The 2 (or more?!) Under 2 Support Thread!

[GrrrlWith2Boys]

Post your woes (or joys) here if you're currently tackling 2 kids under 2 (please say i'm not alone!)

DS1 is super wingey today and driving me batty...the slightest thing and he's whining and crying.

Have managed a 10 min walk with pushchair to get out of house. DS1 watching far too much TV, i haven't brushed my hair and the dog won't stop barking.

I need some gin.

Mine are a bit over 19mths and 3mths.

DS1 currently watching In The Night Garden DVD on the sofa, with DS2 sleeping next to him

Another lovely day, so off for a walk later- yay!

Is anyone else's oldest still using a bottle? DS1 has been asking for bottles of milk an awful lot lately (he does drink water from a beaker). Because he has a cold and 3 more teeth coming through i'm leaving him to it, but i don't know whether to think about coaxing him off it

Supergrrrl the bottle thing might be to do with DS2 being around. DD doesn't use a bottle (and hasn't for a long while) and she only sees DS bf. But she does want to do baby things (even does a "baby DD" impression and crawls around the floor then learns to walk in record time ). She sits in the bouncy chair with DS's (or her old) toys and bats them about and so on. If there were bottles around, I'm sure she'd want one. If DS1 is under the weather I'd not bother trying to coax him off the bottle yet leave it until he can be impressed into 'big boy's' stuff (a cup, for instance) (rather than a can of beer ).

Hi guys sorry have not been around lately, just don't know where the time has been going.

DD2 has been in her 6th week (when their crying is at it's most) so it has been a little chaotic. This week DD1 has been extra whingy and (it seems to me) deliberately screeching when I am trying to re-settle DD2.

Anyway, hope you are all well and well done on the weight loss supergrrrl. I too have done very well - been bacl in mt size 10 jeans for a while now, and the only thing stopping my size 8 tops fastening is my boobs (but then they have always been ample, even though I stopped BFing weeks ago) And re the bottle thing, I've heard that some children regress a little to babies when a new one arrives and start to ask for things that the new baby has. I think the best thing to do is maybe offer the milk but in a cup.

I have beenaking enjoying the sunny weather and taking the children out for walks, letting DD1 walk on her own where we are not beside a road. She's having lots of fun and ger new thing is collecting stones for members of the family. I found her sucking a few the other day, and since our drive way has pebbles, it is taking me a while to get her in the house!

I shouted at DD1 today for falling over, screaming and waking DD2....feel really bad about it....she was there holding out her arms and I just couldn't cuddle her for fear of wanting to squeeze her a little too hard. In the end I had to walk out of the room and leave her there crying. Then she started following me around and I just had to keep walking off til I'd calmed down. God having DD2 has obviously turned me into a total monster

oh gemy (((hugs))) i have been so short-tempered with ds1 at times cos of sleep-deprivation, i do feel so bad afterwards poor lamb. luckily he has had lots of dad's attention to make up for it. plus he went through a stage just after ds2 arrived when he wouldn't say mum/mummy and he is saying it now which has cheered me up no end
v. at your weight loss/back in pre-pg jeans!

supergrrl - ds1 went straight from breast to cups so not bottle here, no help sorry.
tho he is v keen on all the baby toys/chairs, etc.

thanks chaotica & cazwa
ds1 still teething big time (last tooth) so we went for the calpol night at bedtime, peace so far...fingers crossed. he had us up more than ds2 last night, we can't agree but think it was between 5 and 8 times! dh got up for them as i am i/c ds2. hoping that tooth makes its appearance before he goes back to work next week....

right, trying to get to bed early, hmm.
hope you & 2 LOs are well
my 2 are 20mo and 3wks.

DD1 still has a bottle, its a bone of contention between me and DH as I think she doesnt need one, especially in the night. She wakes up most nights asking for 'b' or 'mulk'. DH thinks anything for an easy life and that we shoudl continue giving it to her. TBH I cant be arsed with the hassle of weaning her off it, I get so little sleep these days that the thought of her wailing all night for one is just too much to bear. Saying that she slept through last night and only asked for it at 6.30pm.

