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2006-03-05 - 12.30am previous entry next entry
First painting!!! And other stuff....
Our NEW modem seems to have snuffed it. I can�t understand why our modems keep on being useless (when they were previously working perfectly), and yet when the BT bloke comes to test them, they check out fine. He gave us his own one last time which has managed to work for a few months, but it has suddenly stopped working this evening. It gives random windows of about 60 seconds connection here and there, but it�s definitely getting worse as the evening goes on, so I am not really able to get online at all. Tsk! I am writing this on Word in case I get a few seconds to post it sometime.
It�s late so I can�t write for long.
We had a busy week � I don�t know where it went! On Tuesday we went to the last hour of a mother-and-toddler group that we haven�t been to in months. My friend at church runs it (one of my pregnant friends at church!) and we had planned for her to come home with us afterwards for lunch. We missed most of the activities but got there in time for some singing and then free-play time in the hall with the trikes and floor toys. Arthur loved it! He rode a trike with my help but didn�t seem that crazy about it. He played in the play kitchen and opened and shut the windows on the play house a MILLION times, over and over! He also jumped on the trampoline properly for the first time, and he really liked that. We did buy him one for his first birthday but never put it together (how terrible of us!) as we just can�t find space in our tiny house to put it when it�s up!
Arthur had his first bad fall in the hall that morning :( He was pushing a tricycle around the hall for ages, and then he tried to push it sideways on, and overbalanced and toppled right over it. His legs just flipped up in the air and his head went down, and the hall has a hard floor. He landed on his nose and mouth and couldn�t move as his legs were stuck on the trike, poor baby! I didn�t see it happen properly as I was just turning to see what he was doing at the very second it happened, so I just saw the flip-crash move happening as I turned! I also saw every single mother in the whole place react as one, it was so uncanny! They were mostly with their own children, scattered around the hall, and others were chatting with each other. But ALL of them saw Arthur�s accident and they all seemed to lunge forwards in his direction with one accord! I felt touched by the raw concern on their faces, but I know it�s just instinct and I would have done the same for any of the other kiddies there who might have had a similar accident. It was one of those occasions where I felt so proud to be �The Mummy� and everyone fell back while I (THE Mummy!) stepped in to help Arthur and comfort him. I felt so sad for my poor little love as he really hurt himself. He cried a lot and I held him close and kissed him, and I wasn�t actually shaken by it until someone pointed out that he was bleeding. He got a nosebleed from landing on his poor nose and his lip was a little cut and swollen. It�s the first time he has ever got hurt and drawn blood properly in a fall, so I guess that�s why I felt really quite shaken by it after that. I just took him to a quiet area and cuddled him on my lap, and held one of our convenient cloth wipes that someone kindly wet for me under a cold tap, under his nose. He recovered long before his nose stopped bleeding and was smiling and trying to get back in the big hall just a couple of minutes later, with me trailing after him saying things like, �Let Mummy just check your nose, Arthur�.� and similarly feeble things! He didn�t have a bad nosebleed, and he was as cheerful and energetic as ever just minutes later, and not remotely put off the trikes or the big hall full of toys and children! He makes me so proud :)
We did have my friend here for lunch and it was lovely. Arthur had his lunch and then napped TWO HOURS through her visit, so that was wonderful!! I did have to resettle him after the first 50 minutes but he surprised me by going back to sleep again easily. He has started napping WAY better all of a sudden, just this last week or two. I don�t know why. He has had patches like that in the past but they seemed to coincide with a growth spurt or something, and never lasted more than a week. So far he is still napping well in the day, and dropping off very quickly as I nurse him, even when he had been excitable and energetically playing just minutes before! I am tending to stick to a time that he has his naps now, rather than play it by ear and see when he looks sleepy, as that doesn�t seem to work so well with Arthur. Either I don�t read the signs well and miss the ideal window for him, or he naps too late in the day and that messes up bedtime. Or I see him looking sleepy really early, and act on it, and then he is cranky and tired through the long patch of the afternoon. So now he has much more of a routine, which seems to be suiting him way better. Neil gets up with him and gives him breakfast in the morning, and I get up when Neil has to go to work. We always have to go out in the mornings now. Arthur is so energetic and eager to see things and go places that he goes crazy if I don�t take him out at least once a day! We tend to go for a walk round the local streets before his lunch, when we don�t go to Playgroup or something.
