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2007-02-20 - 11.30pm previous entry next entry
Arthur-talk, photos and monkey boys!
Thank you all so much for the comments and notes after my questions on cows milk and potty training!!! You guys are wonderful! The things you wrote were so helpful and interesting, and I will definitely refer to them later.
BUT tonight I have such a lot to write, as I haven't had chance to write for the last two evenings - Neil has been on the computer more those evenings and I have only had the chance to check my email and messages before bed.
It's my birthday tomorrow!!! Yay! I can't believe when someone asks me how old I am, that I am now saying (or will be, from tomorrow), "Thirty-one" That's just craaaaazy! It really does just become a spoken number, that's all, after enough birthdays. I remember the day when saying my age made me FEEL that age, if that makes sense. Like, "I'm sixteen.... Oooh, I'm really SIXTEEN, how cool! Yes, now that I think about it, I really DO feel like a grown-up sixteen-year-old now, and the more I say it, the more I feel like it describes ME!" I will never nevvver NEVER feel 31. Or thirty-anything, probably. It's just a number to me. I can no longer tell you which age I DO feel though. I just feel... me! I sometimes feel quite surprised that I'm really a "woman in her thirties" because that's like MY PARENTS, haha! Or at least, how the 30s looked to me what seems like only yesterday. How strange that it's me now. I like it. I really do LIKE it. It feels like a warm and comfortable pair of slippers, like I'm comfy and settled, being in my 30s. I guess it's because I pretty much looked forward to my 30s all my life, with the whole parenting thing that it was sure to bring. And here I am! Anyway, another year into this lovely decade, yay!
Neil has taken the day off work tomorrow (at my request!) and I'm getting a lie-in (ahhhh!), and I'm wondering about the possibility of going out for an hour or so on my own in the afternoon. I know most people on their birthdays might want to spend time with their loved ones, and I am ALL about that, it's something I've always wanted to do MOST on my birthdays. But this year I am still coming down from having 2 children under 2 and feeling somewhat frazzled and demanded of! So a blissful scenario for me would be some time alone, just peace and quiet, but OUT of the house. Just something so different from what I usually get to do. I LOVE my boys (all three of them!) but I do miss my own space sometimes. So far this has been a really difficult week with the boys, and I'm distracted with excitement over the luxurious possibility of walking out of my home tomorrow on my own, just to casually stroll and spend some time in peace and quiet, just taking in my surroundings and breathing deeply and being able to hear my own thoughts, etc. I know it will be a time that I end up spending close to God as well, which would be lovely.
I can't decide whether to go shopping or for a walk somewhere naturey. I'm thinking the walk would be better for my soul. Shopping would be great, but I always end up not knowing what to buy (plus the no-money situation) and missing the boys, and then buy them something (and not me!) and come home again! I connect with God INSTANTLY when I walk in a nature setting. It has always been my most natural connection with God, through nature. Through worship follows a close second, but I don't have to make any effort at all when I'm walking and walking on my own with trees and grass, or even junk yards or whatever, so long as it's space outdoors and I'm alone. So I think I'll do that. I DO feel guilty that Arthur loves to go to the park and I never take him. Neil does, while I have my lie-ins at the weekend. He would love to come with me tomorrow if I go, but I want to be on my own. That's the only thing that hurts my heart about going. I feel horribly guilty about that. I love Arthur so much.
HARD week this week, and it's only Tuesday night! I have lost my temper a lot and found it hard to manage things, which is NOT good. Arthur has been difficult, but only in the usual ways. The difference is that Matthew seems to be.... joining in, for want of a better description! He is developing quite a monkey personality already, even at 8 months (ohhhh gosh!) and has recently started purposely doing things that make life difficult, with a glint in his eye as he looks to see my reaction while he's doing it. If I get frustrated or exasperated, he giggles and does it even more. They don't play off each other to wind me up YET, but have this sinking feeling that it's gonna happen, and not too far from now either! How on earth I'll manage that, I don't know.
