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2006-08-30 - 12.47am previous entry next entry
Yet_more_photos,_counting,_and_waffly_stuff
Just a relatively quick update to say, YAY!! - I just signed up with Haloscan.com since Signmyguestbook.crap seems to be so useless lately, and I finally have one of those comments box thingies that I have seen on so many of my friends' diaries!! Yay! I even got to fiddle with the template so it matches my diary and has a photo of Arthur-Boo in it, so I'm all happy happy now! :) Please use my comments box if you have trouble with my guestbook (or just because it's more fun!) - I've made a link to click on up there on the left, under "leave me a note". Just click on "comments" and the box will pop up :) Yay! I reeeally need to update the photo up there - it's Arthur when he was about 5 months old, and that seems sooooooooooo out of date now that I have another baby boy who is only just over 2 months behind that age now! How crazy. But I'm waiting for the "perfect" photo of the two of them, both wearing sweet expressions, and preferably on the sofa because the colour of our sofa happens to match the colour of this diary (and I'm picky like that, hehe!). So far I have plenty of photos building up, of my two sweeties together, and some on the sofa too, but they mostly come out GREAT for one of them and really NOT great for the other, or not-so-good of both of them! I need to keep on taking photos. I'm such a perfectionist over the photo that will be the one everybody sees when they come to my diary. It has to say PROUDLY, "These are my BOYS!!!" so I want to do them both justice with the photo. Still working on it!
So far here are some recent photos of my sweet lil men :)
The above photos were taken when Matthew was 7 weeks old, so not very recent now, but even though they didn't come out great for both boys, I love them because it looks like Arthur was whispering something to Matthew which upset him hugely, and Arthur was utterly gleeful over his mischievousness, hehe!
Here are two more from around the same time - these were the last two of about fifty million that I took of them because Matthew was wearing an outfit that was a gift from a sweet lady who is one of my parents' neighbours in their village in France. I wanted to take a good photo of him wearing it so my parents could give it to her, so I dressed the poor boy up and snapped a billion photos. Of course he got fed up SUPER fast. Arthur, however, has always loved having his photo taken, and when Matthew finally went into meltdown over the whole tedious session, Arthur almost scooped him right up in the big hug he gave him, as though he was trying to make him feel better about it! I took a (blurry) photo of that, but I wish I had caught in on the camcorder, because he was being SO sweet with Matthew. Eventually he gave up and just beamed good-naturedly for the last photo while Matthew bawled next to him, hehe! Anyway, here are the photos:
And here are a couple that I took of the boys last week, first thing in the morning when they were both still wearing their sleepsuits - my little sweeties!
Look at those boys - they are so different! They LOOK so different, but also their personalities really are so different. Arthur is so cheery and laid-back, and Matthew is quite an anxious little person - you can see it in the photos. He is easily nervous about things. He gets that from me. I have always been a super-anxious person, it's the thing I struggle the hardest with. I'm sad that Matthew has inherited that tendency from me (my mother is just the same, as was her father), but thankful that he has an absolutely wonderful older brother to look after him in Arthur, as he is so easy-going and confident and has no anxious tendencies at ALL. Also he LOVES Matthew so much. And at least Matthew has a Mummy who totally understands how he feels. *sigh*
However, when his anxious side isn't getting on top of him, Matthew seems a very calm and happy baby, which is lovely. He has such a gentle nature, I think I mentioned it already, either here or in my pregnancy diary. He LOVES to talk. He would rather talk than eat. Did I say that last entry already? I forget what I've already said here from entry to entry! He also has a tendency to get mighty upset if I am not looking RIGHT into his eyes while he's "talking" to me, even if I break his gaze for a SECOND to acknowledge something Arthur is doing! He starts to cry right away, and I have to work a little to "chat" him back to contentment again! Unfortunately, this is also a trait he has picked up from me. *sigh* I could talk the hind legs off a donkey. I hate it when someone isn't paying me their absolutely undivided attention for the whole 10 hours that my "about my day" talk lasts!! ;) Neil is very patient with me. My dad is the same way as me (my mummy is patient too!). He gets it from his mother. Poor Matthew with his anxiety and chatterbox-ness! I hope he isn't colour blind as well. Arthur isn't, so perhaps I haven't inherited the gene and I'm not even carrying it to pass on to my boys, but then again maybe I AM and Arthur got lucky. I hope Matthew misses it too. If I am a carrier (and I have a 50/50 chance of being one, since my mum is a carrier and my brother is colour blind), any sons that I have will each have a 50/50 chance of being colour blind. Or not. Arthur definitely isn't - his colours are so clear and he can tell me them so well that I know he is seeing red and green easily and not mixing them up like my brother does. I have a while to wait before I can tell if Matthew is okay or not.
