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2006-11-03 - 9.55pm previous entry next entry
Nearly TWO!
Sooooooooooo behind here again!! Thanks so much for all the reassuring messages after my last entry re. endoscopies, etc! I meant to respond in more detail to some of the messages but alas I have no time to even write a diary entry tonight. I SO need to catch up on some recent stuff and some photos so I will do one anyway, even if I'm up a bit later than I should be. Otherwise it'll just start to bug me that I haven't written about things.
In about 2 minutes I have to go and make the pasta sauce but after dinner I'll try to continue and at least post a few photos.
I had a tummy bug last weekend! My first in over a decade!!! But no throwing up, thank GOODNESS!! I felt like being sick for 3 hours straight on Saturday evening. It reminded me soooo much of morning sickness. I forgot how horrid than can be! I just figured it was a particularly bad case of IBS, as I seem to have problems with nausea a lot and it coincides with bad IBS so I put them down to the same cause. For that reason alone, I didn't freak out about the nausea too much, as I never actually vomit with even extreme nausea with my IBS. But I then spent the ENTIRE night on the toilet, and got 45 minutes sleep. Thankfully the nausea eased off around midnight so I didn't have to panic too much about being sick once I realised it wasn't IBS! It seems to have taken me ages to recover though. I had further toilet-y problems the whole next day and night, and didn't eat, and had a temperature during that time. I got really dehydrated, but I did manage to drink hideous dioralyte so I'm glad of that. My milk seemed to almost dry up in the end, and I restricted Arthur's feeds right down to save what I had for Matthew. He was fine. I nursed him as frequently as I could to give him antibodies, and Arthur still nursed when he'd finished, for nap and bedtime. Neither of them caught it though, and nor did Neil. Weird. I have no idea where I got it, and everything I had eaten in the previous 48 hours was either something harmless like marmite on toast, or something that Neil ate as well. And he was fine. So I guess it was a bug.
Anyway. I am better now! Neil had to take Monday and Tuesday off work (again - thankfully they didn't make a big thing about it) because I couldn't even hold Matthew, let alone do anything upright involving my muscles (!!). I just got soooo weak. My legs still shake today if I do too much but otherwise I'm fine. It took me a long time to eat normally too, in fact today is my first day of a vaguely normal diet. I could eat marmite on toast after a couple of days, but anything else made me feel instantly really nauseous. Weird.
I also got a reeeally sore breast while I was recovering, while my milk supply was low. Just a patch that hurt like diddly, but it wasn't red and I didn't have a high temperature, so it wasn't mastitis. I massaged it while the boys were nursing, and otherwise just hoped my milk would hurry up and return. Fast-flowing milk seems to fix the bruisey feelings I have had in the past so I hoped it would again. My milk improved loads a couple of days ago, and today it's back to letting-down and leaking randomly, and the painful patch has all but gone, so that's a relief.
I kept forgetting to write here that a couple of weeks ago my weight was down to 9st 6lbs, almost 3 stone lost since the end of my pregnancy!!!! Last week I weighed 9st 5lbs, and I lost weight with my tummy bug - I was 8st 12lbs after that. But I know I'll put some back on now I'm getting back to normal. But even so that's like 42lbs lost, or something near that. That's a LOT! Today I realised I could fit into the trousers and jeans I was wearing before I got pregnant with Matthew - size 12 again, yay!!!! I was size 10 in jeans before Arthur, but I don't think I ever will be again. My shape is just permanently different, since having children. Not bad different, just matter-of-fact different. More so since Matthew than after just one baby. But I'm HAPPY to be back in size 12 jeans! Once I was out of maternity jeans after I had Matthew, I was finding size 16 a squeeze! My wedding ring fits my finger again too, but still a little snugly. I must remember to put in on more, after all these months/years of not fitting it and thus being out of the habit of wearing it! I love wearing my wedding ring :) I love wearing my engagement ring with it, but the two together are actually too small for my finger still, and anyway you can't really wear rocks and look after babies. Too easy to scratch them, etc. So that's okay. I'll put it away for now.
Okay, back from dinner!
It's Arthur's 2nd birthday in SIX DAYS!!! That's toooo soon! I feel a mixture of excitement, sadness, disbelief and pride, over the fact that my baby boy will be a two-year-old soon. There. That's the very short version of a LONG waffly diary entry all about my feelings on that! ;)
Matthew is waking. I'll have to try and write a little more once he's asleep again after I feed him.
