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2006-04-23 - 11.12pm previous entry next entry

A visit from Ella, molars, climbing, and sleep (again!)

An entry! Yay! :) I have sooooooooo many photos to post this entry!

Easter came and went. We don't do anything at all for Easter, never have really. We usually are at church, obviously, but this time we didn't go. We haven't been going to church for a while but I can't think why. Mostly Arthur is ill or we're exhausted or busy using every second of our weekend to do stuff to the house to get it ready for having two little ones! We really should go though. I miss it, but not as much as I should at the moment. Which is another good indication that I need to go.

We did have some visitors on Easter Monday though! Neil's mum and youngest sister were taking a trip down south to stay with his other sister Rosemary - the first time they had been able to leave their home together in years and years, because all that time they had been caring for Neil's dad and he couldn't be left alone. It must be so strange for them now, so empty and sad but also so liberating and different. So they were staying with Rosemary for a week, and she lives about an hour from us by car. On Easter Monday, they came to visit us! I was so happy about that, because I hadn't been able to see them over the week of the funeral when Arthur was poorly. Rosemary brought little Ella, who is 10 months old already!! Wow, time flies! They all fussed over Arthur soooo much, and said how big he is now and stuff. He impressed them by emptying the dishwasher and a few other things that he likes to do that the average 17-month-old doesn't appear to be interested in, hehe!

The sweetest thing was when Ella got tired of being passed around, Rosemary sat her on the floor with a couple of Arthur's toys, and suddenly Arthur was soooo eager to sit with her and share his toys! This boy is so sweet. He just LOVES to share things and give toys to other children. I love his generous nature :) He brought Ella his stacking cups and stacking rings (rather appropriate toys for her age too!) and pressed them on her one by one till she took them. He sat with her and built them into a tower for her and just passed her any toys that she dropped, etc. Here are a few photos:

Ella is such a sweet baby girl! She is sooooooooo smiley, just like Arthur. She has teethed way earlier than Arthur did, and has seven teeth already!!! But she isn't crawling, pulling up or standing yet. She rolls all over the floor to get where she wants to go! Their teeth look really different, I mean, SO different that it's really obvious they haven't inherited their teeth from the same gene pool! I think Arthur must have my pearly whites and Ella must have her daddy's, or something. I don't know what Neil and Rosemary's baby teeth looked like when they were tiny, but my teeth did look a lot like Arthur's do now - similar shape and very white. Ella's are quite little teeth and very gappy and completely different shape, and Arthur's are HUGE and came in close together, etc. It's always so interesting to compare things with the two of them, to see which obvious genes they share! I don't know if they look much alike, as Ella does look a lot like her daddy.

Arthur's nasty flu thingy is really making itself a nuisance in this family! Neil's brother was going to come with the rest of them to visit us, but he was still ill with the lurgy that he caught from his mum just before coming home after the funeral - who caught it from Neil while he was there. Rosemary's husband didn't come because he was feeling fluey and horrible and coldy, so I think he must have had it too because literally in the 3 hours that they were here, Ella went from smiley healthy girl to a very unwell poppet :( I looked at her halfway through their visit and just knew she was coming down with something. I think because I have seen Arthur come down with stuff soooooooo many times in the last few months. I mentioned it to Rosemary but she didn't think anything was wrong. But by the time they left, poor Ella was absolutely streaming from her nose and eyes, totally miserable and sleepy, and wouldn't eat her tea in Arthur's highchair :( I am pretty sure she had picked up what Arthur originally started passing round the family! I hope she is okay - I must ring Rosemary and find out. It was a nasty bug for Arthur so I hope Ella didn't get it too badly. Poor lil sausage!

Rosemary said that they are planning to TTC again starting at the end of the year!!!! I am so excited! All these babies in the family in such a short space of time. She said it took them 6 months to conceive Ella so she thought maybe it might take a while, but I think they might be surprised like we were! It took 9 months to conceive Arthur, but no time at all with Matthew, and that was even with poor timing! I hope they will find it as easy as we did this time round.

