Plans and thank yous!

Ohhhkay... 7.30pm, boys asleep. Have put on my "sane hat", haha, and am here to update after my last entry. First of all, thank you SO SO much for all the comments, notes and emails after my entry. Wow, I was so overwhelmed! And you guys gave such good advice, and were all so supportive - thank you so much. I have been thinking on every single thing that everyone suggested, and putting a few things into practise too. I also talked to my mum 3 times on the phone since writing the last entry and her view on things and some advice from her have helped too.

I love my mummy. I don't want anyone to think badly of her. But she won't come. She says I CAN do it, and she knows it's really hard for me right now, but I am equal to the challenge! She says her mother never came to help her (I always HATE when she says that) but that if she was living locally she would definitely be helping me out. Practically, there is nowhere for her to stay if she comes here. We fill all the space in our house and really can't shuffle anything around for her to stay, it wouldn't be fair. They normally stay with my grandparents but G&G left yesterday for a 4 week holiday in California (flying to the States on 9/11, yeesh - I am so thankful that they arrived safely!). My brother and his fiancee don't have space and they are busy busy, and my parents always hate to ask to stay with them as they give up their bed so my parents have somewhere to sleep. Other than that it's hotels, and those are just toooo expensive around here. I don't blame her for saying she can't come. But it sucks I guess. Oh well. Mummy feels so bad that I am finding things so difficult and she can't be here to help me. It helps a little to phone her, even with the boys both screaming about something in the background and me crying on the phone too! She always helps me see clearly and tells me what to go and do the moment I put the phone down, and sometimes I REALLY just need somebody to tell me what to do.

My friend from church, Michelle, was here a few weeks ago with her new baby (newer than Matthew even!), Ema, and Matthew was napping most of her visit. Arthur was up and active and rather annoyed that I was paying more attention to someone else rather than him! I found the visit really stressy because I was trying to respond to Michelle's chat (and WISHING I could just hold an adult conversation with ease), whilst having constant whining and shouting in my ear as Arthur tried to get my attention. And my hands were busy the whole time modelling playdough in an attempt to keep Arthur amused while I talked to Michelle! I am finding it increasingly hard to juggle two or three different streams of sound or demands for my attention through my ears, at the same time as doing one or more things with my hands. I just go into stimulation overload, and it tires me out so fast. I end up just wanting to cover my ears with my hands and scream!

Anyway, during Michelle's visit, Arthur did a mega poo and just as I reached for a change of nappy for him, I heard Matthew begin to wail over the monitor. I just stood there in the kitchen doorway, suddenly oblivious to Michelle being there at all, and said, "Okay, NOW he wakes, but there's a poo.... what do I do?!" I was really just thinking out loud in an attempt to single out my thoughts from all the aforementioned overload, but then Michelle's voice cut through it like a wave of calm, saying, "Change that nappy. Matthew can wait." And that's the first time I realised how much of a huge RELIEF it was to hear someone calm and sane stand there and tell me clearly and calmly what I should do, just as my own brain was going into panic mode! It helped such a lot. So Mummy helps me like that when I phone her. But it's a shame she can't be here to take Arthur out for long walks or something. It's energy consuming outings that are most needed around here, for Arthur. I do take them out for shorter walks but Matthew cries most of the time, and we have to turn back WAY too soon for Arthur, who gets upset and tantrumy that we're going home when he's only used up about 2% of his energy! He has SO much energy, that boy. It doesn't seem to matter even when he has a MEGA outing one day, he still bounces off the walls once he gets home.

Anyway. Here are a few things that I have taken on board (so far) and am taking action on from everyone's comments:

I am going to wait till my blood test results come back later this week, and then instead of just picking any prescription up from reception, I think I'll book another appt to see my doctor and talk to her again about my stress levels. I'll try and get it so that maybe Neil can be around to watch the boys while I go to my appt. I think I need to be there on my own to talk about it properly. I want to ask her for help with stress management, mainly.

Secondly, Neil and I have talked afresh about getting some home help. He has already looked into getting cleaning help and is waiting for someone to email him a quote at the moment. Same for the gardening. He says he'll start looking at quotes for child-care help tomorrow at work. My heart sinks a little, you know me! But I am trying my very best to just let GO of the mindset I had over it, and realise I do have to accept help. And like you guys said, it doesn't mean anything about my ability to be a good mother to my kids. I WISH wish wish I could cope on my own, but it's okay to get help if I can't. So far I can TYPE that, but my heart doesn't want to hear it. I will keep saying it. I know it's true so I need to drum it into my head. Thanks for being so honest with me about it.

I'm going to start looking at playgroups for Arthur. My mum reminded me that the doctor once told me it would be good to start looking just before he turns two, because they have waiting lists and that way I'd get him in there by the time he's 2 and a half. Still, that's a way off. I'll look and see what's out there. We'll still try to get out to mother-and-baby groups. I'm THRILLED that my fellowship group at church (the one with a few mums and toddlers) is now meeting EVERY Thursday morning instead of every other one like before! Yay!

The only thing about outings - even the "helpful" ones - is that I do find them SUCH hard work. Almost more hard work than staying at home really. Matthew cries all the time and I need to hold him a lot, and even then he cries. I can't talk to other mums with him crying in my ear all the time. Arthur still wants my attention a lot when we're out, but at least he is back and forth between playing with other kids and toys, and coming to see me for something. I do feel I want to watch him a bit still, to keep an eye on what he's doing. Juggling chat, a crying baby, and keeping half an eye on a whirlwind of a toddler feels like very hard work, and I pretty much end up feeling overheated, sweaty, stressed and crazy thirsty. I'm exhausted when we get home and we still have the rest of the day to get through. So at the moment I find it harder to go out than to stay in. I think the benefits do just about outweigh the cons though - Arthur NEEDS the outing, so that need is met, and I do still enjoy the social contact even if it's strained and difficult. I keep hoping Matthew will get used to outings and be content instead of crying all the time, but he still hasn't yet. Maybe I just haven't exposed him to outings enough? Anyway, we'll try.

Playgroups are possible on Monday and Wednesday mornings around the corner. That's a BIG playgroup and we will get mighty frequent germs from that place! Arthur was ill with a new bug EVERY OTHER WEEK for 4 months at the beginning of this year when we were going there regularly. We used to only go on Wednesdays, but I guess we could try both days. I think we'd start out just on Wednesdays again and see how we go. Tuesdays there is a slightly smaller mother-and-toddler group run by my church but not many mums from my church go. It's for the local community. We could go to that. That's in the morning too. Thursday mornings will be Fellowship Group now, and I DO like that. It's going to be on a rota of different mums' houses (I'm not on the rota) on one week and then alternate weeks will be at a cafe with a secure and enormous kids play area. One of the mums at church did a trial run there and thought it was fabulous, so we'll be meeting there every other week. Thing is, it's in the centre of town and NOT easy to get my two very small ones to. It feels a bit of a dreaded task to me, but I promise to give it a whirl and see if we survive! This week we're at Katie's house, which suits me loooads better. Fridays.... no groups that I know of on Fridays. But maybe that's okay. Maybe we can make Fridays the day I take the boys to the park for a couple of hours instead, or something like that?

Ohhh it sounds like such a good plan but I feel anxious that I won't be able to carry it through! I hope I can do it for them, for ME, for all of us.

Oh! I just remembered that there's soft play at a local leisure centre on Mondays, Wednesdays and FRIDAYS in the afternoon! You have to pay and get tickets 15 minutes before the session, and I am HOPELESSLY disorganised about getting anywhere on time, so I seriously doubt that we'll make it to that unless I am pretending we're going like THREE HOURS earlier than it starts, haha! But otherwise it's a possible option. Also I have finally succeeded in getting Arthur's naps from morning to after-lunch, so he now naps in the early afternoon. Sometimes that won't really allow for us to go to soft play. And I don't think Matthew will enjoy it ONE BIT. But at least his afternoon naps now mean that we are able to attend all the morning mother-and-toddler groups.

Soooo, that's activities. It's my organisation (or lack thereof) that I worry about. We may not get to some of those groups because I am physically incapable of getting myself and two little boys out of the house before the morning is nearly over! Seriously. I find it that hard. We NEVER turn up for anything on time. I sooooo wanted to go to church (for once - it's been ages since we've been) on Sunday and even gave up my lie-in to try and get myself and the boys ready on time. Neil was here too, so it looked promising that between us we'd get ready! But nope. We STILL managed to struggle with finding things in the horrible clutter that is out ENTIRE HOUSE, in time to get ourselves ready and leave. By the time we were almost ready to go, the worship time was almost over and there seemed little point in going. I just. Want. To. Worship. I guess my spirit knows my need for God, because I am just THIRSTING for him right now. I feel bone dry and longing for his touch to restore me.

Oh, but off on another tangent again (!!), I forgot to say before that I DID have a good "time-out" last week. And it was wonderful. It was when I went to the nurse to get my blood taken on Thursday. Neil came home and watched the boys while I drove to the doctor's surgery to have it done. My appt was 11.30am and we figured I would be home somewhere around noon, since they usually run late and so on. But for once I was on time for something - even a couple of minutes early, wow! And they saw me right away. The blood test took a matter of seconds, and I walked straight back out to the car. The weather was soooo nice. Sunny and warm, but not overbearingly hot. And a nice breeze. I felt so.... FREE! Walking along the pavement with both my arms relaxed and swinging by my sides. My body was straight instead of stooping slightly to one side to hold Arthur's hand so far below mine, or to rein him in when he leaned over to this or that whilst walking along. I did not have a child or baby in my arms. I did not have a hand to hold or someone to train ten eyes on in case of an incident! I could let my gaze wander this way and that, and even look up to the sky and remember how blue it is (funny how I never seem to look UP anymore when I'm out with the boys! It's just intense FOCUS on what they are doing, just to try and keep track and keep them safe!). It felt so nice to look around and breathe easy and feel the breeze, and stroll at my own pace. I got to the car WAY too quickly, and stood by it for a while just wondering where I could go if I kept on walking. But it wasn't that nice an area for walking in, so I got in the car after a while.

I drove home, but as I reached the turning for our road, I saw the clock in the car and it said 11.43am. Suddenly it was like the excitement of sneaking out or something, hehe! I realised I could just keep driving and find a place to walk for maybe just 10 minutes, all to myself!!!! It was such a thrilling thought! :) Neil need not know, because he wouldn't expect me home till noon anyway. I kept on driving and found a green off the road. It was quite big, and framed with trees and a fenced-off railway line, so it wasn't right in the face of people and cars and business. I parked and got out of the car, and started to walk onto the grass with this huge silly grin on my face, haha!

It just felt great to be out, like sneaky ME time - it felt like such fun! I knew I just had 10 minutes to walk and relax, and I had planned to just stroll and take in my surroundings and enjoy the quiet and the breeze and use all my senses now that they weren't being assaulted by shouts and cries and clashing toys! But I hadn't gone two steps before I felt God calling me to spend that time with HIM, not just myself. I have missed that intimacy with God soooooooooo much, and it feels like it's been so long since I had the opportunity. I have been praying over the last week that God would help me carve out some time to spend with him again. Telling him that I MISSED him and longed for him, and wanted so much to spend time with him, but that I just didn't know HOW. God is so faithful. He just opened up that door for some time with him. Also I have begun praying with Arthur while I breastfeed him in bed at night, and sometimes I sing over him, worship songs, while I breastfeed him. Just quietly. He seems soothed by it. And my heart just gets lifted up in worship to God, and that's lovely. Also I have started putting Christian music CDs on and holding Matthew in my arms while Arthur is napping sometimes, and just singing and swaying about with Matthew. Again, he is soothed by the music and the singing, and especially by being held so close. I hold him extra close because my heart just grows an extra ACRE when I worship God. I always want to hold my children extra close to me when God is near to me. I feel so full of love and joy and thankfulness to God for giving me my children. So it's good to do.

