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2005-07-27 - 10.36pm previous entry next entry
Standing, photos and video clips again! :)
I am in a great mood today :) I love that! It�s 7.40pm and Arthur has been asleep about half an hour. We are about to sit down to watch a movie with a pizza that Neil is just picking up, and salad, and chocolate brownie cheesecake (from Tesco) for dessert! Yay! I am hunnnngry.
I have loads to write, but no time yet again. Yesterday�s visit to Cameron�s house went well. Nathan (the littlest one) was napping the whole of our visit so we didn�t see him, but it was nice to see Cam�s 5-year-old brother. He is soooo like Cameron. I used to find that hard, but now it�s just lovely with just the slightest sting. And that�s okay. There are photos of Cameron all around still, and Michael talked me through them. I love hearing Cameron talked about by his family like that. It makes him alive again, sort of. And that is a wonderful feeling. I do miss him so much.
But we had to leave too soon, because I had to get to an osteopath appt. That went okay. My back is still giving me lots of trouble and I have had painful back spasms this week :( But oh well. I am getting treatment and I love my osteopath! And I need to continue with my exercises and start swimming. And stuff.
Neil is home. I will save this on Word as I�ve hardly written anything, and finish it later. I have video and photos to show you! :) Back later. Or tomorrow, I guess, if our evening is just too lovely to break away from! :)
Back, and it�s still this evening. We watched a couple of old Friends episodes instead of a movie, and had strawberries after the cheesecake :) But I have a tummy ache. I have had one for 2 days. I think it is my IBS playing up, urgh. But yummy food!
Arthur is just amazing to me at the moment. He is doing so much and never keeps still for a second any more! Well, like maybe a few seconds he will keep still to catch his breath or something! But he is so busy with all his new things. Interestingly, he isn�t quite as vocal as normal at the moment. He doesn�t say mama much at the moment, and last week he would say something that sounded suspiciously like �duck� when he grabbed his rubber duckie in the bath, which he hasn�t said this week yet. It sounds like a very staccato �DAT!�, which isn�t a sound he uses for anything else. He does still babble as much as ever though, and says dada quite a bit. I wonder if he has been soooo busy with motor skills this past week that he is not devoting as much time as usual to the verbal skills or something. He really is leaping and bounding away at those motor skills at the moment! He does understand �Where�s Daddy?� though. Even if Daddy isn�t home from work yet, if I say, �Wherrrrre�s Daddy?!�, he will get all excited and crane his neck to look at the front door, and if nobody appears in a few seconds, then he looks out the front window, bless him! It�s so sweet :) He knows that Daddy arrives home through the front door, and that he can see Daddy through the front window before he gets in the house. I always say where�s Daddy when I see Neil pulling up on the driveway, so Arthur is used to it now, and it�s lovely.
I can hardly believe how fast he is changing at the moment. He is so fast with all his new skills already. He goes from sitting to crawling in an instant, and seems to start reaching for things before he�s even quite reached them when he�s crawling, which shows that he is getting more used to crawling and feeling confident to think ahead rather than so much focus on how he�s moving himself with each crawl. He can kneel today without any support and stay there bolt upright grinning at me! I think it helps that he is not too keen on sitting, and sometimes gets cross now when I put him on the floor in a sitting position, because that makes him super keen to get out of that position as fast as possible! Where yesterday was a day of kneeling and starting to do a couple of new things, today has been a day of standing. I mean, the boy has stood up sooooo much today! He isn�t wobbly at all and holds onto things well. He is so happy and pleased with himself when he stands! I think he would be happy to stand and walk all the time if only he could maintain the balance, heh!
This morning he pulled to standing against his toy basket with me right there with my hand ready to catch him. I was so surprised at how quickly he did it. Here he is standing at his toy basket this morning :)
He didn�t really want to get a toy, he just seemed to want to get a good view on everything! Right after that he did a wobbly cruisey transfer to the armchair (still needs support from me for this):
And then crawled to the kitchen, where he watched me load the dishwasher and put some laundry on! It�s so nice that I am a little bit more hands-free to get jobs done around the house while he watches and stays with me, rather than having to dash off to get something started and then rush back because he�s upset that I left. He just follows me now, and is interested in watching what I am doing, especially if it is at floor level. I sort the laundry on the floor so he can get involved in that nicely. He did try to climb into the dishwasher though, which was not so helpful! He is such a CLIMBER these days! He climbs on me constantly like I am a climbing frame!! He likes to try to climb over me completely in bed, and makes such a lot of effort (complete with mountain-climbing effort noises, hehe!) to get over me! He pulls to standing on any part of me he can grab, and it�s pretty uncomfy sometimes to I try to deter him occasionally. He hates when I stop him climbing because he is soooo eager with all the new things he�s doing! Such a sweetie.
