Matthew's 2nd Birthday! (Part 1)

Thank you so much for the birthday wishes for my little man! Matthew is TWO! I can't believe he's 2. Well, it's sinking in pretty well now :) I love that he is two! I love hearing myself say, "They're three and two..." when someone asks me how old the two older boys are.

He had a GREAT birthday, and it was a wonderful day - I'm so happy with how it went! :)

I have toooo many photos. We did go to the farm (obviously tons of photos and a couple of video clips from that!) but first came the morning and the opening of most of his presents. Sooo, this entry will start with the presents - sorry if these are kind of samey or dull to anyone. I want them on record in my diary! :)

We wrapped everything up the night before, and left the smaller packages and birthday cards on top of the wrapped up sand and water table in the living room:

Here are the boys first thing in the morning on Matthew's birthday - Arthur was WAY more excited about Matthew's birthday than Matthew was, and he had been brimming with excitement for a couple of WEEKS waiting for it, lol!

LOVE this next photo of Matthew! This is one of all three boys with Neil just before Matthew started opening presents in the morning - Nathan and I had just come downstairs. It's not the best of everyone else, but it's wonderful of Matthew and so I love it.

The first present Matthew opened was a £2 Thomas the Tank Engine book about James, that I picked up at Tesco! He didn't want to open any more presents for AGES - he just loved the book and took himself off to have a good look at it - please note in the first picture our new toddler-sized red table and chairs that were excitingly FREE as I've started using our local Freecycle!!!! I'm so excited about that table and chairs and the boys love it and use it many times each day. Free, people! And did I mention that it was FREE?!?! :D Anyway, back to the birthday photos!... Just noticed that Arthur has some serious bed-head going on in the third photo, hehe!

Next up was the toy tractor we got him, which Arthur ADORES! He got so frustrated with how SLOWLY Matthew wanted to open his presents, and how he couldn't really help him do it. Matthew didn't want Arthur doing it for him, and we didn't want to let Arthur do too much of Matthew's present-opening either. It's hard on a 3-year-old! Poor boy. He also had to wait till Matthew had examined his new things before he could hold or play with them, which was never THAT long, but must have seemed an eternity to him! Here's Matthew with the tractor (not a great photo, but oh well), and Arthur delighted that it's his turn, hehe!

Starting to open one of his tractor books (he has loved those, by the way!). I think this one was "Tremendous Tractors" (great book!):

Arthur being allowed to help "start him off" with a present that was a little bit too well taped!

It's.....

CARS!!!!!

At that point, cars were DEFINITELY his very favourite present so far! He was so excited - he couldn't wait for me to get the box off so he could take them out of the plastic moulding and lay them out on the table. He kept just clenching his fists till they shook with excited tension, as he lined his new cars up! Arthur so so so wanted to lay his hands on those new cars as well - cars being his passion - but he did have to wait again. He did a lot of whining and shed a few tears, and hopped up and down a lot, and repeatedly asked Matthew if he could join in yet, etc. Poor Arthur! Matthew was so wrapped up in his cars that he couldn't stand for anyone to get near him for a while, or his cars either. Once he had lined them up and gazed at them and re-lined them, and gazed at them some more, he was willing to give one or two to Arthur. And when he remembered his James book and went off to look at it again, Arthur sank blissfully in front of the cars and lined them up his OWN way, hehe!

Well, the next set of photos is all about the trip to the farm. We got ourselves ready right after opening presents, and set off mid-morning. We had a GREAT time! It's the same farm we went to for Arthur's second birthday, and Arthur was SO much more ready for a trip to the farm than he was at age two. He had none of the anxieties (big animals up close, etc) that he had when he was Matthew's age. Matthew was a little anxious about noises (the hand-dryer in particular, where all the hand washing takes place - ohhhh he was snot-streamingly hysterical for ages over that hand-dryer! Poor love!), and also about the animals close up, but didn't find it overwhelming or anything. Arthur just love love loved the whole thing! I have a million photos, and some video clips too, which I'll post next entry (tomorrow evening?? The next day?? Hopefully soon!).

Here's the link to the entry I wrote after Arthur's second birthday, if you're interested to see us at the farm before I post pics from this time round! :)

It's sooooo late. I have to go to bed!

Matthew is almost two!!!

It's almost Matthew's birthday! Well, it's after midnight now, so technically it's his birthday already, but he wasn't born till 10.45pm so I really can't count it yet!

I need to go to bed, but I wanted to quickly update before Matthew's birthday, then I'll write about his day afterwards. I feel AWFUL that I never did get around to writing about Arthur's 3rd birthday! I have all the photos still. Maybe one day I'll catch up on it?!

Today I baked a simple birthday cake for Matthew when they were out with Neil at the park. Nathan watched me from his bouncy chair :) Arthur is going to be so disappointed that it's not chocolate cake (he is SO like me about chocolate, hehe!), but Matthew doesn't seem to care all that much about whether a cake is chocolate or not. He DOES especially like any cake with raisins in it. He LOVES raisins. If I bake one without raisins, he searches through it pitifully, breaking it apart with his fingers and saying, "Ree-ree? Ree-ree?" and looking at me beseechingly until I put a handful on his plate with his cake, hehe!

