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2005-08-09 - 11.56pm previous entry next entry
Happy 9 months to my Arthur-Boo!
Arthur is 9 months old today!! Here he is being a big 9-month-old boy this morning!...
His hair is so funny! It�s getting really thick and longer all the time, but it STILL stands up on top! Jenn, don�t worry, I am not offended by your comment about his hair looking fuzzy! I love his hair :) The weird thing is his hair seems to be totally straight, but just insistent on standing bolt upright on top! He even has a �flat top�, because after it has stood up, the ends of his hair curls towards the back of his head! I have no idea why. The back and sides are flat on his scalp and straight hair, so I don�t think he has curly hair or anything. Although now that the sides are getting thicker, I do notice they �fuzz� up sometimes. Hmmm. He COULD have curly hair. My daddy has very curly hair � he had ringlets as a baby and when he had long hair in the 70s. There�s lots of curly hair on my side (only a half-hearted wave in my own though!) but no curls or waves of any sort on Neil�s side.
Arthur has now been outside of my body longer than he was in it, by three days! My pregnancy was 40 weeks and 4 days in gestation, and Arthur was conceived on day 14 of my cycle, so he was in there exactly 38 weeks and 4 days, from fertilisation to birth (what an amazing process!). Today he is 39 weeks old. How amazing! It feels SUCH a long time! And yet how quickly it has all gone by. Or rather, how quickly I have suddenly found myself with a NINE-month-old!!
I wish more than ever that I had posted those photos I�m behind on earlier, because now I have new photos and the others are getting older and older and less and less relevant. But I love them so here they are � they were taken last week:
Arthur likes to sit in front of the fridge now that I have put our Simpsons fridge magnets down at his eye-level (well, crawling eye-level anyway!). He just crawls right up to it, and sits himself there for a while! He always used to love it when we held him in front of them when he was littler, so now they are for him to look at whenever he wants to plonk himself in front of them!
His favourite thing in the house is still the washing machine:
He can lie or sit in front of it for ages watching the washing go round, and not get bored or distracted! Funny boy :) He always makes a beeline for it if he hears it from another room, and whether it�s on or empty or not, he always makes sure it�s the first thing he looks at when he crawls into the kitchen and puts his head around the doorway! So sweet :)
Oh oh, I forgot to say before, but I discovered Robeez baby shoes!!! I heard about them here and there online, and didn�t give them much thought, until the last time we were at church and Arthur was crawling and trying to stand on the hard hall floor. It was not the cleanest floor with alllll the people walking over it, and it was cold and he kept slipping too. I wished I had a shoe for him to wear that would be non-slip, protective, cute, but completely and utterly flexible for him to develop normally with walking and so on, and for his comfort. And then those Robeez popped into my mind. Plus I think I saw Joshie wearing some at church that day, but I can�t be sure from a distance. Soooo I went online and found them, and after I read all the benefits, etc, I ordered a pair in size 6-12 months. I think they are too big for Arthur but I was pretty sure the size 0-6 would be too small. Later I found a pair of 0-6 month Robeez on eBay, brand new and with a cute Monkey design!! So I bid and I won, for a third of the normal price, yay! Arthur does fit in them, but he is pretty much growing out of them already. That�s okay though, I will just put them aside for the next baby :) The 6-12 month ones arrived a couple of days later, and I love them. He will fit in them now, although they look big on him. Anyway, I am so glad to have them. They are just what he needs when out and about and soooo flexible. I can�t find anything like them in the shops. Here is Arthur modelling his new Monkey Robeez � note that he was bored of me taking photos by this stage (had taken several already!) and decided to keel over on his side, completely squashing poor Monkey whose paws you can see poking out from under him!! Hehe :)
Arthur pulls up everywhere now and cruises around the room. Here he is at the TV unit, looking at his own photo! He wanted to touch it all the time, and now he is bored of that and just pulls it over every single time he gets his hands on it! *sigh* Anyway, it was very cute before the pulling over stage! He likes to stand against that unit and pat the TV screen, or cruise to the footstool next to it and pull each paper off it one by one (we dump our post and papers there to be sorted � need to change this now!). Or he spends time with his photo (hehe!) or plays with the wooden coasters up there. He likes it when the sun is shining through the window, because it shines on the surface of the unit and he touches the bright spots on the surface and stares into them. He�s so funny! Here he is with his photo, and playing with a wooden coaster:
Yay, I think that�s all the photos I meant to post before!! :) I have lots from today though.
