Many varied ramblings....

No time again - soooo late, but I can't keep NOT writing my diary all the time! I keep having things I want to say! Maybe I should bullet-point this entry, to try to prevent myself getting into a long and waffly entry? Long bullet points, but you know!

* I found this Place the States game the other week, when following links on my "hmmm..." thing about homeschooling. I can't fathom why I then piddled around after midnight doing that when I had a stack of emails owing and a loooad to write in my diary, etc, etc, but I just lost all sense of self-discipline, hehe! I scored 86%, had an average error of just 53 miles (not bad for a non-US resident!) and completed the game in 308 seconds. Fun! :) There it is, if anyone else fancies piddling away a few precious minutes tonight, hehe!

* Matthew pulled to standing for the first time ON ME (how flattered/honoured am I?!) and not his beloved ball blast toy :) For my records: He was 7 months, 2 weeks and 5 days old. A month younger than Arthur was. He was very wobbly and didn't manage to straighten up too well before going back down onto the floor again! I know if he's pulling up by himself then his legs are ready, but he's soooo little and I still have to stifle a worry-worry-worry thing about his tiny little "surely they only just came out of my womb" leggies! *sigh* He is growing up WAY too fast. Waaay too fast. I miss my tiny baby Boo already! But I love where he's at now :)

* Matthew has pulled up to stand against things several times a day since then, not really much more than that. He pulls up most often on either the toy garage, the ball blast, or the sofa - if someone is sitting there with something desirable like food or paper! A couple of days ago he was pretty much only just being propped up by the object he was standing against, at quite an angle! But his "angle" is getting better every day, and he can stand quite upright now, and play with a toy on top of the garage with one hand. He can't stand for long and he is a bit wobbly, but I guess that will improve with practise. He is SO keen.

* Here is Matthew about 4 seconds after he stood for the first time. Neil LEAPT for the camera but Matthew didn't stand for more than a few seconds so he missed it! But it was a sweet little photo anyway - me with my lovely boys in some rather too-bright sunlight, and yet another pair of pink pyjamas! I am the only GIRL in my house. I CRAVE pink these days, hehe! I do wear other clothes than pyjamas, honestly! Most days it takes me HOURS to get out of pyjamas still, though. I don't get the chance till everyone has had breastmilk and nappies changed and then Matthew has gone down for a nap and I've had time for some breakfast. Anyway, I digress - here is the photo (oh, two actually):

* And here is Matthew the next day, finally captured standing at the toy garage:

And starting to sliiide down again!...

* I forgot to show you photos (from 2 or 3 weeks ago now) of Arthur being a cutie with his Very Best Friend, Noddy! He did EVERYTHING with Noddy, but this week he hasn't done quite as much. That might be because Noddy got taken to bed with Arthur and seems to have been forgotten upstairs, and thus not so much a part of the day's activities at the moment. But anyway, it was so sweet while it lasted! Here are some photos of Arthur doing things with Noddy (all set up entirely by him):

* Arthur's "Monkey Incident of the Day", the day after the Rice Incident wasn't quite so funny. We had our new dishwasher delivered that day (hooray!) and the kitchen was a mess with the old machine pulled out (and dripping, ugh) waiting to be taken away when the new one was delivered. The stuff in the cupboard next to the dishwasher had spilled out so Neil had moved some of it while he shifted the old dishwasher before he went to work. I SHOULD HAVE CHECKED the status of the kitchen BEFORE taking Matthew upstairs for his morning nap. Instead I shut the kitchen door (which Arthur can open if he has a mind to) and told him NOT to go in that kitchen till Mummy came back down. Arthur does not mind me. Trust me, we are now working on this with more of a strict approach. *sigh* It was my fault though. Anyway, I was patting Matthew's little bottom after putting him down in his cot, and he was getting sleepy, when I heard this sort of "aaaaaaauuurrrrgggghh" sound in a "HELP MEEEE!" tone, so I left Matthew to take himself off to sleep (he was ready to by then anyway) and RAN downstairs.

Arthur was in the kitchen, of course. He was sitting with his back to me on the floor in front of the old dishwasher, but I could see that he had a box of dishwasher detergent tablets in front of him. He was still making the horrible noise just as urgently, and when I came round him I saw that he had a foil-wrapped dishwasher tablet in his hands and he had BITTEN through the foil and taken a chunk out of the tablet. The rest of the tablet was mostly in the foil packet but some was crumbled on the floor. The stuff in his mouth was foaming up.

I Did. Not. Know. What to do. I grabbed him up and sat him on top of the dishwasher next to the sink, and then ran a quick cupful of water, but as I went to give it to him, I thought, "I can't do that, he'll just swallow the water and the foam with it!" So then how could I rinse his mouth out? I directed him to take a little water into his mouth and then SPIT IT OUT immediately, and he tried to - he spat way better than he ever has when we've tried to get him to after brushing his teeth, but I think he also swallowed a little. So then I just panicked and held him almost upside down under the flowing kitchen tap at the sink! He didn't want that and kept pushing the arm of the mixer tap away, but I was explaining that he had to have the water in his mouth to rinse the soap out. I don't think I did a very good job.

After I did what I could, I sat him on the dishwasher again and looked in his mouth, and it was pink and clean and looked healthy. I couldn't see any foam, and when I asked him if it was all gone, he said, "Yes!" and seemed all happy again. He DID get disciplined for it, though I wasn't severe with him because I know it was my own fault. I felt so awful, urgh. Neil felt worse when I told him later, because he said he'd got the box out and forgotten to put it back afterwards, and just headed off to work. But I still should have checked.

Anyway. Of course then I looked on the box to see what I should do next, and it's covered with those big bold toxic X warning marks, and it says that if ingested, immediate medical attention should be sought. Urgh! So I phoned the doctor and as soon as one was available, she phoned me back. She told me that based on how much Arthur might have consumed (not much) and how he was acting at the time of our phone call (perfectly fine and noisy and energetic), that he would probably be fine. But she wanted me to phone the Poisons Unit to be absolutely sure. Then she couldn't find a number for that unit which wasn't a "Doctors Only" call line, so she suggested I phone NHS Direct because they have a great list of ingredients of EVERYTHING that might be poisonous, and can advise on what action to take.

So I phoned NHS Direct, and they were fab. A nurse phoned me back and asked me a lot of detailed questions about how Arthur was acting right this minute, and about the dishwasher tablet. She told me it was mildly corrosive, and that with the amount he might have ingested, he might get nausea and vomiting, or burning to the mouth and throat. She said that if he'd taken ¾ of a tablet or the whole thing, he would have had ulcers to his oesophagus and stomach, and terrible pain. I feel dizzy with emotion just thinking about the possibility.

She told me to make sure he got plenty of fluids, and to observe him for chest or stomach pain for the next couple of hours. If he developed any symptoms, I had to take him straight to A&E, but she thought he was absolutely fine and I shouldn't worry. She said milk was better than water, and since he is not a great drinker anyway, I just breastfed him as much as he would take - which he was THRILLED about! That boy may be 2 (nearly 2 and a quarter already!!) but he will still happily breastfeed as constantly as a newborn on a growth spurt if I let him!

