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2006-07-01 - 12.50am previous entry next entry
Matthew is here! MEGA photo entry and Arthur update :)
Oh my gosh, a whole MONTH since my last entry!!! Well, I have been keeping up with my pregnancy diary, but still, I can't bear to see this diary neglected a moment longer! I also have WAY too many photos of Arthur to wait any longer to post them!
Well, obviously, since my last entry I have had a baby!! :) Yay! Matthew Gerrard was born at home (yay for my homebirth!!) on Wednesday 14th June at 10.45pm. He was born so fast that the midwife wasn't here and Neil delivered him! My mum and dad were with us too, and I had no pain relief (but oh my GOSH did it hurt!!). Everything went fine, except for my 2nd degree tear (ow), but my stitches are fine and it's not so bad. Matthew weighed 7lbs 11oz and measured 49cm long - smaller than Arthur was, which was quite a surprise! He was born at exactly 41 weeks gestation, and that last week was the LONGEST week ever! Everything is written in a ton more detail in my pregnancy diary (link on the left there) and my birth story is in one of my entries too, but I'll get it sorted into its own link on the left at my pregnancy diary soon.
I posted this photo in my pregnancy diary, but I love it SO much and it seems fitting to post it here as part of the entry that introduces Matthew to the world of "Arthur's Mummy"! In fact I love it so much that I think maybe I'll change the photo at the top of my diary soon, and maybe use this one? Or take another one similar to it, when Matthew is a little older and more expressive :) Anyway, I am SO proud to post this beautiful photo of my boys (my BOYS, yay, I have BOYS!!) here at this diary for the first time:
I am SO thrilled to be a Mummy of TWO children now, and two such precious little boys at that. I love them both soooo much! I will be continuing to write here as normal pretty soon, about life with the two little ones. I plan to continue to update my pregnancy journal till 6 weeks postpartum, since that's when Matthew is officially no longer a newborn, and I am officially signed off by the doctor, out of my postnatal period. Already I miss pregnancy and the wonderful joy of growing a new life inside me, and the excitement of waiting to meet this new little person! I can't wait to do it all again one day. I will feel sad to close my pregnancy diary again, like I did when I closed it after Arthur, but it's only until next time :)
Okay, it's late and Matthew has been asleep for HOURS so I know he'll wake soon and then I won't be able to finish this. So I'll just post what I can.
Arthur is doing great! He loves his new baby brother soooo much! We have no jealousy issues at all so far, though I know it's still early days. I tandem nurse, sometimes they feed together, but more often I feed Matthew when he's hungry and Arthur when he wants milk or for bedtime/nap. Usually that means they don't feed at the same time, and I feel like I literally NEVER put my breasts away all day long, lol! But it's worth it :) I have a ton of milk. The leaking is getting annoying, and I am bigger than last time so my bras don't fit generously enough to allow room for breastpads. Plus we are having a hideous heatwave and thus NO bra is much comfier than anything else. So I am doing a lot of pouring milk all over the floor, sofas, children (!), etc. Every time Matthew cries or even when I lean over him to just LOOK at him while he's sleeping, milk just goes pitter pat on the floor. I should wear a bra ;) But it's too hot for clothes.
When Matthew was weighed at 13 days old (8lbs 8.5oz and 52cm long!), I asked the health visitor to weigh Arthur too! He hasn't been weighed in AGES, so I was eager to see how he's growing. He sat nice and still on the scales, and he weighed 26lbs 12oz, at 19 and a half months. That puts him at the 70th percentile so he is doing great! I stood him against the fridge and got him to stand straight and tall with his heels right back against the fridge (I can't believe my baby boy is big enough now that I can measure his height in such a "big boy" way!), and he is 32.5 inches tall, so 2ft 8.5 inches. He is growing wonderfully. My mum said at the age of 2, I was 2ft 8in, and at 2 and a half, my brother was 2ft 10.5in, so Arthur is quite tall for our family really. Neil is average height so I guess Arthur will be at least his height when he is fully grown. He seems to have had a growth spurt recently. At first we thought we were just having that syndrome of having just had a new teeny tiny baby, and thus our toddler suddenly looks as big as an ADULT, hehe! But nope, he really has grown. He was a size 4 in shoes a month or so ago when I had him fitted for summer sandals. Neil said that lately he can't get Arthur's shoes on that well, so yesterday they went shoe shopping, and Arthur is now wearing a size 5 and a half!!!! He is getting so big!
Here are some photos - I have so many to post that I'll just get started and hope to post them all before Matthew wakes for some Mummy milk!
