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2007-02-17 - 10.27pm previous entry next entry
Long. Milk, and potty training....
At last, a chance to finish my diary entry from before! It's 10.28pm already, but oh well. There has been no time before now, and I STILL haven't caught up on other diaries! :( I will try to do that later? Tomorrow? Soon, I hope! And emails too.
First, before I forget or a boy wakes and I don't get around to it again, here is a short video clip of my little ones in the kitchen a few days ago. Arthur was ducking around the highchair legs and making Matthew laugh, and I fumbled for the camcorder as fast as I could. I think I missed the best giggles though :( But here is the rest. We were waiting for Neil to get home from work:
Okay, I have SO much to write about! And so many photos again. I started a list during the week, which sits next to the computer, to remind me of things I meant to write about in my diary. Otherwise I forget them! Also sitting here are many sheets of paper with Arthur's latest phrases on them, which I jot down throughout the day as he says them! So I guess I had better start working through my list!
Food-related stuff first! I am soooo proud! I have been cooking a family meal for when Neil gets home from work about 5 days a week for the last 2 weeks!! Yay! This is a HUGE deal for me, having never once sat down to eat a meal with our kids before Arthur was 2 years old. And I never cooked for us as a family before this either. Arthur always had jarred food, or actually he did have some home-made stuff when he was tiny but it was just for Arthur, not part of a family meal, and it was pureed, etc. It's a huge effort for me to make such a drastic change, and I've been a bit hard on myself over some aspects of it, but I think I'm doing well!
The one thing that nearly always goes wrong is the timing. I am the world's most disorganised person (trust me on this one!) and never EVER attend anything on time. Even when I try reeeally hard. It's worse than ever now that I have two little people to get organised as well. Hence we don't go out much at ALL anymore. It always goes hideously wrong when we do, and manages to ruin the rest of the day for each of us. But that's another story. So I have been trying REALLY hard with timing the meals, because we have to eat right when Neil gets home from work (just after 6pm) otherwise the kiddies are late in bed. They both need to be asleep by 7.30pm, and Matthew will happily be asleep well before that time if we can organise ourselves to get him in bed earlier. When they have bath night, it's hard to do the meal as well, and because I can't seem to serve a SINGLE meal at the time I plan to serve it (ugh!), the boys have been in bed at very varied times lately. Sometimes it's just that the preparation part took me longer than I expected, which can sometimes be due to little people holding things up while I'm trying to cook dinner! And sometimes it's because I didn't notice the time and was late starting it. Or it wasn't quite done when the recipe said it would be. Or it WAS done on time, but there was some drama with a small boy and we all sat down to eat later than we had planned. Then the meal takes a while, which is lovely, now that we're all sitting at the table together. But it does add to the late bedtimes. The latest bedtime this week was 9.30pm for Arthur (well, sleep-time, he was in bed at about 9.10pm. That is NO good at all. It was after a roast dinner, which took an AGE to carve and serve and make gravy for, etc, etc. And the pudding (rice pudding) wasn't done when it was supposed to be. Neil says I am too hard on myself, but I feel like I am doing so BADLY most of the time with the meals. I have yet to get one completely RIGHT, but when I stand back (on a Saturday, when I'm less frazzled, hehe!) and look at the last two weeks, I think I have done well and I'm proud of that. I hope I can get it right in the end though. And I need to start planning menus. So far we are just feeling our way, and it would help me a lot to get a menu plan sorted each week, or maybe even for a whole fortnight. It's something I have been planning to do since before I started my new diary a couple of months back, for such things. I have a WAY to go yet on the home management thing, I can tell you! There is just an absolute mountain to climb and I'm still not sure I'll ever make it. But it's a start.