Anyway, phhhheeeewwww. He was fine. He didn't even have nausea or vomiting, and I kept looking in his mouth and asking if it hurt him, and he always cheerfully answered, "No, I alright!" and trotted off to play with his cars/trains/books again. I can't believe how careless we have been, considering that we have a child like Arthur around the place. He needs extra care taken on his behalf. I'm just soooo thankful that he only bit a little tiny piece off that tablet and that I got to him fast. Urrrgh.

Next subject!

* It's getting laaaate. I should wrap this up now.

* Arthur is nearly 27 months (in 3 days). That's 2¼!!! His year is passing in a flash, I can't believe it. How has the first quarter of Arthur's two-year-old-ness gone already?! This milestone also means we are almost upon another rather special one: Next week (a week tomorrow, to be exact), will be 3 years to the day that Arthur was conceived. So, on that date, I will have been either pregnant, breastfeeding, or pregnant AND breastfeeding for 3 years straight!! How cool is that?! :) Long may it continue, I say! Hehe ;)

* Also next week, I will have an EIGHT-MONTH-OLD baby again! How is this time thing happening?! I need to get Matthew weighed. I haven't done so since he was 6 months old. It just keeps slipping my mind, but I am curious to know what he weighs. I'm still nervous to be told that he isn't gaining like he "should". But I want to know all the same! He is due his last meningitis and pneumococcal jabs as of next week, so maybe I'll try to time that appt (whenever I get around to making it) with a weigh-in?

* We have had a new front door fitted today. Yes, yes, we have NO money. But we had no choice but to get a new door and bung the darn cost on the credit card, tsk. Our wooden front door had swelled and stuff in the rain before Christmas, to the point where I could not physically open the front door. Shutting it was almost impossible too, but I could do that if I had to, jamming my shoulder in the process. It was just crazy. It didn't really improve after Christmas, rain or not. I have been using a strong woollen scarf to wrap around the latch and YANK with all my might every time I need to open the front door. I have to tell Arthur to stand back before I go to do it, as I usually get propelled backwards a fair way by the sheer force of pulling when the door gives and opens up suddenly. Crazy. It's not even like it's an old front door. When we moved here (5+ years ago now), we had an older wooden front door, and that swelled and stuck, and so we bought a new wooden door and I painstakingly treated it with FOUR coats of weather-shield stuff. Our neighbours got the same door and only gave theirs 2 coats. I felt sure that ours would do well and last us nicely against any weather that could come our way. But our house faces into the day's sun, and always gets the brunt of any rain and wind on the front of the house. So it isn't best placed to withstand that, no matter the treatment on the door. That was only a few years ago. It seems this whole side of our little road has the same problem, because you can hear all the doors scraping open and SLAMMING with a shhhh-THUNK when people leave for work in the mornings!

So we figured enough is enough, and ordered a PVC door. We waited 5 weeks and now it has finally arrived and been fitted, and it only took 3 hours! Yay! Now we have a nice-looking (we got mahogony effect on the outside, white on the inside, with some frosted glass in the middle of the door), silently opening/closing, draught free, excellent security, easy-to-use front door, at LAST!!! I am so excited :) Now to pay it off. *sigh* Our windows desperately need replacing too (they're just rotting away) but we can't afford that. The door was desperate so that's why it got done.

* I cleaned the kitchen floor, at LAST!!!! Yay! Well, there's still some gubbins under the table and a bit of dirty laundry in front of the washing machine, but the rest is 100% suitable for a newly crawling baby! Yippee! Now to maintain it, though.

* Here is Arthur this morning (before I cleaned the floor), doing some ironing! He kept asking me for the ironing board (I put it away as it's too easy for a boy to get hurt when it's there to get out and drag around without my supervision) and when I got it for him, he disappeared into the kitchen, dragging it behind him, iron in the other hand! He was quiet for a while, so I went to check on him, and I found him nicely set up in the corner, having selected a clean towel from the pile of stuff that we'd just folded from the tumble dryer, ironing away with glee! :) Here's my happy little helper:

* This bullet point is for random wafflings that are SURE to take me way past the time I should have stopped and gone to bed, but I just have some thoughts that I wanted to waffle out here for a bit. THEN I'll go to bed :)

I was reading an article today about IQ and it got me thinking.... I know my IQ from some extensive testing when I was 6, and again at 13, and then again in my 20s. A LOT of pressure was put on me (much of it without really MEANING to, though, in my family's defense) based on my "numbers", through my whooole time at school, and it was something I found hard to shake after school. I mean, I found it hard to feel like I was achieving anything if I wasn't DOING something obvious with my brain. And if I was doing something obvious with my brain, then I found it hard to feel like I was successful at ANYTHING unless I really got some big wowee results at my obvious thing. I am darn near 100% convinced that this was the source of my big black hole of depression which lasted from age 16 to 21.

Now I am better. I have come out of the depression (thank you God for healing me!), I have had about 54,362 years of therapy in various forms, and I found God, who let me know (in no uncertain terms) that I am precious and valuable to him just BECAUSE he loves me, and that achievements and such don't mean anything to him. What a weight-off that was! I definitely feel happy in myself and I don't hold myself up to high standards like I used to. I don't feel like I'm failing half as much as I used to - in fact I rarely felt like that till I became a mother, but I have learnt that this is a normal way for mothers to feel sometimes! I love myself the way I am. I don't feel pressure to "maximise my potential" any more.

BUT, having said all that.... Something must still be lurking away, because I get this feeling when the subject of achievements, and academia, and IQ, and such things come up. I FEEL like I haven't thought once about whether I'm intelligent or not in YEARS. But perhaps I'm just sneaky under the surface, even behind my own back? I do find myself idly wondering about whether my constant state of sleep-deprivation and intermittant pregnancy brain has completely altered how well my brain works. Seriously! I feel SO dull and soup-like in my head all the time. Sometimes I can't do the simplest of things with my brain, and my brain is even now feeling too dense to think of an example to write here (though there are LOTS). When I was six, I had a genius IQ. By 13, I was basically resisting any sort of learning that came my way and generally being thoroughly stupid at school - playing the teachers up, doing no work or homework, getting 39 detentions that year, smoking with the "daringly bad" gang behind the school bike sheds, etc. My teachers put me in low ability groups and said I wasn't capable of doing the more challenging work, and my parents were so IRATE that they had me re-tested in London to prove to my teachers that I should be in the top groups. *sigh* My IQ had dropped by more points that the people who tested me had ever seen in such a short expanse of time, hahaha! Except not hahaha, because then I was a Huge Failure and we had to discover what had gone wrong and why (which we never found out anyway). Urgh.

Since I never got re-tested after that, I continued to presume that my brain was permanently altered and that I was still a Huge Failure and ever-more would be so. Hence the depression, I think. I think I was depressed in childhood for a long time, but it got really bad from about 16. Anyway. Even after I felt happier and found God and so on, the question of whether my marbles were gone forever still nagged at me, so eventually, feeling rather foolish and embarrassed, I applied to Mensa, sat the test, and found my IQ back to where it had been, and even a few little bonus points higher! The perfect end to all my worrying, along with the "newly charged with self-worth" me! But sometimes I wonder. I did NOT join Mensa because, what's the point? Not to be disrespectful to anyone who IS a member of Mensa, I just mean that for me, there was no actual REASON for me to join. I felt like God would not have me do that. But at times I sooooo wanted to, just to have that "badge" to wear to satisfy the watchers who waited to see if I would do anything with my "potential".

