Christmas Day 2006!!!

At last, a moment to write the entry about our Christmas! Matthew's first Christmas, and Arthur's THIRD - although his first Christmas Day looked like this...

... because we were all poorly with horrible flu and so I don't really like to count that year's Christmas as something that existed!

Here is a photo of Arthur on his second Christmas Day (the first REAL one), at 13 months old, very serious about opening a present!...

And THIS Christmas Day, at age 2, yet again terribly serious about opening presents, hehe:

We had such a LOVELY Christmas!!! I sort of half expected to feel a bit flat and like it wasn't really Christmas as such, or at least not Christmas as I had always known it, because we wouldn't be seeing any family, just staying at home on our own. But it was so surprisingly wonderful that I hope ALL our future Christmasses as a family might be like this one! I was surprised at how right it felt to just be us four at home on our own, with the whole focus on the little ones. It's how Christmas should be, or at least that's how it feels to me. On Boxing Day (the next day), we drove to Neil's sister's house about an hour away, and the rest of his family were already there visiting, so we got to do the whole "Christmas thing" with one entire side of the family! It felt fine to be doing that on Boxing Day, because Boxing Day is part of Christmas, like it's the second day of Christmas or something. It's how I remember it from my childhood. We did sometimes have one side of the family, either my mum's or my dad's, to Christmas lunch and they'd stay the rest of the day till near our bedtime. But not always. And Boxing Day was always a day that we'd go and visit family. It was so nice that way. We never had to be anywhere but our own beds on Christmas morning, with Father Christmas having been to our own home to deliver our presents, and for me that felt important. We got to enjoy Christmas Day at home with a few close family every year. Boxing Day was a welcome change and still felt like a continuation of Christmas, because we got out of the house after a day inside playing with presents (good for us kids!) and we got to see the rest of the family that day. It seemed perfect to me. We had our first Christmas away from home when I was 11 and we stayed with my grandparents. It was nice, but it did not give me that authentic Christmas feeling on Christmas morning. It was the first year that I felt like it was more of a grown-up Christmas. At home I could hang on to the magic of it all just because that's where it always happened in the same way every year.

Anyway! I digress! So basically it worked out perfectly. I realised for the first time that we are truly our own all-grown-up family unit, separate from the rest of the family now. We have children of our own and THEY are getting to be the ones who enjoy Christmas with their mummy and daddy and then see the extended family on Boxing Day. I feel so content about that! I felt no need whatsoever to see family during Christmas Day, nothing like I had expected. I phoned my parents in the afternoon to say Happy Christmas to everyone there (my grandparents were staying with them over Christmas) and I missed them then, but it still felt right that we were just us four at home for Christmas. I think we're going to try and do everything we can to safeguard that for our kids every Christmas. I think it's important for the kids to have Christmas Day at home, well, more specifically Christmas morning when they wake. We are really hoping that one day we'll have a big enough home so that we can invite family to stay with us over Christmas. Mummy says that's going to be HARD work at Christmas, with little ones to look after as well (she has been there!), but I still feel like that would be the ultimate perfect family Christmas, for me. To have my little ones under our own roof for Christmas, in their own home to open presents, and still have family around without having to travel and visit. Anyway. I hope we can afford that before our kids are all grown up!

So it was lovely! It started early, as every morning with our boys does! Arthur woke at about 6.20am, very normal for him, and we took him downstairs. It was pitch black still so we sat on the sofa while Neil put the light on. Right in front of the sofa was the little table with Father Christmas's snack on it! I said, "Oh LOOK! Father Christmas must have eaten his cookie! And LOOK! Father Christmas's juice is all gone! Do you think he drank it?!" Arthur got interested and went over to examine the plate. He noticed the stump of carrot and we decided the reindeer must have eaten that. Then I asked him if he thought it meant that Father Christmas had been in the night and left him some presents. He looked up at me like he couldn't believe what I was suggesting, hehe! He looked astonished, for some reason. I suggested he look and see if there were any presents (they were RIGHT next to me but he was so sleepy and focused on the table that he hadn't even noticed them yet!), and he went and stood in front of them with huuuuge eyes, breathing, "Wowwwww! Look dat!" :)

He opened a present or two and then Matthew woke so I brought him down. After that he just piled into them and we helped/watched. Matthew was extremely interested, as ever - he is the most INTERESTED baby I have known yet! No wonder he's so frustrated that his body isn't ready to propel him and manipulate objects and stuff like he soooo wants to all the time! It drives him crazy.

Here are various present-opening moments (note dark dark middle-of-the-night-ness and tired parents!):

Arthur got soooo much stuff! He got lots and lots of Thomas the Tank related things. I had decided to search out a lot of different things that were Thomas-based, because I knew he'd love them more than anything else. I did most of my shopping on eBay. I heart that place! Arthur got a Thomas the Tank outfit which he wore on Boxing Day. It has a little padded waistcoat thingy and he looks so sweet in it! £34 new, £3 used once from eBay - I kid you not. It's like new. Arthur loves it. I wish I had a photo of him wearing it, but I think the only pics I have were after he took the waistcoat part off when we were indoors on Boxing Day. I'll post Boxing Day photos in another entry. There will be waaaaaaaay too many photos otherwise! I spent today and yesterday uploading video clips and resizing photos from Christmas and since then, and I do not jest - I resized almost 100 photos and 21 video clips!!!!!! Yikes. So I need to make a few entries over the next day or two to catch up with those, and I'll try to thin them out for my diary but it's hard. I took toooo many!

I am beginning to really dislike YouTube. The video clips have the same naff delay on the sound (you see the mouths moving but hear the voices a couple of seconds later, tsk). So far it has been 6 hours since I uploaded my videos and some of them still don't display - they say they are still processing. That really bugs me! I can't post them in my diary till they've got their arses in gear to sort my videos out. Also they are taking FOREVER to load this evening. I just tried to watch a 1 minute, 34 second video clip of Arthur to see what it came out like at YouTube, and it has taken 10 minutes to load and I'm still waiting for it to finish. I'd rather host my stuff somewhere else but I'm not sure where. Also I hate that I have to make my videos "public" at YouTube in order to post them here. Anyone can view them there, and it creeps me out to see that a couple of them have already had 6 or 7 viewings before I've even posted them anywhere yet. I mean, I put my stuff "out there" by posting it here, but I don't really want to be any more public than this. I don't want huge communities finding my video clips of my kids and rating them or stuff. I just don't like the idea. Anyway. For now it's YouTube. I hope to find somewhere better soon.

Arthur got some jigsaws (some were Thomas the Tank Engine - 2, 3, 4, and 5 piece jigsaws which he put together much quicker than I had expected!):

He got a Thomas the Tank Engine audio CD with stories and singing and stuff on it - that has already proved absolutely invaluable on car journeys, as he sits fairly quietly and listens to them for a long time, chatting away to himself about the stories or singing a bit (he's finally started SINGING, hooray - I thought he'd never do it! He does not hold a tune yet though!). It turned out to be a great present for him:

He also got Thomas the Tank Engine stickers (and some other stickers) - also from good old eBay. Arthur LOVES stickers and has had lots of fun with these ones already. They have been stuck, peeled and re-stuck so many times that they are pretty much losing their stick-y now!

He got some books - this one is from Lois (thank you Lois!!) and he loves it. It has vehicles in it. Perfect for Arthur!

