Swings, and Young Me (!!) and stuff.

Whoops, I just updated this diary with my entry for the other diary! What a shock to see it in my arthursmummy layout when I was done!!! I quickly deleted it but I know that will make my diary red on the buddy lists, so here's an entry to make up for that! ;)

Thank you for the nice comments on my lil Boo! He is a busy boy these days for sure!

While I am here I can tell you two new exciting things that Arthur did today! We went out for a walk this morning with the pushchair, and I took him to the nearest playground with baby swings. He had his first time in a swing at Jaya's party, but today was his first time in a proper sit-up swing in a playground!! I took a few photos but it was soooo bright and he kept blinking and squinting so they didn't come out too well. But here they are anyway:

He seemed to enjoy it, but I didn't let him swing for very long at all because it was so hot and sunny today and he would not keep his hat on for anything! He has very fair skin and I am taking no chances with the sun.

And the other new exciting thing today is that Arthur walked five very steady steps side-by-side with me as he held my finger in ONE hand, waaay above his head because I was standing up normally. I can't believe he is doing that when to me that is one of the images in my head of a real live toddler, and I can't believe that we are getting to that stage. After the five steps, he stopped, and Neil and I were so excited for him! We were praising him up no end, and Arthur got this huge smile on his face and started bouncing with his lil knees bending and straightening like crazy! I waited with him still standing holding my finger, to see if he wanted to walk any further, but he turned to face my leg and clung on with both hands, and looked up with that, "Please pick me up now" look! Another thing that makes me think "toddler" and not "little baby". I can't believe my tiny Boo is growing up. He's still so little to me.

One thing I forgot to mention with yesterday's entry was that his feet have made amazing improvements since he started cruising the furniture! Yay! They are almost straight again now. You can see it in the photo of him and Neil under the sheet from yesterday's entry. His big toes still curl in slightly and the shape of his sole slightly curves in, more so on his left foot than his right. But they are soooo much better than they were a month ago! I am so happy. I am absolutely sure now that he will not need plaster casts again. The physio did say that if he started walking early it would help his feet. He isn't "walking" walking yet, but already the supported walking he is doing is helping soooo much! Yay yay yay!!!! I know the physio is going to be so thrilled for us! I can't believe we have to wait till October to see her again. She left it that long because she thought that's how long it might take him to walk and see improvement in his feet, and here we are in August! Way to go Arthur!! :)

Arthur is sitting soooo much better today than previously too. It seems like all of a sudden he has totally cracked this sitting-from-standing thing. He never topples or falls backwards when he tries to sit from standing now. He just plonks down on his bottom, using very careful movements to get there. His sitting from-and-to crawling has improved greatly in the last week too. Before he would take his time making lots of effort to sit, and sometimes he wouldn't even try it, he'd just flop to his tummy and roll. Now he just power-crawls everywhere, soooo fast and co-ordinated!! He is across the room in seconds, literally, with three or four strong determined little slaps of the hands and knees on the floor! Then, the instant he reaches his destination, he gives a quick shove backwards while already reaching for the thing he had his eye on, and boom, he's sitting bolt upright playing with said object! The moment that gets dull, a quick lean forwards and he's into a full crawl movement before he's even fully off his bottom! It all seemed to come together suddenly, though he had been working on co-ordinating it better for some time.

Today he sat down from standing without holding onto anything. I don't know if he realised that though! ;) He needs to bend his knees more so that he doesn't bang down so hard on his bum, but that'll come, and he doesn't seem to mind the bump. At least he is no longer bumping so hard and uncontrolled that he then falls backwards and hits his head!

I am so excited to watch him learn things. It's just so wonderful to see. I am so proud of him! I love him so much.

No sign of his nearly-there teeth yet. Today's the day I said I might expect to see them, or tomorrow. I can see now that his left top one next to his new top middley will come through just before the right top middley. It's soooo nearly through! He is doing remarkably well today on the teething. No pain relief and no teethy symptoms, except for masses of heavy drooling and thumb/finger/fist/anything chewing.

Today and yesterday he has been soooo into his books. Books have become his favourite thing (besides the washing machine!) lately. I really love this! I so want to encourage him to love books and enjoy reading. I LOVED books as a child and read constantly. Mummy told me that when she took me shopping in town with her, she would have to steer me around sometimes because I walked everywhere with a book open in front of my nose, even in the shops! I was read to a LOT as a child, and I think those are some of my most treasured childhood memories. I don't remember a time when there weren't bedtime stories, special stories when I was unwell, stories just because it was rainy or cold outside and me and Mummy were being cosy inside, stories that Mummy bought me specially for every summer holiday we went on, for me to read there. And so on. Neil, on the other hand, doesn't remember being read to at all, hates books and reading, is ashamed to admit that he can't read very fluently (although he can read perfectly well, just slowly, and his reading out-loud is a bit stuttery), and has only EVER read comic books. He was obsessed with comics as a child. Which there is nothing wrong with. But I soooo don't want that for Arthur. Books are so special, and reading stories so wonderful in childhood. I think Neil missed out, and I don't want our children to do the same. So I'm thrilled that Arthur is already keen on his books!

Today he has a favourite story. It's one of the ones we got from Bookstart at his 8-month hearing test - "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" It's a hardboard book with cut out stars that have gold and silver shiny holographic backgrounds in, to the nursery rhyme. He got up with Neil at 6 this morning (having woken at 5.30) and when I got up a bit later, Neil said he had read every single one of Arthur's books (he has quite a lot now!) to him, one after the other, because that's what Arthur seemed to want him to do! Today I read him some of the books and he kept putting his hand on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, so I read him that one. When I finished the last page and closed the book, he made this annoyed whimpery sound, and then when I put the book down he started to cry!!! So I figured he hurt himself somehow or something, because he NEVER really cries all of a sudden like that unless he hurts himself. I cuddled him and then saw he was reaching for the book, so I picked it up and opened the first page, and he stopped crying right away and touched the star with his pointy finger! So I read the book through again to lots of pointing fingers and happy sounds. As soon as it was closed, he started to cry again! So I had to read it six times in a row before he was happy enough to finish and do something else! Later on he patted it again so we had to read it four times. Then just before Neil got home, I was on the phone to my mummy when I spotted Arthur wrestling with the pages of the book, trying to keep it open, and making very annoyed grunty sounds! So I read it to him twice while on the phone. Mummy didn't mind. While we were on the phone yesterday (we speak every day), I read Arthur "That's not my monster!" and "That's not my puppy!" between chatting to her! At the end of the call she said, "Thank you for the stories - I really enjoyed them!" Hehe! :)

Tomorrow is Arthur's late 8-month check at last. I am looking forward to it! It's at 10am though, so that will definitely clash with his nap. I hope not too badly though. He might have finished napping by 10 if we're lucky. I really want the Health Visitor to weigh and measure Arthur. He seems so much taller and heavier lately. His head comes up EXACTLY to the underside of his highchair tray when he is standing up underneath it (which he WILL keep doing!), so I should measure that distance and then I'll get some idea. But I'll ask her to do it tomorrow anyway.

Oh and I just booked an appt to have our 3rd (of four) photo session done with Olan Mills. The last photo we had done there is in the first entry (or second?) in this diary. It was done at 5 and a half months I think. Definitely time for the next one! We're having them done on Saturday 27th. That should be fun.

Today I had just put Arthur down for his afternoon nap and the doorbell rang. Fortunately he is well and truly out at that part of his sleep, right after he's settled, so he didn't wake. When I answered the door there was a lady promoting some catalogue thingy, and she looked up at me and said, "Are your parents home?" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This happened last year when I was pregnant (but not very pregnant) and I remember thinking how that would be the last time anyone would do that, since I would be sure to age like TEN years in the first year of motherhood, hehe! But nope. So I said, "Um, *I'm* the 29-year-old homeowner!" She flushed and said how sorry she was (over and over), and I said never mind, it was flattering, etc. I can't think why but I signed up for one of the stupid catalogues (why don't I just say NO?!) which thankfully doesn't have any junk mail or commitment to buy attached, and when she was taking my details she said, "It's Miss, right?" hovering with her pen over the name form. So I said, "Um, no. It's Mrs, and there's a baby asleep upstairs!" Ahhh that brightened my day! ;) She was so embarrassed for some reason, though I wasn't bothered by it at all. She said I could only sign up for the catalogue if I was over 18!!!!! Um. Hello? Last year I got asked for ID in the supermarket when I bought wine (it's over 18 here, not 21). I really do not think I look THAT young. But hey ho. I am quite happy about it really. It used to bug me like crazy but I know it is going to stand me in good stead as the years advance! Not that I care much about looking my age. My mummy has always looked really young for her age, and I look very like her.

Anyway.

I can't think what else. It's suddenly so late! I need to go to sleep. Arthur has been tired enough in the early evening to go to bed before 7pm this week. He has often been asleep by 6.30, which is lovely. He does wake early but it doesn't seem to make a difference if he has a later bedtime. I am just glad for him to get the extra sleep of an earlier bedtime. I'm sure he needs it. Yesterday evening he slept 7pm to 11.30 without waking! Yay Arthur! This evening he woke a few times though - once from a gaspy sobby dream, poor Boo, and the other time because he rolled right to the edge of the bed where we have stuff that he can't roll past, and woke up all upset and frustrated trying to roll over!

I love my little boy. He is the cutest Beanaboo. I have so many silly names for him these days. I just use them as they roll off my tongue. Boo-bannoo is the main favourite. Squifflet is another. Or squiffler. He is my little squiffler :) Or my lil squiffly boy :) I am silly. But I love my Arthur so so so so sooooooo much. Really. But you probably gathered that by now :)

Mobileness and still teething!

I wrote this last night but Diaryland wouldn't let me add an entry till this morning, tsk! Arthur was awake at FIVE TWENTY this morning, urrrgh! I played asleep till 5.30, then Neil lay with him so I could get some more sleep in the spare room. They went downstairs at 6am. We have a rule that he doesn't get out of bed till 6am. Before that it just isn't a human hour! Anyway, I will paste last night's update now - my little man is standing at the desk holding on with his hands waaay above his head so I need to rescue him!

Toooo long since I updated AGAIN! It’s hard to find the time at the moment. Arthur keeps me so busy all day, and sleep has been something of a challenge lately so my evenings aren’t so free for updating my diary as normal. But here I am at last! :) I hate to leave it very long between entries as Arthur is changing all the time and I don’t like to miss writing about any of it as it happens.

