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2006-02-13 - 10.18pm previous entry next entry
15 months old, plaster cast, "un", and new signs
Such a diary slacker!!! Ugh. I wish I had updated at least twice since the last entry, but oh well, here I am now. I have been equally slack in my pregnancy diary too. Tsk.
Thanks for all the lovely messages, and Megan for checking up on me and making sure I am not ill! We are all fine, but the reason I haven't written in a while IS partly because of a sort of bug I seem to have caught. I think it's pregnancy related. It's The Sewing Bug. I have got it bad and I can't seem to shake it! I spend ALL my spare time (and time when I should be sleeping at MIDNIGHT!) sewing, and all the rest of the time when I can't sew, thinking about sewing, hehe! Anyway it's not a bad bug to have because it has resulted in a bit of creative accomplishment for me, which always feels good to do, and some new cute and ultra-soft nappies for Arthur (and Matthew, yay!). Like this lil matching pair of Cuddlebuns for my boys!...
I am sooooo thrilled with them! I made a couple of little mistakes on the newborn sized one, because I adapted the Cuddlebuns pattern myself, as their so-called "Preemie" size would have swamped a 3-month-old! So I made a smaller one, but the first one is usually the one with the mistakes! Anyway, I love them! They are both stretchy soft knit print outer, a hidden layer of cotton sherpa (absorbent!), white microfleece against the skin (super soft and wicks moisture away from their skin - I LOVE microfleece in nappies!), and the soakers are part sherpa and part hemp stretch terry. Arthur's has more hemp because he needs more absorbency. Arthur's nappy has a matching hemp booster (topped with microfleece and the knit print on the other side!) and it's the first time I have made a SNAP-IN booster! It snaps into the inside of the nappy and fits beautifully. I used royal blue poppers/snaps on them both and serged them on my overlocker with blue varigated woolly nylon thread! Does anyone care about all this detail, haha?! I just have to write it anyway. I am obsessed ;)
Arthur's Cuddlebuns is sooooo soft and stretchy and comfy, and so much more absorbent than I expected it to be, that we have decided to test-drive him on it tonight as a night nappy. He needs SUPER absorbency overnight, so we'll see. I'm not convinced, but if it does see him through, I will be extra proud of myself! ;) He is wearing it under my first homemade Cuddlewrap too! I used chocolate microfleece outside (just because I love the colour and softness so much!) and beige suedecloth inside, with a layer of PUL sandwiched in the middle for waterproofness. I used red snaps, serged it in varigated earth colours (reds, oranges, browns, etc), and appliqued a cute giraffe on the bum! I am so happy with it. It fits him great and softly round all the elasticated bits, and HOPEFULLY it will be good and leakproof! Here is the little monkey boy wearing his new wrap (with new Cuddlebuns underneath!) before bed tonight:
Yay!! I LOVE sewing nappies! I am keen to finish this diary entry with enough time to sew another Cuddlewrap tonight. I think this time I will use "Sunset" (kind of orangey) coloured lightweight windpro fleece :) I am nuts, I know it.
Soooo as you can see from the last couple of photos, Arthur is OUT of plaster casts, yaaaay! He was in one for a week and the physio took it off this afternoon, and said his foot looks so much better that she won't put another on!!! We are beyond thrilled. I didn't cope well with him during the week, so we were going to pretty much say no to another cast today, unless she gave us good evidence that he really needed one.
Arthur didn't do so well with it either this time. I think in the past he was soooo much less mobile so it didn't affect him so badly to have the casts on. This time he just can't stand still for a second, and wants to walk and try to run all the time. He was so miserable for the first two days, poor love. He just whined and cried all day long, which is VERY unlike Arthur. He would sit and point at things he wanted and just cry, even though I knew he could crawl to them. He just must have felt so stuck in the cast. He wanted to be carried and picked up all the time, and I did say no a lot of the time, but there's no way I was saying no every time. Lifting him was hard work with his plaster on. I am beginning to find it hard to lift him and hold him for long WITHOUT plaster casts, because my bump is getting too big and I get backache and breathless too quickly. So it was extra hard with the cast and him wanting to be picked up more frequently. Also there were the everyday things like lifting him in and out of his highchair (a nightmare structure that I wish we had known NOT to buy all those months back, and bought a nice multi-position removeable-tray type instead!). And the car seat. And lugging the pushchair in and out of the car boot (where it lives as we have zero storage space for it in the house). And carrying him upstairs for his nap.
