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2005-07-20 - 11.43pm previous entry next entry
TWO milestones!!!!
Oooh thank you for the guestbook entries! Eiluned, so nice to hear from you! And thank you to everyone for the congrats on Arthur's first toothie!
Guess what?! That toothie has a new friend :) Toothie number two broke through today! Yaaaaaaaaay! His first tooth is now about a mm or two above the gum (soooo tiny!) and I only realised it had grown out a bit since it came through, when the 2nd tooth came in - just a little hard speck of white on the gum like that first one was just 3 days ago! I'm so glad he has two teeth only 3 days apart. Phew. Two down, 18 to go, hehe!
I noticed it this morning, but he is still teething badly this evening, so I don't know what's up with that. He has a bad nappy rash today. Hmmm. Maybe it's a food thing? But he IS having teething pain this evening that was bad enough for me to give him Calpol AGAIN (the teething powder didn't do anything this time) before his bath and bedtime. Poor sausage. I guess those teeth have to grow up out of the gum now, and that will not be comfy in his jawbone. Anyway. The nappy rash MIGHT possibly be something to watch re. food, because this dumb mummy, after being so careful about introducing different foods all this time, suddenly introduced a little bit of both dairy and wheat yesterday! D'OH!! That wasn't the wisest move, but oh well. I think he already has ingested a little bit of wheat in the form of a tiny bit of bread though, a week or so ago, and was fine. Yesterday - no actually, it was the day before - he gummed on the crust of my Dairylea sandwich (very thinly spread) on wholemeal bread. He seemed to like it, and he gummed two pretty good sized pieces of bread off the crust and swallowed them. He gagged, but I just kept showing him how to chew and eventually he did start chewing it!! Then of course it was pulp and he swallowed it with no trouble :) So yesterday I had a grated cheese sandwich, and I gave him a little tiny pile of grated cheese to play with. He didn't really eat any. Well, one grated sliver went down, but it got gagged on. So I cut him off a little finger of my cheese sandwich and he gummed on that. I think maaaybe he might have swallowed a tiny bit of bread. White bread this time though.
He has also tried a new Heinz simply fruit thing - apple and blueberry. Which he took fairly readily but with lots of faces. I tried it and found it soooo tart!! So I don't blame Arthur for making faces and finding it a bit much! It was nice though. Today I finished the rest of it after he had a tiny bit and refused the rest. Yum!
I found two more at the supermarket today - pea and parsnip, and pear and pineapple. We'll see how those go. I also found him two organic jars of actual meal-type-stuff, one with chicken and one with beef. We had turkey stir fry last night and if it had been organic turkey I wanted to save some for Arthur to try, but it wasn't. Need to buy organic food for us more. Once he has really got the hang of all these different flavours and of eating and chewing and stuff, I can't wait to get back to making him food myself, or having him share our meals if we omit the salt (which we never eat anyway, actually) and so on.
Soooo. I did buy an organic melon today at the supermarket :) I don't know what he'll think of it. I think it will be off-putting because it will be wet and slimy to hold, and he hates that. So I think I will freeze a few little slices to put in the Baby Safe Feeder for teething on. If he likes it, he'll eat it once it's thawed. He has had lots of frozen grapes in the feeder but he makes faces once they start thawing and won't eat them - he's so picky!
