Waaaay too long since my last update here! I’m writing this in Word because I doubt I’ll get it all written tonight, since it’s late and I’m tired out, and I have just resized NINETY-NINE photos – oh my gosh, I
never want to resize another photo again! Not even one. Urgh! My head hurts and my “clicking” arm feels all shaky! I thought that brought me up to date, having resized everything that was saved to Arthur’s 29-month photo file and Matthew’s 10-month one, but then I discovered that HALF of all the photos in Matthew’s 9-month one haven’t been resized. *sigh* But I’m NOT doing them now! I just need to start updating my diaries. I have half an entry saved in Word for my pregnancy diary too. Tsk. I just want to get them posted, but then I get side-tracked or it gets toooo crazy late, or a boy wakes a lot, or something. I should finish the pregnancy diary one since it’s already started, but I just want to get some of these photos posted and update in general on the boys and stuff. I’m getting TOO behind here! I am also a bit behind on other people’s diaries. Hopefully I can catch up quite quickly though, but I’ve been rubbish at commenting on diaries lately.
Now I’m here, I don’t know where to start! I guess I’ll pick up wherever I left off last entry….
STILL no news on my new baby niecey-nephew! Last time I spoke to Bennie was Friday (41 weeks exactly, urgh!), and I spoke to him 3 times that day as they were having all sorts of issues and wanted my advice (which felt wonderful!!). Sarah had absolutely zero signs of impending labour at all by 41 weeks, not even a tiny bit of crampiness or anything. She’s pretty uncomfy and can’t go out for walks at all anymore due to hip pain, etc. I KNOW how hard it is to reach 41 weeks. It’s SUCH blessing to have a baby, and be pregnant, even huuugely pregnant! But 41 weeks does mostly suck, if I’m honest. Poor Sarah! She’s being ever so cheerful about it though! I phoned them in the morning, and they had a midwife coming to their home in the afternoon to do the 41-week appt. So later I got this phone call from Bennie. He is THE most laid-back person I know, and he sounded really stressed and unhappy so I was worried. They had had an idiotic midwife round who had stressed them out, and Sarah’s blood pressure was high when she finally took it, so they had to go to hospital and have it monitored for a while. Of course it was okay and they got sent home. She also barged in with her student without asking if that was okay with them (it wasn’t, they specified that on their birth plan/notes) and then blocked Bennie with their backs while they talked at Sarah. Sarah’s iron count is low and so she smartly informed her that it was below the cutoff (by like 0.2 points!!!) for homebirth, and that was that. No homebirth! They asked all sorts of questions about iron and supplementation and whether there were ways round it and stuff, but she just kept brushing them off without actually seeming to know the answers. It made me sooooooooo mad listening to him tell me about it! Midwives should be SENSITIVE at all times, in every possible way. It should be like, part 2 of their job requirement – part one: Know the stuff. Part two: Treat women with great sensitivity. Hasn’t this woman ever read Sensitive Midwifery?!?! Okay, rubbish link, because I can’t find a decent place, but anyway, it was THE first book I ever read on midwifery, and it won me instantly. I mean, I started applying for midwifery courses. When I got accepted on a midwifery degree course, one of the books on the compulsory reading list (and there were only a few) for BEFORE you started the course, was Sensitive Midwifery! So I’m highly peeved at this daft woman, stressing out her patients so badly and not at ALL adhering to the important doo-dahs described in this book.
So by the time Bennie phoned, they’d had a difficult day, and Sarah was very upset still, and they didn’t know what to do or think. It always makes my heart just swell with joy to be a “big sister” at times like this. I love being called upon to help make things better! It reminds me of the time I shut a boy from my brother’s class in the girls’ toilets for picking on my little brother, haha! ;) But that isn’t exclusive to family, it’s something I just love. It gives me such a great feeling of purpose and it’s rewarding.
