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2006-02-26 - 12.25am previous entry next entry
Birthday, Part Two :) And Arthur stuff...
It's late, but oh well! I have had a lovely day! Today was Birthday Part Two :) This morning Neil took Arthur out shopping and I lay in till 10am!!!! I also got to relax in a bath today, and I did a little bit of sewing this afternoon, and then Neil made us chicken and veg stir fry with rice (which I could just eat for EVER these days, mmmm!) for dinner and we watched 'What Women Want' whilst consuming ridiculous quantities of my birthday chocolates :) I had a LOVELY Birthday Part 2!! I got a card from Jemma the other day too, which was lovely to receive - thank you Jemma! So yay, I feel all happy and birthdayed-out now - way different to how I felt on my actual birthday :)
Also Arthur is better now - yay again! It wasn't chicken pox at all. He did get another red bump on his leg but it didn't blister and is clearing up, so I don't know what it was. His cough continued to get worse till Day 5 (which was Wednesday, I think, the day after my last entry). That morning we didn't go to Playgroup because he was just poorly and clingy and rubbing his eyes with tiredness the whole morning. For his midday nap, he slept longer than usual and sweated a TON, and for the first time in days he didn't cough once in his sleep, or when he woke either. He was a completely different boy during the afternoon - smiley, energetic, etc. He did cough a few times in the afternoon, but he slept well that night and didn't cough once the whole night! In the morning he was absolutely 100% back to himself again. So I guess it was a weird viral cough thingy and it ran its course. I often sweat like crazy and sleep deeply as I kick the last bit of a virus out of my system, so it makes sense to me that that's what it was.
Anyway I am soooo pleased that he is better! He will just have to get chicken pox another time! ;) There's plenty of time for it, and hopefully Matthew will catch it at the same time (not toooo young though!) so they will both get it out of the way at once. I don't know if Arthur might have been exposed to it and developed immunity though - we'll just have to wait and see.
I can't believe I don't have any photos to post today! I feel like there should be some... maybe there are some on the camera that I haven't uploaded? I need new batteries though.
I just felt like writing here tonight to offload some random flotsam that is floating round my head. It feels like it would be good to declutter up there a little. So here I am. I have some really big feelings-type-issues that I want to splurge but I might run out of time to really write a long emotional entry, and anyway I also want to write pointless things like, there are ten glasses of water on this desk! How bad is that?! Every night I bring a glass of water up to bed and then forget to take it down again in the morning. So obviously a desk covered with TEN glasses of water is an indication that I have been particularly crap at tidying or remembering things lately! Tsk. We are going to run out of glasses in the kitchen cupboard if I don't take some down. And get water marks that I'll have to vinegar-off, bleurgh. But how many times do I manage to go downstairs without a hefty boy in my arms or an enthusiastic climber to keep steady as he makes his way down, or more laundry than I should be carrying these days, etc? So the glasses get left. But I'll take as many as I carry when I go to get tonight's glass of water ;)
Arthur does all the actions to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star! Did I mention that yet? He started doing it a week or two ago, just like that. He does twinkly hands opening and closing, and he points up above the world so high, and his favourite (and most accurate) action is making his forefingers and thumbs touch each other (both hands) to make a diamond shape for "like a diamond in the sky". When he does that, my eyes fill up and I can't sing the words clearly. I have NO idea why seeing him make such a sweet little diamond with his hands at the appropriate part of the song makes me emotional! It just does. If he wants me to sing that song, he makes the diamond shape with his fingers and thumbs to tell me so :) I thought that would be the hardest action for him to make but he surprised me by doing it right off the bat when I showed him how.
