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2007-07-01 - 9.48pm previous entry next entry
Huge update, Tumble Tots, sleep stuff, and a singing video!
Here I am at LAST! It has been way too long since my last update! I am nauseous as heck but loooaded up on chocolate and sipping Ribena (new attempt to tolerate fluids!), so here we go. I have so so so much to write tonight. It's evening, which is my worst time of day for morning sickness, but I have had a pretty good day today for nausea, all but a couple of green times. So I figure it's as good a time as any to attempt an entry!! :)
I have photos, a video clip and a ton of stuff to write. I think I will bullet-point some of it and see how I go from there.
* There is THE most hideous smell here! I think Neil must be "processing" the pooey nappies for a laundry load. I totally HEART my husband! :)
* It is Cameron's birthday today. He would have been 15, which is craaaaazy. The number of years since he was born is getting more and more distant from the age I last knew him. When he would have been 12, it seemed realistic that he might have really been 12. Now, he would be 15 - a complete and utter adolescent! His voice would have broken by now and he would have looked part way between a boy and a man. I feel sort of weird even imagining him that way, but probably that's just because he was never meant to be that way. He was always meant to be a child, and only a child. I miss him still. It's always odd when there's a birthday or the anniversary of his death or funeral.
* Today is also special for another reason. It's the 1st of July! Three years ago today, I was 21 weeks and 6 days pregnant with my first baby, and we had our big scan and found out we were expecting a boy. Three years ago today, we gave Arthur his name, and used it from that moment on. I still have such wonderful memories of that day! I feel extra lovey towards Arthur this evening. Three years.... I can't believe three years ago I was pregnant with my first child, and today I am pregnant with my THIRD! Not forgetting sweet little Matthew in the middle :) I love my babies!!!
* The weather is just DIVIINE!!!! I am walking around with a permanent smile of joy on my face, haha! I just keep opening the window simply to feel the COLD air and gusts of rain on my face! ;) I have moaned enough in my diaries each summer for pretty much everyone to know that I HATE hot summery weather. I just hate heat. Hot sunshine just makes me want to hide in the shade. WARM sunshine is just gorgeous. But it's either never sunny for like 9 months straight (!!) or it's suddenly blazing hot sun and humid. Yuck. Anyway, this summer has (so far) been one lovely long rain shower with unseasonably cool temperatures and cold winds! But it's not BITTER because it's not winter. Just exactly what I like :) I seriously think it could rain every day for like two months straight and I would STILL not be tired of the rain. I just love the rain!! It's so nice to see it on an almost daily basis! I know, I'm nuts, and most of my readers are either basking in sunshine and thinking I'm crazy, or else miserable in this British summer and thinking I'm crazy! ;) But I love the weather we're having, so yay! Long may it continue! :)
* Tomorrow I might have my first scan this pregnancy! I have an appointment at the early pregnancy unit but they said they might or might not scan me when it comes to it. I will update about that in my pregnancy diary. Neil is home during the morning so he can be at the appt - we have to take the boys with us and he will definitely need at least his two arms (if not double that count!) to wrangle our little boy beans while I get seen to!
* We are still moving, but um, we haven't actually made any progress, and Neil's new job looms! His last day at his current job is July 16th. He got himself a week after that before he has to start the new job (on July 23rd). I have no idea WHAT we're going to do, as the house remains a total tip, we are nowhere near having it suitable to be put on the market, and that pretty much holds up the rest of the proceedings! I feel at peace about the whoooole thing though, which I KNOW is God, since it most certainly isn't me! But the house is a bit of a worry. We have so far discovered that we are currently completely incapable of digging ourselves out of the hole we're in, as I am too sick or tired with early pregnancy, and Neil is at work or else helping me with the boys. Actually it's pretty much the same deal when I'm NOT morning sick and pregnant. We just have our plates too full to have time/energy left to even TIDY the house (hence its horrible state all the time), let alone de-clutter, organise, pack and finish DIY projects! I keep saying to Neil (over and over and over *sigh*) that we HAVE to accept it and not strive to do what we can't, and just accept every single offer of help, beg for more (!), and pay as many people as we can to do things - like the DIY bits, packing, paintwork, etc. Also, for goodness' sake, how many YEARS must I nag him to finally swallow his pride and hire a cleaner?!!! It's driving me crazy. We need a cleaner. We need a cleaner. We. Need. A. Cleaner. And that is that. I think he's gradually coming round, but it annoys me that alllll this time has been wasted when we could have had a tidier/cleaner house! We certainly can't manage without one in the run-up to selling the house. I don't think we can really afford to pay anyone to do anything, but we'll just have to somehow manage to anyway. We can't do without. We are stretched tooooo thin and we're under pressure to move soon, now.
