Starting out with four, and needing God...

I have just discovered Kari Jobe's music lately - such beautiful songs, and what an amazing voice God has blessed her with! I have been listening to lots of worship music on YouTube while I've been resting and breastfeeding these last two weeks, and especially the last week for some reason. I'm involving myself at MOMYS (Mothers of Many Young Siblings) a lot more for the good influence and wisdom there - I'm excited that I have full access there since Benjamin was born, now that his birth makes me an official MOMYS (4 or more children under the age of 8)! I love the fellowship there, and that the ladies there are so Christ-centred. They lean on God for all that they need to do the task to which He has called them. I know I need to do this too. I HAVE to. I can't meet the needs of four little boys aged four and under otherwise! I'm not able. I'm insufficient! I'm human! But His grace is sufficient for me, and His strength is made perfect in my weakness. I've got to remember that I CAN'T do it, nope, no way, no how! ;) With that in mind, I am DRIVEN to God's feet all day long to seek His strength and to allow Him to clothe me in the patience and peace and joy and self-control and allll those things I desperately need to do this next stage of mothering and discipling my Many Small Children (to coin a phrase from MckMama! ;) ).

I've started to read the Bible more, just little bits, because at MOMYS they sometimes post about Bible verses they're reading and people post their thoughts on the verses. This encouraged me to get my Bible out and really meditate on some verses, which I really haven't done for a long time. And then the next day I really wanted to do the same again with a different verse. So I'm really thankful for the good influence! :)

Neil is going back to work tomorrow, after his paternity leave. He took Friday off as holiday time to round out the week, so it's been a longer break with the weekend on top, than the usual paternity leave, and that is lovely! I have been resting the whole time, doing very little around the house or in terms of childcare. It has been such a precious time for me. I'm sad and nervous to see it come to an end! But I would be in a whoooole different anxious place if I didn't have the perspective God is giving me right now - about needing Him to do it. I feel strangely (!) confident about setting out to do the long days with FOUR little children now, much more so than I ever did with 1, 2 or 3 small children when I started out those times. I hope I am not being naiive! But I really do feel confident. I think it's going to be okay. My parents are coming for the week, and staying with my grandparents. They'll come over late morning till Neil gets home every day next week and help occupy the boys. Mummy even said I can go and lie down and get a nap if I need to during the day, but I am not sure if the boys will be manageable for them while I do that - we'll see. I'm so happy to have them coming over to visit and the boys are so excited too! In some ways I am feeling relieved that I will have help next week. I still get tired SO quickly if I do stuff like go for a short walk with the baby in a sling, so I'm nervous about my stamina with these energetic and not-awfully-obedient little boys!

On the other hand, though.... I feel so eager to get "stuck in" and do the wonderful job that God has called me to do! In order to do it, I need to crank up my organisation skills a notch (or two!) - more so with each baby, I'm finding. And I've been browsing the archives at MOMYS and starting to piece together a flexible basic schedule for our household, to help the days run smoother. I'm sure it will need a lot of tweaking before it works for us well, but it's a start! And I need to seriously crank up the discipline with the boys as well. I feel a bit like I can't really get ON IT to the degree that I want/need to until after my parents have left. So, although I feel like I will really need their help, and will so appreciate it and be sad to see them go again, I am also looking forward to being on my own with the boys, to really set up my home and things with my children as I want to and press on consistently without distraction or help. Help is WONDERFUL, but it can impact an intense focus on something like discipline.

Anyway, so it's nearly time for that to begin! I'm so glad my parents are coming, and so excited about the road ahead! I feel sure there will be PERLENTY of days (weeks?!) where I am NOT in this place and feel overwhelmed and far from God, and so on. I'm sure of it. But this confidence beforehand is new for me. I hope it means things will go okay, and REALLY hope feeling this way might indicate a better experience? I am hoping I do not get postnatal depression to any degree this time. I did not last time (I did with the older two, just feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope - which I see is something that raising 4 such little ones might lead me to feel again!) but then Neil was home to help all the time because he was out of work for the first 6 months after Nathan's arrival. I really want to DO it, to the glory of God!! I hope that is how it will be.

Anyway, I still plan to update with photos and all the things I mentioned last time! But the reason I actually opened this blogger box to update today is because I wanted to post a video I found on YouTube. I was listening to Kari Jobe and clicked on another video link after the one I was listening to finished. It turned out to be a church presentation of a Bible story with Kari's song "I know that You are for me" playing. I watched it just out of interest. It made me cry. I just found it so beautiful, and for that reason I wanted to share it here in case it blesses someone else.

Benjamin Isaac! (and random photos)

I'm a bit late announcing here, but never mind! I have been updating at my pregnancy blog though! Benjamin Isaac was born at home at 7.30pm on Thursday 9th June 2009. He weighed 8lbs 11oz! He has a head-full of dark brown hair, and murky dark grey eyes (which I think may turn brown, as Arthur's did). He has Nathan's chin and Arthur's eyes, my fingers and toes, and looks ever so much like photos of Neil as a newborn (except for the chin!).



I don't know his length, because they have apparently stopped measuring the length at birth here now :( The Health Visitor is coming tomorrow though, and she will measure his length then. It won't be accurate as a birth length (he'll have grown a bit!) but oh well. We're not sure of the length of my labour because I refused to be checked at any point, but my first contractions started around 1pm and were pretty short and painless at first. So it was probably my quickest labour yet! :) Second stage was 11 minutes (longer than the last two times!).

Benjamin is so precious! I am so in love. It's so surreal to have four children, and four SONS at that! I feel so blessed by God, and so in awe of His loving kindness and generosity. I have a lot of work coming up, raising four boys. With ALL my heart I am longing for God to bless us again, to open my womb and enable me to conceive again, in His perfect timing. Right after Benjamin was born (I mean, RIGHT after, you know, before I got my stitches and all that!) I had my first moment of ambivalence EVER. For the first time I stopped for a second and wondered if our family might just possibly be complete with four little boys. I don't know why. I felt like I could be content with that, and I have never felt that before - I have always felt like I would struggle to come to terms with not having any more children. I also felt no sense of loss or sadness about maybe never having a daughter. So I did wonder if that meant we would not have any more children. I was quite taken by surprise at the way I felt, actually! I questioned myself over whether I would actually LIKE to have any more babies, and I thought I would :) With the birth only minutes behind me, I didn't feel overly excited about doing it all over again though! ;) But it didn't take long for those feelings to change. I feel like I'm back in much more familiar and comfortable territory, enjoying my newborn baby and rejoicing over the birth, and eagerly looking forward to another pregnancy and birth and new baby! It felt a bit strange to NOT be in that place for a short while there, and I'm glad I don't feel that way any more! I have already spent much time praying and thanking God for a new little blessing, and asking that He bless us with more when He knows in His wisdom that it's the right time. I am also spending a lot of time in prayer over how to parent the children He HAS blessed us with already. I want to be a good steward of the blessings God gives to us, and I feel like I'm NOT, so I need to focus more on praying and working on that. Another first is that I asked God to please help us to get a handle on the actual parenting and the home (me in particular), BEFORE blessing us again with another baby. I really want to do right by the children, and mostly by God, but I see absolutely no reason not to have a billion more babies if God sees fit to bless us that way - I know that He will equip us for the task to which He has called us! :)

Thanks to Laura, I recently discovered Voddie Baucham's teaching on the family and have started listening to his sermons online. I LOVE what he teaches!!! Yesterday evening Neil and I listened to his sermon on child training and we are re-motivated and optimistic once again! Today the discipline is way more consistent and calm, and the boys are currently TIDYING THE LIVING ROOM!!! I know!!! They have been disciplined a LOT to get to this point though, but it's actually bearing fruit which is very encouraging. They are not doing it with a bad attitude (incredible!!!) and are busy talking about how they are doing great teamwork :) Such a change...

