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2005-08-31 - 11.58pm previous entry next entry
General updatey stuff and photos :)
Oh thank you all so much for the lovely comments on our family photos!!! I am really pleased with them too! Your comments made me smile so much :)
Well it's late but I have to write a quickie entry to post some photos and stuff. It's so hot and humid today. Yuck. Arthur has just worn a nappy like last time it was this hot, but this time he is soooo mobile and active, and he has just had wet hair all over, from roots to tips, all day - just from sweating!! I kept sitting him in front of the fan but he kept pulling it over. He is "into" everything these days! I wish I had time to write a million examples. I don't want to forget them all by failing to write them down before they're out of my memory.
He is using his forefinger (on both hands) to poke things constantly now. He isn't really pointing much yet, but he pokes and pokes with real focus and concentration! While I was speaking to my mummy on the phone today (or was it daddy?), he pulled up on the sofa, cruised along till he was standing next to me, and concentrated on the side of my head, pokey finger getting nearer and nearer all the time, till he very accurately poked his fingertip right into my ear hole! He also pokes any buttons or detail on my clothing when I hold him, any tiny crumb on his highchair, his own belly button, a stray thread on the carpet, etc, etc. He has tried to poke me in the nostril but I have reflexes, haha! :)
His latest thing is pulling up and cruising till he's at a table (full arm stretch just to hang on to the table top with his fingertips!), and with wild sweeping movements of his hands, getting as much stuff on the table to fall down onto the floor so that he can bump down next to them onto his bottom and examine the felled items! He is very quick at everything these days. If I stop to pick up say a nappy that I just took off him in the living room, and look around the room to see if there is anything else lying around that I can take with the nappy to put in the wash, Arthur can easily use that short time to crawl to the kitchen, pull up on the chair, cruise to the table, sweep the bread off the table, sit down next to it and examine it in some detail!
He still LOVES to be made to jump! Anything that would normally scare the average baby to bits is the funniest thing ever to Arthur! Sudden loud roars and "BOO!" sounds are just hysterically funny still. He laughed so hard after his bath time tonight that he got hiccups, and then still carried on hic-laughing for another 5 minutes when we kept on making him giggle! :) The latest fun thing is making him think we are running up behind him to pounce on him or something! Honestly, that kind of thing would make ME jump!! But Arthur loves it so much.
The other day he was doing exactly the example I gave above, he nipped off to the kitchen and swept the bread onto the floor. I spotted him in there at this moment, just contemplating how to lower himself gently to the floor so that he could sit and examine the bread. He had his back to the kitchen door so he didn't see me. I made my feet slap sloowwwwly on the kitchen floor as I came in so he could hear me coming, and then suddenly said, "Yoooouuuuu MONKEYYYYY!!!!" ("Monkeyyyyy" being very loud!) and made my loud steps suddenly really fast as I ran towards his back! He jumped and clung to the table leg shrieking and squealing and laughing with delight till I got there, and then I swept him up and munched his tummy :) He was breathless and twinkly-eyed and beaming as I swept him up in my arms. Why does this child not get traumatised by things like this?!! He just loves to be scared!
He is often heading for things he shouldn't be touching these days. He will cruise till he finds one of the table lamps on the furniture in the living room, and then he wants to pull at the shade. He broke one of those lamps last week! Our furniture is too low to keep them all out of his reach. I do tell him not to touch when he gets near them, and until now he has always always stopped when I said, "Arthur...." in THAT TONE (!!), and looked at me to see what is up. Then I ask him not to touch it, and he might smile at me and then look back at the lamp. So I will say again, "Don't touch the lamp please" and I might ask him to come to Mummy. He ALWAYS does! He is such a good boy. I think this won't necessarily last though! Today he hasn't been quite so responsive, so I'm sure I will need to change tack soon enough!