Thank you Marlen for always being so excited about each of Arthur’s toothies!! :) I should have thanked you the other two times too! xx

All is well here! Arthur is such a busy boy all the time. He spends most of his time standing these days, and when you put him down on the floor he pretty much always just crawls straight over to a piece of furniture and pulls up on it immediately, and then cruises around babbling and stuff. He’s a lot of fun these days but he is also making me feel more tired for all his new skills! He prefers to be upright all the time, and has started to writhe and screech and do everything in his power to get away from you if you lay him down to do something, like change his nappy or dress him or something. I am having to quickly adapt! Sometimes I can distract him with a toy with my fifth hand (honestly, that’s how many I seem to need for a simple nappy change!) but other times there’s no way I can get it done. He seems soooo much stronger than me already in his stubborn little muscles, and I can’t keep him lying down if he has decided he won’t! So lately I put a lot of clean nappies on him while he is standing at the TV unit or the sofa with a big smile on his face!! He is always happy if he is standing up, but then he has always been that way, even before he was really able to stand properly with us holding him! It’s easier than it was at first, to put nappies and wraps on him standing up! I can even position a fleece liner or hemp booster in them if I have to! He giggles sometimes when I am doing the wraps up while he’s standing, funny boy :) It’s also pretty easy to dress him sitting up, but not the trousers. The boy will not lie or sit still for a second. Or stand still, for that matter!

He is now very stable standing alone for several seconds. He doesn’t wobble, and when he realises he isn’t holding anything, or if he loses his balance a bit, or finishes picking up the thing he was letting go for, he simply puts his hands back on something to steady himself and stays standing or starts cruising somewhere else. Once or twice he has sat down after standing for a few seconds, but if he isn’t holding onto something when he tries sitting down from standing, he goes down pretty hard! Good thing he has a big ole cloth butt to pad him out! He is getting very good at sitting down from standing when he holds onto things though. You can really see him trying to figure it out before he does it too, it’s really sweet!

Today he discovered two new things – the porch, and the bottom of the stairs. Uh-oh! The porch is full of highly unsafe things for a baby like loose DIY tools and other awful clutter!! I need to clear it. Until today the porch was still right there available to him, but it’s like he never seemed to realise it existed. He would even play with some of his toys near the doorway to the porch but never even looked in there. Today all of a sudden he started crawling towards it at high speed, very purposefully! He really does understand the word “No” and his name now. I don’t even know why I’m using the word “No”, as I never really planned to make much use of it in discipline. Hmmm. Maybe I will re-read the Sears’ Discipline Book and find alternative ways. Anyway, he is very good with “No” and my tone when I say his name FOR NOW! He got right to the doorway into the porch and I called from the sofa, “Arthur, no, I don’t want you to go in there.” He was wedged right in the doorway on all fours, but the second I said that, he flopped to his tummy and used his arms to rotate himself right the way round so that he was facing me. His face was all questioning when he looked at me, it was so sweet. I told him good boy and he smiled and looked like he would just rest there where he was. After a few seconds he scrambled back round to face the porch and started crawling again. I said the same thing as before, and again he stopped, turned round in the doorway and listened to me. He waited another few seconds and started off again! In the end I went and got him and distracted him with something else, but hmmm, now he knows the porch is there I really need to clean it up! He’s such a good boy though :)

He has also been playing a lot near the bottom of the stairs before and never seemed to notice them. He has pulled up on the bottom step a few times but that was only to get nearer to the bin, which he LOVES to tip over and empty! It only contains paper waste or tissues or packaging and stuff, so that’s fine, and I always sit with him and help him examine the things inside. He climbs the whole flight of stairs very confidently, but we always take him there and start him on the first straight step (the first 3 steps are bending round a corner, and then the rest of the flight of steps is straight ahead). So today he crawled up to them to look at the bin, but then lost interest and suddenly it was like he had a lightbulb moment when he saw the next step above him! Angled steps around a corner are not so easy as straight steps to climb and he slipped a lot. I had my hand under his bottom if he slipped so that he wouldn’t fall so far as to hurt himself, but I let him slip a little so he could learn from it. He did climb them in the end :) He is very determined!

It’s a good thing I am with him ALL the time, otherwise these new discoveries would be big worries. The bottom of the stairs doesn’t have a high enough post to attach a stair gate so I’ll just have to watch him. Although when Joshua came round last week, we wedged the playnest ring upright in the corner bit of the stairs and it prevented him getting onto the stairs at all (much to his annoyance!), and he’s 13 months and taller and more mobile than Arthur, so I know that will work for a while if I need to use it.

Arthur is getting new teeth AGAIN! He has had that typical “eroded” dent under the whitest part of the gum where a tooth is coming, and from his other three teeth, I know that it’s 3 days from first seeing that dent to seeing the first little white corner of a toothie. This time he is going to get two teeth at the exact same time. The other top middle tooth is coming – the left one (HIS right one, that is), and also the one next to the top middle tooth that has already come through. The “dents” arrived two days ago over both of them, so I think they will arrive within hours of each other, and probably tomorrow or the next day at the latest. He will have five teeth then, three at the top and two at the bottom. After all that waiting, they are really making up for lost time! I am a bit hesitant to think he might get a break after these two though, because the other top one is sure to need to even things up soon after. Maybe after that he will get a break for a while. His top middle tooth looks to be about halfway through now, and it seems so big to me! I love his teeth. He looks so cute :) But then I would say that! ;) He has been teething quite badly since I last wrote here. He has woken and cried a lot in the night, and sometimes still whimpers when I nurse him at night if it’s his teeth that are hurting him. We have given him Calpol a few times here and there. He chews his thumb a lot at the moment, but he never sucks it. He is drooling like never before so I’m sure he isn’t comfy, but soon they will come through and then maybe it will get easier for him.

He is eating really well at last, all of a sudden!!! Yay! Neil took him to the supermarket at the weekend to do the food shopping, and they came back with three jars of Hipp Organic stage 2 baby food for Arthur to try. They got roast pork with potato, veg and apple, cottage pie, and Lancashire hot pot! I don’t know how I missed those when I looked last time I was there. Anyway, I have been putting my new plan into action since Friday – Arthur shares what he wants of my toast in the morning (which is half a crust on a good day, other days he just tastes it and drops it on the floor!), and then his other two meals are in the highchair – for ages now we have been feeding him in the living room on the floor, surrounded by towels! The Health Visitor I saw said to make it less formal, even have him sitting on our laps or something, but we never went that far! Now that he can crawl, when he has had enough (ie, none at all!) he just crawls off with food-smeared hands all over the carpet, and I figured it would be better for him to get used to proper meals if he had a specific place to be for them. Not being able to escape from this place would also be helpful to me! So he also has a proper lunch between 11 and 12 (give or take maybe 15 minutes outside of that time, depending on his naps and activities) – which is now some of this new baby food, or a mashed or partially pureed meal that Neil and I ate the night before. He also now has “tea time” which is usually between 4 and 5pm, again in the highchair, and on Friday when I started this, I decided to give him mashed fruit or something. I had an organic avocado and an organic banana, and he seems to really like both of those individually. I suddenly wondered what he would make of the two mashed together, so I tried it out, and he LOVED it!!! I read that neither of these freeze well, but I had sooo much left over that I thought I might as well try it. I froze 8 very large ice-cubes of the stuff, and Arthur loves it so much that he has had that for tea every day since! When we run out, I think I will try mashing banana with something else for tea. I am happy just giving him a fruity/veggie meal for tea, since he has a proper meal at lunchtime. The avocado and banana is mashed to a lumpy consistency but it is so soft that it’s easy to deal with. Arthur has no trouble with it at all. He chews and swallows it very quickly and opens his mouth for more! So far I have only offered him one icecube of it each time, as he previously NEVER ate anywhere near even half of an icecube of food, but he finishes it every time now! After he finishes it I give him a Farley’s rusk (which we have recently discovered – I LOVE these, and will happily eat Arthur’s leftovers!). He eats maybe ¼ of it. Lately if he isn’t interested in my toast I give him a rusk instead. They are soooo good for getting him used to chewing hard crunchy things before swallowing them, as they dissolve really easily in his mouth. He bites proper pieces off with his new teeth and then spends ages mooching them round his mouth till they are ready to swallow.

For lunch so far he has had the Hibb Organic cottage pie, which is full of herbs and spices and onion and stuff that actually makes food FLAVOURSOME, as opposed to everything else I’ve always offered him. He gobbled down the very first spoonful and opened his mouth for more! He ate 1/3 of a jar (it’s a bigger and taller jar than the stage 1 jars) the first time and today he hate at least another third! He has noooo trouble with the lumps. He has changed such a lot in a short time with his eating.

Okay but the flip side of this is that Arthur is definitely taking less milk. A couple of weeks ago I started to notice him making a new face when he was nursing. After he had been nursing on one side for a while, he would suddenly pull off and make this weird face with his eyes all scrunched shut, almost like when you get a sour face when you suck a lemon. But not quite that sour. I wondered if there was something wrong with my milk at first! He would keep making that face immediately that he tried to go back on that breast, every time. After a couple of attempts, he would start looking like he was going to gag or something, so I stopped offering it. Sometimes if I offered the other side he would feed for just a short while before doing the face again. Anyway, that was like once or twice in the whole week, and now he is doing it more than once a day. I have come to recognise it as his, “I’m gonna puke if I have any more milk!” face!! He just seems to get absolutely full up and can’t take any more. My milk hasn’t slowed down and in fact it seems like my supply has changed in the last month or so, from what I’ve noticed. Finally my breasts have started to seem a little smaller, and softer. They don’t get engorged so much and they rarely feel like they are full of milk. One is usually still fuller feeling than the other if I nursed him with the other one last time. I still leak just as much though. I noticed that he just drinks straight away when he latches on these days. He no longer has to suck till I get my letdown before gulping. It’s literally like my breast is a sippy cup and from the first suck he is gulping lots of milk. Before, that never used to happen. I read that after the first four months (has DEFINITELY taken longer than that with me!), the milk supply changes to supply-on-demand. The breast doesn’t store milk so much, and the feeding system is so efficient that the breast is stimulated to make milk literally AS the baby sucks. Isn’t that just so amazing?! I think that must be what is happening, because sometimes my breasts seem empty and soft to look at, and then he is gulping and gasping (I still get the letdown after a few seconds, but he is gulping from before that) till he finally lets go with that gaggy face! So amazing.

