Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve ALREADY!!! I haven't got time to update because it's 11.36pm and I'm tired out, and tomorrow will be INTENSE with the boys from early o'clock. We've spent the evening finishing the wrapping (I did most of it a week or so ago) and stuffing stockings and arranging presents under the (very small and up off the floor!) tree. The boys were fairly wild with excitement this year, it's so sweet!

I sort of see it as Matthew's "first" real experience of Christmas, because he's 2 and a half (can you believe it?!) and really gets it this year. Arthur is just totally into Christmas and very excited - keeps hearing sleigh bells as he's dropping off to sleep the last couple of nights, which wake him with an excited jump and then he's all wired telling me about it and wondering! Tonight he took ages to fall asleep and would not stop talking about Father Christmas, and how he hoped the reindeer liked the carrot we left out, etc. So sweet! I love this, it's so much fun for me even, hehe!

It's Nathan's REAL first Christmas, of course! He's 11 months old, it's crazy. His birthday is actually in just over 2 weeks. I can't get my head around that, but mainly because Christmas and New Year are in the way, and you know how it's hard to think beyond that before Christmas happens. But, RIGHT after Christmas I need to hurry and think about what to give/do on his birthday! It's hard straight after him having presents at Christmas, because I have run out of ideas, and we've had two one-year-olds in the last 3 years already, so we don't really need any more one-year-old type things in the house! Aaargh, what to get him?! I have to think about it.

He's doing so well!! He finally got his first tooth, two days shy of 11 months old! I'm amazed by that, since Arthur was 8.5 months, and Matthew was 7.5 months! Even with his age adjustment he's way later than them! My older boys also teethed in the same order at the same pace, pretty much - they had 5 teeth at the age Nathan was when he got his first! Also, Nathan's first tooth is not the classic bottom front tooth. His bottom gum is still bald! ;) His first tooth is the right TOP front tooth. His left one is starting to look "active" under the gum, and he's currently teething again. My mum was joking that he'd have his two front teeth for Christmas (and nothing else at all!), like the song, hehe! But, he's just a little one-toothed-boy at the moment. :) I have photos, just not uploaded at the mo, tsk.

Also, a week ago Nathan was standing at the sofa facing out into the room. I sat a few feet away from him with the camera, thinking he was in a lovely position to take a good photo, and he beamed from ear to ear and set off walking towards me!! He did it again and again, about 4 or 5 times in a row, and then started to get tired and fell after a couple of steps. He took between 4 and 6 steps every time before he either reached me victoriously (much excited squealing and high-pitched praise from me *sigh* I'm so excited about my babies walking for the first time!!), or else he toppled. He even walked in a little semi-circle at one point to turn back to the sofa, and didn't fall doing that, but he did take it slowly and was distracted by Matthew at the time so maybe that helped?

Anyway, I'm so excited about that! Nathan is my earliest walker, but only by a bit. With his age adjusted (to 10 months old) he's by far the earliest, but without the adjustment he's still 2 weeks earlier than the others (they were both about 11 months and 3 weeks when the started like he has). It's funny to me that Nathan has set off walking in EXACTLY the same way that Matthew did - as he stood at the sofa facing out, and I sat down to take a photo of him! How funny! He hasn't done much walking since then, only one or two steps at a time, but today he walked a few steps to Neil for the first time, so maybe he's had his "lull" (it was like he'd forgotten how on earth he did it the day after the first walking!) and is getting the hang of it again. He is SO PROUD of himself when he's walking, and you know he's going to try just by his sort of panty breathing and little breathy squeals (he gets excited about the very idea of trying it, it seems, bless him!), and his eyes sparkle and he smiles soooo big and stretches his arms out in front of him like he's really excited. Then he sets off smiling and doing gaspy squeals all the way. It's seriously the cutest thing ever. *sigh* I completely adore that baby boy.

We've done some Christmas crafts (the boys and I) but I'm behind on the baking this year, and haven't even marzipaned the Christmas cakes yet!!! Let alone ice them! I'm so frustrated with myself, tsk! But oh well. Maybe I'll miraculously get them done tomorrow and we'll eat some on Boxing Day?

We're doing Christmas just as we did last year - just Neil and the boys and me at home, no family. My brother (and Sarah and Thea) and my grandparents are staying with my parents in France for Christmas. Neil's mum is staying home in Yorkshire this year, and his brother and youngest sister are there for Christmas. Rosemary and my two little nieces are home, about an hour from here, but we have no plans yet to see them. Normally we see them in the week that follows Christmas, but Neil has to work that week this year. His old company used to be closed that week so he never worked it before.

Except Monday morning!!! I have my first scan on Monday morning (I just started my 2nd trimester, is that not crazy?!) and I can't wait! Neil is off work for the morning to attend it, and my grandparents will be home by then to watch the older two for us (we're taking Nathan with us). We still haven't told the boys about Babydot, and don't plan to for a good while yet, though they seem receptive to the idea of babies and our family growing at the moment.

I can't wait for tomorrow morning, just to see the boys' faces when they reach the point on the stairs where they can lean over a bit and see the presents. I wish I had a remote control camera just set up ready, but I'll be sooooo bleary at that moment in time, and behind them for sure, because they'll likely forge the way!

Now I have to chew a carrot in a reindeer-like manner, consume a mince pie (what a chore, hehe!) and then brush my teeth and go to bed. I'm more excited about Christmas Day this year than I have been for years. It was always the highlight of the year for me as a child, and the excitement didn't wear off in my teens either. It kind of waned once I was married and Christmas was what we made it, not what my parents made it for me, sort of. Now I love that my children are just getting to that FUN age where they're as excited about Christmas as I remember being, and I get to be the parent involved! :) So much fun!

The boys wrote (dictated) adorable letters to Father Christmas earlier in the month! I can't believe how much I've missed writing here, with my huge gaps between entries :( I haven't even written about France and Arthur's birthday yet, and those seem to be way in the past to me now :(

Anyway. I will get to those (I hope)! In Arthur's letter to Father Christmas he said that he wanted "a toy Jesus that has a button on the back which when you press it he says, "Everybody please be good!"", hehehe! I had SO MUCH TROUBLE keeping a straight face while I solemnly wrote down what he was telling me! ;) He even adopted a somewhat "holy" tone for the "Everybody please be good!" line - very calm and even-toned, hehe! He cracks me up, that boy! :)

Arthur was supposed to be a shepherd in his first ever Nativity play at church last Sunday, but we've been ill with two fortnight-long "colds" (that have behaved way more like flu with dreadful coughs that are still going - the doctor told me that the first one was now considered an influenza strain. Arthur and Nathan had high temps with that one, but Matthew and I didn't) back to back, so it has been a fun month. We've missed a lot of church what with being unwell before going to France, then being in France, then a month not well again! Tsk! Arthur attended one rehearsal for the Nativity play and then we were ill again. He was none the wiser that he missed being in a play, so that's good, but I'm a bit sad that his first Nativity didn't go ahead for him! But oh well! If he doesn't go to school he won't have as many of those as most children do, so I was looking forward to it! Hopefully there'll be other church Nativity plays he can be involved in at future Christmasses!

Okay, I have to go to bed, it's past midnight. But I'm glad to have "snuck" an update in! :)

Long-overdue update, a few Nathey pics and a video clip :)

Almost a MONTH since my last entry!!!!! That is just terrible! I have been updating at my pregnancy diary at least once a week though, and usually put stuff there I would normally put here, since I didn't have time or energy to write at both diaries.

So, to quickly recap on the last month (!!):

* Still pregnant! I'm 9 weeks pregnant tomorrow, and I heard my little bean's heartbeat with my doppler for the first time last week! There's a video clip at this entry in my pregnancy diary, if you would like to hear the sweet sound! :) I'm beyond thrilled to hear it!

* We made it to France and back, yay! Had a lovely time with my parents, an okay crossing there, and a HIDEOUS, never-to-be-repeated-ever-again crossing back to England (discovered Matthew gets travel sick, yeurgh!).

* I have a four-year-old! Arthur had a lovely 4th birthday in France. He had a car transporter birthday cake, and various presents - books, games, toy cars, a toy car transporter (requested!) and a tricycle at last! I've wanted one for him for a long time. We don't have the space for him to use it at home, sadly, but we can take it out, and we'll move fairly soon and plan to get a bigger place that he can use it in! It's a BIG tricycle, for 2-5 year olds, though Matthew is nearly 2 and a half and can't reach to pedal it properly. Arthur LOVES it! He got the hang of it very quickly. I have a million photos of his birthday, and our time in France, but it might take me a while to sort those out for my diary :(

* While I was in France, I started to bleed quite heavily, and was convinced I was starting a miscarriage. I bled and spotted for a further 2 weeks. When we got home I had a scan (at 6 weeks) and everything looks fine. I saw my Babydot and his/her heart beating! I feel horribly sick (3.5 weeks and counting, urgh!) all day and night so I'm very reassured, lol! The bleeding has stopped now, thankfully. I seem to bleed every pregnancy for some reason, but I don't like it!

* Nathan is 10 months old! Already 10 and a half, actually. He is standing unaided a lot, for 10 seconds or more at a time. He is also doing such a funny "launch" thing where he stands unaided and puts his arms out in front of him, gets a very determined and serious look on his face, and starts to do a sort of lurch movement forwards, as though he's willing himself to move in a forwards direction, haha! He's so sweet! I love watching him do this! ;) He seems convinced that he'll move if he concentrates hard enough, hehehe! Eventually he keels forwards, but at least his arms are out and he just goes onto all fours (hands and feet). He'll get it soon, I should think :) He took one step unaided yesterday, but he didn't even notice, and I'm sure it was totally by accident!

I DO have a photo of the little man standing! Here he is, plus a few others at the same little photo session. This was a couple of weeks ago when he was very new to standing unaided (day 2?):

He's so precious!! He babbles NON STOP now, and is such a vocal baby!

He still has NO teeth! Matthew got his first tooth at 7.5 months, and Arthur at 8.5 months, so Nathan is officially my latest teether! He's continually teething and has been for most of his wee life, but still no toothies to show for it yet. His adjusted age is now 9.5 months, so he's definitely a month past my previous oldest teether :) I have to say, I am happy that he has no teeth yet! The other boys had FIVE by his age - 3 at the top and 2 at the bottom! I'm loving the soft lil gums when I'm breastfeeding, and ADORING the gummy grins and laughs! :) I will soooo miss them when he sprouts teeth!

