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2008-03-19 - 11:39 p.m. previous entry next entry
The Big 4-0!! Jove's party pics, and other stuff
I have just realised that Arthur is now 40 months old! How have FORTY months gone by since I became a mummy? Although, it feels sometimes like forty YEARS since I became a mummy, and I'm amazed that I have had three children in that space of time! I can't remember/fathom what life was like before I had children, it's really weird.
Anyway. Arthur is a third of the way through being 3, this month. How crazy! I'm sure he just had a birthday or something.... Matthew is now 21 months old - just three months before his 2nd birthday is here! Yikes! My big boys :)
We've all been ill since my last diary entry here. I meant to come back almost immediately to post pictures from Jove's party, but haven't had chance really. I'll post them this entry though! Arthur got a nasty cold the day after my last entry, and then Matthew got it. Nathan and I succumbed too, shortly after that. Neil has eventually got it, but a reeeally mild version. He has hardly had any symptoms of a cold as such, but he's had the aching and the exhaustion. It's been a really weird cold. It has FELT a lot like flu for the aches and complete exhaustion and weakness, but has otherwise behaved like a cold (no fever, for example). I am sooooo eager for the end of the germy season!
It has affected each of us differently, but I know it's the same bug. I had a horrible throat for almost a week and lost a few nights' sleep with it, yeurgh. I also got laryngitis - I HATE that! I am a real talker and cannot stand losing my voice! I couldn't sing to my boys or talk much at all. I couldn't be understood on the phone. Ugh, I am so glad to have my voice back now, albeit husky and loooowwww, hehe! Matthew has had his worst bug/cold with this one. He has seemed to have a strong immune system so far, catching everything more mildly than the rest of us, but this time he has been as poorly as anyone else.
Nathan is totally congested and can't breathe to sleep or feed, ugh. His is taking AGES to clear up. He has been congested just as badly for nearly a week straight now. Every night I think (sleepily!) that SURELY tomorrow night he'll at least be a little less congested, but noooo. He and I are not getting much sleep. Thank you God for blessing me with my sweet husband home all the time right now, because this is how I am surviving! I get to catch up on sleep through the morning whenever Nathan lets me. Most mornings it isn't much at all (given that he's still as congested as during the night), but this morning and yesterday morning I had a couple of hours sleep which made a huuuuge difference. He sleeps with me in my bed right now.
So then after a week of the cold (having been nowhere out of the house due to being all poorly), Arthur started having diarrhoea. He had awful diarrhoea for 48 hours straight. He was eating normally and full of his usual energy till the second day and then he had slightly less appetite and flagged more easily. The second night, he was awake a LOT, crying with abdominal cramps. So I took him to the doctor. She said it could be the end of this particular cold-y bug for him, and maybe just the way HE would deal with it - not necessarily how the virus would hit everyone. She said that the diarrhoea that she was seeing at the moment was lasting typically 48-72 hours before clearing up. He only had one more bout after seeing the doctor and that was it. But 2 days later, Matthew started having diarrhoea, and continued for about 36 hours. He also seemed otherwise fine (full of cold, eating normally, energetic, etc), but it was a pain!
I am anxious about Nathan because a 9 week old baby does NOT need to get 48-hours-worth of severe diarrhoea! It would be baaad news. I'm worried it's part of the cold bug, because he definitely has that. Plus, *I* don't personally want to add the runs for 2 days to the things my body is dealing with right now! I am struggling to stay hydrated enough with having a cold myself and breastfeeding 3 little boys - one of whom is a new baby who is having YET ANOTHER growth spurt (seriously, this boy will be off the chart soon if he doesn't slow down!), and increased breastfeeding for the other two due to the diarrhoea, etc.
I AM washing with soap after the older boys nurse, every time. I am also FED UP with doing that! I am getting sore. But oh well. I have Lansinoh cream if I need it, and it will only be for a while. And hopefully worth it, if it DOES happen to have been a separate bug that I might have managed to prevent spreading to Nathan. I don't know where they could have caught a separate bug though.
Anyway. Tonight at bedtime, Arthur was sick! But we THINK it was the chicken sausages we had for dinner. He hasn't been ANYWHERE for like a week, except to Tesco the day before yesterday (but it was a brief trip and he was in the pushchair the whole time), and to the park today (where, according to Neil, he just ran and ran, and didn't have contact with anybody or anything). That's it! We hadn't had chicken sausages before, and these ones were really rich and heavily spiced. They were okay, but I wouldn't personally buy them again. Anyway, Arthur only ate sausages (not THAT many though), and a few baked beans. He didn't have anything bland to go with it. He is still soooo picky at meal times. *sigh* He had banana for dessert.
