***The All New 2 or More Under 3 Thread!*** Join the Madness Here!

[TattooedGrrrl]

Here we go again- join here if you have 2 or more kids under the age of 3. Feel free to update / whinge / look for advice / gloat about how sleep you've had

For any newbies, I have 2 boys, aged 2yrs and almost 9mths.

Sorry simpson I popped off to watch I'm a celeb!!!

Yes, my bro is really good with them. He's older than me, and he's gay so he knows he won't have any kids of his own, so he just adores them. He is a fab uncle. He lives by the sea, as in, practically on the beach, where there is a permanent funfair too. The girls will love it when they are old enough to appreciate it. DD1 was so excited that he was coming today.....

My DD1 was the most perfect textbook baby, she slept loads (and still does for her age)

Evening, Ladies

Simpson - sorry to hear your DH is not well again. How did it go with the GP? I think you're right that working is sometimes better than not working (not that it's much good trying to tell a depressed person that). Things must be really hard for you - glad your mum is stepping in .

(I threatened to leave DD at my sister's the other day (dd has a habit of refusing to anything without a fight) and the look on my sister's face was great: a mixture of pure terror and disbelief. (Fortunately for her I was bluffing and DD did go for it ))

Hi Cazwa - your inlaws sound worse than my outlaws (didn't know whether that was possible). At least I don't have to spend xmas with mine. BTW are you sure Billy hasn't got a form of asthma? Freya had chest infections and a long running night cough last year and it was sorted by being on an inhaler for three months (we didn't believe the gp at first, but it worked...). Maybe it's worth asking the doctors if it doesn't go away. I hope it does though.

LOL at the church + bouncy castle idea, Gooddays. Hope you have another good day, btw.

Uh-oh... DS just learnt how to climb on the sofa by himself [gulp]

Another good day...YAY!

I have just drubk 2 glasses of wine quite quiclky....

don't think I better chat now....prob just spell it all wrong!

Gooddays - glad you have had a good day, am just starting on the wine

Your brother sounds great with the Dcs...bet he is great fun on Xmas day for them

Wine here too, although Freya is wailing intermittently so we're hardly having a wild night.

Gooddays - your brother sounds like a cool uncle to have around. My younger sister is great with the DCs too - so much so that Freya treats her as an imaginary friend (she and my nephew live in the garden ).

Hello everyone sorry I have turned into an intimitent poster - F&cking HP are a really shit company. Seriously, if any of you are thinking of getting a HP just don't. Because my laptop has a known HP fault and they won't fix it, even though their website says they will and they have been very rude and had me in tears the other day after they started insultng me on the phone. So, here I am on DH's laptop again and will connect the old vaio again.

Anyway, enough about me, simpson yes sorry to hear your DH is unwell again and do hope this bout passes swiftly, and in time for christmas.

gooddays just a general high five for you, since you manage to look after your two children with PND and still find time to come on here and offer kind words and support to us others

cazwa will try the wheats. Gave her cheerious this morning and she just kept pulling faces, but then I know it will take her a few attempts so not willing to give up on the cheerios just yet.

I am just trying to sort out christmas shopping and it is so hard to buy for izzy, since she is now standing, alot of the baby toys I don;t think she will be interested in as much (and that sit,walk,crawl, stand thing from fisher price is like £65 and we were going to get her this, but now she stands I think we'll not bother) All else is fine. Izzy is consistently sleeping til at least 6am for a few weeks now so ket's see in the old MN curse kicks in [let's bloody hope not!!]

Freya is fine too, though she did have a nosebleeed the other day after a finger strayed up there but It was scary for me, and there seemed to be so much blood! She got upset too because she had to sit still while we held tissues to her nose and let's hope there are no more.

Well everyone, hopfully will be able to post in a few days again and then when the other PC is wired up then I can be online again perm.

jewels Thanks so much for what you said, it meant a lot to me .

Today is another good day, and at the risk of sounding negative, I am fully aware that I have bro and DH around, so I'm not getting too cocky!!!!

Re-toys for Izzy, someone boughtthis for DD1 for her 1st birthday and she LOVED it and still does, and DD2 loves it already, and all the children who come to play love it too!!! I can highly recommend it.