I'm sure there's so much more, but it's late late late, and I feel sick, and I must go to bed. We've all got colds at the moment and I can't do much for mine, so I'm making hot lemon and honey (real lemons, yay!) and riding it out. Nathan's sleep is really disturbed (he's streaming today, poor lovey!) so I should be in bed already!!! I have just been buying most of the boys' Christmas presents online! :) I'm so happy it's December! I love the Christmas season! :)

I will leave you with the video clip that I mentioned in the above (linked) entry from my pregnancy diary, of Nathan laughing and laughing at Arthur yesterday. I never tire of his sweet laugh. He adoooores Arthur, and finds him so funny, pretty much no matter what he does! Matthew less so, but Matthew is lately making increased efforts to "make Ninny laugh", and it's starting to pay off! ;) Oh! Matthew's talking EXPLODED. He talks in long sentences and uses words like "frustrated", "fantastic" and "complicated", but his pronounciations are EVER SO sweetly toddlerish still! He also misses some words out of long sentences still, and gets tenses wrong, but I'm so amazed at the change in his speech in just the last month, since I last wrote. He tells Arthur off a lot now, and teases him verbally (sigh - an issue lately, since he so enjoys it and is one of those people who can keep perfectly calm and deadpan for AGES while the other child happens to be the type of person who CANNOT BEAR that kind of thing and will pull his own hair out after about 1.4 seconds of it!). He isn't mean, verbally, but he'll just say something simple like, "Be good, Arshur..." with a very stern expression, when Arthur hasn't done a thing. Arthur can't STAND it! He'll say, "I didn't DO anything, Mashew!" and then there'll be a silence, so they both go back to what they were doing. After a measured pause, Matthew will say quietly, in the same tone, "Be good." and carry on playing! It drives poor Arthur crazy. He can't leave it be or ignore Matthew, and ends up in a total state trying to vindicate himself, while Matthew keeps a straight face with a twinkle in his eye, apparently completely absorbed in a game and not in the least bit bothered by Arthur's irate responses! Poor Arthur! Monkey Matthew-Binks!

I have so much more to write about those boys, more than ever now that there are a million funny or cute verbal exchanges to record (I've sadly forgotten most of them already!! :( ), but I HAVE to go to bed!

Here's the video clip of sweet Nathey and his slightly nutty eldest brother!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I love my boys!!! All of them. That Nathey-noo-knee-caps does me in with his extreme cuteness, I can barely stand it :) Love him to bits. Sorry this catch-up entry seems to have focused overly on Nathan (with the photos and video!), but I'll have pics of all the boys next time, I promise!

Thanks so much for all the comments over the time I've been away from this diary - especially the birthday wishes for Arthur! :)

Lots of news!

This is really not a proper entry, but it has been too long since I last updated, and also, there are things to say! :)

So, news item #1: I'm pregnant! Yay! I am guessing most of the people who read here will already know, though, because they read my pregnancy diary too, but I'm announcing it here anyway! :) I'll be 5 weeks pregnant tomorrow. Babydot is due July 7th 2009, and I'm sure he's another boy ;) Pregnancy diary very much IN ACTION, hehe! I never mean to, but I always end up updating there more often than here (sometimes LOTS more often) when I'm actually pregnant. I have not got much to report yet though. I have had some slight spotting, but just consistent with my usual implantation-ish spotting. I'm feeling morning sick, just a little, which is early for me but hey ho! It's not nearly as bad as it will be in ohhh, 7 days from now! ;)

I'm SO EXCITED to be pregnant again! :D

Big news #2: We are going to France tomorrow - tomorrow!!! We're going on the overnight ferry (help!) and then driving halfway down France the next morning/afternoon to stay with my parents! I'm soooooo excited to go and visit my parents again! We haven't been since Arthur was almost 14 months old, for New Year 2006! I was 17 weeks pregnant with Matthew, so neither of the tiny boys have been there. I know the boys will love it! Arthur can't wait! It was actually his choice, that we go to France to visit Nana and Grandy.

Which brings me to Big News #3: Arthur will be 4 years old on Sunday!! Yipe! Howwww did that happen?!?! I asked him a few months ago what he wanted to do for his birthday, and at first he said he would like to go to the farm like we did for Matthew's birthday in the summer (and Arthur's 2nd birthday). But then he thought about it and said he would most of all like to go to Nana and Grandy's house in France for his birthday! He has talked about nothing else since, and I have long since lost count of the number of times (per day! For like 90 days straight!!) he asked me how long it is till we go to France, or how long it is till his birthday! He's just so excited about going!

I'm nervous about the journey. We have a nice cabin on the ferry, because we HAVE to have beds to sleep in. I am not sure we'll get any sleep all the same, though! I hope they'll surprise us and ALL sleep nice long hours at the same time! ;) Also I hope they'll not be too fidgetty on the long drive down France. We can't afford to stop too many times, as it'll just lengthen the journey so much. I hope Nathan doesn't decide he's had enough after an hour of the whole thing and cry in a nails-on-blackboard fashion for the rest of the journey.

In other news, we've all been ill with another (what I think is an) adenovirus. We have done 3 weeks (yes) of it so far and hopefully are finished with it now! We've had a week of sore throats, then a cold and horrible cough, then just weakness and exhaustion for a week, then a fever for 3 days and nights (Arthur's was 102, and Nathan just finished his temp of 101 the day before yesterday. Matthew hasn't really had his yet but he was a week behind everyone else, so maybe his will turn up in France? Fun times!), and some diarrhoea to finish the whole merry thing off! I'm fed up with it now! Neil brought the dang thing home from the office and suffered it in about 1/10 of it's usual strength, while it kicked the rest of the family's butts! Tsk! Arthur got it first and then Nathan and I the next weekend. Then Matthew a week later. Sucky thing! I had a cold sore with mine, on my lip, and I never really get those much at all. I had to have two weeks NOT KISSING my babies, and not even smelling their cheeks or hair or nuzzling them even a tiny bit! That was the worst part of the whole virus for me :( I am seriously making up for lost time now, though! Especially with those solid lil pudding cheeks on my tiny boo bean! And ohhhhh his little double chin! *sigh* I could eat that boy up. I do not even jest.

There's ever so much more to say, but I just have to go to bed, as it's after midnight now and we have so much to do tomorrow! I will have internet access in France, but I'm not sure about the time availability there. I plan to at least try to update my pregnancy diary though, while we're there.

I hope the boys will enjoy France! And sleep okay in strange beds... And not be ridiculously picky with the food! They're bad enough with our own food, here! My parents are cooking for them and they know the list of things they'll eat (and won't - that one's much longer!), so hopefully it will be okay. I hope Nathan doesn't fall on the tile floor which covers the entire house. He's starting to stand unaided for 3-4 seconds at a time very steadily, but I know that right after that comes the opportunity for falls and bumps again. I hope he waits till he's home over carpet to do the next bit! ;)

Please pray for us that the journey goes well and especially the sleep! Also, I am due to begin full-on morning sickness the day before we leave to come home - for some reason my morning sickness always kicks in at 5 weeks and 6 days exactly. It's always terrible in the evenings. We are getting the evening ferry (5 hours!!!) home the day I'm 6 weeks exactly. Urrrgh! I hope the sea will be calm.... I'm actually kind of nervous about all the travel (can you tell?! Hehe!) so I would really appreciate your prayers over that! Thank you!

Will update again when I can. The laptop power cable broke so I can't use the laptop (which has my camera software and all my photos), until the replacement cable arrives, which I guess will be while we're away now :( But, photos as soon as I'm able once we're back. Morning sickness has always made me unable to tolerate being on the computer for any length of time, so it may be quiet here for a bit. I'll try to post the odd short entry though, with photos, where I can!

Thanks for the lovely comments on my last entry with Nathan's 8-month pics! He's 9 and a half months old now!!!!! How in the wide world?!?!...

Nathan at 8 months...

Thanks for the comments on my entry last night (what a weird sentence - I never post "last night" any more, hehe!)! The Great Photo Project has begun! ;) I just uploaded 475 photos and video clips from the camera, all taken over the last month!! Almost 100 of them were taken by Arthur though, in one session. He loves taking pictures with the camera and some of them have come out really nice! I will post those in another entry when I have resized them and put them up at Photobucket.

I just looked at the boys' tickers and since it's after midnight (again!), Nathan's ticker says he's 9 months old!!!! How is my baby boy 3/4 of the way through his first year already?!?! Where has the time gone?! I can NOT believe he is 9 months old. It seems like a milestone age, for some reason.

In the photos from the camera, I found photos that I took of Nathan when he just turned 8 months old, so I figured I had better hurry up and post those NOW before he turns 9 months properly tomorrow! ;)

Beany boy had his "under 1 year check" with the health visitor on Monday - a new name again! It used to be the 8-month check, and then with Matthew it was the 8-9 month check, and now it's the under 1 year check! That's IT now, they have long since discontinued the checks through the toddler years! I think that's naff, but oh well, what can you do.

So he is doing great! Mobilising way ahead of his age (his developmental age is adjusted for his early arrival, so he is doing even better than we think!). He is babbling, but has only started doing that BIG time in the last couple of weeks. Now he is babbling "mamama, dadada, bababa, rararara" alllll the time. It's SO CUTE! I love this stage! :)

He had one undescended testicle at the appt, which was a concern at this age, and I was confused because he had both of them at his earlier checks! But she said maybe he's just cold, and that sometimes they do still "pop back up"! She said to check him after a warm bath, so I did that later on and only found one still. After the bath when I was getting him changed for bed, I decided to check again and there were two little tiddlywinks in there, so that was a relief! ;) Poor boy - the indignity, hehe!

He measures 71cm (haven't converted that to inches yet) and weighs 8.13kg. She usually converts that for me to lbs and oz because kg mean SQUAT to me, even though this is a metric country (I guess I wasn't brought up that way, lol!), but she didn't this time so I'm still clueless, having had no time to look it up yet. I think it's 18lbs-something. She says his weight is "tailing off" and showed me the chart which has his weight around the 25th percentile. It was between the 25th and 50th last time (MONTHS ago) and when he was tiny it was up at the 75th, I think. So she's somewhat concerned, but I'm so conditioned to be annoyed by that after my experience with Matthew. Matthew started at the 50th percentile (average weight for age) at birth and steadily dropped down below the 9th percentile over the months. It was in stark contrast to Arthur who also started at the 50th percentile at birth, but climbed steadily to above the 90th and stayed there for basically his entire first year of life!! So I was anxious when Matthew's weight did that. And the health visitors were not helpful about it. They kept saying I should wean/start solids early/supplement with formula, etc, etc. And NONE of those things needed doing, and my gut said that, and it made it awkward for me to go against what the "experts" were telling me. So now I am a bit bristly, shall we say, about my babies' weights! That's why I really haven't had him weighed much at all since he was tiny. I DO love to know what he weighs though! :) I know he's totally healthy, his development is great and he's physically ahead of schedule, so he must be fine. He's happy and doesn't go hungry at all. He nurses all day and all night about 2-hourly or so. He stops when he's full.

