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2006-09-28 - 10.56pm previous entry next entry
Hi-energy_boy_and_yet_more_video_clips!
Thank you for the nice comments on the video clips I posted last entry!! :) How funny that our accents seem "cute", hehehe! I suppose they're just normal flat old English accents to me, and American accents have a twang that perks up my interest whenever I hear it. I never thought about Arthur having an accent as such, already. But of course he would. Neil's accent used to be northern, and he lost most of it living down in the south of England for all these years, but he still says, "Gras" for "grass" instead of "grarse" like I do :) I like that because I can tell sometimes when Arthur has learnt a word from Neil instead of me. He learnt "glasses" from me, because he pronounces them, "gar-gee" but he learnt giraffe from Neil, pronouncing it, "gaff" rather than "garf".
I must update my �Arthur�s Video Clips� page. I forgot it was there and it only has clips up to 10 months old, so there are lots still to add to it! I have uploaded some more recent video clips today so I�ll post them with this entry (if you�re not too overloaded with my clips already!). There are some of Matthew, and he hasn�t had ANY footage of him posted at my diaries so far, so it�s high time I put some here!
Yesterday we made it to playgroup for almost the whole 2 hours � go me!! :) Arthur had a great time, as always. He did a lovely painting, but we forgot it at the end, and it�s still there in the drying racks. We�ll have to pick it up on Monday when we go again. I really like that playgroup. It�s soooo huge with so many kids, but it�s great fun for them. I kind of like the busy-ness of it. Arthur mostly likes to ride on EVERY single ride-on toy. He is so excited about it! He yells (over the absolute din of the noise of 50 toddlers!) out the name of the thing he�s riding over and over as he rides it, hehe! He ran off there while I was still signing us in when we arrived, and by the time I made it to the big hall with Matthew in the sling on my front, he was riding a bike thingy, well a trike really, his face absolutely shining with delight, shouting, �Bipe! Bipe! Biiiipe!!!� He climbs UP the slides and goes down the ladders, funny boy! He tries hats on and gives the ironing board a quick whizz with the iron. He pushes toy cars around and �cleans� the floor with the toy hoover. He was so busy with the big floor toys that he wasn�t even interested in Duplo, Stickle Bricks and jigsaws that they had out in the other room on tables. He has those in abundance at home though, so maybe that�s why he�d rather play with other things when we�re out at groups? He also did some playdough but only sat still long enough to press two cutters into it and then leave again!
He just mostly loves to RUN. He runs and runs wherever there is space. He is different to any of the other children I see at playgroups, even such a big one as this. I try to watch him as one of the whole bunch of kids, rather than focusing on him and zoning out all the other kids. It�s an interesting different perspective for me. But when I do that, I really see how high-energy he is, compared with other kids. He seem to do everything at twice the speed and with twice the intensity. He is the only child whose hair is wet through with sweat by halfway through the morning, just from how much he is racing about and how intensely he does everything. It was at soft play last week that I started to worry a bit about that. Do you think it�s okay that he�s like this? No matter how energetic the other kids were, none of them showed much sign of perspiration. Arthur hair is always wet to the tips, seriously. But he really does seem to do things at double speed ALL the time. I should try him on fish oils like Jemma suggested. Heather once posted me a link to a study on toddlers and fish oils � I can�t remember where it was though, now. Anyway it said something about fish oils in toddlers� diets being low because they are no longer breastfed into toddlerhood, so I wondered if that would not apply to Arthur since he is still breastfed. But maybe my own diet isn�t so hot on fish oils, so it might be something to try him on in any case? Otherwise I am wondering if I should just run it by my GP � his sweats and crazy high energy-ness. I mean, he seems perfectly normal in his behaviour, except for the SPEED of it! I think he just sweats like that because of the amount of heat he�s generating through his activity. Or something. I don�t know.
Anyway. So playgroup was good. Matthew stayed awake and alert for the whole two hours, watching everything from the Baby Bjorn. It�s hard work on my back now. I think when the weather gets a little cooler I will wear him facing out in the Hug-a-Bub. It�s a pain to fiddle with getting it on and off, but since I am discovering that Matthew will happily sit there for the duration and not need taking out, I might as well wrap him to me in the Hug-a-Bub before we go to playgroup and then take him out when we get home. That would be easy. Plus it�s comfier and easier on my back. And I can lean RIGHT down to the ground without him leaning away from my body in that sling, it�s great. The Baby Bjorn is SO easy to use but he�s outgrowing it quite quickly, as Arthur did, and I find it gets too heavy for my back and shoulders. And Matthew is such a strong and eager baby. He leeeans and leans all the time, and the Baby Bjorn lets him lean quite a way out from my body, which makes it all the more difficult for my back. Plus I know the Hug-a-Bub looks so cool � people will notice it and comment, and that�s always nice :) But we�d both be too warm in it right now, so I�ll wait a while longer.
I�ve given up trying to get Arthur to sit down on the carpet and stay put for the singing time at the end of playgroup. He just won�t, and it�s a real battle! He just wants to keep on running and playing with toys. It�s such hard work with Matthew on my front, to wrangle him. So this time I just gave up. It was MUCH less stressful for me, and I�m sure Arthur appreciated it too! I just stayed in the singing area and let Arthur run back to the big hall where they were putting the floor toys away. I know they would let him ride the toys till they needed to put them away, and then they would either encourage him to go back to the singing area or help them put the toys away. He�d probably choose to help tidy. He loves to tidy. I told him that Mummy and Matthew were going to stay and do the singing, and off he went. It was nice to relax about it, and I could actually SIT DOWN for the first time in the 2 hour slot (!!) and just sing the sweet kiddie songs that I remember from when I was at nursery school, some of them anyway. Matthew LOVES singing, and being sung to, so it was nice to just focus that time on him without Arthur�s distraction. I moved his tiny hands to the actions and sang for him, and he was transfixed by the children doing the actions and seemed to love it all. I found Arthur sort-of-helping with the last few toys that were being put away after song time had finished!