I googled and found a great list of pretty much ALL of Voddie Baucham's sermons and videos online. It's here in case anyone is interested. I am looking forward to working my way through the whole list while I'm resting with my new little man!

I am now really really behind on photos here! I have sooooo many taken in the last two months, that I haven't posted at ALL - I'm talking hundreds!!! I can't post hundreds, obviously, but I'll try to catch up a bit. I want to have some of these photos down "on record" in my blog, for looking back on. I have finally finished editing photos of Matthew's birthday (now a month ago, already!!) but there are 114 of them!!!!!!!! I took over 300 on the day, but narrowed it down to 114 worth posting, haha! No, I'm NOT going to post 114 photos here, lol! I will have to sift through them and see which FEW will sum the day up best! I'm sure there will be more than 20 though! Will post those soon. For now, here are some taken on random occasions:

First time for all THREE little boys drawing together at the table! Nathan was so excited! He actually loves scribbling with crayons, and being properly involved in ANY activity with his big brothers. He does also like to try eating the crayons too, though!...













They also LOVE using the jumbo chalks on the patio (and all over the garden, fences, flowerpots, stepping stones, shed and house walls (!), etc!). Here are quite a few photos that I took of the boys enjoying chalks in the garden one warm afternoon:

Little boys drawing pictures :)



Discussing the details of a drawing:



What do you think, Mummy?!



"Don't eat the chalk, Nathey!" (see the wet on the tip of the chalk he's holding, and the slightly ewwy expression on his face, hehe!)



A little series of photos to illustrate the way Nathan sometimes wins his brothers over. He came along and wanted the green chalk that Matthew had. See him whining for it in the second photo? Working on that. *sigh* Anyway, see Matthew's body language - "No way am I giving up my green chalk!" and then the next photo, as usual Matthew gives in and generously gives whatever it is to Nathan that he was whining for! Nathan was more than pleased, and cheerfully scribbled with the chalk. It was funny, but we ARE working on this because we don't want Nathan thinking he can whine for what he wants and his brothers will always be so soft on him and give in! Anyway, here are the photos :)







Matthew's drawings tend to have a lot of tiny detail. He is very creative with any arty stuff he does, and Arthur is so different - he's logical in his creations, and Matthew is just, well, creative. He absolutely loves any sort of art and craft activity:



Little Nathey, coming to tell me something (not that he's talking yet, but he tells me ALL SORTS in his own little language, bless him!):



Classic! Hehe! ;)



I have a ton more, but I think that's probably plenty for one post! I will try to update again soon with a bunch more. I have some sweet summery photos taken in the garden on hot days, before Benjamin was born. And Matthew's birthday photos, of course. I'll update again soon! I have a week before Neil goes back to work, so hopefully I'll get chance in that time! I'm RESTING, not looking after the boys or the house in any way, while Neil is home, and it's wonderful - I can't think why I didn't do this the other three times! Daja just wrote about this very thing in her blog yesterday, with a lot of interesting stats and information!

I will be back soon!

Labour?

Just a quick update here to say that I *think* things might be hotting up for labour here. It was my due date yesterday, and things have been very quiet in that department, till I had a "show" when I got up which has continued through the morning and ended up with some light bleeding too. I am starting to get some contractions now which are short and irregular and not too painful, so I wanted to update here to say that I will be updating my pregnancy blog as long as I can through labour (if this really is "it"!), if you want to follow me there. If you've never read me at my pregnancy journal though, beware the TMI, haha! I do not hold back about anything there and am as long-winded about detail as I am here! You have been warned! ;) I will absolutely update here with baby news when I'm able, if there's any to report later on or tomorrow!

Also, thanks so much for all the comments on my last post, I so appreciate it!! The boys have been easier to handle for some reason these last few days. Arthur and Matthew seem to be suddenly playing more imaginative games together and this is keeping them busy and happy for long periods of time. I am also getting down new educational toys for them every other day, that I bought in advance as "ammunition" (lol!) for the time around the birth and the early postnatal period. They are excited, learning all about dinosaurs and opposites and things at the moment! I also meant to clarify - the peeing and spitting is BOTH boys equally, not predominantly Arthur (Matthew is actually the worst with the spitting). Arthur is the one who is being incredibly rude to our faces, and that doesn't seem to be something Matthew naturally does, but he's learning from Arthur :S So, it's definitely both of them individually, not Arthur having problems and Matthew picking up the behaviour or anything, just to clarify. We've kept the living room much tidier the last two days and they seem happier in that environment too (poor things!). It's mainly their own mess everywhere which is the problem, but the last two days I have disciplined them if they refuse to tidy, until the room is clear, and they've been way better since that.

Okay, that's all for now. I am going to time contractions - exciting! :)

Nearly at my due date....

It's July 1st! July is actually here! I am 39 weeks pregnant today!

I am so stressed about it being July and being 39 weeks pregnant today. Right now I just feel like I want to run away and hide from the inevitable events of the next couple of weeks. Everything feels soooo overwhelming right now.

It's so HOT and humid! I am sooooo bad with hot and humid weather, I just can't stand it. I feel ill in hot weather when I'm NOT 39 weeks pregnant with little ones to look after! I am so beyond thankful for our plug-in A/C unit that we bought from Homebase a few days after Matthew was born (in the last heatwave we had! Why is it only when I'm about to give birth?!). It means we have to hang a hose out of the window and I am not crazy about spiders coming into my bedroom (the boys found a female false widow spider in the garden the week before last (Neil killed it) and then last week Neil found the male and the nest complete with hundreds of spiderlings and a new egg sac (*shudder*) in the pedal of his bike in the garden!). I'm pretty sure a couple of dozen of those spiderlings have not been accounted for! So I'm paranoid about open windows right now. I don't want false widow spiderlings coming in and maturing into adults who will then give my babies venomous bites!! Scary. I found one inside so far already. Anyway, I digress. I'm so thankful for the A/C unit! It means my bedroom is only 76 degrees (25 celsius? I don't speak celsius!) instead of 91 overnight (33!) like it was before we bought it when Matthew was newly born! Crazy! It doesn't cool the other rooms too well, but it's so much better than nothing! We are just having the curtains and windows closed all the time when the sun is on the house, and it's too hot for the boys to play outside. This morning early there was some cloud so I let them out before 9am for a while. They wanted to come in after 40 minutes when the sun came out. It's just so oppressive! We're eating ice-lollies and drinking plenty but generally pretty bored inside.

It doesn't help that I'm suddenly completely incapacitated, it seems, pregnancy-wise. I am healthy and this pregnancy has gone wonderfully smoothly! I feel so blessed! But also, I'm just so huge and exhausted lately, and no matter my night-sleep, I feel desperate for a long nap every afternoon, which I can't get. I am pretty much able to do Nathan's naps, nappy changes for the younger two, and get their meals, and that's about IT. Which sucks for the boys really. There is NO housework getting done, and let me tell you, not doing housework + heat and humidity = fast mould growth, oh yes. And stinky home. We don't even have something useful like a washing line, or anything outside which we could hang clothes on! But I refuse to use the tumble dryer, so the result is lately that we have no clean clothes and a multiplying mountain of dirty laundry all over the house, urgh. I tried last week to do some housework (just basic maintenance!) but spent the rest of the day feeling nauseous and faint and exhausted, and basically had to lie on the sofa for nearly 3 hours that afternoon while the boys wreaked havoc around me! So, Neil said no more attempting to keep up with housework. But then, the house goes to complete ruin! Which is a) disgusting, and b) really upsetting me to look at. Also Neil is doing bits and pieces in the evenings, which I feel kind of bad about. He has enough on his plate really.

