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2005-06-30 - 12.48am!! previous entry next entry
A few firsts....
Arthur went to his first birthday party on Monday!!! It was Joshua�s first birthday (the little boy of our friends Gordon and Katie at church) � I can�t believe he is one already!!!! It was so nice. Everyone met in the park and they set up a table with food and cake and drinks and stuff, and put blankets down under the trees for the little ones :) There were soooooo many babies!!! I don�t know how many � maybe 15 or 20? Katie and Joshua are active participators in several different mother and baby groups throughout the week! Most of the babies there were Arthur�s age too, between 6 and 9 months old, which was nice. I never saw so many babies Arthur�s age in one place before!! All of them but one were crawling though, and poor Arthur sat there (hugely � waaaay bigger than most of them!) all immobile. He was too busy being interested in them though, so that�s okay. I am hoping he�ll pick up some tips, hehe! The blankets with all those 6-9 month olds on looked soooo funny! It looked like a very badly organised exercise class, because they were all doing these weird rocks and stretches on all fours, and lunging this way and that, all of them intently focusing on a toy or something, as though very serious about warming up for an exercise class, hehehe! It really did look funny. They were all so serious in their expressions whilst trying out their new skill!
One mum did say to me though that I should not wish for Arthur to learn to crawl. She said be thankful he isn�t doing it yet! Hers crawled at 5 months � so early! � and she has been run ragged ever since! She said life will change enormously once he is moving everywhere � something I am seeing from the diaries of my friends who have babies who are crawling. So I am not impatient at all. I don�t think I ever was really, just a little frustrated on Arthur�s behalf, because he gets so frustrated at not being able to move forwards while on his tummy when he sees something he wants to reach. The house is a megariffic mess though, so I am very thankful that he isn�t crawling yet! He is starting to really get into things, even with such limited mobility. He can drag himself around with his arms quite well, in circles and to the sides, and push himself backwards, but not forwards. He can lunge and stretch with an arm forwards to reach a toy that�s maybe a few inches out of reach, and get it. But no crawling or forward motion yet.
But somehow he is finding all sorts of things to be a monkey with, even without moving far! We were late for the party and I had a TON of stuff to take with us � blanket, suncream, hat, present and card, nappy changes, change of outfit, toys, endless other items! So I was compiling all this stuff, and I put it in a huge pile near the door, and put Arthur on his fleece blanket on the floor with 2 interesting toys while I rushed to the kitchen and washed my hands and then went and brushed my teeth. I was careful to check the floor for things he might find that he shouldn�t, but I guess I didn�t check well enough (bad Mummy). I rushed as much as I could getting my teeth done, and while I was rinsing I noticed Arthur was very quiet in there. I thought to myself, �Hmmm, I wonder if he�s old enough yet so that quietness means trouble?!� and when I got to the living room, he was making the same funny noises that he made when he ate the piece of paper. I think I must have only been away about 90 seconds, if that, but he had ignored his interesting toys, somehow moved off the fleece, and was gagging himself with a biro!!!! Yikes! Thank goodness it was the type that is a fully sealed unit that doesn�t come apart, and with no separate cap. He looked up at me and his face was COVERED with blue biro, hehehe! I was just so glad he was okay, and I was feeling kind of shaky about how it could have been serious and urgh I was so neglectful, etc, etc, but when he looked at me and beamed (removing the biro from his mouth!), and I saw his chin a perfect work of art with scribbles of blue biro all over, I couldn�t help but laugh and laugh! He looked so funny, bless him! Fortunately I had just covered him in suncream and when I added a wet cloth to that, the biro came right off and didn�t leave a trace � phew! Monkey boy. And bad Mummy. I need to seriously pay much more attention to things now.