Arthur is doing loads better now. He is completely over his fluey thing, as are we, and my mum is finally getting there too. She is still tired easily but otherwise fine. I'm so glad to see the back of that horrible bug! When Ella started acting so poorly when they were here, for a moment I thought it must be a nasty cold (not Arthur's flu) and that worried me because the two of them had already been mouthing the same toys and stuff, and I knew if it wasn't something Arthur had had, there was no way he would avoid getting it. I sooooo don't want him coming down with anything else at the moment. His poor little body needs a break! But since he didn't come down with it (and neither did we), I think it's safe to presume she had the same thing he had a couple of weeks before.

Arthur got his 3rd molar (the first bottom one) a week ago, and it has come in so fast compared with the top ones! There are 3 corners of it through already! His first molar took almost a month to drag 3 of its corners through his gum! That same first molar still isn't quite all through yet, but mostly. It's so HUGE!! I had enormous baby molars too - I was going to get a brace fitted when I was 11 years old because my teeth were so crowded and wonky, and the orthodontist said we'd just wait till my baby molars fell out first. He was SO surprised to find that my adult molars were SMALLER than my baby molars!!! So my teeth had more room and straightened out, and I didn't ever need braces! I'm so weird. But it looks to me like Arthur has my teeth. His molars are just massive. His other top molar is halfway in. The fourth one to complete his first set of molars, is about to come through any day. I see those characteristic dents in his gum that are always there in the 2 or 3 days before the tooth shows through. He is suddenly having a real teething patch! I'm so glad, as he "teethes" all the time but rarely with any new teeth to show for it! I'm glad they're actually coming in now. He's actually doing surprisingly well with his teething at the moment. We expected the molars to be the worst for him, symptomatically, but we had to medicate him WAY more with all his other teeth than we are with the molars. Weird! So far he has just had a couple of teething powders over the whole time and some Calgel. His sleep doesn't even seem disturbed from teething, which is good! Anyway, when this fourth one comes in, he will have 12 teeth, and we're only waiting on his four eye teeth and the 2-year-old molars, and that's his whole set! He is getting really toothy these days :) I'll also be glad to see him have a break from getting teeth, because he'll be less vulnerable to bugs and germs for a while then.

We want him to get his MMR soon, but there's no way he could have had that so far this year, since he has been poorly too frequently. There haven't really been any windows for him to get vaccinated. We weren't crazy about him getting the vaccine too young anyway, so that is fine. But we are thinking we'd like to get it done and out of the way before Matthew is born. I am keeping him away from Playgroup for a few weeks and somewhere in that window of HOPEFULLY germ-freeness (!), I will take him to the nurse and get his MMR done. Then he has a month to finish any side-effects he might have, and that will bring us to Matthew's due date. I am nervous about him having the jab with all the hype about it, but all the same, we do want him protected against these nasties. I had mumps and measles badly and I know how horrible they can be. And I wasn't even a very young child. So yeah, we want him protected. But I am a bit scared about any chance of something going wrong as a result. We have decided to just DO IT and pray. Pray pray pray. And then it's done :) He'll be 18 months old ish when he finally gets the MMR, which sits better with me than when he was due to have it, at 13 months.

My dinner is ready. I'll be back afterwards to post those photos and maybe a bit more newsy stuff if there's time before bed. I REALLY want to sew this evening so I don't want to spend the entire evening on the computer! Back in a bit....

Back again, and eating a big ole hunk of Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate :) I have put on soooooooo much weight this pregnancy so far, though not as much as with Arthur yet. But who cares! I heart chocolate, and it's all going to drop off when I'm breastfeeding two anyhoo.

Okay, where was I? I should post some photos of Arthur! He loves making pretend phone calls at the moment, but never actually says anything! He has his own phone - our old one that stopped working and which we gave to him to play with, instead of the live phone plugged into the wall! But he knows it's not a working phone and completely ignores it, preferring the one that makes the lovely dial tone when he picks it up, and neat little peep peep sounds as he pushes the buttons! It's getting weird to see Arthur like he is in these photos, because there are some of me at exactly his age, doing the exact same thing. Only that phone was an old fashioned dial-up phone, not a push-button one :) But anyway...

