A visit from Ella, molars, climbing, and sleep (again!)

An entry! Yay! :) I have sooooooooo many photos to post this entry!

Easter came and went. We don't do anything at all for Easter, never have really. We usually are at church, obviously, but this time we didn't go. We haven't been going to church for a while but I can't think why. Mostly Arthur is ill or we're exhausted or busy using every second of our weekend to do stuff to the house to get it ready for having two little ones! We really should go though. I miss it, but not as much as I should at the moment. Which is another good indication that I need to go.

We did have some visitors on Easter Monday though! Neil's mum and youngest sister were taking a trip down south to stay with his other sister Rosemary - the first time they had been able to leave their home together in years and years, because all that time they had been caring for Neil's dad and he couldn't be left alone. It must be so strange for them now, so empty and sad but also so liberating and different. So they were staying with Rosemary for a week, and she lives about an hour from us by car. On Easter Monday, they came to visit us! I was so happy about that, because I hadn't been able to see them over the week of the funeral when Arthur was poorly. Rosemary brought little Ella, who is 10 months old already!! Wow, time flies! They all fussed over Arthur soooo much, and said how big he is now and stuff. He impressed them by emptying the dishwasher and a few other things that he likes to do that the average 17-month-old doesn't appear to be interested in, hehe!

The sweetest thing was when Ella got tired of being passed around, Rosemary sat her on the floor with a couple of Arthur's toys, and suddenly Arthur was soooo eager to sit with her and share his toys! This boy is so sweet. He just LOVES to share things and give toys to other children. I love his generous nature :) He brought Ella his stacking cups and stacking rings (rather appropriate toys for her age too!) and pressed them on her one by one till she took them. He sat with her and built them into a tower for her and just passed her any toys that she dropped, etc. Here are a few photos:

Ella is such a sweet baby girl! She is sooooooooo smiley, just like Arthur. She has teethed way earlier than Arthur did, and has seven teeth already!!! But she isn't crawling, pulling up or standing yet. She rolls all over the floor to get where she wants to go! Their teeth look really different, I mean, SO different that it's really obvious they haven't inherited their teeth from the same gene pool! I think Arthur must have my pearly whites and Ella must have her daddy's, or something. I don't know what Neil and Rosemary's baby teeth looked like when they were tiny, but my teeth did look a lot like Arthur's do now - similar shape and very white. Ella's are quite little teeth and very gappy and completely different shape, and Arthur's are HUGE and came in close together, etc. It's always so interesting to compare things with the two of them, to see which obvious genes they share! I don't know if they look much alike, as Ella does look a lot like her daddy.

Arthur's nasty flu thingy is really making itself a nuisance in this family! Neil's brother was going to come with the rest of them to visit us, but he was still ill with the lurgy that he caught from his mum just before coming home after the funeral - who caught it from Neil while he was there. Rosemary's husband didn't come because he was feeling fluey and horrible and coldy, so I think he must have had it too because literally in the 3 hours that they were here, Ella went from smiley healthy girl to a very unwell poppet :( I looked at her halfway through their visit and just knew she was coming down with something. I think because I have seen Arthur come down with stuff soooooooo many times in the last few months. I mentioned it to Rosemary but she didn't think anything was wrong. But by the time they left, poor Ella was absolutely streaming from her nose and eyes, totally miserable and sleepy, and wouldn't eat her tea in Arthur's highchair :( I am pretty sure she had picked up what Arthur originally started passing round the family! I hope she is okay - I must ring Rosemary and find out. It was a nasty bug for Arthur so I hope Ella didn't get it too badly. Poor lil sausage!

Rosemary said that they are planning to TTC again starting at the end of the year!!!! I am so excited! All these babies in the family in such a short space of time. She said it took them 6 months to conceive Ella so she thought maybe it might take a while, but I think they might be surprised like we were! It took 9 months to conceive Arthur, but no time at all with Matthew, and that was even with poor timing! I hope they will find it as easy as we did this time round.

Arthur is doing loads better now. He is completely over his fluey thing, as are we, and my mum is finally getting there too. She is still tired easily but otherwise fine. I'm so glad to see the back of that horrible bug! When Ella started acting so poorly when they were here, for a moment I thought it must be a nasty cold (not Arthur's flu) and that worried me because the two of them had already been mouthing the same toys and stuff, and I knew if it wasn't something Arthur had had, there was no way he would avoid getting it. I sooooo don't want him coming down with anything else at the moment. His poor little body needs a break! But since he didn't come down with it (and neither did we), I think it's safe to presume she had the same thing he had a couple of weeks before.

Arthur got his 3rd molar (the first bottom one) a week ago, and it has come in so fast compared with the top ones! There are 3 corners of it through already! His first molar took almost a month to drag 3 of its corners through his gum! That same first molar still isn't quite all through yet, but mostly. It's so HUGE!! I had enormous baby molars too - I was going to get a brace fitted when I was 11 years old because my teeth were so crowded and wonky, and the orthodontist said we'd just wait till my baby molars fell out first. He was SO surprised to find that my adult molars were SMALLER than my baby molars!!! So my teeth had more room and straightened out, and I didn't ever need braces! I'm so weird. But it looks to me like Arthur has my teeth. His molars are just massive. His other top molar is halfway in. The fourth one to complete his first set of molars, is about to come through any day. I see those characteristic dents in his gum that are always there in the 2 or 3 days before the tooth shows through. He is suddenly having a real teething patch! I'm so glad, as he "teethes" all the time but rarely with any new teeth to show for it! I'm glad they're actually coming in now. He's actually doing surprisingly well with his teething at the moment. We expected the molars to be the worst for him, symptomatically, but we had to medicate him WAY more with all his other teeth than we are with the molars. Weird! So far he has just had a couple of teething powders over the whole time and some Calgel. His sleep doesn't even seem disturbed from teething, which is good! Anyway, when this fourth one comes in, he will have 12 teeth, and we're only waiting on his four eye teeth and the 2-year-old molars, and that's his whole set! He is getting really toothy these days :) I'll also be glad to see him have a break from getting teeth, because he'll be less vulnerable to bugs and germs for a while then.

We want him to get his MMR soon, but there's no way he could have had that so far this year, since he has been poorly too frequently. There haven't really been any windows for him to get vaccinated. We weren't crazy about him getting the vaccine too young anyway, so that is fine. But we are thinking we'd like to get it done and out of the way before Matthew is born. I am keeping him away from Playgroup for a few weeks and somewhere in that window of HOPEFULLY germ-freeness (!), I will take him to the nurse and get his MMR done. Then he has a month to finish any side-effects he might have, and that will bring us to Matthew's due date. I am nervous about him having the jab with all the hype about it, but all the same, we do want him protected against these nasties. I had mumps and measles badly and I know how horrible they can be. And I wasn't even a very young child. So yeah, we want him protected. But I am a bit scared about any chance of something going wrong as a result. We have decided to just DO IT and pray. Pray pray pray. And then it's done :) He'll be 18 months old ish when he finally gets the MMR, which sits better with me than when he was due to have it, at 13 months.

My dinner is ready. I'll be back afterwards to post those photos and maybe a bit more newsy stuff if there's time before bed. I REALLY want to sew this evening so I don't want to spend the entire evening on the computer! Back in a bit....

Back again, and eating a big ole hunk of Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate :) I have put on soooooooo much weight this pregnancy so far, though not as much as with Arthur yet. But who cares! I heart chocolate, and it's all going to drop off when I'm breastfeeding two anyhoo.

Okay, where was I? I should post some photos of Arthur! He loves making pretend phone calls at the moment, but never actually says anything! He has his own phone - our old one that stopped working and which we gave to him to play with, instead of the live phone plugged into the wall! But he knows it's not a working phone and completely ignores it, preferring the one that makes the lovely dial tone when he picks it up, and neat little peep peep sounds as he pushes the buttons! It's getting weird to see Arthur like he is in these photos, because there are some of me at exactly his age, doing the exact same thing. Only that phone was an old fashioned dial-up phone, not a push-button one :) But anyway...

Arthur is sooooo into climbing lately! He has been many many months, but it's like he's gone up a gear in the climbing thing recently. We finally took away the little table that was next to the arm of the sofa, which he climbs on several times a day to fiddle with the hi-fi and stuff. He was starting to just climb over his toys and get up on it, without bothering with the sofa at all. So we took it away, and at first Neil just put it in the middle of the room till we figured out where it should go (we still haven't, but it's at least stacked somewhere out of his reach for now!). Arthur climbed on that tiny table over and over again and looked so pleased with himself every time he was standing up on it! I watched him nearby because he was wearing socks and might have slipped, but when he started jumping on the top of it (!) I put it out of his reach. The boy is just a climber right now! He climbs everywhere, and on everything. The other day he climbed on the armchair when it was clear of piles of laundry for a rare few hours (!!), and before I knew it, he was up on the back of it, and lowering himself down behind it! He got stuck of course. It is pushed right up to the wall so he got wedged between the chair and the wall.

Here is a little series of photos of Arthur climbing on that little table. I managed to get them so that they run in a sequence, probably best entitled - "A Definitive Illustrated Guide to Climbing For Toddlers":

Step One: Bring one knee up onto the table edge...

Step Two: Rock your weight forwards over the table, using your knee as a lever...

Step Three: Bring your second knee up, and then place your first foot on the table, followed by the second foot...

Step Four: Get your balance, and use your hands to push up to standing...

Step Five: Stand up straight, and give yourself a round of excited applause...

Step Six (optional): Do a lil dance. Warning! - This step may result in your Mummy removing you from the table top!

My lil climbing monkey :)

His hair has been getting so long again lately! It seems to grow soooo fast. Definitely Neil's gene - I was still practically bald at Arthur's age, hehe! A few days ago I finally took him back to the hairdressers where he had his first haircut, and they trimmed it nicely. Here he is (slightly too bright, but oh well) with his second haircut!

It's so strange to see his hair so clear of his ears! I love his sweet little ears though, so it's nice to see more of them again! I know he will need another haircut by the time Matthew is here though, which is just crazy! He has lovely hair. I love how soft it is and how sweet it always smells. What is it that makes baby hair do that? It's lovely anyway. It's pretty much the same colour as mine, though mine is a sort of richer colour with more red in it than Arthur has. He might get more red in his as he gets older though, as I'm sure mine didn't have so much in when I was little. He already does have some slightly reddy shine to it in the sun, so I guess he has my hair :) Neil's has no red, but he does have lots of auburn in his beard if he ever lets it grow (which he never does - I just know it from one time when we went on holiday for 3 weeks and his razor broke right at the start!). I wonder if Matthew will have red hair? It's a good possibility with every child we have, given the amount of it on both sides of the family. I love red hair, so I'm kind of hoping we'll have a red-haired child at some point! :)

Arthur now says three things very clearly, and a handful of other words that only Neil and I understand! His three clear words are "Da-deee!" (daddy, obviously!), "Ank-yoooo!" (thank you), and "Buh-boo" (bubble). He just started saying bubble today, when Neil was reading him a bath book during their bath, with pictures of a duck taking a bath with lots of buh-boos in it! He is still asking for an apple with his picture book mostly, but he does say "aaah-ooo" sometimes too. He loves apples at the moment, and has stopped asking me to bite off all the skin before he eats the nice fleshy part! He likes to just be handed a washed apple and take it away to eat :) He doesn't eat it all though, and when he's done, I discover he has saved up all the peel parts in his cheek pouches (!) and then spits them out! Here he is eating an apple a couple of days ago:

His appetite is great at the moment. He gets super impatient waiting for his lunch or tea to be ready, he seems so hungry by then! He does have his normal snack between meals. I think we are going to try him on slightly bigger portions, as we're not sure if he's getting enough of his main course, and ends up eating LOADS of dessert! He has healthy desserts, mainly yoghurt or fromage frais, fruit salad, or sometimes digestive biscuit or gingerbread men (those sugar-free organic ones). He also usually has a pile of dried fruit at the end of at least one meal a day. I gave him yoghurt-covered raisins and dried raspberries recently and he LOVES those! I found them at Tescos :)

I put him on the scales today and he weighs exactly 12kg. That translates as 26.5lbs. Our scales weigh in increments of 0.25lbs so I guess it's a good idea of what he actually weighs, though not as totally accurate as the health visitor's scales. I did the same thing a few weeks ago and he was 25.5lbs. He was wearing light clothes and a nappy though. Those weights put him somewhere between the 60th and 70th percentiles, so about right for Arthur really. He was somewhere between the 50th and 60th at the beginning of the year. So he is doing great! I have no idea how tall he is - I'll have to try to measure him. He seems so tall to me, and can reach just about everything in the house now! But then I'll look at him again and realise he is still soooo tiny. Aww. My little tiny boy. Still my little baby really, even though I have another baby coming very soon. I have one little boy and one tiny boy :) I love that!