We have therefore started singing a lot more action songs that involve hand actions, as he LOVES them! I have to sing a LOT these days, hehe! His current favourite is Incy Wincy Spider, and he asks for it by making his fingers and thumbs into the start of Incy Wincy climbing up the spout - he can't do the actual climbing motion but he can make the initial shape - it's different to the diamond shape for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star so I know which he's asking for! He also loves In A Cottage, In A Wood - one of MY favourites from when I was at nursery school! So far he just watches me do the actions, completely absorbed, and I have to do it millions of times over, but he has started to mimic the hopping actions and the beckoning one near the end of the song too. He still loves his old favourite, Wind The Bobbin Up :) I have been singing that with him since he was a tiny baby. He can do the actions for that too, except for actually winding his hands round each other. He always claps and beams at the end of an action song, before signing for me to do it again :)
He is suddenly "doing" shape sorters. My eyes nearly fell out of my head when I saw him doing it. I guess it seems such a.... I don't know, clever or "big boy" thing to be doing, even though obviously he was going to be able to do it some day! It just feels like a second ago he was juuust starting to stack one brick on top of another, and suddenly he is picking up a circle shape, turning the shape sorter around till he finds the circle hole, and deftly posting it through, then picking up a star shape and doing the same thing, very quickly and accurately! It amazes me that he knows which shapes go with which holes (how has he learnt that?!). He only spent a couple of weeks trying to ram the wrong shapes in the wrong holes, and suddenly he isn't doing that any more, he just knows to look for the right hole and he recognises it when he finds it and posts the shape through. I think he is ahead for that kind of activity, but I'm not sure. I know that shape sorters are generally recommended from 18 months onwards though, so I guess at 15 months he's doing well. He is also trying to make bridges when he builds bricks, and to stand two bricks on their ends on top of one long brick, etc. He is trying new things with cylinder-shaped bricks as well. He is just so curious about trying new things with his hands, as ever. It's amazing to watch him learn things as he tries them out for himself. He works so hard at it and concentrates for so long - he really loves this kind of activity!
He is also now putting pieces in his jigsaw - the right pieces for the right holes, but not always rotated the right way to fit, if it's an irregular shape like an animal. He can fit them in if he is holding them the right way up, but usually he has to try rotating them first, and he often doesn't seem to have the patience for that yet. He does persevere with some of them though, and rotate them enough for them to slot in properly. I love sitting with him to do his jigsaw and tipping all the pieces out. I ask him, "Where's the cat?" and his eyes search the pieces until he sees the cat, and then he picks it up and puts it in the jigsaw. He knows the right pieces for car, cat, bee, ball, flower, cup, apple (sometimes), fish, and teddy bear.
Arthur is also making more consistent animal noises now, and he now does so when I just say the name of the animal, or if he sees the animal in a book or something, without me having to say the name or make the sound for him first. His absolute FAVOURITE animal seems to be a dog at the moment! He LOVES them! He is so enthusiastic with his woof woof sounds ("Uff! Uff! Uff-uff!") and makes them when he sees a dog outside if we come across one on our walk or something. Today Neil took him to the swings briefly in the afternoon, and he was SO eager to go out, he was clawing at the door to get out while Neil was getting himself ready, and when I asked him if he was going out, he just beamed with excitement and said, "Uff uff!" over and over again! He is always eager to see a doggie if he goes out :) Every day he likes to be lifted up to the window where he pulls back the net curtain and peers out. When I ask what he can see, he pauses and then says, "Uff uff! Uff uff!" but in a more wistful tone, more like he's saying, "I was hoping to see a doggie, Mummy..." (there's very rarely a doggie actually out there for him to see). Bless his heart, he's such a complete sweetie! :)
Another new thing for Arthur is his first pretend-play thing! He likes stirring in containers with a spoon, which he has been doing for a while, but lately it seems that he is actually COOKING something tasty when he's doing it! It's so cute :) He brings it to us, stirring it all the time he's walking over, and offers us a spoonful to taste! We always find it DELICIOUS and he just looks so pleased with himself that he barely knows what to do! He tastes for himself from the spoon and makes tasting sounds and says, "Ummmm!" for when it's tasty :)
Hmmm, what else can I update on about Arthur? He is almost running now. He tears round the house at a scary pace, considering how stumbly he is when he tries to run, and how many many things he could crash into on the way and injure himself!! He also likes to walk backwards, funny boy! He mimics my actions a lot more these days. I can't lug heavy loads of laundry around any more, so I dump it all in a big washing basket and drag it across the kitchen floor to the tumble dryer, and then when I dump it out of the dryer again, I drag the basketful to the living room to sort the dry laundry. Arthur LOVES this activity, and he is getting really genuinely helpful at sorting stuff. He picks out all the wipes for me while I sort other things, for example. But he does then want to put them away for me before I'm finished with the rest of it, and so it ends up "put away" on the stairs or in one of his hidey-holes or something! Or back in the tumble dryer :) He spends lots of time pushing and pulling the empty washing basket around the house, just like Mummy does :) Sometimes he puts a few things in it, like tea towels that he finds in the kitchen or a few items of clothing.
