Urrrrrrrgh :(

Everything is going wrong :(

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arthur is awake again.

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

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

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

Neil's dad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lonnnnnng update and photos!

Ohhh my gosh, TWO WEEKS since my last entry! This will never do! I seem to have no time to update, or when I do, I am too tired. But now I just have waaay too much to write about in one go! Neil and Arthur are taking a walk in the park, but not for much longer, so I have a little window of time to start a diary entry.

Let's see. I will have to try and summarise briefly or something, and then get on with photos and more detailed stuff! I have toooo many photos to post this entry, seriously. Maybe I'll have to split it into two entries? We'll see.

Okay so what has happened in the past two weeks?

Arthur and I went to Playgroup, not last Wednesday but the one before, as he had just got over the cold he caught from the time we went before. He had a nice time, but got cranky during song time, which seems to be an increasingly common thing for Arthur. He just LOVES the toys and running around so much that he hates the bit where you have to sit still, even for singing (which he actually loves)! Arthur runs EVERYWHERE now. He has totally got the hang of it. It's still a cute stumpy little toddler's run, but not so stumbly anymore - he doesn't look like he's about to fall down at any second like he used to! He loves to run and does it complete with exaggerated fast breathing too :) He gets so excited about the speed he's going at or something, bless him!

Anyway, Playgroup was good. I got brave and took the camera, and ignored the attention I created every time the flash went off! I just want photos of my lil man doing stuff that I know I'll be wistfully remembering in NO time at all! So here he is during drink-and-biscuit time. He is sat right at the back on the far right, contemplating his biscuit and the kids in front of him! He never looks for me. He didn't even notice I had slipped off to take his photo, or that I had come back again! This was about half the children on this particular day. There isn't enough room for them all to have their drinks and biscuits at once:

As soon as he'd finished his biscuit, he climbed out of his chair (he doesn't like to hang around!) and rushed off to the big hall to play. It was nice and empty with most of the little ones having their snacks. Arthur did his usual thing, walked around looking at all the toys until he settled on one or two that he chose to play with, and never looked for me once! Here he is pushing a wooden trolley thingy, and playing with a toy hoover. After that he ran out of the hall and I followed, and that was the end of my photo-taking opportunities! But it was fun :)

Except that by the weekend Arthur had ANOTHER cold, ugh! This brings his total since the beginning of January to 4 colds and a viral cough! Before that he had like ONE cold in his whole life! Or was it two? Anyway, it's a completely different picture this year. He is averaging a cold every other week! It's not nice for him and it makes life more difficult for Neil and I, but I'm not too unhappy about it. It's great practise for his immune system (which he really needs) and I just thank God that it hasn't been vomity bugs all this time. Colds I can handle! The only other thing that makes me curious is that the first week of January is the exact same week that my breastmilk dried up. He hasn't had any since, although he has continued nursing. That totally coincides with the start of all these colds (to the week!). I think my milk must have been playing a much bigger part than I thought in protecting him against colds and stuff. I read that it's true, but I didn't really believe it somehow! Also I know lots of people who breastfeed and their babies still have a ton of colds and bugs. But I guess in our case it really HAS been true that my milk has made a big difference, immune-wise for Arthur. He has had a little more exposure to other children in the same time-frame though, so it's probably partly that. And the time of year, etc. In the last week or so, I have started producing colostrum ready for the new baby, and I can't even DESCRIBE how excited I am about it!! Arthur is getting some goodness from me again, and I'm thrilled! He nurses as much as always, and showed absolutely no signs of registering the arrival of colostrum! He is just like that with breastfeeding. I am so excited to be able to officially call it "breastfeeding" again too! :) I felt funny about calling it that when I had zero milk, but now he's getting something, I am "feeding" him again :)

Anyway. So he has had a cold. Neil and I both caught it this time and felt crappy for a few days, but we seem to have thrown it off pretty quickly. Arthur is almost better. Still a bit snotty but it's a week since it started so he's well out of the woods now :) I am taking him to the doctor tomorrow though, because he keeps having miserable moments that aren't like him at all, and we wonder if he's hurting somewhere, so we give him Calpol and he's right as rain within 30 minutes. I wonder if he might have an ear infection or something? He has no temperature and is eating and otherwise fine, but it's best to get these things checked out, so I'll take him. He is a PERMANENT teether though, so it could always be teeth.

Oh this was meant to be a summary! Whoops! What else has happened lately?

Oh my parents came to visit!!!!! Yay! It was soooo nice to see them! Arthur doesn't get to see them often, but he seemed to actually remember them (I wasn't sure that was even possible at his age, since he last saw them at 13 months old - surely before he can do that kind of long-term memory?) and loved every second of their company! I did too :) Mummy spent a whole day with us on the Monday, and then she and Daddy visited us together for a couple of hours the next day. Here is a photo of Arthur and my Daddy, just before Arthur went upstairs for his nap and Mummy and Daddy left:

Arthur just seems so relaxed with my parents, which I'm so glad about as I thought it might be the other way around since he rarely sees them. He is a particular fan of Grandy (my daddy) and posed for the above photo without any arranging from us! I just grabbed the camera :) Their visit was over far too quickly, but they are coming back in a week or two for a couple of days :) They came because Granny had a hip replacement and they wanted to help out and visit her in hospital and stuff, and they're coming back to do similar stuff again. Her op went really well and she is at home and doing great, so I'm really happy and relieved about that. Arthur and I are going to visit on Tuesday :) Arthur drew a picture with his crayons and I made it into a card for Granny. She loved it! I love that Arthur is really getting into drawing more, though he presses sooooooo lightly with pens/pencils/crayons that you can hardly see anything on the page! He is getting the hang of dotting (well, banging!) the crayon onto the paper and making dots and lines that way, which are much more bold and he likes to see what he has drawn. He likes to use ALL the colours on one drawing, not just one or two! I'm relieved that he has finally stopped trying to eat the crayons! He is more interested in sorting them than drawing still. He sorts EVERYTHING. It's his passion ;)

He had his wooden bricks out a week or so ago and was playing with them for ages really quietly. When I stopped to see what he was doing, I found he was sorting them into shapes and had already built two long lines of different types of shapes along the carpet! I took a photo, and he didn't even bat an eyelid, he was that engrossed! He usually stops whatever he's doing to get hold of the camera, but lately he has started to find things too absorbing to bother with the camera. Here he is with his sorted bricks (thick rectangles and thin rectangles), and you can see he is busy working on sorting the arch-shaped bricks and putting them in a line too :)

Last week, Arthur and I went shopping in town as he desperately needed new shoes again. He is now in a Clarks size 4.5G, but a 4G in Startrite. I am picky and those the only two brands I will consider for him. Good shoes with the right fit are soooo important for little ones. They have to be good quality for their growing feet, and to support all the new things they are learning to do properly. In Arthur's case, he especially needs good shoes with a perfect fit because of his previous troubles with his feet. The physio had told me I should buy him new unused shoes, not ones that someone had previously worn, because his feet are a different shape to most, and he needs a brand new shoe to mould to his own foot shape. Urgh. She's absolutely right, of course, but we can't afford it!! We have just NO money at the moment, and good quality baby shoes are so expensive, and he outgrows them every other month at the moment. But we decided it's a priority. I keep my eyes peeled at eBay constantly, because occasionally someone sells a brand new, unused pair of Clarks or Startrite shoes in his size. But I could barely squeeze his previous shoes on his feet last week, so we had to go shopping.