* I think Neil is going to have to commute once he starts his new job. We're obviously not going to be moving for a good while yet (at the rate we're going!) and it's only just over 3 weeks till he starts the new job!! So he will have to commute. People keep telling me it would be better for him to stay near his work during the week and come home at the weekends. Yes, yes, LOTS of families have to do this, and the mothers manage. I feel selfish and somewhat incompetent when I reply honestly - "Um, no. There's no way I could manage without Neil in the week at the moment." We haven't even considered that option, it is THAT much of a NON-option for us. Even if I was fine with the idea and encouraged Neil to do it, I don't actually think he would want to. He is very involved with the little ones and misses them when he's at work during the day even! I can't see him happily staying at some B&B near the office all week long without seeing his children. Nope. There is a fast train which goes from a near-ish station to our house (Neil would cycle there) and takes an hour to drop him off literally outside his new workplace. So that would be do-able. A much longer commute that we're used to, but since it's a fast train with only one stop on the way, Neil reckons he can actually relax on the train and read or something, so it won't be like a stressful commute. Hopefully. It means he will not be home till after the boys should be in bed, let alone in time for us to eat together as a family. I haven't figured out what we'll do about that, but we'll think of something. Maybe family meals will come to an end for a while? I will be so sad about that. I think it's so important to sit down as a family to eat every day. He will also have to leave really early in the morning, which means the end of my usual luxury - the boys usually get up around 6-6.30am and Neil gets up with them and wakes me when he has to get ready and leave for work (about 8am). I think I will have to get up with them at 6am once he starts commuting. I am not sure how on earth, because I am NOT managing the day well on the waking time I currently have! But, thank you God for your peace right now! Although. I might also be in a bit of denial! ;) But we'll see.
* I am too hot under this laptop. Even with it resting on a lap tray. I need to move.
* On the floor now. Less comfy but not quite so sweltering!
* Those points did not need bullets, did they? Nor this one. I am on a roll! Hehe!
Okay, here are some photos! I lost my camera for over a week (it was in my bag all along, tsk) but I had taken a bunch of photos of the boys out in the garden again on a vaguely sunny afternoon. I put the pop-up tent and tunnel out for them and Arthur got some toys from in the house for Matthew to play with (bless him, he's soooo sweet with Matthew!). Here are the photos:
Also, the boys got their Tumble Tots membership packs in the post that day (more on that in a bit if I'm still up to writing!), and they got two inflatable toys. One was a mini beach ball. Matthew LOVED it, well, they both did. But it took him about five minutes to deflate it by biting a hole in it! Of course we just taped over the hole and it's back in use, but that boy needs watching! He puts everything in his mouth still, and bites everything too. Here he is in the garden with the ball - only a matter of a minute between the three photos!...
After a while out there, I went inside to make lunch for the boys. I watched them from the kitchen doorway (which opens onto the garden) while I did that, and the lunch got made verrrry slowly because I couldn't tear myself away from watching them! They were just such a sweet little pair out there! They sat for a long time together on the grass and played with toys. Arthur was such a good big brother with Matthew. I sometimes can't get over that he's only two-and-a-half. He is already so grown-up and attentive to his little brother. He thinks of others so readily and seems mature for his age in that kind of thing. I am just so proud of him! He is really made for the role of the eldest of many kids, more than Matthew would be, I think. I think God is really gracious in that he makes people able to do the roles that they are called to do. He knew that we would have several children (hopefully more than several!) and I think he made Arthur accordingly, as the first child in the family.