We recently increased the exposure to solid food for Nathan, because I was being kind of slack about it and starting to feel guilty - which I should NOT have because there's nothing to feel guilty about! That's outside influence as well, which just bugs me so much! Tsk! A baby should be 95% breastfed till 12 months - solids should be amounting to a MAXIMUM of 5% of their intake! Which is not what most babies get between 6 and 12 months of age, they get much more solids than that. And they shouldn't. It's a peeve of mine, sorry for the rant. *sigh* Anyway, so the HV said I should be giving him more solids, blah blah blah, and that he should be joining in THREE meals a day, not 2-3 like I told her, and that "maybe we'll start to see some improvement in his weight once that's happening" - I don't know, maybe I'm being completely unreasonable but THAT BUGS ME SO MUCH! I just feel defensive and like I don't want to go back to her again! Tsk.

She asked me a bunch of questions with pen poised over some notes when I got in and sat down with all the boys. She asked, "Is he still breastfeeding?" (I said yes), "Does he sleep through the night?" - I told her no, he still wakes several times to breastfeed at night. She said, "Right, we need to redress the balance there then." Um, NO, I think *I* will make that call, since *I* am the Mama and this is my third healthy baby, so yeah, *I* know best, thank you! Tsk. I know I'm sounding horrible but I found the appt really difficult and it left me feeling all bristly and defensive like I said. While I was still kind of stammering over that comment, she fired another question, "Is he taking vitamins?" I said, "Um, no?" And then she gave me the "government" spiel about breastfed babies over 6 months old needing supplemental vitamins. I felt SO irritable at this point, and she was just waiting, looking at me in such an uncomfortably assertive way, for my response. I said, feeling annoyed, "That doesn't make sense! Surely breast is all they need till they're one?!" She just said no no, the government says they need vitamins too beyond 6 months because breast is NOT enough, and what's more the WHO says so too, so ner-ner-ne-ner-ner (okay, she didn't say that last bit). I do actually already know about the vitamins thing. Iron levels in breastmilk start to decrease from 6 months onwards.

Personally I still think adding vitamins is... what's a nice word for the rude one in my head?! ;) - for a breastfed baby. It's not like I'm being all stubbornly determined to exclusively breastfeed my baby - NO SOLIDS - till he's 12 months and refusing to consider vitamins for him! He's taking solids, gradually increasing at his own pace, taking what he wants/needs. He eats what we eat, so he gets plenty of iron sources. It is just not natural that he should be drinking formula milk in order to be healthy, or else having manufactured vitamin drops with added iron!!! It just isn't, so I don't trust the recommendation. Also, I have read the research about the iron in breastmilk being FAR more readily absorbable by a baby's body than any other source of iron. So although there is less actual iron, the amount he can absorb is way higher than a big amount of iron in some other source. Also, I know that if I am concerned I can get him tested for anaemia. That's what Kellymom suggests if you're concerned, but I don't think I would want to get him stuck with a needle to find out if he was anaemic! I think I would probably be reaching for the aforementioned vitamin drops or making sure he ate mounds of meat/greens/pulses before getting concerned enough to have a blood test done, if he seemed to be having problems.

I just told the health visitor that we had skipped purees, and that he was eating what we're eating. She looked doubtful and told me to get him on vitamin drops. I said, "Well, we did the same with the other two (meaning the delay of solids compared to the "traditional" speedy introduction of overly large quantities of pureed and mashed up foods at such a young age), and they turned out just fine. They had no problems without added vitamins." She did keep up what she was saying about the vitamins so I gave up and just smiled and nodded after that. I am NOT giving him vitamins. He doesn't need the extra iron, they taste and smell VILE, and his breastmilk and solids combo is perfectly adequate for his needs, I feel sure of it. Tsk.

I also told her that I am not planning to do anything about his night feeds until he turns one. She gave me the doubtful talk but I just smiled as sweetly as I could and said that all my babies nurse through the night till a year old and I'm happy enough with it till then. AFTER they turn one I will take it in hand, but not before. So she left it at that.

It was good to have his check done, but at the time it did leave me thinking that maybe I would not bother seeing the health visitor with my next baby. I do SO miss my lovely health visitor that saw us with my first two babies! She has retired and her young assistant has turned into the new health visitor at the surgery, so that's who we see now. She's actually nice and I like her in general, but she's nowhere near so supportive or encouraging. Terri (the original HV) had such a gift for making you feel like you were doing a MARVELLOUS job, but this lady does NOT possess that gift, and it's a bit of a stress to see her. Oh well. I am praying about the health care professionals where we will be moving to, as I NEED them to be nice, and supportive! We'll probably be there for the rest of my pregnancies/babies, however many that might be, and I hate having "difficult" health care providers who don't agree with or support my decisions and desires for bringing up my little ones.

Oh this is getting drawn out! Sorry! I meant to just come and post a few photos of Nathan and then go to bed! Neil brought a weird cold thingy home from the office last week, which is mainly an achy throaty thing with a cold on top. He had that for a while, and is still not quite right, and then he gave it to Arthur, who is just miserably coldy right now. Matthew is so far okay, but FULLY exposed as they keep sharing their drinks, etc! I have been achy and scratchy-throaty since earlier today, so I'm down, I guess. Nathan has woken EIGHT times just in the 5 hours since he went to bed for the night, so I'm guessing he is coming down with it too :( Poor baby! We have another round of immunisations booked next Wednesday - first MMR for Matthew (urgh) and 3rd round of the Hib vaccines for Nathan. I am not taking either of them if they are at any stage of a cold. Even if the doctor says it's TOTALLY fine to take them. I will not be doing so. I really want their little immune systems to be as completely at rest as possible for immunisations. Especially Matthew since his will be a live vaccine.

Anyway! Photos, and then bed. I feel a bit yeurghy and it's late.

Here's Nathan all excited about standing and playing at the sofa with his brothers! He is still so thrilled about this, and I have a million billion photos of the three of them playing alongside each other with the cars, etc, because there are now soooo many opportunities to snap those photos! :) He is already standing and cruising WAY more steadily than those few weeks ago, he is changing so fast!

Here is my little Monkey-Noodle, standing at the sofa and making sweet little faces with his tongue and laughing at me. I love him soooo! He's becoming quite cheeky and developing such a fun sense of humour! Did I mention I love this age?! :)

Sweet precious baby boy! He's getting so big, but he's still soooooo tiny when I look at him or hold him. *sigh* My baby! I love having babies! I don't know what I'll do when I haven't got a baby in my arms any more! I know that by then I'll have a bunch of older children to keep me busy (and joy-filled) but I feel sure I will MISS the babies all the same...

Arthur and Matthew bits and photos...

It's been too long yet AGAIN since I updated here! And I totally plan to fix that, but I have so many photos, and also I'm not sure what to write about first! I mean, there are no life-changing things happening here right now, but as always there are so many things in my head that I wish I had time to write down. I am finding it really hard to lose the things that I'm trying to keep in my memory that the boys are saying, meaning to write them here, and they just are GONE now :( I really must do something about that, because it means a lot to me to keep a record of these precious memories!

I have photos from the last time I uploaded from the camera that I still haven't posted, but also my camera currently contains FOUR HUNDRED photos (and some videos!), so aaaaaargh, how am I ever going to sift through those and edit, and post to Photobucket, and get them here before they're old news and I have 400 more waiting?!?!?! Again, it's something that means a lot to me to keep up with, but HOW?! And WHEN?! I don't know. I will just plug on whenever I can.

Like now! :) Yes, it's after midnight, and I'm thus daft. But it's Friday night, so at least I will be able to rest a little more than usual tomorrow. I wanted to post a few photos of the boys (individually, not group shots for once! There are perlenty of those coming once I get the 400 off the camera!) that are just sitting getting out of date.

Here is Arthur a month or so ago. Neil had been at his new job about 6 weeks I guess, and it still seemed like quite a new thing to the boys (after 9 months with Daddy at home all the time! Was it really that long?! It seems a lifetime ago already!). Arthur found Neil's tie one evening after Neil got home from work, and tried to put it on, saying he was Daddy going to work :) So I dug out a shirt (that, incidentally, came from Sharon a while back - thank you Sharon!) and he put that on with the tie. And Neil's HUGE work shoes :) I found him some black trousers and voila! He was proud to bursting when he saw himself in the mirror, and then he set to "being Daddy at work" with the laptop. He was perplexed at first, though he's used Word to do "my numbers" a lot before, so I don't know why, but Neil showed him how to do things and he had a GREAT time! Here are some photos:

I do not know how, but folks, he is nearly FOUR! He wants me to tell him how many days until his birthday, every day at the moment. For the record, there are 30 days left. I can NOT believe my baby is going to be four! I know every. single. mother says this, but sign me up too. I can't believe it. We're going to France for his birthday!!! He had the choice of what to do, and he loves going to the farm for birthdays but he said he wanted to go and see Nana and Grandy's house in France more than ANYTHING (bless!) so that's what we're doing! We are staying with them for a week, from a few days before his birthday to a couple of days after (his birthday is a Sunday so it's midweek to midweek which is good). Neil has booked the time off work without any problems. The ferry crossings were booked yesterday so we're actually GOING! I'm so excited! I miss seeing my parents sooooooooo much, and we haven't been to their house since I was 17 weeks pregnant with Matthew. That's a long time now! So, Matthew and Nathan have never been there. Arthur has, but he was only 14 months (almost) so he can't remember it. I know they are going to LOVE it. The house is so big and it's just so open and spacious in the countryside there. The people are lovely and friendly, and ahhhh I just can't wait! :) Arthur absolutely adores Nana. He refers to her a lot in daily chat, even though he only sees her a few times a year. When they're together, it's like they're in their own little world together, like they're best friends the same age (not 3-year-old age either, like Arthur is older somehow, and my mum is younger - they meet each other in the middle somewhere!). It's lovely. I know he's so excited about going!