Back. He's sooooooooooo sweet! I love feeding a sleepy baby in dim light all snuggled up to me in my bed :)
My parents arrived on Tuesday (it's Friday night now) and Mummy has been here every day playing with Arthur and generally being wonderfully helpful around the house. She took Arthur out for a walk twice, and he LOVES spending time with Nana. He always asks for Gan-gy (Grandy) as well though, and Grandy has been very busy with work while they're here (he owns a business in London) and also helping his own parents - Grandoug had surgery for something on Monday and so he helped fetch him from the hospital and stuff like that. He has hardly seen Arthur, but on the couple of occasions he has popped round, Arthur has been soooo excited to see him! He runs at him with elbows pumping and this HUGE grin on his face, and then stops about 2 feet in front of him, suddenly unsure and shy, as he doesn't really know Grandy all that well. But Grandy just scoops him up in his arms and gives him cuddles :) When Nana arrives each day, Arthur is so happy to see her, and then he starts craning his neck to see round her, saying, "Look Gan-gy" (Looking for Grandy). He looks out of the window for him saying the same, or sits on the sofa watching the front door and saying, "Wait Gan-gy" - so sweet! He just loves Grandy.
He is all better from his poo crisis. I haven't even gotten round to phoning for his sample results yet, but he is not doing horrible poo anymore. He is also eating much more of a variety of food. He still won't eat most things I put in front of him, especially new things, but we got him onto white bread at last and that helped to sort out the poo thing I think! He now eats both white bread and brown bread. He eats cheese and marmite sandwiches, and the canned spaghetti in tomato sauce with peas or sweetcorn, and he'll take fish fingers or even (**NEW FOOD!!**) chicken breast cooked by ME if it's chopped up small and put in with the spaghetti sauce. Better than before, so I'm happy enough! He eats apple and raisins and yoghurt. Today he amazed us by eating quite a lot of Neil's soup. It was a Heinz tin of soup though so not great for salt content. But he just ran to the kitchen drawer, pulled out a teaspoon, went to Neil's side and started helping himself to spoonfuls of his soup! He ate really easily and quickly, and it was surprising because it was a "Big Soup" (Minted Lamb - gross if you're asking me!), thus chunky, and had potatoes and lots of veg in it. It was tomato based too, which he usually hates. He spooned in big chunks of pototo (a vegetable he's always rejected for its texture, no matter how we present it), and everything!! It was really... odd, for Arthur to eat something like that.
Anyway he's loads better. He is taking antihistamines this week to see if it stops him banging his head so much. I don't think it'll work. I don't know what is up with his head/nose banging, but I'm not sure it's allergies. Anyway he has nearly completed a week of it, and a week is all it should take if it's allergies, for us to know.
Arthur says things in 3-word phrases now, most of the time. He is starting to say 4-word phrases more, or mix 2- and 3-word phrases together in a mini sentence, to tell us things or explain what he's doing. The other day he sat down on the sofa, pointed at the kitchen and told me, "Mummy kit-tin, make Ah-yah toas'!" - otherwise translated, "Mummy, please go in the kitchen and make me some toast!" hehe! One of his favourite phrases right now is, "Ah-yah HI-din!" with mischievous expression, before ducking behind something (usually the curtain in the living room, with just his head and shoulders hidden) to hide. I have to look (or Nana does) and pretend he's absolutely GONE and I can't fathom where he might be, despite the whole bottom half of him visible right in front of me, haha! If I pat his bottom and say, "Who's this?!" he'll stay silent, still hiding from me, and if I ask again, he might whisper back as quiiietly as he can, "Ahh-yahh..." because he can't seem to resist answering a question that he knows the answer to, even if it means giving himself away! He's so funny.
Arthur is getting Noddy and Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs for his birthday from Nana and Grandy. And something else, I think. But those were the things I asked them to get when they asked me what he might like. If he watches children's TV programmes, we have always watched CBeebies, and rarely noticed the children's stuff on Channel 5. But lately he has been watching Milkshake in the mornings (on Channel 5) with Daddy, and he loves soooo much of the stuff on there. He really likes Elmo's World, which we cannot watch without thinking of Alex Bean every single time we hear the theme :) He also especially likes Fifi Flowertot, Hi-5, and Noddy. He has always liked those though, from a time when we used to watch Milkshake a bit when I was pregnant with Matthew. Lately he is so keen on Noddy that he'll ask to "wat' Nonny" at times of the day when there isn't any Noddy on TV. And recently he saw an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine and was instantly transfixed. He is sad when it finishes now and asks to "wat' tains" (watch trains) all the time. I knew he'd love Thomas the Tank if he ever saw it! He's soooo into vehicles and trains and planes and stuff. The other thing I asked Nana and Grandy for is a Whoopee Cushion, haha! Arthur finds farting sounds SO hysterical that I know he would love a whoopee cushion like NOTHING else. I mean, I just would love to see him discover what one does and try it out again and again. I don't mean to encourage revolting 9-year-old-boy behaviour in my sweet innocent toddler, but I do want him to have FUN and get things for his birthday that he'll just get lots of laughter or fun and enjoyment from. So I do want him to have a whoopee cushion! :) I had one when I was a child. They're just so outrageously rude, you can't help but love them, hehe! Arthur currently asks "Mummy, nee-ows" (Mummy, make a noise!") at least a DOZEN times a day. He wants me to make farting noises. Oh my. If I make one, he absolutely creases up laughing until his eyes are watering and he's hiccuping - I kid you not! And then asks for another, and another. And another. If I make a different type of noise, like a cow mooing or a little tune, he makes his request more specific - "Mummy, fwarp"!! ;) So the whoopee cushion will take this burden from me! I am not sure where to find one on the high street though. I hope it's not going to be too hard to find. I know I'll find one online but there's not enough time now.
