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2007-01-04 - 12.15am previous entry next entry
2007 already! Arts and new milestones...
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! 2007... Wow, how did that happen?! I miss 2006 already! It was just a LOVELY year for me - I got to be all pregnant again and have another scrumptious baby boy! And lots of other lovely things besides. 2007 feels a bit unfamiliar and cold so far and I'm not sure what it will bring or whether I'll like it yet. I mean, I know I'll love lots of things about this year! I have two lovely boys who I will enjoy watching grow up this year - they will bring me sooooo much joy and love and contentment! But I wonder if it's going to be a year that puts me RIGHT out of my comfort zone - like if (read: when) we have to move house and I have to leave the town I grew up in for the first time in my life. And stuff. And I probably won't get to be pregnant again this year. Some of you are probably thinking I am CRAZY for even considering the possibility! But Matthew will be 18 months old at the end of this year (wha???!) and even if I didn't get pregnant till December, that would still be a 2�-year age gap, and I don't think I want to go as far as 3 years apart. I think. For now, anyway. But this could all be a nice fictional dream anyways, because Neil was just saying yesterday how he thinks it's just nice to have our little twosome. I will give him some time ;) I got my first post-partum period yesterday, so it�s made a whole lot of brain fluff rise up and whirl around � just hormonal musings, plenty of which have been waffled about in my pregnancy diary last night. It�s nice to have my body working normally again after having a baby, though I am feeling kind of crampy and dizzy and pfthth now, which isn�t quite so fun. But oh well! :)
I meant to update again the NEXT DAY after I wrote the entry about Christmas, but I just don't seem to get time. I have soooooooo much to catch up on, a TON to write about, and a bazillion photos to post. Not to mention the video clips! Neil is still off work on his lovely long break and that means things are different here for a bit. I am getting a few more chances to do stuff that is just about ME, which I am finding a bit hard to just relax and DO, but I'm trying because I really really reeeeally need it! And it's fun when I get chance to just chill out with my own stuff. I have been playing The Sims 2, sewing a bit, and sleeping in :) It feels sooooooo wonderful! It's my first break since having Matthew, and such a relief. The first week just felt like normal, like a weekend (with Christmas in there too). I didn't want to do things for myself because, I don't know, it felt weird and also I didn't know if Neil would mind. But that just meant that half Neil's holiday went by and I felt no more rested or refreshed than when he was at work or home for the weekend. So this second week (he goes back on Monday 8th) we have been carving out a bit more time for me to be "off duty", since before I was still attending to the boys with Neil's help, or helping Neil do things with them a lot of the time.
The day before yesterday, for the first time since I had ARTHUR (I think), I went shopping in town ON MY OWN!!!!! I have been to the supermarket a few times on my own since I had Arthur (and once since Matthew too), but it's different to leave them at home during the afternoon when they're napping-and-then-awake with Neil, and just go and shop! Not because we need milk and bread, etc. But just to shop and browse and be myself for a bit. It was lovely! It was also waaaay too crowded as the sales are on and we live somewhere that is a big centre for shopping, so bazillions of people come flocking in for the January sales, ugh. But oh well. I have the local know-how, haha! So I parked quickly while everyone else queued at the more obvious car parks, and walked a bit further to get to the shops. I walked HANDS-FREE!!! No pushchair, no little hand to hold! No weights on my back or front, as I didn't have a baby in a sling, or a huge bag on my back with a million baby-travel-items in it! I could walk at my own pace, which was just soooo much fun that I practically RACE-walked, hehe! It was so freeing to walk fast without things weighing me down or stooping down, or pushing something. And not to have to keep stopping and starting. I got such a buzz out of it that at one point I got overwhelmed with the urge to squeal, �Wheeeee!� as I strolled along! ;) I didn�t, though.
