Email me
2008-08-02 - 10:28 p.m. previous entry next entry
Another trip to the doctor, and Nathan-milestones!
Another good week! Neil has realised (!!) that the working day ends at 5pm where he works, and not 5.30 like he thought (that's when he has always had to work till at any other job), so he's home at 6pm now! Which is lovely :) Some days (okay, most days!) I am running behind with the schedule somewhat by dinner time, and it's on the table between 5.30 and 6pm instead of 5pm like my schedule says. That's okay though. And now it means that Neil can join us for dinner! Usually we've started, and sometimes we're nearly finished, but it's so nice to see his car pull up and then be able to get his plate out and serve his food hot, ready on the table with the rest of us sitting eating, when he comes in! I love it because it makes me feel like a "good wife" - I know that's not what defines a good wife at all, but it's a nice feeling anyway :)
I had a good week with the boys, but another pretty awful Tuesday, the same as last week. It could be huge coincidence, but I wonder if there could possibly be a reason for the bad Tuesdays? The boys are HARD work those days, I am tired, I make mistakes all over the place (including discipline), and the schedule is NOT followed, or else slips crazily. That schedule is really really changing things around here, it's great! If I stick to it as best I can, everything runs so much more smoothly, it takes a weight off my shoulders somehow, the boys seem happier knowing what's coming next, and I am way better able to maintain the mess to some degree. It also allows me to graaaadually pick at the mountainous clutter and "deep mess" around the house, which I was never finding time to manage before.
On the weekends I can tackle things that require a little more help with Neil watching the little ones or doing the heavy work for me. This weekend I am desperate to declutter the porch and the kitchen. During the week some of the 15-minute decluttering times with the boys have been focused on the piles in the kitchen. We cleared a bit box of tupperware and sippy cups, etc that has been looking hideous and taking up loads of space for many months. Now there's a clear space and a nice ordered cupboard below, containing those items! :) I feel like I can breathe a little easier looking at that space now!
My focus this weekend is the kitchen floor. It has clutter on it! Boxes with "stuff" inside and highchair accessories that we don't use any more but which don't have a home, etc. Clutter on the floor prevents me being able to quickly whip around the room with a brush and dustpan, or to EVER clean the floor, it seems! I struggle with maintaining the kitchen floor hugely, and I know this about myself, so I know I MUST get it so that there is nothing on the floor but chairs and a table. Then crumbs and dropped food have nowhere to hide, and I can easily sweep up after each meal (which is what is necessary here!), and encourage the boys to help me do it. THEN I can actually mop the floor now and again too! So decluttering the kitchen floor is a big goal. I also decluttered the porch of shoes today. There still seem to be way too many shoes in there though! We have a tiny porch (it's less than 3ft square!) with just the front door on one "end" and the door to our living room a couple of feet away on the other "end", and hooks for coats on a wall in between! Under the coats are where we put the shoes. But obviously it's a tiny tiny area to store shoes and we don't have shelving. Shoes just multiply in there and somehow we end up with crazy-hundred pairs of shoes that spread out so that we can only open the FRONT DOOR half way to sliiiide out when we want to leave the house! It's that crazy, and has to change! Every time I stack them up neatly, a small boy "rearranges" them so they're wall to wall again. The porch is a discipline zone for us at the moment and has been for some time, so that doesn't help! Arthur has 3 minutes in the porch and Matthew has 2 minutes, for various indiscretions. We also smack.
But - is this beginning to sound familiar?!?! - we are prayerfully considering a different method of discipline right now. We have been for a while, but this week has had some really disheartening moments which makes us want to change things more than ever. I am currently reading and researching, and will probably update more about what we decide upon some time.
I had another trip to the doctor's with all 3 boys (and no pushchair again) this week - poor Matthew has the boys' version of thrush, and as soon as I changed his nappy that morning I knew I needed to take him to the doctor! Poor love - he keeps saying, "Sore!" and crying :( Anyway, the boys were well-behaved going into the doctor's from the car, holding hands and so on. But it was a whoooole 'nother story going back out again. Arthur lost his smartie, that is, the reward of having one for good behaviour, on the way back to the car, and as soon as he heard he would not get one, he immediately decided he might as well behave as badly as he liked if he was not getting the reward anyway. *sigh* He ran off squealing into the car park and wouldn't stop even when I shouted at him to do so. I had Nathan on my hip, a huge bag of potty-et-al in my "Nathan" hand, and was holding Matthew's hand in the other, so I could not run after him properly. THANKFULLY the car park was a tiny one with only two cars parked in it, and nobody else arriving at the time, but that's not the point.