First of all, there are lots from before Matthew was born, which I meant to update with before the birth, but oh well. Here they are now! Here's Arthur, reading his Mr. Men books :) He LOVES those books - Neil's brother bought him the full box set for his birthday, for when he was older, but he loves them now. He just likes opening the pages and pretending to read them :) And he likes to sort them into piles and put them back in the box in order, etc. Anyway, here he is doing one of his favourite activities (Mr. Funny does not appear to be very funny, haha!):
My mum came over when I reached 39 weeks, and turned up every single morning till Matthew was born, staying all day till Arthur went up for his bath and bedtime (6.30pm) to help me with Arthur. She was so wonderful! Arthur got on SO well with her, and was confident with her right from the start. He happily went out for hour-long walks with her without looking back to see me, which was wonderful. I was so tired during those last couple of weeks of pregnancy, I really don't know how I would have managed without Mummy's help. Arthur is so busy and energetic, and has to be doing some stimulating activity ALL the time when he's in the house. The second one activity ends or he gets bored of it, he is asking for the next activity. He is particularly eager to do drawing and playdough and water play these days. One follows the other instantly, but we always tidy the previous activity away first, and he's so keen on tidying that he always helps put everything away perfectly, which really helps! But anyway, Mummy was very eager to play with Arthur and just be with him and have fun teaching him new things and seeing his enthusiasm, so she was GREAT with activities for him and stuff.
Here are a few photos of them during those weeks. First, drawing - Arthur showing Mummy each pencil and crayon ONE BY ONE, hehe! He likes to show people his things in GREAT detail if they have never seen them before :)
Banging on my birth ball - he loved this! :)
Water play - don't know where Mummy was in these photos! She seemed to spend all her time constantly baling out the mat he was sitting on, hehe! Nearly the whole tubful of water ended up on the mat, but the weather was so hot that it was lovely that he was able to cool down with some water. And we never got any on the carpet either! Arthur loves filling containers with water from other containers, and ladling water into things, etc. His aim was pretty awful the first time he had water play that week, but after a few sessions, he was very accurate at pouring a cupful of water into a jug, say. He loves water play, and asks for it a lot, pointing at the kitchen sink and shouting, "Yah-yah, yah-yah!!" (his pronounciation of "water"!):
It was so hot that I made ice lollies out of a carton of freshly squeezed orange and mango juice and some cheap lolly moulds! Arthur loved those :)
He especially loves Grandy (my daddy), but he didn't get to see him much because Grandy was visiting my grandparents a lot while Mummy was helping me, and also he returned to France for a week during the middle of Mummy's stay. But when he did come round, Arthur just smiled and smiled at him all the time. He wanted to take his favourite books to him and have Grandy read them to him - a real sign of affection for Arthur! Here they are doing just that:
What else? Oh here are some photos of me, Mummy and Arthur making ginger snap cookies! It was one of those crazy things I HAD to do for my own sanity in the last few days of my pregnancy, lol! In fact I swear I NEEDED to make those cookies in order to actually GO into labour! It was such an overwhelming urge. Anyway, once I had made the dough, we cleaned the playmat and disinfected it (!!) and then Arthur helped cut out the cookie shapes with his (previously thoroughly washed!) playdough cutters! He got really stuck in and enjoyed it a lot. He loved eating them once they were done, and telling me what the shapes were with great excitement, like he does with the playdough shapes he cuts out :)
Man, I was SO hugely pregnant in those photos!!! I forget already how big I was. It's so hot at the moment, I am soooo glad not to be hugely pregnant any more during this heat! I am worried about Matthew though. He is in his cot-bed wearing only a nappy (no wrap, to let his skin breathe even better), and the fan is on in here too, but I bought a digital thermometer to be nice and sure of the temperature where he sleeps, and right now it says 28.9 degrees (84 degrees) - waaaay too hot for a safe room temperature for a newborn :( But I can't get the room any cooler. At the moment the temperature just seems to be climbing in here. Urgh. Arthur woke twice already this evening absolutely soaked with sweat, poor love. He is in just a nappy too, and the fan is on him, but it's just so muggy and horrible and oppressive, and it makes me want to say (for the MILLIONTH time in my diaries, hehe!) how much I HATE the summer with its horrible oppressive heat!!! Urgh! Roll on cooler weather, already. The next 3 days are forecast 90 degrees. Yuck. How I wish we had air conditioning!!! Fans do very little when it gets that hot with the mugginess thrown in, and I get worried about my tiny boy's safety :( Plus it's just horrid and uncomfy for all of us. Bleurgh. Hate hot weather!
