Arthur's First Birthday!!!

Arthur is a big boy now!!! He is one year old today. I can not believe it. But also, it somehow feels normal. Some naive part of me had this idea that he would suddenly morph into a different child on the morning of his birthday - a "real" toddler, different from the little baby I have known thus far. But of course that was stupid and he's still exactly the same Arthur as he was yesterday and all the days before! Only one day cuter! :) And a big one-year-old boy instead of a monthy-baby!

Thank you so much for the messages and notes and emails (thank you for the lovely ecard, Jaya!!), and also to those of you who sent wonderful cards and even presents for Arthur!!! Also special thanks to Alex and Megan for the special birthday video for Arthur! It feels like the whoooole worldwide web is extended family to us! It's so lovely. Thank you all so much!!!

Arthur has had a really nice day!!! It's 9.30 now and he has been asleep for about 2 hours. He was really tired and ready for bed, rubbing his little eyes and generally acting like a birthday boy at the end of his big day!

My parents are here!!! It is so great to have them around. I love them and miss them so much, it's just sooooooooooo nice to see them in person. They spent most of the day here with me and Arthur yesterday, and today my dad had to go into London so my mummy spent the morning with Arthur and me and Neil, for Arthur's birthday. That was super special to me, partly because I love to share special occasions with my mummy, but also because she was there at Arthur's birth, and it feels like everything has come full circle to have her here again at the same time a year later. It felt really special. We watched the clock around mid/late morning, because Arthur was born at 11.28am. Neil or my mum kept saying, "Oooh, this time last year you were probably...." Neil insisted Arthur was crowning at 11.18am! Hehe. I told him there was no way he was crowning for ten minutes! It made it all EXTRA official when 11.28 had passed and he had definitely been in the world one whole year!

I keep thinking of Arthur's birth at the moment. It was so hard. Weird to think that a year ago, ALL of yesterday I was in established labour, the ENTIRE night before I had not had one wink of sleep due to painful contractions every 10 minutes the whole night long, and then I spent last night in the hospital with stalled labour and a fever, and then finally spent all this morning pushing him out!!!! It seemed CRAZY when I thought about it in that context today and yesterday! It seemed such a long time to be in labour. But I absolutely cherish the memories I have of labour, the whole thing, even the bad bits - though they were mighty hard - and I LOVE to relive it in my mind. I feel so fond of the experience. I'm so glad of it all, that I have been blessed enough to experience it.

We were just talking this morning about how it was a hard night, and we were all remembering this and that about it (Neil and Mummy were right there by my side throughout the whole thing), and then Mummy said she couldn't believe it was a year ago. I said, "Well, we'll be there again in just SEVEN more months!!" (less, actually), and she said (with exaggerated dramatism), "Yes... You mad fools!!!" Hehehe! She said she could never have coped with a small gap between children. I am kind of excited about it myself! Although I know it will be hard.

Yaargh, what am I writing?! This is not my pregnancy diary! And I'm supposed to be writing about Arthur's birthday!! Well, it DOES have connections to birth and stuff. I love to think back on every nanosecond of Arthur's life with us so far. It has been the most wonderful time, hard or not. Wonderfully wonderful.

Okay so Arthur opened his presents from us today, and he will open presents from other people at his party on Saturday. He did open all his cards and loved them! He opened his present from Sharon (thank you Sharon!!) which was a GREAT book with flaps concealing farm animals (this is exactly the kind of book Arthur loves most at the moment) and the last flap in the book had a mirror under it. He was so surprised to see himself under the last flap! He pressed his nose to it and stared and stared, and kept surfacing to grin widely at us, hehe! He's so funny :) Thank you so much Sharon! I could not have picked a better book for Arthur myself!

He also opened a card and a lovely present that came from Frances (thank you Frances!) - a little boat for the bath that has a fish which you pull on a string at the back, and it makes the boat GO!!! He was too tired for his bath tonight so we'll test it out tomorrow. Thank you so much Frances!!!! Arthur loves the boat already, even without the bath! The package arrived at lunch time today and that made for extra excitement for Arthur, with the doorbell ringing and a postman bearing a package just for Arthur!!! We opened it straight away, and he has literally spent most of his birthday with the detachable sailor sticking out of his mouth, haha! He loves to bite on the sailor's head! It is definitely a favourite! :)

We got him a mini trampoline! He just loves to jump on beds, holding onto the headboard, so we thought we'd get him a real trampoline that is safe for little tiny ones. It has a handlebar for him to hold onto. We have to put it together tomorrow but I know he'll love it. I'm a bit worried about accidents on it, but I have seen other babies his age on them at the mother and baby group and I plan to always stay like 0.13 inches from him at all times when he's using it!

We were going to get him a rocking thingy but we aren't sure he'll use one much now. He is so active and doesn't sit still for anything! He likes to jump and bounce so the trampoline seemed more fitting somehow. We also got him a Stand Up Ball Blast which he absolutely LOVES!! In fact, I don't have any photos of him playing with it from today because he was always having so much fun with it that I was always joining in, instead of taking photos! I did take some camcorder footage of him with it though, because it plays funky music, and as you know, Arthur loves anything musical. He has not really been dancing or anything yet, but today he was standing at his Ball Blast thingy and pressed the button (over and over!) for the music to play, and he bopped and danced up and down and side to side while the music played! He stopped when the music stopped, pushed the button, and started over again when the music played again! It was too cute. He always danced with a huge smile on his face! He loves that thing!

We also got him Cut-and-Play Vegetables! They are supposed to be age 3-8 because they are pretend play items, but Arthur loves the fruits that he has had for months now. When he was 5 months old, I took him to the church creche and they had loads of cut and play food, and the main admirers of the things were BABIES, not 3-8 year olds! They were the first things I ever saw him automatically gravitate to and stay interested in for a long time without wanting to play with all the other things around. So I bought him the fruit package. They have had SO much use! He loves to pull them apart (they are in two or three parts, velcroed together) and chew on them, or roll them on the floor. Or put them in and out of cups, bowls, the toy basket, the brick bucket, etc! So I knew he would love the vegetables :)

He had some good meals and a LITTLE more to drink than usual, plus his mama milk whenever he asked for it (a lot). I gave him an Organix gingerbread man and he LOVED it! I have been itching to get him those since I saw Jaya having one when went to visit one time! They are not for babies under 12 months so he couldn't have one then. I am amazed they have absolutely no sugar in them, just flour, oil, ginger and raising agent!! They are really nice considering that! Arthur LOVES them, and has absolutely no trouble biting and chewing and munching them down, even though they are REALLY hard thick biscuits. It takes him ages to chew them up but he works hard at it, which shows me how much he really likes them! He is used to softer finger food. He eats toast and hard things well, but even those are easier than the gingerbread men!

I am excited that he's old enough for Stage 3 baby food now! I bought one single jar of stage 3 spaghetti bolognese the other day, just to see what it looked like in comparison to the stuff he has had for months. I think he will manage it just fine. He eats very lumpy food that I make him. If he particularly doesn't want certain lumps then he just spits them out!

I am getting off track! So he had good food today. He had a great afternoon nap, which was a relief because Neil and I were sooooooooo tired. We were up so late last night wrapping Arthur's presents and talking about Neil's job thingy and whether he should accept it or not. I need to write about that, but this is not the entry for it. Today I have just felt breathlessly tired and had a bad headache by the afternoon, so I'm really grateful that Arthur slept well. He napped an hour and a half without stirring, so Neil and I got about that much sleep too. Neil took him downstairs when they woke and didn't disturb me, so I got a little longer.

Arthur loves the outdoors so we wanted to take him out somewhere today. We especially wanted to go somewhere with lots of birds flying about, because one of Arthur's favourite things ever is birds. He just loves them. He likes the ones on water that swim and waddle up to the pushchair, but he MUCH prefers watching more nimble birds, ones that flit and fly and flutter about. So we wanted to do things he loves on his birthday. But we just couldn't think of a good place with lots of birds that was nearby, and then the day just got filled up and I got headachy, and so on.

In the end, we all took a sunset walk just around the corner at a small park, and that turned out to be lovely! It was soooooooooo cold!!!! Arthur loved it, he was cheerful and smiley and chatty and pointy all the way. When we got back our ears were hurting from the cold! We had hot drinks, and Arthur had warm mama milk direct from the source!!

Neil and I didn't buy him a birthday card, because every time I looked in the shops, I didn't like what I saw. Any nice cards seemed to me to be ones that anyone could get for him. I wanted something more personal, that only his mummy and daddy could get him. But the ones like that all said things like, "For you, Son!" and similar messages that irritate the heck out of me, and aren't "us" at all. We never call Arthur, "Son!" so we could never buy a card saying that.

In the end, after our walk, we got out card, glue, paints, glitter, sequins and shiny paper shapes, and made him a birthday card! Arthur was quite upset when I had the paints out because he thought I was going to paint his hand. We made his party invitations last week and they involved me painting his hand with blue finger paint, and then printing his little handprint onto blank cards. I put sparkly stickers on next to the handprints! Inside I wrote in different coloured crayons, "Dear Nana and Grandy (for example), Please come to my party on Saturday 12th of November at 3.30pm. Love from Arthur xxxxx" I wrote letters to go with them, with more details in them. Here's a finished one:

Anyway, Arthur HATED the painting!! I had to do it sooo fast once I realised he hated it! He just hates to have messy hands. It seems he remembers the traumatic incident well, because he cried like he was terrified any time he saw me with a paint pot!!! Oh dear. I have traumatised my little boy with paint on his birthday! Neil had to take him in the kitchen till I was finished with the paints!

Our card is really pwetty! It sparkles and says, "Happy 1st Birthday Arthur" on the front, and inside we wrote that we can't believe he is already one year old, and that it has been the best year of our lives. That he is our sweet little boy, and we love him more than words can say. We both signed it, from, "Mummy and Daddy". I think that is the first time I signed anything, "Mummy". It felt strange, but WONDERFUL!!! I only ever saw those words on cards TO me, from my own parents before. How weird and wonderful that *I* am the mummy now!

