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2005-09-13 - 11.20pm previous entry next entry
Neil away, and various bits of waffle
Thank you Jenn for your sweet note! I think I wrote about Cameron here already, but mainly just linking back to my old diary. I forget sometimes that this is a �new� diary and I have new readers. I have been at Diaryland for soooo long now.
I have nothing much to say tonight really. I just feel like writing for a while.
Neil got through to the interview stage of the job he applied for!!! Yay! There were apparently around a THOUSAND applicants (wow!) so it�s quite something for him to be shortlisted for interview. He has to attend an �assessment day� tomorrow. Actually I think it�s just a half-day. He has verbal and maths tests, role-playing, group testing, personality tests, and a formal interview. Yikes! He is most nervous about the verbal and maths tests because he says he isn�t very good at either. He failed maths at school, but I maintain that�s because he was taught BADLY or in a style that just didn�t get through to him. I went over some maths questions with him last night and he did fine, once he relaxed and started having some confidence in himself. He isn�t that great at spelling or grammar, but I don�t think they will turn him down because he spells a few words wrong.
Anyway the job is where we think we will end up moving to, like I mentioned a while ago when Neil first applied for the job. Neil is staying overnight at the hotel that the assessments are being held at. I got the county wrong though. I thought it was Hertfordshire and it�s not, it�s Cambridgeshire. Same general part of the country though! Soooo this afternoon Neil came home from work an hour early, packed a little bag while I fed Arthur his tea, took a bath with Arthur and helped put him to bed as normal, and then once Arthur was asleep we prayed together about his journey on the roads, the night�s sleep for all of us, his assessment day, nerves, tension, headaches (which he�s prone to), and my morning with Arthur :) I love to give things to God!! And I LOVE to pray with my husband. It feels like we�re such a team, somehow, when we pray. Him, me, and God. Then I did the �Are you sure you�ve got everything? Don�t forget to brush your teeth tonight!� thing (!!) and hugged him and then hugged him again, and once more at the door, and then waved my lil husband off until tomorrow. Now, I know it�s noooo big deal for a wife to spend a night without her husband (who should be home by 4pm tomorrow after all), and most/many wives do this a lot. But not me. We NEVER spend nights apart. It feels so weird. I hate seeing him drive off knowing he won�t be home for bed. I get anxious about whether he�ll come back. So many accidents happen on the roads. Fires happen in hotels. I know that�s stupid, and I always do my best to find distractions to do so that I don�t think about that stuff, but still it�s there at the back of my mind. I know we prayed so I don�t dwell on it. God is faithful. That�s all that matters. I don�t know what I would do without Neil, and that kind of anxiety is intensified like a MILLION times since having Arthur. So yeah. I am soooo looking forward to when he�s home again tomorrow.
I haven�t done much this evening. Arthur was asleep by 7pm. He woke around 9.45 and I nursed him and then took him off so that he would go back to sleep by himself. He has stirred a bit since then but not woken up. Now it�s 10.30pm. I should go to bed, because I need to get up with Arthur when he wakes at 6am tomorrow, instead of what I�m used to � Neil taking him down while I get a little more sleep till 7.30 or 7.45. I am soooo tired, so I know that having to get up at 6am will HURT tomorrow!! So I had better go to bed while I have the chance. The house feels so empty. I put some laundry on, put the dishwasher on, made myself some dinner and ate it watching some rubbish on TV. We have a new TV. Our old one died. I mean, really. It started popping and snapping whenever we switched it on, and then it started switching itself off with a crackle (!), and then finally the colour went. One day the black and white image got darker and darker and darker right before our very eyes, and then we couldn�t see anything anymore. So we bought a new TV. We have no extra money to buy one, so we bought THE cheapest TV we could find. Man that TV is crap! It is too dark on darker scenes, so you adjust the brightness to see it properly, and then it cuts to a daylight scene or something and woweeeee it takes hours for the spots to clear in front of your eyes!!! So we are giving it to charity as the shop won�t take it back. I guess we could sell it, but it was cheap anyway and I don�t feel right making anyone PAY for such a crap telly. So we used the credit card (ugh) and bought a decent TV. It�s flat/wide screen. It makes my eyes feel funny, but hopefully I�ll get used to that. It looks stupid, like everyone�s faces are super wide. What is the point in widescreen TVs when they do that to a regular image?! Tsk. But yay, a telly that works :)
I woke in the night last night feeling sooooooooo sick. Bleurgh. I didn�t have time to panic about it though because Arthur woke and wanted my breast. After he was asleep again I got up and poked my tummy about a bit! Sounds crazy but I have suffered from IBS badly for yeeears. I know it so well, and when my tummy feels a certain way to the touch it usually confirms for me that it�s IBS. Since getting pregnant my IBS has been markedly improved. Before Arthur, I used to have pretty bad nausea every single day, and cramps and pain and bloating and yuckiness. Sometimes I got attacks which where honestly almost as bad as back labour (which I am now eligible to compare!!) but those were much less frequent. Recently I am noticing more IBS. Most days I have some bother from it. I wonder if it is tied to my hormones? Last cycle was a pretty good one for hormones, and that�s when I really began to notice it bothering me more. This cycle it has been bad every day so far, and I�m halfway through the cycle now. Anyway, I used to wake up most nights with bad nausea, and got used to just sitting up and patting my tummy to see what sounds it made (!!), and based on the sounds I got, I could immediately assess whether to feel reassured or get worried that it might be something other than IBS. I spent an hour some nights, pacing around downstairs till the nausea died down a bit. Urgh. It must have been a long time since that happened, because it felt very weird to be doing it again last night. Anyway so it was IBS, which was a relief! For a moment I was scared it was a bug or something. I have had heartburn for a week, and a tummy ache most of that time too, which is very reminiscent of pre-Arthur IBS. Pah. I can�t think why else it would be getting bad again, other than my hormones are settling back to normal now. Why would IBS be hormonally linked? And how can I ever fix it if that�s the case?! There aren�t any drugs that work on me, and endless dietician appointments have found that there aren�t any dietary changes that make any difference for me either. Oh well.