Anyway. Poor Bennie and Sarah!! Sarah had her cervix checked for progress and there was basically none (at 41 weeks!), and she wasn’t even a candidate for a sweep. The midwife did one anyway (though not sore HOW if she only scored 1 on the Bishop’s score thingy?!), but yeah, it doesn’t look good for a baby any time soon. The hospital they are booked with (which they’re still hoping to avoid!) lets you go to 42 weeks before induction, which is pretty good, as far as hospitals go. Mine was 40 weeks + 10 days. So they have another week. After that they can still refuse, and we talked about that for a while. I had an induction booked with Matthew (who was born at 41 weeks) but I had ever intention of cancelling it when it came to the day. It’s SO stressy to have to deal with that though. Urgh.
I sent Bennie to Homebirth.org.uk, which is FAB – all this stuff is way more relevant to my pregnancy diary isn’t it?! But it’s sort of general updatey news on Sarah, so… Anyway. It covers basically every reason you might be told you CAN’T have your baby at home, and then looks at research that says why that’s a load of rollocks. Including low iron! I told Bennie to read the stuff there, make sure they had all the information they needed about Sarah’s blood count to make an informed decision, and then DISREGARD everything the midwife said. Like, put it away and try to de-stress as though she had not said all those things. The staff at the hospital gave Sarah NHS iron tablets, and later in the evening after the boys were in bed, I read the page I’d directed Bennie to, and it mentioned those as being cheap and nasty (good for diarrhoea, constipation, and nausea, and NOT good for being well absorbed!) so I phoned them back and Bennie said everything was SO much better. He had read the bit about the NHS iron tablets and had already been out to buy some easily absorbed stuff from Boots, along with some orange juice to help Sarah absorb it well – what a lovely boy (except of course my baby brother is now a grown man and NOT a boy, but I’m in denial ;) ).
Also they checked the blood report and found that Sarah’s something-or-other count was smack dab in the middle of the normal range, which actually means that her iron levels are normal, just well diluted because of the increased blood volume of pregnancy. Tsk. I’m so annoyed about ignorant people stressing out the people that I love!
So the next thing they have is a big hospital appt on Monday (41 weeks and 3 days). They have a scan to see if the baby/placenta is doing okay, and another cervix check and sweep, and more blood tests to see if her iron is improving. And probably a huge battle over getting induced. *sigh* That’s tomorrow, and Bennie said to phone after the appt, which is in the morning, for an update. I don’t expect anything has happened because Sarah didn’t seem to be ready for labour yet a couple of days ago. But I hope it’s soon for them! I hope they don’t end up being pressurised and stressed.
So that’s the long-and-drawn-out update on the baby niecey-nephew! I hope he/she is doing okay in there! I can’t wait to meet him/her (but let’s face it – HER. I have such a vibe!). I will update here as soon as there’s news!!! So exciting!
Well, I have sooooooo much to write about the boys and things. I’m sure I won’t have time to update about it tonight. Maybe I’ll post this when I can’t do any more, or maybe I’ll save it here and finish it tomorrow? I feel like I am endlessly behind on my record of Arthur’s development. I caught up a bit with Matthew’s, although he’s changing all the time! That’s the thing – they keep changing all the time, so just when I feel like I’ve caught up, they go and do a ton of new things! ;)
I’m trying to think of words to describe Arthur, for a sort of “at a glance” type of thing! He is always busy. He never stops talking. Ever. He is serious and funny all in the same moment, and has a cheeky sense of humour. He is incredibly communicative, not just with his talking but in what he chooses to communicate to us, and how. He is sociable and confident. Other mums have described him to me as “gregarious”, and that’s spot on for Arthur. He is non-stop but (thankfully!) distractable, because he is just so interested in everything. At church today, I was breastfeeding Matthew in the crèche room after the service had finished, and the lady who was running crèche said to me how Arthur has the kind of energy that would end up making many toddlers the “destructive” type. He’s into everything, and he’s especially instinctively drawn to things he really shouldn’t touch (uncovered plugs at church, locks, latches, wires, etc), and he does things at double speed all the time. He has boundless energy. But the lady said that the difference with Arthur is that he’s just SO interested in things, and he has a long attention span, which is helpful!