Today I suddenly realised in a sort of panic-stricken way (!) that I need to start cleaning Arthur's new teeth! I felt a bit flappy because he has had a tooth for 3 days now and we haven't cleaned it. Poor Arthur! So I started in earnest today. He has had a few tastes of my Yeo Valley organic strawberry yoghurt (sooooooo yummy!) two days running, and he seems to LOVE it, so I bought him some Yeo Valley fruit tumble yoghurts (from 6 months up) for his very own today! We'll see how he goes with them. Or if they make his rash worse. Hmmm... Anyway, yoghurts have sugar in (if they have fruity flavours, it seems) so it's extra vital that I clean his teeth. I use the Milk Teeth Toothpaste that we got a free sample of in my bounty baby pack at the hospital! I just smudge a teensy bit onto a soft towelling wipe, and massage it into his gums where the new teeth are. He doesn't much care for this! We will get started with a toothbrush once his teeth are more "out" and he has had a chance to get used to having the wipe method first. I figured it would be an easier transition this way. He makes faces at the toothpaste flavour (mint), but then once he is used to it, he opens his mouth for more, hehe! He also opened his mouth for more with my yoghurt! Yay! :)
But there's MORE news today! Arthur crawled today for what I think was the first time! A couple of days ago he made maybe a single full-crawl movement with all his limbs, before flopping back down onto his tummy, so I'm not sure whether to call that his first crawl, as he didn't go anywhere! But today he is moving. I expected him to just take off once he started, but he doesn't seem to be like that. He is so doddery and wobbly, it's so cute!! I wondered if he would army crawl first, on his belly, but he doesn't seem to have done that bit. Mind you, he has been on his hands and knees for a good while now, just waiting for motion to kick in! He is really taking his time with the stages of getting going, and not rushing off at all like I thought he would. In fact I wouldn't be too surprised if he forgot all about it tomorrow and didn't crawl at all! It's odd. Although now I think about it, he did do this with rolling too. He rolled and then seemed to have forgotten how for WEEKS, and then once he started again, it was just now and then for a while. For a week or so now, he has been moving his knees back and forth like he's crawling with them, but his arms stay locked straight and unmoving! He has been SOOOO frustrated with this, but hasn't seemed to know what to do with his arms, poor love! Then a few days ago he started lifting one arm waaaay up in the air and to the side when on his hands and knees, like he was practising balancing on three limbs or something! Then he started going through the motions of crawling, but at a standstill, like treading water but crawling! Funny boy. His hands went up and down, pat pat pat pat, and his knees scissored back and forth, but he went nowhere! Then finally today he started tottering forwards slightly with one hand, then the opposite knee would drag forwards an inch, then the other hand would be shakily placed next to the first hand, and the second knee would move forward. He did this maybe three times in a row with all his limbs and then he was at a toy so he stopped :) He did this twice more at different times in the day, but that is all really. He is also using his hands and knees seperately (but together) when he turns round on all fours now, whereas before he would just drag himself around by his arms when on all fours. So he's doing it! But slowwwwly.
He was able to reach the TV cabinet thingy today though - aaargh! He is fascinated by opening and shutting the cabinet door. It's right on his level and has an attractive shiny handle, which is annoyingly un-baby-proofable as it is just flat and smooth, not really like a handle at all. He can grip it and pull, but he loses his grip on it when the door is a few inches open, so it bangs shut again. Allll day long it has been - bang!..... bang!..... bang!........... bang!...bang! etc!! But I am finding it very cute at the moment :) I think I will make that cabinet "his" cabinet, and fill it with safe things for him to play with, as it's obvious that he's going to be opening it and exploring it a lot. At least if it's his, I won't have to worry about him getting into it.
What else can I tell you? I had my smear today at LAAAAAAST!!! First time in four years! Tsk. I am so pleased because it did not hurt :) I carried Arthur in with me though, and discovered there was nowhere to put him while I had my smear done. The nurse gave me two options - have a receptionist hold him while I had my smear (umm, NO!!) or sit him up on the lil bed thingy in the crook of my arm while I had it done!!!! I thought there was no way I would be able to relax if he was sitting against me, since I was sure he'd squirm and I'd have to hold him tight, but it was fine - he was a good boy :) It was the same nurse who gave him his vaccinations earlier in the year, but he didn't seem to remember her! His next one is MMR at 13 months. Which slightly scares me, but I will write about that much later on, because I haven't had chance to think about it yet really.
The nurse asked me about what contraception we were using, and I said I was charting. So she said, "Natural Family Planning?" and I guess it sort of is, so I said yeah. She asked what would happen when my cycles got more normal and I said we would be trying to conceive again. She asked if I got pregnant now, would it be like not such a bad thing, because NFP could be a bit unreliable when breastfeeding. So I thought about it, and actually yes, she's right really. I don't think it WOULD feel like such a bad thing. But we still want to wait for now. And we're still avoiding parsnips when I am showing fertile signs. For now. Anyway, my post-ovulation part of my cycle does not look good at all. It looks basically not fertile. So hmmm, I hope that improves! I'm currently at 5 days past ovulation, but who knows when my period will show. It could be tonight. Last luteal phase was 7 days, and the two before that were 4 days. So we'll see.
There MUST be something else!.... Ohh I know there is. But it's gone. My brain is blank. I need to go to bed. Oh I wanted to have photos for you but I haven't been able to get any good ones of Arthur's lil teeth! I will wait till I get a photo that will do the grandness of the situation justice!! Hehe! Then I will post it asap. If he crawls more I will try to get footage for you to see :) It seems that he's suddenly hitting so many milestones and changing so much all at once. Mind you, from what I see, it seems that this is quite the norm around 8 months for most babies.
I love my lil Boo. Soooooooooooooooo much.
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