Anyway, he watched me put laundry on, and then lay down on the kitchen floor with his chin on his arms to watch the machine go round! He has always loved watching the washing machine. So many of the things he�s doing now make me look at him and think how I can�t believe he is getting so big and so grown up. I know he�s still just a little baby but he�s so �grown up� for a little baby now! Anyway I walked him to the machine and he stood there watching the washing for aaaaages. He likes to reach up and try to �work� the machine with the buttons and dials, especially if the cycle stops going round and he gets impatient for it to start again, hehe! He�s so funny :) I think he thinks he is making it go, because he will watch it with excited gasps and �oooh!� sounds, and then it will have a pause in the wash cycle and the washing stops going round. He stares at it so still and quiet that you could hear a pin drop, and then when nothing happens after like 5 seconds or so, he reaches up to the dials and pats them gently, with his fingers making fiddly movements, and then looks down at the washing expectantly! Of course this takes about the time that the cycle normally kicks in again, and the washing goes round again! He does it every time, and every time the washing �responds�! It�s soooo sweet. I�m sure he thinks he is making it work :) Little love.
Anyway, here he is standing at the machine watching the washing, and reaching up to make the machine work!
He wobbles when he reaches up, so I had my hand on his back for that photo. But he stands so well now! This afternoon I had put something yucky in the kitchen sink to soak and then forgot about it, so when I remembered, I put Arthur down in the living room lying on his back on the carpet with some bricks and toys around him to play with. He was in front of where the TV is, across the room from his toy basket (and facing away from it too). I rushed off and emptied the sink, rinsed off the thing I had been soaking, and started to refill the sink with hot water. While it was filling, I suddenly thought, �I know it has only been like 60 seconds, but I had better just check on him� and when I came to the kitchen doorway, there he was standing bolt upright holding onto the edge of his toy basket! In that tiny space of time, he had rolled over, crawled to the basket, and pulled himself to standing on it! I totally never expected him to pull himself to standing, otherwise I would have stayed with him, because I am still nervous of him falling, or that the basket would not be full enough to counter his weight and might tip over when he tries to stand against it. So my heart leapt into my mouth when I saw him there, but when he saw me, he gave me the MOST enormous smile and let go the basket with one hand to stretch his arm out towards me, as if to say, �Look at ME, Mummy!!� :) He is just soooooo pleased with himself lately! And rightly so, I am so proud of him! :)
His favourite thing to do is still to be walked around. He just LOVES it! I am so relieved to be able to do this with him now that he�s pulling to standing, since that�s what the physio said I should wait for before letting him take much of his own weight. Yay I�m so glad he�s doing it himself! So now I can �walk� him as much as we both like! He would like to be walked ALL day long, seriously. I hold him under his arms or by the hands, and he just starts lifting his little legs out in front of him and off he goes! He changes direction quite suddenly as the mood strikes him when he sees something that distracts him, and he pays no attention to toys or things in his path! He just tramples right over them, hehe! He has his eyes fixed on what he�s interested in. I made two new video clips that I wanted to share with you guys. I have wanted to make one of him doing his �walking� for a while, since I know it will just be a cute memory soon enough and I love his eager funny little steps when he does it. And the other one is shorter, just of him crawling after me into the kitchen like I described last entry :)
Arthur walking with support!: 
Arthur crawling into the kitchen!:
Oh I don�t think I said before, but we won a free photo session at a Venture photo studio!! I was shopping at Sainsbury�s a few weeks ago with Arthur and they were doing a promotional thing for Venture out the front. Of course I got accosted by one of their reps, and said no thanks to their discounted offer, since we have a quarterly thing going with Olan Mills at the moment (well, just for Arthur�s first year, anyway). Which reminds me, we are due our next session within the next month. Anyway, but I filled out a questionnaire and that entered me for some draw, and what do you know?! We won :) I think more people �won� than they let on though, because obviously if you think you won and you get a free session, maybe you�ll be more likely to pay a ton of money for the actual photos. But anyway. We had our free photo session on Saturday, and the studio is really local (like 3 minutes in the car!) which is FAB compared to an hour plus traffic for Olan Mills. Venture are very different though. Olan Mills is very traditional � family portraits, cutesy photos of kiddies with slightly nauseating props, etc. Kind of cheesy. But we wanted some traditional photos of us as a new family. I am not planning to let them set Arthur up with cheesy props as he gets older though! Yuck. Last time they wanted him sitting on a little wooden car thingy. I find props a bit repulsive, especially in children�s photos. I just want photos of my children�s FACES, not sitting on some tricycle or posing cutely next to some stuffed bear. Yeurgh! I know that soooo many people find this cute, but I am not one of them! Over-posed children make me want to squirm! Especially the very little ones I think. Anyway. But Venture are completely the opposite. They are contemporary and shot at unusual angles against a white background. They ask you to wear bright clothing if you have it, and go barefoot. There are a LOT of action shots and ones where you�re just interacting with each other and pretending the camera isn�t there. There are shots of like, just your feet. Or ones in black and white where your sunglasses are BRIGHT blue! That kind of thing. Verrry different.