Anyway, I walked around that park 3 times, all the way round. I kept my pace fairly brisk so I got some exercise out of it, and I enjoyed the walk. I sang and prayed aloud the whoooole way. I just let God's Spirit lead me. It was just WONDERFUL! I mostly just praised God - that is always the most fun part! But I also sat down on a bench for a minute or two and prayed for my boys and Neil and me, and a few specific things. I prefer to PRAISE though! :) I even praised God in tongues. I have not done that for the longest time. It felt weird with how long it's been, but amazing. Every time I did it - this will sound crazy - the wind blew HARD and I could barely stand up. My heart squished my throat so I could barely breathe to pray, for how much awe and joy I felt. And then the feeling would ebb again and so would the wind. Cool, huh?! Sometimes as I sang to God, the words of the songs would hit me right in that spot and my whoooole body would break out in goosebumps. Good goosebumps though :) I lost track of the time and enjoyed myself so much, and rekindled something I have been missing for years. But I was mid-sentence in prayer and suddenly I knew it was time to go home. I got back in my car and drove home, and walked in the door at noon exactly :) I should tell Neil I did that. It didn't come up at the time and I still haven't told him. It's like a secret between me and God ;)

So it's not ALL bad. I just need a bit more time like that, and some catch-up on the sleep front, and maybe it will all be okay. I DO think I need some help with stress management though, regardless of whether things are suddenly peachy again or not. Jemma's right, it HAS been a major issue for me all my life, not just since having children. Ulcers are not good news for a 30-year-old! I need to sort this out, and I will take steps to do so. Thank you for pointing me in that direction, you guys.

I need to go and make a seriously yummy sauce to go on the pasta that Neil is cooking downstairs, but I have more to write so I'll leave this entry open and try to finish it a bit later before bed.

Back, but it's getting really late again. Arthur woke (weirdly) and wouldn't go back to sleep so I sat with him for ages, but Neil's with him now. Matthew will probably wake soon for a feed. He is definitely having a growth spurt. He's feeding way more at night suddenly, and more frequently in the day, so I'm sure of it.

Anyway, quickly - Jenn posted a GREAT link for me (thank you Jenn!) which is here. I found it really helpful. There's a list of things to try at the end, when you feel like you might hurt your child. It helped me so much to read it that I wrote it out and stuck it on my fridge door, see?

I feel really pleased to be able to SEE some sort of action taken, every time I look at the fridge. There are some useful ideas on the list too. My mum also suggested that if I feel that way, I could try to put MYSELF on a time-out till I cool off. She asked if there was anywhere secure and safe to put Arthur and walk away from him to cool down, and the only place I could think of was the travel cot in the bedroom. Today has been another stressful day - Matthew has had 3 THIRTY MINUTE naps (waaaaaaaaay too little for such a tiny person, and definitely too little for THIS particular tiny person!) and I couldn't get him to go back to sleep even using the methods I've been trying. Maybe I just didn't try hard enough? Well, one of those times I had put Arthur to bed right after Matthew went off to sleep, and Arthur REFUSED to nap. If I had time to persevere with him, he would have taken one eventually, but Matthew wakes at the 30 minute mark predictably (urgh) and needs me to go in and convince him that he needs a longer nap (which is hard work and can take up to 30 minutes in itself). So of course Matthew woke before Arthur was asleep and there was no way it was going to work with just me to fix naps for both of them. Why are my kids BOTH such hard work with naps?! Anyway. I put Arthur in the travel cot with his duvet and told him I had to go and settle Matthew and he needed to go to sleep. He wasn't happy, of course, but oh well. Anyway, I was juuust getting somewhere with Matthew when there's this thud and Arthur trots in. So that's the travel cot out. He can climb out of it. I put Matthew back in his cot (crying) and Arthur back in the travel cot (just to give me a minute or so) to go downstairs and phone Neil and ask him WHAT to do. While I was on the phone, Arthur climbed out and WHACKED his face on the radiator :( So he has a horrible bruise on his cheek, poor lovey. And he didn't nap today, for the second time in his whole life.

Urgh, Matthew is waking and Arthur's still awake and it's 11.40pm and I STILL haven't written all that I wanted to about the steps I am taking after yesterday's entry! Poo! I'll have to try to catch up again tomorrow. I have more ways that I plan to try and destress when I need to. I did not hurt my children today, thank goodness! I found today really hard. Neil thinks he might get holiday time from as early as next week. I can NOT wait for that. Okay, not a happy Matthew now! He wants milk, so I must go. Thanks so much again for all your advice and support. I'll write more tomorrow hopefully.

Help.

Okay, totally different vibe to the last couple of entries but -

Does anybody know where I can go to get help for stress? I have noooo idea where to go, and quite honestly I am scared to ask my GP or Health Visitor because I'm beginning to wonder if they'll take my kids away from me. I know, that probably sounds so stupid after my cheery entries recently.

Today I hurt Arthur, and I am too ashamed to tell you about it because it was that bad. I feel like I am going crazy. I feel like I could snap at any second and I don't know what to expect from myself. I feel DESPERATE for help, for a break, for sleep, for something - all things I absolutely CANNOT get to the degree that I need them. It's me, and Neil. Meg, thank you for your lovely offer of coming over again to help me one day. I would LOVE that. I need all the help I can get, it seems. My grandparents came over last week for a few hours and did some housework for me - isn't that lovely of them?

But the kind of help I feel like I need is WEEKS "off" to recharge and prevent myself going completely insane. I feel like I'm no longer exaggerating when I say that. I really feel like some ticker inside me is starting to buzz with an impending explosion. I mean, I have a STOMACH ULCER now. I am more stressed than human beings are meant to get. I know lots of people are out there doing the same stressy job and coping without ulcers or meltdowns, so either I must be crap, or I don't know.... they must be great. Or maybe I'm just a different make-up than them. But a crap one then, let's face it.

Anyway. It's 7pm but Neil has taken Arthur to the park after work to run around a bit. He's okay. He could SO easily not be right now after what I did. I need help. I need help. I NEED HELP. But I don't know where to go for it, or what exact help I need. I don't think I need anger management as such, because I have never really had issues with anger. Stress, though, that's another thing. Stress management then? Where do I go for the type of stress management that is tailored for mothers of small children on the verge of a nervous breakdown?! Also it has to be free. No spare money, though it would obviously be a priority to spend money on.

I am just CRYING. I don't know what to do. I feel this horrible self-loathing that I hate feeling for myself, but it's earned today. Matthew is asleep, I just nursed him to sleep.

I really don't think it is actually Postnatal Depression, because I am mostly happy and optimistic, as you see from my diary entries lately. But I am increasingly unable to cope with normal stresses in a day, and I feel so tired out that I don't feel able to do anything much with the boys. Arthur gets into pent-up "destructo" mode and hits, bites, throws, tears, etc, but I can see that he is just overwhelmed by his energy that I can't take him out of the house to burn off. If I am over-tired and Matthew is crying in my arms for the 2nd hour running, and I have told him for the thousandth time NOT to break this or that or throw the bouncy chair, etc, then something inside me snaps and I do something like today's incident. I am disgusted with myself. But scared too, because I know it will simply happen again the next time I am pushed to that level of stress. I just seem to be unable to cope with stress any more. It's like, physically, mentally.... I just can't cope. I feel like I am on the edge of snapping for real. Over the weekend I had a few meltdowns with Neil where I just begged him to take some holiday time so I could take the pressure off this whatever-it-is inside me before it pops and something bad happens. I honestly feel DESPERATE for time out, REAL time out, enough for me to heal, recharge, catch up properly on a bit of sleep, etc. But I don't know if that's ever going to be possible as a Mummy of two such little ones. I mean, no mummy can take time out like that - it's a job that is signed up for and once you're there, that's that! Which is a wonderful thing. But scary when I am not managing it at all well.

I even used the words, "Neil, I am BEGGING you, please take some holiday time." And I never use phrases like that. He keeps telling me he'll take time off but then there's this project or other at work that keeps getting delayed or drawn-out that he has to oversee before he can take time off work. He figured he could take holiday time off around 4 weeks after Matthew was born. I remember back then feeling like it was an eternity from 2 weeks to 4 weeks after he was born (the time I was on my own after Neil went back to work), and wondering how I'd ever get through it! Well we are still waiting, two months later. I swear I'm going to go crazy if someone doesn't give me a break soon. But I can't insist any more than I am about Neil's work. I guess he just has to do what he has to do there. But meanwhile I feel scared about where that leaves me. Until now I have felt like, well I don't know HOW I'll cope another week but I'll get through it somehow. And it's been fine in the end, with the odd really stressy day. But now I'm thinking, okay I am actually scared about my kids' safety if somebody doesn't come and take over for a bit and let me rest and recharge. But by "a bit" I mean like 2 weeks. A week would have done it a month ago, but I honestly think it's going to go too fast and I will just feel depressed about it from day one, knowing it'll be gone before I feel any better in myself.

It sucks because I get the feeling somebody is going to want to put me on anti-depressants and say I'm postnatally depressed, when I KNOW that if I could only get some practical help or some time to myself, I would be happy, sane, and lovely towards my kids at all times. I feel sad that it could be that simple and nobody is helping me. I feel angry at my family for relaxing happily in France (which they have every right to do) and not seeing how desperate I am for help and getting their butts over hear for a while to help me out when I am at my most desperately stressed. I don't feel angry at them much of the time, just when I feel like this and wish I had somebody around to regularly pop in and take the strain off for me. Neil said at the weekend maybe we should EMPLOY someone to help me with the kids. Am I crazy to think this is a horrible idea? For me, that feels like the final indelible stamp of "failure at motherhood" - needing someone to come and help me with my little babe-in-arms and my normal healthy toddler. And me without a job to go and do or anything. I feel absolutely ashamed of the idea, since there are fifty million mothers of two children under the age of two around, happily organising their children and trotting off to mother-and-toddler groups several times a week, etc. But again there are lots of those who have Grandma down the road. I WISH I did. I wish my mummy hadn't moved to France. She used to live within a 5 minute walk from our house. I have no right to ask that of my parents anyway, but I probably WOULD do if they were here, because I really need the help. For me, I feel really strongly about it being FAMILY who take some of the load when it comes to caring for my children. I can't bear the idea of a stranger being paid money to do so. When my kids are this little, it should be their mummy looking after them 24/7, nobody else. If anyone else has to help, then familiar family members would be ideal. However, they certainly don't need looking after 24/7 by a mummy who can't guarantee that she won't hurt them. I suck.

And the boys are home. Seriously, feel free to insult me over it. But also if anyone knows where I can get some help, please please could you tell me. I googled "hurting my toddler help", "i hurt my children" and "violence my toddler" but got nothing but stuff about toddlers being violent, and stuff about nice mothers who are worried about things hurting their toddlers. Nothing about crazy mothers who HURT their toddlers and want some help. Urgh. Anyway, seriously, please let me know if you have any ideas. I am not sure where else to ask.

I promise to finish my happy-cheery entry about Matthew later, or soon, or something. It feels weird to do so when I am busy being crappy-Mummy with it all hanging over me, so maybe not tonight. I need to talk with Neil after Arthur is in bed. When he got home I had Matthew crying in my arms, Arthur playing happily (somehow?!) but noisily on the floor, and he met me in floods of tears saying, "Where the HELL have you been?!!" (he was all of 5 minutes late) I told him I hurt Arthur. He asked why. I told him because I am shit. He took Arthur out while I got Matthew ready for bed, and I guess we'll talk in a minute after Arthur is asleep. I have to go, i'll be back later.

About Matthew

Waaaay too late again for a diary entry, but I'll never get it done otherwise, so here we go! This is the "Matthew" entry that I've been meaning to write for a while. He deserves an entry to himself at least (!), with all the changing and growing that he's doing! Arthur had about a million all of his own by this age, hehe!

Matthew is doing well! He is 12 weeks old, and he'll be three whole months old on this Thursday coming! Wow. Already.

He is losing his hair. He has been for aaages, I just kept forgetting to write about it. He has a bald ring all around his head now, poor thing! And he's a little thin on top. He is more bald on one side than the other, just like Arthur was before it all disappeared and then the new hair grew in. He does have new hair growing, but if I remember rightly from Arthur's time, that won't stay either! I am still eager to see what colour his "real" hair will be! His eyelashes and eyebrows have got a lot darker, but they still aren't as dark as Arthur's were as a newborn even, so I'm sure he'll have fairer hair than Arthur. I am not sure about the red any more though. I'll just have to wait and see! His eyes are bluer than ever though :)

I took Matthew to the baby clinic the day before yesterday to have him weighed, because his weight had been dropping down on the percentile chart - just a tiny bit each time, but still. He was at the 50th percentile at birth and for the next few weeks, and then he went down to the 25th and was juuust below that at the following appt. On Friday he weighed 12lbs 5oz, which puts him at about the 20th percentile. Hmmm. I had them measure his length too and he is 59cm, which also puts him just under the 25th percentile, so it seems he is well in proportion for his weight at least. They told me not to worry, and I know I shouldn't, and even MORE I know not to compare siblings! But it keeps sneaking into my head all the same somehow! Arthur was 14lbs 3oz at the exact same age that Matthew is now!!! He gained sooooo differently to Matthew, and seemed to be a completely different body shape too. We all think Matthew looks long and lean, and the Health Visitor commented that he looked "tall" the moment she saw him, but we were both surprised that he isn't really, being only at the 25th percentile. He's just a littley!

