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2005-07-04 - 12.44am previous entry next entry
Grandoug's 80th and parsnip waffle
It�s late and I�m superly-duperly tired so this will have to be a brief (haha!) update. Of course, knowing me, it will be as long as ever and I�ll finish it at 1am or something!
Thanks for all the notes and guestbook messages :) Jemma, what a weird dream! I don�t know what it means either, but I like that we are all nice and friendly (if a little odd!) even in your dreams! :) Let me know if I send you Arthur in the post in another dream. Then I will worry! ;)
Liz, I don�t plan on talking to my doctor about my lack of interest in parsnips. I don�t know if you know my history, but I don�t think that it �shouldn�t� be this way if I am so happy with Neil. That idea is kind of negative and pressurising, though it did used to cross my mind. I stopped letting it because it was just upsetting me and making me worry over probably nothing. Not every couple are going to be at it like rabbits all the time! Nor it is abnormal for a couple to find that the whole world does not revolve around having parsnips. I know it is important to our marriage relationship to maintain physical intimacy, but it doesn�t mean there�s something wrong that I need to see a doctor about if I am not interested. Some women just aren�t, and they are no less normal. Of course if it is causing problems in the relationship then things need addressing, or at least big-time communicating about the issue, so that it doesn�t fester under the surface with feelings unexpressed and things unsaid.
This is why, a year before Arthur was conceived, we started psycho-parsnip therapy. It�s all detailed (although not TOO detailed!) in my old diary. We started it because I had been housebound with a rather debilitating illness for 2 years. Now THAT will put a stop to your parsnip life, if anything will! Of course things go right off the boil if you are ill, frightened, exhausted, stressed, and un-parsnipy for two years solid. That is completely normal! But I still stressed and worried about it while I was ill. The illness I had (M.E.) meant that I could not exert myself even slightly, without making my illness worse. At my worst, brushing my teeth or crawling to the toilet could put me in bed for days. Seriously. Man, I forgot just how much that illness sucked. Urgh. Thank you Lord for healing me :)
But anyway, obviously parsnips of any variety were out of the question. M.E. is good at actually obliterating libido anyhow, so that didn�t help. I got M.E. within weeks of getting married, so we had not exactly had a good start on the old parsnips front! We chose to wait till we got married before having parsnips, because we felt that was what God would have us do. Of course, making this decision 3 years before we got married, and being human and finding each other irresistible, this idea did not last long! We did have lots of parsnips back in those days, but it was mainly super-fun because it was kind of not allowed, in our minds, I guess. Anyway, over the months we both found ourselves being less interested in going to church, and just feeling less close to God in general. We talked about it a lot, and both felt strongly that it was the parsnips that seemed to be getting in the way of our relationship with God, so we quit. Man that was difficult!! But we did. I missed my closeness with God so so so much. I used to cry after parsnips and not be able to stop. It wasn�t a huge guilt trip so much as just feeling the connection between having had parsnips and staying with this distant feeling between me and God. I just couldn�t shake it. I am not ashamed to say that I love God more than I could ever love Neil, or even Arthur. He is my first love. And I have been neglecting him way too much lately. But that is another subject. Anyway, so parsnips would make me cry and long for God. Weird huh? So we stopped, about a year before we got married. That year was GREAT. My relationship with God was awesome. My relationship with Neil was no less wonderful. We were both super happy to have quit the parsnips till we were married, in fact, it felt great and �right� to have done that. When we got married, parsnips was like we had never had any before, as though the past stuff was erased. I love God, and I�m glad we waited.