He woke more frequently at night, but not hourly or anything terrible. I would say he went back to waking every 2-3 hours throughout the evening and night, which is a pattern he was following recently enough for us to still be vaguely used to it, and thus not too shell-shocked by it happening again! I did get SO tired though. It annoying coincided with stupid pregnancy insomnia (which seems to be happening in thankfully short bouts, here and there) so I got very little sleep each night. By Day 3 with the cast on, I was tearful and exhausted, and by the afternoon I just HURT all over. My back hurt and my whole pelvis just hurt and hurt all evening, even with me resting. The other thing was that my Braxton Hicks contractions were getting more and more frequent, and I just generally felt like I was putting too much strain on my body but not able to do anything much about it. I couldn't NOT lift Arthur, and I couldn't put my feet up and rest, because I was on my own and Arthur couldn't do anything at all for himself, poor love, with his leg in plaster.
On Wednesday evening when I got a moment to time them, I had 4 BHs in 10 minutes and two of them hurt, even though I had been resting and drinking water since Neil got in from work. So the next day Neil got permission to work from home and he did all the lifting and carrying for me. I got to lie in a bit too, and also Neil used his lunch hour to give Arthur some lunch and play with him while I soaked in a bath. Neil is so wonderful! I was so relieved that he was able to help me like that, because it made such a huge difference. I felt much better that evening.
The next day he wasn't allowed to work from home, but it was a MUCH better day. I felt like my body had had chance to recover a bit, and also Arthur was getting used to his cast and was no longer miserable. He was crawling everywhere and playing with his toys and stuff happily, and I just tried to be as careful as possible lifting him when I had to, and keeping it to a minimum anyway. I also drank more fluids which always helps!
Man I was GLAD for the weekend to arrive! Arthur was pretty cheerful all weekend, and started walking on his cast!!! By Sunday he was walking all over the place in it! The physio said he might walk on it, but we just couldn't believe he would, because he still seems to us to be so new at walking, and the cast is bent at the knee and then his foot is flexed up and turned out at the ankle! *I* would have a hard time walking on that, let alone a little tiny person who only just learnt how to walk! But Arthur doesn't like to let things stop him, once he gets over the initial annoyance of the situation :) At first he just cruised the furniture, but he quickly started walking around the room, all hobbly and pitiful on his bent up leggy, but with a big triumphant smile on his face just the same :) Bless his heart, he really was SUCH a good boy with the whole ordeal.
The cast didn't break because we were wonder-parents (!!) and pushed him around the shopping centre for THREE hours - amazingly he didn't complain about that! He usually gets fidgetty and wants to get out after 30 minutes! Then it was tea time so we brought him home and he ate his tea sitting on Neil's lap. We changed his nappy and then he snuggled with me on the sofa with some mama milk (well, the part of mama that used to produce the milk, anyway!), snack-pack of dried fruit (a BIG favourite with Arthur lately!) and the Bedtime Hour on the CBeebies channel on TV. He has watched way more little people's TV programmes this week than I ever wanted him to watch, but honestly, he has needed the distraction a lot of the time. He really likes Postman Pat (I LOVED that when I was little!) and Boogie Beebies. Anything with music in it really. And Fireman Sam. And Balamory. But Postman Pat is his definite favourite. He never watched enough TV before for me to notice any favourites! I don't plan on letting him watch as much now though. Anyway so he went all snuggly and quiet for nearly an hour with me on the sofa, and then it was bedtime, so he didn't ONCE put weight on the new plaster while it dried out! Yay! So it stayed sound for the week, which was a huge relief.