Anyway, she said Matthew looks healthy and happy. She asked about his feeds and his poo and wee, etc, and whether he seemed happy, or hungry a lot. I told her he has plenty of wet and pooey nappies, seems happy except when he's not (if that makes sense!), and seems annoyed at me offering him the breast too often! He seems to like his milk in nice set meals rather than snacks or third helpings, like Arthur did! Arthur would sometimes change sides (breasts, that is) SEVEN times in one feed, hehehe! Lil piggy ;) Matthew rarely wants the second breast, but I offer it to him anyway. He makes a screwed up face and grimaces so that his mouth won't let the nipple in! He is easily satisfied with one breast. I worry that he's not getting enough, especially since he gets what he wants in a matter of a few minutes, but I can't seem to interest him in any more than that. He gets very fussy at the breast if I offer him milk more often than say 3 hourly, but it's almost a relief these last two days to notice that he must be having a growth spurt at LAST, because he's eagerly feeding every couple of hours and I even noticed a rare HUNGER cry from him today when I was changing his nappy! He never cries from being hungry. I have had to stop breastfeeding him in the E.A.S.Y. pattern from the Baby Whisperer, because it specifies that you feed your baby when they wake up. Matthew's naps have been getting a bit rubbish lately. He will only nap for reeeally short periods of time, like 30 minutes, but then he's tired again after an hour or two. So if I feed him that frequently he just gets cross and won't take much of a feed at ANY point. So I've had to stop doing the E.A.S.Y. routine because of that. I need him to take longer naps.

I am working on that though. I finally got soooo frustrated a few days ago, with his short naps. They leave him cranky and unrefreshed, and eventually after a few short naps, he spends the last 2 hours before Neil gets home from work, crying inconsolably and I am finding that so difficult with Arthur at his most hyper/demanding at the same time of day too. And me at my tiredest. Also it never gives me much time with Arthur one-to-one (or to myself) if he only naps for 30 minutes at a time. I am up and downstairs with him like a yo-yo. On the rare, seemingly fluke occasion that he takes a 2-3 hour nap, he is just the HAPPIEST baby in the whole world and the end of the day is peacefully and much easier with him till Neil gets home. So I know he NEEDS those longer naps.

At the end of the week one day, he got up at 7.30am, napped at 10am for a grand total of 15 minutes and woke up VERY cross. I managed to get him back to sleep after an HOUR, but he only slept 30 minutes before waking again all cross and grumpy. I was so fed up and tired and irritable that I admit I kind of stormed up the stairs to his cotbed, thinking, "You are GOING back to sleep!" I picked him up and breastfed him, burped him, double-checked his nappy, made sure his clothes were comfy, and then put him back down in the cot on his tummy. He cried big time, but I didn't leave him. I stayed and whomped him on the bum with my hand so that he wobbled slightly with each pat. That used to work when he was very new, but it stopped working after a while. So anyway, I just told him it was sleepy time and that Mummy was still here, but kept patting even though he kept crying. I guess I was in the kind of mood where I was determined to see it through because I didn't stop. He cried for maybe 10 minutes with me patting him like that and occasionally telling him it was sleepy time. I figured after 10 minutes I should pick him up and try to comfort him and then put him back down again. But he started to put his cheek on the mattress and seemed sleepy with his crying, and after a while I stopped patting and he went back to sleep. He woke 2 minutes later and cried, and I patted again, and he dozed off. He woke again after another 3 minutes and I did the same thing, and he was back to sleep again quickly.

I felt really relieved about it, though I can't believe I actually did something with one of my babies' sleep that meant them crying! You know how totally against that idea I was when Arthur was tiny! I can't tell you how much it CHANGES when you have two children to juggle and you just get to the point where you know you have to do something to keep the family routine from falling apart! It's so much more important when there's more than one child in the equation. Plus, my sanity.... When his naps got shorter and shorter, I felt sort of gripped by a weird panic (!!) because I remember Arthur's naps being short and random and how things NEVER GOT BETTER, and how awfully hard that has been over these last couple of years. I suddenly felt resolved to make sure that didn't happen again with this little one, because I KNOW I just can't go through that again. And I also know from experience that it gets harder to get things "fixed" the older the baby gets. So there you go.

Anyway. Matthew then napped for the next 3.5 HOURS without stirring!!!!! Yikes! I lost track of the time - Arthur and I were doing playdough and drawing and Duplo and loooads of stuff, and before I knew it, it was nearly Arthur's tea time and I hadn't woken Matthew yet! He was the smiliest, chattiest boy in the world for the next hour and a half and still went to bed beautifully at his normal bedtime. So I have been trying to lengthen his naps using that method since then. He does cry a lot and I haven't got the same strength of determination this weekend that I did during the week. I just can't bear him crying for too long, even though I'm there patting him and saying soothing stuff. But when I HAVE stuck it out, he has gone back to sleep and slept soundly for at least an hour, sometimes an hour and a half, so that's great. He really needs that sleep.

His night sleep is going well! I haven't been turning him onto his back after I go to bed, which makes me mighty nervous so I lay my hands on him and pray over him before I get in bed to go to sleep. He goes to sleep for the night between 6.30pm and 7.30pm at the moment, depending on when his last nap was (and thus how tired he is by 6 or 7pm). Two nights ago when I left him on his tummy, he woke up for the FIRST time at nearly 4am!!!! He had a huge feed and then woke again at 6.45am for the day. Last night the same thing happened and he woke at 4.30am and then 6.15 for the day. I'd be despairing over the 6am wakings if it weren't for the fact that Arthur also wakes before 7am and Neil is already up with him, so I just feed Matthew in bed and take him downstairs to Neil, and then retreat back to bed till 8am when Neil goes to work! I am sooooooooo grateful for that!

So the nights are getting better :) I keep on going to bed too late though, which is really silly because I'm so tired and Matthew is letting me get a bit more sleep if only I'd take hold of the opportunity. Tsk.

Let's see, what else? Matthew is stirring - uh oh... Of course he'll wake now (at 11.40pm), because I've just said that he doesn't wake till 4am, haha. Oh my gosh, he really IS waking! Well I never. Okay I'll have to finish this another time. I have photos and more about what Matthew has been doing lately! Back tomorrow, maybe?

It's late...

Wow, what a weeeird feeling - it's 5.15pm and BOTH boys are awake and active, and yet I am sitting at the computer writing a diary entry! I don't think that has ever happened before! It's Saturday though so Neil is home, and I feel like I am slowwwly losing my sanity for desperate want of some time to myself, so after a brief snappy moment with Neil (which I HATE having happened in front of the boys), he sent me off upstairs to do something on my own for a bit. Matthew is happy at the moment in his bouncy chair with the Kick and Play music playing on the toy bar. Arthur is about to eat his tea, so here I am.

Lately I just feel so DEMANDED OF all the time, and that is okay because it comes as a norm with having two children under the age of two. But I feel like I have had absolutely no respite so far. We have no help, no family around, and the weekends are absolutely swallowed up by me trying to get a bit more sleep during the day to catch up on the HUGE sleep-debt that has been building for nearly 2 years. But that doesn't ever work because the little ones need me for something every hour it seems. One of them wants to be breastfed (and I know I'm probably crazy but I just have a "thing" about only feeding them snuggled up to my body (ie not from a bottle of expressed milk - I don't even have the equipment at home for that - and that's that), or somebody needs settling for a nap, or it's ME who is needing something, like a wee or some food or whatever. The result seems to be that every weekend I spend most of Saturday trying to catch up on sleep and end up getting about 90 minutes of broken sleep somehow, over the course of the whole morning and half the afternoon! Sunday is depressing because it's the last day of the weekend and then the week begins again. Urgh. I am just beginning to CRAVE some alone time.

It's not as bad as I'm making sound though, honestly! I love my lil beanie boys and I have had some GREAT days lately where I just feel like I'm managing wonderfully and LOVING this stage of parenting like nothing else. Even after an exhausting day full of tantrums and sleep-deficient boys and food refusal, etc, which has come on top of a night where I only got a broken 3.5 hours sleep, I STILL have felt wonderful about what I'm doing. But then on the other hand, I still have some days where I just want to run and hide and not be responsible for anybody or demanded of in any way! I guess today is a bit like one of those days.

Anyway.

On Thursday I went for my blood test. Neil arranged for a gardener to come round while I went to the appt to assess our hideously overgrown garden and give us a quote for them to fix it up so that it's suitable for two little boys to tumble about in. So he took a long lunch-break from work and watched the boys while I went to my appt, and that way he was home to see the gardener. I am SO excited about finally getting the garden sorted! The house is the other issue, and we are also looking at companies who will just come round an BLITZ your house and help you with decluttering and everything. It's beyond our own means now, seriously.

I feel ashamed to say it, but my stomach ulcer has come in handy in some ways. It's awful to think I sort of used it as a bargaining tool (!!), but Neil told me I need to find some ways of de-stressing once I got diagnosed with it. Which is TRUE, I do need to. But other than the stresses and strains of the stage of parenting that I'm at, the BIG stresses for me at the moment are the garden and the house. For MONTHS I have been nagging poor Neil to get someone to come and fix them, because I have honestly been finding it soooooo depressing to spend all my hours in such a revoltingly dirty and cluttered house. It's really stressy to be in, and then some days I am too exhausted to take Arthur and Matthew out and Arthur is climbing the walls and I WISH I had a nice garden for a toddler to run about in and burn off some energy. Since before Matthew was born, I have been asking Neil if we can perhaps get some help in to sort those things out. But he has this big "must do it myself" issue going on, and we've had countless arguments over the summer about how it's never going to happen, and if it DOES happen it means that Neil will have to take serious amounts of time off work just to tackle it all, and that will mean he is wasting holiday time on the house and garden, and will still be too busy to spend time with me and the boys. But he STILL insisted on doing it himself, despite me pointing this out, saying it was something he just had to do himself. Urgh.

Anyway so when he said I needed to de-stress, I told him that I couldn't think of any way to make the bringing-up-the-boys thing less stressful, or how to find time in the 24 hour day for some de-stress time for myself, any more than I already do. BUT, the house and the garden were stressing me out hugely and having those off my back would make a big difference! ;) The very next day, he called a gardener and arranged for her to come round :) When he told me, I nearly cried with relief and I made sure I thanked him over and over, because it really does mean THAT much to me to get it fixed. So, yay! I hope we can afford it. We still don't have the quote yet.

I have been taking my medication for 5 days and the first two days I felt really scared because I was in more pain than ever for some reason. But it's getting a little better now. The pain between my shoulder blades and in my chest has gone, which is a BIG relief, and my stomach pain isn't so constant. I did notice that if I bring my knees up to my chest I get a sudden pain like someone is holding a fork into my stomach from underneath it, and it takes ages to ease off after I put my knees down again (which, obviously, I do right away!). It's such a sharp and specific pain, that I feel pretty sure it's an ulcer rather than gastritis. The doctor seemed to think that too. Grrreat. I remember in my teens wondering whether I'd ever have an ulcer one day - what an odd thing to wonder! But I have always been so stressy, and have always felt my stress in my stomach more than the rest of my family did, so I wondered if I might be more prone than most? But it still might be due to the Helicobacter Pylori. I have to wait till the middle/end of next week to phone for the blood test results.

Thanks Valerie and Mallory for your comments about it! And thanks for the advice, Valerie, about the acidophilis. I have taken a really good multi-billion dophilis formula in the past so I'll look for that again, if I do end up on those horrible antibiotics! Yeurgh!