Let�s see, what news do I have lately? I�m sure there is lots, because I have been updating less often than usual, and when I HAVE updated I haven�t had time to say all the things I wanted to say. But my brain has gone blank, ugh. I am super tired. Arthur�s nights are not great at the moment, and I am getting maybe 3 or 4 hours of broken sleep each night. Not so great! But I�m not ready to work on his nursing sessions at night, etc, yet. I�m still willing to sacrifice my sleep at the moment, so he can get milk and comfort whenever he wants at night. He doesn�t eat well enough for me to do otherwise yet, and that�s okay. I�m encouraged that he IS taking a little more food than he used to, so I am happy enough with him taking it very slowly and gradually. I know he�ll eat and wean eventually, and really this is WAY early to be pushing on either of those things. I don�t even want him to wean off the breast for a year or more yet.
I have finally started him on thicker purees and lumpier foods. I got a jar of organic stage 2 stuff from the supermarket but when I got it home I didn�t want to give it to him. I don�t know. It has 22% whole milk in it, which doesn�t thrill me, even though if they say it�s from 7 months + it should be fine. I just don�t want to give him that. So instead I started blending our meals in the mini-blender, which is what I always wanted to do anyway, and making the consistency thick and with tiny lumps and pieces in. I don�t add water, but then it�s things like chicken, potato and carrot, or last night it was spaghetti bolognese! I cooked the mince through and then added tomatoes, and put some of those in the blender before I added the big seasoned sauce that we have. It�s lazy and shop-bought (but super yummy!) so I wouldn�t give it to Arthur. Then I added a half-teaspoon of tomato puree to the blender, and when the pasta was done I added some of that. And some cooked carrot. And bjjjjjzed it up and voila!! It tasted great to me, even without the normal herbs and stuff that is in normal bolognese sauces. I think it was the tomato puree that did it. Anyway, so that made four ice-cubes plus today�s lunch for him. He ate it fine. He ate the chicken meal fine too. He didn�t seem crazy about the new consistency but he didn�t have any trouble with it. He mashed it about in his mouth and then swallowed it without difficulty. He eats such tiny amounts though, and sometimes every single spoonful is a battle. He only really eats a teaspoonful of food on a good day, usually less, in total.
Yesterday I mashed a banana with the last Heinz organic puree left to use up � pear and pineapple. It made a good gooey-but-lumpy consistency and he seemed really interested in eating it! Yay! He ate maybe 8 little baby spoonfuls!!! I never saw him eat that much in one sitting before. I gave him the rest today and he ate about the same amount.
I think he must be getting more solids than I thought, because he is doing some serious poo! It�s not breastmilk poo anymore, and it�s um, well � you really don�t need to know this, but oh well! � pretty chunky and sticky and yucky. He MUST be getting solids if the poo is like that, surely? Even when he first started taking bits of purees and I knew they were going through him by the smell and sight of his poos, they were never this solid. Maybe it�s the introduction of carbs? Well, it�s an encouraging sign anyway.
Today was the first day that I offered him two actual meals instead of one meal and various finger foods at other times. I shared my breakfast with him (finger food) as usual but he really doesn�t do anything with that, so I don�t count it as a meal for him. But he had spaghetti for lunch, and the fruit for tea, and half a rice cake afterwards too :) So that is good. I am starting to feel a bit uncoordinated with the breastfeeding though, as he starts to eat food a bit more regularly. I am used to just offering him the breast whenever � I don�t even keep track. He is happy and it�s fine by me. But now I don�t want to complicate his new eating and fill him up too much, and at the same time I don�t want to hold back toooo much on the breastfeeding, because I want him to still have mostly breastmilk till he�s 12 months old. Still with a good intake of other food though, but plenty of breastmilk still. Now I don�t know when to nurse him and when not to. It�s weird and not too nice-feeling, but oh well. It�s how things go I suppose, when your little one grows up.