Okay, Neil has gone to bed and just came out to complain that he can't sleep with my rattly typing! So I have to cut this short (haha). Here are all the photos from today - hopefully they'll be pretty self-explanatory now that I have written about everything we have done! They are in chronological order...

Arthur with some of his presents this morning...

Opening his birthday cards and reading them! :)

Helping Daddy put the Ball Blast together. He was sooooooooo keen to help hold the screwdriver, it was so cute!

Unwrapping his cut-and-play vegetables (very keen!)...

Into them at last, and happily munching on a plastic avocado! :)

A not-so-great photo of the sunset on our walk:

Arthur watching the sunset and being generally happy and excited to be out on his birthday!...

Arthur and Daddy playing a game that Arthur LOVES - I go ahead and then they RUN towards me, with Arthur squealing and flailing about with joy, and I suddenly rush at them as they get close and we all stop with my nose MILLIMETRES from Arthur's little nose! Arthur loves this game :) Um, the photo is rather blurry, but what can I say?! It was live action! ;)

And finally, a perfect end to a perfect day, mama milk and cuddles :)

So that was Arthur's very first birthday. We sang him happy birthday and just gave him as much love and attention as we possibly could today. We love our little man sooooo much!!! I would love to write more about the feelings and things, but I must go to bed, and let Neil sleep too! I have been writing for an hour now and Arthur still hasn't woken. I think he will probably wake soon though.

Today has been so special. My baby is one year old! I feel like I just graduated the first year of Mummy School or something! ;) It's a wonderful feeling. I will finish this entry with a bit of nostalgia...

My teeny tiny boy as he was on this day a year ago! And now as he is a year later:

What a wonderful, terrifying, thrilling, crushingly exhausting, heart-expanding, joyful, exciting year! It has pushed me through my pre-existing limits of my capacity to love and of my ability to cope. Arthur is the most wonderful gift from God EVER. He is my precious little Boo, the absolute treasure of my heart. I love him so so so so very much. Thank you Lord for blessing me with Arthur, and for guiding us through our first year as a family! I pray for many many more, just as happy and special! Thank you Lord!

Due-date-iversary, and monkey man...

"Remember, remember the 5th of November!"

It's Fireworks Night, yay! The noise outside is unbelievable! It has been constant for hours now. Arthur is amazingly sleeping through it, and he even fell asleep while enormous explosions rocked the house from right outside our window! Amazing. He is sleeping sooooooo badly otherwise, so I'm surprised at how well he's taking the fireworks!

The thing I most remember about November the 5th, though, is that it was my due date this time last year! Arthur was due on Fireworks Night. He didn't show up till 4 days later, of course! Only four days till his birthday. That's just craaazy. I have been reading my pregnancy diary to relive those last few days of pregnancy, at this time last year. I feel so nostalgic remembering it all again! I am still so caught up in reliving Arthur's birth in my mind. All this time since he was born, I still daydream about it. It was so wonderful! So painful and soooo hard, but so so so wonderful!! I know I can never have it again, even if I have other births and future children. ARTHUR'S birth will never happen again. My firstborn. The first time I ever gave birth, or experienced labour, or held my own child for the first time. The first time I was ever a mummy. It's such a precious thing. I try to keep the memories alive and kicking, and anyway, I love to think about it!

Sooooo now I have an almost-one-year-old! He is doing lots of walking. He tries to run on his tiptoes and falls easily when he does that. I took him to get fitted for proper walking shoes, like the physio suggested. I figured it must be time, since he is definitely walking now. He still cruises and crawls a lot, but he's definitely a walker at last. Shoe-fitting went fine! I was worried that there might be trouble fitting him after what the physio said, with his wide curly feet and all. But it was fine. I asked for a stiff flat shoe. Ugh. They were tempting me with flexible cruising shoes, but I told them about his feet and that the physiotherapist said he must go into stiff non-flexible shoes. But thankfully they had some nice ones :) He is a size 3H - really wide! But at least they make H widths in normal baby shoes. He walks fine in them, though he turns his feet in just a bit, and sometimes falls over his toes when he does that, and he fits them well. They are so easy to put on his feet - what a difference when you actually have shoes that fit him! They cost a bomb though, ugh. I need to get him refitted in January, as he'll probably be a size bigger by then. Wow, their feet grow so fast! I think next time I will get him fitted to find out his size, but somehow NOT buy any shoes, and then find some next-to-new ones in the right size at eBay. I wish I had done that this time.

Arthur is behaving.... differently, lately. I don't know what to make of it, it is really perplexing me. He pushes all my buttons and watches for my reaction. I am so tired and hormonal lately and I find it hard. I guess I snap at him more, and feel dreadful about that. Maybe he is picking up on that? How awful :( He waits till I am indisposed (a rare thing, since I spend nearly every waking second doing stuff with Arthur, not my own thing or the housework), like maybe I am so nauseated that I HAVE to sit down and eat a meal. Or I need to fill in a form to get it in the post asap. While I am doing these things, he immediately starts doing every single thing that he knows we would rather he didn't do. He climbs around the sofa to pull videos off the shelves. He opens the glass cabinet doors and rummages in the video machine. He pushes the button on the TV to switch it on and off, on and off, on and off. He cruises to the door to the porch and opens it and closes it and opens it and closes it and opens it and closes it, etc. He finds outdoor shoes and tries to eat them. He tries to push the barrier out of the stairway so he can climb them. He opens all the drawers in the merchants chest and pulls out the financial paperwork, watching me to see my reaction with every individual sheet pulled. He cruises to the big mirror which he isn't allowed near as I'm worried it could fall if he touches it (I think I'm over-worrying, but anyhoo), and bangs the flat of his palm on it over and over, watching me all the while. If he can find any piles of clean clothing, he pulls them down, watching me of course.

I have to get up fifty million times while I am trying to eat a simple baked potato, and take him away from things or redirect him. He does not listen to anything I say, though I know he understands "no" and various other redirections that I use instead of "no". He is just really testing his mummy and daddy out at the moment! Little monkey! I hope this is just a phase!

Also he is super clingy and whiney. This is sooooooooo out of character for Arthur, I don't understand it. He wants to breastfeed ALL. DAY. LONG. I let him, because I don't want to restrict him if he wants to nurse. It's easier if we go out, because then he's distracted and doesn't ask. We should go out more - maybe he's bored? - but I just can't do it. I feel too awful all the time, and too tired. He is a busy boy in the house and stays very active, but maybe I am falling short because I should be doing more for/with him? Urgh. Some mornings his longest gap where he ISN'T breastfeeding is literally 10 minutes. He is off and on between playing and things, but he wants me close all the time, and preferably topless, hehe! He hates to see clothing covering my - correction, HIS! - breasts. He even hates my bras. Anything in the way gets pulled and frowned at, usually with some degree of whining.

It's so strange because he has never been a whiney boy. He is a happy, cheerful, laid-back boy! But he isn't being much of that lately. He still smiles and laughs a lot, but he is ultra grumpy the rest of the time. I keep thinking something must be wrong, as it's so odd for him, but I don't know what.

Also, he is waking like CRAZY at night at the moment. Every 2 hours or MORE. Uggggggggh. I can't, CAN'T do that. But suddenly he is completely intolerant of anything other than me and my breasts at night. He is also like this at nap times in the day. I don't know what to do! I can't nurse him till he falls asleep any more because it just hurts too much now that I'm this pregnant. I don't really WANT to anyway, as I think it is definitely time he learnt to sleep without going off on the breast. So I stop when he's sleepy, or before then if I can't bear the pain any longer. And he gets hysterical. Really hysterical. I stay with him. I sometimes cuddle him if he's really upset, but otherwise I play "asleep" - that seems to work best - or pat his back a little. That used to work, but now he just sobs and screams (REALLY screams, angrily) until he is nearly sick. He can keep this up for over an hour. If he starts retching I put a stop to it. I nurse him or I get him up, so sometimes he has no nap. Lately he is sometimes taking one nap a day and sometimes two, depending on whether he will let me put him down for a morning nap or not.

Ugh. I just don't know. He seems so.... like he is fighting me all the time at the moment. I don't understand why. He has plenty of lovely times when he is just like himself, but SO many times when he isn't now, and I feel kind of upset about it, in case it's my fault or it's getting worse because I am neglecting him in some parenting area, or something. Am I doing something wrong?

I took him to the doctor yesterday in case he had an ear infection or something wrong with his tummy, etc. Once or twice at night he has screamed and cried even when I offered him the breast, which is just totally all-out WEIRD for Arthur. But he was given a thorough check-up and seems perfectly healthy. His ears are fine, his chest is fine, his tummy is soft and fine. I don't see any changes in his gums, though he drools all the time anyway.

He is having serious problems with constipation. I finally got some advice from the health visitor and after a long discussion she said he has a really good healthy diet (yay!) but nowhere NEAR enough fluids. He has breastmilk all the time, and I still have plenty, but it's not enough with all his solids now. He simply refuses to drink though. He will take sips of water at mealtimes and when we offer him a drink throughout the day (which I try to do ALL the time to get him to drink), but after a tiny sip or two he pushes the drink away and refuses to let it near him again. We fill a sippy cup with water each morning and it never seems to have gone down at all by the end of the day.

The HV suggested diluted fruit juice - apple was her suggestion, partly in case it made him want to drink it more, and partly because she has seen fruit juice help sometimes with constipation in babies. So we did that for a few days. He makes a face but still sips it. But the level doesn't go down any more than it did for water. When we saw the doctor yesterday, she said she didn't like the idea of giving him fruit juice as it can cause cavities in babies' teeth. So we switched back to water. She prescribed him lactulose, but said that it needs to be taken with plenty of fluids - um, hello?!!! So I'm not giving that to him. It will make matters worse if he isn't getting enough fluids. Urrrrgh! So frustrating!