Arthur is eating NOTHING of any of the meals I cook - yet. He gets no alternative food. He DOES get offered dessert, which I try to make nutritious. I read that it's not a good idea to withhold dessert from young children who won't eat their main course. It's another way to get nourishment into them (if you make the desserts wholesome) and it teaches them that there's "good" and "bad" food if you start withholding food as a punishment for not eating other stuff. He won't even eat peas and sweetcorn if it's mixed in a sauce or a stew or a soup. He LOVES peas and sweetcorn, and will eat an entire plateful of the stuff, so long as it's not "contaminated" by other food! So he is going without food more than he used to. We are determined to persevere, and every source we read about it assures us that he'll come round. We don't make any fuss of him not eating, at dinner time. We make it light and cheerful, and chat to him about things he has enjoyed. We talk to each other about the food and which parts we really like. We enjoy Matthew's HUGE appreciation of my food, no matter what it is - he eats everything I cook for him with great enthusiasm! Arthur has a tendency to whine and whine and whine at the table constantly, about how he doesn't like the food and he wants such-and-such instead, and he wants to get dowwwwn, and so on. It's HIGHLY irritating but we're trying to be cool right now. We don't tolerate bad behaviour at the table though. He isn't allowed to bang or scream and shout (but he does it anyway, a LOT - I just mean he gets disciplined for it if he does it), and there are various other smaller things that we're teaching him too. Anyway. He will hopefully come around soon! I read that it takes toddlers 3-10 exposures to the same food/meal before they will accept it and try it. I am SURE Arthur will be at the far end of that scale, needing a good 10 exposures, and so far he's only ever had the same meal 3 times maximum. Most of them only once or twice. So we might have a way to go yet! Because we know about this statistic, we're being patient for now!
I made spaghetti the other day and chocolate pudding for dessert! I made it with cocoa and milk and stuff - it was listed as nourishing and full of vital nutrients in my baby cookbook, so I gave it a whirl! It was really nice! Arthur ate a tiiiny bit (he's just as picky about desserts - anything new really) but then didn't want it. Matthew ate some, but we are starting to notice that Matthew has a preference for savoury foods. With the single exception of fromage frais, he only looks vaguely thrilled by all sweet things. He absolutely inhales all savoury foods though! I sliced some banana and nectarine to eat with the pudding and he loved those! Arthur wouldn't eat the nectarine (new *sigh*) but he ate a whole banana.
Oh! I forgot to answer Mallory's question recently, about fromage frais. It's not yoghurt, though it's marketed as a yoghurt-type dessert and Arthur's calls it yoghurt. The boys eat both yoghurt and fromage frais, but we found some Thomas the Tank fromage frais recently and so that has been the favourite over yoghurt! It doesn't really taste the same as yoghurt, but I suppose it is similar. The texture is the same as yoghurt. It IS French, and it tends to be called Fromage Blanc there more than Fromage Frais. I haven't seen it sold in the States before, but it might be, somewhere? Here's a Wilkipedia link for more information, if you're interested! :)
On the subject of milky things, my thoughts have been all stirred up lately about milk for Arthur. He drinks organic whole milk, in fact, we ALL do now (except Matthew, of course!). Neil and I were drinking semi-skimmed (the same as 2% milk in the US I think, except that semi-skimmed milk is actually 1.7% fat here) organic milk but I am continuing to lose weight with all the breastfeeding and am past my pre-Matthew's-pregnancy weight now by a few lbs. I still have 8lbs to go before I am as light as I was before Arthur, but I was TOO light and do not want to get back to that weight again. I am putting out a LOT of milk these days, and I don't think that is going to change any time soon, so I am upping my calories! I could use the fats, to be honest. Neil LOVES creamy milk so he was thrilled to have an excuse to join in - though I told him he has to let me prick his finger to check his cholesterol now and then (he has a history of high cholesterol already). It has been fine for years and years, but it was high when he was a teenager and his mum changed her cooking to make things lower in cholesterol. So I have to monitor it for him, if he's eating high cholesterol foods. He has no sense of self-preservation, he's like another child sometimes!
THEN I read about the process of skimming milk being bad news, and lots of people saying how they are put off drinking anything but whole milk for LIFE now that they've read into it. So hmmm. There was a big debate on a parenting forum I post at recently, about milk for 2 year olds. I read the post because it was relevant to me, since I have a 2 year old. The question was asked, "What kind of milk are you giving your two-year-old?" and the responses varied hugely. What does everyone here think?
