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2006-11-14 - 11.10pm previous entry next entry
Matthew is 5 months old!
Yay, an entry all about Matthew! :) I am soooooooooo behind on photos of Matthew, and right now I have about THIRTY (not kidding) from the last two weeks that I'm trying to reduce to a reasonable number to post here in one go! Some of them are quite samey, but I can't decide which to NOT post! Here he is being all 5-months-old this afternoon!...
Matthew is just.... I don't know how to describe him, or how I feel about him. It all comes out in puny, almost childish words, like "scrummy", "precious", "soooo lovely", etc. No words actually describe, or even remotely give any idea of how completely and utterly I am in love with him. Both my boys, obviously, but the same fierce love somehow reflects slightly differently on their different ages and the different "challenges" they pose for me at this time! Arthur is quite demanding and exasperating sometimes, and I can swing from wanting to... I don't know... lock myself away from him in a soundproof booth (!!), to just feeling absolutely swallowed-up with love for him. I just wish he would keep still long enough for me to hold him and breathe him in to satisfy how I love every fibre of his little being.
But Matthew, for now he is different to Arthur. He isn't pushing all my buttons to test the boundaries, and he is soooo much quieter than Arthur for now! He screeches and cries and other noisy sounds, but oh my gosh Arthur is so noisy ALL the time that he's awake! I just crave a few minutes together of peace and quiet by about mid-afternoon! Okay, mid-morning, but mid-afternoon is REALLY getting desperate, hehe! Anyway, Mathsie is just at that age where he completely ADORES me and all he seems to crave is my attention so that he can smile at me like the whoooole sky lighting up (or at least it feels that way to this besotted mama!). He beams hugely the moment he sees me when he wakes up, he can't stay on the breast for a full feed most of the time because he just can't resist pulling off to look up into my face and smile with these soft happy little "hee" breathing sounds, and then start some earnest "talking" because he just wants so much to be communicating with me. I mean, if you already love a tiny person so much that you just IMPLODE with it, how much more does this stage amplify those feelings?!
Ah he's just so completely precious.
I wrote about him a fair bit last entry, with the weight and feeding and stuff, but I'm sure there's more to write about with how long it's been since I REALLY wrote about how he's doing. Oh but thank you SO much for all the comments on my last entry, about Matthew's weight and stuff. That was really helpful to have people reassure me over my instincts! :) Matthew IS a completely different build to Arthur (and oh my GOSH, Mia, how is Liam FOUR?! I read your pregnancy journal for him!!), in fact he is quite the opposite to Arthur in build. Arthur has a large head (bless him, hehe!), and short legs. And normal-length arms, and my long torso. He sounds quite the odd-bod, the way I describe him! But he does still look like a reasonably normal human being ;) All those features are mine, except that I think I have a combination of my mum's little head (she wears children's hats!) and my dad's large head (very few hats fit him!). Arthur seems to have missed me out and gone straight for inheriting my dad's head! Matthew, on the other hand, has a tiny little head, thin to look at straight on, in the face, and long from front to back (Neil's exact head - like a little carbon copy). And he has longer than average arms, I think. Neil has oddly long arms. Shirts and suits are always too short in the sleeve on him. Aren't we weird?! ;) Anyway, he has average leg length and my long torso again. He pretty much has Neil's entire build, except for that long torso. Maybe with that combo he will be tall, taller than Arthur? I wouldn't be surprised actually. So, they are completely different builds. Here they are wearing the same outfit at the same age - Arthur at 4 months and 10 days old, and Matthew at 4 months and 3 weeks old:
So, it isn't too surprising that Matthew isn't following Arthur's weight pattern in the slightest. It could ALL be down to their builds really. But it's also good to hear that it's not abnormal for babies to wait ages before doubling their birthweight, and that there are other healthy babies out there who dropped right down on those charts and were absolutely fine - that made me feel better about Matthew! Thanks also to Carla for reminding me about the pacifier medicine dispensers! I had forgotten they existed, and that might be JUST the thing for Matthew! He still uses dummies so he'd probably take to that fine. I must buy one!