Today we happened to discover a new absolute favourite food for Arthur - we gave him baked beans on toast for tea, and he LOVED it!!! He ate the whole lot eagerly, and the BEST thing is that this meal makes you very thirsty! So we offered him water after every 2 or 3 mouthfuls and he took more water than he ever has before! Yay! I think it was because the food was thirst-making though. The water went down a centimetre!!!! Woohoo! But that is still pretty bad for a whole day's fluid. Poor Arthur. It is making his poo very difficult for him. He sweats and shakes and cries when he poos :( Sometimes he bleeds. Often we have to rescue him if it's a bad one, by actually applying OIL to the completely stuck poo so that it will come out without making him scream in pain. Poor poor baby :( Sometimes he has a normal poo, and I don't know why because he never has much fluid to drink. I know it's really important to fix it because apparently untreated constipation in young children and babies leads to them losing the urge to poo, and they can need professional help to start again. Yikes. I don't know what to do though, because he just WON'T drink. And it's the fluids that are the whole issue.

If anyone knows what to do, please let me know!!! Otherwise please pray that he suddenly LOVES to drink and it all gets better :)

I have a TON to write about moving and stuff, because it's all up in the air at the moment. But I can't now, I am feeling really sick. I think I will go and eat something. It's too noisy outside for an early night, but that is fine with me because I am just longing for a snuggly evening reading in bed by some cosy lamplight!

I'm sure there were millions of other things I meant to say.... oh well. I can't remember them now anyway. I will try my best to update a little more over the coming week, as I want to get some of my thoughts down about Arthur before he turns one, and of course to write about his birthday and the family stuff afterwards!

I do just want to say that I LOVE my lil precious Boo. I hope I didn't come across too complaining about him. I just love him to bits. But I feel so worn and strained by stuff lately with Arthur. I wish it would all just get better and not be a problem, because I hate having any time at all where I don't feel wonderful about him at every moment. But I love him, love him, love him.

Here are some photos of the mischievious monkey man himself!...

Love him. To bits :)

Lots happening

Hello!

Finally a moment to sit down and actually write a proper diary entry! Arthur is napping with his daddy, but I will go and resettle him when he wakes (which seems to happen every 30 minutes still, in the day). I feel very nauseous but oh well. I need to write my diary! So much has been happening lately, and will be happening very soon. Soooo many things are on my mind as well. I wish I had been able to update more often so I could purge a bit before it all got too pent up and cluttered in there! I am not sure where to start or how to write about each thing briefly enough so that this doesn't end up a mammoth entry and I don't end up feeling dreadful as a result! But I will just start and see how I go. I can always save it and try writing some more later.

Well that didn't last very long! Arthur woke and then I felt soooo sick that I had to eat (how topsy-turvy is morning sickness?!). Now I have had baked potato and cottage cheese and milk and I feel much better. Arthur and Neil are still sleeping.

Neil had a cold which Arthur and I thankfully didn't catch! Phew! I was so sure we'd get it. Now poor Neil has some sort of food poisoning. He bought sandwiches at a garage the other day. That is something I would NEVER do, but then I am paranoid about food anyway. So, now he has had cramps and diarrhoea for 48 hours and it's not going away. I remember he had exactly the same thing in New York after eating a hotdog in Central Park. I had one too though, and I was fine. Neil had cramps and the rest for nearly a week before we finally paid a fortune for a doctor to tell him to wait it out! It went in the end, but he was a poorly thing. I think it must be the same thing, because he says it's exactly the same. Poor Neil. I think he will go to the (free!) doctor tomorrow anyway.

Neil has been offered a job! He applied for a job in a different career, using his geography qualifications (and interest!). The work is all environmental and I just know it will suit him WAY better than the direct marketing job he is in right now. Which is thoroughly dull. And depresses him completely. We talked a lot about his feelings about work over the last couple of years, and that's why we decided he should do a masters degree in something geographical, to boost his chances at an environmental job. He does the mapping and planning and computery side of geography, and finds it really stimulating.

Soooo he started a masters. He did so great in his first year and came out top of his class! He had to defer for a year when Arthur was born as it was just too much on top of work. But when he enrolled this autumn for his final year, they told him he had to pay like thousands of pounds and they previously told him (at the very beginning) that the lump he was paying them was the total amount for the entire course. So needless to say we can't remotely afford it and he has had to drop out. Last week he discovered that his lovely lecturers are so appalled by the situation that they have arranged for his first year credits to be converted into a post graduate certificate and he has been awarded a distinction, yay!! So that's good :)

So then he applied for an environmental job which would mean us relocating to Cambridgeshire. He got interviewed but didn't get the job. They said he would be better suited to a job that they just started advertising for that week, and he applied for that. The closing date was October 14th (a Friday). He got his application in that same day. On the Monday morning at 9am (!!) he got a call from the company he'd applied to, saying that they wanted him for the job and weren't even going to bother interviewing anyone else!!! Wow. It all depended on him going there and meeting the team, and they would ask each other questions and find out if he was suited to the position.

So on Thursday he went. They are going to let him know if they still want him on Monday. It looks pretty positive that they will say yes. Neil thinks maybe he isn't quite experienced enough in some of the software but otherwise things look good. We have a TON to discuss and think over, some of which we have been doing already, and it's kind of a stressy time.

The job is somewhere completely different to the previous one. I had been gearing myself up for a move to Cambridgeshire and was finally starting to feel comfortable with the idea (I am like a tree. I don't like to be moved once my roots are down!) and now we may be moving somewhere different. East Anglia, near the sea. Or is it Suffolk? I can't remember which county the town falls in. I'm not crazy about naming places where we might be living in my diary! My mum has taught me to be nervous about stuff like that! So the county name will have to do. London is different. It's so huge. A bazillion other people live in London. I am just a lil speck here!

Anyway. If Neil gets the job, he has to decide whether to take it. This means a lot of long discussions and stressy things like meeting with financial people and stuff. The job means a big pay cut, which is okay since living out there will be much cheaper than living here. But the company is undecided on whether they will offer us any help with relocating. The job isn't in a bracket where they normally offer any help. Neil said he can't accept the job without help (as we simply can't afford it otherwise) so they are looking into what tweaks they can make to their policy to help us a bit.

We seem to somehow be in financial poo at the moment. I guess we haven't been paying enough attention to our finances for a while and suddenly we are in a fair bit of debt. Ugh. We need to sell a car. We need to budget sensibly. And go over the regular outgoings. They are somehow more than we can manage but I don't know which ones we can drop. Selling up and moving somewhere cheaper will sort this out, because we'll hopefully get a lot of equity on this house that won't all be needed for the next one. I hope! So we can pay off any debts and so on, and start a good healthy savings account. We have one of those already but it has an embarrassingly small amount in it!

The job is likely to mean relocating before the end of the year. To me, that sounds absolutely CRAZY!!! How are we supposed to sell our house (and get it ready to sell, for that matter! It's a dump at the moment with rubbish in the garden and at least 15 small DIY and decorating jobs that are not finished.) and buy another one, and make the move in the next month or two?!!! Neil has to give a month's notice at his current job, but that might be all we get. I do not know how it will be physically possible to make the move in such a short time. Neil is nervous and stressy because he doesn't see how we can sell the house in such a short time, and then his job will start and what will we do then? Will he commute (it's 3 hours plus each way, not including rush hour traffic)? Will he live away for the week? I don't know how we'd bear that, any of us, so I'm pretty sure we couldn't consider that option. Will we have to move there anyway and rent while we finish selling our house? I don't think we can because we can't afford to rent and pay mortgage on this house. In fact, as soon as Neil's salary changes to the lower one, we can't afford the mortgage payments (anywhere NEAR) on this house anyway, so he can't live away or commute while Arthur and I live here anyway.

Urrrrrrrgh!! So stressy. Everything feels so up in the air. And that's not even touching on the big issues of how we FEEL about moving there, or moving away at all. I am totally not prepared in my heart or mind to move to Suffolk. I haven't had time to prepare myself. I feel so insecure and anxious about everything. I am such a stay-in-one-place person. I have only ever lived in London, right here in this little suburb, except for my first 11 months in central London, and obviously I don't remember that. How strange to think that's how Arthur will see my hometown. He won't even remember it. He will just know he was born there and lived there when he was a baby. That feels so weird somehow, since my whole life (and his, so far!) has been here.

It feels such an enormous wrench to move away from here, even though there are fewer ties keeping us here now. My parents have moved to France. My brother is still here but he's moved further into London, and my grandparents are further out in Surrey. We have our wonderful church here. I have never been to any other church. I can't imagine leaving my church family behind and starting somewhere new. I know it will be wonderful when we find a new church that is right for us, and we'll have a new church family and be amazed that we haven't always felt at home there, a few years down the line. But right now it seems such a hard move.

BUT. Just these last few months I am finding more and more that I hate the area we live in. I can't think why I didn't notice it before. Maybe God is preparing my heart for a move. He is good like that :) He prepared me in a similar way for my parents' move to France. I don't know HOW I would have coped with that emotionally without God's gentle help in preparing me.

Lately when I walk Arthur round our local area in the pushchair, I am disgusted with what I see, the WHOLE time. It isn't a nice place to raise a family at all. We have a lovely little home which I will be so sad to leave, but just last week I was walking with Arthur in the pushchair past our local parade of shops, and all the bad things about it seemed to leap out at me for some reason. I always just saw it as a row of random shops with a post office in it. This time I didn't even notice the post office. I was too busy nervously steering round the blokes with cigarettes and beer cans (mid-morning) hanging around outside the betting shop and off-license that stood side-by-side. What made me feel most sick though, was when I glanced across the road and saw (HOW could I have missed this all these years?!) a p*orn shop. Yep, that's right. The streets were smelly and absolutely choking with car fumes. Litter and dog poo on the pavements. Graffiti on the street signs. Noisy building sites everywhere I look. I am so disgusted by it. At night lately I am increasingly unimpressed with this area too. Since we lived here the one thing we could never do was open our windows at night. The traffic is too noisy and smelly. But also there are very few nights now without people drunkenly yelling swear-words at some acquaintance of theirs who is obviously about half a mile down the road, going by the volume. It wakes me even through the double glazed windows. At the weekends you can guarantee there will be smashed glass on the streets somewhere. And what is with the sirens around here?!!! They drive me crazy because they wake Arthur. Even in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, when Arthur is napping, there are nearly always 3 or 4 sirens screaming noisily past our house, just in one normal nap - about 30 minutes. That truly sucks.

