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2005-08-17 - 7.56am previous entry next entry
Mobileness and still teething!
I wrote this last night but Diaryland wouldn't let me add an entry till this morning, tsk! Arthur was awake at FIVE TWENTY this morning, urrrgh! I played asleep till 5.30, then Neil lay with him so I could get some more sleep in the spare room. They went downstairs at 6am. We have a rule that he doesn't get out of bed till 6am. Before that it just isn't a human hour! Anyway, I will paste last night's update now - my little man is standing at the desk holding on with his hands waaay above his head so I need to rescue him!
Toooo long since I updated AGAIN! It�s hard to find the time at the moment. Arthur keeps me so busy all day, and sleep has been something of a challenge lately so my evenings aren�t so free for updating my diary as normal. But here I am at last! :) I hate to leave it very long between entries as Arthur is changing all the time and I don�t like to miss writing about any of it as it happens.
Thank you Marlen for always being so excited about each of Arthur�s toothies!! :) I should have thanked you the other two times too! xx
All is well here! Arthur is such a busy boy all the time. He spends most of his time standing these days, and when you put him down on the floor he pretty much always just crawls straight over to a piece of furniture and pulls up on it immediately, and then cruises around babbling and stuff. He�s a lot of fun these days but he is also making me feel more tired for all his new skills! He prefers to be upright all the time, and has started to writhe and screech and do everything in his power to get away from you if you lay him down to do something, like change his nappy or dress him or something. I am having to quickly adapt! Sometimes I can distract him with a toy with my fifth hand (honestly, that�s how many I seem to need for a simple nappy change!) but other times there�s no way I can get it done. He seems soooo much stronger than me already in his stubborn little muscles, and I can�t keep him lying down if he has decided he won�t! So lately I put a lot of clean nappies on him while he is standing at the TV unit or the sofa with a big smile on his face!! He is always happy if he is standing up, but then he has always been that way, even before he was really able to stand properly with us holding him! It�s easier than it was at first, to put nappies and wraps on him standing up! I can even position a fleece liner or hemp booster in them if I have to! He giggles sometimes when I am doing the wraps up while he�s standing, funny boy :) It�s also pretty easy to dress him sitting up, but not the trousers. The boy will not lie or sit still for a second. Or stand still, for that matter!
He is now very stable standing alone for several seconds. He doesn�t wobble, and when he realises he isn�t holding anything, or if he loses his balance a bit, or finishes picking up the thing he was letting go for, he simply puts his hands back on something to steady himself and stays standing or starts cruising somewhere else. Once or twice he has sat down after standing for a few seconds, but if he isn�t holding onto something when he tries sitting down from standing, he goes down pretty hard! Good thing he has a big ole cloth butt to pad him out! He is getting very good at sitting down from standing when he holds onto things though. You can really see him trying to figure it out before he does it too, it�s really sweet!
Today he discovered two new things � the porch, and the bottom of the stairs. Uh-oh! The porch is full of highly unsafe things for a baby like loose DIY tools and other awful clutter!! I need to clear it. Until today the porch was still right there available to him, but it�s like he never seemed to realise it existed. He would even play with some of his toys near the doorway to the porch but never even looked in there. Today all of a sudden he started crawling towards it at high speed, very purposefully! He really does understand the word �No� and his name now. I don�t even know why I�m using the word �No�, as I never really planned to make much use of it in discipline. Hmmm. Maybe I will re-read the Sears� Discipline Book and find alternative ways. Anyway, he is very good with �No� and my tone when I say his name FOR NOW! He got right to the doorway into the porch and I called from the sofa, �Arthur, no, I don�t want you to go in there.� He was wedged right in the doorway on all fours, but the second I said that, he flopped to his tummy and used his arms to rotate himself right the way round so that he was facing me. His face was all questioning when he looked at me, it was so sweet. I told him good boy and he smiled and looked like he would just rest there where he was. After a few seconds he scrambled back round to face the porch and started crawling again. I said the same thing as before, and again he stopped, turned round in the doorway and listened to me. He waited another few seconds and started off again! In the end I went and got him and distracted him with something else, but hmmm, now he knows the porch is there I really need to clean it up! He�s such a good boy though :)
He has also been playing a lot near the bottom of the stairs before and never seemed to notice them. He has pulled up on the bottom step a few times but that was only to get nearer to the bin, which he LOVES to tip over and empty! It only contains paper waste or tissues or packaging and stuff, so that�s fine, and I always sit with him and help him examine the things inside. He climbs the whole flight of stairs very confidently, but we always take him there and start him on the first straight step (the first 3 steps are bending round a corner, and then the rest of the flight of steps is straight ahead). So today he crawled up to them to look at the bin, but then lost interest and suddenly it was like he had a lightbulb moment when he saw the next step above him! Angled steps around a corner are not so easy as straight steps to climb and he slipped a lot. I had my hand under his bottom if he slipped so that he wouldn�t fall so far as to hurt himself, but I let him slip a little so he could learn from it. He did climb them in the end :) He is very determined!