After MUCH deliberation, I bought him a pair of leather Startrite shoes that should hopefully fit him for another six weeks. They were £31!!! But fantastic quality and well worth the money. And they fit him wonderfully :) He had a few days of tripping over the toes every few steps but he's used to them now. Oddly enough, some of the Clarks and Startrite shoes that he tried on in the shops didn't fit his foot shape well at all. I had presumed if one design in that brand fit him, they all would, but the sales lady said that all the designs are shaped a little differently, even for the same brand. Who knew! There is so much detail about children's shoes, and it's harder than I thought to get the fit just perfect for the individual little one. It's also good to know because now I need to be careful I don't bid on a new pair of shoes on eBay that is in a design I haven't had him tried in, as it might not fit him well after all.

Hmmm, where are those boys? It's past Arthur's tea time.... I should think they walked further than they expected and will probably be home any minute. It's raining so maybe they are drying off or something?! Arthur doesn't seem to mind walking in the rain, and we have a sweet little red raincoat for him so he keeps nice and dry :) When they get home I'll have to stop this and finish it later if I have the energy. Evenings are just pfthth at the moment.

Oh but when we were in town, I decided to splash out (!) and buy Arthur some Stickle Bricks! They're not enormously expensive and I have wanted some for him for months, but lately I can see that he would REALLY get so much out of playing with them - they are just the perfect kind of toy for him right now, with how much he loves building and sorting things. They are different from any of the building stuff he has played with so far. I really wanted some for him. My mum wanted to buy some for him when she was here, but she couldn't find any in the shops, so we went hunting for some last week! I finally found some in The Entertainer :) When we got home from town, we were running late for Arthur's lunch. He usually does NOT tolerate this well!! He likes his lunch on time! I went straight to the kitchen to prepare his lunch, but Arthur was clutching and fussing around the new box of Stickle Bricks, which he had pulled out of the shopping bag. In the end I took the packaging off it for him, helped him take the lid off the box, and left him to explore it while I made lunch.

I called him from the kitchen when it was ready - usually if he isn't already in there clamouring for his food while I'm making it, he comes running when I call him for lunch! But he didn't come! So I went to see what was keeping him. He was absolutely engrossed in playing with his new Stickle Bricks! I told him it was time for lunch and he didn't even look up! I honestly never saw him so enthralled with a new toy before, even his iron, which is saying something! Although his iron was slightly different - he was just plain THRILLED and excited about it! With the Stickle Bricks, he was instantly absorbed and nothing could tempt him away! He had already started sorting and pressing together the various shapes and colours. I sat with him for 5 minutes and took some pictures. Here they are :) He had already sorted the blue squares into one sticky bundle, and the long red rectangles. And the little bundle of circles in front of him, with all different colours. He was working on the green rectangles when I was sitting with him, and he was soooo pleased with himself when he finished sticking them all together!...

Hehe! After that he stuck the long thin orange ones together and then worked on a few more circles:

He loves those Stickle Bricks soooo much! I am so glad I got them for him, and that I was right about them being a great buy for him right now. He has played with them such a lot already! I wish I had bought them for him around his first birthday when I initially wanted him to have some, but we chose set things to spend the money on and planned to get him some later. Oh well. Better now than not at all! :) They keep him happy in the car if we are sitting in traffic or going on a longer journey than usual, he just loves them! I love to watch him play with them. He has such cute expressions of extreme concentration! I love to watch him concentrate on stuff.

Okay I hear the car pulling up, so I will finish this later and get my lil man some tea! :)

Back, and Arthur is asleep for the night. The clocks went forward last night but he is so far following all the normal times even with the change, which is good (so far!). It's 8pm now and he's been asleep for 10 minutes or so, which is even a little on the early side for Arthur! He woke up at his normal 6.30am today but our clocks said that was 7.30am. I hope he doesn't get wise and adjust!

We are in the process of making some big changes to our two bedrooms in preparation for becoming a family of four! We plan to all sleep in our bedroom (the bigger one), as that's what we do now, and I don't want to be separated from my little ones at night anyway. Well, that's awfully hypocritical of me, considering that I have been sleeping in the other bedroom (on my own!) for most of my pregnancy!!! But Arthur and Neil sleep in the big family bed. I sometimes sleep there with them, but mostly I have soooo needed extra sleep since getting pregnant that I have had to sleep in the other bedroom. My sleep gets so much worse when I'm pregnant, and I have always found it hard to sleep with Neil when I'm having a run of bad sleep! He's so noisy - not snoring, but grinding and chomping (!!) and snuffling and doing these ENORMOUS deep breaths that sound like all the air being let out of a balloon. Loudly! It drives me crazy. He tosses and turns a lot too, but remains dead to the world throughout, somehow! I, on the other hand, get disturbed a lot by his fidgettiness. Add to that a toddler who still likes to wake and be resettled by Mummy between 1 and 4 times per night, and I just end up with no choice but to sleep away from them while I'm pregnant so that the little sleep I DO get is at least decent quality! But I miss being all close and snuggly with them. I am just not a good sleeper.

I don't think Arthur is disturbed by Neil's fidgetting though. Sometimes I hear Neil from across the hall (!) and Arthur always sleeps soundly through it. He tends to wake at vaguely predictable times, like he is just in the habit of waking around those times, and even me not nursing him has not managed to break that habit. I don't know what else to do really. We are more sure than we have ever been that we will not CIO. He does roll all OVER the bed though, and sometimes that's why he wakes. He ends up in the corner or out of the covers along the pillows! I think we really need to get going with our plan to transition him to the single mattress part of the family floor bed, as that will restrict his space and hopefully lead to less rolling around and getting stuck or uncovered.

Anyway. We aren't sure about co-sleeping with Matthew, because it has just been SO hard with Arthur. I desperately want to co-sleep, as nothing else feels natural to me. But with Arthur still so newbornish in his night-waking patterns, and the worry about Matthew doing the same thing, we are just simply nervous about how we'd manage. So far we are thinking to have Matthew sleep in the moses basket at the foot of our part of the bed. That way Arthur wouldn't have any access to him in the night, or at least none that wouldn't wake us up as he clambered over us! Realistically, I think I will end up with Matthew in the bed with us plenty anyway, because it's infinitely easier to breastfeed at night that way! So we'll see how that pans out. By the time he outgrows the moses basket, we'll know whether to move him to the bassinet part of the travel cot and maybe the cotbed after that, or co-sleep with both our boys :)

The only thing I was anxious about was if it was a total disaster for all of us to be in the same room. Like if Matthew was colicky or hard to settle at night, and woke Arthur a lot in the same room. I'm not trying to be pessimistic about things, but we have had such a difficult time with Arthur's sleep from the start, that I think it's the most self-preserving way to think! If I think we might have the same troubles, or worse, then I'll be prepared if that happens. If they don't happen then it's a WONDERFUL bonus! My mum has always said that it's a blessing to have your first child be a difficult sleeper. That way you're "toughened" to it (!!) and when you then have a child who sleeps well it is just bliss! She had so many friends who had it the other way round when my brother and I were little - their first babies were little angels with sleep and stuff, and then it was like they were hit by a mack truck when they went on to have a child/children who were difficult to manage with sleep. They all agreed that it would have been easier to deal with on the first child, so she keeps reminding me of that! Obviously I was the difficult sleeper in my family, and the firstborn! My brother started sleeping through the night at 10 weeks old!!!!!!!! My mum didn't know what to do with herself, hehe! I HOPE it's that way for us, but I feel slightly depressingly like we won't be that lucky.