Oops, it's now 6 hours later! Neil called me to get Matthew's night nappy and stuff together while he cleaned Arthur up after his tea, so I went down and then we did the whole bedtime thing and ate dinner and watched Ice Age, and then I uploaded photos from my camera, and NOW it's too late to write any more. So it's a bit of an unexciting entry, but oh well. I'll have to write some more tomorrow. I really wanted to write an entry about Matthew, because I feel like he's changing so fast and I haven't been writing about him much lately. I don't want to forget it all, and I will hate it in a year or so when I look back and don't really see much record of anything from this stage. There is LOADS to say, so I'll try to get it done soon! And photos, but not as many as I thought I would have. I need to take more photos of my lovely boys!

Also I am "doing things" with both the boys' sleep, and I want to write about that too. But, no time. Matthew is stirring a bit and it's nearly midnight, urgh. But first of all, here's Arthur pulling a hairband out of his hair (hence the blurriness!). He looked sooooo pretty with his hair all tied up in a little sprig on top, hehe! It's getting soooo long again, and he found my hairband and after trying to put it in MY hair, he wanted me to put it in his, and stood patiently while I did it! He had cute little curls turning up all the way around at the sides and the back of his hair, and this sweet little sprig on top - oh, he looked soooo pretty! ;) Anyway, he was pretty fast at pulling it out the INSTANT I got the camera, but oh well! Here he is:

And here they are watching Monsters Inc, haha! Arthur ADORES this movie, I think he must have watched it about 50 thousand times already. He asks for it several times a DAY, but of course we never let him watch it THAT often! It is an absolute lifesaver when I have to settle Matthew upstairs or when Arthur is about to throw a mega tantrum or something. Or if I'm just too knackered to move for a while! I have discovered that Matthew seems to love the movement and colour of the TV and if he's crying and crying and I really need to pee or get some lunch or put the wet laundry in the tumble dryer, I can put him in his bouncy chair in front of the TV and he'll be calm and intrigued by it for a while. I hate that my VERY young children sit and watch TV like this! But gosh I need it sometimes, just to get a moment to do something, or to divert a meltdown, etc.

Anyway, Arthur is so sweet on the few occasions I have sat Matthew in front of the TV in his bouncy chair. He sits right up close to him (usually on his potty!) and when I come back from the loo or the kitchen, I find him gently bouncing the chair with his hand on the back of it, while they both watch. If Matthew is crying in the chair, Arthur tries to unclip the harness and get him out. He doesn't like me to leave him there too long! Anyway here are a couple of photos of them:

And my latest favourites of my boys together - Matthew was lying on a floor mat on his tummy, looking at some bright toys, and Arthur insisted on lying next to him (which he does a LOT). I took a couple of photos:

My sweet little boys! :)

Okay, getting too late, must go. I'll try to update again tomorrow. We're hoping to attempt to go to church (only the second time since Matthew was born!) so I had better get to bed, otherwise our chances of making it there will get smaller and smaller. I am suddenly really hungry though, so I think I'll have to eat something before I can sleep. And Matthew is due to wake any time soon for a feed. Back soon!

Stomachy issues, and LOVING Matthew!

It's after midnight but oh well. I am feeling really anxious tonight. I went to the doctor today and she suspects that I have a stomach ulcer. Either that or gastritis. I have to take acid suppressants for a month, but in the mean time I need a blood test for Helicobacter Pylori, to see if I have that bacteria in my stomach which might be causing the ulcer/gastritis. If it's positive then I have to take a yucky course of treatment. Grandoug tested positive for Helicobacter in his stomach a couple of years ago and had that course of treatment and it wasn't much fun. It's two different antibiotics plus the acid suppressant, and he felt very unwell during the treatment and had "shocking diarrhoea" for a couple of weeks, urgh. Apparently that's very common. How fun.

I just hope and pray that it ISN'T Helicobacter Pylori. The doctor said the other reason I might have an ulcer or gastritis would be high stress levels sustained over a long period of time, together with inconsistent nutrition or very irregular meals. Sounds EXACTLY like me for the last 2-3 months! So maybe it is that and not the bacterial thing. I need to take the acid suppressants to allow my stomach lining to heal.

I have been googling Helicobacter Pylori and all that stuff, and it's nothing to WORRY about, but I just feel so anxious today. My stomach hurts more every day at the moment, and today and yesterday I haven't had much appetite. My whole ribcage aches and it bores right through to the middle of my shoulder blades.

But anyway, thank GOODNESS it isn't anything more serious, like anything to do with my heart or gallbladder! I need to count my blessings. But I feel small and scared all the same.

Arthur had an appt right after mine, and I asked the doctor about how he bangs his head SO hard on things. He whacks it on the floor as hard as I can hit with a HAMMER, I kid you not. It's not in anger or tantrum-ness, it's as though something is physically driving him CRAZY. He sometimes bangs his forehead and other times it's all focused on his nose. He also presses and rubs his nose vigorously a lot, so I wondered if he might have an allergy or something. He doesn't sneeze a lot or have a runny nose though. The doctor looked in his nose and said it looked a little red inside, so she is giving me a course of antihistamines for him to take for a week. If they fix it, it's allergy. If they don't, it's not. She did note that he seems to be teething quite badly right now (as he always seems to be!) and told me that when little ones teethe, their gums can tingle and prickle, and in some children, that sensation gets transfused through the nasal cavity and the forehead. So it might just be that sensation that's driving him crazy and making him want to pull his own head off! Poor Arthur, either way!

So that's today. Matthew has cried ANGRILY for hours today. I don't know what's up. I hope I don't have to take alllll those drugs. They are allegedly safe for breastfeeding mothers, but they are still gonna get to him in some form, and I don't want him to have to "get" them.

I am enormously in love with Matthew lately. I mean, Arthur too, of COURSE, but ohhhh my Matthew! He seems just that little bit more vulnerable than Arthur, perhaps just because he's a tiny baby, but mainly I suspect because he's a more vulnerable personality. My heart just scrunches for him all the time and I want to hold him close and snuggle him and kiss him constantly. I love leaning over the cot when he's sleeping in there and just breeeeathing in his smell. I don't love Arthur any less than Matthew. I just have this INTENSITY of the love I have for Matthew right now. My milk lets down just saying his name (seriously) during the evening when I'm downstairs chatting with Neil. I just almost feel suffocated with how much I love Matthew right now. Not in a bad way (which it might sound like with the word suffocated!). Just... WOW. Big love. It has almost been exactly a year since he was conceived. Yesterday I went back through my diaries and read all my thoughts and stuff from around that time, this time last year. We weren't even trying, and we had decided to wait after a chemical pregnancy the cycle before. I kept changing my mind, because I was so excited to have another baby (but then, also completely petrified!). Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my goodness, I am just SO glad that my hormones made me get all in the mood and that thunderstormy evening led to the oopsie that made Matthew! So so so so so glad. He's such a miracle. Such a treasure. I love him so much!

And my sweet Arthur :) All his new words today and yesterday have been two-syllable ones, I have just noticed. Circle, hairband, pattern, downstairs, piglet... I can't think of any others off the top of my head. Ohhh I mustn't get into "mega update" mode!! It's too late. I have to go to bed, but I'll try to do another update soon. I have a few photos waiting to be posted so I'll try to post them soon.

Waffly stuff

Thank you for the comments after my last entry!!! I was SO excited to see comments in my new comments box! :)

As always I'll start by saying that I don't have any time to write, blah blah blah - I really don't, but somehow I always end up writing for HOURS anyway! It's already 10.50pm so I'd be reeeeally daft if I did that tonight. I guess I have photos somewhere, but I don't think there are any new ones uploaded from the camera yet. I just ate dinner and Neil is watching a DVD that he likes (and I don't) and I was just scaring myself googling "pain between shoulder blades", so I figured I should stop doing that and maybe luxuriate in an actual WAFFLY diary entry - the kind where you just let your brain flow through your fingers as they type, without anything prepared in advance. I LOVE writing like that! It's why I even STARTED writing diaries. But lately I'm always playing catch-up with news and photos about my sweetie-boys. Which is so much fun and something I prefer to do anyway, but I do still miss letting my thoughts run out onto the keyboard.

I have some weird pain at the moment which has been bothering me for a few days. I am pretty sure it's just indigestion, but something about it is nagging at the back of my mind and worrying me, so I got to googling (never a very good idea!). I have a horrid dragging ache under my ribcage and just feel really bloated and indigestiony. But lately I have had a pretty bad pain in between my shoulder blades, and it doesn't feel muscular. Something kept on nagging in my mind from my nursing studies, about referred pain, but from WHAT? So I googled, and found that I could be having a heart attack and should be calling my doctor RIGHT AWAY! Yikes! But then again, I strolled around the supermarket only a couple of hours ago and didn't fall over, and I am pretty healthy and still young, so I'm pretty sure it's not that. Then, it could be gallbladder trouble or an ulcer. Urgh, I really shouldn't google! It's probably just indigestion and some weirdo shoulder thing, being all coincidental with each other. I think I will go to see my doctor on Monday anyway. The indigestion is bothering me, and the shoulder blade pain much more so, and I have been having bad headaches that last a few days at a time recently too, so it would probably be a good idea to run those things past her. Now that I have little ones, I feel so much more anxious about my wellbeing. I go straight to "Ohhh, I hope it's nothing that will require medication that will mean I have to stop breastfeeding my little ones!", and then a split second later I'm right at, "Oh my gosh, I hope I don't DIE! I mustn't die, I mustn't die, please God don't let me die! My baby boys need their mummy!"

Am I crazy? I just seem so easily thrown into panic about something happening to me so that I can't be there for my boys. I HAVE to be there for my boys. They need me. It breaks my heart to even think for a second of them losing me. I find myself praying many nights in bed that God will not take me or Neil from them while they're growing up. Everything in me wants to protect them from anything that could be an emotional struggle while they are children. Or EVER, really, but especially while they're growing up. My sweet boys. I love them so much.

I also find that I am frequently anxious (especially at night, again) about losing one or both of them. I can't FATHOM how anyone could have children and one day lose one of them, and not just totally die from the pain of it. This is the first time that I have ever realised that the intense maternal love I felt for Cameron was not the same as the love I feel for my own children. Even when Arthur was a baby, I felt that I loved Cameron just as much as Arthur (which was really saying something!), so I guessed I must have loved him as my own, like I had thought all along. The bottom fell out of my world for a long while after he died, but I still survived and I'm still here and happy and seeing life normally, etc. I am beginning to feel like I love Matthew and Arthur even MORE intensely than I loved Cameron. But maybe the memory of how intensely I loved Cam while he was still around is fading, that's all? Or maybe my capacity to love grew since Cam was alive, and now I can love more, so I DO - more than I ever loved Cam? Anyway, the long and short of it is that I feel like I could not live if Matthew or Arthur died. I mean, physically, not emotionally. Like as if you removed my windpipe so that I could no longer breathe, that kind of thing.

Yesterday I was standing in the porch and I had a random moment of achiness, of just MISSING Cameron. I don't get those so often now, and they always make me wonder why when I get them. It has only just occurred to me that it's now September, the month that he died 3 years ago. So that's probably why then. It's so weird how something in me just picks up on the subtle vibe of the time of year, even when the weather isn't the same as it was that September or anything. I can't imagine him if he were still alive any more - he would be 14. An adolescent. Since he was never meant to be more than a child, it makes it impossible to imagine. And I don't think I even want to. I am starting to forget things about him, the way he looked and his mannerisms and things. That's scary when that kind of thing happens. He used to feel like part of my very being, body and soul, and now I am forgetting exactly what he LOOKED like. I don't like that feeling.

Urgh. I didn't plan to write like this!

Anyway, my precious boys. I get anxious about losing them lately. I don't know if that's just normal or if I'm getting a bit over-the-top about it, hmmm. Matthew sleeps on his tummy from bedtime until his first waking, and sometimes we remember to turn him onto his back during the evening, but it we forget then he'll wake when we turn him at our bedtime. So sometimes I want to just let him sleep and I leave him on his tummy. I feel absolutely WEIGHED DOWN with guilt over that, and fear that he won't ever wake up as a result. I should just turn him and be done with it, but he sleeps so peacefully and well if I leave him to sleep till he wakes naturally, and he ALWAYS wakes when I turn him at bedtime. Sometimes I lie in my bed next to his cotbed and just can't sleep until he wakes anyway. I try not to worry and to relax and go to sleep but I just can't. Other times lately I have been laying my hands on him as he sleeps and praying that God will protect him and keep him breathing and safe and alive, and just try to give my anxiety over it to God. Last night I did that and he slept from 8pm to 4.30am - his longest stretch yet!!! But all on his tummy. I still feel anxious about that.