I am very sure of my decision on milk for Arthur and my reasons behind it, but I'm curious, after reading all this stuff. I will probably NEVER give Arthur (and Matthew) anything but whole milk. Before I read all this stuff, I just had this gut feeling that I did not want to be messing around with different amounts of fat in milk for children. The guidelines here are very strictly laid out (as in, advice from your health visitor or dietitian, etc) - do not give your child semi-skimmed milk before the age of two, and do not give them skimmed (0.1% fat) milk before the age of 5, as they need the energy from the fats in milk. With that in mind, I had pretty much decided that whole milk is the way God intended it to be consumed (as in, straight out of the cow and not fiddled with!), and that fats for children are a whooole different ball game to fats for adults, in terms of whether they are a good thing or not. Fast food and sugary-fatty junk for kids is a whole 'nother story for kids, but whole milk is surely a good nourishing thing to ingest?
When I was very little, there was only whole milk around. Semi-skimmed and skimmed started in the 80s, I think, and we didn't bother trying it out till I was in my teens. We always got our milk delivered to our doorstep in glass bottles, by the milkman. The cream sat in a lovely thick yellow layer on top of the milk. These days milk is so mucked about, that it makes me wonder whether there are any adverse affects by doing so (there usually turns out to be something when it comes to changing a food from the way it comes naturally). Milk is homogenised a LOT these days. You don't see the milk with its cream on top any more, thanks to homogenisation, which serves to whizz all the fat into tiny particles so that it's evenly distributed throughout the milk. It also removes some vital nutrients and enzymes from milk - ah-ha! I checked our milk in the fridge and it's homogenised AND pasteurised! All milk is pasteurised here, but not all of it is homogenised as well. I am now on the hunt for some organic milk that ISN'T homogenised. I don't see the point. I'm happy with cream sitting on my milk (it shakes or stirs in fine) and with those homogenised-out components BACK in my milk thank you! I think I have found some that I can buy at Tesco, called Country Life organic milk. It's only pasteurised. Which, by the way, is a process that buggers milk up aplenty itself. I was fascinated to read about it when I googled this evening. Did you know, pasteurisation takes the lactase out of milk?! That's crazy! Lactase is needed to digest lactose, which milk has a lot of. It's a wonder anyone can digest pasteurised milk at all! Also interesting is that most lactose-intolerant folks can cope with raw (unpasteurised) milk just fine. It starts to make me feel cross that foods like milk are being so messed with. There is WAY more than just the lactase thing, but I don't want to rant on about it any further than I already have here.
Anyway! Back to my point! I just feel like milk is one of those foods that's best left alone, or at least left as close to the way it came out as possible. It's a healthy food! And really, whole milk is 3.7% fat - that's ALL! That is 96.3% fat free!! I do understand the reasoning behind some people wanting to have reduced fat milk for dieting or cholesterol issues. But there seems to be a whole "fat phobia" (with foods) thing going on, and some of this discussion online was about how it's completely unnecessary to give children reduced-fat milk, and some were suggesting it was just bringing the adult "fat-phobia" issue into what we give our children. Some said they gave their kids reduced fat milk because they were over 2 now, and they were chunky kids anyway so they figured they didn't need that extra fat. One lady was giving her 2-year-old skimmed milk (ie. that white water stuff) because it was what she drank and it was easier, and he probably didn't need the extra fat in his body. Others had the same reasoning for why they kept their 2-year-olds on whole milk (for those with lightweight toddlers!). So many people were busy "consulting their peds". The whole thing just seemed blown out of proportion to me, as I read it. Children's bodies' needs for fat are completely different from an adult body's need for fat. They use fats as energy and all sorts, that we don't use it for. But that aside, suddenly it seemed crazy that we're all asking advice and going by "the appropriate age" to change the fat content in our children's milk! Suddenly it just seemed nuts. It's milk. It comes out of a cow just so. It's good to drink and highly nutritious. Why change it, and especially for children? Anyway, that's just what my view was on it, after taking in everything that was said, and reading up a little online.
I think I was one of only a few whose 2-year-old was still on whole milk, and definitely a minority as someone who does not plan to introduce reduced or non-fat milk to her children at any stage. Maybe when we have teenagers we'll think again, or maybe we'll find out somewhere along the line that one of our kids has high cholesterol (if it's an inherited thing, for example), and then we'd alter things accordingly. But I guess I'm this tiny minority who thinks whole milk is good for kids of all ages. It's not going to make kids obese now, is it?