Anyway so I was starting to get anxious about having a "Plan B" in case it all went horribly wrong! We decided that Plan B should involve me and Matthew sleeping in one bedroom, and Neil and Arthur in the other. Neither of us want to put Arthur or Matthew in their own room yet. They will still be soooo little, and Arthur seems to benefit enormously from all this constant proximity to us. I feel so proud that he's 16 and a half months old and has never been separated from us (well, me, but Neil too with the exception of work hours and one or two nights) for more than.... I can't even think. An hour? Maybe not even that! If he's on his own in a room for longer, it's because he's sleeping in our bed during the evening while we are downstairs. But that is the extent of his separation from us so far. It means we don't go out, don't get babysitters in... I can't even think what else we don't get to do, because to be honest we never really do that stuff anyway, even before Arthur came along. We're not big go-er outers. The only thing we used to do that we can't do anymore while we go with our guts to stay close to our little ones, is evening housegroup at church. We were a bit crappy at attending it anyway, though I do miss it sometimes. I go to the fellowship group during the day with Arthur though.

LOTS of people are starting to think (now that Arthur is getting older) that we are doing him harm by sticking so close to him, and by the fact that he has never even had a grandparent take him out for an hour or two without us. Arthur doesn't have grandparents who live locally, in fact you can count on your fingers the number of times he's seen them in his life. We haven't been blessed to have close friends and family around locally to support us, which has made it a much harder job for us than many. But it's okay. We already knew we did not plan to leave Arthur during his first year at least, as in to go out for the evening and get a babysitter in, or to leave him in creche or something for a couple of hours. It just didn't feel right to us, for the way we wanted to do things with Arthur, so that's why we chose it. People are always saying we ought to just do it, that we "deserve" time out, and that Arthur will probably be fine with it. But they don't get it at all, because none of that is the point. I am not sure when we WILL leave him for the first time, but I can't imagine doing it any time soon, especially with Matthew on the way. Delightfully, Arthur has proven the Attachment Parenting theories right in his case, being a completely secure, happy and independent little boy from very early on. He has never had to wonder where his Mummy is or become anxious about anything without me there. He doesn't even consider keeping an eye out to make sure I'm still there when we're at Playgroup or places full of people. He is just 100% sure that I will be, and I always am. He is already taking steps of confident independence away from me that *I* don't feel ready for, hehe! We'll do the same thing with Matthew and any other children we have, for sure, even if that means we don't get time out much for many years. We're lucky that we're the kind of couple who don't actually LIKE going out! ;) I hate pubs and drinking. We aren't crazy about parties. We have never been social climbers as a couple really. We like movies on our own TV and pizza for a special evening together, or a nice meal in our own home. I don't like eating out anyway. I DO sometimes think it would be nice to go to the cinema together if there's EVER a good movie out (rare, it seems!), but oh well. It doesn't matter, we just rent it when it's out and enjoy it just as much :) Also we can't afford to go out in any case, so we're saving money, hehe! ;)

Wow, that was a big random waffle! I can't even remember what my point was when I started that! Ohhh yes, sleep and separating from our little ones! So, to summarise, we don't want to do that! We're happy with the back-up of temporarily having me and Matthew in the smaller bedroom, and Neil and Arthur in our room where they have always been. BUT, the small bedroom is a big dumping ground for furniture, and the room where everything gets done that can't be done anywhere else in the house (if that makes sense!). So it's CRAMMED with furniture, so that there's hardly any room to actually move about. And the computer is in there, where I'm sat now :) And my sewing stuff (masses of it), and all our books. And clothes storage for Arthur and Neil. We needed to clear some furniture out of our bedroom when we made a big family floor-bed, so this is where it ended up. But I couldn't possibly be in here with Matthew the way it is. We talked for ages and made a plan!

I decided we needed to put up more shelving on the walls for books and fabric, and get rid of the enormous free-standing bookshelf that took up so much floor space and room. Then dismantle the wardrobe that is used for storing all of Arthur's clothes. And acquire a double chest of drawers or something similar, because something like that will be the entire clothes storage for both our boys, and they'll probably share a room when they're older too, so it will still be in action for them for YEARS to come! We also needed to put the bedside tables and a blanket box in the loft, because they were taking up room without much useful storage space. And in the end I want to dismantle and store both of our normal sized chest of drawers, and replace them with one single "slim Jim" thingy, you know, the tall narrow chest of drawers that are like a reeeally tall bedside table full of drawers. I reckon if we make better use of the storage space in our big wardrobe (in our bedroom) and get ruthless on which clothes we keep and which we give to charity, we should be able to cope with just the tall drawer thingy instead of two chests of drawers! That will take up WAY less space. And finally, store away the current computer desk (it's enormous) and acquire an old fashioned dressing table - the type without much depth to the surface so it doesn't stick out from the wall very far, but which also has two sets of drawers either side of a space to sit at. That way we'd have more drawers to store things in, and still have a computer desk, but one which didn't stick out so much and take up so much space in a small room. Phew!

Obviously we can't afford new furniture, but we started looking on eBay right away, and I found a FANTASTIC double chest of drawers with children's animal handles! It's beautiful and in wonderful condition, and enormously spacious. We bid and won for £50!!! I had just made £54 selling a few maternity clothes and bras on eBay a few weeks ago, so we felt GREAT about that! Neil had to hire a van to pick it up though, so that was extra cost. He got it yesterday from North London, and somehow we got it upstairs. Neil took the wardrobe apart and stored it, and the blanket box and bedside table, in the loft. So now the small bedroom already has SO much more space in it, and a huge and beautiful piece of furniture full of both our little boys' clothing! It is so lovely to open drawers and see clothes for Arthur and teeny tiny clothes for Matthew! More and more, we are feeling like we really do have TWO boys, even though one is not quite here yet!! It's lovely :)

Now we are looking out for a cheap dressing table. And I have moved my fabrics. After all that, we have to look out for a tall drawer thingy and store our chests of drawers, and then there will be lots of space for the travel cot or moses basket to go right up against the single bed in the small bedroom, for me and Matthew :) I'm so pleased we worked it out, because I was getting antsy about it before, and also it has filled my yearning for some nesting and decluttering, which I haven't been able to tend to for a while lately!

Wow, that was long and drawn-out! Sorry! But that and the cold have been the reasons I haven't had time or energy to write for a while. I hope things will settle down soon!

What else can I say about Arthur? I need to get his hair cut again! Already! I keep putting it off, but it is getting longer and it gets in a terrible tangle at the back after he naps now! He has permanent fluffy-head at the back, hehe! It's so sweet :) But I can't seem to comb it out so I think I ought to get his hair cut so that it's easier to deal with or something!

Ahhh, he's so cute :) I love him so much!

He continues to be a little monkey, testing me all over the place! He climbs everywhere now, and puts toys at the foot of pieces of furniture specifically so that he can use them as a step-stool and reach whatever is on the surface! Just this morning he set the tumble dryer off, put a clean wash load on a spin cycle (when it didn't need it!) and switched the dishwasher off mid-cycle! He was getting into the freezer SO many times per day that in the end I went out and bought our very first real baby-proofing device (other than the stair gate of course!). It's a freezer lock and I LOVE it!! It didn't need tools or fittings to fix on, it took seconds to apply, and now Arthur can't get in that freezer no matter how hard he tries! He was a little frustrated at first, but now he has started concentrating quietly when he fiddles with it! We are kind of nervous that he'll figure it out! He already somehow knows to push the button that releases it (he has never seen us open it!) but so far hasn't figured out that he needs to slide it across once the button is pushed in. Hmmm. I hope he won't figure it out, as I was planning to get another one for the cleaning cupboard under the sink, which is currently tied closed (even from Mummy and Daddy!) with tight rubber bands!

