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2007-05-18 - 12.51am previous entry next entry
First evening out since Arthur!
Thank you so much for all the congrats on my new niece! :) We will be visiting them on Sunday, and I can't WAIT!! I will hopefully have photos (or one, at least!) to post here! Yay! They are doing GREAT. They were home within 24 hours of the birth, and everything is settling down nicely. Thea is feeding well and sleeping a TON, and they are gradually recovering from the night at the hospital! Bennie sent me photos so I have already "seen" her, but they have family members in them who I'm not sure would want to be splashed over the internet! Anyway. She looks way more like Sarah than Bennie, to me, but she has Bennie's monkey toes! :) I have those too, but Bennie's are MUCH longer than mine. They are seriously like fingers, hehe! Thea's are the same. I am totally unable to get my head around the fact that my little brother is a daddy! Seriously. I see the pictures of him holding her, and talk to him on the phone (several times already!) and my brain hears that he's talking like a daddy, but I just can't GET it! It's toooo surreal! I am STILL getting weepy about them when I think of them. I am having weird hormones that I need to write about in a different diary. *sigh*
Guess what I did tonight?! I WENT OUT!!!!
(pause to let that sink in...)
Yep, for the FIRST time since my baby shower for Arthur at the end of my pregnancy with him (ie, over 2.5 YEARS ago!), I went out in the evening!!! People are aghast when I tell them that. I'm not. It feels natural to stay home with my babies 24/7 for EVER, so I do. I have no urges to go out, at all.
At church last Sunday, my friend Michelle (who had a baby in July, a month after Matthew) told me there was a women's social coming up and that I should go. I said the usual thing, "Oh but the boys sometimes wake, blah blah blah" but she was quite persistant! She said I should let Neil handle it and it would be fine. She said I ought to get out of the house without the kids once in a while. She said, "Come onnnn! Matthew is nearly 11 months old! It's time you went out!" and then I made the mistake of telling her, actually I haven't been out since Arthur was born, and then she said, "I'm going to ask Neil" and off she went! Poor Neil! She came springing back saying, "You're coming!" and that was that!
She isn't the type to hear excuses! But I was determined that if the boys seemed like they might need me that evening, there was no way I would go. If there was a chance that Matthew might wake, I wasn't going. This week he has had some WEIRD sleep going on, and seems kind of miserable about something (teeth again??) so I really didn't know if he'd be wakeful on Friday evening between like 8 and 10.30pm (when this thing was on). Also we are struggling these days with getting the boys to bed at a decent hour. I am cooking the family meals for when Neil gets home, but they seem to be slipping later, and we don't eat till like 30-45 minutes after he gets in. So that puts off bath time, which puts off bedtime, and neither of the boys just get popped in bed and go to sleep by themselves. Matthew is getting more difficult to settle these days (especially for naps) and he takes maybe 30 minutes including breastfeeding in bed (which is about half of that time). Arthur is longer. Sometimes MUCH longer. So they are getting to sleep between 8 and 9 at the moment. Some nights Arthur isn't asleep till as late as 9.30 - waaaay too late. I need to pull my socks up on the cooking and make sure we eat WHEN Neil gets in, not ages after.
Anyway. So at the moment we are pretty much guaranteed to be in the midst of putting boys to bed on the dot of 8 o'clock. But Michelle said that it's just a "turn up from 8pm" thing, so I should just try to make it. She was kind of pushy! I almost wanted a way out of going, but actually I sort of liked the idea of the evening. It was a clothes swap party, with lots (and lots!) of chocolate to eat :) The ladies at church have really taken off in the past year with social stuff - I mean, there are some really close friendships forming, and since it's a "young" church, as in, most of the people there are basically in their 20s and 30s (and plenty of university students) with some 40s as well, it's just so nice. I don't know why. It's sort of like girlie fun that I remember from school (I went to a girls' school, which was SO much fun on the social side (school was not so much fun otherwise!)). With close friendships in similar age women, there seems to be lots of fun and laughter and giggling, and silliness :) Which I enjoy, and have missed from school!
So that's why I was interested, although I did NOT want to go out and leave my lil boo beans. I really DON'T feel that it's essential to my mental health that I leave the house without my babies. I think I am programmed to want to stay close to my children when they're young, and I don't think that feeling needs "fixing" or fiddling with. It does really help me that I have never been a "going out" type. I am a total homebird. I know there are plenty of women who would just go stir crazy if they didn't get out of the house after having kids, and have a social life. I don't ever have that. And that helps me stay at home with my kids like I want to.
