New shoes for Arthur, church, and new haircut photos!

Thank you for the lovely messages about Paddy. I feel okay about him at the moment. I think the next time we visit my parents, even if it's AGES away, it will really make me sad that he isn't there :( But I am doing okay. My parents are still so sad, but everything will be okay in the end.

I have had lots of requests for new photos of Arthur - especially for his new haircut! So here are three that I took a couple of days ago :)

I love the first one - he looks so relaxed and also so grown-up to me somehow! The second one is just to show you my job on the back of his hair - it's a bit short!! But neat enough :) Taken during a moment of mischief as you can see! ;) Otherwise I can't see a LOT of difference in his hair, because I asked them not to make it too short. They cut very little off the top and front, it was mostly the sides really. And the job I did on the back. He had poor teethy red cheeks again in the last photo (not sure what that expression means, as I don't think I've seen him do that before!).

He is teething at the moment, but it's very "vague" teething, and very on-and-off also. He still only has two little corners of one molar poking through, so it's going to take AGES for the whole darn thing to come through I think, which looks like it will = lots of teething symptoms dragged over a long space of time, poo! No sign of the other top molar yet, but the gum around it is still very swollen. Poor boy!

Arthur is starting to say thank you!!!! It doesn't sound anything like the actual words, but I absolutely recognise it, as he says the same thing every single time he copies me saying thank you, and sometimes he is now saying it when I give him something, especially if we are playing a give and take game passing something back and forth and I say thank you each time he gives the thing to me. He says it when I give it to him. It sounds like the "ang" part of "anger", sort of like "anck" but with great enthusiasm so I really should write it with lots of exclamation marks after it!! :)

Arthur is constantly desperate to see/play with the iron! Even when he's upstairs he will suddenly start saying, "Un! Un! Un!" in urgent tones, and try to get downstairs! He is only happy when we take him right to the iron. I ordered him this iron and ironing board from the Early Learning Centre yesterday. It's coming out of my Christmas money from my parents. I can't think of any way I'd rather spend it right now :) I know Arthur is just going to light up when he sees his very own iron and ironing board and that has got to be worth way more than anything that I could buy for myself! He always loves playing with them soooo much at Playgroup, and he found a plastic iron at church creche today and ironed the carpet with great delight! So I can't wait for it to arrive. They were constantly out of stock at my local branch so I gave up and ordered it online.

I meant to say last entry - Arthur is so keen on waving things goodbye these days! He waves at EVERYTHING! He really understands now when someone is going, or if something is all done. He waves if I go upstairs to use the toilet, or if Neil even shows signs of heading towards the porch or puts his shoes on, Arthur waves! He waves at anyone who says bye bye to him, or even if he hears the word "bye" in anyone's conversation! There are a couple of really cute examples of his waving that I LOVE - when I finish nursing him and do my bra back up, he waves bye-bye at my breasts, hehe! I love that, it's so cute! Also he has taken to watching the bath water go down the plug hole after his nightly bath, every day now. He sits on my lap wrapped in a towel and peers eagerly over the edge of the bath, absolutely silent and transfixed for several minutes, watching the bath water go down the plug hole. He waits till the verrrry last trickle is disappearing and then he raises his little arm up in the air and waves and waves at the water till every last drop is gone. My cutie boy :) He waves at his toys as we put them away, and his empty bowl when I take it from him after he has finished his lunch. I just love him so much! He makes me want to squeeeeeeeze him all the time!

Matthew is whamming me with his hands really hard right now! It's sort of sharp and hurty, but I love it :) I think it is morse code for "get me some toffee ice-cream!" Or something similar ;)

Ohhh today we did some "proper" discipline on Arthur for the first time. He is getting kind of difficult at times lately. I mean, the usual thing where he does 10 things in a row that he KNOWS I have always told him not to do, or just race-walks about squealing in the most shrill wails I ever heard, for AGES without stopping. Or going deadweight and floppy when I try to pick him up if he is doing something he shouldn't be doing, that kind of thing! He climbs on EVERYTHING, at all times. If I take him down from one place, he does his almost-run to the next place and instantly flings his leg up onto it to climb up, with a big mischievous grin on his face! This can go on and on and on and on and on. And on.

Today he has been ultra hyper, and he wouldn't even take his nap - making it the first day in his life with no nap at all! Well, he fell asleep for the last 60 seconds of the car journey home from church, but then we woke him up and gave him lunch. After that we let him digest for a while, and then our new tandem pushchair was delivered (yay!!!) and THEN it was like 3pm and getting way too late for him. I think he just went beyond tiredness and got too wired. Anyway, so he has done all these things and more today. But when we tried to settle him for his nap he was kind of naughty.

Lately he has been doing this a bit more actually. Sometimes when I am nursing him in bed to get him sleepy (as part of his naptime or bedtime routine), he flings his upper arm (we lie on our sides, tummy to tummy) about and smacks me with it. Once he has done it by accident a couple of times, he seems to TRY to do it, harder and harder till he is absolutely walloping me in the head and chest, etc. Which, of course, is not on. So I tell him not to do that, and that it hurts Mummy, all while he is still nursing. He stops doing it for like 3 seconds and then starts again. So I tell him the same as before, but add that I will stop nursing him if he doesn't stop hitting Mummy. When he does it again, I end the nursing session, and he either gets upset and I pat him till he's calm and goes to sleep instead, or lately he sometimes retaliates a little. He will grab a handful of any part of me he can get, and scrunch really hard, which reeeeally hurts. He has started doing this to Neil as well sometimes, if Neil is being firm with him over something. So that's not good. We always react sternly but never really know what best to do.

Today at his nap time he did this a couple of times and then when I moved away from him and Neil put him down on the bed, he did it to Neil as well. So we decided it was time for the next stage of discipline, that he is old enough now (we think! It's so hard to be sure that what you're doing is right when you've never done it before!). We set up the travel cot (the only thing that will contain him, and he will NEVER use it for sleep so it doesn't really matter that we're using it for discipline), and put him in it, explained why we were putting him there, and both of us left him there for a time-out. So that is Arthur's first time-out! I am happy to use the time-out method, as we really don't ever want to use a physical contact method of discipline. It just doesn't seem gentle enough to be right for our kids somehow. It doesn't feel "right" in the same way that CIO didn't feel "right" for us. I was smacked (hard!) until the age of 10, and got it a LOT, as I played up a lot. Neil got the wooden spoon as a child, on the bottom when he was little, and on the hand after that. I never want to use an object to hit my child with, and I never want to hit my child in any case, but especially NOT with an object.

Anyway so we're happy with time-outs. I just hope they are a successful method for us! I heard they work really well if you are consistent, but I guess consistency is the magic ingredient in any type of discipline. So we left Arthur in the darkened bedroom in the travel cot for 5 minutes. We went in the other bedroom and waited. It feels silly to say it, but we were kind of holding our breath and just looking at each other, waiting to see what would happen! We expected Arthur to get really mad about it and know full well that he was being disciplined. But for the first 4 minutes he sounded very cheerful! After that he tried calling us and we didn't go to him, so his shouts got more and more angry until he was doing burst after burst of this funny forced crying, the type that isn't real crying at all, just the stuff that says, "I'm so mad at you, you're making me CRY about it! See?!" At 5 minutes we went back in and explained to him again why we put him in time-out, and then we got him out again to try nursing in bed once more.

He hit me again while he was on the breast and I warned him, and he didn't do it after that. But he didn't fancy sleeping either after that! He nursed for a while and then sat up, waved bye-bye to my breasts and climbed off the bed!!!! Funny boy! So he has had no nap today. He didn't even act tired at all, right up to when he was in bed for the night! He just seemed sooooo wired for the afternoon. Cheerful though, which was nice :) He fell asleep soooo fast at bedtime, hehe! He was asleep by 7pm and hasn't stirred since (it's 10pm now).

I took Arthur to have his feet measured again for shoes two days ago. He was measured for his first ever shoes in early December and has been in those shoes (size 3, width H) ever since. They have seemed nice and roomy until recently, and now it seems a little difficult to get his feet into them smoothly. They did tell me to come back in January (6 weeks or so after the last time) to be remeasured, as they said his feet would probably have grown enough to need new shoes by then. Their little feet grow SO fast at this age!!! I bought him brand new shoes last time for £24, and there is noooo way I'm doing that again! Good old eBay is the place for me :) It's just too much money to be paying out every 6-8 weeks for shoes that will barely get worn before another pair is needed!

Anyway so we went and he got measured, and was soooo good while the lady did it, and he measured between a size 4 and 4.5!!! And his feet have got a little narrower, he is a G width now, which I am DELIGHTED about since H is the widest you can find and there aren't many styles out there that come in an H width. The average at this age is apparently F or G, so there are plenty of styles and designs available to him now that he has slimmed down to a G!!! I am so pleased about that :)

The lady tried him in a pair of Clarks size 4.5 and also a pair of Startrite size 4.5, because she said there was no point putting him in a 4 if he's already edging out of that size - he would hardly be in them any time. But the 4.5s seemed too big on him, he had waaaay too much space at the toe and the heel slipped as he walked on his to-be-plastered foot. So she put him in size 4 and it fit great with room to spare. So I said thank you very much and LEFT!! Hehe! I did ask about the prices but she told me £31 for the Startrite shoes and £26 for the Clarks, which is just crazy! So I am all happy to have an excuse to bid bid BID on eBay again (I'm addicted), and tonight I won him a pair of brown suede Startrite ankle boots for £3 plus postage! :) Obviously barely worn, as the little boy who used to own them grew out of them in 4 weeks! So yay! And I also have a bid on a pair of normal Clarks shoes like his current pair. Of course he is going into a plaster cast tomorrow for 2 weeks so he'll only get to wear one of them for a while, but oh well. I love finding lovely shoes for fabulous prices sooooo much that I am actually excited about him growing out of his shoes each time now, hehe!

Today we went to church and it was great :) At first I was so distracted by anything and everything during the worship time. I couldn't focus on the words or the music, let alone think much about God. Twenty minutes later, I had settled in a bit more, and Neil was walking an enthusiastic Arthur up and down the hallway out the back of the main hall - he just wanted to walk walk walk! So I got to sit down and just BE before God a bit. I haven't taken time to do that in soooo long. I haven't really sung praise to God in a while either, as we keep missing church for one reason or another. It's one thing to sing the words parrot-style, but quite another to go into the words and their meaning and really connect with God and pour out an offering from your heart to him as you sing. I WISH I did that more often. I love it so, and it makes my whole heart soar like nothing else ever does. Sometimes I try but I don't get that sense of connection or soaring in my heart, because I'm too distracted or something. It takes me some time to warm up to really worship, sort of like it takes me some time to relax enough to fall asleep at night. When I have times in my life where I am on fire for Jesus and really close to God, I just seem to have praise on my lips all the time, and can instantly be caught up in intimate worship any time I stop and sing to God. But otherwise I have to prepare my soul a little, like preparing my mind to go to sleep at night.