Well, the only thing lately that has been really difficult with Arthur has been his sleep. I hope I do not sound too much like a broken record! I know his sleep has been ongoingly problematic for Neil and I since the beginning really. It has just been so long since we had an uninterrupted night's sleep. Urgh. Arthur is still waking a couple of times per night. I have no idea why. He just does. I wish I could make him stop doing it, because I'm getting increasingly worried about how I'll manage with a newborn and Arthur having almost newborn sleeping patterns still himself!

He goes to sleep sometime after 7ish, though lately it has been 8pm or later (urgh, more on that in a mo!) and tends to wake sometime around 11pm (though not every night, sometimes he sleeps through that one), and then again at 2ish, and again at 5ish. Then he is up for the day at 6am. Yeurgh. When I look at that pattern, I realise how very much it resembles that of a newborn waking for 3-hourly feeds. I can't fathom why he is STILL doing that at 17 months, when he doesn't even get the breast during the night any more! Sometimes it's fine, he resettles really fast and all he wants is to reconnect with me for a couple of seconds. Other times he will wake more persistantly and it will drive me CRAZY. Recently he has had a patch where he wakes between 4 and 5am and will not go back to sleep for love nor money. He doesn't want to get up (not that we would let him if he did!), he closes his eyes and seems dozy while I pat his back. But then if I stop, or after a few minutes when I have stopped, his head pops up abruptly and he says, "Uuhh?!" and seems very wide awake, and the whole patting/dozy thing continues for 5-10 more minutes. This pattern can go on for an hour and a half, till 6am sometimes, and then he might doze off till maybe 7am. Urrrgh. It drives me crazy. He hasn't done that for the past 3 nights so maybe it was just a weird patch. I hope so!

But the thing that has started to stress me out and upset me more than that is bedtime. When I used to breastfeed him to sleep, he would take ages to go off to sleep, because after the age of about 9 months, he would not nurse to sleep any more. He had enough milk but was still wide awake. So we lay with him and he went on and off the breast and sat up and lay down and climbed all over the bed, etc, for an hour or more, until either he fell asleep, or (more commonly) we got fed up enough to hold him down to stop him wriggling so much and, horrible though it sounds (and IS), he would cry for a minute and then get used to the idea, and we'd let go and he'd fall asleep. I hated doing that. But we didn't know what else to do to get him to sleep so that we weren't spending our whole evening trying to settle him.

In the end it was just getting too stressful for me to lose most of my evening faffing about with Arthur for 90 minutes, while he was very much in control of the messing around while we tried to play asleep or get him to calm down and get sleepy. So that was the main reason for transitioning him to his own mattress - the single one he now sleeps on, up against our kingsize one. We figured if he was in his own space, he may get disturbed less (though I don't think he was ever particularly disturbed by us anyway), and we would be in a position to do a more structured bedtime - ie. breastfeed in our bed, and then a clear "putting to bed" moment.

At first it really helped! He got a bit cross that I wasn't lying next to him while he was going to sleep, but I stayed right next to him on the other mattress, which he was separated from by a long body-length pillow down the join in the mattresses. I patted him and soothed him in whatever way he needed me to, and he got used to that quickly and would go to sleep. We thought, YAY, it's actually working! But then he got the flu thing and since then he has been less settled. He is more clingy to me and will not go to bed easily. He doesn't fight actual bedtime, he just seems totally wide awake and like he's really happy with the idea that he gets to play about in his bed whilst also demanding our presence for as long as he fancies. At first it was disheartening after things had improved before, and we had felt we were finally getting our evenings back. Then as he took longer and longer and mucked around and didn't listen to us more and more after the lights were out, it got more stressy and upsetting for me. Neil too, I guess. I just started to feel so tired and so fed up with Arthur ruling the roost, so to speak, at bedtime. I soooo need my evenings at the moment. I started to resent him for it, and that's always a MAJOR alarm bell that something needs to change. But we didn't have a clue how to make the changes we needed. And I didn't know if we SHOULD enforce changes, given that Arthur seems to need me more at the moment since his flu, and also how he really is still such a little one.

Bedtime was regularly taking 90 minutes again, AFTER bath, night nappy, dressing for bed, clean teeth, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and a snuggly breastfeed. This is why he has lately been going to sleep as late as 8.45pm some nights. He is in bed for 7pm or thereabouts, but that's how long we have to sit and get stressy for. It has felt really hard and I haven't dealt with it well at all. Once or twice, when I was feeling particularly like I would blow my top on a tired or hormonal day, I just told Arthur enough was enough, and went downstairs leaving him with Neil. He cried and cried but went to sleep with Neil patting him. Neil says we should do that more often, because maybe it's just a case of Arthur getting used to depending on me less for getting to sleep? I don't know. I would say maybe, if it wasn't for the fact that he seems so extra needy of me at the moment.

We also will absolutely not consider CIO. But he does cry, with what we've been doing. We just don't leave him alone to cry. I hate what we HAVE been doing, which is trying the Supernanny approach, sort of. We tried a bit of her "back to bed" thingy, just sitting there in the room and not interacting with him at all, nor patting, etc. We let him do whatever he wanted on his bed, but if he got off the bed we placed him right back there and then sat down again. We didn't look at him or speak to him or touch him. It felt horrible to me, but we were desperate. I really didn't know if he is too young for the Supernanny thing though. I tried to find out online but I couldn't find anything. Also, I don't know how fair it is to use that approach on a very young child who has always been used to physical contact and close sleeping from birth, not sleeping apart from his parents in a cot like all the kids seem to be on Supernanny. But anyway, we tried it. Arthur got out of bed 27 times. The first 10, he was cheerful and chatty to himself, not bothered that we were being all detached and putting him back every time he got off the bed. Then after number 11 he started to cry, and he didn't stop. He started to want to come to me when he got off the bed, but he would still get put back if he tried. We wanted him to see that once it was time for sleep, that was all we would let him do. We figured if he got the picture, he would stop messing around for ages at bedtime and just lie down and go to sleep, knowing that was the thing to do after you go to bed.

But it was horrible. He got more and more frantic for me, and we ignored all his vocal pleas and stuff. He seemed increasingly agitated and upset that he was making all his normal questioning vocal sounds and we weren't responding. I felt lower than scum, I tell you. But I persevered. I figured, at least we were sitting in there with him, and not leaving him alone. He knew we were there. But it didn't work at all. In the end Arthur's crying just got out of control. He got so hysterical :( I stopped the whole thing when I recognised the type of crying where I know he has no control over anything anymore, and will cry hysterically even when comforted. I knew we had pushed it too far and he would not be able to go to sleep now unless we sat there cruelly and forced him to cry to sleep. Which we were NOT going to do! The next time he tried to get to me, I let him. I held him to me and he sobbed and sobbed, and I kissed him and rocked him and told him it was okay and that Mummy was sorry, etc. He instantly calmed down and went to sleep on me. The poor love had been so upset that he had POOED - he hasn't pooed in his night nappy since he was tiny baby! So we had to wake him and change his nappy, and then he went right back to sleep in my arms, and stayed that way when I put him down. He cried when he woke during the night, and needed me to cuddle him close as he lay in bed to seem comforted and drop back off. Poor baby. I feel like we did something awful to him, and I wish we hadn't. But at least we know it wasn't the right thing to do. I just wish we knew what to DO instead.

The next night we decided to do the same approach but we figured that he had needed to be able to have physical contact with me, so we would sit within physical reach of him, but still do the unresponsive thing. That way he might get the picture, but still be able to reach out and touch me if he wanted closeness for comfort. But it didn't work, again. He wanted me to PAT him and when I wouldn't, he cried. Neil and I swapped places so Neil could pat him instead of me, but Arthur cried so much and reached and reached for me in such a way that my heart nearly ripped right out, or at least it felt that way, and I cried with him. In the end, when I could see it going the same way as last night, I gave in and patted him. He went to sleep fairly quickly, but the whole thing had taken 90 minutes again.

I asked for help online at a couple of AP forums and got some really helpful replies, a bit of advice on things to try (some of which we have tried already), and mostly a lot of reassurance that it won't necessarily be the desperate issue that I'm anxious about when Matthew arrives. Jemma is on one of those forums and gave me some lovely reassurance there too - thank you Jemma! We thought we would try Neil settling Arthur at bedtime instead of me, to see how that goes. My whole instinct goes against that idea, because I so want to stay involved in bedtime for Arthur, and because of how needy he seems to be of me at the moment. But I know he won't be able to have me all the time when I have Matthew to deal with too, and I don't want THAT to be the time that we really face this issue head-on, as Arthur would totally associate it with Matthew, and that would not have good results

So since then, when Arthur wakes in the night, I have stayed in the spare room and not gone in. Neil has patted Arthur and he has gone back to sleep! Yay! I hope this will mean he'll stop waking and then we'll all get better sleep. There have been one or two times in the night that Arthur has just got really upset and I have gone in after waiting a while, which Neil and I agreed on. Sometimes he just wants his mummy, and he's too little and too needy at the moment for me to refuse him that. His requests are actually perfectly reasonable at his age, but it's just that his parents are struggling with the demands placed on them! So I really want to meet Arthur halfway at least. He's still such a little one, still a baby really.

So last night I was wondering about leaving it to Neil to get him to sleep. But we didn't do that in the end, nor tonight. Neil had taken him for long walks during the day and Arthur was tired out. Perhaps that's been half the trouble? But I can't do that amount of exercise with Arthur these days, when Neil isn't home for the weekend. It's too much for me, and I get so exhausted at the drop of a hat right now. I can see Arthur has boundless energy that's only partly used up in the house, but I can only take him on short, slow walks round the smelly local roads, where he has to hold my hand and not escape to have a good run about. I feel so bad about it for him, like I'm letting him down on something he needs, but I just can't find the energy, and it gets worse the more pregnant I get.

Anyway, so last night was like a beautiful antidote for the stress of the bedtimes over recent weeks! Arthur was sleepy and contented, and he was cute as anything joining in to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with us before we turned out the lights. He had a lovely long (painfree!) breastfeed where he didn't fidget, just lay snuggled up to my bump and stroked and patted my arms, tummy and whichever breast he wasn't nursing from. He stopped once to gaze up at my face, make a little contented "Ahhh..." sound, and then actually gave my left breast a kiss on the side of it before latching on to it again! How cute is that?! :) It made my day, anyway!

Then he had a drink of water, CLIMBED into his bed, and reached for me. I lay down on our mattress with my head looking over at him on the body pillow, our faces an inch or two apart. He put his arms around my neck, pulled me closer so that our cheeks pressed together and settled himself for sleep. I just kissed and kissed his soft cheeks and his hair while he clung on tight to me in that lovely cuddle. Every few minutes he pulled away just a couple of inches to look into my eyes with an absolutely unbroken gaze. I didn't pretend to be asleep or pull away or anything that I had been doing before. I just returned his gaze and smiled at him and waited to see what he would do. He put a little hand up and touched my nose evvver so gently, and then my mouth and my eyelids. I let him do that for as long as he wanted, as he was being so gentle and staying quiet and sleepy. After a few minutes he just put his hand back down by his side, his eyes rolled shut and he went off to sleep! It was the loveliest bedtime ever :) It felt the most natural and "right" thing to do. I felt like, who am I to deny him that kind of gentle closeness as he goes to sleep? It just felt so right. And it didn't take ages or anything.

Tonight he was less tired out as he didn't have the same energy burn-off as yesterday, and bedtime took 30 minutes with me having to pretty much say, "That's ENOUGH, Arthur!" after ages of playing about and not minding me when I told him it was time for sleep, etc. But it wasn't so bad. It was full of plenty of close cuddly Arthur-initiated moments like last night again, and that was lovely. He is SUCH an affectionate little boy. Tonight during the half hour it took for him to settle down and go to sleep, he popped up 7 times in total, just to kiss me on the lips and cuddle me round my neck before settling back down again. I love that he loves me so much, and shows it in such lovely ways! I am such a blessed mama! I shouldn't complain so. But sometimes it's hard and I so often feel like I have no IDEA what I'm doing, in terms of parenting him.

Anyway that is the latest on his sleep. I hope it improves, I really do. I am nervous about adding another baby to the mix!

