Thoughts about 30, skating, and pox! And photos :)

Thank you so much for the lovely comments about my home-sewn nappies!!! :) I honestly think anyone can do it though, I'm not really gifted or anything! I never sewed a THING before nappies. Well, I did sew some verrry basic stitching to make a pair of curtains for the kitchen, under heavy supervision from my Granny (as I was so rubbish at sewing!). I did have to do one or two sewing projects at school, but the first one (an apron that I still have in the kitchen drawer!) I got lots of help with, and the other one was a denim skirt which I completely failed to sew and got an F and several detentions over! ;) I was fairly amazed to discover that I could actually SEW when I put my mind to it - it is really as simple as following the pattern and a lot of practise. I get lots of practise because I love sewing so much now! Anyway thank you for the sweet comments :)

I feel like I have SO much to write! It's Sunday so maybe I'll get the chance to write it all in one go (in the day even - gasp!) as Arthur and Neil are napping together and then they are going out shopping this afternoon.

They are going "mystery shopping" :) It's my birthday the day after tomorrow but I have no idea what I want, so they are just going to scour the shops, hehe! I am really looking forward to my birthday. I think it will be a normal tiring day, and Neil will be at work, but oh well. The bit I'm looking forward to is that I'm going to be 30! It feels a really special milestone and my 20s have felt like they have lasted for EVER. I suddenly feel tired of being in my 20s and glad to see them go. I'm so excited about my 30s!!!!! It's going to be my "mummy" decade! I know I'll still be a mummy in my 40s and so on, but in my 40's my children will become teenagers. I am excited about the part that I have been waiting for ALLLLL my life where I am "mummy" to a little brood of babies/toddlers/primary school kiddies :) I am so excited!!! Getting to be 30 is sort of like my grand arrival in that stage, even though I already have one little toddly person in my 20s. I remember when I was turning 20, all I ever wanted to achieve by the end of my 20s was to be married and have had my first child, maybe even have number 2 on the way. And here I am! I am so blessed. I am exactly where I wanted to be, and excited about what the future holds. I don't have any regrets for my 20s, except the beginning was not pretty suffering from severe depression, and those 2 years housebound with M.E. SUCKED and blew. But oh well. I am so much stronger for the experience, and God has taught me so much through it all. So I can't regret anything.

I got married at 23 and had my first baby at 28. Baby number two was conceived when I was 29. We have everything we need. I think back on it all and can't believe how blessed I really am. I am so relieved that I feel a peaceful sense of completion over finishing my 20s and moving on to my 30s. I used to be so nervous that nobody would marry me and I wouldn't get to have children, and I'd enter my 30s all flipped out over when I'd manage to have a child, feeling like time was running out.

Yay, I'm going to be THIRTY!!! :D On the other hand, wow, I can't believe I'm actually 30 years old!!! I mean, I was 15 yesterday, so I don't know how 15 more years just disappeared like that!

Arthur has a cough. He's coughing now in his sleep, so much that I think it might wake him up before he's finished his nap. Hmmm. It's dry and infrequent, but it bothers him in his sleep and he coughs occasionally throughout the day. He is fine otherwise. No cold, no exposure to other children in the past week really. He seemed a little cranky a couple of days ago, and more tired than usual yesterday (he nearly dozed off in his highchair over lunch, which is unheard of for Arthur!). I am sort of keeping my eyes peeled for chicken pox. I read that it often starts with a dry cough or runny nose (he doesn't have a runny nose) and general crankiness, a few days before the spots start.

I think chicken pox must be on year 3 of the 3-yearly epidemic cycle here, because there seem to be an awful lot of children locally coming down with it (Jaya has it too, and she's quite local to us - maybe 30 minutes drive away). A mum from church phoned me a couple of weeks ago to tell me that a 2-year-old at church has come down with it, but Arthur had no contact with him during the incubation period. She said she has heard that chicken pox is actively going round this town at the moment, and a lot of kids are getting it right now.