He also likes to iron real clothes on his ironing board now! He finds things that he REALLY wants to iron - usually his favourite things, like my bras - he loves to "iron" my bras! Or his socks. He goes all over the house looking for just the right item sometimes! Lately he wants to iron BIG items, like Daddy's big winter coat or a thick woolly jumper, and he drags them over to his ironing board with lots of effort, and gets frustrated trying to drape them over the board without tipping it over. If he succeeds (or if I help him when he doesn't), he irons it joyfully till it's "done" - which he tells me by plonking the iron on that metal bit on the end of the ironing board and declaring loudly, "Dat!!!" or some similarly punctuated word!
He is soooo helpful at unloading the food shopping now! Seriously. He goes through the bags and gets the cans out, and actually carries them one by one to the kitchen, where he opens the cans cupboard and puts it on the shelf before coming back for another one! He knows what items go in the fridge, and he LOVES the fridge, so he always wants to put those things away. He needs to be lifted up for that though, so he doesn't really get to put them right in there. He also tries to put his snacks up on the dresser in the kitchen, where we keep his cereal bar snacks and biscuits, etc. He is juuuust about tall enough to push things onto the kitchen surfaces at full stretch with his finger tips, and practises this regularly, most worryingly with cans and stuff that I am SURE is going to crash back down on his poor little upturned face one day as he's trying to push it up there, and give him a nasty bruise. Cans are so heavy :( I encourage him to do something else when he does it, but often he goes to do it when I am not in the room.
Arthur is really starting to try and talk more. He is starting to say "din" for drink sometimes, and mimics lots more words that we say, though he doesn't use them spontaneously in context yet. But he has recently started saying short sentences in baby-talk, that are obviously supposed to have clear meaning, going by the earnest expression on his face as he says them! For example, he will do something clever or put a piece in his jigsaw and then turn to me and say, "ah digger!" My mum thinks maybe he's saying something like "I did it!" but I don't know. He uses it consistently though so it definitely means something. There are other similar "sentences" but I can't think what they are right now - how annoying!
Anyway, he also does the noises for elephant and monkey well now. He LOVES doing the elephant one - I make it like a trumpeting sound by blowing upwards with my lips pulled tight. Arthur got the hang of that one quickly and for a while he made that sound for EVERY animal in his new Zoo book, hehe! He was just so enthusiastic about it! He signs monkey (the arms scooping under the armpits) every time he sees a picture of one, or one on the TV occasionally, more than he makes the "oo-oo-oo" sound.
Arthur's hair is getting so long again! I am actually going to have to take him for another hair cut, but I swear he only got it cut a few weeks ago! Maybe I'll have to ask them to cut it shorter this time :( I don't want him to have really short hair though. He has definitely inherited Neil's gene with hair growth. It can't be mine, because I was bald till I was nearly his age and didn't have much more than just wispy stuff till I was two!! My mum was the same, except she was 18 months before she had hair! Maybe Matthew will have my hair gene and be a baldy? :) But Arthur is quite the opposite! He had over an inch of very thick hair at birth too, which stayed for months and grew in that time too! His hair was quick to grow once it started growing back. Today after his nap, his hair was all standing up at the back and he had a little fluffy halo TWO INCHES LONG around his head!!! It still curls, which I love! But some days it curls more than others. Some days he seems to have quite straight hair, though never completely straight.