Anyway. Arthur showed Matthew how to make the music sounds and was just sooo patient with him. He kept trying to put Matthew's hat on for him, because he knows that when it's sunny I try to get him to keep his hat on (he always takes it off after about 0.3 seconds). He even puts his own hat on to try to encourage Matthew (which doesn't work, but it's so sweet of him!). I love that he didn't even know I was watching. He just is so generous with other children and has a soft spot for littler ones than himself too. Here are a couple of photos that I couldn't help taking, of them sitting and playing while I got lunch ready:
My sweet little boys! :)
A couple of months ago, Meg emailed me to suggest that I look at Tumble Tots for the boys, since I had just written in my diary about wanting to do some sort of gym thing with Arthur. He is so full of energy and loves active things, so I wanted to start something with him. If I am going to home-school him (and it's still an IF at the moment), then I want to set him up with "extra-curricular" activities so he gets to do fun/stimulating/active things with other kids, maybe even every day. Definitely at least 3 times a week. I had got as far as thinking the kind of group/class activities he might enjoy could be something gym/active, a sport maybe (swimming?), something arty, something musical, and I can't remember the other thing off the top of my head. Anyway, I was thinking about starting him on some of those things NOW, because he's already at a place where he'd enjoy them, and get lots out of them. And it would be a good trial run to see if it would work for him, you know?
Anyway, so I had those thoughts. And Meg suggested Tumble Tots, and so I looked into it, found that there was one really near to us (where my church used to meet when I first went there and became a Christian, in fact!), and arranged to take the boys! Arthur and Matthew should really be in two different groups because Matthew isn't really a walker yet and Arthur is in the 2-3 age group. But at the local Tumble Tots, they have two classes - one for confident crawlers/pre-walkers through to 2 year olds, and the other for 3-5 year olds. So both the boys fit in the same class which is a huge relief, since I am not sure how I'd manage keeping one of them from joining in with the other's class! This age range is parent-involved during the class which is what I wanted. The next class is not, but parents stay outside the hall, they don't go home or anything. Tumble Tots is run nationwide (worldwide actually) and we enjoyed our trial class so I went ahead and bought 2x membership and 2x class fees for an 8-week block. It was ever so expensive. We did wonder about it for a while, but I have not come across the type of equipment they use in any other gym-type thing for kids, or at any play centre or anything. It seems unique to Tumble Tots and I love the stuff they use. They have singing and actions in between free-style climbing and activity sessions (which Arthur refuses to join in with!) and it's just great. After we wrote the huge cheque, my parents were over for Matthew's birthday, and since their visit coincided with Tumble Tots (which is on a Tuesday morning - wonderfully late enough in the morning to accommodate naps, which no other playgroup-type-thing ever seems to be!), Mummy came with us that day. I was soooo glad of her help! It took Arthur a couple of weeks to warm up to using all the equipment. The lady who runs it warned me in advance that ALL children take up to 4 weeks to actually decide to use the equipment fully. They have free rein in there and do whatever they want to do, which is lovely. I thought, "No way, not Arthur! He'll get stuck in straight away!" but she was right! He was using pretty much all the equipment by the 3rd session though, and is impossible for me to chase after and watch on the equipment, with Matthew as well! He runs about SO fast, and never stops. His hair just gets wet to the tips with sweat! I get comments on his energy and speed every week! ;) So it was great to have Mummy with me to watch Arthur while I followed Matthew around.