I was pretty excited at the news, I have to say! I am really eager for Arthur to get chicken pox. It's mild enough in young children and once you have had it you have lifelong immunity, so it's well worth catching when you are little. If you catch it as an adult it is a very nasty illness. My brother and I had it during a similar local epidemic when I was 4 and he was exactly Arthur's age. It was straightforward and we carried on as normal while we had it - I mean, we didn't feel unwell, just LOOKED it, hehe! My mum says my brother had it worse than me but he coped okay. My only memories of it are seeing my brother sitting on the kitchen floor covered in calamine lotion and spots (!) and the fact that I got to go out and play with my friends from nursery school who were also at home with chicken pox! There were plenty of them at the time, so it seemed to me that I just saw my friends as normal, only we giggled a lot because we were all as spotty as each other! :)

Anyway. Arthur has been to playgroup (the one with 100 toddlers!) in the past 11-20 days (the incubation period) so we'll see. I REALLY don't want him to miss this round of chicken pox. He will do so well to get it over and done with before he gets a lot older. On the other hand, if he DOES miss it, at least there will be a later chance for both Arthur and Matthew to catch it at the same time and get it out of the way together. Anyway, yay for chicken pox (that sounds weird!)!!! :D

The other thing that seems to be going around is a yucky tummy bug, which has been freaking me right out for the past couple of weeks :( I just want to stay inside and hide when I hear that there's a tummy bug going round. I CERTAINLY don't want to go anywhere near a playgroup with 100 children! It seems very virulent - every family at church seems to have had it, and it was on the local radio recently because at one of the local primary schools, a third of the children were out on ONE single day with it! Yikes! Neil's mum and sister have had it up in Yorkshire, and my mum had it in France at the same time!!!! I felt absolutely trapped, like I was surrounded by sickness everywhere and there was no place safe to hide from it. I always feel like that when I hear of tummy bugs though, even if they aren't local to me. In the past I simply stayed in for as long as I felt like I needed to. Not the healthy response but oh well. Now I can't afford to do that, because it isn't fair to keep Arthur in because of my irrational fears and insecurities! He has to pick up bugs and stuff as he socialises and does normal things. Inevitably, Neil and I will catch them too. But I'm DREADING it, particularly with the tummy bugs. I have not been sick since I was 18, though I couldn't even begin to estimate the amount of time I have spent since then panicking that I might be. Urgh. I hate this fear. I wish I didn't have it. It's so controlling, and it totally doesn't go with having children. I am just desperate for April to get here. These things seem to fade away after March, so I will be glad to get the next month or so over with!

Arthur's night boot is going a bit crappily. So far he has worn it 2 nights and NOT worn it for 3 nights! The first night it left a nasty red mark on his foot, so we left it off the following night to let his foot recover. Then Neil had a "Poker night" after work (they play for chips, not money!) so I was putting Arthur to bed by myself and I can't get his boot on without help. It is really complicated with a million straps and you have to shove his heel really hard into the right place in order for the foot to be stretched properly. Of course he wriggles the whole time and tries to get his foot back out, and you need at least 6 hands to wrangle the straps into the right places whilst simultaneously holding his heel firmly in place! So, no can do without Neil. So that was 2 nights without the boot. Then he wore it the next night, but got a sore red mark again. I don't know what we're doing wrong, but I think we will leave out the "optional" strap next time we put it on. I think it's that strap that is giving him the mark. He sleeps so much worse with that boot on, ugh. Last night he woke 3 times just in the evening alone, and needed me to resettle him each time. Poor Arthur.

Arthur now says thank-you pretty much every time we give him something, and also when he wants a musical toy wound up or something, he will say thank you as he hands it to me when I offer to wind it up for him :) Sometimes it sounds like "ancka" now, instead of just "anck". He is also starting to try the word "bib" when he sees his bib, or when I say I'm going to put his bib on. So far it's just a very exaggerated "MmmBBuh!" (ie a strong letter 'b'). He hears EVERYTHING, even tiny sounds, and signs to me that he can hear something (hand cupped next to his ear) and calls out urgently until I acknowledge it! I have to acknowledge that a) he has heard something, b) what it is, and c) that Mummy can hear it too! He is very particular about the right response, hehe! This happens very frequently throughout the day, as he does it every time the boiler clicks on or there's water running, or if the toaster pops up, the washing machine door clicks to say it has released at the end of a wash cycle, or even if the fridge hums! If he hears a siren, shout, or bird outside he does it too. He is just absorbing everything around him at the moment, and wants to tell me about every tiny detail, which is so sweet.