The boys' behaviour. Again. I almost don't want to write about it here because I have done so soooo many times this past year and it's always worse and worse and worse, and I always get a ton of advice that conflicts and end up feeling kind of embarrassed about admitting to what goes on in our home in the end! :S

But it's bad. Arthur and Matthew are spitting and peeing everywhere. I kid you not. They are trashing the room daily (more than once usually, especially Matthew). They are drawing on the walls. ALL my glass in the living room has dried spit on it. All of it. Mirror, door glass, windows, everything. It has been running and then smeared about with fingers, and is now dry like that, but today I have not managed to clean the glass in there. I sit in the evening and look at it and just feel so depressed. They do that to the glass every day, several times a day. They get disciplined every single time they spit, but they still do it the same. They are going out of their way to disobey me as much as they possibly can. Neil gets the exact same behaviour from them, it's disgusting really. They are so RUDE to our faces. They use nasty tones and aggressive faces, and blow raspberries and stick their tongues out at us. This is mainly Arthur, but Matthew is learning. I can't fathom how to discipline Arthur, because he is simply not responding to the strongest discipline we know how to dish out, even if it's repeated endless times per day. He is lately lying like crazy, and Matthew is starting to as well. His attitude and spirit is getting so awful, everything is about him and no matter if he has to hurt somebody else or lie through his teeth or blame some innocent brother, he will if it gets him what he wants, or helps him avoid something he doesn't want. I'm so disgusted, and I am struggling because I feel terribly guilty and at a loss about it - I'm the parent and this has to rest entirely on MY shoulders (well, Neil's and my shoulders, collectively). *I* am responsible for his behaviour and attitudes and it's my responsibility to mould and shape that in him, and I'm absolutely MISERABLY failing. The fruit is almost all bad.

We are honestly for the first time reaching a stage where we are feeling desperate enough to need some sort of professional help from a real-life "Supernanny" or someone, and we've never thought that could ever be us, no matter how bad things got with the boys. I can't really understand why, although I'm sure I must be being reeeally naive or just stupid about something, somewhere along the line. People suggest things, like, maybe it's to do with the baby coming? Or maybe they're just too bored and not stimulated enough? Maybe they don't get out enough? Maybe they should be at school? Etc, etc, you get the picture. I'm not convinced one bit about any of the above suggestions - it's been going on too long to be baby-related, although it's mayyybe possible that the behaviour worsening is related to it in some way? I don't know. Arthur is so very excited about Benjamin coming soon and talks eagerly about it all the time. Matthew says nothing about it, and seems not to have made much of a connection yet, so far.

Bedtimes are getting difficult. If Matthew does not nurse to sleep (and he won't be doing that all that much longer because I will probably want to wean him in a few months if he hasn't done so by himself), then it's impossible to get them all to settle properly for bed. Now, don't get the impression that I mean children who won't "settle down" and lay down in their beds, no no. I mean, children who scream and shout hysterically back and forth to each other and say as many rude things as they know how to say, and make sure they do the opposite of what we ask them repeatedly to do, as forcefully as possible for as long as possible, while their poor baby brother sits dazed in his cot next to their bunk bed in complete confusion at their noise, tired and wanting to be able to go to sleep. It makes me SO ANGRY, I can't even describe it. They always end up downstairs in seperate time-out zones, but still shrieking and spitting and laughing hysterically so that Nathan still can't go to sleep and we can't "switch off" their noise to our ears to allow ourselves to calm down and discipline them properly. This kind of bedtime takes 2 hours. Two hours of this continuous behaviour. I can't stand it!

Tonight I just cried and cried at bedtime. I lost my temper with Matthew after about 40 minutes of it and then held him while he cried, and Nathan cried next to us in his cot (while Arthur cried in the other bedroom with Neil) and just could not breathe for crying. I never ever do that in front of the kids, but I just had nothing left to prevent it. They did calm down after that, but urgh.

I have a stressy home visit from midwives tomorrow, well, two. A normal antenatal appointment in the morning and then a big appt at noon where some midwives are coming over and bringing the senior Supervisor of Midwives from the hospital, to discuss in detail my decision to have a homebirth despite being Group B Strep positive (thus declining IV antibiotics). Urrrrgh. My doula is coming (did I say here that I have a fantastic Christian doula?!?! I do! Thank you Lord!) and I'm glad of that, and Neil is going to try to get work to let him be here over that time to take the boys somewhere (shopping centre?! Too hot for outside!) while it happens.

I feel about ready to just have a hospital birth anyway, with the state of the house and the boys' behaviour. More than that though, I am just feeling slightly panicky about the fact that I'm 39 weeks pregnant and due to give birth REALLY soon. I don't want to!!! I want to hide and for it not to happen! I would happily continue my pregnancy for another few months right now! ;) I just can't fathom how it will be when I have tiny Benjamin here AND the house as it is and the boys' behaviour as it is, in such a short time from now. I have no idea how on earth I will avoid postnatal depression with that kind of set up. I had it mildly after the first two boys, mainly due to finding it hard to cope afterwards. None whatsoever with Nathan, possibly because Neil was out of work and home to help all the time. So, I'm anxious.

Well, my laptop battery is about to die and I made a deal with myself to go to bed when it dies! So I must stop for now. Sorry it's just a huge rant. I need to pray a lot. I'll update properly soon.

About Nathan

It's 10am and the boys are up, obviously, and I usually have a rule of not getting out the laptop at all during the day. BUT, I am just never getting a thing done online, especially at my blogs, when I leave it till the evening. I'm SO tired out lately and don't get through the day particularly well. I'm officially on "baby watch", being full-term in my pregnancy at last! ;) I'm 37 weeks now - less than 20 days till my due date!

So, I got out some jungle animal toys (I got some buckets of 60-90 "counters" in various themes recently - I'm making activity boxes for the boys for after the baby comes) and they're pretty absorbed with that at the moment. I really just wanted to catch up on a few things here, even if I don't get as much done as I need to - anything is better than nothing!

It was Matthew's birthday on Sunday - he's three! It feels odd not to have a 2-year-old any more, but as my mum reminded me, it's only 7 months before I have one again (how crazy is that?!?!)! Now I have a 4-year-old, a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old! :) Matthew had a lovely birthday, and we went to Bird World in Surrey. The journey was not too long and it went fine. Matthew and Nathan went to sleep in the car on the way there even! I have a million photos which I had planned to have posted here alreayd, but I am just. so. tired. in the evenings now that I'm getting only a few edited per evening and then I just have to go to bed because my eyes aren't focusing properly! So far I've edited 44 photos (told you there were lots!) and I'm part-way through the Bird World photos - still have to do the birthday cake stuff from when we arrived home yet! I'll post them asap with more detail about his big day, and maybe somehow manage to pick out fewer photos than I've edited for this blog! 60 photos would probably be a bit too many for one entry, haha! ;)

The boys are NOT playing with jungle animals any longer, and they're not being too well behaved actually. Nathan is napping, but I'm suspicious that I heard bumping around upstairs just now, so I might just have to stop for now. I just really wanted to write a bit about Nathan, because at his age he is changing so fast and I don't want to let it all pass by without recording any of it! So let's see how much I can get typed about him before I have to go!

Nathan is now 17 months old! Benjamin is due in the week before he turns 18 months, so I think they will probably be exactly 18 months apart.

Nathan is so behind on his toothypegs compared with my other boys! He has four at the top in the middle, and the two middle bottom ones - these have been the same for MONTHS! At the end of May he cut the first corner of his top left (or right as you look at him) molar, which is still the only part of it sticking through. I was so surprised because he hasn't had ANY bother from cutting his first molar! I just happened to see it there when I was brushing his teeth, and I knew it was about to cut through because of the white pressure point on his gum a couple of days before, but he didn't complain in the least. He hasn't got any other molars imminent at the moment, so he just has the 7 teeth (well, 6 and a tiny bit!) at the moment. I keep thinking surely he's about to get like TEN at once and catch up, haha! But he doesn't. I adore his sweet little semi-toothy grin! It's been like that for so long and I can't imagine him with more teeth in his smile now!