Arthur got some playdough (from Nana and Grandy), which got ground into the carpet waaay too quickly as we didn't have enough eyes in the backs of our heads! Matthew also liked the pots of playdough a lot:

Matthew got fewer presents than Arthur, obviously! He got a couple of lovely shape-sorters:

Matthew mostly loved shiny crackly wrapping paper, and it worked well because Arthur liked to actually unwrap and examine the presents while Matthew was content to just scrunch and shake the paper! Here's a short clip of Arthur helping to open Matthew's present from Lois (thank you again Lois!!) - a sweet little top with cars on the front! Matthew just loved the paper!

Arthur got various vehicles, including a Postman Pat van (he loves Postman Pat) from Millie, who is an online friend of mine who doesn't read here. Here's a little clip of Arthur opening the present from Millie - I love how he spontaneously says, "Oh yes please!" and "Aaan-goh Millie" (thank you) but hate how the sound isn't in sync for it. Tsk.

He also got a wooden bus-type-thing from Nana and Grandy (which he has had SO much fun with already)...

... and a huge rescue helicopter playset from Uncle Ian (Neil's brother):

And a box of 20 Matchbox cars, which he was super-thrilled to open and find:

But his BEST present by far was the one I have been buying excitedly for a few weeks at eBay - a huge collection of Thomas the Tank engines from the My First Thomas range. There are SO many different types of Thomas the Tank train sets out there! But I chose the one tailored for the youngest children (12 months +) because they are going to be the most hard-wearing, they are a good size for little hands, colourful and cheerful, and safe for little ones to shove in their mouths. Also Matthew can get his little mitts on them all he likes, which was an important consideration because he is SO interested in playing with Arthur's toys, and I know he's only 6 months old but I swear this boy already has a particular liking for Thomas the Tank Engine. The theme music calms him if he's fussing like crazy, and he always looks up from where he is on the floor, when I put Arthur's Thomas DVD on the TV, and smiles. He actually watches it for like 10 seconds at a time, with an expression like he likes what he's watching, which is surely crazy for a 6-month-old! Anyway, so I knew I needed a suitable Thomas set for 2 very small boys!

My First Thomas sets come in two styles - an oval track with a level crossing and a big station house, or a circular track with no extras. The engines are bought individually and are not exactly cheap, at £5 - £10 each. I won a set at eBay consisting of 29 of the most popular engines and carriages, the circular track AND the oval track and extras, for THIRTY-ONE QUID including postage!!!!!!!! Woo-hoo! The guy who sold it to me said his little boy loved it and that it cost like £300 in total or something craaaaazy like that. It's in great condition and I am just soooo thrilled. The set was missing a few engines that I know Arthur likes from the two DVDs that he's got, so I searched those out and bought them individually at eBay - about 8 more I think. So he has a huuuuge set now! We put them all in a big box and wrapped it up just like that, so that when he opened it, it would just be like this ENORMOUS boxful of his favourite things ever! :) We put it at the back of the presents and he opened it last out of all the floor presents. He was so excited getting the trains out that he actually went the opposite way to his norm - he went quiet and pale and actually SHOOK when he was lifting out Gordon (his favourite) and fixing his tender to him. We could see he was just so thrilled, and that was the loveliest thing for us. He has played non-stop with his Thomas set since Christmas Day. We put the track together for him and he started to put some trains on it and push them round. At one point, he sat back and suddenly said, "Fan-kah-gick!" and then said it again, and I didn't know what he was saying until I suddenly twigged that it was, "Fantastic!" hehe! He has never said that before, so I guess he was VERY pleased with his Thomas set :) I took a video clip of him playing with his Thomas set as we were putting it together, and I caught him saying the "fantastic" bit at the beginning:

The last present that Arthur opened, in the toe of his stocking, was a little fluffy duck with a pouch for a belly. My mum once gave it to me one Easter, filled with chocolate eggs, and I kept it because I thought how it might be useful as a gift for a child of my own one day! Sure enough, it seemed perfect for filling with Arthur's favourite treat - yoghurt-covered raisins. The only thing Arthur loves more than yoghurt-covered raisins is breast milk. If I can't nurse him when he is asking to nurse, he will usually cry a bit and then ask for his raisins in a pitiful voice! We once discovered, though, that a wonderful treat for Arthur is chocolate-covered raisins. He never really gets actual sweets or chocolates to eat. There's no need for very young kids to eat crap like that and as far as treats go, he is over-the-moon to get sweet things like the yog-covered raisins, etc. So we decided to treat him to a duck-full of a mixture of yoghurt- and chocolate-covered raisins! Here he is discovering it (with his Thomas audio CD playing in the background!):

I got a LOT of chocolate :) And a Laura Ingalls Wilder book that I have wanted for yeeeears. And The Sims 2 Pets, yay! I also got money, which I think I might spend on some other Sims 2 extension packs :) Or maybe a pair of jeans and some cosy PJs? If I can find the clothes I want cheaply (ie marvellous eBay again!) then I can probably still buy some Sims 2 stuff. Yay! I got a few sweet little gifts from friends and just really enjoyed "my side" of Christmas. By far the nicest part for me was the presents for the little ones though. I love that part!

Neil drinks crazy quantities of tea these days and asked for a giant mug so that he doesn't keep having to refill a smaller mug (!!), so I found this (yes, eBay...):

He also got previously-requested sweet treats galore and money and a huge radio-controlled helicopter (!!!) from his brother, to match Arthur's smaller one! Men are such little boys at heart :) He was really excited about it, but I have no idea where he's going to fly it yet!

After all the presents were open, I started the Christmas lunch, which was roast chicken (we're too small for turkey and chicken is easy and yummy), roast parsnips, roast potatoes and various veg (broccoli, carrot, peas) and gravy. No stuffing or sauces or anything typically Christmassy, but I don't personally like those anyway so the meal was perfect for me! Neil takes stuffing if it's there, but he's happy without too. While we got things ready for lunch (which was amazingly ready for about noon, for the boys' sake, as they eat lunch really early compared with us!), I noticed that the little ones had gone unusually quiet, just playing with toys and stuff for a while. It was lovely! I took a little video clip:

Of course that didn't last long, hehe! The next clip shows Arthur having a slightly mad moment (he put an empty toy box on his head and ran about like a crazy thing, laughing every time it fell off!) - I wish I had taped more but I only thought to get the camcorder after he'd been at it a while. He then went in the kitchen and climbed on a toy (as he says, "climb!" when Neil goes in and discovers him!) and rattled some cutlery in some cups and glasses on the surface (PLEASE try not too let your eye fall on the state of our kitchen too much, ugh!) and sang the Bob the Builder theme, hehehe! He has only just started "singing". I was starting to wonder why he wasn't doing it, because other kids his age are singing and it's not like he isn't going to be musical so it baffled me somewhat! He suddenly started singing the other week, but he does not hold a tune at ALL! The first thing he ever sang randomly to himself was "Happy Birthday to you!" hehe! He sang that while he was waiting for Bennie and Sarah to come and visit us - he was watching at the window for them, and the last time he was doing that was at his birthday party :) He has been singing Happy Birthday a lot lately. He also loves to sing the Thomas the Tank theme, and he surprised me by knowing all the words when I prompted him! He likes the "bridge" bit best, where they sing about each engine in turn ("Thomas, he's the cheeky one... etc.") and he knows all the words to that. He sings with such a shy smile that it's hard to hear him. He has always seemed shy about singing so far, as though the shyness was the thing stopping him from doing it before now. Strange, for Arthur anyway! His very favourite line in the song is "Gor-non thun-nun daaan liiiiine!" (Gordon thunders down the line) :)

Anyway, he went in the kitchen and started "singing" Bob the Builder. Neil recognised it first - he's saying, "Bowb Budder, CAN FITSIT!" hehe :) He's so funny! Oh yes, the clip:

We finally shoved aside/cleaned the kitchen contents enough to have all four of us sitting at the kitchen table FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME for Christmas dinner!!! Matthew's highchair has this great up/down option that means he can sit right up to the table with us, and I really like that. He's so detached behind a tray set away from us when we eat, and he's the kind of baby that likes to join in, especially where food is concerned! Arthur was on his usual seat, his big-boy booster at the table. I love that seat! It has been a great buy. Allegedly it is also suitable for a baby Matthew's age, but I still like the multi-function highchair for him over getting another booster seat like Arthur's. Arthur loves his seat and he's been big enough to sit up at the table like a "beeb boy" for a good while now, so it has come in very handy. His own highchair has long been redundant and I can't WAIT to get rid of it somehow! It's just in the way now.

