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2006-09-23 - 11.35pm previous entry next entry
New_words_and_photos_and_monkey_behaviour!
Oh no! Another whole week to catch up on! And such a busy week too. And to add to it all, I have somehow managed to take a ton of photos this week, so I'm sure I'll NEVER fit it all in this entry!
Neil has finally got a week off work - yippee!!!! It's so nice to think that it's Saturday evening and he isn't going back to work till after NEXT Saturday! Yay! We have planned way too much to achieve, but it's all so urgent that we'll have to try. We got quotes back from the gardeners who came to assess our garden, and we can't remotely afford to have someone come and fix our garden to make it a place for Arthur to play :( So Neil will have to use his holiday time to fix up the garden after all. It's a bummer but we have no choice. It's still costing us a fair bit of money because Neil is going to re-turf the lawn, smash down the horrendous eye sore that is the brick-built barbeque (which we never use anyway), clean and de-weed the patio areas, dig out the trees growing in the borders, and tackle the front border by the driveway. We have a skip coming on Monday for a week. Yeurgh. I'm not that pleased about that part, but I guess we need one. There will be so much stuff to go in it, and the old turf will be heavy. Neil has had to hire tools for some of the gardening projects too. Soooo, busy week. We also hope to tackle some of the house, which is in an absolutely hopeless state. We have started to try spending 15 minutes together, both tackling one specific part of the house after both boys are asleep at bedtime. THEN we have our evening. I am also really hoping I might get some rest and relaxation time for myself with Neil home. I sort of hope it will be a holiday for me too, but I hate that it means Neil has to take over when I rest, because it's his holiday from work. I really want to just chill out and do stuff that I've been wanting to do for ages. I want to sew some nappies! I want to finally set aside big chunks of time to start reading diaries again - I have no clue what is going on in the lives of so many of my friends at Diaryland! It has been far too long and I so want to catch up again. I have a LOT of reading to do once I start though! I also kind of fancy playing The Sims 2 a bit, but I feel guilty at the idea because it is such an UNPRODUCTIVE thing to spend hours doing! Every hour seems precious at the moment and computer games seem to waste that time. Although I love The Sims. It's so much fun! :)
You guys want to see a new photo of my lil Mathie-man? Here he is talking at me yesterday:
And look what I found today?! Arthur, aged nearly 4 weeks younger, but wearing the same sleepsuit and lying on the same changing mat cover!
Aren't they just soooo completely different?!! Their head shapes are utterly different. Arthur has my dad's (round and large!) and Matthew's is identical to Neil's. Very different. They have different noses, but neither of them have "my nose" or "Neil's nose". They both have mixed noses (what an odd thing to say, haha!) but completely different "mixes". Matthew has Neil's eye shape and blue eyes. Arthur has my eye shape and brown eyes. I am always aware of how different they are, but seeing photos like this really brings it home even more. I love their differences! It just boggles me that the same parents can produce two such different children though!
Matthew is now officially a roly-poly boy!! He rolls onto his tummy every time I lay him down on his back, but only in one direction - to his right. I caught it on video during the week but I am sooooooo behind on getting video clips uploaded to the computer. I will probably end up with an entry full of out-of-date video clips at some point! I have some sweet footage of Arthur just running about at the park when Neil took him, about 3 or 4 weeks ago. And some other stuff. Maybe I will get around to that this week. I will try to reply to some emails this week too. I hope I am not setting my expectations too high! A week will go by too fast, I know it. If I don't get it done, I hope people will understand and wait till the next time I have some free time (whenever that might be!).
