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2005-10-09 - 11.03pm previous entry next entry
11 months old!! And lots of photos! :)
Arthur is 11 months old today!!! I can hardly believe it! 11 months seems soooo old compared with the other numbers he's been through so far! One month today until his first birthday. That just seems impossible to believe. My baby is growing up! Waaaah!!
One month feels like such a short time to think about what we might do to celebrate his first birthday. We have already decided to have a small family gathering. I figure this birthday is one that he will NOT mind one jot that there are no other little ones his age! I like the idea of keeping it cosy and intimate with our family, and also the fact that everyone present will be absolutely besotted with the birthday boy, and not distracted from him by 10 other babies! ;) I am so proud for him to be the absolute centre of attention on his special day!
His birthday falls on a Wednesday, so we will have to do the family thing the following Saturday so that people who work can come. Neil is going to try to take Arthur's actual birthday off work, and I really want us to spend the day together doing all of Arthur's favourite things! And we can give him our presents on that day too. I wish we could have the family celebrate his birthday ON his actual birthday, but oh well.
This weekend we decided what we are going to buy him as his main present. We have a list of various toys and activities that we particularly want him to have over the next few years, mostly things that we loved ourselves as children, or stuff that we've seen that we know he will really go for, or really cool fun stuff that happens to be educational, etc. We made a big list. I partly based it on a survey I saw online where somebody asked other mothers what the best gifts were that their one-year-olds got on their birthdays. That has been very helpful in figuring out what things will actually be a waste of money/space and what things will be a great investment of fun and stimulation for all of our children to come.
Anyway, we really wanted to get him something big as his main present for his birthday, and for Christmas too. He is so into moving about at the moment. We want to get him a rocker for his birthday, and a little trike for Christmas. A rocker like this one maybe, and a basic little wooden trike and trailer like this one - just something he can play with indoors and shovel along with his feet. We'd get him an outdoor bike/trike later down the line I think.
My parents are getting him a garage with some cars, and ramps and a lift, etc. I remember having a Fisher Price two storey garage when I was little and I LOVED it! It was one of my favourite things, and my brother's too. I really wanted to get Arthur something like that, and I found such a nice one, and my mum asked if they could get it for his birthday, so that's great!! We want to get him a mini trampoline, the ones that are suitable from 12 months with the handle bar. Arthur HAS to bounce on the bed, holding onto the headboard (same height as his shoulders) like a handle bar, EVERY DAY at the moment!! He loves to jump soooo much! He gasps and squeals as he bounces, it's too cute :) When the momentum wears off, he pauses for a moment and then starts afresh with renewed energy, nodding his head vigorously for extra effect, hehe! I know he would absolutely LOVE a mini trampoline. Of course where we would HOUSE all these enormous toys is another matter!
Anyway. It's so crazy that he has a birthday coming up. My baby - a birthday boy!!! Okay so it's still a whole month away, but still. I have to get my head round it, and I know that will take at LEAST a month! I have already started working on a letter that I want him to be able to read when he's older. I love that sort of tradition, writing a letter to your little one on special occasions in their life. I WISH I had written him one right after he was born, or during my pregnancy with him. I will have to make a point of doing that with this new baby. I have no idea how long my letter will end up being! I am LONG-winded with words (I hear you all gasp with surprise at that revelation, hehe!) so it could be an epic! ;)
Okay, I have a lot of photos to post, so I had better get started! Thanks Mallory and Megan for your nice comments on the last lot of photos!! :)
Okay first of all, what is up with different brands having COMPLETELY different sizes, even though they are labelled the same?!! I am discovering that anything I buy from the States is way smaller than the same size in UK baby clothes. We have Gap here, but they come up small too. I got a lovely pair of Carter's dungarees from eBay (we don't have them here) and they are size 18 months, but they are TINY!! They fit Arthur well now (except a bit of a roll-up on the legs, as he has such short lil leggies!), but see, look at them (on the left) next to the pair of Tesco dungarees, size 12-18 months on the right:
All the US baby clothes I have are seriously THAT much smaller than the UK ones! For some reason I expected the opposite. I remember Arthur grew out of an Old Navy 6-12 month sleeper at 15 weeks old, hahaha! Okay but those Carter's dungies are really cute on him! I had to take some pics. Here he is being busy at his toy basket:
Lil Boo still LOVES reading! Did I say this already? - he now goes over to his books (as you can see in the above photos, we keep his little "library" low down with his toys where he can access them easily), selects one, pulls it out, and sits down with it on his lap to "read" it! He turns the pages well now, by himself, and he particularly loves books with flaps that you have to lift to see a hidden picture, at the moment. He will sit himself down with one of these books and turn the pages, looking at the pictures with great concentration, and scrabble at the edges of the flaps with his fingernails to open them :) See?...