Another interesting thing was that the class was intended for Arthur, and I figured I'd be "taking Matthew along too", but actually Matthew is getting AT LEAST as much as Arthur is out of the classes! In fact, Matthew defied the lady's theory and climbed all over several pieces of equipment on the first session! He was THRILLED! He just smiled and laughed and squealled his way around the hall, climbing on things. They have some great tunnels to crawl through and he loves those. The tunnels were the first thing Arthur would use, at the end of the first session, purely because Matthew was in them enticing Arthur to chase him through like he does with the pop-up stuff! :)
They have staff to watch the kids if you have more than one there, but the parents are meant to follow their kids and encourage them and stuff. There are only two of us with more than one child. Until last week, the boys were a bit too clingy to allow a stranger to do the session with them. They both wanted to be near to me and got wary of the staff. That's why it was soooo great the time that Mummy came with us. But last week I was able to follow Matthew while a very nice lady ran around without stopping after my speedy boy! ;) Arthur went suddenly weird about going in when we arrived - he keeps saying it's too busy for him, every week, but then gets on and enjoys it. He still says it was too busy for him afterwards, but it's only about 8-10 kids and their mothers. The busiest thing about it is the huge amount of bright coloured equipment, I think. Maybe it's a combination for him? Anyway, so he didn't want to go in, and I handed Matthew over to the lady so I could stay close to Arthur while he wanted me. Poor Matthew cried and cried, even through the singing time, which he loves when I sit with him and do the actions with him! I soooo wanted to go and grab him out of her arms, but Arthur was being ever so clingy and I wanted to reassure him and settle him in properly. In the end he wanted to go near where Matthew was anyway, and I got to grab him then! Arthur seemed okay after that so I kept close to Matthew.
Anyway, Tumble Tots is going great! Thank you Meg!!! A wonderful thing is that on the way home with my mum and the boys, after she came with us, she offered to pay for it all for us! She said she's not here much and she doesn't get to spend money on them like she would if she was around all the time. She would love opportunities to contribute to fun things they like doing, and in particular, their education. After she saw them enjoying Tumble Tots, she said it was almost like a part of their early education and she wanted to pay for it! Lovely Mummy!!! So that is wonderful because it was a lot of money and we could definitely use it on other things right now. :)
It's also in the same grounds as a riding stable! So after we finish the class, we can go outside and look at the horses. Arthur loves that.
Hmmm, what else? It's getting late and I am getting queasier. I sooo don't want to leave things out this entry though! I know I am rubbish at coming back to finish off what I wanted to say, these days!
Ohhhh I have been meaning to say stuff about sleep things with the boys for many weeks. It's a long subject though... But I do want to get it written down, if only for my own records, before it's all old news and I forget what actually happened at this stage of their lives/our parenting!
With the new baby coming, we pretty quickly decided that we need to "do things" with the boys' sleep. They were both pretty dependent on us (mostly me) to get to sleep, and while I was happy with that, despite it going on for MUCH longer than most people would think acceptable, it would become too draining while I'm pregnant. And we know from experience that we DEFINITELY need them both sleeping easily and independently by the time Beanlet is born! Arthur STILL relies on me to get to sleep for his daytime nap, which was NOT easy to deal with when Matthew was newborn.
So we began the "Back to Bed Technique" from Supernanny, with Arthur. We have always been right next to him in bed while he goes to sleep at night. He USED to breastfeed to sleep, but that stopped many months ago now, and Neil has been in with him after that, patting his back or just waiting for him to fall asleep. Recently this has been taking longer and longer, and Arthur would mess around like crazy and completely be in control of his fun game, while Neil had NONE of the control and just had to put up with it, or get angry and smack him (which didn't help anyway).
Which reminds me. For whatever reason, we really don't seem to be smacking Arthur any more. We didn't even decide not to, so I'm not sure how or when it faded out. I think he does still get smacked but it's very infrequent now, maybe once in a week or so. When it was our method of discipline and he was driving us out of our tree continually, he would get LOTS of smacks a day. So it's a big difference now. He gets "put on the sofa" for being naughty these days. We did do that before, but it appeared to be useless and we rarely used it as a method. Anyway, now the sofa thing seems to be working. He goes on for 2 minutes (since he's two). Sometimes Neil gives him warnings and counts to three, as well, and that seems to be a good method at the moment too. He will obey me if I count to three usually too. If he does something REALLY bad and I tell him off in obvious tones, he stands and listens looking kind of sheepish, and says a hushed, "Sorry Mummy..." before I have even finished what I'm saying. So things are very different at the moment with Arthur and discipline. I am GLAD we are not smacking him much any more, though I was okay with deciding on it as a method for us. I don't like doing it, but I will do it if need be. It doesn't look like we need to, so that's good. We wonder if he was maybe too young for the other methods until now? Anyway, it's nice to have some of the control back over things now!