For Christmas dinner, Arthur was served some of the meal but he made noises at the back of his throat (ones that mean, "yuck!", the charmer!) and kept saying he didn't want it and he didn't like it, as we were serving. He did eat a few peas but then just wanted marmite on toast. I had expected as much so was quite happy to let him have that for Christmas dinner instead! It was just sooooooooo nice to have all four of us sitting at the table together, eating a FAMILY MEAL!!! It's soooo bad that we haven't done that before now. It's important for the boys, and for us as a family. It can only serve to improve Arthur's eating. So we'll try to do it more. It was so enjoyable! But a little difficult to organise in the first place. Worth it though!

Matthew ate a roast parsnip, which he chewed to smithereens and swallowed several pieces of, and had his first try of roast chicken! He LOVED it. He has yet to bat an eyelid at a new food, honestly. He is so completely different to Arthur! I handed him a chunk of roast chicken from my plate, about one inch by 3 inches, and he just went for it! He took a moment to get used to the new texture and then he swallowed some pieces and chewed the rest till he couldn't hold it any more.

We took photos, of course! Here's our Christmas dinner (again, PLEASE ignore hideous kitchen):

Matthew eats roast chicken!...

Arthur eats festive marmite on toast ;)

After lunch there were the usual naps for the boys, and Neil and I went to bed as well. We all slept for 1.5 hours which was WONDERFUL!!! The afternoon was a sort of toy-filled blur and I can't really remember what we did, but Arthur had a lovely time playing with his toys and played with Matthew a lot too. He was such a sweetie. He kept showing Ma-Ma his toys and "sare-ing" them :) He's lovely with Matthew. They played on the floor for a while before bedtime. I can sort of see it turning into a fun rough-and-tumble time as they get older, as they both seem to enjoy that kind of interaction, and they are both eager to do that kind of thing with each other. The only problem just now is that Arthur isn't great at remembering to be gentle enough with Matthew, and Matthew has a fascination with Arthur's hair and grabs hold and pulls if he gets the chance - poor Arthur! We have to be on hand to prise open tiny fists while Arthur lies as still as possible crying out, "Oh NO, oh DEAR!" and other such things! My funny boys :) They're a bit grainy, but here are some photos of them doing the above stuff, just before bedtime on Christmas Day:

I finally iced and marzipanned the Christmas cake - phew! I had left over icing so I made it thicker and added snowmen and snowballs to the top :) That is MY slice there! It was yummy.

The boys were in bed by 7pm - Matthew was asleep by 6.30pm in his cot. Just before I breastfed Arthur in his bed, I asked him what his favourite thing had been today. He answered in about 0.04 seconds, "Like pennits!!" (I liked presents!). We read the nativity story from his Toddler's Bible at bedtime and I explained not-that-well about why we celebrate Christmas and who baby Jesus is and so on. In the end the thing he seemed to most "get" was that Christmas was like celebrating Jesus' birthday, remembering the day he was born. Arthur wanted to sing Happy Birthday, so we did :) I sang, "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear...." and looked at Arthur to fill in the gap. He whispered, "Aaahhh-yahhh?" (Arthur) and I had to remind him that it wasn't HIS birthday today! I asked him whose birthday we were singing about, and he said (fairly relunctantly, I thought!), "Gee-guz" and so we finished the song, and he clapped at the end and then settled down for some nice snuggly mama milk in bed :)

I love that boy.

So that was our first Christmas as our own little family unit - something we'll be making every effort to do every year from now on. People will have to visit us, or we could visit them if it's convenient to us (it's hard to travel with two little ones), but not on Christmas Day itself. Some other time over the holiday season. I want to guard our special family Christmas time. I am already excited about future Christmasses with our little boys! It's only going to get MORE exciting, because they'll be more and more into Christmas with each year that passes now. What fun!!

It's really late now, and this is a VERY long entry! I hope it hasn't been too much to read - I know there have probably been too many video clips to watch, but I wanted them all together in one entry for "Christmas" for my own records. Tomorrow I will write about Boxing Day, because we spent it with Neil's family and Arthur and Ella were very cute with each other :) So there will (of course) be plenty more photos and video clips with that entry! And I warn you - more to come after that too! I need to write another entry RIGHT after that one so that I can catch up with everything before it's 2007 and it all becomes "last year's news"!! I can't believe 2006 is almost over. I seem to have blinked and it's gone. But, more about that another entry. That's why I need to make another couple BEFORE New Year!

I hope everyone had a good Christmas - I have read a couple of diaries but STILL need to do my Major Diary Catch-up that I've been planning for so long. I miss ALL the diaries I haven't had chance to read for a while, though I have caught up a bit on one or two recently. Right now I have a hankering for some Camden-pie, so methinks that will be the next diary to catch up on :)

Rocking, eating, tiny boy, and it's Christmas Eve!!

I can’t believe I wrote this TWO DAYS ago!! I never never do this – start an entry, and fail to finish it the same day. I hate even doing it and leaving it till the next day, but urgh, there has just been so much to DO somehow, and no time at all to get on the computer. I am so annoyed that I never finished it that same day, because now it’s Christmas Eve and everything is all about Christmas now. But I REALLY wanted everyone to know about this non-Christmas related news:

No, he’s not crawling, but it’s a big new thing for Mathie to be on his hands and knees, rocking away! I wrote about it a couple of days ago so I’ll copy and paste that from Word now. And then it’ll be too late to write any more, tsk. But I’ll just write a little bit more and then go to bed. I need to get some stuff written BEFORE Christmas! Because afterwards there will be loooads of Christmas stuff to write about! So here’s what I wrote a couple of days ago, including some photos and a video clip of Matthew rocking on his hands and knees from the second day he was doing it:

Sooo little time to make an update! Neil is off work from today till the New Year, yaaaaaaaaaaay!!!! I feel physically like I have relaxed my shoulders properly for the first time in months, seriously. I didn't expect to, even though I knew I was looking forward to him being around for an extended time, but I am WAY more relieved than I thought I'd be! :) Yay!

So, it's only 5.08pm and I nnnnever get to go on the computer when the boys are awake, but I have managed to convince Neil that it's a good idea that I get a brief (haha!) diary entry done NOW so that when the boys are asleep later, *I* can work on the mountain of urgent sewing projects that have been piling up for months, and HE gets to play his shoot-em-up computer game thingy that he's addicted to, instead of me needing to monopolise the computer for my diary - cunning, no? ;) So here I am in absolute bliss, typing away in my diary with both boys AWAKE and active downstairs, and yet NOT my responsibility right at this moment! It's so nice to have a breather during a normal active time of day. Neil is getting Arthur's tea ready, and I can hear Matthew chatting to toys on the floor.