These days, the very term "genius IQ" just makes me want to lie on the floor laughing and kicking my legs until my ribs ache, because I FEEL SO THICK these days!! Although, I obviously do not mean genius like.... um.... (see, soupy brain!).... uhh.... those clever people who everybody knows about from the history books - CLEARLY I am not clever like that. It's just a number, a figure to indicate "potential", and I did NOT use mine. I found difficult maths easy-pips at school. Big deal, in the grand scheme of things, right? It should not even matter the number, but I do find myself wondering if my IQ is like HALF of what it used to be, haha! These days if you ask me to multiply a two-digit number by another two-digit number, I will likely say, "Oh crap!" and then mumble incoherently and count on my fingers for ages till I finally admit I can't figure it out. So I am sure my head is now full of fluff. Is that possible? And if it is, will it ever recover? But even if that is so, it doesn't MATTER. But, nag nag nag in the back of my mind.... Maybe I'll never shake that thing about my sense of worth being attached to a number that gives a vague idea of what I should be able to do with my brain. Since I have never made use of that, I always feel like I fell short of what I should have been doing. Not like a pressure to BE a certain person or DO a certain job, but just.... where's the achieved-potential from a so-called "genius IQ" when you never finished any education except the compulsory school that your parents and teachers dragged you through as you fought hair, tooth, and nail against them; when you have no career or aspirations to one, and you "simply" stay at home and raise children all the year long? It's what I WANT to do, in fact, it's what I have ALWAYS wanted to do, and nothing else. I can do it because it's up to me what I do, and this is my chosen thing. Which I do happily, and well - most of the time. But sometimes that sneaky feeling creeps up on me, and it makes my shoulders feel heavy. As though I have wasted something special that was given to me, and that somebody, somewhere must be mightily disappointed in me because of it.

I'm not sure how to get past that. Or maybe I should accept that I probably never will, and just put it to rest and get on with my life? I hope I don't come across as..... something not nice - egotistical? In this entry. I feel squeamish about this subject. I will start a new one.

* Arthur rides his elephant! :)

* Arthur also does this to his elephant during the "mad moments" that he has, sometimes! The strange child...

* We're making some big decisions at the moment. Moving, jobs, our little ones' futures, etc. At the moment, we have pretttty much decided that we will not be enrolling Arthur in a pre-school playgroup. This makes him different from EVERY other child in our area. It seems that all children go to playgroup from about the age of 2. Most playgroups in our area don't take children till the age of 2½, but they all have long waiting lists and you are supposed to get shopping for the ideal playgroup and get your child registered somewhere around the age of 18 months, or asap after that age. I have been dragging my feet, but I have finally decided (and talked with Neil, who agrees) that I don't WANT to send Arthur to playgroup. He's only TWO. There are other ways for him to socialise, if that's what it's about. He doesn't need to be weaned off me before nursery age. When I was little, no child around here spent any time away from their mothers until nursery school (which was full of crying children as a result, those first few days and weeks of a new term!) at age 3. Before age 3, there were mother-and-toddler groups. Society has changed soooo much in the past 30 years. I'm not saying it's a BAD change, but it's a change that doesn't feel right for my family, right now. In the OLD old days, babies were still absolute babies until age 3 at least. I mean, they still rode in a pram and everything, and were called "baby"! How times have changed.

Anyway. My purpose isn't to baby Arthur, but to keep him close to me for now. He is still breastfeeding. Neil's biggest concern about him going to playgroup was actually that if he hurts himself he always wants some Mummy milk, and he hates the thought that if he hurt himself at playgroup he wouldn't be able to have Mummy milk to make it better, and in fact he wouldn't even be able to SEE us, let alone get comforted by us. It just feels to us like our little one is too young for that kind of separation yet. Arthur is gregarious and confident. He's a very sociable little boy. He would probably adjust well to going to playgroup, and enjoy it. We are not out to deprive him of essential new things that he'd enjoy, but we just feel that he wouldn't be missing out on anything by staying home with us. As he is getting older, we want to make sure that he gets more opportunities to socialise with other kids his age, because we don't want him to be lonely, or to miss out on fun with other kids when he would really enjoy such things. But so long as we pay attention to that, I think it will be fine for Arthur to be here at home while other kids his age are at playgroup.

If you think about it, homeschooled children are at home all the time throughout their childhoods, not with other kids in a mainstream school. I haven't come across any sad or lonely or wistful homeschooled children yet on my searches. Most of them do better academically than their school-attending peers, are happy and well-adjusted, possess excellent social skills with adults and children of all ages, and ALL say that they love being homeschooled. Most have several siblings to share their time with though, and Arthur only has lil Matthew so far.

Anyway. I'm not saying we're homeschooling. That's not what I mean. But I'd be lying if I said we weren't thinking about it sort-of-maybe-seriously, for the future perhaps. I am not sure if I'd want to homeschool just two children. I think if I did homeschool my kids, I would want to have a BUNCH of children for them to have the maximum benefit of the setting. It's the kids in big families who seem to benefit the most from learning at home. I hardly hear of it in England, but I checked and it's officially a rising phenomenon - if it can even be called a phenomenon yet. It's rising, anyway, whatever it is. There are currently about 150,000 families where a parent is teaching their children at home, full-time, in the UK. I was surprised that there were that many! Mostly you hear of it in the States. There's a lot of debate about it, but since I am sort-of-maybe-seriously thinking about it, I have looked into some actual research that seems to lean pretty strongly in favour of homeschooling as far as the kids are concerned. Interesting....

Anyway. These ponderings are usually kept for my new "nobody bash me!" diary, hehe! But if they become relevant to things that are actually happening in my life, then I will start to share them. If I make a firm decision then I will share it here, because I like to share everything here. So far, no pre-school playgroup for Arthur. Which I feel absolutely joyfully relieved about, actually :) We are sure enough so that if someone asks us, "Have you registered him for a playgroup yet?!" as they keep on doing, we will now cheerfully say to them, "No, and we're not going to!" Hooray! :)

* Swimming. I wanted to write about swimming for the boys (thoughts on this), and how it clashes with going to church (which we aren't doing much at the moment anyway), but OH MY GOODNESS I just noticed the time (1.42am) and realised that I have let myself waffle just as much as always. *sigh* So I must go to bed RIGHT NOW. And that is that.

Except, oh! Boys being cute through the kitchen door again :)

Photos and boy news and stuff

Soooo late once AGAIN, but I spent ages this evening sorting out photos and a video clip for writing an entry tonight, and I'm determined to get it written now I've spent the time on it! :) I'll have to try to be brief. Ooh, a pig just flew past my window! ;)

Today has felt quite hard to manage. I got my period yesterday, giving me a HUGE four-day luteal phase (that is, only 4 days from ovulating before the first day of my next period), ugh. No wonder the hormones swung crazily from rose-tinted to nails-on-blackboards! I always forget how crappy periods are when I haven't had any for ages due to being pregnant. I have just felt rubbish today. I had yet another bad night with waking boys, and Matthew wouldn't go back to sleep between 3 and 4am, which is when my cramps were just toooo painful to stand up properly, even after painkillers. Urrrgh. Today I just feel wobbly-jointed and exhausted, and incredibly hormonal. I mean, not good hormonal. I have been so horrible to my poor children today. I just can't seem to help losing my temper at the slightest thing, and I'm honestly not a lose-my-temper type of person in general. But then, in between scary mad moments, I've been completely calm and normal and nice and happy. What is up with that? When something flips my lid, I am actually a bit scared because I try to control my temper and I just feel like I do not have control over myself at all. I have been rougher with the boys than I should be, and shouted at them more than once. I hate that. Hate it. I feel so awful. I hate that I can't seem to pull it together.

