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2005-06-15 - 5.23pm previous entry next entry
Blech, bits, and video clip :)
No update for a couple of days � I have been really poorly with Arthur�s cold, blech. I feel ultra bad for him now, as it feels more like flu than a cold, only no fever. I ache and ache and ache and ache and ache. It�s so sad that my poor lil boy had to ache like that and I just thought he was bothered because he was congested, and didn�t give him pain relief very often :( I wish there was a way to KNOW these things! Also I feel dizzy and queasy, so maybe that�s why he was partial to bringing all his food up. It�s not a pukey bug or anything, and you feel hungry as normal, but yeurgh my tummy does not feel good most of the time. My throat has stopped being sore now but my nose and head are solid concrete. Thank goodness it�s been 3 days and now I can look forward to getting better soon!
I had an osteopath appt today but I don�t feel well enough to go out. Looking after Arthur has been more difficult than I expected on my own and not being well. I mean, obviously this is what SAHMs have to do! But I thought I would muddle through and it wouldn�t be too bad. It has been really hard. I just had no energy and felt so awful. Thankfully he has napped pretty well in the day, so at least I haven�t had to battle with him over that. He is asleep at the moment, but he has been for an hour and he might wake any time, so I�m just writing this till he wakes and then I�ll save it in Word for later.
Arthur is increasingly bored with staying in the house and playing with toys on the floor. I don�t blame him one bit! But lately I haven�t been well enough to take him out. Yesterday I phoned my mummy to ask what I could do with him! She usually has good ideas. She suggested I make some �household� toys for him to play with, as she found I liked those better than expensive bright-coloured plastic toys.
Oh he�s awake, I�ll be back later! :)
Okay I�m back, but only for a few minutes probably, as Arthur is on his playmat watching me, and that gets boring very fast!
Anyway so yesterday I filled a wastepaper basket with �safe� household rubbish and a couple of other things � one of his stacking rings (the red one), a food pot lid, two large pieces of thick paper, crumpled into loose balls, an empty tissue box, that kind of thing. Arthur LOVED it!! He played with it for an HOUR!!!! He literally chucked the red stacking ring aside and went for the crumpled paper and food pot lid with far more excitement! He also did the whole thing sitting up without my support � he is getting so much better at the sitting thing. He sits with a much straighter back and reaches so far to pick things up from in front and both sides that he almost topples over, but he never lets himself. I do always have a few cushions behind him though, because sometimes he just decides he�s had enough of sitting and throws himself backwards! I used to put a massive pile of them, but now I try to make it as �floor like� as possible, just soft enough so that he doesn�t hurt himself. I want him to learn that he�s going to fall if he hurls his body backwards!
The other new toy he really went for was a large plastic water bottle (empty) which I suddenly figured I could fill with rice and pasta bits � just a quarter full so that they made an interesting rattle. He loves it! I am really pleased :) I used tricolore pasta so that it�s more colourful. I have just handed him a large-size empty cotton reel left over from my sewing, and he acted like I just handed him gold or something! He seems to be getting increasingly bored with his nice colourful toys, and far more interested in a piece of paper, or the TV remote, or a million other things that are �not for Arthur� (as I�m constantly having to say these days!).
I am getting tired of wondering about this, but I am *hoping* that his bottom front teeth are on the move. Until now, all his teething actions have been biting hard over his whole gum area, top and bottom, molars and front teeth, equally. Over the last week he has been biting hard on things, specifically pushing objects and fingers onto his bottom gum in the middle and pressing so hard that his arm shakes with the effort. I also noticed him rubbing that spot on a teething toy, back and forth as though it was soothing. So hopefully they are actually DOING something now! I can�t remember if I said, but I got my first two teeth at the exact same time. The two bottom middle ones cut through together, and grew out of the gum at the same rate, so maybe Arthur will cut both his bottom teeth together too? I can see them through the gum � two little white lines under the surface, and there isn�t one more prominent than the other. C�mon teeth!!
Thank you for all the lovely messages again (and Julie for the email!)! I really appreciated all the supportive words and also the good advice - Michelle your note about what you do with Seth came in super handy, as I tried whomping on Arthur�s butt the very next nap after reading it! And it WORKED!! Thank you! :) Of course it hasn�t worked every time, and he has gotten mighty annoyed once or twice, but it did work again at bedtime last night, so it�s encouraging! :)
Mallory, I loved your dream!!! I can�t wait for it to come true!! :)
Arthur is now on my lap, having got bored with the playmat � he started giving me looks that said, �I can�t believe you�re not picking me up! Humph!� so I put him on my lap, and he is now all smiley and currently eating my credit card. Credit cards are fun and shiney, and good for biting on! ;)
Oh whoops, he has dropped it on the floor, and would now like to say this:
H . 2 XnmL
And that is all, apparently! I love to let him do google searches! He looks so enthusiastic at the keyboard, and recently he did a search that came up with an article on poverty and inequality in Great Britain from 1942 to 1990!! The other successful search he did had at the top of the list, an article on malnutrition during pregnancy, hehe! NOT one of Arthur�s concerns! ;)
Here he is a couple of evenings ago in his sleeping bag, helping Daddy on the computer:
He is so funny in how eager he is to �help��with t h0ings
Like hs�
Helping now! He looks so exasperated if he k dsaDS gets moved out of reach for a moment so that we can actually finish what we were looking at! Poor Arthur!