Anyway. Last night I took a shower in the evening and Matthew woke during that and was INCONSOLABLE when Neil rocked him. I dried and threw on pyjamas as fast as I could, but he was just sobbing and wet with tears when I got there, arms flailing for me as I went towards him. He is like that at the moment. Only Mummy will do. And my friends, there is no greater feeling! :) A lady at church asked if Matthew was at a clingy stage, and I said he was, and she immediately got terribly sympathetic and said how hard that must be for me. But I had to tell her that it ISN'T. It gets wearing on hard days when Matthew won't let go of my legs so I can't walk around. If I prise him off me then he screeches and wails and is totally miserable. If I HAVE to get something done, then it's stressful to have him crying for me while I do it, especially if Arthur wants me too. Sometimes I find it a bit irritating.
But otherwise I totally love it! His little face just pleads for me to hold him and love him and make him feel secure. His favourite place is pressed to my chest, with my arms wrapped around him. He wraps his own arms around my neck and shoulders, and squeeeezes his little cheek into my neck/jaw. He peers over my shoulder at things, resting his chin on me. If he wants a good look at something, he leans himself away from me to look, but clings on HARD with both hands, to my shirt or my shoulders. As I hold him and sort of jiggle a little bit to get him ready for sleep (both for naps and bedtime) after breastfeeding him, he puts his forehead on my chest and his arms just slowly drop down by his sides. As I go to lift him away from me into his cot, his arms jerk up like a reflex reaction and clutch frantically at my neck and shoulders, clinging on for dear life! He can do this in his sleep even, these days.
I LOVE love love it. If I'm tired of jiggling and need to put him down and get back to Arthur or something, and he flings his little arms around my neck and holds on tightly, I can't help it, I just melt and wrap my arms round him even tighter and kiss his little head all over. I give him a little longer, and then try again. I just find the feeling SO precious and don't seem to be tiring of it. I know it will be such a fleeting thing in the grand scheme of things, and I'll miss it one day. I miss it NOW when I think like that.
He's just such a precious lovie-boo. I love him sooooo. I could hold him forever, if only my body wouldn't get so tired doing it! I just want to squeeze or eat that boy at most moments during the day! ;)
Anyway, I digress! So after yesterday evening I thought there was NO WAY I was going to the thing this evening. But he napped okay today, and Neil said he wasn't that likely to wake before 10.45ish, except if he woke within like half an hour of going to sleep (which occasionally happens). So I waited till he'd been asleep over half an hour and then went! I got there at 9pm and came home around 10.30 when it finished. Neil said he woke at 10pm - aargh! But he didn't wake Arthur, and Neil managed to get him back to sleep rocking him for a while. He was much sleepier than when he woke yesterday so that made it easier.
So that's great! I had a nice time, and came home with lots of clothes - yay! The ones that didn't get taken are going in a BIG load to charity. The nicest thing about it was that it was a REALLY girlie evening. I don't know what I expected it to be really. I guess I figured it might be a big pile of clothes on a table with various women rifling through the piles, like some jumble sale or something! And refreshments, and chat.
It was MUCH more informal! I turned up to find a small living room with no carpet visible, as the entire floor was knee deep in jumbled clothes of all types and sizes! About 8 ladies stood, knelt, or sat in amongst all these clothes, chatting and giggling like school girls, in various states of undress, hehe! They all looked up when I came in, and suddenly I felt nervous, but Katie (wearing the same nursing bra that I had on!) just cheerfully asked me my clothes size and then told me to come on over and get stuck in! So I did! Everyone just tried on EVERYTHING that they might possibly fit in, and even the stuff they did NOT fit in, haha! It was great fun. I tried on a ton of stuff and VERY quickly lost my sense of awkwardness over just peeling my clothes off. I came home with a really nice thick jumper, a bright orange cardigan thingy that everyone said I HAD to take because the colour really suited me (who knew!), lots of basic T-shirts and tops, two pairs of trousers, and a SKIRT!! I am not a skirt girl. I just feel unconfident about pulling them off (not literally, I mean pulling off the look!).