He has learnt that when the boiler light goes on, if he goes and looks in the other room at the thermostat, there is usually a red light on that too. He knows that one seems to trigger the other, and rushes back and forth looking at them both until they go off again! He also seems to be learning that if I put the hot tap on in the kitchen, the boiler lights up. I came across Neil teaching him that last weekend, holding him up to the boiler in one arm and turning the hot tap on and off with the other hand, explaining to Arthur what was happening! Arthur was absolutely engrossed, it was so cute :)

We have to go out at least once each day at the moment, usually twice. Arthur has his midday nap, and either side of that, he seems to need to go out, otherwise he just climbs the walls and drives me crazy! In the morning we take a walk around the local (yucky) roads. I time it so that we are usually out for 30-40 minutes and when we get back it is Arthur's lunchtime straight away. Then he has his nap. After his nap there is now quite a big window in the afternoon for us to go out somewhere. We usually go to the supermarket or into town, but we can't go shopping EVERY day, so I need to think of more places to take him that don't exhaust me. I am getting tired much more quickly these days.

The morning walks are working really well. Arthur loves to walk. He is getting really good at walking on sloping driveways and things now, and he likes to walk over drains that make a clanking sound as you walk on them because they are uneven. He will walk back and forth over a clanky drain cover a MILLION times, and use up about 15 minutes of our whole walk time! The thing I like most about our walks is that we are not going anywhere in particular and I am in no hurry, so I can let him just take all the time he wants exploring the texture of a wall or stopping to stare at a car going by or a dog every 5 seconds (literally!). He just wants to take so much in, and it's nice that I can let him take the time to do that. Sometimes we don't actually get any further than the next road to ours, but it doesn't matter! I just watch the time and we turn back round and make our way home if it's gets late enough. Arthur loves our walks!

He loves the swings. They make him squeal and giggle, and when I slow it right down so that I can get him out, he rocks himself vigorously to show me he wants to continue swinging! He likes to swing for AGES. Yesterday Neil took him to a big playground with lots of toddler things, and he apparently loved the toddler see-saw!

He really likes football. Yeurgh! Yesterday Neil was watching the FA Cup and at one point you could really hear the billions of men in the stands singing their football chanty things, and Arthur suddenly started doing it too!! Aaaaaaargh, he's only ONE!!! ;) He really enjoys watching sports already though, it's weird! I didn't expect him to nearly so young as this. He spotted a football match being played when they were at the playground yesterday and stood there transfixed for ages!

He isn't that impressed by the winter olympics though. *I* am! I love the winter olympics! It always feels like it has been forever since the last one, much more so than the general olympics. I wish it was more frequent than every 4 years! I just like all the snow and ice and seeing stuff that's so different to the usual sports out there. I love the figure skating. It makes me wistful to skate again (and REALLY reminds me how crap I was, haha!). Since I got pregnant with Arthur I have barely thought about skating - it's weird to think that, since it dominated my life so much for ages. I used to have a skating diary here at diaryland even! I forget where I put that diary now.... When I had M.E. I used to DREAM of getting back to ice-skating, and then when I was healed I did go skating again. My legs were waaaaaay out of condition and I only went once. I don't know why I only went once. Anyway that was it! Skating and pregnancy don't mix, and let's face it, neither do skating and small babies/toddlers! I do so want to introduce Arthur and Matthew to ice-skating at an early age. I don't want to push them into having lessons or anything like that, I just want them to try it and hopefully enjoy it. I know I can teach them the basics if they are interested in skating better.

I have yet to find anything in my life that grips me with such passion (not including my relationship with God!) - an activity I mean. I used to wear my skates in my bedroom to do my homework (!!) and fall asleep every night practising turns and stuff in my head, imagining I was on the ice so that I could almost feel it. If I was stressed or being bullied at school, or even ill, stepping onto the ice and that first glide away from the edge would literally melt every bad or tense thought in my head. If I was unwell I would instantly feel better. Just the smell of the ice would lift my spirits and make me feel happy and excited, even if I caught a whiff of it from the outdoor vents walking past the rink. I should skate again, but I don't think I will get the chance now.