Im currently BFing DS and will be till around 6mo and I just know that when he goes on bottles DD will want one all day long too. My friend with a 13mo gap ended up having a bottle made up for her eldest that she gave her whenever her youngest had her bottle as she would have a tantrum if she didnt have one.

DD also only has 4 teeth at 18mo!! This means I am in for a nightmare with teething. I reckon she and DS will probably teeth at the same time as I can almost see his already. Thats goign to be fun!

Off to dreamfeed, then hit the pillow. Hope everyone has good nights.

well, i think in a few weeks when his teeth have settled, i'm going to withdraw the bottles, one by one. For some reason when he wants milk in a bottle he says 'ghee' (as in Indian butter!) No idea what he's TRYING to say, it doesn't sound like bottle, like, drink etc

when he wants water, he says beaker. I'm def introducing a beaker earlier with DS2 though, that's one lesson i've def learned!

Happy Valentine's all anyway!!

Afternoon all, and happy valentine's to you.

oops, short post, DD just started to yell and wail -- must go [shoots off in the opposite directions emoticon]

sorry: 'direction' not 'directions'

(Try as I might, I can't yet manage to go in more than one direction at once...)

I am still here, but only just!
We finally got everything moved and have nearly unpacked ( ok, we've hidden a few boxes in the shed ). We haven't had a good night since moving (dd1 VERY unsettled, and dd2 teething badly) and dh and I are sleep deprived, which is horrible for dh starting a new job, and means that I've been to a couple of toddler groups with Russell Brand hair (and eyeliner, come to think of it)and an inability to say anything more than "hello, we've just moved here and these are my whingy, clingy children".
Haven't read through the bits of the thread that I've missed, so can't comment on anything, but hope you are all ok, and have survived the last couple of weeks!

However I'll have to do this tomorrow, as today is dh's birthday (which means I never get any Valentine stuff!) and I'm going to sit and watch 'Flag of our Fathers' and drink cava (ie drink cava, and fall asleep on dh's shoulder while he watches film, wake up, eat chocolate, and fall asleep again).

Hey everyone, having a better few days with the girls. Since turning 7 weeks Izzy seems to have settled down alot and even Freya has been a sweetie today.

We give Freya a bottle of cold cows milk after her bath which she drinks on our bed. But this is the only milk she has. Throughout the day she has juice or water or whatever out of a beaker, or out of her cup with straw. Cazwa I am with you! If your child is old enough to say mulk then she is old enough to be told no! When she knows it's not gonna happen, she'll not ask for it. I can have a whole packet of biscuits open on the coffee table but if I say Freya cant another one, then she knows she;s not going to get one and accepts it. Either that, or when my back is turned she grabs the packet and scoffs it (and then has a little chuckle to herself.....actually, sometones she does chuckle for no aparent reason.....)

I am in the throws of toilet training. We have mastered the potty, now I have a training seat for the toilet. So far so good - she thinks it's ffun and has done lots of wees and poos. And it's so great not to have to clean out the potty all the time.

Anyway, eating champagne truffles, watching friends and drinking expensive wine (you know the stuff in Tescos that has a security tag on it - I must say it is delicious!)

xxx

Hi Hazeyjane glad to hear you've survived. It must be really hard moving and having to settle the girls down as well. I'm still building up the nerve to unpack or throw out boxes from when we moved nearly 2 years ago (I know conventional wisdom says throw them out, but the reason they've not been opened (much) is that my career is in there and it's not that I don't need them but I've had other things on my mind...) Good luck with all the new toddler groups maybe they'll welcome a Russell-Brand-a-like...

Gemy we have a Freya too And I sympathise with you having a hard time when the big one wakes the small one it's so hard not to react negatively when the older one really doesn't mean anything by it (most of the time DD only wakes DS accidentally because she wants to give him a hug/tickle his toes/cover him in toys etc...)) Glad it's being going better recently.