Arthur loves trains and cars. He spends accumulative hours each day pushing cars around the floor and furniture and lining them up, and parking them, and having them wait at traffic lights and in traffic jams. He does the same with his Thomas the Tank trains (his HUGE set from Christmas). Those crash a lot and require some engine or other (usually Terrence) to come to the rescue! ;) We don’t have a ride-on toy for him in the house at the moment, because there is just NO space, but he’s made his own up anyway. He spends huge chunks of the day just riding on an upturned clear plastic box from the toy unit! He sits on it and shoves himself around the carpet with his feet, chatting constantly to himself (and anyone else who will listen), telling me he’s going shopping, or parking the car, or driving home, or – well, endless things. He just loves cars right now! He still loves Thomas the Tank Engine, but it’s playing with the cars and stuff that he loves the most, rather than watching it. He knows the theme song all the way through and sings every word. He sings a lot now, and surprises me all the time by singing words to songs I didn’t know he knew! But ALL his singing is completely flat, haha! I don’t know why. Neil and I sing well, and in tune, so I don’t know why he’s so off-key, hehe!
Let’s see, what else does Arthur do these days? He watches too much TV. Urgh. I know I need to work on that. I am currently working on a proper routine for my day, which will obviously mean the kids’ days too. It’s ME who is too disorganised to do stuff, and then there’s stuff that HAS to be done, or a moment when Arthur needs distracting, and the TV is on a lot. I hate that it is. I do NOT plan for it to stay this way, but I know I need a working plan first. I am working on it! Of course, because the TV is on, Matthew is watching more TV than a baby under one EVER should, ugh. There are a couple of occasions in the day where the TV is actually reeeally useful even for Matthew though: nappy changes – a total nightmare at the moment! Matthew won’t keep still or lie on his back, and it’s nigh on impossible to change him. When there’s a pooey nappy it’s BAD bad news, so I heart my TV then. He has favourite things on TV, which I feel kind of ashamed to admit, but knowing his favourites means that I can put those on and I can actually change his nappy. It makes a huge difference! His absolute favourite is Thomas the Tank Engine, wouldn’t you know?! He gets highly excited and squeals and bangs the table with his hands, and actually watches it intently for a long time (for a little tiny one), like most of a 10-minute episode. This is also the choice when I am in a critical stage of cooking the family meal (what we call our early evening meal with all four of us at the table), and Matthew goes into clingy meltdown mode. Thomas to the rescue! ;) He also likes Teletubbies, Razzledazzle, and Boogie Beebies, but the latter is mostly about the music and dancing. He dances eagerly to that, with a big beaming smile on his face, looking over his shoulder constantly for my approval. He’s the cutest pie! :) Anyway. Too much TV in this house for tiny people. Must sort it out.
Anyway, back to Arthur! He seems so tall to me this week. I wonder if he’s been growing? He still breastfeeds as much as ever before. I still turn down requests several times a day, when it’s too near to a meal time or I just nursed what feels like 376 small boys during the course of the morning, to the extent that my nipples just HURT! That does happen sometimes. Both the boys breastfeed quite a lot still (each boy 5+ times a day and Matthew at least a couple of times at night), and neither has the best latch in the world (especially Matthew!). I’m probably as tough as old leather by now though (!!) and don’t find it uncomfortable a lot of the time. I completely LOVE it anyway! Matthew is 11 months old today (wha?!?!!) and so I have a new breastfeeding milestone blinkie for him over there on the left :) My TRUE breastfeeding milestone thus far is now 30 months!!! Arthur was 30 months old last week, which makes him exactly 2½!! So I have been breastfeeding for 2½ years continually! Yay me! :) Matthew’s 11 months is a great achievement by itself but it feels ever so small against the length of time I’ve been breastfeeding his brother! I am kind of proud of myself :)
We are STILL persevering over the eating issues. *sigh* I lose count but I think it’s something like 11 weeks and counting. He still won’t eat my cooking, and we don’t give him anything else if he doesn’t. He does get offered pudding as part of the meal, and sometimes he eats that. It depends what it is. He has eaten a few tiny bits of meals that I make, but only if it’s like baked beans or something. The doctor recently recommended serving him his jarred toddler food (which of course he will devour happily!), say spaghetti bolognese, mixed with a tiny bit of MY spag bol when we eat that as a family. She suggested letting him see us mix it in, and then gradually make the quantities more my cooking than the jar. But we don’t eat spaghetti bolognese every day (!) so it’s going to take ages to see that through, and that’s only ONE meal! We’ve served it to him twice like that, and he’s mostly getting the jar while we eat “real” spaghetti bolognese. But he eats it all up. Other than that he doesn’t eat. He eats sandwiches for lunch (picky about contents) and all the usual bits and pieces still, like yoghurts, raisins, apple, raw carrot, peas, sweetcorn, cereal bars, etc. He does eat normal cereal with milk for breakfast, and he’ll eat toast and marmite too. He eats my puddings if they are things like banana sponge with custard, except without the custard. *sigh*