Jewels - fisher price do a fab buggy which is a walker as well its about £20 in Woolworths and Mothercare sell it for £25. Can't do links sorry but am going to get one for DD's first birthday. When she is walking well, then she can use it as a buggy iyswim. It's called stroll along walker by fisher price.

Gooddays - Glad things are going well Just take each day as it comes!!

Had a bit of a nightmare yesterday as our sink has been blocked. Finally realised we had to call out plumber and it cost £124!! Just what we DON'T need before Xmas!!

Gooddays, you said 'I feel tremendous guilt that there are many women out there coping with so much worse than me (like 3.5 hrs sleep a night'....i don't think shouting at the kids, telling them to leave me alone and swearing alot is coping!

Glad you're feeling positive right now

Jewels- the laptop sounds a nightmare. Threaten them with Watchdog!

I think i got about 7 hrs sleep all together last night! They both slept better through the night, but both up 5am- Grrr!

Am in work now- hoping step MIL offers to have boys tonight, but DH said he probably wouldn't visit her today because she had DS1 overnight last week and he didn't want her to think he was taking advantage. But it was her that offered...and a break would be lovely!

Going to take the kids to the Winter Wonderland that's here each Xmas- huge ferris wheel, food stalls, hot chocolate, ice rink...I gots that Xmas feeling!!!!!

Hope you all have happy, restful weekends guys. xx

Grrl Is your DH off work at the weekends? Could he take the kids somewhere for a couple of hours to allow you to have a sleep in the day to catch up.

I truelly believe that lack of sleep is a form of torture and I really do genuinelly not know how you are managing. I'm not suprised you shout at your kids, I do, and I get 6-7 hours sleep a night.

The other thing I wondered (last night when I couldn't sleep and I was thinking about your situation ) was is your older DS old enough to understand the concept of a star/reward chart? As in, he gets a star if he stays in bed and doesn't get up and when he has 5 stars he gets a treat? I used one for DD1 when I potty trained her and it worked a treat. Worth try? Kids seem to repsond well to them I think???

i'm not sure if he'd understand Gooddays, but he does seem to understand more than we give him credit for. I've basically been awake since around 3am. Dyl woke and i settled him, then George started getting out of bed at 4am. I sat next to his bed and he stayed there, only tried to get out once. I was knackered and freezing though, so after 20mins i went back to bed and he got straight up. Been up and about since just before 5am. Maybe i'll try the chart, he can have a Cbeebies magazine when he gets enough stars maybe.

How old is he? DD1 was just 2 yrs old when we did it with her, and she understood more than I thought she would.

You've got nothing to lose by giving it a go hey?

Good luck!

grrl - we are on a similar behaviour 'phase' at the mo.
we got MIL in on the act and we have a chart.
ds1 either gets a smiley face or a sad face (different colour pen too) drawn in the box for the day.
if he gets a smiley face he can have a 'grandma sweetie' - a milky bar button from a big tube she bought.
if i remember, we do it at the end of breakfast so he gets chocolate for breakfast, ah well! it's worth it if it works.

the thing that really seems to make it work though is reporting back to grandma - either by phone/skype/when we next see her.
the way she talks to him kind of grates on me but seems to work wonders on him - and i am prepared to try anything after weeks of crazy earlyness.

we had a bad run of quite a few sad faces - not helped by MIL being away on holiday (how inconsiderate, lol!). so i bribed him with TWO sweeties the next day = 6.18 hoorah!
(we had just had 5 days full of solid activity and i was shattered, but so was he! not sure if i can manage that every week though).

back to 5.35 this morning i told him he could still have his smiley face if he went back to bed for 10mins (figure 25 was too big a number for him) - he went to 5.58 (we can count that as 6 i think!.

babysteps....and we have tried 2 different clocks, no real improvement from either.
have tried slightly later bedtime but i'm not prepared to give up my evening entirely - no diff.
tried more food/drink before bedtime - no diff.

i know what it's like, sympathies by the bucketful

You poor people with sleep problems - so far Connor just seems to be getting me up before everyone else (and several times a night); and I'm so knackered... Nothing compared to Grrrl and JKS though. I like to blame teeth at the moment (poor guy still only has 3 and about 10 coming through which is upping my calpol bill) but I know I might end up with some habits which are hard to break. So DP and DD are getting a lie in and I've once again been up entertaining Connor for hours...