I have a TON of milk these days and every boy gets very full when they breastfeed. I do find that AMAZING. That my breasts can do that! I think the supply and demand thing is just boggling. At bedtime, we put Matthew and Arthur to bed together now. They have a bath (every other night), and then get into night nappies and pyjamas (having to retire the sleepsuits for Matthew - he has a thing about undressing himself when he wears them, sadly!) in their bedroom. We then read a couple of stories on somebody's bed (they choose whose bed each night), and then we turn out the lights and I sit on somebody's bed (not necessarily the same one we had Story Time on) with a boy on each side of me, and let them breastfeed. I LOVE this part of their bedtime routine and it's the one nursing session I'm most protective of. BUT, I don't physically enjoy it very much. Having two older toddlers breastfeeding at once can be a really overwhelming sensation and not too pleasant! It's sometimes just too much and it makes me want to pull my own skin off. Also sometimes it's sore to nurse them. But I don't want to change it. I have found that bedtime "milky" is the perfect time to put my arms around my boys and pray out loud for them and sing to them. It distracts me, and blesses them, and it's part of their bedtime routine that I want in there anyway, even if I wasn't breastfeeding them. On the occasions where I find it too uncomfortable, I sing a SHORT song, hehe! As soon as I have prayed and sung to them, that's the end of Milky Time.
When I pray with them I always thank God for our day and pick out specific things to say thank you for. I always pray for each of the boys with any specific needs they have, and I pray for their sleep, and for good dreams, etc. I pray for healing if they need healing. The songs I sing are always worship songs. I sometimes even find that while I'm singing worship songs in the dark with an arm round each of them as they breastfeed, my heart unexpectedly soars and I can actually have a little time of closeness with God for myself. Not always though!
Then the boys have to get in their beds and I sing lullabies. I always sing the same three in the same order, I don't know how that started, but it's nice anyway! I sing "Golden Slumbers" because my mummy sang it to me when I was little, and her mummy sang it to her. Then I sing all three verses of "Away in a Manger" because it's sleepy and the boys like it. And then I sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" three times, more slowly than it's usually sung, and I improvise so each "verse" sounds different - I make it more and more lilting and sleepy as I go along (doesn't always have the desired effect though, hehe!).
Arthur now stays in bed and is often asleep by the time I'm finished singing. Matthew is currently being "trained" to stay in bed. *sigh* It's working though. Before that, he was getting out and running round emptying clothing out of drawers, jumping on Neil's bed, making a TON of noise and disturbing (or even worse, exciting) Arthur, laying on his bed kicking the wall, etc. Now he gets disciplined for kicking the wall, and for getting off his bed after they get in bed from having milky. And it's a LOT better already. He got off the bed twice tonight, that's all! And kicked the wall "just" 3 times! I am right there to discipline him when he does, so it's swiftly dealt with. We pretty much wait with the boys till they're both asleep right now, but I'm planning to "wean" Matthew off that gradually. Right now he gets upset if we leave while he's falling asleep, and cries at the gate (we put the portable safety gate from the kitchen doorway in their bedroom doorway at night) for us.
Anyway. They both - Arthur in particular - finish that brief Milky Time at bedtime very full of milk. Arthur often groans and says he's had too much milky! I have often wondered if he is actually queasy from it, as he seems to act that way and sometimes continues to groan and complain of having had too much milky for a while after they're in bed. I suppose it's kind of like I would feel if I drank a full glass of water as fast as I could (my flow is very fast and they all have trouble keeping up when my milk lets down).
Tonight was like that, and he stayed quiet while I sang the lullabies, just tossing and turning a bit. And after that he threw up! I did know he was going to, though, because he was acting scared and whimpery and he wouldn't tell me why. Then he started crying, "Noooo" and something went TING in my head - he's just like me, scared of being sick, and wanting to fight it rather than have to DO it. I knew that's what he was doing. Sadly I only had a small terry towel to hand so all his bedding and pyjamas needed changing, but the thing I am MOST proud of is how I handled it! I did not freak out or panic!!!! Yay me! I was aware that I was shaking a little bit while he was actually throwing up, but it was at the same time as I was rubbing his back and saying soothing things to him - I really and truly did not freak out, I'm so amazed!
I FELT way outside my comfort zone, though. I am just so proud of how I kept calm. I think it was actually more to do with the fact that Arthur was in more distress than I was, and I cared waaaaaay more about how he was feeling than about how I was feeling. I wonder if he had breezed through the ordeal, I might have had the opportunity to panic more? Anyway. I just called downstairs to Neil who was walking Nathan back and forth to settle him to sleep. It's funny, I knew I was somewhat panicky by the fact that I was saying such ULTRA calm things, almost ridiculous in the way I worded them without thinking about it (does that even make sense?!) - "Neil, can you come upstairs without hesitating please?!" hehehe! That was my instinctive calm version of "NEIL!!!! Get up here NOW!!" ;) He brought Nathan with him, and I calmly told him to "take him out of the room immediately", hehe!