I am being boring, aren�t I? Broken TV. Irritable Bowel Syndrome! Oooh I can tell that there are people out there hanging on my every word, hahaha!!
Arthur is eating better today. He ate a normal lunch and then some tea. Not so much for tea but that�s normal for him anyway. No change in the gums, but he is drooling like I never saw him drool before! He has a string of it constantly hanging from his chin, no matter if I just wiped it five seconds ago, so he must be having some issues, poor thing!
He is so cuddly these days. He gives me hugs so frequently! He will crawl or cruise over to me, or pull up on me, and then reach and reach and climb until he can get his arms round my neck. He pulls himself into me with his arms sooo tight around my neck, and lays his cheek against mine, and then goes all still. I love his hugs. They are the best feeling ever! He still gives lots of kisses, sometimes at quite random moments! Today I was teaching him �nose� � �Where�s Mummy�s NOSE?!� (pat my nose, then take his finger and pat my nose with it) Where�s Arthur�s NOSE?� (pat his lil button nose, then take his finger and pat his nose with it). He was so intent on this new game, and seemed to find it lots of fun, as he kept doing this delighted smile with shiny eyes, and giggling now and then, the sweetie! But all of a sudden in the middle of it, he pulled my hand down and leaned in to give me a gentle kissie on the lips (still open mouthed though). He is so gentle and sweet. I love that he is such an affectionate little boy already. I had hoped I would have an affectionate son. I think it�s so important for boys to be affectionate and sensitive, and not get all macho and lose touch with their feelings. Men like that make me want to hurl.
Oh he is doing a new thing!!! He climbs down the stairs!!! He has spent ALL day practising it. He usually climbs the entire flight of stairs maybe 5 � 10 times every day, as it�s one of his favourite things to do, and he loves getting to the top and having a whole new layout of rooms to explore! He always crawls straight off in a very business-like manner, babbling away importantly, when he reaches the top. He never pauses. He is so energetic! He usually goes straight to either the bathroom and pulls up on the bath, or he crawls to the full-length mirror on the landing and pats his reflection and squeals and smiles and leans his forehead against �his forehead�, looking up as far as he can to see his face in the mirror. Funny boy! After those things he tries to get in the laundry cupboard, and then explores the spare bedroom, and then it�s usually another visit to the bathroom and mirror (and that laundry cupboard again!) before the grand finale in the bedroom, trying to pull the fan over and move the hoover about and climb on the bed and get as many items off the bedside table as possible! At this point, having trailed him all the way, I usually grab him and take him back downstairs, where he might play for anything from 2 minutes to 20 minutes before going back to the stairs for the whole thing to start over again!
But today he has only climbed all the way up to explore a few times. The rest of the ENTIRE day seems to have been devoted to climbing the first four steps (sometimes three), so that he can very deliberately practise climbing back down them again. He did this at least 10 times in a row, seriously. And then the same again an hour or so later. When Neil got home he showed his daddy what he could do twice in a row, but it was obviously just a brief example in Daddy�s honour, because he only climbed two steps, just to make it a quick example, hehe!
We are so proud of our little Boo! He climbs down so cleverly. We haven�t taught him going down at ALL, as we have been so focused on him going up, and we figured that he wasn�t nearly old enough to be able to climb down. He would probably just fall, so we always carry him down, or even catch him if he seems to be trying to go backwards. So I don�t know how he started doing it, or figured out how. He started yesterday, standing on a step for AGES, making sweeping movements with one foot behind him, as though he was searching for the edge of the step. When he found it, he moved that foot nearer the edge and then started sweeping around with the other foot. He toppled backwards a few times yesterday doing this, but I am always one or two steps behind him so he never falls. Today he has climbed the four steps, fast and easy, and then facing the stairs, he did a quick sweep of the step he was standing on as he moved his feet backwards, and then when he found the edge of the step, he simply placed one foot down over the edge (very carefully too) until it touched the one below, and then when he had lowered himself so that he was flat on that foot, he brought the other foot over the edge next to the first foot. Then he immediately started sweeping backwards to find the edge of that step, and so on! My clever boy! By the end of today he was doing this very well, climbing up the four steps and down them just as smoothly. I�m sort of amazed that he figured that out for himself. Anyway, we always clap and cheer when he reaches the bottom, and he smiles sooooo big with all his teeth showing! :) He�s so lovely.
I have heartburn. It�s 11.15pm! I should go to bed. I think I will eat something that will cool off this heartburn and then go to bed. I am about to ovulate. I got a positive OPK (ovulation predictor kit) today. I should write that in the pregnancy diary but that�s all the news I have for that diary and it is mighty dull of me to write a whole entry there saying just that! So it�s here instead. I feel achy round my left ovary so I think it�s accurate. I always ovulate from my left ovary. Isn�t that weird of me?! I almost never feel ovulation pain on the right side. But I know it�s common for women to have a dominant ovary that they usually ovulate from. I wonder what determines which one it is?
Okay, ice cream maybe? That seems cold and milky and soothing and yummy. Then I am going to bed. I hope Arthur and I will sleep well. Last night he woke fairly normally, around 1am, 3am, and 6am, after my bedtime. I kind of expect him to wake somewhere around midnight, for some reason. Or by 1am anyway. So I�m going to get some sleep while I can! I�ll update again soon :)
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