It�s a good thing I am with him ALL the time, otherwise these new discoveries would be big worries. The bottom of the stairs doesn�t have a high enough post to attach a stair gate so I�ll just have to watch him. Although when Joshua came round last week, we wedged the playnest ring upright in the corner bit of the stairs and it prevented him getting onto the stairs at all (much to his annoyance!), and he�s 13 months and taller and more mobile than Arthur, so I know that will work for a while if I need to use it.
Arthur is getting new teeth AGAIN! He has had that typical �eroded� dent under the whitest part of the gum where a tooth is coming, and from his other three teeth, I know that it�s 3 days from first seeing that dent to seeing the first little white corner of a toothie. This time he is going to get two teeth at the exact same time. The other top middle tooth is coming � the left one (HIS right one, that is), and also the one next to the top middle tooth that has already come through. The �dents� arrived two days ago over both of them, so I think they will arrive within hours of each other, and probably tomorrow or the next day at the latest. He will have five teeth then, three at the top and two at the bottom. After all that waiting, they are really making up for lost time! I am a bit hesitant to think he might get a break after these two though, because the other top one is sure to need to even things up soon after. Maybe after that he will get a break for a while. His top middle tooth looks to be about halfway through now, and it seems so big to me! I love his teeth. He looks so cute :) But then I would say that! ;) He has been teething quite badly since I last wrote here. He has woken and cried a lot in the night, and sometimes still whimpers when I nurse him at night if it�s his teeth that are hurting him. We have given him Calpol a few times here and there. He chews his thumb a lot at the moment, but he never sucks it. He is drooling like never before so I�m sure he isn�t comfy, but soon they will come through and then maybe it will get easier for him.
He is eating really well at last, all of a sudden!!! Yay! Neil took him to the supermarket at the weekend to do the food shopping, and they came back with three jars of Hipp Organic stage 2 baby food for Arthur to try. They got roast pork with potato, veg and apple, cottage pie, and Lancashire hot pot! I don�t know how I missed those when I looked last time I was there. Anyway, I have been putting my new plan into action since Friday � Arthur shares what he wants of my toast in the morning (which is half a crust on a good day, other days he just tastes it and drops it on the floor!), and then his other two meals are in the highchair � for ages now we have been feeding him in the living room on the floor, surrounded by towels! The Health Visitor I saw said to make it less formal, even have him sitting on our laps or something, but we never went that far! Now that he can crawl, when he has had enough (ie, none at all!) he just crawls off with food-smeared hands all over the carpet, and I figured it would be better for him to get used to proper meals if he had a specific place to be for them. Not being able to escape from this place would also be helpful to me! So he also has a proper lunch between 11 and 12 (give or take maybe 15 minutes outside of that time, depending on his naps and activities) � which is now some of this new baby food, or a mashed or partially pureed meal that Neil and I ate the night before. He also now has �tea time� which is usually between 4 and 5pm, again in the highchair, and on Friday when I started this, I decided to give him mashed fruit or something. I had an organic avocado and an organic banana, and he seems to really like both of those individually. I suddenly wondered what he would make of the two mashed together, so I tried it out, and he LOVED it!!! I read that neither of these freeze well, but I had sooo much left over that I thought I might as well try it. I froze 8 very large ice-cubes of the stuff, and Arthur loves it so much that he has had that for tea every day since! When we run out, I think I will try mashing banana with something else for tea. I am happy just giving him a fruity/veggie meal for tea, since he has a proper meal at lunchtime. The avocado and banana is mashed to a lumpy consistency but it is so soft that it�s easy to deal with. Arthur has no trouble with it at all. He chews and swallows it very quickly and opens his mouth for more! So far I have only offered him one icecube of it each time, as he previously NEVER ate anywhere near even half of an icecube of food, but he finishes it every time now! After he finishes it I give him a Farley�s rusk (which we have recently discovered � I LOVE these, and will happily eat Arthur�s leftovers!). He eats maybe � of it. Lately if he isn�t interested in my toast I give him a rusk instead. They are soooo good for getting him used to chewing hard crunchy things before swallowing them, as they dissolve really easily in his mouth. He bites proper pieces off with his new teeth and then spends ages mooching them round his mouth till they are ready to swallow.