At the moment I know he is getting less milk than he was a couple of weeks ago. He is still getting a lot, but less. He wakes 4-6 times over his 12 hour “night” period, which is a heck of a lot, but at the moment I am almost glad of it because I know he is getting milk and I am getting to nurse him. I love to breastfeed him. I also want to be sure he is still getting PLENTY of milk. I would rather he had the vast majority of his nutrition from breast milk till he is a year old, as that is the recommended way (for good reasons!). Now that he is eating two (and a bit!) times a day, he only nurses for naps, and I never feed him again at the end of a long nap like I used to. He never needs a quick top-up in the middle of the afternoon. I know he is still nursing a ton, but seeing a couple of feeds disappearing is sad for me. It’s the beginning of the end, even though the end might still be years away. Right now I almost wish I could be his source of nourishment for EVER. Well, not really forever, but you know. I am just sad that he really is going to wean one day. Honestly, the amount he nursed up until now and the way he was so disinterested in solids, I simply couldn’t imagine him ever eating food and not breastfeeding one day!! I knew it would happen, obviously, but somehow I never really thought about it enough to accept it. Now I am accepting it, and it is really affecting me more than I expected. When I am nursing him and watching his sweet face and stroking his hair, I want to just cry when I think of this part of our relationship ending someday, and I just wish it would never have to end.

Once he is a year old, I will consider GENTLY starting to cut out a night feed or two, or set a block of time during the night where I will comfort him back to sleep without nursing him. I have been researching on this a lot lately. But I’m not willing to try it till he’s over a year old, however knackered I am in the meantime. His milk is important till he’s one (and then some, but especially in his first year). Also it’s just too soon. He’s still just a baby. If he happens to be a wakeful baby then so be it. I won’t restrict him if he wants to nurse back to sleep every time he wakes. At the moment I just feel so wonderful and blessed when he wakes me to nurse at night. I feel so tired and I wish I could sleep more solidly but the time is going to come too too too soon where he won’t feed at my breast ever again. Ever. That is too sad. So I will savour every last time I nurse him, day or night. Or at least I will try to! It’s hard when I’m tired at night, and I am VERY tired at night at the moment. Lately with his teething he has had nights where we haven’t got to sleep till after 3am, because he has like 3 hours where he literally wakes every 5-15 minutes crying. Poor baby. I am so sad. All of a sudden it is really hitting me that he isn’t going to be my baby for always, and the time is literally zipping by so that “that time” is coming faster than I want it to. I know that’s just how it is, but still….

Anyway.

Today I have carried him a lot, and he leans out from my body a lot to see things and reach for things, and this hurts my arms and back after a while. I haven’t said this here before because I guess I was being all secretive about it for some reason (?!!) but I am sewing a sling at the moment. I never thought I could do such a thing, but I researched slings to see what the best type might be for an exceptionally HEAVY boy of Arthur’s age (he was just over 6 months when I first started searching), and also taking into account that my osteopath says I shouldn’t wear a front or side sling, only a back-carry. Everything seems to point to something like a Mei Tai, and I found a pattern made by a lady whose six month old son was pretty much the same weight and build as Arthur, and she had trouble finding a comfortable sling too! She made alterations to the traditional Mei Tai, to make it comfier and stuff, and made the pattern available online! Yay! So I have graaaadually been working on it. I have so little time to actually sew at the moment though, and I have two unfinished nappies currently waiting to be sewn, plus another new project which is special so I will talk about that separately another time. But the sling too. I have sewn about ¾ of it now though, so not much more to go, and then I can try it out! You can do a front carry in a Mei Tai too, but obviously that wouldn’t work with my back so well. Anyway, I can’t WAIT to wear Arthur again. We used to wear him in the sling every day, and now he never gets to go in a sling. He outgrew his Baby Bjorn at about 4 months old – he is that big!! Seriously, his body stopped fitting into the actual carrier! The clips pressed him in the sides because it was too small and it just did not seem comfy. Plus, ow, on my shoulders. After that we used the Hug-a-Bub more, but it hurts my back since it’s all on the front. So I hope the Mei Tai will really be as good as it sounds for us! I am using up some heavy duty navy corduroy with a print on it that I bought yeeears ago. The inner layer is canvas though, to make it strong. Anyway I am longing to have it finished at the moment because Arthur likes to be held and I like to hold him a lot.

Sooo today I finally just got desperate and pulled out a large piece of printed flannel fabric from my shelves of nappy-making fabric, and folded it about a bit till I got something vaguely usable. Then I tied a knot in it (tight), put it over my head, and positioned Arthur in it on my hip!! It wasn’t the comfiest thing ever invented, but it was instant and involved no sewing, and Arthur was happy and I could hold him without my arms being used much at all for a while. I was so pleased that I took a photo of us in the mirror. That was right before Neil got home, and when he found us with the sling on, he took a photo of us, so here they both are. I'm not too thrilled that the second one makes me look a bit like a sack of potatoes (very confused breasts lately!), but oh well, here it is anyway:

Okay, what else can I tell you tonight? It’s getting late so I need to go soon.

Oh, Arthur is soooo helpful around the house these days, hehe! Yesterday he emptied the entire load of wet washing from the machine, piece by piece! He stood up there when I opened the machine to transfer washing to the tumble dryer, and I reached past him to get an item out, and that started him off. He had no idea that he could actually pull things out like that! I just sat next to him cross-legged on the floor and picked up each item as he dropped it on the floor, making a pile to put it in the dryer! He had a great time, it was so sweet! He found it hard to pull out the big towels and stuff, but boy is he determined! He pulled and tugged and kept on trying until he nearly fell over with the effort, and I helped him with the last little bit of the towels. Also he found it hard to reach the last few items so I put those near to the door for him to grab. I praised him up the whole time of course!

After that I unloaded the dishwasher and he was really eager to “help” me with that too! He pulled up on it straight away, cruised round the edge of the door, and pulled the bottom rack out. Actually he ended up pulling that bottom rack RIGHT out and almost onto the floor (on top of him!) but fortunately it didn’t have anything left in it by then (hence why it was light enough to pull right out!). He was so eager to be involved though. Such a cutie! Here he is helping me:

I love those trousers on him – they are the ONLY pair in size 9-12 months that actually fit him anymore (from Tesco’s – yay for Tesco’s!!) and they are a really generous comfy fit on his cloth bum. Also, I love them because they have the word, “Monkey” written across the bum! ;)

We still haven’t finished our bedroom. The weekend was busier and more sleep-deprived than we thought. We cleared a little bit of clutter but not much. At least the bed is on the floor so he is safe from falling off it now. Arthur has this game he LOVES when I change the bedsheets now that the mattress is on the floor. I lay him on the mattress protector and tuck the top end of a new sheet under the mattress. Then I hold the bottom end with the sheet covering him and shake it about wildly so that the sheet ripples and waves about over him. I make appropriate exciting noises to go with this! Then when the waves stop, I pop my head under the sheet and say, “Boo!” and he laughs and laughs. While the sheet is rippling I can’t see him, but I can see all his hands and feet in the air thrashing about at the sheet underneath, it’s so funny! He squeals and gasps while the sheet ripples. He’s just too cute. Here he is enjoying his sheet game (the first one got gate-crashed by Daddy!):

He banged his head sooooo hard on a square plug socket right after this game though, it was so sad :( He hit his forehead on the corner with all his weight and it left a deep purple dent in his forehead. It looked like he had been stabbed with a pencil or something. He cried sooooo much, my poor Boo. I felt so bad. I nursed him within like 10 seconds of grabbing him up to comfort him, and it’s amazing how that is like magic. He had this awful dent in his head that MUST have hurt, and he was purple from how hard he was crying, and yet the instant I put him to my breast he was quiet and calm. Neil held a cold facecloth on his forehead while I nursed him. He still has a bruise today, but it’s getting better. Poor poor baby.

What else? Neil is going to bed now. I need to go too. Oh but the weekend was a bit special for anniversary-type-things! Saturday marked 18 months to the day since Arthur was conceived. He was conceived on Friday 13th February 2004, the day before Valentine’s Day. That’s the day I ovulated anyway. Friday the 13th is neither here nor there to me, since I think superstition is complete balls. But a special thing to remember for us. And then, no less special, Sunday 14th was our 6th wedding anniversary. We didn’t mark it in any way other than to say Happy Wedding Anniversary. I don’t know why I feel bad saying that, but it’s no biggie for us. It’s just another day, but we do remember our wedding day fondly and marvel at how many years it has been since then, etc. Other than that it really is just another day, and we love each other just the same on the 13th or 15th. As it happened, on our wedding anniversary, we had just had the WORST night’s sleep, and therefore we felt a bit yucky all day, argued twice, and did nothing productive other than play with our sweet boy! But that’s the way it goes sometimes. I feel so laid back about life at the moment. What will be, will be, that kind of thing. I know it has coincided with having spent time praying with Neil about our future. God is so awesome. He treats me so tenderly and parents me so beautifully. I know God is the reason I feel so laid back, and since I am NEVER laid back about anything, I am very grateful!

On Thursday the Health Visitor is finally coming round to do Arthur’s 8-month check. I finally phoned her on Friday, rather peeved at the lack of communication over it! She was really apologetic and arranged to come and see us on Thursday :) I feel like she wouldn’t have got in touch if I had not phoned, tsk. But it’s arranged now, so hooray! I hope she will weigh him too, while she’s here. He feels so heavy to me again, and Neil thinks he has grown again in height.

Okay there was probably more but I have to go to bed. I need to get round to emails soon, and also update my other diary, but hopefully I’ll get to that tomorrow, or at least a start on it! I’m sure I missed out something important but oh well. I’ll update again when I can!

Third toothie photo! :)

See Arthur's THREE teeth?!....

Plus, is he not just a complete cutie?! Ahhh my little love :) He was smiling at me this morning before I changed him out of his pyjamas, so I grabbed the camera. He gives me the loveliest smiles. His new toothie is all through the gum now, and I am just seeing more and more of its "length" as it comes in. I love to see his teeth! He is such a big boy with them! No sign of the other top middlie yet though. I think he's going to be a gappy boy for a while!

Thank you for the messages again, and for the responses to the entry in my other diary - I keep forgetting that they share the same guestbook! I never did get that pregnancy diary guestbook fixed. I kept on complaining to signmyguestbook.com that my guestbook vanished but nobody ever replied. Tsk. So my guestbook is shared by my diaries for now.