Anyway, here are a couple of photos of my sweet lil Matthew being happy with Daddy:
Neil is blowing raspberries at him. Matthew LOVES raspberries - they are his favourite noise in the whole world, and he smiles enormously and his little eyes light up when you parple your lips or blow raspberries with your tongue! He worked and worked for a couple of days at copying us when we did it, and now he can blow his own raspberries with his tongue! He doesn't stick his tongue out very far though, but he makes the appropriate noise, which is the enjoyable part, apparently! He blows bubbles too, which I don't remember Arthur ever doing, and he drools like crazy all the time. He is teething a lot today. He has a nappy rash and is fussing more, and he is biting his fingers so that they are going all red and puffy. I gave him the knuckle of my little finger to bite this afternoon and he bit and bit and bit for 5 minutes straight. I gave him a teething ring and he chewed that for a while, but he's too little to hold it and co-ordinate it to his own mouth yet so in the end it was easier on my arm to just give him my knuckle to bite rather than hold a teething ring at the right angle for half an hour! Poor Mathie.
Mathie is what I seem to call him a lot lately. Nobody else does, just me. I call Arthur, Arthie a lot too. I guess I am one of those people who finds it impossible to avoid shortening names to cutesify them or something! Matthew's nickname from me seems to have turned into Mathie-Moo, or even Mathie-Moo-Moblet (no idea why!) if I'm in the mood for a longer nickname! Poor Arthur has to put up with "Arthie-knees", hehehe! I think that must have arisen from a combination of his name and another of my odd affectionate nicknames for the boys - "sweet knees"! I have no idea why these things come out of my mouth, really I don't. I guess I am just weird! ;) Also both boys are lately known (by me) as "lamb" or "lambie", or even "lambie-lamb". It can get as bad as "lambie-lamb-lamb", and "lamb-lambie-lamb-lamb" has been known on occasion! Urgh, my poor children! ;)
Matthew REALLY loves mirrors at the moment. He gazes at himself for ages, as though he just doesn't understand, and then he starts talking to himself with a very serious expression, hehe! I hold him in front of the mirror in my arms for ages sometimes, and he smiles at me but looks rather serious about that other baby in there with me! On his playmat, there is a centre-piece that has a mirror dangling down, and he loves to stare at himself in that. He talks much more cheerfully to the baby in THAT mirror (the one that isn't hogging his mummy's arms!) and gives it all sorts of very cute shy looks and smiles. I got a couple of photos of him doing this at 8 weeks old. I wish I had more time to get photos of him that are as good as the ones I took of Arthur at his age, but I just don't get the chance now, with Arthur around as well. I still try though!
Wow, I think I am almost caught up with all the photos now, yay!!! I have one more from last week to post here, but I have some on the camera from the last few days to upload sometime too. Phew! So many photos, so little time!
We finally used the Mothercare vouchers that were given to us by the church to buy Matthew a Bumbo seat! I had heard about them when Arthur was a baby but I didn't want to buy things to put him down in. I wanted to hold him all the time and keep him close to me. I would like the same with Matthew really, except that it just doesn't seem to be physically possible with the second child when the first is still so little and so demanding of me. Unless I wore a sling of course, but my back hurts enough without wearing a sling these days, and anyway, slings aren't all that tandem-nursing-friendly. Matthew seems happy enough to be put down for short periods of time, but he does get really really upset after a short time and then sometimes I end up having to leave him crying while I attend to Arthur's meals or nappy changes or something or other. I HATE letting Matthew just sit/lie somewhere screaming his head off and getting himself so upset, but sometimes I just don't seem to have any choice. I hate that. Especially with Matthew being such an easily-anxious baby. He really seems to get upset, not angry. I wish I could hold him close to me more. I hope I'm not hurting his sensitive little soul in the process of all this :(
Anyway, but we bought a Bumbo seat. It's for 3-14 months, but his head control is very strong so we sat him in it and he did great! He enjoyed it because it let him look around and see everything clearly. But he gets tired of it quite quickly at the moment, and wants a change of scenery. Also the position means he is a bit scrunched over his tummy so he brings up more milk sitting there than anywhere else. But he seems to like it. I think he'll like it more as he gets older and can see further. He'll love watching Arthur play across the room before he is old enough to sit up by himself or mobilise. He LOVES watching Arthur, no matter what he's doing! He seems to really adore Arthur so far. I'm so thrilled that they love each other!
