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2005-06-21 - 11.00pm previous entry next entry
Mama....
The "hmmm" from 2 days ago turned into proper wondering yesterday, when Arthur got upset at bedtime after I finished nursing him. He was almost asleep, and I left the room while Neil lay down with him till he fell asleep, and he just got more and more awake and upset. Neil would turn him over and pat his little bottom, saying, "Shhh, sleepy time" like we do, but Arthur finally had enough and started crying, and wailing, "Mamum! Mamuum!" over and over! I felt in my gut that he was calling me, although I still wasn't sure about the vocalising being a coincidence or something. It was the hardest thing to hear him call me by name and not run to him as fast as my legs could carry me, arms outstretched!! But I did get there pretty fast! :) When I got in and let him comfort suck for a while, Neil said, "I think he might have been calling you" and I told him I was wondering the same.
Which brings us to today. Today I am finally sure of it! My clever baby boy can call me by name! ALL day long he has been calling me Mama, Mamum, ah-Ma, or ah-Mum! It's the most lovely sound I ever heard, since his first cry at birth. He has done it so often that I can't even count the number of times - dozens and dozens, for sure. It's like when he first signed milk actually - one day we were wondering did he just sign milk? Then the next day we knew he just did! Then the next day he signed it like 50 times, all day long, hehe!
Today, if I leave the room (I watched out of sight once or twice!), he stops playing, looks around, and says, "Ah-Ma?" - complete with question mark intonation on the "Ma" part! If I have to be away longer than this (like when I have gone to the loo or something), he stops making a questioning tone and goes right to, "Mamummmm! Ah-Mumm!" sounding more and more put out all the time! He has such a determined personality, he always knows exactly what he wants, and makes every effort to communicate it right away!
Although my heart ached at one point today because he is back in yet another bout of painful teething, and he was gnawing on his hands and crying about it for a while, so I gave him teething powder, rubbed Bonjela on his gums, and gave him a cold teething ring to chew, and then a cold cloth after that, but he still had pain :( I was right there holding him on the fleece blanket on the floor, and he looked at me, crying round the fist he was chewing on, and sobbed, "Mamuuum!" It just about broke my heart, because I was right there, he didn't need me to go to him, and I couldn't do anything more than I had already done for him, and yet he still was desperate for me to do something to help him, so much so that he was asking me to :( I just held him close and kissed him and talked to him in soothing tones till he calmed down a bit, then I nursed him right there and then. He was a bit better after that. But I didn't even think about how it can be hard to hear your little one call you by name sometimes. I thought it would always just feel wonderful! Of course, it is wonderful all the same, because I just can't think of any greater gift he could give me right now. I feel wonderful when I hear him say my name. I feel like standing on a mountain top and yelling, "MY BABY CAN TALK!!!!" because I'm so proud!!!! Of course he can't really talk as such, but he has his first word that he can really SAY, and he knows how to use it in context. It's not just a random "mama" that happens to get addressed to me sometimes. He knows I am Mama. He knows how to say it, and how to use it to his advantage. My clever boy! :)
So that is my wonderful news today!