Meg, my church is affiliated with New Frontiers (which used to be called NFI in the Stoneleigh Bible Week days, which they used to run). I have heard of Salt and Light - v. similar in style to my church - fabby isn't it?!! I just love my church, I love the style of worship and the relaxed atmosphere and casual clothing and family/studenty based congregation. It suits me down to the ground, and has done since I became a Christian. I remember I picked it as a church to "try out" when I read that it was relaxed and informal with a real sense of family, in the local university's Christian Union church guide :) Of course I had never really BEEN to church before, so I had no idea what to wear. My instinct was to wear smart clothes and I felt like a real lemon when I got there to find everyone comfortably dressed in jeans and things! Anyway, I love my church :) I will be sad to leave it if we move, but I know God will lead us somewhere just right for us, and I will love it all over again. We will have to visit our "old" church sometimes to keep in touch with people. I have never been to another church, as I became a Christian the day I visited this one!

Okay I haven't got much else to say, and in any case my dinner is just about ready. I just wanted to show you my gorgeous boy and his toothie!

A move away from London??....

Thank you for all the lovely messages saying Happy 9 months to Arthur!! :) And to Sam for the advice about baby shoes - I will have to check those links out, thank you!!

Well, after such a big newsy photoey entry yesterday, I suddenly have nothing to say! And ironically this is when I find myself a moment to update, heh. Oh well. I will waffle about not-a-lot then, since I have a moment.

I have a serious blinkie addiction. I think I need help! I replaced the 8 month breastfeeding milestone blinkie with a 9 month one today, and couldn't resist adding 3 new ones. *sigh* Plus I added a couple of others last week. You should see my computer file absolutely bursting with TTC and pregnancy ones all eager to be used in my pregnancy journal, hehe! I am just sniffing them out all over the internet and hoarding them up for when they are appropriate! I love blinkies.

I went to the osteopath today. It wasn't so bad - for once there seems to be a bit of improvement, yay! I think maybe my back is a tad stronger than it was, in the supporting muscles, and when I told her that, she agreed! She can see improvement when she watches me bend this way and that. We get on so well and have so much in common, as she has a little boy who is one month older than Arthur. These days we never stop talking from the moment I get on the table! Seriously, we hardly draw breath. The session is 40 minutes. I really enjoy them. They are usually pretty uncomfortable but I feel glad to be getting stuff done to my back that it needs, and I really look forward to our chats now too! I am still in trouble for not swimming! But she lent me her yoga for pregnancy video, and said that it would benefit my back to do the exercises in it, so I will do that when I can. I also got sent to the chemist afterwards to buy some Tiger Balm to put on my neck, shoulders and lower back 2-3 times a day, urgh! That stuff STINKS. I hope it won't put Arthur off breastfeeding, because seriously, it's overpowering. She said if it does, I should stop using it, or cut back the amount of times I apply it. But I have a lot of muscle pain in those areas that needs fixing.

Dum de dum.

Neil applied for a new job today. I am excited and nervous (as he is too, of course!) to see if he gets it. I proof-read his application the other evening and we fine-tuned it together, then he posted it this morning! So it's DONE. He could get a new job! A complete change of career. It would mean moving away from London, and who knows how soon, if he does get the job. I thought such a thing would make me nervous and depressed, because I have always had that feeling about moving away from where I grew up. But since we prayed about it a few nights ago, I feel so unexpectedly different. So at peace and happy about it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I reckon maybe God WILL have us move away and for Neil to get a new job. I don't know if it's THIS job, but there are others like it which come up from time to time, and he will keep applying for them because that is what he wants to do. He will be doing environmental work, using his geographical skills and putting his degree and diploma into practise at last.

I am soooo glad we prayed about it. The way I am feeling, I am SURE God in it this. I know I would not feel so calm and eager about it on my own. But I would say (sooo weird for me!) that I am almost excited about the move away. We will potentially be heading for Hertfordshire (a couple of hours (ish) north of London). We have a specific town picked out, where the jobs seem to be, and where we have already researched and found a fantastic thriving family church which happens to be one of the same "family" of churches that we currently attend. We also researched schools and found three at the top of the UK league table. The best one is a Beacon School and Neil actually PHONED them up, bless him, and got them to post us their map of their catchment area!!! I feel so wonderfully proud of him. He is such an excellent husband and father, such a great head of this family. He really looks out for all our interests. He didn't even tell me he had researched the church and schools, etc, until he was sure he wanted to go for a job in that area.

So we got the map, and then researched the property market in the catchment area. It's really important to us that Arthur goes to a good school. I know he is going to be bright and have a ton of potential, and I am a fantastic example of a bright person with tons of potential who totally flopped on the school-front, and ended up with all sorts of emotional issues as a result. I don't want that for Arthur. So schools are important to us. I want a place where I don't have to push push push for him to get what he needs, where it's all just there for the taking and where he will be encouraged at his own pace, so that there doesn't need to be any pressure on him, or obvious evidence for him to see of his parents ranting at the school that their child isn't being adequately stretched. I have a lot of messy experience in my own memory banks that I want to be careful to avoid, or at least be more sensitive about. I want him to enjoy school, every part of it. The learning, social life, everything. I want him to be happy with himself no matter what he turns out to be, and never to feel he has a mark of potential that he needs to hit or else it's a miss, all the time.

Anyway. It's a great school. We were amazed to find plenty of houses for sale in the surrounding residential area, and it seems to be a lovely area. Because we are selling a London property and moving out, we found out that we will be able to afford a very nice 3 or 4 bedroom detached house!!!! That is crazy!!! But I am breathless with excitement about it, after going online and seeing some of the houses up for sale there at the moment. It is beginning to feel more and more like that is THE place we were always meant to raise our family at. It feels so RIGHT, and that's a rare thing for me to feel, so I am pretty confident. I don't know if Neil will get this job, though he's super adequately qualified and it's a junior role. I think there are several going actually. He will take a significant pay cut, but we will be living cheaper out of London and buying a property a little cheaper too, so I think we will be fine.

I am so excited to get set up in the house that Arthur will always know as his childhood home!! And to have more children there. I moved to this part of SW London (from another part further north) when I was 10 months old. I have only ever seen this place as my home. It's weird right now to think that Arthur will have the same feelings for a place that we don't even know yet. It's like a story book that I know will be exciting and thrilling and joyful, despite any challenges, and you know when you're a little child and your parents are reading you a BIG story book at bedtime, only it's so big that it's like a few pages each night, so that it takes FOREVER to get through the book? And you just look forward to each storytime to hear what happens next? Our life is starting to feel like that. I love that. I feel so blessed! God is so good to us.

Anyway I don't know when all this might happen, but I wanted to write about it as it's like a biiiig part of our lives starting up. It will be the biggest change we've known I think. Bigger even than becoming parents. Or maybe equal to it. And that was BIG!!! ;)

I am tired. Arthur has wanted to be held all day, poor Boo. He is feeling a bit delicate I think, with his big big toothie still pushing through. Almost the whole width of it is through the gum now, but he has a bit of nappy rash and some runny poo today, and drooling gallons of drool everywhere. Today when he woke from his nap and lifted his head to smile at me, I saw a patch of drool on the sheets the size of his whole head!!! Poor baby Boo. Those top middlies are pretty nasty I think, for most babies, from what I am reading. I keep telling him he will be very glad of them soon enough! I hope he feels better soon. He is just quite clingy and whiney and gets very upset very easily. Like if he's reeeeally tired and ready for a nap, where he would normally just get a bit cranky and maybe start crying kind of half-heartedly if I can't get him to bed right that second, today he is just sobbing and wailing like his whole world is falling apart, and he has tears running off his chin :( It's soooo sad to see him like that and to hear his little breaths catch in his chest. He does this little whimper-whilst-panting thing that is particularly pathetic, and it makes my heart try to wrench itself out of my body to reach him, if I am doing something like driving the car and can't stop to cuddle him better. I do love him so terribly much.

I try to give him extra giggle times when he is sad like that with tiredness or teething. I like to balance it out for him where I can! I think it's as much to soothe ME though, to hear his squeals of happy laughter after a pre-naptime 5-minutes of such sad sobbing.

The stair gates that I ordered from Kiddicare arrived today! Along with Arthur's first wooden puzzle. It has farm animals that lift out and you fit them back in the shapes they came from. Arthur finds them good to teethe on, but then he is a little young for puzzles yet! I want a shape sorter. Then I will try to lay off the baby toy obsession for a while, hehe! Anyway, the stair gates. They are BabyDan wooden ones, and I really like them. One is for our bedroom door so that it's eventually a safe room for him to be playing or napping in, if I have to take a shower or something important where I can't keep a safe enough eye on Arthur. I would need to be near enough for him to hear me though - I wouldn't want to put him in there to play and then disappear off downstairs for ages! I know lots of babies who wouldn't mind that for a while, but Arthur likes to see and reach me at all times! He plays well and independently if I'm in the room, and interacts quite well with other babies, but it's a different story if I'm not in the room. Which is fine by me.

The other stair gate would be useful on the bottom of the stairs, if only we had bannisters to attach it to! Oh dear. Another good reason to move asap! ;) I also can't wait to have a lovely garden for Arthur to go out and roam around and play in. Ours is horrible and has waist-high thistles in it, and cardboard boxes all over the very grimy patio. And car fumes over the fence. Bleurgh. We have never used it for anything except to hang washing out in the old days before it got too overgrown to get to the line! When we were at Jemma's house for Jaya's party, her garden was so nice and spacious, and the little ones were so busy and happy in it, and it contained such lovely activities for them (like the swing set and stuff), that suddenly I realised what Arthur was missing, and wanted a garden for him. So a move would serve that purpose too. Although we will have to do something to our garden in order to sell the house!

