounded like he was a teacher talking to a pupil!

* Giving Matthew a toy to play with (this one is a few weeks ago now): "There Mashew, my swee' dahling..." :)

* After his normal nursing session one morning (again, a few weeks ago now), he asked for some more milk a little while later. I gave him a little and then said no more (it was getting too near to lunch time). He asked, "I like a lilloh (little) bit milk..." And I said no. He said, "I like some TINY bit milk?" and I said he couldn't even have a TINY bit of milk! ;) I went in the kitchen after a while to prepare the lunch, and after a few minutes, Arthur sauntered in casually, running his hand along the fridge as though he had nothing in particular on his agenda, and then hugged my legs gently and looked up at me with the most angelic look on his face. Then, still hugging my legs, he said, "Mummy, swee' dahling?" So I replied, "Yes, Arthur?" and he said, "I'd like some lilloh bit milk!" Smooth-talking little monkey! :) He used his MOST winning tone, and the sweetest cuddle to my legs, and fancy calling me "sweet darling" like that?!!! He knew exactly what he was doing! The WORST thing about it, is that I did nurse him, just a little bit. *sigh* He hasn't used it on me since, so hopefully it wasn't TERRIBLY the wrong thing to do, and he DID eat lunch all the same. But I just couldn't resist his charms, hehe! ;)

He uses funny little phrases in response to things we suggest or say now, that make us laugh all the time. Some of them that I've written down are:

* "I cer'nly DO, Daddy!"

* "That would be nice, wouldn't it Mummy?"

* "Oh, thank you Mummy!" or even, "Thank you for showing me, Mummy!" :)

* He says, "Have a nice day, Mummy!" when I wave him off on his pretend car, and "Be care-foh Daddy! Be care-foh onna ladder!" when Neil goes into the loft - with such genuine concern in his tone! He even couldn't concentrate on a story while his daddy was in the loft, and walked off after a while saying, "I just checking see if Daddy alwight..." and then I heard, "ARE-OOO ALWIGHT DADDY?!!" as he shouted up the ladder! He only came back when Neil had called down that, yes, he was alright thank you, and he would be careful on the ladder coming down. Bless :)

* Matthew was interfering with a game he was playing with his trains one time recently, and Arthur called from the living room (sounding most annoyed!), "I need some help wid dis litter (little) boy!"

* He was sticking the cut n play veggies together and the carrot wouldn't line up JUST SO for him, so he got frustrated and called to me, "I having a problem with the carrot!" I love how easily he communicates issues or frustrations now!

* He's starting to get very serious and sort of acting like he's the grown up person teaching US things, sometimes! A couple of weeks ago, we were driving over a bridge that went across the River Thames, and he shouted from the back of the car, "I see the sea!!" So I started to explain that it was a river, and he interrupted me, saying, "It's act'ly water" in a very serious tone!

* Today he was sitting with me on the sofa, looking up out of the window, and he pointed out and said to me, "You see doze white clouds?" When I didn't respond right away, he repeated the question, so I said, "Oh yes, I see them..." Then he told me, very seriously, "Dat means it gun rain!" and nodded his head at me wisely! It DID rain, an hour or so later!

* One for my personal treasure trove: Arthur finished nursing one time a couple of days ago, and smiled up at me, saying, "That's nice milk, Mummy!" LOVE that one! :) He wanted Noddy to have some Mummy milk later that day, and insisted on tandem nursing with Noddy. He eyed Noddy with some amusement as he nursed, and then I said to him, "Do you think Noddy likes Mummy's milk, Arthur?" and he immediately came off the breast and said, "Ohhh YES!" as though it was crazy to suggest otherwise! :) It's frustrating for me, because Arthur uses the rise and fall of his tone SO much in how he delivers his little sayings, and I CAN'T bring that across here at all. It sometimes makes for more than half the cuteness of what he's saying, so it's frustrating to me that I can't record that here :( But oh well.

* A couple of days ago, we were playing with playdough and he was looking for the parts of a set of coloured stamps to make patterns in the playdough. He found one, and sat up, saying very matter-of-factly, "Well, we've found the green... Now where's the blue?"!! Some of the things he says sound SO grown-up. Most of the time his voice is still so chipmunky and his sayings so sweet in their toddler pronounciations, but sometimes he comes out with a perfectly pronounced, even-toned phrase that makes him sound like a much older child. It's so weird to hear him like that. NICE weird, but it's just something I'm reeeally not used to hearing yet!

* I asked him if he was going to share a toy with Matthew the other day, and he calmly replied, "No. I jus gon' hold it allbyself!"

* "allbyself" is a BIG phrase right now! About 50 thousand times a day, I hear the phrase, "I wan' do it allbyself!!" He can say it more clearly ("all by my self") but he is usually so intense in his frustration over something that he HAS to say it super fast so that it sounds like one word! That's how it is most often used at the moment.

* One time recently, I was cutting something out of a piece of paper, and Arthur wanted to use the scissors when he saw me. I told him that he was too little and that they were for Mummy and Daddy to use. After whining, "But I waaaaant toooo!" and still getting the same response from me, he stopped and looked thoughtful, and then said, "When Ah-yah grown up?..." so I said yes. There was a pause of about, oooh, 5 seconds (!), and then Arthur called out cheerfully, "I grown up now!! I use it now!" :)

* He was watching Matthew one time and suddenly said, "I wish could go out wi Mashew...." (aww!) I explained that Matthew was too little to walk and run with him yet, and he said, "When Mashew grown up..."

* I asked him, "Do you want to go out to the supermarket?" and he answered, "No, I just staying home thinking." He adopted a "musing" pose, semi-reclined on the sofa, with his finger on his chin, and then suddenly he shoved his hand RIGHT down inside his trouser leg to the ankle, and said, "I looking in my pocket!" Funny boy! He comes out with such silly things sometimes! ;)

* At dinner one evening (macaroni cheese and salad):

Arthur: "Mummyyy? What are you chewing?"

Me: "Cucumber, Arthur."

Arthur: "Cucumber?!?! Mummy, don't eat cucumber with the pasta! It weew mess it all up!"