I think I have only ever felt this kind of hormonal intensity twice before, and both of those times were when I started my period after a chemical pregnancy. The first of those was the time I smashed the printer for not hurrying up and working as I wanted it to! I am NOT proud of that, and it was EXTREMELY out of character for me, but I mention it as an example of how extreme my moods seem to be at the moment. Ugh. The good thing was on those occasions, it only lasted the first couple of days of my period and then things seemed to settle. Lots of my pregnancy buddies who have got their periods back have said that their first or second postpartum period was just TERRIBLE, hormonally. I can't remember this from last time, but then I did not get a 4-day luteal phase like this last time either! Anyway, I hope it passes FAST and I feel normal again in no time. I don't like the way I feel at ALL right now. I got weepy over this morning's episode of Thomas the Tank Engine when I watched it with Arthur!!! Thomas went ahead of the runaway trucks to warn somebody that they were headed for the new station that was nearly finished, and the points were diverted and the trucks didn't hit the new station. I nearly bawled when the Fat Controller told him what a Useful Engine he was! My eyes filled up and I got all chokey-throaty. *sigh*

Anyway. Of course my children have not escaped that inbuilt "thing" that is common to most kids, where they have this sixth sense for when would be the WORST time for Mummy to deal with things, and they just DO stuff to make the day harder to handle. Matthew has refused all his naps/bedtime. I just left him in the cot. He was knackered until the second I put him down in his cot, and it was so frustrating. He would just flip over and giggle at me, and then crawl around the cot till he banged his head and cried. I left him till he cried and then went back and picked him up, and put him down again for sleep. Then I left again, because he flipped over onto all fours and giggled at me. On the third try, he went to sleep. He also did three very "I'm eating new food!" poos (mucho mess) and the INSTANT his nappy was open so that I could attempt to wipe him, he clenched his legs together and flipped sideways off the changing mat onto the carpet, whilst simultaneously clutching his crotch with both hands. Let me remind you of the horribleness and widespread-ness of today's "I'm eating new food!" poos, and the fact that I hadn't even had a nanosecond to wipe any of it off him before he did all that. Each and every one of the three times he pooed. Ugh. I am seeing the funny side now, but let me tell you I could have screamed earlier! Or worse. The MOST difficult part of it was that he only did it because he knew it was a monkey thing to do - ie. with a huge and inreasingly-familiar "I'm being a monkey, hahaha!" grin on his face, in the full knowledge that I would NOT be happy about it! I had to pin him down with my legs (!!) to change his nappy EVERY time today. Otherwise I have no idea how on earth I would have got the darn things on him. I did NOT want to clean poo off the carpet so I couldn't give up and leave him nappy-less.

He just woke so I've now fed my snuggly gorgeous little Boo and he's asleep again in his cot. But now it's later than ever. Must hurry up!

So, a challenging day. Not forgetting, of course, Arthur's "Monkey Incident of the Day" - here's what this tired and emotionally frazzled mama found when she finally came downstairs from getting an exasperating giggly/flippy baby to sleep:

Yeah, it's rice. The entire not-quite-full tub of "American Easy-Cook Rice - Contains Approx. 100 Servings!" Mmm-hmm. It doesn't even look as bad in the photos as it really was, because only half the room is in the shot, and the flash and the colour of the floor seem to make it less visible in places. When I came downstairs, Arthur met me at the stairgate beaming and excitedly saying, "Oh WOW! Show Mummy!" and pointing to the kitchen, hardly able to keep his feet still with the anticipation. Just the "Oh wow!" was enough to tell me that I would not like what I was about to see! But he did also have a sparkle in his eye that told me he KNEW I would not like it, but he was excited all the same. Cheeky monkey! I just didn't know what to say when I saw it. I think I just said, "Oh NO! Oh noooo Arthur.... Ohhhh no!" because I couldn't think what to say or do or think or ANYTHING at that very moment. The whole floor was wall-to-wall rice, and he'd obviously been having a good old slide, kick and fling in it, because there were all sorts of rice snowdrifts up against the furniture and huge skid marks where he'd slid along or flung it about.

He didn't seem put off by my reaction. He just lay down on his front on the kitchen floor and waved his arms and legs wildly, effectively making "rice" angels, much like he might in a good snowfall. *sigh* Of course this sent the rice under all the appliances with tiiny cracks between them and the floor, with force.

I had no idea what to do, and I just felt completely defeated for a moment, so I phoned Neil at work and he said I should let Arthur have fun in the rice for a bit. It would not change much about the situation, and it would keep him busy for a while. So I did.

He played for a long while and then I can't remember what else happened for a bit, but then before I knew it Matthew was awake again, earlier than I'd expected, and I had to start to clean up once Matthew was going to be downstairs. I made Arthur help me sweep it all up, which he found LOTS of fun:

Matthew kept driving me crazy trying to climb over every barrier I put in the way of the rice - he was SO eager to get hold of the stuff, and he is so quick once he gets something in his hand now. He is like lightning at getting the object to his mouth, as he's had to learn to do it FAST before I get there to whip it off him! So in the end I had to put him in the living room and shut the kitchen door. I figured if he got upset then I'd have to think again, but he seemed fine for ages. Arthur kept wanting to check on him and see if he was okay, and they spent a cute few minutes greeting each other through the mottled glass in the door!

It did NOT stay fun. Arthur kept messing up the piles I swept and flinging rice about, and Matthew got upset out in the other room, so I put Matthew in his highchair without his tray on, to watch me (which he loved!), and strapped Arthur into his booster seat at the kitchen table, where he had a huge sobbing screaming tantrum about being confined there. Urgh. BUT, that was the most I had felt able to cope all day, for some reason. I just worked away at sweeping the floor and getting every grain of rice that I could find off the floor, and I cheerfully ignored the huge tantrum, and somehow I felt in control for that moment and it made me feel such a sense of relief compared to the out-of-control emotional way I'd felt before. I don't know why.

Anyway. Monkey boy, AGAIN!

Matthew has banged his head at least 10 times today, poor little love! His latest thing is pulling to kneeling upright at anything. He is practising it constantly, and crawling to things with the purpose of pulling up on them. This evening he pulled up to kneeling at the sofa, where Arthur was eating a snack, and such was his eagerness for a bit of that snack, he raised his right foot and alllmost put it on the floor next to his left knee, but it faltered there for a moment and then he put his knee back down instead. All this pulling up and trying to reeeach for things once he's up on his knees is leading to a lot of overbalancing or just losing his grip on whatever he had pulled up on, and so DOWN he crashes, usually pretty hard. It's worst when he falls onto hard toys :( I knew it would happen though. It's just a part of learning to be mobile, but I hate it for him. I hate seeing him fall and get hurt, and I instinctively want to protect him, but he will learn so fast if I let him try without bubble-wrapping him. I have been trying to rush to sweep the floor around him clear of toys every time I see him pull up somewhere though! Then at least he'd just go BONK on the carpet instead of toys that could hurt when he lands. But he has still had some nasty falls today.