I did start properly again when Neil and I were first engaged, so not all THAT long ago. Neil got so attracted to it by my enthusiasm, and sometimes he came to watch me, and so he ended up getting lessons himself for a while! He could barely stand up on the ice before that, and we stopped going a few months later but he could go forwards and backwards by then, so it was well worth the lessons for him. He is way more confident on the ice now, which will be good for when we skate with our children on family outings! I had picked up where I left off but I didn't get much further than a sort of refresher course on what I had done years before, and then we stopped going. But it was so much fun! Watching the olympics, I just get such a rush of excitement for the way it FEELS, and I want to be out there skating again. I miss the jumping and the speed most of all. But being busy with little ones is definitely more of a rush for me right now, so I don't feel sad that I'm not able to go anymore, which is good! I really hope I'll be able to take my own little ones some day and see them enjoy it too. I hope they will, because it's soooooooo much fun if you don't hate it to bits! :)

Well, Arthur woke from his nap coughing again, and then he was all clingy and cuddly for a while so we stayed in bed for a bit. When we got up, he did a horrible poo, not his normal thing at all, but not diarrhoea or anything. Hmmm. He seems perfectly happy and energetic now though, so I can't figure it out. Neil has taken him shopping since he seems fine.

Matthew is kicking up a storm in there! :)

Ohhh I just remembered something I meant to write! I bought some triple chocolate soft cookies at the supermarket recently, dark chocolate cookies with big chunks of dark, milk and white chocolate (mmmmmmmmmmmm!!!). Arthur was extremely interested in them, but I didn't give him any until the last one. I gave him a tiiiny nibble of one little corner, and it didn't have any lumps of chocolate in it. Of course he loved it to pieces and proceeded to drive me half crazy begging for more! So I wrapped the half cookie up in its wrapper and distracted Arthur to another part of the room while I hid it in a cut-out piece of fabric for making a nappy! It was just meant to be there temporarily but of course I forgot about it. The fabric was high up on the back of the sofa, out of Arthur's reach (except not really, since he climbs on the sofas easily).

Anyway, later on I had to go for a wee, and I left him playing with bricks on the floor, apparently absorbed. About 15 seconds later I heard a crackle sound, but I didn't think anything of it, and then it went VERY quiet - too quiet, you know the type I mean?! When I came down about 60 seconds later (maxiumum!), this is what I found:

Little monkey! He must have immediately known that as soon as I went out of sight, he would have a good look for that cookie, and he even hid from me the fact that he must have known exactly where I put it! He couldn't have found it in 15 seconds otherwise! He must have got up the second I was upstairs, and climbed straight on the sofa to find it! He lost no time at all in unwrapping it and tucking into that cookie straight away! He had eaten a whole quarter of a cookie by the time I peed and flushed and came back down! Monkey boy :) I took the rest away and cleaned him up (he was pretty chocolatey). It was such a rich cookie that I wasn't sure if it would be too much for him, but he was happy and somewhat "buzzy" - what a surprise! - for the rest of the morning! He ate a great lunch so it didn't put him off, but I have no intention of letting him eat that much rich chocolatey cookie again any time soon! My little mischief maker! ;)

Here he is again a little later, on his chocolate high, hehehe!... See toothie number seven at the bottom there?! And the enormous pile of only about a quarter of my nappy-making fabrics dumped all over the sofa! Ahem.

Speaking of which, here he is relaxing on the sofa wearing another newly made Cuddlebuns - this one made of hearts soft stretchy knit print and all the rest is hemp, except for lime green microfleece on the inside, and lime green snaps :) Lurrrve making nappies!!

I only have one more picture to post - my brother and his Sarah came round today to see us. They haven't seen Arthur since his birthday party, so he has changed a lot since then! He was thrilled to have visitors and did lots of ear-to-ear grinning complete with hunched up shoulders at them! He even gave them cuddles! He showed them his "un" and his snack, and enjoyed having lots of attention. The bit he liked best was that Bennie (my brother) brought his big long umbrella as it has poured with rain today. Arthur has never seen an umbrella opened out, and Bennie opened and closed his umbrella for him. Arthur LOVED it!!! He stood under it and held the handle, making it swing like a pendulum. Then he wanted it closed and opened again. He just kept standing there and roaring with joy at how exciting it was!! He thought it was fab ("Ab!") and when Bennie told him it was an umbrella, he shook his head with a scornful expression and said, "Ab!" as if Bennie totally did not know the right word for it, hehe! Anyway, here they are with the "Ab!" :)

Okay, it's Arthur's bath time so I have to finish now. I'll update again soon! Oh but thank you so much for the messages again! And Sarah, thanks for the advice on raisins. I will try him on grapes more, but he loves raisins sooo much, I'm not sure how to limit them! He does have them for mealtimes as a dessert too. Grapes are a great idea though :) And Jemma, who is the other Arthur Cameron?! I'm intrigued!!

