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2006-11-22 - 12.45am previous entry next entry
Decision, video clips, and recent Arthur stuff
I absolutely do not know what to say! I am so touched by all the lovely messages and emails that I have received since my entry about the Sucky Care Hospital thing. Thank you soooo much for being wonderful and supportive! And for the great advice. It really helped me feel better about things and see my options more clearly. I decided I am going to go to my GP (I moved GP surgeries since it all happened so I don't see the same lovely doctor who knew all about it at the time) and tell her all about it. I am definitely thinking about whether to just give her a thing to READ so that I don't have to talk about it in detail again, but then she still gets to know all about it. And I am going to ask her what she thinks. I suspect there won't be any other places in my area that offer the stress management course, but I'll see what my GP suggests.
I did want to talk to her about the possibility of needing some further counselling about it, and maybe I still will, but I do feel better for my "splurge" here. I don't know if it's because I have now managed to shut it all away again though? I did not feel better at first. It took me two days to actually get over writing about it, which can't be good! I did go and eat a nice meal and watch Friends after I wrote my diary entry, but I couldn't relax properly even though I enjoyed it. Neil said he knew I was stressed because my whole face was taut. I had such a megarooney knot in my shoulder blade that Neil had to try and massage it out for a while before I could go to bed.
The next day I got a cold sore - my first one since early in my pregnancy with Arthur! I used to get one every year or so, but it has been 2.5 years since my last one. For me, they nearly always come when I am very run down, either physically or emotionally. I have had lots of stress-related ones before, but then I'll get one that arrived because I was out in the sunshine on the first really sunny day in the year - direct sunlight is a common trigger. Anyway, for me, that was a very clear sign that rehashing the Sucky Care Hospital stuff had really wiped me out, emotionally. I hate cold sores! I can't kiss my children, and I was simply NOT prepared for how terribly hard that would be! I didn't realise how much kissing them seems to be a part of my very language towards them. Now that I can't do it, I have become aware that I have been kissing them constantly! Especially when they are crying or looking vulnerable or wanting comfort. I can't resist just kissing them when I am breastfeeding them or snuggled up to them. It's like an instinctive reaction - little head against my cheek: MUST kiss the head! But I can't. My boys happen to have the cutest, softest cheeks of all time. They are BEGGING to be kissed - not just a lil peck, but a real mash-those-lips kiss, hehe! But I can't kiss them. I have to content myself with just stroking their cheeks instead, which isn't NEARLY satisfying enough! ;) Not kissing my little ones is driving me craaazy. Today I kissed Arthur on the cheek when he was really crying over something. I was so caught up in feeling awful over it that I didn't even think. Poor boy got his cheek scrubbed vigorously with a wet cloth! I hope that's enough. I would hate hate HATE myself if I ever passed these vile things onto my little ones. Some crappy 14-year-old boyfriend of mine passed them on to me. Nobody had told me at 13, that if a boy's lip is kinda scabby, DON'T let him kiss you! Yes, of COURSE I think it's totally gross when a boy has a scabby-looking lip, but I didn't actually "let" him kiss me. Which is another reason why I hate the cold sores. They remind me that I let someone push himself on me. Ugh. No, this is not "Trials from my Life" Week ;) I'm done talking about that one.
Anyway, I am using that Zovirax stuff on it and that usually makes it a 5-day bugger rather than a 2-week one. And a bit less painful, so yay :) Matthew is waking up. Back after I give him a snuggly feed (no kisses!)...
Back again! So where was I? Oh yes, the cold sore. And I just felt distracted and anxious and tense all the time over the next day or two. It kept being on my mind whenever I had a moment to myself. Now it's not so sharp in my head and that combined with the fact that I have recently released some feelings about it all, seems to be making me feel a bit better about it now. I don't want to think or talk about it again though. I don't want to go back to that hospital, even for therapy that I need. My mum is worried that someone there will recognise me and that I won't be safe there. I hadn't really thought about that, but it's a possibility I guess. It's a small hospital.