Okay it's getting late, and I HAVE spent the whole evening updating instead of sewing! Tsk! But yay, because I needed to update. Oh I know what I meant to say! We bought a car!! Yay! Just in time too. Our cheque arrived from the insurance company and immediately they took our hire car away, so we have no car until we get the one we bought. We test drove a Ford Mondeo estate (huuuuge, well, for little me anyway!) earlier in the week and it was a heap of junk - I can't believe the guy was selling it for so much! It seemed like a really dodgy dealership though. We just smiled and nodded and got out of there as fast as we could! But at least the test drive showed us that I CAN drive such a big car and so we could consider other Ford Mondeo estates if we saw any. We saw another one the very next day, and Neil's work (who have been very supportive of the whole situation, it has to be said) let him take the time off to test drive it, and make up the hours another time. It was an hour's drive away round the M25 and then some, but we took Arthur and went to test it out. It was worth it, because we liked it so much that we bought it! It's used and doesn't look like new, but that's fine. We're just buying a second hand car that will suit our growing family and which we can - as Neil puts it - "run into the ground"! We can't afford finance on a newer car anyway, so we just had to find something within the budget of our insurance cheque and buy it outright. And we did! We're really pleased with it! It's a bright blue Ford Mondeo estate, four years old, so not that old at all really. It's enormous, and the inside seems vast to me! It has the most enormous boot I ever saw (trunk, in case American readers are wondering why there is an item of footwear attached to the car, hehe!), and it will easily accommodate the needs of a larger-than-average family, which we hope to become someday! The boot will easily hold our tandem pushchair and any luggage we might take if we visit my parents or Neil's family for a week or so. The doors seem to leave SUCH an enormous space when opened, that I have no difficulty getting into the car even when hugely pregnant with Arthur in my arms to get him in his car seat! I never found that with any other car, and I'm happy because it's so handy with little children (not to mention the pregnant bump!). Three children's car seats will easily fit in the back, and the front is super spacious too. It has quite a bit of mileage, but it has been well looked after and frequently serviced, and all the services have been done by proper Ford service places. It cost almost the exact amount of our insurance cheque! We will just be out a couple of hundred when we finish paying for the road tax, and that is it! No more finance payments! We feel so liberated!! :) Neil can't get time to pick it up until Tuesday and the hire car went on Friday, so we are currently without a car. Fortunately I went food shopping on Friday morning so we have food! And we have no appts to get to before we have the new car.

The only thing about the car is that it smells horribly of old car. You know that smell that makes even non-travel-sicky people feel travel sick?! Yeah, it smells of that, even with the cleaner that they've put in on top of the smell. I hope there's a way to get rid of the old car smell, but I am not too hopeful, as all the cars I've been in that smell like that don't ever seem to change. Urgh. I don't want to have my little ones all pukey in the back because we have a stinky old car. Anyway, maybe it will be okay with lots of time with the windows down, etc? But yay, we have a CAR!!!! A big family car to last us until it bites the dust - hopefully yeeears from now when we need a different kind of car anyway. If we have four children we'll need different transport, and I do so love the idea of having 4+ children, so maybe that might happen one day? But for now, it suits us perfectly! I'm so glad. Somehow, Neil has managed to find us insurance at only HALF the cost of our previous insurance! Which is also wonderful! God is really blessing us with our finances after a difficult time, and we're so grateful. We are still in debt but this will really help us get out of it quicker. Yay!

Okay, 11pm, definitely time I went to bed! I will finish with three photos of my lil Boo-bean being his usual climbing-monkey self! The other day he went into the kitchen and after a while I called to him and he didn't answer. He was being "too" quiet, you know the way?! I went in and couldn't see him! And then I heard this echoey babble and turned round to see this:

Yup, the lil man had climbed into the tumble dryer! Of course I lumbered for the camera and took some photos!

He was very pleased with himself and spent a while in there checking everything out! I had to help him get out though, so I think I need to keep the door of the tumble dryer closed, or be sure I'm in there with him if it's open.

Okay I'm going to bed! I will update again as soon as I can. Sllloowwwly catching up on my favourite diares, a few at a time, which is nice! Emails are just not happening at the moment though, I'm so sorry if I owe you a LONG overdue one! I will get there eventually! Thanks for all the lovely messages and notes lately :)

Lonnnng update, part two!

Back to write part two! Although it's already 8pm and I need to eat yet and I'm tiiired again, so maybe it won't be a long entry this time!

Thanks Jemma for your message! I did wonder about Matthew's night wakings and how they would fit (or not!) with Arthur's. At the moment I think it wouldn't be all that great if they DID both wake at the same times, because I couldn't physically be in two places at once, it would be a nightmare! But then if they didn't wake at the same times, I would hardly get any sleep. Yeurgh. I am slightly dreading it, to be honest! But I hope Arthur will start to sleep through - the same old hope I've hung onto for 17 months now! ;) Not sure if anything will actually change, but hey ho. We'll just have to manage somehow.

What other things did I want to say last entry? I can't think of them suddenly! Oh, Arthur still isn't saying many words. He says "thank you" soooo beautifully though! He uses his winning smile with it, and makes the words so exaggeratedly clear, it's so sweet, and especially when you hear it in his little chipmunky voice :) It sounds like "ANK-yoooo!" He says thank you to us completely unprompted when we give him his drink, say, or something he asked us for. He also prompts US to say thank you to him when he hands us things, hehe! He loves to help me empty the dishwasher, and he hands each plate/spoon/saucepan to me in turn, saying, "ANK-yoooo!" as I take each one! I always say thank you whenever he hands me anything, especially things I've asked him for. I have a real pet-peeve about adults teaching little children to say "Ta" instead of thank you. It makes me want to pull my own skin off. I can't think why it bugs me THAT much, but it really really does! My mum always used to say how much she hated that, so maybe that's why I have such a thing about it too? She always said toddlers are perfectly capable of learning to say "thank you" as easily as "ta". Neil's mum says a very over-exaggerated "taaaah" every time Arthur gives her something, and it drives me CRAZY, but I don't say anything. Anyway, I love that Arthur has like 10 words in total, most of which only we can understand, and one of them is a nice clear "THANK YOU"!!! Ha.

I can't think what new words he's saying since I last wrote about it. Maybe he hasn't got any yet? Oh, he does say "eye" for both "hi" and "bye", with his hand raised in a wave :) It's both hi and bye but without the starting letter! He says "eye" to everything - the bath water as it goes down the plughole, the downstairs as we climb the stairs for a nap, anybody he is saying goodbye too. I think it's mostly his word for "bye" but he does also use it as a greeting. For Arthur, most of his new ways of communicating are in signs and sounds, and the fact that we are getting really fast at picking up his body language to know what he wants. We always say the words for things as he points at them - this is one of his favourite things to do actually. In particular he is really having a phase where he likes to read his books with me, and point to EVERY tiny detail on the page, and I MUST name them as he points, or else he gets annoyed about it! ;) He has a Noddy book which is getting slightly tiresome to read at the moment, as it has a picture of Noddy on every page, as well as about 10 bouncy balls with smiley faces on them. I can't even read him the story, he's so intent on pointing at the pictures and having me name them, and as soon as that's done, he turns the page! So I sit there as he points, saying, "Noddy.... And there's a ball!... Yes, another ball.... Ball.... Ball.... There's Noddy.... Ball.... another ball.... ball...." etc! And on the next page the same thing happens. Snore! But he loves it :)

I think he will get to talking when he is ready. There's such a huge variation in age when starting to talk, and it's all normal. I can't wait to hear his little voice piping out words all the time, but once it starts he'll be doing it forever more, and I'm in no hurry to rush him out of a baby stage :) I just know I'll love it when it happens. For now he is doing great. I think sometimes he gets a little frustrated about communicating with us, but he gestures such a lot and makes his own signs up, and we understand them very clearly most of the time, so he gets his message across! He is VERY clear when we have translated one of his signs or gestures correctly, so we always know when we have it right, and that helps us to fine-tune our understanding of his way of communicating.

My mum kept a journal with both my brother and me when we were babies/toddlers, just of our development and stuff, and I'm so glad she did. She loves to pull it out to check what we were doing at Arthur's age, and she reads it to me over the phone every month or so. I love to hear it, because it gives me some pointers of what to expect. Also, Bennie and I were so different in some of our developmental stages. I think we were a typical girl and boy! Mummy describes my play as very "emotive" (whatever she means by that!) and apparently nothing like Arthur's play as she has seen him. Bennie's play seems to have been exactly the same as Arthur's, at his age. He was into all the same things. Also we have all teethed in the same pattern! Arthur has definitely inherited my teething pattern, not Neil's. Bennie's speech was the same as Arthur's is - a handful of words at 16 months, some of them back-to-front and not too understandable to anyone but my parents. At 18 months I was talking in short sentences! My mum had written some examples of sentences I was saying at 18 months - "Here comes Matthew" (my best friend at the time!), "Here comes a car" and "More milk please"!! I can't IMAGINE Arthur talking like that just a month older than he is now! Because he's saying hardly anything and he's my measuring stick, 18 months seems to me sooooo young to be talking like that! It's amazing what a huge range there is amongst the norm. Anyway so I am reassured by my mum's journals too. I have read that boys often develop earlier than girls in the motor skills and later in speech and stuff. Arthur is definitely whizzing along on those motor skills, so I'm sure he'll get to speech when he's ready :)

He does make a lot of animal sounds now. I especially love his bee and snake! His bee is a bit lispy, but not so that it's just a hiss like a snake :) He understands just about everything we say. He uses his story books to ask me for things sometimes. There is a book that Sharon (an online friend!) got him called Peekaboo Farm, which he LOVES. On the page with a pig on it, there is a little detail of three apples on the floor. Oh! Apple is one of the new words he is trying. He says "aaah-ooo" very carefully, and sometimes "aaah-ooop". These apples, of course, get pointed to one by one, and I have to say apple for each one as he points :) Anyway, lately he has started getting that book, opening it to the page with the apples on it, pointing to an apple, and when I say, "Apple!", he immediately signs please! I ask him if he wants an apple to eat and he signs please again and goes to the kitchen! Sometimes he signs please when I say "apple" and then points to the kitchen! I love the little things he makes up to tell us things!

He is the most mischievous climbing monkey at the moment. He has a ton of places that he climbs that I absolutely can't babyproof to prevent him getting to them, and he KNOWS he's not allowed to climb there. But he makes a beeline for them the instant my back is turned or I am out of the room. He does NOT get the whole telling off thing. I always tell him to get down in a not-pleased voice when I find him there, and lift him down straight away. He LOVES to be caught doing something naughty, and laughs with glee! I can't figure out what to do about it at all, so it just continues. Hmmm. He can also reach the drawer where we store all the crayons and pens and stuff now - a drawer which I can't manage to fit a lock to as it's really tiny. He is getting too tall! He can reach most things, and even onto the kitchen surfaces and stuff. There aren't any surfaces in the house that he's too short to reach anymore, which is not good! Anyway, he loves drawing with his crayons so he is always trying to get them out of the drawer. I give him them if he wants to draw, but the problem is that he only draws for like 5 seconds and then he eats the crayons. He isn't put off by having yucky crayon in his mouth - the strange child! He just eats them, and I always tell him he mustn't eat them and put them away when I see him doing it. But it isn't changing anything there either.

Here he is this week, drawing a picture to make into a card for Nana, thanking her for all her help and sending her lots of love to get well soon :) She got it in the post yesterday and loves it. It's displayed where everyone can see it apparently! He even "signed" his name on the back! As I was writing his name with a pen, he came over and wanted to do it, so I gave him the pen and he drew carefully all over the little space where I was writing his name, and then gave the pen back to me! :) Anyway, here he is drawing Nana's picture. And, as always, eating the crayons, and making a face at the waxy taste of a mouthful of yellow crayon!...

Arthur's hair is growing craaazy fast. It's got so long again now that his curls have gone flat on top and people are starting to call him a girl again, urgh! I hate that, though it shouldn't really be a big deal to me! He is always dressed really boyishly, and yet people tell their children to "mind the little girl" when he is playing near them, etc. His hair is starting to look quite cute and girly around the sides though, and he IS such a pretty little boy, hehe :) I am taking him back to the hairdressers this week coming to have it cut again. I wanted to take him last week but we just didn't have time/energy.

Having a Braxton Hicks contraction. La la la. I really need to update my pregnancy diary. I don't think I'll get to that tonight though.

Arthur is wearing size 18-24 month trousers and jeans now, and dungarees. Except Next dungarees - they are so generous. But their trousers don't fit him any more in that size. He wears the next size up with the legs rolled up - sweet little short leggies :) He wears 12-18 month tops for most brands, though some are getting tight on him. I have no idea of his height or weight at the moment, and it feels like ages since I had those checked. I think I will wait it out until Matthew is born now, because then there will be loads of opportunities when Matthew is weighed to get Arthur checked as well. It won't be long now!

Arthur has definitely slimmed down such a lot since he started walking though. His nappies have gone back down a size to size large - in MotherEase wraps and fuzzi bunz, but he doesn't fit size 2 nappies. He wears size 3 Tots. I bought some second hand ones cheap at UKparents and dyed them in batches with some old greying terries that I inherited from someone at church. I took the old grey aplix off them and we use nappy nippas (snappis) instead. So now he has 2 bright red Tots, 1 bright green one, and two lovely sky blue ones :) And we have some nice terries the same colours, that I use for all sorts. He doesn't ever wear flat terries as nappies, but they are so useful for other things. Most of the nappies he wears are ones I have made though. He has an ever-increasing collection of Cuddlebuns that I am immensely proud of :) I really want to make him lots more of them, but I never seem to get time. I need to make some for Matthew in newborn size too.