I feel like.... my boys are my LIFE. I don't know if that's how it SHOULD be. I know God should be Lord of my life way more than I let him be. He should be the most important thing in my whole life. And somewhere under the clutter, he is, really he is. I love my God. I have been neglecting my relationship with him terribly these last couple of years, but I LOVE him so. I feel like my life is like a house - Jesus is my foundation, and my family are my walls. Neil, my husband, is my roof over my head. I NEED all those parts and would struggle terribly without them, I wouldn't be complete. But the house is empty without my children. My children FILL the house. If I lost them I would just be empty, empty, empty. I get scared about that happening. I really don't like how anxious I am in life. I should give it all to God more, but I struggle with that soooo much.

This is such an anxious entry! I think I will waffle about something else. Hmmm.... I can't think of anything else! That's crazy! It's 11.20pm, I should go to bed. Oh, I know! I must have a billion little things to share that Arthur did or said lately! Those always fill me with joy and will be a GREAT way to finish this rather morbid entry!

Arthur's rate of picking up new words is increasing every day. I think he must be saying about 10 new words every day at the moment, roughly. He is combining two words together a lot more just in the last 48 hours too. Mostly his name and another word, to tell me he wants something or he's doing something, etc.

Did I tell you that he has REALLY taken to Monkey (his favourite stuffed toy) lately? He has never really had an attachment as such, to any toy or blanket. His comfort thing has always been the breast instead. But lately he is mimicking everything I am doing with Matthew, with Monkey! It's the sweetest thing! It started a couple of weeks ago when he wanted soooo badly to help me "bup" Matthew but he was patting a bit too hard and Matthew was squirming so I told him he couldn't help me right at that moment. He got frustrated and then suddenly fetched Monkey and said, "Bup!" with great delight, and started patting Monkey soooo carefully on the back, just exactly as I was doing it to Matthew! Since then, his caring duties towards Monkey have expanded and become more detailed. He puts Monkey on the changing mat and says, "Taynge!" (change) and then leans riiight over him so that his nose is hovering above Monkey's tummy. He sniffs for a moment, wafting his face back and forth over Monkey, and then straightens up and declares, "Poo-poo!" Then he needs wipes to clean Monkey, and I help him with the velcro fastenings on one of the Very Baby fitted nappies that I made for Matthew in the teeny tiny newborn size. It is now Monkey's nappy, officially! It's a little bit big on Monkey but it definitely fits him. I also gave Arthur a tiny baby popper vest with Winnie the Pooh on it, which NONE of my babies are ever going to fit in unless they come early! It fits Monkey generously :) After Monkey is changed, Arthur puts him in the bouncy chair and takes GREAT pains over clipping him into the harness, which is quite difficult for his little fingers, but he works and works at it until Monkey is clipped in. Then he stands by the chair with his foot on the side of the seat and his hand on the back, "rocking" the bouncy chair with his foot! He sees me rock the chair with Matthew in it, with my foot all the time, so he tries really hard to mimic me doing that. It's impossible for him to do it the way I do though, because he's too little, so he has to stand and almost fall into the chair as he tries to rock it standing on one leg! After he has rocked for a few seconds, he suddenly whispers, "Oh!" and then puts his finger on his nose and says, "Ssss!" - soooo cute! I LOVE how he puts his finger on his nose instead of his lips to "shh" me because Monkey is asleep! It's exactly what I do if Matthew is cranky and tired but he won't go to sleep - I rock him in the chair and when he is dozing off, I say to Arthur, "Oh! Matthew's asleep!" and then I put my finger to my lips and say, "Shhh..." and then I tell Arthur that Mummy is going to take Matthew upstairs and put him in his cot because he's asleep. I guess I do it exactly the same way every time, though I don't mean to be so precise! Anyway, it's so sweet to see Arthur trying so hard to do exactly as he sees me doing with Matthew. Right after Monkey is "asleep" in the bouncy chair, he takes him out and goes to the stairgate with him, gesturing to me that he wants to take Monkey upstairs. If I take him up, he is so excited as he climbs the stairs! He says "Ssss!" several times on the way up, reminding me that Monkey is still asleep. He runs straight to Matthew's cotbed and pops Monkey in, and then looks at me and whispers, "Ohhh....Ssss!" with his finger on his nose :) My cute lil boy!

I do this thing with Matthew that makes him smile reeeeally big. I take both his tiny hands in mine, and I say, "Buh... buh... buh... buh... BOOGIEEEE!" With the first "buh", I pat both his hands on his tummy, and then a big higher with each "buh" sound until they're at his shoulders and then I wiggly-shake his whole body at the shoulders with his arms as I say, "BOOGIEEEE!" I don't know where it came from - I just started doing it one day :) Anyway, the other day Arthur was playing happily with his toys and chatting away to himself, and suddenly I heard, "Bap... bap... BOOBIEEE!" hehehe! I looked and he was bopping Monkeys hands with his own, up Monkey's tummy as he said "Bap... bap..." He was too busy grinning at the word "BOOBIEEE!" to remember to shake Monkey's body! It was sooooooo sweet, seriously. He has done that quite a few times since, and he has also done it with a teddy bear he found in his basket today too :)

I keep thinking how sweet he is being with Monkey, but right after a particularly tender loving moment, he is still a bit prone to squashing Monkey as hard as he can into his potty and then sitting down hard on him! Or positioning Monkey JUST SO on the carpet, getting on his car and DRIVING OVER poor Monkey for kicks!!! I am a little confused by his mixed messages, hehe! But he's a sweetie :)

Okay Arthur just woke calling "Mumma! Muuuummaaa!" so I went in and he was asleep on his front with his legs all curled up under him. I lay my hand on his back and covered him up with his duvet, and he didn't stir, so I guess he was dreaming. I sat with him a while in case he was going to stir again and want me, and then I bent down and kissed his sweet face and left him to sleep. I can NOT get over how blessed I am to be a mummy, and more especially, mummy to TWO such sweet and precious little boys!!! I drove to the supermarket this evening for a rare luxurious trip to do something on my own, after I had put the little ones to bed with Neil. I missed them the INSTANT I pulled off the driveway and every road further away I drove, my heart tugged more for them. But I drove beaming from ear to ear with joy over how lucky I feel, how blessed I am, and how excited I am to finally be a real life MUMMY!!! I keep thinking back to my teens when life felt so boring and empty and like I was just having to pass time WAITING to get to the bit where I got to have children. It's all I wanted. Sometimes it felt like it would NEVER happen, but here I am, and I'm so proud! So proud of what I've achieved - two little boys, grown inside my body and pushed out by moi, nursed at my breasts and held in my arms, and *I* am MUMMY, the person they most love and want to be around in their whole lives so far! I can't imagine anything more wonderful, except to be Mummy like this to even more children! :) So proud of what I've accomplished just today, or last week, or last month: two children under two and managing life with some sense of normality and a cheerful heart! So proud of my boys themselves, of the sweet little people that they are, of how cute and smart and funny and gentle and handsome they are, and of how much joy they bring to so many other people's lives as well as my own. And sooooooooooooooooooooo thankful to God for bringing it all about. I just feel BOWLED OVER with how blessed I am and how much I love my baby boys. I am getting more and more magic moments these days, where I just feel so happy with my situation that I wish I could freeze time for a moment and capture it forever. It's still hard work and I still lose my temper sometimes or don't know how I'll ever get through the day, but I am having soooo many more occasions where I LOVE LOVE LOVE where I'm at and I look at my kids and think, "Can it GET any better than this?!" Then I just want to POP because I know the answer is, "Yes, it can, just you wait and see!"

Yet more photos, counting, and waffly stuff

Just a relatively quick update to say, YAY!! - I just signed up with Haloscan.com since Signmyguestbook.crap seems to be so useless lately, and I finally have one of those comments box thingies that I have seen on so many of my friends' diaries!! Yay! I even got to fiddle with the template so it matches my diary and has a photo of Arthur-Boo in it, so I'm all happy happy now! :) Please use my comments box if you have trouble with my guestbook (or just because it's more fun!) - I've made a link to click on up there on the left, under "leave me a note". Just click on "comments" and the box will pop up :) Yay! I reeeally need to update the photo up there - it's Arthur when he was about 5 months old, and that seems sooooooooooo out of date now that I have another baby boy who is only just over 2 months behind that age now! How crazy. But I'm waiting for the "perfect" photo of the two of them, both wearing sweet expressions, and preferably on the sofa because the colour of our sofa happens to match the colour of this diary (and I'm picky like that, hehe!). So far I have plenty of photos building up, of my two sweeties together, and some on the sofa too, but they mostly come out GREAT for one of them and really NOT great for the other, or not-so-good of both of them! I need to keep on taking photos. I'm such a perfectionist over the photo that will be the one everybody sees when they come to my diary. It has to say PROUDLY, "These are my BOYS!!!" so I want to do them both justice with the photo. Still working on it!

So far here are some recent photos of my sweet lil men :)

The above photos were taken when Matthew was 7 weeks old, so not very recent now, but even though they didn't come out great for both boys, I love them because it looks like Arthur was whispering something to Matthew which upset him hugely, and Arthur was utterly gleeful over his mischievousness, hehe!

Here are two more from around the same time - these were the last two of about fifty million that I took of them because Matthew was wearing an outfit that was a gift from a sweet lady who is one of my parents' neighbours in their village in France. I wanted to take a good photo of him wearing it so my parents could give it to her, so I dressed the poor boy up and snapped a billion photos. Of course he got fed up SUPER fast. Arthur, however, has always loved having his photo taken, and when Matthew finally went into meltdown over the whole tedious session, Arthur almost scooped him right up in the big hug he gave him, as though he was trying to make him feel better about it! I took a (blurry) photo of that, but I wish I had caught in on the camcorder, because he was being SO sweet with Matthew. Eventually he gave up and just beamed good-naturedly for the last photo while Matthew bawled next to him, hehe! Anyway, here are the photos:

And here are a couple that I took of the boys last week, first thing in the morning when they were both still wearing their sleepsuits - my little sweeties!

Look at those boys - they are so different! They LOOK so different, but also their personalities really are so different. Arthur is so cheery and laid-back, and Matthew is quite an anxious little person - you can see it in the photos. He is easily nervous about things. He gets that from me. I have always been a super-anxious person, it's the thing I struggle the hardest with. I'm sad that Matthew has inherited that tendency from me (my mother is just the same, as was her father), but thankful that he has an absolutely wonderful older brother to look after him in Arthur, as he is so easy-going and confident and has no anxious tendencies at ALL. Also he LOVES Matthew so much. And at least Matthew has a Mummy who totally understands how he feels. *sigh*

However, when his anxious side isn't getting on top of him, Matthew seems a very calm and happy baby, which is lovely. He has such a gentle nature, I think I mentioned it already, either here or in my pregnancy diary. He LOVES to talk. He would rather talk than eat. Did I say that last entry already? I forget what I've already said here from entry to entry! He also has a tendency to get mighty upset if I am not looking RIGHT into his eyes while he's "talking" to me, even if I break his gaze for a SECOND to acknowledge something Arthur is doing! He starts to cry right away, and I have to work a little to "chat" him back to contentment again! Unfortunately, this is also a trait he has picked up from me. *sigh* I could talk the hind legs off a donkey. I hate it when someone isn't paying me their absolutely undivided attention for the whole 10 hours that my "about my day" talk lasts!! ;) Neil is very patient with me. My dad is the same way as me (my mummy is patient too!). He gets it from his mother. Poor Matthew with his anxiety and chatterbox-ness! I hope he isn't colour blind as well. Arthur isn't, so perhaps I haven't inherited the gene and I'm not even carrying it to pass on to my boys, but then again maybe I AM and Arthur got lucky. I hope Matthew misses it too. If I am a carrier (and I have a 50/50 chance of being one, since my mum is a carrier and my brother is colour blind), any sons that I have will each have a 50/50 chance of being colour blind. Or not. Arthur definitely isn't - his colours are so clear and he can tell me them so well that I know he is seeing red and green easily and not mixing them up like my brother does. I have a while to wait before I can tell if Matthew is okay or not.