Arthur is sooooo into climbing lately! He has been many many months, but it's like he's gone up a gear in the climbing thing recently. We finally took away the little table that was next to the arm of the sofa, which he climbs on several times a day to fiddle with the hi-fi and stuff. He was starting to just climb over his toys and get up on it, without bothering with the sofa at all. So we took it away, and at first Neil just put it in the middle of the room till we figured out where it should go (we still haven't, but it's at least stacked somewhere out of his reach for now!). Arthur climbed on that tiny table over and over again and looked so pleased with himself every time he was standing up on it! I watched him nearby because he was wearing socks and might have slipped, but when he started jumping on the top of it (!) I put it out of his reach. The boy is just a climber right now! He climbs everywhere, and on everything. The other day he climbed on the armchair when it was clear of piles of laundry for a rare few hours (!!), and before I knew it, he was up on the back of it, and lowering himself down behind it! He got stuck of course. It is pushed right up to the wall so he got wedged between the chair and the wall.

Here is a little series of photos of Arthur climbing on that little table. I managed to get them so that they run in a sequence, probably best entitled - "A Definitive Illustrated Guide to Climbing For Toddlers":

My lil climbing monkey :)

His hair has been getting so long again lately! It seems to grow soooo fast. Definitely Neil's gene - I was still practically bald at Arthur's age, hehe! A few days ago I finally took him back to the hairdressers where he had his first haircut, and they trimmed it nicely. Here he is (slightly too bright, but oh well) with his second haircut!

It's so strange to see his hair so clear of his ears! I love his sweet little ears though, so it's nice to see more of them again! I know he will need another haircut by the time Matthew is here though, which is just crazy! He has lovely hair. I love how soft it is and how sweet it always smells. What is it that makes baby hair do that? It's lovely anyway. It's pretty much the same colour as mine, though mine is a sort of richer colour with more red in it than Arthur has. He might get more red in his as he gets older though, as I'm sure mine didn't have so much in when I was little. He already does have some slightly reddy shine to it in the sun, so I guess he has my hair :) Neil's has no red, but he does have lots of auburn in his beard if he ever lets it grow (which he never does - I just know it from one time when we went on holiday for 3 weeks and his razor broke right at the start!). I wonder if Matthew will have red hair? It's a good possibility with every child we have, given the amount of it on both sides of the family. I love red hair, so I'm kind of hoping we'll have a red-haired child at some point! :)

Arthur now says three things very clearly, and a handful of other words that only Neil and I understand! His three clear words are "Da-deee!" (daddy, obviously!), "Ank-yoooo!" (thank you), and "Buh-boo" (bubble). He just started saying bubble today, when Neil was reading him a bath book during their bath, with pictures of a duck taking a bath with lots of buh-boos in it! He is still asking for an apple with his picture book mostly, but he does say "aaah-ooo" sometimes too. He loves apples at the moment, and has stopped asking me to bite off all the skin before he eats the nice fleshy part! He likes to just be handed a washed apple and take it away to eat :) He doesn't eat it all though, and when he's done, I discover he has saved up all the peel parts in his cheek pouches (!) and then spits them out! Here he is eating an apple a couple of days ago:

His appetite is great at the moment. He gets super impatient waiting for his lunch or tea to be ready, he seems so hungry by then! He does have his normal snack between meals. I think we are going to try him on slightly bigger portions, as we're not sure if he's getting enough of his main course, and ends up eating LOADS of dessert! He has healthy desserts, mainly yoghurt or fromage frais, fruit salad, or sometimes digestive biscuit or gingerbread men (those sugar-free organic ones). He also usually has a pile of dried fruit at the end of at least one meal a day. I gave him yoghurt-covered raisins and dried raspberries recently and he LOVES those! I found them at Tescos :)

I put him on the scales today and he weighs exactly 12kg. That translates as 26.5lbs. Our scales weigh in increments of 0.25lbs so I guess it's a good idea of what he actually weighs, though not as totally accurate as the health visitor's scales. I did the same thing a few weeks ago and he was 25.5lbs. He was wearing light clothes and a nappy though. Those weights put him somewhere between the 60th and 70th percentiles, so about right for Arthur really. He was somewhere between the 50th and 60th at the beginning of the year. So he is doing great! I have no idea how tall he is - I'll have to try to measure him. He seems so tall to me, and can reach just about everything in the house now! But then I'll look at him again and realise he is still soooo tiny. Aww. My little tiny boy. Still my little baby really, even though I have another baby coming very soon. I have one little boy and one tiny boy :) I love that!