15 months old, plaster cast, "un", and new signs

Such a diary slacker!!! Ugh. I wish I had updated at least twice since the last entry, but oh well, here I am now. I have been equally slack in my pregnancy diary too. Tsk.

Thanks for all the lovely messages, and Megan for checking up on me and making sure I am not ill! We are all fine, but the reason I haven't written in a while IS partly because of a sort of bug I seem to have caught. I think it's pregnancy related. It's The Sewing Bug. I have got it bad and I can't seem to shake it! I spend ALL my spare time (and time when I should be sleeping at MIDNIGHT!) sewing, and all the rest of the time when I can't sew, thinking about sewing, hehe! Anyway it's not a bad bug to have because it has resulted in a bit of creative accomplishment for me, which always feels good to do, and some new cute and ultra-soft nappies for Arthur (and Matthew, yay!). Like this lil matching pair of Cuddlebuns for my boys!...

I am sooooo thrilled with them! I made a couple of little mistakes on the newborn sized one, because I adapted the Cuddlebuns pattern myself, as their so-called "Preemie" size would have swamped a 3-month-old! So I made a smaller one, but the first one is usually the one with the mistakes! Anyway, I love them! They are both stretchy soft knit print outer, a hidden layer of cotton sherpa (absorbent!), white microfleece against the skin (super soft and wicks moisture away from their skin - I LOVE microfleece in nappies!), and the soakers are part sherpa and part hemp stretch terry. Arthur's has more hemp because he needs more absorbency. Arthur's nappy has a matching hemp booster (topped with microfleece and the knit print on the other side!) and it's the first time I have made a SNAP-IN booster! It snaps into the inside of the nappy and fits beautifully. I used royal blue poppers/snaps on them both and serged them on my overlocker with blue varigated woolly nylon thread! Does anyone care about all this detail, haha?! I just have to write it anyway. I am obsessed ;)

Arthur's Cuddlebuns is sooooo soft and stretchy and comfy, and so much more absorbent than I expected it to be, that we have decided to test-drive him on it tonight as a night nappy. He needs SUPER absorbency overnight, so we'll see. I'm not convinced, but if it does see him through, I will be extra proud of myself! ;) He is wearing it under my first homemade Cuddlewrap too! I used chocolate microfleece outside (just because I love the colour and softness so much!) and beige suedecloth inside, with a layer of PUL sandwiched in the middle for waterproofness. I used red snaps, serged it in varigated earth colours (reds, oranges, browns, etc), and appliqued a cute giraffe on the bum! I am so happy with it. It fits him great and softly round all the elasticated bits, and HOPEFULLY it will be good and leakproof! Here is the little monkey boy wearing his new wrap (with new Cuddlebuns underneath!) before bed tonight:

Yay!! I LOVE sewing nappies! I am keen to finish this diary entry with enough time to sew another Cuddlewrap tonight. I think this time I will use "Sunset" (kind of orangey) coloured lightweight windpro fleece :) I am nuts, I know it.

Soooo as you can see from the last couple of photos, Arthur is OUT of plaster casts, yaaaay! He was in one for a week and the physio took it off this afternoon, and said his foot looks so much better that she won't put another on!!! We are beyond thrilled. I didn't cope well with him during the week, so we were going to pretty much say no to another cast today, unless she gave us good evidence that he really needed one.

Arthur didn't do so well with it either this time. I think in the past he was soooo much less mobile so it didn't affect him so badly to have the casts on. This time he just can't stand still for a second, and wants to walk and try to run all the time. He was so miserable for the first two days, poor love. He just whined and cried all day long, which is VERY unlike Arthur. He would sit and point at things he wanted and just cry, even though I knew he could crawl to them. He just must have felt so stuck in the cast. He wanted to be carried and picked up all the time, and I did say no a lot of the time, but there's no way I was saying no every time. Lifting him was hard work with his plaster on. I am beginning to find it hard to lift him and hold him for long WITHOUT plaster casts, because my bump is getting too big and I get backache and breathless too quickly. So it was extra hard with the cast and him wanting to be picked up more frequently. Also there were the everyday things like lifting him in and out of his highchair (a nightmare structure that I wish we had known NOT to buy all those months back, and bought a nice multi-position removeable-tray type instead!). And the car seat. And lugging the pushchair in and out of the car boot (where it lives as we have zero storage space for it in the house). And carrying him upstairs for his nap.