And to top it all off, we're coming up to Bonfire Night here in England. It is November the 5th (Arthur's due date last year!). This means fireworks for a good two weeks either side. They started last week here. Last night we had an hour of the deep booming ones that echo for ages. Arthur woke of course. Tsk. I can't wait till it's past. I love fireworks but I hate the decibels they reach these days, and I hate how they wake my baby boy when he so desperately needs some good sleep and I so desperately need the same, or a nice restful evening.

So I know it is a GREAT thing that we are getting the chance to move away from this yucky area soon! London has become so overcrowded and noisy and polluted. I don't like living here anymore. When Neil went to meet the team at this new job last week, he said he had to stop on a main road when he reached the town, because he lost his bearings. He got out of the car to get the map out of the back. After a moment he said he suddenly realised how CLEAN the air smelt, even on a main road!! He was amazed, hehe! He stood there just taking deeeeep breaths for a while before driving off again! So that is exciting. I can't believe we have been breathing this muck in for so long here. I couldn't bear to bring my children up breathing the same. No wonder this area has the highest rate of childhood asthma in the COUNTRY!!! One in three children here have it. Soooo bad.

Okay Arthur is awake. I'll try to write more later.

Back, and it's now evening. I need to hurry up and get some more things off my chest so I can go to bed!

Arthur had me worried yesterday evening. He woke at 9.20pm crying, and when I lay next to him he wouldn't even turn towards me, which he normally does automatically to breastfeed. The breast always fixes any source of crying! But he didn't even turn to me. He lay all stiff and cried like he was in pain. We held him and he cried more. I was scared because he had such a frightened expression on and he was so stiff and unmoving. He was holding his head really funny, tipped back as far as it could go and he wouldn't move it even to turn his head to see one of us. I walked him and rocked him but he still cried so much and seemed scared :(

We tried to give him Calpol because we figured he was in pain, but he fought us giving it to him - again, odd for Arthur. He didn't have a temperature. In the end Neil said maybe he has painful wind in his tummy or something? He DID have his tea really late, like almost right before bed, which has never happened before, so perhaps he didn't get chance to get any air up from eating like he normally would. I walked him and patted him until my arms nearly came off, and eventually he burped and seemed WAY more relaxed after that. He still cried and wouldn't settle, but he relaxed his weird position and moved about more. Poor baby. I held him close to me in front of the mirror so he could see us both, and sang my favourite gentle church songs to him. They calmed me as much as him, maybe even more. I was really scared before, because I didn't know what was wrong, and something did seem soooo wrong somehow. I didn't know how to fix it for him. I hate that feeling.

Anyway we put him back to bed and he happily breastfed till he was almost asleep and then dozed off. He woke 15 minutes later crying and anxious, looking for me. As soon as he saw me, he lay himself down again and went to sleep! He has never done that before. I fully expected to nurse him but he just wanted to know that I was there. I sat with him till he slept. Then he woke at 11pm to nurse and after that he didn't wake till 5am!!!!!!! That's a SIX hour gap!! Go Arthur!! I'm so pleased! Of course it would be the night that the clocks went back so we lost an hour, tsk! So it was 4am really, but who cares, it was six hours for Arthur.

I couldn't go back to sleep after he nursed at 4/5am (whichever it was!) - another typical thing considering it was the longest he's ever slept!! I have stuff on my mind. I am feeling really upset and hurt about something at the moment, so much so that I am losing sleep over it. I can't even write about it here, darn it. Oh for a private diary! But actually that wouldn't make much difference in this case anyway. I am TRYING to put it out of my head but maybe I am just being all "pregnant" about it and blowing it out of proportion. Or maybe I am just genuinely hurt more than it seems reasonable to be hurt about this particular thing? Who knows. Anyway. It's a big thing on my mind at the moment and I couldn't even sleep yesterday afternoon when Neil took Arthur out for a short while so I could catch up a bit on sleep. I wish I could relax about things that get to me or upset me. It annoys me that I am sooo not good at that! Tonight I am going to try praying more, about the situation and the person involved. Hopefully God will make me feel better about it all.

My parents are coming over for Arthur's birthday!!!!!!!!! I am SO EXCITED!!!! :D I can't WAIT to see them. I miss them so much. I thought they would just visit for like a weekend or something (not staying with us though, they will stay with my grandparents, but at least we'd get a couple of visits from them), but I was so thrilled when Mummy told me that they are coming for almost a week!!!!!! Yippeeee!! They have to spend time with other family members too, obviously, but yay, I get to see my mummy SEVERAL times in one visit!!!! And my lovely daddy too, but Mummy is like my best friend. I miss her so much, even though we talk pretty much every day on the phone. I can't WAIT for them to see Arthur! I know they'll love him to bits and be so proud of all his changes and how gorgeous he looks! I am so proud to show him to people :)

Talking of the little man, he is walking a lot now. Not all over the place yet or anything, but he tries his steps out frequently during the day. He loves to walk from me to Neil or Neil to me, and he loves getting clapped and cheered for it! He starts the clapping himself if we aren't quick enough, and waits for us to join in! :) Today he walked 8 steps, at two different times. Pretty soon we are going to have to stop counting his steps, hehe! He also took off several times today from cruising along furniture, which he hasn't done before. And he has walked to his toys and things today, not just to one of us. He is getting so much more confident. He launches himself eagerly into walking whether he has got himself ready and balanced or not! He sometimes goes down on his bum quite hard if he didn't get his balance before starting out, but he doesn't mind that. He is also doing this thing where he walks so fast that he looks like he is running. Today he took 6 steps from me to Neil and literally ran them, bobbing up and down, bending his knees and everything! He looks so toddly and cute when he walks! I know that this walking thing officially makes him a toddler. How scary that I really have a toddler now! But I guess he has to go there if he's going to be a big brother :)

Arthur currently wants to eat everything and anything that we are eating. He is becoming so adventurous with food - which is so strange considering how he was a few months ago! I thought he would never be that into food, but here he is! He wants to try everything we have. He is not on cow's milk yet. I am not sure how best to introduce him to that in a gradual way, but we'll start after his birthday. He suddenly seems ready to tolerate really lumpy or scratchy foods. He'll readily eat dry water crackers and somehow chew them up and swallow them. He likes toast and sandwiches, and he's just as eager to eat the crusts as any other part. I'm going to try him on stage 3 baby food soon. I think he will cope just fine. The meals I make and freeze at home are lumpier and coarser than his stage 2 jarred stuff and he is fine with that.

Sooo food is going well with Arthur. I am looking forward to the foody aspects of his birthday party, as I now know he'll be right into it! I think we'll have some snack-type foods for the adults that Arthur eats. I want to make sure we have some of his favourites. The party will fall over his tea time so he'll have his meal sharing our food, and I like that. Then birthday cake, which I also know he'll love! :) He has only had cake once in his life, and that was a little tiny piece. I am going to put icing all over it but I don't want to give him a piece with icing on. He does not need to eat pure sugar! But cake, yay! It's his birthday. Birthday cake is an absolute "must" tradition in our family. I know he'll love it, but I would never force it on him just for a photo or anything. I can't believe my baby is going to be ONE!!! In just ten days!! It is going so fast.

I am going to decorate the house with balloons and fairy lights. I discovered that he likes balloons recently, or at least, they interest him. And they're partyish so I'll get some! Fairy lights are a particular favourite of Arthur's. We discovered that when he was only weeks old, as we still had some pretty coloured fairy lights up around the big mirror from my homebirth (I wanted pretty soothing things to distract me!). He totally loved them, and I remember for MONTHS they seemed to be the only thing that would calm him when he cried. So we'll have lots of fairy lights. I know he'll love those!! I feel quite excited! I've never been the mother of a birthday boy before!!

I have to send invitations! I wanted to make them but I don't think that is realistic, so I'll probably buy them if I can find some nice ones.

Anyway.

Arthur's hair is getting so long! It hangs over his ears an inch at least and I'm constantly tucking it back behind them! He has worn his hair a little thin on one side at the back (not sure how!) but the other side is getting really long. I don't want him to have his first haircut till after he is one. It feels toooo soon otherwise! But I don't want him sporting a mullet, hehe! So he will get a little trim soon :) On top it is still curly and won't lie flat, so I don't think it needs any taking off there. I love his hair. It always smells so good, and it is so soft and fine. I love the colour, actually it is very like mine. I think he will have very dark hair when he is grown up though, because he has quite dark hair for a baby really. Mine was very light brown when I was a toddler, and almost blondish in the summer. Arthur's hair is more like my brother's colour when he was a baby, and I don't know anyone whose hair is darker than my brother's, so I think Arthur will be very dark when he's older. I love that because he has lovely brown eyes! He still has some grey in his eyes but maybe more brown now than grey. Neil has blue eyes and I have mixed - mainly grey with a small hazel ring right around the pupil. The only person in the family who could have given Arthur his eye colour is my mummy, who has very brown eyes. I LOVE that :) He has my mummy's eyes. Not even mine. Mummy's :)

I have some photos of Arthur feeding himself his yoghurt, which he much prefers to do these days! But I haven't resized them yet so I'll do that next entry. He is very good with a spoon. He always gets it right in his mouth and gets most of the yoghurt off it. Then he turns it upside down to get the last little bit out of the deepest part of the spoon with his tongue! Then he hands it back to me to "reload"!!

Oh I keep forgetting to say, Arthur is really into putting things IN to things now. He only took things out for the longest time, but now he is really keen to stack cups inside each other. He is pretty accurate now, but he got very frustrated at first, bless him! He is so cute at tidying away too. He loves to help me tidy away! Sometimes he spontaneously starts doing it by himself too. I find a dozen bricks in his toy basket (they live in the brick bucket) where he has carefully put them over the edge, one by one. Or the remote control in the stationery drawer! Or a letter that arrived through the door that morning carefully posted into the very centre of the wires with beads on, on his activity cube! He can now reach everything in the kitchen, urgh! He can get his little fingertips over the edges of the surfaces, and open all the drawers and cupboards. And the freezer door. He LOVES the freezer!