On a different health-related subject - my ulcer symptoms seem to have gone away, pretty much. Huh? But yay, because it's so nice not to have the anxiety-provoking pain any more! I will talk to my GP about that as well, because mayyybe I don't need the endoscopy if my symptoms are going? I'm sort of hoping that's what she'll say, but I know it would be a good idea to have a look in there anyway, to know exactly what's what.
So that is my follow-up on the last entry. Thank you all so very much for your loving support and for making me feel so proud of what I did, and for THANKING me! It really means a lot to me :)
Okay, back to more normal musings! :) I feel happy and normal now so I can get on with writing normal stuff again! Yay!
Arthur has the first corner of his first 2-year-old molar through this week - the bottom left one. That is toothie number 17 out of his 20 milk teeth. I'm impressed that it waited till he literally just turned 2 before making its appearance, hehe! I know it's gonna take like till his NEXT birthday to finish coming through - these molars are so enormous and seem to take such a long time to finish coming in. No signs of anything on the gums over his other 2-year-old molars though, but he is definitely teething. He has puffy cheeks at the moment, poor love. His teeth are getting very crowded. His canines just finished coming in properly and they are SO massive for canine milk teeth!! They have already started to turn kind of sideways on to fit in the space, and the ones at the front are overlapping and turning a little too. I'm sad because that's BEFORE his big 2-year-old molars are even in, and I don't want his teeth to be all scrunched up together for his childhood. He has such a lovely smile! I don't want his teeth to let that down, y'know? He has inherited Neil's mouth shape, which is basically weirdly too small to hold the number of teeth that a normal human being produces! Neil had to have teeth removed as a child so the rest could even fit. Urgh. To top it off, Arthur seems to me like he's inherited MY baby teeth. My baby teeth were huge. My baby molars were BIGGER than the adult molars that replaced them (hence why I didn't end up getting those braces that the orthodontist swore I would need before my baby molars fell out!). Arthur look so big too. I feel sure his mouth can't possibly fit his teeth in together. I am pretty sure he'll have to have teeth removed to fit them, and I hate that thought. Poo.
Talking of dentists, I have booked Arthur in to have his first ever dental check on Monday! It's an NHS dentist (hooray!) so it's free. When I went there during my pregnancy with Matthew (concessions, yay!), they briefly checked Arthur after I was done, but they told me they usually see children from the age of two. So he's two, and he's going! He isn't great about opening his mouth to let anyone look inside, so I'm not sure how it will go. Possibly rather badly! But we'll see. He told me his mouth hurt the other day. I am hoping to goodness that it's that molar that was hurting him, and not toothache. He has fluorosis still (too much fluoride) so we only brush his teeth once a day with a smidgen of toothpaste, but I still worry that it won't protect him enough from tooth decay. I'd hate for him to need to have work done at such a young age. I know it would be terribly traumatic. Let's hope all is well (and easy to see!) at Monday's appointment!
On Friday he has a hair appointment. His hair grows soooo fast! Again, Neil's. I was still practically bald at Arthur's age, haha! Neil told me that last hair appt was the first one where Arthur seemed rather unimpressed with sitting to have his hair cut, and it got quite difficult to finish! Yikes! I will have Matthew with me as well so I hope it all goes well and Arthur lets the lady cut his hair nicely!
I have just uploaded THIRTEEN video clips from the camcorder!!! It has taken all evening to get them up as some of them are a few minutes long. I can't believe how behind I was getting on those! There are four from his birthday which I said I would go back and add to the entry about his birthday here. So I have added them, if anyone wants to see them. There are three from our trip to the farm, all pretty short - one of Arthur walking up a little hill, another of him looking at the piglets, and one of him standing on the wagon frame and helping me eat my apple! Also in that entry is the promised video clip of Arthur laughing and laughing at me sitting on his whoopee cushion, moments after he unwrapped it on his birthday! I love to hear/see him laugh! It warms me right up :) You'll have to scroll down and look between the various photos for the little audioblog buttons to click on.