I'm somewhat nervous about the journey though - the part which has put us off going all along so far! Well, that and lack of passports, but we all have those now :) We're travelling on an overnight ferry to get there, which will HOPEFULLY go okay! :S And a late evening crossing (5 hours) on the way back from a different French port, that will get us home after midnight sometime, but hopefully that will work well because the boys will all sleep in the car between the ferry and our house. I reeeally hope we don't have a totally sleepless night on the ferry! The drive from the ferry port in France to my parents' house is just over 3 hours, which probably doesn't sound like much (especially to any American readers out there!) but it's a LOT to me! That time will possibly double with little ones. I remember we stopped doing drives longer than an hour after we drove to Neil's family 5 hours north when Arthur was 13 months old and it took TEN HOURS. It was just too long for him to be stuck in the car, and we had to stop really often and take time to let him run about and nurse or eat and change his nappy, etc, each time, so the time literally doubled. We haven't been since as a family, because it was that AWFUL, so I'm nervous about carting THREE littles for several hours straight! Hopefully it'll go much better than we think it might. We are armed with several story CDs (Thomas the Tank Engine, Postman Pat, Winnie the Pooh, Dr. Seuss, etc!), a couple of which are new, and should therefore keep them occupied for a good while! They LOVE audiobooks.

Arthur is now exactly a metre tall! I think that's 38.5 inches, or something? Anyway, that was a few weeks ago. I haven't weighed him in a while. He has really outgrown his car seat (birth to age 4) and needs a "big boy" car seat now, but we're struggling to find The Perfect One. We got a Maxi Cosi one recently and it had a fault so it went back, but I got a refund because I'm not sure I liked the shape of the headrest enough - it comes very far forwards so that he has to lean forwards to see out of the side windows of the car. But it scores top marks in safety tests. The other one we're considering is the Concord PT Lift Evo. The boys currently have Concord Ultimax car seats and they are just fab. We bought them because they're "different" with a billion designs to choose from, and have won safety awards - you can't find a higher scoring car seat when it comes to safety. The next one up (the PT Lift Evo) is the same way, but it has a REALLY high backrest that sticks up high enough to obstruct some of the view through the back windscreen, and we want Arthur to be in the middle of the row of 3 seats that the boys are now in (we have our new Citroen C8, yay!), so hmmm, we can't decide! We ought to just go to a store and try them out, but absolutely NOBODY stocks them, that we can visit anyway! Tsk! So, we'll keep thinking for a bit, but we really must get him in a new car seat soon. He's too big for the other one. His old one is more worn than we expected (straps are fraying a bit, etc) so instead of moving Nathan into it (who is verily CRAMMED into his infant "bucket" style seat now, poor love! He's used it almost THREE TIMES as long as Arthur did when he "outgrew" it!!), we think we'll buy a brand new Concord Ultimax for Nathan and toss Arthur's old one. Better to do that, safety-wise, anyway.

This is turning into a long update, aaargh! I have to go to bed! ;)

Okay, photos of Matthew. Matthew is just changing in leaps and bounds with his speech, constantly. Week by week he's communicating completely differently to the week before! He still pronounces many many things ever so sweetly, in toddlerish ways, which I love! :) He's such a mixture of complete sweetness and total mischief! I only have a few photos of him because he's at that age where he's difficult to catch in a decent photo (tsk!), but funnily enough they do illustrate my point, hehe! Here he is at Bible Time (we still do this every morning for 30-45 mins or so), "reading" my Bible in my chair, in the exact position I like to sit in to read it! :)

When he's not being utterly gorgeously adorable (and he does this part SO well, trust me!), he is either doing this:

Or involved in learning new things, or expressing himself like this:

And the rest of the time (probably more than 50%!) he is in THIS mode:

That's Matthew in the porch, which is where the boys go (a thousand million times a day right now) for being naughty, for however many minutes they are in years of age (that doesn't feel like it made sense!). They can't get out once they're in, and I go and get them when their time is up. I then sit down and ask them to tell me why they were put in the porch, and we talk about why that is not something to do again, and they have to apologise, etc. I OFTEN find Matthew in this kind of state when I arrive. He takes his nappy off pretty much immediately and then puts on a hat and welly boots or something! He has started to put his trousers back on and hide his nappy under shoes so that I don't necessarily notice when he's taken his nappy off, until he wees in his trousers a bit later on! Monkey! He also wees in the porch sometimes. I am not a happy mummy when he does this!

Anyway. He keeps me on my toes! :)

I remembered one thing I wanted to post for memory's sake a while ago! I was putting the boys' shoes on in the porch ready to go somewhere or other for an appointment, and we were late as always, so I was being impatient and barking orders at the boys, etc. *sigh* Anyway, in mid bark, I looked up and saw Arthur looking at me all sort of fondly, with a funny little half-smile and his head a bit on one side. I said, "What?!" curiously, and he shook his head, again sort of fondly and said, with a little amused sound, "Precious Mummy..." I sat stunned for a moment, and then he said in the same very grown-up tone, "You're so precious to me!" just like I say it to him at bedtime sometimes! I asked him what made him say that, and he said, "You're precious because you make milky for all the boys." Love that boy :)

But, that said, he IS weaning, hehe! Poor Arthur, he really would not choose to. I am not forcing the issue as such at the moment. I just am ready for him to stop nursing now. He is nearly four. I have two other nurslings, and would like to have another baby any time God is happy to bless us that way. He has been nursing 3 times a day at regular times for a long while now, with Matthew. They nurse after breakfast, together, on the sofa snuggled up to me, and then I nurse Matthew for his nap (usually to sleep), and Arthur has his turn when I come back downstairs to him, and then they nurse at bedtime (together on Matthew's bed).

Lately I have changed that somewhat. I nurse Matthew first at bedtime, like I do for his naps (in the hope that he might sometimes nurse to sleep and we'll be spared the 60-90 minutes of Matthew-related palava at bedtime *sigh*), and THEN I will go to Arthur's bed and nurse him for less than 30 seconds. He usually complains that it's too short, but I say that's all there is for tonight, and I think he's getting the picture. Also I have cut out the morning breastfeed for both of them in the last couple of weeks. I would still like to be giving that to Matthew, but they nurse together and I can't think of a smooth way to cut it out for Arthur (who cares more about it, to be honest) and not for Matthew. So it's gone. Arthur regularly asks for milky in the morning as usual (Matthew only rarely does) and I always tell him, "Oh, we don't do morning milky any more, remember?" and keep it light and casual and then change the subject or distract with an activity. People have suggested the "don't offer, don't refuse" method for Arthur, but people! If I adopt that method, he will probably nurse till he leaves home or something, haha! Or at least it's beginning to feel that way! He ALWAYS asks. And in fact, he asks probably 6+ times per day EVERY DAY regardless of the fact that I never ever let him nurse more than 3 times a day, and haven't done for many months now! I already "don't offer" and have even started to refuse! So that method is not something that will work for Arthur :) I still let him breastfeed if he has a BAD accident and hurts himself (ie. huge-o bruising, blood, shaking with the shock of it, etc) but not for any old random bump, which by the way he never fails to ask for milky for, and I always tell him no, but that he can have a big cuddle instead. He's VERY attached to his milky. I can't believe I have nearly been breastfeeding for 4 years without stopping, tandem nursing for 2 years and 4 months, and triandum nursing for nearly 9 months, and I've never weaned a child yet! Craziness. But I'm so very proud of my achievement! :) I wish Arthur would have self-weaned before I got to the (unexpected) point where I just plain don't want to breastfeed him any more. But never mind, eh.

Okay, it's so late. I'm going to bed! I'll be back with the million photos (or a small fraction of them!) soon! :

Update on various things! :)

What in the wide wiggly world am I doing up at 1.45am?!?! Tsk. Anyway, I AM up, and I've lately been desperate to update my diary, but I have had no time. So, I should close this down and go directly to bed without passing Go, but here I am anyway. I will be soooo tired in the morning. *sigh* But that's my own silly fault! ;)

Okay, I just have to sort of bullet point the "news" in case I don't get a chance to update properly for ages again. I really hope to though! It's driving me nuts not to get time.

* Thanks for all the lovely compliments on my hair!!! :) What a confidence boost - I'm really grateful! xxx

* Nathan is cruising the furniture and turning himself to face out into the room when he's standing at the sofa and other things. He seems reeeally eager to walk, which Matthew never was even though he was on the move early like Nathan is. He's 8 months old!!! Or 7, adjusting his age! I'm boggled! ;)

* Nathan's sleep has been just dreeaadful all of a sudden lately. He has been doing his usual 3-4 wakings at night (yes, still), but lately started staying awake at one or two of those, and walking around and around his cot, or pulling up on me if he was next to me at the time! It has been so hard to get him back to sleep, and I have just been knackered. His day naps have been just as bad. Normally he seems to be a naturally pretty good napper, which is wonderful! He naps 3x a day and the first one is around 9am for about an hour, then around noon for maybe 90 mins or so, and then another starting between 3.30 and 4.30pm, for about 30 minutes. He's usually cranky-ish after that nap till bedtime, but only mildly so, and he's easily distracted by an interesting brother or toys/things to chew on, etc.

Anyway, the trouble was that he suddenly began taking an HOUR to go to sleep at nap time, screaming the whole time. I have had some days where I haven't had the energy to pick-up/put-down or walk/jiggle/rock for ages, so have tried going in and out of the room and letting him cry for a bit. On Thursday I was feeling ill so for two of his naps he literally cried it out, which was HORRIBLE. He cried for the best part of an hour and that didn't even result in him sleeping. He just got gaspy and gaggy and chokey and I ended up breastfeeding him again, whereupon he fell into instant unconsciousness. Nathan is not a baby for whom Crying-It-Out works, I am sure of it. Thankfully! :) I hate CIO.

Sooo, on Friday he cried for ages for nap #1, and I breastfed him again in the end (he always starts with a breastfeed, short story, and I rock him while singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - that's his before-nap routine, and then I put him down and pat him for a bit, and then leave - that used to work! Lately he cries like he's anxious the moment I start singing, and pushes away looking at the door!). I noticed that he was pulling my top to his cheek as he breastfed, and then when I put him down in his cot, I noticed that he took hold of the corner of his flannelette sheet and held it to his cheek/lips as he fell asleep. Suddenly I had a lightbulb moment, and when it came time for his next nap, after the feed/story, I picked him up to rock him and sing to him, and gathered his soft sheet from the cot in my arms too. He instantly snuggled the corner of it to his face and lay his head against me! I sang the song, put him in the cot, and he was asleep in 3 minutes with no fuss!

I just got the feeling he was needing some form of comfort, but not me as such. He didn't want me right there in his face, but he didn't want the alternative I was offering him - to be left completely alone to sleep without any comfort. He has two little soft toys in his cot but he hasn't gravitated towards them. The sheet he likes is just a little one - moses basket size from Mothercare, too small for his cot, but it's an easy small cover to put on him if I notice he's a little chilly during his day naps.