Soooo I baked a basic vanilla sponge cake, but just tipped in a TON of raisins. If I had had a bit more forethought, I would have baked a light fruit cake, but those are supposed to sit for 24-48 hours before cutting/decorating, so I didn't have time. Anyway, it came out fine :) Tonight I finished his cake and was DONE by 9.30pm!!! I am always always up till the middle of the night decorating cakes because they always take me longer than I expect! Maybe I didn't shoot so high with this one? We are not having a party, and no family members are coming over at all to see Matthew on his birthday! :( But, he won't care - he loves his little family unit, so we'll have all the cake to ourselves, haha! ;) And have fun together. *I* would have liked a little more attention for him, but that really doesn't matter because it isn't important to Matthew. He wasn't too comfortable at a party he went to a couple of weeks ago, so I am in no hurry to get him into children's parties before he wants to. His best friend in the whole world is Arthur, and the feeling is mutual. I love that!! :)

So the cake is small, made from just one loaf tin shaped cake. I made him a tractor cake! I cut the end off and stuck it on top of the rest of the loaf at one end, for the driver's cab. Then I covered the whole thing in butter icing and laid red ready-roll fondant icing on top. I used huge double choc chip cookies for wheels under the "cab" on either side, and Oreos for the front wheels. I used Smarties to brighten up the centres of the wheels, and yellow ones for headlights. I cut a lump of chocolate into a stick shape for the exhaust pipe on top of the bonnet, and then cut windows in the red fondant, and filled them in with butter icing. Then I piped "Matthew" on top, and "2" on the back, and outlined a few details (windows, etc) in black ready-to-use icing, and it was done! It was so much quicker than usual, I'm not sure why. Maybe it was just a smaller cake, or I was more willing to cut corners with easy options like writing icing, roll-on fondant, and biscuits for wheels! Anyway, it was fun to do and I think Matthew will really like it. I'll try to remember to take photos before we cut it! :)

I'm so frustrated that we don't have any new tapes for the video camera (haven't for many months) so this will be the first of my children's birthdays where the camcorder isn't used :( BUT, at least we do have a video function on the new camera. I will have to keep any clips short because they are very big files and take forever to upload online, but I'll try to take lots of pics and video clips tomorrow!

We are going to the same farm that we went to for Arthur's 2nd birthday! Just the five of us. Last time, Matthew was a 5-month-old baby in the Baby Bjorn sling, just like Nathan is! (FIVE months old yesterday, can you believe it?! Also, Nathan is NOT like Matthew - even though he is actually gestationally only 4 months old, the Baby Bjorn barely does up around his torso now!). I wonder if we'll be doing the same thing again for Nathan's 2nd birthday (can NOT fathom Nathan as a 2-year-old yet!) with another 5-month-old baby (boy - you know it'll be a boy!) in the Baby Bjorn?! I hope I'll be that blessed...

Tonight I also wrapped up Matthew's presents. He has 3 little books - two about tractors, and one about James from Thomas the Tank Engine. And the Tesco toy tractor and pack of matchbox cars. I know he'll LOVE those! That's all we were able to afford to get him. But the sand-and-water table from my parents arrived and we assembled it tonight (the easiest thing I ever assembled, and it looks like a fab table!), and then I wrapped it. It looks like the most enormous present, assembled and wrapped up! He has four cards that came in the post so far, and I put those on top with the smaller gifts. I made him a tractor birthday card last night using instructions that I found online for how to draw a tractor! It came out nicely, and today Arthur and I wrote the message on the inside and he made it very colourful :) So that's on the pile of presents too.

We finally ordered the big carpet road map thingy and four Playmobil 1.2.3 (18 months +) chunky vehicles (including a tractor!!!), with the cheque that Granny and Grandoug sent for him. I WISH I had got myself together to do that earlier, or at least ask if they'd mind sending a cheque earlier, so that Matthew could have had those fun things to open on his actual birthday. But never mind. They should be here in the first part of next week. I can't wait till the boys see the road carpet! :) Right now we have a large flattened cardboard box (the house-move packing type), and when it's flattened out it fills most of our living room floor. I drew a big maze of roads on it, and they play with that for hours every day! We keep adding to it - now it has a playground, a garage (complete with my badly drawn mechanic!), and a set of colourful "Balamory" houses, etc. And Tesco's with a big car park! I know they'll love the carpet when it comes.

Food tomorrow is all Matthew-centred. Normal breakfast - he eats Weetabix (just one) and rice crispies on top. And snacks tomorrow will be Organix cocoa and raisin cereal bars (he loves those!) and their Elephant Biscuits (another fave). We'll take a picnic to the farm, so it will be his normal lunch anyway, which he likes - sandwiches (marmite, Nutella, etc), Bob the Builder ham, Thomas the Tank Engine fromage frais, apple, etc.

Matthew is WAY more picky these days with food than he ever was before. I know it's his age, and he'll outgrow it. I'm anxiously waiting for that! ;) It's so stressy dealing with ultra-picky toddlers! Anyway, his current favourites are macaroni cheese and anything CHICKEN. This boy loves his MEAT. Seriously. He will leave the sauce and pasta when we have spaghetti bolognese, but pick out every morsel of minced meat that he can find, declaring triumphantly, "Meep, meep!" every time he finds one, before popping it in his mouth! (meep being MEAT, of course! ;) ) He looooves meat. Any type. But I think his very favourite has to be chicken. He gets SO excited to see it on the plates when he is put in his highchair and that's what we're having for dinner! He cries out, "Cyee-cyick!" ("c-y" is how he manages to pronounce "ch").