Arthur particularly likes to climb on things that he KNOWS he isn't allowed to climb on, of course! He likes to be found by me, doing it. Or to be daring enough to try it in front of me and watch my reaction! Monkey boy! Here he is on my return from emptying the poo from his nappy down the loo the other day during a nappy change (please excuse the Teletubbies - I hate them SO, but they are a wonderful distraction for Arthur at wriggly pooey nappy changes, I have discovered!):

See his fluffle-hair that I was talking about?! Poor Boo! But *I* find it cute, anyway :)

Arthur has discovered the joys of actually riding his sit-on car now! He used to just push it about, walking behind it, with a huge smile on his face. Now he likes to climb on it and sit, saying, "Brum! Brum!" He does push himself around on it with his feet, but not very fast yet. He also likes to climb onto it and stand on the seat, and try to jump up and down. Urgh. He suddenly took to it when the Grand Prix was on a couple of weeks ago! He wanted to watch it with his daddy, but sitting ON his own car :) Here he is doing that:

Matthew has hiccups :)

Arthur is getting so good at sorting the laundry with me! It's something he really loves to do. I dump everything into the basket from the dryer, and drag it through to the living room, where we sit and sort. I start a pile for Daddy and a pile for Arthur and a pile for Mummy. Then there are piles for cloth wipes and for nappies and inserts. He will pile the wipes and inserts himself on the correct piles, but lately he has started pulling clothes out and holding them out to me with an "Uh?" question. I tell him, "That's Daddy's T-shirt! It goes on Daddy's pile!" and he will put it on the correct pile :) He loves when I push the basket from room to room, and spends plenty of his own time each day pushing, dragging and carrying the empty basket from kitchen to living room and back again!

He understands so many instructions now - that sounds weird but I can't figure out better wording! I mean, he can understand and act on two-part commands. Like if I say, "Go and get your drink and bring it to Mummy" then he will do it right away. Or if I say, "Where's your drink?" he will look around the room for it. If it's not there, he holds his palms up to sign "all gone", heh. It's so sweet. He looks so concerned at the same time :) So I tell him, "Your drink is on the chair in the kitchen" and he goes straight to the chair in the kitchen and gets his drink. He has a play toaster and loves popping the toast in and out! When it was time for his bath with Daddy one evening this week, he was playing with the toaster and when Neil said it was bath time, he got up with the plastic toast still in his hand and toddled eagerly to the stairs, ready for his bath. I called out to him and said, "Can you put the toast back first, Arthur?" and he actually stopped, looked at the toast in his hand, and walked back to the toaster and put it in, before going back to the stairs! He is getting much better at things like that. I think he can understand pretty much everything we say at the moment. He understands and responds to soooo much but doesn't really say much at all yet. He will choose between two things if I offer him the choice. Like he has two coats, one beige and one navy. I hold the two out to him and ask him which coat he wants to wear, and he usually picks navy :) I do the same with his bibs, and he likes to choose which one he wears.

If I split all his plastic fruit and veg into their two halves and mix them up, he now likes to play a match-them-up game. He picks one piece out and I ask him where the other part is, and he searches the pile with such an earnest expression, and finds the other half :) It's so exciting doing new things with him as he learns and expands his knowledge of stuff!

He has made up his own sign for "please", which is the cutest thing! I don't know how he started doing it, and it's not something we ever do. It just seemed to be something he made up himself. I need to take a photo of him doing it, somehow. It's one I NEED a photographic record of, just because I know I'll be sad the day he stops doing it and it's just a memory! If he wants something, he points to it, but now instead of just pointing and saying, "Uh!" in a demanding or questioning tone, he does this funny little clasp of his hands with one on top of the other, at the same time as shrugging his shoulders right up to his ears and grinning his most winning smile, the type that makes his nose wrinkle up :) If he asks for something and I ask him if he would like the whatever-it-is, he does his please sign then too :) I love it! I will try to get a photo.

Okay there is sure to be a ton more but I have got the WORST indigestion and can't sit here any longer! Plus it's late so I should get some sleep when my tummy gives me a break! My morning sickness seems to be back somewhat lately, which is a bit sucky, but oh well. It's Mother's Day today, and Neil forgot. I don't tend to make anything of Mother's Day because my mum never did. So I shouldn't expect anything! But I guess lately I feel sooooo tired and pushed to the end of my own limits, purely as a result of being a mother! And I guess it would have been nice to be congratulated or something for being a mother today, as a result. Instead I had to remind Neil to ring his own mother (who DOES do Mother's Day!)! I felt kind of silly about it earlier, but there's really no reason to. I am a blessed mama all the time, even when it's hard work! I have a precious little boy who snuggles with me and loves my presence still, and a tiny hiccupy squirmy boy who I get to have the joy of meeting and doing it all again with, in just a couple of months! I have a lovely, kind, scatterbrained husband, haha! ;) And lovely Meg whose Happy Mother's Day message today really cheered me up :) Thanks Meg! xx Happy Mother's Day to all the UK mummies!

Much better :) And 16 months old!!

Just wanted to update (supposedly briefly, as it's nearly midnight!) to get a cheerful entry up instead of the last one, and also to say thank you SO MUCH to you lovely people for the uplifting and reassuring notes and messages! And prayers. I reeeally appreciate prayers :)

I had no idea so many others completely identified with the way I felt when I wrote the last entry, and I'm so grateful that you took the time to let me know it! :) It really helped me. Time helped as well, because I felt less raw about it by the evening, and even less so the next day. It was just a baaad day, and although I was slightly nervous about the next day being just as bad, it really wasn't. It was so much better. I had a better night's sleep. I just FELT more together that day, and Arthur seemed in a mood to cooperate instead of the way he was being the day before! So it was way better, and that helped me feel better about it all too :) So, phew! I don't feel like I am a horrible mummy any more.

It is weekend and I love the weekend! It means I can lie in because Neil does stuff with Arthur during the morning, and it means a BATH - how GROSS is it that I only get to take one single bath every week?! Uggggh. I hate that. I feel like the most revolting person ever, but yeah, Saturday is the only day I get a chance to bath. I have been washing my hair at the kitchen sink (also very gross of me) during the week while Arthur plays with saucepans on the floor, but my bump is getting too big to bend over the sink now. Neil and I keep talking about how we can arrange for me to get the chance for more baths, hehe! It sounds so ridiculous! But I barely get to sit on my butt, let alone relax or take a bath, in the day time when Arthur is awake. He naps too inconsistently for me to bath while he takes a nap. Evenings are so precious and short, and I tried an evening bath twice before, but both times I woke Arthur and then he was inconsolable with Neil while I hauled myself out of the bath and dried as quickly as I could. So hmmm. I even tried bathing in the DARK during the evening, in case it was the bathroom light or fan that woke Arthur, but he woke anyway. He is just kind of wakeful. It's potluck as to whether he will wake during the evening or not, and how much. He needs me to resettle him every time at the moment, but we need to help him change that before Matthew arrives.

Anyway. At the weekend I get time for a bath. But it's definitely not good enough! Especially if I can't wash my hair at the sink anymore. I can't take Arthur into the bathroom with me because it is tiny and he is drawn like a magnet to the toilet, which I don't want him ANYWHERE near! And throws toilet paper in the bath. The whole roll. Unravelled carefully first. Also I can't take him into the bath with me. I can't wash myself with a (very) squirmy boy to handle, and I don't trust my balance getting out with him now. I am thinking I will have to have a quick bath when Neil gets home from work, but that is when Arthur has HIS bath and then goes to bed, so it might put Arthur's bedtime off. Hmmm. So frustrating!

I can't believe I just wrote about this. I am so ashamed of my poor hygiene! Why on earth would I just broadcast it to the world?! Urgh. By the way, I DO wash and deoderize on weekdays!