Today we went to Fellowship Group at one of the mums� houses, but we didn�t get there till quite late, which was a shame. Arthur did every possible thing to keep me off my bum, and Matthew had woken up really early this morning and so his naps were all out of whack. He was exhausted when we arrived and fell asleep in my arms, so it was REALLY hard to keep track of Arthur with a sleeping baby in my arms. In the end I asked if people would sit there and watch him if I put him down on the sofa, because he can roll now, and I needed to keep an eye on Arthur. Urgh. He drove toy cars on clean painted walls, as hard and fast as he could (back and forth, like a scribbling action), he banged on glass windows, he yanked the inner part of their letter box till it came OFF, he climbed the stairs numerous times, climbed on furniture, opened the piano lid and nearly shut it on his fingers twice, took a toy phone from Joshua and wouldn�t give it back, opened cupboard doors and drawers in the kitchen over and over, and generally just ran and ran and ran around the house without stopping. It just seems like he has too much energy, and that amount of energy is increasing week by week or something. It was such hard work. I really wanted to join in the conversations that the other mums were having, but I seemed to be the only one whose child was not sitting and playing nicely with the HUGE array of toys on the floor. I was the only one who had to get up at least twice in every minute to get Arthur down from somewhere. He wasn�t being naughty or menacing in anything he did, he just seemed overwhelmed with energy and like he didn�t know what to do with himself to release it. It�s so hard with a baby as well as a toddler that active, and doubly hard this morning because I guess I spoke too soon last entry � I have come down with Arthur�s cold today. I had a sore throat in the night and it�s still there now but not too bad. I just feel crappy and virusy and achy today. I had a bad headache at Fellowship Group. It just felt such hard work. I really sometimes wish I could just call in sick from my �job� sometimes, pull the covers over my head, and stay in bed all day. But I can�t ever do that!
I feel like I could moan a lot right now, but thankfully I don�t have the energy required, so you are all spared, haha! Hopefully my cold will be as mild as Arthur�s has been. Neil and Matthew still seem fine. Neil is EXHAUSTED from a really heavy day�s work on the garden. Today he hired out a petrol-powered turf cutter, and stripped the old turf from the lawn in the back garden. Yesterday he smashed the brick-built barbeque to smithereens with his new 10lb sledgehammer! The new turf is coming tomorrow and it has to be laid the same day it arrives so that it doesn�t dry out. He also has to return the turf cutter in the morning, but he hasn�t quite finished removing the old turf yet, as he got so tired out and his muscles so sore that his arms started shaking � poor Neil! He�s not used to this kind of work and he has really been working hard at it. I did take some �before� photos � I hope I still have them on the computer because I�ve erased them from my camera! I�ll be sure to post them with some �after� photos when it�s all done!
Okay, time for bed. I feel like poo so it�s definitely time to hit the hay. But before I go, here are the new video clips for you guys to see my sweet Mathie-Moo and also some footage of Arthur from TODAY!
The first video clip is really long � just under 4 minutes � I hope it loads okay and works for everyone to see it. It was taken a week ago, the day Matthew turned 14 weeks � he�s 15 weeks old now, that�s soooo many weeks old! I should stop counting in weeks already. Anyway, he was sitting in his Bumbo seat on the sofa with me talking to him. And Arthur was pottering around playing with toys in the background. When you hear him calling, �Nana?� he was calling for his police car. I still have NO idea why he calls police cars, �nana�!! Also you see him trying to �ride� his toy car, hehe! Sorry if it�s a bit long and drawn out. I make the clips to send to my parents and they love long, drawn-out clips, hehe!
These next two clips were taken this afternoon, when Neil took Arthur to the park again. They go there a LOT. It�s huge and there are so many different areas to go and walk or run, and lots to see. In the first clip, Arthur was running and found some rabbit poo, hehehe! He generally likes to touch or pick up deer or rabbit poo (urrrrgh) but obviously we make a BIG deal about him not doing that! He didn�t touch it this time, so maybe he�s getting the message. See how he calls Neil by saying, �Mumma, Daddeee!� even though I wasn�t there? He does that sometimes when only one of us is there, I�m not sure why.
Here�s another clip taken a little bit later at the park. They were in the trees by then, and Neil told me he had been teaching Arthur �uphill� and �downhill�, and they had been practising saying it whilst running up and down some slopes! After that, Neil would hide behind a tree and Arthur would call him and then �find� him. To my over-sensitive (or over-protective) mummyness, this seems horrendously cruel to my little tiny boy, all on his own in the park � as far as he knows once Daddy has disappeared!! But he seemed unscathed and enjoyed �finding� Daddy. At the end he got tired and wanted to go home � you can tell what I mean now about the way he pronounces things � �tired� sounding more like �ti-ye� on the fuzzy sound of the video, and �home� sounding more like �hoooo�. But he�s getting more understandable all the time, and it�s so exciting to hear more and more words from him every day!
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