At the moment I am offering Matthew the breast after it has been a couple of hours-ish since he last fed, and he's mostly accepting it happily - sometimes eagerly, and sometimes rather half-heartedly. I am trying to listen to his cues better, and I know that if he waits till 3 hours have passed then he lets me know about it! Unless he's extremely distracted by something interesting. I have been nursing him upstairs with Arthur downstairs, but there have been a few near-incidents downstairs, so hmmm. I am offering him the second side EVERY time without exception, and he nearly always has some of it. Sometimes he has a lot from the second side, so I'm glad I'm doing that for him all the time now. I feel kind of bad that I wasn't always doing it before :( With his teething lately, he has been waking a couple of times during the evening and more at night, say 3 or 4 times from my bedtime to 6am. Not DREADFUL, but kind of tiring nonetheless. But it has been a great opportunity to breastfeed him more, and actually, I know I am going to sound crazy but I very very rarely actually MIND his night-wakings. I remember with Arthur finding it like fingernails on a blackboard to have him wake A.GAIN for the fifty millionth time that night, EVERY night. I spent my whole time complaining about it from when he was about 3 months old, mayber earlier. But he DID wake much more frequently than Matthew ever has, and it was night after night for EVER (or so it felt!), and I guess some crazy section of society had instilled in me this expectation that my baby would start sleeping better any day now, and that I should be able to fix it if not. So yeah, that wasn't true. And I found it hard and got resentful of being woken.
But the wonderful thing about that was, I seem to have been conditioned or something! ;) Because Matthew's 4+ wakings over his 12 hour night do not bother me in the least. I love it when I hear him wake. I can't wait to scoop him up - I love the word "scoop" in my head as I reach over him to pick him up in the dark. I don't know why. I just look at him and think, "Oooh I'm gonna SCOOP you up!" like he's a delicious lil ice-cream or something :) Last night I even said out loud, "Scoooop!" as I picked him up, without even meaning to! I'm crazy ;)
He's just so scrumptious, and more wonderfully, he is so scrumptiously MINE. I totally GET that when I lift him into my arms and nestle down with him to breastfeed him at night. Just how MINE he is, and how perfectly wonderful such a concept is. I love that it's dark at night, and we have no lights on anywhere in our house, except one of those plug nightlights at the top of the stairs. But there's no light from that in our room. "Our" room is Matthew's and mine. Neil and Arthur share the main bedroom - the TRIPLE mattress on the floor. I never meant to leave them to it there, but I needed my sleep during my pregnancy and Arthur was so wakeful that it became necessary to night wean him after he turned one. So I moved to the spare room (which is small and has a single bed) for that, because the plan was for Neil to resettle him when he woke during the phase where we were night weaning him. I slept SO much better in my own space (Neil disturbs me at night as much as Arthur actually!) that I stayed there for the rest of my pregnancy, as I was needy of sleep then. By the end of my pregnancy we had decided that I should stay there during the early weeks and months with Matthew, because I'd be up breastfeeding him a lot and Arthur was easily disturbed at night, so it would not have worked to have Matthew in with us. And we did not want to banish Arthur to his own room right when we were bringing a new baby into the family, and with Arthur still only 19 months old. So there I stayed. And it has worked so well for us, and Matthew is still wakeful at night, so I am still here! Of course we have no need to worry about conceiving any more babies in the near future, haha! And it's not exactly the perfect picture of a healthy marriage. But right now, it works for us and we are both happy with the arrangement. We need to move house in the next year, and we're planning it as best we can already. We need a third bedroom. Then things will be better at night for us, I hope!