He is really growing still. In the space of one week, he suddenly went from fitting his 18-24 month sleepsuits fully in the torso but having to turn the cuffs back and the feet hanging 3 inches off his legs (!), to completely filling them out - full length in the arms and nothing hanging off the end of his feet! It just seemed to happen over just a week, it was crazy! I won some Next sleepsuits at eBay in size 18-24 months. They are WAY more generous in size than all the other brands. He fits the other brands well now, but I can't do the poppers up in the torso length when he has a big night nappy on anymore. The same happened with 18-24 month vests. All of a sudden he needs a vest extender on those now! I have just bought him some vests in age 2-3 - how CRAZY is that?! They fit him generously so that's great.
I love that he's fitting size 12-18 months well in all his clothes, because I haven't got ANY clothes at all in size 18-24 months (except the sleepsuits and vests but he fits those now), so it means I get to do lots of bidding on eBay to get a load of clothes ready for him in the next size up! Yaaaaaay! I love it when it's time to shop for more clothes for Arthur! I am very picky about what I get him now, WAY more so than when I got him clothes for the first 6-12 month sizes. I pretty much favour Next clothing, because it is so lovely. They do such cute/trendy outfits and the quality is second to none. The sizes are more generous than any other brands and he looks so lovely in their stuff. Their clothes seem to fit him particularly well, just for his body shape, which is another plus. BUT they are THE most popular brand anywhere at the moment, and nearly-new items from recent seasons sell for almost the same price as you would spend on them in the shops, so that's the downside. But I still bid on eBay because it's cheaper, and there's more variety with various seasons being represented!
This week Arthur got two new dungaree sets from Next (at eBay) in 12-18 months. They fit now and have plenty of room to grow into as well, and he looks great in them! I need to take photos. Also he has brand new Clarks shoes that I found at eBay in his size - I'm so pleased with those! He is rapidly growing out of size 4 shoes. I can tell because they are beginning to be slightly harder to get on him than when he was fitted for a size 4 (only a few weeks ago!). I'm pretty sure he must be a 4.5 now, so I'm looking out for new shoes in that size on eBay. It's rare to find NEW shoes at eBay though. The physio said he needs NEW shoes to give his feet maximum support for their unique shape. Even lightly used shoes have somebody else's moulding to them, and with his issues with his feet, he should get the best support from shoes that he can. So I am only buying shoes from eBay if they are brand new in the box and unworn. I still need to look at eBay because they are CRAZY expensive in the shops and we are very tight on cash at the moment.
Anyway I am having a blast bidding on cute little outfits in size 18-24 months :) And a couple of sweet little outfits for Matthew while I'm there, of course! Although we basically have everything we'll need for Matthew, what with Arthur's enormous wardrobe of clothing and everything! I love that if Arthur fits the Next clothing beyond it's age range (which he tends to do by a month or so, as they are so generous), Matthew won't be far behind Arthur for when he grows out of them! So the cute little set of "Digger" dungarees and matching embroidered top that Arthur is wearing in size 12-18 months should fit Arthur till he's maybe 20 months old. By which time it will only be 10 months before Matthew might fit it! I love that :) There are so many things that Arthur wore that I LOVED that I can't wait to put on another sweet little boy of mine! I get so excited about these little details! ;)
Ohhh it's sooooooo late, and I didn't really do the brain-purge thing after all. I just wrote about my sweetie-boy :) I love him so. What a nice way to finish the day! And now I am going to bed. We might go to church tomorrow and I have less upbeat things to write about at some point because of something that happened with someone there recently, and also I didn't write about Fellowship Group on Thurday (which was GREAT!!), but never mind. I'll try to get to those things soon. And update my pregnancy diary. I really wanted to today, as I have things to write about. But for now, bed! And take some of these glasses downstairs! Tsk ;)
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