Well, the only thing lately that has been really difficult with Arthur has been his sleep. I hope I do not sound too much like a broken record! I know his sleep has been ongoingly problematic for Neil and I since the beginning really. It has just been so long since we had an uninterrupted night's sleep. Urgh. Arthur is still waking a couple of times per night. I have no idea why. He just does. I wish I could make him stop doing it, because I'm getting increasingly worried about how I'll manage with a newborn and Arthur having almost newborn sleeping patterns still himself!

He goes to sleep sometime after 7ish, though lately it has been 8pm or later (urgh, more on that in a mo!) and tends to wake sometime around 11pm (though not every night, sometimes he sleeps through that one), and then again at 2ish, and again at 5ish. Then he is up for the day at 6am. Yeurgh. When I look at that pattern, I realise how very much it resembles that of a newborn waking for 3-hourly feeds. I can't fathom why he is STILL doing that at 17 months, when he doesn't even get the breast during the night any more! Sometimes it's fine, he resettles really fast and all he wants is to reconnect with me for a couple of seconds. Other times he will wake more persistantly and it will drive me CRAZY. Recently he has had a patch where he wakes between 4 and 5am and will not go back to sleep for love nor money. He doesn't want to get up (not that we would let him if he did!), he closes his eyes and seems dozy while I pat his back. But then if I stop, or after a few minutes when I have stopped, his head pops up abruptly and he says, "Uuhh?!" and seems very wide awake, and the whole patting/dozy thing continues for 5-10 more minutes. This pattern can go on for an hour and a half, till 6am sometimes, and then he might doze off till maybe 7am. Urrrgh. It drives me crazy. He hasn't done that for the past 3 nights so maybe it was just a weird patch. I hope so!

But the thing that has started to stress me out and upset me more than that is bedtime. When I used to breastfeed him to sleep, he would take ages to go off to sleep, because after the age of about 9 months, he would not nurse to sleep any more. He had enough milk but was still wide awake. So we lay with him and he went on and off the breast and sat up and lay down and climbed all over the bed, etc, for an hour or more, until either he fell asleep, or (more commonly) we got fed up enough to hold him down to stop him wriggling so much and, horrible though it sounds (and IS), he would cry for a minute and then get used to the idea, and we'd let go and he'd fall asleep. I hated doing that. But we didn't know what else to do to get him to sleep so that we weren't spending our whole evening trying to settle him.

In the end it was just getting too stressful for me to lose most of my evening faffing about with Arthur for 90 minutes, while he was very much in control of the messing around while we tried to play asleep or get him to calm down and get sleepy. So that was the main reason for transitioning him to his own mattress - the single one he now sleeps on, up against our kingsize one. We figured if he was in his own space, he may get disturbed less (though I don't think he was ever particularly disturbed by us anyway), and we would be in a position to do a more structured bedtime - ie. breastfeed in our bed, and then a clear "putting to bed" moment.

At first it really helped! He got a bit cross that I wasn't lying next to him while he was going to sleep, but I stayed right next to him on the other mattress, which he was separated from by a long body-length pillow down the join in the mattresses. I patted him and soothed him in whatever way he needed me to, and he got used to that quickly and would go to sleep. We thought, YAY, it's actually working! But then he got the flu thing and since then he has been less settled. He is more clingy to me and will not go to bed easily. He doesn't fight actual bedtime, he just seems totally wide awake and like he's really happy with the idea that he gets to play about in his bed whilst also demanding our presence for as long as he fancies. At first it was disheartening after things had improved before, and we had felt we were finally getting our evenings back. Then as he took longer and longer and mucked around and didn't listen to us more and more after the lights were out, it got more stressy and upsetting for me. Neil too, I guess. I just started to feel so tired and so fed up with Arthur ruling the roost, so to speak, at bedtime. I soooo need my evenings at the moment. I started to resent him for it, and that's always a MAJOR alarm bell that something needs to change. But we didn't have a clue how to make the changes we needed. And I didn't know if we SHOULD enforce changes, given that Arthur seems to need me more at the moment since his flu, and also how he really is still such a little one.