It’s quite a big deal for us that we’ve managed to persevere, as it’s been hard work to keep on. It’s easy to worry about him and give in. I think if I wasn’t breastfeeding him I would have given in long ago. He gets great nutrition from my milk and he seems healthy and energetic these days. He always nurses in bed right before going to sleep, so he never starts the night with an empty tummy. He DOES sometimes wake in the night hungry though, and that’s heartbreaking :( He’s too sleepy to want to wake up and do anything about it, but he just says his tummy hurts and goes back to sleep but has a fitful night :(
Anyway, lately (maybe the last two weeks?) he has started tasting my food!!! Yay! He seems a lot less anxious about it in front of him, and he has started putting it to his mouth on a spoon and touching the food with his tongue. Then he yells with great excitement, ”I tried it, I tried it!!” :) We make a big thing of him for trying food so he is trying it more (with aforementioned excitement) these days. I think one day he’s just going to eat it. One day last week we had sausages, baked beans and mashed potatoes, and Arthur inhaled his baked beans (blink and they’re gone!) as usual. Then he wanted some of Neil’s, so Neil said he would give him some if he tried his sausage. Well he tasted his sausage and said, ”I like it!” and then proceeded to munch through an entire sausage without hesitation. Neil and I were just looking from Arthur to each other, wide-eyed in joy and disbelief, enormous silly smiles on our faces (the type you just can’t wipe off for anything), not daring to say anything in case we rocked the boat, hehe! It’s crazy how much it MEANS to a parent to see their child eating well, especially if it’s felt like forever with an eating issue. I feel pretty confident that if we just keep going the way we are, one day he is just going to put food in his mouth, declare that he likes it, and eat it all up. And then never look back. So we’ll carry on!
What else about Arthur? It’s getting so late. I ought to try and finish this up and post some photos.
Arthur seems to LOVE little babies. More so than the average toddler, I think. In crèche, there are a ton of things to do, and a bunch of other kids and babies, and he does race around at high speed doing things, but he’s the only child who is constantly drawn to the babies. He is ever so sweet with them, and talks to them in such an adult way, all crooning and tender, as though he’s an adult being all fond of the babies! He looks at me like we’re both adults, and smiles fondly at a baby, saying to me, ”Aww, look! He’s so little, isn’t he?!” :) He loves to give them things to play with, and chooses carefully what he thinks they might like. He has always done that, from about 13 months old (seriously!). He strokes their heads and holds their hands, and just keeps stopping what he’s doing to crouch down next to a sitting 8-month-old, and stroke their cheek and crane his neck so that his face is looking right up into theirs as best he can, and say, ”Hello little boy!” - or girl, these last few weeks he has finally stopped saying boy for all babies, hehe! But he DOES still say “he” – so for example, at crèche today, he said about a baby girl – ”This baby girl is smiling at me, isn’t he?!” Bless! He’s such a sweetie :) He does this kind of thing with ALL babies, at least up to Matthew’s age. One of the little ones he was talking fondly to yesterday had just turned one. He’s just SO SWEET with babies! I love to see it!
He is also very “parenty” with Matthew. If Matthew’s trying to get at something he shouldn’t put in his mouth (like say a tissue), Arthur will take it out of his reach and say to him, ”I’m sorry dah-ling, but that’s not for you” – shaking his head solemnly!! He mimics Neil and I SUCH a lot. We hear whole phrases and sentences come out of his mouth EXACTLY as we said them a week ago and in the right kind of context too. Arthur’s speech is just coming on wonderfully. I think he’s ahead for his age, but there’s such a range, and I don’t actually KNOW what is the expected norm at this age. I feel pretty sure he’s ahead though. My friend Katie from church said that Josh (who is 5 months older than Arthur) got the hang of “I” and “me” and “my” a few months ago, and that she thinks Arthur is doing pretty well having been using those for a couple of months already. He pronounces things toddlerishly (?!) sometimes, but otherwise his speech is really approaching the kind of general stuff that Neil and I say to each other! We can hold a pretty near adult conversation with him. He tells us things constantly, and he can now do so in many sentences without stopping, one after the other, describing things in lots of detail.