Anyway, sometimes if I see him approaching a no-touchy item with eager anticipation, I will say in sing song tones, "Arrrthuuur?... Whatcha doooinnnng?...." He will usually pause at this point, and might look back. Then I pause and say in a sort of sing-song warning tone, "Iiiii seeee yooouuu!" and for some reason this just makes him turn and giggle at me with the most mischievious look in his eye! He's such a little monkey. He's gorgeous. I love him so much. I love that he's such a little character who likes to make mischief! Lil sparky boy of mine ;)
Okay what else? Oh his sleep. I feel okay about it today. He is still waking a lot. I am going to ride it out some more. Usually when he gets to be waking hourly for a while it passes and turns out to have been a phase of some sort. Maybe he's teething? Or growing? Or just wanting extra closeness with his mama? Whatever it is, he probably has a good enough reason - good enough for me anyway, so I will ride it out. I have plans to take his night wakings into hand a little after he is a year old. I read this article and it really felt right to me, for our family. They strongly discourage parents from trying to force night changes before their baby is a year old, and that is what my gut has told me for a long while now, so I'll hang in there. Arthur is not even a year old yet. That's sooooo little. If he wants his mama in the night, I will gladly be there. After he is one I will reassess the family's needs, and our own individual needs, and consider whether to start changing things following the guidelines in that article. I will never cry it out though. I think there WILL be crying, which I am dreading. But I won't ever leave him to it. It just feels totally wrong to my heart, as Arthur's mother, to do that to him.
But for now, we plod on! The only thing that would induce us to start the changes a little early might be if I got pregnant and my need for a less disturbed night became a desperate issue with pregnancy exhaustion and stuff. But I realised recently, there are only about 10 weeks to go till Arthur's first birthday!!! Can you believe that?!! Where has the first year gone?! When I think about giving Arthur my cuddles and milk and closeness at any point in the night that he wants them, for just another 10 weeks, and with him still being such a little baby, I just think of COURSE I will stick it out. Somehow! The countdown helps. I feel proud of having done it the way I have. It has made things extremely hard and exhausting for all these months, but I am glad of it and proud that he has never asked something of me and had it withheld in any way. I know the next 10 weeks will just disappear before I know it.
Sooo sleep issues are easier on my mind today :)
Arthur is doing great with food. He has a finger or two of toast with butter and a smidgen of marmite for breakfast (cut from my toast in the morning), half a jar of organic something-or-other for lunch, and mashed banana with something (the favourite is still avocado!) for tea, followed by some baby yoghurt and maybe a rice cake if he's still interested in eating. He drinks well from a full sippy cup, holding it with both hands, but because the cup is heavy and full, I still guide it for him. If I don't make it full, he never tips it up enough to get any water. I never offer him anything but water in the cup. He gets milk "on tap" (!!) and I have read bad things about offering a baby juice too young, and there's no need anyway so it will be a while before he has juice. He seems to like water, which is good!
He likes to nibble a bit of any finger food that I might have during the day, like a cheese-spread sandwich, or a bite of my banana, etc. Today I gave him one of the frozen meals I made a few weeks ago, from mine and Neil's dinner one evening! Yay! I feel so great when I actually give him a proper meal that is homemade. Today's was chicken, potato, carrot and broccoli. All organic. I got two ice cubes of that out and mixed it with one ice cube of sweet potato puree, left over from the first puree days. Oh my gosh it was the most delicious mixture!! We must try adding sweet potato to that meal for ourselves next time! Anyway, Arthur ate the lot :)
His favourite meals from jars are definitely the veggie lasagna and spaghetti with tomato and mozzarella sauce! Here he is after demolishing a good portion of the latter:
His hair STILL smelt of spaghetti sauce that night AFTER we had throughly washed his hair!!! Hehe!