What was I saying before? Oh sleep! So Arthur's bedtime thing was just getting ridiculous. At least 3 evenings out of 5, Neil would end up falling asleep settling Arthur down, and I would have to go and wake him, which drove me crazy for some reason. He would pretend to be asleep to get Arthur to calm down and sleep himself. It was just getting silly!
So we explained to Arthur that we would no longer be staying in the room with him while he went to sleep, because he was a big boy now and he was able to go to sleep all by himself! We told him that if he got out of bed, we would take him straight back there, and there would be no chat. We would keep doing that until he stayed and went to sleep.
His current bedtime routine is bath (every other night) with Matthew, get changed for bed (nappy and sleepwear), go up to bed and have stories read by Daddy (Toddler's Bible and either Thomas the Tank Engine or Little Red Tractor), while Mummy breastfeeds Matthew in her bed (in the other bedroom). After that, I go to Arthur and we always read one story from the Bible and then it's lights out. I then ask Arthur about his day (specifically, what his favourite things were today, and a bit of general chat about whatever he brings up in response), and then he breastfeeds lying with me in his bed - which is still a mattress on the floor next to the big kingsize mattress - our big floorbed! I always have to tell him when he's had enough, because that boy could nurse for HOURS if I let him! And I get sore. And to the point where I have had enough of breastfeeding him for that session! I always tell him time's up when I've had enough, and he accepts that. Then he always wants a drink of water (which he has right there next to the bed in a sippy cup), and then I say goodnight to him and kiss him and give his back a little pat, and then Neil comes in and says goodnight. I go downstairs while Neil pats Arthur's back for a minute, and then Neil goes out and stands at the top of the stairs. He has to stand up there rather than come down and begin his evening, because if Arthur comes out of his room, he would go straight through and wake Matthew up before either of us could get upstairs to him. Plus he still gets up a fair amount of times before finally going to sleep! I'm hoping it gets better soon.
I don't think it's working as fast as Supernanny says it should. Maybe there's something we're not doing right? Or maybe it's just taking longer with Arthur. But it has been a few WEEKS now, and he's still keeping Neil upstairs at least 30 minutes, and having horribly late sleep times as a result (usually after 9pm). I need to work on getting him down for his daytime nap earlier so that maybe he will be more tired at bedtime, but he can still stay up for ages, even when he's really tired.
The first night, he didn't get up. He just seemed to marvel at being on his own in the bedroom, and kept saying things like, "Woooow! It's all dark!" and similarly awed things! Hehe! He took a long time to go to sleep, but he didn't get up. The second night, the novelty was over and he got up EIGHTY-FIVE TIMES. I kid you not. The third night it was 42 times. It went back up to 80-something though, so we were a bit discouraged. He found it a huge game to run out and have to be taken back to bed. I think it would help if we weren't RIGHT THERE outside his door when he gets up, but our upstairs is TINY and we can't be anywhere else! I do not want to risk him going into Matthew's room every 3 minutes.
We are working on Matthew's sleep too. Matthew has always been a better sleeper, so I think it will be easier. But he needed jiggling/walking to sleep EVERY night at bedtime. Sometimes it took sooooo long that I couldn't hold him any more, so I would put him down in his cot and pat his bottom like we used to when he was younger. Neil started doing that too. But then we were still tied to him for as long as he took to get to sleep, and it was still physically demanding. I found my arm got soooo tired patting for 20 minutes straight that I got all breathless leaning over the cot and just couldn't do it any more. If we didn't pat or hold, he would just cry and cry. Which was no good. We would never let him cry to sleep.