* Last period I had, I came downstairs in the morning and took some painkillers straight away for my cramps. Arthur asked me what I was doing, so I told him I was taking some painkillers because my tummy hurt, here (and I patted my tummy where it hurt). He watched me take them, and then got a pained expression on his face and started patting his tummy in the same spot, saying, "I need some pinker too! I like some tablers just like Mummy. I got a sore tummy too!" I especially love "pinker" for painkillers, and "tablers" for tablets :) Neil calls them tablets, so that's where he knows that one from.

* We were looking at a picture with two mice on it, and I said, "There are two MICE!" Arthur frowned at me and said, "No, not MICE - mouse!" It sounds simple, but I actually found that pretty hard to explain to a two-year-old who doesn't count or understand plurals yet!

Except, on that subject, Arthur has recently started to count to three! In his Toddler's Bible, there are pictures of pairs of animals with the Noah's Ark story. He counts each pair, "One, two" pointing to each animal as he counts. I think that's repetition since I count them with him like that as we look at them all. But there was a donkey on the opposite page to the one with a picture of a pair of donkeys. When I asked, "How many donkeys are there?" he counted the pair, "One, two..." and then pointed to the other one and said, "Three!" He did that several times over the next few days with other pictures in his Bible. And when he only saw one animal, he'd say, "Only one fnail (snail!)... I think the other one disappeared!" and look all worried! So I now know he can count one of something, two things, and identify a third thing as well!

He also finally realised recently that "Mummy haven't gotta willy...." I told him what ladies and girls have instead, the word for which I am not about to write here because of gross googlers, and he repeated the word with such a tone and facial expression of "Oh my gosh, what a completely ridiculous suggestion!" hehe!

Did I tell you that we tried a day of potty training to "test the waters" so to speak (no pun intended, haha!)? It must have been a couple of weeks ago.... Oh, it was the day before Jove's party, so it must have been March 2nd. Anyway, he was eager to put big boy pants on and sit on the potty, so we gave it a whirl. I was not about to go all gung-ho though. I just wanted to be easy-going about it and see how it went. Sitting on the potty got to be NO FUN after about the second time, and the total result over the course of one morning was 0 pees in the potty, and 6 pees in the big boy pants. Thankfully we have 10 pairs of big boy pants! :) There were a few puddles to clean up, which I did not mind cleaning at all. But he got so fed up with going near the potty, and he ended up refusing to let me change him out of pee-soaked pants and trousers, and in the end I just cheerfully told him he had done well wearing his big boy pants today and that we would try it again another day, and changed him into a nappy. He protested HUGELY though. I have read stuff about not stopping once you start with potty training, otherwise the child can feel like they've failed, but when I talked with my mum about it beforehand, she didn't agree with that. She said she had taken a very easy-going approach to potty training, and thought there was nothing wrong with you and your child seeing it as something to "give a try today and see how we go", and then if it doesn't go so well, to cheerfully say that we can try it again another time. It seemed reasonable enough to me, and it made it suddenly SO much easier to embark upon a bit of potty training now that the "all or nothing" mentality had lifted. Mummy said I was dry in the day times by 19 months but not a night for quite a while longer. My brother was a bit older, but he still wet the bed till he was 7 on occasion. She said it was NOT a difficult process, but it was gradual because she took it easy like she suggested. I like that approach, I think.

Anyway. We haven't tried big boy pants since then. I am not sure Arthur's really ready, since he was NOT keen on peeing on the potty. He was very keen to wear the pants and totally happy to do every single pee in them, no matter that it got him wet. He stills sits on the potty now and then when he's out of a nappy for bathtime, say. But I'm happy to wait a while longer. I'm happy to wait, full stop, really. Anyway, I just wanted to make note of that here.

There's more stuff to write that Arthur has been saying - let me just get those written down and then I'll HAVE to stop as it's waaaaay past midnight (and 1am, for that matter, urgh):

* Arthur was eating beans on toast for lunch and I was sitting next to him with Matthew on my lap (late lunch for Arthur, and Matthew was about to go down for a nap, but he was VERY interested in Arthur's lunch!). He said, "Paps Mashew might like some Ah-yah beans?" and offered some on his spoon, tentatively. Matthew ate them eagerly! Arthur asked him, "What d'you think Mashew?" :)

* When we were sorting socks recently, Arthur seemed to decide to give each individual sock a cuddle, for some reason! There were about FIFTY socks!! He took each one in turn and folded his arms over it, tucking it right under his armpit. Then he rocked his arms a little and said, "I just giving that one cuddle.... Ahhh! He's so lovely!... (to the sock:) Ahhh, uv you!" :)

* The other day he peered into the kitchen with a wrinkled nose and a frown, and said, "Dere's a smew (smell) in there...." and he looked over the floor. In a very doubtful tone (with matching expression!), he said, "The floor not look very clean to me.... Dere's a smew in there." I asked him what it smelled like, and he answered, "Smews like dirty..."!! Note: The floor was definitely filthy, but I could not detect any horrible smells in the kitchen, so I don't know where that came from!

* In contrast, we were upstairs after his nap one afternoon and he sat down in the hallway and looked around, and then threw up his hands in surprise, saying, "Wowww! Look how tidy tis HERE!" Hehe! It was NOT tidy, but in comparison to downstairs, it was absolutely pristine ;)

* He talks so sweetly to Matthew! He is always sitting down by him and looking RIGHT into his face to tell him things and explain stuff. I love watching the backs of their little heads and bodies as they sit side-by-side, involved in communication that is ONLY between them and nobody else. I can't wait till Matthew is talking too, to hear the sweet little conversations that will take place between them! Matthew sometimes listens to Arthur with such an earnest expression now. Arthur just chats to him whether he's listening or not, although sometimes if he's clearly NOT listening then Arthur stops to get his attention again!

One time a week or so ago, Arthur was sitting up on the sofa with me. I was eating a chocolate chunk cookie and Arthur was being allowed a rare treat of sitting with me and sharing a piece of my cookie. Matthew was playing with bricks on the floor. Arthur was acting SO proud to be sitting there doing something so privileged and grown up! He started talking to me about Matthew very much as though he was another grown-up with me, and Matthew was the only little one around :) It was more his tone of voice than anything else, that conveyed that. I wrote down the conversation afterwards:

Arthur: "I wonder what Mashew doing?"

Me: "I think he's playing with some bricks. Isn't this a yummy cookie?!"