It's still hot. But I am getting the hang of keeping the house cool a bit better now. I need to keep the windows and curtains closed on the front of the house all day long (where the sun is on it all day), and then the heat is much better in those rooms. I open the windows at the back though, if the air is cool enough, which it was today thank goodness! Today I even opened the back door to the garden. This is where I realised how hideous our garden has become! Ugh, I am disgusted that we let it slip into that state. It's a small garden but it was simple and easy to care for when we moved here - it has a patio area right outside the house, and then a lawn, and another patio area right at the end. Very small patios though. Right now, the lawn is not grass, but 3ft high weeds (thistles - yes, 3ft high thistles! - and those yucky spindly things with a billion fluffy bits all over) and moss. I think the grass died long ago. The patio outside the back door is covered with large sheets of cardboard that was the packaging to various baby items we bought in the last year, and which were too big to keep in the house or be collected on bin day. And, I'm thoroughly ashamed to admit, underneath the cardboard is a sad, rainlogged (and stagnant, ew!) birth pool :( We are so crap. Oh, not forgetting under THAT is the old kitchen floor. Yeurgh. So there is nowhere to even STAND outside the house at the back, it's so gross. I really wish we'd taken better care of it. It's such a mammoth job to do now, but I think we must do it. It's not very nice out there so we hadn't planned on using the garden for Arthur's play really. We have a lovely park nearby which, although a drive away, is well worth ditching the garden for on a nice day! But I didn't realise how much I might want a place to put Arthur in the open air while I hung the washing out or something. Today I hung washing out, treading carefully round the stagnant pools (ugh!) and crackly weeds, and Arthur sat in his highchair in the kitchen (which opens onto the garden), calling, "Mama? Mamum!!" when I had been out of sight too long (ie 5 seconds)! Later on, I scooped him up in my arms and we stood out on the cardboard for a few minutes in the air. He seemed fascinated by the gross garden, and that made me wish all the more that we'd looked after it, ready for him. It's noisy and smelly out there because there is a car workshop over the fence, so it's really not a nice garden to spend much time in, but it would be nice for a little while maybe. We need to fix it.
But there's little chance, since the house is in a fairly similar state and seems to be so forever, and we need to tackle that first. Not only are we miiiiles from having it babyproofed, we also have a messy, unhygenic, depressing house to live in. I am feeling pretty down about it at the moment. I am always reading other mothers, even those with more children than I have, or PREGNANT women with more children than I have (Robbi for example!), who write that they just cleaned the bathroom and now they are going to tackle something or other else. I can't understand why I seem to be the only one with a pigsty for a home and seemingly no time or energy to fix it! I am beginning to see that it must just be me - I must be super-lazy or disorganised. I think I am both, and always have been really. But even though I am wanting to fix the mess and trying to organise myself, it still isn't working one bit. I may get the dishwasher unloaded and reloaded again SOME days, and I do get laundry done pretty much every day. But CLEANING?! Never. I'm ashamed, but honestly, never. And there are no clean surfaces to lay even a PEN on. Not one. Even the seating is overflowing with stuff. Upstairs is a little better, especially since we worked on the spare room to move the furniture a bit. But there's still a huge pile of crap against one wall. But I could lay a pen on the desk, so there's obviously more space up there!
Ugh. I am just so tired of the mess. Very little of the floor is visible in the day. Mostly because Arthur's blanket is down with his toys on it, but even when that is picked up at the end of the day, the rest of the floor is awful. I am getting downright nervous about when he starts to crawl, and finding myself thankful that he hasn't managed to yet! He seems forever on the verge of it, but we are just not ready for him to be mobile. But at this rate, we never will be.
I am the stay-at-home-person. Why can't I get my finger out and just DO it?! There must be time and opportunity. Everyone else seems to find it. I suppose I use his nap times to make and eat lunch, and catch up online mostly. I do the laundry and dishwasher when Arthur is awake and watching me from the highchair, but he never sits there happily for long enough for me to do much more than that. It's so crap of me. Yuck.
Anyway.
I will talk about Arthur for a while now! I hate moaning in my diary, and I think I do it more than I like!
Let's see, what else is new with Arthur? I keep trying to remember things as they happen, to write here, but then when I am sitting at the computer I can't remember them. He is still not enjoying the heat, and he has quite a bit of heat rash now, mostly around his neck and on his shoulders and face :( I don't know how to prevent it, as I keep him as cool as I can, although that's not really cool enough. It doesn't seem to bother him too much, although he has been scratching at the back of his neck today till he drew blood :( Poor baby. This weather is due to last all week though, so hopefully he'll start to adapt to it a little or something. I hope.