Bedtime was regularly taking 90 minutes again, AFTER bath, night nappy, dressing for bed, clean teeth, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and a snuggly breastfeed. This is why he has lately been going to sleep as late as 8.45pm some nights. He is in bed for 7pm or thereabouts, but that's how long we have to sit and get stressy for. It has felt really hard and I haven't dealt with it well at all. Once or twice, when I was feeling particularly like I would blow my top on a tired or hormonal day, I just told Arthur enough was enough, and went downstairs leaving him with Neil. He cried and cried but went to sleep with Neil patting him. Neil says we should do that more often, because maybe it's just a case of Arthur getting used to depending on me less for getting to sleep? I don't know. I would say maybe, if it wasn't for the fact that he seems so extra needy of me at the moment.

We also will absolutely not consider CIO. But he does cry, with what we've been doing. We just don't leave him alone to cry. I hate what we HAVE been doing, which is trying the Supernanny approach, sort of. We tried a bit of her "back to bed" thingy, just sitting there in the room and not interacting with him at all, nor patting, etc. We let him do whatever he wanted on his bed, but if he got off the bed we placed him right back there and then sat down again. We didn't look at him or speak to him or touch him. It felt horrible to me, but we were desperate. I really didn't know if he is too young for the Supernanny thing though. I tried to find out online but I couldn't find anything. Also, I don't know how fair it is to use that approach on a very young child who has always been used to physical contact and close sleeping from birth, not sleeping apart from his parents in a cot like all the kids seem to be on Supernanny. But anyway, we tried it. Arthur got out of bed 27 times. The first 10, he was cheerful and chatty to himself, not bothered that we were being all detached and putting him back every time he got off the bed. Then after number 11 he started to cry, and he didn't stop. He started to want to come to me when he got off the bed, but he would still get put back if he tried. We wanted him to see that once it was time for sleep, that was all we would let him do. We figured if he got the picture, he would stop messing around for ages at bedtime and just lie down and go to sleep, knowing that was the thing to do after you go to bed.

But it was horrible. He got more and more frantic for me, and we ignored all his vocal pleas and stuff. He seemed increasingly agitated and upset that he was making all his normal questioning vocal sounds and we weren't responding. I felt lower than scum, I tell you. But I persevered. I figured, at least we were sitting in there with him, and not leaving him alone. He knew we were there. But it didn't work at all. In the end Arthur's crying just got out of control. He got so hysterical :( I stopped the whole thing when I recognised the type of crying where I know he has no control over anything anymore, and will cry hysterically even when comforted. I knew we had pushed it too far and he would not be able to go to sleep now unless we sat there cruelly and forced him to cry to sleep. Which we were NOT going to do! The next time he tried to get to me, I let him. I held him to me and he sobbed and sobbed, and I kissed him and rocked him and told him it was okay and that Mummy was sorry, etc. He instantly calmed down and went to sleep on me. The poor love had been so upset that he had POOED - he hasn't pooed in his night nappy since he was tiny baby! So we had to wake him and change his nappy, and then he went right back to sleep in my arms, and stayed that way when I put him down. He cried when he woke during the night, and needed me to cuddle him close as he lay in bed to seem comforted and drop back off. Poor baby. I feel like we did something awful to him, and I wish we hadn't. But at least we know it wasn't the right thing to do. I just wish we knew what to DO instead.

The next night we decided to do the same approach but we figured that he had needed to be able to have physical contact with me, so we would sit within physical reach of him, but still do the unresponsive thing. That way he might get the picture, but still be able to reach out and touch me if he wanted closeness for comfort. But it didn't work, again. He wanted me to PAT him and when I wouldn't, he cried. Neil and I swapped places so Neil could pat him instead of me, but Arthur cried so much and reached and reached for me in such a way that my heart nearly ripped right out, or at least it felt that way, and I cried with him. In the end, when I could see it going the same way as last night, I gave in and patted him. He went to sleep fairly quickly, but the whole thing had taken 90 minutes again.