We pretty much only use MotherEase airflow wraps now (the side-snapping ones). They are just the best wraps we have used, though I have only tried them on an older baby so I don't know how good they are on a tiny one in smaller sizes. They are soooo slim-fitting, so loose and easy on his legs and waist, and yet somehow don't leak at all, and are soft and cute :) Side snaps really suit his shape too. Tots Bots wraps don't really suit Arthur any more. He outgrew the size 3 wrap for night times a while ago, it just doesn't fit him in the rise any more, and that's the biggest wrap they do. Also they are aplix fastening and that's a big no-no for Arthur! He loves to undo aplix. He sometimes has a go with poppers but he isn't bothered about undoing those yet. The only other wraps he wears now are homemade ones - I made him 2 Cuddlewraps from windpro fleece, and I'm really proud of them because they are his softest, best-fitting, most leak-proof wraps! :) Also I made a MotherEase airflow replica with fleece binding which has never leaked and does great over his night nappy. It's so much fun!!! :D I can't wait to have my two boys in cloth at the same time! I don't care about the extra washing! I pretty much have to do a nappy wash per day and another general load (though I mix nappies and general stuff anyway - I pre-wash pooey nappies on their own though!). Two loads a day will be fine, although I think there may be more than that at first. I'm not sure. Laundry is my favourite chore :) I think it would be good to make a ton more nappies though, just so we don't HAVE to wash each day if I get too tied up with my little ones (which I'm sure will happen!).

I made this banana cake the other day. Arthur loves bananas but we only buy organic and they come in huge bunches that we sometimes don't get through before they get too ripe. So a few months ago I looked online for a good banana cake recipe, to use up over-ripe bananas. I found the one above and it's sooooooo yummy! I made an extra banana-y one the other day because we had four over-ripe bananas instead of two (as per the recipe), as Arthur has been poorly and not eating them. I just baked it 15 minutes longer and yummmm it's so nice! Arthur absolutely LOVES banana cake. It's full of sultanas too, and he really likes dried fruit. I love it when I home-cook something and he just asks for it all the time because he likes it so much :) He picks all the sultanas out and then eats the cake, and he gets soooo excited when I am cutting him a piece! He eats very well in general, and the only thing he seems to really turn his nose up at is egg, in any form. So I like that he gets egg in cake :) He won't even try it, just wrinkles his nose, and shakes his head while saying, "tha-tha-thaa" (his pronounciation of ugh-ugh-ugh!). He gives me a funny sort of slightly disgusted smile if I am eating egg, as though he thinks I am so silly for doing such a thing!

He eats lots of fruit and veg, and tends to pick it out of his meals to eat first. He always picks peas and sweetcorn out to eat, and he loves baked beans and pretty much all fruit. He likes exotic fruits as much as "ordinary" ones, and ALL dried fruit. He pretty much only drinks water, but he has milk on his cereal and yoghurt or fromage frais for pudding at one meal every day. Usually he has cheese somewhere in a day too, so I'm not worried that he hardly drinks any milk. We could offer it to him more in a sippy cup I suppose, but he doesn't tend to drink much of it. He does sometimes drink some of ours if we are having some. Neil and I drink milk a lot :) Arthur does like it, he just prefers water, which is fine with me. He also likes freshly squeezed orange juice, but not diluted, so I only give him little bits. When Matthew is born and my milk comes in again, Arthur will get TONS of mama milk until he chooses not to have it, so he certainly won't need cow's milk then :)

We are shopping for a car at the moment. Things have been happening constantly with our car since Neil crashed it on the M1 going up to his dad's funeral. It has been confirmed as written-off. Neil still has yellow bruising to his ribs from the crash but he doesn't seem to have any aches or pains or anything left over, which is such a blessing. It could have been so much worse. The insurance company said it was currently worth about £10,000 but the repairs would cost £10,500!!!! Yikes! So that makes it a write-off, and THANKFULLY our expensive insurance means that they will pay off the remaining finance that was outstanding on it (about half it's value), and then write us a cheque for the rest, with which we need to buy another car. We currently have a very small 3-door hire car that is being paid for by the insurance company for 2 weeks until the cheque comes through. It should come through a few days after Easter I think, so we need to buy a car like TOMORROW if we are going to avoid a gap where we have no car at all.

So we are shopping. Strangely, this crash has actually worked out to help us in the long run. We were really struggling to keep up the finance payments on the car and now we don't have any. We will buy a decent second-hand car that will suit our family needs with our two little ones, and we are REALLY hoping that we'll find a good car for little enough money so that we have some left over to start a savings account for the next car we'll need. My grandparents gave us that advice. They are just the BEST money savers I ever knew! They started out with no money and living with their parents till my daddy was 5, and just saved and saved, even tiny amounts when they had nothing much to put away. They were disciplined and sensible at all times with money, and the result has been that they have always had enough money saved for a new car by the time their old one dies, have been able to afford regular holidays overseas since their retirement, and could even finance a private hip replacement for Granny, when the wait on the NHS was too long for the pain she was in. All through being so sensible with saving and investing money. I really value their advice on money matters, but stupidly don't put it into practise enough. We plan to do it this time with starting saving for the next car when we buy this one. Or else using a little of it to pay off a bit more credit card stuff. Urgh. Neil gets a bonus in his pay cheque this month and we'll do something sensible with that too.

Tomorrow we are hoping to drive to a car place to test drive a Ford Mondeo that we HOPE is still available. We need a car at least that size really, for two little ones, and for the tandem pushchair to live in the boot and still give room for other stuff when we go places or get a load of food shopping or something. We considered estate cars but I am pretty sure I am waaaay too small a person to drive them successfully! They are just soooo long! But if we find one and I manage it okay at a test drive, we might buy one. The key thing is getting one NOW, so we need to find the best thing available that meets our needs and our budget, and buy it. Neil, of course, is in his element :) He loves buying a car. It bores me a lot, especially having to traipse out and test drive them, but it's important that we do. And then we'll have a car again and be able to put it all behind us and work on the next thing we need to get ready for Matthew!

Boy I'm so glad we're not moving house as well! I remember we thought we might be during the second half of my pregnancy. I had no idea how I would feel at the time, and I'm fine and healthy in my pregnancy - thank God - but oh my gosh I couldn't bear the thought of moving house at this time! A new car and rearranging the bedrooms is enough upheaval! I just want to get nesting and allow our family to transition from one little one to two, for a while at least. I know we'll need to move in the nearish future, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Okay it's reeeally late now (have eaten and watched Supernanny - love that programme!) and finished writing here, and now I so need to sleep. Arthur's 3rd molar isn't quite peeping through yet, but there are three almost-sharp-but-juuust-covered-by-gum bumps on his gum still. He has woken this evening so I think he may be a little wakeful with this big ole toothie pushing through tonight. I expect to see it in all its whiteness tomorrow :) The bottom molar on the other side (to complete the set of his first four molars!) is feeling close to the surface too, so I don't think it will be a long way behind. This tooth coming in now is his 11th. I can't believe he is only halfway through getting all his milk teeth! He has so many teeth when he smiles that it seems crazy to think that's only half of them!

Matthew is kicking my ribs in the most uncomfortable way, so I will take that as him telling me to get my butt in bed and rest, and post this entry now! I always feel like I have missed several things that I really wanted to write, which I probably have, but oh well. I should write more often, then I could catch up on little things easily and not have to remember 50 million of them in one go! Also I miss just writing to get things off my chest as they occur. I miss random waffle (though I somehow manage to include plenty of that in my entries anyway!). I need to catch up on my online places and diaries soon too. And emails. I'm sooooo behind on those. But my pregnancy diary will come next, as and when I get the chance! I will leave you with a photo of my lil Boo asleep in his car seat a few weeks ago (just found it on the camera). We had been to take Daddy his lunch at work, when he made himself some healthy lunch in the morning and forgot it when he went out to work. We made an outing of it, and I parked the car a long way from Neil's work, so Arthur and I had a good walk and stopped frequently to take a close look at interesting things on the way. He got to charm the receptionist and was so excited when Neil came out of the lift at the reception area to see us! Neil is so sweet with Arthur, and it's lovely to just stand back and watch Neil in his own "territory", being so proud of his little boy. He just loves on him and is just as soppy with him in front of his blokey colleagues as he is at home. He stops everyone he sees at his office to show Arthur to them, and carries him round to introduce him to people :) All the ladies loved Arthur and all the blokes seemed to find it hilarious to ask him if he was here for a job interview. Anyway so that was a nice outing for Arthur :) And Neil got his lunch! And Arthur was so pooped from the exciting morning that he only played with his Duplo in the back of the car for a little while before nodding off to sleep :) I took a photo when we got home, before I woke him and took him inside. I can never resist photo opportunities like that! It's funny, he looks so exactly like my dad when he's asleep in this photo! He just happens to be wearing the exact same expression that Daddy gets when he's sleeping:

Love my lil man :)

Lonnnng updatey entry (part one!)

Phew! Back at LAST!!! And I have sooooo much to write about, or at least, it feels like I do. Arthur is taking an early nap but I have been uploading photos and stuff for 30 minutes so I may not have much time left to update. We'll see.

Thank you all SO so much for the uplifting and supportive messages and notes over our difficult time lately - they have meant so much to me and helped me through each difficult day. We are definitely getting back to normal-ish now, which is a huge relief! I am horribly behind on reading my favourite diaries so I have no idea what is going on with all my online friends! I will have to catch up soon and hope you are all doing well for now!

Okay, let's see. Arthur has been such a poorly boy :( I was sure it was just a bad cold, and so at first I wasn't too bothered by the idea, since we have had FIVE of those this year alone already! It was just a shame about the timing. But it wasn't a cold. It was one of the influenzas, but I denied that for a long time because REAL influenza is a 2-week long deal with high fever and being unable to get out of bed for anything most of that time, and I thought it couldn't be anything like that if Neil only had it for just under a week and still managed to get up and do some normal things on the last few days. But it does turn out that it was an influenza strain after all. Marvellous. A really virulent one too, it seems, as my poor lovely helpful mother went back to France with it, suffering horribly :( She caught it at least as bad as Arthur. Neil had it during the week he was with his family, and his mum has since been down with it. I finally succumbed to it the day my mummy left to go back to France, but I can't understand it really because I have had it so mildly. I haven't been anywhere to catch anything else, so it has to have been that flu virus. But I didn't have a temperature at all, just ached and ached and ached for days and had to keep going back to bed, and all my congestion has weirdly been in my ears, not in my head. I don't have the awful cough that everyone else has either. But it's the only bug I could have caught so I guess I was fighting it off all the time I was looking after Arthur (thank God, because otherwise there is no way I could have managed on my own caring for him!), and then just got it mildly or something. I was sure you can't get flu "mildly" though! It's either there badly or you don't have it! But anyway. It seems like I did somehow have it mildly.

Anyway! Poor Arthur had a temperature for days and days (well, mostly nights and nights), and was so miserable all the time. After my last entry to say how he was doing, his temperature went back up to 102 and it was so hard to reduce with any methods. He also started being sick, urgh. He hasn't had a tummy bug yet so he hasn't really done "being sick" - just a couple of odd times over the last year or so for no apparant reason. Those times he wasn't distressed by it at all, but this time was soooooo different. He scared me for the 20 minutes or so beforehand because he was so still and subdued. He just lay on the sofa and didn't move a muscle. He only moved his eyes now and then, and he looked so unhappy and not like himself at all. He wouldn't take the breast or a drink and after the first 10 minutes I started to get worried and wonder why he was acting that way. I even took a photo to send to Neil on the internet so he could see what I meant and help me figure out what to do:

He just did not move an inch from that position and that expression for 20 minutes, which is AGES for my usually active, cheery boy! I was so worried. I figured he was in pain after a while and tried to give him Calpol (he also had a temperature so it didn't hurt to try the medicine) but he wouldn't swallow much of it, and then he threw up all over me/him/the floor. I didn't freak out!!!! Yay me! :) But poor Arthur :( He was upset and I comforted him and then changed both our clothes and cleaned the carpet. He didn't perk up though, and 20 minutes later he threw up on me/him/the floor again. Once I had comforted him that time and changed our clothes again and started to clean the carpet again, he suddenly perked right up and acted normal, so I realised he had been acting so weird because he must have been feeling really nauseous, poor love :( He WAS super congested so it may have been the fact that he had swallowed a ton of goo during the night. However, the rest of us have found that we couldn't eat for a few days when we had it, and Neil and my mum had some nausea too, but nothing like any vomiting. Weird bug.