When Neil takes him to the park on Saturday mornings (while Matthew and I nap), he always comes back HIGHLY excited about his outing and desperate to pour it all out to me before he’s even through the door properly! A typical example is something he said last weekend when he came through the door: ”We went to the park!!! And derr was a squoah-woah!! (squirrel!) And it did run away on the grass, because it was scared. And derr was a woodpepper!! We heard it in the twees and we were looking fow it everywhere!! And it did flew away…. (sudden excited gasp) I saw a DEER!!!” Neil told me at that point that Arthur had looked and seen a big deer with antlers and said to Neil, ”Dere’s a deer! (thoughtful pause) It looks like you, Daddy.” Neil: “D’you mean it’s tall, like Daddy?” Arthur: “No. It looks like you, Daddy.” Hahaha, I found that quite amusing! ;) He is really beginning to come out with more and more funny little observations that make us laugh so much. Most of them he’s dead serious about (and we stifle our laughter or hold it till later when we can talk about it fondly after the boys are in bed!), but he also has a cheeky sense of humour and comes up with things to say that are purely for getting a laugh out of us.
His latest thing when “talking back” if I’ve asked him not to do something, or to come and do such-and-such when I have asked him 3 times already, is quiet protest and calm reasoning!!! Yikes!! It rather throws me, as I’m not sure how to respond to it. If I have asked him to give me something that he is not to have, he’ll look at me with a very authoritative, serious expression and say, ”I’m afwaid you can’t have that, Mummy, because it’s mine.” VERY matter-of-factly, and with a nod of the head on the word “mine” that just adds to the “and that’s that!” effect! He just repeats it if I tell/ask him to give it to me again, just as calmly as before! He uses “I’m afwaid not” a LOT at the moment, and it always totally floors me for some reason! He is also recently adopting a new sad face, when told he MUST come somewhere or other now, and he doesn’t want to. If there’s no time to argue it or give him a little longer or offer a distraction, then he simply has to do as he’s told and come. In the past this would often result in a tantrum of sorts. Now he has a new ultra-calm response. He looks like he’s going to get cross and throw a wobbler about it as he used to, but then suddenly he puts on his “sad face”. All the protest in him falls away, and he instantly looks downcast and sad. He quietly sits down where he is, hands folded in his lap, eyes turned down to look at his hands. He makes his mouth small and sad, and his eyes large and drooping. He doesn’t exaggerate the expression at ALL, and at first when he started doing it, Neil and I were quite worried! We kept asking him what was wrong, and a million other things, to try and find out what on earth had happened to him! We never see him so quiet and unmoving and forlorn looking! He won’t answer my questions, he just looks Ever So Sad and no matter if I know better, his magic just starts to worm its way into my heart and make me melt a little as I watch him! HOW does he do that?! If I finally pull myself together and just get authoritative and go to get him, he doesn’t meet my eye, just keeps looking sadly at his hands, and says, ”No, I can’t go down at der moment – I’m busy being sad.” !!!!!!! How do I argue with that?! The little monkey! He is beginning to make me think (and worry!) that he’s going to be a smooooth talker! I will have to keep on my toes.
Matthew just woke and nursed, and now it’s crazy late so I will have to save this and continue tomorrow, if I can. I’m just so tired out now, so I’m going straight to bed.
Back! It’s Monday, but very late already so I guess I’ll just post what I’ve done in a short while, and go to bed again. Otherwise I’ll just never get an entry posted, and I might as well be adding these bits and pieces to my diary as I write them! I MUST post some photos before I finish though.
Thanks for all the comments on my last entry, by the way! I forgot to say that yesterday! Thanks Jeannie for asking about Sarah too!