But I guess I haven�t been so interested since the pre-marital parsnips. Maybe I am just rebellious by nature and prefer things when I am not meant to be doing them! My mum would definitely vouch for this! ;)
Then I got M.E, like IMMEDIATELY after we got married. Ugh. Two and a bit years later, God healed me, in a church meeting that I could barely make it to, just like that, in one evening :) I love him so much. He has blessed me like I could never imagine. It took me a while to build up my strength again, but I could do anything I wanted without feeling ill. Knackered, yes, but not ill. The difference was phenomenal. So, official green light for parsnips! But no rush, we thought, plenty of time to catch up on that as I got my strength back. Believe me, after two years as ill as I was, parsnips was the last thing on my mind. Wonderful things like going outdoors and climbing the stairs ranked much more importantly for a long time. Then it started to feel like a good while had passed and I still couldn�t be bothered with parsnips. I started to worry about it around then.
And then, if memory serves me right, we hit a bad patch � a bad year I think � where we just were not close, in fact we seemed to not even like each other much for most of that time. We just seemed to be two people who happened to be living in the same house, who were starting to argue more about little things than they used to. Big alarm bells were going off but I couldn�t be bothered to do anything about it (another BIG alarm bell). I can�t actually believe this was us a few years ago now! It just seems so foreign to how our relationship is now. I am glad to have written about it as it happened though, as I am for all the ups and downs since my illness, because you forget, and everything is there to be learned from. So I�m glad it�s all there. But yes, so we had marriage counselling. After a while the subject of parsnips came up, and we were referred for psycho-parsnip therapy, which we had to wait for on a list for ages, like 8 months or something. By the time it came around we had gotten around to parsnips on our own, but we had various issues with interest and stuff still, which I wanted to sort out with a therapist, so I�m glad we stayed on the list. Things were a lot better for us from the marriage counselling too. We just hit a rut and forgot how to communicate and foster romanticness and stuff like that. When we learned how to again, things got so much better. We decided we might consider trying to conceive the next year, perhaps in the summer, and we started psycho-parsnip therapy. This went SO well � we had the most amazing therapist, and the sessions were fun and informal, and non-scary, and we got so much out of each and every session. We saw Cheryl, our therapist, for a year before we were officially ready to stop seeing her. One thing we learned from her is that if we aren�t interested in parsnips for like weeks at a time, it is NOT abnormal. Everybody is different. One of my goals at the start was to be having parsnips all the time by the end!!! Cheryl helped me see that this was not realistic if I wasn�t someone who WANTED to have parsnips all the time. And I�m not. But I�m normal. One thing we knew we needed to do after we finished therapy was to make sure that too much time did not elapse between parsnips, because that was a sure-fire way for us to lose intimacy and for it to become awkward again, so the cycle would start again and we�d stop the parsnips and lose intimacy in our relationship. Sooo we know all about it now. We know what to do, what signs to spot and how to spot them, and exactly how to fix any problems before they get worse.
We started trying to conceive as planned in the summer of 2003, half way through our therapy. I don�t think God wanted us to have a baby till we had our relationship fully sorted out though, because we didn�t conceive till after we had finished � in fact, a few weeks after we finished! I was so impatient that even though this was in the back of my mind, I still wanted to persevere before the therapy had finished! I kind of wondered if it might not happen till God was ready to let us start a family. I�m glad he made us wait till we were ready as a couple. We have a good foundation for our little family now.