Matthew is DESPERATE to crawl. I know I mentioned that before and he has been for a while, but his sense of frustration over it has really gone up a gear in the last few days or maybe even the last week. He is more cranky than usual on the floor, and gets cross and frustrated after only a short time there. I also think he's a bit bored with the type of toys he's playing with now, as they're all "baby" toys, and the boy is just itching to sit up and whizz cars around the garage that is more for toddlers like Arthur! He watches and I try to help him be involved as much as I can (and so does Arthur, bless him!), but he is just so frustrated by his body's lack of ability to DO things that he's interested in.

He is very mobile on his tummy, rolling and swivelling around and stuff at quite a fast speed, to get to anything he wants, but I know he wants to crawl and sit and DO things with his hands and feet properly. I think he hates having no control over his body. Oh my gosh, I think he is going to be like me! I am a BORN control freak. It's definitely in my family! And poor Matthew seems to be very similar in his personality. Arthur isn't like that, though he DOES like control of the situation - but then toddlers do, don't they?

Yesterday he and Arthur were playing with the magnetic cars that go with the garage. They are big and chunky and they rattle when you shake them. They are suitable for 12 months plus, so a nice toy for Matthew, as there are no small parts to worry about. They're bright coloured and he LOVES them. But he grapples at them so vigorously that they tend to whizz away from him out of his reach, and then he gets frustrated. I went upstairs while they were playing to get some washing to put in the machine, and when I got to the top of the stairs to come down again, I saw the red car right up against the stair gate, and Matthew was 2 feet away from it, head on. He was absolutely motionless, on all fours! He was staring at that car with such intensity and stayed still like that for so long that I wonder if he was trying to MAKE it come to him by will, haha! Arthur was playing on the other side of the room, oblivious to Matthew's new thing, which I was relieved about because I wanted to see what he'd do, undisturbed. I just stood there and held my breath! After a while he started rocking back and forth on his hands and knees, and then went still and bored through that car again with his laser beams, hehe! Then he rocked some more and then stared. Then Arthur noticed him and came running to give him the car - he's such a sweetheart. He cried out, "Oh no! Poor Ma-Ma, can't reach red car!" and came running to get it for him. Instinctively I stopped him because I wanted to give Matthew a chance to continue practising his thing, but I wish I hadn't really, because Arthur was being so lovely to do that and he got quite upset when I asked him not to. I had to cuddle him and explain that Matthew is about to learn to crawl and sometimes when he can't reach something it is a good idea for us to leave it for him to try and reach. I told Arthur that Matthew is practising on his hands and knees, trying to figure out how to crawl, and the more practise he gets, the sooner he will be able to crawl. Arthur understood I think, but he still used this sad pitiful voice and said, "Ah-yah get red car, Ma-Ma..." and so I let him get the car and give it to Matthew. And gave him lots of warm praise for it. He is such a total sweetie pea.

After that Matthew got bored of the car and got very cranky so I couldn't try to encourage him again or get the camcorder out or anything. But since then he has been going up onto all fours quite a lot, and rocking and rocking. This afternoon I took some footage of him rocking on his hands and knees while Neil took Arthur to the park for a run about. He gets into the position with total ease, in a second, which surprises me from out of the blue - having not even known how to make his body do that yesterday morning! I wonder if he'll be the type of baby who suddenly crawls across the room from nowhere at all?! Arthur wasn't like that at all, but Matthew is very different to him in the motor skills so far, so it's possible.

Here's a bit of the footage I took today:

Today when Matthew is on all fours, he seems to know he wants to move as well as be up there like that, because it's really obvious sometimes that he's trying to figure out or make his body DO the next thing, but he just doesn't know how, and he gets very frustrated. He freezes his position and does this weird wide-open-mouth, frowning frustrated face, like a silent scream but with no air coming out, and he stiffens his back like he WANTS the darn thing to DO something to move him! But then he relaxes and acts cross and cranky. Twice today he figured out that he can lift one arm and look at me with one hand up in the air with the other hand and his two knees on the floor at the same time. I know he just has to figure that if he puts that hand juuust a bit in front of where it was, when he puts it back on the floor, he could shuffle his knee forwards to line himself up right again, and then - wow, I MOVED! And then he probably won't look back. BUT, I am not holding my breath toooo much because Arthur was rocking on his hands and knees for ages before he actually crawled. He seemed much happier doing that for a while than Matthew is though, so perhaps Matthew is more motivated to get going than Arthur was. Anyway. It makes me nervous! I need to grow a few extra eyes, quick!

Matthew is doing great on his food! He has been having more banana and enjoying it immensely! The other day Arthur was having a little pouch of pureed apple (sold as a toddler food but it's just apple and vit C) and he wanted to "share appoo Ma-Ma" so after Matthew's banana was too slimy from being handled for him to hold any longer, I mashed it on the tray with some of Arthur's applesauce, and he enjoyed getting his hands mucky! He did feed himself a couple of fistfuls of the lumpy mixture though, and seemed to like it:

Before all that he had eaten just whole banana, and watched Arthur eat his applesauce, and so he had some nice sweet flavour from the banana. Here’s his face about 2 seconds after he had some apple puree, hehe!...

And here is Arthur being THRILLED to be allowed to actually feed Matthew with a spoon – Matthew was eager to let him too. He just adores Arthur. Of course Arthur did get so that he couldn’t decide whether to put the spoon in Matthew’s mouth or his own, after a while!...

Then the next day (four days ago, I think), Matthew moved on to a new food! He had parsnip for the first time!!! I roasted an organic one, but it was a bit disappointing because it was less flavoursome and yummy than the non-organic ones I usually get for Neil and myself. I have to admit, Matthew has since had a non-organic roast parsnip! He seemed happy enough with either though, and munched into them right away! Another first for Matthew that meal was the introduction of a sippy cup with water in it, as he was taking these HUGE chunks off the parsnip and trying to swallow them! He did a fair bit of gagging, but by the end of his meal he was doing a lot better already and swallowing large pieces or just spitting them back out, with less gagging than at the start. He really just needs practise, that’s all. It’s scary when he gags, and that’s when I caved with Arthur. I figured it must be dangerous so I stopped him eating the lumpy/solid thing in question (rice cakes, I think) for a couple of MONTHS! This time I keep reminding myself of the research I’ve done and how gagging isn’t dangerous, but an indication that the baby is practising learning to swallow. And it’s true, he really does improve as he tests his new skill out. He isn’t remotely panicked by the gagging, even with a bigger lump than he intended and watering eyes, gasping, etc. Once I whipped a piece of parsnip out of his mouth for him (not sure if I should have done that though) as it was rather large and he’d swished it right to the back of his mouth. He simply blinks the gagging tears away for a second, and then with eager eyes, looks back to the highchair tray, grabs another lump of food and rams it into his mouth! He seems perfectly happy and calm with eating big pieces of food, and isn’t put off at all by struggling over learning to swallow different textures, which is hugely reassuring for me. I think if he was upset about it, I’d find it almost impossible not to cave in and go to mushy food. But it’s fine :) Anyway so I figured he would be getting thirsty with all these big lumps of food, so I offered him a sippy cup with water and he was very eager to grab the handles and chew chew chewwwww on the soft-ish nozzle. When he realised water came out of it, he made a face, and looked at me for reassurance, but soon went back and tried again. He sucked it once or twice and got a proper drink, but mostly just chewed it. He did great! He can’t hold the sippy cup properly by himself, but as always with Matthew, he is eager to give it a go. Here he is with his first parsnip (already mushed by eager chewing!) and his first sippy cup of water!