So tomorrow we're having a meal combo especially for Matthew! We're having macaroni cheese and mini chicken fillets, just cooked plain and cut up for him. He prefers it plain as plain can be, ideally. No marinades, no gravy, no sauces, etc. But he'll eat it covered in ANYTHING, all the same!

We'll have birthday cake for dessert. I really hope he enjoys his birthday!

I can't believe he is about to be TWO. I am happy and relieved to have a two-year-old again - doesn't that sound like a weird thing to say?! :) But I am. I love little ones, and I love HAVING little ones of my own. Since Arthur has been 3 these last 7 months, I've missed having a 2-year-old! So I'm really happy to have another 12 months of "Mummy-to-a-2-year-old" status ahead of me again :) Also, I now have a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old! I like that too :)

Most exciting to me is the fact that I have achieved something really special again. My own personal goal with all my babies is to breastfeed them for at least 2 years. My plan is actually to let them self-wean, but my heartfelt desire is to breastfeed each of them till they are 2 - to at least reach that milestone. Two years seems to take a long time to come around! It's a long time to have breastfed continuously (forgetting for a moment that I was already nursing continuously for the 19 months before I started with Matthew - 3yrs and 7mths now, yay me!), and I really did think that Matthew might self-wean before he turned two, given that he was a much less breast-focused baby, shall we say, than Arthur ever was. I'm SO EXCITED that he's still breastfeeding!!!! :D And proud of myself for two babies nursed to the age of 2 and beyond! :)

I really really really wanted to make a montage of photos and stuff of Matthew to post for his birthday, but as expected I simply haven't had the time. We're STILL trying to recover from the latest cold virus - Neil has conjunctivitis and a maybe-possibly ear infection (bulging ear drum, but no build up of fluid behind it yet), and everybody else is still kind of snotty and tired out and achy. Please pray that we DON'T catch anything else at the farm! We just seem to be on a run of illnesses and on a low ebb immune-wise. Matthew and Nathan are teething, which naturally makes them way more prone to illnesses (I have discovered my kids are like this!).

Anyway, hopefully Matthew will have a great birthday and I will update about it asap! I'll TRY to catch up on the things I'm behind on here after that!

Sleeping children!

Just had to write a super quick entry to say that

ALL THREE OF MY CHILDREN ARE SLEEPING RIGHT NOW AND IT'S MID-AFTERNOON!

Wheee, what an amazing experience! ;) I know somebody will wake before I post this entry properly, but I have just had about 40 minutes of quiet stillness in the house in the middle of the day! Neil is at the library finishing a job application. Matthew went down for his regular nap, and Nathan was ready for a nap not long after. Arthur gets to nurse for a short bit once Matthew is down, and we snuggle on the armchair together. He went right off to sleep nursing, which he has done twice this week with his cold (which is much better, just leaving him tired out). So we moved him to the sofa and he's still sleeping.

Of course, the down side is that we'll likely be trying to wrangle wide awake boys into bed for like 2 hours after bedtime tonight, but oh well.

The weather is beautiful today! Very warm and sunny, and a lovely breeze. Somebody nearby had a woodfire going outside earlier, and my coldy nose still managed to smell it - I love that smell!! It was lovely.

What other random things can I write about while I have a few more minutes?

I need to somehow figure out how to give Arthur some more focused time. I think the home schooling will help this, but I want to try and "schedule" some one-on-one time for each of the boys, on a regular basis. If we have lots of children, I want to make sure nobody misses out on quality one-on-one time with Mummy and Daddy. I'm going to ask other large families (any comments/suggestions from mothers of lots of kids who are reading would be much appreciated!) and see what advice and tips they give.

Arthur had his first big home-schooling moment last week! Well, it isn't SUCH a big deal, but I was excited! I plan to do a combination of structured schooling and child-led schooling. I don't want to do it totally structured and like a classroom, but on the other hand, I'm nervous about letting it be 100% child-led. So, a combination sounds good! Last week, Arthur had his first child-led lesson! He was sitting at the window watching the rain, and suddenly asked me, "Mummy, how does the water get into the tap?" I leapt up in excitement, hehe! We got the laptop out straight away and Googled "how does water get into the tap kids" and voila! We found this PDF file on the first page of results, and spent a while learning about the water cycle. That evening I gathered links and ideas for experiments we can do about the water cycle, for little ones. So much fun!

I have prepared a bag of things to teach Arthur about matter (solids, liquids and gas), which was an idea I picked up from another online homeschooling mama (I can't remember which one though! I read SO many homeschooling and large family blogs now - I've had to subcategorise in my "diaries" folder in my favourites!!). I have told him it's there and that I'm excited to teach him about matter, but I'm waiting till he says he wants to learn about it. Check out this absolutely AWESOME Montessori physics lesson for little kids on "The Beginning" (universe, Earth, etc): http://www.missbarbara.net/thebeginning.html. It's written for a classroom setting, but that will soooo not stop me doing this with my children! I plan to do this lesson exactly as she describes it, when the boys are 5 and 4 maybe. And then Nathan will be nearly 3 so he can join in too. How exciting! I do want to teach the boys about Creation from a Biblical perspective, but I will also teach the stuff the rest of the world believes too ;) I don't want them to learn only about the Creation, and then get older, look for themselves at the Natural History Museum and wonder why I kept that from them. I will teach the whole lot, and tell them what I believe.