Arthur: "Oh yes! Iss yummy!"

Having finished, Arthur climbed down from the sofa.

Arthur: "I'm gonta see what Mashew doing!"

Me: "What's he doing?"

Arthur: (goes over and looks carefully, then turns to me with very grown-up expression) "He's playing wid bricks." (nods wisely!) "I'm gonta sit down wi' Mashew... I sitting down next to Mashew."

Me: "Oh, that's good."

Arthur: (turning to look into Matthew's face, and talking to him) "We had a yummy cookie Mashew! An' we had toas' an' pwisps (crisps!) an' yoggut as well! That was nice, waddunt it Mashew?!" He's such a sweetie :)

* Today Matthew was crying SO hard while we were trying to change him for bed. He was tired out and hates being messed with when he's tired. Arthur seemed very concerned and came to sit by his head while we changed his nappy and clothes on the floor. He stroked Matthew's head and held his hand, and leaned right over his face, saying stuff. I couldn't hear what he was saying at first over the NOISE of Matthew's crying, but I leaned in closer and heard Arthur saying:

"It justa bad dream Mashew... It's okay Mashew... I hee you Mashew (I hear you - something I tell him when he's crying and I'm unable to pick him up and attend to him RIGHT at that second)... There's no scary bad coming Mashew, it justa bad dream." Bless his heart! Arthur has been having MANY bad dreams lately, several per night for a while. They are about various things, but recurrent ones are about a "scary man" or the cow, or just something he can't explain. One night he just started shouting for me, not crying, and his voice was absolutely full of terror. He was shouting, "I don't like it Mummy, I don't like it!" So I went in quickly and he was sitting up in bed, trembling so violently. He couldn't even look at me or relax into a cuddle, and he just kept staring at the door. He wasn't asleep, they are always just bad dreams that he wakes from. Usually he cries but this time he seemed too terrified to cry even. It took ages for him to relax enough to have a proper cuddle, but I held him in the meantime and talked soothingly to him. He couldn't tell me what had scared him. He kept saying, "I don' know what it was" or, "It was some-sing... I don' know what..." His voice shook and his body shook, and I just felt terrible for him. I talked to him about what everyone was doing - Matthew was asleep in his cot, Daddy was downstairs watching telly, and Mummy was on the computer, and everything was okay in the house. I asked him if he wanted me to ask God to help him, but he said no, and I did not want to push that further without his consent.

In the end he suddenly sighed and said, "All gone now" and then he stopped shaking after a while and I nursed him and he went back to sleep. The next day I talked on the phone to Mummy about it, and she SUGGESTED that I pray with him!!!!! If you know my looonnnng-term history, my family are not Christians - well, my mum DOES believe in God, but yeah they have never been supportive of my becoming a Christian and all that stuff. So this was a happy moment for me, to hear my mum suggesting that I pray with my little boy!

That night I talked with Arthur at bedtime. We read some stories from his Bible about God helping people, and then I talked to him about how God helps us, and how he loves us. I told him that, if he would like, I could ask God to help Arthur with his scary dreams. He said, "Oh, that would be nice!" hehe! So I told him what I would say when I asked God, and since he still seemed eager, I prayed out loud with him. I just said, "Dear God. Please let Arthur have no more scary dreams. Please help Arthur not be scared any more. Amen." I wanted to keep it really simple for him. Arthur said, "Ah-MEM!" with great enthusiasm :) And then I told him that if he DID have a scary dream that I would come in and cuddle him and we could ask God to help him right then and there, to make him feel better and not feel scared about the dream any more. He seemed happy with that idea, so I nursed him and he went to sleep. He didn't have a bad dream that night, and he hasn't had any in the two nights since either! Praise God!!!! :) If he DOES though, I feel much happier knowing I can go in and we can call on God to help him with his fear.

A few days ago, Arthur saw an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine with an engine called Arthur. We haven't seen that engine before, and at first he was saying, "Nooo, it not Ah-yah!", but then he heard the narrator CALL the engine "Arthur", and then he started to call it "Arsur". That's the first time he has pronounced his name any other way than "Ah-yah". "Ah-yah" is incredibly special to me, and I have LONG been dreading the day he got grown-up enough to stop pronouncing it that way, although I knew it would come. It's just the sweetest little name, the way he calls himself!

Yesterday he used the name "Arsur" for something, and when I asked him to say it again, he said, "Ah-yah". So I knew the end was nigh for my beloved baby name that he's been using! A bit later on that day, we were folding laundry and he was handing me items, naming them as he did so, as usual. He handed me a pair of his trousers and said, "Arsur's trousers..." I looked up in surprise and said, "Whose trousers?!" and he said, "Ah-yah's", but then the next item was handed to me as, "Arsur's seepsoot" and when I asked whose again, he said, "Arsur's" - waaaaahhhh! After that, ALL the items belonging to him were "Arsur's" and sometimes he got the 's' to sound more like 'th' even. A couple of times over the rest of that day, he referred to himself as "Ah-yah", but today he has only called himself "Arsur" or "Arthur" :( I'm sooooooooooo sad. I know you'll think I'm crazy, and it's just something to move on with, and even to CELEBRATE, because it's a big deal that he's finally pronouncing his own name in the proper "grown up" way. But I'm so sad to lose my "Ah-yah"! I'm just so glad to have him on video saying it, many times! My baby boy is growing up so fast.

Okay it's soooo late. I wanted to post photos, but there's just no time left. It's Mother's Day today, or it was. Neil forgot again, just like last year. By noon, I finally just reminded him to phone his own mother and he still didn't really mention anything to me about the occasion. I had to pretty much say, "Um, it's Mother's Day today..." before he said, "Oh, I forgot again! I sort of remember with my own mother but I guess I just don't really make that connection with you!" Hmmm.