Here is Matthew in his new Bumbo seat last week:
See his completely straight feet?! I still marvel at them joyfully all the time, after what Arthur went through and how Matthew could so easily have inherited the same condition! Yay!
Of course, Arthur likes to squeeeeze himself into that Bumbo seat as often as he can too! He likes to share all of Matthew's things!
I am realising lately that Arthur understands some new things. He seems to know a lot of opposites now. He knows (and says, in the right contexts) hot and cold, high and low, and lately he has been running his hand up my arm to my shoulder while he's breastfeeding, and popping off the breast to say, "Up!" and then sliding it back down to my hand and saying, "Dowwwn!" He does this over and over and OVER, as though it is a fun game to him. Yesterday we were playing with playdough during one of Matthew's naps and there were some big pots and some little pots. I picked up a big pot and said, "Oh look Arthur! Here's a BIG pot!" His attention was immediately caught, so I picked up a small one and said, "And here's a SMALL pot!" I put them together and pointed to each one clearly as big and small. He got SO excited, bless him! He went through all the pots (we have a lot of empty playdough pots from old playdough that has long been thrown out) declaring excitedly whether they were big or small. I loved his enthusiastic pronounciation of those words as he tried them out for the first time - "Beeeb!" and "whshmooow" hehe! I LOVE the effort he puts into trying to make a sound. I don't think he has tried any words yet that start with "sm" and he had a really good go at it, ending up with a whooshing sound that merged into an "m" sound. So sweet! I try to describe them in my diary as accurately as I can because I don't ever want to forget exactly how they sounded.
Also I discovered today that Arthur can COUNT!!! Yikes! I have NEVER counted with him, and today we were choosing a clean nappy for him to wear (I have started involving him in this in an attempt to make nappy changes easier, and he likes to choose his own nappy), and I figured it wouldn't be a bad thing for me to start counting out the wipes as I take them off the shelf (yes, we finally put those darn shelves for the nappies up above the tumble dryer this weekend! They aren't finished yet though). I thought it would be good to start exposing him to counting, as he's getting old enough really, and he is so enthusiastic about learning new things in general. So I took them off slowly, and as I did, I counted "One....two.... three...." and Arthur suddenly piped up from the kitchen doorway, "Foh.... Fie.... Shhhheees.... Eh-wum.... Ay...." Oh my giddy crumpet! I said (well, nearly bellowed, such was my excitement!), "ARTHUR! You can count!" and he smiled at me and said, "Ny.... TAM!!!" I kid you not. The boy counted to ten right in front of me! I was sure Neil must have been counting with him, but when he got home I told him about it and he was as gobsmacked as me because he said he HAS been teaching Arthur counting, but he has only been saying, "One, two, three" with him so far. So where has he learned it? I can't understand it. We think it HAS to be the telly or something. There's just no other way he could have picked numbers up. Also he says "ten" with such pride and like it's the last number, so he MUST have seen examples of counting to ten on TV, otherwise surely he wouldn't say it like that? But again, I rarely leave him just WATCHING TV on his own, except when I have to go and settle Matthew to sleep upstairs, and I don't remember any obvious counting things from what he is watching.... But I guess there must be some that I'm missing. It really shows me how much he takes in, even when I think he isn't really paying much attention to something. He notices EVERYTHING lately.
Of course I tried to get him to count for me again twice over the next hour but he wasn't having any of it. He cheerfully chucked the ten balls I lay in front of him all over the room, and didn't respond at all another time I asked him about counting! ;) But later on he had two Duplo sheep (or "meep!" as Arthur calls them - he really hasn't got the hang of making the sounds of words that start with "sh" yet!) in his hands and I said let's count your sheep and then started off, "One...." and he said, "Too..... Fee.... Foh.... Iy.... Shheeess.... Em.... Ayt... (and then he just did a shoulder-hunching grin for "nine").... TAM!" I always repeated the number AFTER he said it, but he seemed to know the word of the next number without me prompting him. He just amazes me! I don't know that he can actually COUNT objects though - I phoned my mummy and told her about it and she asked if he was COUNTING or RECITING. I guess he's reciting. But still, my clever Boo-bean! :)
Okay it's suddenly CRAZY late and I will kick my own butt tomorrow morning when I wake exhausted out of my brains because I was up too late on the computer! Matthew has slept soundly in this room with me while I've been typing which is good. I still feel weird about invading his sleeping space, but at least he doesn't seem disturbed by it at the moment.
