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! :