Well, I have never been big on Mother's Day anyway, as my mum wouldn't let us celebrate it with cards or presents as she didn't want us exploited by the commercial side of things and spending our money on stuff. So it is not in my heritage, as it were, to celebrate it. BUT, I do feel like I am stretched to the max, giving everything I've got, to the "job" of motherhood. It's wonderful and demanding and rewarding and draining, and I wouldn't rather do ANYTHING else in the whole world. At the moment it's pretty intense, with two little ones, and there's this day that's set apart to acknowledge and celebrate mothers and all that they do, and I just feel like I would like a little recognition on that day from my nearest and dearest, along with all the other mothers out there. So I guess I feel a bit peeved that nothing happened for me on Mother's Day. Nothing happened after Neil remembered either. I did the food shopping, the day went as normal. I DID buy myself a lot of chocolate though ;) Really though, I should be happy enough on Mother's Day that I AM a mother, and that I have been blessed with two beautiful, healthy, happy children who love me. That is enough to feel fulfilled on Mother's Day!

Okay, I have to stop now! You're going to want to beat me about the head with whatever is close to hand when I tell you that it's 2.45am and Monday morning looms with Neil back at work after the weekend. I am stupider than stupid to stay up this late, even for a diary entry, because I KNOW I will seriously not be up to giving all that my little boys need of me tomorrow. And that sucks. I am just going to pray that God will help me tomorrow. Not that I remotely deserve it, but still.

Remind me to tell you about Arthur stuffing a yoghurt-covered raisin up his nose next time. It was nearly a trip to the good old children's A&E again, but thankfully we didn't have to go in the end! That boy...

Lots of photos of my little boys!

It's already soooo late (again) and I meant to write a big long wordy update but I wanted to include a few new photos with it, and when I uploaded my camera stuff, there were 67 photos on it!!!! So then I had to resize and all that jazz. And now it's crazy late and I haven't done anything but fiddle with photos this evening! Urgh.

So I decided since there are soooo many photos, this will have to be a photo entry to catch up (with brief descriptions - well, as brief as I know how to be, anyway!), and then I won't have such a backlog of those, and I can concentrate more on the writing next time. I am also SO behind on emails. My poor parents haven't had photos of their grandsons in almost THREE months! That's just terrible :( I must get them emailed, but there are literally 200-300 photos to send them. Yikes.

Okay, enough with the chat, or I'll never get to bed! Oh, but Matthew is 9 months old tomorrow!!!! How surreal it is, every time he turns a new month old. It just doesn't seem possible that I have a 9-month-old baby! Or will have, tomorrow. Three months tomorrow till his first birthday. Nooooo! I am desperate to slow down his babyhood! I am loving it so much and I don't want it to rush by too fast! He's such a precious little baby boo-bean. I need to write about his 8-month check. I'll try to do that next entry.

Photos!!! Here is a rather blurry set of photos, which I took because I wanted to record something that is a VERY common view for me these days. Matthew is a real "ankle climber". Arthur never was. He was too interested in crawling or pulling up to explore AWAY from us, whereas Matthew is constantly pulling up on my legs as I'm trying to walk, and clutching at my clothes, etc! He's very clingy today because he's teething (still no top front teeth but the gums there are SO red and swollen and they surely can't be much longer coming?!), so there has been more of it. But otherwise he's generally happy, just climby-on-me-ish! Sometimes it does drive me a bit crazy. But he's so cute all the same, so it doesn't matter! It DOES drive me slightly mad when Matthew is climbing up one of my legs and Arthur is whining and screechy and hanging off the other one. But such is life with a two-year-old and a baby, and honestly? I wouldn't swap it for anything (this said hours after they've been asleep and I've had time to regain my sanity a little!)!

So, here is Matthew this morning. Yes, I am wearing pyjamas AGAIN. At least they're not pink this time! :) And I did get out of them by the afternoon. *sigh* He drops to his knees and crawls off between my legs after he's had enough pulling and climbing!

Arthur is a real sweet and sour combination these days! Delicious in general, and sometimes completely sweet and lovely as he has always been, but other times just reeeeally hard to be around and know how to handle. He seems to get a little worse week by week at the moment, but I know it's just his age. Since a few months before he turned two, I've been browsing posts on parenting forums about 2-year-olds and their behaviour, etc. I thought Arthur was doing the "two" thing early by having some meltdowns and stuff, so I looked. BOY was I wrong! Now I really know I am in the "two" territory! Before there was definitely an increase in tantrums and stuff, but it's absolutely nothing compared to this now. But at least I know from reading all those posts over the months, that it's normal, he's at EXACTLY the age everyone seems to say it peaks at (but the peak lasts for several months), and it DOES go away. Weirdly, the mothers desperate enough to post messages about their two-year-olds and complain that everything was okay a few weeks ago, but now it's unbearable (!) had 27- or 28-month-olds. Mostly boys, but still plenty of girls. Arthur just turned 28 months and he has been like this for maybe 2 or 3 weeks, getting worse gradually. So at least I know he's RIGHT on track, hehe! It looks as though we just ride it out. It can't be easy for him, either.

He has had a few REALLY sweet moments today, lots of cuddles and affection and being helpful. But he has also had a couple of screaming meltdowns and plenty of whining and angry "NO! Stop that Mummy!" type of phrases!

Here is Arthur this morning. He looks remarkably relaxed for the fact that the most glass-shattering screechy scream is eminating from his open mouth. He was annoyed with me about something:

Here he is hating me for making him stay on the sofa till I say he can get down, after he did one of the million things I'd asked him not to do repeatedly today:

BUT, then a bit later, after Matthew was asleep for his nap, I took Arthur up to bed and breastfed him to sleep as usual. When I take him off the breast, he usually stirs and starts to say that he wants some more milk, but he's always asleep and still has his eyes shut even. It always comes out as a slurred mumble, and he gets as far as, "I like shmmoremilll...." and then he's too far gone into sleepiness to form any more words (or even finish the word 'milk'!), and I slip away :) I don't care that he is two and still needs to nurse to sleep. He can go to sleep without nursing because he does it every night at bedtime. I LOVE nursing him, and he prefers it as his way of falling asleep. It does create the odd issue when Matthew won't settle and Arthur CAN'T get to sleep for his nap without nursing. But that's rare, and it's well worth it just to have these magic moments with him still.

So I nursed him to sleep, and he did the slurred mumble asking for more milk, and then just lay there unconscious. I lay for ages just watching him sleep. He looked so beautiful to me and I couldn't even imagine the annoyance and frustration he'd brought up in me earlier. He was QUIET, and still - two rare things for Arthur! He has such round pink little cheeks, and such rosebud lips. I love his long dark eyelashes - he gets those from Neil, and Matthew has them too but not so dark. I love them! He was wearing such a "grown up" little outfit - blue jeans and a shirt - and earlier I'd been telling him what a big boy he looked in his shirt and jeans, just like Daddy wears! He looked so grown up to me earlier, but all that fell away as I watched him sleeping, and even with his big boy clothes on, he just looked like a baby to me, all round and pink and sleeping peacefully with his arms outstretched.