Anyway, but yay, I am cleeeean right now! :) Don't you just love that freshly-bathed feeling, in clean pyjamas with clean hair and clean bedsheets to climb in between at bedtime?! Heavenly.

Also I just LOVE my lil boy. I always do, but you know sometimes you just get a surge of the feeling, and it just overwhelms you? I have had that a lot today. I love his laugh, and his funny serious expressions, and his little voice as he tries out words (he still isn't trying many yet!), and I love his little staggery run and his purposeful walk. I love the way he smiles with his whole face and his eyes sparkle when I sing action songs with him. I love how soft and springy his hair is, and how WONDERFUL it smells all the time. I love how soft and squidgy his cheeks are, and how I have to stop myself from kissing them sometimes because once I start, I honestly can't stop. He gets fed up with it if I go on long enough, or else I am kissing his cheeks while he's asleep and I have to make myself stop so that I don't wake him up. I love soooooooooo much about him, and about being his mummy. I think if I decided to write each and every thing, I would never stop writing. He's the most wonderful little being I ever knew!

Today we all went to Homebase to pick up some wall plugs to refit the stair gate that came away from the wall a few weeks ago. It was a great chance to let Arthur run around in a large space and see lots of people. He had a GREAT time, hehe! He got soooo many fond looks from people as he toddled around the place with the most enormous smile on his face! He always looks so happy as he walks along. He is such a happy child, and I'm so thrilled about that. He smiles ALL the time. People even ask me if he does, and I have to say yes! He just seems so thrilled with life and all the new things he sees and does. He loves to be around people.

We got wall plugs and came home, and Neil fixed the stair gate, so Arthur had a rather hyper time after tea having a completely free rein upstairs for the first time since before his last plaster cast! We all played pounce-and-tickle on our big floorbed :) I love family moments like that. We should have more of them. Arthur squealed and giggled and rolled and crawled and dodged and got hiccups :)

The other day I went to the loo and when I came down, I found Arthur sitting on the sofa (he had been playing with toys on the floor before) with the box of teething powders, which he must have got by climbing up to the bookshelves and taking them down from a place we thought was "out of reach"! He had already chewed the cardboard box into tiny pieces, which were scattered around him all over the sofa, and was working on his first sachet of teething powder! When he saw me on the stairs, he didn't stop, or look guilty or anything. He just gave me the most enormous smile and signed medicine frantically over and over for 30 seconds without stopping! Hehe! Funny boy :) I love when he can communicate with us, even if he is being a monkey in the process! He seems so pleased to communicate.

He doesn't say much still. He babbles and "chats" CONSTANTLY, he is hardly ever quiet. He talks to himself in a shouting voice in the mirror (quite funny to watch!) and talks to the toy doggie in woofs :) He cheerfully attempts all sorts of words and sounds that we make, but isn't ever consistent at saying them the next time we do. He did have a pretty successful go at "ladle" the other day though. He likes to play with the plastic ladle and stirs imaginary stuff in the saucepans with it. If I say, "Ohhh you've got a LADLE!", he will cheerfully sing out, "Day-lay!" and wave it at me before continuing his stirring game :) Mummy says that my brother started out with quite a few words that seemed back-to-front at first. He pronounced my name, "Ashil", which is how I was known for a few years when he was very little!

Arthur says the starting sounds for a few words now, but they don't resemble the words yet. I know he is attempting them, but only because I am around each time and can hear that it's the same sound consistently, every time he refers to the item. "Bib" is just "B", for example, and duck is often "D". He makes such cute little animal sounds, and also sounds for some household items and other things like sirens, steam irons hissing, etc. The other day he had a musical toy playing, and I was absent-mindedly lah-ing along to it. He started to mimic me singing la-la-la to the tune, and now he really loves lah-ing to that toy! I LOVE when he does it, because he is just so cute at it! He lahs so sweetly, and his voice is so tiny and chipmunky, and he is so exaggerated with his tongue, which sticks right out and curls up onto his lip each time he lahs! :) So cute!

Arthur is 16 months old!!! Where is the time going?! I can't believe how big he's getting or how much he is changing from just a few months ago. He pretty much never walks any more, at a normal pace anyway. He seems to go everywhere at a race-walk! He does a funny little stumbly staggery run if he is in a particular hurry, but sometimes that results in a tumble. If he is REALLY eager to get somewhere, like into the kitchen the instant he hears the dishwasher being opened (he is obsessed with that thing!), he does the funny little stumbly run with his head down and his elbows pumping up behind him, almost as high as his head, hehehe! He is so funny :) He walks WAY more steadily outside than he did a month ago. He doesn't really take any falls now, even though he sometimes walks with his head literally turned 180 degrees behind him! He just stares and stares at whatever catches his interest, and can't tear his eyes off things, but still keeps walking all the same. Of course he veers off course and nearly walks into walls and all sorts! I do a lot of steering at times like this, and seem to say, "Watch where you're going Arthur!" a lot now! But he doesn't fall nearly as much. His footing is way more steady in outdoor shoes and boots now. Anyway, he never keeps still, indoors or outdoors. Unless he is sitting down playing with something he's really interested in, it's almost impossible to get a photo of him these days that isn't in motion in some way!...

We went to Playgroup on Wednesday but it wasn't the best time we've had there really. Arthur was tired out before we even got there, and we only went for the last 45 minutes anyway. He wanted to paint as soon as we were there, and even sat on a tiny chair near the painting table, staring wistfully, but every seat was taken at the time. He lost interest after a while and when I brought him back to it later, when I saw it was free, he didn't want to paint any more. We have lost his first painting! I don't know where it is! When I went to bed, it was on the fridge door. The next morning, nada. Just gone! Neil had been up with Arthur an hour or so by then, but he said he didn't move it and didn't see it lying around. It was waaaaay too high for Arthur to reach, although he could have grabbed at it if Neil was carrying him past the fridge. Anyway it's totally gone. I am so sad! I hope we find it, but we have looked everywhere. I guess Arthur must have found it on the floor somehow and has done something with it. I really hope it turns up. I'm just glad I scanned it!

Anyway, we had to come home from Playgroup before the singing time finished at the end, as Arthur was just getting cranky and miserable and tired. Very unlike Arthur, but he was at the end of a yucky cold, which has allllmost gone now (and I didn't catch it, yay!) and seemed to get extra tired by it as he was getting better. He had a 3 hour nap one day this week!!! Wow.

I am ultra nervous about Playgroup (and other social things) again, as I overheard some mums talking about the horrible stomach bug their kids had had during the week. One was saying her child only got better yesterday! Yikes! Don't people know that vomiting and diarrhoea bugs are still contagious up to 3 days after all symptoms have stopped?!?!??! It drives me crazy. Of course the instant their kids seem better, they take them back to mix with other children. No wonder these bugs spread like they do. Urgh. And Jaya and her daddy have had a HORRIBLE sounding tummy bug so it makes me nervous that these things are "about". I spent 2 days all anxious wondering if Arthur or I would come down with anything pukey after Playgroup, and finally relaxed today - 3 days afterwards and still feeling healthy! :) I hate being fearful about this. Roll on non-germy season!

Ohhhh I forgot to say before - Arthur and I went to visit Cameron's mum last week! I phoned her because I hadn't spoken to her since the end of last summer, and that was the last time we saw her too. We didn't get to see Nathan (Cam's youngest brother) that time either, because he was napping, so the last time I saw him was when Arthur was a newborn and Nathan was 14 months old! Anyway we had a lovely chat on the phone and she was delighted for us that we are expecting another baby boy! She invited us for an early lunch on Thursday, and so we went! I think it was FINALLY the first time that I felt happy pulling up in front of their house and going in, since before Cam died. I mean, going there didn't fill me with longing for him or that weird jangly "something's not right" sadness that he is missing. Maybe enough time has passed now that it feels normal that he is gone. That seems a sad realisation, but I suppose it is inevitable.