For lunch so far he has had the Hibb Organic cottage pie, which is full of herbs and spices and onion and stuff that actually makes food FLAVOURSOME, as opposed to everything else I�ve always offered him. He gobbled down the very first spoonful and opened his mouth for more! He ate 1/3 of a jar (it�s a bigger and taller jar than the stage 1 jars) the first time and today he hate at least another third! He has noooo trouble with the lumps. He has changed such a lot in a short time with his eating.
Okay but the flip side of this is that Arthur is definitely taking less milk. A couple of weeks ago I started to notice him making a new face when he was nursing. After he had been nursing on one side for a while, he would suddenly pull off and make this weird face with his eyes all scrunched shut, almost like when you get a sour face when you suck a lemon. But not quite that sour. I wondered if there was something wrong with my milk at first! He would keep making that face immediately that he tried to go back on that breast, every time. After a couple of attempts, he would start looking like he was going to gag or something, so I stopped offering it. Sometimes if I offered the other side he would feed for just a short while before doing the face again. Anyway, that was like once or twice in the whole week, and now he is doing it more than once a day. I have come to recognise it as his, �I�m gonna puke if I have any more milk!� face!! He just seems to get absolutely full up and can�t take any more. My milk hasn�t slowed down and in fact it seems like my supply has changed in the last month or so, from what I�ve noticed. Finally my breasts have started to seem a little smaller, and softer. They don�t get engorged so much and they rarely feel like they are full of milk. One is usually still fuller feeling than the other if I nursed him with the other one last time. I still leak just as much though. I noticed that he just drinks straight away when he latches on these days. He no longer has to suck till I get my letdown before gulping. It�s literally like my breast is a sippy cup and from the first suck he is gulping lots of milk. Before, that never used to happen. I read that after the first four months (has DEFINITELY taken longer than that with me!), the milk supply changes to supply-on-demand. The breast doesn�t store milk so much, and the feeding system is so efficient that the breast is stimulated to make milk literally AS the baby sucks. Isn�t that just so amazing?! I think that must be what is happening, because sometimes my breasts seem empty and soft to look at, and then he is gulping and gasping (I still get the letdown after a few seconds, but he is gulping from before that) till he finally lets go with that gaggy face! So amazing.
At the moment I know he is getting less milk than he was a couple of weeks ago. He is still getting a lot, but less. He wakes 4-6 times over his 12 hour �night� period, which is a heck of a lot, but at the moment I am almost glad of it because I know he is getting milk and I am getting to nurse him. I love to breastfeed him. I also want to be sure he is still getting PLENTY of milk. I would rather he had the vast majority of his nutrition from breast milk till he is a year old, as that is the recommended way (for good reasons!). Now that he is eating two (and a bit!) times a day, he only nurses for naps, and I never feed him again at the end of a long nap like I used to. He never needs a quick top-up in the middle of the afternoon. I know he is still nursing a ton, but seeing a couple of feeds disappearing is sad for me. It�s the beginning of the end, even though the end might still be years away. Right now I almost wish I could be his source of nourishment for EVER. Well, not really forever, but you know. I am just sad that he really is going to wean one day. Honestly, the amount he nursed up until now and the way he was so disinterested in solids, I simply couldn�t imagine him ever eating food and not breastfeeding one day!! I knew it would happen, obviously, but somehow I never really thought about it enough to accept it. Now I am accepting it, and it is really affecting me more than I expected. When I am nursing him and watching his sweet face and stroking his hair, I want to just cry when I think of this part of our relationship ending someday, and I just wish it would never have to end.