Okay, Matthew is awake and I have resettled Nathan now, so I have to go. Better wake Arthur now too!

Thank you for the comments (so many already!! :) ) on the photos from last night's entry! I'll be back soon with something more long-winded, haha! ;)

Daddy photos, and still SO in love!! *sigh*

Thank you for the comments on my last entry! We didn't realise that you should stand stock still when faced with a snake, so have passed this information on to Arthur - thank you! I am surprisingly more scared of snakes than I ever was before (I was never scared of them, just didn't like them), since Arthur's incident. I mean, I am lying in my bed at night and suddenly start thinking about snakes out of nowhere, and literally break out in a sweat and palpitate. Tsk! So annoying! I am praying about it.

We've all been ill AGAIN, hence the gap since the last entry. Matthew got an infected finger! How do we keep getting infections and viruses lately?! Especially Matthew. But God has been faithful - this is the third time he has seen a doctor and they've prescribed him antibiotics, saying he'll need it (he had a mild ear infection last week at the end of that tonsillitusy-conjunctivitisy yeurghiness), and every single time we have laid hands on him when he's asleep and prayed that he will not need to take them (because he spits them out, and it's nigh on impossible, and they'll mess his bowel up), and each time his infection has resolved! His middle finger was a big swollen red thing with really pretty luminescent green pus under the skin all around his fingernail. I have noooo idea how that got started. It was completely sealed in, and we tried but we couldn't get it out. The doctor said he must have antibiotics. The next day (before we'd given him any), we looked at his finger and it was pink and normal size/shape, and clean! He has his fingers in his mouth all the time these days, so my thinking is that he chewed on it, it burst (uggghhh!) and yeah. He has chewed on more disgusting things (believe me) so it is possible. Anyway, yay! No antibiotics again! We've cleaned it with antiseptic cream and it seems fine still.

Matthew ran a temperature at random one night (10 days ago?? I can't remember now), and that's why we took him to the doctor. She said he had a mild infection in his right ear, but that since his fever was so low and he seemed happy and well, and not bothered by it, she'd give us the antibiotics but we should wait and see if he got a worse fever before giving them to him. He didn't get ANY more fever, so we happily disregarded the presecription! :) Then the next night, Arthur was shivery after his bath and looked really strange in his face. He was pale and said he felt funny when he stood up, and he just wanted to go to bed. He didn't even want bedtime milky! He went to sleep really fast, and a couple of hours later when we checked on him, he was burning up. He had a fever of 101.5 (who knows what that is in C, I only speak F!). He was really restless and kept talking gobbledy-gook, and seemed like he felt unwell, but wouldn't sit up to take anything for it. He seemed okayish the next day and we stayed home from church. That night he had a fever again - it started by about 4pm, but at least we got him to take some Calpol at that point, since he seemed to feel really unwell with it and retreated into a corner. He was fine 20 minutes later.

Bennie wanted to come round with Thea on Monday, so we told him about the fevers, and that we'd seen the doctor that day who looked at Arthur and saw nothing wrong with him, and speculated that it must be the end of this weird virus or something. Bennie was happy to bring Thea over anyway (she socialises a LOT and they're past worrying about what she does and doesn't catch!).

So it was lovely to have them round! The boys loved her company, and she loved their toy cars, haha! She took her first step a couple of weeks ago! We'll see her again at Grandoug's traditional birthday bash on July 5th - my parents are coming over from France for that too!! I just can't WAIT! :) I hope we're healthy. We seem to never be at the moment.

Anyway, Thea arrived with a runny nose, and 2 days later 3 of us were streaming and aching and coughing and feeling like absolute rhubarb (me, Arthur, and poor sweet tiny Nathan). I still had a sore throat from the 2/3 week throaty thing, but it was almost gone. It's sore now from the cold. This cold has really kicked our butts! I haven't felt so ill and achy and weird with a cold since I can't remember when. I think Arthur and Nathan have had slight fevers but I didn't check. They just felt a bit too warm to me. Arthur and I are getting a bit better now. Matthew came down with it yesterday and both boys have been dropping on the sofa and napping at weird times of the day (they NEVER nap on the sofas, and Arthur hasn't napped in like a year!). Poor Nathan has been really poorly :( His eyes are red-rimmed and he's so horribly squelchingly congested. I have been up with him such a lot in the night times. He's 100% co-sleeping at the moment - I'm not even bothering with the cot any more. It's so much easier to tend to him in the night when he's poorly, if he's right there next to me, and he sleeps a lot better next to me than in the cot too, and for longer blocks. My poor tiny snufflet! I love him so much!

Soooo, please pray that we won't get ill again this summer! It's 2 months solid for us now, and I'm feeling really fed up with it! It has been hot today and yesterday, but still so cold and un-summery before that, so maybe that's part of it?

Anyway.