He woke more frequently at night, but not hourly or anything terrible. I would say he went back to waking every 2-3 hours throughout the evening and night, which is a pattern he was following recently enough for us to still be vaguely used to it, and thus not too shell-shocked by it happening again! I did get SO tired though. It annoying coincided with stupid pregnancy insomnia (which seems to be happening in thankfully short bouts, here and there) so I got very little sleep each night. By Day 3 with the cast on, I was tearful and exhausted, and by the afternoon I just HURT all over. My back hurt and my whole pelvis just hurt and hurt all evening, even with me resting. The other thing was that my Braxton Hicks contractions were getting more and more frequent, and I just generally felt like I was putting too much strain on my body but not able to do anything much about it. I couldn't NOT lift Arthur, and I couldn't put my feet up and rest, because I was on my own and Arthur couldn't do anything at all for himself, poor love, with his leg in plaster.

On Wednesday evening when I got a moment to time them, I had 4 BHs in 10 minutes and two of them hurt, even though I had been resting and drinking water since Neil got in from work. So the next day Neil got permission to work from home and he did all the lifting and carrying for me. I got to lie in a bit too, and also Neil used his lunch hour to give Arthur some lunch and play with him while I soaked in a bath. Neil is so wonderful! I was so relieved that he was able to help me like that, because it made such a huge difference. I felt much better that evening.

The next day he wasn't allowed to work from home, but it was a MUCH better day. I felt like my body had had chance to recover a bit, and also Arthur was getting used to his cast and was no longer miserable. He was crawling everywhere and playing with his toys and stuff happily, and I just tried to be as careful as possible lifting him when I had to, and keeping it to a minimum anyway. I also drank more fluids which always helps!

Man I was GLAD for the weekend to arrive! Arthur was pretty cheerful all weekend, and started walking on his cast!!! By Sunday he was walking all over the place in it! The physio said he might walk on it, but we just couldn't believe he would, because he still seems to us to be so new at walking, and the cast is bent at the knee and then his foot is flexed up and turned out at the ankle! *I* would have a hard time walking on that, let alone a little tiny person who only just learnt how to walk! But Arthur doesn't like to let things stop him, once he gets over the initial annoyance of the situation :) At first he just cruised the furniture, but he quickly started walking around the room, all hobbly and pitiful on his bent up leggy, but with a big triumphant smile on his face just the same :) Bless his heart, he really was SUCH a good boy with the whole ordeal.

The cast didn't break because we were wonder-parents (!!) and pushed him around the shopping centre for THREE hours - amazingly he didn't complain about that! He usually gets fidgetty and wants to get out after 30 minutes! Then it was tea time so we brought him home and he ate his tea sitting on Neil's lap. We changed his nappy and then he snuggled with me on the sofa with some mama milk (well, the part of mama that used to produce the milk, anyway!), snack-pack of dried fruit (a BIG favourite with Arthur lately!) and the Bedtime Hour on the CBeebies channel on TV. He has watched way more little people's TV programmes this week than I ever wanted him to watch, but honestly, he has needed the distraction a lot of the time. He really likes Postman Pat (I LOVED that when I was little!) and Boogie Beebies. Anything with music in it really. And Fireman Sam. And Balamory. But Postman Pat is his definite favourite. He never watched enough TV before for me to notice any favourites! I don't plan on letting him watch as much now though. Anyway so he went all snuggly and quiet for nearly an hour with me on the sofa, and then it was bedtime, so he didn't ONCE put weight on the new plaster while it dried out! Yay! So it stayed sound for the week, which was a huge relief.

Here is Arthur sitting on me after his non-existent mama milk, eating raisins and watching CBeebies, letting his cast dry out:

After the first day I finally used a little imagination to give him something distracting to do when he was all miserable - I got the big bag of pasta shells out of the cupboard and his cups and a plastic bottle and a sieve, etc, and he spent AN HOUR completely engrossed in them without a break! He loves anything to do with containers. He put them one by one into the bottle, and then tipped them out into the sieve and then seperated them into different cups. I gave him a baby spoon and he stirred them around in their pots :) He is really into stirring things with spoons lately. Anyway, here he is doing that:

I was so glad to have thought of it because it really helped in a pinch, if he was just unhappy with everything. After a couple of days when pasta got a bit old, I freshened things up with a potty full of walnuts, hehe! He loves those :) Actually that one was Neil's idea. We also discovered that a toddler crawling with plastered leg is an EXCELLENT nut cracker, hehehe! I was able to just follow him and eat his trail ;) (Note: We never leave him alone with either the pasta or the walnuts)

Life improved for Arthur in a huge way when his new iron and ironing board arrived from the Early Learning Centre!!! Yay! He was even more thrilled with it than I imagined he would be! Which is really saying something. They were in a big brown box, which he was standing against and trying to open. I pulled out the ironing board first, while he watched. It was flat-packed and mostly obscured by cardboard and plastic packaging, but you could see the face of the board and the top of the legs folded up behind it. Arthur took one look at it, before it was even fully out of the big box, and did this little gasp, and said, "Un! Un! Un!" with huge wide eyes! I was amazed, since I didn't think it was that recognisable as an ironing board, and I hadn't told Arthur what was in the box! He was soooooooooo excited, bless him!

I set it up right away and he stood at it, seemingly unaware of his cast for the first time, "ironing" and just squealing and roaring and beaming with glee over his new toy! Here are three (of about 50 thousand!) photos:

He has had SO much fun with that "Un" since then! The first day it was here, he literally said the word iron several hundred times! He said it while he was eating his meals, settling down for his nap, crawling around the house, playing with it, everywhere!! I think he was just so thrilled with it. He was so eager to show his daddy when Neil got home from work too :) Today he was exploring my kitchen cupboards and he discovered an electric mixer thingy (the hand-held type with two whisk attachments that clip in) at the back. He stopped and stared, and then looked at me with wide eyes, looked back at it, pointed, and said "Un!" I had to explain to him that it LOOKS a bit like an iron, but it isn't one - it's a mixer! But that's a lot for a little one to understand, so he kept on saying "Un! Un!" and pointing to the cupboard. Sweetie boy :)

Arthur is 15 months old!!! Already! That's a whole year and a quarter! I can't believe how old he is getting, so fast. I remember 15 months being like a mini-milestone age in my mind when I was pregnant and when Arthur was tiny. I would think ahead to this-time-next-year and I couldn't imagine having a 15-month-old, or what one would be like even! And now here he is! My big 15-month-old boy! He is wonderful. I could never have imagined how much. Today is also a special day because it's February 13th, and that is the exact day that Arthur was conceived, 2 years ago! At least, that's the day I ovulated, so that's the day the magic happened and he popped into being in his little one-cell self! Neil and I love remembering February 13th :) We love our boy!

Arthur has suddenly started signing more, though I don't know why because we are still being pretty slack with signing to him and teaching him new signs. Two days ago he squirmed and crawled away while I was changing his clothes, and then hobbled round the kitchen half-naked for a while. I was just about to get him and put some clothes on him, when he appeared by my side, gave me a very direct look, and signed "cold"!! Sure enough, he felt chilly to the touch, and I popped him straight into the warm clothes I had ready for him. But I was so pleased that he came to tell me he was cold!

He is teething again. That molar seems to have stalled - his first one, the one he only got two corners of a while back. It doesn't seem to be coming out, but maybe this new bout of teething is a sign that it will be pushing through soon. Or at least pushing two more corners through! I can't believe how long it's taking to come through. His 7th toothie, the one that came in the day before the molar, is already halfway up next to his two bottom middle teeth. But then those are "easy" teeth compared with molars, I guess.

Anyway so yesterday he was a bit miserable and very red-cheeked and chewing his hands constantly. He signed "medicine" to us for the first time!!!! We are SO thrilled about that because we had deemed it to be one of the most important signs we wanted him to learn, given that it would mean him being able to tell us when he was in pain enough to need some medicine. Also I could not find a sign for medicine anywhere, no matter how hard I looked, so I made one up. So it's my very own sign for medicine, and it's lovely to see Arthur sign it back to me! He was ever so pleased when we responded immediately and gave him some teething powder. He even lay down (we always lay him down to give it to him, as some always misses his mouth otherwise) while I was getting it ready and opened his mouth!