Anyway, here are a couple of photos of my sweet lil Matthew being happy with Daddy:

Neil is blowing raspberries at him. Matthew LOVES raspberries - they are his favourite noise in the whole world, and he smiles enormously and his little eyes light up when you parple your lips or blow raspberries with your tongue! He worked and worked for a couple of days at copying us when we did it, and now he can blow his own raspberries with his tongue! He doesn't stick his tongue out very far though, but he makes the appropriate noise, which is the enjoyable part, apparently! He blows bubbles too, which I don't remember Arthur ever doing, and he drools like crazy all the time. He is teething a lot today. He has a nappy rash and is fussing more, and he is biting his fingers so that they are going all red and puffy. I gave him the knuckle of my little finger to bite this afternoon and he bit and bit and bit for 5 minutes straight. I gave him a teething ring and he chewed that for a while, but he's too little to hold it and co-ordinate it to his own mouth yet so in the end it was easier on my arm to just give him my knuckle to bite rather than hold a teething ring at the right angle for half an hour! Poor Mathie.

Mathie is what I seem to call him a lot lately. Nobody else does, just me. I call Arthur, Arthie a lot too. I guess I am one of those people who finds it impossible to avoid shortening names to cutesify them or something! Matthew's nickname from me seems to have turned into Mathie-Moo, or even Mathie-Moo-Moblet (no idea why!) if I'm in the mood for a longer nickname! Poor Arthur has to put up with "Arthie-knees", hehehe! I think that must have arisen from a combination of his name and another of my odd affectionate nicknames for the boys - "sweet knees"! I have no idea why these things come out of my mouth, really I don't. I guess I am just weird! ;) Also both boys are lately known (by me) as "lamb" or "lambie", or even "lambie-lamb". It can get as bad as "lambie-lamb-lamb", and "lamb-lambie-lamb-lamb" has been known on occasion! Urgh, my poor children! ;)

Matthew REALLY loves mirrors at the moment. He gazes at himself for ages, as though he just doesn't understand, and then he starts talking to himself with a very serious expression, hehe! I hold him in front of the mirror in my arms for ages sometimes, and he smiles at me but looks rather serious about that other baby in there with me! On his playmat, there is a centre-piece that has a mirror dangling down, and he loves to stare at himself in that. He talks much more cheerfully to the baby in THAT mirror (the one that isn't hogging his mummy's arms!) and gives it all sorts of very cute shy looks and smiles. I got a couple of photos of him doing this at 8 weeks old. I wish I had more time to get photos of him that are as good as the ones I took of Arthur at his age, but I just don't get the chance now, with Arthur around as well. I still try though!

Wow, I think I am almost caught up with all the photos now, yay!!! I have one more from last week to post here, but I have some on the camera from the last few days to upload sometime too. Phew! So many photos, so little time!

We finally used the Mothercare vouchers that were given to us by the church to buy Matthew a Bumbo seat! I had heard about them when Arthur was a baby but I didn't want to buy things to put him down in. I wanted to hold him all the time and keep him close to me. I would like the same with Matthew really, except that it just doesn't seem to be physically possible with the second child when the first is still so little and so demanding of me. Unless I wore a sling of course, but my back hurts enough without wearing a sling these days, and anyway, slings aren't all that tandem-nursing-friendly. Matthew seems happy enough to be put down for short periods of time, but he does get really really upset after a short time and then sometimes I end up having to leave him crying while I attend to Arthur's meals or nappy changes or something or other. I HATE letting Matthew just sit/lie somewhere screaming his head off and getting himself so upset, but sometimes I just don't seem to have any choice. I hate that. Especially with Matthew being such an easily-anxious baby. He really seems to get upset, not angry. I wish I could hold him close to me more. I hope I'm not hurting his sensitive little soul in the process of all this :(

Anyway, but we bought a Bumbo seat. It's for 3-14 months, but his head control is very strong so we sat him in it and he did great! He enjoyed it because it let him look around and see everything clearly. But he gets tired of it quite quickly at the moment, and wants a change of scenery. Also the position means he is a bit scrunched over his tummy so he brings up more milk sitting there than anywhere else. But he seems to like it. I think he'll like it more as he gets older and can see further. He'll love watching Arthur play across the room before he is old enough to sit up by himself or mobilise. He LOVES watching Arthur, no matter what he's doing! He seems to really adore Arthur so far. I'm so thrilled that they love each other!

Here is Matthew in his new Bumbo seat last week:

See his completely straight feet?! I still marvel at them joyfully all the time, after what Arthur went through and how Matthew could so easily have inherited the same condition! Yay!

Of course, Arthur likes to squeeeeze himself into that Bumbo seat as often as he can too! He likes to share all of Matthew's things!

I am realising lately that Arthur understands some new things. He seems to know a lot of opposites now. He knows (and says, in the right contexts) hot and cold, high and low, and lately he has been running his hand up my arm to my shoulder while he's breastfeeding, and popping off the breast to say, "Up!" and then sliding it back down to my hand and saying, "Dowwwn!" He does this over and over and OVER, as though it is a fun game to him. Yesterday we were playing with playdough during one of Matthew's naps and there were some big pots and some little pots. I picked up a big pot and said, "Oh look Arthur! Here's a BIG pot!" His attention was immediately caught, so I picked up a small one and said, "And here's a SMALL pot!" I put them together and pointed to each one clearly as big and small. He got SO excited, bless him! He went through all the pots (we have a lot of empty playdough pots from old playdough that has long been thrown out) declaring excitedly whether they were big or small. I loved his enthusiastic pronounciation of those words as he tried them out for the first time - "Beeeb!" and "whshmooow" hehe! I LOVE the effort he puts into trying to make a sound. I don't think he has tried any words yet that start with "sm" and he had a really good go at it, ending up with a whooshing sound that merged into an "m" sound. So sweet! I try to describe them in my diary as accurately as I can because I don't ever want to forget exactly how they sounded.

Also I discovered today that Arthur can COUNT!!! Yikes! I have NEVER counted with him, and today we were choosing a clean nappy for him to wear (I have started involving him in this in an attempt to make nappy changes easier, and he likes to choose his own nappy), and I figured it wouldn't be a bad thing for me to start counting out the wipes as I take them off the shelf (yes, we finally put those darn shelves for the nappies up above the tumble dryer this weekend! They aren't finished yet though). I thought it would be good to start exposing him to counting, as he's getting old enough really, and he is so enthusiastic about learning new things in general. So I took them off slowly, and as I did, I counted "One....two.... three...." and Arthur suddenly piped up from the kitchen doorway, "Foh.... Fie.... Shhhheees.... Eh-wum.... Ay...." Oh my giddy crumpet! I said (well, nearly bellowed, such was my excitement!), "ARTHUR! You can count!" and he smiled at me and said, "Ny.... TAM!!!" I kid you not. The boy counted to ten right in front of me! I was sure Neil must have been counting with him, but when he got home I told him about it and he was as gobsmacked as me because he said he HAS been teaching Arthur counting, but he has only been saying, "One, two, three" with him so far. So where has he learned it? I can't understand it. We think it HAS to be the telly or something. There's just no other way he could have picked numbers up. Also he says "ten" with such pride and like it's the last number, so he MUST have seen examples of counting to ten on TV, otherwise surely he wouldn't say it like that? But again, I rarely leave him just WATCHING TV on his own, except when I have to go and settle Matthew to sleep upstairs, and I don't remember any obvious counting things from what he is watching.... But I guess there must be some that I'm missing. It really shows me how much he takes in, even when I think he isn't really paying much attention to something. He notices EVERYTHING lately.

Of course I tried to get him to count for me again twice over the next hour but he wasn't having any of it. He cheerfully chucked the ten balls I lay in front of him all over the room, and didn't respond at all another time I asked him about counting! ;) But later on he had two Duplo sheep (or "meep!" as Arthur calls them - he really hasn't got the hang of making the sounds of words that start with "sh" yet!) in his hands and I said let's count your sheep and then started off, "One...." and he said, "Too..... Fee.... Foh.... Iy.... Shheeess.... Em.... Ayt... (and then he just did a shoulder-hunching grin for "nine").... TAM!" I always repeated the number AFTER he said it, but he seemed to know the word of the next number without me prompting him. He just amazes me! I don't know that he can actually COUNT objects though - I phoned my mummy and told her about it and she asked if he was COUNTING or RECITING. I guess he's reciting. But still, my clever Boo-bean! :)

Okay it's suddenly CRAZY late and I will kick my own butt tomorrow morning when I wake exhausted out of my brains because I was up too late on the computer! Matthew has slept soundly in this room with me while I've been typing which is good. I still feel weird about invading his sleeping space, but at least he doesn't seem disturbed by it at the moment.

Neil isn't well - he has a cold which has started with some weird weak exhaustion and big sweats. He said it's going round the office, urgh. I got paranoid about the boys getting it, but so far so good. Arthur had a weird night the night before last where he woke moaning and crying at least once an hour all night, and he sweated a lot then, but he seems fine now and hasn't had any cold symptoms like the ones Neil has come down with since. I felt horrible yesterday, achy and weak and knackered. I took the boys out for a SHORT walk but I actually got scared that I would fall over at one point, my legs felt so weak and loose in their joints. I felt crap overnight and woke up in a sweat, but this morning I perked right up and feel fine now. I am thinking that Neil gave it to me but I have somehow fought it off maybe? Which is WONDERFUL because it means I am making antibodies to it and passing it to my boys in my milk in frequent doses. Maybe that's why Arthur seemed to fight it off also? Neil is really full of cold now so it's definitely different to how Arthur and I have been. Matthew seems fine - I think his fussiness at the moment is more due to his teething than a virus, so I hope my milk is helping them stay well. I am desperately hoping it will make a difference to them over the coming months, because they will be exposed to SUCH a lot of nasty things at playgroup over the autumn and winter. I am so glad they are both getting plenty of my milk at this time of year!

Arthur ate a fantastic portion of spaghetti with grated cheese and sweetcorn tonight, sitting at the table in his booster seat!!!! Yay! I don't know what swayed him - he hasn't eaten this well in a couple of months now. He seemed really hungry and asked for "Teee, teee, TEEEE!" from about 4.30pm. Also I just bought him a toddler's plate and bowl with the Teletubbies on them :) He just LOVES them. He wants to play with them all the time and pretend he's eating off them! So he's thrilled to see the Teletubbies appear on his plate as he's eating. That was the idea when I bought them, so I'm really glad they are helping!

Anyway, MUST go. I'll try to update again soon! Oh but I meant to answer Julie's questions from the message she left me - Matthew outgrew his Moses basket at 2 or 3 weeks old!!! He has slept in his big cotbed ever since, for both naps in the day and sleep at night. He comes into my bed (the spare bed next to his cotbed) for feeds during the night, and when he is finished, I sit on the edge of the bed, burp him, and put him right back down in the cotbed. He fidgets for a moment and goes back to sleep! It's so amazingly different from my experience with Arthur! Just these last couple of days while I've been feeling weak and crappy, I haven't had enough strength in my arms to hold and jiggle and rock and walk him to get him sleepy for his day naps, so I have sometimes just taken him upstairs when he starts to get yawny and fussy, and put him straight down in the cot (on his tummy during the day, on his back at night), and flopped down on my bed for a moment to recover a bit. He fusses and cries a bit, and if he starts to sound really cross about it after a minute or so, I pick him up again and jiggle him till he is calm again, and then put him back down. Eventually he has been fussing/crying for a minute or two while I lie there saying things like, "It's okay.... Sleepy-bye time.... Mummy's still here..." etc, and then he GOES TO SLEEP!!! From wide awake!! It's just amazing. I never thought I would have a child who just went to sleep like that! I have high hopes that he will sleep through the night at a much younger age than Arthur did, and that there will come a time (hopefully sooner than later!) when I can see him getting tired, take him upstairs, put him in his cot and retreat, and know he'll fall asleep happily by himself! I just feel so JOYFUL about the very thought of it! I am so glad to have persevered with him over it, because he hasn't done it by himself. He seems willing to accept the way I'm leading him, and happy in his cotbed, but other than that, Neil and I have really put effort into helping him with his sleep. We feel so proud of ourselves and happy that he's taking to it so well. It's so nice to have evenings to ourselves already - we had wondered before Matthew was born, whether we'd have our evenings to ourselves at all during his first year!