Anyway. So at night it's just me and Matthew. Nobody but us. We don't co-sleep - Matthew's cotbed is pressed up against my single bed, and I can reach him through the end of it if I need to. I sleep SO much better in my own space. Better even than when it's just me and NEIL in the bed, no kids at all. I wish it was "okay" for me to sleep in my own bed! It's just not how it's meant to be, when you're married. You're suppposed to sleep all smooshed up next to your husband and it's meant to be all romantic and parsniply-charged and that (sorry if you are new here and don't know about the word "parsnips" - I have used it in my diaries for a long time in place of the word "sex" to try to minimise gross googlers and the like - I just chose a silly word that seemed fun to use, and now it has stuck!). But I have never really done that because I just Like My Space! I get restless leg syndrome fit to drive me CRAZY at night and need a ton of space to do the Highland Fling in bed (or similiar amount of leg-flailing). I hate the feeling that I'm disturbing someone else on the same mattress with jolts and bumples from my restless legs jiggling all over the place! It distracts me right back. So I wish I could sleep in my own bed all the time and for that to be OKAY even though I'm married and supposed to be having parsnips. Which I'm not. Because, hhhhffft, it's such a FAFF and I'm sure it'll hurt and there's no time or space or energy and I have a major thing about freshly-showeredness and when do either of us ever get chance to shower, let alone showered within the same 24 hours as each other?! And. It's never been the highest thing on my list of fun things to do, but for me, breastfeeding hormones quadruple that feeling and that leaves me thinking that parsnips is about as appealing as having my teeth polished at the dentist. Which, although not dreadful, isn't exactly something I'm longing to go and do. The same hormones seem to happen while I'm pregnant, so 14 months of no parsnips isn't really a good thing in a marriage, is it? I do know that once I start getting proper ovulatory cycles again, I start to feel differently, so I know it's largely hormonal for me. How d'you think Matthew happened?! ;) He was an "oops" which was entirely due to me jumping Neil's bones in hormonal heat, haha! And I'm sooooooo glad now that he's here!
Hang on! This entry was meant to be about Matthew! Tsk. I shall resume.
So I love him to little tiny bits and pieces. I LOVE sharing my nights with him and having him make these ultra cute little snuffly snorty sounds as he blindly mouthes around for the breast after I snuggle him close to feed him. He is just soooo soft and sleepy at night! I will be sad when these precious moments are over with, though I know I'll also be SO thrilled to get a solid night's sleep again! It will pass so fast though, and seem like it lasted no time at all when I look back. Time with Matthew is whizzing so fast anyway. I actually feel I want to hang on to the lovely sleepy night feeds, just him and me. Nothing like how I felt most of the time with Arthur. It's just SO much easier already than it was with Arthur, and I also get my own space to sleep, so it feels better. Sometimes when Matthew wakes at around 2am to feed, I can't stay awake as he's feeding and when I wake up again it's 5am and he's sound asleep all snuggled up next to me. I LOVE when that happens! If we sleep together by accident then it's wonderful. It's if I PLAN to do it that way that I struggle to get to sleep or feel comfy, and end up feeling like I have no space for myself. Matthew is happy in his cot bed and sleeps well in there, but he is equally happy next to me if we doze off together. He doesn't complain if I feed him when I wake and then put him back in his cot bed though, which is nice for me.
Oh! You know that big fanfare about his first tooth?! Well, it has disappeared again! I would feel completely stupid/embarrassed except that Neil felt and saw it too, and then the next morning his gum felt kind of puffy like he was doing some active teething, and I couldn't feel the little sharp corner that I'd felt before, so I figured the gum had just swollen around it a bit. But later it had gone down and taken the sharp toothie with it! Or something. Is that even possible?! I don't really think it is. Yesterday I saw a white corner of the OTHER bottom middle tooth, and it felt hard but not sharp like it was quite through the gum yet. And today, nada. Just pink gums that are obviously still bothering him, although he won't really let me get a good look at them to be 100% sure of what is going on in there. But what is up with that?! I am confused. So, no first toothie for now, I guess. How weird!