So it was nice that I finally got to relax enough during the worship time, and that Neil was watching Arthur for a while too. I sang the songs, and I meant the words, but then someone read a passage from the Bible - I can't even remember what it was about - and the worship leader started playing "The Lord is Gracious and Compassionate" and everyone started to sing, and everything suddenly felt different inside. Like it hasn't felt for waaaaay too long. Not completely overwhelmingly so, but enough. I sat (I felt tired and achy in my bump when I stood) and closed my eyes and sang, and the chorus just goes, "Praise the Lord, O my soul, Praise the Lord" over and over. When I am not in the mood, that chorus just feels kind of repetitive and boring, but when I am in that place where I am meeting with God and my heart is really worshipping him, then the words and the music are beyond beautiful. I started to sing in harmony because the harmonies in that song are lovely, and there were lots of others singing in harmony around me, and oh when I sing in harmony my WHOLE heart and soul just wells up with joy. And before I knew it, there I was REALLY worshipping God, hands raised, heart soaring, and it felt so wonderful because it seems like it has been so long since I felt that way. And I remembered how incredibly indescribably much I LOVE my God, and felt his unfathomable love for me, and just nothing could touch me for how wonderful it was to be loved by God, and to love him in return.

Oh how I have MISSED that feeling! So I had a wonderful time this morning! After the worship time I took Arthur to creche, and 5 minutes later, Neil came in to say he would stay with Arthur at creche if I wanted to go in for the sermon! We are not leaving Arthur places yet, that's just how we want to do it. We don't have a time in our minds for when we'll start leaving him either. Just whenever it feels right, which could be a while yet. Anyway, I haven't been in to the sermon the WHOLE time that Arthur has been around! So I was glad to, and Neil had a great time with Arthur in creche. I actually really enjoy creche with Arthur! I don't fuss around him, I just let him play with the toys and the other kids, and often I just act as one of the helpers and play with or settle the other kids if they are unhappy or restless. Arthur doesn't bat an eyelid. But I won't leave him yet.

So I went in for the sermon, and it was about God's grace, focusing on the tricky issue of the sinful nature! Yikes! But it was soooooooo good. I so needed to hear it. The whole thing was just so relevant for me right now, and I felt uplifted at the end of it, and more joyful and aware of how God loves me and how he gives me everything I need to get through life living to please him, which is what I LONG to do, since I love him so much. I often feel that I can't do it, and it's true, I can't do it in my own strength. But it was so refreshing to be reminded today that I CAN do it in God's strength, and it's okay to say I can't do it without him :) It feels so freeing!

After the service I ate cake (!) and then went to get Arthur and Neil from creche. They were playing a piano that was stood in the corner! Arthur LOVES playing the piano. He gets quite upset if you take him away from one if it's time to go! But I had cake, so all was right with the world, hehe! Arthur likes cake :) Then I talked to countless people who complimented me on my bump, flattered me endlessly over my gorgeous little boy, and said how lovely it was to see us at church, and we left radiant with joy and eager for next Sunday! It was such a nice morning :)

This week is pretty busy. Arthur is having his plaster cast on tomorrow afternoon, and then we are just going to try and take him out in the pushchair for as long as possible (!!) so that the cast gets the longest chance to dry out without him putting any weight on it. Otherwise it will break and he'll have to go back the next day to have it reinforced or replaced, ugh! I am so worried that it will break. It broke last time, and he wasn't even walking then, well, taking steps but not walking everywhere all the time. We had SUCH a hard time keeping him off his feet that afternoon, so this time I think we have no choice but to wheel him around somewhere in the pushchair! We physically can't restrain him from putting weight on it otherwise. I just hope it will hold. The physio said she would make it a really good thick cast!

Then Tuesday is a mother-and-toddler group that we haven't been to in ages. And Wednesday is Playgroup. I'm not sure about taking him to those when his leg is in plaster as he will still be getting used to it, and he might find it bothersome, or even upsetting, that he can't get about when all the other kids are. Also I hate taking him out with a cast on. I get looks and comments. I would rather avoid those. On Thursday we have fellowship group, which I can't wait for! There will be children there, nobody will give us looks, and everyone will pray for Arthur that his feet get fixed fast. Friday is something, I'm sure, but I can't remember what.... Or maybe not? Saturday is Granny's birthday but she is in agony waiting for a hip replacement (in March) so she can't tolerate visitors at the moment :( My parents are coming from France to spend a day and a night with them for her birthday, but they won't be here long enough to see us. Never mind. They will just have to come again soon!

I am soooo thirsty. I am going to post this now and get a drink before bed. Arthur will probably wake in an hour or so, and then sleep the rest of the night till 6.30ish (when he nurses and gets up), which is what he has started doing recently. This is soooo wonderful in comparison to how things were for his first year (and then some!)!!! I'm so pleased :) It's sooo nice to have longer blocks of sleep too. Oh but last night he woke at 11pm and when I went in, he was sitting up on the bed all smiley and cute and warm and squidgely, and when I offered him water to drink he just smiled and smiled, and wouldn't even stop smiling to take a drink! He just kept gazing at me in the darkness and smiling. So I knew I should just be all quiet and consistent and lay him down and settle him back to sleep, otherwise he would get all awake and take forever to sleep again, but I couldn't HELP myself! He was just so cute, and I had to snuggle him! So I scooped him into my arms, sitting on the bed, and he just relaxed his body right into mine and wrapped his arms around my neck, and laid his little cheek against my shoulder. He stayed perfectly still and quiet and I cuddled him tightly for the longest time. It was just such a precious moment, completely silent, just totally ENJOYING the cuddle. Finally I pulled him back to see if he was sleeping or something, and he turned his eyes up towards mine and just smiled and smiled again :) So I should have put him down and settled him to sleep, but I just HAD to keep cuddling him! He stayed absolutely wide awake, as though he was enjoying the cuddle just as much as I was. It was so lovely. We just cuddled close and silent for maybe 15 minutes! And then I lay him down and nursed him. He kept popping off to smile at me, bless his heart! It took him till midnight to go back to sleep, but it was so worth it. What a treasured moment it was for me! I think it was for him too. And he made up for it by sleeping from then until 7.35am!! :) He was as cheery as anything when he woke up.

He's so precious. I love him soooooooooooooooooo much. So so much.

Paddy cat died, and other more upbeat stuff

Thank you SO much for the encouraging notes! I appreciate them so much, and as always they uplift me no end just when I need it :) Thank you.

My last puddy-tat died today :( My original "Bean" - his name was Paddy but I loved him so that my insides squelched when I cuddled him and it always made me want to give him a cutesy nickname. Bean was the one that popped out when he was a kitten when I was 17 (well, Paddy-Bean, followed by just Bean, and then Beanie-Boy, and then various oddities revolving around "Bean", the weirdest (but most heart squelching for me) being Beansome-whack! Wha??!).

Anyway. He was an old boy, 14 years old. We had two cats, brothers from the same litter who had been rescued as a family of strays in London. We adopted them from the Cat's Protection League. Percy was the other cat, and I loved him DEARLY but somehow Paddy had my soft spot. They were both so darling though. They were absolute members of the family. Percy died two Decembers ago. He was really ill before he died for quite a while and finally my parents had him put to sleep :( It was so heartbreaking.

Paddy got sick while we were there over New Year, but not reeeally sick at the time. Anyway, long story short, he had a tumour on his intestines, and today they did surgery on him to try and remove it. But they found it had spread to his kidneys already, and so they didn't revive him (as per my parents' wishes). My Mummy and Daddy took him home and buried him in their garden in France, in a bed of beautiful roses that they planted when they moved there, opposite an identical rose bed where Percy is buried.

I feel so sad. But my parents are completely broken. Mummy cried during our daily phone call and told me that she and Daddy have both been in tears all day. We SO love our cats in this family! It sounds a weird thing to say, but I feel almost relieved that I had not been able to maintain such intense squelchiness of heart with Paddy since I haven't lived at home with him for 6 years now. I remember I used to be scared of when he would die. I did not know how I would breathe again, but now I have had that distance, I can be the one saying the right things to my tearful mummy on the phone and not have so much pain as I could have had.

Anyway. It's so sad. Our cats are gone, and it has been such a long time that they were with us over all. I bet my parents' house feels so empty now :(

So.

We got the new single mattress today, and I did (stupidly) too much work instead of leaving it for Neil when he got home from work - I unpacked it, pushed it up the stairs, rearranged the bedroom furniture and laid it in place next to our kingsize mattress on the floor, and made up both mattresses with clean sheets :) It was bigger than I thought in our room and barely wedged in between the wall and the kingsize (which is also up against the opposite wall). So now we have a magnificent WALL OF BED!!! It looks fantastic to a tired mummy, hehe! Soooo inviting. I never saw such a big expanse of bed ever before. And it's ouuuurs, all ours!!! :)

Arthur was terribly excited during the whole (2 hour long!!!) procedure. He climbed straight on the new mattress while I tried to get the sheets ready to put on it, and actually started jumping up and down - which is a first for him NOT holding onto anything! He was so delighted!

Arthur fed himself quite a bit of his tea today!! He had fish fingers, spaghetti in tomato sauce, and peas. He used his toddler fork and managed really well! He was so excited when I told him well done, or that he was a clever boy :) He grinned so wide that the food almost fell out again, every time he managed to get some in with the fork! He also did pretty well spoon-feeding himself (and me!) his yoghurt.

I need to get him re-fitted for shoes. They said to come back in January as he might have grown out of his size 3s by then, but we haven't got round to it. His shoes seemed fine till maybe this past week, when they have seemed a little harder to get on than normal. So I need to get him refitted, and soon!

He has a physio appt on Monday (the 6th) for another plaster cast to be put on his left leg. The physiotherapist said she will put him in another plaster the following week, and HOPEFULLY that's all he will need (though she wonders if he might actually end up needing a third one), because she is going away on holiday after that week so he will be out of plaster for a bit even if he does need another one. Anyway. Maybe I should wait to get his shoes refitted, till after the plasters? Mind you, no, because he will still have one foot in a shoe and he could totally grow out of it over the time he is in plaster, and I can't bear the idea of taking him to a busy children's shoe store with one leg/foot in super-thick reinforced plaster! I hate it when we're out in public when he is in plaster. I get so many not-nice looks, like I have let my baby break his legs or something :( So I prefer to avoid it, or cover his leggies up as best I can in the pushchair or something.

Anyway. Need to do that. Or something.