I went to look for things to spend my Christmas money on � for ME. I thought I might get some cosy PJs or maybe some new jeans that fit me well. Or something. I looked in lots of shops but didn�t have time to try anything on, as I had to be back to nurse Matthew by a set time. I gave him a huge breastfeed before I left, and I didn�t want to be away for more than 3 hours from his last feed. I really could shop for like 5 hours +. Really. I wouldn�t even notice the time go! It felt quite restrictive to know that I only had three hours! Which is crazy really. In the end I found it really hard to relax and just be me. I kept thinking about the boys and wondering if they were up from their naps and if it was going okay. I wondered if Matthew was fussing, or still asleep, or getting hungry. I wondered if I should call Neil (I took the mobile phone) and see. I found it very hard to focus on shopping for just myself. In the end, the only thing I got for myself was 2 boxes of painkillers and a prescription for, um, Fybogel. Yeah baby! I so got my groove on during THAT outing! ;)
I spent some of Arthur�s Christmas money from my grandparents (�Spend it on something he would like��) on two Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs :) He has four now. Before I went shopping I sat down with him on the sofa and said, �Arthur... For Christmas, Granny and Grandoug gave you money!� He looked at me like he knew it was a big deal. I said, �We use money to buy things at the shops.� He nodded and waited, so I continued, �If you like, Mummy could take your money to the shops and buy you a new Thomas the Tank Engine DVD. Would you like that?� and he did this huge long gasp while I was saying the words �Thomas the Tank Engine DVD� and the moment I finished my question he exclaimed with GREAT enthusiasm � �Oh yes PEEEASE!!!� He is so lovely! He was so excited. He kept saying, �Mummy go shops, buy nyyyooo dee-vee-deeee Ah-yah!� He could hardly wait for me to go! So I browsed, and ended up buying two. He still has some money left (they were generous!) and we think we�ll put that in his Child Trust Fund. There�s nothing else he really needs right now. I got him the entire first series (26 episodes!) of Thomas the Tank � some of which are duplicated on one of his other DVDs, but only four of them out of 26. I also got �It�s Great to be an Engine!� because it has episodes that he hasn�t seen before, and engines that he reeeally likes.
I also went to the Early Learning Centre and bought 6 big containers of ready-mixed liquid paint (6 different colours) because the ones he currently paints with are actually a set of six finger paint pots which I watered down a bit so they were suitable for brush-painting with as well. They have almost run out. Some of his Christmas presents from us were craft-based, as he LOVES art and craft things so much already. We are wondering if he might be starting to have something of a flair for art, maybe. He could get that from Neil. My mum says I am artistic, but I don�t know about that. Creative, maybe, but I never really DID much with arts and crafts, once I got older, so I don�t know if I would have been any good at it. I wasn�t very confident about myself when it came to drawing and stuff. Neil, on the other hand, is definitely artistic. He used to use his pocket money to buy things like a book about birds when he was a child, so that he could sit for hours and copy the pictures, drawing them carefully. He is good at drawing even now. He had quite a passion for it as a child and teen. He is also musical, playing many more instruments than me, and at a higher level too. We might be wrong about Arthur being arty, but he just seems to enjoy it so much. It isn�t just the he loves it though. He has done the odd thing that has surprised us, but then maybe we just have NO idea what the average 24-26 month old is supposed to be able to do in that area. Right after his birthday, he painted a picture of Gordon from Thomas the Tank Engine. Often he will sit with the paints and cheerfully tell me he is going to paint such-and-such. He is always drawing something specific when he is scribbling or drawing on the furniture even (on those rare occasions when he discovers a pen that I�d forgotten about!)! After I�ve told him off for it and explained why we don�t draw on the walls/table/shelves/floor, he STILL has to tell me that it�s a �beeb lorry� or a �whiw-wer car� (that�s silver, by the way!). Anyway, so he told me he wanted to �paint Gor-nin!!� all morning and so I got out the mat and paints and apron, etc, and he sat down happily with a big sheet of A3 paper and the paints. He got out a brush, asked me to take the lid off the blue paint, and when I did, he painted a long line which turned out a little bit wavy, and then stabbed the paper with the paintbrush several times underneath the line. And voila! He announced, �Gor-nin!!� and beamed at me. And there he was � long and blue with five circular �dot� wheels, evenly spaced along his undercarriage! Today Neil built him a horse out of toilet roll tubes and stuck it all together with selotape. The first thing Arthur did with his pens was to painstakingly draw two circles, one on each side of the horse�s head (in EXACTLY the right place on both sides) for eyes, and then fill them in carefully with tiny scribbles! I didn�t know he knew how to do that yet.
Anyway, so he loves painting, and for Christmas we got him some supplies. We got him a set of 14 big chunky sponge shapes for sponge painting, and a set of 6 paint pots with open/close lids � the type you put the paintbrush through via a hole in the centre. So I got some paints to go with those. I am eager to get him an easel because it would be easier than the floor mat (though we�d obviously still have that out under the easel!) and also you can get ones with whiteboard on one side for wipe-clean pens and stuff, and a blackboard on the other side for chalks. I think he�d love chalks, but we have never introduced him to them because he still has a tendency to put things in his mouth. Wax crayons and washable pens are one thing, but chalk is another! Yeurgh! We do lots of sticking and glitter and collage-y stuff, and I want to expand on that this year. I can�t wait till we can do more fiddly crafts and collages!