This boy looks like he is going to be a happy eater :) I am thrilled about that, after the huge food-related palavas with Arthur! He isn’t hesitant or suspicious or unsure about any food so far, although I do realise he’s only had 3 different foods to date! It’s time to give him a new food again, and methinks I will hand him a chunk of roast chicken when we have Christmas dinner tomorrow. We’re not doing turkey because it seems a bit daft when there are only two of us eating it! Chicken’s fine by me, and easy peasy to do. Appropriately sized, also. Arthur won’t eat it. He won’t eat anything but baby food jars these days. Yes, you read right. *sigh* Not BABY baby food, but those toddler 15 months plus jars. I found one in the back of the cupboard a couple of weeks ago, some risotto thingy with beef and veg, and thought I might as well serve it up for Arthur to use it up, pretty sure that he would refuse it like everything else (with the exception of toast and marmite, peas, cereal, peas, raisins, peas, and – oh yes, peas!). But he LOVED it! He ate it nearly all up, and that meant for the first time in ages he got a meal that was 100% nutrious, fully balanced, organic, without salt, and DIFFERENT to the foods he’s been eating for ages. That was enough for me. Who cares about the whole “but it’s BABY food, and he’s TWO!” issue! Those foods are good and nutritious and he’ll EAT them. They have a good range of balanced meals. He likes me to make him extra peas (like a whole adult serving!) to go with it, even if it has peas in it already. He eats all the peas first, and often will leave whatever is left, but if the food is TEAMING with peas then he pretty much has to eat it all just to eat the peas, as it’s in a sauce. So he gets the good stuff and doesn’t complain! Yay! So, phooey. I went out and bought the whole range of those toddler meals and now he tucks into those happily again for tea, with extra peas. He’ll eat a yoghurt and some raisins for dessert as well. For lunch he has marmite on toast and maybe some banana or raisins, or an organic sugar-free gingerbread man, and I don’t have to worry about whether marmite on toast is going to be his most nutritious meal of the day or not, now that he’s back on the baby jars. I was all flappy about it at first, but my mum told me to stop. She said he’s eating nourishing food and that’s all that matters. Plus, it IS very very easy for me. Ready made, and 40 seconds in the microwave! Very handy for my current lifestyle! I think it’s quite likely that Arthur will start to take more interest in food when Matthew leads by example. I will make proper meals for Matthew as he moves from just single items of food, and if Arthur wants it, he will be welcome to have some too. I think if I just go with that laisse-faire attitude, he will be most likely to come around. He’ll see me not bothered with what he eats (from his point of view anyway!) and Matthew enjoying Mummy’s cooking, and hopefully he’ll start to take an interest and eat the food with Matthew. Until then, so long as he’s eating well, I’m not going to worry about it. He’s two, after all. But these food issues are just Arthur, and nothing to do with being two.

Okay that’s what I wrote!

I have noooo time to write about anything else really, but I’ll just quickly catch up on the weekend. I can’t believe it’s Christmas Eve already!!! Yesterday was Neil’s second day off work and he woke up with one of his headaches. He had to go back to bed at 9am and stayed there till 3pm, when he took Arthur for a short walk around the block to see if the air helped his head. It didn’t. He went back to bed and then helped settle Arthur into bed at bedtime, and stayed there till the next morning. I had this horrible split-personalities type of thing going on. Nice Me was thinking, “Oh my poor poor husband! He should rest and get some peace and quiet! I hope his headache goes away soon!” whilst Horrid Me was thinking, “Urgh, those ?%*$# headaches!! When do *I* get to have a break?! Why did I let myself believe I’d even get a real chance to rest for like the first time in the SIX months since I gave birth?! And how come he gets to go to bed for the entire #%%$! day when he gets a headache, and I have to suck it up and look after two small children for the entire day when *I* get one?! Why can’t he pull himself together and just put up with it?! Lucky sod getting to lie in bed all day, headache or no!”

Yuck. Horrid me. :(

But anyway, I guess I got over it, because the day didn’t go too badly with the boys. It just felt exactly like a day when Neil is at work, and once I got that into my head I was better about it I suppose. It did suck though. *I* want a darn break. When I’ve been genuinely too poorly to get up from my bed and Neil has been home, I have still had to do waaaay more than he has. He is fantastic with the boys, and I am very lucky. But I do still have the breasts and both my children breastfeed, and one of them relies on me to get to sleep. Neil is prone to bringing a cranky boy to me while I’m sleeping, and waking me up to say, “I don’t know if it’s because he’s hungry” when actually he isn’t hungry, but then I’m awake and need to deal with it. I just LONG for a big old block of unbroken sleep. I can’t remember when I last had one. It’s okay because with Matthew it is what I expected – he needs to feed at night and I am BLESSED to have the ability to give him nourishment from my own body! It’s wonderful snuggle time and I’ll be sad when it stops. But in the day when I get a rare chance to catch up on some sleep, I find it so frustrating to be woken after an hour or two just to see if Matthew might want to breastfeed when it has only been an hour or two since he last fed. He is fine to go 3 hours from his last feed, though if he’s cranky after 2 or 2 and a half I might see if he’s hungry, if I’m right there anyway. If he has to wait another half hour, he’s fine to do that. So I wish I could just be seen to be “away” until 3 hours have passed! I’d love to sleep 3 uninterrupted hours during the morning, say, on a Saturday, to help me catch up. I heart my morning sleep. I can manage way better without late evening sleep than I can without the same amount of sleep in the morning. I am NOT a morning person. I do great staying up late, and my brain seems to work best late at night. I used to do my homework very late, once I figured out that I could do it with the most ease and whip through it quickly too. I find it hard to wake up in the mornings even if I’ve had a LONG night of good sleep. It’s just the way I am. I’m lucky that Neil takes the boys when they wake in the morning so that I can sleep till he needs to get ready for work – it’s just an extra hour or so, but it’s worth it to me!

Anyway, on a less selfish note, Neil is now over his headache, and we’ve had a good day preparing for Christmas – our first Christmas as a little family unit all of our own! Arthur isn’t really old enough to know about Christmas yet, but we’ve been doing our best to tell him about it these last few days. I spent the last three evenings (five hours each time!) sewing the boys their own Christmas stockings! I just decided to do it last week. They didn’t need to have stockings at all, but I had some Christmas fabric left over from making Christmas nappy wraps for Arthur when he was still in my tummy, and some gold thread, and I got to thinking… So I embroidered their names on the top of their stockings in thick gold thread. There is gold sparkle on the fabric too :) Arthur says they are “pwetty” :) Tonight he helped me to hang them up in front of the Christmas tree. He chose the spot for his own one, and then Matthew’s. My parents used to have us put out a glass of sherry and a mince pie for Father Christmas, but we don’t have sherry in this household, and I don’t want to drink the stuff, so we decided to make Father Christmas’s snack something that we wouldn’t mind consuming ourselves!! ;) We decided on a cookie and some milk, American style :) So I took Arthur in the kitchen and put a cookie on a plate and explained that it was for Father Christmas in case he was hungry when he was delivering Arthur and Matthew’s presents. I told him Father Christmas might be thirsty too, so how about we leave him a glass of milk? Arthur shook his head solemnly and said, “No milk. Juice!” So Father Christmas got left a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice instead ;) Perhaps that will be our own tradition! At the last minute we added a carrot for the reindeer :) Now, not to burst the Christmas bubble, but I have to say, I had trouble eating my dinner tonight after doing my job as Father Christmas and his carrot-happy reindeer, hehe! I can also tell you that Father Christmas had to have a top up of orange juice ;) I left a nibbled stump of carrot and a large crumb or two of cookie, just for the effect. And a little orange juice in the bottom of the glass. It was so much fun!!!! It’s the first time I’ve ever been the parent in this situation! It’s the most fun that Christmas Eve has been in YEARS! Since I was a child, even! We wrapped presents this evening, and filled the boys’ stockings and laid out the other presents around the stockings and the tree. I took photos. I couldn’t help myself, and it’s not even Christmas Day with the boys awake yet!! *sigh*