Matthew is a menace at nappy change time. He twists his body so that I can't wipe him, or put a new nappy on him, and clutches himself when he's caked in poo. He isn't just cooing innocently and doing those normal baby flings with his arms and hands, he's making a very concerted effort to get his hands to his crotch BEFORE my hands get to his, within the shortest time after his nappy comes off (ie. 0.45 seconds - he is FAST!) - he will even swat and clutch at my hands to try and stop me catching him before he achieves his goal! And then when he DOES get his hands past mine and in the poo, he gets such a monkey grin on his face, with a look in his eye that is definitely saying, "Ha-ha, I got you! That was fun!" *sigh* I am NOT finding it fun! He's just as bad when I try to change Arthur's nappy. He can be over the other side of the room with his back to us, playing with some Duplo, and I'm as quiet as I can be when I am starting to change Arthur, but he has this radar and drops the Duplo, turns round and POWER CRAWLS (60 miles per hour) towards us. I need 8 more arms when he arrives, because he seems just determined to clamber over me and actually sit on Arthur's dirty nappy, or something, as I'm trying to remove it! I use my arms and legs (all at once sometimes!) to try and prevent him, but he uses SO much effort. It's horribly irritating when I am cleaning up Arthur's poo and he's climbing all over me - I have NO hands free, a baby who wants at the poo, and a toddler who will quite happy get poo everywhere too if I don't watch him!
I sometimes pick him up and put him over the other side of the room, but honestly, this boy is so fast at crawling now that he's pretty much back next to Arthur by the time I am! He reaches frantically for Arthur legs and clutches at him, or his hair. Arthur has taken to shouting anxiously, "Oh NO, Mashew coming!!!" and holding his hair down (hehe!) when he sees Matthew start to crawl over during his nappy changes! Matthew has also found a way of figuring out if the item he's interested in is something I do not want him to play with. Maybe it's a monkey baby's sixth sense or something?! Even objects he hasn't seen before. He sees a tissue, for example, which has found its way to the floor on the other side of the room to where we both are. As he sees me clap eyes on it, he gets this determined expression and does his 60mph power crawl towards it. If I break into a RUN (I am not kidding), I can beat him to it, but even then I will likely have to prise the shreds of it out of his little clenched fist, because he'll make a good grab for it anyway and is getting pretty accurate at grabbing and picking things up quickly.
This last week, he has been pulling up on the sofa or other places, and seeing something that's been left there that he shouldn't ideally have. Let's say it's a tissue box again, or something like that. Straight away, he will put his hand on the box, and then turn his face to find me. When he sees me, he waits till I meet his gaze and then changes his expression (mischievous eyes and slight smile) to one which says, "Ho ho, see me actually TOUCHING this box!" and his eyes are full of communication. His expressions are so descriptive that I can almost translate them into words and sentences sometimes. He asks me with his eyes a question that is a combination of, "Mummy, can I play with this?" and "Mummy, I'm about to play with this, and I know you don't want me to! Whatcha gonna do about it?!" I can't figure out which it is. I think it's the first one, but it is too cheeky a look for a simple innocent question!
Anyway, the main point is, the boy KNOWS what he's doing suddenly, and he is doing what he can to be a monkey boy. Already! It worries me a bit because Arthur was not anything like this monkeyish when he was 8 months old, and look at him now! I dread to think what Matthew will be like at two! When the two of them are being somewhat difficult, I am find it hard to manage things again.
Today, Matthew pooed on the carpet again. Urgh. I took his nappy off and he flipped and crawled away, as usual. Before I could get to him, there was this awful sound, and, yes, poo everywhere on my carpet. And the little boy's legs. Of course, startled by the sound, he turned from his crawling position to see what had made it (bless!) and sat down in his poo. Instinctively I lifted him off the floor under his arms, but from the angle I was at, I could only just hold him above the floor like that, and he used that opportunity to stomp stomp STOMP in his poo-poo with his bare feet. The afternoon was not a pretty one. It was about the last straw for me, for various other reasons, and I am not proud of how snappy and horrid I was with the boys while I tried to clean it up and keep them away from what I was doing. I made a barrier of toys (oh for the space to put up a playpen - who'd have thought I'd ever yearn for a playpen, hehe!) across the living room that Matthew couldn't climb over (big toys like the toy garage and stuff), and they played behind that for a while. Arthur could climb over, but WOE BETIDE anyone who crossed Mummy's path at that time, so he stayed back after he got snapped at enough. Urgh.