Okay it's time I thought about eating some dinner, so I think I will finish this for now. Ohhh but that reminds me! About a month ago people started saying more and more that I had lost weight and stuff, and I hadn't checked my weight in ages, so I jumped on the scales and found that I weighed 8.5 stone!! Yay! I have lost almost 3 stone (14lbs to a stone for the U.S. readers) since the end of my pregnancy. I was 7 stone 10lbs at the beginning of pregnancy (though I went down to 7 stone with morning sickness, yuck!) which is actually lighter than ideal for me, so I only wanted to go down to 8.5 stone after the birth. And here I am! I hadn't even noticed!! I think I had started to notice that my clothes are a little more baggy though. But I don't quite fit in my pre-pregnancy jeans yet. I don't think I ever will if I manage to maintain this weight - and that's what I want to do. I think this is a much healthier weight for me, for the energetic task of being a mummy! Especially since I am still breastfeeding Arthur such a lot, and hope to have more babies soon. I think the breastfeeding is the reason actually. Not the fact that I'm doing it, but the sheer AMOUNT of milk that I'm making and he's taking. It's just using up my own supplies! I am a tad nervous that I will lose too much weight as he continues to nurse a lot, as he is a big boy and gets all his nutrition from me still. My fat stores from pregnancy are all used up I think, so now my daily intake is the only fuel. I have never really eaten to lose weight since my pregnancy so I'm a bit worried that it's falling off too fast now. I am trying to make sure I eat big enough meals and trying to have two cooked meals a day instead of a sandwich lunch and a cooked meal for dinner. And desserts aplenty, haha! I love dessert :) If I have to go up to full fat milk, I will. I drink semi-skimmed and prefer it, but when I was too thin/light 8 or 9 years ago, my dietitian put me on a high calorie diet (which took MONTHS to make any difference), including gold cap Jersey milk! It took me a long time to adjust to the amount of cream in it and tolerate it okay, but it made semi-skimmed milk seem like water in comparison when I switched back! Sooo I'll do that if I have to. I like milk :)

Okay, need food and water and to peep in at my sleeping boy and feel my heart melt into a gooey thing as I gaze at him. I love watching him asleep. I could watch him allll the time if only I didn't have to sleep and eat and pee.

So I am going now. No photos today, wow! I will update again when I can! :)

Happy 9 months to my Arthur-Boo!

Arthur is 9 months old today!! Here he is being a big 9-month-old boy this morning!...

His hair is so funny! It’s getting really thick and longer all the time, but it STILL stands up on top! Jenn, don’t worry, I am not offended by your comment about his hair looking fuzzy! I love his hair :) The weird thing is his hair seems to be totally straight, but just insistent on standing bolt upright on top! He even has a “flat top”, because after it has stood up, the ends of his hair curls towards the back of his head! I have no idea why. The back and sides are flat on his scalp and straight hair, so I don’t think he has curly hair or anything. Although now that the sides are getting thicker, I do notice they “fuzz” up sometimes. Hmmm. He COULD have curly hair. My daddy has very curly hair – he had ringlets as a baby and when he had long hair in the 70s. There’s lots of curly hair on my side (only a half-hearted wave in my own though!) but no curls or waves of any sort on Neil’s side.

Arthur has now been outside of my body longer than he was in it, by three days! My pregnancy was 40 weeks and 4 days in gestation, and Arthur was conceived on day 14 of my cycle, so he was in there exactly 38 weeks and 4 days, from fertilisation to birth (what an amazing process!). Today he is 39 weeks old. How amazing! It feels SUCH a long time! And yet how quickly it has all gone by. Or rather, how quickly I have suddenly found myself with a NINE-month-old!!

I wish more than ever that I had posted those photos I’m behind on earlier, because now I have new photos and the others are getting older and older and less and less relevant. But I love them so here they are – they were taken last week:

Arthur likes to sit in front of the fridge now that I have put our Simpsons fridge magnets down at his eye-level (well, crawling eye-level anyway!). He just crawls right up to it, and sits himself there for a while! He always used to love it when we held him in front of them when he was littler, so now they are for him to look at whenever he wants to plonk himself in front of them!

His favourite thing in the house is still the washing machine:

He can lie or sit in front of it for ages watching the washing go round, and not get bored or distracted! Funny boy :) He always makes a beeline for it if he hears it from another room, and whether it’s on or empty or not, he always makes sure it’s the first thing he looks at when he crawls into the kitchen and puts his head around the doorway! So sweet :)

Oh oh, I forgot to say before, but I discovered Robeez baby shoes!!! I heard about them here and there online, and didn’t give them much thought, until the last time we were at church and Arthur was crawling and trying to stand on the hard hall floor. It was not the cleanest floor with alllll the people walking over it, and it was cold and he kept slipping too. I wished I had a shoe for him to wear that would be non-slip, protective, cute, but completely and utterly flexible for him to develop normally with walking and so on, and for his comfort. And then those Robeez popped into my mind. Plus I think I saw Joshie wearing some at church that day, but I can’t be sure from a distance. Soooo I went online and found them, and after I read all the benefits, etc, I ordered a pair in size 6-12 months. I think they are too big for Arthur but I was pretty sure the size 0-6 would be too small. Later I found a pair of 0-6 month Robeez on eBay, brand new and with a cute Monkey design!! So I bid and I won, for a third of the normal price, yay! Arthur does fit in them, but he is pretty much growing out of them already. That’s okay though, I will just put them aside for the next baby :) The 6-12 month ones arrived a couple of days later, and I love them. He will fit in them now, although they look big on him. Anyway, I am so glad to have them. They are just what he needs when out and about and soooo flexible. I can’t find anything like them in the shops. Here is Arthur modelling his new Monkey Robeez – note that he was bored of me taking photos by this stage (had taken several already!) and decided to keel over on his side, completely squashing poor Monkey whose paws you can see poking out from under him!! Hehe :)

Arthur pulls up everywhere now and cruises around the room. Here he is at the TV unit, looking at his own photo! He wanted to touch it all the time, and now he is bored of that and just pulls it over every single time he gets his hands on it! *sigh* Anyway, it was very cute before the pulling over stage! He likes to stand against that unit and pat the TV screen, or cruise to the footstool next to it and pull each paper off it one by one (we dump our post and papers there to be sorted – need to change this now!). Or he spends time with his photo (hehe!) or plays with the wooden coasters up there. He likes it when the sun is shining through the window, because it shines on the surface of the unit and he touches the bright spots on the surface and stares into them. He’s so funny! Here he is with his photo, and playing with a wooden coaster:

Yay, I think that’s all the photos I meant to post before!! :) I have lots from today though.

Let’s see, what news do I have lately? I’m sure there is lots, because I have been updating less often than usual, and when I HAVE updated I haven’t had time to say all the things I wanted to say. But my brain has gone blank, ugh. I am super tired. Arthur’s nights are not great at the moment, and I am getting maybe 3 or 4 hours of broken sleep each night. Not so great! But I’m not ready to work on his nursing sessions at night, etc, yet. I’m still willing to sacrifice my sleep at the moment, so he can get milk and comfort whenever he wants at night. He doesn’t eat well enough for me to do otherwise yet, and that’s okay. I’m encouraged that he IS taking a little more food than he used to, so I am happy enough with him taking it very slowly and gradually. I know he’ll eat and wean eventually, and really this is WAY early to be pushing on either of those things. I don’t even want him to wean off the breast for a year or more yet.

I have finally started him on thicker purees and lumpier foods. I got a jar of organic stage 2 stuff from the supermarket but when I got it home I didn’t want to give it to him. I don’t know. It has 22% whole milk in it, which doesn’t thrill me, even though if they say it’s from 7 months + it should be fine. I just don’t want to give him that. So instead I started blending our meals in the mini-blender, which is what I always wanted to do anyway, and making the consistency thick and with tiny lumps and pieces in. I don’t add water, but then it’s things like chicken, potato and carrot, or last night it was spaghetti bolognese! I cooked the mince through and then added tomatoes, and put some of those in the blender before I added the big seasoned sauce that we have. It’s lazy and shop-bought (but super yummy!) so I wouldn’t give it to Arthur. Then I added a half-teaspoon of tomato puree to the blender, and when the pasta was done I added some of that. And some cooked carrot. And bjjjjjzed it up and voila!! It tasted great to me, even without the normal herbs and stuff that is in normal bolognese sauces. I think it was the tomato puree that did it. Anyway, so that made four ice-cubes plus today’s lunch for him. He ate it fine. He ate the chicken meal fine too. He didn’t seem crazy about the new consistency but he didn’t have any trouble with it. He mashed it about in his mouth and then swallowed it without difficulty. He eats such tiny amounts though, and sometimes every single spoonful is a battle. He only really eats a teaspoonful of food on a good day, usually less, in total.

Yesterday I mashed a banana with the last Heinz organic puree left to use up – pear and pineapple. It made a good gooey-but-lumpy consistency and he seemed really interested in eating it! Yay! He ate maybe 8 little baby spoonfuls!!! I never saw him eat that much in one sitting before. I gave him the rest today and he ate about the same amount.

I think he must be getting more solids than I thought, because he is doing some serious poo! It’s not breastmilk poo anymore, and it’s um, well – you really don’t need to know this, but oh well! – pretty chunky and sticky and yucky. He MUST be getting solids if the poo is like that, surely? Even when he first started taking bits of purees and I knew they were going through him by the smell and sight of his poos, they were never this solid. Maybe it’s the introduction of carbs? Well, it’s an encouraging sign anyway.

Today was the first day that I offered him two actual meals instead of one meal and various finger foods at other times. I shared my breakfast with him (finger food) as usual but he really doesn’t do anything with that, so I don’t count it as a meal for him. But he had spaghetti for lunch, and the fruit for tea, and half a rice cake afterwards too :) So that is good. I am starting to feel a bit uncoordinated with the breastfeeding though, as he starts to eat food a bit more regularly. I am used to just offering him the breast whenever – I don’t even keep track. He is happy and it’s fine by me. But now I don’t want to complicate his new eating and fill him up too much, and at the same time I don’t want to hold back toooo much on the breastfeeding, because I want him to still have mostly breastmilk till he’s 12 months old. Still with a good intake of other food though, but plenty of breastmilk still. Now I don’t know when to nurse him and when not to. It’s weird and not too nice-feeling, but oh well. It’s how things go I suppose, when your little one grows up.

He is doing so well. He is such a lovely little boy. I keep on getting just overwhelmed with how much I love him. It’s toooo much sometimes! Well, not too much, but you know. He gives cuddles and kisses spontaneously now, just out of the blue sometimes. He’s very cuddly. He climbs on my lap for cuddles sometimes, and I love holding him squished against my front with his arms squeezing me so tight around my neck and his little soft fuzzy head pressed into my cheek. I always loved feeling him close to me, but it takes on extra preciousness when it’s HIS choice and initiated by him. It’s such a wonderful feeling. His cuddles usually last about 5 seconds, all still and close, and then he is climbing over me again, off to do something new! Sometimes he cuddles for much much longer, like when he is tired or has hurt himself or something. I hold him close like that for as long as he will let me. It always ends too soon, no matter how long he lets me cuddle him for. I know it will disappear too soon, and he will find it gross if I hug him close at the school gates or whatever. I know one day I might only see him for mealtimes because he might spend the rest of his time with friends or in his room. I will savour each and every second of his precious cuddle time while I can, even now when he’s this little. Every individual second of it is so precious to me and time is already ticking. Each cuddle matters so much to me and I feel sad that my brain isn’t capable of making a crystal clear memory log of each and every hug, because it means that someday I won’t even REMEMBER that precious squidge my little one just gave me or how his cheek just felt against mine. That’s so sad to think about. I love him so much.