Just after Arthur went to bed this evening:

After my work was done, hehe:

After we finished wrapping and laying things out:

I switched all the lights out to come up and write my diary before going to bed, and I just got captivated by that Christmas tree thing again. I just love to sit and gaze at a Christmas tree all lit up, in the dark. It’s magical, somehow. It makes me feel seven years old again, and it’s a lovely feeling! I gazed at the tree for ages and then finally turned the tree lights off and came upstairs to bed. Not before I took a photo in the dark though – I wanted to see how it would come out.

I love Christmas!!! I forgot how much! I am so excited about when my kids are a year or two older and REALLY into Christmas. I can’t wait to re-live that part of my childhood by seeing them go through it, and playing my part in the story as a parent. What fun! I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas! I am going to try to find time over the holidays to catch up on diaries that I have been missing for a long while. I am excited to read how other families have enjoyed Christmas together! Especially the little ones that I have been reading about since they were born (or earlier, in some cases!). Merry Christmas everyone! I’ll be back to write about our quiet family Christmas (though we’re hoping to attempt a 1-hour car journey to Neil’s sister (and Ella!) on Boxing Day) in a day or so, I should think. There should be some video clips and photos :) Now I am going to bed. It’s stupidly late (2am, ugh!). Night night!

Christmas!! And my little playmates :)

I'm sure everyone American has already seen this (it was on America's Funniest Home Videos or something), but OH MY GOSH, this little video clip is toooo cute and had me laughing and laughing :) I must have watched it like TWENTY times today. It feels nice to laugh so healthily at such cuteness! :)

Thanks Esther for pointing out the problem with my video clips from YouTube - I can't believe nobody else mentioned that they couldn't see them! I had one on a previous diary entry a week or so back as well, and I guess that couldn't be seen either! I did have my settings on "private" so I have changed them all to "public". Hope you can see them now!

We are doing fine here. I still have a cough by I'm finally feeling better from my coldy throaty thing. It's crazy how mild it was for the boys! Matthew had a crappy night and day but otherwise it was mild. I am pretty run down though, and they DO get my antibodies in my milk, so maybe that was it. I couldn't throw it off till the weekend when I finally got chance to rest a bit more with Neil home from work. Talking of home from work, Neil has got quite a few days of holiday time left (somehow!) at work, and he has arranged to lump them all around Christmas and New Year. With the automatic days off around that time anyway, he is going to be off work from THIS FRIDAY - woohoo!! Thursday will be his last day, and he won't go back till the 8th of January!!!!! I am sooo excited that he'll be home for so long in one stretch! I'm beginning to relax about Christmas a bit more and actually look forward to it now.

Christmas, for me, has to be a family thing or else it just feels not-like-Christmas. This year we have too many small people to go travelling and visiting family (who all live miiiiles away), and nobody is coming to us, so we are just the four of us this Christmas. At first that idea made me feel blue and like it might be better to just not really "do" Christmas. I mean, the boys are too young to really know much about it this year. Arthur won't be next year though, so I thought maybe we'll just try not to focus on Christmas much this year, with no family around. I did not have any urge to decorate the house or anything Christmassy. We haven't had a Christmas tree up in this house for 2 years, at least. Maybe 3 now. We have never spent Christmas here properly, as we've always been spending Christmas week with one side of the family and New Year's week with the other side. We come home in between to unpack, do laundry, get sleep, and re-pack, before setting out somewhere else. It doesn't feel like Christmas at home, and there seems no point in making effort to make it so.

Two Christmasses ago we were at home, but not by choice. We were supposed to be going to France to spend Christmas with my family, and Arthur was only 6 weeks old. We all got flu really badly (except Arthur who had the marvellous wonders of breast milk to help him only get an extremely mild case!) and couldn't go anywhere. So, no Christmas at all for us that year!

But last week I finally stopped having that mild irritation that comes from seeing people putting up Christmas trees when you feel like it's WAY early for Christmas yet. I usually get that till a certain point, I don't know why it bugs me, but it does. Eventually I start to feel like it's getting to be Christmas time, FOR ME, and then it stops bugging me and I want to put my own tree up! I was one of those kids who used to BEG their parents to put the tree up on the first day of December too :) My parents always said no, it was way too early. I bugged them every single day after that till it went up, but most years that was the middle of December. By my teens it was like during the week before Christmas. I LOVE Christmas trees. I have such fond memories of spending hours upon hours just sitting on the sofa with my knees hunched up under my chin and staring at our twinkly Christmas tree with the lights out and the tree lights on. I remember I could hardly breathe for the feeling of magic in the air. I never wanted to switch the main lights back on, or the tree lights off, so I just stayed there for ages. I used to play "Christmas morning" with my brother, and put fake presents under the tree and pretend it was Christmas morning :) Christmas morning was just sooooooo awesome when I was a child. I totally believed in Father Christmas (which he is called far more often than Santa here - I hear "Santa" a little more from kids these days but I figure it's because it's American and in the movies a lot now, etc. I LOVE the name Father Christmas!) - even when I knew he wasn't real (can't remember when that even was), I still chose to play along for the fun of it for years!

The BIGGEST excitement of Christmas morning was the complete lack of presents and the almost unbearable anticipation leading up to Christmas, and then putting out pillow cases (with our names pinned to them in case Father Christmas got confused, heh), and leaving mince pies and sherry for Father Christmas on a little stool next to the pillow cases. And then feeling all jittery going up to bed. I always woke at like FOUR am on Christmas morning, and would go and wake my poor little brother (who was always a much better sleeper than me!) to drag him downstairs and see if Father Christmas had been!

The one snapshot moment of the BEST excitement at Christmas for me, is the bare and empty room with just the pretty tree in my memory from the night before, and then opening the door to the living room in the dark of that early Christmas morning, and not being able to see if Father Christmas had been and left any presents yet or not. My heart would beat soooo hard in those few seconds between opening the door and reaching the light switch. Then with a snap, the whole room was lit up and my brother and I would be DAZZLED with what seemed like a bazillion shiny, colourful, wrapped gifts, a whole FLOORFUL it seemed! Our pillowcases would be stuffed and presents would be on the floor around them too. New tiny presents would be on the tree, and presents for grown-ups underneath it. I never saw such bounty in all my life!

After sweeping my eye across that wonderful sight, I would always notice that Father Christmas had drunk all but the last few drops of his sherry, and left only a crumb of the mince pie crust - the official "sign" that he had definitely paid us a visit! :) I love the contrast between the no-presents and suddenly that breath-taking sight! It was all we could do to just stand there and gasp with our jaws hanging for a few silent moments, and then we'd tear upstairs to my parents' room, yelling as we ran, "HE'S BEEN, HE'S BEEEEEN!!!" Even when we were teenagers and not doing that any more, my parents would still smile and say, "He's been, he's been!" when we all came down on Christmas morning to open presents! :)

My parents had a rule that we could sit and LOOK at the presents if we must, before 7am, but we were not to open any until then. They did not get up till 7am on Christmas, as they would get too tired otherwise, catering for family later in the day and coping with two over-excited kids all day too! I like that rule. I think when we our kids are old enough to really get into Christmas, we'll have that rule too. We never did open any presents, even if we sat for two hours looking at them and stroking the wrapping paper and handling the odd one to see if we could figure out what it was! It was lovely enough to just sit amongst all that magical joyfulness and anticipate opening everything!