I did phone my brother this afternoon around 4pm but got the machine. So I figured they were out and decided to try in the evening after the boys were in bed. My mum was going to phone them too, to find out about their appt today. Well, I’ve phoned them this evening around 9pm and STILL just the machine!!! Then I phoned Mummy and we flapped about excitedly to each other, as she’d phoned them at about 5pm and got no answer. She left a message too, and said that Bennie usually gets back to her quickly and he hasn’t. So methinks something is going on, and more to the point, methinks they are NOT at home. Which brings me down from the excitement a bit, because (with my mind getting waaaay ahead of itself!) I am wondering if they went to their appt and had the scan, only to be told that something was not good with the baby or the placenta, and so they may well have been sent straight upstairs to be induced right away. And THAT makes me anxious for them, because if Sarah’s body really isn’t ready for labour yet, as it wasn’t only a few days ago, induction could be looonnng and drawn out, right? And if she doesn’t progress as fast as they want her to (uuuurrrgh! Another annoyance of mine with hospital births!), then she’ll be put under pressure and pumped full of actually-not-that-helpful labour-inducing drugs, and then her risk for ending up with a caesarean is SUPER high. And the hospital is a 1-in-3 hospital (as in one in THREE births is a caesarean! Is that not exasperatingly crazy?!!). And the ONE thing that they most want to avoid in the whole process is a caesarean. I’m so nervous that she’ll end up with one after all this, and have a hard time emotionally over it.
I know, my mind is painting all sorts of pictures that might not even be happening. Maybe there’s having a blissful spontaneous homebirth and don’t want to answer the phone?! ;) But Sarah is basically not able to get out now so they wouldn’t just be “out”. And with the appt earlier today…. I just feel pretty sure they’re in the hospital and things haven’t gone according to plan, which makes me feel physically uneasy and unhappy. I am finding it so hard to think about them, for some reason most especially when I’m holding Matthew in the dark (falling asleep) to settle/comfort him, or to let him burp after I breastfeed him (which I’ve done three times this evening already! Still no teeth to show for this misery, urgh!). I just feel overwhelmed with this feeling of attachment to them, like I can hardly bear the separation at this time. It’s not the not-knowing, it’s a sort of vague feeling of wanting to protect or mother them somewhat, feeling like they might be having a hard time and wanting with all my heart to be there with them to help and support them. I hate being unable to BE somewhere when I feel like this! I spend the whole time holding Matthew, just praying for them, but I still feel sort of anxious in my tummy about it. I hope all three of them are okay, and that we get a happy phone call tomorrow – that it doesn’t drag out ages for them. *sigh*
Well.
Back to what I was writing yesterday – what was that again?! Oh yes, Arthur’s talking and stuff. I have SO much more that I could write about his lively chatter, and reams of stuff that he’s said to make note of. But no tiiime!
Oh, we are NOT potty training yet, but we are casually offering him the potty to sit on straight after he comes out of the bath. This is mainly because he pretty much gets out of the bath and pees on the floor, so we figured he’d be better sitting on the potty and doing it there! We’re not actually intending to take action on potty training right now. I feel very laid-back about it and am happy enough for him to lead us. I am not bothered about him being in nappies for however long he might be in them. I love his cloth nappies anyway, so that’s an added bonus if he stays in them a while longer! I am not looking forward to when he’s using the toilet actually. I feel like I SHOULD be, but those feelings just aren’t there. He’ll want to, when he’s ready. He is definitely checking pretty much all of the signs off the readiness list now though. Well, he doesn’t seem dry after sleep, but then I don’t change his nappy right after naps – I put him in a new one right BEFORE he naps, so I wouldn’t know if he wakes dry. He’s wet after the night, but Neil says it has been a few months now that he hasn’t needed as many inserts in his night nappies for absorbency. Anyway. He has peed in the potty three nights running after his bath now, and he is always excited to take the potty up with Neil to empty it into the toilet. It’s making him more eager to perform again the next time! If they bath before we eat dinner (which occasionally happens these days) and he pees in the potty, we offer him big boy pants to wear instead of a nappy, until bed time. He always chooses big boy pants – Thomas the Tank ones :) They’re age 2-3 but they seem awfully tight on him at the moment. Last time I put them on him was a couple of months ago, and they fit him very comfortably then. He has DEFINITELY been growing all over lately. Neil and I have really noticed lately – his limbs are noticeably longer and seem sturdier than ever, and he is taller. His feet look BIG to me, and he has real “little boy” hands now, not chubby baby hands. I can’t believe my baby is growing up!!!