I asked for help online at a couple of AP forums and got some really helpful replies, a bit of advice on things to try (some of which we have tried already), and mostly a lot of reassurance that it won't necessarily be the desperate issue that I'm anxious about when Matthew arrives. Jemma is on one of those forums and gave me some lovely reassurance there too - thank you Jemma! We thought we would try Neil settling Arthur at bedtime instead of me, to see how that goes. My whole instinct goes against that idea, because I so want to stay involved in bedtime for Arthur, and because of how needy he seems to be of me at the moment. But I know he won't be able to have me all the time when I have Matthew to deal with too, and I don't want THAT to be the time that we really face this issue head-on, as Arthur would totally associate it with Matthew, and that would not have good results

So since then, when Arthur wakes in the night, I have stayed in the spare room and not gone in. Neil has patted Arthur and he has gone back to sleep! Yay! I hope this will mean he'll stop waking and then we'll all get better sleep. There have been one or two times in the night that Arthur has just got really upset and I have gone in after waiting a while, which Neil and I agreed on. Sometimes he just wants his mummy, and he's too little and too needy at the moment for me to refuse him that. His requests are actually perfectly reasonable at his age, but it's just that his parents are struggling with the demands placed on them! So I really want to meet Arthur halfway at least. He's still such a little one, still a baby really.

So last night I was wondering about leaving it to Neil to get him to sleep. But we didn't do that in the end, nor tonight. Neil had taken him for long walks during the day and Arthur was tired out. Perhaps that's been half the trouble? But I can't do that amount of exercise with Arthur these days, when Neil isn't home for the weekend. It's too much for me, and I get so exhausted at the drop of a hat right now. I can see Arthur has boundless energy that's only partly used up in the house, but I can only take him on short, slow walks round the smelly local roads, where he has to hold my hand and not escape to have a good run about. I feel so bad about it for him, like I'm letting him down on something he needs, but I just can't find the energy, and it gets worse the more pregnant I get.

Anyway, so last night was like a beautiful antidote for the stress of the bedtimes over recent weeks! Arthur was sleepy and contented, and he was cute as anything joining in to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with us before we turned out the lights. He had a lovely long (painfree!) breastfeed where he didn't fidget, just lay snuggled up to my bump and stroked and patted my arms, tummy and whichever breast he wasn't nursing from. He stopped once to gaze up at my face, make a little contented "Ahhh..." sound, and then actually gave my left breast a kiss on the side of it before latching on to it again! How cute is that?! :) It made my day, anyway!

Then he had a drink of water, CLIMBED into his bed, and reached for me. I lay down on our mattress with my head looking over at him on the body pillow, our faces an inch or two apart. He put his arms around my neck, pulled me closer so that our cheeks pressed together and settled himself for sleep. I just kissed and kissed his soft cheeks and his hair while he clung on tight to me in that lovely cuddle. Every few minutes he pulled away just a couple of inches to look into my eyes with an absolutely unbroken gaze. I didn't pretend to be asleep or pull away or anything that I had been doing before. I just returned his gaze and smiled at him and waited to see what he would do. He put a little hand up and touched my nose evvver so gently, and then my mouth and my eyelids. I let him do that for as long as he wanted, as he was being so gentle and staying quiet and sleepy. After a few minutes he just put his hand back down by his side, his eyes rolled shut and he went off to sleep! It was the loveliest bedtime ever :) It felt the most natural and "right" thing to do. I felt like, who am I to deny him that kind of gentle closeness as he goes to sleep? It just felt so right. And it didn't take ages or anything.

Tonight he was less tired out as he didn't have the same energy burn-off as yesterday, and bedtime took 30 minutes with me having to pretty much say, "That's ENOUGH, Arthur!" after ages of playing about and not minding me when I told him it was time for sleep, etc. But it wasn't so bad. It was full of plenty of close cuddly Arthur-initiated moments like last night again, and that was lovely. He is SUCH an affectionate little boy. Tonight during the half hour it took for him to settle down and go to sleep, he popped up 7 times in total, just to kiss me on the lips and cuddle me round my neck before settling back down again. I love that he loves me so much, and shows it in such lovely ways! I am such a blessed mama! I shouldn't complain so. But sometimes it's hard and I so often feel like I have no IDEA what I'm doing, in terms of parenting him.

Anyway that is the latest on his sleep. I hope it improves, I really do. I am nervous about adding another baby to the mix!