Anyway. He didn't get better the next day, and he didn't get better the next day, even though he had a few 10 minute bursts here and there where he was more smiley and played a little bit with his toys. He very quickly got miserable and clingy, and kept on dropping off to sleep on the sofa as though he couldn't stay awake. He napped 2 or 3 times a day, but he needed to be close to me or my mum, being cuddled or dozing off next to us on the sofa. Here he is the first day Mummy was here to help us:

He wanted his head snuggled down lower than his bottom for some reason! He threw up when he woke though :( I used my softest flannel fabrics for nappy-making to spread out on the sofa so he could nap comfortably, and the sofa got protected from snot and stuff! My poor Boo. Here's another from the day after that:

I am SO thankful for my mum's help. She thinks she didn't help much, because Arthur pretty much just wanted me and cried and whined most of the few days she was here, but he was just feeling so ill and only Mummy will do when he feels that way. That was fine though. In his more happy moments, Nana did the lifting and carrying when he wanted to be lifted up to see something or held. I really needed that help because I am finding it so hard to hold him now with my huge bump! I get exhausted so quickly when I am holding him, and more so that week because of how very little sleep I was getting caring for him during the night with Neil away. So it was WONDERFUL to have Mummy here! She cleaned and tidied for me when Arthur and I lay down for naps. She was wonderful and MUCH needed company for me. She was so good with Arthur. She is a seasoned veteran with vomiting children (!!) so her calm presence helped me a lot and she wasn't squeamish about physically, erm, catching sick with her hands if the need arose! Ew! I'm sure one day that will be something I'm used to, but yikes, I couldn't do it now! Thank goodness for Mummy!

She was so touched one time when Arthur let her hold him and cuddle him when he was feeling horrible and crying, because I was on the phone to Neil about the latest on the car at the time. She held him and kissed him - no wonder she caught the bug, poor Mummy! It seems so unfair that she should end up so poorly with it herself when she came to help and just loved on that little boy SO much while she was here :( But in the end he went to sleep on her and stayed there for ages. She got quite tearful, she was so touched by it, because he doesn't really know her as he never gets to see her. I think he must trust her a lot because of how close he sees her being with me, and how obvious it is that I trust and love her. Also we are very similar, and our voices sound the same. He must get a vibe of being able to trust her, but it was lovely that he let her comfort him when he was feeling horrible. Every day since she went back to France, I have phoned to see how she is doing. Today she finally sounds like she is doing better. The whole time she was really ill, she told me she just kept thinking of HOW she caught such a horrid bug, and she said it was worth catching it to have such closeness with little Arthur :) I love my Mummy.

The second day Mummy was here, I called the doctor out. Arthur's temperature wasn't coming down and it was day 4 with a high temperature, and he seemed so not-himself that I thought it would be wise. I couldn't have taken him there on my own and we didn't have a car anyway, so I got a home visit for him. The doctor came and looked in his throat and ears and listened to his chest. He had a bad cough but it wasn't a chest infection, and his tonsils were fine. He did have an ear infection starting in one of his ears - BOY am I glad I called the doctor out when I did! I can't imagine how much worse it would have got if we hadn't caught that early! So Arthur had his first ear infection, and his first course of antibiotics which lasted 5 days. He took his medicine really well, though he didn't want to at first.

He was still poorly and sleepy when Mummy left to go back to France, and I was feeling pretty yucky with coming down with his bug, but I had my eyes fixed on the fact that Neil would be home the next day, and I couldn't wait! We missed him so much. He came home a day early because he wanted to be with us. His dad's funeral went really well and he ended up feeling like he had a really constructive time with his family. They talked a lot of stuff through and enjoyed being together, and he felt a lot of closure over things, which is great. I WISH we had been there. The day of the funeral, I really felt such a pull the whole day, like I wanted to be there with him, and also to say goodbye to his dad for myself. He was such a lovely man. Arthur shows such a lot of his mannerisms and some of his expressions too, which is so lovely. But anyway, we couldn't be there. Neil's family were so understanding and I'm grateful for that. But I still wish we could have been there.

Neil was feeling way better by the time he came home, which sort of worked out well so that he could pretty much take over with Arthur while I spent the weekend in bed with the lurgy. Arthur still has a bad cough nearly 2 weeks later, and is somewhat snotty still, but he is definitely much better. Yesterday I had an antenatal appt with my GP and I asked her to check his (and my) ears to reassure me that the infection was all gone (and that *I* didn't have one, as I am so gunky and fuzzy in my ears - I don't, which is a relief!). His ears looked perfectly healthy, yay! She said not to worry about his cough, and that it could go on a while, but it will clear up. He has a lot more energy and is finally eating big meals again. He didn't eat properly (or at all, sometimes) for a week, and even when he started eating again, his portions were tiiiny, just a few spoonfuls of cereal for breakfast before he was full, etc. I'm sooooooooooooooooooooooo unbelievably glad to see him better again! :)

We went to the physio this week about his feet. I didn't think I would be well enough to take him, but I felt better than I expected and managed okay. Arthur put EVERY SINGLE TOY in the waiting area in his mouth while we waited. Ugh. I was absolutely dreading the possibilitiy of him coming down with something else already, but that was 3 days ago and so far he is still okay!

Anyway his feet are okay. Still a little curly, and the left one has a slightly curved outer edge which isn't so normal, but he can hold it straight without any trouble and they seem better than before. The physio said she wouldn't even think of putting more plaster on it or even night boots, it's that close to being normal now. We are going to leave it for 3 more months and then go back at the beginning of July to reassess. If they have got any worse, she said she would simply ask me to buy him sturdy, stiff boots to wear instead of shoes for a while, that's all! Which sounds fun for him in the heat of summer, so I hope it won't even be necessary, but it's a VAST improvement on plaster casts! Also, Matthew will be here by then, so she said she would love to look at his feet for me while we're there and reassure me that they are okay. We think they will be, because they were so straight-looking at the scan, and Arthur's were curly even at that stage of development. Any of our children could have this issue with their feet, so I'm just relieved that it looks like Matthew hasn't inherited it (so far).

Arthur was totally charming at the hospital. He always has been a charmer, but since he got better he seems to have stepped it up a level! He seems so thrilled to be better and so so soooo smiley all the time now! I couldn't think how he could get more smiley than before, but he really is! He just beams at everyone he sees, and not just a little smile like a glance, but he fixes them with his eyes and grins and grins until his nose is all wrinkled up and his shoulders hunch right up to take part in the smile! My funny sweet boy :) Of course this means he gets a LOT of nice compliments and interaction from people when we are out places. During his appt with the physio, the nurse came in and just picked him up to fuss over him, and took him out of the room! She came back after a bit to ask if I minded, but Arthur seemed perfectly happy so I said it was fine. She came back with him 5 minutes later, gushing about how lovely he was :) He had been helping the receptionists at the desk and smiling at everyone who came in, and apparantly he had made their day! She was still holding him when she told me she had enjoyed giving him a cuddle, and when he heard her say "cuddle", he put his arms round her neck and squeezed her a big smiley cuddle!! Everyone awwed over him so much that I actually got blushy and felt kind of like I wanted to just take him home now. I am not great with too much attention, even though it was on Arthur mostly!

Anyway, he is a sweetie :) He gave the doctor a cuddle yesterday too. I think he is just a very affectionate little boy who is confident around people and who is ULTRA happy with life now that he's feeling better again! It IS a great feeling to feel well when you've felt ill for ages, so I completely understand that! He is giving Neil and I cuddles and kisses all the time at the moment. He just comes over to us, or climbs up next to us on the sofa, and puts his arms around our necks/legs/tummies (whichever part is accessible really!) and hugs his cheek into us, saying, "Aaaahhh!" I think he has picked that up because we tend to just spontaneously say "Aaahh" when he cuddles us :) He kisses a bit more normally these days - less slobbery and open-mouthed! He kisses my knees and my arms while I'm sitting down, and Daddy's head while he's holding onto Daddy to have his trousers pulled up after a nappy change or something. And if I point to my belly and tell him Matthew is in there, and say "Give Matthew a kiss!" he kisses my belly :) It's so cute. The other day he was busy playing with toys on the floor and I was flaked out on the sofa, and suddenly he dropped what he was playing with, climbed up on the sofa kissed me on the lips, climbed down and continued playing with the toy! That was just a magic moment for me :) He's so lovely. I can barely contain how much I love him.

That's another thing I've noticed. During the time Neil was away, I seem to have developed an even deeper intimacy with Arthur. I don't think it's specifically because Neil was away, more a combination of being the only one around to care for him, and him being so very poorly all that time. I noticed my whole focus was on Arthur. I didn't think about anything else. If he had been healthy it wouldn't have been that way probably. Day and night I focused on Arthur and held him and rocked him and nursed him constantly. For two nights I did this all night long without really getting any sleep for myself. Normally this would drive me crazy and I'd resent his every waking sound through the night, knowing it was going to mean a disturbance to MY sleep, but that didn't happen. I guess I was just so worried about him, and so keenly aware of being the only one there to look after him. There was no sense of feeling like it was just a case of getting through this one night on my own, because it felt like the time ahead stretched for ever, just me and Arthur trying to deal with this virus. I knew Neil wouldn't be home anytime soon, and Mummy wouldn't be with us at night when she was over from France. Every time he woke, even 10 minutes after he last woke, and feeling dizzy with exhaustion, my heart just leapt to see how I could help him, and it didn't seem to occur to me to bother with my own needs. All day he was so clingy but I just wanted to help him feel better so that's all I thought about. He napped on and off when he was ill so I did get a few chances to eat and pee and stuff, and more so when Mummy was here to watch him. But he mostly napped on the sofa so I needed to stay right there with him in case he rolled off or woke in an unfamiliar place to him.

By the end of the week, with Arthur starting to turn the corner, and Neil due home soon, I began to notice how intensely close I felt to Arthur. I wish I could even describe it, or contrast it with how I felt previously, but I can't seem to isolate the feelings enough to describe them. When Neil got home, even though I was too ill to do things with Arthur, I hated to be apart from him, even to go to bed. Arthur came to see me a lot in bed when I was poorly, and I nursed him if he asked for it. I wanted to be close to Arthur at night, and found it hard to sleep in another room like I had been doing with ease in recent months. We have been so physically close and so caught up in being poorly together. He seems to thrive on just being close to me, and I thrive on it too. He has always smiled and looked happy when he sees me, but lately his body language just seems to show pure delight when he sees me, say on waking after sleep or something. He clasps his hands together and squeeeezes them till his arms shake with the effort, smiling his biggest smile and his eyes shine and shine. I love him sooooooooooooooooooooooo much. So so much.

Last night when he went to sleep I lay with my face inches from his and just gazed at him for the longest time. I don't know if my eyes went funny or what, but his face seemed to me like it gave off light, it was so beautiful. I just lay there thinking that I never in my LIFE saw anything so beautiful before, as my precious little boy's sleeping face. I wanted to reach out and touch his cheeks and his hair and his forehead, but when I did, the touch didn't seem enough. The feeling was making me long for closeness to him, but I didn't find that in a touch. I guess he is just part of me and always will be in a way. I became suddenly aware of how fast this time will become a memory, and how much I need to treasure it now. And I do! It's so wonderful.

Well, Arthur has now been asleep for nearly two hours, which is lovely! He is really in-between needing one nap or two naps lately, especially with being tired after his fluey virus. If he gets up around 6am then he never lasts the morning, so I put him down at 10.30 this morning and he's still asleep now at 12.20. I don't think he'll take another nap though, given how long this one has lasted. His naps are longer than they ever used to be in general, but the norm for Arthur is one nap, lasting one hour. I would personally love a longer break (or two!) in the day, but I am so grateful for an hour, as he never used to nap for longer than 30 minutes at a time. Which was actually pretty hard when I was tired out. An hour feels much more of a break for me, even if it's only one nap a day now. It's going to interfere with morning activities like Playgroup, him needing an earlier nap than usual, but to be honest I am not worried about that for now. I'm relieved that there's a break for the Easter holidays at the moment, because otherwise Neil and I had decided to keep him out of Playgroup for a few weeks perhaps, simply to give his body a break. I know it's "good" practise for his immune system, to be catching a new cold or bug every SINGLE time we go there, but enough is enough really. There will come a time when he's enrolled in something permanent like nursery or school, and he'll just have to catch whatever is going and keep attending throughout. But right now, he has been knocked by 7 viruses in the last 4 months alone, and the last one really kicked his butt. He has been teething for most of them, and this time he cut a front tooth during the virus, and I noticed he has his third molar (the first one at the bottom!) coming through today, so he is low on the immune front. I think the poor kid could do with a break! I know his parents could! ;) Not a long break, and hopefully the season is almost finished for the peak of all these bugs and colds. But we could do with a respite from viral illness for a little while, so perhaps we'll avoid Playgroup for a bit. Maybe just a few weeks or so. Arthur is just as happy with ANY outing actually, although he does seem to enjoy Playgroup a lot. He is just as thrilled to be out amongst people in the shops or at church or somewhere, so I know I am not depriving him of something he enjoys and won't find in any other capacity.

Arthur just let out a lonnnng sigh :) I think he is waking up, so without further ado, I'm going to scoop that little love up into my arms and spend the rest of my day with him :) I'll finish this later. I have a ton more general updatey stuff to write, and a few more photos, so I'll try to get that done this evening. And then I need to update my pregnancy journal. Can you believe I will have another baby in 8 weeks time?!! Crazy thought! I'm going to love on my lil man now, while he's my one-and-only :)

Okay, it's 8.30pm and I'm back until dinner is ready. Then I really really need to get an early night. So hopefully I can finish what I wanted to write before then! Wow, this entry is going to be sooooo long! It has just been too long since I last did a proper update, and I am that besotted with my little one, so I know I tend to waffle on and on and ON for ages about his every little mannerism ;) But I don't care!