There are just too many to post all in this entry - they each deserve a mention by themselves really. So I'll post Matthew doing a little example of his rolling (the method by which he can cover like 12 feet in a matter of seconds, sometimes!), about a week ago:
And also, taken the same day, Matthew being all interested in Arthur's toy garage. He just LOVES that thing. The way he looks up at it as he frantically claws his way near to it, makes me feel like there should be some heavenly chorus playing - you know that one where a million voices go "Ahhhh" in harmony, as someone gazes up at something magnificent?! Well that's the look that comes over him when he sees the majestic curves of the mighty plastic garage, hehe! He just thinks that thing is the most wonderful thing he ever saw. He longs to sit or stand and play with the cars on it, I can tell. He gets all grapply and frantic when he's near it, and I know that if only his body would comply, he'd be sitting by it all day and whizzing cars around on it. He loves to watch Arthur do so.
One time while Arthur was napping and Matthew was awake, I was having a rare one-on-one time with Matthew, and I thought he would like to just sit without interruption and marvel at the garage, if I could hold him near enough and support him. So I set up the camcorder to film his cute little eagerness, and sat with him at the garage. It's kind of a shame I had to shush him when he was making loud noise with one of the cars at one point. He should NEVER have to be shushed with interesting noisy play, but Arthur was napping badly and I reeeeally wanted Matthew and I to have a break for a bit longer! Anyway, here's the clip:
And, not forgetting Arthur, here's a short clip of him when he was watching Thomas the Tank Engine in the week after his birthday. He was learning the engines' names and wanting to tell me them as he saw them on the screen. It was cut short because Matthew woke from a nap. His favourite engine seems to be Gordon. He is always asking to "see Gor-nin" when an episode starts, and he gets excited when he does see him.
More videos next entry! I'll try to make that soon, because otherwise they'll get out of date. I even have a video that I took of Arthur today, at the park. That should be here in this entry, but I really don't want to overload the entry with all the videos at once. The older ones should come first!
Arthur is saying all sorts of funny little phrases now. He has recently started really injecting some humour and irony and other such things into his speech lately. He says odd little things that I guess he hears us say, like, the other day I watched him trying to stuff something that was too big into a box that wouldn't contain it. He persevered with lots of frustrated effort noises for a long time. Finally he stopped, sighed, tossed the thing on the floor, and said, "Oh maaan!" hehehe!
He says things like, "See y'ater!" (see you later!) after saying goodbye to someone or something, and "Si-yee Daddy!" (or Mummy, or whoever has been si-yee - silly!). He says, "wait see..." ("wait and see..." when I tell him that there will be no more Thomas after this episode finishes.
I am noticing that he's "telling" me things a lot more these days. He tells me what happened, for example, when I hear him crying while I'm upstairs with Matthew, and I come running down. I can now have an actual conversation with him to find out what happened. So I'll ask, "What happened, Arthur?!" and he'll sob, "Ah-yah fall down" and points to the TV unit (tsk!). I ask him, "Did you hurt yourself?" and he'll cry harder and say, "Yeahhhh!" If I ask him where he hurt himself, he first tells me where in the ROOM, not on himself. He says, "Here" and points to the corner of the TV or pats a specific spot on the floor or something. It took me a while to teach him to tell me where on HIMSELF he had hurt, rather than where in the room! He still wants to tell me where in the room, first, and then he says, "Nose, bang!" and points tearfully to it. Before the crappy cold sore, I would always ask if he wanted Mummy to kiss it better, and he would always sob, "Yeahhhh!" and tip his little chin up to "offer" me his nose to kiss better. Aw! After I kiss it I ask if it's better now, and he always says, "Yeah!" and gets up more cheerfully :) But he always asks for milk if he has hurt himself, and I always give it to him. It's just so nice to be able to converse with him at last!