...Now to get the rest of the house up (evil )

BTW Jewels - how is breakfast going? I seem to have a couple of cheerios and shreddies fans, but also we try chopped up fruit, toast/muffin/crumpets with cream cheese, marmite, peanut butter or houmous; or eggs of various sorts, even avocado (on toast or in chunks), baked beans (which were a hit), pizza (which was a hit with Connor but not Freya (who seemed to sense that you're not supposed to eat pizza first thing in the morning )... ...all sorts on non-breakfasty things really (Connor was a fussy eater to start with so I tried anything for a while). They both like porridge with fruit in too though.

Hope you're all having a nice weekend (and if you're snowed in, you're making the most of it - our snow had melted by the time Freya got up so she didn't even see it ). So we went swimming instead .

Also, as far as xmas/birthday presents for one year olds go, we got DS a ride-on thing which is also a walker (and makes lots of tunes) - he loves it, although he hasn't worked out how to sit down on it yet without falling over.

Hi all,

DD2 eats 2 weetabox for breakfast every morning.....since she was 6 months old. How boring. She won't eat anything else (although she loves eating our bran flakes and all bran, but I don't feel she's quite ready for all that fibre!!!). I've tried giving her different stuff but she's not interested. She is such a creature of habit!

I've had a good weekend here. Been feeling very positive, really hoping it lasts. I'm seeing the GP tomorrow, but not really sure what to say now??!!

Hi

Good sleep vibes sent to everyone

Gooddays - wow 2 weetabix Glad you have had a good weekend and docs is helpful tomorrow.

Chaotica - crumpets a big hit in this household too

Had a lovely roast dinner at my mum's today which was fab!! Dcs are always spoilt rotten when they go there which is nice and lots of people to help with them as DH at work.

Have a good night all!!

Hope it goes well at the docs tomorrow, Gooddays. Don't let the few good days put you off telling him/her the truth about what you've been feeling like when you're down though - I know it's hard when you're not feeling that way though. You'll regret it if you have another slump (which I truly hope you don't) and you have to go back to the gp because you didn't have anything to say first time. Just describe what you're like?

Sorry Gooddays - (pressed 'post' too fast!) - "just describe what you're like when you're down" is what I meant to say. I hope it all goes well.

So I went to the GP, who was lovely. It did feel a bt weird as I have felt good since last week, but I took chaotica's advice and told her everything. She was very helpful and has referred me to a support group, and also given me a prescription for low dose ADs. She also gave me a prescription for more (different) anti-biotics for my chest infection (which I have now had for 2 months and is really getting me down) and an inhaler as I'm getting wheezy and tight chested with the chest infection. She suggested I treat the chest inf first, and see how much of a difference that makes, then try the ADs if I still feel bad. I am hoping not to need them, I didn't even collect the tablets from the pharmacy, but I know I have the prescription in my purse, should I need it.

DD1 is at the CM all day today so I only have DD2 to contend with. I have washing on the line, and the house isn't too bad so I might even wrap some Christmas pressies while she is asleep! Only a month to go!

Glad to hear things are moving forward Gooddays

I'm putting up the office Xmas decorations today. I'm pretty sick of making paper chains, but i'm starting to feel Xmasy!

Sleep still crappy here, but last night was about 7 hrs i think- Dyl slept through until almost 6am, George got up at 4am, faffed around in our room for 45mins (climbing on our heads, asking us questions) then started to drop off! But then when i tried to creep out of bed when Dyl woke he woke up too. I think bringing him into our bed but ignoring him might be the way to go. Let's see!

In other news, Dyl has started eating like a horse! He's usually just had a bite or 2 of whatever he's given, but the last few days he's eaten more than George- he especially likes pasta, chicken, nanas (bananas) and ready brek.

Evening ladies

Glad it went well, gooddays.

And GO Dyl!

More later if I ever escape from the mountain of work I'm squashed under...