Well he is getting bored so I will save this again and finish later. I have more to rwite0 so
0I won�t post it yet. Need to find this little man something interesting to do to take his mind off being os helpfuyl right now!! ;)
Back again! We played for a while, then Arthur watched me do some laundry and eat some lunch, did a huuuuge poo, got changed, and then got sleepy, so he is napping again now :) He wasn�t easy to get to sleep though. He nursed, then I banged on his bum (!!), and he kept closing his eyes, but then waking and crying. After a while I figured it was his teeth, as he was banging his gums together and crying, �Oh-yo-yo-yo!� which always means �Ow, my ____!� whatever is hurting him, poor thing! So I rubbed his gums firmly with Bonjela, and he actually giggled when I rubbed it over his bottom middle gum! It felt odd, sort of rubbery rather than smooth, but the rest of his gums were smooth like normal. Perhaps that�s because of all the rubbing and chewing he�s been doing on that one spot? After that I gave him teething powder, which he took eagerly with smiles :) And then I banged his butt again, but he wasn�t happy with that method. Eventually I nursed him and he went to sleep. It was hard for me to leave though � he kept on grasping hold of a wad of breast tissue in his little fist and dragging me towards him to keep the nipple in his mouth! He did not want me to leave! I still try to avoid nursing him completely to sleep though, and I managed to detach him just now, and let him put his hands and feet on me till he was asleep. Little love :)
Ohhh yes, I know what I was going to say!! I am an auntie!! I have a niece! Yay, it�s a girl � I knew it was going to be a girl!! So Arthur is no longer the only grandchild on Neil�s side! The new baby is called Ella (isn�t that pretty?!) and she was born in the early hours of yesterday, weighing 7lbs 10oz. A lovely weight too! That�s what I thought Arthur would weigh � maximum! I am sooooooo envious though, because Rosemary�s labour was just so irritatingly easy! Get this � at midnight, she thought she had wind. It persisted. After a few hours they went to the hospital. At 3.40am they arrived and she was assessed. As soon as she was examined, they said, �I can see the head!� She pushed through 5 contractions, and Ella was born at 4am. Oh. My. Bob. That is so not fair! Of course it IS fair, and it�s wonderful for Rosemary that she had such an easy time of it, but I feel strangely weird about it. And annoyed at myself for feeling that way! Tsk. But of course, not having loads of time to stretch and all that, she did tear quite badly, but they are both fine now.
I am so happy about their lovely news! And delighted that Ella is here, and that she�s a girl and that she has such a beautiful name. But I don�t know. I can�t shake �something�, I don�t know what, which I totally didn�t expect in the first place. At first I was so excited to hear the news, I thought maybe the �something� was like an anti-climax feeling. But it seemed more than that. I felt really depressed last night, and couldn�t stop thinking about them. I don�t understand what is behind it, and if I�m honest, I am actually anxious about it. When I told Neil about it, he said maybe it�s to do with attention � given that perhaps the attention will shift to Rosemary and the new baby rather than me and Arthur? I don�t know if that�s it, but that is what is making me anxious. I would hate to be feeling all funny about things just because I childishly want attention. The very idea makes me feel awful. I spend ages praying last night because I just needed to ask God to change me in this area. If it�s true that I�m this bad of an attention seeker, so that I even get jealous of happy people and depressed that something lovely has happened to them, then I NEED to change. I would hate that about myself, if it�s true. And I don�t want to start hating on myself again. I have been �clean� of that habit for a long time, for the most part. I don�t loathe anything about myself. But I would if I was this bitter and twisted and self-centred. God please help me not be like that. Please.
Anyway I hope that�s NOT why I was feeling funny. I still don�t understand why. The other possibility that came to mind was maybe I just want to have another baby, and I feel wistful about their situation, because I�m longing to be there again. But again, WHY should I feel that way? I have Arthur. Surely Arthur is all I should ever need or want. I feel guilty if my longing for more is affecting me that much when he�s only 7 months old. Like he�s not enough. And he IS. So why can�t I feel that way and be happy? Or is my longing for another a symptom of something that needs sorting out? Like back to the attention thing again? Do I actually want another baby for the wrong reasons? I just don�t know anymore, I can�t figure anything out today. I didn�t think it was for bad reasons � I just want to have more children, and I loved being pregnant and giving birth (hard though it was!) and having a tiny newborn to care for. But I feel it�s wrong to Arthur to be wishing it all back again now that he�s grown out of that phase. He�s just as fulfilling now as he was then. I don�t know why I feel anything today.