Here is Arthur sitting on me after his non-existent mama milk, eating raisins and watching CBeebies, letting his cast dry out:
After the first day I finally used a little imagination to give him something distracting to do when he was all miserable - I got the big bag of pasta shells out of the cupboard and his cups and a plastic bottle and a sieve, etc, and he spent AN HOUR completely engrossed in them without a break! He loves anything to do with containers. He put them one by one into the bottle, and then tipped them out into the sieve and then seperated them into different cups. I gave him a baby spoon and he stirred them around in their pots :) He is really into stirring things with spoons lately. Anyway, here he is doing that:
I was so glad to have thought of it because it really helped in a pinch, if he was just unhappy with everything. After a couple of days when pasta got a bit old, I freshened things up with a potty full of walnuts, hehe! He loves those :) Actually that one was Neil's idea. We also discovered that a toddler crawling with plastered leg is an EXCELLENT nut cracker, hehehe! I was able to just follow him and eat his trail ;) (Note: We never leave him alone with either the pasta or the walnuts)
Life improved for Arthur in a huge way when his new iron and ironing board arrived from the Early Learning Centre!!! Yay! He was even more thrilled with it than I imagined he would be! Which is really saying something. They were in a big brown box, which he was standing against and trying to open. I pulled out the ironing board first, while he watched. It was flat-packed and mostly obscured by cardboard and plastic packaging, but you could see the face of the board and the top of the legs folded up behind it. Arthur took one look at it, before it was even fully out of the big box, and did this little gasp, and said, "Un! Un! Un!" with huge wide eyes! I was amazed, since I didn't think it was that recognisable as an ironing board, and I hadn't told Arthur what was in the box! He was soooooooooo excited, bless him!
I set it up right away and he stood at it, seemingly unaware of his cast for the first time, "ironing" and just squealing and roaring and beaming with glee over his new toy! Here are three (of about 50 thousand!) photos:
He has had SO much fun with that "Un" since then! The first day it was here, he literally said the word iron several hundred times! He said it while he was eating his meals, settling down for his nap, crawling around the house, playing with it, everywhere!! I think he was just so thrilled with it. He was so eager to show his daddy when Neil got home from work too :) Today he was exploring my kitchen cupboards and he discovered an electric mixer thingy (the hand-held type with two whisk attachments that clip in) at the back. He stopped and stared, and then looked at me with wide eyes, looked back at it, pointed, and said "Un!" I had to explain to him that it LOOKS a bit like an iron, but it isn't one - it's a mixer! But that's a lot for a little one to understand, so he kept on saying "Un! Un!" and pointing to the cupboard. Sweetie boy :)
Arthur is 15 months old!!! Already! That's a whole year and a quarter! I can't believe how old he is getting, so fast. I remember 15 months being like a mini-milestone age in my mind when I was pregnant and when Arthur was tiny. I would think ahead to this-time-next-year and I couldn't imagine having a 15-month-old, or what one would be like even! And now here he is! My big 15-month-old boy! He is wonderful. I could never have imagined how much. Today is also a special day because it's February 13th, and that is the exact day that Arthur was conceived, 2 years ago! At least, that's the day I ovulated, so that's the day the magic happened and he popped into being in his little one-cell self! Neil and I love remembering February 13th :) We love our boy!
Arthur has suddenly started signing more, though I don't know why because we are still being pretty slack with signing to him and teaching him new signs. Two days ago he squirmed and crawled away while I was changing his clothes, and then hobbled round the kitchen half-naked for a while. I was just about to get him and put some clothes on him, when he appeared by my side, gave me a very direct look, and signed "cold"!! Sure enough, he felt chilly to the touch, and I popped him straight into the warm clothes I had ready for him. But I was so pleased that he came to tell me he was cold!
He is teething again. That molar seems to have stalled - his first one, the one he only got two corners of a while back. It doesn't seem to be coming out, but maybe this new bout of teething is a sign that it will be pushing through soon. Or at least pushing two more corners through! I can't believe how long it's taking to come through. His 7th toothie, the one that came in the day before the molar, is already halfway up next to his two bottom middle teeth. But then those are "easy" teeth compared with molars, I guess.
Anyway so yesterday he was a bit miserable and very red-cheeked and chewing his hands constantly. He signed "medicine" to us for the first time!!!! We are SO thrilled about that because we had deemed it to be one of the most important signs we wanted him to learn, given that it would mean him being able to tell us when he was in pain enough to need some medicine. Also I could not find a sign for medicine anywhere, no matter how hard I looked, so I made one up. So it's my very own sign for medicine, and it's lovely to see Arthur sign it back to me! He was ever so pleased when we responded immediately and gave him some teething powder. He even lay down (we always lay him down to give it to him, as some always misses his mouth otherwise) while I was getting it ready and opened his mouth!