Something that I totally didn't expect (and am not too happy about!) with Nathan is that he has self-weaned! A couple of months ago, at 15 months, he had a bad cold which kept him congested for 2 whole weeks, too much so to breastfeed. He tried sometimes and found it upsetting that he couldn't, but then the rest of the time he would just shake his head and pull my top back down when I offered to nurse him. After his cold was gone, he got back into nursing again, just for his day naps (twice a day) and bedtime. I night-weaned him a few months ago in preparation for him moving into the boys' bedroom, hoping he'd sleep through the night better and thus disturb the boys less. It wasn't hard to night-wean him, as he only really got cross and wanted to nurse once in the night at about 4 or 5am. Very different to Arthur as a baby! Not too different from Matthew, but I was offering the breast to Matthew more frequently at that age. He breastfed before 2 naps, at bedtime, and first thing upon waking in the morning - even still at 19 months when my waters broke with Nathan! And if he got hurt in the day time. Nathan hasn't been nursing for getting hurt or for comfort in the day time, which is a first really. I'm not really sure why not. I think just because he hasn't been interested to. He hasn't nursed outside of bed in many many months, maybe even before he turned one? I can't remember. But that is very different to my other babies anyway.

So, he breastfed for a few weeks after his cold, and then now and then he started to latch and immediately pull off again and turn away. I haven't had any noticeable milk supply at all for months, because it always dries up by 20 weeks of pregnancy for me. I get colostrum soon afterwards, and definitely can express that now, but he's been used to that before now. So I'm not sure what's caused him to refuse to nurse. My personal goal with breastfeeding for each of my children is two years minimum, and so far that has been well surpassed! So it was very strange to me to see signs of Nathan choosing to wean before then! It's not what I wanted at all, but I would never force him to continue. I did persevere OFFERING the breast at all the usual times for a good 2 or 3 weeks. He eventually stopped even doing the quick latch thing, and just would shake his head if I asked him if he wanted any "milky". If I lifted my top to nurse him, he would pull it down straight away. I noticed he was happy to snuggle up to me and get sleepy before his naps, lying down on the bed, so we did that for a while, and then he stopped wanting to do that too.

I haven't TOTALLY called him "weaned" because I know that after Benjamin is born, when I have a ton of milk again, he MAY see Benjamin breastfeeding and want to try again, in which case I will absolutely let him! If he does do that, he might want to nurse properly again for a long time, or he might just give it a try for a short while and then stop for good. I don't know. Right now I would say he has self-weaned for sure, and I no longer offer him the breast :( I'm a bit sad about it because I love extended breastfeeding and it's the last thing I expected! I ended up needing to wean Arthur shortly after his FOURTH birthday because it was starting to drive me nutty (!), and he spent much of the next 4 or 5 months asking to nurse and missing it. He was always (by far!) my most attached baby when it came to breastfeeding. Matthew is still breastfeeding at bedtime, at age 3! :) He occasionally asks in the day time if he's very tired or hurt badly, but I usually tell him no because it's day time and remind him that milky is for bedtime. On rare occasions I give him a very quick breastfeed in the day for a bad hurt or something like that. He's still very attached to his bedtime nursing sessions and almost always nurses to sleep, which I'm happy with for now. I think it won't be long before it starts to feel a bit.... there's not a word for it really - like it started to with Arthur (which I didn't expect, since I was enjoying breastfeeding so much!), and I'll WANT to wean him. So, I'm still breastfeeding someone, as I have done without a break since Arthur was born 4.5 years ago, but surprisingly it's not my youngest! ;) Sometimes it's a bit sore lately (pregnancy-wise) but I have had a MUCH less sore time of it this pregnancy. The worst was Matthew's pregnancy - it was so sore to breastfeed a lot of that time, but Arthur did nurse eleventy times a day and at night too.

Anyway that's the main news about Nathan really. He self-weaned at 16 months old. I can hardly believe it in many ways! But I know that lots of toddlers self-wean earlier, especially when their mothers are pregnant again. Oh well. I wish he was still nursing! But never mind!

Nathan is STILL working on running! He practises so hard every day, back and forth across the diagonal of the living room, like the other boys do (especially Matthew!). He prefers to practise running and stuff inside the house than outside, but he LOVES to be outdoors. He can now "race-walk" really well, hehe! Two days ago he did a little sort of bounce to the race-walk and Neil and I were convinced he'd just managed his first little run, but he hasn't repeated it since. He gets so excited when his brothers run back and forth, or outside, and joins in squealing excitedly, as fast as he can.

He has very few words still, but has just started to say "gone" and "open" really clearly. He has a TON of baby words that sound ever so real-word-like, and tries so hard to communicate with us using those words, which I find so sweet! Matthew had probably just as few words at this age, so I'm not concerned about it at all. I never have been one to be concerned over speech in any case. Arthur was later than average with words, but far ahead of where Nathan is now. He was behind his peers, and finally started stringing 2 or 3 words into short sentences at 22 months. By 2 months later he had suddenly overtaken his peers and had a huge vocabulary with long sentences, so he was obviously okay! ;) Matthew didn't start stringing words together till he turned 2, and caught up with things a few months later. He was much bigger on motor skills than Arthur was, and Nathan is the same way, so I'm not expecting Nathan to talk in even short sentences till he turns two, which is a while away yet. I don't know how many words he's got, but it's not many. I'll see if I can list them off the top of my head, though I'm sure I'll miss a few!

* Gone (goh!)
* Open (oh-bah)
* Daddy (deh-dah)
* Arthur (ah-tha)
* Hair (haaa)
* Nose (doh)
* Bye-bye (bah-bah) (he also says "bah-bah deh-dah" (bye-bye Daddy))
* Car (cah)
* Here you are (ee-wah) - for handing me something - this is heard very frequently throughout the day!
* Curtain (coh-cuh) - I'm pretty sure he said this for the first time (many times!) yesterday, pointing to the curtain every time.
* Again (geh!) - usually repeated over and over with great enthusiasm! ;)
* Uh-oh (oo-oo, or oo-oh) for when something falls over or down from the table when he's eating, etc.

I think there are more, but the boys are being "difficult", ugh, so I have to go. Oh, but Nathey also says "moo" for a cow, SUCH a cute high-pitched "meeeeew!" for a cat (he calls the cats outside by standing at the window in the living room and saying it over and over and over. If he gets up there and starts to mew excitedly then he's often telling us he sees a cat. If I ask him if there's a cat there, he'll turn to me and say, "Yyyyeah!!" excitedly. He's VERY big on saying yes, allll day long, but he has never said the word no yet. He shakes his head for no. He roars for a lion if he sees one in a book or a toy one, is starting to make a hissy noise for a snake, does a sort of shorter roar thing for a dog's barking, and another type of roar for a pig, lol! All my little ones have roared for a pig, because they can't seem to do the inhaley snort that I do, and do it exhaling instead, which basically sounds like a roar! ;) He quacks (wack-wack!) for a duck very eagerly

He gives kisses and cuddles like none of my babies have so far, it's sooooo adorable! He wants to kiss his brothers all the time, and is very spontaneous. His kisses have stopped being the baby open-mouthed ones a while ago, and he now approaches people with his top teeth over his bottom lip, which is his version of the puckered lips thing, hehe! He pops his mouth open with a "fffuh" sound to actually give a kiss. If he hurts one of his brothers (he's sometimes hitting when he's frustrated with one of them) we ask him to "say sorry" which he can't do because he can't say it yet, but he always immediately goes and gives them a kiss instead. We are working on "gentle" with him too, and he's really starting to respond to that recently, which will hopefully be helpful when Benjamin is here! I am not sure how he'll fare with a new baby brother now. I have always found that still nursing the new big brother is a MAJOR factor in how well they accept the new baby, but Nathan is my first child who won't have that helpful factor. Another major factor for them is whether I have a homebirth or not, and I'm not sure if I can, given that I have just tested GBS positive (Group B Strep).