I scrubbed that carpet with disinfectant and a stiff brush for literally thirty minutes straight, only pausing to blot it with an entire kitchen roll and re-soak it again, and I still can't quite get the yellow stain (and accompanying bleurghy smell) out of the carpet. Finally I gave up. It was 3pm, I had not had lunch yet, the boys were WAY late for their naps, and Matthew was only dressed in a nappy, and Arthur needed changing too before naptime.
I took Matthew up to bed, nursed him and put him down. He crawled excitedly all over the cot so I left him to it and came back down to get Arthur changed. When I got down, Arthur had found a bowl with about an inch of yucky pooey water (how on EARTH I could have been so stupid as to leave that within his reach, I do NOT know. Thank goodness I had put the mainstay of the stuff up out of his reach!) and was "cleaning" the kitchen table and floor with it. He was soaked with it too. I stripped him down and washed him, and then changed him for bed, while Matthew cried and cried upstairs. He was crying so much by the time Arthur was ready, that I told Arthur I would just pop up and re-settle Matthew for a couple of minutes and then I'd be back to take him up for his nap.
I went up, picked Matthew up and was rocking him and shushing to calm him down, when there was this thud-thud outside the bedroom door and ARTHUR ran in! Another moment of immense STUPIDITY - I had obviously forgotten to close the stair gate. I can't think what was the matter with me today. *sigh* I reacted with shock, and Arthur turned and took off again for the stairs (open stair gate!!!). I ran after him with Matthew in my arms, shouting "STOP RIGHT NOW!!!" (what our neighbours must think of me/us today, I do not know) and he did, thankfully. I shut the stair gate and squatted down next to him to tell him he must never run near the stairs, and he took off running back to the bedroom. When I caught him up, he was jumping on my bed (next to Matthew's cot) and squealing with glee. I just thought, "Right, that's IT!" and plonked Matthew on the bed next to him, grabbed Arthur and swung him to the floor, and then turned to pick Matthew up again, to find that he was already in mid-flight to the floor, where he landed heavily on his face and his body flipped back over himself, bending his neck in a way that scared me to DEATH. I swear he could have broken his neck. He screamed and cried instantly and I was so scared and desperate to grab him up off the floor that I just grasped his clothing on his front and hauled him up by it onto the bed!
Oh it was awful :( I ended up yelling at Arthur to GO AND LIE DOWN ON YOUR BED and then just holding Matthew close and rocking him and trying to calm him a bit before I pulled him away to look at his face and see how badly hurt he was. He was crying too hard at first. When Arthur ran back just as Matthew was calming down, I sent him away again and shut the door on him :( At that moment, there were just TOO MANY kids to deal with, even though there were only two. I needed to focus on Matthew. He was clutching at his nose as he cried, as though it was hurting him, but he had a big red mark on his forehead. I think he did hit his nose too, but there was no blood or major swelling. After that I lay down with him in the bed and breastfed him, and he eventually calmed down enough to nurse to sleep. Arthur tried the door a couple of times and then started banging his head on things and crying and crying and CRYING. I feel awful that I ignored him out there, but I couldn't have done anything for him unless I left Matthew, and he needed me at that moment. It was a good 10 minutes of head banging and crying though, which was so awful for him (and me!).
I really feel that Arthur needs to be disciplined better. He doesn't mind me, and he SHOULD, especially over safety issues, and no should mean NO, and that's that. But every event this afternoon was actually my own doing (how awful) so I can't blame him for it all. He got yelled at more than enough, and I'm ashamed to say that I was rougher with both of them than I should have been at times. Urgh.
Once Matthew was asleep, I went through to Arthur (who was lying on his bed, just like I'd asked him to - the good boy!). He was crying and upset and when I came in, he reached for me and I lay down next to him. He said to me, "Mummy say sorry be gwumpy with Ah-yah!" ;) And so I did say sorry about that. I WAS sorry for that. And then he said, "Mummy say sorry go upstairs with Mashew!" So I started to talk to him about how it made him feel. I figured he was trying to tell me about how cross and upset he felt about the whole thing. I asked him if he felt sad, and he said yes, and I asked him if he felt disappointed, and he said yes. He told me, "Need milk for it!" which is his latest saying over a hurt or being upset about something, hehe! So I nursed him to sleep for his very late nap.