Anyway. So it worked! I was so pleased to have figured it out! :) For his last nap of the day, I did the same thing, and he was asleep again within 5 minutes. At bedtime we usually have a little more difficulty settling him to sleep than for naps, but I tried cuddling him with the blankie sandwiched between us. He got cosy very quickly that way, and I put him in his cot. He stood up and cried for me so I went back in and picked him and his blankie up again, cuddled for a moment and put him down, and he went straight to sleep! Since then, over the weekend, it has been working well. Sometimes he likes to suck on the blankie just a little, so that he falls asleep with it at his lips. My insides turn to mush when I watch him sleeping with his lil blankie at his sweet relaxed lips like that.

Nathan is my first baby to have any specific comfort source (other than me!). So it's new territory for me! :)

* We got new windows fitted yesterday!! The sale of the end of our garden finally went through and we have a lot of money ready for the home improvements we need to do, to get ready for selling the house. Neil's wondering about finding a way to maybe rent out our home if we can't sell it, so we need to fix it up a bit anyway. The fitting was quick (8am till 4pm) but a bit of a nightmare with the kids. I stood on glass, ugh. And picked it out with finger and thumb. D'oh! The thumb wound has been more trouble than the foot, as there was a tiny sliver of glass left in it that I couldn't get out. The boys were terrified of the Very Loud Tool that was used to cut out our old windows! Poor boys! They shed many tears and wailed in terror! Neil had an MRI on his knee (he's limping a lot at the mo because he has really bad knees - lonnnng history) that morning, so we couldn't go anywhere till he got back. When he got back, we all got in the car and went to Tesco's (weyhey) and then to the library. Neil drove us around for an hour and we all napped for a bit (except poor Neil!) and then we went home to find our windows nearly done! :) It's so nice to SEE out of our windows, hehe! The old ones were awful and almost falling to bits.

* We're getting a new car!!!! Yay! Neil gets a generous car allowance at work, and he's allowed to use it for anything he wants! So we're using it to pay for a new-ish Citroen C8 over 3 years, and after that, Neil will switch the payments to go on a car that he wants to drive to work (something less transporting-the-masses oriented, hehe!). He's keeping the Ford Mondeo to drive to work right now, the one we got when Matthew was nearly due. The Chrysler Grand Voyager that we've been driving since Nathan arrived is off the road at the moment as it ran out of tax last month so it's living on our driveway! We're getting it picked up by a company who'll pay us a not-so-great amount for it, but it really isn't worth much, so I guess that's okay. I can't wait for our new car to arrive! The 3 kids will go across the middle row, and in the Chrysler we had the two little ones in the middle row (two captain's chairs there, not a bench of 3 seats), and then Arthur in the back row. He talks NON-STOP and it's so hard to hear him all the way from the back! So I am looking forward to having him in the middle row again. It is being delivered to us on Tuesday (or maybe tomorrow!!!). The boys are soooo excited! I can't wait to be able to get out and drive with them again. We have missed church for a few weeks due to no transport big enough to get us all there! And shopping couldn't be done, or trips far away from the house with the boys. Neil had a temporary car that fit us all in it over this weekend, because Citroen were meant to give us the car on Friday and they messed up so they gave him a temporary car till Tuesday.

* Matthew is talking such a lot! He can verbalise absolutely everything now, and talks in 5 word sentences a lot. He and Arthur chat continually as they play. Lately Matthew's verbal developments seem to have all been to do with intonations, casual phrases, and those little things in casual speech like ums and ers, "mmm-hmm?" type sounds, and sighs appropriate to what's being said, mannerisms to go with things he's saying, etc. His communication is generally becoming a lot more effortless and fluent. It's SO LOVELY to see and hear them chatting away as they play! They play together constantly. Along with child #2 newly learning to talk has come a certain amount of bickering and arguing, which we haven't had before! We've had the physical conflicts - never outright fighting yet, but frustrated headbutts aren't uncommon around here. *sigh* We're working on that.

They LOVE each other! It's so incredibly sweet to observe! Matthew is so sweet with his new ability to talk - he constantly praises his brothers. He'll tell Nathan, "Boob-boy, Ninny" (good boy!) when he gets down from standing safely without bashing himself on the head (we had a couple of weeks of that while he learned!), and also tells him "Care-coh, Ninny!" (careful) when Nathan is playing with something unstable or shaking a heavy toy about that could whack him in the head! When he and Arthur are doing school together, he will crane his neck to see Arthur's painting while he's doing his own, and gasp loudly and say, "Woooowww, Arshur! Pain-ping bwiwant!!" (that's "painting brilliant" by the way! ;) ). He's so excited with school. I'm so glad to have thought to shift the schedule about and include him.

* School is going great. We've now done "The Sea", "The Farm", and last week was "Harvest", which was actually a bit difficult to think of ideas to keep us going for the whole week. Their favourite activity was making combine harvesters out of kitchen roll tubes and boxes, and then painting them! I have never seen Matthew so focused and enthusiastic as when he was painting his combine harvester - much more so than Arthur was. We have a lot of their work displayed in the kitchen and he points it all out excitedly at most mealtimes, beaming away! So sweet :)

* This week coming, our school theme is "Autumn" - yay! I've been looking forward to this one. I have books from the library, a Tractor Tom DVD that's about Autumn at the farm, and a billion craft ideas up my sleeve. There's so much to LEARN too, and so many things to see outside. I have no idea how we'll fit it into one week! ;) Maybe we'll extend it to 2 weeks? I am planning to start a blogspot blog to chart my homeschooling progress, just for my own records, but also I guess for anybody who finds it helpful in their own homeschooling ventures, or just for ideas for activities for their little ones. I want to take photos of everything we do for school, and post each week with what we did for our theme, with photos. Then I will have no trouble finding it all again when I have preschoolers in the future after Arthur and Matthew have grown past that stage! It will be so helpful for me. I haven't got time at the moment, but it has been my plan to start a blogspot blog for that purpose for a while now. I'll let you know when it's set up! :)

* Did I ever get round to saying that Arthur is night-time potty trained? It's been 2 months maybe? I can't remember. He's totally dry day and night. He potty trained in the day within 5 days of starting, and I had no intention of trying him at night for a while because I'd heard that it would be a good while longer before he'd be ready for that. But after a few weeks of being day time potty trained, at bedtime one night, Arthur told me he wanted to try going to bed without a nappy! *I* was the one who ummed and uhhed and said that I wasn't sure about that, etc! I can't believe how there has been absolutely NO training required whatsoever with this boy! It's been GREAT! :)

Anyway so he was dry the next morning, and he hasn't worn a night nappy since. He has had 2 nights about 5 weeks apart when he wet the bed, and both times he woke Neil up and said his bed was wet. Both times he had been very restless during the night leading up to the wee and had had a bad dream one of the times too. BUT, he has also had about 4 or 5 nights over the weeks where he's woken Neil up in the night to tell him he needs to do a wee! He does it on the potty by the bed, and then goes back to sleep. I have also discovered that if he needs a wee while we're out, he can hold it till we get to a place where we can find a loo. He still does almost all of his stuff on the potty at home, as we're not working on transitioning to the loo yet - he can't do it independently because of all the stair gates in the way, etc. When we move, we are placing a high priority on having a downstairs toilet for that reason. We have many years of toilet training ahead of us yet! ;)

So Arthur is an absolute star with his potty training! :) I'm so proud of him! He never has accidents any more, and he also dresses and undresses himself every day - these two things combined make a MASSIVE difference in the job of getting everyone ready for the day. I now feel like I have two littlies to dress and change, and I can hand Arthur his clothes and know that he'll deal with the toilet side of things (with the exception of me having to empty whatever it is down the loo regularly! Not GREAT fun, but I'll stick with it for now!).

* Nathan is eating table food. We are so slack on starting him gradually, and often his naps have coincided with mealtimes. So finally we just started sitting him in his new booster seat at the table with the rest of us, and serving him what we're eating! He loves it. *I* love it. Baby-led weaning is the BEST! :) He's still at least 95% breastfed, and some days he really doesn't have solids as such because he sleeps at mealtimes or something. He loves to eat food though!

* He's babbling - ra-ra-ra-ra-ra, vwa-vwa-vwa-vwa, and (new!) ma-ma-ma-ma! Lots of babies his age are babbling lots more than that, or have been doing so for a while, but I don't expect him to be early OR average with speech. Both my older boys have been later than average, but caught up and overtaken shortly after they've started! ;) So I expect he'll get busy with walking in the next few months, and get around to talking around age 2, like Matthew did.

* Matthew has lately started to finally understand a few colours! He knows orange, black, yellow, and this week he told me that something was green when it WAS, and when he was painting he couldn't decide which colour to start with. He finally said, "Uhhhhmmm.... RED!" and stuck his paintbrush in the red paint enthusiastically and began to paint! I was ever so thrilled, because any of my boys could be colour-blind (red/green) and so it's a big relief when they first show me that they can tell the difference between red and green. Of course Matthew could still be colour-blind. I will have to wait till it's obvious he's telling subtle shades of red, green and brown apart. But I'm encouraged by his progress! :)

Okay now it's really late, and I've gone and written a proper diary entry! Tsk! ;) I wish I could post a photo, as I have about 200 on the camera, and a bunch on the computer, but it's too late to start fiddling with photos, so I can't! I have soooo many to post. Next time, I promise! :)

Started school this week!! Also new hair cut, and Nathan's little photo session...

Ohhh, I know I'm later than I said I would be, updating with photos of Nathan! :S The boys all caught a cold this week (Nathan first, he chewed every. single. toy. on the floor in the church creche last Sunday and naturally was miserable and snot-ridden in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.) and so far Neil and I have managed to avoid it. I know I am exposed to it because I figured I'd get it so I continued kissing drooly, snotty little faces, and I can't fathom how many times somebody's little sneeze sprayed me right in the face. So I am hoping my immune system keeps on trucking and that I don't get it! It's not a horrible cold, but the boys have been a bit miserable with it. Nathan is starting to turn the corner today, I think, so that's good!

I have so much that I want to write!!! I almost feel kind of weird and emotional about it because I really really doooo want to write so many things and they are all equally important to me, but I can't possibly even write about half of them. There's just not time! *sigh* But oh well. I'm feeling hormonal and weepy lately, so that doesn't help (update on its way SOON at my pregnancy diary, for anyone wondering about the gap of several weeks! I'm not pregnant though, just ovulating! :) ).