I did wonder for a moment if it was because Rosemary had a girl and I didn�t. But I immediately dismissed that because I couldn�t be happier to have had a boy. I actually WANTED a boy in the first place, although I would have been just as delighted if he had been a girl, of course. So it�s not that. I would like a daughter at some point, but it can�t be that because I�m even quite eager to have another boy next time, so there�s no achy longing for a girl or anything. I don�t knoooow.
Urgh. Enough of that. It�s GREAT news about my new niece, and I�m thrilled! I don�t know what came over me with the weird feelings. I am feeling slightly less weird about it today, so whatever it was will probably just disappear, thank goodness. I hope I am not as yucky inside as I was beginning to think.
What else can I write about before Arthur wakes? Oh I finished that Cuddlebun at last!! Yay! I am soooo pleased with it. I used hemp stretch terry for the soaker and the matching doubler, and it has a stretchy knit print (firemen!) on the outside, and blue microfleece for extra softness and dryness on the inside. I used a hidden layer of sherpa :) And chose white snaps. And um. Decided to turn and topstitch it instead of serging it, because the legs are more chunky and soft on Arthur�s thighs for some reason. Anyway, here it is, up close, and in action!...
Doesn�t it fit him well?! I am already half way through making another one, with different fabrics and colours, and I have another one cut out ready to sew! I just LOVE sewing nappies! I forgot how fun it was, all that long time without much access to my sewing machine. Now that it�s in the kitchen I can sew much more easily. My serger/overlocker is still in the bedroom though, so I can only use that when Arthur�s awake and watching me :)
Arthur is rocking a lot on his hands and knees now. He seems so impatient to move. He does a lot of bobbing about, whatever position he�s in. He is trying to sit himself up from lying down, but doesn�t have the strength yet. If I see him straining to sit, I give him a little push from under his neck and shoulders and he�s up very easily. Also if I sit him on my leg with his legs either side, he will push himself to standing in an instant! He loves to stand more than anything else, and is getting very strong at it now. He doesn�t bounce much when standing � he prefers to puff his chest out and make his legs like ramrods with a huge smile on his face! He�s so proud of his standing! It�s very cute. He takes basically all his weight on his own now when standing. I do have to hold him because he has noooo balance at all, but if he�s leaning on something like the sofa, he will stay on his legs for a couple of seconds before they buckle. They do that randomly so it�s not safe to let him lean alone!
Just these last few days he has been doing this odd bobbing when he�s sitting. Look (will put this in the video clip page too).... 
Why is he doing that?! Is it to move in some way? Or to do with leaning forward till he�s on his front like in the clip? The one time he fell forward like that before, it was an accident and he cried. This time it�s like he was wanting to fall forwards, and he didn�t mind it at all � he just rearranged his limbs. Anyway. Just wondered if anyone knew what on earth he�s doing when he does this!
Well he just woke after 30 minutes but he was crying and sleepy so I nursed him again and he�s out. Lately he has been having HUGE afternoon naps � yesterday�s was nearly 3 hours!! So he has been going to be later, between 7 and 8 as a result. I think he is tired from his cold though, as a bit of post-viral fatigue is normal after a cold. I am slightly dreading that part of it myself. I am tired enough already and even on a good night I am getting maybe 4 hours sleep, in two parts usually. Arthur normally wakes now at around 11pm, and then again around 2, and again somewhere around 6am. He�s up for the day from the 6am waking, and our routine now is that Neil gets up with him and I get some more sleep. Isn�t Neil wonderful?! He is a real morning person though. I am soooo not one of those! I think I need to become one though, for the next few years at least!