Arthur is starting to say a couple more things - light (lah) and drink (dih). Also today when he was in his highchair getting fussy and not wanting to eat his lunch, I tried a distraction (which usually works) of asking him where various things are in the kitchen. It really showed me how much he understands now!

I asked him in quick succession without any clues by my looks or body language, where the various kitchen appliances are. He pointed clearly to each one, like a SECOND after I asked him where it was, so he is understanding the names of them clearly. I was surprised, but maybe I shouldn't be? I know that toddlers understand MUCH more than their parents usually think they do, but I still felt surprised! He pointed instantly to the right things when I said the names of the washing machine, tumble dryer, microwave, dishwasher, toaster, fridge, freezer (he pointed to the top of the F/F for "fridge" and the bottom for "freezer", which is the right way round), boiler, oven, iron and light. He said iron and oven as he pointed to them too.

He is also understanding WAY more general questions that I ask of him. Basic ones like, "Where's your other sock?" (he'll go and find it and bring it to me), "Can you find your bricks and build me a tower?" (he'll at least go to the bricks and pick one up to show me, and often start building a tower too), "That's a dirty hankie! (when he fishes one out from somewhere) Can you put it in the bin for Mummy?" (he'll wrinkle his nose and say, "Ur-thur-thur!" (urgh!) and go and drop it into the bin). Also he is always stashing his sippy cup and I can never find it! So lately I have started asking him, "Where's your drink?" and he will look for it. He usually doesn't find it though! I don't think he pays much attention to where he puts it, since his WHOLE day revolves around stashing and sorting and taking-out-of-drawers-and-cupboards! It's just one item in fifty thousand that he has put somewhere that day!

Today I could see his drink behind the toy garage on the floor, and I asked him, "Where's your drink?" He immediately started wandering round the room with his concerned "searching" expression on, hunting for his drink. I didn't help him because I thought he would see it and lift it up triumphant to lots of praise from me! But he didn't see it. Eventually he just turned round to me and raised his hands palms upwards out to his sides, shrugging his shoulders and looking a bit lost in his expression! I never saw him do that before! It was so cute :) He was clearly telling me he couldn't find it, and it was all gone. I don't even know how he learned that. Maybe he has watched us do that kind of mannerism when we can't find something, or perhaps I have signed "all gone" with him more than I thought I had.... Anyway it was super cute :) I showed him where it was of course, and he was pleased to find it. I love that communication with Arthur is just opening up like a flower at the moment.

He did a stumbly little run today, trying to get away from me (shrieking and giggling!) when he had something in his hand that he knew he shouldn't have, and I was fast approaching him to get it back! Monkey boy :) But that was the fastest I have seen him go yet, and the first time he has broken into a little canter and not fallen over as a result.

The boy does NOT stop moving at the moment. It's crazy, he just never stops moving his feet or his body! He walks with everything in his hand rather than stopping to examine it, and squirms constantly when tethered to his highchair for meals! If he is walking with a musical wind-up toy in his hand and it stops, he brings it to me to wind up again (after a quick failed attempt of his own) and during the few seconds it takes me to wind it up, he paces back and forth!!! He is just a super live-wire at the moment! He never seems to run out of energy and still doesn't conk out easily for a nap or bedtime. I have been exhausted today (after my silly over-activity!) and just couldn't keep up with him. I even had to let him play with things he had gotten hold of that he should not have been playing with, because he would KEEP on getting them out and I came over breathless with tiredness and had to lie on the sofa for a while, listening to my ceramic ovenware going clunk, crash, chink as he enthusiastically stacked it on the kitchen floor! We really should have child locks on some of the low level kitchen cupboards, but so far we have just supervised him and let him explore everything "safely". And taught him what not to play with. Which has worked REALLY well except that he knows he can use those things to push my buttons when he sees me tied to the phone, say, or exhausted on the sofa! Little monkey!

He is such a treasure! Despite being such a mischief-maker! ;)

Okay. I am going to bed. I sooooooooo need to update my pregnancy diary but I didn't feel like it tonight. I just wanted to come here, say my baby cat is gone, and then write cheerful stuff about Arthur to get in a nice frame of mind for going to bed. And it has worked, so before it wears off I think I will hit the hay! I'll update again soon though.

Oh! I almost forgot! We sold the car!!!! For more than we had expected! Within four days of it being advertised!! Thank you God! That was a big answer to prayer - I even asked the ladies at fellowship group to specifically pray that we would sell it quickly. The buyer is a really sweet lady and she is coming back with her husband on Saturday with a banker's cheque (she already gave us a deposit), and then she'll drive the car away. We still have our family car (Citroen C5) but poor Neil no longer has a car to drive to work. He is going to buy a bike on eBay. I hope his knees hold out. He has bad knees. It's that or the train, but that's not cheap. Or Arthur and I drive him to work and pick him up, but we agreed that will suck so he'll try the other options first. He has been wanting to get a bike and cycle to work for yeeears, so I hope it works out well.

Anyway, yay, that will clear our overdraft and start to pay off our credit cards. We will still need that loan from my parents to pay the rest off though. But I'm so relieved to get the ball finally rolling. We have been paying unfathomable amounts in overdraft fees lately, as we have been over the limit for months with no money to cover it. So yay :)

And now I am definitely going to bed.

Baby brother, playgroup again, and LONG emotional waffle...

Phew, it's 1.30pm and Arthur is napping, and I wish I was too (I am soooooo tired!) but he never naps long enough so here I am instead. It's a good opportunity to catch up with my diary!

In case you don't read my Pregnancy Journal, we had our big scan 2 days ago and found out we are expecting another baby boy!!! So Arthur is going to have a little brother called Matthew! It is so exciting, and soooo surreal somehow! Anyway I just wanted to make note of that in this diary too :)

Arthur is doing way better with his sleep at night!!! Woohoo! I also started making him only have one nap during the day, as he was having a short nap morning and afternoon, and then at bedtime he was messing about for over an hour till we finally got him to go to sleep. It was driving me crazy and getting me down, so I figured maybe he wasn't sleepy enough at bedtime if he only just woke from his afternoon nap between 3 and 4pm. His bedtime is around 7pm, but flexible. But I had no intention of putting him to bed later as the solution. I am a big believer in a toddler/child's bedtime needing to be EARLY in the evening for them to get the sleep they need at night. So that just left his naps. I keep him awake till after he eats lunch (he eats at 11.30am) and wait for the traditional after-lunch poo (!!) before changing his nappy and nursing him in bed. He is usually pretty tired by lunchtime if he hasn't had a morning nap, and he falls asleep sooooo fast on the breast at nap time! He tends to nap longer for his one nap - if I'm lucky it's up to 1.5 hours! I love getting a good window to just be "me" and get a few things done in the daytime. I have been slowly going insane for 14 months without it! He has never consistently given me more than 30 minutes at a time. It has been hard - harder than it sounds.

Anyway, he sometimes still only takes a short nap and then he's cranky and tired, but I can't get him to go back to sleep for anything, so that's how it has to be. The great thing is, that means he's up again by 2pm in general, and when bedtime rolls around he has started going to sleep pretty quickly - sometimes extremely quickly if he's really tired! Yay!

The other GREAT thing is that he has started sleeping very long stretches at night sometimes, and waking only once, and maybe once in the evening. This is a big improvement for Arthur!! He slept through the night once last week!!! I mean, the official definition of sleeping through the night is apparently 5 hours straight, which is just crap because say a baby sleeps 7pm to 1am - that isn't sleeping through the night, is it?!! The whole night is still ahead of you at 1am!! Tsk. But anyway, so he has been sleeping stretches of 5+ hours quite regularly now. He tends to wake around 11pm and again at 4.30, but sometimes he misses the evening waking or (less commonly) the 4.30am one. Anyway one night last week he went to sleep at around 8pm and woke up at 6.30am!!!!!!!!!!! That is a HUGE first for Arthur! But it was a one-off for now. I feel so encouraged by it though! Naturally the nights he sleeps well, I can't get to sleep till 2am so I don't even get 5 hours sleep or feel the benefits of Arthur's better nights, urgh! Typical! But one day I just know he is going to sleep great like that one night and it will coincide with me going to bed at a decent hour and sleeping well myself! I can't WAIT for that! :)

I don't know how we stuck at it, because I remember just crying over the whole "what do we do about his sleep?!" thing and thinking I couldn't possibly do one more night like it. But we just kept going. We couldn't bear to CIO with him. I'm so glad we're here with things working out and we didn't have to resort to the CIO, properly, I mean. When I thought we would have to do it, it made me feel so horrible inside. We tried it a little, to varying degrees, and I could never keep it up because every fibre of my being told me what I was doing to him was wrong, whether or not it reaped benefits for both Arthur and us. It just felt so wrong, I can't explain it :( I thought we would just have to DO it, eventually. We're not quite there yet, so I shouldn't discount the possibility, but it looks pretty positive that our hard work is going to pay off without CIO! I am sooooooo thrilled and proud and relieved!!! Phew!

So that's great! :)

Today we have been to Playgroup for the second time. We are all slightly snotty from the cold that I caught there two weeks ago, but we're better. I just HOPE we haven't come away with another virus! Arthur LOVED it again, of course! He was so eager to get stuck in, the moment we arrived. I barely got his coat off him before he took off without me and went to the big hall with all the noise and tricycles and play kitchens and stuff. The first thing he did was look around and spot the plastic iron and ironing board, and then he crossed the huge hall towards it, never taking his eyes off it, with a huge smile on his face :) He is so cute! He loves irons. He played with the iron last time too. He is always pointing at ours at home with urgent cries of, "Un! Un! Un!" (that's "iron", for those who don't speak "Arthur"!) He ironed very nicely at the ironing board, back and forth, and then he tried to take a second iron from a little girl, but I stopped him and explained why he couldn't have that one. He just seemed to listen to me and then carry on with his own iron :) I love all the social learning he is going to do at Playgroup.

Later on, he was playing with a plastic tea set at a little miniature table, and there was a little girl playing there who looked about two. She was called Abby. Abby did not want Arthur touching ANYTHING at the table. She snatched from him everything he picked up and pushed him and shouted "NO!" at him and stuff. Her mum kept telling her she had to share things. But it was so sweet - as soon as Arthur saw that she wanted everything he picked up, he started picking things up and streeetching out his arm to her as faaar as he could, he was THAT concerned to give them to her! He is such a lovely generous boy :) She would snatch them and shout, "NO!" anyway, and he immediately picked something else up and pushed it at her to give it to her. In the end I started saying things like, "Abby, would you like the teapot? Arthur is giving it to you!" and then she took them from him way more nicely. He is always so eager to please people and he seems to have such a generous nature that sometimes (in situations like today's) watching him do things like that when he's soooo tiny and young still, makes me want to cry with how proud I feel of him and how much I love him. It's just something about his vulnerability with being soooo young, and yet his earnest desire to give to others in some way. It makes me ache somewhere, but in a nice way :)

Arthur's awake after 45 minutes. Poo. I will nurse him and see what happens.