When we got older, in our teens, and we started buying presents for our parents and other family members with our own pocket money, the presents would gather under the tree in the days leading up to Christmas. Nothing new appeared on Christmas morning, and we got up at a more leisurely time to open presents and eat breakfast together. I liked that too, but for little kids I absolutely want to do what my parents did and have just the anticipation of presents right up till Christmas morning, and then THERE they all are!! Nothing beats that feeling, for a child, such excitement! That's the thing I most want my children to have, from what I had at Christmas as a child.

My parents did not do anything religious at Christmas. None of my family are Christians, in fact some of them are very ANTI-Christian. In my teens, I would go to church on Christmas morning on my own, after we all opened presents, just to our local CofE church. I don't even know why. I guess I was curious about Christianity and since I did not dismiss it as being untrue, I felt a bit hypocritical not going to church on Christmas morning if I was going to celebrate it. I don't know what made me do that, out of such a non-Christian family. Well, now that I am a Christian, I know that it's because God had his hand on me even then, and always had plans for me to come to him. I love looking back and realising that! :) My parents never said anything bad about me doing it. They were always open to me choosing my own path, that is until I actually went and turned into one of those happy clappy Christian types (!!) and then they got rather unsupportive and made life kind of hard for me at home for a while. I know they were scared that I'd got myself into a cult or something, but they are less like that since I married someone LOVELY from church and seemed happier for my relationship with God, and they met a couple of my friends from church and they were normal people, hehe!

I don't know why I'm on this path of memories! I didn't intend to. I just started to write about Christmas and went off on a tangent!

Oh yes! So last week the Christmas feeling finally hit, and I was suddenly desperate to put up a tree and some pretty lights, get my Christmas cards sorted out and sent (STILL haven't done it, urgh!), marzipan the Christmas cake that my mum made for me in October and brought over with them at Arthur's birthday, and have Christmas music playing allll the time, you know the kind of thing?! I love Christmas carols. My mum loves them too, from when she learnt them at school, and we used to sing them for weeks either side of Christmas, just doing things around the house, but especially as we were doing Christmassy things like making the cakes or decorating and stuff! It is one of my warmest cosiest memories from my younger years. We both know all the words to most Christmas carols, and we would sing them in harmony together. How I loved those times. Once, in my teens, when I thought I was going to have to move out or something and be a normal teenager (!!), I made a tape of my voice singing one part of the harmonies for all these songs, and then I could sing along with the tape, singing the other part of the harmony! I just didn't want to lose that. It's been ages since I sang like that now, but when Mummy and I are together, sometimes we sing those carols, no matter the time of year!

Anyway. So we have a tree now! Yay! I figured we couldn't have one, what with a toddler who would probably not leave the tree alone for a second, and a baby who would make a beeline for it and roll right over and pull stuff off it! We also have no space for a tree, anywhere. But in the end I figured I could put a small one (say 3ft tall) on top of the big chest in the living room, and then it would be more out-of-reach, and wouldn't take up extra space. All the shops had sold out of that size by then, but then I remembered that we bought a huge-arooney fake tree the year we got married, for our first tree together! It was NOT cheap, but we saw it as the perfect tree to see us through small spaces in small houses, large spaces in large houses, curious toddlers, and large family gatherings with older kids. It's 7ft tall I think, and it comes in 3 parts. You can use the top section by itself, or the top and middle together, or all three together. Our ceiling in this house is actually too low to get the whole tree under it! The year we had a tree in this house, we used the top and middle sections and it looked lovely. This year I got out the top section and it is just the PERFECT size for where I wanted to put it - about Arthur's height and a nice shape too. Arthur is not at a stage where he is going to be a help with decorating a tree! Next year maybe? But he would have just run riot with the decorations and maybe broken some of them, and he would have been just toooo excited and energetic to do anything about it, so it wouldn't be fair to involve him this year. So I put the tree up and strung coloured fairy lights round it and over the mirror next to the tree. We have white lights too, but enough to thoroughly encrust the whole 7ft tree! So that would have been too much for this little tree! I put some ornaments on it and secured the base. I did it all in the evening after the boys were in bed. It's so lovely and Christmassy and cosy downstairs now, with the tree there! I love it! Arthur's face was a picture when he came down the next morning! He kept making these sweet gaspy noises and breathing, "Ohh WOWWW! Look dat! Shiiiiny lights!" :) He loves the tree and the lights. He has always loved fairy lights, since he was newborn. Matthew likes it too, but he doesn't seem as taken by them as Arthur was as a baby.

Anyway, yay! I discovered I have NO Christmas music on CD or cassette!!! I can't believe that! I know I did have some but I guess it got chewed up years ago and I threw it out. So I ordered a children's favourites Christmas CD :) It's got carols and other stuff. I had a similar compilation on tape when I was little, and if it wasn't all wow-y and chewy now (but still in its box on my shelf, because I can't can't bear to throw it away!), I would still be listening to it RIGHT now. I have been singing a LOT though, hehe! The Christmas cards are coming along at last, and the presents for the boys and Neil are pretty much sorted, put away to be wrapped nearer the time (nearly time, yay!). But I still need to marzipan the cake, and that's supposed to be done 3 weeks before Christmas! Oops! And I am making the boys a Christmas stocking each. I have some lovely Christmas fabric left over from nappy-making a couple of years ago, and I'm going to add a sort of panel-type-thing and embroider each boy's name on their stocking :) Those will be the right size for smaller gifts and stocking fillers. I want them to have bigger gifts around the tree and on the floor, like when I was little.

We ARE doing Father Christmas with our children. I have no experience of how to bring Jesus into Christmas more for children, but Arthur knows the story of when Jesus was born, and I plan to teach him that it's why Christmas is celebrated in the first place. We'll go to church at Christmas, of course. But I also want him to have the magical, imaginative side of Christmas, the one with the excitement and Father Christmas, and reindeer, and presents, and the various traditions of the actual day. Those were so wonderful for me, and I want to pass that on to my kids.

Today we received a Christmas card with Father Christmas on the front. Arthur wanted to know who it was, and I told him it was Father Christmas. I gave him a basic explanation - wish I'd thought about it first though, as I don't know if I gave a very good explanation for a child his age! He got enthusiastic about the idea and ran to the window, shouting, "Far Kismass COMING!!!" as though he expected him to be coming up the driveway or something, hehe! I kept explaining that he's coming SOON but not yet, but that's when I wished I had thought it out first, because Arthur's not old enough to understand timings and stuff yet, I think.

My goodness this entry is long and waffly already!!! I meant to write some stuff about the boys and post a million photos again.