BIG EXCITING NEWS, though, which I was meaning to write about before, is that we're officially home-schooling!! Yay! I'm so excited. I switched our schedule around quite a bit and started Arthur AND Matthew at "pre-school" this week!! I know Matthew's only two, but I sorted out a curriculum for the entire academic year, starting this week, and when I reviewed it I realised how it was totally suitable for Matthew as well. We started on Tuesday, because I was still finalising the curriculum stuff on Monday. So we have now finished our first week, and it has gone really well! :)

I bought the book, Creative Activities for the Early Years (Brilliant Publications) about a year ago when I was starting to research and read up on things for starting homeschooling, or doing an early version of it. I got it out recently to look for an idea for making a fish (I'd seen one on a children's TV programme that has a craft section in it, and wondered about other ideas for fish-related crafts, to see if I could theme it with Arthur for a few days or something). I found what I wanted on the first page! The book has a different theme for each week (it's aimed at mother-and-toddler groups, playgroups, or nursery-age groups that meet once a week) and the first week's theme is "The Sea". I read the rest of the ideas for that theme, and then started to have one of those lovely moments where everything clicks into place in your head in quick succession - click click click! :)

Two days before, I had been praying about ideas for homeschooling, and for guidance, because I was feeling like I didn't know what to DO next, what was right and what was wrong, etc. I also felt that what Arthur and I were currently doing was going a bit stale. He wasn't too motivated to do anything, and we had no set thing going on. The time for school on our schedule was when Matthew had his nap, and so all sorts of things could influence that time and give us a good patch of time for school, or next to NO time. And he'd want to nurse and relax as well. Yes, he's STILL breastfeeding - didn't you see my blinkie?! ;) Yes, I know he'll be FOUR in a couple of months. Yes, I DO plan to wean him. I have loved our breastfeeding relationship sooooo much, and feel so proud of the aeons that I've breastfed him for, lol! But the happy-happy aspect is finally wearing thin for me. Arthur is in no way ready to wean, which is beginning to unnerve me (which is a strange thing to admit, for me!) given that he's nearly four already! He nurses 3x a day, and Matthew does the same. I tandem nurse them two of those times (first thing in the morning, and bedtime), and I nurse Matthew at nap time (sometimes right to sleep) and then when I come downstairs from doing that, I nurse Arthur on the armchair for our snuggle time. He looks forward to it every day.

I'm amazed to hear myself say/think, "I want to wean!" I have never weaned my own baby/child before, even though I have 3 of them! ;) I never wanted to wean, ever. I wanted THEM to do the weaning. But I am so ready to stop breastfeeding Arthur. I feel a twinge of guilt and sadness for Arthur when I think like that - he'd be so sad if he knew I felt that way. But it's time. I am not sure how to do it (it HAS to be gentle - I have already talked to him about the idea and he was so so sad.), or when. I am thinking around or after his 4th birthday - what a thing to breastfeed my baby till he's four years old!!! I'm so proud! :) I still remember his first week or two when he would not take the breast and it was so heartbreaking and horrible and difficult, and I questioned my ability so many times and wondered if he'd ever breastfeed at all! Now look at us! :)

I could wean Matthew as well, since there are altogether too many people clamouring for my milk all day long (again, new feeling for me, and it seems a bit weird and not-like-me-ish), and he's already nursed to the age of 2. BUT, I really don't want to wean Matthew. I still enjoy nursing him. I don't enjoy nursing Arthur - maybe the odd occasion when I'm feeling particularly "Ohhhh, my baaybeee!" towards him, but otherwise not. And Nathan still nurses on demand day and night (he's 8 months old - EIGHT MONTHS!!!). He wakes 3-4 times to nurse at night, yup he does. And probably goes anywhere between 1.5 and 2.5 hours in the day between feeds. He isn't really taking much in terms of solids, but we're not intending him to have much of that yet. His intake should be 95% breastmilk till he turns one, seriously. So we're not stressing with the solids. And those he does eat, are big ole hunks of real food that he picks up himself and gnaws at (aka Baby-Led Weaning, which went so wonderfully when we did it with Matthew!).

I know I'm getting off track here, but I'm glad to have finally written about these things all the same! I am sort of anticipating a maybe-possibly pregnancy soonish (I appear to be fertile and my cycles have normalised much sooner than after my other babies, and we're not using birth control, remember? We will see what God chooses for us! Yay!), so when that happens I want Nathan to have ALL the milk that I produce, because it will diminish anyway before he's 12 months old (probably). Still, I don't want to wean Matthew... But my personal preference would be to just be nursing one little one while pregnant with the next.

Anyway! Where was I before the breastfeeding?

Homeschooling! So I started to think how I could pad out the stuff in the book and make a great thing out of the Theme Per Week idea, but do it every day for a week rather than just once a week. I love how the book is based on themes that are popular with young children. I could vary it depending on what I want to achieve. It's very art/music/discussion/story based, which I love, and I think it's perfect for their age levels. But I know I can introduce learning more "schooly" things with it. This week Arthur learned to read (or recognise) the word "fish", because I wrote it up big in thick black lettering on a piece of paper attached to the mirror in the living room, and the letter "f" at the beginning is in red. It's easy to incorporate counting or first maths with each of them as their age level allows, with pretty much anything we're doing. I'm teaching Matthew his colours as we do the crafts and things. He knows yellow, black, blue and orange, but only orange and black consistently. He totally DOES NOT GET the other colours. His default is "blue?" :) It's different for me because Arthur was not like that. Arthur knew 11 colours consistently at 19 months old, and all the colours I can think of before he was two. He is not colour blind. My mum is a colour blindness carrier. My brother is colour blind. I have a 50% chance of being a carrier, and if I am, then any of my SONS have a 50% chance of being colour blind. Sooo, I know Matthew's not Arthur, and that he's still young for learning colours really. But I get nervous! What if he can't seem to grasp them because he is colour blind? I guess only time will tell. I soooo hope he's not! :S

So, anyway, there's lots of scope, and flexibility, and I like that! Every Monday (it was Tuesday this week though), we go to the library (gasp! We've never been before this week!!) and take out as many books as we can for little ones about the Theme of the Week, and then read them all week, and return them the next Monday when we pick out the next week's theme stuff. I was pleasantly surprised by the library trip! I was nervous in case the boys didn't behave, but they were really good, and the children's area was full of toys and even had music playing when we arrived! My sweet little boys said, "Wow!" when we walked in and they saw allll the books (they LOVE books), and they both went straight to the bookshelves, and each picked out a book, sat down somewhere comfy (not next to each other) and turned the pages quietly, looking at the pictures. When they finished their books, they went back for another, and made a pile of the ones they'd read next to them! They did this for ages. We stayed over an hour, and they had the best time. Arthur said that was the best part of his first day of school and he can't wait to go back to the library again on Monday.

We took out 10 books - stories, picture books, and early years science books, about the sea and the creatures that live in it. I can incorporate Christian teaching, so to speak, into any of the themes, because God made the sea and everything in it, and we can thank him for that, read about it in the Bible, and so on. We can also read other sea-related stuff from the Bible together, like Jonah and the whale. Every day before the craft time (which is now replacing Table Time after Matthew's nap), we read 2 of the books together, sing songs ("One Two Three Four Five, Once I caught a fish alive", "Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea", "A sailor went to sea-sea-sea", "Bobby Shaftoe", etc), and then we watch a quick YouTube video that I have scouted out beforehand. We saw some amazing videos of exhibits at aquariums this week, and also some diving videos of coral reefs and things. It's so easy to find quick videos that are relevant there, and I can browse them to find the most appropriate ones beforehand.

Anyway, I'm so excited about it! The book also happens to have a theme for each week, grouped into three school terms, starting in September! So it was a perfect answer to prayer at the perfect time (thank you Lord!). Next week's theme is The Farm. The boys are so excited about that one! Then it's "Harvest", and then "Autumn". I am excited about Autumn. And the THREE weeks in a row of Christmas themes later on, wheee! :) We will not be doing "Halloween" or "Magic", and we probably won't do "Chinese New Year". As a family, we do not plan to associate with the first two in any case, much less have lessons about it with our very little children! And Chinese New Year... we may do it. But it seems not that culturally relevant for them right now and they're only very little yet.

Here are a couple of pictures of some of their craft work this week. They did tissue paper rainbow fish on Tuesday, and shiny fish on Wednesday. We did painting with (homemade - I'm cheap, haha!) stencils of sea creatures and boats (they loved that!) on Thursday, and then jellyfish yesterday. We don't do school at the weekend now that we've started this, though Arthur is disappointed about that!

The fish - Arthur's are the bottom two, and Matthew's the top two:

The jellyfish - Matthew's is pink and Arthur painted his blue:

Matthew's attention span is waaaay shorter than Arthur's, but that's to be expected - he's only 2! He still starts off eagerly, but usually gets down after a bit to busy himself around the kitchen or run back and forth in the living room (they both do this a lot - BOUNDLESS energy!), and then comes back to do a bit more. This is good because he needs a lot more hands-on help than Arthur does, and although Arthur is fiercely independent with what he's doing, he does like my attention all the time to SEE what he's doing! So I can give him that when Matthew dips out of the "lesson" for a while.

Ahhh this is getting too long-winded!! It's also really late and I'm exhausted suddenly, so I must go to bed. I wanted to post two other things this entry, so I'll try to bash that off now!

I got my hair cut today!!! First time in.... 16 months, I think? And that was the first time in about 18 months. I just grow it till it annoys me with its length, and then get it cut to just below my shoulders, grow it out, get it cut, grow it out, etc. It's all the same length. The thing that bugs me about my hair after I have a baby, is that it falls out in HANDFULS after about 4 months postpartum. I know that's pretty much universal and completely normal with the hormones settling and that, but I hate showers once my hair is at that stage. And the LONG hairs strewn about the place, in my baby's little fists/mouth/clothing, etc. Yuck! Also I have been tying my long hair back and unless it's just pulled to the nape of my neck, it's heavy enough to give me a headache after a full day, and it feels like it's pulling on my scalp.

I also dislike the REGROWTH of hair postpartum! About 5 months PP, I get new thick growth of hair all over my head at the same time. This makes for a really yeurghy crew-cut looking thing making its way down my forehead (painfully slowly) over the months, and since I don't have a fringe and my hair is dark, it's really visible. I really don't like it! But it's only juuuust starting to be long enough to tuck behind my ears when I give birth to another baby, and thus begins another cycle of it!