Soooo then Arthur was conceived, and almost immediately I started bleeding with a threatened miscarriage, so thus stopped the parsnips, and they never resumed again after the long gap, until I was that desperate for him to leave my body around due-date time!! And then after that, owch. And since then, ow. And also, we are just beyond exhausted. Our little precious has not given us more than 3 nights of good sleep since he arrived, and I often feel sick or weepy with exhaustion. It is not easy for us to have parsnips, even though I know some couples would make room for it even with that level of exhaustion. Some people, like Jemma, have trouble waiting the 6 weeks post-partum! Good for them, but I am never going to be someone like that, and I don�t think it is healthy to compare, as it just adds needless pressure. I have recently read that breastfeeding hormones significantly affect libido. Significantly. Especially for extended breastfeeding, somehow. Some women find no such problem, but anyway, whatever reason, or compilation of reasons might be the cause of my lack of interest, I do not worry that it isn�t normal. I have a lot of good reasons not to be interested, and I have a lot more insight and knowledge about our parsnip relationship than my GP will ever have, so there is little point talking to anyone about it. Maybe I would consider running our situation by a parsnip therapist, but to be honest, we already know what we need to do and what signs we should be worrying about, etc. We do talk regularly about our relationship, and I will say if I am worried that we might be losing intimacy a little, and we discuss ways to rekindle that. I think we have a good solid relationship, which does have blips and irritations here and there now that we are always so sleep-deprived. But we have learnt a lot of things about a marriage relationship through the nearly-six years of our own. I am glad of the lessons, because they have made us stronger. Things are so different after the first year or two of marriage I think, things mellow out and you have to rely more on �maintenance� things, like good communication and just your growing awareness and familiarity with your husband, AS your husband, and less on the headiness of the early rabbits stuff, hehe! Neither of us are of the �rabbit� variety though (!!), so we are not too worried. I am confident that our parsnip relationship will return to as �normal� as it ever was, and maybe even change and surprise us, now that I have had a baby. Who knows. But I am not worried :)
Wow, what a long essay on my parsnip life!! So much so that hmmm, I don�t think I have time for the other stuff I wanted to write. Maybe just a couple of things�
Arthur will be 8 months old on Saturday!!!! Here is my broken record piece � I CAN�T BELIEVE IT!!! Heh. Let�s see, what can I tell you about him lately? He is not crawling and has no teeth. He is not enjoying solids. Nope. No siree. He still takes a bit of banana but he acts digusted when he gets it in his mouth, and if he�s self-feeding he now pretty much just plays with it. I do mash some of the banana and while he is playing with it and a spoon, I use another spoon to pop some of it in here and there! Is that cheeky of me?! Anyway he does not seem too impressed but he carries on, and takes maybe a � of a banana that way. Not much. Some days he won�t have any at all. We tried him on mashed sweet potato, and he gagged and retched and gagged and retched and didn�t swallow a single tiny bit. It all came back to the front of his mouth. I pumped enough milk to make the sweet potato pretty sloppy, and that seemed a little better for him, but he still did a lot of gagging and retching the moment he had any in his mouth. I don�t understand that, because he�s past the age where developmentally he should be doing that, especially on purees. Hmmm.
Anyway today we all ate a meal together again. We had turkey steaks (cut into strips/sticks for Arthur), mashed potato (his without anything added), and steamed broccoli. He had his own bowl, but still preferred our plates. In the end we let him help himself from our plates, but he basically chucked it around and played with it. He didn�t like the mess on his hands, and wouldn�t gum on any of the bigger bits, like the turkey or broccoli florets. Normally he�ll hold ANYTHING that kind of size and gum on it, no matter what it is, but he wouldn�t today. I think he didn�t like that it was moist and foody. That made him suspicious, hehe! He did eventually put his foody fingers in his mouth and make tasting faces though, so he got to taste potato and broccoli. He also let me hold turkey to his mouth and gave it a gum or two to taste it, but did not seem impressed at all.
One thing he DID like however, was when I gave him a crust of my marmite sandwich, knowing he wouldn�t eat it, and with the skinniest layer of marmite. He didn�t eat it, and I watched him like a hawk, but he did love the marmite!! Yay! He�s going to be a marmite-lover like his mummy, hoorah!! Man, I love marmite. I always have! He kept tasting it with the tip of his tongue and then making interested tasting faces!! Mind you, I have eaten a LOT of it during my pregnancy and whilst breastfeeding, and it has a strong taste so he�s bound to have had a flavour of it plenty of times before now. I can�t wait to give him wheat products though, because it�s so easy to offer finger foods once you can. I think he will like toast fingers and things. Also cheese. I can�t imagine he won�t like cheese. My weaning book says I can offer him dairy products like yoghurt and cheese in the 6-9 month window, but I am still nervous about food allergies and want to hold off as long as possible. Also he hasn�t had much other food at all yet. But if he won�t eat anything else, maybe it will just come down to those things. I thought he might like meat, but he did not seem impressed with the turkey.