Yay, I nursed him for 15 minutes and he went back to sleep!!!! That is so unusual! He usually wakes when I get up if that happens but I managed to sneak off! ;) I am hoping he'll get a good while longer because he has had a busy morning and could use a longer nap. Plus, yay, more free time for me! :)

Where was I? Oh, Playgroup! I love this playgroup! Katie was there with Joshua, and I told her we had our scan and we're having another boy! She has hers tomorrow. I can't wait to hear what they are having! I hope they don't say, "It's a boy, and his name is Matthew!" because then, um, what do I say?! We are not telling anyone outside of immediate family his name (except you guys!).

This morning Arthur had his first HAIRCUT!!!! His hair was getting so long, and every single darn time we left the house, some nice lady would say, "Oh, she's lovely!" or ask, "What's her name?" Urgh! Yesterday we made a quick trip to the supermarket for some eggs and milk (I baked a banana and sultana cake that would have been FABULOUS if only I had read the recipe right and used twice the amount of flour that I DID! Tsk), and at the checkout, the lady behind me said to Arthur, "Aren't you pretty!" That was about the last straw (I know she would not have said that to a boy, so she must have thought he was a girl!), so last night I trimmed his hair at the back (a bit too short but very neatly), and then chickened out of doing anything with the top or sides, as they are curly and I was scared to mess them up!

So this morning I phoned the local cheapy hairdressers, and asked if they cut children's hair. The lady said yes, and I asked, "Even toddlers?!" and she said yes. So 30 minutes later we went to have Arthur's hair trimmed, right before Playgroup! When we walked in the door of the hairdressers, Arthur stopped dead and stared around him with his arms still stuck out to the sides, mittens hanging from the wrists of his coat! All the hairdressers stopped cutting and went, "Aww, look!", hehe! He did look very sweet :) They knew he had come to have his hair cut and made a big thing of it for him. All the other clients in there were old ladies having their hair set. Arthur was so cute getting his big boy haircut! He was as good as gold, as he always is with everything. He sat on my lap because it was his first time, but after this they will put him in a highchair. He got a big cape wrapped around him and then they cut the sides of his hair and a bit off the top (I kept on flapping like a mother hen and saying, "Oh! Oh! I don't want too much off the top! Oh! I don't want to lose all of his curls!" etc! Nuisancey mother! ;) But I was so nervous!

In the end it turned out beautifully. They didn't cut his hair short to his head at the sides so what is left still curls up strongly, much to my delight! They barely took any off the top so he looks very similar to how he looked before the haircut, which I'm happy about. Now the back just needs to grow about a cm to make up for how short I cut it! At least I cut it in a neat shape, and the hairdresser didn't have to touch it at all.

Anyway he was wonderful, and much admired during the procedure! Oh he's awake again. Wow, how did 30 minutes just go by?! Well, I'm happy with that for him. Now I need to make pastry (I'm making a homemade chicken and veg pie for dinner tonight!) and do some nappy laundry, and phone my Mummy. I have more to write so I'll finish this later. I just hope we have a good afternoon and Arthur will be happy while I'm doing all these things! He is getting better at that, but if he's tired he still wants my total attention all the time. I am doing more housework and baking these days which is a good thing - both for me, and for him to get used to.

Okay, Arthur is in bed (it took him an hour to go to sleep again tonight, urgh. Maybe I let him sleep too late this afternoon?) and the chicken pie is in the oven, so finally I can finish the entry! We had a good afternoon. Arthur played with pans and stuff on the kitchen floor while I did some laundry, and I made the pastry while he was eating the non-messy course of his tea! Dried fruit and stuff for dessert :)

He did a bit of crayoning this afternoon, which he has never spontaneously done - I have done it with him a few times but he would rather "sort" the crayons and transfer them from hand to hand till he has a whole handful, etc, than draw with them! Today he started trying to draw with my biro on the pad of paper I was making a list on, and so I got out his crayons. He drew one single line of brown crayon, and then looked up at me as if to say, "Is that right?" So cute :) Then he went back to sorting! He also tried playdough in the crafts room at Playgroup today, but it didn't last very long. He didn't want to eat it, as I'd thought, but he didn't think much of just rolling and pressing cutters into the stuff. If he picked a piece up, he held it gingerly between finger and thumb and dropped it down his side, as though it was dirty and he didn't want to hold it! Funny boy! He does that with actual dirty things, like used cloth wipes. He actually holds them between finger and thumb with his little finger up, says, "Ur-thur-thur!" (as in, "ugh!" and drops it somewhere like the dirty laundry pile or the nappy bin! He amazes me! Anyway then he just wanted to drop cutters on the floor and get down from his chair, so that was the end of playdough! When he's a little older, maybe? He has plenty of time and lots to occupy him till then.

Yesterday I had a crappy day. I think I was on a mega come-down after the huge emotional high of the scan (at LAST!! I had been waiting so eagerly and so long!), and I had no appetite, felt completely exhausted, and was just totally depressed all day. It got worse throughout the day, like a weight that got heavier and heavier and heavier. I'm sure it was largely hormonal, and also tiredness didn't help. If I get like that, I tend to focus on feelings that I hide away from normally, so those make it WAAAY worse too. Which is what happened yesterday.

I just felt like such a crappy mother. And wife. Lately I have been so irritable and I see myself taking it out on Neil and Arthur. I feel HORRIBLE for it. I think the guilt is the weight that presses on me more than anything else. Neil is always on at me to go to bed early so that I will fix the tired/irritable/snap-at-Arthur routine that seems to be happening more these days. But I always feel so depressed just going to bed early. I feel like I have had no space to breathe on my own all day long, and then Arthur finally goes to bed and I get a few puny hours to just relax and do things I enjoy and have no demands on me at all. I hate cutting those hours short for sleep. If Arthur is difficult at bedtime and I am up much later than usual getting him to sleep, I end up staying up CRAZY late just to feel like I have relieved my need for "me" time before going to bed. Going to bed sucks, because there's nothing fun in it, time just vanishes, I know I will have to wake a couple of times when I am tired out, and then before I know it, it's time to get up and do it all again. And I just selfishly want some time to myself to unwind and be me.

But Neil doesn't understand this (he says he does, but he doesn't), which makes this an extremely dull and tiresome ongoing argument, that we've had on and off for the last year-ish. He says he gets that I need "me" time, but me not snapping with tiredness at Arthur is more of a priority so I should basically suck it up and go to bed and get my sleep. He says that will help ME to, because if I'm less tired then maybe I won't feel so desperate for time to myself. I see why he feels that way, but at the same time, he really doesn't seem to be on my wavelength about my feelings on this, and it's like banging my head against a brick wall when I go over how I feel about it for the millionth time. He always says he understands, and then says something which shows me he doesn't. Urgh.

Anyway. So I feel horribly guilty that even though I get snappy with Arthur sometimes, and I KNOW I am just tired and hormonal and could perhaps improve it by going to bed early, I DON'T. That makes me feel like, how CRAP am I?! I put my own selfish wants above my son's needs. Even with my husband telling me clearly what I already know. I still stay up. I feel horrible about that. That's just one of a zillion examples of why I feel like a crappy mother/wife at times. I feel like I don't manage very well. I LOOK like I do, to the general public, but that isn't how it is all the time.

I particularly feel bad for Arthur because he is such a smiley happy little love, and he isn't NAUGHTY, but when he pushes my buttons by doing ten things in a row that he absolutely knows he isn't meant to do, watching for my reaction the whole time.... sometimes I lose it and shout at him. I have so much less patience these days than I ever used to. I don't know if that's just tiredness, or hormones, or - my big anxiety - could it be just ME? Just the true way I am, exposed at last by someone actually putting me to the test? Does it show up my true colours, and reveal the type of parent I am going to be, one who clearly isn't cut out to manage parenting in a nice way, especially parenting more than one child? I sometimes find myself saying "No!" and "Stop it!" to Arthur way more frequently than I ever wanted to. If he has been on my frazzled nerves for long enough without stopping, then he hardly has to do a thing wrong for me to snap at him. He's ONLY 14 MONTHS OLD. I feel such a turd of a mother :(

And I always wanted lots of children. A large family. I still do. But maybe this is showing me that I am not cut out for that, because I can't cope or behave nicely towards the ONE child I do have. That's something that I have felt guilty and unhappy about for months and months now. It weighs SO heavy on me all the time. I never talk about it with anyone, or even write it here, because if I do then I get this surge of emotion and the pain of it makes me want to stuff it all away again. So I don't get it out in the first place.

Except last night, I told Neil I was feeling irritable and depressed (which he had already noticed as it was pretty obvious when he got home from work, urgh - "good wife" issues going on here as well, only those are YEARS old). And we ended up discussing the whole snappy-with-Arthur thing. Neil didn't want to discuss it because he said it was a bad time, with me being hormonal - I would just get overly down about things and it would be better discussed when my frame of mind was more rational. Which is true. But then we'd NEVER discuss it. Until it blew up again, and we rarely resolve arguments because Neil always closes off and goes to bed before I feel like there's been any resolution or closure (completely seperate issue which drives me CRAZY!). So then it festers to varying degrees until the next argument about something similar, when it's brought up again. Exactly what we learned NOT to do in marriage counselling years ago. Tsk.

Anyway. I feel so deflated about our communication as a couple these days. I feel like it's going nowhere. We get on well and love each other and have fun and laugh together. I would definitely describe us as happily married. But we just get nowhere with our discussions. We have opposite or different views, and have no idea how to healthily resolve an argument or discussion with that issue in mind. So nothing ever gets resolved, I never feel valued or listened to in these "discussions" and Neil gets frustrated at me for not seeing his point and acting on it. Which I guess I don't do because I am so squashed by how he doesn't get my feelings on it and I'm full of resentment over it. What a mess!

Anyway we discussed this in detail last night. He said maybe we need another run of marriage counselling to teach us how to communicate better again, because he has forgotten all the things we were taught before. I love that he is so open to taking action to make things better :) But last night I was in my "everything's pointless" pit, so I didn't feel good about it.

Neil asked me what brought on this whole negative vibe I was having about being a bad mother. He noticed it has been around for a while, especially when I feel down. I told him it's partly me feeling guilty for things, like the stuff I mentioned above. And partly seeing other mothers with their children and comparing myself to them (Golden Rule of Parenting - NEVER do this!). And then the last part is things that Neil has said to me sometimes, which just compound my own feelings about my mothering skills (which I never told him about before so he wouldn't have known that).