Oh that reminds me, some of the MANY photos that I have waiting to post in my diary are of Arthur doing some painting recently. I think I made a video clip or two as well� I�ll have to check. I made so many that I can�t remember what I�ve done now!!
Okay, there are two little video clips � taken a couple of days after Christmas. The first one is Arthur making some circles in his painting with the paintbrush jar, and also doing some handprints with me. He wanted me to do my handprint too! He�s wearing an old baggy T-shirt of Neil�s. He looked like a little angel to me, wearing it! I just love him soooooooooo! :)
Then the next video clip is of Arthur putting handprints on a fresh sheet of paper, and counting them. The sound is out of sync with the visual again, which you can tell by me counting one, two, three, four as I seemingly point to the wrong handprints! Tsk.
Here are a few photos of the same painting session :)
Another thing that we got Arthur for Christmas was some bath crayons. I had heard of them before from various online diaries and friends, and it sounded like something Arthur would LOVE, so for Christmas we got some for him! He was SO excited when we opened them up before bath time one night after Christmas and told him that he could draw with these crayons in the bath - all OVER the bath if he wanted to! He couldn�t wait to go �up bath, daw cayons!� Here he is using his bath crayons for the first time (Neil�s above-knee area carefully avoided, haha! Arthur still always baths with Daddy. Neil does wear boxers when he baths with the boys though, after a few eye-watering hair-pulling incidents from the early days, hehehe!):
Just before I breastfed him in bed that night, I asked him what his favourite thing was that day. He didn�t even hesitate to say, �Like daw!� The next time he used the bath crayons, he had also been out that day and seen a deer at the park. So when I asked what his favourite part of the day was, he said, �Like deer!� and I asked if he had particularly liked anything else that day, to which he replied (pausing to think first with finger on chin, hehe!), �Like deer�. daw�. a� out!� (I liked the deer, drawing, and going out!).
Urgh, it�s getting craaazy late and I still haven�t written half of what I wanted to say in this entry!! Matthew is doing fine. He has been the crankiest boy since Christmas, fussing and seeming angry a lot. I know it is to do with wanting to crawl. He still isn�t crawling, he�s just rocking on his hands and knees all the time. After about a week of intense grumpiness (!!), he suddenly seemed to think differently about it. He started working very hard at going from hands-and-knees to sitting and vice-versa, and the new focus seemed to cheer him up no end. It has been quite funny to see him swinging his bum this way and that, trying to swing his leg under himself, and leaning so exaggeratedly on one arm as he attempts to sit up! He sort of backs himself around in circles, like a lil puppy, hehe! Anyway, by doing this he has sort of started to move himself backwards when on all fours, but not really crawling still. He seems a bit frustrated by it, but at least he�s happy working on a new thing that he IS making progress with. He enjoys this practise best when he has no nappy on, or even better, no clothes on, and when I take his nappy off these days he is SO eager to get practising that he WHIPS over onto all fours before I can stop him! Today he has finally got the hang of it, and I�m so proud! :) I took video footage but he�s all nudie so you don�t get to see it! He flips onto his tummy, shoves onto all fours, and literally swings his legs under his tummy in one smooth movement, pushes with his arms, and voila � he�s sitting bolt upright with one arm supporting him, hand on the floor! Then he lets go the floor and for the first time he is REALLY sitting well � ramrod straight back, both hands held up in front of him. He uses his torso muscles to keep himself steady, and those muscles must be getting pretty strong now because he does lean and sway this way and that a bit, but he can still keep himself from tipping over just with his back, side and tummy muscles. He looks SO pleased with himself! He can also pretty easily go from that position to all-fours again, so he is now all set up and ready to crawl, able to sit back when he needs to. How I wish he�d figure it out! Not that I�m eager for another mobile youngster about the place, but he is just so fed up about it and thus the rest of us feel it too!