Anyway. He is still loving his mama-milk! And of course I adore giving it to him. I know I will miss breastfeeding one day. I hope I will never stop between children, but then HOW will I manage when I finish having children?! Either I must never stop having children (!!), or I must feed my youngest till they are 10 years old or something (!!!), or I must be sad and mourn the loss of the wonder of breastfeeding. *sigh* I do love it.
What else? He is teething at the moment � what is new?!! His top front gum is red and swollen today, which is weird because WHERE ARE HIS BOTTOM TEETH?!!! I did read in my Babycentre email that around now I might see his top central incisors come through � what?! He hasn�t even got his bottom ones yet, and they come first. But his top gum seems to agree with Babycentre, because it�s pushing and swelling and hurting him. Surely he won�t get those first? His bottom gum is all blunt and pink and normal. Where are his toothy-pegs?! It is a mystery. I guess we just wait. They will have to come through eventually. At the party on Monday, there was a baby there who also turned one last week, and he still has no teeth. Also I seem to remember Robbi has kids who don�t get teeth till they are one or something, so that encourages me! He will get them eventually! :)
Arthur is starting to pull up on things with his arms, from lying on his tummy. He is not really showing signs of pulling to sitting from lying yet though. I am just enjoying watching him and seeing the things he is trying to figure out as he moves. Two days ago he was lying on his tummy in bed, and I watched him as he pushed his bum in the air until he was standing on his tippy toes with his legs totally straight, and then pushed his arms till they were straight too. His head was still down though, so he was on his hands and toes with his bum up in the air. He did this over and over, and sometimes the angle made him keel over to one side as he pushed his legs straight. He hasn�t done that much more since then, but today he has been on his hands and knees in crawling positions, rocking two or three times and then flopping back onto his tummy. He also tries to bring one knee forward to change his angle of movement, but doesn�t manage much � thank goodness!!! The house is soooo not safe for him to be crawling around in!!
I am slacking on the Flylady front, tsk. Some days I don�t shine my sink :( Also my before-bed routine has gone out of the window. But I am decluttering, slowly but surely. I need to stop slacking though. I need to use the forums to help me stay on track, but I am even slacking on that too. Urgh.
Okay, here are two photos of Arthur a couple of days ago. He was having some play time on the big bed while I tidied around him and stuff. Here he is peeping at me over the bedguard � which is not going to �guard� him too well for much longer, since he got both hands on it and started to haul himself up as best he could! He managed to lift his chest till his head was peeping over it, see?...
Here he is looking at one of his favourite toys. It�s a little dancing man in a box. He has a key in the back which you turn and he dances to a tune. It was Neil�s favourite toy when he was little, and Arthur loves it too! He just watches and watches it, and always smiles so big when I start winding the key up!
Yesterday was my grandfather�s 80th birthday family get-together. I have been looking forward to it for a while, because my parents came over from France especially (they are on the ferry home as I type, boo!) and I just love being together with all my lovely family. I can�t believe Grandoug is 80 (on Tuesday). That is just crazy. He is the youngest 80 year old I ever met in my whole life. He wears jeans and running shoes, and was itching to see the Live8 concert on TV yesterday. He is the most hip grandfather I could hope for, hehe! I remember in my late teens, when I was bored of chart music, he knew the chart stuff better than I did!! He even had some of the latest CDs. He likes his music. Anyway, the family gathering was lovely. Arthur was so good, and everybody adored him as usual! He napped in the car on the way there, and then had another 30 minutes later in the afternoon, in the travel cot. He woke from that nap crying, and I could tell from the cry that he was scared that I wasn�t there and he was in an unfamiliar place. I got to him as fast as I could, but when I was a couple of rooms away, I called out, �Mummy�s coming Arthur!� and I heard him stop crying immediately. When I got to him, he was waiting for me, looking worried, but no longer crying about it. I love that just hearing my voice can soothe him, even when he can�t see me and he is somewhere he is not familiar with.