Anyway the party was lovely. We arrived at 3pm and stayed till it finished at 4.30. Arthur was tired by then because he had not napped for a while, but it was such a nice day and we were already out there in a nice park, so I put the full sun-cover over his 3-wheeler and because the one I have is head to toe and black, it�s nice and dark in there for him, and I pushed him around the park. He was asleep in 3 minutes flat, and he slept his usual 30 minutes, and when he woke, we came home again :)
Okay I hope I don�t come under fire for this because I know I have a lot of American readers, but I have noticed something that I have an opinion on (what a surprise, heh). It is totally not meant to be an attack on anyone or any group or nationality, etc. I am just noticing something that I don�t notice here, and being really perplexed/weirded-out by it! What is up with it being a tradition almost, to put a baby in front of a huge gooey cake on its first birthday, and watch it get the stuff all over its face? I am noticing EVERYWHERE online (i.e., pretty much exclusively US) that the photo of a baby with cake and hideously toxic-coloured icing all over its face seems to be the �traditional� or �must-have� photo keepsake from a baby�s first birthday. Why is this?!! So far I can only seem to find that people think it is cute or something. I think it�s awful! And extremely low on the cute-factor scale. Maybe that is because it�s just never done here though? I love the photos that I see of babies on their first birthday all dressed up for their party, or opening presents, or sitting in front of their cake with the candles burning while everyone sings. But I can�t bear those cake-face photos. Why are they cute?! The colourings in those cakes or their frostings just scare me when I see them over such tiny pure little faces. They do not look nice! I like photos of messy food faces on babies, so it�s not a messy thing, but yeurgh. Sugar and possibly near-toxic additives and colourings plastered everywhere, all for the sake of a photo that doesn�t look cute to me at all? I don�t get it. I wouldn�t like Arthur to get near that stuff, even on his first birthday party. I hope he will have a birthday cake and maybe he will want to try a bit of it, but I would make it with that in mind and not make it too unhealthy for him. Yeah I know it�s a one-off, but still. I notice that sometimes the mothers are saying how they will be sure to pick up the gooiest messiest frosted cake for the best photo opportunity. I just can�t get on with that idea at all. I know I�m probably going to be told I�m being stuffy and it�s all in the name of fun, but oh well.
One-year-olds that I have known all have just as much fun and so do the adults, at their parties, WITHOUT the chemicals and sugar everywhere! There is more personal touch involved from what I see. Joshua�s birthday cake was plain sponge with jam in the middle, and just a dusting of icing sugar on the top, no icing at all, and a single candle in the middle. It wasn�t boring, because who is the cake for anyway?! Joshie was not old enough to care about what his cake looked like, and he didn�t seem that fussed about whether he even tasted it or not, but most of the babies his age did have a little. The nice thing was that the cake was baked by Joshie�s grandmother. I like stuff like that. Of course, she could have covered it with messy frosting and still have it homemade with love, but thinking about it, if there had been such a cake at that party on Monday, I think every mother there would have had the same, �Yeurgh!� reaction that I feel about them. I can�t think of many of those mothers being thrilled to give a piece to their little ones.
Anyway, I didn�t mean to make this a debate or rant or anything � that is soooo not my intention, I hate when people get cross with things that I say and debate it in my guestbook or whatever, so I don�t mean to do that. I just keep coming across the cake thing and have developed some strong feelings about it, personally, and have SUCH a different experience of birthday cakes for one-year-olds here that Joshua�s party seemed to trigger the desire to spill my thoughts on it a bit in my diary. I hope I didn�t offend anyone. I�m sure lots of you love the messy cake thing and plan on (or have done) doing it when your little one turns one. That is fine for you. I just don�t get it and wouldn�t go near it for Arthur.