It was a happy time though, and I really enjoyed taking Arthur there. He was charming and confident and Cam's mum was really taken by him :) She couldn't believe how big he was (he's as tall as her little boy who was 2 last October!!) and how much he has changed - obviously, since he was only weeks old when she saw him last! Nathan is gorgeous. He reminds me of Michael (Cam's other brother) more than Cameron, which perhaps made it easier for me to not focus on Cam while we were there.

We had lunch (I took Arthur's there with me) and Arthur sat up to the table in Nathan's tray-less high chair! He LOVED that. I loved it too. Arthur's own highchair has a tray that won't remove, and we are seriously contemplating replacing it with a better one that has a removable tray and can go up to a table when the little one is big enough. He seemed soooo much more involved in our meal, and for the first time EVER, he fed himself his whole meal with his spoon, absolutely perfectly, without spilling anything! Cam's mum told me that can be quite normal when you take your little one out to eat with friends, and that he might not necessarily do it at home! He hasn't fed himself quite as well at home since, but he is feeding himself quite consistently now with his little toddler spoon. He is very accurate at getting all the food into his mouth, and doesn't slop any down his front. I always feel amazed when I watch him feed himself so well. It's like, I can't believe he is doing that! He was only just starting solids YESTERDAY, or something! It's crazy how fast it goes.

There are photos of Cameron all over their house. I love that. There's one of me and him from my wedding day on their mantlepiece :) It's getting much easier to talk casually about him with his mum now. She always did just talk comfortably with others about him. Maybe she felt less comfortable underneath? I always did, but I tried to do the casual chat about him all the same. Now it's not such an effort to do. He has been gone.... well, as long as Nathan is old. Nathan was born the day before Cameron's funeral. It feels like MUCH longer, but then soooo much has happened to me since then!

Arthur put all the shapes through Nathan's shape sorter and his mum was amazed! I think he must be ahead for that, but when people say so, I just say that different children seem to develop different things at different rates. I AM pretty proud of him for being so good at that kind of thing early :) But I don't want to be all arsey about it (sorry, that's such a crass word, but I can't think of a better one right now!) though, and it's TRUE that he's just working on some things early and not so much on other things. Alex (a few weeks older than Arthur) is saying EVER so many words, the clever girl! And Arthur hardly says any. So it evens out. They can all do ALL these things the same in a year or so anyway, so it doesn't really matter what order it's in for now. But he IS good at dextrous things at the moment.

He is currently working on building bridges with bricks, and building Duplo into multi-coloured towers - no longer same-coloured towers like he was doing a week ago. He specifically makes stripey towers out of the same two colours, say blue and green. One green brick, one blue, one green, one blue. He is really trying new things out. He can put the tumble dryer on for a specific programme - not that he knows which one he's choosing of course! The other day I found it anti-creasing an empty load after an "extra dry" cycle, hehe!!

He loves to help with any household chore. He sweeps the kitchen floor with his little broom, vigorously and with a very serious expression! He sweeps so hard that he nearly loses his balance sometimes, hehe! He prefers the real dustpan and brush to his own toy one, unfortunately! He puts any piece of rubbish he finds - even a single crumb or tiny piece of thread - into the bin. If I give him a wet cloth wipe, he loves to clean his snack table (a small low table at perfect height for Arthur in the living room, that we put his snack on mid-morning and mid-afternoon), or even the carpet! He blew his own nose this week!!! I was on the phone and he was blowing his nose gently with his chin out in my direction - an action that means, "Mummy, my nose is all snotty and it needs blowing please!" But I couldn't stop right then and do it, so after a few seconds he just walked over to the box of tissues, pulled one out, put it to his nose and blew gently! He pulled it away to examine it, to see if he had achieved anything (he hadn't), and then proceeded to wipe his nose carefully back and forth from side to side! He got plenty off that way, and then I was able to help him finish it off :) I was so proud of him!!! I made sure to praise him LOADS over it!

Neil has a new bike, which he is starting to use to cycle to work. But it felt too long for him, and sure enough when he checked the measurements he found that the bike shop had sent him the wrong size! So he had to dismantle it ready for them to collect it and leave a replacement that IS the right size. He took it apart on the doorstep as soon as he got home from work the other day. Arthur was absolutely ecstatic to be allowed to watch and even HOLD part of the bike while his daddy took it off the main frame! He just loves helping Daddy with DIY-ish things :)

Arthur's main fun thing to do is still playing with saucepans (and ovenware - some rather breakable, though sturdy!) on the kitchen floor. He empties out the WHOLE cupboard of this stuff and will play happily for up to an hour (!!), stacking and sorting the pans and bowls, and stirring them with spoons and stuff. I am amazed that they keep him so busy for so long, but he loves them:

My parents are on their way to England! Yay! I am so excited! They are only coming for a few days, and I don't know if we'll see them much, but I know I'll get to see them at least once, and I can't WAIT!!!! My lovely Granny had a hip replacement on Wednesday (her third - not that she has 3 hips (!!), but one replacement has already been replaced, if you see what I mean!) and they are coming to help Grandoug prepare the house for her return from hospital, and to bring her home, if all is well, next Wednesday. Her surgery went really well and she seems to be recovering well too, so I am relieved and thankful. She isn't in pain, but she is having a hard time with the physiotherapy which has already started. I know my parents will be visiting her a lot and spending time with Grandoug while he's on his own, as that's the whole reason for their visit. BUT, Mummy is coming on Monday for sure, to spend most of the day with me and Arthur!!!!!!!!! I am so excited!! I can't wait for Monday! I love my mummy sooooooo. I can't wait for her to see Arthur again. I know he will have changed so much, and she will love him soooo much and he will enjoy her company loads. I just can't wait :)

Okay, I've done it again, and it's stupidly late, so I am going to bed! Oh, I almost forgot - I updated my breastfeeding milestone blinkie to 16 months!! :) And I added a few more blinkies that I found that I love (so sorry!) - the tired mama one is GREAT, hehe! And I thought I should make reference to Matthew in my blinkies at this diary now too! So there they are :) Now to bed! But I will update again soon, and thank you again for the loving support you guys give me here :) xxx

Crappy Mummy :(

Having a really really really bad morning :( Arthur is sleeping at a weird time for his nap and I need to offload/confess/something-or-other.

I think I hurt Arthur :( I have no excuses other than I am just a horrible mother. I know most of the time I am not a horrible mother but you can't use that as a make-it-all-better phrase if you hurt your child, can you.

Last night I had just about THE most crappy and painful night's sleep yet this pregnancy, and it wasn't Arthur's fault that I woke a million times and couldn't get comfy. He only woke once actually, around 3am, and then he was up for the day at 6.30. A pretty good night for Arthur.

Today I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooo tired and have about this > < much patience. That's not Arthur's fault either. It hurts me to get up and down from sitting (in my pubic bone, which is suddenly shouting the joys of the third trimester) so much so that I just want to stay sitting as much as I can, especially just after getting up. Arthur uses his time to climb on furniture and switch the TV and stereo on and off and on and off and on and off, ad infinitum, and he opens and closes the freezer door, loads POOEY nappies into the washing machine from the nappy pail, climbs on his toy garage that will most definitely break pretty soon if he keeps doing it, bites everything in sight, etc, etc. These are all things I have told him 50 thousand times NOT to do, and he knows it. I know it's normal that he's testing me but when I feel like this I absolutely can't stand it. He doesn't even register me telling him not to do something, just carries on without even hesitating. I feel like I am talking to a brick wall, and it's more frustrating because I KNOW he understands me and hears me. Of course he leaves me no choice but to get up off my sore butt and physically remove him from the place where he's causing mischief. Then I sink breathlessly back down on said sore butt and about 0.3 seconds later, Arthur is doing another thing he shouldn't do, and after several, "Arthur, don't touch that please.... Arthur, Mummy said don't touch that! Arthur, no!" I have to get up and remove him again.