I am teaching him hot and cold. He makes the cutest little sound when he touches something that is unexpectedly hot (not burning though) or cold. He is always eager and excited, but the moment he touches it he snatches his hand back and his face gets a sort of concerned expression with his head tipped to one side, and he looks at me and says, "Ohhh!" in such a sweet, slightly doubtful tone, one that seems to lovingly warn ME that it's hot or cold! I tell him "Hot!" and he says, "Hoe!" He doesn't say anything for cold (like the freezer) but seems eager to touch it again right away! Funny boy!

He has taken an age to tell us where his nose, etc. is when we ask. I don't think he has understood the question, "Where is your....?" until recently. Anyway now he points to nose and ear and stuff, but only on me :) He is much clearer about objects. Maybe I have been more consistent with those things and not given him much practise with the body parts? Probably. If I ask him where are his bricks, he goes right over and picks one up, holding it out to me and saying, "Aht!" He does the same with books, and I'm pretty sure he knows "cups" (his stacking cups) now too. He knows where "music" is when I ask if he wants to hear some. He will look at the hi-fi straight away even if he is busy doing something else with his back to it. He also now understands the sign for music, which I have been doing with him for a couple of weeks. He smiles BIG when I do it :)

He still loves his music. He sings and dances to it now, bouncing and making little wailey sing-song sounds. It is seriously the cutest thing ever. I love my boy!

Okay I have managed to write a lot which is a relief! I am beginning to try and catch up on other diaries now, where I can. So far I have a TON to read because so many diaries have been updated since I read them last, and most people have written eleventy entries since then too! So far I am getting a lovely blur of beautiful baby photos, and the odd MOVIE (how exciting!), and feeling very excited to be catching up on people's news. I will try to leave some comments soon, as I catch up! Thanks for the notes and messages here while I have been sort of absent. They are lovely to read when I get chance to come back :)

Steps and slacking!

I can't believe it has been NINE days since I updated last!!! Urrrgh, I have been longing to update, I have so many thoughts that need writing down, and sooooo much to write about my little man and how I am feeling about life with him lately! I just feel too sick or tired to update. I just want to say that I have not even been able to read favourite diaries, let alone leave messages or return emails. I'm so sorry! I miss my diaryland buddies soooooo much! But I get so little time where I feel able to be online. I use it to check my due date buddy group, my email and messages in case of uplifting pick-me-ups (!!) and if I get chance, to write my diaries. I honestly cannot WAIT to be feeling up to my usual online activity again! I just have no time, or if I do then I don't feel good. It will pass though, and then I'll be back to normal here :)

Okay I have soooo little time as it's 11pm and I needed to be in bed like three hours ago!

I haven't taken photos of Arthur in way too long!! I finally took a couple yesterday. The house is in SUCH a state, and we have been trying to make a dent in the mess over the weekend. Of course, Arthur LOVES any sort of mess, and he particularly loves it when messes get tidied! He loves to help! Here he is helping his Daddy with the Great Laundry Crisis - he just loves "sorting" and "folding" clothes:

Basically, he has watched me sort the clean laundry a million times, and he loves to pick up an armful of clothes, swing to one side and drop them in a new pile, then pull a few of them and twist them about in a business-like manner (!!), and then add a couple more things to that same pile in the same way, before starting to transfer the items to a "new pile" all over again, hehe! He is so cute. He has such a serious expression of concentration on his face while he does it! It will keep him busy for such a long time, he just loves sorting the laundry! He likes to pull down my piles of neatly folded stuff too, which isn't quite so helpful! He also likes to chew the odd item!

I wish I had been updating lately. Arthur is taking his first steps at the moment! I am so excited for him! He spends much of his time excitedly standing and balancing without holding onto anything. He can stand for ages and ages now, but he really only does it for show, so once the excitement wanes, he takes hold of something again so he can be on the move again! This boy rarely stays still! He is always crawling or cruising somewhere. He's so active, it makes me tired to watch him sometimes, hehe!

Anyway, his thing when he stands alone is to make his body soooo tense with excitement! He makes his arms all stiff and locks his knees, and he has a particular way of holding his hands out which we are familiar with as an expression of the MOST excitement he has ever had!! It's so sweet :) He is just SO thrilled with himself when he is standing! He makes these excited roaring sounds and smiles and smiles with his eyes shining at us! We always cheer him and say, "Look at YOU standing, you strong boy!!" and things like that. He LOVES the attention over it :) We are so proud of him!

Today I FINALLY managed to capture him doing this on camera. He has been doing it for a few weeks but here he is standing and making excited sounds with his "excited hands"....

He doesn't wobble at all any more when he stands. He took a wobbly step once a couple of weeks ago, and then another single step twice since then. Yesterday he took two steps in a row while Neil and I were cheering him on for standing. Much fuss was made, of course! :) Then this morning I was sitting on the sofa feeling green and Arthur was cruising along the sofa, and suddenly he started doing his excited roaring, and I looked and he was standing with his hands all flexed like he does, so I got down to his level on the floor and cheered him, and held my hands out to him. He immediately took a step, followed by another, and then ANOTHER with that first foot!!! It wasn't wobbly at all, though he had reached me by step 3 so he sort of fell into my arms on that step. Yay for Arthur though, I'm so proud!!!! :)

Then Neil got home from work tonight and Arthur was soooooo cute. He has spent a LOT of time with his daddy this last week or two, as Neil had a whole week off work to spend time with Arthur, and then last week he was off 3 days with a bad cold. So Arthur has seen him around a lot, and has LOVED hanging out with him. When Neil got home he was so excited, and I have never seen him do this before, but he was showing Neil his toys and telling him all about them! He sat down at his little wooden workbench and started making his babbly talk which now sounds like real language, just not in words we understand! He would look at it, poke a few things on it (all the while "talking" earnestly) and keep on looking at Neil as though he was asking him to see what he was doing. Then when Neil sat with him playing with the workbench and talking to him, he quickly moved onto the bricks, and took a few out of the bucket to show Neil, babbling about them with really communicative expressions as he handed them to his daddy. It was so cute!

Then he wanted to stand and roar and be cheered, so he did that, and I told Neil about his three steps. Neil held out his hands to Arthur and said, "Come to Daddy!" and Arthur walked four steps right to Neil without any hesitation!! I thought he would never attempt it because Neil was far enough away from Arthur that usually he would just get down and crawl the distance to cross it. Anyway it was so exciting!!! Arthur was so pleased, and Neil swung him up in the air and we clapped and cheered until Arthur started clapping and cheering too!!

I LOVE my little boy!! He is too precious.

Anyway I reeeally wanted to write about that!

There are only two weeks until Arthur's first birthday!! I can't believe it! I keep wondering what I was doing this time last year. How amazing that I was pregnant this time last year, and I'm pregnant now as well and it feels like I've been pregnant for ages even though it's only a few weeks! That's a lot of pregnantness in a year or so! ;) This time last year I was 38 weeks pregnant and we were doing a trial run with my birth pool. I was crampy and huge and wondering what on earth it would be like to be a mummy. I can't even imagine NOT being a mummy now. I can't remember what life was like. It has been the most amazing change of my life EVER. I can't believe how wonderful it has been!

We are having a family party for Arthur on November 12th. Did I say that already? I haven't figured out who, what, where, why, and when yet though. Although, here - obviously - and probably somewhere between 3 and 5.30pm. Arthur LOVES company so he will have a great time! I am going to bake him a birthday cake but I haven't thought too much about the details yet. Something simple though, nothing gooey or thickly coated with toxic coloured sugar, and probably no super special design. Just simple. Arthur ate cake this weekend when a friend from school came to visit and brought some light fruit cake with her. He was so cross that I wasn't sharing it with him (!) so I gave him a bit, and he LOVED it! He ate the raisins and everything. So I think he will like birthday cake!

I just love him so much. I am trying to think of the million other things I'm sure I needed to say about him since last entry, but all I can think about is how much I love him love him love him. I just can't think of anything else. He is so affectionate. He gives hugs and kisses very readily, even to strangers if he has spent an hour with them and decides he likes them, and they are giving him a cuddle or something. Often he chooses to give cuddles or kisses at really touching moments, like when Neil has been blowing raspberries on his tummy till he can hardly breathe for laughing - he will catch his breath a bit, and then lean over and give his daddy a gentle kiss on the mouth. I love that when he has enjoyed being close or having fun with his daddy he will respond with a cuddle or a kiss, almost to say "Thank you Daddy, I love you!"

Or when I am nursing him. Nursing him at night - although tiring! - is magical. He is either snuggly and sleepy and newborn-ish, which is cuter than cute and makes me feel utterly tender inside, or he is more interactive. I love when I can just make out the shape of his cheek as he nurses, and a curl of hair at the side of his head in the shadows. He randomly pops off the breast just to gaze up at me. I can just make out his teeth and eyes shining so I know he is smiling at me. He makes the softest sound, like a whispered "aaahhh" sound, and his hand reaches up and strokes my face. Sometimes he gives me a kiss then too, before suddenly going back on the breast with enthusiasm! I love my gentle affectionate boy. He is so precious! It is so wonderful to begin to really see him showing us that he loves us. There is just no feeling like it!

I need to remember to show God how much I love him, more often. Being a parent sometimes reminds me, like with sentences like the last one. Since God is my Father and I am his child, I am beginning to see how incredible the love is between parent and child, and how he really must love to have me come to him and tell him I love him. How awesome is that, that God - God himself! - loves me - ME! - that much?! So amazing.

Okay. It's soooo late. I know there was a ton more, but I need bed and I am feeling sicker than when I started. Bed will help that a LOT so I'm going now! I hope I will be able to update again soon. I really need to write my thoughts and feelings down as my little boy approaches his first birthday, if only to keep me sane, hehe! I can't believe my baby is going to be one. Wow.

10 years....

Thank you for all the nice comments about the photos and Arthur's 11 month birthday!