When my brother was one I remember his cake. I was nearly four. Mummy baked him a normal round sponge cake and it had white icing on it, the water-and-icing-sugar kind. In the middle there was one white candle. I just thought it was wonderful! He didn�t have a party, there was just me and Mummy and Daddy and him. I remember we sang happy birthday to him, and then he tried and tried to blow out the candle like Mummy was showing him how to, but his bottom lip kept jutting out so he would blow up to his hair instead, hehe! I got so impatient!! I just kept on taking a deep breath and threatening to blow that candle out, but Mummy kept warning me not to ;) I was mischievious a lot as a child! When he was two he had a party, but just with his best friend and her sister (since her sister was my best friend at the time). I remember that too. He had a lovely cake that year. But all the icing on cakes at little ones� birthday parties seem to be firm, like the fondant type, not messy. Or non-existent, especially when the mothers don�t want them eating a ton of sugary stuff when they are tiny. I haven�t really thought much about Arthur�s birthday, mainly because the very concept seems outrageously foreign to me!! To think of him actually HAVING a birthday is just weird! Surely he�s going to be a baby forever?!! I can�t believe he will actually have a birthday. It almost feels like November was SUCH a month � being hugely pregnant and giving birth to Arthur � that it can surely never happen again! That must have been the last November ever to happen, it was that momentous!! Silly. But anyway, it will roll around again, and sooner than I think too. I liked Joshua�s party, but Arthur is a winter baby and can�t have a nice party in the park like that. I don�t know what we�d do. I have only ever thought of having family around � and I�d hoped my parents would come over to England for his birthday. I really hope they will. I miss them too much. I know I would make him a cake, but I have no idea what kind, or whether he�d be having any or much of it. I guess if he�s eating everything by then, he will have some. But I wouldn�t give him icing, just cake. The magic part of a little one�s birthday party for me is the singing and blowing out of the candle, not the eating of the cake afterwards. I can�t wait for all the birthdays that he�ll have where he sits there proudly while we sing just for him, and then blows out his candles. I know I will wish I could stop time and live that moment forever. Little ones grow up way too fast.
Anyway! Back to the party! So it was nice to talk with the other mums. I already knew one or two of them, from church. Everyone said how HUGE Arthur is now, and asked me things like, was he sleeping better, and how are the solids going, etc. I said he is basically still exclusively breastfed and their eyes nearly popped out! I thought maybe they would be on my back about getting him on solids, but it was soooo nice because one lady said how much she sympathised, because her son was super picky with his food and she found it hard. And another lady commented on how well I was doing, because he is looking so big and healthy and it must be tiring for me to be providing such a big baby with all his nutrition. I didn�t really think of it like that. Anyway, they were very nice and supportive. I was proud to breastfeed him right there on the blankets (with the video camera running too!) later in the afternoon when he got hungry and wanted to nurse. I realised how easy I find breastfeeding now. Arthur is so adaptable now and he climbs on me and nurses from all angles, so I really do sit there like my mental image of a calm and relaxed nursing mother has always looked, without being hunched over him or tense, and he just nurses, and it�s lovely. I am so happy with our nursing relationship. I just love to breastfeed, and I feel so proud to do so in public. Of course it is easier when the �public� are other mothers. None of them were breastfeeding though, and I noticed one of them saw me breastfeeding Arthur all free-and-easy like I was, and looked a bit�. I don�t know, unimpressed or something? Anyway she looked away quickly. But I still felt proud :)
The other little babies were eating rice cakes and stuff while the adults ate strawberries (some of the older babies ate the fruit and things though), and birthday cake and cookies and other yummy stuff. I felt yucky and unwell in my tummy due to the last day of my antibiotics � it really gets to me by the last day of a course of antibiotics � so I didn�t eat much. My chest is nearly back to normal, thank goodness! I am finally feeling better :) Anyway, one mummy came up to me with a rice cake and asked if Arthur would like one. I said sure. He has never tried one, but I thought he wouldn�t go for it. He took it eagerly, like he does with anything put in his hand, and it went straight to his mouth. He chewed and chewed on it with his gums, and it got soggy and started to disintegrate, and amazingly he swallowed the bits!!! Yay! He did gag a little here and there, but he was mainly soooo distracted and interested in all the goings-on around him that he didn�t have much time to bother gagging on food! He ate most of it, and left a soggy heap of the remains on the blanket :) Then the same lady asked if she could offer him a corn puff thingy with apple and orange powder in it. I wasn�t crazy about the orange powder, since the weaning book says no citrus till 9+ months or something, but I really did not think he would go for it, and it was such a tiny amount, so I said yes. He tasted it a bit but basically left it uneaten.