Arthur just turned 17 months old! I changed my breastfeeding milestone blinkie to 17 months :) He still nurses aplenty which I love. Some of the time he just takes like 2 sucks and gets down to play again, or if he's eager to get up in the morning then he won't even take the breast for his waking "feed". But never mind. I don't think he will wean now before Matthew is born, and that was really the main thing I was worried about. I did not want him to wean. I think nursing him will be a very useful thing while he is getting used to the transition of having a new baby brother, especially a new baby brother who gets to use "his" breasts all the time!! ;) I don't know how he'll be about sharing them. I know he loves them for himself, and I almost wonder if he sees them as his rather than mine! If he's nursing on one, he pats or strokes the other, bless him! He plays with my bra on the other side. Sometimes when I nurse him to sleep for naps (which I still do for daytime naps), he falls asleep still flutter-sucking on one side, and with both hands holding the other breast like a comfort blankie! I love it, it's so cute :) But hmmm, that is not going to work when there's a new person attached to and in possession of the other side! I hope it will all go smoothly.

Arthur's bedtime transition continues to go pretty well. He prefers his big boy bed to our mattress now. He really seems to like it in there. The full-length maternity pillow that covers the join in the two mattresses, and which serves to seperate Arthur into his own space from us, seems to have become a comforting thing for Arthur. He loves to snuggle up to it to go to sleep! I didn't think of it like that, but it's quite handy. On the other side he has a mesh bedguard, and he sleeps with his head on a proper pillow. We started that because of his congestion, 2 colds ago, but he likes it and sleeps well (and looks so cute and grown-up at the same time!) so we kept it that way for him. Sometimes he snuggles down the bed a little and sleeps with his head off the pillow, but mostly he doesn't.

Our bedtime routine now goes as follows - Neil gets home from work around 6.15pm. By that time, I am just a knackered heap on the sofa (!) and Neil receives the many cuddles that Arthur is excitedly giving him while I tell him about Arthur's day. Arthur usually wants to show him the kitchen (he is obsessed with the kitchen!) and some of the toys he's played with that day, and then Neil runs him a bath and gets him undressed. Neil and Arthur bath together around 6.30 or 6.45pm and I gather the things for getting him ready for bed, if Neil hasn't already done that, while they're in there. If he has got them ready, I tidy all the toys and books away downstairs to make the living room nice for us to enjoy a grown-up evening in! I get Arthur a fresh sippy cup of water and take them upstairs when Neil calls me from the bathroom.

I hold Arthur while Neil gets out of the bath, and we watch the water go down the plughole. Arthur waves it bye-bye (bless!) and then Neil takes him to our big floor-bed. We put his night nappy on and his sleepsuit, and we usually have to sing action songs with him while we do it, because he is usually totally wired and wriggly during this stage! He is REALLY up for playing games and being a cheeky monkey after his bath, which can make getting him dressed quite difficult! He just has a mischievous glint in his eye all the time, and knows the perfect moments to flip over, climb off the bed, and run naked down the hallway to fling something in the bath or through the bars of the stairgate, down the stairs! He giggles and squeals the whole time he is running though, so we never lose him, hehe! We TRY not to play excited games with him after his bath, though he's absolutely gagging for them, because then he's super wired for bedtime. Sometimes we have a short game of Catch-The-Arthur-And-Eat-Him-Up! though ;) This boy LOVES rough and tumble games. He doesn't mind being thrown around on the bed, or pulled across it by his ankles and then eaten alive, hehe! He squeals and laughs and screams till he can't breathe and his eyes water. He just LOVES it! :)

After he's dressed for bed, he wants a drink of water, and then we clean his teeth. We used to put lotion on his face after that, but I don't like to use lotion on him unless his skin is dry. Skin doesn't need lotion. My mum always told me her father (he was a doctor) said that you should never apply moisturising agents to your skin as a routine, because then the skin adjusts and needs it to keep moisturised. Arthur's skin is new and young and definitely doesn't need help with moisturising! So when he gets dry skin from a biting wind or teething drool, I put lotion on the dry parts, but lately he hasn't had dry skin at all so we don't do the lotion part any more.

Right after that we all sit on the bed, and Neil and I sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to him with the actions. Arthur smiles and smiles and SMILES while we sing it, and watches our actions. He usually joins in with the actions after a while, and makes sing-song "ahhh" sounds as though he is singing too :) That's our bedtime song. As soon as we finish singing, Neil kisses Arthur goodnight and lays him down next to me to nurse, and switches out the light. I nurse Arthur for as long as he wants to, or sometimes as long as I can bear too, if it's painful. Lately it hasn't been hurting so he has nursed for longer. He usually gets up to have a drink of water several times over say a 10 minute feed. If I sense he is dropping off to sleep, I stop the feed, which I HATE doing (he hates it too) but it's part of the plan to help him fall asleep by himself rather than depending on me to help him.

When that's done, I put him in his bed and every time he gets up (which can be a LOT still), I tell him to lie down on his bed. At first he is wide awake and I have to lay him down every time as I say it. But after a while, he lays down when I tell him to, and he usually wants a long hug with his arms around my neck before going to sleep. I can hear him settling himself for sleep as I hug him, which is lovely. Sometimes I pat him, but only if he takes my hand and puts it on his tummy or side, which means he wants me to pat him :) He goes off to sleep pretty well at that point, though he wasn't so great at it tonight and mucked around for ages trying to make it a game. We decided that if he does that, I tell him that Mummy is going downstairs now, and that it's time for sleep. I kiss and hug him goodnight, and leave the room. Neil sits with him and continues the "lie down on your bed" routine. Arthur cries when I'm not there, but he gets the picture and goes to sleep pretty quickly, and at least he is not left alone.

He doesn't wake at all in the evenings now, but he still wakes a couple of times during the night, usually between 1 and 2am, and again around 5am. At 5am he can be a nightmare to resettle. I don't feel it's because he is going to bed too early or anything - he's usually asleep by 7pm - because he is definitely tired enough by 6 or 7pm, and sleeps a good while longer after he is finally resettled at the 5am waking. We just have a no-tolerance thing on him getting up for the day before 6am, even if it means he is lying awake in bed with us trying to settle him off to sleep again till 6am. I think if we let him get up before 6am he would easily get in the habit of it, and that would not do for us at all! While he was ill he sometimes slept till 8am, which he has NEVER done before! Today he got up at 6am though, after being awake from about 5.15. Urgh! It does vary a lot. I wish we could get his night wakings to disappear, but I'm still hoping somehow that they'll fade out, or that continuing this method thingy will make a difference to it.

Urgh, I'm waffling in WAY too much detail and it's filling my diary entry up way too much! Also I am running out of time to write much more. Let's see, what else can I write about?

We went to visit my grandparents earlier in the week that Arthur got ill. Granny is doing really well with her new hip! I'm so happy about that. They loved seeing Arthur and he loved the visit. He walked with Grandoug around their garden for a while when I was feeling too tired to watch him amongst their 50 thousand household items TOTALLY unsuitable for visiting toddlers! He was really interested in the garden. I watched them from the window and saw how he looked closely at the plants that Grandoug was pointing out to him, and how sweet they both looked together - 80 years apart in age, Arthur so little against Grandoug, but their walk and just the way they held themselves seemed so similar somehow. I took a few photos :)

I love that there are photos of me when I was the same age as Arthur, walking with Grandoug just exactly like that, looking interested in the things he was pointing out :) In some ways that makes it seem weird to watch my own son doing it. Grandoug seems to have changed soooo little in the photos. He had the same white hair in the photos of me and him as well. I love that Arthur knows his great-grandparents. It's pretty special for them too, to spend time with their great-grandson.

Oh poo, now I've had my dinner and it's 10pm. I'm too tired to finish the entry, but it's waaaay too long in any case and I just wanted to get it posted tonight, so I think I'll post it and try to write everything else in another entry tomorrow. And find another time to update my pregnancy diary! It's Easter weekend so Neil is off work Friday and Monday, yay! Hopefully it means we'll both catch up a little on rest and I'll get a bit more time to write here until I'm caught up. But I really want to sleeeep, so I'm going to bed now. Will continue tomorrow, hopefully!

Just a quick update...

Thank you so much for the messages and the prayers! I appreciate them so much!

Just thought I would snatch my first chance to write a quick update on how things are going.

We are getting a courtesy car from the insurance people which is going to be delivered HERE tomorrow. Nice for me, as I will be able to put Arthur's car seat in it and use it, but it does leave Neil stranded in the north of England! He will have to get the train or a coach home, or hopefully his brother or sister will be leaving the day he's hoping to and won't mind bringing him the extra distance home. I don't know what will happen to our car yet, we're still waiting to find out.

Neil has come down with Arthur's lurgy and is really poorly :( He sounded terrible on the phone. He had been to the viewing of his dad's body and seemed at peace about that. I just hope this virus doesn't spread all through his family over the next couple of days leading up to the funeral. It seems to be a nasty one, very flu-like. Baby Ella is there with them. She is 9 months old and I desperately don't want her to catch it. Neil also seems to be showing signs of some neck and back trouble since the car crash :( I hope it won't be a major issue for him and that he'll feel better soon.

Arthur had a terrible night. He slept for blocks of 40 minutes at the longest, and just 2 or 3 minutes at the shortest. His fever sat around 102 all night and I dosed him with the right medicine and stripped him right off to just his nappy and no covers, and nothing seemed to make any difference to his fever. I just felt so scared and alone all night, because I didn't know if it was okay that he was still feverish or what I should be doing. I was up googling several times in the middle of the night between Arthur's wakings, and the websites I found reassured me a lot. I just didn't understand why the methods I was using weren't working at all. I tried the tepid sponging thing too but he reacted like he was terrified of the cloth whenever I approached him with it and I couldn't get it near him. Poor Arthur was so miserable all night and cried such a lot, no matter what I did. He signed for milk a lot so I offered him the breast frequently, but every time he latched on he immediately gagged, gave me a frightened look, and cried inconsolably :( I just felt like there was nothing at all I could do for him, and it was a horrible way to feel. I had him in bed next to me and just spent the night stroking his back and medicating him and wiping his nose, etc. The fan is in the loft and I didn't feel safe to climb the ladder with my huge bump to get it, so I sometimes fanned him with a damp facecloth, and other times I wet my hands and then stroked his back with them, which he seemed to tolerate okay. None of it made any difference to his fever though.

He slept two one-hour blocks from about 3.30-4.30am and 5-6am, so that was the sleep I got as well. I'm just glad I got SOME sleep, but I'm exhausted today. Poor Arthur was still just as poorly when he got up for the day sometime between 6 and 7am. His temperature was still 102, which slightly worried me since it was morning and they say fevers are at their lowest in the morning.

He's awake and coughing, back in a minute.

He has such a bad cough at the moment, poor love. It's that kind that when I hear it, I know it hurts like red hot needles stabbing your chest every time you cough or take a deep breath. Urgh. I have had enough of those to know just by how he sounds when he coughs. Also he cries like he is in pain every time he coughs, which makes him cough more and that makes him cry harder. How I wish I could just make him better instantly! I feel so bad for him.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, so his temperature wouldn't come down even in the morning with Calpol. I had used up all the Calpol quota for the next few hours and just didn't know what to do, so I phoned my parents and Neil and the doctor, and tried to get Arthur to drink some cool fluids. He has pretty much refused to drink most of the day, but he has picked up a bit this evening. He isn't peeing well, but he is still making his nappies damp to the touch after a few hours, so it could be worse. He hasn't eaten breakfast, lunch or tea today :( He has picked at some raisins and fed himself half a yoghurt, but that's it really. I have made a zillion foods available to him throughout the day but to no avail. I know it's normal with a fever and I don't need to worry, but it's still hard not to, somehow! Hopefully he'll feel more like food tomorrow. He doesn't seem poorly in his tummy, just off his food. He is farting a lot though, and they smell terrible! Poor poor baby.

So he had an hour of solid sleep for his nap today, which is a relief, and I napped curled up around him. He isn't gagging on the breast anymore which is also wonderful, but I just WISH more than ever that I still had milk! There is a little colostrum but it's still clear and not golden yet, so not the proper stuff yet.

He went to bed on time and slept over an hour before waking, and he sounded peacefully asleep during that time, so that was another big relief. It's just this cough that wakes him and then he's choking on goo and crying with pain and hard to console. I am breastfeeding him absolutely on demand though. He really needs the comfort. Just now when I went in, he was half back to sleep already but he was signing milk frantically with his eyes closed, bless his heart! He just knows he feels horrible and wants the most comforting thing he can think of, even if he's half asleep. He was asleep before I could even get in next to him to nurse him.