Other big news from today is that Arthur did a wee in the potty for the first time this evening!!! We are NOT pushing potty training yet. We have owned his red potty since he was a year old I think, just as something for later. It has always been amongst his toys or somewhere normal and familiar to him. For a few months we have been telling him that it�s where he will wee-wee when he�s bigger, and when he was undressed for a bath or something, we�d tell him that if he wanted to wee, he could sit on the potty and wee there if he liked. We never did or said anything more than that really. He has done a lot of wees on the floor and when he does we have started to ask him not to wee on the carpet if he can help it, but to wee on the potty or in his nappy instead, if he needs to go. I know he can control it. Actually he pretty much checks off everything on the �readiness for potty training� checklist from Babycentre. But we are in no hurry. Nappies are so easy, and what is more I absolutely LOVE his cloth nappies! I will be sad to stop using them on him! Also, when a child is ready to potty train they will literally lead you through it, so I am not in a rush. Arthur often sits on his potty and makes funny little fake effort sounds and tells me he has done a wee-wee, but he never actually has. It�s usually a light-hearted game between us that he laughs about and finds amusing, which is nice :) Tonight he was sitting on his potty pretending to do a wee-wee. I was laughing with him over something to do with it, and I said something like, �Shall Mummy help?� and bent near to him whispering, �Pss-pss-pss-pss!� And he did a wee while I was making that sound!! I had heard of making that sound from mothers who do EC (elimination communication � urgh, google it, it�s too complicated to explain here quickly!). I was so surprised that he did a wee! He stopped, giggled, and then said, ��Gain Mummy!� so I made the sound again and he weed some more! He did a whoooole big wee-wee in that potty, and when he stood up he looked in and shouted, �WEE-WEE!!!!� pointing at it excitedly! We made a hugearooney fuss of him, of course, praising him up for being such a big boy and saying how proud we were of him for it, etc! Yay for Arthur!
Then I asked if he wanted to see where his big boy wee-wee goes, and he said, �Oh, YES PEEEASE!!� :) So I took him and the potty up to the loo, where I tipped the wee in and showed him, telling him that�s like Mummy and Daddy�s wee, in the toilet. Then we flushed it away, Arthur peering eagerly over the bowl to watch, and when it was gone he cried out, �Oh my GOO-NISS!!!� hehe! �Oh my goo-niss� is today�s phrase-of-the-day, it�s very cute! I don�t know why he started saying it today, but he�s been saying it for EVERYTHING all day. Oh, he dropped a toy car down the back of something this morning and said, �Oh no! Dizappeared!�!!! He said it soooo clearly, each syllable. He has started to use a lot of 3-syllable words lately. Fantastic, disappeared, delicate, difficult, dishwasher� I can�t think of the others off the top of my head. He says them pretty well. And he has suddenly started to say better pronounciations for things this week � two of his first early words were �orange� and �ambulance�. Both of them sounded like �ahh-daaan� when he said it. He continued to say those up till last week, and then one day he said, �orringe!� when he saw the orange crayon! That same day, he heard a siren outside and said, �Am-ber-lance!� I don�t know why it happened all of a sudden. Today is the first day he has started to pronounce Matthew�s name more accurately. He has been �Ma-Ma� all this time and I am very fond of it therefore! But today he called him, �Mah-shew� many times. He also used �Ma-Ma� a lot still, but I know the end is nigh for that lovely nickname! I know it also means that there may only be hours or days left of the precious way he says his own name: Ah-yah. I just want to cry thinking that he will not say it like that anymore! But if he can say Matthew, he can certainly say Arthur :( I know it will be soon. Boo-hoo!
Anyway. So my big boy!! I have no expectations for potty training just because of the wee in the potty, but it was just a big moment! At bedtime when I asked what his favourite part of the day had been, he said, �Like out� (he liked going out) and then was too eager for some mama milk to say any more. After I said night-night and left him with Neil, I heard him suddenly call out, �Oh Mummy!� and start to cry. I started to head back, but I heard Neil talk to him. He asked what the matter was, and Arthur said, �Like wee best!� and cried some more. He had meant to tell me that the wee was his favourite part of the day but forgot when I was there, and he sooo wanted to tell me when he realised, bless his heart! I heard Neil say, �Oh, you liked your big boy wee the best? Don�t worry, I will be sure to tell Mummy when I go downstairs.� And Arthur stopped crying and settled down right away, so I didn�t go in. My sweet boy :)
It�s toooo late to continue for now. I�ll be back soon with the rest, and all those photos and videos. I have some sweet ones of Arthur and Ella from Boxing Day! Must post those soon! Haven�t had chance to email or do much else actually, since my last entry, so I�ll hopefully get to that soon.
Recent entries.....
Moving time... - 2009-01-04
Christmas Eve! - 2008-12-24
Long-overdue update, a few Nathey pics and a video clip :) - 2008-12-01
Lots of news! - 2008-11-03
Nathan at 8 months... - 2008-10-12