Our money has run out! Four maxed out credit cards (that's so terrible!) and in the red in the bank. Not a scrap left to buy food, or shoes for Matthew (he's been wearing Arthur's handed-down sandals even in the rain, poor love!), or anything. I'm so excited to see what God will do! This is the part where our faith in Him is going to be really tested, and that's exciting. I know He will provide. I trust in Him completely. The garden sale is going ahead but there are lots of bits and pieces to tie up before we can get the money. It has gone down to £13,500 from £15,000 though. But that's still fine :)

Neil has a job interview on Wednesday, over the phone for half an hour. It's for a really well-paid job in Hampshire, close enough to be just about commutable, but somewhere we would not mind moving to as well. It happens to be in the same town where my SIL (Rosemary) lives!! Who, by the way, was due yesterday! Excitement! :) That job is the same kind of work he was in before, so stuff he can do. And it's more interesting to him than his previous work, so that would be good. He is also applying to be a train driver! He would need 6-9 months of training on a scarily tiny wage, and then after that he would be on a pretty good wage.

Also he has applied for a job very locally to us, which isn't quite so well paid as we need, but it would be a great opportunity. So, there are more jobs out there all of a sudden, which is encouraging.

I'm kind of sad that I can't buy Matthew any more birthday presents, which I had planned to do. I know he won't care, but I feel sad anyway. He does already have some Matchbox-style cars and a tractor, and a couple of tractor books, and the ELC sand and water table from my parents arrived! My grandparents gave him a cheque, and I am desperate for it to hurry up and clear so I can use it to buy the thing I wanted to use it for (the big roadmap carpet) in time for his birthday (which I'm not sure will happen now). Anyway. He's getting plenty, so I shouldn't feel sad! We are raiding the loose change box for entrance fees to the same farm we went to for Arthur's 2nd birthday, on Saturday!

I can't believe he will be two on Saturday! So nearly there. I really want to work on a little montage/letter type thingy for his birthday, to post here, but I feel sad about that too, because I feel sure I won't get time, and that feels bad. I will try though.

I STILL have to write about my leg and Matthew's haircut, lol! But there isn't time now. Again! ;)

I had a few more (favourite!) photos that I meant to post soon after my last entry, so I'll post them here. They're all of a "Daddy" theme :) Here's a set of three photos, of Matthew and Nathan on the mat on the floor with Daddy - Nathan was interested in Neil's wedding ring (he loves rings!) and Matthew was interested in Nathan (as always!). In the second one, Neil was giving Matthew a gentle back-rub/neck-tickle. Matthew always goes sooooo still and quiet for these, and eventually gets kind of sleepy. He is JUST like Neil in this respect - Arthur isn't like this, but it's something I used to do for Neil all the time when we were dating :)

He's such a lovely Daddy!!! :)

Here are all three of my sweet little boys hanging out with their daddy. Matthew is chewing his hand in this photo, which is a constant sight at the moment. All 4 of his canines are still coming through (about halfway down and changing his smile now, but I love his new "filled out" smile!), and he is having quite a lot of pain and discomfort from the 2-year-old molars at the back (hence the hand-chewing), though I can't feel them anywhere near when I check. Thank goodness they are the LAST ONES!!! Wheee! And then we start all over again with Nathan, who is having teething pain a lot already. Poor teethy boys!

I am in love with this last photo. ALL the men in my life, hehe! :) And look at all the small boys I've had in the space of 3 years?!?! Photos like this always make that kind of reality hit me with a bump, but I love "re-realising" it every time :)

I just adore having my little boys! I mean, they are HARD WORK (especially the older two right now) but I am just pinch-yourself happy right now, with my three sweeties! I make several trips per evening upstairs to lean against door posts and sigh contentedly as I watch them sleep, or kiss sleeping faces and whisper how much I love them. My heart leaps for joy when Nathan wakes, even if he's woken NINE times already that evening and I feel crummy myself, because OH how I love that boy and delight in every opportunity to take his sweet little body into my arms and hold him to me and sway till he is just making little snuffly whimpers instead of crying, and ohhhh just feel his soft little downy head nuzzling jerkily against my neck and shoulder as he tries to settle. Matthew's sweet little profile last night when he was sleeping - oh my heavens. I just NEVER wanted to leave his side and go downstairs again! If I didn't think I would disturb him, I would have spend ages kissing every square mm of his face as he slept. He looked so beautiful to me! I just whispered to him instead about how much I love him, and how 2 years ago exactly, he was due to be born any time, and how much I wanted to meet him, and how I can't believe I have had two years getting to know him and how DELIGHTED I am to be his mummy! *sigh*

Arthur is also a sweet treasure, but he is less of a cute lil baby bean these days and more rude and demanding and DIFFICULT, etc. But my heart melts nonetheless when I stroke his hair and kiss his face when he's sleeping. Sometimes I look at him and he's such a sweet tiny! I forget he has two little brothers and remember that he's only a baby himself, in many ways. If I had an 8-year-old, Arthur would seem such a LITTLE one to me!

I have such a TON to write about things the boys are saying, that I'm trying to jot down in pencil during the day, otherwise it will get lost in the sands of time, and that would be so sad! Matthew is talking much more, and says so many words that I couldn't possibly count them. He says some words that I didn't know he had heard before! And he frequently puts two words together now. He plays imaginary games by himself (just started that), and with his sweet new talking thrown in, it's just ADORABLE to behold! :) He and Arthur play imaginary games together a lot now, which is what I've been waiting for all these years (well, the last two anyway, lol!). I must write about them more next entry, and the things they're saying.

It's getting late now and I need to change the sheets (oh the MILK staining at night when co-sleeping! I'd forgotten!) before I can go to bed. Back soon! :)

Scary encounter. And millions more photos...