Of course eventually, when you have turned enough pages and flaps, at 11 months old, books are still just really good to eat! After he has finished reading, I know when he has had enough because he starts turning the book around to get a good angle to gnaw on it for a while! That's when I either take it from him or read it to him. Usually the latter. Anyway, here he is getting just the right biting angle, hehe!
I love to watch him sit down by himself and "read". I can't resist just watching him and keeping quiet in case I disturb him and he stops! I had to take some photos this time. I just wanted a record. He also still loves being read a story at any time. It is always something that can divert a fuss about something, or distract after a bump or fall. A cuddle on my lap and a story works wonders! I usually nurse him if he hurts himself badly or is really upset though. He always gets so mad when a book finishes, hehe! We usually have to read many in a row, or the same one several times over. Here he is reading his dinosaur book (and then his puppy one!) with Daddy yesterday - the first one came out blurry for some reason:
The boy LOVES his books!! :)
Arthur is such a lively little boy at the moment. He needs to go out once or twice each day to see the world and other people. This is going to be tiring on me as my pregnancy progresses! But hopefully I will have a good pregnancy and feel energetic through the middle trimester at least. He is constantly moving in the house - constantly! He cruises, crawls, bounces, climbs up and down the stairs, pulls up and down on things. Even when he is sitting he constantly changes position! He has this thing he does at the moment where he shakes his head vigorously in a really swingy way, from side to side until it makes him sway with giddiness when he stops! He particularly does it when he knows either me or Neil is about to play a chase game with him or pretend to eat him! He does it with the biggest grin on his face, and squeals too! He is so funny, that boy.
He does what we call his "power crawl" if he wants to get somewhere super fast. He crawls so fast for a spurt, say across a room, that he has to put his head down like a bull stampeding towards a red flag, hehe! His chubby little thighs wobble like crazy as his knees pummel the floor faster then I knew he could move his legs past each other! It is actually pretty hard to catch him when he crawls like this, as he moves SO fast. The only sad thing about it is that he sometimes crawls right into something hard with his head still down (like a bed or other piece of furniture), with a huge BANG, and then lots of tears! It's so sad when he does that, as he usually set off so fast because he was excited about something or wanting us to play chase and catch with him. Then it all ends in tears and it's so sad for him :( Of course we do everything we can to comfort him and kiss him better and hold him close. We love him so fiercely! Fiercely seems like a weird word in that sentence, but it's so accurate. It's like a fiery grip sometimes, the extent of my love for him. It overwhelms me completely, all the time. It's a FIERCE love, this mama's love thing!
Okay here are some photos of Arthur today, on his 11-month birthday! Today he did lots of things with Daddy because Mummy was flaked out feeling pregnant and catching up on some rest a lot of the time! He loves his time with Neil. He really likes a lot of things Neil likes, already. He LOVES watching birds. I never saw a baby so fascinated by birds before. I know pretty much all babies are interested in them and will watch them for ages, but Arthur just seems so taken with them. He looks so eager when he is watching them, and he doesn't like it when they are all gone. He will watch pigeons flying overhead instead of waving Daddy off as he drives off to work in the morning, if there are any pigeons there - much as he loves waving Daddy off! Anyway, Neil loves birds. He has always enjoyed bird watching. I think they are going to have some lovely times watching birds in the country when Arthur is older.
Also Arthur seems to absolutely LOVE sitting on his daddy's lap watching sports that bore me silly on TV! He likes football, and he particularly likes the Grand Prix. Snore! He really seems so excited by it though, it's funny! Today they watched the Grand Prix together for maybe 10 minutes. Arthur's attention usually wanders in that time unless he's occupied with something he's really interested in, like a certain toy, or a book. Or the Grand Prix, as it turns out. *sigh*
And here is Arthur with his Mummy, who should have been out of those pyjamas many hours before this photo was taken!