Anyway! I have yet more photos! The last ever photos of me breastfeeding Arthur before Matthew was born:
And the first photos of me tandem nursing my lovely boys when Matthew was 3 days old :) I posted these in my pregnancy diary, but here they are again - I am so proud!! :)
Same dress in both sets of photos! But then, I officially have NO clothes that fit me, tsk! I seem to have gained more weight than I even expected to, and I am a clothes size BIGGER than the size I had prepared for (which was 2 sizes bigger than my pre-pregnancy size in the first place!). So, of course, I have ZERO clothes in that size. And thus nothing that fits over my vast bottom! I am eBaying as we speak ;) So that maternity dress is getting a lot of wear, as it doesn't have to negotiate with my bottom, hehe!
Here are a couple of photos of Arthur being a bit of a monkey! Climbing onto the pushchair that was temporarily stacked in the living room to make way for a new washing machine in the car! And then one that Neil took when he discovered Arthur eating a chocolate biscuit - no idea where he had managed to find it from!
His hair got so long and wild, hehe! He had a haircut just after Matthew was born though - Neil took him. That was his third haircut already!! Wow. His hair seems to grow so fast. It is also very thick when it gets long, and it was giving him itchy heat rash on his scalp in the hot weather, so we knew it was time to get it cut.
One of Arthur's favourite things at the moment is to sit in the driver's seat in the car and fiddle with all the dials and buttons! He likes to "drive" with the wheel and puts the radio on and bops while he drives, hehe! It's the sweetest thing! He likes turning the lights on and that makes a bing-bing-bing alarm with the door open, which he really likes to have "control" over by switching the lights on and off! He cries like the world is ending when it's time for him to come inside, even if Neil has patiently sat with him for TWENTY minutes while he plays there! Here he is enjoying being the "driver"! :)
Wow, I think I am nearly there on the photos at last!! Hehe! I told you there were lots of photos to post!
Urgh, 29 darn degrees in here.
Okay, Arthur just woke again and then Matthew did, so it's after midnight now. I think Arthur's asleep again - Neil is lying with him. Matthew has been fed and changed and is now lying in his cot-bed behind me wearing just a fuzzi bunz nappy. He is a very contented baby. He isn't asleep but I know he'll let me know if he gets fed up in a minute, and I'll give him some more Mummy-milk. Sometimes he takes himself right off to sleep after I put him down! I HOPE this is something he'll continue to do - I am still holding out for a baby who naturally sleeps wonderfully!
Anyway I am so near the end of this entry that I just wanted to finish it off and post it. I just wanted to say about Arthur and the new things he's saying and doing, to keep track before it all changes again!
He is so active when he's out in a big space or at the playground. He enjoys the swings and the climbing frames and slides, but mostly he loves to just run, run, RUN until he's out of breath in a large grassy area, and then pause for a moment to catch his breath, and then run and run again! It's so sweet to watch him do that funny bobbly toddler run! He is very stable running now, but it's still such a sweet little toddler's run :) He also kicks a ball really well. He runs and kicks at the same time, "dribbling" the ball with pretty good accuracy. He really enjoys that.
He is getting taller. He can reach new things that aren't really toddler-proofed enough! He can reach dishes on the kitchen surfaces, and he takes them down to put them in the dishwasher! He's the tidiest toddler I ever met! He tries to wipe Matthew's bottom with a clean cloth wipe during nappy changes, bless him! He points at pen marks on his hands or places they shouldn't be, and says, "Oh-dee..." (oh dear) which sometimes comes out like, "Oh-doh" for some reason! Anyway it's sweet because he says it in such a doleful tone, like there's a real serious problem here, hehe! He says oh-dee" a LOT these days. Anything out of place or untidy or marked or even slightly broken gets pointed at and he gets very concerned over it, saying "Oh dee" over and over till we notice and reassure him over it! He's so funny.
He says such a lot of words and things. He names EVERYTHING, though plenty of it still with his own special pronounciations! He has a book with lift out pictures, like a jigsaw, and he takes each piece out and makes a big pile of them, and then holds them out to me one by one and tells me what they are, before putting them back in their places in the book. The pictures are: drink, toast, egg, swings, dog, tree, apple, carrot, cake, duck, soap, boat, car, ball, bricks, teddy, bed and moon! He names them all and I can understand him when he names them, though his way of pronouncing some of them is very sweet and toddler-ish! I particularly like soap (boap)! He just names everything he sees, constantly. He attempts longer words like ambulance, but only Mummy and Daddy know that he is saying ambulance when he hears a siren outside and says, "Woo-woo-woo! Ahh-dan!" Ahh-dan is ambulance :)
He is SERIOUSLY into anything vehicular! He has a real obsession with seeing cars and buses and trains and vans and trucks and lorries, and you name it, if it's a vehicle, he'll love it! He also loves toy vehicles and is gaining quite a collection as I am too soppy and can't resist picking one up every time I am in the supermarket! He plays with them such a lot and gets so much obvious enjoyment out of it. He pushes them around the floor all the time. He has a set of emergency vehicles which he pushes around singing, "Ni-nny, ni-nny, ni-nny!" in a cheerful manner! Neil taught him that sirens go, "Nee-nar, nee-nar, nee-nar" - well, they USED to around here. Now they just go "woo-woo-woo!" like in the States. But I remember when they all used to go nee-nar. Anyway, I love Arthur's way of saying "nee-nar", it's so sweet to hear him cheerfully singing, "ni-nny, ni-nny!" as he pushes the ambulance or police car around the carpet, bless him!