Arthur dropped a toy next to Matthew today as he was walking past him in the living room. It almost hit him, and as Arthur stooped to pick the toy up again, I heard him say in such a sweet little cheerful sing-song voice, "Oh! Sorry my dlah-ling!" hehehe! What a funny little boy ;)

Here is Matthew's first attempt to pull up to kneeling a few days ago, in the kitchen (he wanted to watch the washing go round in the machine):

Here he is yesterday evening just before bedtime:

He LOVES that Ball Blast toy!!! It's the biggest motivator for him to pull up like that, as he loves to push the button and bop to the music - he gets so excited sometimes! Here he is earlier today:

And this evening just before bedtime:

He is crawling ALL OVER, and can crawl pretty fast when he wants to get to something urgently. He is also getting pretty good at combining crawling and climbing to get over things on all-fours. He just gets this look of determination in his eyes and goes for it. Nothing will deter him so usually I have to pick him up and move him away from the place he's trying to get to (that he's not supposed to reach!) in the end! Here's a sweet picture of my tiniest boy crawling towards me today:

His hair does have lots of blond in it but it's definitely brown. In the light it has this halo-ish look with the blond hair being all lit up from certain angles, and he'll always be fairer than Arthur, but he still has brown hair all the same. It's growing in so fast now! It lies flat all over except on top - just like Arthur's! Except that Arthur's used to grow up and curve backwards and Matthew's grows up and forwards. I'm still hoping he'll have some of the vaguely curly gene that I've tried to pass on, hehe! His standy-up hair gives me some hope on that one :)

I made a short video clip this evening of Matthew doing a few of his latest new things all in the same minute, so I thought that would be a good one to post here. He does his pulling up to kneeling at the Ball Blast, and a bit of crawling, and going from crawling to sitting and vice-versa. He fell about 10 seconds after the end of this clip and banged his head on the floor :( He looks so tired in this clip - look at the bags under his eyes! He didn't have his usual length afternoon nap, and it was pretty much bedtime at the time of this video clip. But anyway, here he is being all mobile, as he suddenly is these days!

I am beginning to get somewhere on meals for the family, I think (I hope!). We have had two homemade family meals in the last week (our first EVER one since having kids (!!) being Christmas Day) with all four of us sitting at the table. We are hoping to do this regularly, and obviously it's what I've wanted to do EVERY night once I have children, since way back in my own childhood. So that's my aim. It means managing the children and the house, and cooking a meal which I should serve up pretty much as Neil walks through the door from work, so that we can all sit down to dinner as a family, in time for the boys to then have their bedtime routine and a decent bedtime. We tried it twice on non-bath nights (the boys have baths every other night) and it was a success - if rather fraught and not organised as well as it should have been! - but we don't know yet how we'll manage it on bath night AND get the kids in bed at a decent hour. I'm sure it's doable though. I just need to get better at the whole process with practise. So for now, we're doing non-bath nights till I feel more in the swing of it.

The first night, we had sausages, mash and baked beans! Arthur ate the beans but made a huge fuss about the rest and wouldn't try it. Matthew loved it:

The next meal we shared was a beef stew that I made with no salt or ready-made stock, and yet with plenty of flavour, yay! It had beef, parsnips, carrots, tomatoes, swede, potatoes, and peas. And onions. And water :) Arthur made a HUGE fuss and lots of disgusted noises and much-o distressed crying, and wouldn't try it. He did try a pea but acted like it bit his tongue because it was covered in the stew sauce. *sigh* Matthew LOVED my stew! :)

Matthew has now tried both wheat and dairy. I was more nervous about dairy because he was not able to tolerate my breastmilk when I had been drinking milk. I had to cut it out of my diet completely (including ice-cream and yoghurt, but not cheese for some reason) for his first 4 months. I tried it again after 17 weeks, since that's when the first little stage of gut maturity comes. It's MUCH more mature at 6 months, so I was expecting that I might need to wait till he was 6 months old, and then hopefully he'd be okay with me drinking milk again. At 4 months exactly, I tried ice-cream (ohhhh bliss!!!) and I wasn't sure if he was a bit fussier than usual, but definitely not as bad as he had been before. After another couple of weeks I tried it again, and I didn't really notice any reaction so I continued :) Then I put milk on some cereal one morning and he was fine so I haven't looked back! Yay! But I have been nervous about his reaction to eating dairy products himself. I had planned to wait till he was maybe 8 months or so. Then one day a week or so ago, I allowed Arthur to eat his fromage frais in the living room after lunch, and after a moment of silence while I was washing my hands, I heard, "What think, Mashew?... You like, Mashew?" - yikes! So I rushed in to find Arthur sitting down with Matthew and spoon-feeding him his fromage frais! Matthew was obviously enjoying it so much and it was all so cute that I just relaxed and let it be, and started taking photos :)

He absolutely LOVED the fromage frais! He actually cried when it was finished! I figured I'd have to find out if he was bothered by dairy sometime, so it was just a waiting game from then. Happily, he didn't react at all, and the next day he had some more fromage frais! He has since had a little butter on his toast instead of it just dry, and also a big lump of cheddar cheese to try. He broke off a big piece of it with his gums and had a good old gag on it for a moment before swallowing it down! No trouble after the cheese so I think I can safely cross dairy off the worry list! Yay, I am so relieved! Of course there is still actual milk to come, and he can't try that till 12 months anyway. I can serve him food that has milk used for cooking in it now, but I haven't tried him on that, so we'll see.

Anyway, he LOVES both wheat and dairy products. Eggs are my next anxiety to get past! I think I would say that Matthew's favourite food is emerging as wholemeal bread or toast (well, that and fromage frais, of course!). He'll drop ANYTHING to take a piece of toast and eat it, and he really does EAT it up. It's the food his the most frantic about when he sees us eating it, too. I pretty much give him both wheat and dairy every day. It makes things a lot easier now that I know he's okay, as those food groups add a lot of variety to meals and stuff.

Here he is this lunchtime, eating his beloved fromage frais:

And another with Arthur in it, who had already finished his fromage frais and was busy pretending his spoon was the spoon on Big Cook, Little Cook, when Little Cook sits on it and flies away! He was saying, "Spoon like Bid Cook Liddoo Cook! Shhhhhh!" (meaning, whoooshhhh!):

My parents came to visit for the afternoon yesterday which was LOVELY!!! And guess what?! They went shopping in town before coming to us and phoned us from the car to ask if we would like a dishwasher for Christmas!!!!! They were going to bring us money for Christmas, as they hadn't got around to it over the Christmas season (we always get money, it's hard for them to buy and ship gifts from France), but they heard that our dishwasher and broken and so they offered to buy us one as a Christmas present!! What lovely parents I have! :) We had wondered about getting someone in to try and fix it, but it might have cost a lot and they might have done like the guy who came to see our washing machine said, and told us that to repair it would cost almost as much as to replace it. And then have to pay for the call-out as well. So we said YES PLEASE!! And by the time they arrived that afternoon, they had paid for a dishwasher and arranged for delivery on Friday (TOMORROW!!!) and for the old one to be taken away! Yay!!! I have such lovely lovely parents :) It's such a weight off for Neil and I at the moment, to receive such a lovely gift. We both feel a little bit worn down lately and things seem to be going wrong or breaking all at once, which tends to happen from time to time. So this was a wonderful thing to receive at this time, and we're soooo grateful! :) Thank you, too, to God, who knew allll about it, I'm sure! ;) I love God! He looks after us so wonderfully.