Anyway, it's just getting later and later here, so I absolutely must go. Matthew has been asleep 6 hours now so he'll wake any time for some milk and I need to brush my teeth and drink a TON of water. I am so thirsty with all this milk-making! :) Back soon!

Big update part two, and more photos

Another entry at last, yay! Not sure how long for though, because it's after 10pm and Arthur is weirdly wakeful this evening. He has woken twice this evening already, crying for me and wanting to nurse. He has been all soaked with sweat both times so maybe that's all that woke him. I hope he's okay. He's teething STILL, and seems quite bothered by it all the time really. His nasty nappy rash has at least eased off for the time being, but his cheeks are red and it looks like his gums are sore. He is working on his eye teeth (canines). He has one bottom one fully through, another bottom one half through, the little white tip of a top one poking through, and a very red swollen gum where the fourth one will soon be. Poor Boo. But after these, there will only be the 2-year-old molars to go - four more teeth and he is FINISHED with baby teeth!! Yay! I will be so pleased, really. He has had a horrible time with teething since he was 10 weeks old.

Speaking of which, Matthew is nearly 11 weeks old now and has been pretty obviously teething for the past week or so. This week he has been worse than last week, and today and yesterday we actually had to give him a mini dose of teething powder. He has been drooling like CRAZY for a couple of weeks, and chewing on his hands now that he's found them. The last couple of days, he has made his index finger red and puffy with how hard he's biting it. Neil gave him his knuckle to bite on this afternoon when he was crying and crying and CRYING, and he went all quiet and gummed Neil's knuckle for like 10 minutes straight, as hard as he could. He also has a bit of a nappy rash this evening which I reckon could be part of it all. Poor babies! I ordered some teething rings for him, with my online order of oven locks and oven knob covers, etc, which have suddenly become necessary with our new oven! Its door and knobs turn and open sooooooo smoothly and easily and Arthur just keeps on fiddling with it. We tell him no and take him away from it, etc, and he generally minds us but then when we're not there for a moment he'll still go and play with it. I found him shoving his ride-on car in the oven yesterday with great effort and concentration! So we decided to be safe and order an oven lock (which I hope will fit) and some covers for the oven knobs). He knows not to go near the oven when it's on because he understands the concept of it being hot and that he can get hurt.

Anyway, so yeah, teething boys. But we're all okay other than that. Neil and I are tired out of our MINDS, but that's the way it goes at the moment. Neil feels like he's getting a cold this evening. Urgh. I hope he isn't. We REALLY don't need to get sick with anything right now.

We took the boys for their immunisations last week but the appts were mixed up (my fault, I think??) and I had the wrong time, so it turned out that we had MISSED their appointments a couple of hours earlier - I felt soooo bad. Three other people could have had appts that covered our big jab session! And we were just a no-show, that's so bad. We waited a while in case the nurse could manage to see us anyway, but she was out until her next clinic started, so we had to reschedule. The next available appointment was SEPTEMBER 13TH!!!! I'm so annoyed, that is such a long wait when Matthew is behind on his immunisations already and I had really wanted to get Arthur protected with the MMR before we started going to playgroups when the start up again in September. But oh well.

We did get to see the Health Visitor though, and she weighed Matthew again for me. He weighed 11lbs 13oz (exactly a whole pound lighter than Arthur at the exact same age!) and that puts him at around the 25th percentile again. She said he looks healthy and happy, and she isn't concerned about his weight gain. She wants to see him again in a month, or for me to take him to the drop-in baby clinic in a few weeks.

Arthur is awake AGAIN - only 30 minutes after the last time. Hmmm. Hopefully he'll settle back to sleep easily - Neil is in there with him now.

Anyway, it looks like Matthew has chosen the 25th percentile, since he has been there for the last two weigh-ins, which is fine. I just still feel a LITTLE bit concerned, since the last time, he was just above the 25th, and this time he was just below it. He is difficult to feed - I mean, he is not a big eater. Soooo different to Arthur! He won't feed for long, and he's fidgetty while he does. Today has been particularly difficult, and I feel like he hasn't really had much milk today at all, as all his feeds have been very brief and on-and-off-ish, and it has been very hard to keep him on the breast for more than a minute or so. He did have a long feed at bedtime though, and went to sleep on the breast (which hardly ever happens) and actually pulled off in his sleep when another let-down of milk happened, so I know he had had enough milk that time. He seems full at the end of these ridiculously short and fidgetty feeds though, and burps and brings up some milk, etc. He doesn't seem hungry again for a few hours afterwards. But they are so SHORT, surely he can't be getting enough, or enough of the right kind of milk?! His poo is normal though. He gets hind milk for sure when he is on a breast that Arthur just had a feed from too. Anyway, I just hope he isn't gaining too little and dropping down that percentile chart even more. I shouldn't obsess over the darn chart, I know, but I can't seem to help dwelling on it a little. Tsk.

One thing about Matthew is, he is MUCH more eager to talk than eat! Arthur was the kind of baby who would rather eat than do ANYTHING, hehe! Matthew can wake up after a LONG stretch without milk, suck luxuriously for a minute or so, and then turn his eyes up towards my face, realise I'm there, and then he can't seem to stay on the breast, such is his eagerness to smile and coo and "chat" with me! He tries to talk around the nipple but that doesn't really work! I chat and smile with him for a while, but then sometimes I have to tell him, "Focus on your milk, Matthew, we have plenty of time to talk in a minute!" and look over at something else for a moment. I hate looking away from him when he is trying to smile and "talk" with me, but I do it when he has hardly started his feed but won't continue for wanting to talk with me. He gets back to feeding till I look at him again, and then he breaks off to coo and smile and stuff :) He's a sweetie. His latest thing is blowing raspberries and bubbles. Arthur never blew actual raspberries with his tongue, but Matthew loves doing it, and if I do it back to him his little face lights up like a Christmas tree and he beams and beams at me. He loves raspberries :)

I am sooooooooooo behind on photos, but I have been meaning to write about what Arthur is doing lately, because he's changing so much all the time and I know if I don't write it down NOW, he'll change again and I'll forget this stage ever happened. So I want to write about it. Thing is, there's SO much to write about, and I'm not sure where to start after all this time not updating.

Let's see. He knows SUCH a lot of colours! I can't remember the ones I already said he knew a month or so ago. Over the last month he will accurately point out items in the colours: red, yellow, orange, pink, blue, green, aqua, brown, black, white, purple, beige, grey, silver, gold and turquoise. He did learn tan, but I think he has forgotten that one now. This last couple of weeks, we have taught him navy, khaki and maroon. I just tell him colours of things as he's playing with them, like, where I used to say, "Oh, you've got your car!" I now say, "Oh, you've got your red car!", etc. Or I ask him, "Where's your purple cup?" and he'll fetch it. When he used to fetch me a green cup instead, I would say, "Oh good boy, that's your cup, but it's not the purple one - that's the green one". He has this toy car in a really dark green. Lately all very dark colours are "dack" (black) so I thought I might as well teach him that there's such a thing as light and dark in the same colour. Yesterday he held up that toy car and said, "Geem!" so I told him it WAS green, but it was DARK green. That evening he held it out to me again and said, "Daah geem!" and he has done that twice today as well. He's very pleased with his daah geem car at the moment, hehe! A few weeks ago, he was pointing at all the things on the sofa and naming their colours (he loves naming colours on the things he sees these days - he will do it on walks, during ANY activity in the house, in the car, in picture books, etc), and he pointed at the sofa cushion and said something that I didn't hear properly, so I absent-mindedly said, "Yes, RED, clever boy" and he gave me a scornful look and pointed again and said, "Ni-MOOM" in a very direct tone! He was correcting me! The cushion was indeed more of a maroon colour than red. I was boggled, seriously. That boy is a smartie-pants :)

He is saying SO many words, more and more every day it seems. His words aren't clear and easy to understand though. He says them consistently but they come out sort of like "ni-moom" for "maroon" - almost there, but really you'd have to be Mummy or Daddy to understand it straight away! He keeps saying things I am SURE we haven't taught him. He has plastic fruit and veg in one of his toy boxes and he was sifting through them a couple of weeks ago. He suddenly plucked out the peach and brandished it at me excitedly, and said, "Peepf!" I have NO idea how he knew that word - we never have peaches, we hadn't played with that toy fruit for MONTHS, and I don't remember seeing any references to peaches on the TV while he has been around. Weird.

I LOVE the way he pronouces things! His words are soooo cute! Like "peepf", that's one of my favourites! Another of my favourites is "bwips" (bricks). His little voice is so tiny and chipmunky, and I love how over-exaggerated his consonants are and how long and careful some of his vowel sounds are. I love how he tries so hard to make a vocal sound that he hasn't mastered yet, like the "ch" sound in peach, and it comes out all cute instead :) I know it'll change before I know it and get pronounced all normally and the cuteness will become less and less, and so I am just cherishing all these little newnesses while they're still new. Neil and I both feel that we'll be so sad when he learns to pronounce his name more clearly. He still says, "Aaah-yah!" for "Arthur" at the moment, and we love it! I wonder how Matthew will pronounce his name? Or Arthur's name, for that matter!

Matthew is starting to stir in the cot so I'm not sure if I've got much longer. His nights are the same as when I last wrote - a good block of sleep during the evening, usually 5 or 6 hours (though it was 7 and a half last night!!!) and then 3-hourly-ish after that first waking. He slept with me the whole night a few nights ago, because I was soooo tired I just couldn't stay awake while I was breastfeeding him in bed. All his night feeds are snuggled up against me in my bed, and then I sit up, burp him, and pop him back in his cot which is pushed right up against my bed. I have to admit, I really miss the snuggly closeness of co-sleeping with Matthew, but I need the space to sleep, and he seems happy as anything in his cot so it's working well for both of us. But I still sometimes miss the closeness of co-sleeping. It's so special. *sigh* I LOVE that I breastfeed him in bed at night though :) I'm glad we still have SOME snuggle time in bed at night!

Okay, some photos, before I run out of time! Here's one of Arthur just over a month ago, building a Mega Bloks tower! He loves building, but lately he is getting more and more easily frustrated with building. I think it's that stage where they get easily frustrated and have tantrums, etc, that's causing it. A brick will not go on properly and he'll smash the whole thing down, crying and screeching at it. Or he'll build it high and then it will topple before he's finished, and he's just angry and distraught about it. Poor lovey, it's such a hard stage to go through, learning about life's frustrations! I feel bad for him, because I know he only has outbursts and tantrums because things get on top of him and he doesn't know how to manage his emotions yet. That's all it is. It's hard for him. It'll pass, and each tantrum blows over, but it's still hard for him to be this age. I don't know why they call it the "terrible twos". I don't know ANYONE whose child has not been going through it BEFORE the age of two. It's just a toddler phenomenon, rather than specific to the age of two, that's all. Anyway. My toddler is frustrated a lot these days, and life is hard for him to feel in control of. I need to give him more of a sense of structure, I think. Toddlers thrive on structure, and I read that it helps them to feel more in control, so I must try to help him with that.

Anyway, I digress. I meant to post the photo of Arthur building a particularly huge tower! Here it is :)

He LOVES playing with his toy cars. He has loads of cars and trucks and lorries and emergency vehicles. I got him a pretty good selection of matchbox type toy cars, and he just adores them. He plays with them for ages, just running them around the floor or the furniture, or poking them into small spaces, naming their colours, or just naming the specific vehicles. He says, "car" properly, but his other pronounciations are hard for anyone else to know what he is saying. Lorry is "yah-yah", ambulance is "ahh-dan", police car is "na-na" for some reason! Fire engine is "en-nee". He has been consistent with these pronounciations for these words for a couple of months now, so we are very familiar with them, but nobody else knows what he's talking about, poor Arthur! One of his favourite things to do with his vehicles is make a long line of them somewhere - preferably along the shelf on his toy unit. He LOVES doing this, and spends ages lining them up and when the line is full he will carefully select one car to remove and replace with another one, complete with very cute serious commentary to himself as he does it, and "hmmm" sounds as he thinks about which cars to move, hehe! I managed to take a photo of him doing this a few weeks ago:

Arthur is showing some signs of getting ready for potty training, and he has been showing some of them for a couple of months now, but I am still not convinced it's time to act on it yet. He is still so little, and I am in no rush to see him leave behind his lovely cloth nappies! It's hard having two full time in cloth nappies, but I still love it to BITS, and will be sad when he is done with them! I know it's only been 10 weeks, but I still think it's going to seem really odd to suddenly only have one child in nappies and only one baby's cloth nappies to wash again! I'm so used to the vast quantities of two little people's cloth nappies to wash, and I love it! Plus I still have some sewing projects that are half done, nappies for Arthur - or fabric that I am LONGING to make into nappies or wraps for him, and I know Matthew will grow into them one day anyway, but I will feel sad to never get round to those projects before he's done with nappies!