His favourite toy at the moment is his workbench! I bought him a wooden workbench a couple of months ago, because I liked the look of it, and I thought it would be stimulating to him in several different ways at once. It has pegs that you can bang through with a hammer, and a bendy wire-type-thing with big wooden beads threaded on it, and wooden circles that spin when you push at them with beads inside so that they rattle. And a squeaker! And some other thing. And it's very colourful and reversible - different colours but same features on each side. Arthur LOVES squeakers! They have made him smile since he was 2 months old. All I have to do is press a squeaker on a toy a few times and he beams soooo wide! Anyway, he will sit at this little workbench (which is only about 12 inches wide and a couple of inches off the floor) for ages and push at the various bits. I haven't given him the hammer because he just wants to eat it and smack himself in the head by mistake, etc! It is a 10-months+ toy though. If I support him, he loves to stand leaning over his toy basket, sweeping his gaze over all his toys! He will do this for a few moments before reaching out for the one he has chosen - usually the workbench at the moment. He can stand just holding onto the edge of the basket for support, but it's not sturdy enough to take his weight like that so I keep my hands under his arms incase he falls. He's very wobbly on his legs with balance, but very strong at standing up! He will not sit or lie for ANYTHING once he's standing! If I finally get him down, he goes like a board that I have to lower to horizontal (!) and then when he's down, he cries :( The boy loves to stand, and that is that!
What else is he doing now? There must be things I have forgotten to tell about for a while?... He lifts his arms now when I say, "Arms up, Arthur!" if I want to take a t-shirt off him when he's sitting up, or lift him out of the highchair. It's so cute :)
Ohhh yesterday he knocked a toy out of reach, playing on his tummy, and after trying and trying to reach it, he finally went limp and just watched it for a moment, then suddenly popped his head back up again and started to pull on the sheet he was lying on, watching the toy all the time as it got dragged towards him!! Once he got it near enough, he grabbed it and continued playing with it! I was so impressed by that! Clever Arthur! :)
He started banging two toys together a couple of weeks ago, and he now loves to do this all the time with the stacking cups! They make a nice clack-clack-clack noise :) He also bangs together two plastic stacking rings and anything else that he might have in each hand! He had been banging a single object against the floor, a toy on the floor, himself or the highchair tray for quite a long time, and then suddenly it seemed to dawn on him that it would be more fun to bang two items together that he was holding - maximum control! ;)
Also I started offering him a third item when he was already holding one in each hand, because I saw it as a developmental milestone for the next month or so on Babycentre and wondered what he would do. I could see the dilemma going on in his mind, hehe! He eventually dropped one of his items and took the one I was holding, whilst keeping the other item in his other hand, which is apparently what he's meant to learn to do, so that's good! Other times, he refuses the new item. I like to see which things he likes or favours, by what he does when I offer him more than he can hold at once!
What else? Oh he LOVES it when I sing "Wind The Bobbin Up" and do the actions with him! I think I mentioned this a little while ago. We sing it several times a day now because he just loves it. He smiles as soon as I start to sing it, or when I sit him in front of me and put my hands in the first action as I start to sing, so I know he recognises it now. He loves when I clap! He always grabs my hands and holds them on the outsides as I clap them, and if I stop, he does this slightly impatient move where he picks up and drops my hand again almost at the same moment. I have seen him do that with toys that he wants to see move, so I know he is trying to make my hands continue moving in the way he likes! Very determined little man!
I want to get him a spinning toy. I put his stacking rings on their sides and tweak them so that they spin for a few seconds, and he loves watching this. He watches them intently, never me. If I stop and one of them has fallen within his reach, he does that same pick-up-drop thing, and then waits a second or two, watching it with an expectant look on his face - it's so cute and funny when he does that! I love doing it just to see him do it :) So I know that's what he's trying to do when I stop clapping - make me keep clapping!
He is 7 and a half months old this week. How crazy is that?!
We haven't tried him on any food since the other day with the mashed potatoes. I want to buy a sweet potato and mash that up for him to eat while I am eating my lunch. Although maybe I should stick to us eating the same things for a while? I could have baked potato for lunch one day - mmm! And he could have mashed potato. I still want to introduce each new food gradually to watch for any allergies he might have. Ooh, I didn't even think about this rash he's got having something to do with the mashed potato! That was a new food. But hmmm, I think it's heat rash. But it IS on his face, round his mouth and stuff, so hmmm.... Isn't that a weird place for heat rash? We'll see if it clears up.