Today and yesterday Arthur has been kind of easily upset and clingy. I think he is still having trouble from that new tooth, like the last two. It’s so big, that top middle one, that there is still only half of its width showing through the gum! So he has a lot of work to do with that one. I can see it more clearly today. You can’t see it in photos yet though. I took one today from a good angle when Arthur was giggling at me on the bed after his nap. I was snuffling and munching on him! :) He likes to be snuffled! His top gum just looks pink and a bit swollen, and you can’t really see the new toothie at all, but it’s the middle right one as you look at him. The only part of the tooth that has come through so far is the half nearest to the middle of the gum. But yeah, you can’t really see it. But I’ll post the pic anyway :)

I love snuffling that boy! I could honestly eat him all up! ;) If I blow open raspberries on any part of him, he ripples, and the MOST satisfying parpling noise bursts forth!! He really is almost edible. The best noisy raspberry areas are his tummy, his armpits (new discovery!) and his thighs. He is one squidgy boy! :) He squeals with laughter when I do his armpits! I also eat his ribs one at a time with my lips over my teeth, working my way upwards and making eaty noises, and he writhes about all over the bed, slapping at me with his arms and flinging his legs about, and laughing and squealing till he hiccups. It’s the most lovely thing. I am so blessed to be the one to do all this.

*sigh*

Let’s see, what else? Arthur is getting much more helpful in the kitchen these days, hehe! He “helps” me empty (and load) the washing machine, now that he can stand at it. He is much more secure standing there now. He can reach and fiddle with the buttons and dials without wobbling and without me having a hand on his back to support him, and he can hold on to the machine with one hand whilst playing with the door, and he can lean right in and toss the washing about inside!....

He is so intent and serious when he does this, it’s so funny! He does like to take things out of the machine that I am putting in DIRTY though, which is not quite so helpful, but I guess he doesn’t understand that! ;) He also “helps” me fold the laundry now too:

But that usually doesn’t last long before he’s bored and crawling all over my neat piles of clean washing! It’s so cute how he really wants to take part in whatever I am doing around the house at the moment. It’s so nice that he can just choose to crawl on up and get involved when he feels like it. If he doesn’t like being left in the living room for a moment while I empty the tumble dryer in the kitchen, he just crawls in and “helps” me! It’s lovely :)

He is cruising quite well now in both directions. I noticed for the first week or so that he would only cruise to the left, but all of a sudden he started cruising to the right, and faster than to the left too! A new thing he did twice today was to stand holding onto his toy basket with me sitting directly behind him, and then let go with one hand, rotate his torso to face me, take hold of me with his spare hand, and walk his feet round to face me before letting go the basket and transferring the other hand to me! He cruises gaps of about a foot between the furniture, between the armchair and his toy basket, the sofa and the TV unit, the stairs and the other sofa, etc. It’s very weird to see him standing at a different piece of furniture to the one I saw him at before I looked away to set my glass of water down somewhere safe or something!

Arthur has bitten me a few times with his new teeth. Ugh. Twice on my nipple. But those were sort of my own fault because on those occasions I was hoping to nurse him to sleep and I think he happened to be not that hungry. I read somewhere that babies are more likely to bite when they are no longer hungry on the breast, especially at the same time as teething. Still, that doesn’t make it okay, so I put my breast away and told him, “No biting!” as sternly as I could, and moved away from him for a few minutes. We use the same tactic if he bites us anywhere else, which he has done a few times. He sometimes bites us on the shoulder when we are holding him, or once or twice he crawled up to us and bit us on the leg as he was pulling himself up. Every time he gets a stern, “No biting!” and is put down firmly. He didn’t bat an eyelid at this at first, but now he is taking more notice. I think he is recognising it as a little discipline, because he starts to protest a bit when he is put down. He is biting less now though. I am dreading the (hopefully!) rare occasion when he bites me with a full set of top and bottom middle teeth! Yeeps. It hurts soooooo much more than I imagined it would, and Arthur isn’t even a strong biter. He just nips me a little, for a second. He never bites down really hard, but still it takes my breath away and makes me want to do anything to get his teeth off me! Last time he bit me on the nipple I wanted to cry. Ow. But thankfully it has only been 2 or 3 times in all, and he is getting the message not to bite, I hope.

He was due to have his 8-month check with the Health Visitor but I was told they are running behind on the 8-month checks when he went for his hearing test. They still haven’t contacted me though (apparently I’m waiting for an invite) so I think I will have to ring and find out what’s going on, as he’s 9 months old now! I know it’s not a vital check and it’s just making sure he’s progressing fine for his age (which I know he is), but I still want him to have his checks when he’s at the appropriate age. Just because.

What else new? Oh Arthur is letting go a lot more now. He can stand for 2 or 3 seconds without support, but he has only done it 3 times so far. Before that, it was one wobbly second and then a bump on the bum! But today he stood for those few seconds because he let go and didn’t notice, and when he realised he simply put his hands back on me or the sofa, and continued what he was doing. So that’s much better :) I feel sure he will walk early, like the physio thought. But I was talking to my mum on the phone, and she got out my baby book (I LOVE that she kept this!) and told me that I was sitting at 5 months, crawling at 6, pulling to stand at 7, and standing alone at 9 months, but I didn’t actually WALK alone until 13 or 14 months. So Arthur could still wait a while, despite his fast changing development at the moment. My granny told me that my daddy walked at 13 or 14 months too. Mummy took her first confident steps at 9 months though, so who knows. I don’t think that bit is hereditary though. It’s so interesting to me to hear all the family stories of when we all did things, now that I have a little one! I hope Arthur walks earlier than later, because of the benefit for his feet. I think they are starting to look maybe a fraction straighter again now that he has been up on them a lot for a couple of weeks. I know it will make me one busy frazzled mama when he does start walking (!!) but oh well. It will happen soon enough one way or the other, and I’d put up with early frazzling for his feet to get straight quicker.

The new bed arrangement is working well so far. We are far from finished with the bedroom though, but it will have to wait till next weekend to continue, as the only time we really get to work on it is evenings, and Arthur is asleep in there then. There is too much for him to get into and it’s not safe, if I am trying to tidy and sort in there and thus not keeping such a good eye on him. I can’t wait till that room is clear and containing 2 items of furniture and a large floor-bed! Arthur still tries to stand up on the mattress against the wall, like he used to when he wanted to see out of the window, only now the mattress is sadly 2 feet lower than it used to be, so there is no chance of him seeing out! Sad really, because he had just managed to reach the windowsill with his fingers whilst standing on the bed, and he could peep over the top and ooh and ahh at the world outside! Of course I still lift him to see out, but it’s a sad thing when a boy still looks for something he enjoyed that isn’t there any more, as though he’s saying, “I KNOW there was a window here the last time I looked!”

Wellll, what else? I have an osteopath appt tomorrow. I haven’t managed to do my exercises as often as I should have, ugh. I really need to fix my back because it hurts most of the time, but it’s being very slow to get better. Probably it would get better quicker if I did the exercises more often, and put ice on my back the 2-5 times a day that the osteopath told me to! But I don’t find the time to even pee most days, and then all of a sudden it’s bedtime and I forgot during the evening, and there we go.

Katie and Joshua came round today! It was so nice to have visitors!! Joshie is 13 months old now, but it was so nice because he and Arthur have much more in common now than they did a few months ago. He crawls super fast and stands alone for a short time, and he can reach the doorknobs where Arthur can’t yet. And he climbs the stairs much more efficiently than Arthur! But otherwise they are doing the same things – crawling, pulling up, cruising, standing, etc. They were interested in all the same toys today, but Josh can push the top down on the spinning thing to make it go, and Arthur just gives it a pat and an expectant look, bless him! ;) I find it so funny when he does that – he has a lot of toys that “go” when you wind them up or press them or whatever, and he is really getting the hang of pressing things like buttons to make things respond, but where you have to actually push something or turn something, he doesn’t have the dexterity yet, so he just pats it sharply in the right spot and then snatches his hand back and waits with a very expectant look! It’s so cute! He has a crab that crawls sideways to a funny tune every time you push down on its shell, and he is just beginning to get the hang of that now. The poor crab always ends up on its back though, claws flailing about and music tinkling, because Arthur has flipped it over and sits relentlessly patting it to make it react!! Hehe!

He loves to knock anything down that I stack up for him, like the stacking cups or a tower of wooden bricks. He just cannot resist a tower of bricks! It even works to deter him from something he shouldn’t be doing, if I build a tower across the room from him and draw his attention to it! The pull is so strong, he can’t resist crawling over and knocking it down! He has started to delicately take the top cup off the stack now, and is very interested in things “in” and “out” of containers. I put a brick in a cup and he tries to get it out. Usually he gets impatient and flings the cup around till the brick flies out across the room! Or he tips the cup upside down till the brick falls out if he can’t reach it properly.

I think he might have clapped a little today when I was clapping randomly (I’m strange, I know!), but he stopped when I looked over at him and wouldn’t do it again, so I’m not sure. He prefers to watch me clap, it never ceases to thrill him!

It’s getting soooo late and I’m getting a headache so I think I should go. I have so much to write about my little man! I have hardly had time to write anything about me or Neil or anything! We are pondering a move away from London, and I wanted to talk about that more here, but at least I talked about it some in my pregnancy diary (which seems to have become a “thinking about trying to conceive” diary again!). So it’s “out there”. I hope I’ll have time to write more about my feelings and stuff on that soon. It’s a biggie for us, and we are praying about it. Which is so nice – to be praying together. We don’t do that enough and it feels so wonderful when we do.

Okay that is all for now. I think that’s all the photos too – at last! I will update again as soon as I can. Still so behind on emails, I’m really sorry to those I owe emails to! Thank you all so much for the lovely guestbook messages and notes lately. Julie, I am still interested in the flybabyness! Mallory, believe it or not, I got ALL of Arthur’s clothes that he has ever worn from eBay! Except for a few little outfits and the odd pack of vests, etc. Such a big saving, and such lovely clothes! I would highly recommend it – you often find new things there and there is such a vast choice compared with the shops. Not to mention the bargains! ;) Meg, a bed full of children will not prevent the parsnips! There are lots of other rooms in a house…. ;)

Sleep. Must sleep! Night night :)

Jaya's birthday party!!