Matthew is also grasping toys with both hands, and scrunching and stroking on crackly textured toys. Today I did not tie my hair back (which has only happened like TWICE since I had Matthew - long hair + two tiny ones = rapid hair loss and baby boys gagging on hair!) and I was leaning over Matthew and he was absolutely entranced by my hair! It's so weird when you tie your hair back for like 3 months and never have a moment to look at yourself in the mirror (!!) - my hair actually took me by surprise with how long it has gotten since the last time I took it down and looked at it, haha! Also I happened to glance up into the mirror the other day while I was washing my hands in the bathroom, and was quite surprised at my own face. That sounds weird, but honestly I have not had a moment to look in the mirror for months, or so it feels. I have just been rushing too fast or thinking about the next thing while I'm washing my hands, so not really paying attention to the mirror. I never wear make-up so I have no reason to look in the mirror anyways. And obviously I just brush my hair as fast as I can and scrunch it back in a hairband every day, so no need for a mirror there either! Anyway, it was just a glance but I sort of stopped in my tracks and just looked and looked for a while, because - I know this will sound crazy of me, but my face seems to have aged so much since I had Matthew. I am not bothered by it at all, since I have never had any issues with getting physical signs of ageing. It's just odd to see it happening to my permanently-15-years-old mind! I have new lines all OVER my face, mostly where I scrunch up with worry, like on my forehead and stuff. That's not good! But then, neither is a stomach ulcer so I am guessing the lines aren't exactly unexpected. But I just LOOK older. I remember before I had kids, I would watch new families at church as the couples started to have children, and the vast majority of the mothers looked young and almost like teens while they were pregnant with their first. Most of them looked considerably older by the end of their baby's first year. I remember telling my mum about it and she said having kids ages you! It's just very hard work. It's not a BAD thing, it's just the way it is. After Arthur, I didn't really notice much change in my face. Maybe a little. But since Matthew.... I really look like my age now. Which is still young, but before I had Matthew I was STILL being asked for ID if I bought wine in the supermarket (and the age is 18 here). Up to my pregnancy with Matthew (and once during it, I think), salesmen would knock at the door and ask me if my parents were home! It bugged me sooooo much! But I notice that nobody is doing that any more, and I think I finally look my age. I miss that my youth is getting further and further behind me (well, YOUNG youth, you know?!) but I am sort of quite pleased to be looking older. I AM older. This is the best part of life, for me - being a parent. You don't generally get to do that till you're "older" and I've been waiting for it for EVER. Now I'm here, and I look the part - stretch marks and all, hehe! I'm happy to be here :)
I have loads more stuff that I wanted to write about Arthur and the things he says and does. I was reading a couple of my recent entries back the other day, so I could see what I'd already said and what I have yet to write about, and I realised that the way I write about Arthur (and Matthew even) might seem kind of.... I can't think of the right word... egotistical? You know, like I'm bragging about every little thing he does. I think it might come across that way. I wanted to mention it, because it's really not how I mean it! I write my diaries rather selfishly - for ME, and to purge my own thoughts. The thoughts that I have in my head are the same as any mother's about their child - how gorgeous he is, how there is no other child in the WORLD more cute/scrummy/clever, etc, than mine, hehe! You know how it is - those of you with kids must think like that too. I am so excited and proud and thrilled about every new thing he learns or says or does. Things he does that are funny are exaggerated to my mind in their cuteness or funniness. In my head, I see him do new things and I think to myself, "Oh, he's SO clever!!!" Well, of course I would never trot down to the local mother-and-toddler group and start talking about my children like I do in my diary! I wouldn't say it out loud like I think it - now that WOULD be arrogant and annoying of me! But my diary here is like an extension of my brain. I don't write my diary for my readers (sorry, hehe!) or like an update for friends to read, although it does seem that way by how I write sometimes. I have always written my diaries just for me - knowing I have readers, but still, writing it for me. I write my thoughts straight out of my head and on the whole I don't censor them. Except for stuff that would make me too vulnerable online, and occasionally stuff that I feel ashamed about having in my head. But even then, I have found it helps to be honest. It helps me to purge, it helps me to get feedback over the issues, and wonderfully, I get contacted by strangers who tell me how much it helped THEM to see me write so honestly about something they are struggling with. So I like to write honestly, from my mind.
Right now, most of my thoughts and stuff are about my boys and what they are doing. I am proud to BURSTING over them and delight in their every little action, so of course it comes out here. I just wanted to explain that, even though I know I didn't need to. I know I'm always saying, "Oh Arthur knows FIFTY THOUSAND different colours! He's the cleverest child in the universe!" and stuff like that, but I really am just excited that he knows his colours, and honestly not comparing him with other children as such. I think if he was struggling to know his colours at the age of FIVE and one day he suddenly learned red, yellow and green, you could bet I'd be here going, "Oh my GOSH, Arthur just told me his crayon is RED! My clever Boo-Bean!!!" even though every other child knew those colours years before him! I never mean to compare. I hope I don't annoy people too much! Nature has wired me to think my own children are the best that can be, hehe! And I can't help myself ;)
That said, I have a whole list of little things that Arthur is doing or saying that I wanted to write about (in the above style, hehe!). I just never want to forget all these little things, and writing them here means they won't get forgotten.
Okay, let's see.... Arthur knows soooo many fruit and veg names from playing with his plastic fruit and vegetables. He knows avocado ("a-bah-bo!") and aubergine ("oh-beem"), which is UK for eggplant for any Americans wondering what the heck kind of vegetable I'm talking about! If he doesn't know one, he holds it out to me and I tell him the name, and he repeats it and puts that fruit/veg down and picks up another one. He seems to really enjoy learning stuff and it's so much fun to teach him new things and see him learn them so fast.