Sometimes in the past, if I have snapped at Arthur for something, Neil has snapped back at me, saying, "Don't take your bad mood out on him!" Which was RIGHT and reasonable of him. But I already knew I shouldn't, and felt guilty for it. And then when he says it too, I feel doubly guilty. But also still snappy and like my feelings are overwhelming me and I don't know how to snap out of it and suddenly be all nice and serene with my husband and son, at that moment. So I say something like I am trying to and I don't MEAN to snap at him but I feel like I can't help it. Then Neil will say I am a grown-up, I SHOULD be able to help it, and then he's all steaming about it and usually comes back with, "If this is how you get when the pressure is on with the little one, then I don't want to have any more kids after this one (Matthew)!" and storms off. Which crushes me like a bug. I don't know if he realises that it's one of the biggest weapons he can use - the two-edged sword of guilt-over-crappy-mothering and longing-for-large-family. But he uses it well when he's worked up about something like this. He knows how much I am longing to have more children. But he DOESN'T know how guilty I feel about the way I behave sometimes.

So last night when he didn't get why I felt like he had played a part in why I feel like a crappy mother, I explained that sometimes he says things that just reflect EXACTLY how I feel about myself (in a bad way) and he'll say them in such a way that it crushes my confidence even further. He asked for an example. I gave him the one above, about the having more children. I told him the idea leaves me scared that I won't get to have more children, and then right after that the thought occurs to me that I shouldn't have any more anyway - that he's quite right and I would obviously be a bad mother to them and if I can't behave nicely all the time towards the child I have got then I do not deserve to have any more.

It sounds sooooo petty, but the above has been SUCH an intensely upsetting thought to me for so long. Typing it out is making me cry. It's about the biggest parenting issue for me of all time (so far!). It's my main family-based goal in life, and always has been (the big family) and it's under threat because of my own inadequacies, which makes me feel like *a-rude-word-that-I-never-use-in-my-diaries*

So I told Neil that I never said it to him before because it would upset me to even say it. He made me say it, and I cried. He was sooooooo sweet. He held me, and the moment that door was open with someone loving and listening and letting me open it in a safe place, alllll these feelings came out that I had shoved away because they hurt me too much. How painfully much I love Arthur and therefore how much I hate myself when I hurt him in any way. How I am even more defensive towards him in my mind than even Neil is when he defends him, at the same time as being the one I want to defend him from, which is a weird and difficult clashy way to feel.

Once the feelings were out there I realised how frightened I have been feeling that I can't cut it as a good mother, and that I don't even know WHY I am like it, and if there is even any hope for me to improve. It goes back a long way, I guess. There are aspects of my life that have always needed "working on" but which I have never been successful at improving. Things that have disappointed my family and caused stress in our relationships, like my inability to stick to ANYTHING, for one. Urgh, I don't want to get into those things. But I never seemed to be able to pull myself together over anything and just "get it done" like any other person (apparently) would have. I had counselling for a total of more than HALF my life with different counsellors and still I am the same, maybe happier in myself (except for odd moments like this!) and healed over some painful incidents in my past, but basically just as inadequate where I was inadequate before.

What if I never change, as a mother? I always hoped I would get better at it, but maybe I never will, and right now I seem to be just getting WORSE at it. What if I get worse every time I add a child to the mix, and end up being a horrible stressful mother to my brood of lovely children? And yet feel powerless to change, and crushed with guilt and self-loathing over it forever. It scares me.

I cried like.... weirdly much. You know that kind of crying where you can't breathe or talk or even let out a breath without it turning into a 3 year old's high pitched waily sobbing? Yeah. Neil just held me and held me and I stopped fighting it and trying to control my speech and breathing (!) and just cried like a 3 year old till it died down a bit. I was amazed how much was in there to get out, and it NEVER happens to me. All I wanted to tell Neil was how much I love Arthur and how much it hurts me to hurt him in any way. And how I don't even know why. And how sorry I feel about it. And then how it's not just Arthur, it's Neil too, and I'm so sorry that I bring him down with my words sometimes and I don't know why I do it. And I don't know why I am not interested in parsnips all the time, or why we aren't as intimate as we should/could be, or anything. But I am just so sorry about it and so guilty about it, and I wish things would change. And I wish I knew how. And I'm scared that I can't do anything about it because I'm just inadequate to the task.

And after I poured that and the tears all out, I felt soooooooooooooo much better. I just stopped, blew my nose (for EVER, hehe!) and lay back feeling 100% calm in my centre. Like I could take a deep breath down to a place that had been blocked up before. I felt so good having poured all that out to Neil, because it feels so right (it IS so right) to communicate so openly with your husband and not hide stuff, especially feelings-stuff. It has to be right, because the feeling is so strong.

Neil listened and was generally wonderful. I can't even remember what was said after that. I just felt drained but peaceful. And like it didn't matter what came next, because the worst part was done and that made anything else seem easy and manageable. Neil often doesn't SAY much after big discussions, especially where I reveal stuff that he hasn't realised before. He tends to take it away and think about it, and then a week or so later he'll suddenly bring it up in conversation and say he's thought about it and wondered about such-and-such as a solution. Sometimes it frustrates me because I am such an opposite type of person, I like to hash everything out NOW and can't rest till there's a solution! But I know Neil is just different to that and he works better in his own time on things, and is wonderfully committed to seeing things through. We are well suited in that, I think. Each way has its own strength. We just need to learn how to better communicate with our two different approaches.

Anyway. I cried so hard that I burst like a THOUSAND tiny blood vessels around my eyes!!! Once I had mopped up and we went into the kitchen, Neil gasped and said, "What happened to your EYES?!!" I have a panda ring around each eye of a million tiny red pin pricks where blood vessels have broken. They are over my cheekbones, eyelids and out to the sides and above my eyes. Urgh. I have had those a few times in the past when I have cried especially hard, or for a long time, but like only a few speckled here and there. I look terrible!!!! I was half tempted to wear dark glasses and not go out of the house today, but Arthur loves Playgroup so much and it seemed petty of me. So we went. Me and my "oh my gosh, what happened to her eyes!" face, and nobody asked or commented, even Katie, who MUST have noticed. It's reeally noticable! Yak. I know they will go darker before they fade, and it could take a week. Urrgh. Thank goodness we have no pressing engagements left this week or at the weekend. Oh except church on Sunday. I soooo hope they will have healed up by then! I figured that if anyones DOES ask what's wrong with my eyes, I will just be honest and say, "Oh I had a huge hormonal cry and my eyes went like this - how embarrassing!" or something. I couldn't think of an alternative that wasn't basically a lie. But I'd prefer to stay indoors for a few days!

Today I feel LOADS better, and all the more sure that hormones were the main culprit! :) The issues are still genuine and I'm glad the hormones meant that we got to talk them through and I got to get some major stuff off my chest. But yay, I feel better about it for now.

Tomorrow morning we are finally getting Arthur's single mattress delivered! Well, OUR single mattress. It's going to make our bed a triple-mattress floor bed! Then we'll transition Arthur to that part of the bed and gradually move it away from ours, but still on our bedroom floor. We are not ever going to transition him to a cot or toddler bed, he will go straight to a proper adult single bed, starting with his mattress on the floor. He needs way too much space for anything smaller anyway.

Oh I'm sure there was going to be more for me to write about, but the pie is ready and I'm sooooo hungry! So I will write again sometime soon, and I meant to update my pregnancy diary tonight as well, but there's no time now. Tomorrow, I hope! I need to take more photos of Arthur. I love him. Just because, after all that I've written today, I want to say it loud and clear. I love him so much.

Neil's birthday and stuff

Thank you all so much for the lovely messages and comments about Arthur's latest photos!!! It gives me such a buzz because I love how I have such great friends here! :) I am on a rose-tinted glasses kick at the moment though, it seems! I am just weirdly happy most of the time, even when things happen that would normally depress me or put me off things. I am pretty sure it's hormones, but I am definitely not complaining! :)

I caught a cold from our first visit to Playgroup last week - wouldn't you know it! Wednesday we were at Playgroup, and Friday I was tired and feeling fluey and sneezy, etc, etc. I am getting over it now, but I just have congestion and a cough left. What amazed me is that Arthur did not get it - it must have been something that I came into contact with and he didn't, at the time. I haven't slept much at all till Tuesday night because it's been the type of cold/throat that you just can't sleep through for love nor money. But oh well. Normally this would HIGHLY bother me! But I'm fine. I am glad to be able to carry on pretty much as normal, and that my body is fighting it off well.

On Monday I did have a rather pathetic wobbly in the morning though. I was feeling sooooooo horrible and had had next to no sleep for the 3rd night running, and Arthur was having a particularly energetic morning, and Neil got ready to go to work as normal, and I dissolved into a pathetic weeping thing, convinced I couldn't make it through the day. Neil was so wonderful (he ALWAYS is, about everything!) and took the morning off work!!!! I went back to bed and lay there till noon. I didn't sleep but it was good to rest and get past the achy/fluey patch I was feeling. I got up to put Arthur down for his nap in the morning but otherwise Neil let me rest till he went to work at lunchtime. Other than that I have not needed extra help. I feel kind of silly that I did though, over just a cold!

But anyway. On Monday I was sure Arthur must have missed catching the cold from me, but unfortunately he came down with in on Monday night and is very snotty at the moment. But he's cheerful and carrying on pretty much as normal. It's his second cold this month, but that's normal I think. I read that the average number of colds per winter in young children is EIGHT!!! So Arthur is doing fine. Maybe he'll get the other six yet?! Although I hope not! It's good for his immune system though, so I'm not too worried. I just hate it for him when he can't breathe to nurse.

Sprout is kicking like CRAZY!!! Quite high up for Sprout too. The whole time I've been typing so far, Sprout has been giving me these hard jab-like kicks over and over in the same spot! I love it :)

Arthur has also been teething really badly. It hasn't really let up at all this month, but I know it's because he is working on a whole bunch of teeth at once, and those include molars. Yesterday I put some Bonjela on his gums and felt a new toothie! So I got a good look while I was making him laugh, and saw two tiny white corners of his first molar poking through. Poor Boo! No wonder he has been drooling and fussing so much more than usual, and his cheeks have been so red and puffy. It's the top molar on his left, the one I knew was coming first. The top right one is not going to be too far behind as the whole gum around it is really swollen. The bottom molars aren't swollen yet but I can really feel the shape of the teeth under the gum there now.

