July 2010: Drool it, maul it, crawl over it - that's how our threadbabes would eat a creme egg. But why the Creme Egg?!

[CakeandRoses]

Will that do us?

/panic

don't be naughty memph, i'm a recovering jusrol addict ffs

I?m back, after a weekend of mania as we doubled the adult and child population of my tiny 2.5 bedroomed house. All went very well though, M got on really well with the 2 year old daughter of our visiting friends and nothing too significant got broken around the house!

Mobility is causing endless amusement here, as M continues to refuse to get her bottom in the air and opts instead for comically dragging herself across the floor with her arms. She looks very affronted when I then fall into helpless giggles at her efforts.

On the plus side, her lack of success in crawling but taste of movement seems to have made her more determined to walk, combined with watching her 2 year old friend toddle all over the place. M?s been trying to drag herself to her feet on everything handy... Including the cat, who was not impressed.

Very belated, but thanks for the words of encouragement, Trudyla. :) I just feel constantly like I?ll make a better parent when M is older... I get very bored with most of the baby stuff, TBH. I really want to be able to do cooking and board games and such with her!

As for playing alone, M (who is laid back to the point of horizontal) will only manage about 10 minutes of playing alone before she starts to grumble that you?re not paying any attention to her pointing/waving toys!

And now for Cake?s Survey-time (tm?): Who is your baby like?

Hair: What little she has is fine, straight and dark brown. That?d be from me, as DH was born white blonde and only went dark brown when he was older. However M has a double crown like my DF.

Skin-colour: Pale, like DH and I. My DM and I have lots of freckles and she doesn?t appear to have any (yet), so might be more after DH. But her skin does go bright red for ages when pressed or scratched, like me and my DF.

Eyes: She has blue-grey eyes which are definitely from DH and his side of the family, as my family are all brown or green-brown. However the shape might be mine, in particular the eyebrows definitely come from my maternal line!

Nose: The jury is still out as DH and my noses are quite similar, but we suspect mine.

Mouth: Not sure yet... DH thinks mine, I think DHs! She only has one singular tooth still, so we can?t tell there either.

Face-shape: Too pudgy to tell, really. Looks more like mine at present, since my face is rounder than DH?s. But it might elongate into his shape as she gets older and loses the puppy fat.

Ears: Definitely mine.

Body: Definitely DH! She?s long and skinny like he is, while I?m...cuddly. She also seems to have his hands, with long slender fingers and lovely nails.

Height: DH again, she?s very tall and I?m definitely not!

Personality: Mostly DH, as he?s really calm and laid back. However M does seem to have a stubborn streak in her that might possibly have something to do with me!

Any weird traits/throw-back to previous generations?: The eyebrows in particular, we have a picture of M, me, my Mum and her Mum in a row, and we all have exactly the same eyebrows! It?s freaky.

M also seems to still be leaning towards left handed like my DM is. Every new skill she learns first with her left, and 90% of the time she leads with her left.

tsc dp is ONLY 6'1???? I think I only know 2 people that tall!! im 5'6 and the tallest girl in my family and most of my friends, and dh is 5'7!!!! and the 2nd tallest in his family!!!
cakes im a new founder of jusrol, I think bugger it to pastry making if i make everything else from scratch!!

of I forgot to say about L's hands they are like his daddy's really wide and fat with fat fingers, his friends call him sausage fingers and people have already started calling L sausage!!!
I have just had my new shiney washer delivered!!! gone are the 1.5 hours 'quick wash' and hello 20 min wash!!!

Hope your day improves tsc is he teething? A seemed to go thru a growth spurt (feed-wise) the last few days so maybe it's that?

at hobbit feet mlic. aren't they hairy?

oh and i intended to put up a couple of pics of F & A together to the fb group partly to give vik and trudy something to look forward to when they have two but stupidly posted the second one to my profile (which i never normally do) and it was 'liked' before i could remove it. so i guess it'll stay there now.

Unbelievable. After another my breakdown yesterday and my intention of it all having to change around here, M played beautifully today. She played on the floor while I was doing the laundry, cooked and panicked about packing packed. I also once went into another room where she couldn't see me and she didn't cry. I can't believe this. I think she is playing with my mind

Still taking her to the doctors this afternoon, so if this was to get out of it, she was wrong

Aww, thanks for putting some pics up to cheer us up cake, will go and take a look now. Sorry it went wrong though.

Mlic really laughed about the hobbit feet.

great news trudy at messing with your mind

In case mlic anyone is wondering, today's lunch is: miso soup, wholewheat noodles, broccoli, peas and mushrooms for me and last night's pasta with sweet potato, broad beans, green beans, peas, mushroom and broccoli in cream 'cheese' with garlic and herbs for her Ladyship.

