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2008-02-28 - 11.56pm previous entry next entry
A milestone for Matthew!
Thank you so much for all the lovely birthday wishes! :) I had a really nice day! We went out for that walk in the park, and I sat in a nice coffee room with some other mums from church and breastfed Nathan, while Neil and the other boys ran around outside in the park! We weren't there long, but it was so nice. In the afternoon I took a nap with Nathan! And when I woke up, Neil and Arthur had baked me a birthday cake with smarties on it (I wonder who thought of that part?!), AND our/their first ever attempt at chocolate brownies. Those were gooooood. Neil made a roast dinner, and I blew candles out on the cake after dinner, while Neil and Arthur sang "Happy birthday dear Muuuuh-meeeee!..." and Matthew "ahh ahh"ed along with their singing in his highchair! I don't think I had any presents to open at ALL on my birthday, and only 3 cards in the post, but I couldn't have been happier with my day!
Well, yet again it is LATE and I have a gazillion things on my mind to write about. BUT, I will just have to squash some of it down for another time, because really I want to make sure I write about a significant event from today!
Matthew and Arthur (and Neil) are currently sharing a bedroom - I mean, that's the plan, that they share, because we only have two bedrooms. Neil will move out when they're settled in and enough time has passed since Nathan arrived for it not to be toooo much of an upheaval for them. Matthew is in his cotbed, and Arthur is in the single bed (raised off the floor for the first time in his life!) with his bed guard in place. Neil is on a single mattress on the floor. It's SNUG (the room is only 12ft by 7ft!) but they all fit in there and it's going well.
Matthew has been chewing the heck out of his cot for ages now. I hear his teeth grinding on it at bedtime when the lights are out! He stands at the far end near the bedroom door, and just chews. He has gradually gnawed some big chunks out of that cot. We have teething rails on the sides of the cot, but he hasn't bothered with those bits! He goes for the nice arched ends, and he has scraped the varnish off with his teeth and everything. It looks yucky, and I'm sure it's not good for him either!
Then the night before last, Neil and I were putting the boys to bed. Matthew was in his cot and Arthur on his bed, and we were just getting the bedtime story ready. Matthew is OBSESSED with "Little Red Train to the Rescue" at the moment. Thankfully it's a lovely story, since I have to read it constantly these days! I have lately restricted it to bedtime, and he begs for it at naptime too! He calls it, "Leh Cwane". His speech hasn't improved much since my last entry (only a week ago, I know!), and that would be impossible to understand for anyone who didn't know him and who was familiar with what he was asking for. "Leh" is a combination of the "L" in "Little" and the "eh" for "red"! And "Cwane" is train, obviously! ;)
So I was holding it but it was out of his reach where he was in his cot. He has got sooooo tall lately. He's definitely taller than Arthur ever was at this age. He's still so little against Arthur, but he has made quite a jump in height lately (Arthur has too - we just noticed that today actually!), and for the first time he's starting to look like he's catching Arthur up in height just a little bit. He'll be taller than Arthur eventually, I'm sure. He just has a longer/leaner body type than Arthur.
I haven't posted photos of Matthew in ages, it seems. Here is one of him a few weeks ago (just before he had a LOT of hair cut off! He was so distressed at the hairdressers, and he always is, that Neil asked them to take plenty off so he wouldn't have to come back so soon! His hair grows soooo fast) - just doing what he does these days. He is into everything, curious about all things, and constantly on the go:
King Matthew, hehe!
He LOVES dressing up in Arthur's dressing up clothes, more than Arthur does in fact! And here's a photo taken just about a week ago, if not less than that (after the haircut, as you can see!). Here's something I forgot to write here when I noticed it a few months ago - Matthew's blue eyes have done exactly what my blue eyes did as a toddler (and what my mum wondered if they'd do because of my eyes) - they have "greyed up"! They are still a lovely clear colour, no rings and just one brown spot above the right pupil there. But they are absolutely clear grey, no blue whatsoever. They just WENT like it over a month or so, recently. Anyway - photo!
Anyway, I digress! Where was I? Oh yes! He leeeaned out over the cot side (which was right up), and just flipped out onto the floor! He was pretty shocked, but so were we! So, there we have it. He isn't climbing out at all. But he's tall enough to fall out by accident (he did it again last night, reaching again), and he's eating his way through the poor cot anyway! So we nervously (!) decided that it is time that we turn his cot into a toddler bed.
My parents came over from France this morning for a long weekend type of visit, to see my grandparents and Thea and our boys all in just a few days. So we'll see them a bit for a few days but only for short visits. We all miss them so I'm happy for ANY length of visit! They were here for an hour this afternoon and while the boys were occupied with Nana and Grandy, Neil went in the loft and got the toddler bed ends down, and turned the cot into a toddler bed! I went up to see it when he was finished and I felt kind of tearful when I walked in the room and saw it, I have to say. There it was - a teeny tiny little "big boy" bed - no rails or guards to confine him any longer! The old chewed cot ends were still in the room standing against Arthur's bed, and suddenly I realised my baby boy was growing up! Waaah! It doesn't matter that I have another baby boy, I still feel sad about THIS baby boy growing up before my eyes! But, since he was born I have really not like him being behind those bars where I can't reach down to kiss him (once the base was low enough) while he sleeps. Sometimes it has driven me crazy, like an itch I can't scratch! So I'm THRILLED to be able to kiss his little face while he sleeps now! :)
Anyway. I took a photo after I had my wistful moment! ;)
After Nana and Grandy left, we took the boys up to explain the changes and let them explore the new bed a little. Here they are on Matthew's new bed!
They were BESIDE themselves with excitement about it at bedtime, especially Arthur, for some reason! He wanted to sleep in there with Matthew all night, but we said there wasn't room for them both to SLEEP. He was disappointed, but we said they could lie together in there for the bedtime story! Here they are at story time (guess which story, hehe!):
Please please disregard what you see of my hair in the last photo. *sigh* It needs a wash, and my "Matthew hair" that came in 4 months after he was born is now just annoyingly too short to tuck behind my ears, but too long to have flapping all over my face - hence the very attractive job I've made of pinning those bits out of the way! *sigh*
It took the boys AGES to go to sleep. Matthew would not stay in bed. We moved the portable safety gate from the kitchen doorway to their bedroom door for the night, and Neil stayed in there with them till they slept. We padded the floor next to Matthew's bed with a big duvet cover, in case he rolled out. He is usually ALL OVER his cot and banging into the sides in his sleep, so we expected he might. At 11pm we heard a huge thump and ran upstairs to find Matthew totally unconscious on the duvet on the floor! I can't believe he slept through falling out of bed! It IS only a very low bed though, not far to fall. We put him back, and I took a photo with the flash, of the boys fast asleep :)
Aren't you amazed that I have taken, uploaded, and posted in a diary entry, a photo that was only taken like an hour ago?!! I am, hehe! I'm usually so behind with photos! But I really wanted to write about this (with photos!) as it happened, and I spent my whole evening doing the uploading. I can't seem to resize photos properly with the new camera software, so that's why they're too big for this diary page. Oh well. They'll have to do.
Anyway! I have so much more to write about but Nathan is waking and I have to get him and nurse his sweet little self! Will try to update more soon, and I also have a ton to write (and lots of photos waiting now, yay!) at my pregnancy diary! Back soon!
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