*sigh*
Anyway, I WAS interested to hear what other mothers are thinking (or doing) with their little ones and milk, but now that I've ranted from the highest point of my soap box (!), nobody probably wants to share that information with me, haha! But I've said my bit and don't intend to debate any further :) I just wondered if anyone else out there thinks like me or if the discussion online was a pretty accurate representation of any group of mothers. Do any UK mothers reading this feel differently? This was a US forum where the discussion took place, and I do think that there is a different feeling about fats in foods over there, to here. Anyway I am just curious....
Wow that has taken WAY too much of my diary-writing time!! Whoops!
The next thing on my list on my notepad is "potty training"! Haha, what a relaxing and non-confrontational entry this is! ;)
Again, I wanted to pose a question to people reading here: Am I the ONLY mother of a 2-3 year old who is NOT potty training at the moment?! ;) I have been reading lots of diaries (well, up to about a week ago) here at Diaryland - ones that I have been reading regularly since Arthur was born, most of which are written by mothers who have little ones who were born around the time that Arthur was. So far, it seems like ALL these other mothers are potty training (or almost done potty training!) their little ones who are Arthur's age. First one started, and then another, and another, and now I'm not sure if there are any left other than me!
I don't know what to think about potty training. I mean, I reeeally don't know what to think, or say here, even. I have some thoughts about it (mostly things like, "I don't want to do that for a while yet!") but then in light of everyone else's adventures, I am beginning to feel like I'm not.... right? in thinking those things now. I mean, I know it's about Arthur's readiness, so this stuff isn't really relevant (or shouldn't be, I suppose), but I still wonder if my attitude isn't right or something. Everyone else is like, "Wayhey, we're POTTY TRAINING!" with sleeves rolled up, ready to attack the process with gusto! They have been for months now. But I just don't feel that way. Is this another thing I'm being too lazy/disorganised about? And that's another thing - I read that for potty training to be well-timed and successful, the potty trainer (that's me!) needs to be organised in herself. Which I am NOT. So, oh my gosh, how am I meant to do this?!
And also:
I DO. NOT. WANT. TO DO IT!
Is that wrong too? Nappies are soooo easy. I dread the process of nappy training. I get so that I wonder what the point is, in getting it done already? I know the point is that Arthur can use the toilet independently (albeit with my help), and doesn't have to wear nappies any more. But is that all? Am I missing something else? Because I heart his lovely cloth nappies, and I don't mind changing them, and HE doesn't seem to mind wearing them most of the time, and they are just so much easier than dealing with potty training. And he will obviously use the toilet independently one day, whatever happens, that WILL be the outcome. But the benefit of him doing so NOW instead of in 6, 12, or more months? I can't figure one out. I fear that I'll let him down when it comes to getting him to a loo when he needs to go, outings will be soooo much more difficult than they currently are - and trust me, outings of any sort are currently SO difficult that we stay in the house 90% of the time, if not more, these days. That is NOT the intention, and lots of the time it's because Matthew is napping (he naps long and gooood these days, twice a day), but that's how it seems to be at the moment. The only real difference I can see right now is that when he's using a toilet instead of his nappy, he's going to have way more opportunity to get germified. Not a healthy thought, I know. But there it is.
I am wondering, is everybody potty training because they dread it and want to get it over and done with? Or because they feel it's "time" given their child's age and the fact that society has this "age" whereby potty training is supposed to commence? Or does anyone's little one dictate it with some major signs that they want to leave nappies behind for good? I honestly have no CLUE about all this, and I'm wondering what the catalyst is for the process with other mothers out there - is it YOU, wanting to get your child potty trained (and why, out of curiosity?), or are your 2- or 3-year-olds making life difficult because they don't want to be in nappies any more, and thus the process needs to start in order to make life more bearable again! I don't know whether I'm "meant" to take the bull by the horns, or whether I'm meant to wait for Arthur to show me signs that he's ready and willing. Or do some people choose to go for it, and others choose to wait for signs? Does it matter?