Lemon drizzle cake for pud. Yay!

cake I don't know why the ciabatta tastes so good but you have to make a starter dough that sits for 12 hours and then you add the rest. I think that's what makes it chewy. I use the same pastry recipe as mlic.

trudy so pleased M's having a good day! :)

Ati tsc 'only 6'1' you do live in a funny world I'm 5'2ish and DH is 5'7 or 8, anything taller than 5'10 is freakish!

Just got back from a friend's house, she's currently staying at her mil's and they have the most amazing garden, all overgrown paths and hidden nooks. I've got serious garden envy. They do have 3 ponds though and at one point I was clearing sand out of S's mouth, looked up and L was gone. I couldn't find her for ages and had visions of her trying to stroke the ducks, twas not nice at all. If t'were mine I'd have them all fenced off pronto!

mlic I'm with you on sleeping through, if they wake me up they've not slept through even if they wake up, witter and then go back to sleep.

I've got a Dorset friend coming with her 2.5 year old tomorrow til the weekend. They're going to sleep in S's room, S in our room so we might not be getting any sleep at all!

I'm with you tsc, DH is 'only' 6'2" and I don't think that's freakishly tall at all! It is tall, certainly, but I'm 5'9" myself so am tall too. J is definitely tall as well. Not sure I can be bothered to go through each feature, but everyone says he is the spitting image of me. I can't see much DH in him, certainly, which is annoying as everyone says he looks more like DH's best mate! grr!

J slept OK his first night in his own room - through till 1.30 and then I tried settling him a couple of times, but ended up feeding him. Annoyingly I just could not get back to sleep after that, was awake for ages. He woke for the day at 6 (need to buy black out blinds...).

I tried settling him on his front a couple of times, as his amazing sleep of the night before was on his front all night. It's OK to put them down on their fronts at this age, isn't it? Only problem was that he has just learnt how to sit himself up from lying on his front (yes, I know, he is slow...) and he kept doing that. He was really sleepy, he didn't want to be sitting up, he just seemed to be practising it.

I've just got him down for his nap in his cot in his own room too - he normally naps in our bed but now we haven't got the cot next to it and he is getting so mobile, I don't think it's really safe to leave him unattended in it. He protested a bit about being put in the cot but went off fairly quickly.

Cake, how old is F? I always thought he was 14 months older than A (as I thought you said you stopped BFing him when you got PG and he was that old), but I've realised he must be older than just turned 2 now.

Trudy, good luck with the doctor and with the flight to the UK. I'm not looking forward to our flight to Ireland next week, never mind across the world!

Just picked up the Maclaren Quest I've just bought on eBay for £30. It seems in really good nick, I think it's a good buy! I have also been to visit two nurseries this morning - one with an amazing building and facilities but didn't have a very nice feeling, and the other with nice staff etc but really horrible dark dingy building and terrible outside space. It's at the back of our Sainsbury's car park, surrounded by endless empty parking spaces, so it seems very unfair that they have so little space. So I think he's going to go to the one we visited last week, the sure start one, which is not-for-profit, a bit cheaper than these two (which are both chains), has better ratios than are required, and where the staff seemed lovely. He also has a little friend who has just started there.

Thanks for the recipe mlic

woodlands imo, it's fine to put them down on their fronts at this age as long as they can roll, most will be rolling onto their fronts to sleep now anyway

F is 2.7y now. Got pg with A early Nov, when F was just over 1y and carried on bf him til Dec when he was 14m. He was 21m when she was born so i've actually got the longest gap by a month of the small-gap gang members of me, mlic and chul.

good progress re nursery selection. re outside space - F's nursery's garden is pretty crap but they make great use out of it and have loads of fun equipment. They go outside every day.

aha! I was adding 10 months to 14 months and forgetting about the 9 months of pregnancy... doh!

At nearly all the nurseries I've been to pretty much all the children have been outside so it's been hard to see what they do inside with the staff - I guess it's nice to get out whenever possible! The only exception was at the one I think we're going for where it was tipping it down, though even then some children were riding trikes round the covered bit.

Survey-time: Who is your baby like? Some people say me others say dp so she must be a good mixture

Hair: its dp's colouring but thick like me

Skin-colour: she seems fair but neither of us tan well

Eyes: hazel like us both

Nose: mine thank goodness, the only thing of dps I didnt want her to have

Mouth: quite full lips so probably more mine

Face-shape: mine as she has a round face dp's is long

Body: slim with chunky legs like I used to be

Height: She is tall about 2 1/2ft I'm only 5ft 5 but dp is 5ft 11 so she may get height from him although he was tiny when younger and I was the tall one

Personality: She's smiley and cheery like dh but stubborn and headstrong like me. She's fine till something isnt going her way.