Arthur loves crafts! I do crafts with him all the time. Katie told me that she thinks boys are less into crafts than girls. She reckons on the whole they are more into motor skills and have less of an attention span for crafts than girls do. Arthur is definitely big on the motor skills, but he DOES have a great attention span and is heavily into crafts. I personally love doing them with him. Doing kiddie crafts comes naturally to me and I enjoy it so much. Lately we’ve been making pictures of animals, over the last month. I put things on our walls that Arthur makes (well, the stuff that comes out really nice, or that he’s especially proud of), and we’ve made so much lovely stuff lately that we’re running out of wall space! Unless I give the whole adult-décor over to toddler artwork! We make one big project a day, or every other day if it doesn’t work out, while Matthew naps in the morning. Arthur also does a lot of drawing and sticking and gluing and painting, but the big projects are things he gets very excited about. I let him request what he wants to make, and then we get to work on it! He wanted to make a sheep, so I cut a cardboard sheep shape out, and we stuck white cotton wool balls all over it, and then glued black paper on the legs and nose, and made a pink ear! The next day he wanted to make a pig, so I cut a cardboard pig out, and we had a blast tearing and scrunching up pink tissue paper to glue all over the pig! I like to vary the materials and textures as much as possible for him. The next time, we made a cow. I got out the white finger paint for Arthur to splodge and splurge a white background onto a cow shaped piece of card, with his hands. He LOVED that and giggled the whole time! When it dried, we glued black velour patches onto the cow that I cut out, and pink paper udders and nose! I made a pipe-cleaner tail and he taped that on the back.
I so love doing these things! It’s as much fun for me, as it is for Arthur, really! I bought yellow and brown feathers at eBay (reeeally cheap) when I saw the theme Arthur was on, so when he asked to do a chicken, I was all ready with the feathers, orange card and yellow tissue paper! And a few days later we made yellow towelling chicks with yellow feathered wings :) Those are all on the wall – I took a picture!
Sometimes if Arthur’s climbing the walls and driving me crazy, I can put him at the kitchen table (now that I’m keeping it a LITTLE cleaner these days!) and set him up with a craft activity. I need to think on my toes, especially if I’m trying to cook dinner while he does it, or something, but I’m blessed to find that easy with crafts. He always asks to do an animal, so one day like this when he asked to do a giraffe, I sketched him a really badly-drawn giraffe (sigh), and grabbed some brown and yellow paper, orange card, and yellow towelling, and orange fleece. And chopped bits up for him to sort of collage with glue on the giraffe shape. While he did that, he told me his giraffe needed some grass to eat (!!) so I went onto the driveway (in the rain, with Matthew on my hip) and picked some long weedy grass from the border. He stuck that on his picture! The next day he wanted to do a frog, so we made a lovely collage of a tissue paper frog on a lily pad, on a pond! The pond was the best fun (though Arthur likes scrunching tissue paper best!) because I’d been hanging onto that idea for ages wanting to do it with him! I got a big tin of Quality Street for my birthday, and I have been keeping the wrappers carefully for crafts. I had Arthur stick silver foil wrappers all over the pond area, and then put another layer of glue on top of it, and then I got the blue cellophane wrappers from all the coconut and whatever-the-other-ones-are sweets, and he glued those all over the top of the foil, so that it looked all blue and shimmery! I cut him long triangles of green gummed paper (his first lick-and-stick!! I remember lick-and-stick from nursery school!!) and he licked and stuck and licked and stuck grass all the way around the edge of the pond. He did great! I do help a lot with the layout and guide him over where to stick things and why. We put a little black fly on at the last minute, and a flower on another lily pad, and Arthur still points to his picture, giggling, and saying, ”Dere’s a fly! (giggle) The fwog’s gonna go - GLULP! (much hysterical giggling!)”