Lunch time is pretty much always 11.30 on the dot. Arthur likes his lunch on time! Sometimes I�m disorganised and it comes 15 minutes later, and when we go to Playgroup or other groups, we don�t get home till noon or even 12.30 sometimes, so then he has lunch later. He NEEDS a substantial morning snack these days. Not huge though, just something like a yoghurt-covered cereal bar or a banana and some raisins, or cheese biscuits, etc. If I know he�ll have lunch later than he�s used to, I give him a slightly bigger snack, or offer it to him a little later than usual. He goes to the place where I keep his snack things when he wants a snack, and shouts, �Dack, dack!!� enthusiastically, hehe! �Dack, dack!� is also the same �word� for snap (as in poppers � I tend to call them snaps like they do in the States, because I just prefer the word, and also it makes more sense for Arthur because they really do just go SNAP! when I put them together or bang them onto a new nappy or something! So he has learned to call them �Dack, dack!!�s :) )
So after lunch, it�s usually somewhere between 12 and 1pm, and I give Arthur maybe 15-30 minutes before putting him in bed. Sometimes he has had lunch later so I put him down straight away, or he�s sooo tired during lunch that I put him down as soon as he�s finished. Usually I like him to digest a little first :) He perks up after lunch and can play very energetically, but I still take him up when I think it�s a good time, and he always responds to it, so I think I must be doing something right at last! He sometimes goes to sleep within SIXTY SECONDS, which used to be just unheard of for Arthur! And he is right out after that. I don�t have to creep away carefully, or tiptoe around the house, and he sleeps for much longer. So it�s working well.
Bedtime is NOT working so well, and it is still taking us a very frustrating hour to get him to sleep. He fidgets and nurses on and off, and gets up at least three or four times for a drink of water, and eventually I am toooo sore to nurse him anymore, after which time he just cries and fights our efforts to put him to bed. Urgh. He usually falls asleep by accident after a physical struggle to keep him lying down on the bed, which is NOT the way we want it to be. He is also waking aplenty at night, despite there being no nursing at night and all the �experts� assuring me in their manuals that my baby is now peacefully sleeping through the night � how frustrating is that?!!! It is driving me absolutely crazy as I am soooo tired and can�t fathom why he is still so wakeful and dependent on me to go back to sleep. I absolutely don�t want to leave him to cry though.
I have a new plan. I went back to the Dr. Jay Gordon method for changing the sleep pattern in the family bed (can�t link it as stupid modem not working to allow me to find the link, sorry!) to see if I had cut any corners or done anything wrong the first time around, and I think I HAVE. I was not nursing him and then putting him in bed AWAKE. I still lay next to him to nurse him and just detached him gently when he was dozing off to sleep (though not entirely asleep). This method says I have to make sure he�s fully awake and then put him in bed. So I guess that means an end to snuggling on our sides tummy-to-tummy to nurse :( I am sooooooooo sad about that, as we both love it and would never want it to change, but something desperately needs to happen with his sleep and his dependence on me to get him to sleep, before Matthew is born. We still have our big family floor bed with the new single mattress up against our kingsize. We are going to put the mesh bedguard on the open side of the single mattress (even though it�s on the floor, to save him rolling right off the bed, as he�s very rolly in his sleep!) and then separate the single mattress from the kingsize one by placing one of my long maternity pillows down the bed where the mattresses join. It will still be a big family bed, but he will be in his own space in it, and it will be almost an enforced separate space really. I don�t like the enforced bit, but oh well. Anyway, so I will nurse him on our mattress and then PUT him into bed in his single mattress, and start the Dr. Jay Gordon plan again by sitting with him instead of lying next to him. I think it will be HARD for a while, as he does not do well without me snuggled up next to him, and cries a lot for a long time. But I think it�s time that he learned that he can go to sleep by himself, and that Mummy will not leave him while he does so, and that this is how it is now, in our family � Mummy and Daddy sleep in their own space, and Arthur in his own space, even though we are all staying right next to each other. I don�t personally WANT any more distance between me and my little one than that at night, so I wouldn�t consider moving him to his own room unless it became necessary, say if he was being disturbed by us at night (which MIGHT happen when Matthew is added to the equation!). Anyway. I am just waiting on the delivery of a waterproof single mattress protector (should be here in a few days) and then we�ll start. Urgh. I am dreading it, and too unconfident to hope that it might work, as I have always hoped before and NOTHING has worked, but it needs doing and it�s well worth a try. I just hope it won�t be too awful!
On Wednesday this week we went to the big playgroup again, yay!! It�s only the third time we�ve been, and Arthur caught some lurgy both of the other times. I guess it�s inevitable with the enormous amount of toddlers (75 last time!!!) there, but it�s a good thing for his immune system I guess. Not mine though � I seem to catch his things too! In fact the first time we went, it was ME who caught a cold and passed it to Arthur! Tsk.