He is getting pretty good with his spoon now. He always holds a spoon while I feed him with the other one. He likes to participate! Mind you, he always has done this, even before we were even feeding him anything! He is pretty accurate at getting it into his mouth now, and can eat a spoonful of food off the spoon without much of it slopping SOME of the time! The rest of the time it goes down his front :) Here he is feeding himself some yoghurt last week:
See how he puts the spoon in and munches down on it?! Clever boy :) Still terribly messy though, of course! He is lately VERY unimpressed with being cleaned up after a meal, and gets quite hysterical sometimes, which can be difficult. Sometimes he is so upset by it that it takes a cuddle and a breastfeed for a while before he's happy again! I don't know why he hates it so much, and I do it as quickly and cheerfully as I can, but he HATES to be wiped and cleaned and de-bibbed! I always nurse him after a meal, in the living room. Even if he only takes a few sucks and then gets up and cruises off somewhere.
Ohhh nursing is getting FUN these days!!! My little boobie boy is quite the little acrobatic nurser now that he's so mobile! Most of his feeds are in bed before sleep, but the after-meal ones are getting interesting. I sit on the floor with my back against the sofa, and cradle him across my lap. Of course this does not last long because he wants to sit up and look around while he nurses! So I sit him up. He nurses sitting up very well, but he likes to turn his head so that he is also using the breast as a nice comfy pillow as well as chomping away on the nipple! I think he thinks my nipples are elastic. Yow!
Then he will wriggle off my lap so that he's sitting on the floor, and turn round and kneel facing me so that he can nurse like that for a while. But while he's still latched on, he will stand from kneeling and nurse bent over at the waist!
This morning I was soooo fast asleep next to him at 6am when he woke, that I didn't hear him wake and stir. I was woken with a shock when he crawled right up to me and latched on, face down over me as I lay on my back, hehe! I thought someone had pinched me on the nipple, woke with a jump and looked down to see him sucking away, hehehe! I found that so funny! I could just see his little thought process going - "Ahhh, morning time! I'll just sit up and take in my surroundings.... Ooh there's Mummy! I think I'll have a little morning milk for breakfast!..." hehehe! :) My sweet funny boy.
I love all these new ways of nursing. It is painful sometimes with his teeth pressing and my breasts being unused to that, but I am happy with his acrobatics. I know they are very normal for a nursing toddler - not that he's quite a toddler yet, but he's getting there fast! I would not always let him do that when somebody else was present, but it depends on who that somebody was. Sometimes I let him treat me like a milk bar after a meal. I sit on the floor with him for a while with a breast out so that he can choose whether to have some milk, or play or cruise or whatever, and have the freedom to come back for a little more at any time. I know when he IS a toddler he will be so busy that it will suit him more to keep coming back for little short feeds, and I want to let him know now that he is free to do that if he wants. I don't feel like I want any restrictions on him nursing. As he gets older I can explain that I am just talking to so-and-so and he must wait a moment, and then he can nurse. So for now I just want to teach him different ways of nursing. Sleepy time, with its no-wriggling and scrunching me (!!) rules; after meal times, when he nurses sitting up for as short or long a period as he wants; and playtime, when he is free to ask me for a drink or a cuddle-nurse any time he wants. I know right now he is learning to just help himself, but I will start to teach him that he must ask me eventually.
Anyway. I love breastfeeding! :) I hope it continues for a loooonnnng while yet, because I definitely don't want to stop. I am one proud milk bar!! ;)
Well let's see? It's late and I need to think if there are any milestones that Arthur has made recently. I don't think so, since I last updated on what he's doing these days. He cruises along the sofas so fast now that sometimes he stumbles like he is trying to run! It looks so funny! He cruises gaps and walls now as well. He gets down from standing well, so long as he has something to hold onto. He can go from standing to either sitting or all-fours so that he can crawl away, depending on which he prefers. He likes to take objects out of containers, at last! But no interest in putting them in.
He is waking up - midnight is a fairly usual time, so I had better go. We are visiting Jaya and Jemma tomorrow - I can't wait!! We're going round for lunch. I will write about it asap! I will leave you with another highchair photo, since it seems to be a theme this entry, hehe. He just looked so cute and wouldn't stop smiling at me, so I started snapping photos. Here are my favourite two (and no that is not a molar in the back there - he was chewing a piece of bread!):
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