If I don't, then surely that is no good because it isn't consistent and I know I need to be consistent with teaching him what is acceptable and what isn't. Although lately I admit that there have been times when I simply have not had the energy to keep getting up and moving him away from stuff he shouldn't be getting into. I can't lock everything away or child-proof EVERYTHING he's into - we just don't have the space to relocate items or put him in a place that isn't closed off. Our house is too small. I would have to use a playpen or something and there is noooo way I want to do that. Arthur would hate it anyway.

He needs to learn to mind what Mummy says, but so far I am persevering and it totally isn't working.

Anyway. We had Fellowship Group this morning, which I always look forward to because it's just such a nice group of ladies with their little ones at one of their houses. It's such a shame it's only every other week. So we were running a bit late for Fellowship Group and I had to change Arthur's nappy because I could smell poo. Nappy time is getting to be a nightmare here. The instant that nappy was off, despite distractions that I'd arranged for him while I did it, he grabbed his bits (pooey) and when I tried to get his hands so I could clean them, he twisted and writhed and tossed his legs this way and that, just doing ANYTHING so that it would cause me maximum difficulty in getting his nappy off, bum cleaned and a new nappy on. He does this a lot but it's awful when he has done a poo. Of course I am constantly telling him to be still, listen to Mummy, don't do that, etc. But asking him these things just seems to make him more vigorous than ever in his movements and if I start to get angry and raise my voice (which I NEVER wanted to do) he laughs and laughs while he's wriggling. It. Drives. Me. Crazy. I usually get through it but today I just had no rope left at all. Sometimes if he's really wriggly I pin his legs down with my ankles (!) so that I can keep him in one position and hold his hands with one of mine, and clean his bum with the other hand. It's a palava but it gets it done. Arthur doesn't like it, but hey ho.

Today I went to do that same thing, because poo was going everywhere and Arthur was just being as difficult as he could be. But I was so angry that I pinned him down too hard. I think I wrenched his hips when I shoved his legs apart and onto the floor to put my ankles on them :( He was laughing at my annoyance at the time, and in an instant his face changed to a pain reaction and he cried and cried and barely breathed between crying :( He also stopped all his wriggling. I just let go of him like he was a hot coal. I felt terrified that I had hurt him. I cleaned him up as quick as I could, and picked him up without a nappy on to cuddle him. I felt so so so so terrible and so sorry that I had caused him pain.

How can you make that up to your little one, if you have purposely hurt them when they have never had that happen to them before? You can't. He cried for so long, even in my arms, and I cried too and told him over and over and over how sorry Mummy was for hurting him. But that doesn't work either. Saying sorry doesn't make it better. People who actually abuse their children often feel remorse and will try to make up for it afterwards, but they are still people who abuse their children.

I feel absolutely indescribable. Sure, I feel terribly sorry and I love Arthur beyond measure, but how is that different from parents who abuse their kids? I am just a terrible mother today. Not just, oh I'm so crap. I am a genuinely terrible mother today. I hurt my child, and it wasn't really an accident.

I cried for an hour and my face was too swollen to show its sorry state at Fellowship Group, so we couldn't go. Arthur recovered okay. He is walking and moving fine and playing happily with his toys. He is very tired at the end of his horrid cold, and in the end he seemed like he needed a nap way before nap time. It was the same yesterday and I made him wait till the usual time, which backfired big time, so I put him down early today and he has slept 40 minutes so far. So here I am to offload, and confess. I wish Neil or my mum had been available when I was upset and wanting to tell someone what I'd done, but they were both on voicemail :(

I feel just horrible. Nothing can erase what I did today and nothing can make it better, even if Arthur is a precious little love who trusts and loves his Mummy and is happy to forgive and forget within no time at all. How can I forgive myself for it? My instincts towards Arthur make me want to tear out my own insides and stamp on them. But that rather conflicts with self-preservation!

I don't know. Anyway. Arthur is waking up. I guess I'll post this and write a normal entry another time - hopefully soon. Arthur is 16 months old today and I wanted to write normal happy stuff about him. I just love him so much. Maybe that's not enough? I need some self-control. Maybe I even need help? I don't know. I am really weepy at the moment but maybe that's just hormones, or the weight of what I have done today. I need some chocolate. And Arthur is definitely waking up. My face has gone down enough so I think I will give him lunch and then we'll go food shopping. We need milk anyway. It will be weird to go out when he is normally napping. Maybe I can get him to take another nap later this afternoon? Otherwise I have just buggered up the day for him sleep-wise. Hmmm.... although if he has a late afternoon nap then he might not go to bed well at bedtime? He has gone quiet again.

I wish I could rewind today and start again.

NOT colour-blind, yay!!!! :D

Just a quick entry (haha!) to say thank you for the comments on the pictures of Arthur last entry, and that I owe people emails which I promise I WILL get around to!! If that's you, then I am soooo sorry! I will get there soon! And also, I heart the BT man, who brought me a new modem today at no cost (!!!!!) and fitted it and showed me how to use it, and now I have lovely jubbly internet access 24/7 again! Yaaaaaaay! I hate when I can't get online.

And ALSO, huge congratulations to Jemma on the slightly early arrival of little Jove!!! So exciting! :) New babies, yay!

I am sooooo pleased because I think I have been given a fairly good sign that Arthur ISN'T colour blind this afternoon! It's a wait-and-see game, you see, because my mum is a carrier (girls carry, boys suffer, in general - unless both parents have it (father suffering from it and mother carrying), and that's the only way a girl could actually be colour-blind). My brother is colour blind (mainly red/green (and thus brown also) - he absolutely can NOT see a difference between the two, but also blue/purple to some degree) and I remember him colouring in a tree trunk green and the leaves red when he was little, and not knowing anything about it. It was a normal thing for him to ask me which colour pencil he was holding before he started using it, when we were doing our homework or something. I also remember he would get really picked on by "friends" over games of Space Invader or stuff like that. He could not tell the red baddies from the green friendly aliens and would shoot the wrong things or let the baddies get too close, thinking they were friendly :( His friends used to tear strips off him for it, and Bennie never stood up for himself over it, and I remember wanting to smack their heads in for it! He used to play Little League football (soccer) and his team wore red. If they played the green team he was basically in trouble! Poor Bennie. I felt for him soooo much over it. He wanted to be an electrician for a while but he found out he would not be able to, being colour blind. He is a computer programmer instead :)

Anyway. So Mummy carries the colour blindness gene on one of her two X chromosomes, and therefore her children each have a 50/50 chance of getting the X chromosome with the colour blindness gene. It's sort of luck-of-the-draw with each child therefore. My brother picked that X, unfortunately. I can't really know if I did or not. If I did, then all of my children will have the same 50/50 chance of taking my X with the colour blindness gene, like with my own mother. Any sons I have could be colour blind, and any daughters I have could be carriers to their own children. The only way to find out is if I have any sons who are colour blind. Then I will know that I did! If I only had daughters, I would have to wait until they had sons to see if any of THEM were colour blind or not. If I have several sons who are not colour blind, it's not definite, but I think I would assume that I didn't inherit it. Anyway, so Arthur is the test. I have been hoping and praying that he isn't colour blind since I found out I was having a boy during my pregnancy with him.