Well, Arthur LOVED Playgroup, as always. He could barely keep still enough for me to take his coat off when we arrived, and dashed off to get involved in the activities the second he was free of it! He pushed a plastic chair around the place for 15 minutes without stopping, hehe! Funny boy :) He built a huge tower of those Lego Quattro bricks � the REALLY big ones that are softish. I had to lift him up to put the last few bricks on top, as he was so determined and it was far too tall for him to reach. He built a tower all by himself that was a foot taller than he is!! He is soooo into building things. He builds his Duplo for ages now, completely absorbed in it. The other day he surprised me (again) by sorting the Duplo into colours and building a single tall tower out of each colour � a red one, a blue one, a green one, a yellow one, and a black one! He likes to do that a lot at the moment. He also sorts them and builds them by shape, building towers (colour-specific) out of only the square bricks, and then a multi-coloured tower out of the few rectangular bricks in the set. He understands some colours, for example if he is stacking his rings on their stick and he goes to put the blue one on before the yellow one (which needs to go on first), and I say, �Can you put the yellow one on first, Arthur?� � he will drop the blue one and look around until he finds the yellow one, and put that one on instead. He seems to have a preference for the colour pink � he loves pink things! He also seems to be less than excited about the colour blue. It�s fascinating to watch him choose preferences for things, just out of his own interest and leanings. I like to learn new things about my lovely little boy!
Arthur did his first ever painting at Playgroup this week!!! He has seemed completely uninterested in painting and drawing until very recently, and at Playgroup he walked right up to the painting table (walking right past the playdough table though, still not ready for that yet!) and hung about looking interested. A lady asked if he would like to paint, and I said he had never tried it before. She got him an (enormous!) apron and I found a piece of paper, and we sat at the table and painted!! I handed him loaded paintbrushes one at a time with different colours, and he actually dabbed and blobbed them onto the paper in front of him with interest! Yay! I have been looking forward sooooo much to when he gets interested in painting and craft activities and stuff. I am really looking forward to doing things like that with him. I had SO much fun with my own mummy doing that kind of thing when I was very little! I still have fond memories of it, going back as early as before my brother was born (I was nearly 3 then). Arthur also painted his free hand (he painted with his right hand, incidentally) and stared at it unconvinced until I printed it onto the paper to encourage him to finger paint. But he isn�t crazy on finger painting. He just wanted to use the paintbrushes. After I gave him the blue paint, he lost interest, haha! I washed his hands (he LOVES having his hands washed with actual soap these days!) and hung his apron up, and he had already run off into another activity room by the time I was writing his name on his painting and putting it on the rack to dry with all the other children�s paintings � and I can tell you, that was a tearfully proud moment for me :) It�s one of those �Mothering Firsts� that gives me a lump in my throat :) My little man�s first big-boy painting!! And here it is!
And in pride of place as the first piece of artwork by any of our children, on our fridge door later the same day :)
Isn�t it lovely?! Well, I know I�m biased, but still!! ;) The sort of dotty part on the left is where I printed his painted fingers, but he painted the rest himself :) He liked to paint colours on top of other colours. I just love being a Mummy! Suddenly over moments like this it just overwhelms me. I love it so much.
Also at Playgroup I was feeling really tired out and heavy so instead of tailing Arthur everywhere, I decided to go with him into the big hall full of floor toys and just sit on one of the chairs around the edge. That hall is absolutely enormous, and so noisy with all the children playing. You can�t hear someone shouting across it from the other side! I wanted to see if Arthur would just be fine getting on with things without me nearby. He has never shown any sign of having a problem with this, but I always stay near anyway. I made sure he knew where I was, and then just sat and watched him do things. He pushed toys around and played in the kitchen. He watched children climbing on the big wooden climbing frame that he is still too little for really � the kids on there are sooo much bigger than him and it�s such a crowded piece of apparatus. He approached several children and just smiled at them or looked interested in what they were doing, and he examined some small toys here and there. He never once looked my way! I watched him for ages! After a long time he tripped on a toy and fell to his hands and knees. I knew he wasn�t hurt, but I like that he looked up at me right away, from where he was on his hands and knees. I called out (completely muted by all the noise!), �You okay Arthur?� and his expression changed to happy again and he got up and toddled off to play with something else :) That was the only time he looked over at me, so I�m thrilled that he�s so confident. And reassured that he knows where I am if he needs me, and WILL look for me if he wants to.