It was Neil's birthday yesterday! He was 32. I joke with him about how I'm still in my 20s, hehe! But I am 30 next month so it won't be for long! I am excited to turn 30. I am not one to cling to youth and do the traditional moaning/fretting about big milestone ages as they approach. I feel fulfilled and thankful for my 20s, and like they are READY to be done and move on to the 30s now. My 20s did not start out on an easy note. I have spent my 20s as a Christian (I became a Christian a few months before I turned 20). I got married in my 20s, spent two years housebound with illness in my 20s, had my first child in my 20s, left home and moved house twice in my 20s. There have been bereavements in my 20s that have hit me like a mack truck. I was on Prozac for suicidal depression at the start of my 20s. I started (but never finished) a midwifery degree and later a nursing degree in my 20s. My 20s have been FULL of stuff! Some easy, some horribly hard. Some joyful and some not. I feel absolutely 100% ready to put my 20s behind me. I am so excited about my 30s!!! It's the decade of my life where I will bring up my children, through their young years, and I have waited for that ALL my life, so I'm ecstatic to finally reach it! I expect that in my 30s I will physically start to show signs that I'm getting older. I know 30s are still young, but I know also that I'm gonna have new wrinkles here and there, and grey hairs here and there too. And no doubt my shape will change after I have had all my children (which I do plan to complete in my 30s - the women in my family menopause at 40). But I don't care about any of that. I watched it all happen to my mum as I grew up, and I remember loving each and every new change and wrinkle that I saw, because they seemed to make her more beautiful to me. I hope I grow old as gracefully as my mum (not that she is old (58), and she would hate me saying it that way, hehe!). I love that Mummy never dyed her hair to cover the grey, and I never saw her wear make up. She never needed to. I want to be exactly like her. I don't fear growing older, physically, or in any other way. Every stage of life brings incredible blessings and joy that the last one couldn't contain because it wasn't time yet. I am not crazy about hip replacements and my hand shaking when I write and forgetting everything just when I want to say it (!!), but other than that, bring it on!

So I am excited to turn 30 :) Neil is not like me though, he is always moaning about how OLD he's getting. It's so annoying! What is the point of that? But he did seem to have a nice birthday yesterday. I felt great yesterday because I was super organised and I felt so accomplished at the end of the day, especially still feeling a bit rough with a snotty cold. I had been out shopping the day before and bought (cheap!) gifts that I know Neil would like. I ordered a CD from Amazon because I couldn't find it in the shops. On his birthday I had a cranky little boy with a new molar coming in and a stinky cold, and I cleaned the house up, baked and decorated a birthday cake, fed, changed and "napped" Arthur successfully (not always easy!), wrapped Neil's presents, wrote him a card from me and helped Arthur "draw" a picture with his crayons in a card especially from him to Daddy! And I made Neil's favourite meal for dinner (fisherman's pie at the moment). I got Arthur's things ready for bed, and made some phone calls to family that were overdue. I felt SO great for getting all that done so successfully and cheerfully, and more so every time I realised that I didn't feel great with the cold :) I love when I actually ACCOMPLISH things! It boosts my mood no end!

So Neil was really surprised at all the presents (there were some from his family too that we had brought back at Christmas), and cards, and the birthday cake. Arthur helped him unwrap everything. He seemed to somehow know every item that contained chocolate - how is that?! He was frantic to open the ones with chocolate in them! Once they were opened, he wanted to open the actual chocolates too! When we wouldn't let him, he took a big bar of Galaxy chocolate (Neil's fave) and just acted like he was playing with it and stroking the wrapper, etc (what a crafty monkey!), and rather subtly ended up getting his teeth right through the wrapper and silently sucking on the exposed chocolate until we wondered why he was being so quiet and noticed!!!! When we hid it behind a sofa cushion he spent ages climbing on the sofa and trying to get behind it! I don't know what it is with that boy and chocolate - it's not like we've ever actually given him any! Although I admit he has had a taste of Cadbury's Dairy Milk once, like a tiiiiny corner. He likes it :)

I sang Happy Birthday to Neil (who was called "Daddy" for the purpose of the song!) when I brought his cake out, and now EVERY time the word "birthday" is mentioned, even in fast conversation without interesting tones, Arthur immediately drops what he's doing, starts dancing, and sings, "Ahh-ahh-ahhhh!" which is his cue for us to sing! So we have been singing Happy Birthday a LOT! He does the same thing if he sees a picture of a star, or something in the shape of a star, or hears the word "star" in conversation, only then we have to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star instead :) He's a sweetie.

Yesterday we didn't go to Playgroup because Arthur seemed kind of poorly. I know you pretty much just keep on socialising if your little one has a cold (not the case with something more nasty or a stomach virus), but he didn't seem happy or well, so I didn't think he would enjoy it. As it turned out, I was right, and he ended up taking an ultra long nap in the morning which lasted most of the time we would have been at Playgroup, so I'm glad I made that decision.

This morning, however, he seems very much more cheerful, albeit snotty! And the Fellowship Group was meeting at Katie's house this morning so in the end I decided to take him. There were only 6 little ones and three of them had snottier colds than Arthur! So I knew it was fine. I hope he doesn't get another one on top of the one he's got though! He was fine, sociable and cheerful, and played with lots of toys and books while I chatted with the others. I am really beginning to look forward to fellowship group these days. It's a shame it's only on every other Thursday. I miss that we don't really pray together much there any more. We used to but the little ones made it almost impossible, so now we don't, we just talk about where we're at and gather prayer requests, and then pray for each other afterwards in our own time. I asked for prayer for our financial situation (urgh) and also for everything to be healthy and normal at my scan on Monday.

Yesterday it hit me (like it does from time to time) that I really really really MISS prayer at the moment. I miss praying with other people. I often chat to God in my own time, not so much "prayer" as it's probably traditionally known, but just chatting like I usually do. But I miss the fellowship stuff, praying with others, worshipping together, etc. I miss talking about God with other Christians, or just bringing God into our normal conversations and feeling that sense of joy bubbling up because I love that we're bringing him into it, and I love that the person I'm talking with LOVES him too! Fellowship Group is a teeny weeny taste of that, but it's almost all about chasing our toddlers and trying to hear each other over the wailing of one of them! Which is fine, but I do miss more focus on God. I think I generally miss that in my life at the moment, but I only really noticed it yesterday. I don't even know why I noticed it. It just occurred to me or something. I wanted to go to church on Sunday - I really want us to start going regularly as a family again - but I was too ill and sleep-deprived. Hopefully this Sunday coming though.

Anyway so this morning was good. Arthur didn't have a nap (though I did try!) before we went, as it was a bit early for him to nap. We came home to get him some lunch, and he fell asleep in the car after only about 60 seconds!!! It's been AGES since he has done that! So I had to wake him and give him lunch, and now he is napping. He has slept for an hour and 20 minutes so far! But he isn't too well, and he's teething, and has had a really busy morning and no nap, so I'm not too surprised. It's a nice break for me though :) Hence why I have the time to actually make an update here! Yay! I had this huge urge to play The Sims 2, but that will have to wait till the evening, if I get chance!

We have put one of our cars up for sale, like we planned to do ages ago. We had a guy arrange to come and see it the first DAY it was advertised! But he didn't show. Pfthth. Anyway so hopefully that will sell fast (another thing I asked them to pray for this morning!) and the money from that will clear our overdraft and make a start on the credit card debts. Urrrgh. Whatever debts we have left will be paid off by a business loan from my parents, which we'll finalise once the car is sold. Then we have to cut up our credit cards, and begin repayments to my parents, and ideally start a savings account - not the ones we've already got, one that has a good interest rate and which we'll actually USE. We are so bad at actually putting money into savings! Over the last 5 years, our savings account set aside for "car" stuff has the grand total of £1.99 in it!!! Hahaha! That won't even buy us a TOY car!! We are so crap with money. We need to learn to budget, but I'm not sure where to start. But we'll do it. This has been a good lesson for us, and we'll learn well from it and be well set up to manage our finances for our growing family in the future. Daddy says if we were going to get into financial difficulties then it's best done now, so we can learn from it before we are in full swing of bringing up children.

Arthur sounds like he's waking up, so I'll leave the rest of this entry for now. I don't think I have much left that I wanted to write at the moment, just a couple of photos I think. But I'll post those later.

Okay, Neil is bathing Arthur so I have to be quick as he'll be ready for bed n breast (!!) any minute now! I just wanted to hurry up and post this entry!

Here are the couple of photos I meant to post - both of Neil and Arthur. One is of Neil and Arthur with the birthday cake yesterday (which Arthur is soooo transfixed by!):

And the other is of my sweet sleeping boys :) Something went wrong with the colour because they were not that pink in reality, hehe! But it was dark in the room and I used a flash, so maybe that's why. Anyway here they are!...

I know Neil is such a star with how he does sooooo much over Arthur's sleep. The good thing is that he is the kind of person who sleeps through ANYTHING and is unconscious the instant his head hits the pillow/floor/chair-back, etc! I am the exact opposite, so it works well for us that when I need extra help getting MY sleep, he is still happy to sleep with Arthur. He doesn't get disturbed. I get up and resettle Arthur every time he wakes, but at least someone is still in there with Arthur during the night, which is what we have wanted.

Oops, Neil just called for me to arrive in the bathroom with towels to bundle up my cutie boy! I'll update again soon! Oh, Neil has The Cold. Pfthth.

Weigh-in today, and first PLAYGROUP!!!

Thank you all so much for the sweet notes and messages!!! This diary DOES feel so much like "home"! I miss writing here so frequently, so I'm back as soon as I could get time! Yay! Hopefully I'll be able to write a bit more frequently now. I do love to offload here!

Heather, thank you so much for your long message about the sleep thing! It's sort of good to know there are other mothers out there who know what it is like, but at the same time, awful that there are other mothers going through it (or having been through it in the past)! I think we have ruled out our movements disturbing Arthur, because his wakefulness is just the same in the evenings when we are not in the bedroom, and for the past couple of months since I have been symptomatically pregnant (weird description!), I have been sleeping in the spare room most or all of the night. Neil either sleeps in the bed with Arthur, or on a makeshift mattress on the floor next to the bed (which is a mattress on the floor anyway). So a lot of the time, Arthur actually has the (KINGSIZE!!) bed to himself!! This is a crazy arrangement! ;) We have noticed a few times that Arthur seems way more settled once someone is in there next to him, and he has his feet against them or some other contact. But his sleep doesn't seem better or worse with any change of situation, unfortunately.

The advice I was reading was for a co-sleeping, breast-fed-at-night toddler, so I was really confused to see it tell me that he would be sleeping through the night by now!