Anyway. Poor Arthur! He does get so scared. He is so like me. He does have a sensitive palate and tummy, it seems, and Neil was instantly convinced that Arthur was sick because the sausages had just been too rich for him. That sounds a bit flimsy to me - d'you think? But I guess it's plausible. Arthur definitely returned the sausages, and felt waaaaaaaay better after being sick. Neil told him not to worry, that he didn't think he was poorly, just that the sausages had perhaps been a bit too rich for his tummy, that's all. After we stripped him down, Arthur sat next to me and Matthew on Neil's floor mattress, while Neil changed Arthur's sheets. He did a big sigh and said to me, "Mummy, I don't want to have those chicken sausages ever again!" and rolled his eyes with a sort of tired exasperation, hehe! He told me, "I really don't like being sick...." and I told him that I really really don't like being sick either, so I understood exactly how he felt. We talked about it for a bit. It's so nice that he is now old enough to really communicate absolutely ANYTHING when he's ill in any way.
He went to sleep fine after that, and Matthew did too. It's after midnight now and they haven't made a peep since. I was perfectly happy with the thought that it really was just the sausages at the time (maybe that's another reason why I didn't panic like I usually would? No risk to ME if it's not an infectious thing?), but you know me - I have since started questioning whether it's likely to REALLY be just the sausages, and wondering if he might have picked up something he could share with the rest of us. But I don't think he has been in contact with anyone, or even anything. And he hasn't been sick again. His diarrhoea finished days ago, so he's all clear from that, and his cold is gone too. He's the healthiest one amongst us now! The rest of us were at least a couple of days behind him on the cold-y thing. He did get very full on my milk, so maybe it was a combination of rich dinner and tooooo full with the bedtime milky? I always tell him to stop before he gets TOO full of milk, but he never does. He likes the length of time that he's used to, with nursing. I now have more milk than before, so in that same length of time, he is getting a lot more milk, and quickly too.
Anyway, I'm waffling! But I hope Arthur really IS alright and that I have nothing to worry about.
Okay, I must post the photos from Jove's party, if nothing else! Everything gets so out of date before I get around to posting it here! I wrote about the party last entry. The photos we got were mainly of our boys climbing on the soft play stuff and in the ball pool. Arthur went on the older kids' stuff with Neil, and Matthew stayed in the toddlers' area with me (nice friends of Jemma's held Nathan!), but after a while Matthew was much more keen on following Arthur on the older kids' stuff. He was way too little for most of it though! He watched for a long time, and at the end Neil took him round some of the slides and things. Arthur just climbed around like a monkey and had a wonderful time! Matthew liked the ride-on cars soooo much. Arthur came into the toddler area after a while and enjoyed those cars as well. I wish we had a suitable outdoor space for them to use a car like that. I always intended to get them one. In the 3rd photo here, Matthew is at the bottom of the climbing thingy (barely visible actually!), and you can see him in the 4th photo in the background while Arthur is in the car. The last one of this little set shows Matthew watching Arthur on the big kids' equipment! He loves to do whatever Arthur does, and he is definitely every bit as hardy and adventurous, even more so perhaps!
Then there was party food! I think it's the first party for both the boys where they've had a sit-down children's party meal. Arthur had one at Josh's 3rd birthday party, but Matthew has never had one - how exciting! I was holding Nathan and Neil was watching the boys during the food time so I didn't really find out how they took to it. Arthur picked at his plate and only ate the odd thing from it. Matthew ate his pretty well. They sat opposite each other at the far end of the table. They looked soooooooo sweet sat at the table with all the little ones there! I mean, ALL the little ones looked sweet! ;) I'm so "myownkids" focused, hehe!
After a bit more running around (and pooey nappy changes for all three of our boys! What fun!) it was time to do sing Happy Birthday and for Jove to blow out his birthday candles. He had a FABULOUS cake! Now that Jemma has posted her photos, I can marvel at the detail of it here! ;) I loved the "rubble" - I am soooo going to use that idea on Matthew's birthday cake when he turns two. He is heavily into tractors, like I mentioned last entry (THANK YOU Vikki for the Tractorland link!), and I'm thinking of a similar cake theme, based on a tractor instead of Bob the Builder - though he LOVES Bob the Builder too, and was delighted with Jove's cake! If anyone has seen Jemma's montage of the party on her (locked) diary, I was amused to see the video part of the birthday cake, as Arthur was hopping around in the background, beside himself with excitement during the whole thing, bless him! He loooooves cake, particularly chocolate cake, and had his eye on it for the entire mealtime! ;)
Anyway, I got a couple of photos of Jemma's lovely family as we sang Happy Birthday to Jove!