He has so many new words AGAIN since my last entry even. I can't write them down as I hear them any more because there are just too many, which I am finding a bit sad! I so wanted to keep track of his development more closely, but never mind. He is learning several new verbs every day right now. If I can't figure out what he's saying by the way he pronounces it, he gets frustrated, but he has started trying to show me by example (that clever boy!) while saying the word again, so that I'll hurry up and catch on! For example, yesterday he brought me a bag of winter tops and jumpers that Katie gave me for him, which Joshie has grown out of. He pulled them out of the bag, lay them on my knee and said, "Fwhoo-hoe". The nearest thing it sounded like, to my ear, was "throw". So I said, "Throw? You want me to throw them?" I felt stupid suggesting it, because it obviously wasn't the right word - silly Mummy! But I just couldn't figure out what he was saying. He immediately got frustrated and tried the word again and again, looking at me earnestly and patting the clothes. In the end, after much frustration, he finally spread one of the jumpers out on the sofa next to me, picked up one side of it and very purposely folded it onto the other side, then looked up at me and said, "Fwhoo-hoe". The penny dropped, and I said, "Oh, FOLD! You want Mummy to FOLD the clothes?!" and you should have seen how excited he was that I had understood him at last! He beamed and clasped his hands under his chin, and said, "Yeah yeah! Fwhoo-hoe!" I repeated "fold" a few times while we folded them, and by the time were were finished folding he was pronouncing it better, more like "foo-hoed".
He has suddenly started saying "yes" to everything in the last week. Well, he says, "Yeah" or "Yah" but the great thing is, we can now ask him a question with a yes/no answer and he can easily tell us yes or no, which is great. He has been saying no for ages but we'd have to guess whether the answer was "yes" based on whether or not he said "no"! He would make "affirmative" sounds for yes, if we asked him if he wanted an apple to eat, for example. But it's so nice to ask him and to hear him say clearly, "Yeah" or "No" (which often comes out more like a cheery "Nope!" sound!). If he's super eager for whatever it is, he'll say, "Yeah yeah!" or even, "Yeah yeah yeah!" whilst clapping his hands or clasping them excitedly under his chin. He pretty much does that every single time I ask him if he wants some milk (as in, my milk) :) His word for milk is pronounced, "Mum", often "mmmmum" so if he says it then I ask him if he wants milk and he says, "Yeah yeah yeah!" and scrambles excitedly onto the sofa in readiness :) He's a sweetie.
I LOVE one of his new words, which is "cugg-oo" (cuddle) :) And he is now combining three words together to describe something he's doing - like the other day Neil was taking the bins out on bin day, and Arthur went into the kitchen and reappeared with a small empty wicker-basket bin. He carried it carefully to the front door and declared, "Ah-yah, bin, heppin!" (Arthur, bin, helping!) :)
Another new word rather shocked me the first time I heard it. He sat on his potty and said, clear as day, "Shit!" I thought, oh my gosh, where did he learn that! And just ignored it. But then later on he sat on his car and smiled and said again, "Shit!" and I realised he was saying "sit" with a bit of a lispy thing going on, hahaha! He now likes to declare whenever he's sitting on anything, "Shit!" We're trying to help him pronounce the 's' better ;) He also says, "wide" whenever he's on his car (ride). He likes to try to "wide" anything and everything, even his toy cars and duplo animals, which he squats down on soooo carefully, hehe! I love to see him carefully balanced on a teeny tiny duplo horse, waddling round the room singing out, "Wide!" and making click-clock sounds with his tongue! Funny boy!
He calls out for things that he's looking for as well, which is a fairly new thing. He has this FAB set of 2 piece jigsaw puzzles from Boots - a box of 20 of them. They are things like a car, a butterfly, a postbox, a snowman, etc, and they are each in two halves. I won them at eBay, as I knew he would love them. He really likes jigsaws. Anyway, these are currently one of his favourite things to do. He spreads them all out on the floor and picks up a piece. He knows all the names for the pictures already. He'll look at the top half of the fairy and say, "Ware-wee" and then look over the other pieces, calling out, "Ware-wee? Ware-wee?" with both hands turned upwards in the "all gone" sign, hehe! If he's watching a children's telly programme and somebody has lost something on the TV, like their dog or something like that, he'll go round the house calling for the thing that somebody on TV has lost, like it might turn up in OUR house, haha!
We've seen the programme "Something Special" on CBeebies a few times lately (it's a programme for toddlers about signing) and today I was absentmindedly singing the theme. On the programme, when the guy finishes singing the theme song, he says, "Hello!" and then asks/signs "What's your name?" and then says, "My name's Justin!" and signs it by tracing a 'J' shape on his other hand with his forefinger. Arthur was playing with Duplo, and as I sang the last line, he dropped his piece of Duplo and said, "Ah-row!" (hello) and then said, "Dut-din!" whilst pointing to his other hand! I can't believe Arthur has picked that up so fast and associated it with me singing the theme tune!