The health visitor told me they can't test for colour blindness until a child is at least 3, but they usually don't actually test it until primary school! That's AGES!!! I'm SURE it's possible for him to tell me if he can see a picture amongst the red and green coloured bubbles on those pictures BEFORE age three! But there we go, that's the way it is done. I planned to watch out for myself and see if I could tell one way or the other. I didn't expect to have any clue until he really knew his colours though, much later on. But amazingly, this afternoon the perfect opportunity arose! He was busy building towers of Duplo again in their individual colours. He builds red and green towers separately, and has not mixed them up yet, so I had wondered if that was a good sign, but I figured it was too vague a thing to pin it on, one way or the other. But anyway, today he was building a green tower, and searching through the pile of Duplo bricks for more green ones. The last green one was stuck together with a red one, and he spotted it, put his green tower down carefully, and pulled the red and green bricks apart. He didn't hesitate in putting the red one back on the pile, and sticking the green one on his green tower!!!! I know it's not 100% confirmation, but I feel soooooo thrilled and hopeful that he must not be colour blind if he did that! If he is colour blind, I know from my brother that he simply would not be able to see the difference between those two colours, and he picked them apart easily and with careful thought over which was which. I am soooooooooooooooo happy!!! I phoned my mum IMMEDIATELY and she said it did sound like he couldn't possibly be colour blind :) We were both so excited over it! Yay yay yay yay yay yaaaaaaay!

Of course, even if he ISN'T, it could still be that I am a carrier and he just inherited my X chromosome that DOESN'T have the colour blindness gene. So we will wait and see all over again with Matthew. I think I will relax a lot more if Matthew is not colour blind either. Anyway I am just so so so so so so happy about that! I had to write about it here :)

I am having a Braxton Hicks contraction. La-la-la.

Arthur has a horrible cold, poor love. Neil's cold is all but gone, already!! They are soooo obviously different colds. Today I decided to have Arthur take his nap with his head on a pillow like Neil and I sleep, to elevate his head and ease his breathing. He is soooo snotty and can't breathe at all to breastfeed or sleep. It's the first time we've given him a pillow to sleep on, so I wasn't sure how well it would work. But it went amazingly well! I checked on him a million times, worrying that he was face down on it and suffocating, but I know that he is old enough to sleep safely on pillows now, and would turn over in his sleep if he couldn't breathe for any reason. I don't know if it was the pillow or just the fact that he isn't well, but he had a THREE HOUR NAP today!!!!!! He has never ever ever ever slept that long in the day before! Even as a new baby! I was hovering round the bedroom and worrying after 2 hours (typical!) and eventually I phoned my parents and Daddy told me not to worry - Arthur wasn't well and it was GREAT that he was taking extra sleep to help him get better. I should leave him sleeping as long as he needed, and not wake him up! Even if it meant bedtime was a little difficult. So I did, and he woke after 3 hours! It took him nearly an hour to wake up properly too, and he was quite unlike himself during that time, just lying on the floor on his side and watching TV all glassy-eyed :( I got worried again but then he perked up and was as lively and cheerful as ever :) I will be so glad when he gets over his cold! Of course in two days we go back to Playgroup again to seek out new germs, haha! I HOPE we do not come away with any this time.

He is sleeping on the pillow again now, and has been asleep for nearly 4 hours so far :) He is definitely breathing better for it, although he does have a cloth wipe soaked in Karvol (decongestant stuff for little ones) near him too, so that helps! We are thinking we might consider giving him a pillow of his own to sleep on at night now. But we'll see. He seems soooo much more settled and he doesn't roll around the bed so much, waking himself up when he gets wedged in the corners! Hopefully that might be a good thing for when we transition him to the single mattress. Wow, he is getting such a big boy! He sleeps on a full-size mattress under a full-size duvet cover, with his little head on a grown-up pillow! He looks sooooo tiny though, against the big pillow, and with his little shape humped up under the big duvet :) Sweetie-boy. I love to look in on him and see him sleeping peacefully.

Oh I forgot to say ages ago that we turned Arthur's car seat to forward-facing when he got his latest plaster cast on last month. We had no intention of switching him from rear-facing for a LONG time yet (see this fab article for why) but with his leg in plaster, he couldn't curl it up enough to fit against the back of the seat. So we had to turn him forwards while he had his cast on. I was not happy to do it though. Anyway it was soooooooo much easier to put him in and take him out of his car seat, and he loved seeing everything out of the front of the car, and we just haven't had the heart to turn it back to rear-facing yet. I am not sure that we will now. I feel that we should, for his best safety, but I don't know - I think he is so happy facing forwards that he would complain if we turned him around. Although he is pretty easy going about things so maybe not. And anyway, that's not a good enough reason not to. What IS a better reason is that I am now struggling to get him in the seat FORWARD facing with my growing bump, and I know I would just hurt my back trying to twist round to get him in rear-facing now. So I think forward facing will be better for ME for the rest of my pregnancy. But I wish he could stay rear-facing a bit longer. It's just the safest way for him to be, and he is a pickle for wriggling his arms out of his shoulder straps - VERY dangerous, but way more so if he's forward facing. I am buying this nifty gadget to stop him doing that though :) It's weird not to see him in that rear-view mirror anymore while I'm driving, but lovely to just glance over my shoulder when I'm stopped at a traffic light and see his whole self smiling at me :)

Neil has nearly got his new bike sorted for cycling to work. We have taken him to work a few times recently, which sucks somewhat, but I suppose it has its good points too, as we are then up and about (non-blearily!) earlier than usual and we are at the supermarket bright and early while the shelves are all bursting with fresh stocks! That part is fun. But I NEVER feel like getting myself and Arthur into the car that early in the morning to start with! It's probably good for me though. Anyway I will be glad when Neil has his bike ready. Then all that's left for me to do is worry like a crazy woman about his safety on the roads. *sigh*

I need to sewww. But I haven't got the energy. And quite honestly, squatting down to cut templates out of fabrics on the floor is wreaking havoc on my oesophagus, due to pregnancy-induced acidy-type-issues! I am getting too big to faff about on the floor now, but we don't have any surfaces big enough for cutting fabric. But the sewing urge is not being met therefore. I sense the impending surge of another Sewing Bug where you will not see hide nor hair of me for DAYS while I sew like crazy and get nowhere near enough sleep, hehe! It usually comes to a head like that if I don't get my sewing urges dealt with ;) Plus I am expecting another shipment of luscious fabrics (and a new nappy pattern!!) THIS WEEK from the States, so that will settle it. I will HAVE to sew :)

Another Braxton Hicksy thing. I need to go to bed. And drink some water first! Vitamin C too. I felt really achy around my glands yesterday and yucky, as though I was coming down with something, but I took extra Vit C before bed and I felt okay again in the morning! I feel kind of achy again now so I think I'll do the same again. There is no way I have missed being exposed to Arthur's cold, as we are still sharing saliva (nice!) just as much as ever - he feeds me his food from his spoon, and gives me rather wet kisses, and he is SO drooly at the moment anyway with that new molar coming through, that it's hard to find anything (furniture, clothing, utensils, etc!!) WITHOUT cold-germ drool on it! So I will be very pleased if I somehow manage to fight this cold off without getting it. I am going to take more Vitamin C and go to bed! And I neeed to update my pregnancy diary soon. Tomorrow is the last day of my 2nd trimester - can you believe it?! Matthew will be here before I know it... Which is kind of scary. But WONDERFUL too!!