So since I get RARE hair cuts, we thought it would be okay for me to treat myself to a swishy salon instead of my frugal dry-cut hairdresser down the road! I was nervous in case I went in and they descended on me and I came out with multicoloured hair standing stiffly 10 inches above my head, haha! Fashionably speaking, of course! ;)

But it was GREAT! Such bliss to be pampered! I had iced drinks, and chocolate toffees, and got to talk to the stylist about my hair - she has an 8-month-old baby too! And she said the secret to hiding the regrowth of hair is changing your parting (mine has always been a centre parting). So she gave me a side parting, and it hides it waaaay better, yay! She rolled her eyes when I said I use a 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner, and told me off for it! Honestly, I would LOVE to shampoo twice, towel dry, condition and rinse, blow dry in a downward direction and then apply serum, but one quick wash with a 2-in-1 shampoo is a luxury in itself some weeks - it's usually achieved in a hurry while Nathan takes his first nap of the day and the boys do all manner of things downstairs (granted, they often just play nicely, but there can also be full-potty-tipping and snack-crumbling into the sofas and TV/DVD/CD player-fiddling, headbutting, or shouting at each other enough to wake Nathan back up while I'm still rinsing carelessly squirted 2-in-1 shampoo out of my eye!). Boy would I LOVE to follow the stylist's advice every other day! If only it were that simple! ;)

Anyway, I then had a complimentary head and neck massage - ohhhhhh! And got my hair luxuriously washed in niiiice smelling stuff. And then had like 8-10 inches cut off my hair, and she blow dried it and put some serum on (my hair can be frizzy sometimes), and chatted about my little ones the whole time! *contented sigh*

Weird thing that bothered me throughout: I felt strangely emotional, and I was anxious about it. I kept feeling at each stage of the appointment, as though I could start to cry at any moment, and not be able to stop! What is up with that?! I was actually nervous about it because I felt so on-the-edge-of-tears some of the time and I was anxious about having a sob-fest right there in the swishy salon full of teenage assistants with highlighted hair, and women with heads full of foil reading magazines! NOT a comfortable thought. I don't cry in front of anyone as it is, for some reason. It makes me uncomfortable. But yeah, it was a weird feeling. I don't even know why it was there. Maybe I have been needing to feel pampered for such a long time, or maybe it was just the joy of a real luxurious treat just for me, I don't know. When the lady started the head massage, my chest automatically swelled up into a sob, and I had to shove it back down. When I sank back into the hair-washing chair and felt the lovely water on my head and heard a voice ask me, "Is that temperature alright for you? Do you want it a bit warmer?" the same thing happened. It bothered me throughout because I couldn't shake it, and I felt so unstable! It was weird. I generally feel kind of weepy at little things at the moment, so maybe it's just random hormones or something? Anyway. Weird.

Neil took some photos of my hair! My mum INSISTED on photographic evidence, haha! So I thought I would post it here too (eep!). Here's my hair this morning, before it was cut:

And after - sorry about the rubbish lighting, it was evening and the flash made things look weird, but hey ho.

And from the front - so so so VERY not comfortable with posting a photo with my face in it on the internet! But never mind. It's to show that the side parting does an okay job of hiding the new hair growing up the top there, and also the fact that the stylist sort of layered my hair near my face so that it has a softer effect or something. I have only ever had all my hair the same length, or else a fringe when I was young, so this is really different for me! It's curling up more than it was earlier after my appointment, because my hair does that, but never mind. It won't all go in a ponytail, but I can tuck the hanging bits behind an ear, and I like that :)

I'm really happy with it! I was surprised at how much happier and more confident I felt walking through town after leaving the salon. I do not really put any focus on how I look in terms of my self-esteem. I have pretty good self-esteem, or at least I thought I did. So I was surprised by how different I felt after the hair appointment. I wanted to smile for no reason, and my step felt light. I held myself more confidently as I walked, which surprised me one time when I glimpsed my reflection in a shop window. I realised I was happy for everyone to see me, whereas sometimes I am glad to have a bunch of small children with me to soak up any attention that comes our way! I feel like I look nicer than I did before, which probably isn't true, but my perception of myself feels different.

So, that was nice! :) I was not at home when it came time for Matthew's nap though, and he apparently cried for FIFTY MINUTES straight, sobbing and saying, "Niddi (need) Mummy, niddi Mummy..." over and over and over again as he cried. It about broke my heart when I got home to hear about that! He had a nap in the end though, and was up again and cheerful when I returned. Nathan was ravenous and I noticed I was engorged and leaking by the time I nursed him! He only had a 4-hour gap! Which is LONG for him though, so that's probably why. But still, he's 8 months old. I am leaking much less in general, as I usually am by this stage, but still have a random let-down sometimes and leak a little. I rarely wear breastpads now - only when we got out somewhere.

In town, I also treated myself to a sandwich for lunch and sat in a pretty garden to eat it. I went to the Christian bookshop and browsed children's Bibles, because we only have The Toddler Bible and it's temporarily missing for some reason. Arthur is ready for longer Bible stories and other things. So I browsed, but didn't find the perfect Bible, so I left. Before I went back to the car, I bought myself a 99 Flake ice-cream cone from an ice-cream van!!!!! I have not had one of those in about a decade, and it was pure, blissful, totally-about-ME indulgence!! I had that weird aaargh-I-might-cry thing then as well. I do not know what gives with that.

The other thing I wanted to post were the photos I made reference to last entry - the little session I had with Nathan on the sofa with Monkey a week or so ago. Remember this photo of Arthur at 6 months old?

Or this one of Matthew at 5 months old?

Arthur's was a one-off, but Matthew's was part of a similar "photo session" to Nathan's. You can see the rest of Matthew's pictures here if you're interested in comparing (scroll all the way to the bottom of the uncharacteristically long-winded entry, haha!)!

Here are the new photos of my sweet little Nathey, at 7.5 months old (6.5 months adjusted age, so similar to Arthur's age in his photo). Be warned, there are lots! And some of them are samey, but I don't care! :)

This next one is my favourite - it's a serious expression, but this is Nathan. I am thrilled that I somehow just happened to capture his features and expression and direct gaze very clearly in this photo. I am in love with his little cleft chin and the shape of his mouth and nose. And the way his eyes see right into me. And his sweet new hair growing in dark dark dark. And his blue blue eyes. These soft, soulful expressions are what I try to drink up visually, every time I see them. This is an image of a very intimate part of my relationship with my baby son, and so it's a precious photo to me!

Quite the opposite, hehe! He is always laughing and smiling, even though you see him so serious in the picture above:

My sweet baby boy! They all still look really different from each other, but I hear WAY more from other people about how much Nathan is so much like Matthew. Two people at church have told me they have mistaken him for Matthew in my arms and then had to shake themselves and realise that Matthew is two now, of course! I don't think he's THAT like Matthew, though he seems to resemble him more than he resembles Arthur. I have been looking at the photos of Arthur at 7 months old, and some of those are UNCANNY in how much he and Nathan look alike. They have different head/face shapes (Arthur seems quite unique so far, hehe!) but otherwise very similar eyes and mouths (and thus smiles), and expressions and mannerisms. And they have dark hair which makes them SEEM more alike. Different eyes though :)

Okay, it's so crazy late. I am going to bed! Back as soon as I can. I have stuff to write about moving house (we're not yet, but EXCITING news - Neil is going to view a house near his workplace on Monday. It sounds like exactly what we asked God for (yes we really did reel off a list, and we do have faith that he will bless us with what we asked for - I want to write more specifically about that soon, and of course about the house Neil sees on Monday!), and about changing our car AGAIN! ;) And various boy news and photos galore as always. Thanks so much for the comments on my last entry! Siobhan, I'm so excited (for some reason!) that your little brother, Nathan, was also called Ninny!! :) Thanks for all the sweet comments about Nathan's pics and his new milestones! :) He pulled up to stand in his cot today, so I have to lower the mattress to its lowest setting tomorrow (I can't reach to kiss him when it's right down low, waaaahhh!), and I'd only just put it to the middle setting a month or so ago! He is also standing and banging toy cars together at the sofas with his brothers (sooooo cute to watch!!) and "walking" on his knees when he pulls up to kneel at a toy with wheels and it sets off with him still leaning! Hehe!

MUST GO TO BED!

Several milestones for Nathan (again!) and loooads of photos

Thank you so much for the sweet messages after my last entry with the video clips! :) And also the positive thoughts about homeschooling! Congratulations to Robbi on starting homeschooling at last! :) I'm excited for you, but how are THREE of your kids school age?!?!

Well, as usual, it's already late. I have a scary amount of photos to post - I kid you not! I just uploaded FIFTY (ish) to my photobucket, and those are just of Nathan!! They're the ones I chose from the bunch of photos I had on my camera. I cannot fathom how I'll manage to show you all the photos I've been taking lately. *sigh* Somehow I must!! I really want to get all the photos that are important to me on here. This is my back-up memory bank! I should get gold membership for a bit again so I can back up my diary. Sometiems I think of switching it ALL to Blogger or something, because every other bloggy place is making Diaryland seem teeny-tinier than ever before, even though I think Diaryland was one of the first places to keep an online diary. So I wonder whether it will eventually get eclipsed completely? I know they say it won't "go under", but I get nervous these days, with 7 (SEVEN!) years of precious memories stored here. Should I move it all over? Is it more secure there? Hmmm, thoughts....

Anyway, that is not what I wanted to write about! I have soooooooo much on my mind (not much of it particularly exciting, just flotsam mainly) that I have really been wanting to write about here, but I just don't seem to get chance! Well, I DO, but I prioritise other things sometimes. Like I will just read a TON of blogs (I am behind on those in general lately so have been starting to try and catch up) for a whole evening (or two!), or I'll read the Bible - I am really eager to read my Bible lately. I started Cover to Cover - Through the Bible in a Year for the 2nd time, on August 17th. I'm on Day 26 so I'm a bit ahead. I would really like to read it in half the time if I possibly can. I read it through last time in about 2 years, during pretty much the entire time I was housebound with M.E. I love that this book takes you through it in chronological order (which is NOT necessarily the order the books are arranged in!). I just finished Genesis, woohoo!! :) I'm reeeally enjoying it!

Okay, I must get on with what I came to write about!! It's Monday tomorrow, so I don't want a crazy late night to start the week!