I did leave eventually, but I couldn't stop thinking about how he'd looked to me just then, and after a while I went back in with the camera to make a record of it :) Here he is, having his afternoon nap today:

Those were taken with the flash (he didn't stir). He has a blackout blind so he sleeps in the dark even in the day. His room was approximately this dark (without the flash!):

Here are a few of Matthew, taken a couple of minutes after I took the above ones of Arthur. It is completely necessary to my sanity that my children nap at the same time in the afternoon! I will arrange my ENTIRE day to achieve it! ;) I need that time out, and it has been really hard to learn how to juggle it, but WELL worth it. Here's the tiny man:

No blackout curtains for Matthew, who is a better sleeper anyway, but I am currently trying to finish attaching blackout lining to the curtains that hang in his room. So far they've been in a pile downstairs for over a month (having barely got started) and there's a big sheet of blue fleece (nappy-making fabric) over the window instead. *sigh* I wish I had double the hours in a normal day! I'd get everything done that I needed to, probably.

The boys play together SO sweetly, completely spontaneously, and for LONG periods of time. I feel so blessed that they get along so wonderfully, and that they are already entertaining each other and playing like this with only minimal supervision at times, at such a young age. I didn't expect it till Matthew was MUCH older, so it's lovely! They pretty much make up their own games. Matthew is emerging as a very playful little boy. He isn't the giggler that Arthur always was as a baby. He does laugh and giggle every day, but less than Arthur did. Mind you, I never met a baby who laughed as frequently and heartily as Arthur! He is still the same today :)

But Matthew is very playful. Now I think about it, he's shown many signs of that since the early months, but I didn't put it down to anything until now. Interesting. He makes fun for himself putting things on his head - that's one of his favourite things to do right now! He pulls clothing over his head - anyone's, and clean or dirty will do! He pulls it onto his head and then falls down with a thud! And laughs about it - funny boy! It's even better if someone else comes along and plays with him - peekaboo goes down well, but the boys also have a game they seem to have made up which Arthur calls "Gimme!" hehe! Matthew picks up a sock or brick or anything fist-sized, and holds it out to Arthur with shining eyes and big excited smile, and Arthur grabs the other end and tugs vigorously at it, jerking Matthew's arm like crazy, and saying, "Gimme, gimme, gimmeeee!!" I'm not sure where it has even come from! Anyway, Matthew LOVES it! He squeals and gasps and giggles and eventually the item is yanked from his grasp, and then he picks something else up to have Arthur do it again!

I think I have a photo of them playing "Gimme!".... Yes, I do! It's from a couple of weeks ago:

It's a very joyful and blurry experience, hehe! I found a couple more from the same little photo session, one right after that particular game of "Gimme!" and then another game that Matthew likes to play (on his own) - Arthur calls it, "Playing Dropsie!" This involves holding one or more items, holding them up in the air and dropping them, preferably with eyes shut so as to be prepared for pain if it's a heavy item and it lands on your leg or foot! Then you pick the items up again and repeat ad infinitum. His latest version of this is starting to involve a lot of long-distance (seriously, I'm quite amazed sometimes!) throwing! Anyway, photos:

But Matthew just loves to put things on his head, or wrap himself up in clothes so that he falls over or can't see! It's the most fun when Mummy or Arthur (or Daddy, for that matter) play it with him. Here are a few photos of games like this that have happened recently around here (all initiated by Matthew and eventually "noticed" by Arthur!):

Matthew has started to be interested in helping with folding the laundry, just like Arthur was at his age. But Arthur's was absolutely pure PASSION, and Matthew is just curious. Arthur is delighted that he's showing an interest, hehe! Well, that and also slightly peeved to have to share his favourite activity with someone. And Matthew gets in his way a lot while he's trying to make piles. I tell you, Arthur is so unusual in this respect! He loves housework. He MAKES me do housework just so he can get to do some! He has always had a special soft spot for laundry. He unloads and folds (well, hands me each item in turn, saying what it is - "Another bottom wipe.... another nappy.... another insert.... teeea-towel.... another bottom wipe..." etc!!), and a new CRAZY thing is that I can now pull out the wet washing into the laundry basket, push it round in front of the tumble dryer, and call out, "Arthur! Could you put the wet washing in the tumble dryer for me please?" and he comes RUNNING! I get on with a different chore, and he literally loads the tumble dryer for me. He loves it! It takes him ages because he likes to put things in one-by-one (each wipe or sock individually!) and name them as he goes. When it's loaded, I shut the door and turn the dial, and press the start button. I see me being able to teach him to do that within a few months. I think he would be thrilled to set the tumble dryer going all by himself. He's very into "Do it allbyself!" these days!

Anyway. So far, they sit and "fold" laundry together. Which, for Arthur, means naming and sorting and unfolding things that I've folded to "just check" them again, and for Matthew it means lots of chewing. This boy is at his most content when he has a random sock (clean or dirty, he doesn't mind) either in his hand or in his mouth! He is almost always to be found clutching a sock (or one in each hand, odd ones usually!) as he crawls around the house. He scavenges socks! We have very few matching pairs these days as a result. Here are a couple of photos of the boys as I found them in the kitchen one day. They're not as recent as I thought, actually - about a month ago now already! When I saw them, I asked Arthur what they were doing, and he said, "We just folding, Mummy!" and then he crawled off into the living room, calling out, "Mashewww! Fowwow me, Mashewww!" And Matthew did! He squealed and giggled all the way behind his brother (there was a slight bottle-neck at the fridge) into the living room, where they stopped and played with bricks and trains together :)

I love my boys!!! I do, I do! They are just the sweetest little people I ever met. I love them so completely that I don't know what to DO with myself. Precious little loves...