Back, but as briefly as I can manage, as it's already really late!

Thanks so much for the comments on my last entry with all the photos! I still have soooooooo many more photos to post - I will try to post some tonight in a minute. Jemma, I actually wrote the notes about my leg and Matthew's haircut BECAUSE I wasn't planning to write them last entry, hehe! It's not that I forgot to write them! ;) I knew if I wrote a one-liner in that entry, somebody might remind me another time (I knew I did not have time to cover them), or I might scan the entry and be reminded. Heh. I sometimes do that because I know I'm scatty like that :)

As it goes, I don't think I'll have time to write about them properly this entry either. Tsk! I so want to write about all the jumble in my head!

Oh the other one I forgot to leave a reminder for was that Arthur came face-to-face with an adder (or viper) snake at the park! London's vast parks (the wilder ones anyway) do have snakes, and the visitor information at our local one tells us that there are grass snakes and adders there, but that adders are extremely rarely seen. Adders are the UK's only venomous snakes. My mum saw a dead one by a pile of rubbish bins once when she was six, and that was quite a big deal!

Anyway. We don't KNOW that it was an adder, because we didn't see it. Neil took the boys to the park as usual and they were in the ferns and undergrowth leading to some lakes a way off. The boys just roam and roam there. I don't know anybody who has ever seen a snake there - even a grass snake which is much more common compared with the adder. Well Arthur was forging ahead of Neil and Matthew (as usual), and suddenly came running back to Neil, kind of shaken but not scared/crying. He said he saw a snake that "sliddled" into the grass out of sight when it saw him. He seemed a bit like I would feel if I saw any snake (I don't like them!) - they give me the "willies" for want of a better word! He looked like that.

They left that area and when they came home I asked Arthur a lot of questions about the snake. I presumed it must have been a grass snake and I wanted to turn it into a learning experience by looking them up with him online and learning about them, maybe drawing one, etc. I also wanted to be sure that he really HAD seen a snake, having never seen one before. I asked if it might have been a worm, and he gave me a disgusted look and said, indignantly, "No! Worms are small and PINK! This snake was really long and black!" At which point I froze and said, "What colour was it?" and he said, "Black. With sort of orangey bits."

So, he was right there with me in the living room, but I swear my blood ran cold for a moment! I looked up creepy videos and photos on YouTube and other Googled places, and first I showed him grass snakes. Grass snakes in sunshine, grass snakes coiled up in a heap, grass snakes in motion all slithery, etc. I said, "Ah ha! Was THIS what the snake looked like?!" and he said (again with the indignance!), "No Mummy! That snake is BROWN, not black!" So, rather shakily I brought up the photos and video clips of the European viper (adder), and he cheerfully said, "Yes, that's the one!" the moment he saw it.

*shudder*

Now, they are not highly venomous snakes, but they could kill a small child. Arthur said it hissed at him and its tongue "slithelled" at him and he didn't like it, and then it started to "slidder" away so he turned around and ran back to Daddy. We (very over-enthusiastically!) praised him heavily for what he did, and said he did the right thing to turn and run away. We had a good talk about snakes and how to behave around them (ie, RUN AWAY!). I don't want to instill a fear of snakes into the boy, but I DO want to HAVE my boy to grow old with, and I also don't want him to learn the hard way that it's not a good idea to mess with snakes, even a non-venomous one. He doesn't seem upset by the incident at all, but snakes definitely appear to give him the heebie-jeebies. I think I can safely say he's not a fan!

Apart from the HORROR STORY side of the incident (!!), it's actually quite exciting that he saw an adder, as nobody ever sees them - they're so rare! :)

But, yeeeuuuuaaaaahhhrhrhrhrhhh.... I will now change the subject!

My leg and Matthew's haircut will have to wait till next time (again!).

Oh! I almost forgot! I am DESPERATE for an Ergo baby carrier, and obviously can't afford one, but they are good for babies from 5 months old in the back carry. It's the back carry that I want the thing for, so with only a couple of weeks till Nathan turns 5 months old, I'm starting to get itchy for an Ergo! I've been watching second-hand sales lists, but they get snapped up the second they're listed, and it's still too expensive anyway. But a girl can "window-shop", can't she?! I really need one soon as Nathan has almost outgrown the Baby Bjorn, and everything else hurts my back (well, the Bjorn does too, but at least it only lasts the early months while their weight is still relatively low). The Ergo is supposed to be the BEST carrier out there for distributing weight and preventing back pain. I do have a couple of Mei-Tais, but I think he's a bit little for back carries in those, for me anyway.

So, I just found a link to a competition to WIN an Ergo at the January 2008 babies buddy group I read from time to time (having a January 2008 baby, after all!). I went to enter but it says in order to enter, you have to link to the competition in your blog or at a forum you use, etc. It closes at midnight TONIGHT (thankfully not UK time, otherwise I'd have missed it by now, lol!), so quick, here's the link! If you're super quick, you might get in with a chance to win the Ergo yourself! :)

http://www.alongfortheride.biz/contest-s/49.htm

And now I shall go and enter with about fifty million other hopefuls, and very likely NOT win the Ergo, but hey, there's a teensy chance! :)

ETA: Have just discovered that it looks like it's US/Canadian residents only! Poo! No rules that say as such, just won't take my "non-US" entry :( Oh well!