Nathan has had a BUSY week! He's teething, but still no sign of that first toothie yet. The main thing is (Milestone #1!!), he is now crawling properly. He started on Thursday evening - he did five "knees", as my mum and I call it, haha! As in, knee-knee-hand-hand-knee. Not much of a crawl, but a definite first start! Then he flopped and did the rest as usual on his tummy with his elbows and toes! He practised the short crawl a few times on Friday, and then on Saturday he really started doing longer crawls. He still prefers his old army crawl because it is less wobbly and gets him there faster if it's across an entire room or something. He already seems stronger crawling on hands and knees today, so I'm sure he'll lose the army crawl fairly soon. For my records, he was 7 months and 3 weeks old when he started crawling. His developmental milestones are adjusted by a month because of his early arrival, so it's the equivalent of 6 months and 3 weeks. Which is EXACTLY the age that Matthew started crawling! But he never did any army crawling of any sort before he set off properly. He just stayed stock still on his hands and knees, rocking and rocking in frustration, hehe!

I have got a tiny video of him crawling but it's soooo tiny and short, and I haven't got around to uploading it. Plus I'm sure I will have more impressive footage over the course of the week!

Milestone #2 is that he's stopping at toys and propping himself up with one arm in a sort of "half-sit" to look at the toys and play with them a bit. He still isn't sitting unsupported much yet, only very occasionally and for a few seconds (read: less than 10!) at a time. I always have to really encourage him to do it, and most of the time he just refuses and pushes back to lying down, or tries to stand up and walk! So, he'll sit when he's ready. He's by far the latest of my babies to sit unaided. Here he is doing the pause-at-a-toy "sit" (and then another one of him playing from that position):

Milestone #3: Nathan is suddenly really interested in one of the dolls we got for the boys last Christmas! It's the big "boy" doll (in the photos above), the one that only a few months ago I used to confuse for Nathan all the time when it was lying on the carpet, hehe! I would glance quickly across the room as I walked to get something, and freeze for a second in horror as my foot nearly stumped into MY BABY BOY! But wait, no, just a doll - phew! ;) They were the same size for ages, and some of Nathan's outfits were rather similar! Anyway, he suddenly seems really interested in it, and crawls to it if he catches a glimpse of it, even trying to pull it out of the toy basket (which is too high for him to reach up to right now).

I was watching him play with it this week and realised that he was actually giving it kisses! He has recently started to give open-mouthed kisses to us. It was hard to tell at first if they were kisses or not, because he always BEAMS with joy when we kiss him (he's so precious!!) and his big beaming smiles are wide-open-mouthed. But he is definitely trying to kiss now :) And he was working really hard trying to kiss the doll's nose/mouth, which I thought was so sweet! I took photos of course! :)

Milestone #4: Nathan started pulling to kneel up at things on Friday, the day after he started crawling. This is RIGHT in keeping with his brothers - they all seemed to do several big milestones in a bunch around this age. I think one of those big milestones for the other boys was a first tooth (Arthur for sure) so I'm wondering all the more about Nathan's first toothie! It can't be that far off now! :)

Anyway, he pulled up to kneel against me when I was sitting on the floor, which was exciting, and he was so pleased with himself! Arthur and I clapped him (Matthew was napping) and he loved that!

Milestone #5: Within a few hours he had discovered that pulling to kneeling makes it much easier to pull to standing!! Here he is kneeling at the jigsaw puzzle box on Friday, during Matthew's nap time, and then attempting to stand! The box edge was too low to the ground, but he was definitely trying!

On Saturday I took him up to bed for one of his naps, nursed him on the bed, and SUDDENLY he was wide awake and super excited about the cot bars that are up against the side of my bed. He kept trying to clamber over me to get to them, so I sat by him to watch what he wanted to do. He crawled up to the side of his cot, and started to grapple at the bars like he was trying to pull up and kneel there. He was almost frenzied in his eagerness, hehe! He made such cute little heh-heh-heh enthusiastic breathing noises, and had his tiny little pointy tongue sticking out with concentration. I nearly interrupted his efforts to eat him whole, but decided it was only fair to let him continue. ;) He pulled up to kneel at the cot bars eventually, and clung on with one hand while he batted the cot side with his other hand (in glee!):

He seemed REALLY happy and satisfied with that for quite a bit, and then suddenly got that focused look and the frenzied heh-heh-heh thing started again. I wish I could describe to you exactly what he was like as he did this. He worked so hard with his little leggies and arms that weren't used to that kind of activity! Eventually he managed this:

But the frenzy did not stop until he was triumphantly doing this!!....

Neil's eyes nearly popped out of his head when I showed him the photo, hehe! So that was Saturday (yesterday). Today Nathan has been working very hard at the Fisher Price Ball Blast toy (he has been interested in that for a while, frequently "asking" me to hold him near it so he can pretend to stand or sit at it and play with it!). He pulled up and knelt at it after a bit of effort this afternoon, and then let go and did not realise that if he lets go, he falls down rather heavily in a random direction! I need to stay closer to him when he's trying new things, I know :( I am not sure if I can always be there to do that though. Poor sweetie, he has a few bumps and bruises coming his way with this new stage he's entered.

Anyway, he went right back to try again, and I got the camera out this time:

He moved round the the other side to try again, and seemed a little unsteady so I sat near him and put my hand out to steady him, and he instantly used it as a helpful "pull up" aid, and stood up! He clung on tightly and eagerly pressed buttons and things on the top of the toy, and I took some photos. He looks so steady and grown-up here, I can't believe it.

Nathan seems to have become a lot older in such a short space of time, all of a sudden. I suppose it's just the fact that he's hit a few milestones that take him into "older baby" category or something. He has also had a growth spurt, and his head has grown like crazy recently too! His hairline seems more receding than ever, haha! And the sort of "male pattern baldness" area above his forehead has quite a pale, veiny effect at the moment, as though there has been fast growth there. It almost seems stretched! But I'm sure it can't really be. Anyway, his head has recently grown fast. Maybe that makes sense anyway, that he must have had some recent rapid brain growth to lead to the milestones he's hitting - and the increased social skills and communication too.

He's beginning to show a really playful cheeky personality (help! hehe!), very similar to Matthew's at this age. Matthew was actually more playful though, and by 8 months of age was initiating games with Arthur more than the other way around. Nathan likes to go for things that are a bit monkeyish, like a box of hankies on the bed (to pull out all the hankies), and he KNOWS that it's a monkey thing to do. He finishes nursing, gets a sudden undeniable twinkle in his eye, then flips over and starts to army crawl his way to the pillows at the top of the bed (where I keep a box of tissues). The whole way, he has his cheeky little pointy tongue out and he tosses glances over his shoulder with the MOST sparkly mischievous eyes. He makes his eager breathing noises as he goes, (heh-heh-heee) which sound more like "thhh-theee-heh-theh" with his sweet little tongue in the way there :) I honestly could eat that boy right up. He's so scrumptious!

Then, I wait till he's almost at the pillows, increasing his speed and starting to stretch out his little hand for the tissue box, and I say in my best fake stern tone, "Na-than?" He stops straight away and sort of half-twists onto his back (legs still front down, back twisting so his head is lying back to look at me), and gives me the most cheeky look! He beams and his eyes sparkle so much. You can tell he is having so much fun playing at being a monkey-boy, and then he does a sharp intake of air which is almost a squeal, such is his excitement, turns back and reaches the tissue box. He LOVES it when I then pounce on him and swing him away from the hankies.

Good golly, I love that baby boy soooooooooo much. My chest is sort of aching just writing that stuff. I think I might pop. Ah my sweet lovey boy bean!

Nathan's cringeworthy nicknames continue. There really is no hope for any of my children. It's an affliction of mine. ;)

He has a LOT of nicknames, many of which would probably nauseate the non-cutesy of you. Quite a few of his nicknames seem to be food-related. He's my Pea. Also my Bean-Pea. And my Bean-Pea-Pickle. Or even my Bean-Pea-Pickle-Pea. It can get worse! ;) The more squish-him-up-to-nothingness-because-I-cannot-bear-how-much-I-love-him I'm feeling, the longer the chain of names, hehe! He is also my lil Muffin, and my Waffle. Now, any of the food related nicknames can be finished with a "Bean" or a "Pea". There are some crazy combinations out there, haha!

Okay, now we get off the food-related nicknames and onto the even more embarrassing ones. Muffin has various additions: Muffin-Woo, for example. Also, somehow another word has combined with muffin to produce Fluffin. The poor child is often Fluff for short, or in one of the aforementioned "squidgy-hearted" moments: Fluffsy-Woo-Wee-Waffle-Woo. Yes, I am blushing. I know there are people feeling distinctly queasy right now. But I want it recorded! I know one day I might forget which child had which overly cutesy nicknames, and I want to remember clearly, because it's part of my very fondest, loveliest memories of their babyhoods.

The one I'm using most at the moment (though I use LOTS all the time) for Nathan is P. Fluffin. I don't know why! He just is. Mr. P. Fluffin. Or Little P. Fluffin. Oh my goodness, I squeeze him up so tight to my chest when I call him that. Again, the WHY escapes me, but there you go.

Also, with Matthew pronouncing his name, "Ninny", that has worked its way into lots of the things I call him too. Ninny-noodle (which is shortened to Ninny-noods, or lately just "nood" (poor, poor baby love)), Ninny-noo-nobblet, Ninny-knees (which has become just "knee-caps" for some reason!). And Ninny has recently developed into "Nin-zy" or Ninzy-woo. Or even just Ninz.

Please remember that I do also love and nurture my little ones and they are reasonably well-adjusted (!) and happy, so I urge you not to make that call to Childline on their behalf. ;) Really, by the age of 3 or 4, the amount of daft nicknames is drastically reduced! There is hope for them, eventually! ;)

Okay, it's really late and I must go to bed. I did a little photo session with Nathan yesterday while the older boys were out at the park with Neil, and there are quite a few photos from that. They are of Nathan on the sofa with Monkey, because I did a similar session with Arthur on the sofa with Monkey when he was 6.5 months old, and again with Matthew, but I think he was only 4 or 5 months old. So I suddenly had the idea to do it with Nathan, and I'll post the results (along with a reminder photo from Arthur's and Matthew's sessions) in a separate entry this week sometime!

I do have a BUNCH of news about the other boys, and general waffle from the recesses of my brain, which I will really try to write down soon, because I so want to! I hope I'll find time this week one evening. If only I wasn't taking so many photos of the boys (particularly Nathan!) right now! Every time I come to catch up on the computer, there are like 80-120 more photos to dump off the camera and upload, edit, and resize! It puts me off getting down to it when I'm tired, but I don't like to leave the photos undone and just go on and write waffle instead. Anyway, I'm glad to have done some catching up with Nathan's photos!

Back soon! :)