The only bad thing about Playgroup this week is that � you guessed it! � Arthur has come down with a cold in the last 24 hours. I am sort of relieved because he has had two AWFUL nights where he was waking hourly � HOURLY folks!!!! - and being really unsettled and making me want to cry with exhaustion by the morning. I am hoping it was just down to the cold coming and he�ll sleep a lot better after it clears up. I expect we will have some crappy nights till then though. He woke five times yesterday evening alone, between 7.30 and 11.30pm. Urgh. I think he must have had a sore throat. They are the WORST. I would be that wakeful too, if I had one. Neil came down with a cold the same day, but I�m pretty sure he has a different one to Arthur�s � urgh, let�s hope they don�t give each other their colds (or both to me!)! One cold at a time is enough I think! Neil said everyone at work seems to have a cold at the moment, and he couldn�t have caught the same cold as Arthur since he wasn�t at Playgroup. If he has Arthur�s cold, it would have shown up later. I am taking lots of vitamin C. I reeeally don�t want a cold right now!
Another culprit for the bad sleep was probably the fact that we discovered a little shiny corner of Arthur�s second molar peeking through his gum yesterday! So that is toothie number 9 for Arthur. It�s a top molar, to match the one he has on the other side at the top. He doesn�t have any bottom molars yet, but that�s the order I got my baby teeth too, apparently. The other molar at the top is now just over halfway in � one whole side of it. It�s sharp and he uses it much more to chew food now. Poor Boo, having big ole molars grinding through his gums at the same time as a poxy cold starting :( But he�ll get better soon, I hope. Just in time for another trip to Germ City, uh, I mean Playgroup! ;)
Arthur now makes the sounds for a siren :) What a nice area we live in, that he puts his hand to his ear like five times in one afternoon to sign to me that he can hear a siren outside! But oh well, we use it to learn! I tell him it�s a siren, and mimic the wailing sound of it. Now he signs that he can hear something when he hears a siren, even a reeeally distant one that I wouldn�t have noticed, and then he makes such a cute high-pitched aaaooowwwaaaoowww sound to mimic the siren :) He is so sweet!
He has fallen in love with Neil�s stuffed fluffy toy dog in our bedroom! I bought it for him in the early days of our relationship when we were nauseatingly cutesy with each other, haha! I have a big stuffed grizzly bear toy in the bedroom too, that my brother got me years ago for Christmas. Arthur started pointing to the bear and saying, �Uff uff!� (doggy sounds), so I told him it was a bear and made a growling sound, and showed him the dog and made the doggy sounds. For ages he would still point at the bear and say �uff uff!� but now if I say �bear� he growls. But in the process of all this, he has fallen for that stuffed doggy BIG TIME! He loves it, and likes it when we make it gallop up to him and eat his neck and tummy, �woof, woof, woof�ing all the time! The cutest thing about it is that he spends ages sitting with the doggy, holding its head in his hands right in front of his face, and talking to it in doggy sentences (all made up of �uff�s!). It�s the cutest thing I ever saw.
Ohhhh it�s so late, I am so stoopid! Okay I have to go to bed. I hope the modem is working enough for me to post this before I turn in. It�s driving me crazy! Oh but I have a few photos first! I took some pictures of Arthur yesterday before he got all cranky and miserable and snotty. It�s hard to get photos of Arthur at any distance any more, because he always likes to get as near to the camera as possible while I�m trying to take them! So here is Arthur leaning on his bump of a brother and looking up at me:
His eyes look so brown in that picture. There are still quite large areas of grey to his eyes. I still can�t figure what they are going to do eventually! I love them though, they are so unusual and suit him so well :)
Arthur likes my hairbrush. He likes to brush his hair with it, and is actually getting quite good at it now! Excuse the horribly full-of-hair hairbrush, ugh�
He also likes to wear my glasses. I am sure this can�t be a good idea � I get worried it will weaken his eyesight or something, looking through someone else�s glasses! But he just gets so excited to try them on, and smiles and smiles soooo big when he is looking through them. So occasionally I let him for a few seconds. He looks so cute and funny in my glasses! Here he is wearing them yesterday, still brandishing that horrible hairbrush! I love these photos. They make me want to go and kiss his soft cheeks and breathe him in till I stop breathing altogether, I don�t know why. I just love him so much, and he�s so gorgeous and such a cutie, and I just CAN�T believe I am this blessed and he is MINE! Thank you Lord for my precious baby boy. Baby boys!! Thank you Lord for blessing me AGAIN with another wonderful baby boy to love! I just feel so happy with what I have been given :)
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