What else can I write about Matthew before I post fifty thousand photos? Today he rolled the other way! He went from back to tummy, I think. So now we are in trouble! He is already surprisingly mobile just rolling in one direction, and has figured how to get all around the room to all four of its walls just by doing that! So now that he's starting to roll the other way.... I wonder when he'll start crawling. I feel like it will be sooner than Arthur did (at 8.5 months), just because he has always been so much stronger than Arthur and ahead of him in the motor skills so far, and because he is just so EAGER to be able to get himself places and follow Arthur in everything he does, etc. I know he is just longing to get mobile! He shoves and scoots a little now, on his tummy.
He sits well with support, and if I sit him on the floor (in a not-overly-bulky nappy!) in front of me and then let go when he's fairly stable, he won't topple for a few seconds. He pretty much only topples forwards, because he is CONSTANTLY fascinated by whatever he can see in front of, or below him. He LOVES to grab, eat, and play with his feet. Arthur was never interested in his feet. They are so different! We still sometimes sit Matthew in the bouncy chair, which he should definitely not sit in anymore, because he instantly crunches his abs and leans way out to the side to look at something on the floor, or sits forward to try and chew the harness that holds him in the chair - and today he even flopped himself RIGHT forwards to examine the colourful pattern on the seat between his legs, hehehe!
So it is definitely time to put that chair away! The Bumbo does not seem to work too well for Matthew either, though he has only just come into the alleged suitable age-range for it. He seems uncomfy sometimes, and he can also simply twist his torso and almost flip himself out of it by skewing one leg almost out of one of the legholes! He just needs to learn to sit and then he'll be soooo much happier! I should give him more time supported by that maternity body pillow, or maybe I should get that activity ring out and sit him in that? I'll have to watch Arthur around him though, he's somewhat boisterous with him, and it's too risky with him learning to sit.
Arthur and Matthew LOVE each other still! Matthew gives Arthur these adoring gazes and smiles that aren't quite the same as the ones he gives Neil and I. If I'm holding Matthew on my lap on the sofa and Arthur is running back and forth past us, arms flailing and making lots of noise, pretending to be a fire engine or runaway train or galloping horse (something he seems to have the energy for a LOT these days!), Matthew just watches him intently with his head moving like he's watching a tennis game - following Arthur back and forth, all the time with this huge smile on his face like he never saw anything more entertaining or fun in his LIFE before! And as Arthur gets really near to us, he reaches both his arms out towards him, and then they drop again as Arthur gets further away, and as he runs back, Matthew's sweet little arms go up and out again towards Arthur. He never tires of trying to be near him or join in with something Arthur is doing. I find it just the sweetest thing ever, to watch :) I think they are going to be sweet little friends together, which is so nice! Lately, Matthew is VERY interested in all of Arthur's toys - even the ones that are way too big or complicated for him to use yet. He just watches with that eyes-popping, wistful gaze! Arthur made a long train out of his cars that magnet together and left them lying around in the living room after a while. Later on, I put Matthew across the room on the floor mat, and he spotted those bright colourful cars and wriggled and rolled and squirmed his way to them. Arthur was watching Thomas the Tank Engine (quelle surprise!) when Matthew's outstretched fingers finally made contact with the cars, and he grappled at them and it made them clatter and roll a bit. Arthur got so excited! He stopped watching Thomas the Tank straight away and leapt up shouting, "Oooh! Ma-Ma play!" and ran over to help him with the cars. It was so sweet. Arthur rolled the cars back and forth and Matthew just watched and occasionally reached out and touched them. Sometimes they just looked up at each other and smiled and then looked back at the cars. My heart just gave a creak as it stretched that bit bigger than before. Ahhh, my sweet boys! I took a photo but it totally does NOT capture the atmosphere at all. But here it is all the same:
Here are a few photos of Matthew on the floor mat - the first one he was being very interested in Arthur's Thomas the Tank Engine that he got for his birthday (he actually LOVES that toy and fiddles with it to make it play the tune if he can get a moment alone with it!):
I can't think what else I meant to write about him. It's getting really late now as I've just stopped to feed him and now that he's settled again I'm continuing, but I must go to bed. I have a lot more photos to post, but they're all from the same huge photo-session - a rare one when Arthur was asleep so I could take my time to play with Matthew and put him somewhere that wouldn't work for photos if Arthur was around! And just snap a million photos of him looking thoughtful or calm or just focused on the camera - none of which would happen if Arthur was around! I'll post those at the end in a minute.