I keep feeling amazed at the things Arthur can say and do. Toddlers just learn in leaps and bounds, don't they?! It just amazes me. They are like little sponges. Mummy told me once that you should never expect too little of a child, just because they are very young. I read somewhere that "you can start teaching your child their colours between age 2 and 3". Mummy said that's what she was told as well, but she saw my interest in things and thought why should she just expect me not to be able to learn that at a younger age? So she told me what colour things were, just as part of the normal chatting she would do while we played and things. And as a result, I knew all my colours by age two, including weird ones like mauve and beige. My first day at nursery school (a year later), they had an "orange corner" and were just learning their first colours!
So lately I have been telling Arthur what colour his crayons are as he is drawing with them, etc. I am absolutely amazed that Arthur now knows ELEVEN colours. He picks up his marker pens out of the box, holds them out to me, and names the colour before placing them in a neat pile on the mat by his paper. When he has told me all the colours and all the pens are out on the mat, then he starts drawing :)
Since teaching him colours, he has developed a HUGE fascination with colours. Everywhere he goes, he is naming colours! When we sort the laundry now, instead of naming whose item of clothing this is, or what item of clothing (trousers, etc) - which he has been enjoying doing for a while - he now wants to tell me the colour of each item. Neil says when they go out for walks, he tells Neil the colour of EVERYTHING he sees! He is really excited by colours at the moment, and for the most part, he pronounces them really well.
He knows blue (boo), purple (bur-poo), red (rrrreh), green (geem), yellow (lellow), orange (ah-gah), brown (baum), black (dat-dat-dat! He loves the sound of staccato words and for some reason as to repeat this one several times for effect, lol!), pink (pim), white (way) and aqua (ak-ah!). His favourite colour is purple, and it's the first one he became really consistent with. Then followed blue, then aqua and brown and black. At first, if I asked him what colour something was, EVERYTHING was booo (blue), and sometimes everything is lellow, but if I ask him if a green item is yellow, he shakes his head and says geem. He likes to tell me the colours of the Mr. Men on the front covers of his Mr. Men books, and he is starting to tell me more detailed stuff like the Mr. Man in question is lellow, and then he'll say, "Hat!" with his hands on his head to get his point across, and then say, "Geem" because that Mr. Man happens to be wearing a green hat. Or "sshhooo, baum" because he's wearing brown shoes. He just LOVES his colours! Today I told him my trousers were grey and my bra was beige. I figured, why not? My mum did it with me and there was nothing wrong with it. A child can learn anything you teach them, and it's not pushing him to teach him something he's interested in learning. He pointed to an olive green Mr. Man today and said, "lellow", and I realised he was ready for me to teach him more "complicated" colours like beige and stuff. He can see the difference between colours, so why not tell him what they are? He seems perfectly able to retain lots of different names for colours and use them appropriately, so I am happy to tell him more of them. Anyway, he was very eager to repeat that my trousers were "gay" and my bra was "babe", hehe! I think he will remember those colours and point them out on other items in no time. It's so much fun teaching an enthusiastic little one and watching him enjoy his new knowledge! :)
Okay I'm sure there was more I wanted to say about Arthur's latest things, but it's soooo late now and I must go to bed. Matthew got cranky just now so I nursed him to sleep in bed. I'll put him back in the cot-bed I think, when I go to bed. If he wakes he can stay in with me. It's so hot, I am hoping he'll be happy (and cool enough) in his cot-bed because I'm too hot for close snuggles tonight! I have the fan on him. I hope that's okay for a newborn, but it's so warm in here that I don't know what else to do to keep him cool enough. Okay I am going to drink a ton of water and go to bed. I will leave you with one last photo of Arthur, just being lovely and Arthur-ish :) I'll update again if I get time, hopefully soon. Arthur is changing so much, so fast. I don't want to miss recording it all as it happens, or else it just gets forgotten and I cherish it all so much that I want it recorded! So I'll try to update again soon.
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