The evening was really good because if I put an item of clothing on, I instantly had 5 or 6 people telling me if it suited me or what things went well and what did not. Everyone was friendly and honest and flattering and encouraging. I found out stuff about myself in just that hour or so that I didn't even know, from everyone else's comments as I tried things on! I suit reds and oranges, and I can pull off bright colours. I should not be embarrassed to wear tops that reveal my stomach somewhat, as it's not as bad as I think it looks. It doesn't look like I have stretch marks on my tummy to the casual observer. I tend to see myself as bigger than I am. I try tops on and say, "Ohhh, this is too tight in the breastfeeding department, don't you think?" and everyone says, "Noooo!" and then someone tells me that it's just "fitted" rather than too tight, and it flatters my figure, etc :) I had the same trouble with my hips, or rather, the flobbly stuff that sits a few inches below them. I said, "Ooh I don't really DO skirts, they're a bit scary!" which instantly made me into a "project"!! Skirts and dresses were pressed on me to try, and I actually found one that I like. It's dark blue with tiny flowers, and knee length and a cute feminine cut. I can't really describe it. Anyway. I kept squeezing the flobbly stuff through the skirt and asking if it was looking bulgy through the skirt but people said no. So I brought it home! Yay! A SKIRT, for me!!! :)
Another nice thing was that everyone there (but one, I think, and the hostess) was a breastfeeding mummy! These are pretty much the people who are MOST likely to attend an event where they can get rid of clothes they don't fit, and try a ton of other clothes on in different sizes, which they can take away for free! Lots of us had the same nursing bra on (Emma Jane, the same exact design too!) which we found quite amusing! ;) Katie and I had the oldest babies out of the bunch. The youngest baby is nearly 3 months, but all the babies were at home with their daddies watching them :)
Oh but one slightly less-than-perfect moment was when Katie said I should try on a tight (sorry, fitted) boob-tube type of top, like a black evening number. It was really pretty and it was shoulderless with a tie around the back of the neck. I NEVER wear such stuff, so thought it would be fun to try it on. Well I put it on over my bra (bras were coming OFF at this point to try on skimpy tops and stuff, and everyone seemed completely relaxed about such things!) and then went to fix it properly in front of the mirror. Everyone looked and Michelle did the tie up behind my neck. People were saying all flattering things about how it looked, and then Michelle noted that you couldn't really see how it looked properly with the bra straps in the way, and said, "Do you mind if it undo it for you?" and when I said okay, she whipped my bra off! I mean, the boob tube top was still in place, but urrrgh, the tired-and-worn-out boobs inside instantly dropped like FOUR INCHES, hahaha! And there was this silent pause, and then, "Oh. That doesn't sit right... Nooo, that's not sitting right at all!" and THEN, "Can you sort of... hoist yourself up in it again?!" So I did kind of shove the girls up the top, but alas, they plopped straight back down, and nobody seemed to think anything of it (they just said how nice it would look with a push-up bra that didn't have straps, and I should definitely take it home if I had a bra like that, etc) but ohhhh it was a somewhat bashful moment for me! *cringe* I did not take it home! ;)
I ate lots of chocolate biscuits and other yummy stuff. And it was actually a great feeling to be one of the people saying, "Ohhh that really suits you!" to others as they tried things on. I felt so.... part of a close group of girls. And I have REALLY missed that from school days. And those are a really really long time ago now!
I was praying like crazy while I was driving there and back though. I am just paranoid that anything might happen to me, because I can't bear the thought of my boys not having their mummy. They are so tiny. They NEED me. I don't want anything to happen to take me away from them. I always feel extra anxious when I'm driving away from them, or even when I'm driving back towards them. I just want to be 100% there for them. I love them so much.
Okay, it's late and I'm going to bed. I just wanted to add one more thing - a video clip (wow, it's been a while since my last one!). This afternoon they boys and I ate a good lunch and it seemed to last ages, so they ended up going for their afternoon naps quite late. Matthew took an age to settle to sleep. I knew he would, given how he's been this week (on Wednesday he refused ALL naps and was awake from 7.25am to 8.10pm!!!!!! Never had anything like that with Matthew before - he's such a good sleeper in the day! And then he woke all evening crying too. Odd.), so I set Arthur up with a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD to keep him entertained and quiet (he's SO bellowing and noisy these days!) until I had managed to convince Matthew to go to sleep. When I finally came down, he had gone to sleep! Arthur NEVER goes to sleep by himself in the day. EVER. Like, a handful of times in his entire life. He always, always breastfeeds to sleep for daytime naps. He was kneeling up on the sofa and I thought he was in an odd position, and then I realised he wasn't moving, and realised he was asleep! I think he had been resting his cheek on the sofa back, watching Thomas, and then dozed off, and turned his head the other way when he stirred after a bit (like he does). He was RIGHT out. He was even doing the odd little sucky-sucky thing he does in his sleep - he's still my baby really! Here he is:
See him doing his sucky thing with his mouth right at the end there?! He has done that since birth. Since he sucks to fall asleep, even now, he still does that cute baby sucking thing in his sleep :) I love it. It reminds me that he's still just a baby boo, even though the world around me is busy shouting at me that he's "a big boy now" and that I need to make him more independent and less of a baby, etc. I love his sucky-sucky thing :)
After I filmed that, I picked him up and he protested, "No, I just wanna..." and then conked out on my shoulder. He didn't even flinch when I laid him down in bed, and slept 50 minutes straight. So sweet!
How lovely it is to actually write a diary entry which, for once, is about TODAY'S happenings rather than last month's or something! I love writing my diary when I am right up to date. It becomes more of a chore otherwise. I am still way behind on other newsy stuff with the boys and of course the photos, but I'll get to them soon. I took some photos of the boys today that will hopefully come out nicely so I'll post those asap as well.
Okay, bedtime. Sooooo exhausted now. Night night!
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