Later that day he was really suffering with his teething, and he did his first two-word signing sentence! He pointed to his ear and then immediately signed medicine. So we gave him Calpol, and he could barely swallow it for smiling at the fact that we'd read his signs and given it to him! It was so sweet. After I gave it to him, he reached for the bottle and I told him I was going to put the medicine away in the kitchen now. Right away he did another "double" sign - he waved bye-bye and immediately signed medicine! We were so excited, hehe!

So that has motivated me to teach him some new signs. I especially want to teach him the sign for raisins. I need to look it up. He wants raisins several times a day and so far he just points at the cupboard where they're kept and grunts this primative "uh-uh-uh-uh!" sound in urgent tones! He does that for a LOT of things actually, so I am hoping that he is getting more interested in learning new signs more quickly, so that maybe signing will replace all this grunting! Then again, he is male. Perhaps he is practising for adolescence?! ;) Though right now, I can't imagine Arthur as anything but charming and sociably adorable! :)

Oh I didn't finish saying about the cast. So he had it removed today, and the physio was so pleased with his foot. It looks way straighter to me, so I'm glad we finally did it. She said he definitely doesn't need another cast - yay! But she thinks he could do with a MONTH of wearing a night boot on it. Ugh. But that's definitely preferable to a plaster cast! At least it's off in the day and he can get around as normal. I hope he won't prise it off at night like he had started to do 8 months ago when he was in night boots. They don't look comfy at all - they are leather with velcro straps, and the boot is bent sharply outwards so that his foot is forced into an outward stretch at the instep. That exaggerates the position his foot should be in, and helps the foot stay straight (or even get a little straighter) between the times during the day when he isn't wearing it. A month seems like a lonnnng time, but it's okay. He wanted to take it off tonight (the first night he has worn one) but we wouldn't let him and he has been asleep 2 or 3 hours now, so all seems well. It's kind of fiddly to put on, but oh well. I hope it works well and we can toss it away after a month! We go back to the physio for a follow-up at the end of March.

Arthur was SO thrilled to have his plaster cast off! He just squealed and smiled at everyone. He did lots of hunching his shoulders up and clenching his fists while he was grinning soooo wide, it was THAT exciting for him! He walked through the hospital back to the car and was so happy and noisy about it all the way :) When we got home he just raced about doing all the things he hasn't been able to do for a week. He did a LOT of climbing on the sofas, and sat playing with pans on the kitchen floor with both legs bent right up under him, smiling and smiling. By bedtime he was completely hyper and desperate to play "escape from Mummy and Daddy" every time we tried to pick him up, or hold him still to change him or brush his teeth, and he even continued like that when the lights were out and I was nursing him. He just wouldn't calm down for sleep and in the end got really frustrated that we were insisting on sleepy time, and then there was lots of tired-and-wired-little-boy crying and tantrums, followed by sudden and exhausted sleep!

Sweet little love. I love his exuberance and his excitement and energy over everything. Even when it means I get tired as a result! I love him so much. He is just this little wriggly, vibrant, moving-blur of a gem in every waking moment of my life. Even when he is driving me crazy. He is so precious. I love him soooo much.

I have way more to write about and catch up on, but it's getting late and I should go to bed. Or maybe just cut out that fleece for a wrap.... Or just be sensible and GO TO BED!! ;) I need to update my pregnancy diary asap. And I need to change my 14-month breastfeeding milestone blinkie to a 15-month one :) I am still nursing Arthur just as frequently as ever, and for just as long each time he nurses, even though I'm not producing even one DROP of milk any more! I'm glad he's still going! But I can't wait for my breasts to actually produce something again, even colostrum would be nice! I like for Arthur to get something when he sucks. But he likes the comfort, which is fine by me. I nurse him on waking (between 6 and 7am), for his after-lunch nap, and at bedtime. Also whenever he wakes in the evening up until about midnight. And any time he asks for it in the day, which varies. Usually he asks at least 3 or 4 times, mostly in the afternoon. Those occasions are just nursing on the go, and they don't tend to last long before he's off again! Those are also the upright nursing sessions, where he stands or sits or kneels to nurse, and where I have to constantly remind him to keep still (which makes absolutely no difference!) as he likes to climb all over me and look around in all directions, all while attached to my nipple! Ow. So anyway. I still say I'm breastfeeding, though the "feeding" part of the word feels like I am not eligible to say it. We're just waiting for the milk to arrive, or colostrum or whatever. Then I'll feel okay to call it actual breastFEEDING again! I just say "nursing" for now. But 15 months anyway :) Yay!

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.