Later that day he was really suffering with his teething, and he did his first two-word signing sentence! He pointed to his ear and then immediately signed medicine. So we gave him Calpol, and he could barely swallow it for smiling at the fact that we'd read his signs and given it to him! It was so sweet. After I gave it to him, he reached for the bottle and I told him I was going to put the medicine away in the kitchen now. Right away he did another "double" sign - he waved bye-bye and immediately signed medicine! We were so excited, hehe!
So that has motivated me to teach him some new signs. I especially want to teach him the sign for raisins. I need to look it up. He wants raisins several times a day and so far he just points at the cupboard where they're kept and grunts this primative "uh-uh-uh-uh!" sound in urgent tones! He does that for a LOT of things actually, so I am hoping that he is getting more interested in learning new signs more quickly, so that maybe signing will replace all this grunting! Then again, he is male. Perhaps he is practising for adolescence?! ;) Though right now, I can't imagine Arthur as anything but charming and sociably adorable! :)
Oh I didn't finish saying about the cast. So he had it removed today, and the physio was so pleased with his foot. It looks way straighter to me, so I'm glad we finally did it. She said he definitely doesn't need another cast - yay! But she thinks he could do with a MONTH of wearing a night boot on it. Ugh. But that's definitely preferable to a plaster cast! At least it's off in the day and he can get around as normal. I hope he won't prise it off at night like he had started to do 8 months ago when he was in night boots. They don't look comfy at all - they are leather with velcro straps, and the boot is bent sharply outwards so that his foot is forced into an outward stretch at the instep. That exaggerates the position his foot should be in, and helps the foot stay straight (or even get a little straighter) between the times during the day when he isn't wearing it. A month seems like a lonnnng time, but it's okay. He wanted to take it off tonight (the first night he has worn one) but we wouldn't let him and he has been asleep 2 or 3 hours now, so all seems well. It's kind of fiddly to put on, but oh well. I hope it works well and we can toss it away after a month! We go back to the physio for a follow-up at the end of March.
Arthur was SO thrilled to have his plaster cast off! He just squealed and smiled at everyone. He did lots of hunching his shoulders up and clenching his fists while he was grinning soooo wide, it was THAT exciting for him! He walked through the hospital back to the car and was so happy and noisy about it all the way :) When we got home he just raced about doing all the things he hasn't been able to do for a week. He did a LOT of climbing on the sofas, and sat playing with pans on the kitchen floor with both legs bent right up under him, smiling and smiling. By bedtime he was completely hyper and desperate to play "escape from Mummy and Daddy" every time we tried to pick him up, or hold him still to change him or brush his teeth, and he even continued like that when the lights were out and I was nursing him. He just wouldn't calm down for sleep and in the end got really frustrated that we were insisting on sleepy time, and then there was lots of tired-and-wired-little-boy crying and tantrums, followed by sudden and exhausted sleep!
Sweet little love. I love his exuberance and his excitement and energy over everything. Even when it means I get tired as a result! I love him so much. He is just this little wriggly, vibrant, moving-blur of a gem in every waking moment of my life. Even when he is driving me crazy. He is so precious. I love him soooo much.
I have way more to write about and catch up on, but it's getting late and I should go to bed. Or maybe just cut out that fleece for a wrap.... Or just be sensible and GO TO BED!! ;) I need to update my pregnancy diary asap. And I need to change my 14-month breastfeeding milestone blinkie to a 15-month one :) I am still nursing Arthur just as frequently as ever, and for just as long each time he nurses, even though I'm not producing even one DROP of milk any more! I'm glad he's still going! But I can't wait for my breasts to actually produce something again, even colostrum would be nice! I like for Arthur to get something when he sucks. But he likes the comfort, which is fine by me. I nurse him on waking (between 6 and 7am), for his after-lunch nap, and at bedtime. Also whenever he wakes in the evening up until about midnight. And any time he asks for it in the day, which varies. Usually he asks at least 3 or 4 times, mostly in the afternoon. Those occasions are just nursing on the go, and they don't tend to last long before he's off again! Those are also the upright nursing sessions, where he stands or sits or kneels to nurse, and where I have to constantly remind him to keep still (which makes absolutely no difference!) as he likes to climb all over me and look around in all directions, all while attached to my nipple! Ow. So anyway. I still say I'm breastfeeding, though the "feeding" part of the word feels like I am not eligible to say it. We're just waiting for the milk to arrive, or colostrum or whatever. Then I'll feel okay to call it actual breastFEEDING again! I just say "nursing" for now. But 15 months anyway :) Yay!
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