I found out I can give him more Calpol (the dose size, that is) than I have been giving him, now that he's in the age 1-6 category. So I've started giving him 7.5mls each dose (he can have up to 10mls) instead of 5mls and that seems to have dramatically improved his fever and symptoms. Perhaps he just wasn't getting a high enough dose to help him properly before? His fever came down to normal this afternoon and has stayed down, though it's hovering just slightly above normal at the moment, but evening would be the peak time anyway. I could have cried with relief to kiss his forehead and feel that it was a normal temperature! I have hated feeling him so hot. I know it has only been a day and a night but it feels like forever. I feel like I can't remember when he was healthy, it's weird.

Well, I should stop now. It's 9.40pm and I have to eat something. Last night I didn't eat till 10.30 because Arthur just woke too frequently for me to make any food or sit down to eat it before then. I have been sneezing and having to blow my nose a lot this afternoon and evening, but I am just taking my high-dose Vitamin C and hoping and praying that I'll throw it off or else just have it mildly! I thought Arthur just had some cold badly, but Neil seems so knocked sideways with fluey symptoms and not being able to eat or relieve his headache/congestion, etc, that I am wondering if it's just how this virus is, and if it IS then I don't know how I'll manage looking after Arthur if I get it that badly. Urgh.

Thankfully my parents ARE coming, though my dad is poorly and infectious - my grandparents told them to come anyway and they'll take the risk. His doctor told him he has a fluey thing that has been going around the little town they live in. I just hope we don't swap or mix germs during their visit! Mummy seems well at the moment. She will be here tomorrow, probably from mid-morning, to help me with Arthur. I am SO thankful, and so relieved that she will be around. It has only been a day or two but I feel insecure and lonely already. I think it wouldn't be like that if Arthur was well, but anyway.

Oh, in true Arthur-style, he is cutting teeth. He does that such a lot when he also has a cold! Someone suggested perhaps that's actually why he GETS the colds at those times, because teething has him run down and more vulnerable to catching things. It makes sense to me, especially now that it's happened again. He is getting that fourth bottom front middle one, his tenth tooth. It's almost visible through the gum this evening, and I did notice that his whole gum on that side at the bottom was puffy and squidgy and swollen right up when I put Bonjela on it today and in the night :( Poor Boo. Perhaps that's why he has had such a fever - the combination of bad teething and a nasty cold? Anyway. I think he is also working on more molars, which doesn't help.

Okay I need to eat something and go to bed in case a) it's another wakeful night with Arthur, and b) I am coming down with the lurgy. I just hope soooooooo much that my little man is feeling better in the morning, and has his usual smiles for me (sadly missing for what feels like forever already!) and eagerly eats his breakfast. I can't wait for the joy of seeing him healthy and happy again. I love him so so so so much.

Urrrrrrrgh :(

Everything is going wrong :(

Neil was meant to leave yesterday (Saturday) to be with his family for a week, but at the last minute we decided that Arthur and I SHOULD be at the funeral if we could possibly manage it. So we sorted out flying up (just me and Arthur) on Wednesday, the day before the funeral, and then coming back in the car with Neil on Friday night. Neil couldn't leave yesterday because he got a bad headache and couldn't drive :( So anyway we had it all planned out and he was leaving today instead.

Arthur got sick. That DARNED Playgroup once AGAIN. That's five out of the six times he's been, that he's come back with a cold or some virus. Urgh. I'm so glad there's a break for Easter now. Even though he enjoys it, and it's good for his immune system, blah blah. It's SO not a good time right now.

Also he hasn't been this ill before, I don't think. I think it's just a very bad cold starting, so nothing to actually worry about, but he's so poorly. He hasn't ever had a fever before, and this morning when he woke around 5am I thought he felt warm to me, and was breathing faster than usual too. So when he stirred again at 6am we took his temperature, and it was just ever so slightly raised. He was coughing in the night too, but nothing else. This morning after he got up, his nose and eyes just started streaming, and I honestly have never heard a person sneeze so many times as Arthur has today. His little temperature became a real fever and doesn't want to come down with Calpol. It's not enormous, but it's over 100 (nearly 38). He hasn't been able to nap for more than 10 minutes at a time, though he's exhausted all the time. His nose isn't congested yet, but something is bothering him to keep him from sleeping properly.

He cooled down a little this afternoon when I opened his sleepsuit front and gave him a little bowl of ice-cream :) He didn't want breakfast but has eaten really well other than that, and he will not take much of anything to drink, which is frustrating, as I know he needs fluids right now.

He just feels so hot, and I feel extra scared given that it's the first time I have been a parent to a child with a fever-while-poorly and I'm on my own. He really isn't himself at all, but he is trying to be. He picks up the toys he usually plays with, but then puts them down or gets frustrated over something-I-can't-figure-out. Poor lovey boy. I just put him to bed because he fell asleep slumped over on the sofa watching the CBeebies bedtime hour - soooooo unlike Arthur, and so far he has slept 10 minutes, constantly making whimpering sounds as though he's about to wake but he never does. I haven't covered him up, just dressed him in a footless sleepsuit for now. I wish I had someone with me :( I am nervous about the rest of the evening (peak fever time) and the night.

Okay but that's just part one of how everything is going wrong. I thought the fact that I got only 2 hours sleep last night was bad enough until everything else unfolded today!

Neil phoned me around lunchtime from his mobile to say he had crashed the car on the M1. He ran into the back of a BMW and he feels so terrible because he says it's all his fault and he looked down for a second and he should never never never have done it. Poor Neil. He has had so much on his plate. I don't want him to beat himself up too much over this. Anyway, the BMW is slightly damaged. Our car is buckled up at the front and completely undrivable. Neil is fine - thank you God! I had this horrible thought for a moment that we could so easily lose him and be on our own forever.

Arthur's awake and coughing. Back in a bit.

Okay I gave him another dose of Calpol and stroked his poor hot head with my cool hands till he was asleep again. Poor baby love.

So Neil is okay, but the car is not. Neil said it could even be a write-off :( Thankfully we have full insurance but how we'll afford the premiums as a result of this, I do not know. And it's our only car. We neeeed a car! Neil was stranded halfway up the country, and the RAC couldn't take him all the way up to North Yorkshire, so his brother drove all the way to get him and back again. I hope he's okay and the rest of their journey is safe.

Oops, the phone rang and it was Neil! He's there safely - phew! I need to find some car insurance details tonight for him, but otherwise he's trying not to think about it too much. The car has been towed to somewhere or other in the middle of the country, and I am not sure what happens next. I feel so stuck here and like Neil is so stuck there, with no way for him to get to us or us to him if there was an emergency :( I hope it's all sorted in time for him to get home again at the end of the week. Anyway I'm so glad he's there and he's safe. He's glad to be there with his family, which is good.

Arthur woke during the phonecall but he resettled quickly with me stroking his head again. I think he might cool down okay actually, with the covers off and the Calpol doing something or other, if it works for him. I'll check him very frequently this evening and cover him if it gets necessary. I just want him to get better :( I hate my baby boy being so poorly.

During the various phone calls from Neil about the car crisis, we had a poo crisis here. Arthur did the most enormous mushy poo-poo and thonked both heels in it when I went to take his nappy off. I kid you not, his feet were completely brown up to his calves. Ew. Then he grabbed his feet with both hands. Yup. My reaction was so freaky-outy, just instinctively I guess, that poor Arthur got scared and cried and cried :( I never scared him with a strong reaction before, and I feel so bad for it because he was so poorly and got so scared and upset :( It took me ages to calm him because I couldn't really pick him up with poo on his hands and feet (and bum!). I had to clean him off as best I could and then dump him in the sink to soap him down with baby soap! Then I put him to bed and cleaned the poo off the carpet (between phone calls from Neil at the roadside). Arthur woke several times during the process too. Urgh.

HOWEVER! I have managed the day. Now I just need to manage the evening and the night, and NOT catch what Arthur has.

When I phoned my mum for some advice earlier, she said my dad isn't well. He has no voice and feels terrible and exhausted, and he is going to the doctor tomorrow. If it's something viral then they can't really risk Granny catching it when they stay with her, so they would have to cancel their trip, and thus the help I desperately needed during the week. I absolutely don't want them to come if one or both of them is ill. I also already feel worried that if they DO come, they'll catch the horrid thing that Arthur has, and I don't really want them to have to do that either. But I just want to cry when I think of getting to the next weekend without any human contact, any help, any car, any food (as of Wednesday, that's when I've figured out I will have run out of meals for me to eat in the evenings!). Yeurgh. Nothing can be done though. Neil has to be where he is. My parents can't be here if they are ill. Arthur can't help being ill. I just hope and pray I stay healthy. That would just top it all!

Arthur is awake again.

Poor lovey :( That's three times in 40 minutes. He pretty much sleeps for 10 minutes at a time, just like during his very broken naps today. He goes back off with me stroking his forehead. Which still feels hot. Hmmm.

Anyway. I am not sure what to do about anything. Not that there is anything to be done in any case. I hope nothing else goes wrong. I feel anxious about everything tonight.

Thank you all so much for the messages and notes, and to Lois for the email. You are all lovely friends! I really appreciate your support. xxx I'll update again soon, and hopefully tomorrow will be better and Arthur won't get worse overnight. Please pray!

Neil's dad

Urgh, I have so much to update about all sorts of things, and a load more photos, but today and yesterday have been incredibly difficult and so I need to update (probably briefly) about that instead.

Neil's dad died yesterday morning. Lots of you who have read here for a long time will know that he has been very unwell for yeeears - five years now I think, since the year after our wedding. He had chronic leukaemia, and the issues with that and his already troublesome cardiovascular system lead to multiple strokes (like 10 or more over a few years I think), which in turn meant he couldn't communicate, swallow, care for himself, anything. He could just about walk, but it would exhaust him. He became like a little old man in the space of just a year or two and lost half his body weight. It was so hard to see him like that whenever we went to visit. He would drool constantly and seem confused a lot. And just look very very ill all the time. He was tube-fed and got agitated easily.

We got a phone call from Neil's mum two nights ago to tell us that he had developed pneumonia and was in hospital. He had some other more minor issues as well, but I have to say, when I heard that he had pneumonia I just knew that would be it. His blood counts were too low due to the leukaemia to make much use of antibiotics against the pneumonia, and the alternative was some sort of surgery (can't remember what). At the time, he was in pain and so weak and poorly. The family made the decision to try the antibiotics and see. They didn't want to put him through surgery because it would mean more pain for him, and if he slipped away then it would not be a terrible thing. He died around 9am the next morning.

I got a tearful phone call from Neil's sister (the one with baby Ella) right after that, and she called Neil at work to tell him. He was in a big meeting and work were so nice to him. His boss immediately drove him home and everything. Neil is doing okay. He is exhausted and drained all the time and just seems at a loose end. Making decisions is difficult but we have had some big ones to make about when to go up north, and how, and whether it will even be manageable, and just a million other details that neither of us can sort out in our heads properly enough to make any decisions.

I am having a more difficult time pregnancy-wise all of a sudden this past week. I am too exhausted to do the slightest thing all the time, and by the evening I can't catch my breath and get in a flap about it. I feel sick a lot, the same way I felt with morning sickness, and it's hard to eat and manage anything that smells (!). By the evenings I feel actually ill with tiredness, dizzy, breathless and achy in weird places. I hurt EVERYWHERE, in some places too badly to sit or sleep for long. I am sleeping badly and can't even seem to do the food shopping any more without coming over funny. It's normal really, given that I'm 7 months pregnant, just unfortunate with the timing. I should write all that in my pregnancy diary, which is really overdue an update, but I don't know if I'll have time so it's here instead. Also it's relevant to the rest of everything.

The journey to Neil's family is one we swore (at Christmas) that we would not repeat again, until our youngest child was at least three years old! It was a total nightmare. It's a 5 hour car drive, with clear roads and no children! With Arthur, it was TEN hours last time. Urgh. I would simply be crying with pain from sitting in the same position by the time we were half way there. My pelvis really isn't happy with things at the moment!

Neil wants to go up now, like today, and then come back tomorrow (crazy, crazy idea), and then go up again 2 days later with me and Arthur for the funeral, which will be on Thursday. I can't persuade him to consider the fact that he'll be absolutely physically unable to do all that, with all the emotional exhaustion he'll have on top of it. It's just too much. He doesn't want to leave us here on our own, bless him, because Arthur has become unexpectedly difficult lately! He is having tantrums here and there, and seems to be overtired and cranky a lot (leading to major tantrumy meltdowns in seconds over absolutely nothing, at any given moment!), has waaaaay too much energy for me to cope with, and I am just not managing at the moment for some reason. Well, pregnancy, but yeah. Also Neil is thinking of my recent week of knackeredness and stuff with the pregnancy. He should really think of himself this week, but he's the most selfless person I know and NEVER thinks enough about his own needs. *sigh*

It has been so hard to know what to do. The house up north is full to bursting with all of Neil's family and their latest additions. It sounds such a petty detail, but Arthur is NOT a good sleeper and nor am I at the moment, and the only room left for us would be next to the loo. Which in a house that full of people would get used like every 15 minutes throughout the night or something, and I think Arthur and I would get next to no sleep at all. And then be ultra needy in the day times. Which would defy the point of being there to support Neil.