Today he wanted to make a monkey, and I have brown fleece and velour ready, and green tissue paper for the tree he’s going to be swinging from, and I’m thinking a banana for his hand, made out of something-I-know-not-what-yet. But he ate a crayon after I told him not to, so that means the end of the craft session. *sigh* But tomorrow, probably. It’s so much fun thinking about what we’ll use to make things, and then seeing him enjoy the variety of things! I’m loving it!
I bought him magnetic letters and numbers for the fridge last week and he is so thrilled with them. He asks for them every day, and generally spends an hour straight putting them on the fridge and sorting them, chatting to them the entire time as he does so! He knows some of his numbers by sight, and can find them for me if I ask him. He knows some letters, but not many. I’ve started to do silly things to help him recognise them. Like, I’ll say, “Here’s ‘n’ for NIBBLE?!!” and then eat his neck till he squeals and begs me to stop! :) I noticed it took him approximately 20 seconds to permanently learn that one, hehe! He keeps running into the living room, brandishing the letter ‘n’ and shouting, ”I’ve got ‘n’ for NIBBLE!!” and then running from me screeching with excitement over the inevitable neck munching ;) Other letters can be similarly played with, hehe!
He was so intent on playing with his letters and numbers on the fridge the other day while I was emptying the dishwasher, that I overheard something ever so sweet happening! He was chatting away to the letters, and this is what I heard: ”Ooh, four!! Now, where you going to go?.... Uhhhm, HERE!.... Now, where will dis one go….” And then suddenly he started looking annoyed and distracted, and then he looked at his crotch and started flapping his hands like he was shooing something, and said, “Shoo! Shoo! Go ‘way poo! Shoo-shoo!” Hehehe! Then he tried to get back to his letters and numbers, but only lasted about 5 seconds before he suddenly flapped his arms down in frustration, sighed, and then stood up and said to himself in a very exasperated tone, ”I think I goingta hafta go inny other room and DO it.” and then he marched off! I laughed SO much while he couldn’t see me doing it! ;) He will not poo in the same room as us any more. He takes himself elsewhere. He used to tell US to go away, but we started suggesting he go into the other room if he wants to poo, and he seems happier with that. I know he’s really getting ready for potty training. That’s okay. We’ll get there. I don’t think there’s any rush, but I’ll speed up if he seems to want to get on with it.
Okay I have just looked at the time and I don’t even want to SAY what time it is, so I’m definitely going to stop now and post this! I have lots of photos, so I’ll post the ones that relate more to Arthur this entry, since it’s mostly about him. They are all from before his haircut, as I'm so behind on photos! I’ll have to catch up with more, and Matthew stuff, next time!
Here is Arthur’s latest artwork, most of which is described above – the last photo shows two of Arthur’s most recent favourite thing to draw – “wainbows”!!
Playing with his helicopter from Uncle Ian (Christmas present):
Having found and opened a tube of Smarties from a hidden Easter Egg (handed out at the hospital when we went for his feet appt, but hidden by me so he wouldn't find it and eat it while I wasn't watching! Which is exactly what he did anyway!):
Just being Arthur:
There are photos of me when I was little, EXACTLY like that last photo. If I had one I'd scan it and post it. It's uncanny! I was the same way - boundless energy, slightly manic expressions (!) and picklish mischief. Every time I send my parents photos of the boys, they say they do more, "Ohh, isn't he JUST like Alice in that one!!" than the time before!
At the park (he's running away from me in the second one - I said it was time to go back to the car, and in about 0.5 seconds he had turned on his heel and legged it, as you see here! It looks like he's walking, but actually he was REALLY running! It didn't half take me a while to catch him!)
A couple from outings I took the boys on last week before all the (gorgeous!) rain we're currently having:
Wearing my shoes in the porch! He has really started to want to play dressing up a LOT lately. We have nothing to dress up with. I'm going to find some stuff on eBay I hope! :) He likes to pretend he's a doctor and tells me to, "Hmmm.... Open up wide!.... Hmmm..." as he peers into my mouth, hehe!
He's still seriously into building towers and things with bricks. He is thrilled with Neil gets ALL the bricks and helps him build "sheds" for his Thomas trains! Here his early one morning playing with what they built the night before:
And here he is just the day before yesterday, building a tower all by himself (he called us to watch!):