I have a lot of photos to post, so I'll get on with that, and then go to bed. Nathan is waking really frequently at the moment. I don't know if it's another growth spurt or what, but he's feeding 2-3 hourly round the clock at least. He pretty much has done that from the start though, and it hasn't changed, but it feels a bit more intense tonight and yesterday - he sometimes isn't making it to 2 hours between feeds. That's okay, but it makes for a very up-and-down night! Thank goodness it's just me and him and a kingsize bed with a cot pushed up against it! He spends the last few hours of the night in with me usually, as I lose the capacity to put him back in his cot by then! ;) This evening he has woken 3 times already. For the FIRST time ever, the last time he woke I picked him up and patted his back and rocked him for a moment. He was SO CROSS with me! ;) I added his dummy to the mix and he went off to sleep peacefully, and settled fine when I put him back in his cot. I think he was a little bit chilly or something. He's used to being put to the breast every time he wakes, day or night, so it's understandable that he's cross when I don't, even if he's not hungry for a big feed yet!

So, photos! :)

When Arthur was tiny (2.5 months, I think), I took a photo of him (just one of many random photos at the time) wearing a white Gap sleepsuit with green stars on it, and he was lying on one of my home-sewn changing mats. When Matthew was about the same age (3 months), I put him in the same outfit and lay him on the same mat and took a photo. It really showed how different they are in body/head shape! So, a few weeks ago, Nathan reached that age (adjusted for his early arrival - he had just turned 4 months old and his adjusted age made him just 3 months old) and I put him in the outfit and lay him on the mat, and took his photo! I have been eager to post all three photos here to compare, but haven't got around to it for a while. So I'll do that first. I'll do them in order of birth - Arthur's photo first, then Matthew, then Nathan:

Arthur:

Matthew:

Nathan:

Matthew and Nathan really are a LOT more similar to each other than Arthur and Nathan (or Arthur and Matthew, for that matter). It's so interesting to compare! Arthur's head-shape and size was quite unique, and still is! Matthew and Nathan have similar heads, but Nathan's is definitely in-between the two boys, even though it looks so similar to Matthew's, because Matthew's head is really tiny for his age and Nathan's has always been bigger in terms of measurements. Arthur's has always been huge! :) Even their measurements at their 21-week scans showed this.

Anyway, onto other photos! Here are some of my little Nathey sweetie pie when the weather was warm and we were about to head out in the garden for some water play (STILL haven't uploaded those photos, but they are the only ones outstanding to upload now):

Nathan next to Mummy's (as yet still enormous) leg, and on the floor mat:

Nathan looking around at interesting things! He is so interested in everything lately. He loves the touchy feely Usborne books, and likes to use his jerky batting movements as best he can to put his hands on the textures on the pages and grab the book, etc. He looks so excited while he looks at those books, and he drools and smiles continually, hehe!

Matthew in the ferns at the park (*shudder*):

Sitting on my tummy as I tried to lie on the floor for a bit, one tiring afternoon (the monkey!)!

Arthur in the ferns at the park (soooo don't think they'll be going to the ferny locations so much after this! There's plenty of flat grass there too):

Showing me a fire engine (very seriously!):

Painting with me one afternoon while the little boys napped. This will be our "school" time as it has been for a long time. Nothing formal planned yet though, we just enjoy crafts and cooking and things right now :) We painted pasta that day which was just for fun, but I noticed how much it really honed in on Arthur's fine motor skills, more so than any other painting we've done so far, so it was great. Then he did handprints, and after that I let him loose with the remains of the paint, on the newspaper covering the table. He has so much imagination right now. He was making different creatures' footprints with the paintbrushes and different colours, and leaving "trails" behind the paint "glasses" (need to buy a palatte of some sort eventually!), and then making up stories and being a detective following the trails! :)

My "monkey" little dude :)

Blurry, fluffy-haired, and self-photographed, but who cares! It's ME and my precious baby BOYYY!! :)

Cheeeeeeese! (why do they always say this, it's never what I want them to do when I point the camera at them?!) - I love Matthew's hair in this! It has NEVER lain flat in his life! The new hairdresser (more next time I hope!) said it needs to grow long on top to have any chance of lying flat, so he's growing it out on top. It's so springy and long there right now, hehe!

Okay, I think that's definitely enough photos for one entry! I have saved my favourites for last, but I will do them in another entry. They're too special to just bung on the end of an over-photo-y entry! They are all of Neil and the boys. I'll post them next time.

Now I am going to brush my teeth and go to bed before Nathan wakes again! Back soon! :)

Ridiculous amount of photos

Thanks for all the comments last entry and for missing me! I'm sorry I haven't updated in 11 days!!! I have so much to write about! It's already midnight and I have had a horrible headache all day that painkillers haven't touched, so I'm nuts to even be sitting at the computer instead of going to bed. I just couldn't let ANOTHER night go by without an update of some sort. I've been meaning to update every evening for five days now!

The virus we've had STILL continues. We've had an adenovirus of some sort. Matthew had awful conjunctivitis with his that STILL hasn't completely cleared up. Arthur and Nathan have miiiilld conjunctivitis, just slightly pink eyes with mild irritation (no goop). I have had tonsillitus and my throat was soooo painful for seven days straight. The whole thing lasted me 10 days, and I only have a bit of a cough now, thankfully! I also had laryngitis and NO voice for a couple of days. I hate losing my voice as I love to use it so much (hehe!), and was ever so glad when it finally started to come back, even if I did sound like Barry White for a few days (feeeeels so good....).