Everybody got to cuddle him, which of course they were all lining up for! We had a nice lunch outside, although the weather was a bit chilly. We played the now-traditional Grandoug�s-birthday game of croquet on their lawn, which was fun! I even got to play almost a whole game while Sarah (my brother�s fianc�e) held Arthur and played with him a little way off on the grass, until he started fussing and calling, �Mama! Mama!� over and over! Of course I stopped then :) He is sounding clearer and clearer on the �mama� thing all the time. He has it down to �mama� or if he�s feeling impatient, �MAMAM!!� now, instead of �ah-ma� or �ah-mum� which he sometimes did before. I love hearing his tiny little voice chiming away, �Mama?� when he has been playing with someone for a while and wants me back again. He now uses it constantly, particularly when he isn�t happy about something � I get complained at a lot, hehe! If Neil is changing him and he doesn�t want to be changed, he fixes me with an urgent look and shouts crossly, �Mamam!!� as if he wants me to stop daddy doing that to him! If he�s stuck, he whimpers, �Mama� mamam!� and if he is tired or wanting to nurse and is not in a patient enough mood to sign for milk, he fusses or cries and says �mama� in a very annoyed way! He often fixes me with that look as he says it, as though he wants me to fix things for him immediately, whatever they might be! If he�s tired and he rolls against something, sometimes he asks me to sort that out, even though I tell him he can perfectly well roll himself back again! And sure enough, he does, even as he is finishing saying, �Mama!� about it, but he does use my name a lot when he finds himself in a situation he doesn�t like!
He�s so lovely.
Did I tell you he loves peekaboo games or hiding games now? His favourite game � I�m sure I�ve already said this � is where I hide around the corner, and peek out at him (he is being held by someone for this game), and he beams and squeals with excitement. Then I duck back and pop out again the same way. After two or three peeks, I suddenly run out and speed towards him making a roaring sound or something equally exciting for him (!!), and he shrieks with laughter and bounces his limbs till they nearly fall off! It�s sooooo sweet! We showed my family this on Saturday, and they thought it was adorable. He IS though. So adorable. I love him so much.
If Neil is in the kitchen doing some cooking or something, Arthur knows about it now. If I am holding him in the living room, he leans and reaches for the kitchen, and I take him up to the closed door. I say, �Do you want to open the door, Arthur?� and he puts the palm of his hand flat on the door, and pushes with his arm! If he doesn�t have the strength in his little arm to push it far, I help him by leaning his body into the door a bit, and it swings open. Then he cranes his neck round the doorway to see his daddy! It�s the cutest thing. As soon as Neil looks up and sees him, Arthur beams and makes excited squeally noises :) He loves his daddy.
Okay I definitely need to wrap this up now, as it�s 12.25am (what a surprise!) and I am officially nuts for staying up so late. Tsk. Plus Flylady�s �new habit for July� is to go to bed before 11pm. I need to do that too. But obviously, not tonight! Maybe tomorrow?