Yay, I’m back from Jaya’s party!!

Oh my gosh, I had the BEST time!! I can’t imagine what I was nervous about! Jaya is soooo lovely, and Jemma and Stu are honestly just about the nicest people I ever met. Neil and I are kind of shy and don’t socialise too easily, but we both felt right at ease the moment we walked into the garden where everybody was. We arrived just in time for the naming ceremony, which was really lovely! I’m sure Jemma will write all about it with photos, but I did get her permission to post some of the photos I took today, even though she won’t get a chance to update straight away (she will have a lot of cleaning up to do! Plus the party is still going as I type this! It’s going to be a late night for them!).

Jemma’s family and friends were really lovely. It was so easy to chat with them and feel at home. Arthur was terribly quiet and serious for most of the time though. He seemed quite stunned by so many people all so close-up, hehe! He was tired though, because he only slept 20 minutes for his afternoon nap and it was earlier than usual so that we could get to the party on time (ish!). He drooled a lot and lots of the photos involved Arthur chewing his hand, but guess what we found when we got home?! Yup, the tiiiiniest corner of toothie number 3 is just out enough to feel with my finger, but I can’t actually see it yet. It must have come through at Jaya’s party! Tomorrow I’m sure I’ll get to see it. There is a lot more of it to come through yet though. He has been a bit unsettled today, so maybe that is why. No huge crying teething fits though, so that’s something!

Okay, I have a ton of party photos for you, of course! Here is Jemma holding my enormous (and remarkably pasty looking, against lovely tanned Jemma!) boy:

He loved her hat. *I* loved her hat!! Didn’t she look lovely today?!

Jaya went for a nap right after the ceremony, and Arthur got on with the business of trying out all her birthday presents! ;)

He looks like he was about to whack poor Jack in that ball pool, but he was actually reaching out for a birthday card that Jack was playing with! There were quite a few other babies there, and it was nice for Arthur to meet them and play a bit with them. The inflatable car full of balls was so funny – it was full of baby BOYS having a good time, hehe! Arthur pulled up and stood against the side a few times, but it was kind of soft so he had to keep sitting down again. Jack and Oscar (the other babies in the photo) were more advanced than Arthur with standing and stuff, as they were about Jaya’s age I think. He got knelt on a few times but didn’t seem to mind, bless him! I think he needs to socialise more. He seems so agog at other people and babies that I wonder if he is just not used to it enough? Hmmm. Anyway, so today was good for him I think.

Then I changed Arthur’s nappy and he was perfectly sociable and smiley once he was half-naked and scrunching his bits again, hehe! That boy just loves to have his nappy off! He will smile at ANYONE then! After that I nursed him for a short while because I figured it had been a few hours since I nursed him down for his nap, and he was soooo distracted by the party sounds that he kept pulling off and exposing me, but oh well. I think he got some milk in him so that’s the main thing! Then Jaya woke from her nap and Arthur got to meet her properly at last! I was so excited for the two of them to meet! They were so cute together, and at one point they crawled up to each other face to face and paused there for a moment, looking at each other. Me and Jemma were snapping away with our cameras like paparazzi, hehe!! I think she will have some very similar photos but here are my favourites :)

Aren’t they cute?!! Jaya looked just gorgeous today in her christening gown which she wore for the ceremony, and so sweet in the little white dress in these photos. In that third photo, Arthur was smiling at Jemma, who was standing right next to me taking a photo! He knows to smile for the camera, but I guess he had to choose which one to smile for, hehe! Ahhh we had such a nice time! I was sad to have to go home, but it was right that we did because Arthur was soooo tired and it was almost his bath-and-bed time. It took us just under 30 minutes to drive home, and he slept all the way. He was so sleepy when we got home and cried big tears when we changed his nappy that we decided not to bath him tonight, and he went straight to bed. That’s when I found his toothie :) He was such a good boy today. Here is one last photo of Arthur wearing Stu’s hat! Stu popped it on his head and Neil happened to be there with the camera! :) See, he is chewing his hands a lot, cutting his new toothie.

Well I am beat. I have a headache, and I have now had a headache for 5 days running I think. Two of those days it was continuous all day, and through the night in the middle, every time I woke. Ugh. I don’t know if maybe I’m not drinking enough, or maybe I’m just too tired. Arthur has been waking a lot at night lately, and my restless leg syndrome thingy is really bothersome at the moment, but it’s a vicious cycle because the more tired I get, the more it bothers me, and it prevents me from sleeping so round and round we go. Also I have been nauseous through most of the day for a few days running now. If I didn’t KNOW that I am not pregnant, I would be running to test by now! I even had pubic bone pain on two separate days in the last week, which I haven’t felt since my pregnancy (or maybe in the first couple of weeks after the birth too). So that’s weird. But I had a mega period since we last had parsnips, and my temps are definitely not pregnant temps. So that can’t be it. But it’s weird.

I have photos of Arthur still, from a few days ago, but I think I will finish this entry now and leave it as a special entry about Jaya’s party. I’m so glad we were able to go! I hope that we can meet up again soon. I am all buzzing from having had such a great time and meeting such lovely people!! Yay :)

Picnic photos and party excitement!

Aaaaaaargh, one hour till we leave for Jaya's birthday party/naming ceremony, and I'm in a huge flap of what-shall-I-wear?!! I hope Jemma is doing okay today. I know she had a cold a couple of days ago, bleurgh, and about 50 million things to get done before today! The invite said "stylish attire" and I am not remotely stylish! But I'll see what I can dig up to make myself vaguely presentable! But more to the point, what will Arthur wear?! Neil is out buying wrapping paper (I can't believe I forgot that!) and I just nursed Arthur to sleep. He napped an hour and a half this morning which is great! We had a bad bad bad night last night. My restless legs were ridiculously restless, and I couldn't sleep till 1.45am and then Arthur woke at 2am to nurse, and I couldn't sleep till after 3am and then he woke again at 4am. And 5.30am. Yeurgh. Wonderful Neil got up with him at 6.30 and I nursed Arthur at 8ish, and then zonked out till my boys woke me at 11!!! Yay! So I caught up on my sleep a little, but we didn't go to church. Oh well. Probably for the best, with a busy busy afternoon ahead!

I am so nervous/excited about the party! I get nervous about meeting people, even ones that I know and love from afar, and I am especially nervous about a large gathering of people who know each other but who I don't know at all. Glad I will have my boys with me and Jemma and Jaya and Stu! I will personally kick my own butt if I manage to forget my camera - I will be so peeved! So I fully intend to take the camera and snap lots of photos! I'm sure Jemma will have loads of photos to post in her diary of the day, but I will post some too (hope she doesn't mind!).

We did get a lot done on the bedroom yesterday! A lot of stuff went in the loft, and I sorted the books from the underbed drawers and stuff. We moved the wardrobe of Arthur's clothes into the spare room, and took our big bed apart. And the cot is finally in pieces in the loft. I want to dance a lil jig about that one, heh. ;) So now we have a temporary arrangement in the bedroom whereby the kingsize mattress is on the floor at last (yay!) and we've surrounded it with soft pillows incase Arthur rolls off. He has already climbed off it several times today and come to no harm even when he has gone head first or lost his balance! I'm so relieved to have the bed on the floor at last. We now need to swap the mattress with the triple wardrobe and tidy the clutter and stuff on the floor. And buy and install a stairgate. And hoover the floor. I am going to put new curtains in too - the ones I got from eBay but never finished taking the hems up.

The bed looks soooo much bigger on the floor without the frame, and Arthur looks soooo tiny all curled up on his side fast asleep on there in the evening! He's so lovely.

Okay if I am going to post a load of photos from today in my next entry (I hope!), I had better get caught up with the ones I STILL haven't posted from earlier in the week!

Arthur is now so wriggly in the bath that it's hard to bath him (even for Neil who is IN the bath with him!). When he lifts him out at the end of bathtime, I sit on the (closed!) toilet with a towel open on my lap, and Neil passes a very wriggly and dripping Arthur onto my lap. I wrap him in the towel and cuddle him dry while Neil gets out of the bath. Then we all go to the bedroom and put our little precious to bed together. I love our bedtime routine for him! Anyway, these days he will not sit still on my lap after the bath. He immediately twists his body and reaches out for the loo roll, and starts shredding it with his damp hands (and then trying to eat the shreds!). So lately I have been wrapping him in a close swaddle with the towel, and he goes all still and calm, it's lovely! Here is a photo of Arthur and I after his bath one day last week :)

On Tuesday we went to the park for a picnic with a few mothers and toddlers from the group we went to once before it finished for the summer. It was so nice! The weather was great and I got to get to know the other mums a bit better. Their little girls are 17 months old so a bit of a gap, but it was great fun. Of course I took photos! Here is the picnic, with Arthur in the foreground wondering what I'm up to!

The two ladies who ran the group were there and they just LOVE Arthur, so he got lots of cuddles and kisses and attention! One of them was taking a nice rest after we ate, and Arthur kept crawling to her and pulling himself up on her back! He does this to me ALL the time in bed now. Here he is giving a professional back massage to Barbara, hehe! She said it was nice to have some physio on her day off! ;)

Here we both are at the picnic:

Arthur had a lovely time, but he got sooooo tired out by the end, and he was asleep literally seconds after I started the car to leave the park! Here he is about 5 minutes after we arrived home:

Okay I have run out of time - Neil is home and showering and Arthur is awake and climbing out of the ring I just tried to put him in! So I have to go. Will write all about the party and post the other photos I still have to show you as soon as I can! :)

Updatey stuff and photos

Over a week since the last entry!! That is soooo not good. I have had no time at all to update, and the only times I have been online, I haven't had long enough to attempt a diary entry (which usually takes me the best part of an hour I suppose). I am super behind on emails (Megan, I will reply to your lovely email soon!) and even a little behind on reading my favourite diaries!!! But not sooo far behind that I missed Hailey's safe arrival (Yay! Congratulations Robbi!!) or Jaya's first birthday!

