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2006-05-30 - 10.02pm previous entry next entry
Waiting for Matthew, and photos of Arthur!
Thank you for the lovely compliments on my toy unit (and of course, my little boy!)!! :)
Just wanted to update here with some more photos of Arthur before I end up giving birth and never getting round to the latest photos I've taken! I am pretty restricted in what I can do these days, as my blood pressure has gone up and I'm just feeling weird and pre-labourish all the time. It hurts me to move about such a lot sometimes, and I just feel exhausted and like I am about to give birth or something! Which I probably am really, given that I'm due next week! :)
Other than that, all is well here. My parents arrive in less than 48 hours (oh my GOSH I am so relieved about that! I just can't relax till they're here) and we are struggling to get the house ready for Matthew still. Especially now that I can't do a thing to help Neil, I can't even look after Arthur on my own for any length of time, not even 30 minutes.
Arthur is so incredibly demanding at the moment! Not in an awful way or anything - the word demanding does give that impression, but I mean he is just 110% energetic ALL of the time. And he requires somebody's FULL attention over every tiny thing at every single moment. He talks non-stop about everything he sees, mostly in babble-talk rather than understandable words, but if I don't acknowledge everything he is pointing out to me, then he shouts the word louder and louder and LOUDER until I acknowledge him. This is becoming increasingly irritating and frustrating for me, especially when I am trying to talk to Neil about something. It is something I don't think he should be allowed to do, so I want to figure out how to "discipline" him over it in some way. I don't feel he should think it's okay to just shout and shout at Mummy or Daddy while they are talking, until they stop what they're doing to acknowledge his shouting. We acknowledge him very quickly and he is usually the main focus of our attention, but I do want him to understand that he can't always be instantly acknowledged (or get stroppy with us about it otherwise!) when we are in the middle of discussing something important.
At the moment, all I am doing is telling him firmly, "Don't shout!" or "Mummy and Daddy are talking at the moment, wait a minute" or something. I know he's still so little but it's driving me crazy and I want him to get the message in some way that it's not okay to yell at us until we give him attention! Lately I have a SUPER short fuse and he only needs to yell a couple of times before I get cross with him and snap his head off :( But yelling and things like banging something loudly to get our attention is just driving me CRAZY these days. I can't bear it, it makes me want to pull my skin off! Sometimes I have to leave the room because I am so angry and riled by Arthur yelling at me that I just want to scream at him, "SHUT UP!!" - which obviously would NOT be helpful! Thank goodness Neil is at home a lot at the moment.
It has been Bank Holiday Weekend so Neil has been home on Monday, and he took Tuesday off (today) as well. My blood pressure went up at the beginning of the weekend, so he phoned work today and told them he can't be there tomorrow, because my blood pressure went up and I can't look after Arthur on my own. I'm so thankful that he did that. I simply can NOT look after Arthur even for an hour, even from lying on the sofa. He is too demanding and knows all the things to do that will make me have to get up, the instant I am lying down. I find it very trying sometimes, but he is still such a treasure and so sweet and smiley, and he can't help that he has toooo much energy and a mummy who can't do anything at the moment. So I don't hold it against him! But it's hard. So I know it sounds bad, but I think I would have put my foot down and TOLD Neil that there was no way he could go to work tomorrow if he had said he had to go in. I absolutely can't do it, and we have nobody else around to help me at all so he HAS to stay home. My mum will be here the next day so he can go to work then. But it's important, y'know? Blood pressure and pregnancy is a pretty big deal and I know work is important too, but it should definitely come second. I feel like that's selfish, but what else can I do? I have to protect myself and my littlest one at the moment. Anyway, I'm so glad it didn't come to that, and Neil arranged to take tomorrow off and work was fine with it :)
Neil fitted the BabyDan thingy to the wall around the bottom of the stairs, when the wall fittings arrived this week :) I'm so glad that's done. We have to be careful about putting any furniture, toys or things like my hospital bags too close to the gate because Arthur uses them to climb on to get over it! A few days ago I found him straddling the gate! Then later the same day Neil was in the kitchen and I was upstairs, and I heard this huge thump followed by "Help! I'm hurt!" crying (you know, the type that makes you sprint like you never knew you could, to get to your little one IMMEDIATELY!). And he was lying on the floor like he had fallen from sitting astride the gate. His push-along car was nearby, and it looked to me like he had pushed it up to the gate to climb on it, and then fallen ON it when he toppled off. Poor Arthur! But he shouldn't have climbed when we had told him not to! He hasn't climbed it since, but we have been making it more difficult for him to get near it since then, and watching him more carefully, so maybe he'll try it again. I hope not! That gate is our last resort to keep him from the stairs!