Matthew has started banana, after I finally bought some organic ones and let them ripen a little:

He LOVES it! He isn't eating much of it yet, but I am beginning to notice the telltale signs of some of it going down, as it's coming out the other end now :( I feel so sad that he's no longer just on mummy milk! Silly of me, but I still do. The poo-poo changes were the ultimate confirmation that was feeling all sad about, and here they are at last. *sigh* Oh well. He has to grow up, I suppose! :) He isn't choking or gagging on things at all. He makes faces as he tries to sort out big lumps of banana in his mouth - he keeps gumming these huge bits off! But they don't pose him any problem whatsoever. The first time we handed him a big ole piece of solid food, Neil and I just stood back and watched in amazement! We couldn't believe he was eagerly chomping away like that on something really SOLID, and having no trouble with the big pieces he gummed off it! He mostly spits them out, but he takes down some of them, or mashes them enough with his tongue and gums to swallow them. It's amazing, at only 6 months old and just a few days into solids! I love baby-led weaning! I wish we'd done it with Arthur really. I haven't decided what comes next, but I'm thinking maybe a nice sweet tender parsnip to chomp on! I soooooo love parsnips (the edible kind, yes yes!) - so much that my mouth is watering just typing this!!

Oh, that reminds me to ask - are parsnips really a British thing?! Only, I mentioned them in an American parenting group I'm part of, and everyone there was like, "Parsnips?! What are those?!" and those that knew just had this idea of them as bitter roots!! Wha?!?!?!!! They told me it must be a British thing. I am boggled at the thought! They are seasonal - that's the important thing to know about parsnips. They are crap things out of season. At best they are utterly flavourless, and at worst, completely bitter. DO NOT attempt to buy, cook, or eat parsnips when there has not been a recent frost. Sweet delectable parsnips depend on frost to make them so. I am always drooling with anticipation of the end of autumn, for the frosts that I know will bring parrrsnips, mmmm!!! And sure enough, they are to DIE for right now. I know Matthew will love them. They beat sweet potatoes hands down :) Oh, and parsnips should be roasted for ultimate perfection (but not for too long otherwise they dry out too much) or boiled and mashed like potato. Gaaaagghahhaghhh.... I sooo love parsnips!

Arthur is talking sooooo much. Every day I can not believe how much more he is talking than the day before. It's accelerating all the time lately. This morning he ran to his welly boots and shouted cheerfully, "Come on weh-wee! Let's go out!" whilst trying to ram one on his foot! His sentences are getting longer and much more clear to understand.

He also plays imaginative games more and more these days. This morning he was running around as usual downstairs, and Matthew was on the floor in the living room. He rolled onto his back and Arthur suddenly lay down next to him, staring at the ceiling, all quiet. After a moment he looked at me and said, "Ah-yah wie down Ma-Ma! Wot cowds!" (trans. Arthur lie down with Matthew, watch clouds!) followed by much gazing in wonder at the blank ceiling and pointing, saying, "Ohhhh!.... Look DAT!.... Pwetttty!.... Ohhh, shiiiny!" etc :) He's so funny!

He bashed his nose up quite badly yesterday :( He went for a walk with Daddy to see the sunset - how cute are my boys?! Anyway, on the way home, he tripped up a curb and fell flat on his nose. Neil said it was an awful sound, and he was scared he would have broken his nose or have it bleeding horribly, etc. But he didn't even have a nose bleed which is pretty amazing. He does have some bruising though, and he skidded on his nose a bit, so it's scraped and cut pretty badly right up the full length from the very tip! Poor baby! The cuts were superficial and we checked carefully that nothing was broken. He cheered up pretty fast once he got home and had some mama milk :) I cleaned it up well, but today it is weeping a little (there's a fair bit of skin off it so there are some open patches) and the wounds are all brown and trying to scab. Today he caught sight of himself in the mirror and looked surprised. He said, "Oh no!" and put his hand to his nose, looking at his reflection. Then he giggled and said, "Dot pay-doh on!" (it's got playdough on!) and giggled again! Funny boy :)

Ohhh there's sooooooo much more that I have been trying to make mental and actual notes of, to write here, but the boys both woke since the last paragraph and Matthew was weirdly wet through his sleepsuit so had to be changed, and then of course he was WIDE awake and beaming and chatting, so it took a while before he was asleep enough for me to start typing again in the same room as his cot! Arthur did not ask for milk just now. For the first time in his. whole. life. I almost want to cry! But of course it was what I was trying to achieve, the night weaning. And he has night-weaned before, but he never stopped asking for milk if I went to him at night. The first two days that I went to him recently and said that Mummy's breasties were asleep, he cried a little and tried asking again and then cried some more, and then gave up and asked me to pat his back. The third night, after I said they were asleep, he coaxed, "Dus' liddoo bit?" (just a little bit, hehe!), and then didn't get upset when I said no. The next three evenings he only woke two of those, and both times he asked for milk and didn't bat an eyelid when I told him the breasties were asleep. He just rolled over and asked me to "bup" (burp, or pat) him to sleep, and went to sleep quickly. And then tonight when I went in, he didn't even ask for milk! Obviously it's what I wanted, but it's crazy of me - I felt so sad that it wasn't part of his "program" to ask any more :(

Anyway, so the boys have been up and now it's really late, tsk. So I can't write any more like I wanted to. I guess this entry is long enough anyway, but I do have a lot of photos getting more and more out of date the longer I leave posting them! So I'll post a few now to finish the entry.

Oh but first, here is that video clip of Matthew's latest vocal sounds, before they get to be old news! It's working at YouTube at last. Sorry it's so dark:

We got Arthur's "school" photo back today! It's the one he had taken at playgroup a few months ago. I'm very proud of it because it's the first of many school-type photos in that official frame that every British school kid's photos go in! All mine are in ones like that too. The difference with Arthur is that nearly all of his will have his brother in too, since they are so close in age and will likely be at the same school throughout. I went to a girls' school from age 11 so my brother stopped appearing in my school photos then! I can't WAIT to proudly display a photo of my two boys in their school uniforms! What a weird thought. School uniforms, yeurgh. All that to look forward to yet! It used to drive my mum bonkers getting those sorted every August ready for school in September. Fun fun.

Anyway, photos! Here are my boys reading Thomas the Tank Engine with Daddy (who will hate that I've posted these photos as he is wearing the hideous trousers that his mum bought him for Christmas 2 years ago, and which he only wears in the house because they are comfy!):

"I can eat with two spoons at once!!"

Just Arthur being himself just before a late afternoon walk in the cold the other day (before the nose bashing incident):

The other evening just before bedtime, Arthur was running like a crazy thing around the house as fast as he could with a vest on his head! No apparent reason except that it made him laugh and laugh! My silly sausage ;)

My lovely boys are playing together more and more. They are each really excited by the other one's company when playing with toys and stuff, which is so sweet to see. I love watching their friendship unfold as they get more able to share things. I find them playing together a lot, just spontaneously. Matthew will roll somewhere, like to the Duplo tub, and start pulling bricks out of there to play with (he is keen, this boy!), and Arthur loves that. He comes running to "pay Dupo Ma-Ma!" and then I take photos, of course :) It's mostly Arthur initiating the "joining in" as he sees Matthew doing things, but Matthew also rolls and squiggles to get to some place that Arthur is busy playing, just so that he can join in too. Today Arthur was trying to get Matthew's attention away from eating one of his jigsaw books (!!), and he was running one of his toy cars back and forth on the floor to entice him - he had even chosen one of the ones that Matthew likes best. He was saying, "Ma-Maaaa! Ma-Ma, LOOK! Brumm, brumm, bruuuummm! Look, Ma-Ma!!" Matthew was too interested in eating the jigsaw so I had to intervene, but it was very cute anyway :)

Here are my sweet little playmates!

I love them to BITS! I feel so happy lately.

I have so much more to write, but another time. Emails too, but I will get to them one day! Tsk. Thank you for the lovely notes as always! :)