Yesterday I used Arthur's nap times to write a huge update. I didn't quite get finished by the time he woke, so I just left the browser open till after his bedtime so I could finish it then. Note to self: Never, and I mean NEVER, write a diary entry in the little darn box at Diaryland, thinking it would be quicker than opening Word up. Tsk. I came back after Arthur went to bed, and I had only been on here a little while when this error occurred and closed all my little browser screens. My diary entry disappeared just like that, and I didn't have the heart or energy to write a new one. Of course, here I sit in front of the lil Diaryland box. Tsk. I never learn.

Okay, I have almost exactly 25 minutes (if Arthur is as predictable with his morning naps as always!) to write as much as I can, but THIS time I am posting whatever I get done! I have way way way too much to write in one diary entry anyway, not to mention the photos! So I will have to write another entry later too.

Soooo, we are doing well. I will start with some photos, since I have so many! I took a ton of photos almost a week ago, right after the last diary entry, of Arthur being active! He is such a busy boy these days. Here he is last week, exploring a bit:

There was so much clutter on that little table, and he wanted to grab it all, so I pushed the rest back out of reach and gave him one of the items - a baby hairbrush. He was less than impressed, hehe!

He discovered how to wave later that same day. He would pull himself to kneeling against something all the time, and let go with one hand to see me. I started waving at him when he did this, and he finally got the picture and started waving back! It was so sweet though, because he was so fascinated by what his own hand was doing that he stared and stared at it for a while as he waved, hehe! Cutie :)Here he is a few hours after the previous photos, kneeling on the bed and discovering how to wave at Mummy!...

I love the one where he had a blurry hand in front of his face! He was grinning sooo big behind that hand! :)

Right after that, he took a nap, and then when he got up we went downstairs. This is where I discovered a new issue. How on earth do I go to the loo if I suddenly need to go, with an un-baby-proofed bathroom the size of a postage stamp and Arthur being such a mobile boy these days?! On this occasion, I put him on the living room floor, and surrounded him with a thick ring of his wooden bricks. I gave him some toys to play with, and I scattered random noisy toys at various corners of the room. Then I rushed off to the loo, and called down to him the whole time, asking how he was doing and what he could see, etc. My plan almost worked! First I heard him playing with his toys. Then, silence. I called down, "What are you doing Arthur?" Then I heard "clinkle clinkle" which told me he was crawling through the ring of bricks! A-ha! But in which direction?! After the bricks, it was all quiet and I was wondering where he was, until he pressed the button on his musical toy and I relaxed again to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, because then I knew he was over by the big merchant's chest and the toy basket. When the tune died out, I strained my ears to listen for what he was up to next, but I heard nothing. And then I heard lots of effort sounds, like grunts and heavy breathing! So I had to come back downstairs to see where he was at. Here is what I found:

Monkey!

Since then he has been even more active! He crawls very well and quickly now, and pulls up to standing in an instant on the sofas and stuff. He is currently getting very frustrated with the fact that he can't climb up onto the sofas! He is climbing climbing everywhere now! He climbs the stairs easily (with me right behind him) and automatically goes to put his knee up on something if he wants to climb up. He reeeally wants to be on the sofa, but he can't get his knee that high! He tries though, and then gets mad and bangs his hands on the seat with his face all red and angry! It's terribly serious for him but I can't help smiling because he looks so funny, hehe! Once or twice I have given him a shove on the bum as he tries to put his knee up, and up he goes. He immediately crawls to the back, and pulls himself up on it, then stands there beaming around the room! He is always so proud of his new achievements, it's so cute! :)

He is cruising a lot, still in tiny steps and a bit wobbly, but he's getting more confident. He tries to cruise gaps, like from the edge of the sofa to the entertainment unit. There's a gap of maybe a foot there, and both surfaces are at just the right height for him to cruise on, so he likes to try to go from one to the other. He can make it too, but I always have my hand on him incase. The entertainment unit is hard and has a sharp corner edge, and he sometimes wobbles and falls as he's cruising, so I protect him a little over that.

He is letting go when standing more and more now. He usually stands with one hand holding onto something, and the other exploring or waving at me, or just standing at an angle to something so that he holds on with one hand out to the side of him. He has tried letting go completely several times now. The other day he tried it twice when standing at his toy basket. Both times he lasted a second and then keeled into the basket before righting himself again. It looked like he must have hurt his ribs but he didn't seem bothered. He is just so keen to try things! Yesterday he let go of the sofa and stood for only a second before bumping down on his butt. And also yesterday he was pulling up to standing on me in the kitchen, and he was bent over at the waist. He suddenly let go and straightened up all by himself, without any support! He stood for maybe a second or two, then suddenly realised he wasn't being supported, and did this panicked thing with arms flailing for me! I had my arms right there for him so he grabbed me pretty quick.

He is learning to get down from standing too. Whether he can do it depends on what he is standing against. The sofa seats are quite low so he can sit down again from standing against those. But I put him in the cot yesterday when he would not sleep for like 45 minutes - I thought I would try putting him down in the cot to see if it was magic (?!) or something. He was in there about an hour, but he spent the whole time pulling up on the sides and holding the rails. They were so tall that although he could stand there, he had nothing to take hold of lower down to get himself back to sitting again. He eventually whacked his head in there and cried his heart out, so I took him out of there and nursed him better, and he fell asleep in the big bed :)

We are soooo taking that darn thing apart and storing it in the loft. It converts to a lovely little bed so we may still use it for that when he's older. But I can't believe I bought into the whole "have baby - need cot" idea. Ugh. Because we are never using a cot for him again (and never have, come to think of it), we have been having long talks about making our family bed a permanent thing, and how to make it safe now that Arthur is getting so mobile. We have a plan! But it's going to take us all our spare time at the weekend and then some to implement. I can't wait till it's done though.

The plan is to put the cot in the loft - yay! I need to declutter the bedroom and clear the floor. It's really bad at the moment. There is an old makeshift mattress of blankets and sleeping bags covering the entire floor for when Neil used to sleep there! Loads of clothes everywhere, clean and dirty. Stuff that Arthur grew out of months ago and needs putting in the loft. Nappies that he has outgrown. Um. And lots of stuff. Yesterday I tackled the clothes and put lots of laundry loads on, and sorted and bagged the rest.

Then we need to clear out the under-bed drawers (they are full of books that won't fit on the bookshelves!) - methinks a trip to the charity shop will be in order, as I'm sure we have a TON of books that should be given away. The rest should go in the loft. Then we need to clear the under-bed drawers in the spare room - oh my gosh, there is soooo much junk in those! That could take a whole weekend in itself! Ugh. But anyway, it needs doing, because then THOSE drawers need taking apart and putting in the loft, and they will be replaced by OUR under-bed drawers (which don't take apart so we can't fit them through the loft hatch). Confused?!

THEN the best part!! We take down our huge kingsize bed! Bye-bye bed! The parts of the frame that can fit in the loft will go up there, and the rest, I don't know.... maybe we'll have to stash them in the spare room for now, but I hate that idea. Anyway, then we move a wardrobe out of our room to the spare room, and a chest of drawers if it will fit (the poor spare room, it is soooo chock full of furniture!).

And finally we are left with a kingsize mattress on the bedroom floor. And a triple wardrobe which we'll swap positions with the mattress. Then there will be space next to the mattress for a single mattress to go right up against it. And thus we have our permanent, safe, fit-five-kids-in-if-you-have-to family bed!! Yay! I feel such a sense of RELIEF just thinking of it. It's what I have been wanting since Arthur was born and I knew we would be sticking with co-sleeping.

All that the room will contain will be just that wardrobe, a bedside table at the side of the wardrobe for the lamp (which we need to anchor somehow!), and a MASSIVE floor-bed that nobody can hurt themselves by falling from. Then we buy a stair-gate and that will go on the bedroom door. After that I know I can safely put Arthur to bed in the daytime for naps without a worry in the world, and for his evening sleep time too. Even when he's walking or waking without sounds that could alert us to his awake state, I know I don't need to worry. I can happily put him in that room with some toys while I shower or go to the loo (neither of which I can safely do these days), and it avoids the need for a playpen, which I completely loathe! Neil suggested one, but I refused. I would rather save all my pee up and never take a shower than put Arthur in a playpen! I know I'm silly, but I just feel strongly about those things, sort of like I do a cot. Babies and barred pens.... I don't like the two together. Also I just know Arthur would hate being confined in a small space like that. He has never known anything like it and I would hate it, so I'm sure he would too. Soooo I'm really happy with the plan we have!! I can't wait to get it done! But it will be a lot of work.

This weekend I'm not sure how much we'll get done, because we have a busy Sunday. We have church in the morning, then HOPEFULLY Arthur will take a huge nap over the whole of lunchtime, because then we are going to Jaya's birthday party/naming ceremony!! It's about 30 minutes drive to Jemma's house I think, and the party is mid-afternoon, so I hope Arthur will take all the napping he needs before we go. Otherwise we will have a tired and potentially cranky boy for the party.

Eh-up! I've just noticed that I've been bashing away at this keyboard for almost an hour and Arthur is still asleep! Yay! He did stir after half an hour, but he went back to sleep. I will keep going till he wakes and then post what I've written.

Arthur is teething pretty badly at the moment. He has red swollen cheeks in the evenings and he is very whiney and clingy, which isn't like him at all. Poor baby. The gum over his right top middle tooth is white with that little eroded dent in it, the same one that was over his new teeth 3 days before they came through. It has been there for 2 days now, so I am expecting to see the corner of that new toothie either today or tomorrow. It's a BIG tooth, that top middle one! I don't know why, but I sort of expected the left one to come through first. I guess that's the usual order or something, that I read about a while back. Funnily enough, the left middle one is showing no signs of doing anything at the moment. The tooth to the RIGHT of his right middle tooth is starting to look active though, so I think that might be his next tooth after this one. His two bottom teeth are doing well. I think they are at least halfway out now and they look nice and clear and toothy - you can't miss them! They are so cute! I love that look of babies with just a couple of new teeth in their mouths!

Here is Arthur the other day, making a particularly silly face for the camera when I tried to take a photo of his teeth! He spends a lot of time with his bottom jaw jutting out, making an underbite (or should that be overbite??) so that he can feel his little teeth against the front of his top gum. He does this like a habit, absentmindedly, and I LOVE how his lil cheeks pooch out when he does it. He is such a cutie! I want to eat him all up! Anyway, here is my silly boy!...

I think I will stop now and post this. Arthur has been asleep for an hour and I'm sure he'll wake soon, plus I need the loo now, so it would be a good time to go! But I have a TON more to write so I'll do another entry later if I can :)