I have been using big words to describe feelings with him for quite some months, and I'm so happy that it's paying off, because he will now tell me very clearly how he's feeling about things. My mum says it's great that I've given him a tool to express his feelings to me, and I hadn't thought of it like that before, but I see it's a great thing now. I'm glad to have helped him with that. If he can't have any more milk, he will look miserable and say, "Aooowwwww!" and then sit up straight again and say to me in a small voice, "I sad!" So I ask him, "Are you sad that you can't have any more milk?" and he says yes. Then there's a pause and he'll say, "I disappointed!" (he pronounces it very clearly) and then add, "It's shame...." ;)
So that was today. I phoned Neil at work and he was very reassuring (lovely Neil!) and then I finally had some toast and marmite for lunch at 4pm. I was soooooooo hungry! Matthew woke before I had finished (after only 30 minutes sleep) and cried so I ran up there, but he'd already woken Arthur, and when they're both awake, I can't possibly get them both back to sleep. Knowing Arthur might run in again, I took Arthur downstairs, set him up with Shrek 2 (a new favourite for Arthur recently) and with Matthew hysterical upstairs, I had to leave Arthur crying downstairs. He was crying for me and for milk. He hates to be woken early and is always clingy and whiney when he wakes from a late nap :( I got Matthew back to sleep but Arthur cried a lot while I did it. Then I came down and nursed Arthur on the sofa for a while.
When Matthew got up, I tried to phone my mum to talk to her about my day. It was just one of those days. I needed to talk to my mummy about it, even just briefly while I played with the boys. But Matthew climbed everywhere and messed with the toys Arthur was playing with, and Arthur pushed him (something he never does) and so I had to stop to field that, and Matthew would NOT stay on his side of me (I was the human barrier between the boys while I tried to talk to Mummy!). In the end, Arthur was screaming at the top of his lungs for Mummy to PUT PHONE DOWWWWWWWWN HELP AH-YAH BUILD TWAIN TWAAAAACK!! And I do mean horrible tantrumy screaming. Ugh. By the time Neil came in the door I was about ready to chuck the pair of them out of the window and bang it shut behind them, and then I saw Neil was all pale and he told me he had one of his headaches (where he needs to go to bed straight away). I cried. I know it sounds selfish in light of his poor headache, but I couldn't help it.
Anyway! It turned out okay. The boys went to bed. Neil took painkillers which made a lot of difference, and he was able to help me put them to bed. He went to bed right after, and I ate pasta with sauce and cheese, watching some TV, and then came up to write my diary.
I am SO glad to have a birthday tomorrow so that I can hopefully have a day that completely contrasts this one!
But the weirdest thing is, I seem to love Arthur and Matthew all the more intensely for all the difficulties of the day - I can't fathom that, but there it is. I feel fidgetty with them sleeping in their beds, and keep wanting opportunities to rub my face against Matthew's soft fluffy little head, or kiss Arthur's little round cheeks as he sleeps. I just love them so so so so so much, I can't even describe it. I still feel COLD about Matthew's fall today. He had another one this morning when Neil was watching them - he fell sideways against the TV unit and hit his temple on the cabinet handle (sharp-cornered)! He has such a nasty raised bruise there, and he cried so much, poor lovey. His little forehead is so bruised! There are little bruises of all colours and stages here and there, from all his falls that he keeps having now that he's standing so much of the time and starting to try cruising.