The other thing I wanted to write about is his new thing of pretending to be asleep, hehehe! He is really into pretend play more and more these days and loves to cook food for me in the kitchen with saucepans and spoons! Today he was mixing something in a saucepan and I asked him what he was making, and he smiled at me and called out, "Tee-tiiine!" (tea time, which I often call out when it's ready for him) and when I asked what was for tea, he thought for a moment with his head on one side, and then shouted, "Beeeeans!" excitedly! He wanted me to get into his booster seat at the table so that he could feed me some tea! Once again, I was thick Mummy and put HIM in the chair, thinking he was eagerly asking me to put him in it, but as soon as I lifted him into it, he said, "Noooo!" and shook his head. He said, "Mumma, tee!" and patted the chair. I had to tell him the chair was too small for Mummy! He then delighted in feeding me spoonfuls of imaginary beans from a ladle out of his saucepan :) I love this little boy!
Anyway, lately when I tell him it's time for sleep, he lies down and closes his eyes (but that squinty not-quite-shut type of closed), and snores: "Ah-phew, ah-phew!" hehe! He then pops up shouting, "Awake!" and then does the whole thing over again. He likes to randomly do this during the day on the living room floor, and also makes the same snoring sounds for on Monkey's behalf when Monkey has been "put to bed" in his box and is "sleeping"!
He CONSTANTLY plays answering the phone! It's the cutest thing. If he hears a phone ringing sound ANYWHERE, like on TV, or outside, or our phone, or a toy phone - he'll instantly stop what he's doing and snatch his open hand to his ear (his imaginary phone!) and say, "Ah-row?" Then he pauses, eyes off to one side as though he's listening, and then he makes THE funniest assortment of "phone conversation" noises, which he has obviously picked up from listening to us talking on the phone! He has ones that he uses the same way every single time. He says, "Ah-row?" followed by, "Oh?.... Oh NO!.... Yah.... Yah, yah.... Oh NO!...." and then the funniest bit of all, he does this hilarious fake laugh that sounds like Count dracula's laugh on Sesame Street, hehe! The a-a-a-ah! one ;) He tips his chin up while he's laughing the fake laugh, and then goes back to, "Oh?.... Yah?.... Oh NO!" etc, before he puts his "phone" down again. We must get a lot of awful news over the phone for him to be saying, "Oh NO!" so much, hehe! Actually it's something I seem to say a lot on the phone, say if my grandparents phone and tell me about their computer playing up AGAIN, and I usually respond by saying, "Oh NO!" and then commenting on it further. So I guess that's where Arthur got that one from! Anyway I sooooooooooo want to get him on video pretending to talk on the phone. I will be so sad if he stops doing it one day and I never caught it on camera.
Oh, he did answer the phone the other day! Usually we have the ringer off and just respond to messages, but I had turned the ringer on one time when I was expecting a phone call from someone and I forgot to turn it back off. I went upstairs to settle Matthew and left Arthur playing with toys. Suddenly I heard the phone ring, and on the third ring it stopped! I thought, oh NO! Because I knew Arthur must have picked it up. I raced down to grab the phone and on my way down the stairs I could hear him saying, "Ah-row?.... Oh?.... Yah.... Oh NO!"!! As he came into view I could see him with the phone held to his neck (he never quite holds it correctly to his ear when he's actually holding the phone!) and he was doing his fake laugh with head tipped back :) I took the phone and said, "Hello? Hello?!" and there was no answer. I said hello again, and a lady said, "Um... hello?" hehehe! It was some sales person (ugh) who was a bit dumbfounded after her conversation with Arthur! ;)
He is also, however, a complete monkey around the house. He climbs on everything. He uses toys or the laundry basket, pushing them up against the kitchen cabinets to climb on them and reach things on the surfaces - NOT safe, but he'll do it when I'm taking Matthew up to bed or something. One time he found a biro from I-know-not-where, while I was settling Matthew, and when I came down he was VERY excited to show me that he had been "daw, pen!" (drawing with a pen) all over the wall above the 3-seater sofa! We also have some very nice pencil artwork on the surface of our wooden chest in the living room. We generally keep all pens and pencils locked away in a drawer with a child lock on it, but he ALWAYS finds the odd one that got left out and wastes no time using it somewhere while I'm upstairs for a minute! He hasn't done it that much though.
Matthew has woken but I had SO much more to say, and more photos too! I'll just finish with some photos of another monkey thing I found Arthur doing when I came down one day from settling Matthew in his cot:
Yes, it's nappy cream. Oh-so-carefully applied to one side of his face! ;) But he's so precious, I can't help but love him to bits all the same! I'll update again tomorrow if I can, I have so much more to write, and more photos too. Here's my lovely boy, a couple of days ago:
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