Here is a last photo (it's really WAY too late again) of my lovely Daddy with his smallest grandson, the one he watched being born!

Matthew took to him INSTANTLY, just as Arthur did. He was a bit wary of Nana for a while, and kept giving her expressionless stares, and then looking at me as if to say, "What's she doing here?!" hehe! Fortunately, she wasn't offended, and he warmed up eventually. Arthur was completely excited and thrilled to see both Nana and Grandy of course! He remembers and knows them well now, and he was sad to see them go. He didn't want to go up for his nap until Nana took his hands and squatted down to his level, and talked very gently to him about how she would still be here when he woke up, and that he needed his sleep so that they could enjoy doing all the fun things they were going to do after he woke up. He listened in silence and then turned and walked to the stairgate, saying, "See y'later, Nana!" :)

Okay, MUST go to bed. It is TWO in the morning. Ugh. I will sooooo regret this tomorrow. But I'm glad to have caught up a bit here! :)

First toothie, and lots of photos again!

Did I say I loved hormones?! I think I am about to have another really short luteal phase again, because I went from "Ohhhh, aren't hormones just the best?!" to "If you exhale again at that volume I will not be held responsible for the consequences!" in like 2 days flat! I have gone straight into big-time PMS right after ovulation, and my temperatures on my chart are really NOT good for post-ovulation. They are very similar to the ones I had the first couple of cycles after Arthur was born though, so that's reassuring! Anyway. I am 4 days past ovulation today. My guess is that I'll get my period within the next few days. I had an 8 day luteal phase last cycle. Joy of joys.

But apart from being tired and crabby, everything else is fine! :) Thank you SO much for the lovely comments after my "Arthur" entry! It's so nice to hear that I'm not odd for stealing from my sleep to get some "me" time! Not sensible, but not odd! Thanks for reassuring me! And Meg, YES PLEEEEASE!!! I would love a Meggie visit!! Just say when! :)

The main reason I'm writing tonight is to say that Matthew got his first tooth today! I know I had another entry a few months ago titled, "First toothie!" or something like that, but that was soooo weird back then - a brief appearance of a lil white toothie edge, only for it to be swallowed back up for several more months the very next day! How weird. But it's definitely here now. It's so much harder to tell with Matthew than it was with Arthur, because they have completely different mouth shapes. Arthur's is broad and naturally "open", and when he smiles, alllll his teeth and gums are visible. He almost never stopped smiling as a baby so it was VERY easy to tell what was going on with his gums at all times!

Matthew has Neil's exact mouth-shape (although, Arthur doesn't have mine, and his is totally different to Matthew's! I think Arthur's is exactly like Neil's dad's mouth shape, but Matthew's mouth is like Neil's mum's (as is Neil's) - is that even possible?!) and it's smaller and narrower. When he smiles his lips and tongue tend to mostly cover his gums - mine do that (Neil's don't) so I guess he gets that part from me! But anyway, the point is, it's very hard to see his gums at any time, even when he's smiling! And he is not a fan of me poking around trying to see/feel his gums either! So it's hard to know. With Arthur, I could clearly see a dark sort of "eroded" spot on his gum exactly 3 days before a new tooth came through it. It lasted the 3 days, and by the end of that time, there would be a sharp little something just touchable on that spot, and only a few hours later you'd be able to tell that the something was white. I can't see if Matthew's gums have that dark patch to them in time to predict the toothie so that's a shame. It was nice to be able to tell with Arthur's teeth!

Anyway. In the middle of the night last night, I nursed Matthew as usual in the dark in my bed, and then went to sleep. The next time he woke, I sleepily lifted him into bed with me and put him to the breast, and when he latched on, I thought, "Ow!" Not from something he was doing, but I was just sore like the previous feed had caused some irritation or something. The next feed felt exactly the same way, and then in the morning when I nursed Arthur, it hurt the same, but only on that side. So I wondered if perhaps Matthew had finally cut a tooth and in my sleepy state one time, maybe I'd let Matthew sort of drag himself off that breast (a habit that he has all the time and which I now HAVE to stop!!) at the end of a feed. I'm surprised I didn't notice it hurting at the time, but I was soooo sleepy.

I tried to see his gum down there by getting him to laugh a lot, but he never really moved his tongue out of the way. I felt with my finger and could feel like a little rough sharp grain-of-sand type thing on the smooth gum, so I thought, "Ah-ha!" :) I knew it was a toothie, but onnnly just. Later on, I let him bite my finger for a moment in some good light and just whipped his tongue up with another finger, and WOW he has a huuuuge dark sort of crater-y patch on his gum, with a little rough toothie edge just visible in the middle of it. It looks massive against his little mouth! Neil had to have LOTS of teeth removed when he was young because he has a very small mouth and not-so-small teeth. I think it's fairly probable that Matthew will have the same awful situation, given that he has the same little mouth :( How awful for him!

So Matthew's first tooth is the left bottom middle toothie! I think that was Arthur's too. I must write it in his baby book! At 7½ months, he is exactly one month younger than Arthur was when he got his first tooth. The tooth next to it looks like it might not be far behind, though I didn't get chance to see if there was a dark patch starting there yet. Arthur used to teethe mostly in pairs. His second tooth came 3 days after his first, so we'll see about Matthew's! I hope he gets a break from teething soon. He has suffered horribly with teething (the rashes, diarrhoea, 24-hour pain, etc) for nearly 3 weeks now, poor sausage. That seems rather excessive for just getting a tooth! I was starting to hope it would be this bad because maybe he'll get LOTS at once, then that would make it worthwhile, and get several out of the way. His top front teeth look "active" so they surely won't take a long time now? I hope not.

I can't believe my tiniest boy is getting TEETH! He has also spent the entire day pulling up to kneeling on everything. He is so pleased with himself because he can reach a whole new load of stuff "standing up" on his knees. He can push the button on the Fisher Price ball blast and just bop away at it whilst clinging on for dear life! Did I mention that he knows how to use the toy garage?! I watched him a few days ago, and he crawls over to it, grabs a toy car, and purposefully swings his arm up until it's wavering around above the top of the curving ramp (this sometimes takes him a few tries to perfect, as he usually does it from lying on his tummy, which is hard to do since it's above his head-height then!), and then he drops the car onto the ramp! The car then whizzes down the ramp and under the garage, and Matthew ducks his head to watch it zoom out at the bottom, and then grabs it again and puts it back on the ramp! He LOVES the garage and will spend a long time (5 minutes straight sometimes) just doing this over and over. I need to get that on video.