He is doing so well. He is such a lovely little boy. I keep on getting just overwhelmed with how much I love him. It�s toooo much sometimes! Well, not too much, but you know. He gives cuddles and kisses spontaneously now, just out of the blue sometimes. He�s very cuddly. He climbs on my lap for cuddles sometimes, and I love holding him squished against my front with his arms squeezing me so tight around my neck and his little soft fuzzy head pressed into my cheek. I always loved feeling him close to me, but it takes on extra preciousness when it�s HIS choice and initiated by him. It�s such a wonderful feeling. His cuddles usually last about 5 seconds, all still and close, and then he is climbing over me again, off to do something new! Sometimes he cuddles for much much longer, like when he is tired or has hurt himself or something. I hold him close like that for as long as he will let me. It always ends too soon, no matter how long he lets me cuddle him for. I know it will disappear too soon, and he will find it gross if I hug him close at the school gates or whatever. I know one day I might only see him for mealtimes because he might spend the rest of his time with friends or in his room. I will savour each and every second of his precious cuddle time while I can, even now when he�s this little. Every individual second of it is so precious to me and time is already ticking. Each cuddle matters so much to me and I feel sad that my brain isn�t capable of making a crystal clear memory log of each and every hug, because it means that someday I won�t even REMEMBER that precious squidge my little one just gave me or how his cheek just felt against mine. That�s so sad to think about. I love him so much.
Today and yesterday Arthur has been kind of easily upset and clingy. I think he is still having trouble from that new tooth, like the last two. It�s so big, that top middle one, that there is still only half of its width showing through the gum! So he has a lot of work to do with that one. I can see it more clearly today. You can�t see it in photos yet though. I took one today from a good angle when Arthur was giggling at me on the bed after his nap. I was snuffling and munching on him! :) He likes to be snuffled! His top gum just looks pink and a bit swollen, and you can�t really see the new toothie at all, but it�s the middle right one as you look at him. The only part of the tooth that has come through so far is the half nearest to the middle of the gum. But yeah, you can�t really see it. But I�ll post the pic anyway :)
I love snuffling that boy! I could honestly eat him all up! ;) If I blow open raspberries on any part of him, he ripples, and the MOST satisfying parpling noise bursts forth!! He really is almost edible. The best noisy raspberry areas are his tummy, his armpits (new discovery!) and his thighs. He is one squidgy boy! :) He squeals with laughter when I do his armpits! I also eat his ribs one at a time with my lips over my teeth, working my way upwards and making eaty noises, and he writhes about all over the bed, slapping at me with his arms and flinging his legs about, and laughing and squealing till he hiccups. It�s the most lovely thing. I am so blessed to be the one to do all this.
*sigh*
Let�s see, what else? Arthur is getting much more helpful in the kitchen these days, hehe! He �helps� me empty (and load) the washing machine, now that he can stand at it. He is much more secure standing there now. He can reach and fiddle with the buttons and dials without wobbling and without me having a hand on his back to support him, and he can hold on to the machine with one hand whilst playing with the door, and he can lean right in and toss the washing about inside!....
He is so intent and serious when he does this, it�s so funny! He does like to take things out of the machine that I am putting in DIRTY though, which is not quite so helpful, but I guess he doesn�t understand that! ;) He also �helps� me fold the laundry now too:
But that usually doesn�t last long before he�s bored and crawling all over my neat piles of clean washing! It�s so cute how he really wants to take part in whatever I am doing around the house at the moment. It�s so nice that he can just choose to crawl on up and get involved when he feels like it. If he doesn�t like being left in the living room for a moment while I empty the tumble dryer in the kitchen, he just crawls in and �helps� me! It�s lovely :)
He is cruising quite well now in both directions. I noticed for the first week or so that he would only cruise to the left, but all of a sudden he started cruising to the right, and faster than to the left too! A new thing he did twice today was to stand holding onto his toy basket with me sitting directly behind him, and then let go with one hand, rotate his torso to face me, take hold of me with his spare hand, and walk his feet round to face me before letting go the basket and transferring the other hand to me! He cruises gaps of about a foot between the furniture, between the armchair and his toy basket, the sofa and the TV unit, the stairs and the other sofa, etc. It�s very weird to see him standing at a different piece of furniture to the one I saw him at before I looked away to set my glass of water down somewhere safe or something!