I was so impressed with the rice cake though! I had not thought of those before. The next day we went to the supermarket and I bought organic sweet potatoes, more organic bananas, and two packs of organic baby rice cakes � one plain, and the other with apple and cinnamon! For lunch I gave him half a banana and two long thick slices of apple (not cooked). He seemed to really enjoy lunch! He ate a little of the banana just like it was, and chewed on the apple for a long time, but didn�t break any of it off at all. He was very chatty and vocal whilst chewing on those! I mashed the rest of the banana right there on his highchair tray, and didn�t bother making it extra soft with breast milk this time. I got two baby spoons, the ones we have been using all this time (soft tips and bright colours), and gave him one while I put some banana on the other. Between the two of us, he ate the whole lot!!! That is quite a big meal of solids for him really, and I was pleased. I stripped him off and put him in the kitchen sink (clean and shiny these days!) and bathed him and washed his hair. Banana just gets everywhere!
Lunch for Arthur is around 11.30, sometimes a bit later depending on his naps. In the late afternoon, around 4ish, he ate an apple and cinnamon rice cake! He seemed to really like it, although he did gag on a lumpy bit at one point. I could see it on his tongue and it was soft, and I�m sure he could have dealt with it, but I scooped it off for him since he was gagging and sticking his tongue out, and looking at me like he wanted me to fix it for him! I tried one of those rice cakes and they are really nice!
Well today he has not been interested in solids at all. I gave him half a banana and a plain rice cake for lunch, and he gummed on them a bit but didn�t eat them really. I mashed the banana in a bowl and he took maybe a baby spoonful, but gagged such a lot. He is super gaggy today. I don�t know why he is so gaggy these days. Much more so than when we first tried him on smooth and runny baby rice. It�s odd. He gags so much that he retches, and saliva just runs off his tongue like he�s going to chuck it all up, but he doesn�t. That shouldn�t be happening, should it?? I do think it�s mainly to do with taste though, not texture. I gave him a touch taste, literally, of my baked beans sauce that I had with lunch, and he was interested in tasting it, but once the flavour was on his tongue he gagged and did the watery tongue thing, so it CAN�T be texture. Hmmm.
Anyway. So solids seem to be starting! And in a nice way, because he is pretty much self-feeding and choosing himself what he has and how he takes it, and we aren�t doing the purees. Proper solids!
And today he did his first big-boy poo!!! We had been waiting a good while for it since the last poo, and he looked very worried while he did it and looked at me for reassurance after the awful noise in the nappy had finished (!!), and when I looked in there to change him, there were BIG BOY POOS in there! Poos with some shape and substance! Not much shape and substance, but some. Until now, he has had classic breastfed poo � mustardy and runny. These new poos weren�t as foul as I had expected. I was so surprised to see them brown and less runny! I looked at Arthur and said, �Did you do Big Boy Poo-Poos?!!� and he gave me such a huge smile with his hands tucked under his chin, like he was super pleased with himself, hehe! How nice. I hope none of you are reading this over a snack, hehehe! ;)
I have photos � not of the poo-poo of course! ;) But of yesterday�s successful lunch (in the living room (messy) instead of the kitchen, just because), and today�s less-than-successful lunch! Today I am so glad I sat him in just a nappy on the splash mat on the floor, because he dumped the mashed banana all over his legs and we had to just get in the bath together after that! We were late for my osteopath appt because of that, but oh well. I should have thought about the clean-up part taking some time! Anyway, here are a few photos of that:
Yesterday�s lunch � very happy boy!...