Once he is a year old, I will consider GENTLY starting to cut out a night feed or two, or set a block of time during the night where I will comfort him back to sleep without nursing him. I have been researching on this a lot lately. But I�m not willing to try it till he�s over a year old, however knackered I am in the meantime. His milk is important till he�s one (and then some, but especially in his first year). Also it�s just too soon. He�s still just a baby. If he happens to be a wakeful baby then so be it. I won�t restrict him if he wants to nurse back to sleep every time he wakes. At the moment I just feel so wonderful and blessed when he wakes me to nurse at night. I feel so tired and I wish I could sleep more solidly but the time is going to come too too too soon where he won�t feed at my breast ever again. Ever. That is too sad. So I will savour every last time I nurse him, day or night. Or at least I will try to! It�s hard when I�m tired at night, and I am VERY tired at night at the moment. Lately with his teething he has had nights where we haven�t got to sleep till after 3am, because he has like 3 hours where he literally wakes every 5-15 minutes crying. Poor baby. I am so sad. All of a sudden it is really hitting me that he isn�t going to be my baby for always, and the time is literally zipping by so that �that time� is coming faster than I want it to. I know that�s just how it is, but still�.
Anyway.
Today I have carried him a lot, and he leans out from my body a lot to see things and reach for things, and this hurts my arms and back after a while. I haven�t said this here before because I guess I was being all secretive about it for some reason (?!!) but I am sewing a sling at the moment. I never thought I could do such a thing, but I researched slings to see what the best type might be for an exceptionally HEAVY boy of Arthur�s age (he was just over 6 months when I first started searching), and also taking into account that my osteopath says I shouldn�t wear a front or side sling, only a back-carry. Everything seems to point to something like a Mei Tai, and I found a pattern made by a lady whose six month old son was pretty much the same weight and build as Arthur, and she had trouble finding a comfortable sling too! She made alterations to the traditional Mei Tai, to make it comfier and stuff, and made the pattern available online! Yay! So I have graaaadually been working on it. I have so little time to actually sew at the moment though, and I have two unfinished nappies currently waiting to be sewn, plus another new project which is special so I will talk about that separately another time. But the sling too. I have sewn about � of it now though, so not much more to go, and then I can try it out! You can do a front carry in a Mei Tai too, but obviously that wouldn�t work with my back so well. Anyway, I can�t WAIT to wear Arthur again. We used to wear him in the sling every day, and now he never gets to go in a sling. He outgrew his Baby Bjorn at about 4 months old � he is that big!! Seriously, his body stopped fitting into the actual carrier! The clips pressed him in the sides because it was too small and it just did not seem comfy. Plus, ow, on my shoulders. After that we used the Hug-a-Bub more, but it hurts my back since it�s all on the front. So I hope the Mei Tai will really be as good as it sounds for us! I am using up some heavy duty navy corduroy with a print on it that I bought yeeears ago. The inner layer is canvas though, to make it strong. Anyway I am longing to have it finished at the moment because Arthur likes to be held and I like to hold him a lot.
Sooo today I finally just got desperate and pulled out a large piece of printed flannel fabric from my shelves of nappy-making fabric, and folded it about a bit till I got something vaguely usable. Then I tied a knot in it (tight), put it over my head, and positioned Arthur in it on my hip!! It wasn�t the comfiest thing ever invented, but it was instant and involved no sewing, and Arthur was happy and I could hold him without my arms being used much at all for a while. I was so pleased that I took a photo of us in the mirror. That was right before Neil got home, and when he found us with the sling on, he took a photo of us, so here they both are. I'm not too thrilled that the second one makes me look a bit like a sack of potatoes (very confused breasts lately!), but oh well, here it is anyway:
Okay, what else can I tell you tonight? It�s getting late so I need to go soon.
Oh, Arthur is soooo helpful around the house these days, hehe! Yesterday he emptied the entire load of wet washing from the machine, piece by piece! He stood up there when I opened the machine to transfer washing to the tumble dryer, and I reached past him to get an item out, and that started him off. He had no idea that he could actually pull things out like that! I just sat next to him cross-legged on the floor and picked up each item as he dropped it on the floor, making a pile to put it in the dryer! He had a great time, it was so sweet! He found it hard to pull out the big towels and stuff, but boy is he determined! He pulled and tugged and kept on trying until he nearly fell over with the effort, and I helped him with the last little bit of the towels. Also he found it hard to reach the last few items so I put those near to the door for him to grab. I praised him up the whole time of course!
