July 2010: It's about time, that we all went back to rhyme!

[Spirael]

Though mutiny is always an option.

It's really windy here too. I'm going to my sisters in a min then I've got a friend coming over at 3.

I KNEW saying that D's naps were good at the mo would jinx things. He still went down really well but only slept half an hour. He was up earlier than usual today so not sure if he was overtired? I can't even tell the difference really I just put him down 5 hours after waking in the morning and that seemed to be the magic formula.

woodlands I find it so strange that some children seem to get their 'illness' and they just get it over and over again. Hope you get some work done even with him at home!

tsc today any better? considering you don't really like bf and do it really cos formula's so expensive, you're properly committed to this one!

cake glad you had a good weekend, am a bit

Ack! It's horribly wet and windy here, had to drop the car off at the garage to get the bumper my dad 'decorated' resprayed, did my pelvis in pushing buggy to the taxi rank, now have to go back in to pick the car up and I'm really hurting now :( sorry to whinge, I'm a bit fed up!

S has his MMR tomorrow I'm dreading it so, so, so much.

Yea tsc I realise he's anti-formula, so was S but thankfully I wasn't tied to bf for more than 12 months! It might be best to cancel your trip, esp if the Dr said he wouldn't go and you're so run down, won't be any fun for any of you. I take it the weather's horrible where you are too so no chance of going out anywhere as a distraction?

Sorry you're feeling down tsc. I would definitely, absolutely cancel trip to granny's

I too have cabin fever. Bored, bored, bored. Blowing a gale and tanking down outside.

With a teething toddler and a bored (almost) 3yo

Joy

Sorry everyone is feeling shitty and fed up. I've just got back from my sisters. My friend was supposed to be coming round at 3 but this morning she put on fb that she was really ill so I commented on it saying will I not be seeing you today then but she didnt respond.
I text her earlier asking what time she'd be over and she didn't reply it's not like her to not reply to either so now I'm worried. I don't think there's much chance she'll be over now but I want to know what's going on.

I know I'm a bit old fashioned in this respect, but have you thought about ringing her instead of using fb and text?

tsc I would take docs advice, is grannies near a surgery/ hospital also plus that journey would be awful with an ill toddler, what does dp say?

apologies if its been done as I was off here for a while but what is everyone getting for xmas for LO's? we have a little people garage, cars, Cars 2 DVD for me and a leap frog counting toy, DH is buying me a netbook it better be a white one

L has been so constipated screaming as he farts in pain, then has had 6 solid logs and now finished off with a scream and explosion! doesnt help that the only fruit he likes is banana, but have started getting smoothy into him this afternoon.

The next door neighbour here is odd, very lonely bloke who has left his wife and has his son with him, (who seems to love dh) he doesnt allow him to see his brothers or mum, he sneaked to see his mum yesterday and to punish him his dad has locked the door and left the key in, he was quivering trying not to cry, his phone had gone dead and couldnt contact his mum, he came in and called her, its lagging it down and he is waiting for his mum and refuses to come back in :( hes 13

Lolmlisc I was going to ring her but then thought if she is at work she wouldn't be able to answer. Not to worry she has finally text me back saying they were stupidly busy at work (children's centre) and wouldn't be out of there til 5.

DH will be home by 5 today so it's not worked out too bad.

So, those of you who have older siblings roughly E's age, how often do you wash their hair? I have been feeling a little reading a thread in AIBU started by someone who doesn't wash their 5yo's hair because she doesn't like it. Everyone (with only 1 or 2 exceptions) said she was BU.

I don't wash E's hair because he screams blue murder, therefore W also starts screaming blue murder and I get incredibly stressed out.

He regularly gets compliments on his hair and I truly believe it doesn't smell. It certainly doesn't look like it hasn't been washed in so long that I can't even remember when it was it isn't washed often.

So, AIBU? Should I make him have his hair washed every week?

I don't think dcs this age need their hair washed very often mlic they have such lovely hair and washing it too much just sticks more chemicals and stuff in there imo. A doesn't mind having her hair washed now and we do it once a week - it gets a bit wet in baths inbetween too and at other times e.g she was running through the sprinkler in the garden yesterday so it got a bit of a wash then .

She used to hate having it washed, prob when she was about E's age, it used to go quite a long time between "proper" washes as she would scream blue murder too. Strategies I had were:

Just washing with water, not shampoo.
Putting her in a deepish bath by herself and encouraging her to practise "swimming", she would lie down in the water and most of her hair would get wet that way.
Getting her to have a shower, she didn't mind getting her hair wet then.

Occasionally I just had to bite the bullet if her hair got a bit manky and say "Look we have to do this, close your eyes and I'll count to 20 and it'll all be over" and in 20 seconds I would wet her hair, rub a bit of shampoo in and rinse it out .

If E's hair looks and smells ok I wouldn't worry about it.

Thanks wss

He went through a phase of 'swimming' in the bath but is back in 'refusal to bath' mode again :( If I'm lucky he'll get in and sit down and play. If I'm not lucky he stands there while I quickly wash him and then he wants to get straight out.