Anyway, I don't think he's done with them for a while yet, but still, he's definitely showing some signs of readiness. Not ALL the signs, but plenty of them all the same. He can (and does) pull his nappies up and down. He can control it when he wees, if he's peeing on the carpet and I ask him to stop, he does so immediately. I should point out, this is a rare occurrance! He very occasionally wees during his short nappy-free time before a bath, but I'm beginning to read his body language and know when he needs to wee when he is having nappy-free time. I ask him and he doesn't answer me yes or no yet. But he does tell me when he's done a poo, IMMEDIATELY that he's done one. He has only started doing that in the last few days - well, he's been telling me that he's done a poo, or needs to do a poo, for a while, but not right away. Now he comes and finds me and gets my attention so that he can give me a very serious look and say solemnly, "Poo." ;)

He seems to be hating nappy changes more and more (he never used to mind them at all), and especially hates being changed when he's done a poo, even though he wants to be in a clean nappy really. He likes to sit on his potty, and he knows what it's for. He makes such cute little pretend effort noises when he sits there, as if he's pretending to poo or wee, hehehe! He has never done anything on the potty though, and we never make anything of it. We ask him if he's doing a wee-wee or a poo-poo, but just casually as though we're asking him if he's cooking when he stirs an empty saucepan with a wooden spoon. I don't want to push him at ALL over potty training. I'd much rather he leads us through it, but I don't actually know HOW to potty train a child. I guess I should read up a bit and find out how it works. But for now, I'm just glad that he's relaxed with the potty. Except that sometimes he is um, perhaps a little TOO relaxed there, and wants to sit on it while he eats, etc, hahaha!

I bought Matthew a bath seat recently, so that it would be ready well in advance for when he's able to sit up properly and they are sharing bathtime together. When it arrived, Arthur instantly declared it to be a "poppee" and when he was having nappy-free time later, he was determined to pull it out of the packaging onto the floor, and wedge himself in it, making his pretend wee-wee and poo-poo sounds and cheerfully exclaiming, "Poppee, poppee!" I told him it was Matthew's bath seat, but he still insisted it was a "poppee" and spent the best part of an HOUR getting stuck in it and climbing back out of it, and playing with the spinning balls on the front, etc! Funny boy. Lately I have managed to convince him that it's Matthew's bath seat, and now he calls it a "bah-peep" instead of a potty and then says, "Mah-mah" so I know he understands that it's Matthew's bath seat now! Here he is the day he got it out of the packaging:

Another sweet word of Arthur's that he uses ALL the time, is "heppin" (helping). I LOVE this one! He is so eager to "help" all the time around the house, and I love it when he is vigorously yanking towels out of the tumble dryer and gasps breathlessly, "Ahh-yah, heppin!" He uses it so much now that it sometimes gets used when he's not actually helping as such. Like if he's riding his car all around the living room and he drives it up onto a pile of laundry or something, and I ask him to come down off the pile, as he struggles to get the car off the pile, he says, "Heppin!" So I wonder if he's using it for various things, like doing as he's told, as well as helping. He's such a total SWEETIE!! I love him so much! :)

Today Neil took him to the park and they climbed a big hill. Neil told him it was a hill, and when they got home, everything was a "heew"! The stairs were a "heew" and climbing onto the sofa was a "heew". He seemed so excited with his new word and he seemed to want to create a context in which to use it again and again!

Arthur is very quick at picking up dance moves. Not specifically actions to childrens' songs, but actual dancing. I have noticed this in the past but I am noticing it more and more lately. He HAS to get that from Neil. Neil was really into dancing when he was at uni. He went out dancing a lot and was good at it. COOL dancing, you know, not the foxtrot or anything like that, haha! Me on the other hand - I am just unconfident about dancing and always have been. I have rhythm but I don't think I am naturally a very good dancer. I always just feel like I look stupid and get self-conscious. Neil's dad was also an excellent dancer and just looked naturally good at it on a dance floor. My mum always said that Arthur had that dancing "thing" that Neil's dad had, even when he was a little baby! He always enjoyed being boogied to music, any type of music. Matthew doesn't seem as thrilled about that so far, so maybe they'll be different in that as well. They are so different in so many ways! Anyway, Arthur loves to dance. He dances with his feet and his hips and his arms. Neil taught him this throw-your-hands-up-in-the-air move and he does that with such enthusiasm, it's SO cute to watch! He has rhythm and can move in time to the music, but the more excited he gets about dancing, the faster he goes and the less in-time he stays, hehe! He can dance whilst watching Neil dancing in front of him, and copy Neil's actions as he does them, really accurately. I'm impressed! I never danced that well, so it's nice to see him happily dancing away with Neil. Mostly he still just bops around crazily though, and jumps and turns around and around. I love watching toddlers dance! It's so cute :)

I have a million photos (or so it seems!) of Arthur at the park, from various outings. One from when it poured with rain and he got soaked despite having his raincoat on. He wouldn't keep the hood up, but oh well. He had lots of fun! Another time I took Arthur and Matthew to the local park with swings and we sat under a tree and had a picnic. It was an attempt at making eating interesting for him, and he did actually sit down and eat some of his sandwich, and a slice of apple, getting up and dashing about now and then between bites. Matthew got REALLY cross about being out (he still hates outings of any sort unfortunately) so we had to get up and move after a short while. We walked to the swings and Arthur ran and ran and RAN on the grass, and a nice guy gave him a tennis ball at the tennis courts, all for his very own. And Matthew cried the WHOLE time. But never mind. Arthur had fun. I found it hugely stressful but oh well. I guess I should persevere!

Anyway, here are a few photos from those occasions:

One time a few weeks ago, we went to the park with two other mums from church, and their little ones. One of them was my friend Katie and her little boy, Joshua. Joshie is Arthur's favourite friend and they really get on well together. If he knows he's going to see Joshie, he spends ages saying, "Goggie, Goggie!" over and over before we meet up with them! Josh was 2 in June so he's a bit older than Arthur, but they are just the sweetest little friends! He has a new baby sister who was born 11 days before Matthew so Katie and I have a lot in common! They were round here a few days ago for the morning and when they left, Josh waved so sweetly at Arthur and said, "Buh-bye Ar-fuh!" It was soooo sweet. They cuddle each other a lot and even give the occasional kiss :)

Anyway, so they were at the park, and so was another lady with her two little boys, aged 4 and nearly 2. The 4-year-old immediately took charge and declared himself to be "the leader", and directed the three little boys to take up some sticks and follow him through the park as we walked along! He was so sweet with them and treated them gently. Arthur was ULTRA excited to be playing with other children, and even more so to be following the lead of a big boy! He is so excited by bigger boys. He just wants to be around them all the time. They all picked up a small stick each and followed the boy around, and he gave them the task of "chopping down trees" (lightly tapping at every tree they passed with their sticks, pretending to chop it down). Arthur was BESIDE himself with excitement, and I was so thankful to have my camera with me because the cuteness was almost indescribable, hehe! He alternated between gazing at the other kids in adoration/excitement, and going completely rigid and letting out this huge squeal of excitement with a wiiiide-open mouth, like he just couldn't contain it and had to keep on squealing about it, hehe! The little boys sometimes looked a bit put-off him with his loud squealing, and they were so calm and quiet in comparison! Poor Arthur, he just couldn't seem to help himself! Katie commented that Arthur is very gregarious - he seems so eager to play with other children. I should get him more social time with other kids. It'll be easier once playgroups start up again for the new term in September.

I took about 30 photos at the park that time, but there are only a few I feel comfortable posting here, as I don't want the other kids in my diary in case their mothers wouldn't like it. The ones I can post have the other kids with their backs to the camera, mostly, or just Arthur in the photo. Or they're too distant to see much detail. Here's Arthur with Joshie:

And a few photos of Arthur with the other boys, "chopping" trees - note the squeally excitement and the one where he just got so excited that he started RUNNING randomly, hehe! The other boys just looked at him like he was a bit nuts ;)

And a few of just Arthur - still excited, bless him! ;)

I can't believe it's almost time to think about an actual playgroup/nursery for him!!! I am thinking to start him at a normal pre-school playgroup when he's maybe 2 and a half. He'll start nursery in the afternoons once he's 3, but that's not for ages yet. Until he's 2 and a half I will take him to mother-and-toddler groups galore, as much as I can handle with Matthew in tow (who I REALLY hope will get more tolerant of outings and not make it so difficult that we have to keep leaving places early). I am DREADING the bugs and colds and yuck that will come with it, but that's just part of the territory when you're a toddler (or a mother of one!). It was my lovely GP who put my onto the idea of starting him at the type of playgroup where the mothers don't stay with their little ones, when he's about 2 and a half. She said to start looking around just before he turns two, in case there are waiting lists. I guess there are places he could go now where I don't stay with him, but I have no desire to take him to those yet. He's still so little, and there's really no need. He gets the same social/play/exercise/activity exposure at a mother-and-toddler group where I stay with him, as he would at a leave-him-there playgroup anyway. He is confident and never looks for me when we're at a playgroup, but for me, that isn't reason enough to test him yet. Same as at church creche (when we actually go!). I know they think I'm NUTS for sitting out the whole sermon in the creche with Arthur and one or two other babies and two helpers (it's a SMALL creche!). Every mother there is desperate to pry herself loose from her baby at only a few months old it seems, and will try endlessly for months on end, saying what a good morning it was for their little one when they only cried and had to fetch the mummy in 3 times that morning! They ask me every time if I would like to leave Arthur and go back to the service and I get some funny looks when I say no every time. Especially since Arthur is running around playing with toys, seemingly oblivious to my presence! But I am staying with him. I stick with Arthur like glue till he's 2 and a half, and even then I'll see how I feel. Maybe he'd be fine, but I don't care to test him. He's still just a baby. School is YEARS away. He doesn't need the practise yet, not for a long while. I am eager to give him plenty of "practise" at learning new things socially and activity-wise with Mumma close at hand. Whether he feels he needs me there or not, I will be there, and maybe that will help him feel more secure during this early phase, ready to be more independent when he's old enough to start trying that kind of thing.

Did I mention that he calls me "Mumma" now? I love it!!! I usually refer to myself as Mummy, but he calls me Mumma. It's not "Mama" any more, it's changed to sound slightly different now. I love the name Mumma. I almost want him to keep calling me that instead of Mummy, but then I fear that Mumma stands more chance of getting shortened to Mum than Mummy does. I hate "Mum"!! But I'm sure he'll end up calling me that - it seems like ALL kids do these days. But then, maybe I'll warm to it once he's the one calling me it. My brother and I still call my mother, "Mummy", or "Mim". I don't know where Mim came from! It's a more affectionate name for us to use for her than Mummy even, and we mostly call her Mummy. I love that we do, although I admit it didn't always feel cool while I was at school. I felt I had to try to avoid saying "Mummy" around my friends in case they laughed at me. I would say, "My mum" instead. I think I even tried calling her "Mum" once or twice and it just felt WEIRD and awkward, like I had called her by a name that was somebody else's and not hers. Anyway, I hope my little ones will call me Mummy, but I know they are probably more likely to call me Mum. But oh well.

Arthur is waking AGAIN. That's at least once per hour so far. He's moaning. I hope he's okay, poor baby. I wonder if we should give him some Calpol?

I have a load of photos of the boys together (some getting rather old now as they were taken a few weeks ago) and quite a few of Matthew, but I've run out of time. I need to check on Arthur (who is quiet again now) and get ready for bed (YIPES, it's after midnight!!!) because Matthew will probably wake for a feed soon - he's been asleep 6 hours now. I'll try to update again soon, and one day maybe catch up on all those diaries I'm missing!! Thank you for the messages again! :) Back soon!