We took our time to decide on a suitable birthday celebration for Arthur, but it's going to be the same as last year - a family gathering with cake and balloons and presents, here at our house. A lot of two-year-olds will have a birthday party with kids, but Arthur doesn't need that yet. He hasn't got a circle of friends yet, and although he seems happy to go and see Joshie and play with him, he is still at the stage where he's much more thrilled with the attention of a group of adults than other children. If we were choosing what HE would like to do, I think it would be to have family around, as he knows them and enjoys their visits so much when they come round individually. It will be lovely to get everyone together for him, and we'll enjoy that too. Everyone will. I know Bennie and Sarah can come (can't WAIT to see them - first time since I found out they are having a baby!), and my parents. It's on Sunday (the day after tomorrow) because my parents are going back to France that night. It's near enough to Arthur's birthday though, and his actual birthday (Thursday) will be just our little family. Neil is taking the day off work and we'll think of some things that Arthur really likes to do, and go and do them.
My grandparents may be able to come on Sunday. It depends on how Grandoug's recovery from his surgery is going. We invited my SIL and BIL and Ella, but they had a tummy bug last weekend too and are waiting to see if they're all better before committing to come. Neil's mum and youngest sister are too far away to come at such short notice, which is a shame, but we'll take photos and video like last time.
I think it will be really simple, just cake and presents and lots of attention for Arthur. That's all he needs really! I am looking forward to it but there is SO much to do to the house before it can happen! Neil finished the garden yesterday - yay! It looks so different, and just right for a toddler to play in. I will try to take photos soon and then post before and after shots here :)
I am going to make Arthur's birthday cake, like I did last year. I'm making a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and Smarties, in the shape of a car. I asked him, if Mummy makes him a big cake for his birthday, would he like it to be shaped like a car or a train? And he said, "Car!" so a car it shall be! I'm sure I'll have to make way more complicated cakes for future birthdays, to go with requested themes or to incorporate favourite TV characters or something, so I'm glad of another simple year this year! When I was two, Mummy made me a chocolate birthday cake with Smarties too :) I forgot about that till this evening. How uncanny!
Matthew is doing great too. He is so strong! So different to Arthur. He is so eager to move on and do things that Arthur is doing. If Arthur is playing with cars on his toy garage, and I hold Matthew near enough so that he can watch Arthur playing, his eyes practically bug out on stalks with excitement and curiosity, and if I hold him closer still, he uses ALL his strength and crunches his abs to reeeach out and grab the cars on the garage. His whole body shakes and quivers with how focused and excited he is to be getting his little hands on those thrilling-looking toys that Arthur gets to play with! He's the sweetest pie, honestly.
When he's on his tummy, he props himself on his HANDS now to look around, with straight arms, not his elbows any more. He rolls constantly, over and over, and rarely stays still for more than a few seconds. If I lay him down on the blanket on the living room carpet and go in the kitchen to get a drink of water, when I come back, he'll be about 6 rolls across the room, examining a letter or Duplo brick or sock or something, with that same quivery excitement and eagerness that I mentioned earlier. He is just so excited by all the things around him and can't seem to WAIT to get big enough to do things with them!
He is laughing a LOT more these days. He's really ticklish :) He is suddenly really entertained by sudden moves or sounds, whereas that used to scare him only a few weeks ago. He loves to be "wheeee'd" up in the air, or fake-dropped in my arms along with a sudden sound. He just likes company and "conversation", and smiles at absolutely anyone and everyone. People comment on how good-natured and sociable he is. He's a LOVELY baby. I'm so blessed! I love my boys so much.
Which brings me nicely to photos of the two little cherubs! I have a few - first a set of four that were taken when Arthur was very specific about wanting himself, Matthew and me in the photos! He even had me put Matthew EXACTLY where he needed him to sit, and then I sat where I was told too! Unfortunately I was also the photographer, and since my arm isn't very long, Matthew seems a bit cropped down there in the bottom corner, the little sweetie! He's the smallest, you see. I just kept on pressing the button and took a million photos, and these are the four I like best :)
And then some of the boys from a couple of weeks ago - we put them in matching "Funky Little Dude" outfits for going to church a couple of Sundays ago - here they are just before we left! Matthew is pretty stable at sitting up when propped on the sofa now, but on this occasion he was too eager to lean towards Arthur to fiddle with his face and clothes! Arthur found it funny to have Matthew fallen across him so we took a photo of that too!
And later that same day (after church and a change of puked-on top for Matthew!) - another photo session requested by Arthur :)
And Mathsie-woo, my sweet lil boo...
And now, to bed. It's 1am. I'm NUTS. But hooray, a diary entry at last! :) Will update again (and return emails I hope!) asap!
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