After that I unloaded the dishwasher and he was really eager to �help� me with that too! He pulled up on it straight away, cruised round the edge of the door, and pulled the bottom rack out. Actually he ended up pulling that bottom rack RIGHT out and almost onto the floor (on top of him!) but fortunately it didn�t have anything left in it by then (hence why it was light enough to pull right out!). He was so eager to be involved though. Such a cutie! Here he is helping me:
I love those trousers on him � they are the ONLY pair in size 9-12 months that actually fit him anymore (from Tesco�s � yay for Tesco�s!!) and they are a really generous comfy fit on his cloth bum. Also, I love them because they have the word, �Monkey� written across the bum! ;)
We still haven�t finished our bedroom. The weekend was busier and more sleep-deprived than we thought. We cleared a little bit of clutter but not much. At least the bed is on the floor so he is safe from falling off it now. Arthur has this game he LOVES when I change the bedsheets now that the mattress is on the floor. I lay him on the mattress protector and tuck the top end of a new sheet under the mattress. Then I hold the bottom end with the sheet covering him and shake it about wildly so that the sheet ripples and waves about over him. I make appropriate exciting noises to go with this! Then when the waves stop, I pop my head under the sheet and say, �Boo!� and he laughs and laughs. While the sheet is rippling I can�t see him, but I can see all his hands and feet in the air thrashing about at the sheet underneath, it�s so funny! He squeals and gasps while the sheet ripples. He�s just too cute. Here he is enjoying his sheet game (the first one got gate-crashed by Daddy!):
He banged his head sooooo hard on a square plug socket right after this game though, it was so sad :( He hit his forehead on the corner with all his weight and it left a deep purple dent in his forehead. It looked like he had been stabbed with a pencil or something. He cried sooooo much, my poor Boo. I felt so bad. I nursed him within like 10 seconds of grabbing him up to comfort him, and it�s amazing how that is like magic. He had this awful dent in his head that MUST have hurt, and he was purple from how hard he was crying, and yet the instant I put him to my breast he was quiet and calm. Neil held a cold facecloth on his forehead while I nursed him. He still has a bruise today, but it�s getting better. Poor poor baby.
What else? Neil is going to bed now. I need to go too. Oh but the weekend was a bit special for anniversary-type-things! Saturday marked 18 months to the day since Arthur was conceived. He was conceived on Friday 13th February 2004, the day before Valentine�s Day. That�s the day I ovulated anyway. Friday the 13th is neither here nor there to me, since I think superstition is complete balls. But a special thing to remember for us. And then, no less special, Sunday 14th was our 6th wedding anniversary. We didn�t mark it in any way other than to say Happy Wedding Anniversary. I don�t know why I feel bad saying that, but it�s no biggie for us. It�s just another day, but we do remember our wedding day fondly and marvel at how many years it has been since then, etc. Other than that it really is just another day, and we love each other just the same on the 13th or 15th. As it happened, on our wedding anniversary, we had just had the WORST night�s sleep, and therefore we felt a bit yucky all day, argued twice, and did nothing productive other than play with our sweet boy! But that�s the way it goes sometimes. I feel so laid back about life at the moment. What will be, will be, that kind of thing. I know it has coincided with having spent time praying with Neil about our future. God is so awesome. He treats me so tenderly and parents me so beautifully. I know God is the reason I feel so laid back, and since I am NEVER laid back about anything, I am very grateful!
On Thursday the Health Visitor is finally coming round to do Arthur�s 8-month check. I finally phoned her on Friday, rather peeved at the lack of communication over it! She was really apologetic and arranged to come and see us on Thursday :) I feel like she wouldn�t have got in touch if I had not phoned, tsk. But it�s arranged now, so hooray! I hope she will weigh him too, while she�s here. He feels so heavy to me again, and Neil thinks he has grown again in height.
Okay there was probably more but I have to go to bed. I need to get round to emails soon, and also update my other diary, but hopefully I�ll get to that tomorrow, or at least a start on it! I�m sure I missed out something important but oh well. I�ll update again when I can!
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