My, so many questions! ;)
Last week sometime, Arthur said to me, "I wanta do a wee in tha loo!" and went to the stairgate, waiting for me. I feel almost ashamed to say here that I had a huge sinking feeling and did not take him up to the loo to try a "wee in tha loo". Matthew was up there sleeping, with only a thin wall between his cot and the toilet, and I knew taking Arthur up would mean switching on the noisy fan that comes on when you switch the light on. And then noisy-enough chat and bumpings to wake Matthew, if the fan hadn't already. And then mucho fiddling about with the toilet and unravelling of toilet rolls. And in the end, probably no intention of doing a "wee in tha loo" at all, and back down we'd go, collecting a sleepy and disoriented boy on the way, who should have had a lot more sleep than what he had. So I suggested if he wanted to do a wee, maybe he'd like to sit on his potty and do it? But he said no, he wanted to do a wee in the loo. I said not today. But I feel dreadful about it, and I keep on thinking over it again and again.
In lots of ways it seems like I am being unfair to Arthur in favour of Matthew. I fiercely guard Matthew's naps. That is the main thing. Matthew naps 2 hours in the morning and another 2 hours in the afternoon, sometimes a little longer both times. He naps wonderfully in his cotbed, but very poorly anywhere else. He naps from roughly 9-11am, and then 2-4pm, but this varies so much that it's usually 11.30 (or even 11.45 sometimes) before he's properly up from his morning nap, and it can take him a while to actually go to sleep these days as he likes to force himself to wake up juuuust as he's about to drop off, to practise pulling up to standing and crawling around his cot, etc. So after he's done that and finally gone to sleep, add on his 2+ hours of sleep and it's like a 3 hour process sometimes. If he's up nearer noon, that puts off the afternoon nap a little, and the end result is that we have a small window where both the boys are up until about 8.30am (when Matthew gets nursed in bed in preparation for his morning nap), and then another window over lunchtime, after which Arthur is getting tired for his nap and things are winding down a bit, and then the next window where they're both awake is usually not till 4 or 4.30pm. I used to try and take them out somewhere for a short while after that, but my complete inability to organise myself usually meant that I couldn't get them both ready and out of the door before it was practically 6pm and time for Neil to get home from work. And dark outside. These days, that window is out because I have to cook the family meal from about 5pm.
All of which leads to NO time for outings. Poor Arthur. He does need his outings, to burn off energy. Sometimes we go in the garden and he runs, but it's sooooo muddy in there right now, and it has been raining recently too. Sometimes we do it so that when Neil gets home from work, Arthur is ready to go out and he goes for a walk with his daddy for a short while. He loves walking with Daddy "in tha dark!", but it's still such a short outing. Some days I take them out in the lunchtime window, and make a packed lunch for Arthur. We get the supermarket shopping done, and this week one day we went into town and bought a couple of things. Arthur mostly walked but he went in the tandem pushchair with Matthew after he stopped listening to me when I asked him to stop (near roads, etc!). Or we might go to the park. But whenever I use that window to take them out, it's ALWAYS a disaster for their sleep (and food, pretty much) afterwards. I haven't managed to sort it any other way yet. Arthur eats fine in the car, but that's not exactly ideal. And it also means that Matthew doesn't get lunch, because he can't eat in his car seat like Arthur, all tipped back in his rear-facing seat. He gets breastmilk on demand, so he doesn't go hungry on those occasions, but again, it's not ideal. And then we are always home WAY late for their naps in the afternoon. They are usually tired out, grumpy, and Matthew might have fallen asleep in the car (thus making a nightmare situation for getting him in the house, nappy changed, and convincing him he needs to go back to sleep in his cot after all that!) and takes AGES to settle for sleep once we're home. And I can't get Arthur sorted for his nap until Matthew is down, as Matthew just cries and prevents Arthur sleeping if I just leave Matthew and go and try to settle Arthur for his sleep. So I HAVE to get Matthew down first. Urgh. Then poor Arthur is waiting till like 3pm before he gets to nap that day! He sleeps deeply and wakes VERY cranky and clingy, and then his late nap off-sets his bedtime and he mucks about for literally hours in bed that evening.