And now Matthew has woken and nursed and gone back to sleep, and it's laaaate, so I'm going to bed now. I'll try to update again as soon as I can, to write the other stuff. I don't want to forget it before I write it! I have notes on what Arthur says, and Matthew's (and Arthur's) stats from Matthew's 8-month check written down too, but there's sure to be more that I'll forget, or it will just get toooo out-of-date to write, if I don't hurry up and do it soon!

Jove's Naming Ceremony, and other things!

Okay, back for part two (the first part is ranty, I have to warn you! Hence the need for a nice fresh Part Two!) of tonight's diary entry! I really could have arranged that sentence better, couldn't I? Oh well.

Soooo, as I was saying, I will start at the beginning of the EIGHT-day hiatus (!!) that has happened since my last diary entry, and try to post as much as possible before it's just getting stupidly late and I have to go and get some sleep. It's midnight already so that probably shouldn't be far from now...

I found a good way of getting some necessary "daytime" cooking done the week before last. Usually I cook anywhere from 4.30pm, depending on how long that night's meal will take to cook. But say if I want to make stock from last night's roast chicken, or a batch of vegetable stock for a soup I want to make this week (I'm going to try making Creamy Leek and Potato soup this week - my first serious soup!) - then I need to prepare the ingredients for that much earlier in the day, and let it simmer through the middle part of the day, or the afternoon. Then I can cool it and process it into containers and into the freezer before I have to change tack and make dinner, and it's not left to do after the boys are in bed for the night. BUT, little boys are up and about in the daytime, so it's hard to find a good time to do it. Last time I made stock, I hit on a way to do it! As soon as Matthew went down for his morning nap, I cleared the kitchen table and spread Arthur's activity mat on top of it. I sat at one end of the table with my chopping board and chopped an onion and stuff, and Arthur did some crafts! I froze some paint in an ice-cube tray a while ago, for a new thing for Arthur to do, so I got those out and he LOVED them! He loves cold things, which is good because otherwise he would have HATED that activity! They were way too cold to hold after a while, but he stuck at it and enjoyed it:

As soon as he'd finished doing that, we put his drippy paintings to dry and I got out the glue and some pictures and shiny foil and bits of pasta, etc, that I'd been saving up for him to do sticking with. These days, I scavenge every leaflet, magazine, item of junk mail, etc, etc, for pictures that Arthur might like (car insurance things are GREAT because this boy loves cars, and they are sure to have at least one picture of a car on their stuff!), and I cut them out. I actually really enjoy the scavenging part! :) I like sifting through stuff and I get a little buzz out of happening upon a tiny picture of something that I know will bring a smile to Arthur's face. And then I save them all up for a soothing moment of quiet, say when the boys are napping or in the evening for a few minutes. And then I sit in the quiet house and cut all the pictures out. Cutting carefully around shapes of things on paper is sooooo soothing. I don't know why. It's on the same level as sitting with a bunch of colouring pencils and a child's colouring book and filling in the shapes with their chunky black lines.... I love stuff like that! It's so comforting and soothing, just something from childhood that makes me feel at peace when I do it. So I like hunting for pictures for Arthur to use for sticking! :) Today at Tesco I rifled through the Free Papers stand outside and picked up several pretty irrelevant magazines. I'm going to have a lovely time cutting out pictures of planes and cars and baskets of fruit, etc, sometime soon! :) I also cut out pictures and patterns from spare scraps of nappy-making fabrics, as that gives him lots of different textured stuff to stick with.

Anyway. Arthur had never actually had the "control" over the glue before, as I'd helped him with it in the past (it's that white runny glue, not a glue stick or paste). This time I poured him a tiiiny amount into small cup, and gave him a glue spatula, and showed him how to use it and stick things on. I spread his bits out for sticking, and left him to it:

He had a lovely time! He stuck things to cover the whole piece of paper, and he was soooo pleased with his finished work! He couldn't WAIT to show Daddy when he got home from work. Yesterday I cut a piece of A4 card into two pieces, and Arthur stuck lots of pictures and fabric on one side. When it was dry, we turned it into a postcard! I drew a line down the other side to divide it into an address section and a note section, and then I asked Arthur what he would like to say if we wrote a postcard to Nana and Grandy. He said, "I don' know what-ta say Nana an Gwandy...", which, by the way, is his latest thing. When asked any question about anything, he pretty much says he doesn't know the answer. He'll say, "I don' know what-ta choose....", "I don' know how-ta fits it...", "I don' know the name...", "I don' know wits colour it is..." (definitely fibbing on this one, as he has known pretty much all the colours since he was about 20 months old!), "I don' know what-ta do...." or even, "I don' know how-ta say the words!" which is soooo heart-rending, because lately he has been trying to say LONG and complicated sentences and it's frustrating him so much when he can't make the words in the right order. He'll start over a couple of times and then just flop in discouraged frustration, whimpering sadly, "I don' know how-ta say the words!" He seems more disheartened about things lately, and goes into tantrums more easily. I think he must be reaching that age where it's very common for this kind of emotional development to be peaking. He can be VERY difficult right now, but along with it has come this vulnerable little thing who is just finding life a bit overwhelming at times, and he is SO wonderful at communicating about it with me. I think it is preventing a lot of tantrums, the fact that he's able to tell me so much about how he's feeling and what exactly is frustrating him. The worst may be yet to come, so it might not prevent things for long! We'll see! The vulnerable side of him is something I totally didn't expect to see at this stage, and it's melting my heart for him all the time. I find myself being extra tender and gentle with him lately, and giving him a lot of extra cuddles, and being very patient with him over things he's trying to express to me. I try not to OVER-help him with his words, because this eventually frustrates him as much as if he can't say what he wants to say, and it can trigger a "flash" tantrum if I'm not careful! I am learning! It's hard to find a balance with a 2-year-old in the throes of that stage of development. Poor little soul! It's a hard life!

Arthur was 28 months old yesterday. Two years and 4 months. It has just occurred to me that he's only TWO months away from being out of the "twenties", in terms of months, and into the "thirties"!! Yikes! Thirty months also makes him exactly two-and-a-half. Where is the time going?! And Matthew will be 9 months old next week. He is now way closer to his first birthday than to birth, and that just seems craaaaazy-impossible, somehow.