He's my most independent baby by far, playing very happily and entertaining himself for long stretches of time with toys and books. He adores vehicles of any sort and pushes them around the floor endlessly. He pushes trains on the wooden train track now too, and says "oo-oh" (uh-oh) for when they fall off the track! He loves loves loves looking through books and will amuse himself for a long long time just looking through book after book, even if he's holding some of them upside down! ;) He is very into soft cuddly toys, more so than my others have been. He loves to squeeeeeeze them to his cheek or neck with both arms and a blissful smile on his face :) He's SUCH an incredible sweetie pie. He loves to dance, especially when one or both of his brothers are doing so, in fact he loves to join in anything they are trying to do (sometimes this is a huge source of frustration for them!). He claps readily at anything he feels proud of doing! He loves to help tidy and put dirty laundry or even dirty nappies over the kitchen gate. He loves the wooden geometric stacking toy and will stack and re-stack for a long time, happily. He adores the ride-on toys in the garden, but prefers pushing them rather than sitting on them, with the exception of Matthew's main birthday present - the Little Tikes Cosy Coupe car that you sit inside and push along with your feet. He loves sitting in it, but isn't interested in moving along. He sits in there for up to 10 minutes at a time, just looking relaxed and comfortable, hehe!

He eats really well and isn't as picky as his brothers (yet!). He puts away large quantities of food, even compared with his brothers, but maybe that's just his age and stage of growth. He loves spaghetti bolognese and macaroni cheese. He isn't crazy about mashed potato, which for some reason NONE of my children like. He'll eat it though, which is more than can be said for the other two! He LOVES cheese and yoghurt. He has a sweet tooth and likes cake especially. Arthur is the same way, and Matthew is very different and has never liked cake! Nathey doesn't seem to like any fruit though.... He's quite hard to get fruit into, though he loves raisins, and he'll eat fruit yoghurts and stuff. A few months ago I started giving him those organic fruit puree pots from the baby weaning section in the supermarket, just to see if he would eat them to get some fruit, because he really likes spoon-feeding himself pots of yoghurt or fromage frais, so I was hoping it would work! It DID work for a long time, and he had a good range of fruits that way every day. But lately he won't eat them. He has been totally independently self-feeding since before he was one, thanks to Baby-Led Weaning, and very quickly picked up spoon-feeding himself too. He eats his dinner with a toddler fork and spoon very well, and gets on with meals happily, whereas we seem to still be constantly nagging the older two to eat with their spoon still!

He loves his Monkey and his blankie, and needs both for his naps. He likes to bring them down with him after naps and in the morning, and picks themm up and carries them about a lot. He'll cosy down with them on the sofa, or pick them up and bring them to me purposely to let me know that he's ready for a nap in the day time. He's so different in this kind of way to my others! He still naps twice a day, and there was a time a few months back when he seemed to be refusing his morning nap for a couple of weeks straight. I assumed he was transitioning to one nap a day, and during that time he napped just once right after lunch, but then he had that cold and went back to two naps, and has seemed to totally NEED them both each day. He is usually up for the day by 6.30am (sometimes by 6am) and is tired and ready for sleep by 9am! His naps lengths vary but he usually takes 1.5 hours maybe, in the morning. And then he's tired again by 2.30pm and naps for a couple of hours. Again, NOTHING like my other babies! I love his natural thing for naps! :) He's super grumpy and whiney and cries for AGES after getting up if he wakes too early in his naptime.

He is starting to have more tantrums over things, like if he wants a toy the older boys are playing with and I say he can't. He is fairly easy to distract and divert, but still has these tantrums if he feels very strongly about something! ;) He is NOT hard work and continues to be a very "easy baby". He's such a lovely little boy and a complete delight. He has a smile on his face all the time, one which makes his little cheeks all "appley" and round, and his eyes shine and shine. He's happy and enthusiastic about life all the time. He does this thing with his eyebrows when happy or enthusiastic, where they go up SO HIGH on his forehead, hehe! They are up in that position so much of the time lately, he's just so happy about life! He's such a little precious.

I have no idea what he weighs, or what he has weighed for a LONG time, since I haven't had him weighed since he was X months old (can't even remember, but maybe somewhere like 6 months old?!?!). He's slimming down in his legs especially at the moment, and suddenly looking taller lately, more like a little boy in some ways. He was never chunky like Arthur, but never as slender as Matthew either. He doesn't look like he weighs all that much, but seems healthy and scrummy and toddlerish to me when I look at him. I measured all the boys against the wall yesterday (Nathan's first time!) but I haven't taken a tape measure to the line yet to find out exactly how tall he is. They are stairsteps almost exactly, with about 5-6 inches between each of their heights! So sweet! :)

Okay, that is all for now. Nathan is up from his nap, Tesco has been with my grocery order and I've unpacked it and put it away, disciplined various boys endless times, and now I must go and make their lunch. I'm glad to have got the Nathan stuff written down at last! I absolutely adore that boy-bean-boo. :)

Change of sleeping arrangements!

I'm soooooo behind here! It's late and I am not feeling well at the moment, which seems an even stranger time to start trying to catch up! But it's giving me a chance to do a few small things online here and there, which I wasn't keeping up with before.

Today and yesterday I have had tummy cramps and diarrhoea all day, urgh! The night before it started, I woke up ALL night long (half-hourly) with nausea and tummy ache, and then the next day was Friday and Neil went to work as usual. I still had a bit of nausea and my tummy hurt a bit, but I ate all the same. Which was apparently not the thing to do! I was sooo nauseous that afternoon and had to keep running to the loo as well, and that was so difficult with the little ones. Matthew emptied cereal all over the kitchen floor on one of my toilet runs, and I just so didn't like leaving them all unattended like that all the time. I felt horrible too and had to just lie on the sofa. Since it didn't stop that evening and then I was awake half-hourly with tummy pains again last night (nausea gone though, phew!), Neil worked from home today. I'm so so so thankful that he is able to do that in a pinch - his boss is very good about it. It's hard for him though, trying to work with three little boys in the same room (our house is too smaaaall!) causing all sorts of trouble. They are really difficult to handle at the moment - I sound like a broken record, I know! Nathan isn't so difficult, but the older two go out of their way to be, which is so very difficult right now. Anyway, as it turned out, Neil's work computer system had problems after the first couple of hours and so he was able to just give up on it and take the rest of the day away from work altogether. I had to pretty much stay in bed today. The symptoms I'm having have actually got worse today and I have felt pretty crummy and weak, and can't seem to even have a drink of water without it giving me cramps and the associated evacuation! I am trying to snack on appropriate things anyway. People are saying it sounds like my body is getting ready for labour (I'm 35 weeks now), but I'm not so sure. I haven't been anywhere to catch a bug, but Arthur complained of feeling "queasy" a few times yesterday and had one occasion of loose stools. He's been otherwise fine, but that was odd for him. He's 100% fine today. Also, I have never had that kind of "preparation" before labour with my other pregnancies, so I'm wary of that theory for me. Anyway, who knows. I just want to feel better now!

I realised that I never did post about the change of sleeping arrangements for the boys! Or maybe I did, but never posted photos? I can't remember.

A few weeks ago, we finally moved Nathan's cot into the boys' room, where they now have a bunk bed. Matthew had been sleeping in his toddler bed still, and Neil was using a bunk. They still wake at times during the night and it's so much easier to have one of us sleep there so that they don't just wake everybody else up before we're even awake to know that there's a problem! So we moved Nathan into the room in his cot. We originally hoped to move him into the toddler bed and Matthew into the bottom bunk, but when it came to it, Nathan just doesn't seem ready to be out of his cot yet, and it's HIS little bed! Also, Matthew is still very attached to his toddler bed and we didn't want to cause any problems there!