Soooo, I decided we would start a new method to get him to sleep. The day naps also required this jiggling/patting thing, and he was taking longer and longer to go to sleep for naps. Sometimes I would be over an HOUR upstairs trying to settle Matthew for a much-needed nap, while poor Arthur played or watched TV downstairs. NO good. Also it was making me very irritable towards him around nap times, which didn't help. It required too much of my energy, and too much of my time away from Arthur. I knew I couldn't continue it once I was pregnant because my energy levels would become just plop. So! I decided to do a combination of the Baby Whisperer approach (which we used with Matthew when he was tiny for a while - not very consistently mind you!) - a "pick up, put down" type of thing, and Supernanny's "Sleep Separation Technique". I don't like the sleep separation technique, mostly because of its name! I hate anything that means separating myself from my babies, or anything which causes them to have to be separated from me. I feel strongly that babies are just that for a few YEARS, not a matter of months. But you guys know that about me, so no need to ramble further on that subject!
But the Sleep Separation Technique IS useful, in that it helps you to gradually distance yourself from your little one if you want to get to the point where they are happy to independently put themselves to sleep, especially if they have never done so without you next to them. The way Supernanny does it is to sit next to the cot, but don�t look at the baby. The baby then cries and cries, and you just wait. You�re �there� but not responding, and eventually they get the idea, lie down, and go to sleep. You don�t leave the room till they are asleep. I just can�t bring myself to do that! I can�t let my babies cry to sleep, no matter if I�m right there or not. The Baby Whisperer approach is about picking the baby up EVERY time they cry, so that they are reassured that you are right there for them, but then as soon as they stop crying you put them back down again, however many times it takes. I just don�t have the energy for all the picking up and putting down now. So I decided to do a mixed thing.
I breastfeed Matthew as usual, with the lights out, lying tummy-to-tummy in bed (love that!). He rarely falls asleep on the breast any more. If he does, it will be on an evening that he�s totally tired out. I always let him fall asleep on the breast if he has an evening like that. He goes back to sleep on the breast when he wakes at night too, and I�m fine with that. There will come a time (probably fairly soon actually) where it�s not so okay any more, as I get more tired with the pregnancy, and I want him to be sleeping through by the time Beanlet is born anyway. But I will cross that bridge when I come to it. Right now I�m just delighted to still be breastfeeding during the night. I LOVE the snuggle times with my sleepy boo bean! And I remember from last pregnancy, as my milk supply starts to diminish, the best (almost normal) supply is during the night. So as long as I can, I would like to night nurse Matthew. He will get lots of good milk that way and that�s important, to me and to his little body. So, he has his bedtime breastfeed. Then I pick him up from my bed and hold him close, and cuddle and jiggle and rock him for a bit. It calms him down and is part of his �getting sleepy� routine, and honestly? I love snuggling my boo! I�m sure I will get less able in time, but I can shorten the time I rock him if I need to. Anyway, then I kiss him and put him on his tummy in his cot. He has slept on his tummy since he was TINY, back when I used to get really scared about it (thank you Lord that he was fine like that after all!). He rolls into all sorts of positions these days, and usually ends up squashed into the bars at the top of his cot for some reason! He doesn�t much like this, so I usually move him down the cot during the evening so he won�t bonk his head and wake up annoyed!
Anyway, I digress! So I put him down, and then sit down on the floor. I don�t make eye contact. I just sit still. He fidgets and rolls and gets up and rattles the bars, and fusses and plays with anything he can reach, and eats his feet and reeeeaches through the cot bars to try and grab things that are actually way too far away from him to get hold of! And I ignore the lot of it. If he cries then I get up straight away and pick him up. I hold him close and kiss his cheek, rock him gently for a moment, and then put him back down as before, and sit down again. The first few nights, I sat on my bed, which was the furthest thing in the room away from the bedroom door, so probably the �safest� feel to Matthew. Then I sat in front of the cot. Then a bottom width (!) further away each time. So, I sat right next to the spot where I sat the previous night. He took to it quite well, and so long as he could see me, he would eventually settle and go to sleep, checking on me now and then by turning his little eyes up towards me without moving his head or body, and then closing them again.