Arthur fell HORRIBLY yesterday. He was running towards the TV unit and tripped on the Fisher Price record player. It was about the length of his body-height from the unit, and he fell down flat, so fast that he didn't even get his arms out to protect his fall. His forehead caught the shelf on the TV unit, and he has the most awful raised line from the edge of it just above one eyebrow, longer than his eyebrow too. It was so swollen at the time. Thank goodness it didn't break the skin though. He cried and cried and his lips went purple, and I grabbed a cold pack from the fridge and breastfed him while he rested his poor eyebrow against it (which was also against my breast, brrr!). That's the only way I can get him to keep a cold compress (we use foil pouch drinks!) against an injury for more than 2 seconds - to have him breastfeed whilst using his position at the breast to lean him against the cold compress. He eventually breastfed for 10 minutes like that, so I was glad about it. I kept him up for 30 minutes (he had been due a nap) to observe him, and he was fine. I kept asking him if his head hurt, or if his tummy felt okay, or if things looked funny, and he cheerfully answered, "No, I alwight!.... Head not hurt.... Tummy alwight (patting it).... Things not look funny!" Today he has a nasty purply-red line there but it's not swollen so that's a relief. I hope the cold pack did a lot of good.
Matthew seems okay tonight. He is sleeping fine and his forehead looks a lot better already. I stubbed my little toe on the highchair when I went downstairs after nursing Arthur tonight, and my nail is going black. It hurt SO much!
What a day!
And now it's 1am and I do NOT want to be knackered on my birthday (which it sort of is already - yay, Happy Birthday to Me!!), but this entry has been a bit gloomy and dramatic and I didn't want to end on that note! Plus I still have a lot of Arthur's sayings to write, and now that I've left it this long, some of them are already out of date :( I knew that would happen, tsk! I should have written them at the time, like I wanted to! Oh well.
Arthur's speech is coming on so fast. He often talks so clearly and in such complete sentences now, that I sometimes feel like I'm talking to an older child, well, you know not OLDER, but like a 4-year-old or something. He doesn't talk like a 4-year-old yet, but you know what I mean? He understands too many language concepts to count, and uses them well in context. He uses all sorts of tenses, like, "I should have", "I have been", "I will be", "I am going", "I was thinking", "I might go", and others. He commentates on his every activity throughout the day. He NEVER stops talking! He talks to me, to Matthew, to Neil, to himself (quite a lot), to toys, to thin air even! He seems more fluent lately, in his random comments, as though he doesn't have to stop and think how he'll phrase something any more, or try it and then have another go when it doesn't quite come out right the first time. It's just little things that demonstrate it, like at the table a few nights ago, he was eating his fromage frais and twirling the pot around with his spoon in it, and he said, "I spinning it around!" as he did it. He used to have to focus on the action and then try to comment on it when he wasn't so intent on what he was physically doing. Or he'd have to stop to TELL me what he was doing, instead of just casually commenting on it while he did it. Now it seems effortless, like he has the words right there at the tip of his tongue to use.
I will write out as many as I can of the huge list of his latest phrases that I have been jotting down! The latest ones are downstairs so I'll have to add those another time. I just don't want to miss writing them here. The bits of paper will get lost or thrown away, and my memory won't hold up to the task, so I need to write them here if I'm going to preserve their cuteness! :)
* He's pretty clear about things he wants to do now. If he wants to open the tumble dryer, he'll tell me, "I wanta open tha tummle dryer!"
* He has this cute thing where he muses thoughtfully about the past, as though he's suddenly a wise old man with a lifetime of experience, haha! Last week, he saw an advert on the TV for Little Red Tractor, which he loves (anything vehicular, of course!), and he got this distant look in his eyes and tapped his chin thoughtfully, saying, "I wonder when Lilloh Red Tractor on? I never seen it aaaages!" Funny boy! Later on he did the same thing when I asked him if he'd seen the dustpan for the dustpan-and-brush in the kitchen. He went all thoughtful and said, "Hmmm, I never seen it aaaages!", hehe!
* He has since improved this type of sentence. The other day I asked Arthur if he'd seen the facecloth I'd put near him to use, and he said, clear as day, "No, I haven't!", which was one of those "older child" moments for me, because it was absolutely adult in the way he pronounced it and in his intonation. His tone was very concerned, like he wanted to help me find it (which he did!).
* He has developed a real love for the Dr. Seuss books - yay! I loved those when I was little, and I even still have my battered copy of Green Eggs and Ham! Arthur got a box set of 6 Dr. Seuss books for his birthday, one of which is Green Eggs and Ham. I read them to him every day (not ALL of them, goodness! My voice would be hoarse all the time - they really take it out of you in the voice dept, don't they?!) because he brings them to me and asks me to read them. He giggles at the silly words and sounds. Last week he was sitting at the table with us, rejecting yet ANOTHER family meal, and he said crossly:
"I don' want 'weetcorn,
I don' want peas,
I don' want cawwots
I don' want mince meat,
I don' want ANYWHERE!"