So the photo session was GREAT fun!!! We had such a great time, and Arthur was so good. He didn�t fuss through the hour-long session even though he was very late for a nap, and he did everything the photographer hoped he would do, except crawl. But then he was only just starting to crawl and he was too interested in the studio to bother crawling places.
Today we went to our viewing appt to see the photos. It was such a buzz!! They showed them on a big screen and dimmed the lights, and played them in a slide show to funky music!!!! It was too cool :) The photos are fantastic. I have never seen any of us portrayed like that before, and I like what I see soooo much. We look so happy and relaxed, and when I see them I think happy thoughts and think what a lovely family we look like :) The music was upbeat too and it was great to watch them like that. Neil and I both felt like we had been to see a great movie that had made us feel happy and excitable when we got home! Boy do they know how to sell their products!
The worry was that they are SO expensive, we can�t really afford to get any photos. With such a great selection and the way they sold them to us, it was going to be hard not to walk away with a second mortgage taken out on the house! But we did okay. We ordered three framed prints. They only sell them framed � you can�t buy loose prints, which I am SO sad about because there were at least twenty fantastic photos of us left after we got rid of a whole bunch that were not quite so perfect as the others. Lots of Arthur on his own, but family ones too. We aren�t looking at the camera in any of them, and some are at very weird angles. Arthur is looking at the camera in some of them though. The photographer was so clever in the way she took them. I am soooo impressed! Anyway, we have 3 family shots for the wall, in 3 identical frames. They are going to fill the gap above the 3-seater sofa � one above each seat-back. And we got a free framed 7�x5� which I chose, of Neil holding Arthur, off-centre in the shot. I hope we can take them out of their frames when the arrive and scan them because they are soooo lovely. I love them! We have to wait 2-8 weeks for them to be processed. I can�t wait!!!!
Anyway. I had a great day today. I feel upbeat and happy, and that�s a nice way to feel. I haven�t felt that upbeat in a while so I am enjoying it! I need to update my pregnancy diary which shouldn�t really be called that anymore! But I will do that tomorrow or something, because it�s getting late now and I�m tired out. Arthur has slept badly lately, but the last two nights were a bit better. I am just wiped out these days and feel dizzy a lot in the day. I am waaaaaaaay behind on sleep, and maybe I will never catch up now, but I should at least go to bed before it gets too late! I sleep all night with Arthur now and I love it. Love it love it love it. I am finding that I am relaxing more and more with him next to me, now that he is sleeping a bit better and I�m not so nervous about waking him up. It�s lovely.
Arthur is working on more teeth, the poor lil chap. He woke and cried so many times yesterday evening and seemed in pain a lot, even whimpering in his sleep occasionally. We finally got the Calpol all ready to give to him, but he cried soooo much when we tried to put anything in his mouth, so I nursed him to calm him down and he went to sleep, and didn�t wake again till a normal night feed. This morning I noticed his gum is swollen over his two top front teeth and the tooth next to the two that came through at the bottom, but on the left. The right one doesn�t have any swelling over it. Also I noticed that his RIGHT top front tooth has the now-familiar whiteness to the gum that indicates pressure from the tooth, the same thing that happened about a week before both his other teeth came through. I don�t know why I was looking to see the left one appear first, but it doesn�t look ready yet. We�ll see what happens there over the next week or so.
Okay I must go to bed! Will write again soon, when I get some time! I have so much I am behind on at the moment, and the highest priority is getting the house more baby-proofed. I did the kitchen, but the living room still has patches that aren�t really safe for Arthur to explore, so I must get onto that tomorrow! Back soon!
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