Okay it's getting late, and I HAVE spent the whole evening updating instead of sewing! Tsk! But yay, because I needed to update. Oh I know what I meant to say! We bought a car!! Yay! Just in time too. Our cheque arrived from the insurance company and immediately they took our hire car away, so we have no car until we get the one we bought. We test drove a Ford Mondeo estate (huuuuge, well, for little me anyway!) earlier in the week and it was a heap of junk - I can't believe the guy was selling it for so much! It seemed like a really dodgy dealership though. We just smiled and nodded and got out of there as fast as we could! But at least the test drive showed us that I CAN drive such a big car and so we could consider other Ford Mondeo estates if we saw any. We saw another one the very next day, and Neil's work (who have been very supportive of the whole situation, it has to be said) let him take the time off to test drive it, and make up the hours another time. It was an hour's drive away round the M25 and then some, but we took Arthur and went to test it out. It was worth it, because we liked it so much that we bought it! It's used and doesn't look like new, but that's fine. We're just buying a second hand car that will suit our growing family and which we can - as Neil puts it - "run into the ground"! We can't afford finance on a newer car anyway, so we just had to find something within the budget of our insurance cheque and buy it outright. And we did! We're really pleased with it! It's a bright blue Ford Mondeo estate, four years old, so not that old at all really. It's enormous, and the inside seems vast to me! It has the most enormous boot I ever saw (trunk, in case American readers are wondering why there is an item of footwear attached to the car, hehe!), and it will easily accommodate the needs of a larger-than-average family, which we hope to become someday! The boot will easily hold our tandem pushchair and any luggage we might take if we visit my parents or Neil's family for a week or so. The doors seem to leave SUCH an enormous space when opened, that I have no difficulty getting into the car even when hugely pregnant with Arthur in my arms to get him in his car seat! I never found that with any other car, and I'm happy because it's so handy with little children (not to mention the pregnant bump!). Three children's car seats will easily fit in the back, and the front is super spacious too. It has quite a bit of mileage, but it has been well looked after and frequently serviced, and all the services have been done by proper Ford service places. It cost almost the exact amount of our insurance cheque! We will just be out a couple of hundred when we finish paying for the road tax, and that is it! No more finance payments! We feel so liberated!! :) Neil can't get time to pick it up until Tuesday and the hire car went on Friday, so we are currently without a car. Fortunately I went food shopping on Friday morning so we have food! And we have no appts to get to before we have the new car.

The only thing about the car is that it smells horribly of old car. You know that smell that makes even non-travel-sicky people feel travel sick?! Yeah, it smells of that, even with the cleaner that they've put in on top of the smell. I hope there's a way to get rid of the old car smell, but I am not too hopeful, as all the cars I've been in that smell like that don't ever seem to change. Urgh. I don't want to have my little ones all pukey in the back because we have a stinky old car. Anyway, maybe it will be okay with lots of time with the windows down, etc? But yay, we have a CAR!!!! A big family car to last us until it bites the dust - hopefully yeeears from now when we need a different kind of car anyway. If we have four children we'll need different transport, and I do so love the idea of having 4+ children, so maybe that might happen one day? But for now, it suits us perfectly! I'm so glad. Somehow, Neil has managed to find us insurance at only HALF the cost of our previous insurance! Which is also wonderful! God is really blessing us with our finances after a difficult time, and we're so grateful. We are still in debt but this will really help us get out of it quicker. Yay!

Okay, 11pm, definitely time I went to bed! I will finish with three photos of my lil Boo-bean being his usual climbing-monkey self! The other day he went into the kitchen and after a while I called to him and he didn't answer. He was being "too" quiet, you know the way?! I went in and couldn't see him! And then I heard this echoey babble and turned round to see this:

Yup, the lil man had climbed into the tumble dryer! Of course I lumbered for the camera and took some photos!

He was very pleased with himself and spent a while in there checking everything out! I had to help him get out though, so I think I need to keep the door of the tumble dryer closed, or be sure I'm in there with him if it's open.

Okay I'm going to bed! I will update again as soon as I can. Sllloowwwly catching up on my favourite diares, a few at a time, which is nice! Emails are just not happening at the moment though, I'm so sorry if I owe you a LONG overdue one! I will get there eventually! Thanks for all the lovely messages and notes lately :)

Recent entries.....

Moving time... - 2009-01-04
Christmas Eve! - 2008-12-24
Long-overdue update, a few Nathey pics and a video clip :) - 2008-12-01
Lots of news! - 2008-11-03
Nathan at 8 months... - 2008-10-12