Arthur has bitten me a few times with his new teeth. Ugh. Twice on my nipple. But those were sort of my own fault because on those occasions I was hoping to nurse him to sleep and I think he happened to be not that hungry. I read somewhere that babies are more likely to bite when they are no longer hungry on the breast, especially at the same time as teething. Still, that doesn�t make it okay, so I put my breast away and told him, �No biting!� as sternly as I could, and moved away from him for a few minutes. We use the same tactic if he bites us anywhere else, which he has done a few times. He sometimes bites us on the shoulder when we are holding him, or once or twice he crawled up to us and bit us on the leg as he was pulling himself up. Every time he gets a stern, �No biting!� and is put down firmly. He didn�t bat an eyelid at this at first, but now he is taking more notice. I think he is recognising it as a little discipline, because he starts to protest a bit when he is put down. He is biting less now though. I am dreading the (hopefully!) rare occasion when he bites me with a full set of top and bottom middle teeth! Yeeps. It hurts soooooo much more than I imagined it would, and Arthur isn�t even a strong biter. He just nips me a little, for a second. He never bites down really hard, but still it takes my breath away and makes me want to do anything to get his teeth off me! Last time he bit me on the nipple I wanted to cry. Ow. But thankfully it has only been 2 or 3 times in all, and he is getting the message not to bite, I hope.
He was due to have his 8-month check with the Health Visitor but I was told they are running behind on the 8-month checks when he went for his hearing test. They still haven�t contacted me though (apparently I�m waiting for an invite) so I think I will have to ring and find out what�s going on, as he�s 9 months old now! I know it�s not a vital check and it�s just making sure he�s progressing fine for his age (which I know he is), but I still want him to have his checks when he�s at the appropriate age. Just because.
What else new? Oh Arthur is letting go a lot more now. He can stand for 2 or 3 seconds without support, but he has only done it 3 times so far. Before that, it was one wobbly second and then a bump on the bum! But today he stood for those few seconds because he let go and didn�t notice, and when he realised he simply put his hands back on me or the sofa, and continued what he was doing. So that�s much better :) I feel sure he will walk early, like the physio thought. But I was talking to my mum on the phone, and she got out my baby book (I LOVE that she kept this!) and told me that I was sitting at 5 months, crawling at 6, pulling to stand at 7, and standing alone at 9 months, but I didn�t actually WALK alone until 13 or 14 months. So Arthur could still wait a while, despite his fast changing development at the moment. My granny told me that my daddy walked at 13 or 14 months too. Mummy took her first confident steps at 9 months though, so who knows. I don�t think that bit is hereditary though. It�s so interesting to me to hear all the family stories of when we all did things, now that I have a little one! I hope Arthur walks earlier than later, because of the benefit for his feet. I think they are starting to look maybe a fraction straighter again now that he has been up on them a lot for a couple of weeks. I know it will make me one busy frazzled mama when he does start walking (!!) but oh well. It will happen soon enough one way or the other, and I�d put up with early frazzling for his feet to get straight quicker.