We are consistently using the Naughty Chair technique for discipline, at last, now that he's two. We used it for a while a few months back but it didn't seem to be working and the books said not to use it before the age of two, so we waited. It's amazing how those few months have made such a difference! He really GETS the Naughty Chair now. He mucks around on it, so it has changed from being the sofa (where he could play energetic games of trampolines or belly flops during his punishment time!) to a hard dining chair over by the wall in the living room. There, he has nothing to do but sit, and he can't reach anything fun to do. All he can choose to do is sit, or get off the chair. If he gets off the chair, we simply place him back on it without talking to him, and his 2 minutes start over again. He gets off a LOT. It's rather frustrating, but we're persevering! He also screams fit to break windows while he's on it - anything to get our attention I suppose. He bangs his head on the wall behind the chair. We ignore him completely. He usually gets off the chair about 20 times before he does his 2 minutes. *sigh* He can be kind of hard work, this boy! He's energetic and spirited, like his mummy was when she was his age, so it's just his genes really. But he needs to be taught boundaries all the same.
Today I had to discipline him over something in the park and I was absolutely pressed over it. It was pouring with rain, none of us had waterproofs, except Matthew had the raincover over his pushchair, and Matthew was SCREAMING. He had been crying for 10 minutes straight and we were a good way from the car. Both the boys were late for food and sleep, but Arthur would not come. I could not physically carry him to the car, and I couldn't push him up the hill in the pushchair while I carried Matthew either. In the future I will take the tandem pushchair instead of Arthur's all-terrain single, when we go to the park. But it rained heavier and heavier and Matthew cried harder and harder until he was making these chokey noises. I had taken him out to cuddle him earlier but he didn't seem happy about that, and now it was raining so I couldn't. And all the time I was calling to Arthur to come here NOW because we had to get back to the car quickly. He just would not. He'd take 2 steps, then stop and look around. It was driving me crazy, even though he wasn't actually doing anything wrong in his behaviour - just the fact that he was not obeying me when I told him with seriousness to come NOW. I tried everything verbal. I tried explaining why, being playful and asking him to run, shouting my head off at him from way ahead where I was waiting (also crap of me), etc. I couldn't do any sort of time-out because we just had to get out of that rain and fast, and I couldn't physically haul his butt back to the car. It ended up being one of those HORRIBLE rare occasions where I just went and smacked him, and then took him by the hand and said, "Now COME!" and headed off briskly with him. I HATE that I did so, and that I was soooo UN-gentle with him. But he needed to know that he could not just stand there while Matthew cried and the rain poured, and Mummy asked him to come so that we could all get out of the rain and Matthew could get home for the food and sleep he needed. He needs to know that when I am dead serious and tell him to come NOW, he needs to come NOW and not do anything else. If I didn't smack him, I could not think of any other way to get those things across to him and take control of the situation. He would have been in control and I would have had to wait in the rain for him to call the shots. Which would NOT have been okay.
Poor Arthur :( I hate smacking him. I rarely do it - never, now that we are using the naughty chair. I warned him before I did it, that if he didn't come right now, I would smack him. But he cried soooo much when I did, and said, "Hurt!" I'm so so so sorry that I hurt him :( I know I was pretty stern with him in my hurry to get him back to the car. He cried hard all the way back, and I just blindly pushed the pushchair with one hand, pulled Arthur along by the other hand, and bent my head against the rain. Both of them were crying at the tops of their lungs, and we were wearing no waterproofs. Arthur had fallen in a muddy puddle earlier and his jeans were soaked with mud. We got some very sympathetic looks from passers-by!
At the car, I figured Matthew had been crying for like 20 minutes by then, so a few more wouldn't make much difference. I HATE to let my baby cry for even 30 seconds, but I felt I had to prioritise Arthur for a moment, just to calm him down once we were at the car, and cuddle him and explain again, before I put him in the car seat to go home. I didn't want him to feel hurt and punished all the way home. So Matthew sat in the pushchair some more and cried and cried and cried, while I sat Arthur on my lap in the front seat and took his muddy things off and wiped his eyes and nose, and told him how Mummy does not like to smack Arthur, and she's sorry she had to. I think I told him that it was wrong of Mummy to smack him, but my mum thinks I should not have said that. I just FELT it was wrong. But I guess it might confuse him to tell him that and then maybe one day smack him again sometime? Not that I plan to, but then I didn't this time either.