So, we moved the toddler bed to the main bedroom next to where I sleep, just where Nathan's cot had been. We gave Matthew the option of sleeping in his little bed near Mummy (and thus missing out on "the boys' room"!) or sleeping in the bottom bunk. On the first night he slept in the bottom bunk, very excited about it! On the second night I was just climbing in with him for his snuggle/prayers/breastfeed (yes, he is still breastfeeding at almost 3!), when suddenly he sat up and said in SUCH a sad voice, "But... this is not my bed!" and his little chin wobbled and his eyes filled up! My heart nearly turned to a puddle of goop with how much I LOVED him at that second, and I asked him if he wanted to sleep in his little bed in the other bedroom tonight. He said yes and looked so relieved! He hopped right out of bed and ran to his little bed, and just beamed and smiled in there for ages! So, he slept next to me that night. That was nice, because I didn't feel so alone in the bedroom - the first night without Nathan in there was really surprisingly lonely and sad for me! I missed him sooooo much! I was glad for Matthew to choose to sleep in there the next night, though I didn't get much sleep at all because he flings himself about in his sleep quite a bit (so like his daddy, hehe!) and his arm kept whacking the cupboard door that his bed was up against, which woke me constantly (but didn't disturb him in the least!).

Since that night, Matthew has not slept in his toddler bed. It's still there, and we plan to leave it there a while, just so he knows it's an option for him. But it's going well! He has chosen to nurse in there before going to his bunk to sleep some nights, but not for the last week or two.

Nathan has adjusted very smoothly to the new bedroom, and really hasn't seemed bothered at all by the change-about. He can still be kind of wakeful through the night, but nearly always resettles himself. Arthur can tend to wake once or twice some nights (not many) and when he does, he calls for Neil to resettle him, or climbs down the ladder (in the dark!! Which makes me so nervous!!) to get to him. So Neil is staying in there for a bit longer. We have yet to decide if he's going to move back in with me (which, let's face it, is where he should be! This must all sound so ridiculous to the normal married couple, haha!) at all for when Benjamin comes - oh, that is his name by the way! Benjamin Isaac will be our new baby boy's name! :) I don't think I have said that here yet, though most of you will know from my pregnancy diary. If you know me at Facebook, PLEASE don't mention it there! We never reveal our baby names till they're born, anywhere except my blogs online, and a ton of real-life friends keep up with me there!

Anyway, basically we will have to weigh up the best place for Neil to get the best sleep, which so far has NEVER been in the room with me and the new baby. So, I think it's likely that he'll stay in with the boys (he's on a mattress on the floor, which fills the floor actually, since the room is so tiny!) for the early weeks with Benjamin. If they are wakeful with Benjamin's night wakings, then he's right there to settle them until they get used to it, and he should probably get way more sleep there too. I know I will be up and down like a yo-yo changing nappies, breastfeeding, burping the boy, and changing endless leaked/puked-on sleepsuits and sheets! ;) I can't wait!!! And I promise I am not being sarcastic. I just so can't wait for those sweet early weeks again, exhausting though they are.

So, here are some photos of the change-of-sleeping-arrangements thing! Here's a "before" picture of the boys' room, when it was just the new bunks (aren't they nice?! I got matching bedding and curtains for all three beds recently, and the boys LOVE them! They were soooooo cheap on eBay!) and Matthew's little toddler bed that he has slept in since he was born (as a cotbed back then, of course!):



Here's the "after" picture, just after the cot went in:



And here are a few photos taken once they had all finally fallen asleep on the first night in there together. They went to sleep pretty quickly considering the excitement! Nathan was last to fall asleep, but he takes a good while settling himself to sleep every night as a norm, and he's very independent with it and doesn't fuss or anything.





After I took the photos, I stood and watched them sleeping for a while, and just felt so inexplicably sad! I'm sure I was being heavily influenced by hormones, but it was just a real "moving on" thing for both Nathan and Matthew, and ohhhh I cried and sobbed like a baby, standing there watching them! After a while it got so that I felt pretty sure if I didn't pull myself together I might just continue all evening and end up with a sinus headache and those pretty broken veins under my eyes, so I went downstairs and did some "normal" stuff, and felt a bit better so long as I wasn't thinking about it. I felt sad and lonely in the same way when I went to bed though. It got easier after a few days! :) I now have the opportunity to sleep better than I have since.... well, maybe even since before ARTHUR was born!!! They've all slept through the night for the first time JUST before I give birth to another baby, and I have done all the night wakings with them. Oh but I think there was a time when I was pregnant with Matthew where I slept in the then "spare room" for a while to get a better night's sleep, while Neil and Arthur co-slept. But otherwise, no full nights for me so far! Ironically, I haven't slept well since Nathan moved out, because either I am too tuned in to his sounds in the night still and wake when he stirs anyway, even if he's in the other room and Neil settles him, or else I just have to pee and pee and pee and pee and pee (ad infinitum) all night long due to being hugely pregnant! ;) So, never mind! Good thing I really don't mind it, now that I am so used to it! I am tired though.

So yay, finally caught up with the bedroom stuff that I meant to post ages back.

Matthew's 3rd birthday is coming up! Only 9 days away, I can't believe it. I love that it was 3 years ago exactly when his due date was approaching and I was huge and pregnant and excited to meet him, and I'm in almost the same position now, 3 years later! And how blessed am I to have had another baby in between as well?!?! God is so good to me.

I have been unusually organised, for once, regarding birthdays this summer! I bought all the family birthday cards way ahead, and am now glad to have them in the drawer ready to send out. Thea (my brother's little girl) turned 2 a couple of weeks ago, which is soooo surreal! Those two years have gone so fast! Tonight I wrote Emily's birthday card from all of us, for her 1st birthday, and her sister Ella shares Matthew's birthday on the 14th, but is a year older than Matthew. He was born on her first birthday - cousins! :) I have bought and wrapped almost all of Matthew's presents a few weeks ago - I'm NEVER this organised! We are getting him some smaller presents and one bigger one - the bigger one is one of those Cosy Coupe ride-in cars for the garden. He could have done with one of those a couple of years ago even, but the garden hasn't been suitable for them really, and we're only now starting to make proper use of it. He LOVES those cars at other people's houses, and I figured why not, since we have more little people to grow into it once he has outgrown it! Also, everyone else here has a winter birthday (till Benjamin evens it out!) so garden toys never work for anyone's birthday but Matthew's. I have yet to buy the Cosy Coupe car, mainly because I don't have anywhere to store it to keep it out of sight once it's here! I know where I'm getting it from though, and that it's in stock, so that's okay.

We're giving him two Little Red Train books - he LOVES the one he's got and I know he'll be thrilled with a couple more! Also a jigsaw puzzle, a cut-and-play ice-cream set from The Early Learning Centre (he always wants to play "serving ice-cream" lately, with plastic balls balanced on little cups, so I know he'll love it!), a set of 3 toy emergency vehicles (he is obsessed with these), and a DVD of Postman Pat: Special Delivery Service. He will be highly excited about the DVD, because he looooves Postman Pat, and the new Special Delivery Service series is his favourite right now, alongside Chuggington. Those are his smaller gifts from us. My mum has sent two books and two jigsaw puzzles through Amazon and I've wrapped those too. I love wrapping presents!! :)

It has taken us a while to figure out what to DO on his birthday. We have our own little family tradition of a day out somewhere, usually of the birthday boy's choosing, but we default to the farm for everyone's 2nd birthday, just because it's straightforward and they don't usually know how to choose at that age. They love the play farm! Arthur chose going to France to visit Nana and Grandy for his 4th birthday! I can't believe I haven't actually blogged about that properly yet :(

Anyway, we considered "Days out with Thomas" (Thomas the Tank Engine) but the nearest one was in Essex and we didn't want to travel far. Same thing ruled out the seaside. We considered the farm again, but wanted to do something Matthew would specifically be excited about. We were thinking of going to a miniature railway (he loves trains!) but we don't have a very local one, and we weren't sure if he would decide he didn't like the trains or the steam close up, and end up not enjoying it on his birthday! So, we are going to a place where we there's a small farm area (small animals to stroke - he thinks these kind of animals are "so fweet!!"), and a huge aviary (Arthur loves birds), and an aquarium. Also a big picnic area and a little ride-on train to take you from one place to another. We'll take a picnic and hope the weather is okay! I think all the boys will really enjoy that. It doesn't feel like it will be TOO overwhelming for me as I reach full-term either, because it's fairly local, and we can go at our own pace and do plenty of sitting down as needed. We're not telling the boys till the actual day, I think, just in case something or other happens with me pregnancy-wise and we can't do it on his birthday.