I feel a bit of a failure in these ways at the moment - various Arthur-related things like outings, sleep, etc, and whether I'm letting him down on the potty-training thing. And the darn family meals that I can't seem to get right yet. I hope I get better at them. I can't figure it out most of the time. I just feel clueless and dumb and stupid about it all, like even when I try reeeeally hard to figure out what's best for my little ones, I STILL can't do it, and so I bumble along and seem to be stuffing things up a fair bit along the way. But then I don't seem to be learning from that, really. Which is frustrating/disappointing/upsetting.
Anyway. So outings are affected by my decision to prioritise Matthew's naps. And now the weeing in the loo thing too! But I have done it the other way around and it has NOT worked. Matthew NEEDS his sleep, and we all suffer if he doesn't get it. If he's awake, he's cranky and miserable, and I have to tend to him more. So Arthur gets less of me. If we're out, he's soooo miserable that we have to cut outings short and come home, Matthew crying the whooole time. That's no fun for Arthur (and definitely not for me!). When Matthew has short bits of naps throughout the day, as a result of being taken out a lot and losing his pattern for good long naps, he is cranky between naps, and I have short, unpredictable periods to spend doing special things with Arthur.
THIS way, Matthew is wonderfully contented, well-rested, and happy at all times (seriously! He is such a happy baby), I have absolutely predictable times when we all know Matthew will be napping, and I get huge blocks of time to do things with Arthur, just me and him. The one-on-one time with Arthur is SO important. I would even say it's more important to Arthur than going out. He would not get it nearly as much if I tried to take us all out more often at the expense of Matthew's naps. It's SO HARD to juggle more than one child sometimes!! Often you just have a situation where you must choose to prioritise one child's need over another's. You can't do both, a compromise wouldn't make that much difference either way, and so you must choose - do you prioritise your baby and let him get the sleep he needs while your toddler doesn't get to do much outdoor/social stuff? Or do you prioritise your toddler and fill his life with wonderful stimulating fun activities, while your poor baby gets exhausted and sleep-deprived?! It's so hard. I tried both ways and chose this one. I didn't have the luxury of a baby who WANTED to sleep the first time around - I'll be jiggered if I'm letting the opportunity slip through my fingers this time! ;) I think I said this before, but my friend Katie chose the opposite to me with her little ones, and her toddler gets out every day and goes to different mother-and-toddler groups 4 days a week. He gets everything he needs and is loving it. But her baby girl cries all the time and seems tired all the time, and naps in tiny bursts with no predictability, mostly on the go. She's a couple of weeks older than Matthew, and he's crawling all over while she isn't sitting unsupported yet. I know babies vary hugely in their development and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with anything. But it made me curious, that's all. Both Katie and myself said how hard it was to have to prioritise (I HAVE said this before, here. Oh well!) but we just had to go with what felt right. She couldn't bear the thought of restricting her toddler. I didn't want to think of forcibly sleep-depriving my baby (!) when he was so obviously asking me to help him get the sleep he needed, and it wouldn't be the End of the World if my toddler did activities at home more than anywhere else for a while.
I figure one day in the not-too-distant future, Matthew will drop a nap, and then we'll have a HUGE window in which to start gallavanting about to mother-and-toddler groups (with TWO toddlers by then, yikes!) and other fun stuff. The only thing is, what if I get pregnant again? I can't make my head work to think what will happen. I think I'm too tired, or else losing more brain cells again ;) Ohhhhhhhhh my Bob, it's 2.30am!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had no idea! I honestly thought it must be around 12.30 or something! Yeeuuurgh! I guess that's what happens when I get carried away on topics that I have "opinions" about! Oh dear. No wonder my brain feels like soup. And I had soooo much more (nicer stuff, I promise!) to write as well. And photos! Phooey.
At least I have got the heavy stuff out of the way this entry! I have some much more light-hearted stuff to write next time, and all the photos too. Sorry the entry is so long and heavy-going!
Here are a couple of photos to finish (less to post next time, therefore!) of my sweet little boys playing together during the week:
I'll try to write again tomorrow, if I get the chance, although Neil might need to use the computer in the evening... maybe if I have a bit of a window during the day? I really want to catch up and get rid of this list on the notepad before it gets to be old news! Okay, going now :)
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