Oh but first I have photos from the family thing yesterday. My family loved to see him. Mummy and Daddy held him as much as they could, and I tried to make sure I offered him to them to hold a lot. He is heavy though, and their arms got tired quick! Everyone was asking how much he weighs now, and I just realised it�s been over a month since I got him weighed! I must take him and get him weighed again this week, maybe Friday? I have no idea what he weighs now. Anyway, here is my Daddy taking Arthur for a walk round the garden. Arthur was very interested to be shown lots of different leaves, and Grandy was explaining about them to him while he touched them:
Here he is again with my Granny, being interested in another plant! He was interested in EVERYTHING yesterday, like he always is these days:
Here he is being read his favourite book by Auntie Sarah (whilst a particularly testosterone-fired game of croquet was taking place on the lawn!). He has three of these touchy-feely books, but his favourite one is, �That�s not my puppy!� � I love these books! He likes to feel the different textures on the pages, and he enjoys being read a story so much now. Anyway, here he is:
Oh, and he has a new car seat at LAST!!!! I had this Concord Ultimax on order since we had that bump in the car and I didn�t feel his current (new) car seat would be safe anymore, but the darn online store never sent it to me (I paid with Paypal) and after two complainy emails, they finally sent me notification that they had gone bankrupt and had no money to pay me back. Grrr. So I don�t know what to do about claiming my money back. But in the meantime, I placed an order for the same car seat where I should have in the FIRST place, from good old Kiddicare.com (see the link above), and the most fabbarooney car seat EVER arrived a couple of days later! It is far better than the Britax one he has been in so far. It�s from newborn to four years, and can go rear facing or forward facing, which is great since Arthur still needs rear facing for a while longer I think. He has well exceeded the weight requirement for forward facing, but I think he could be sitting more securely before I want to face him forwards. He sits great now, but I guess he doesn�t really sit regularly for 30 minutes plus, which is what the car seat companies say it should be. He can sit for an hour, but only if distracted by other babies! Otherwise he throws himself backwards after a while, so I will wait some more. The longer he is rear facing, the safer for him anyway, and this car seat is so funky � it�s so soft and comfy, and looks GREAT, and is quite shallow on the sides so he can see all round the car even from rear facing. I am so impressed. And it was super-easy to install. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. We will be buying another for the next baby when it arrives. I love how there are 16 different colours and designs! There is a very PINK one, and I have my eye on it for if I have a girl. Obviously she wouldn�t need a pink one, but I just have my eye on it anyway! I like all of them though. I chose the one I bought for Arthur because it is nice colours and the most interesting one for him to be in. I think it suits him well. And it�s HIS seat so I thought it should be a design that he would approve of!
Anyway it is great, and he seems to love it. It is easier to get him in and out of it too, and he looks comfy when he sleeps in the car.
Okay it really IS going to be 1am if I don�t get myself off the computer and into bed!! I have my ENT appt tomorrow morning, but I can�t remember what time, so I�ll have to phone them in the morning. It�s at Big London Hospital so that will be fun fun fun taking Arthur there. But I�ve done it before. I just hope the wait won�t be too long. I seem to remember from when I was pregnant that the waiting room is very hot and stuffy, and crowded. And you do end up waiting like 40 minutes beyond your appt time. I don�t think Arthur will be happy about that! I hope we get seen on time.
Oh but one more thing - I just wanted to write that July 1st (Friday) was Cameron's birthday. He would have been 13 - unbelievable! I took Arthur to the cemetery and we left him a birthday card. He has lots of colourful windmills in his grave, and Arthur loved watching them go round. I miss Cameron so much.
Friday was also one year exactly since the day we had our scan and found out that Arthur was indeed an "Arthur"! I remember seeing his lil boy bits, and I remember sitting on the toilet at the hospital with excitement pushing my heart into my mouth, and thinking, "I have a SON!!" What a wonderful moment. And standing in the car park with Neil, saying, "Shall we call him Arthur?" - we had Matthew and Benjamin as back-ups, although we had pretty much chosen Arthur, unless he didn't look like an Arthur. But we both agreed right there in the car park, waiting for him to move a bit so that the sonographer could see his lil heart chambers, that he was definitely an Arthur, by the look of him on the scan! Ah what a lovely time. It's so exciting! And here he is with us now. We have called him Arthur for over a year now. Before that he was Bean. I can't wait to do it all again!
Anyway, I will update again soon. Oooh but Happy 4th of July to the Americans out there! :)
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