Urgh. He calmed down. At bedtime tonight while I breastfed him in bed in the dark, I talked to him quietly about the day and reminded him about the time on the hill when it was raining and Matthew was crying, and Mummy smacked Arthur. He stopped sucking for a moment while I remembered it for him, and then I said again that I was sorry to have hurt him and that I did not like to smack him, and that I love him sooooo much. And he continued to nurse. I told him my favourite things today were seeing Arthur splash in the puddles at the park, and picking up leaves with Arthur at the park (we really did have such a nice time before it all went horribly wrong, which makes it even sadder that I ended up smacking him). I asked him what he liked best about today, and he popped off the breast and said, "See horse!" I said, "Oh yes! We saw a horse, didn't we?! Did you like that the best?" Arthur said, "Yeah!" and happily latched back on. I honestly do not know what I would do without breastfeeding Arthur still. It's just so wonderful for both of us.
I put the leaves that we picked up into a press. I chose different colours, red, orange, brown, green and yellow. There are so many colours out there at the moment, it's so pretty! I am going to do a new craft with Arthur when they are ready, maybe even tomorrow? I'm going to draw a big tree-trunk with brown crayon or pen, on a big piece of paper, and then we'll stick those leaves all over the paper to make a tree! I think Arthur will love that. I will too :) If it works well, I think we'll pick up as many leaves as we can, every time we go out, while there are so many to have. The other day I introduced him to glitter shakers and glue! :) He made a lovely picture on some black A4 card that I had bought a while ago, and he was very excited about shaking the glitter on and seeing it all sparkly. Every day, we have something to show Daddy when he gets home from work. It's usually a painting that Arthur has done with me, or a drawing. One day it was a BIG leaf that Arthur found near the swings, and we took it home especially to show Daddy later. Last week I let him paint a kitchen roll tube while I held it carefully, and then when it had dried, we stuck stickers all over it. That was a "snake" :) The next day I used various bits of paper waste from the living room bin - junk mail and envelopes and stuff, fashioned it into a snail shape, and wrapped it around with kitchen roll. Then Arthur painted it, and we stuck stickers on it after it was dry. He was SO excited to show Daddy his snail! It was the cutest thing. He was literally shaking when Neil came in and said, "WOW!!!" as he saw the snail in Arthur's outstretched hands!
Two days ago I showed Arthur how to make circles with paints and various circular shaped things, small bowls and tube ends and cotton reels, etc. He liked that too, but he seems to enjoy making actual "things" or using stickers or sticking things ON best. He is very into circles at the moment, and points them out everywhere. He also knows square and triangle, but he doesn't make note of them unless I ask him what shape something is. He likes to draw circles, so much so that he'll draw circles with yoghurt on the table at tea time, etc, saying, "Daw circoooo!" excitedly!
Okay there is SO much more to write, and lots of photos, etc, to post, but it's getting very late so I must stop for now. I think I will post that video clip from today at the park after all, as I've talked about it so much this entry. We had literally been at the park 3 minutes or something, at this point! Arthur got straight out of the car and jumped in a big puddle with his shoes on! I was just getting the wellies out as well! I put him in his wellies and let him go and jump in the next puddle he saw, and I filmed him doing it :) He fell in it, of course. *sigh* It was cold and he must have been SO uncomfortable. I can not believe I forgot a change of trousers for him. I explained that if he was too uncomfy we needed to go home to change his trousers, but he did not want to go home. He wanted to walk a bit more, and then his trousers dried somewhat, so he carried on as normal. I wasn't happy about him walking on in those wet jeans, but I don't think he would have been happy to leave right when we'd just arrived and he had been SO eager to go to the park.
Ugh. I feel so bad that I spoiled it by smacking him. I just wish he had done what I asked of him, and come quickly so we could have got home without trouble. Next time though, I'll take the tandem. Then I'll just plop him in it and that will be that - Mummy in control!
Anyway, here is the video clip. And a couple of photos of Arthur on the way down the same hill where we had crying/rain/smack on the way back. See his teethy cheeks? :( And Matthew, during that pleasant part of the walk!
And that is all! Except I have 36 bites on my back and shoulder. Ugh. Some pesky little bitey thing bit me in my sleep last night. Tomorrow is Fellowship Group. I can't believe I am nuts enough to be up this late. Night night!
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