Oh I keep on meaning to mention that Arthur has found his bits in the last few weeks, hehe! His hand goes straight there the instant his nappy is off, and I have discovered I need at least a third hand if I am going to remove his nappy, prevent his hand going in stinky poo, and clean said poo off his bottom at the same time! I find I need to do all of those at the same instant, otherwise something is going to get poo on it. Other than the nappy and wipe that is! Today I was poorly co-ordinated, and poo got on his fingers and my jeans. Ew. But anyway, so he has found his lil bits ;) He is so cute scrunching them all the time! But he really does scrrrrunch � it looks painful to me! Also sometimes he treats them like elastic and pulls till they sort of ping out of his grasp! Ow. But he doesn�t seem to find it painful. I have seen mothers soooo many times over the years make comments to their baby boys as they change their nappies: �Don�t play with your willy!� or �I don�t think you should be doing that, (insert baby�s name)�; �Leave yourself alone!� or �Stop fiddling with that� or even, �Don�t touch, it�s dirty!� � basically a huge range of comments that imply that their little ones should not be touching their bits during nappy changes (or at any other time for that matter). I don�t see anything wrong with it at ALL, and it really bugs me when mothers seem to try to discourage it in some way. It�s completely normal. Really. What�s to discourage?! I think discouraging can even be harmful, because really, what is it teaching your child?! Something negative about self-image or natural instinct, or at the very least, that it can be wrong to touch a part of your own body, or that part of your body is taboo or dirty. No way do I want any of these messages to reach my son. I am perfectly happy for him to fiddle with his lil bits! He is fascinated by them anyway, and since he is into exploring everything at the moment, I see no reason to restrict him on this exploration of his own little person. The things I say to him while I�m changing him and noticing him squishing his bits are stuff like, �What have you got there?!� or �Are you fiddling with your bits?!� or some similar question, with a cheery smile. If I have to move his hand out the way to wipe him and he�s annoyed about it, I just tell him I have to clean him and he can have them back in a moment, hehe! I hope he will get nothing but an open easy-going vibe about his body from Neil and I.
My own parents were super easy-going about body image and sex and stuff. I am so grateful to them for that. For me, that formed a very important part of my physical self-esteem and ease with the subject of sex or similar issues. They told me about sex when I was three. I don�t remember it, but I asked one day and Mummy told me. I didn�t bat an eyelid, and she said she didn�t think I understood, but she bought me a book about it for little children for the next time I asked, so she could explain with something to better help me understand. I don�t remember a time that I didn�t know about sex or feel it was just some normal thing that people do which was no big deal. At school I never understood the giggling and jokes about it, well, till I was a bit older anyway.
Also my parents used to bath with us and there was no hiding away of any part of our bodies when I was growing up. I�m so glad they did that. My brother and I were used to seeing them without clothes on and it was normal to us. I was happy to wear nothing on a hot evening after my bath around my family until I was maybe 10 or 11. I just like how easy-going it has been for me with this subject, because I know you can get quite weird reactions from people, like there are people who never knew what a man looked like without any clothes on till they got married or whatever, because their own father and brothers were never seen at home wearing less than a suit (okay so I�m exaggerating, but you get my point!). I think it�s sad when that happens. What must children think of their bodies, or THE human body in general, if their role models teach them that it should be hidden away and not spoken of. I really want to bring Arthur (and any other children we have) up with the same liberal sense of familiarity that my parents taught me. I remember when I talked to Neil about all this, he first thought it was a little odd, because he was brought up in a much more conservative home where he never ever saw his parents even in their underwear, let alone without clothes, and from a very young age, he and his siblings would isolate themselves (like people tend to do) to bath or get changed. He was interested in my experience from my upbringing, and after we discussed the benefits (and draw-backs for the alternative), he was happy to try it. So he baths with Arthur, and has never looked back. We both get changed in front of Arthur, and wash in front of him, etc, and will continue to do so for a long while yet. I hope he will be like me when I was growing up, and stand casually leaning against the bathroom door-frame while I am in the bath or getting changed, telling me about his day at school. I know some people who were brought up waaaay opposite to this will think it weird. But I would only wish relaxed views on my little one, and this is one I feel strongly about. It isn�t weird to a child. Only to children who have been taught that it is weird.
Anyway. Where did all that come from?! Oh yes, Arthur�s bits! So anyway, he has found them :) I think it�s cute! And all of a sudden I can�t think of anything else to say�. Nope, nothing there! Arthur is still asleep and it�s 5.20pm so maybe I should get him up soon?? I never know about getting him up. Usually I�m just so glad he�s sleeping that there�s no need to get him up. He sleeps as long as he needs, or usually less, before he wakes naturally in part of his sleep cycle. I guess that if he�s taking extra sleep, he is needing extra sleep. He was so upset when he woke earlier that I was glad to nurse him back to sleep, as though he needed it. So maybe I�ll let him sleep. If that offsets his bedtime then so be it. He is recovering from his cold still, so I need to be extra flexible with him. I wanted to try him on solids again when he turned 7 months, but he was unwell, so I�ll wait till he�s thoroughly better and try then. I think I�ll have another go with the apple puree. I have three cubes of it in the freezer. Money is slightly tight at the moment so after Neil gets paid I am buying a Baby Safe Feeder, and then I will try him on all sorts of things in that, and see how he likes it!
Well that�s all for now. I�ll update again soon though :)
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