Now I need to ask Matthew what he wants for dinner on his birthday (birthday boys always choose their favourite meal for dinner and I make it for them!), and make his birthday cake. I am making a dump truck birthday cake for him. I wrote myself 3 pages of instructions (with diagrams!) a few weeks ago, to save me time and effort nearer the time. He loves any sort of vehicle, and when I asked him what kind of birthday cake he wanted, he said a police car. But then he changed it to a caterpillar (!), and then a tractor (he had one of those last birthday), and then a train, and so on. He didn't seem to have a clear preference, and Arthur kept on influencing him with his OWN preferences! ;) So I just stopped asking him, and I decided to make him a dump truck. He wants chocolate cake, though he actually isn't a fan of cake at all - I think he will be most likely to eat chocolate cake over other varieties though. He is soooo keen on Smarties (NOT the sour U.S. kind - the chocolate M&M-ish British kind!) and I am going to have the tipper bit of the dump truck filled with Smarties. I hope it turns out okay! I will be sure to post photos :)

We need to figure a way to take videos, because now that I have the new camera, we really don't have any way to take videos right now. The old camera has video capabilities, but it's not working too well, and for a week or two it has disappeared into thin air! Our old camcorder is OLD, and we lost the battery charger a long time ago (hence using the camera to take videos after that!). I don't want to miss the chance to take videos on Matthew's birthday though! I'll have to try to find the old camera.

Okay that's it for now. I have successfully eaten a small bowl of Cheerios, and two loo-run-free hours have passed - weyhey!! :) So I'm going to bed, and hopefully I'll be much better tomorrow. It's the weekend at least - thank you Lord that I didn't get poorly on Monday or Tuesday!

I have so much more to update about, and so many more photos, but I will get to that soon, hopefully! If anything happens in terms of a baby arriving or something (!!) I will be blogging about it as much as I can at my pregnancy blog while it's happening (see last entry for link), and maybe at Facebook if I'm able. Otherwise, I'll be back soon!

Photography and Pregnancy Blogs!

Oh I have a ton to write here, as always, but haven't had chance really. The internet is not working some of the time for us this past week or two, and it's really annoying! I just wanted to quickly say thanks so much for the comments about my very first photos that I took with the new camera! :) I have been taking photos with it for a few weeks now, sometimes having gaps where I don't take any for a few days, because it's hard to find the time some days. Some of them are coming out not-so-great but mainly because I'm beginning to try different modes instead of just auto. I mostly shoot in auto mode, but have started using manual a tiny bit lately (NOT always good results since I have no clue what I'm doing, remember?!). I am reading a photography book (about photographing children) and it's FAB, with assignments in each chapter and everything. So, I decided to start a photography blog to keep a record of any progress I make, because I am really really interested in "pursuing" photography and working on getting better at it. I'm excited about the assignments, and I learn something new each chapter and get to practise and do homework on what I've learned! Yay! I have only put 3 entries in so far, and the first one is explaining about the book and so on. I knew I would like to tell people it's there, but not straight away, so that's why I haven't till now. I am still working on the first assignment, but have just started to post photos. They ALL have to include a child or children, so that means that any photos I post there will be of the boys, and I LOVE to share photos of my boys! :)

So, you can visit me, if you're interested, at http://alicesphotographs.blogspot.com.

Tonight I just posted photos of the boys for part of the assignment called, "White". I put them on a white-sheeted sofa and stuffed a snuggly white duvet on top of them, tucked it in around their little necks and shoulders to hide the colours of their clothes, and started snapping for about 60 seconds (till they started playing dens under the duvet and the photo opportunity had thus expired!). I realised when I posted them that I did not want to miss sharing them with anyone! I'm really pleased with them! And I didn't want to duplicate a post and upload photos twice to different blogs, so I figured it was time to tell readers at this blog that I have the photography blog going (with cute photos in it! Hehe!). Please visit! Although, if you're not interested in photography, it may not be a very exciting place to visit.... but I'll probably refer to it here any time I have photos there that I particularly want to share of the boys.

These are my two favourites from the ones I took and posted today, just because they're worth recording here too, as they're sweet photos of my little boys!




The other thing is, I have started a pregnancy blog here at Blogger. I still have my Diaryland one but I make posts to both of them at the same time now. I just posted about it at my Diaryland pregnancy diary, so if anyone here doesn't know about my blogspot pregnancy diary and would be interested (Warning! Lots of long-winded waffle (are you even surprised?!) and likelihood of TMI, hehe!), here is the link:

http://alicesbaby.blogspot.com

I have not yet transferred many of my nearly SIX HUNDRED archived entries (I know!!! But I have been writing there since 2003 before we even started a family!) for obvious reasons, but I'm working on it slooowwwly. If you ever have reason to want to read my earlier wafflings, you'll have to go back to the Diaryland pregnancy diary (whose link is in my sidebar there). I have transferred the belly galleries, ultrasound galleries, and birth stories for all my pregnancies/babies though! :) Anyway, it's there. I am now 34 weeks pregnant and about to book a homebirth (finally made the decision!). If I have a homebirth I hope to blog during my labour like I did a little with Matthew. I managed to with Nathan to some degree because there was internet at my bed in the delivery room, so if I have a hospital birth in the end, I might still be able to do that. If I do, it will be at my new blogspot pregnancy blog, not the Diaryland one, just so you know!

Okay, I think that's all! I must go to bed, but I'll be back soon with more! It's almost the end of May, which SOMEHOW means that it's only a couple of weeks till my little baby Mathsie-woo turns THREE!!! How in the wide world?! I know he has basically already got 2 younger brothers, but still! He's my baby! How is he three?! I will be sure to waffle more about this soon, and about birthday plans, etc! I am the most organised I have ever been so far, and have already ordered, received, and wrapped his birthday presents! I wrapped them today and put them high in my wardrobe at the back. His presents from Nana (my mum) turned up in the post today from Amazon so I will wrap those soon. We have one bigger item that we haven't bought yet, but all the smaller ones are sorted, and I have also written a detailed design for how to do his birthday cake, to save me time later on - I will reach full-term in my pregnancy around his birthday, so I'm trying to save myself any extra exertion now!

Well, I did it....

This morning I got out of bed, took a deep breath, and re-opened the box with my new Sony Alpha 300 DSLR camera inside. This time I actually used my recently acquired knowledge (!!) and put the battery pack into the camera! ;) Then I switched it on. It did a little busy sound, and I panicked and switched it back off again, haha! I had a read of the manual and identified all the dials and buttons and so on, and then I switched the camera on again. I had no memory card in it yet (hadn't read the 3 pages devoted to putting that in, hehe!) but I put it on auto with no flash (I know, I know, I'm supposed to get into manual mode and not waste time with automatic!), and pointed it at the unmade bed, just as something to point at. And then I pressed the "shoot" button. The camera made this LUSCIOUS sound that was somewhere between a crisp crack and a softer "chunk" sound, and I instantaneously fell in love. I nearly tore open the memory card packaging with my teeth, haha! I ran (okay, lumbered) downstairs in my nightie with "B is for Bump" and a picture of Mr. Bump on it, and scoured the house for the children. I had a lie-in because it is Saturday and my husband is wonderful. :)

So, they were out in the garden, and I couldn't exactly run out there in said nightie, so I threw open the kitchen window and sat there taking photos of the boys and learning how to focus and fiddle with various settings while I did it. I also got a book from Amazon a few days ago which I finally picked up and read (skim-read) most of this morning, called "Photographing Children" (a Photo Workshop book). It took me HOURS to research which book on that subject to buy, reading review after review on different books, and so on. I'm glad I got this one! It looks great, it will teach me sooooo much about photography in general and I love the major focus on photographing little ones (which is what I'm most interested in, obviously!), and it's so inspiring. I think if I really get the hang of using this camera and keep as much passion for using it as I have started out with today, I will likely be seriously interested in taking photos of other people's babies and children semi-professionally. IF I get good enough, that is! I already feel excited about it enough for that to be a possibility, if I work at it.