Currently the boys are doing lots better, though not 100%. Arthur has tonsillitus but he's doing fine despite that. It's a viral type as part of this adenovirus thing so we haven't needed antibiotics. His throat looks awfully sore and he has white spots all over his tonsils, but he only complains now and again and touches his neck a lot, poor love! Matthew is cutting all four canines at once and I think that's bothering him more than his sore throat. Neil has JUST come down with the sore throat 2 days ago so he has another 8ish days of FUN yet. *sigh*

This season has been SO GERMY! Where's the summer and the respite from All The Germs?! It bugs me that there's only 4 months till the next flu season starts, which means this last season seems to have somehow been EIGHT months long!?!?!

I MUST write about my leg - don't let me forget! ;)

And Nathan is rolling both ways! Tummy-to-back and back-to-front! He rolls over and over now in the same direction, and yesterday when I put him down in the living room, he rolled 7 times in a row to get across the room! This is exactly what Matthew did, but I can't remember if he was older or the same age as Nathan. Nathan seems so little for it yet!

I know there were other things that have been on my mind to write about, but they've fallen out of my head tonight. Matthew's birthday is in just over 2 weeks!!! I'm using Freecycle and eBay so far to search for affordable presents for him. And since not a lot is coming from those (though we did get a FREE lawnmower through Freecycle after Neil mowed a golf ball on our lawn with our old one!), I have sold a few items of maternity clothing on eBay that I really don't use much when I'm pregnant, and bought a couple of tractor story books and a couple of toy tractors from Tesco, and a top with a tractor on it. I'm going to bake him a tractor birthday cake. Anyone noticing a theme here?!?! Hehe. The boy ADORES tractors (twaa-twaa!!). He also loves cars, woh-wees (lorries), emergency vehicles, and trains. And planes. Okay, so he's not picky about his vehicles! But his favourite vehicle is definitely a tractor at the moment, so I'm going to tractorize (?!) his birthday as best I can.

My parents are buying him the sand and water table from The Early Learning Centre, that I wanted to get him. I just asked them if they would mind buying it for his birthday present, as we can't afford to. The other thing we can't afford that I REALLY want for him, is this road playmat that's actually carpet. We have a much smaller, cheaper playmat that isn't real carpet and it is not living up to the wear and tear it is put through! I wanted a real carpet one originally but couldn't find one. Anyway, I am thinking of asking my grandparents to help me buy that for him. They always give a cheque for birthdays, but I might ask (like at Christmas) if they'd mind giving me the money early so I can buy this for him to open on his birthday.

If there happens to be any money left over, I would love a couple of items from the Playmobil 1.2.3 toddler range, notably these ones:

I think he would LOVE those! :)

We might go to the farm for his birthday, just like we did for Arthur's 2nd birthday (but less wrapped up for a winter outing, that sort of thing!) - mainly to see TRACTORS though! I think he might be like Arthur and get a bit scared of some of the animals up close, at his age. I have to finish figuring it all out, because his birthday will be upon me in NO time! My niece, Ella, will be three that day too! It's a shame they don't live nearer to combine birthday outings or something. They might be just a TAD busy this year because Rosemary is currently 38.5 weeks pregnant! We don't know if it's a girl or a boy, but her pregnancy is NOTHING like Ella's, and every. little. bit. like all three of mine, so I'm thinking BOY! Rosemary told me they are stopping at two children, which seems crazy sudden to me! But that's partly because it feels like yesterday that they were just STARTING with Ella (after I had my own first baby, which was oooooh.... last week?!), and partly because I slightly insanely (?!)want a bunch of kids, and now when I think of someone stopping at two, I automatically think, "What?!?! Are you crazy?! You've only just started!!" hahaha! ;)

Okay, I must must must go to bed. But not before I post a ridiculous number of photos in a hopeless attempt to catch up with the huge backlog (just uploaded another 105 photos from the last week alone, and STILL haven't caught up with the 135 from the previous two weeks! Aaargh!).

Oh! Did I write about Matthew's haircut?! I MUST write about Matthew's haircut! Soon.

Here are a few photos of Matthew and Nathan from AT LEAST a month ago (sorry!) - the last one is from a couple of weeks ago though:

Hehe, Matthew was newly awake from his afternoon nap in the third one there! ;) I LOVE that one, for some reason!

Three little boys = Happy Mama!! :)

A typical sight in our household - the boys play cars like this ALL day long, on the sofas mainly, but also all over the floor. It's SO cute to see them side by side, so focused on the same game, now that Matthew is older. They play together with the cars and interact - Matthew will often hand Arthur the cars one by one (saying, "Heeeere....") and Arthur will put them in a traffic line or car park.

Arthur and Matthew watching something on TV together (they look so BIG!):

Three little monkeys (two weeks ago)!

Nathan in The Ring (see photo of Arthur in it, if you open up the comments box!):

Everybody in the ring!!

That's probably reeeally enough photos for you in one go! But I have so many more to post! I would post them all NOW if I didn't think it was going to be too overwhelming and start to make each of them less special or something because of there being so many at once. But instead I'll be back SOON to post the rest! :)

Now I'm going to bed! :)