Matthew LOVES being tickled! He is soooo ticklish. He likes having raspberries blown on his tummy and giggles and does whispery squeals, but he reacts the MOST when it's Arthur blowing the raspberries, which of course he loves to do! I have to wipe Matthew down after Arthur has been blowing raspberries on his tummy and chest - he's so drooly in his enthusiasm, hehe! Matthew is especially ticklish under his arms and round his neck under his chin, so obviously I eat those areas regularly :) I LOVE to hear him giggle and hear his soft little "hee" sounds in his breathing that he gets when he's amused or excited about something. He's just so so sooooo lovely!
Matthew likes attention, and can screech louder than I ever EVER heard Arthur screech when he was a baby! He'll screechy-shout for attention if there are people talking in the room and he would rather they were talking to HIM! He likes to be part of conversations and anything social, and he lets you know about it! Sometimes his noise is so great that it pierces my whole head and I can't think at ALL. Yeurgh. He's just a screecher. Arthur never was. I always affectionately call him my noisebox when he does that - I started that when Matthew first started these loud screechy noises and they scared Arthur, so I wanted to comment on the noise for Arthur in a relaxed and cheerful way. Now when Matthew makes noise like that, Arthur just looks at him, smiles at me with a knowing look and says, "Ma-Ma, NOISE!" as though we're BOTH the adults saying, "Oh, isn't he noisy?!" Sweetie boy.
Matthew is currently wearing medium fuzzi bunz, though he also fits at least half of Arthur's size large ones that he just grew out of, on the closest setting! Some of Arthur's larges are generous sizing and others (from a different batch, I guess) are quite stingy in the fit, and those ones fit Matthew really well on the closest snap setting. He wears homemade stuffable night nappies at night with a large ME airflow wrap, and he now wees as heavily as Arthur overnight so they both need two hemp inserts and two microfibre inserts in their night nappies! That's a whole lot of wee, people. It makes me feel dehydrated just to think about it, since most of it is directly from MY body fluids, hehe! *I* don't pee that much overnight! Which is probably not surprising considering how much is going out of my breasts instead! I need to drink more water. *pause to chug down the entire glass of water next to me*
Matthew also wears size 2 Kissaluvs with a microfibre insert and a medium ME airflow wrap during the day, but although he fits them on the closest snap setting, they are starting to look a bit small in the rise already. My boys are both long in the rise, nappy-wise. The other night I didn't have one of Matthew's 2 night nappies clean (sooo need to make more!), so in a pinch I put on him one of Arthur's Wee Notions XL toddler-size microfibre nappies, with an extra hemp and microfibre insert in the pocket. It is extra long in the rise for large toddlers, and it FIT HIM on the closest setting, rise and all!!! So, he may be lightweight but boy is he growing in other ways! We have to get the 9-12 month baby clothes down from the loft at the weekend, because he has officially outgrown the 6-9 month sleepsuits for overnight with his big night nappy on. Yikes.
Okay it's toooo late. I hope I remembered everything I wanted to write today. Here are the many photos from the little photo session I had with him yesterday. His eyes are still so blue. He has one tiny brown speckle in his right eye, just above the pupil but like a pin-prick - too tiny to see in a photo, and the rest is just bluuuue blue. In the first few photos, he was chewing on a clean cloth wipe to help him with his teething. He loves chewing on cloth wipes! In the last one with the wipe, he got it kind of wedged in his mouth, hehe! He looked so put out! I had to take it out for him and then he wasn't so keen on it, so I gave him Arthur's monkey to play with a bit. He loves Monkey and Arthur seems happy to share for now...
My sweet lovely little man - five months old already. Wow.
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