Today�s lunch � more interested in the spoon, and then it was much more fun to have banana everywhere (except for the usual initial �ewww!� factor that Arthur seems to get!)�
Neil got a haircut yesterday, and it had grown long really fast (his hair is like that), so the cut made it super short all of a sudden. He doesn�t like it, but it will grow out quickly. Anyway, when he got home from work with a new shorter haircut, Arthur was really unsure around him! He must have looked too different to seem familiar for Arthur, poor boy! Normally he is literally shrieking with joy when Neil walks in, and reaching and reaching for Neil to take him from me and make him giggle! It�s so cute. But he was very uncertain, and once or twice reached for me to take him back! Poor Arthur! He is fine now though. I knew he would adjust quickly. Here is a photo of Arthur being very uncertain with his daddy�s new hair (I think they look really alike in this one � even their hair grows the same way!):
Oooooh I know what else I wanted to write!!!! A major milestone! First post-partum parsnips at laaaast!!! ;) Yay! And it only took us 7 and a half months, hehe! And � go me!! � it was MY idea!! Although it�s not as great as it sounds, because I was busy thinking how I MUST schedule my smear again this cycle. I chickened out of the last one because I was too anxious about it being painful. It always is when there have been no parsnips for a long while. So I was talking to Neil this evening about how I should make another appt, and worrying about it being painful, and then figured we should have some parsnips to try to fix that. Very non-passionate, hehe! Also I would not get it on until I had wiped the gross dried banana bits off the splash mat in the kitchen first, haha! The joys of parenthood! And of course Arthur made waking sounds at a reeeally bad moment, which just made us laugh so much with the irony of it all (!), but he didn�t wake, which is good! :) But I could have been a bit more romantic I suppose. The hormones just aren�t there for me because it�s the last thing I feel like doing, but anyway, you don�t need to know much more about it since it�s MINE to know ;) But I am super happy because I feel like a non-pregnant/milk machiney person again, and it was amazingly non-painful :) So that is groovesome.
I can�t wait for the weekend because it�s Grandoug�s 80th birthday. Well, his birthday is next week, but the family get-together is on Saturday :) I love his birthday get-togethers! It�s only 9 of us (including Arthur) but I love them. We always go to their house. My parents are coming over from France, and I am LONGING to see them!! I still speak to my mummy on the phone every day pretty much, but it�s so lovely to actually see her. So different. And I can�t wait for them to see Arthur. Mummy says they can�t wait either. They are only here from Friday to Sunday, and we�ll only see them on Saturday which is a shame, but better than nothing.
Katie invited me to go to a mother-and-baby group that she goes to, which is where most of the mothers and babies at the party came from. They are all the ones with babies Arthur�s age, so I think that would be good. Plus they seemed like a nice bunch. Except Arthur was chewing on a nice rattly toy on the blanket, and a little boy called Ben crawled right up to him and snatched the toy right out of his hand, even though it was in his mouth at the time!! He sat back and put it in his own mouth. Arthur just looked so shocked and surprised! He didn�t look upset though, just amazed, like he had never seen anything like this before and he didn�t know what to do! He just stared at the little boy with his hands still frozen to his mouth, exactly as they had been when the toy got snatched from them. Ben�s mum rushed over saying she was sorry he snatched Arthur�s toy, and she took it from Ben and gave it back to Arthur, who put it right back in his mouth and carried on like nothing had happened! It was very interesting to see him with other babies. I think he needs more exposure to them actually, so it would be good to join the group. Somehow I am pretty nervous about it though. I am worried that I am overprotective of Arthur, and I don�t know how to stop being like it. It pulled at something sharp, deep inside, when the little one took the toy from Arthur. I feel so terribly protective of him, it�s such a fierce feeling. I don�t know if that�s good though. It�s like I don�t know if I can bear to see him with other children because there are sure to be some bad things that happen along the way, and times where he is actually hurt on purpose by another child, or crying and upset at something someone else did to him. I don�t know if I can bear that, but surely that�s awful of me? He needs normal experiences like this, and a cool and collected mama to run to, to make it better. Not one who wishes she could wrap him in her arms and keep him all to herself forever more, or one who would gladly give the offending child a good pinch for hurting her little precious! I feel like I should be different, and can�t make myself be. I hope it won�t be detrimental to Arthur�s development. I just feel so in love with him that it�s hard to squash the feelings.
Well it�s sooooo late, but I needed to write all this down. Arthur is stirring so I will go now. I�ll update again soon :)
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