Arthur is lately VERY into playdough! We went out and bought 2 metres of some bright wipe-clean tablecloth fabric off the roll at a local fabric store, and that is his LARGE craft mat for messy play :) We don't have much access to the kitchen table these days so he plays on the carpet for everything he does. We needed something to protect it when he did drawing, messy play, or playdough, so I figured a LARGE wipe-clean tablecloth would do the trick. It nearly fills our whole carpet space when it's fully spread out, but we usually double it up to make it cover a smaller part of the room. I know it will be GREAT for children's parties and picnics in later years too, and cooking projects with my little ones!
So after we bought that, I finally bought Arthur some playdough. I had a recipe to make some, but I didn't have much time to make it and also I just LOVE the smell of shop-bought playdough!! It's just intoxicating, mmmm! So we bought Tesco's own, which is cheap and just as good as any other. We got tubs of red, yellow, green and blue, and also a box of smaller tubs with some small parts (shhh, not for under 3s!) to press into the dough and make "crazy people"! Arthur loved playing with those at the church creche and we NEVER take our eyes off him for a second when he's playing with playdough anyway, so I got them for him. I keep the small parts in a screw-lid jar that he can't open, in the playdough box on the toy unit :)
Anyway, he asks for "day-doh" every day at least once! He loves it. He doesn't do much with the cutters, but he likes it when I cut playdough stars and hippos and crocodiles and so on with the vast array of cutters that I had ready for his playdough fun! He stacks them up and then squishes them together :) He spends ages pressing small parts into the dough, and then rearranging them. He seemed kind of squeamish about touching the dough at first, but now he LOVES squishing it with gritted teeth for added effect, hehe! At the weekend, Neil took a few photos of Arthur working on a "crazy dough person". He was so absorbed that he didn't even bother to look up when Neil started taking pictures, let alone abandon his activity and grab for the camera! He pressed all the bits into the red dough without any help from Neil (that's our new wipe-clean mat too!):
He also asks to "daw" (draw) many times per day at the moment! He loves drawing with different things. He has marker pens (age 1+ and completely washable!), coloured pencils, and lots of crayons, and he likes to use them all in each sitting. He also makes sure he uses each colour in turn - usually a few strokes (or even just one) with each colour, before carefully placing that crayon/pencil/marker in a neat line with the others and choosing the next one! He's sooo tidy and careful about stuff, I have NO idea where he gets it from! ;)
He has so many new words since my last entry. Most of his new words start out like baby talk, I mean, for example just the vowel sound of the word he's attempting, or the starting consonant. But he uses it consistently with definite reference to that object every time, and over time the way he pronounces it improves. The words he had started saying a few weeks ago are already much clearer to understand, while his newest words can be hard to figure out sometimes! He is very persistant though, and keeps repeating a word at us until we get it! When we finally get it right, he beams this huge, relieved smile and signs, "please", if it's something he is asking for :) Sweetie. "Apple" used to be pronounced "aah-ooh" but now it's "aaa-pool" He lingers ages on the aaa part, it's so sweet how carefully he tries to pronounce words of more than one syllable!
Arthur has also started combining words a little bit, or at least making attempts to get more than one thing across to us at once. Like he'll say, "Aah Dada?" with the all-gone sign, to ask, "Where's Daddy?" Today he wanted to watch the Teletubbies (for the millionth time!) and he walked up to the TV and patted the blank screen, and said, "Mama? Uh-oh!" and waited for my response! He always says, "Uh-oh" to mean the Teletubbies (they say, "Eh-oh" frequently!).
I also noticed a couple of weeks ago that he hadn't called me by name for a very long time. He's been saying "dada" for EVER, but never "mama"! It's weird because "mama" was his first word, very early on, and he used it consistently, with understanding. But then suddenly he stopped saying it. I wondered why, and just figured maybe I'm just there for him every second so he didn't need to use it or something? Anyway, just in the last week he has started using it again :) I love to hear him call me Mama! It's the sweetest sound.