At the car he led me a merry dance dodging around the vehicle and giggling as loud-and-crazily as possible while I felt completely embarrassed (despite nobody being there to watch!) lumbering after him this way and that with Nathan on my hip. I gave up and told Matthew to put his hands on the car while I unlocked it (I had no free hand to manipulate the keys otherwise). I was anxious that he'd run off with Arthur, but I didn't know how else to open the car! Anyway, he did run off with Arthur, squealing and laughing. I shouted "Stop!" to both of them but they continued running to the entrance of the car park, laughing all the way. I RAN after them with poor Nathan on my hip (I didn't have time to put him safely in the car), which can't have been comfy for him. I was so ANGRY with them at that point. I just grabbed Matthew and hauled him back to the car, barking at Arthur to follow. Once they were both inside (and prevented from exiting by my large behind, hehe!), and Nathan was safely in his car seat, they both got a serious "spanking" (as I have heard it called in the States!) and Arthur in particular got a strong lecture about all aspects of his various mis-deeds. He did not like that part. He didn't want to look at me while I told him, and he cried a lot.
The way I disciplined them was pretty strong, for me, but I absolutely will not have that kind of behaviour out and about again. I needed to give them a consequence that would help me achieve that! I don't trust that it won't happen again though, but they'll get the same consequence every time they try it. I completely draw the line at road safety.
Arthur also spent 3 minutes in the porch as soon as we arrived home, mainly for the bit where he initially decided to run off and ignore me, and lead me a merry dance of disobedience, but also for leading Matthew astray. He HATES 3 minutes in the porch. So much so that he ended up with another three minutes right on top of the first lot, for thumping me when we got into the house and I told him he was to stay in the porch for his 3 minutes like I had told him in the car! Sometimes I don't know what to do with that boy. Sometimes it seems like NOTHING works with him. I am guessing that no matter what I think I am doing right, I must NOT be being consistent enough with the discipline.
Behaviour at bedtime has also been atrocious two evenings in the latter half of this week. He leads Matthew on who is then just as bad as Arthur. It's mainly the rudeness and the wilful disobedience, not so much the actual mind-bending noise and lonnnng-drawwwn-ouuutness of it all. I really wish we could seperate them at bedtime but we only have two small bedrooms for the five of us! So we can't. There are little ones in both bedrooms as it is, so we can't split the boys up, even for one of them to fall asleep on our bed to be carried into his own bed later.
Anyway. It has been a hard week for discipline, which has been pretty discouraging and exhausting at times. I am still reading various things, but I am currently thinking that I will start Tomato Staking them, though I'm slightly dreading starting because I know it will be a lot of hard work at first, especially with more than one toddler! I'm still weighing it all up anyway.
I actually came here tonight to write about something completely different to what I just wrote about! ;) But now Nathan has woken and nursed, and stirred again a bit further into writing this entry, and now it's really late and I have no more time to write. I didn't even get started! And I got carried away talking about the week, so that's okay. I need to write about that anyway! I'll try to update again soon about the other stuff (and to catch up a bit on photos!).
Thanks so much for the lovely comments, and compliments on the pictures of my sweet little boys! :) I took some more of Nathan a week or so ago, which are waiting to be posted - they're kind of similar to the ones from last entry, so I didn't post them last time. Here they are now. I just ADORE that boy! :) The first one isn't so samey, but it just makes me giggle, hehehe!
Nathan has hit a few milestones this week, all of a sudden! He's sitting up on his own a tiny bit. By "a tiny bit", I really mean only a few seconds, but he's balancing on his own while he does so, and corrects himself back to his centre of balance if he has leaned forward or sideways slightly for a toy or something. And he now sits with a straight back, which he wasn't doing at the beginning of the week. He's so keen on shoving himself backwards though, when sitting! Arthur did the same, and he had to have a pile of cushions behind him at all times for a few MONTHS after he learned to sit, as a result! Matthew didn't do it really, or not nearly as much, so never sat with a ton of cushions for protection. He was always much more interested in propelling himself forwards, not backwards! ;)
Talking of which, Nathan has also suddenly started pushing to elbows (occasionally hands) and knees, and rocking!! Out of absolutely nowhere too. He started maybe 3 days ago, and now he is already spending a lot of time rocking and pushing into that position. The elbows and knees position is unfamiliar to my memory banks, so I don't think it's something either of my other babies did. I wonder if that will pre-dispose Nathan to "army crawling"? The others never did that. They rocked on hands and knees and eventually set off. So, I wondered that aloud to Neil the other day, and then yesterday afternoon, Nathan saw a puzzle two feet ahead of him and army-crawled and squirmed and lunged himself along the floor until he reached it! He worked really persistantly and quickly too. I was excited to tell Neil when he got home from work, and then I set up the same situation for Nathan that evening for Neil to see, and he did it again and again. Today he has been army crawling to whatever he's interested in reaching, but only within a few short feet, not across a room or anything. And it's not TRUE army crawling yet - I just call it that because he's using his knees and elbows to get there, though much of it still involves his stomach sliding and wriggling across the floor! ;) He isn't too coordinated with it, and tries a variety of random moves to propel himself (he'll shove his bottom in the air and then push with his toes, then try a good lunge forwards, then use his elbows and knees, then sort of roll onto his side and arch his back, so that when he's back on his tummy again he is a little further ahead, etc). But he is certainly mobilising now!