Does anyone know anything about the Love and Logic parenting series? I would really value your comments on it, if you do - whether it's good or not, whether it works or not.... I hadn't heard of it before this week, when one of my friends at a buddy group online mentioned it to me. I know I said last entry (or the one before) that we have CHOSEN to smack Arthur and are confident about having done so. But, you know parenting! And, more to the point, you know me! I never seem to be confident about a method for very long. I WISH I didn't have to smack Arthur, though I have now stopped being quite so narrow-minded as I was before, and will never judge anyone for smacking their child. If Love and Logic is a good method and it WORKS for us, then we'll gladly ditch the smacking and use that instead. I soooo don't want to be chopping and changing methods with Arthur all the time, but I do want to settle on the RIGHT one for him. We'll smack him and stick with it, but at the same time we would MUCH rather not. We're kind of mixing methods this week, which is very inconsistent of us. *sigh* He's having some time-out (having to sit on the sofa and not get down till we say so - which he hates at the moment, so it works) and smacking for when that doesn't work. Which isn't something to continue doing, as it's too mixed up and inconsistent. I want to know if Love and Logic is worthwhile enough for me to spend some non-existant money on the books that teach about it, BEFORE I make the purchase. If you have any knowledge of it, please let me know so I can make a decision about it! Thank you!! :) From what I can see so far, it looks like the MOST gentle and calm discipline method I have come across yet by far. I love that there doesn't seem to be any stern-ness or anything. Maybe I am missing stuff that I haven't been able to find out yet though? Anyway, all advice and opinions on that one gratefully received! :)

No noooo, this won't do!!! It's 1am and I'm WAFFLING!!! Aaargh! No time for waffling! On with the entry!

Arthur's latest monkey-ness:

Nappy cream AGAIN! He climbed up to reach the NEW pot that I bought, and retreated to a corner of the living room with it. He was soooo quiet (I was putting Matthew down for his nap) and as I came downstairs with that sense of trepidation, I could hear this squelchy-squelchy sound and these whispered, "Oooh!.... Haaa!.... Wowww!" sounds, as he worked his fingers and hands in the cream with great delight! Little monkey! He had plunged his hands RIGHT into that pot and cream had shot up his sleeves and I STILL can't get the stains out of his soft brown top :(

Here are a few photos of my increasingly BUSY little Mathie-man:

Finally able to have full access to the toy storage unit boxes! He rifles through them constantly, and tends to push the middle shelf ones until they crash onto the floor, spilling their contents, and then he can just play with them easily! He also stands on tiptoe where you see him in this photo, and holds on with both hands to the shelf above with all the closed boxes on it! He looks scarily STUCK when he's hanging on like that, as though he can't undo his action and he'll end up falling, but he never does. He likes to try new things and stretch to new places!

In this next photo, he was "talking" to me (pulled up on my leg to see me), and I had a nanosecond opportunity to snap a photo of something vaguely toothy! You can't see his second tooth in that photo but it's as tall as that first one now. He is about to cut his first top tooth as I type this - there was a fine white line sketched across his gum there this afternoon, so I think it's about to break through.

And here he is with a Mr. Men book :) He is becoming quite hard to photograph sometimes, just like Arthur, because he's in motion ALL the time, it seems! If he's down out of my arms, then he wants to be exploring constantly, and even when he's standing still because he has pulled up somewhere to "talk" or something, he bounces and bops and waves objects and thumps the sofa and so on! He's never still:

Sweet little sausagey-poo! :)

On Saturday (a week ago - already! Where has the week gone?!), we all went to Jove's Naming Ceremony!!! I hadn't seen Jemma and Jaya and Stu since Jemma was 10 weeks pregnant with Jove, so it was LOVELY to see them all again, and of course to meet Jove at last! We were late getting there as there was the usual disorganisation over getting all four of us out of the house at a set time (*sigh*) and then the car was being iffy, so I came back in the house to phone Jemma and tell her that we'd be there a bit late. Fortunately (for us!) things were running a bit late there too, so we would not miss anything. The boys both fell asleep on the way there - it was nap time for them so I'm glad they did. Matthew had to go without a proper afternoon nap as the party started at 2pm (we got there about 2.40pm) and that's about when Matthew normally goes down in his nice quiet cot for a 2-hour nap! He slept 30 mins in the car and we drove round and round and ROUND the streets near Jemma's house to let them sleep for the full 30 minutes and wake by themselves (both of our boys can never sleep past 30 minutes when out and about, and it's BAD news to wake them sooner than that!). Then we went in.

The house was full of people, and the first person I met was Jemma's MIL holding Jove. He looked gorgeous in his little white outfit! It felt like I had only seen him last week or something (!), rather than never having met him before, because of how well I "know" him through Jemma's diary! Isn't that funny?! But nice :) Then Jemma came to greet us and she held Matthew, who took a few wary looks back and forth between her and me, and then burst into tears and wailed and wailed inconsolably! He's soooooo different to Arthur. At Jaya's naming ceremony on her first birthday, Arthur was exactly the same age as Matthew was at Jove's (our kids are exactly the same age gap - well, a 4-day difference!), Arthur was this completely confident little chunk of a person! He was so happy for Jemma to take him, literally before we even got through the door when we arrived, and didn't even look for me while she held him. He even got interested in her hat, I seem to recall. In fact - here's Arthur at Jaya's Naming Ceremony, in August 2005:

I'd love to have a comparison photo of Matthew with Jemma, but (apart from the wailing!) I was a bit rubbish with my camera at this particular event - I think it's because I had two littlies to watch this time, and there were lots of people, and I just kept not thinking of my camera! I even left it in the car and only remembered it once the ceremony started! I went out to get it, but missed half the ceremony in the mean time, and when I got back, Arthur and Jaya were in the house with the toys (the ceremony was taking place out in the back garden) so I stayed there with them for a while, and since I had my camera with me, I took some photos. But they didn't come out too well. Arthur had his back to me all the time, looking at toys! And Jaya is as energetic and interested as Jemma always says in her diary, and never really kept still enough for me to photograph her properly! So here are the few blurry-ish photos that I took:

Jaya was eating something in this one!

He finally found the Thomas toys, quelle surprise! :) In the verrrry corner of the photo on the bottom right, you can just see the edge of Jaya's red dress as she disappeared out of the room, hehe! She was on the move all the time!