This evening he was kneeling at the garage, and he used the tower part of it (which is next to the ball blast toy) to cruise on his knees, doing funny little side-steps, to the ball blast!!!! Yikes! I think he must have nooo idea of the concept that he can one day pull to STANDING and use his feet to cruise, because otherwise I'm sure he would have tried it by now! He's soooo eager. I hope I am RIGHT there the moment he discovers that he can get to his feet :) His face when he managed to haul himself to his knees, steady himself holding onto something and look around, was priceless - soooo amazed and excited all rolled into one look! He was hauling himself up to peer over a big box of Fairy washing powder that I'd used as a barrier in front of a pile of dirty laundry which was in front of the washing machine yesterday, so he wouldn't get to the laundry when he went over to gaze lovingly at the machine! He kept going back there once he'd figured out that he could kneel and watch the machine over the box - it was so cute :)

Matthew is sleeping soooo well in the day at the moment. I don't want those to be my famous last words (!!) but I don't think I've mentioned his sleep for a while and the difference between him and Arthur is INCREDIBLE for day sleep. I am just constantly boggling at it! I don't know if it's the boys themselves, or something we've done differently, since BOTH are different factors. I do fiercely safeguard Matthew's day sleep though. To the point where we don't go out and do playgroups or other activities for Arthur because Matthew's naps co-incide with those things. Earlier on, I tried just carting Matthew with me and hoping he'd fall into step with his sleeps, around our activities. It did NOT work. His naps got so awful and he was so cranky and tired all the time. When he did nap, he'd wake after 30 minutes (just like Arthur used to) and be cross and tired till the next 30 minute nap. With just a bunch of 30 minute naps all day, he ended up with WAY less sleep than a baby his age needed - usually 4x 30 minutes (so, 2 hours) total. I know babies vary in their needs, but at his age, on average, he should have been getting 4-6 hours sleep in the day!!! Arthur never did, because his sleep was DREADFUL all round, and he completely depended on me to get him to sleep. I found it impossible to keep him asleep once he woke. Urgh, it was so hard! He never improved on his sleep, and in fact he now sometimes actually takes 1 straight hour spontaneously for his only nap, which is an improvement on some of the baby days even! He most often takes 30 or 40 minutes and then wakes wanting milk and if I'm lucky he'll nurse back to sleep for another 30 minutes. But he's older now, so that's fine.

Matthew seemed willing and happy to sleep well if only I'd enable him to do so. It started to seem unfair to not give him that opportunity, even though it then seemed a bit unfair that Arthur didn't get to go out as much and do things. I had to choose one of them to prioritize for this time in their lives. My friend Katie has prioritized her toddler who attends playgroups all over the place and gets out of the house for walks or activities twice a day, every day. Arthur would love to do that, I know. But her baby (the same age as Matthew) is constantly crying and miserable and rubbing her face. She always has been like this whenever I've seen her. She falls into exhausted sleep randomly while being held or in the car or pushchair, for 20 or 30 minutes at a time before being woken by something and crying again. When they do get time at home for a few days, the baby sleeps really badly anyway. They have real trouble with her sleep in general. Katie knows she's overtired, but she hasn't got much choice other than to go with the flow, because her toddler needs to be out and doing his stuff. We both agree that it's horribly hard to have to prioritize one child over another for things like this, but that there really doesn't seem to be any way around it when neither of your little ones go to any activities without their mummy.

I chose to prioritize Matthew because, well, babies need their sleep, and I read an article that said that growth hormones in babies are not even secreted till they've been asleep for about an hour! So that did it. I started making sure he got to nap properly, and took quite a few weeks (maybe even a month or two) enforcing longer naps - doing a ton of stuff to get him back to sleep if he woke too early. We used to use a dummy with him, remember that?! It seems like a whole different lifetime, Matthew's tiny baby days. That's crazy, because he's only 7 months old, but honestly, remembering the things he did or the equipment we were using for this or that back then REALLY feels as distant and detached as remembering something from when ARTHUR was a baby! It's so strange how that happens.

Anyway. I don't know how the dummy disappeared, but I think he pretty much stopped using it by himself. We only gave it to him if he was colicky or fussy, or if he got tired and needed to calm down to sleep. After a while I would only give it to him for a short bit, while I cuddled and rocked him before putting him down. When he had dozed off, or was just about to, I popped it out of his mouth. There were a few occasions where he got annoyed and refused to take his dummy when he was cranky and needing to settle for sleep, and after trying to get him to for a while, I thought, "What am I doing?!" and stopped trying! We used it on a few random occasions, but less and less, and then suddenly one day I found a dummy down the side of the bed and that's when I realised it had been ages since I'd picked one of those up or used one with Matthew! So that was that.

So anyway. His day sleep still varies a little in how long he'll nap for. He's fairly predictable though - something amazing in comparison with Arthur! And the AMOUNT of sleep he gets is also very different to what I "achieved" with Arthur. He takes two naps, having dropped the third a few months ago. He started refusing to go down again for a late afternoon nap if he'd already had two naps that day, EVEN if he was exhausted and it had been way too long since his last nap, and he'd NEVER make it to bedtime! He just was having nothing of it. A few times he was so tired and cranky that I just left him in the cot hoping he'd drop off while I made Arthur's tea. He sometimes lay there without much fuss for a whole 30 minutes, which was how long I expected him to nap, so I would just get him up again after that! Then I stopped trying to put him down for 3 naps, and spaced out the timings of the remaining two - this is when playgroups and stuff went RIGHT out of the window.

He gets up between 5.30 (uggggggghhh) and 7am most days. It varies hugely, but most often it's around 6am, like Arthur. He needs to go back to bed after he's been awake for 2 hours or so, so his nap start-time depends on his morning wake-time. Lately he goes down for a nap just after Neil goes to work, about 8.45am maybe. He sleeps without needing me to resettle him or anything for at least 1½ hours! Amazing. Occasionally it's only an hour, and he will NOT go back to sleep for anything these days, when I try to get him to. I just get him up and think of it as extra time for a morning outing for Arthur, and hope that he'll make it up in the afternoon!

Often he will sleep 2 straight hours in the morning, getting up sometime just before 11am. Then he needs another nap after 2 or 3 more hours have passed. The afternoon nap is rather structured by me, and always has been. See, I discovered that if I don't get my children to sleep at the same time at some point in the day, then I go CRAZY! I'm just so thankful that my older child is still young enough to need a nap in the day - I have no idea how I'd manage otherwise! I need a gap in the day, even 30 minutes, where the house is quiet and I can eat some lunch without stress or little grabbing hands! Arthur needs a nap any time from noon, after he eats lunch. It varies for him depending on how tired he is. But I make one or the other of them wait until the other boy is ready for a nap too. If Matthew wakes early in the morning and takes a morning nap from 8am or something, and then wakes at 9.30am, he has a LONG stretch till I let him nap again! It sounds so mean of me! ;) He will be up for 3-4 hours until Arthur has eaten lunch and seems more tired for his nap. But if Matthew's nap has started late and gone on till 11.30am, Arthur will have to wait till 2pm or something, for his nap, because Matthew won't be ready for his nap till then. Poor boys ;)

It's soooo worth it though! When it comes to nap time, I change both their nappies, and then take Matthew upstairs while Arthur watches Thomas the Tank Engine or something, and I nurse Matthew in my bed and then put him down in his cot. Sometimes I have to rock him a bit first and pat his bum once he's in the cot until he's closing his eyes. This week he's driving me crazy fighting me when I try to put him down for a nap - he flips over and giggles at me, so everything gets very drawn out as he gets noisy and so I try again, and he resists with cheeky laughter, and so I leave him to it again, and so Arthur waits longer :( Today they didn't go to sleep till after 3PM! I don't want to repeat that again, so I'll try something different next time.