I got as far as sitting outside the bedroom door, so he can still see half of me from his cot. But I haven�t got any further yet. I think actually NOT being visible will be a fiddly transition, but so long as I go right to him when he cries for me, I hope he will be reassured that I�m still right there if he needs me, and just go to sleep as before. He can still take a good while to go to sleep some nights though. He doesn�t much mind me sitting there and not looking at him. He just plays and rolls and fidgets, and if he�s feeling really lively, he will stand and cruise around the cot and rattle the bars and bang on the walls with the heels of both palms! But I just wait, and eventually he gets tired and lays himself back down, and after a while of sleepier fidgeting, he goes to sleep. Some nights he goes to sleep straight away, as soon as I put him down and sit in my place to wait. He might fidget a little bit, sleepily, but his eyes are closed from the start.
While I am sitting, Neil is reading Arthur his stories in bed, and when Matthew is asleep I go and read to Arthur and then breastfeed him. Some nights, Arthur is finished reading with Daddy and Matthew is still awake, so then Neil just sits where I have been and I breastfeed Arthur. He used to have to take over jiggling and walking Matthew till he would sleep, so it�s much easier on both of us now. I am also doing the same thing for Matthew�s day naps. It does still keep me away from Arthur as I wait for Matthew to sleep upstairs, but it�s taking less time in general, and I�m on the landing near the stairs now that I�m sitting just outside Matthew�s door, so I can hear exactly what Arthur is doing downstairs. He is a VERY good boy these days while he waits. I am so proud of him. He keeps ever so quiet too, so that Matthew can go to sleep quickly. When I come down, he beams with pride and says in a loud whisper, �I�ve been vewwy qui-yet!� He�s such a good boy! He usually asks for his threading beads or a certain DVD as I am about to take Matthew upstairs. In some ways I feel sad that he�s SO accustomed to me being away upstairs for ages, but in other ways he is soooo good. He gets himself prepared with quiet activities and keeps busy.
Oh, I forgot to say before � I wanted to get Arthur some threading beads. I thought he would really like them, and they�d be another different activity for him to do sometimes. I bought him some from Toys R Us (the nicest set I have come across, actually), and gave them to him 2 days after Matthew�s birthday party, as a special present for being such a good boy at the party :) He loves them! See?...
Matthew is not usually around when they are out, but if he is, he loves to chew the strings. Of course!
Talking of Matthew again (!), he is such a climber these days. He has been climbing for a good while, but the EXTENT of it is getting a bit hard to know how to handle these days. It has been most frustrating for a while, as he would climb to dangerous places the instant I left the room for a wee or to try and cook a meal. I would come back, get him down, leave the room again and he would be back up in 4 seconds flat. My wonderful 2-year-old is an excellent help. He always calls out, �Oh NO! Mashew�s climbing!� or �He�s up again, Mummy!� Hehe! He�s a wonderful help. My lovely Arthur! Matthew can now climb over pretty much anything, including all the objects we had put around the room to stop him getting to other things. The big toy basket had been blocking his way to the kitchen and that no longer works as he just clambers over the toys, then lands pretty much on his head on the other side! Or gets stuck in the middle and cries pitifully until I rescue him. So we bought a mesh travel gate and put it in the kitchen doorway. It doesn�t open and I have to climb over it (and my legs being as short as they are, the gate is actually higher than my crotch level!! But I am getting good at going over it on tiptoe! Haha!), but at least it is a good solution. Matthew climbs on the sofas and jumps and jumps and jumps, squealing with glee! He loves to trampoline on things! Arthur immediately gets up and jumps with him. *sigh* He climbs further than the sofas if he can, which isn�t so good. He particularly loved it when he finally discovered he could climb onto the TV unit and look out of the window! Of course, he then can�t get down, and has in fact fallen off and banged his head quite badly while I�ve been out for a nanosecond doing yet another wee or something. But he won�t stop climbing up there. He is soooo excited at the window! He loves looking out. Arthur always joins him there as well, because he has long enjoyed looking out of the window from the TV unit himself! They do look INCREDIBLY cute from the outside of the house � two tiny boys, just their little faces and top-halves in the bottom corner of the front window, beaming at each other and chatting away, wafting the net curtains about in great excitement! So sweet!