Arthur was unexpectedly reserved and quiet at the party, which surprised me really. I thought once he warmed up to the new place, he'd get stuck in with his normal energy levels, but he kept himself to himself a bit. He played with the toys inside, and also in Jaya's room upstairs for a while too. Neil and I took them upstairs so I could feed Matthew in peace at one point, and Jemma said Arthur could play in Jaya's room (which was gloriously full of toys!). He absolutely loved the tea set and the Peppa Pig stuff, as he loves Peppa Pig and watches it most weekday mornings when it's on. It made me think that we really don't have enough "girly" toys around the house for Arthur. We must get him a tea set - he would LOVE one! He so enjoyed playing with Jaya's, and Matthew had a good bang with a plastic spoon and a chomp on a plate as well!

The rest of the time, Arthur was outside in the back garden. After the ceremony, almost everyone was inside, as it was quite a cold day, although sunny for the most part. The food was inside too! Arthur wanted to ride the ride-on toys outside. He spent ages in the Coupe car thingy (MUST get one of those - that exact car has been on my to-buy list since he was about 10 months old, but lack of garden till a few months ago, etc....) He didn't shove himself around the place in it frantically, as I thought he might. He just carefully and SLOWLY went this way and that, going forward, reversing carefully, going forward, reversing carefully (etc!), and if I suggested coming inside or something, he'd say, "No, I just parking..." (hehe!), and if I asked again a moment later, he'd sound more impatient, saying, "No, I steew (still) parking!"

(By the way, this is NOT a reflection on my parking skills! ;) I am a marvellously quick parker and since Arthur sees my fab example, I can't fathom why he is determined to be so SLOW at it, hehe!)

He DID come out of the car for chocolate birthday cake, of course! It was YUMMY! I had a near-perfect opportunity to take a photo, as Jaya was sitting at the table outside, by herself, eating birthday cake. I brought Arthur's piece out and he walked up to the table and went to sit in the chair opposite Jaya. I thought, "Ah-HA! Photo opportunity!!" But as Arthur sat down, Jaya choked on a crumb of cake. She nodded when I asked her if she wanted a drink, so I went to get her some water. When I got back, fumbling for my camera (!), she took a sip of water, hopped down from the table, and disappeared! I did soooo want to take a photo of the two of them together! I did get this one of Arthur being annoyed that his drink wasn't close enough to grab, a few seconds after Jaya left!

After that, he went back in the car while another little boy (a fair bit older than Arthur) rode the tricycle and pretended to crash it into things! Arthur surprised me again by being a bit quiet and seeming unsettled by him, when he would usually respond like you see Jaya responding in these photos!

By the way, HOW gorgeous did Jaya look in her dress?! She had sparkly gold shoes on too! She looked like the hostess of the party, hehe! :)

That same little boy came over to Arthur a lot and tried to chat with him and get him to play games with him, it was very sweet. Arthur always looked a bit worried, and said funny little polite things about just parking the car for now, etc! He wouldn't vacate the car, and in the end the boy said to him, "I'll tell you what, you go on the tricycle, and I'll go in the car!" and he started to get off the tricycle. I wondered what Arthur would say or do to that, and when he saw the boy was coming over, he said to him, "No, you (meaning himself - he gets "me" and "you" mixed up a bit at the moment, regarding himself!) go in the car, YOU (pointing at the boy) go on the try-see-coh!" I liked how he was able to process what the boy suggested in just a couple of seconds, and turn the sentence around to the opposite suggestion, and then say it. I always think that language acquisition is just an AMAZING thing. Where does it come from?! It just seems so quick all of a sudden, that they go from saying their first word to full sentences and complex concepts within their own speech and responses to other people. Amazing.

I can't BELIEVE I did not even get one photo of the birthday boy himself!!! Jemma and I will have to get together again soon, and then I'll have a better chance for photos, and the little ones will have a better chance to play. And maybe Matthew will be more relaxed next time too! I think he was really overwhelmed with all the people. He's a really different baby to Arthur - much more sensitive and easily upset. He gets anxious about things easily, and shows clear signs of the normal separation anxiety that Arthur never went through. He had several more wailing panicky incidents over the course of the party, as people tried to engage him a little (everyone wanted to touch his hair!), but there was a moment where I was hovering at the buffet trying to select food and eat it with one hand, whilst holding Matthew in my other arm, and a very nice man came over and swept Matthew up with a cheery, "I'll hold him for you, while you eat!" I braced myself for the panicked crying, but none came! I ate what I wanted and chatted to people, and Matthew was totally easy-going in that man's arms! I even gave him some finger food (well, so did the man who was holding him - whose name escapes me now!), and he was just his normal self, quite relaxed! How funny! I don't know what it was about this man, but he obviously felt secure with him, which was nice.

We left the party at about 5pm, I think. It was still going strong, but Matthew was finally melting down, poor love! He just cried and cried. I had fed him so it wasn't that, but he hadn't had a proper nap and he's a boy who needs his sleep JUST SO, in order to function happily during the day! I think in hindsight, he was too hot as well, as we'd dressed him warmly enough but he was then in our arms all the time so he probably got too warm. And he's not a lots-of-people person, so I think it allll just got too much for him. He was fine in the car but a bit unhappy during the evening, and quite wakeful after he went to bed. He was teething too.

But it was so nice to go to the party and see Jemma and Stu and their sweet little ones again! I keep feeling like there was something else I had meant to write about from it, but I can't think of it now.

Oh my goodness, it's SO LATE!!!! I will have to stop here, and post more photos and other news in my next entry, which will hopefully be soon. Thanks Megan for missing me!! xxx

Don't let me forget to tell about Matthew's 8-month check which happened on Monday! He was weighed and measured and all that, and Arthur was too! I must write about that next time. And we went to CHURCH on Sunday - gasp! We haven't been in a while again, but I was on creche duty. And on Tuesday I met up with Katie and her little ones at a local playground that I did not even know existed!!!! It's a lovely one, within walking distance from here. Must write about that too. And a BILLION things that Arthur has been saying. And a ton more photos. And our car being a bit wonky at the moment. And I think that's all. But I'll catch up on those things soon! Oh and I've got another period (my 3rd postpartum one now). I need to make an entry in my pregnancy journal, rather than waffle about that stuff here! But I'll get to that another time too.

Sleeeeeeeeeeeep....