But we have a plan!!! Yay! So I feel way less hopeless about it. Also he is starting to sleep better some nights, so that helps too. The other night he slept from 8pm (when he fell asleep) till FOUR THIRTY AM!!!! Woohoooooo!!! Other nights he has done 7.30 or 8pm till say 2.30am. But he has this new clockwork thingy going on at 4.30am and 6.05am (on the DOT!). I have no idea where that came from. I don't nurse him when he wakes at 4.30 and he is pretty much quick to go back to sleep with me next to him. I can't sleep next to him at the moment because I am finding it hard to sleep comfortably now that I'm halfway through my pregnancy. I'm not UNcomfy, just fidgetty and unable to get into my cosiest sleep positions for easy-dropping-off, and I have horrible restless leg syndrome in any case. So I need the spare bed these days. So I go back there, and he wakes at 6.05am. Then I nurse him in bed, and when he is done, he climbs over me to snuggle with Neil, and then starts pointing at the door and making his, "Let's go!" shouty sound (!!), so that's when he gets up for the day. With Neil :) I go back to bed till Neil has to get ready for work an hour or so later. It's such a blessing to be able to do that!

Soooo things are slightly better with his sleep. Some nights he wakes a couple of times in the evening, maybe every 2 hours, and then sleeps 3-4 hours till 4.30am. So that is now a typical "bad" night, which is a VAST improvement on our old bad nights! So that is encouraging :)

Also - the plan! We DO plan to transition Arthur to his own space before the new baby comes. We have been planning this since before I got pregnant, as we knew it would come up eventually. I don't think I would sleep well with two little ones in bed with me, as I don't do that great with one! Also I think Arthur would get disturbed by the wakefulness of a newborn. I know I couldn't cope with TWO night-waking babies on a regular basis! So he needs to transition. We decided that we don't want him in his own room though, unless the new baby is just disturbing him TOO much at night and something has to change for Arthur's benefit. The books I have read about transitioning a co-sleeping toddler when a new baby is on the way, all say that it is best for the toddler if they can stay in your room, not go into their own. Otherwise there are usually problems when the new baby has arrived and is sharing the space they have always shared, and they are suddenly relegated to another part of the house. I fully agree with that idea in any case, and we have no intention of putting Arthur in another room. I like my little ones close to me at night, and don't like the thought of them being out in another part of the house all night long. I know, that's just me, but that's how I feel.

So, the plan was to transition Arthur to the toddler bed (the converted cot-bed that we bought a while back but never used). I figured he would be old enough to manage a real bed. He needs to complete whatever transition we make by 6-8 weeks before the baby is due, as any later can cause problems with association for the toddler. Yeah, I have done a LOT of reading on this!! ;)

BUT, I don't think Arthur will transition that easily to a toddler bed. He has always slept his whole life in a kingsize bed, and he is used to the space. To put him in a toddler bed would be sooo restrictive. I know he would get used to it, but I don't think it would be that nice - I wouldn't like it myself, and it could take a while of many night disturbances for him. So I did a lot of reading on AP/co-sleeping boards online and finally found a couple of posts where mothers in my exact situation were asking how they should transition their toddler out of the bed before the new baby came. The replies were great because they were all from mothers who had been there and done that. The ideas I liked best involved a full-size single mattress on the floor. One lady put guard rails round it like a bed, but on the floor in their bedroom. Another lady put a single mattress next to the big mattress on the floor, but seperated it with a full-length body pillow.

Neil and I both immediately loved that idea. I have two full-length body pillows (one of which I will definitely need for the remainder of my pregnancy before too long!) and we have enough space on the floor for a single mattress to go alongside our Kingsize. So I think that is what we'll do. I have the single mattress picked out to buy, but we have to wait till Neil gets paid before I can order it. It's really cheap - I searched for hours to find the cheapest ones out there that are still good quality. And free delivery too! So I think that will be quite an easy transition for Arthur. If we want to, once he is used to his own mattress, we can start moving it that little bit further away from ours, until he is against the wall on the other side of our room or something. Then if all is working well like that, he can stay there, and we can put the mattress onto a bed eventually, and move him into his own room as and when he is happy with that idea.

I hope it works! But I feel optimistic about it.

Sprout is kicking me :)

Okay, so that is the sleep thing. I always seem to have so much to write about it, and I'm always glad to get it over and done with! But it's stuff I know I'll forget all about when Arthur has been sleeping like a log all night for months and months, or years, and I know I will be fascinated to read how it used to be eventually. Plus it's a big thing going on for us at the moment, and I want to document how it's going from time to time. But it's long-winded and dull of me! Sorry! :)

Onto other things! Arthur cut his 7th tooth, next to his two bottom middle teeth (the right one), three days ago. I am so excited to see the new little gleamy thing emerging more and more each day! It has been ages since he got a tooth so it's all the more exciting after all this time! He is still working on his two top molars, especially the right one. He has had some horrible poo, and nappy rash like he never gets outside of bad teething episodes, and he is drooling like CRAZY. He bangs his mouth on things on purpose and then cries, so I know it must be bothering him. I give him teething powder or gel when he does that, and that fixes it for a while. We have been giving him Calpol when it seems really bad, and he's a whole new boy once that kicks in, poor love. Today after his nap, he was really bothered by his ears. He kept stopping in his tracks while walking around, and making a face and poking his fingers in his ears and whining :( I wanted to take him to the doctor this afternoon just to rule out an ear infection, but they were fully booked and to be honest, I am sure it's all to do with teething. If it gets dreadful for him over the weekend then we can phone the emergency clinic or something. I gave him Calpol when he did that with his ears earlier, and he seemed cranky and bothered by his ears for 20 minutes and then was completely different and happy :) He seems fine this evening, just a bit red in the cheeks. He felt overly warm on the forehead yesterday afternoon and I kept taking his temperature because I felt sure he was feverish. But he wasn't, every time. I guess it's teething. I hope those molars hurry up! It would be awful if it was dragged out for ages. I know they are nasty ones to cut though.

I took Arthur to the baby clinic this morning to follow up on his weight, as he had lost weight at his last check up in early December. At 10.5 months he weighed 23lbs 13oz, and then at 13 months he weighed 23lbs 5oz. They said not to worry because he was eating well, looking healthy, and had started walking (and night-weaned) since the last weigh-in. They were sure the night-weaning and walking had contributed to the weight loss, and said it was normal. But they said to come back in January just for peace of mind. So we went this morning, and he now weighs 23lbs 12oz! Yay! He is gaining weight absolutely fine, and is following the curve of the 50th percentile (which is what he had dropped to last time) - the same percentile as he was at birth. I had him measured this time too - he is 78.5cm (31 inches), between the 50th and 60th percentiles :) So he is doing great. I asked them to measure his head circumference too, but they said they don't do that after 12 months. They don't have charts to plot it on or anything. But I really wanted to know, because his head seems so big to me! He only fits hats that are age 2 now - we have had to go back to the shop to exchange the 12-18 month hat we got him before Christmas! Now that he's much slimmer, his head just looks big on his little body to me. So I wondered if that was okay. The health visitor measured it for me anyway and it's 47.5cm (the two-year-old hat said 48cm). She said he was fine, and not to worry at all. My dad has a pretty big head actually, so perhaps he has inherited Daddy's head as well as his curly hair! The curly hair probably adds to the impression of head size though, as it stands out! I love his sweet head though :) I just wanted to be sure he was growing right, or something!

So all went well. I don't have to take him back ever again if I don't want to, apparently! There will be no further baby checks for Arthur now. There used to be one at 18 months but it got scrapped in this area. The next developmental check will be at school I think! But I asked them, if I was at the baby clinic with the new baby, would they check Arthur too? And they said of course they would, so that's nice :) They love Arthur! But he always charms everyone there, so that's probably why :)

Ohhh I know what I meant to write about!! A week ago, Arthur and I went to the ladies' fellowship group at church (well, at one of their houses) one morning, like we do every couple of weeks or so. It's the one that is really a mother-and-toddler group, as all the ladies who are around to meet in the day have pre-schoolers or babies! There are only 5 or 6 of us which is nice and cosy. I am much happier in small groups than with lots of people. Especially in someone's house rather than a big venue. So I really enjoy the fellowship group. Anyway, while we were there, my friend Katie (the one who is pregnant and due 2 days after me) said that there was a mother-and-toddler playgroup that she has been wanting to try out, really local to me, and asked me if I would like to take Arthur along too. Katie has been taking Joshua (18 months) to mother-and-baby groups literally like 5 days a week, every week since he was 5 months old! Plus swimming and goodness knows what other social activities. She is a really active mummy. I feel so.... incompetent next to her sometimes. We are just so different though, that's all it is. She is outgoing and active and sociable, and I am, well, the opposite of all those things, by nature! I find social settings SO hard. I literally have to drag myself to do them, it's so hard. They are always the LAST thing I want to do, and I get nervous and think of excuses why I can't go, and often MAKE the excuses too, and don't go.

But I know Arthur NEEDS to start socialising more. He is reaching a developmental stage where he needs to interact with other children his age and learn through playing with them, etc. He needs it. It would be good for me too. But I have been dreading it all along. I fear that I have been shielding him too much from bugs and viruses, by not socialising with him very much. He has been pretty healthy so far, but I have always been kind of scared that when he DOES start to socialise more, he will catch every bug going. I know that not all children do, but still. I also know that's a NECESSARY thing, for a healthy immune system, and I am not doing him any favours by holding him back from social settings. I know, I know, I know. But I still find it hard to actually take action on it.

Anyway, Katie saved me because the playgroup is literally around the corner from my house. We can walk there (Arthur too). And I have absolutely no excuse not to at least try it out. Katie was going to go whether I did or not. I felt a little better knowing that I would have someone there I'd know, but also a little intimidated by the idea that she would probably just strike up friendly chat with 5 nearby mums and I'd be left feeling shy and foolish, given that she's an absolute pro at all this playgroup stuff! The playgroup is a very popular one, and I heard it is big. It meets from 10am to almost noon.

So on Wednesday (2 days ago), we went to Playgroup! Ooooh how nerve-wracking/exciting!! It was HUGE. I mean, bigger than I imagined. There were between 100 and 200 toddlers and babies there! Running everywhere, busy playing and doing things. My eyes were bugging as much as Arthur's were as we walked in and made our way amongst the clamour, looking for Katie and Joshua. There is a big carpeted foyer area which has blankets and things laid down for babies, with toys and things. And lots of chairs for mums to sit on! There is a kitchen area (no little ones allowed!) which had trays ready on tables with 200 plastic sippy cups ready for drink time! They had two side rooms with different activities going on - crafts and playdough in one room, and rocking toys, wooden train sets and toy farms (all floor toys) in the other. And a big toilet with baby changing facilities. And then a HUGE sports hall at the back, with big climbing frames set up, and those plastic stand-up kitchens with all the utensils and plastic food, etc! And millions of tricycles and sit-on cars! I never heard so much noise in my life, or saw so many toddly people all at once! I know Arthur hasn't either!