However, when Matthew is up there, not only can he have an accident falling down, he can get to the TV and shake the heck out of it (I don�t know why he likes to do this so!), and also reach the hi-fi and phone on the shelves. I just can�t stop him climbing up there and it was starting to make me irritable and fed up, as he would go up like 30 times a day � sometimes 20 times in the same hour. Urgh! So, now we have a large box and the toy basket in front of the unit, and he hasn�t been able to get past that until today, when he climbed on the toys and practically vaulted a dangerous-ish gap to the TV unit! I am not sure how to stop him getting up there now. It�s a work in progress.
Here is the monkey beany boy up on the TV unit, one time a couple of weeks ago when I found him there:
And loving his achievement!
Shaking the darn TV....
And discovering the phone. *sigh*
Okay, I think that MUST be everything! Well, maybe there are some little things I have forgotten, but I�m just sooo happy to have finally written about Tumble Tots and the sleep things. And all the recent photos are posted, hooray! Oh! I knew there was something else!
Arthur is lately singing ALL the time. It�s so lovely! He knows the words to ever so many songs, even words that I don�t know. He picks the words to songs up with just one or two listenings, and some of them aren�t simple kiddie songs. But ALL his singing is pretty much completely without tune or timing, bless him! I have no idea why! I wonder if he will sing flat and out of time for the rest of his life?! I hope not, but maybe he just will. Neil sings in tune well, though I don�t know if he did when he was tiny.... I sang bang in tune and kept rhythm by banging my back against the pushchair from age 18 months! So I don�t know why Arthur has no sense of tune or rhythm with singing! But oh well. He�s still a sweetie when he sings! :) Lately he has begun to want to perform a little more, especially showing us dancing or singing. The other day he was singing to the Vtech bus (it has a million tunes of nursery rhymes and stuff) and I got the video camera out. As soon as he saw it, he wanted to see himself, so I turned the little viewer around to face him and he started singing to his image, to see himself doing it, I suppose! He fetched the bus and �performed� some more, except that he pressed a button by mistake at one point and lost the tune! He is very into singing �The Farmer�s in his den� at the moment, but he also likes any Thomas-related song, �Hey Diddle Diddle�, �London Bridge is falling down� and lots of others. He sings songs as he reads his nursery rhymes books as well! Which reminds me (I�m SO rubbish with emails at the moment) � thank you so much Jemma for Matthew�s present of a LOVELY nursery rhyme book! The boys both love it and Arthur sings the songs from it with the actions. It was at the post office for AGES without me realising it was a present from you, so we only just picked it up! Sorry!
I made the video footage of Arthur into a clip to post here :) Matthew�s in it a bit too, although mostly getting impatient for Neil to come downstairs � once again my husband�s naked legs are in the shot. *sigh* The man wears boxer shorts and a T-shirt nearly all the time at home! It seriously impedes my opportunities for taking photos sometimes! I like to post nice photos here, but when he�s sitting in his boxers then I can�t very well post those, can I?! Tsk. Anyway, he�s in this one, legs and all ;)
And that is all! Funny little Arthur! :) Now it�s so late, I MUST go to bed. I have been typing this for over three hours!!!! My nausea has not been so bad, which is lovely! Will update the pregnancy diary tomorrow, and this diary again as soon as I can. Thanks so much for the lovely messages after my entry about Matthew�s birthday party. I�m glad my cake didn�t look so bad as I thought! :)
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