The new bed arrangement is working well so far. We are far from finished with the bedroom though, but it will have to wait till next weekend to continue, as the only time we really get to work on it is evenings, and Arthur is asleep in there then. There is too much for him to get into and it�s not safe, if I am trying to tidy and sort in there and thus not keeping such a good eye on him. I can�t wait till that room is clear and containing 2 items of furniture and a large floor-bed! Arthur still tries to stand up on the mattress against the wall, like he used to when he wanted to see out of the window, only now the mattress is sadly 2 feet lower than it used to be, so there is no chance of him seeing out! Sad really, because he had just managed to reach the windowsill with his fingers whilst standing on the bed, and he could peep over the top and ooh and ahh at the world outside! Of course I still lift him to see out, but it�s a sad thing when a boy still looks for something he enjoyed that isn�t there any more, as though he�s saying, �I KNOW there was a window here the last time I looked!�
Wellll, what else? I have an osteopath appt tomorrow. I haven�t managed to do my exercises as often as I should have, ugh. I really need to fix my back because it hurts most of the time, but it�s being very slow to get better. Probably it would get better quicker if I did the exercises more often, and put ice on my back the 2-5 times a day that the osteopath told me to! But I don�t find the time to even pee most days, and then all of a sudden it�s bedtime and I forgot during the evening, and there we go.
Katie and Joshua came round today! It was so nice to have visitors!! Joshie is 13 months old now, but it was so nice because he and Arthur have much more in common now than they did a few months ago. He crawls super fast and stands alone for a short time, and he can reach the doorknobs where Arthur can�t yet. And he climbs the stairs much more efficiently than Arthur! But otherwise they are doing the same things � crawling, pulling up, cruising, standing, etc. They were interested in all the same toys today, but Josh can push the top down on the spinning thing to make it go, and Arthur just gives it a pat and an expectant look, bless him! ;) I find it so funny when he does that � he has a lot of toys that �go� when you wind them up or press them or whatever, and he is really getting the hang of pressing things like buttons to make things respond, but where you have to actually push something or turn something, he doesn�t have the dexterity yet, so he just pats it sharply in the right spot and then snatches his hand back and waits with a very expectant look! It�s so cute! He has a crab that crawls sideways to a funny tune every time you push down on its shell, and he is just beginning to get the hang of that now. The poor crab always ends up on its back though, claws flailing about and music tinkling, because Arthur has flipped it over and sits relentlessly patting it to make it react!! Hehe!
He loves to knock anything down that I stack up for him, like the stacking cups or a tower of wooden bricks. He just cannot resist a tower of bricks! It even works to deter him from something he shouldn�t be doing, if I build a tower across the room from him and draw his attention to it! The pull is so strong, he can�t resist crawling over and knocking it down! He has started to delicately take the top cup off the stack now, and is very interested in things �in� and �out� of containers. I put a brick in a cup and he tries to get it out. Usually he gets impatient and flings the cup around till the brick flies out across the room! Or he tips the cup upside down till the brick falls out if he can�t reach it properly.
I think he might have clapped a little today when I was clapping randomly (I�m strange, I know!), but he stopped when I looked over at him and wouldn�t do it again, so I�m not sure. He prefers to watch me clap, it never ceases to thrill him!
It�s getting soooo late and I�m getting a headache so I think I should go. I have so much to write about my little man! I have hardly had time to write anything about me or Neil or anything! We are pondering a move away from London, and I wanted to talk about that more here, but at least I talked about it some in my pregnancy diary (which seems to have become a �thinking about trying to conceive� diary again!). So it�s �out there�. I hope I�ll have time to write more about my feelings and stuff on that soon. It�s a biggie for us, and we are praying about it. Which is so nice � to be praying together. We don�t do that enough and it feels so wonderful when we do.
Okay that is all for now. I think that�s all the photos too � at last! I will update again as soon as I can. Still so behind on emails, I�m really sorry to those I owe emails to! Thank you all so much for the lovely guestbook messages and notes lately. Julie, I am still interested in the flybabyness! Mallory, believe it or not, I got ALL of Arthur�s clothes that he has ever worn from eBay! Except for a few little outfits and the odd pack of vests, etc. Such a big saving, and such lovely clothes! I would highly recommend it � you often find new things there and there is such a vast choice compared with the shops. Not to mention the bargains! ;) Meg, a bed full of children will not prevent the parsnips! There are lots of other rooms in a house�. ;)
Sleep. Must sleep! Night night :)
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