He is 6 months and 3 weeks old - which happens to be exactly how old Matthew was when he started proper crawling (after 3 weeks of grumpy rocking, hehe!). Nathan is a month behind gestationally though, so he's doing great! I think he'll be a while getting to actual crawling, but I'm excited that he's able to move himself about forwards to get to things he's interested in. He was starting to get a little frustrated with rolling sideways, as he'd have his eye on something up ahead and the only thing he knew to do was roll, which would relocate him frustratingly further away from his desired object! I'm not dreading the crawling-at-last! stage at all. One more mobile small person surely won't make ALL that much difference in this tiny house?! We're already baby-proofed, and the boys are so excited that he's moving! They'll be less excited when he moves to their games and knocks their cars all over the room when they were trying to line them all up, etc, but such is life ;)
Another milestone for Nathan is that he signed "milk" to me for the first time this week!! I have been signing milk to him since maybe 3 months old. I'm so excited about it! He has been signing back when I sign it to him, but not THAT obviously - just a concentrating expression and fingers that are obviously trying to do something, which has gradually improved. Then the other day, he was lying on the living room floor fussing, and when I looked at him, his face suddenly got very "urgent" and focused, and he held his arms out stiff from his body and went very still, while he sort of "fiddled" his fingers open and closed! I asked him did he want milk, and signed milk as I asked him, and he did such a squeaky gasp of excitement and did such a huuuuge grin and his little stiffened arms shook likehe was too thrilled and excited to contain himself! It was so lovely! I scooped him straight up and nursed him :)
He's babbling differently this week, as though he's trying out a few new sounds. And he's enjoying "older baby" games now that he didn't use to quite understand! He loves being tossed in the air, and squeals with delight with a huge open-mouthed smile! And he is starting to enjoy peekaboo. He did NOT get that game a few weeks ago! ;)
Oh, I forgot to say, at the doctor's when we went, the boys sat nicely in the surgery waiting room! There weren't a lot of people in there, but a few elderly couples and a mum with a little girl. I overheard one of the elderly ladies say to her husband as we sat down, something about it would be worth it when they're older (in reference to my boys) - I guess we're starting to turn heads now and then with how many and how close together they are. Arthur and Matthew are starting to look closer in age than ever before, and the gap between Matthew and Nathan looks quite a lot bigger, given that he's a baby, but it's exactly the same. They were great going in though. Arthur picked a car magazine and sat on a chair, and Matthew stood at the fish tank watching the fish. I sat proudly with Nathan on my lap next to them! :) Then a nurse came out, and my little chatterbox piped up, "Are you a doctor or a nurse?" She said, "I'm a nurse! Are you here to see the doctor today, or the nurse?" Arthur took a breath and said, "Well..." and time went into slow motion as my brain realised that he was about to use his louder-than-average volume to tell the reason for our visit to the oh-so-quiet waiting room! I did that mental hand-held-out, "NoooOOOooooOOOOooo!" thing, and then time snapped back to normal speed, and Arthur continued (loudly, and in a VERY quiet room full of listening elderly people (not forgetting that mama with her 5-year-old daughter)), "Mashew's got a TERRIBLY sore willy. And so we're here to get the doctor to look at his willy and see if she can make it better." The nurse said, "Oh?!" in an interested tone, and I blushed, though there was really nothing to blush about so I'm annoyed that I did - he was being perfectly innocent and I doubt anybody minded that! I'm sure they all thought it was rather amusing, but I confess I didn't look at anyone to see! Then the doctor (bless her heart!) opened her door and called us in, and the nurse left abruptly saying with some humour, "Well, good luck with that Matthew!" :) And we went in. He has special cream that I have to apply, poor love. And he's still sore, but I hope he'll get better from it really soon.
Okay, that's ALL! I must go to bed!! :)
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