Pyjamas are GREAT to do the "nurse-on-a-whim" thing that Arthur is doing these days! The great thing about all his marathon nursing lately is that my milk seems to have bounced back big time, and I have lots again. I'm glad :) I just hope it lasts! We finally started Arthur on cereal for breakfast, as I pumped him some milk to go on it. He got to have fresh mango with it, and he seemed to like it. He has oat cereal at the moment.
Arthur still requests music all day long. He likes to push the button on his musical toy so that a tune starts playing, then make his pop-up orchestra start playing a tune, and then immediately go to the hi-fi and pull up by it, calling to me in urgent tones so that I'll put some music on for him!! I don't know why he wants it all on at once though, funny boy! Lately we have had Mozart on in the daytime. I like it. I wanted to see what Arthur thought, and he only gets antsy when there's a really slow quiet track. Today and yesterday I have put my Daddy's music on. It's classical and with lots of piano in it. He composed and played it, and it's extra special to me (besides that) because it's the music I used to let Arthur listen to in the womb. I used to put headphones on my belly and play the whole CD all the way through. Mostly I would put another set of headphones on for me to hear it too. I liked feeling how Arthur jumped about a lot to some pieces and went more quiet to others.
He hasn't heard Daddy's music since he was in the womb, so I wondered if he would recognise it. I watched a programme a few years ago (Child of Our Time, I think) on BBC1 (or was it 2?) where they did a study of this. They had their babies listen to the same music every time in the womb, and then they didn't hear the music at all till they were a year old. At a year old, they let the babies hear the music in a lab setting, sat on their mother's laps (the mothers had headphones on so they couldn't hear what was going on, just in case they affected things). The babies sat in a room with two spheres, one on either side of the room. When they looked at one sphere, it started rotating and a tune played that was similar to the one they heard in the womb, but not the same one. If they looked at the other sphere, the first sphere stopped and so did the music, and the second sphere rotated with a new tune playing - the one they heard in the womb. This way the babies could demonstrate control over the music playing, and show by the length of time focused on a specific sphere, and their behaviour when listening, whether or not they could remember their womb music after all that time. Anyway the study showed 100% that the babies recognised their womb music clearly.
When I put Daddy's music on, Arthur went soooo quiet!! He just went completely still and listened with his head on one side, for ages. I picked him up and he stayed still in my arms, listening for several minutes. He seemed remarkably calm in himself. It was lovely!
Okay it's getting late and I hear Neil getting ready for bed. I had better finish this entry off and get some sleep. What else can I add before I go? Oh, Arthur loves a plain old plastic bowl at the moment, to play with! He will play with it on the kitchen floor for ages! It keeps him really entertained, and all he does is pick it up, throw it down, watch it roll or settle on the floor, crawl after it, pick it up, etc. Today Neil got out a wooden spoon and showed him how to bang the bottom of the bowl with it like a drum. He was so sweet watching Neil so carefully, and he seemed so excited when Neil gave him the spoon to have his own turn! At first he would not hit the bowl with the end of the spoon, he always had to make contact with the bowl with his own hand, so he would hold the spoon and then bash the bowl with his hand clutching the spoon! Neil showed him over and over again, and eventually he got it!! Clever boy! He had so much fun! Then imagine his excitement when Neil got out a SECOND wooden spoon and showed him how to bang BOTH of them on the bowl, and also bang them together like drumsticks!! He had such a great time, and picked it up quickly. Here he is flapping them around (and finally, eating one of them, of course!):
Okay and that will have to be it for tonight. I am tired out. I wanted to write more waffle about my thoughts and about Arthur - there seems to be so much to say about him at the moment, he is doing so much and changing so fast!
The one thing that never changes is that I love this little boy soooooooooooooooooooooo much. I can't even begin to describe it. He is such a delight, and he fills my whole life with joy. He is so precious. I'll finish with a photo that makes my heart squeeze nearly out of my throat with how much I love him and what a happy, joyful little person he is. I love him so very much. My little man.
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