This is such a lame-o entry because I wanted to write a big thing about something and I feel so utterly miserable with nausea today that I can't :( I swear I have never felt so sick. For so many hours without a break. Except that I know I did the last time I was pregnant. But ugh, all the same. I'm so thankful because it means my baby is probably thriving inside me, but I am finding it hard to deal with this evening, after a day of being utterly unable to do a THING for the awful nausea, and feeling like I could throw up at any time, and it being soooooooooooo hard to chew and swallow food, and sip any fluids. Tonight I have a headache, and I know it's because I am dehydrated, yet I can't shove enough into my stomach to fix it. I feel so bad, like I'm letting my body down, and my baby, and Arthur, because he needs a mummy who isn't dehydrated, and also he needs his mummy to make his milk for him like usual. Ugh. It has just been a hard day and I'm tired of feeling so sick already :( It feels like an eternity before I'm at the stage where it might pass or ease off. I know this should be in my pregnancy diary but oh well.

What I MEANT to write tonight is that this evening it has been 10 years since I became a Christian. October 15th 1995, somewhere around 8pm :) I wanted so badly to write a big entry about my feelings about that and my history, but I feel too gross.

But I WILL say that I feel too gross to write about it because I am experiencing blessing number fifty million and one (!!) since I let God into my life! Of course he was blessing me so much before that, but somehow it feels amazing to acknowledge him in everything since. God has literally - literally - turned my life around since I gave it to him to deal with. I will write the short version:

When I became a Christian I was suffering from depression. The clinical, diagnosed, suicidal kind. It started in my last year at school (age 16) and I was 19 when I became a Christian. It did continue for a while longer though. I went on Prozac. Prozac and I did NOT get along. It turned me from somebody who was depressed into somebody who was depressed and UNSTABLE, seriously. It was on Prozac that I attempted suicide. Stoopid Prozac. Anyway, I was a brand new Christian when that happened, like only a few months or something. I was at my workplace and after my attempt failed I just walked out and kept walking till I reached the nearest hospital, where I tried to check myself in. They told me I needed a referral, and basically, "Buh-bye!" Can you believe that?!!

So standing out in the car park, I didn't know where else to go or what else to do. I felt utterly unsafe and like I had no idea who I was. I had left my coat and bag at work (I never went back there either), and I only had the clothes I was wearing. I rummaged in my jeans pocket (I NEVER put anything in my jeans pockets) and there was a church leaflet folded teeny tiny. Somebody's phone number was on it, but I knew that lady was a school teacher and it was term-time and during school hours so she would not be there. I phoned anyway, and there she was. She drove right over and picked me up, and we spent the afternoon talking and praying, which I had never really done before with anyone like that.

Anyway. I felt compelled to come off the Prozac. I didn't want to see my doctor or follow advice, so whether it was wise or not, I just stopped taking it. I never had one single day of depression since that day. Not even the next day! Not ever. I have felt depressed sometimes, but it's so different. Back in those days, it was literally like a taste in my mouth. I could feel it was chemical. Sometimes I think how the Prozac must have jump started me or something, though my doctor couldn't really figure it out, nor my therapist. But actually I'm pretty sure it had much more to do with God than anything else!

Thank you God for healing me from hideous depression and setting me free!!

Okay, then there was Neil. We were already dating at this time, because we met on the Alpha Course which I started at a church in Wimbledon right after I became a Christian. I met Neil in November 1995. Nearly 10 years! He was on the course too, and the same friend invited us, though we had never met before. He was on her degree course and had been brought up in an actively Christian home, but had lost any desire to pray and stuff during his time at Uni. Sooo I met Neil. We became really good friends. I never had a good male friend before! We had so much fun together. I drove and he didn't have a car (I drove my mum's) so I would give him lifts everywhere.

How we fell in love is a whole 'nother LONG story that I should go into another time, but basically I began to realise I was falling in love with him, as more than a friend. I had no idea if he had any feelings for me like that (I presumed not) and I was scared about having such feelings. I went with a new friend from church to a prayer clinic, and explained my new feelings and that I was afraid to even consider a more-than-friends relationship with a man because I had been sexually abused several times (at 7, 14, and 19 - all completely isolated incidents from each other) and felt terrified of men in general. Hence no male friends I suppose. So they prayed. I felt SUCH an incredible sense of freedom as they prayed that I asked them to pray that Neil would have feelings for me, and that he would miss me while he was away at home over the half-term break, hahaha! Sneaky me :) Anyway, God answered that prayer right away, hehe! Neil told me he really missed me that break and it surprised him how much. Mwa-ha-ha! ;)

Okay I was so confident that on the way out from the prayer clinic I stopped at the Christian bookshop and bought a book on weddings, hehehe! My friend said that was a bit premature, but I just knew :)

So needless to say, God blessed me with my wonderful husband. Long lonnng story of how it all happened, but that's for another entry. I could not IMAGINE a more perfect husband for me. God has blessed me so much :) Thank you God for blessing me with my wonderful husband!!

I got sick with M.E. right after we married and was housebound for 2 years, and that was a MISERABLE time, but most of you already know that God healed me, November 10th 2001!! Thank you God for healing me when I was sick. I LOVE you Lord.

The most precious gift I was ever given here on this earth is my baby boy. I know he is a gift from God. November 9th 2005. Wow, nice things happen to me in November, don't they?! :) Thank you Jesus for my precious little boy. What an incredible blessing.

NOW I have mucho-nausea and a teeny tiny beating heart deep in my body - yet another blessing from God! Thank you Lord for my precious second child who I know you are knitting together even as I write this.

I am just so blessed. God has done so many other amazing things in my life these last 10 years, too many to write about. He has literally provided thousands of pounds from absolutely nowhere when we have been stuck financially - twice. He blessed us with our first two homes. One of them would not have been ours to live in without God's amazing financial blessing. He provided the exact amount we prayed for. God is just awesome.

Soooo many tiny things that God did that could not be explained any other way, much to the annoyance of my parents, who were extremely against my being a Christian! Like the time when Mummy lost her wedding ring in the garden and we all searched for HOURS, and she was so upset and crying and saying it was gone for good, and suddenly I thought I could not believe I hadn't thought to ask God! I stood there in the garden and prayed silently, and immediately had a visual image in my mind's eye of a branch with twigs coming off it in a certain way, with the ring lying at its root. It took me all of 10 seconds to find the branch exactly as my mind saw it, and there was the ring at the foot of it :) My parents were soooo confused when I told them what God has showed me!

Or the time I lay hands on my cat and prayed that his arthritis in his little front paws would go away, and he leapt up like I touched him with a hot poker and stood there shaking his front paws about weirdly (I kid you not!) and immediately lost his limp, haha! Yup. They couldn't explain that one either :)

God is so incredibly awesomely wonderful, and I love him so so so so so much. It's a different type of love I suppose, but incredibly intimate, and I would definitely say that I love him more than I even love my own son. For those of you with children of your own, or even those of you who have an idea of how much I totally LOVE Arthur, you see that my love for God is overwhelming. I have a living relationship with God, I think that's what it is that makes me love him so. Only it's much more than that also. I don't just choose to believe in a set of beliefs. I just KNOW God, personally, like I know Neil or my mum I suppose. It's different though, but hard to explain.

Anyway, I love him! Love him love him love him! I wish I had stuck closer to him over the years. I wish I was closer to him NOW than I am. I get distracted by life and forget to tune into his presence every day. I feel sad about that, especially when I think of all those things he has blessed me with. Those are like the solid part of a cake. The filling and the icing and decoration have been the countless times I have spent in his presence, just "being" with him. Or crying my heart out and begging him to draw me close to him, and suddenly feeling something that can never be described, as though somebody just communicated to me that they loved me beyond my brain's capacity to understand it or my body's ability to feel it. I love the times where I have just felt "lost" in God. Like there's nothing else in the world but God and me. Like nothing else matters. I could sing of my love for him forever at those times, and spend the rest of my days talking with him and praising him. Sing sing singing when he puts music in my heart and I feel it run through my veins and pour out of my tear ducts as I sing it.

I can't imagine continuing my life as I was before I gave my life to Jesus. I just can't begin to imagine. I am so glad that I didn't. I can't even tell you. I would not be where I am now. I would not have the people in my life that I have now. I would not be the person that I am now. Maybe I wouldn't even be around now?

Anyway, I am so thankful to God for these last 10 years! He is the main definition of what my life is about. Now if only I could live that out more....

Well, that is what I wanted to write about tonight. I also needed to update about Arthur's physio appointment with his feet. We have to go back at the beginning of December after he is a year old. If he is walking by then, we'll see how his feet do, and fit him into STIFF walking shoes, ugh! If he isn't walking by then, he needs one or two more sets of full-leg plaster casts!!! :( I am so bummed about this. But his feet just aren't quite getting straight enough on their own, and they will only cause him problems in the future if it's not fixed. I am still hoping that he will start walking and we'll fit him with boxy stiff shoes and those will correct his feet as he walks. But it does seem likely that he will be in plaster casts yet again. Only one or two sets though, she hopes, and once that is done it will be sooooooo worth it. My poor Boo! So we wait and see till December.

Okay, this was much longer than I thought it would be - I'm glad I got to write about it in more detail! I feel grim now though, so I'm going to bed. No photos today, must take some new ones soon!

11 months old!! And lots of photos! :)

Arthur is 11 months old today!!! I can hardly believe it! 11 months seems soooo old compared with the other numbers he's been through so far! One month today until his first birthday. That just seems impossible to believe. My baby is growing up! Waaaah!!

One month feels like such a short time to think about what we might do to celebrate his first birthday. We have already decided to have a small family gathering. I figure this birthday is one that he will NOT mind one jot that there are no other little ones his age! I like the idea of keeping it cosy and intimate with our family, and also the fact that everyone present will be absolutely besotted with the birthday boy, and not distracted from him by 10 other babies! ;) I am so proud for him to be the absolute centre of attention on his special day!

His birthday falls on a Wednesday, so we will have to do the family thing the following Saturday so that people who work can come. Neil is going to try to take Arthur's actual birthday off work, and I really want us to spend the day together doing all of Arthur's favourite things! And we can give him our presents on that day too. I wish we could have the family celebrate his birthday ON his actual birthday, but oh well.