Enjoy the wine and chocolate...

evening all,
well dh off out to pub with a mate, so am i/c 2 on my own! but ds1 in bed and ds2 sleeping loads today so will head off to bed with him in a mo. need to start thinking about his bedtime routine from next week i think.

chaotica - would love to go in more than one direction at once too

hazeyj - glad move went ok

gemy - enjoy that wine and chocolate and best of luck with the toilet training, so glad i don't have to worry about that just yet...hoping ds1 is a slow developer in that regard

supergrrl - ds1 calls his monkey 'pays' or at least that's what we hear, dunno where he gets that one from.

cazwa - how do you find the dreamfeed??

right, bed calling, lovely and early!

katy1 - the dreamfeed is supposed to be the one you wake them for at 10-11pm, except DS wakes up himself demanding it! I find it a pain as he always does a massive poo straight after it and can take a while to settle. Saying that he is not himself at mo, I worked out hes had a bad cough for 3 weeks now so took him to docs today. Nothing prescibed, just got to keep eye on him and come back in a week if no better. He has a coughing fit every time he wakes up, cries for ages after this then is settled for about 10 minutes before crying because he is tired Its wearing me and DH out... Cant wait for him to be well, he'll be a whole new baby again.

Coil fitted today - phew, no more children! Watch me be the unlucky 1% that gets pregnant.

Had pink champagne, pate, steak and choc cheesecake last night with DH - yum! He forgot to be in when Tesco delivery arrived earlier that day so had to run out and buy replacement food for meal, it then got redelivered an hour later! So we are eating like kings for the next few days.

Hazeyj - I take my hat off to you moving house with 2 LOs, very very brave.

As someone said earlier in this thread: why isn't there a tired emoticon?? Perhaps because if there was, we'd all overuse it. I'm going to use this instead because it looks like a yawn:
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Sorry about that -- by some people's standards I can hardly claim to have had a sleepless night, but DS is doing his best for reasons best known to his little baby self. He ends up in our bed now (after feeds, calpol, nappy changes and cuddles) and then proceeds to practise kung fu on me for the rest of the night. He's going to be very good at rolling soon, and then I don't know what we'll do.

Actually, he's already wriggled off a beanbag today... I feel like I should start one of those bad-mother threads immediately just so that people can say 'don't worry, I dropped my lo from a multi-storey carpark and she was fine So I won't, because I don't think I want to know that the nation's children have all been dropped on their heads at some point or other (although it might explain a few things )

Thought I ought to add (before you all think that I'm a really bad mother) that DS is fine from his (approx 20cm) feet first wriggle (or at least he seems to be didn't even cry or make a fuss. But I'm still and (with myself) about it thank god I didn't leave him on the changing table...

Cazwa we do the dreamfeed too but we don't wake her at all. Sometimes she'll kind of wake a little whe I lift her out of her cot, and when I put her back in (and sometimes - horror of horrors - she is fully awake and I am hoping there is no need to say goodbye to being off in the land of ZZZ by 11pm!)

I am sat on the sofa with a duvet over me. Let's just say that DH has been relgated to just 'H'. I feel the 'darling' should be revoked until further notice. We had a lovely day yesterday and I was talkinbg about haircuts and how I really must get around to it. And H decided now was the time to give me a lecture about how now we were living on one wage, I should make sacrifices. I was really pissed off. I stormed of too bed and which point H followed but I was too angry to listen to anything he had to say. I really had to stop myself doing anything rash, like throwing his mobile phone out of the window, or programming something nasty his laptop. So I slept on the sofa hence duvet being here. It's quite handy it being here, just to snuggle up in whilst typing. So, smiles in the end. (plus H apologising lots this morning but I feel it's too early to reinstate the D)

Sorry for the rant everyone! Thanks for listening

xx

Gemy hope you get to put the D back in DH soon... For all I know, one salary might leave you all living on boiled rice (in which case your H might have a point ), but I sympathise as it is hard to negotiate when you're used to earning your own money. I haven't fully worked it out myself (and I'm not strictly a sahm, just an on-maternity-leave-again working mum, although I took a pay cut to be part time for while) haven't quite sorted the finances out with DP though (especially when it comes to spending on myself).

On another topic entirely, can't get the dreamfeed to work with DS -- he just fails to settle or wakes again when he would have done anyway so I have to do 2 feeds not one. But he's a difficult little baby at night these days - wish I could work out why.