We have gone back and forth a billion times, deciding for sure that we're all going, then that Arthur and I will stay here while Neil goes, and back again, etc. I think today we finally decided that Arthur and I WILL stay here. I feel like a crappy wife for not being at my husband's side at his father's funeral, but I talked to my mum at great length about it all (to get a fresher perspective) and she thinks I will not be a good support to Neil if I'm requiring his help and support CONSTANTLY for myself and Arthur, which is what is currently happening at home. It will be even more so there, I think. Neil's needs are more important this coming week, and he especially needs space to be with his feelings, and space to be with his mum and his brother and sisters. I don't think he will get that adequately if we are there with him.

Also I figured out a way for him to not drive up and down the country like an exhausted yo-yo all week. I think he should go tomorrow (Saturday) and just STAY, spend time with the family, be involved in funeral arrangements like he wants to be, take some personal time to view his dad's body, and then come home again after the funeral. Which I think should be the following Saturday, to give him a day with his family after the big ordeal of the funeral. So that would be a week away. The good thing is that my parents HAPPEN to be coming to England again for a few days to visit Granny during her recovery from her hip replacement. They arrive overnight on Monday night, leave again Thursday afternoon. Mummy says she can leave Daddy to do the visiting with Granny and help me during the time she's here.

Soooo I would just have to get through the weekend and Monday somehow. If I took the car seat out of the car before Neil goes, someone could give us a lift to church on Sunday (there's a special service on prophecy and other exciting stuff!) and that would be an outing for us to use up some of the day. Then Mummy would be able to help me on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning, though she'd stay with my grandparents and just come over during the day. And then there's just Friday to get through, and Neil would be home on Saturday. I think it will be difficult, given how things are right now, but manageable. And I want to be positive about it for Neil, so that he doesn't have to worry about us while he's gone.

I feel anxious that people are going to think badly of me that I'm not taking Arthur to go to the funeral with Neil. Like I'm not showing family unity or something, or being supportive enough. I really don't want people to think that of me. I am not even sure if it's actually TRUE though, so I wanted to ask Mummy if she thought I was wrong to stay. She just said supporting Neil was the most important thing, and if we were going to be a drain on his resources rather than a support to him, we should perhaps consider staying here and giving him "time off" from having to think about his pregnant wife and energetic toddler all the time!

I think I can manage Arthur's bedtimes on my own. We FINALLY transitioned him to his big-boy bed!! He is sleeping on a full-size single mattress on the floor, up against our kingsize mattress. He has a mesh bedguard on the open side, and one of my full length maternity bean-bag pillows down the join in the mattresses, to separate him into his own space from ours. He has pillows at the head end so he doesn't burrow upwards in his sleep (which he tends to do) and head-butt the wall! And a big single duvet to cover him. He looks like such a big boy in there! Our bedtime routine has taken a dramatic change, for the first time in his life. Right before I lay down to breastfeed him on our big bed, I explain to him that Mummy is going to give him some milk and then she will put him in his big-boy bed, and he will have a lovely sleep :) He listens with such an intent and serious expression, and then I lay with him and nurse him till he's acting sleepy and less fidgetty. Way before he actually starts dozing off, I stop the feed (which he has never had done before), and lift him onto his mattress and tuck him in. I sit next to him on the other side of the maternity pillow, which is another new thing - he has never known me NOT lie with him as he falls asleep. I pat and stroke his tummy and back, and whisper to him now and then, things like, "Sleepy time now, night night" or "Good boy, sleepy time". If he gets up, I offer him a drink. Then I say, "Lie down on your bed" and he flops right down again. He is doing SO GREAT!! I am so proud of him.

The first night, he wasn't crazy about the change, although he hasn't ONCE cried during the process, which I'm overjoyed about! I expected that he would cry or something, but it just feels so wonderful gentle for him, as a transition. I stay close to him and if he wants my hand on him then I pat or stroke him. He now picks my hand up in his two little hands and places it on him where he wants me to pat or stroke :) Usually his tummy. When I start patting, he rubs his eyes and "munches" his little mouth, all the things I recognise as him making a real effort to go to sleep by himself. If I stop patting he tends to reach out for my hand to get me to continue a while longer.

The first night, he tried every trick in the book to get me to react to him and change what I was doing! He got up and down, he wriggled everywhere, he kicked the covers off, he blew his nose - which only worked for him until it was empty of snot and blowing it became pointless, hehe! He headbutted the mesh bedguard, he gagged himself with his fingers down his throat (this one always has me jumping to stop him, but not this time!), he pulled the pillows down on his head, yanked at the maternity pillow, asked for a drink fifty thousand times, etc! He even tried making pitiful expressions and frantically signing for milk! When I just said, "No lovey, it's sleepy time now", he changed his signing to "medicine", hehehe! Little monkey :) But that didn't work either. As he got sleepy he seemed to have a moment of panic and reach for me frantically, I think because he didn't know how to fall asleep without me snuggled up against him in some way. Isn't that lovely, that my nearly 17-month-old has never known sleep without a snuggly mummy against him?! I feel so happy for him that this has been his experience for ALL of this time. I feel proud of my perseverance to give him that, given how terribly hard it has been to maintain.

Anyway, when he did that, I told him it was okay, that Mummy was right here and it was okay to go to sleep. I let him hold my hand in both of his against his chest, and he fell asleep almost immediately, cuddling my hand like a teddy bear to his little chest :) It was so sweet. As soon as his hands went limp I got up and he slept THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!! Well, 8pm till 5am anyway. At 5am it took me about 20 minutes of the above method to resettle him to sleep (we have an absolute no tolerance rule (!!) of him getting up before 6am) and he slept till 6.45 then.

We are sooooo pleased with how well he is taking the transition. Last night was the second night, and he went to sleep much more quickly. The first night took nearly an hour of just sitting with him patiently and patting him or talking to him gently when he needed the reassurance. After a few nights, I can phase-out the talking, and then a few nights later, the patting. After that I can sit further away, etc, if he isn't falling asleep pretty much straight away by himself by then. Last night it took 20 minutes, and was much easier. He seemed to know what to expect and after he had fidgetted for a while and had a few drinks of water, he closed his eyes and settled himself off to sleep with me rubbing his tummy. I love how soundly asleep he is now, the instant he goes off! It's such a difference to a few months ago! I can lean in and kiss his little face and whisper how much I love him before I leave the room, WITHOUT creeping noiselessly! I can use the toilet and FLUSH, haha! We can climb the stairs without avoiding the creaky parts! We can talk normally and watch TV without headphones! Wow, we were really restricting ourselves before now, for all these months! But Arthur used to wake soooo easily. He still does when he's in certain stages of his sleep, but suddenly it's so much better than before.

Also I get to sleep WITH my husband!! We get our own bedspace to ourselves. I love that I have the best of both worlds - our own bedspace, but not even apart from my little boy. I still feel terribly separated from him, just with a maternity pillow between us! I can't sleep for hours when I go to bed and peek over it countless times to see his little face right on the other side, looking like a sweet angel with his long eyelashes on his cheeks and his relaxed body and gentle breathing. I could look at him all night long if only I didn't need my sleep! I still end up going to the spare bed in the other bedroom halfway through the night, as I just can't get any good sleep in the big bed. I toss and turn so much and my legs are SO horribly restless these days, and I can't get comfy. I get easily disturbed by two other people's breathing and stirrings, and sleep much better in a different room at the moment. But I love to start out the night with my boys :) While Neil's away, I will sleep the whole night, every night, with Arthur, and just hope that I start to find it easier to sleep there. I absolutely don't want to be in a separate room from him when it's just me and him, for some reason.

Anyway. So last night he was very restless, and kept making noises and acting like he was waking up or was uncomfy, so I would move him back down from where he was wedged at the top of the bed, or cover him up again if he'd kicked the covers off, and he never even woke while I did that! So he didn't actually wake himself, but he kept ME awake quite a lot. I hope he'll be less restless over the next week. Anyway it looks promising! I'm just so glad we've done it at last. Now we have that part of life more ready for Matthew's arrival.

Anyway so I think I can manage bedtimes on my own with this new arrangement, and hopefully he won't be too wakeful at night for me, while Neil's away. The only thing I will SUCK at is getting up with Arthur when he wakes for the day. Neil is a real morning person (I am absolutely NOT) and gets up with Arthur when he wakes between 6 and 6.30am, after I nurse him first. I go back to bed with earplugs in (necessary these days - Arthur likes noisy play first thing!!) and sleep till Neil wakes me at 8am so that he can go to work. Over the last few weeks, I am dealing BADLY with getting up even at 8am. I feel absolutely grey with exhaustion nearly the whole morning, and only start to wake up properly near when Arthur has his lunch. It is definitely getting worse as the weeks go by now. I have absolutely NO idea how I'll cope with getting up with Arthur at 6am and lasting through the morning. My chest aches and I can't breathe when I get that tired now. But I will have to manage. I'm sure I'll get through it somehow.

Mummy is going to help me bath Arthur on the days that she's here. I think he will have to go without baths on the other days. He normally baths with his Daddy - they both get in together. I can't get in with him and get him out safely, and I can no longer bend over the bathtub with my bump, let alone bend over it AND stop him slipping or touching the hot tap, and wash him! So I don't think I can bath him unless I have some help. But I think I can do it with Mummy here. I will just have to try to nap when he naps and take early nights, even if it means I am doing my head in for lack of "me" time by the time Neil gets back! I think it is going to work, and it is the best way that Neil will get enough time to deal with everything, do everything he needs/wants to do, and spend time with his family, without having to constantly help with or think about me and Arthur.

So that is what will happen. I really feel like we SHOULD all be at the funeral, but it's so far away and things are just not going to work out for it to happen. We looked into staying at a B&B or flying up, but we can't afford either.

I hope I am not being really bad and unsupportive. I just can't sort my thoughts out about anything, so I'm not sure what's right and what's wrong to do.

Neil has taken Arthur out to the park for a long walk. They both needed to go out and have some air, and Neil really perked up at the idea. Arthur had to have an early nap today instead of lunch (which he had later, when he woke up) because he just got toooo tired and had a mega tantrum. He screamed all the way up the stairs in Neil's arms, and on the bed, and instantly went silent the moment I offered him the breast :) He was out like a light in seconds. He had been acting exhausted for a couple of hours. I am wondering whether I should try him back on two naps a day for a while? He seems to be struggling on just one nap lately, even though he's been on one nap a day for months and doing fine with it. It had become impossible to get him to take two naps and not be wired at bed time, so we cut him down to one, and it worked out great. But these last few weeks, he seems to be getting more and more tired with just one nap, and seems ready for a sleep earlier and earlier in the morning. I thought it was because he had a cold before, but he's fine now and still the same way with the tiredness.

We did go to Playgroup again 2 days ago, so I hope we haven't come away with yet another viral thing. I guess if he's still well tomorrow then I can presume he didn't catch anything.

I took him to the doctor this week, like I said I was going to last entry, to see if he has an ear infection. He has never had one before, but I wondered, as he seemed to be having miserable moments more often, and sometimes we'd wonder if he was in pain and give him Calpol, and he'd be a lot better 20 minutes later. Well he doesn't have an ear infection. His ears are squeaky clean and healthy-looking! The doctor said he was a model patient! He sat quiet as a mouse on my lap and even turned his head when the doctor asked him to, to poke his torchy thing in the other ear! He doesn't mind things poked in his ears at all - in fact he loves our ear thermometer at home and wants to do it on himself after we do it! It makes him smile :) He also didn't mind the doctor listening to his chest with the stethoscope, and gave him a smile while he did it. He wasn't crazy about having his mouth prized open with a tongue depressor stick thingy, but he didn't resist all the same. His expression just told me he wasn't crazy about it! The doctor said his teeth look fine and don't look as though they are currently a major source of teething pain. Everything about him seems physically healthy, but the doctor did say that in his opinion, Arthur is physically more like an 18 month to 2 year old, and developmentally he seems to also be at that age range. He wondered if perhaps he is just reaching the tantrumy age early because he is essentially "ahead" in other aspects too? He doesn't talk much yet, so perhaps that is a source of frustration for him. How I wish we'd done more with him with signs now! Also he suggested allowing/encouraging him to feed himself more at mealtimes, as it might be a source of frustration to him. I started that straight away and he is now feeding himself almost his whole meals with his little spoon and fork, wonderfully efficiently, without spilling or missing his mouth! He isn't so tantrumy at mealtimes now, so perhaps frustration has been the main problem?

Okay the boys are home and I hear Arthur climbing the stairs to come and see me :) So I'll post this for now, and update again when I can. Please pray for Neil's family if you pray. And that nothing will go wrong for Arthur and me while we're on our own!