Arthur nearly fell off the bed in the spare room at the weekend! Neil and I were in there talking about how we could move the furniture around to make the most room for a wardrobe, and we put Arthur on the bed on his playmat. We were standing right next to the bed and watching Arthur, and we literally both glanced away at the same time, to a wall of the room, as we talked, and suddenly Neil yelped because Arthur had hit his legs on his way down to the floor!
I can't believe how fast he moved from playing to nosediving! He must have done a double roll in under a second, hehehe! Anyway, thankfully Neil was standing with the side of his leg against the bed, and Arthur rolled over the edge against them, so Neil just made a quick move and trapped the poor boy between his leg and the bed till we got our arms there to pick him up again! He never hit the floor, but when I bent down fast to grab him, his butt was sandwiched between Neil and the bed, his legs UP IN THE AIR and his head about 6 inches from the floor!!! What a scary moment! I'm so glad he did not hit the floor. He didn't seem at all bothered by the experience, and seemed to be waiting patiently in that odd position for someone to rescue him! Actually I think he was just fascinated by the new view of the room, from upside down, funny boy! We soooo need to be super careful with him now. It seems we can't take our eyes off him for a second. We should make sure he is never in an unsafe place though. He is safe on our bed as it has 3 sides completely walled-in (two bed ends and a wall), and the other side is half bedguard, and then the bottom half is a gap, but we roll up a duvet cover and lay it securely across the gap, then put a pillow over that for good measure. It won't be safe when he can crawl, if we are not there on the bed with him to watch that he doesn't clamber over it. In the night I go between the bedguard and Arthur, so he has the wall and me to reckon with! We are desperate to fix up our permanent family bed on the floor asap. I can't wait till that's done!
Okay this is a lonnnnng entry and it's getting late. I have an osteopath appt tomorrow. Neil has private medical cover at work, and he is now seeing this osteopath too. He just put me on the company's medical insurance which means we have to pay a small amount extra on our outgoings each month. BUT I get to see the osteopath for freeee!!! The extra per month is less than the cost of ONE osteo appt, so since I have them weekly, we are saving money! Yay! Neil will take me off again next year, since I'm sure I will be finished with my treatment by then. I hope!
I think I may go to the doctor if I can bear to tomorrow. I am still sick, and although the coldy stuff is finally starting to go, my cough is weird. I don't usually get coughs after colds, only with flu usually. And now I have a weird groaning sound coming from the bottom of one of my lungs. It isn't wheezing, it's something else. I can't describe it too well. But I listened to my chest all over with my stethoscope and it's definitely isolated to the bottom lobe of my right lung. Not sure what to make of that, so maybe I'll ask the doctor.
Also my period is not here yet - yay! I know it is right around the corner, and I have cramps like it is already here, but I am hoping soooo much that it will hold off till tomorrow, because then I can rejoice and say my luteal phase has lengthened since my periods started back!! Only by one day, but oh well. I am antsy about it staying so short, the same length each cycle. I want to see it gradually lenthening, so I would like to see an encouraging sign! The last two cycles, having checked my charts again, I am pretty sure I had a four day luteal phase. That is sooooo short. The first cycle I had spotting at 4DPO, so maybe it was even shorter than that really? This time I really want to see it lengthen to 5 days. It needs to be 10 to support a pregnancy. And although it seems ages away, our goal of December for trying for another baby is actually only 5 and a half months away. Yikes! Possibly not time enough for my cycles to get better. Oh I can feel a huge waffle coming on about this, so I'll stop! This is stuff that I should save for my pregnancy journal anyway! I'll update about it there sometime.
Okay, that all. It is 11pm and time for bed. I will leave you with a photo of Arthur, taken yesterday during one of his naps in the too-hot weather. He had the fan on him but he was still sweating. One great thing about the hot weather is that he only wears a nappy, if anything at all, and I LOVE to show off his gorgeous cloth nappy collection!! Cloth bums are the cutest :) Here he is sleeping in his Starbunz "Bam-Bam" stuffable nappy (it's fluffy!!)!...
Night night! :)
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