After I leave Matthew dozing off, I go down and fetch Arthur, and take him up to bed as fast as possible. I nurse him to sleep (he ALWAYS needs to nurse right to sleep, and has never been able to sleep for day naps any other way) and then check on Matthew, who is always fast asleep. The difference between getting Matthew to sleep and getting Arthur to sleep is usually about 10-15 minutes. That way, if either of them wake at the 30-minute mark (which both can tend to do, but especially Arthur), I still get to have 15+ minutes to totally relax and be "off-duty"!! Once I know a boy has reached the 30-minute mark, even if they stay asleep, I can't relax as much because I know they could wake at any moment. If Matthew wakes that soon, he always wakes crying and that tends to wake Arthur, and then I'm in trouble! Both awake and crying and needing Mummy to fix it! Which, no can do. So it's not good if that happens, and I can't relax because I need to be ready to sprint to either boy's side in 0.56 seconds and stop the crying with breast or reassuring cuddle until they sleep again!

When Neil is here at the weekend, the urgency isn't so great. When someone else is around, if one boy wakes and his noise wakes the other, there is one person to tend to each boy, so it works fine.

Anyway. So I get a blissful 15 minutes or so, and manage to eat something in that time usually, though I can't cook anything because it takes too long. I usually eat a sandwich or toast or something and just flop on the sofa with my ears pinging joyfully at the "noisy" silence around me, hehe!

If Matthew wakes at all, it's at that 30-40 minute mark, like Arthur, but because their naps are staggered by about 10-15 minutes, Matthew doesn't usually wake Arthur at that stage, because Arthur is only about 15 minutes into his nap and that is a time when it's really hard to wake him :) It just works really well for us to do it that way. I resettle him without trouble, as he desperately wants to get back to sleep, and then he sleeps a longer stretch. All in all, he tends to take about 2 hours in the afternoon as well!!! It's just amaaazing! I still feel anxious about waking him, because once he's awake he can only make it 2-3 hours before needing to go to bed for the night, and if he wakes (or is woken) earlier than 3.30pm he will be cranky and overtired before bedtime arrives. If I put him down for his afternoon nap earlier than 1.30pm he is guaranteed to wake no later than 3.30pm. He almost can't quite make it with just 2 naps, but he WILL NOT take a third, and I don't think he actually needs one anyway. He's just stretched. If his naps were shorter, he'd take three, probably. Otherwise he'd never make it through the long gaps till bedtime!

Today he slept especially well - I wonder if it was teething-related? He napped a straight 2½ hours this morning and then a very unusual 2¼ hours this afternoon. I use his nap times to do lots of one-on-one stuff with Arthur - crafts or playdough, but often housework like folding clothes from the tumble dryer, which is Arthur's absolute FAVOURITE thing to do in the whole world at the moment! There's always plenty of it to be done, so it's a good activity! It's also quiet-ish, which is something I like since Matthew is sleeping.

Matthew only sleeps on his tummy. He has only slept on his tummy since he was tiny - I can't remember now how old he was when I first started putting him down for naps on his tummy, but it was very early on. I don't like that he does really, since it does carry risks, but he wouldn't sleep on his back. At night he would, though he'd wake a bit more, but in the day he got so that he wouldn't sleep, or else he kept waking. He slept great on his tummy so I put him like that for all his naps. Then he started getting hard to keep asleep past 4am at night, so after that feed he would go onto his tummy, and gradually the night sleep got phased into tummy-sleep rather than back-sleep. I was really anxious about the night sleep on his tummy, and would pray over him every night before I got in my bed. I just felt scared every single night, knowing he was on his tummy and I was dropping off and not able to watch over him, so it was a relief to pray about it. I still sometimes feel nervous about it, even though he's been sleeping that way for so long. He still wakes 2-3 hourly at night all the same! But his day naps are GREAT. I love his one extra-soft-and-warm red cheek when he wakes :) That is just about the cutest part of having a baby who sleeps on his tummy! I kiss it and kiss it and kiss it and KISS it when I pick him up from his cot. It's going in my sensory memory treasure trove along with things like popping bubble-wrap, and hearing rain on a canvas tent above my head, etc. I could EAT that boy, he is so scrumptious! :)

Of course he has been able to roll himself from back to front and front to back since about 3 or 4 months old, so that took some of the worry away, as he would probably have started putting himself to sleep on his tummy anyway and I couldn't have done much about that.

Wow, what a lot of detailed waffle about naps and sleep!!!! DARN IT, it's got late again!!! I never notice when I'm writing here. Tsk.

Okay, must post a few photos to try and catch up. What else to report before I go? Oh, our dishwasher broke today :( It had a horrible burning metal/plastic smell and now there's no heat to it :( So it's not working. And I was NOT keeping up with the kitchen and dirty dishes even WITH a dishwasher. I don't know how we'll manage without one! Urgh. We have no money (again), in fact, less than no money at the moment, so repairs or - the worst-case scenario - replacment does not sound good right now. Also, do you remember when Neil went shopping a couple of weekends ago and 3+ pints of milk spilled all over the inside of the car boot? Well, he took the carpet out and it's STILL in our back garden, grrrrr! But the milk also seeped into the works of the car, and today when I opened the door to put Arthur in his car seat and lifted him up, I was hit with SUCH an awful smell! I actually took Arthur back inside and took his coat and shoes off, got a nappy together and took his nappy off, only to discover that he HADN'T done a poo at all, and the smell had to have been coming from the car itself - YUCK! It smells like rotting poo. I kid you not. It's absolutely disgusting. The next thing I hunted for was a forgotten package of sausages or something that might have fallen out of a shopping bag in the boot, but I found nothing, so I guess it has to be the darn milk. Urgh. I have NO idea what we are going to do about that. The smell is awful, and I don't think it's going to go by itself. Neil is soooo depressed about it tonight. He's had a hard day at work, and the car stinks, and the dishwasher is broken and we haven't got any money. Poor Neil.

Happy News! My parents are doing a flying visit tomorrow!!!! They are coming to bid on some furniture at an auction somewhere, and they are travelling overnight tonight and going back tomorrow night, so no stop-over. They plan to visit us for a few hours in the afternoon tomorrow - yaaaay! I can't wait! Arthur seems excited too. He keeps saying, "Nana coming sooooon!" and "Out Nana walk!" (he wants to go out with Nana for a walk), and "Fold clothes, Nana!" and "Do tlay-dough, Nana!" ("tlay-dough" is how he pronounces playdough!). He loves Nana! So do I :)

Yet again there is sooooooo much more I wanted to write and that is pressing to be caught up on! But it's too late again. I'll post some photos of the boys playing together and stuff now - I've been meaning to catch up on those for a while, and there really are SO many of them playing together now. They spend accumulative HOURS each day playing with each other now, and they enjoy each other so much. They like the same things (cars, trains, building blocks, etc) and I am just beginning to notice that I can go in the kitchen and do a bit of housework while the boys entertain each other!!!!! How wonderful is that?! I'm so happy about it. If they want me, either of them can come in to me independently now, as Matthew crawls everywhere. If Matthew gets something he shouldn't, I hear Arthur say something about it so that alerts me (plus I look in to check on them very frequently, or I call to ask Arthur if they are doing okay) - he'll suddenly say, "Oh Mashew! No no no!" or a very wary-sounding "Ohhhh no!" and when I call out, "What's Matthew doing, Arthur?!" the reply will come back, "Mashew eat paper!" or "Mashew got phone cord!" and then I come dashing in to prise things out of Matthew's hands/mouth and put them away! I have no idea how he finds some of the stuff he gets hold of. Anyway, photos! They are all from about a week or two ago:

That's probably PLENTY for one entry! I still have so many MORE!!! I'll try to write another entry soon!