Any weird traits/throw-back to previous generations?
This will sound stupid but she is so like my mum. I dont mean looks just certain things she does like how nosey she is or her determination. Of course this could all just me because I must be like my mum. We often joke she is my mum re-incarnated. Other than that she has the curly hair from my dads side (but so do I)

Havent caught up yet as I am getting such a crap memory. I spoke to the hv regarding shit sleeping and not great eating. She said not to offer her water either as she is just using that as an excuse to wake up. Also with food not to mash it so much just give her our food but cut up. I've to remember she is probably taking in more than I think since she has a tiny tum and 3 8oz bottles are ok (thanks for the advice mlic). Looks like bootcamp kicks off again tonight. I need to get this sorted the lack of sleep seems to be bringing on panic attacks again. I'm anxious and feel run down. Sorry about the me me me post ladies. I will catch up with you all soon.

Yeah tsc he does get up but I chase him as he has work the next day. I haven't told him how I'm feeling so can't blame him. Does your dp know what you've been up to regarding finding him a rental? No wonder your having a meltdown if he's not listening. Dude we should runaway to cakes lodge.

Woodlands I've been puttign G to sleep on her stomach since she could roll i.e since she was 6 months! She sleeps bettter that way.

tsc sounds like things are coming to a head, what would you really like him to do to sort it all out (in a ideal world kind of way)

tsc That sounds really hopeless . Can't suggest anything just wanted to say that I feel for you.

stac Sorry to hear about the panic attacks. I def think that sleep deprivation can bring those things on, so good luck bootcamping.

woodlands I'm glad the move went well. Typical though that you would lie awake then We're only flying over from Germany, so not that much longer than your flight to Ireland.

Well, M had the best day for ages. She played nicely a lot today and even smiled and laughed. It's nothing I have changed (other than maybe relax a bit more about the chaos "playing independently" causes) so I don't expect it to go on.

The doctor doesn't think it's a dairy intolerance since it's only her behaviour that is affected, no belly aches, no weird poos or skin reaction. She did say though to try excluding it for 3 weeks if I really wanted to. She said there is no need to find a dairy free formula and that M is old enough to then get a mixture of rice and oat milk.

We have a 1 hour appointment for when we're back to look at the complete picture. She is taking a more holistic approach. She gave me several sheets with lots of questions about everything, sleeping, eating, health, family health, and lots, lots more that I'll have to fill in and then she'll ask me even more questions to see if we can figure out why M is so unhappy. Based on that result we'll decide on future actions and whether a homeopathic remedy might help. I know lots of you will disagree with a homeopathic approach but I'm quite open to it since it looks at people / problems from a different angle without suggesting a black and white or medical solution necessarily and I think in our case that can only be a good thing. I'll see how it goes. I'll probably do the dairy exclusion too though once we're back from England.

Feeling a lot more positive today after such a good day and seeing my little girl smile and laugh rather than scream in anger. Long may it last.

We're off over tomorrow so I won't be on here for a week. Have fun all and when it comes to voting on cake's holiday house, I'll go with viksam's ideas. It seems the woman has some good ideas

Cheerio

OMG im watchng a programme i recorded a while ago called Movin on up;pop hits from 1991!! its hilarious, i was so into all this and i suppose still am to a certain extent. So far we have has such delights as 808 State, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Electronic(Bernard Sumner=my hero!) James, The Mock Turtles. It looks so dated, but then it was 20 years ago!!!!20 years!!!OMG, where has THAT gone!Kind of depressing really............
Right to catch up on the goss.........

hahahahahaha remember (those of us that are on the wrong side of 35) Ocianic and insanity, omg, that is funny!!

Hair: very fine and blonde at the mo so he still looks quite bald.

Skin-colour: fair but he will burn easy like DP

Eyes: quite unusual, theu're greeny in the middle and get blue towards the edge.

Nose: mine but hard to tell.

Mouth: def my mouth/chin.

Face-shape: not really sure, bit early to tell. Prob end up like dp.

Body: long limbs with big hands.

Height: Hes on the 25th centile for height, hes around 80cm.

Personality: Very talkative, babbles all the time. Mostly happy though :)

Any weird traits/throw-back to previous generations?
I cant think of any right now but they'll come out in time I reckon.