Neil isn't well - he has a cold which has started with some weird weak exhaustion and big sweats. He said it's going round the office, urgh. I got paranoid about the boys getting it, but so far so good. Arthur had a weird night the night before last where he woke moaning and crying at least once an hour all night, and he sweated a lot then, but he seems fine now and hasn't had any cold symptoms like the ones Neil has come down with since. I felt horrible yesterday, achy and weak and knackered. I took the boys out for a SHORT walk but I actually got scared that I would fall over at one point, my legs felt so weak and loose in their joints. I felt crap overnight and woke up in a sweat, but this morning I perked right up and feel fine now. I am thinking that Neil gave it to me but I have somehow fought it off maybe? Which is WONDERFUL because it means I am making antibodies to it and passing it to my boys in my milk in frequent doses. Maybe that's why Arthur seemed to fight it off also? Neil is really full of cold now so it's definitely different to how Arthur and I have been. Matthew seems fine - I think his fussiness at the moment is more due to his teething than a virus, so I hope my milk is helping them stay well. I am desperately hoping it will make a difference to them over the coming months, because they will be exposed to SUCH a lot of nasty things at playgroup over the autumn and winter. I am so glad they are both getting plenty of my milk at this time of year!
Arthur ate a fantastic portion of spaghetti with grated cheese and sweetcorn tonight, sitting at the table in his booster seat!!!! Yay! I don't know what swayed him - he hasn't eaten this well in a couple of months now. He seemed really hungry and asked for "Teee, teee, TEEEE!" from about 4.30pm. Also I just bought him a toddler's plate and bowl with the Teletubbies on them :) He just LOVES them. He wants to play with them all the time and pretend he's eating off them! So he's thrilled to see the Teletubbies appear on his plate as he's eating. That was the idea when I bought them, so I'm really glad they are helping!
Anyway, MUST go. I'll try to update again soon! Oh but I meant to answer Julie's questions from the message she left me - Matthew outgrew his Moses basket at 2 or 3 weeks old!!! He has slept in his big cotbed ever since, for both naps in the day and sleep at night. He comes into my bed (the spare bed next to his cotbed) for feeds during the night, and when he is finished, I sit on the edge of the bed, burp him, and put him right back down in the cotbed. He fidgets for a moment and goes back to sleep! It's so amazingly different from my experience with Arthur! Just these last couple of days while I've been feeling weak and crappy, I haven't had enough strength in my arms to hold and jiggle and rock and walk him to get him sleepy for his day naps, so I have sometimes just taken him upstairs when he starts to get yawny and fussy, and put him straight down in the cot (on his tummy during the day, on his back at night), and flopped down on my bed for a moment to recover a bit. He fusses and cries a bit, and if he starts to sound really cross about it after a minute or so, I pick him up again and jiggle him till he is calm again, and then put him back down. Eventually he has been fussing/crying for a minute or two while I lie there saying things like, "It's okay.... Sleepy-bye time.... Mummy's still here..." etc, and then he GOES TO SLEEP!!! From wide awake!! It's just amazing. I never thought I would have a child who just went to sleep like that! I have high hopes that he will sleep through the night at a much younger age than Arthur did, and that there will come a time (hopefully sooner than later!) when I can see him getting tired, take him upstairs, put him in his cot and retreat, and know he'll fall asleep happily by himself! I just feel so JOYFUL about the very thought of it! I am so glad to have persevered with him over it, because he hasn't done it by himself. He seems willing to accept the way I'm leading him, and happy in his cotbed, but other than that, Neil and I have really put effort into helping him with his sleep. We feel so proud of ourselves and happy that he's taking to it so well. It's so nice to have evenings to ourselves already - we had wondered before Matthew was born, whether we'd have our evenings to ourselves at all during his first year!
Anyway, it's just getting later and later here, so I absolutely must go. Matthew has been asleep 6 hours now so he'll wake any time for some milk and I need to brush my teeth and drink a TON of water. I am so thirsty with all this milk-making! :) Back soon!
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