So, today was my first day using my new camera!!! I had so much fun, and honestly could have shot photos all day long. I had a rare haircut today (and thus an afternoon being pampered (somebody else washing my hair with gorgeous-smelling shampoo while I closed my eyes! Scalp massage! Drinks with ice and lemon brought to my side! Neck rub! Haircut and blow-dry! Blissssss!!) and shopping and eating a mint choc chip ice cream cone all by myself! Neil said I should do this kind of thing more often, but honestly I don't desire to. I make a hair appointment once every 4 months, and that's when I have my one afternoon to shop without little ones, use stairs and escalators instead of lifts with huge queues of pushchairs and tired children, and eat a treat in a completely leisurely manner, lol! ALL the rest of the time, I want to be with my children. Even when they drive me crazy sometimes! ;)

So I ran late getting ready for my hair appointment because I was STILL standing there in my nightie taking photos of the boys (Nathan now up from the nap he had been taking) and completely unable to stop myself! Neil kept saying to stop and get dressed, haha! I wanted to pick the camera up again the moment I got home. I think I took 200 photos today, but I tossed a lot of them straight away (which I read is a good idea!). I have a LOT to learn about light and exposure and so on. I tried to switch to manual after a while but couldn't figure out how to use it or why everything was too dark, so for the time being I switched back to auto. I'm really not doing too much more than pointing and shooting so far, but I'm getting used to things like rotating the lens to focus the shot, and also starting to fiddle with the white balance and so on. I have sooooo much to learn yet! :)

So far, I am hooked! The moment that gorgeous sound came from the camera. That was it. I love my camera!! I can't wait to learn how to use it properly! Here are some of the million billion photos (or so it felt when I was uploading them to edit!) that I took today - they look kind of small here to me, but if you click on them they show up BIG and in much more detail.

The boys were playing in the garden together. Matthew noticed me at the window with the new camera, and struck several poses without me asking, telling me to do "a angwy one!" or "a BIG one!" hehe! Meanwhile, Arthur was lying on the grass calling Matthew over and over and OVER to come back and finish the game. He got so grumpy about it, and ended up face down on the grass in despair while Matthew posed for me, haha! Even worse, Matthew then stopped the posing, and lay down in the sand-and-water table (as you do) instead of going back to poor Arthur! Arthur did come and join him in the end though.















Arthur, realising I was pointing the camera at him. It works sooo much better if he doesn't know I'm there! *sigh* See Matthew ready to stone him for his uncooperative behaviour? Haha! ;)



Back in the house, after the boys came inside and Nathan woke up from his nap. Nathan has a new lovey! He has SUDDENLY become inexplicably attached to Monkey, a stuffed toy that Arthur received as a tiny baby and who we thought Arthur might get attached to (he didn't!). Nathan started picking Monkey up and joyfully hugging him a week or so ago, and that led to him seeking Monkey out to hug or hold. Once he seemed to be obviously attached to Monkey over any of the other stuffed toys or dolls, I let him take Monkey up to his cot for naps. He was so delighted! The first thing he does when he groggily wakes up from sleep, even if he's crying, is to pick up Monkey before he's lifted out of his cot. These last two days, we're having trauma at mealtimes because Monkey must be prised out of Nathan's grasp in the highchair in order to serve him his food! He cries and leans out and reeeeaches for Monkey (who goes to the living room for a little rest!). He sleeps with Monkey at night and his "going to sleep" mannerisms now include lying on his tummy and stuffing Monkey underneath his tummy as his little eyes roll shut. It's so sweet! During the day, he seems to be walking around with Monkey dangling from one hand a lot, and if he puts him down to play with something, he will retrieve him as soon as he finishes. He often gives Monkey squeeeezy cheek-to-cheek cuddles with a wiiiide-open-mouthed joyful smile and squeezed shut eyes. He's just the cutest pie!!

Here are some photos I got of him today, just up from his nap. I LOVE how much more clear and crisp this camera gets the photos! And how eyes seem to stand out beautifully without me actually having a clue about what I'm doing (so it can't be my photography skills, lol!). I love the softer blurred backgrounds as well. I am going to learn more about those to make use of them more often (hides the detail of the clutter and mess around the house for one thing!).







Here's Matthew collapsed on the laundry pile (clean, I might add! At least there's that!) as Nathan climbed over him. I love this one of Matthew, even though it's upside down!



Arthur and his daddy! They rub noses sometimes, just to be sweet :)





Nathan, "hiding" behind the ball blast game. He loves playing hide-and-seek at the moment, especially with his brothers (mucho squeally excitement):





Another one of Mathie:



Nathey and Daddy! I just took photos of everything that usually goes on at any given moment, which is all of the above. Neil was originally trying to just have a bit of a rest in the armchair, but little boys kept climbing on him :) I have purposely NOT included the many photos of Arthur and Matthew sitting on poor Neil and each one of them picking one of Neil's nostrils as they cracked up hysterically! ;) I love the one of Nathan and Neil where Nathan is making his "Ooooh" sound that he does, and Neil was doing the same back. Nathan is always soooo intense in his facial expressions with his vocal sounds, especially the "Ooooh" and the "Doh" or "Dah" ones! He really doesn't have many words at all yet (maybe 3 in total, even). He just started to say "Uh-oh" for when he drops something from his highchair, or a train falls off the track on their wooden railway set, but he says it, "Ooo-ooh!" with a very serious expression, and he places the two syllables soooo carefully with his lips all pursed out - it's soooooooooo cute! :) He says deh-deh for Daddy, and he says "Ah-sah" for Arthur, and he roars like a lion for ALL animals, haha! He shakes his head when he doesn't want something, and he says a VERY clear, "Yessss!" (this is sometimes pronounced "Yeshhh!") or "Yeaaahhh!" when he's urging us for something and we ask him if he wants such-and-such and get it right! ;)

Oh yes! Photos! ;)








These photos must be larger files than even my previous camera (which I thought had HUGE files since they seemed to take so long to upload everywhere!), because they are taking forever to upload to blogger. Hmmm. I'm just typing all the stuff while they load, but it could be a bit of a nuisance sometimes. Also, I hope this doesn't mean the page takes AGES to load for anyone reading! :S

Well it's getting late and I'm so tired from all the walking round town and shopping! :) I bought some of Matthew's birthday presents, and also enough birthday cards and wrapping paper to see us through the May, June and July birthdays in the family! I will be glad of that when I'm even more pregnant and newly postpartum! It was a bit crazy buying the birthday cards, because my niece Emily turns one in June, my niece Thea turns two this week, Matthew will be THREE (yikes!) in June, and my niece Ella will turn four the same day! And then we'll have a new baby in July! :) Lots of little ones at this stage, in my family, which is lovely! I can't believe Matthew is going to be three. He seems SUCH a little one still, even though he's starting to really change physically, getting longer limbs and slimming down even more (he was always a lean boy, but he's losing his toddler shape, boohoo!). His talking is still so chipmunky and cute, and his pronounciations soooo adorably toddlerish! He's ever so cuddly and affectionate, and little for his age. He still nurses at bedtime and I love that lingering bond with him still. He loves his stuffed toy Puffin so much and that just turns my heart to mush for some reason. I nurse Puffin before bed as well ;) Matthew ALWAYS lets Puffin breastfeed first, such is his love for the sweet little bird! I have to take some photos of Matthew with Puffin. He sleeps clutching him in one hand under his chin all night. *sigh* My children are so adorably precious!

Okay, I will be back soon, probably with a crazy ton more photos! :)