This weekend we decided what we are going to buy him as his main present. We have a list of various toys and activities that we particularly want him to have over the next few years, mostly things that we loved ourselves as children, or stuff that we've seen that we know he will really go for, or really cool fun stuff that happens to be educational, etc. We made a big list. I partly based it on a survey I saw online where somebody asked other mothers what the best gifts were that their one-year-olds got on their birthdays. That has been very helpful in figuring out what things will actually be a waste of money/space and what things will be a great investment of fun and stimulation for all of our children to come.

Anyway, we really wanted to get him something big as his main present for his birthday, and for Christmas too. He is so into moving about at the moment. We want to get him a rocker for his birthday, and a little trike for Christmas. A rocker like this one maybe, and a basic little wooden trike and trailer like this one - just something he can play with indoors and shovel along with his feet. We'd get him an outdoor bike/trike later down the line I think.

My parents are getting him a garage with some cars, and ramps and a lift, etc. I remember having a Fisher Price two storey garage when I was little and I LOVED it! It was one of my favourite things, and my brother's too. I really wanted to get Arthur something like that, and I found such a nice one, and my mum asked if they could get it for his birthday, so that's great!! We want to get him a mini trampoline, the ones that are suitable from 12 months with the handle bar. Arthur HAS to bounce on the bed, holding onto the headboard (same height as his shoulders) like a handle bar, EVERY DAY at the moment!! He loves to jump soooo much! He gasps and squeals as he bounces, it's too cute :) When the momentum wears off, he pauses for a moment and then starts afresh with renewed energy, nodding his head vigorously for extra effect, hehe! I know he would absolutely LOVE a mini trampoline. Of course where we would HOUSE all these enormous toys is another matter!

Anyway. It's so crazy that he has a birthday coming up. My baby - a birthday boy!!! Okay so it's still a whole month away, but still. I have to get my head round it, and I know that will take at LEAST a month! I have already started working on a letter that I want him to be able to read when he's older. I love that sort of tradition, writing a letter to your little one on special occasions in their life. I WISH I had written him one right after he was born, or during my pregnancy with him. I will have to make a point of doing that with this new baby. I have no idea how long my letter will end up being! I am LONG-winded with words (I hear you all gasp with surprise at that revelation, hehe!) so it could be an epic! ;)

Okay, I have a lot of photos to post, so I had better get started! Thanks Mallory and Megan for your nice comments on the last lot of photos!! :)

Okay first of all, what is up with different brands having COMPLETELY different sizes, even though they are labelled the same?!! I am discovering that anything I buy from the States is way smaller than the same size in UK baby clothes. We have Gap here, but they come up small too. I got a lovely pair of Carter's dungarees from eBay (we don't have them here) and they are size 18 months, but they are TINY!! They fit Arthur well now (except a bit of a roll-up on the legs, as he has such short lil leggies!), but see, look at them (on the left) next to the pair of Tesco dungarees, size 12-18 months on the right:

All the US baby clothes I have are seriously THAT much smaller than the UK ones! For some reason I expected the opposite. I remember Arthur grew out of an Old Navy 6-12 month sleeper at 15 weeks old, hahaha! Okay but those Carter's dungies are really cute on him! I had to take some pics. Here he is being busy at his toy basket:

Lil Boo still LOVES reading! Did I say this already? - he now goes over to his books (as you can see in the above photos, we keep his little "library" low down with his toys where he can access them easily), selects one, pulls it out, and sits down with it on his lap to "read" it! He turns the pages well now, by himself, and he particularly loves books with flaps that you have to lift to see a hidden picture, at the moment. He will sit himself down with one of these books and turn the pages, looking at the pictures with great concentration, and scrabble at the edges of the flaps with his fingernails to open them :) See?...

Of course eventually, when you have turned enough pages and flaps, at 11 months old, books are still just really good to eat! After he has finished reading, I know when he has had enough because he starts turning the book around to get a good angle to gnaw on it for a while! That's when I either take it from him or read it to him. Usually the latter. Anyway, here he is getting just the right biting angle, hehe!

I love to watch him sit down by himself and "read". I can't resist just watching him and keeping quiet in case I disturb him and he stops! I had to take some photos this time. I just wanted a record. He also still loves being read a story at any time. It is always something that can divert a fuss about something, or distract after a bump or fall. A cuddle on my lap and a story works wonders! I usually nurse him if he hurts himself badly or is really upset though. He always gets so mad when a book finishes, hehe! We usually have to read many in a row, or the same one several times over. Here he is reading his dinosaur book (and then his puppy one!) with Daddy yesterday - the first one came out blurry for some reason:

The boy LOVES his books!! :)

Arthur is such a lively little boy at the moment. He needs to go out once or twice each day to see the world and other people. This is going to be tiring on me as my pregnancy progresses! But hopefully I will have a good pregnancy and feel energetic through the middle trimester at least. He is constantly moving in the house - constantly! He cruises, crawls, bounces, climbs up and down the stairs, pulls up and down on things. Even when he is sitting he constantly changes position! He has this thing he does at the moment where he shakes his head vigorously in a really swingy way, from side to side until it makes him sway with giddiness when he stops! He particularly does it when he knows either me or Neil is about to play a chase game with him or pretend to eat him! He does it with the biggest grin on his face, and squeals too! He is so funny, that boy.

He does what we call his "power crawl" if he wants to get somewhere super fast. He crawls so fast for a spurt, say across a room, that he has to put his head down like a bull stampeding towards a red flag, hehe! His chubby little thighs wobble like crazy as his knees pummel the floor faster then I knew he could move his legs past each other! It is actually pretty hard to catch him when he crawls like this, as he moves SO fast. The only sad thing about it is that he sometimes crawls right into something hard with his head still down (like a bed or other piece of furniture), with a huge BANG, and then lots of tears! It's so sad when he does that, as he usually set off so fast because he was excited about something or wanting us to play chase and catch with him. Then it all ends in tears and it's so sad for him :( Of course we do everything we can to comfort him and kiss him better and hold him close. We love him so fiercely! Fiercely seems like a weird word in that sentence, but it's so accurate. It's like a fiery grip sometimes, the extent of my love for him. It overwhelms me completely, all the time. It's a FIERCE love, this mama's love thing!

Okay here are some photos of Arthur today, on his 11-month birthday! Today he did lots of things with Daddy because Mummy was flaked out feeling pregnant and catching up on some rest a lot of the time! He loves his time with Neil. He really likes a lot of things Neil likes, already. He LOVES watching birds. I never saw a baby so fascinated by birds before. I know pretty much all babies are interested in them and will watch them for ages, but Arthur just seems so taken with them. He looks so eager when he is watching them, and he doesn't like it when they are all gone. He will watch pigeons flying overhead instead of waving Daddy off as he drives off to work in the morning, if there are any pigeons there - much as he loves waving Daddy off! Anyway, Neil loves birds. He has always enjoyed bird watching. I think they are going to have some lovely times watching birds in the country when Arthur is older.

Also Arthur seems to absolutely LOVE sitting on his daddy's lap watching sports that bore me silly on TV! He likes football, and he particularly likes the Grand Prix. Snore! He really seems so excited by it though, it's funny! Today they watched the Grand Prix together for maybe 10 minutes. Arthur's attention usually wanders in that time unless he's occupied with something he's really interested in, like a certain toy, or a book. Or the Grand Prix, as it turns out. *sigh*

And here is Arthur with his Mummy, who should have been out of those pyjamas many hours before this photo was taken!

Pyjamas are GREAT to do the "nurse-on-a-whim" thing that Arthur is doing these days! The great thing about all his marathon nursing lately is that my milk seems to have bounced back big time, and I have lots again. I'm glad :) I just hope it lasts! We finally started Arthur on cereal for breakfast, as I pumped him some milk to go on it. He got to have fresh mango with it, and he seemed to like it. He has oat cereal at the moment.

Arthur still requests music all day long. He likes to push the button on his musical toy so that a tune starts playing, then make his pop-up orchestra start playing a tune, and then immediately go to the hi-fi and pull up by it, calling to me in urgent tones so that I'll put some music on for him!! I don't know why he wants it all on at once though, funny boy! Lately we have had Mozart on in the daytime. I like it. I wanted to see what Arthur thought, and he only gets antsy when there's a really slow quiet track. Today and yesterday I have put my Daddy's music on. It's classical and with lots of piano in it. He composed and played it, and it's extra special to me (besides that) because it's the music I used to let Arthur listen to in the womb. I used to put headphones on my belly and play the whole CD all the way through. Mostly I would put another set of headphones on for me to hear it too. I liked feeling how Arthur jumped about a lot to some pieces and went more quiet to others.

He hasn't heard Daddy's music since he was in the womb, so I wondered if he would recognise it. I watched a programme a few years ago (Child of Our Time, I think) on BBC1 (or was it 2?) where they did a study of this. They had their babies listen to the same music every time in the womb, and then they didn't hear the music at all till they were a year old. At a year old, they let the babies hear the music in a lab setting, sat on their mother's laps (the mothers had headphones on so they couldn't hear what was going on, just in case they affected things). The babies sat in a room with two spheres, one on either side of the room. When they looked at one sphere, it started rotating and a tune played that was similar to the one they heard in the womb, but not the same one. If they looked at the other sphere, the first sphere stopped and so did the music, and the second sphere rotated with a new tune playing - the one they heard in the womb. This way the babies could demonstrate control over the music playing, and show by the length of time focused on a specific sphere, and their behaviour when listening, whether or not they could remember their womb music after all that time. Anyway the study showed 100% that the babies recognised their womb music clearly.

When I put Daddy's music on, Arthur went soooo quiet!! He just went completely still and listened with his head on one side, for ages. I picked him up and he stayed still in my arms, listening for several minutes. He seemed remarkably calm in himself. It was lovely!