DD is awake. Hope it's not going to be a long night.

Hello ladies!

Posted here a few times a couple of weeks ago then lost the thread....

Well I officially graduated from this on 9th Feb anyway - ds1 is now 2!

Good luck to the rest of you - sure I'll be lurking from time to time anyway....

Hi alicet -- good to have you back (if lurking). I'm sure we don't have to be so strict about membership that you're now banned for having a 2 year old and a lo...
[Do we, ladies? ,chaotica looks around anxiously>]
...Or is your life soooooo much easier now your eldest has hit 2?

(I'm taking the youngest, DS, to an osteopath on wed., btw. Hope to get help with his head/neck and with reflux (although I'm a bit of a sceptic) -- we'll see.)

Oh it's so so much easier chaotica!!!! I WISH! Had a bit of a meltdown on Thurs actually as totally exhausted - ds2 is still waking at 11, 2 and 5 and despite dh doing the 11 o'clock feed it had got on top of me. 12 hours sleep thanks t dh and my mum has me feeling more human now...

Oh and we took ds2 to a cranial osteopath and I think it made quite a difference - before he was a very stressy baby who cried loads and after a couple of sessions was a lot more tranquil. Could be coincidence and might have happened anyway but it certainly didn't do him any harm! I was a big sceptic first too... Good luck!

Hello smallwhitecat, welcome! Thats the age gap mine are, my DS is now almost 4 months and looking back its certainly a lot easier now. It was mental at first, I didnt think Id ever catch my breath, but you find loads of shortcuts and become more immune to crying/mess/not doing things perfectly. Plus the oldest gets used to there being a new one very quickly and adapts well.

Hi alicet, I believe we are fellow geordies, I spotted you on the Oct 07 board but Ive not had chance to post on it and noticed you mention a few local places to me! Im a North Shields/Tynemouth lass.

On the back of Alicet's comments I find it scary when people who are further down the line with their LOs are still finding it hard I keep thinking its going to magically get easier in a couple of months, when in reality it might be just as hard but different IYKWIM? A friend with same age gap but youngest now 9mo came with me to a cafe (4 under 2 and 2 adults - yes we are mad) for breakfast and we realised its the last time we could do it for a few years, as her youngest wasnt happy sitting on her knee, my youngest didnt sleep through the whole time and needed lots of attention. No more cafes for us for a while.

DS going through his 4mo growth spurt today and yesterday, it is hard work. Been feeding him every hour...

Gemy, sympathies, dont men realise we NEED haircuts?? I was p*ssed off with DH this week, he said Id finally got my 'mum cut' i.e. my long hair cut into a shortish bob

Hello and welcome smallwhitecat

Well Chaotica, DHs salery is not bad at all, plus we only have a very small mortage (not to mention quite a few thousend in savings!)

And the H is back - had a lovely day climbing Callender Crags yesterday (got all the way to the top with both babies in carriers!) but the nly downside is I lost my sunglasses on the way down. Am gutted. They were expensive and, after the haircut fiasco, can I even ask (now that I am JUST a housewife) to get some more???

Anyway, DD1 is very annoyed that I am sneaking in a quickie mumsnet so I'd etter go before a tantrum starts to emerge.

Have a lovely day
xxx

Hi ladies!

I'm in a rotten mood today, not sure why

DS1 fine, apart from insisting on In the Night Garden being put on every day. Am putting foot down and banning it for a week now. He likes tv too much, and it's all my fault.

DS2 teething miserably, with no sign of tooth. It's pretty horrendous actually. As i was typing this he's gone ape-shit and he's breastfeeding now. I'm chuffed because i did post that i was going to have to stop as he was having trouble with it, but i stuck with, my milk has built up, and now he's getting almost all breast milk. On the down side, he still latches on funny, so it's not always comfy, and now he's teething, sometimes i try to comfort him with boob, and he repays me with mauling my nipple between his gums

Just realised he not done a dirty nappy for few days- wonder if that's upsetting him too

Anyone else finding the nice weather has made things easier? Been to park already this morning.