I always ask him what he wants for dessert now, after he finishes his lunch or tea. It's so lovely to have him TELL me what he wants now, and for me to be able to understand him. It feels like a great relief to me, almost a physical weight off, so I know it must be a big relief for him too, to be understood when he tries to tell us things. He nearly always asks for either "ya-ya" (yoghurt), "uns" (raisins) or "BAR!" (cereal bar, said with great enthusiasm as it's one of his favourite snacks!). He has the Heinz toddler cereal bars with fruit in them, but he especially likes MY cereal bars which have "cu-cuk" chips in them ;) He gives me huge smiles while he munches on them, and keeps stopping to point at chocolate chips in the cereal bar. He tells me as he points to them, "Cu-cuk ah bar!" which I proudly take to be his first basic sentence, showing me there is chocolate in his bar! :)
Okay my dinner is ready (lovely Neil!) so I will be back in a while to post those other photos and finish the entry.
Back again! I have two more photos of Arthur breastfeeding, which are non-graphic enough to post here :) I keep wanting photos of things like this taken at the moment, as it's my last chance to capture something absolutely precious to me that will never be the same again in a very short time! I know Arthur will continue to breastfeed for hopefully a long while yet, but it will never be just me and him. Never just "milk for Arthur" any more. I hope he will accept sharing Mummy's milk easily - I'm hoping that Matthew's first feed after his birth will be shared by Arthur if Arthur wants to join in (and if he's awake at the time, obviously!). He likes to switch sides whenever he feels like it, and frequently too, so I'm not sure how he's going to find it when there's someone else attached to the other side! He often falls asleep nursing on one breast whilst holding the other one in both hands like a comfort blankie :) So sweet. He is so much like a tiny baby sometimes when he breastfeeds, that's one of the things I love about extended nursing so much - it allows the little one to still BE a baby, as an 18-month-old really still IS. He's such a little boy in so many other ways now, but I love that he still snuggles and nurses, and Mummy milk still makes any hurt or tantrum melt away instantly, and when he's in an almost-asleep state, he actually still roots frantically for the nipple, with his eyes closed and mouth wiiiide open like a baby bird! Just like he did when he was a newborn baby :) I love that. He's such a sweet baby boy to me still.
Anyway. Here we are snuggled on the sofa a few days ago, breastfeeding :) These two photos were taken like 2 seconds apart but I like them both so I can't pick one to post!
My shoulder blade is hurting me soooo much for some reason, and typing is making it worse. So I think I will stop for now. I'll finish with some more photos of Arthur sitting in his activity ring - he really likes it in there! He was being sooooo smiley that morning. Neil took him out while I lay in and they went on a big red double-decker BUS! Arthur has been so highly excited about buses for weeks now, to the point where I finally bought him a toy bus, which he plays with constantly, pushing it around the carpet on all fours and exclaiming "Buh!" :) Anyway so Neil took him for a short ride on the bus and they came back on another one too! Arthur tells me what he has seen now when they come in from a walk, it's so sweet! He comes in all excited and smiling and scrunching his shoulders right up to his ears with glee when he sees me. I greet him with hugs and kisses and ask him if he had a good walk with Daddy. I ask him what he saw, and he tells me "Buh!" I say, "Did you see a bus?!" and he smiles soooo big and says again, "Buh!" Then he pauses and says, "Brummm!" which is what he says for car, so I ask him if he saw cars and he beams and says "Brummmm!" again :) Then he might say, "Woah-woah!" which is his noise for a dog, and so I'll ask him if he saw a doggie, and so on. He loves to "tell" me all about what he saw on his walk - he LOVES his walks. He gets so excited about everything he sees that sometimes he just has to stop walking and stare at the exciting thing, clenching his fists till they SHAKE, he's that excited, bless him!
Anyway, that morning he had been on a bus for the first time, and when he came in he seemed soooo excited about something. He kept saying over and over, "Buh! Buh! Buh!" and so I asked him if he saw one. Neil said they had been ON a bus, and when I asked Arthur if he rode on a bus, he took in this huge squeally breath and shouted, "BUH!" :) He was soooo excited! He did not stop smiling all morning, I kid you not! Here he is beaming and beaming at us from his activity ring about an hour later - halfway through taking his socks off, which he always finds amusing for some reason!
This one is my favourite, and I think I'm going to use it in all my online forum signatures :) My sweet smiley little man! I love him so much. I love him SO much....
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