* He also reads the Dr. Seuss books to himself, which is the sweetest thing! He sits with his legs all stuck out in front of him, big book open in his hands in front of him, saying, "I am Sam!.... I don' like geen eggs HAM!" with such funny little rise-and-fall tones in his voice, as though he's been ultra serious about trying to read it properly like when I read it to him!
* He is giving various examples of "parenty" talk to us, which is very amusing! Neil overloaded his fork with pasta the other night at our family meal, and as he lifted it to his mouth, Arthur spoke up sternly, "That's TOO MUCH, Daddy!" :)
* Another example: I dove in to nibble on his neck the other day, and Arthur straightened up and gave me a very serious look, and said, "No, thank you!" in a very well-to-do tone, hehe!
* Gross example: We were all in the car the weekend before last, on the way to my grandparents' house, as it was Granny's birthday, and Neil's nose was running as he was driving the car. I said something like, "Urgh, wipe your nose!" and looked around for a tissue, and Neil - the revolting man! - wiped it on his sleeve!!!! Immediately this little voice piped up from the back in an absolutely perfectly appropriate tone for what it was saying: "Oh NEIL! Tha's disdusting!" We laughed so much that I was literally crying!
* The other day Arthur was trying to build a tower of bricks in a certain way and it wouldn't work! He suddenly said, "I fed up!" So I asked him, "What's made you fed up?" and he answered, "I fed up tower not working!"
* He has started getting picky about how he looks lately. I expected this earlier (age-wise) but he has seemed pretty easy-going about stuff till now. I put him in a plain white long-sleeved top with blue jeans one day last week. He looked so sweet! He never wears white tops though, as he only has this one and I had forgotten about it in a drawer for ages. When I put it on him, he strutted about the room with a huge beaming smile and his chest puffed out, saying, "Ah-yah look GORDUS in white!" hehehe! Then, as he strutted around, he passed a mirror, and accidentally caught sight of himself in it. Suddenly he stopped dead and stared at his reflection, and his expression changed to this dramatic combination of horror and disappointment, hehe! He just stood there shaking his head in disbelief, and then finally found the words to say to me, "Don' like white! Take white top OFF!" Hehe, funny boy!
* Also he did NOT like his hair being all flat after taking his hat off when he came home from a walk one day a week or so ago. He did the same horrified frowning thing in the mirror and shook his head with his hands on his hair! Neil combed it with a neat side-parting (something he never wears) and he ran back to the mirror, only to be totally aghast at what he saw, with much horrified shaking of the head, etc! I fluffed his hair up so that it flopped forward like normal and curled up a little at the sides, and he beamed at his reflection and puffed out his chest, nodding at me happily! He's such a sausage! I suppose he likes to look like Arthur and that means looking like he always looks, not with any new hairstyles or colours!
* Oh but he DID approve of a new pair of jeans and a reeeally soft corduroy shirt that came in the post (eBay - 99p (!!!!) plus postage, "Next" brand as well!!) the other day. He hasn't had shirts before as such, and he was super thrilled to be wearing one, "Just like Daddy does!". Here's a rather blurry (ever-moving child) photo of him being delighted with it just after I finished getting him dressed in it:
He had a haircut the other day! It was long overdue. I have a couple of photos of him wearing another new item of clothing after his haircut, a pair of Next denim dungarees (�1.24 at eBay!!!!!) which I'm REALLY pleased with, but I haven't uploaded them yet. Neil took him to a different hairdresser this time. The lady at the one he'd been going to since his first haircut did a rubbish job, but it has to be said that he didn't keep very still while it was being done! So this time we decided not to take him back there. Neil drove him to the BARBER'S shop where he gets his own hair cut, near where he works! How grown up for our little man! Arthur sat in a grown-up chair, and had his hair sprayed with water (bit disconcerted at first, apparently!) and then cut, and blow-dried (again, bit worried, but reassured by Daddy!). His hair looks so lovely. It's just a trim, so the same style, but a nice length on him, and it's the nicest cut he's had yet. He will definitely be going back to the same place again! Probably in about a month, at the rate his hair is growing!