I wasn't sure how he'd take it, firstly being his first real playgroup experience, but secondly it being so big and noisy, and having so many children running and toddling around. I knew he would be likely to get knocked over now and again with all that activity. I sort of didn't expect him to be shy and clingy because he has never been that way inclined. He seems perfectly secure with me usually, no matter the setting.

Well, we eventually found Katie (chatting with mums as expected!) and Joshua in the big sports hall playing in the toy kitchens. I sat on a tiny chair like a bit of a lemon, and Arthur set right to it with plastic food at a little plastic table, with a little girl called Alice :) He didn't cling, hold onto me, look over at me, anything. He was wonderful!

I talked with Katie after a while, and just marvelled at the scene all around me. Joshua cried a lot, which isn't that unusual for Joshua. Arthur found a toy iron and ironing board, and you SHOULD have seen the look on his face!!! He had the most delighted expression I ever saw! We have been talking about getting him one of those for ages, as he is so keen on household chores (!) and particularly loves watching Neil iron his work clothes every morning. "Iron" is even one of his first words :) He started "ironing" with the iron on the ironing board without hesitation :) It was the cutest thing. He had such a big smile on his face the whole time!

Eventually we got called through for drinks and biscuits, and found that long tables had been put out for the little ones to sit at, all with those miniature chairs around them (not for adults at all!). There was a sweet little basket of biscuits at each table, and each table seated four children, happily swinging their legs from their chair and drinking from plastic beakers and munching biscuits. There were no free seats when we arrived (there were SO many kids!!). I took one look and thought, "This is too "old" an activity for Arthur. I don't think he would even sit at the table, let alone drink on command!" I knew he would eat a biscuit if he was given the chance, but I didn't think he'd sit there or drink from their beakers. I got him water in a cup without a lid - a bit of a first for Arthur! And when a seat opened up, I sat him on it and tucked him in at the table next to a 17-month-old called Natalie. And then I backed away to watch, and I'll be darned if he didn't look like a real grown-up boy along with all the other children, swinging his legs under the table, drinking from his cup with minimal spillage (with my help though), and munching on his biscuit!!! I felt almost tearful watching him with the other children like that. It was like a wake-up call of how he is growing up. I was soooooooooo so proud of him at that moment! He took to it all like a duck to water, and looked so grown-up. He did so well!

The idea at this playgroup is that you can let your child go wherever they want to, and play with whatever takes their fancy. I LOVE that. Arthur loved it too. After drink-and-biscuit time, he just darted off this way and that, stopping a lot to just stare at other children as they walked or ran past him. One little girl stopped near him and just jumped and jumped on the spot, you know how little kids do when they are just bubbling over with energy?! Arthur squealed with joy and clapped his hands at her every time she did it, hehe! I know he would LOVE to jump like that. He loves it when other people do and always claps and squeals and looks so thrilled!

He got knocked down twice and banged his head once, enough to get a red mark on his forehead, but he never once cried or got clingy. He just got up and kept going! He went to the wooden railway and took it apart, and stacked the pieces of tracks! He built some bricks. He went on the small slide three times (with my help) and loved it! He has never really done slides and stuff before, so I didn't know how he'd be with it, but he just loved everything and took it all in his stride. He went on a rocking horse and liked that. He kept on disappearing and I had to follow him, as he never once looked to see if I was still there!! He is so confident and independent. I am so proud of that :) One time he had gone off somewhere, and I found him in the room with the toy farm. When he saw me, he walked towards me with a plastic hippo (on a farm?!) in one hand, and a plastic horse in the other, beaming from ear to ear as he approached me and holding them out for me to see. Such a sweetie! He approached other children a few times, and once he gave a toy that he was carrying (a toy frying pan) to a baby younger than him, and then took it back again - much to the baby's distress! I gave the baby something else to play with and followed Arthur. I just wanted to be near him that first time. More for me than him really.

After a while, one of the ladies running the playgroup got out the hoover and started to vacuum up the crumbs from the biscuits, and lots of the children stopped in fascination to watch. Arthur was right near the hoover while it was running, and stopped dead, staring at it. I know he is terrified of the hoover at home and he hadn't looked back at me to see where I was for a good five minutes, so I made sure I was nearby in case he wanted to find me for reassurance. But he was okay. His expression said he wasn't sure about it, but I guess it was a different setting, and he saw all the other children being interested and not scared, or just ignoring it and carrying on with their activities, so that helped. When it stopped, he looked over at me and didn't seem to sure about things, so I sat with him on my lap for a couple of minutes just so he could touch base with me. He soon slid off and toddled off to do something else though!

Katie took Joshua home before the end because he was just crying a lot and cranky. I never thought I would stay beyond when she did - I had even said I would only stay an hour and then go before she did! - but I was enjoying it and Arthur was enjoying it, and they said it would be song time soon, so I wanted to stay! Yay! Song time was great. Arthur picked a shaker to make noise with, and had fun with that. We sang action songs that he knows, and the singing was so wonderfully full and loud with so many many voices (nearly all mothers and no children though, with them being so little! They were busy focusing on the actions!). I sang my little heart out! :) Arthur loves songs and singing and music so he was happy. There was a song they always finish with, called "Hop Little Bunnies" or something like that. I didn't know it, but I do now! All the children lie on the floor and the song starts out about bunnies sleeping and how still they are, and then you all clap and shout WAKE UP NOW!! And they jump up, and then the song is all bouncy and you sing "Hop little bunnies, hop, hop, hop!" over and over! And the little ones jump up and down till the next verse starts, when they all lie down and pretend to be sleeping again! I love it! It reminds me of songs we sang at nursery school. There were some like that.

Anyway - too old for Arthur, thought I. He can't jump yet, and I can't imagine he would lie down on command! He watched for the first verse on my lap with eyes boggling! Then, I was so surprised - as the second verse started and the children all lay down on the floor again, Arthur slid himself off my lap and lay on the floor! He lay perfectly still and stared at the ceiling!! But he was slow to get up, and only just got there before the jumping bit finished, bless him! For the other verses, I picked him up quick, and put my hands under his armpits to help him jump! He LOVED that!

And then it was the end, and we came home! I was on such a high after Playgroup, I was so surprised at how much we had both enjoyed it, and how it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be, and how EXCITED I was to be going back next week! Yay! We are sooooo going every week from now on, unless we can't because Arthur is in plaster casts or we have an appt or something. He loves it, and I love seeing him love it. It's perfect timing for him I think. He seems absolutely ready for something like this now.

So that is great news! :) I am so happy about it. We'll just have to hope we don't catch too many bugs! They meet on Mondays as well as Wednesdays I think, but we'll just go on Wednesdays for now, with Katie and Josh. And we'll see in a while, if it feels right to start going twice a week. Anyway I am so happy about that!

It's so late now! This diary entry has taken ages to write! Oh I meant to say also, a week ago, a couple of days after my last entry, Arthur was sat playing with his bricks, and I got a good flat surface for him to build on (he normally builds on the carpet which isn't that stable), and when I looked over, he had built a tower of SEVEN bricks!!!!!! He knocked that down, and just built tower after tower after tower, all with eight or nine bricks!!!!!! He just amazes me. He tried a tenth brick but the height made it wobbly and it fell down every time. He loves to build a tall tower :) We were so excited that we got the camcorder out and filmed him building tall towers for a while, hehe! We have to use "candid camera" these days, smuggling it into the room and hiding it amongst cushions on the sofa or something! Arthur has a fascination with the camcorder these days and will stop any and every activity the moment he sees you with it, to investigate. It is so frustrating, as we only ever get it out when he's doing something really worth filming, only for him to stop! Tsk! So we have started trying to hide it. It does make for weird footage sometimes, with things in the shot that we didn't intend to be there, etc!

Anyway. He is also now able to put Duplo together, just these last few days. He sticks two pieces together and roars with delight, and then claps and claps and looks round for us to show us his two pieces stuck together in outstretched hand! He knows he is a clever boy :)

He climbs EVERYWHERE, urgh. He climbs on sofas, boxes, toys. We have even caught him with his leg up against the washing machine, trying to use the washing machine doorway as a foothold! Yikes! I can see this stage leading to some new bumps and bruises for him. I try to discourage him from climbing but he just does it more if I insist he stops! I try distracting him instead, which works better usually.

He has also started climbing into laundry baskets and his activity ring and lying down in them! He gets stuck and ends up having to call me to help him get out, funny boy! Here he is in his ring yesterday. I was busy being all nesty and pregnant, sorting through a ton of papers that have been festering and cluttering things for YEARS, and he was such a good boy, keeping busy with his toys. When I looked over he had climbed into his ring (the same one as in the photo at the top of my diary! He looks soooo different in there now!) and was casually lying in it, putting two mega blocks together and pulling them apart, over and over. He loves doing things with blocks and Duplo, etc.

When he saw me, he did this - I think he was saying, "No pictures!" (hehe!):

This afternoon he called out from the kitchen, not distressed at all, but just a call that I recognise as him saying, "Um... a little help here, people?!" And I found him like this:

The poor boy had to endure me running for the camera and snapping his picture before being rescued, hehehe! He is so patient with me though ;)

Another new thing he is doing, which he started doing quite by himself one afternoon while I was tidying in the kitchen, is STACKING PLATES in the dishwasher!!!! I swear this child has not inherited this tidy-homemaker thing from me! He stacks them so carefully, and in order too. They were clean plates that I was about to unload - I wouldn't let him near the dirty ones! All the plates at the front are ones he had just stacked!

Well I don't know if I had more to write, but I'm tired out and need to go to bed. I have a couple more photos to post, which I will finish with. They were taken a few nights ago. Arthur was in the middle of being changed for bed, and if we do that downstairs (on the rare occasion that he doesn't have a bath and get changed on the bed afterwards) then he is apt to jumping up when you reach for a nappy/sleepsuit/wipe, etc. and toddling off at his fastest walk (which is really starting to resemble a slight run - more of a race-walk now) to the kitchen to take one last look at his favourite cupboards! His current favourite is the one with all the saucepans in. He loves to look right to the back and see all the pans and lids on the top shelf. One night when this happened, I took a photo of him doing it, because he looked so cute all standing on tiptoe to see right in at the back. Then he turned round and saw that we had caught him (Neil was there too), and he gave us such a scrumptious excited reaction that I had to take another photo :) So here they are:

He is just so delighted with life in general, and so DELIGHTFUL in general! The last photo shows an expression/reaction he makes to things VERY frequently. I love this little boy sooooooooooooooooooooo much. See how his legs are so much slimmer now?! And what the heck is up with the inside of that cupboard door, yuck! Things like that are standing out to me like crazy these days - I am nesting like a mad woman, even though I'm only halfway through my pregnancy so far! I obviously need to tackle those doors. Yuck-o.

Anyway, for now I need to go to BED! I will update again when I can! :)