Okay it's getting late and I hear Neil getting ready for bed. I had better finish this entry off and get some sleep. What else can I add before I go? Oh, Arthur loves a plain old plastic bowl at the moment, to play with! He will play with it on the kitchen floor for ages! It keeps him really entertained, and all he does is pick it up, throw it down, watch it roll or settle on the floor, crawl after it, pick it up, etc. Today Neil got out a wooden spoon and showed him how to bang the bottom of the bowl with it like a drum. He was so sweet watching Neil so carefully, and he seemed so excited when Neil gave him the spoon to have his own turn! At first he would not hit the bowl with the end of the spoon, he always had to make contact with the bowl with his own hand, so he would hold the spoon and then bash the bowl with his hand clutching the spoon! Neil showed him over and over again, and eventually he got it!! Clever boy! He had so much fun! Then imagine his excitement when Neil got out a SECOND wooden spoon and showed him how to bang BOTH of them on the bowl, and also bang them together like drumsticks!! He had such a great time, and picked it up quickly. Here he is flapping them around (and finally, eating one of them, of course!):

Okay and that will have to be it for tonight. I am tired out. I wanted to write more waffle about my thoughts and about Arthur - there seems to be so much to say about him at the moment, he is doing so much and changing so fast!

The one thing that never changes is that I love this little boy soooooooooooooooooooooo much. I can't even begin to describe it. He is such a delight, and he fills my whole life with joy. He is so precious. I'll finish with a photo that makes my heart squeeze nearly out of my throat with how much I love him and what a happy, joyful little person he is. I love him so very much. My little man.

Sixth toothie, and things about nursing

I am just heating up a slice of humble pie ;) Thank you so much for all the messages! I didn't realise so many people can't see Arthur's video clips with dial-up - what a shame! Kat, somehow I did miss your congrats for Arthur on his first step! Thank you for that message!! I'm soooo glad you guys liked the video clips! :) Of course I am biased, but Arthur is so cute when he laughs ;) I am so happy to keep catching him laughing on video! Anyway, I officially realise how good my online friends are ;) Thank you! xx

Arthur got toothie number six 2 days ago, right when I expected it! I love how I always know to expect a tooth exactly 3 days after I see that eroded dent thing on his gum. So far I haven't missed seeing that the day it appears, so I always find the new toothie right when I expect it. He is still teething though, but I remember that he had some bad teething pain for a good few days after all his other teeth came through. This evening he has such hot red cheeks, and they look kind of puffy too, poor Arthur. We gave him Calpol before bed tonight. The new toothie is still just a wink of white, but you can just about see it. He had four at the top now, and two at the bottom. Here is his latest toothy smile, taken this morning!...

This boy NEVER stops smiling!! Mind you, he has been that way since he could first make his facial muscles do it, hehe! I remember when he was 8 weeks old I posted this entry and Marlen said that she never saw a baby Arthur's age smile so much! :) Funny how I still remember specific comments about my cutie from so long ago! He really has been a smiler, since the early weeks. He smiled at 4 weeks old for the first time, and he just constantly looks so happy and smiley! I love that :) Here he is again, a bit later on today:

Well I can't stay for a long entry tonight because it's getting late and I am already so tired. I have had a little more energy today though, which is good. I think I may have a little less milk today. Arthur has been clingy and wanting to nurse all day long, which is really unlike him. Maybe it's just that he is taking less at night now? But I suppose the greatest likelihood is pregnancy induced milk reduction. I have also noticed - I can't remember from when, because it seems to have happened gradually - that when Arthur is nursing on one breast, the other doesn't leak and wet my clothes any more. In fact I don't leak at all any more, except when he is nursing and then pulls away when my milk is letting down. Then I leak from the side he was on, but not all over the place or anything. Today I was remembering how many pairs of breast pads I used to soak through in a day a few months ago - crazy amounts!!! And how when Arthur came off the breast, a little jet of milk would be spraying out in a 2-or-3-inch stream at him, hehe! It's so different now. I guess my milk supply IS totally different now that he's at such a different stage of breastfeeding. Those things were when he was exclusively breastfed. I haven't noticed any less milk since he started solids, but the supply hasn't been so ferocious I suppose. He has certainly had plenty. At the moment I am getting nervous that he isn't getting enough, but I think that is unfounded because every time he nurses, he gulps and gasps during the let-down for a while. He is nursing for longer today too, and yesterday now I come to think of it, which makes me wonder if it's taking him longer to get the amount he's used to getting. Lately I have been checking after he's finished and I think he isn't getting any more milk - I squeeze to try to express a little, and always get white milk right away, so I guess there's still enough there. It just makes me feel a bit uneasy that there are signs that something is changing there. I want to be sure I keep a close eye on my supply to be sure what he is getting.

He is eating the same amount of solids. I think his tea is getting bigger though, and sometimes he seems ravenous for lunch! I always nurse him after meals, but today he has wanted to nurse such a lot. He has been sort of clingy and whiney more than usual as well. I hope he's not coming down with something, but it could just be teething pain. I have let him clamber on me and cuddle as much as he has wanted to today, and have stayed close to him, playing on the floor with him most of the day. For the last 2 hours till Neil got home tonight, I just opened both bra flaps and gave him full access to both breasts during our play time! Just having them visibly available seemed to make him more settled, and he did nurse like eleventy times over that period. He got milk each time because I could hear that he was, so that was reassuring.

Over the last few days, Arthur has started to let me cradle him for long nursing sessions on the sofa again, which I LOVE!!! He has been such a wriggle-bum for months now, and since he could sit up without support he has nursed snack-style, for brief moments, sitting, standing, climbing, kneeling, anything but the traditional cosy cradled baby position! And often trying to move about while nursing, which gave me serious elastic nipple syndrome, haha! Anyway, I love the longer, quieter, cosy nursing sessions. Sometimes when I am nursing him, I look down and watch him and really realise that he is nearly a year old, and I feel so amazed and proud that I am still nursing him! It feels like such an achievement for me. I don't think I had any major concept of nursing a baby for this long before I got pregnant with Arthur and did some reading about it, and figured it was the best thing for him. I guess I just figured once they are on solids, babies lose interest in the breast and weaning is easy. Now I know! ;) It feels such a sense of freedom to have no agenda on weaning - with the exception of night-weaning now that we are soooooo sleep deprived, hehe! But to have no goal like that, it's so nice. But the "down" side is that I am dreading when he chooses to wean himself! I am so hoping he will want to continue nursing through my pregnancy, even for comfort when my milk is sparse, and enjoy nursing for a long time to come yet.

I need to take more photos of Arthur breastfeeding. I know I will regret not having done so when he weans and it's all just a warm fuzzy memory. I have some recent ones from a month or so ago, but they reveal waaaay too much of both of us, so they are just for me to gaze at wistfully! :)

Arthur is waking. It's 10.38pm so a normal wake time for him really.

Okay, I'm back - now it's 10.47pm. Arthur is so precious. I love him so much. It's amazing how mushy I continue to feel as I nurse him, even though he's not a little tiny baby any longer. He DOES seem so much littler at night though, when he's half-asleep :) I could have stayed next to him all night just now, instead of getting up and letting Neil take my place. He didn't want much milk and got gaggy pretty quickly. I think he is way fuller at night than he used to be, because he quickly gets that gaggy face after not-that-much milk, like he is just toooo full. After that he just went back off to sleep, snuggled with his tummy against me, his hand on my neck, his leg flung over my hip. I can't think of anything more.... I can't even thing of the right word! Wonderful? Intimate? Cosy? Those don't really describe it. It's wonderful anyway :)

Last night I nursed him at 12.30am. I just wanted to. Usually that is in our window where I don't go in, but I jumped right up and went to nurse him. I just couldn't keep away! I sometimes just NEED to be near him, as much as he needs me close to him. After that I came back to bed, and he did not wake again till the dot of 6am!!!!!!!!! Wow!! Of course *I* woke at 4.30am feeling all restless and thinking, "Where is my little man?! I miss him! Will he wake soon?!" etc! I fully expected him to wake at any time, but I guess I fell back to sleep thinking about it because next thing I knew he was waking and it was 6am. Amazing. I don't expect the same again, because it never works that way! In a way it's perfect for me because at the moment I LOVE to be disturbed to nurse him. It's even nicer and easier now that he is waking less frequently - I WANT to nurse him in the night now that he's waking less frequently. But I will be careful not to disturb the pattern he's starting to develop, by lumbering in and giving him the breast when he might happily let Daddy rub his back to fall back to sleep! Sometimes I just will though. I love nursing him soooo much. If he does have more long stretches of sleep, that is great too, since it means he is better rested and I get better/more sleep too!!! Yay!

I need to go to bed. I'm sure there's more to write. OH OF COURSE THERE IS!!! I almost forgot, Neil finally managed to phone the place where he applied for the job, and they told him he did not get it. Bummer. BUT, it turns out to be quite positive, because they gave him great feedback and said that they would like him to apply for a couple of other jobs within the same company, as they feel he is much more suited to those. These two jobs are currently up for applications, and the closing date is October 14th, so Neil can get onto that right away! Yay! I feel like somewhere along the line he is meant to work for this company, and we are meant to relocate because of it. I think these jobs would mean we have to move to slightly different locations than the other job would have taken us, so we'll have to look out schools, churches and houses again, but that's okay. God will lead us to the exact right place to bring up our family, so I'm confident :)

I will leave you with two photos of something I found Arthur doing yesterday in the kitchen! He has such a thing for drawers at the moment, urgh! This means trapped fingers and paperwork all over the floor a lot of the time! We need to fix some sort of thingy to them so that he can't open them really, but he loves them so much, and we have soooooo many drawers in the house that we couldn't possibly child-proof them all! He rarely traps his fingers though, and when he does it's because I wasn't right there watching, which I usually am. If I'm with him he is okay, and he does learn from trapping his fingers sometimes. He will avoid the drawer in question for a while but then forget all about it a few hours later!

Anyway, the kitchen drawers (ones that I bashed together from a plank of wood, painted white, and bought 3 basic wooden handles to put on them!) are especially rolly and contain interesting things, like boxes containing enormous rolls of 100 food bags with tie handles...

Little monkey! It took me ages to re-roll them all up again! Longer than when he unravels an entire loo roll (!!) because they are slippery. But I can't bear to restrict my monkey boy from such mischief! I'm sure it's good for his character or something, hehe! Plus otherwise I would not get to giggle with my husband when he comes home from work and we have put Arthur to bed, and I show him the photographic evidence of what Arthur has been up to today!