Talking of hair growing, Matthew's hair is really filling in! It still refuses to lie down on top, but it's getting long enough (a couple of inches standing up on top now!) so that the weight of it is juuust beginning to lean it over a bit. It's so thick, even though it's just downy and fine. These boys of mine have hair that any little girl would be desperate to have! I know I would have loved thick, fast-growing hair! You watch, I will have a girl next who will be bald till she's 2, haha! Matthew has started to play with his hair a bit, on top. He strokes and gently pulls at some of the soft sticky-uppy hair on top, when he's sleepy in his cot - how cute! :) *I* would love to stroke and gently pull on his lovely tufty soft top-hair as *I* fall asleep, if I'm honest! It's the softest substance EVER.
Okay there's more, but at least I've done the mainstay of Arthur's talking stuff! There's more from the last couple of days, downstairs, but I'll write those bits another time.
Here are a couple of sets of a few photos to catch up a bit! Both were initiated by Arthur, hugging his baby brother and calling out, "Mummy, take a picture!" :)
From a week ago:
From a few days ago:
Matthew's eyes are gradually starting to "grey" a little, which doesn't surprise me too much. I think they still tend to leave people with the impression that he has blue eyes, as they're still clear and light in colour, but they are definitely more of a blue-grey at the moment. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they went completely grey, and I'm thinking they might well get a hazel ring in the middle too. He has the verrry beginnings of a slightly yellowy centre, so I reckon that's what they'll do. Mine are exactly like that, clear grey with hazel in the middle. Mine started out blue as anything and my mum says the gradually "greyed up". The hazel ring didn't appear for ages - she says she didn't even know I had one!
Okay, more soon. Thanks for the lovely messages again! Will try to update soon, as I still have more to write and I want to write about my birthday while it's still fresh in my mind too. Arthur knows it's Mummy's birthday tomorrow and has already asked, "Ah-yah share Mummy's birthday?" hehe! He wants to "boh out candles" on a birthday cake! He helped to do that on the cake I made Granny for her birthday the other weekend - oh I forgot to write about that! It was such a lovely day! My parents came over from France and my brother and his 28-weeks-pregnant (how exciting!!!) Sarah were there too! Granny was 81 but she was in hospital on her 80th so we did a big celebration this year instead. Well, SMALL-big, we're only a tiny family, and we like our birthday-dos to be family only :) It was lovely!
We had roast lamb (ohhh yummmmmm!) and all the trimmings and Matthew chewed and sucked and ate of everything offered to him, including blackberry and apple pie with custard afterwards! Arthur ate peas and sweetcorn, and plenty of them! He wouldn't eat anything else, but he ate birthday cake and some yoghurt. He DID sit at the table and behave beautifully for the entire meal though :)
Photos of my mummy holding Arthur up to blow the candles out on Granny's cake - who was much more interested in watching Arthur blow her candles out than actually blowing them herself! :)
The cake was a bit of a rough impression of a patchwork quilt using very limited food colourings (!) and not that much forethought, unfortunately! Granny sews quilts as a hobby. Arthur "got at" the finished cake just before we left to go to G&G's and broke some of the decorations off the side, which I tried to repair, and all-in-all I think it looked pretty awful! But Granny was thrilled, and that's what counts :)
Here are the little ones just enjoying some SPACE for once, poor loves! Our home is so tiny and cluttered!
There's a lovely family photo of all of us that Sarah took with her camera set up somewhere, and if she gets time to send me it, I'll post it here. I don't think we've managed a SINGLE family photo with both Neil AND me and both the boys in it yet! Tsk! Must try and fix that!
Okay, definitely going now! Night night :)
Recent entries.....
Moving time... - 2009-01-04
Christmas Eve! - 2008-12-24
Long-overdue update, a few Nathey pics and a video clip :) - 2008-12-01
Lots of news! - 2008-11-03
Nathan at 8 months... - 2008-10-12