Jemma sent me a photo of Matthew that one of her friends took at the party, so I'll post that here too - this was taken after he spilled a whole drink down his front and had to be changed into.... a non-existant outfit! Because we had neglected to bring anything in his size. We had brought Arthur a change of T-shirt (in case he got too hot running about, as he is apt to do), but nothing else at all! Poor Matthew had to wear an "age 4" T-shirt and a pair of age 2-3 Thomas the Tank underpants over his nappy to stop him taking it off without his jeans on!
So we had a lovely time! Thank you Jemma! It was lovely to see Jaya and Jove too, as it had been a year since I saw them last. I feel like I know them so well just through Jemma's diary, I suppose in the same way that she knows my boys through mine! They seemed completely familiar to me the whole time.
Well I have had to stop this twice to breastfeed Nathan, and now it's ridiculously late (2am!) and I should take Nathan up to bed. While he's this congested, he isn't sleeping at ALL when we put him down (he wakes instantly, unable to breathe), so I am just putting him next to me wherever I am, once he's asleep, and he is sleeping better that way. I'm able to attend to him the moment he stirs or fusses, and that means he is more likely to stay asleep. The poor little chap. I am just trying to help him get a solid block of sleep the best I can. During the evening he sleeps on the sofa next to where I'm sitting. I make a bed for him with sheets and lay him there. He's sleeping again now, so I should finish this, get ready for bed, and scoop that sweet baby boy up and take us to bed.
I have a bunch of photos to post of the boys. I really want to get to that soon. I never seem to get back to finish what I meant to finish, as quickly as I hope to! Just in case that happens again, a few things I meant to record here for prosperity:
* Matthew's jumping. Did I already write about it though? He is jumping ever so early for his age. He has been jumping HIGH with both feet, very steadily, since about 18 months old. I know it's a 2-year-old milestone, and Arthur started jumping pretty much around the age of 2, maybe the month before or something. Matthew practises jumping OFF things with two feet, and lands ever so securely from jumping HIGH into the air from the sofa or from an upturned toy box! He is just unstoppable, that boy! He can also do continuous jumps with both feet, across the room, without faltering. He jumps quite a long way with each jump!
* Matthew's speech is coming on. He has a lot of words now, though many of them are pronounced toddlerishly (word?!). He says a FEW two-word phrases, which I think he was starting to do the last time I wrote about it - like saying "Bye Arthur" or something (he still pronounces that, "bah, Ah-yah"). Nathan is pronounced, "Ninny"!! It's so cute :) All day long we hear, "Ninny! Ninny!" He ADORES Nathan, I mean, ADORES him. Seriously. He cries if he doesn't get to see "Ninny" before his nap, when he gets up from his nap, before bed, etc. He just looooves "Ninny". He likes to kiss his face, hands, etc, evvverso gently. He has learned to kiss properly, starting with his lips slightly pursed together, and then making a little "puh" sound when he places the kiss. He has practised soooo hard timing the "puh" sound at the same time as making contact with Nathan's face/my arm, etc. He's SO adorable. I want to just scrunch right up inside with how in love I am with that boy!
* Slightly embarrassing nicknames. *sigh* You all know I had some humdingers for Matthew when he was a baby. I think I listed them once or twice, and thankfully nobody left me awful comments, hehe! I just can't seem to help myself - I have a THING for silly affectionate nicknames for my babies, and they just pop out of my mouth and mutate over the weeks and months, and I. can't. stop. myself! Somebody help me. I remember Matthew was "binksie boy", "twiglet", "lambie-loo", and many others! I think it is getting worse with each child. *sigh* I am actually reluctant to write here the nicknames that have sprung forth for Nathan, because I'm kind of embarrassed!!! But I want to be able to record them so that I don't forget. I want to read them back one day when I've forgotten exactly what I used to call him, and when I remember them I'll get a warm fuzzy glow - it will be worth the humiliation for that golden moment, haha!
So, my current affectionate nicknames for Nathan (so far, I know there'll be more!) are (crinnnnnge....): "Nathie-noo-kneecaps" (I know), "Mummy's Little Loo Foo", "Lil Baffly Lamb" (I don't understand that one either! It just rolls off the tongue and makes my insides mushy when I say it to him. *sigh*), and a multitude of one-word names, many of which are food related - he is my "waffle", "muffin" (also even "muffin-woo"), and "lamb-puff" (don't ask!). He shares some nicknames with Matthew, like things starting with "mini" (mini lamb-puff, for example), and whereas Matthew is my "mini squinky boy", Nathan is my "tiny squinky boy". The lamb-puff one came from goodness knows where - it just fell out of my mouth one day during a particularly mushy moment, and I honestly nearly ovulate all my eggs at once when I press my cheek against his tiny squidgy one and whisper "sweet little lamb puff". I am obviously certifiable, but hey, at least it's the GOOD kind of crazy, right?! ;)
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