He'll go swimming a lot at CPs next week so will have clean hair for Christmas

tsc sounds so shit ur end, poor F, its horrid that you have to give him all that nasty stuff that makes him hyper, im not suprised you feel negative, lets hope it will pass soon.
mylife No they dont fully understand why u say no do they, D really sticks his bottom lip out and cries if i tell him no or take something off him. I think hes going to be a challenger i really do, he really plays up when its nappy time or PJ time, i took a leaf out of ur book mylife and put night garden on in my room and changed him etc on my bed, a change of scene worked well but he still resisted. Dreadfull night last night, he woke on and off for three hours, he wasnt really crying just unsettled, i went in and settled him twice, second time it seemed to work, which is good as i went and got some milk but didnt have to give it in the end.
Is anyone watching 'my child wont eat' on ITV2? I have just turned it over, its interesting but most of it is very obvious. A child of 4ish is having only 8 bottles of milk a day and hardly any solids, strange how people get into these situations.

memphis that's horrendous! I can't believe he can get away with this...seriously, I never shout social services but honestly, that boy is going to be so damaged already, how is nothing being done about this? To punish him for wanting to see his own mum?? Poor, poor lad :(

mlic I wash L's hair about once a week but she's got loads of cradle cap/dandruff so I'm going to attack it with head and shoulders for a bit. I was leaving it but she's started really scratching it and it looks awful. I don't think you need to wash it often though, DH only ever uses water on his and it's fine.

DH realised tonight that S has cut 3 pre-molars and has one more bulging underneath so that'll be 4 in about 10 days, no wonder he's been so miserable!

Ahhhh chu poor S, hope that last one comes through asap! D has been in the same situation for a few weeks now, need to check to see if its broken through any more, it was just coming the other day, i realized that D has been teething almost non stop for weeks, months really, as he now has 16 teeth, maybe it could explain why his sleeping is just shite!
memph that sounds os cruel, poor boy, and such an impressionable age too.

memphis with you on the teething. I haven't had a proper look recently but I think A's up to about 14 teeth now and it feels as tho she's been teething nonstop forever. She's rarely miserable in the day, it's alway sleep that's affected :(

tsc that sound shit :( def don't go to granny's house ffs. That would send you over the edge.

I agree with you chulita about memphis 's neighbour. Really sad.

mlic we wash F's hair around once a week or when it needs it. As the others said, it doesn't seem to need it as much at this age so E's sounds fine.

Have we heard from trudy lately?

On train back from night out with workmates in london - trying to stay awake so I don't miss my stop.

D wasn't too bad last night, woke at 11ish and went back to sleep fairly quickly but I must've fallen asleep sitting up next to him because when I woke up it was midnight and I had the most excruciating pins and needles. He then slept til 3 then woke for the day at 7:10.

I want to go to asda this morning but it's about a 20 min drive and I find if I take him out in the car in the morning for longer than 10 mins he falls asleep a lot earlier than he would at home. If I try to keep him awake in the car hes just really miserable when we get home and is a nightmare to get to sleep when we get home.

16 teeth?

W's 10th is through on one side but not the other. The 9th is through on the sides but not in the middle iyswim

I had a bloody awful night with the kids. So I'm putting my tree up to make me feel better Am I the first on the thread?

No, MLISC. We put ours up last weekend to make ourselves all feel better after the horror of the end of the week and while M wasn't feeling great. It kind of helped... M at least loves the Christmas tree lights and her Elf on the Shelf.

at the number of teeth some LOs have! M has only just got her 7th. I think the 8th is on the way, and I thought I felt some premolars under the gums.

I suspected her sleepless night and fever at the end of last week and over the weekend was due to molars. Is it wrong to be relieved it was caused by something else?? Hopefully the molars will be easy in comparison! [naive]

I would say so mlic, isn't even december yet!

We always go and get a tree on the 1st or as close to it as possible which sometimes works out to be the first saturday of Dec. We then go to a very xmassy maffis garden centre with FC, ice skating and rooms upon rooms of decorations to choose a new dec each (I write the DC's initials and the year on theirs). This year dh and I got ours in Brussels so just F and As to get this year.

What Christmas traditions do you all have?

And what's your presents/xmas morning tradition? Ours is opening stockings with smallish presents 'from FC' for each of us when we first wake then downstairs for breakfast then tree presents (not from FC). What do you all do?

Had a bit of of contrast this morning to my glamorous day in the city yday. Yesterday: viewing case study film rushes being edited and meeting a new video production company and getting all arty farty about the style I want then out for cocktails. This morning: dealt with 3 lots of poo by 7.15am but have had lots of cuddles from A and and 'I love you' from F so it's not all bad. :)

Quietish day today apart from all my work emails and washing I'm behind. F's music class this afternoon and might meet a friend for coffee.

What are you all up to?

Xposted spirael so I was wrong on the tree front!

Also I'm not actually sitting behind my washing and emails :D

I'm shocked re how many teeth A and others have too. memphis's L has all of his now bar his last 4 molars (which F didn't get til 3yo).

at all your Christmas trees, we're putting ours up a week before Christmas. When I was growing up we put it up about the 21st or 22nd so that's just what I'm used to.

We also had the tradition when I was growing up that we opened stocking presents and one big pressie in the morning, then the rest were opened after Christmas dinner (and the washing up and the Queens Speech, so at about 3.30pm basically!). We did this because my dad worked Christmas Day mornings.

Now it used to drive us mad with anticipation when I was a kid but actually it was really good as it spread out the presents over the whole day, we hadn't opened them all by 7am or whatever. By the time we'd opened presents, played with them all and looked at everyone else's it was time for tea (cold turkey) and then the Bond film or whatever.

So far we haven't done this with our dcs but I'm wondering about trying to insigiate something like that, it just made all the anticipation and excitement last a bit longer.

cakes L has been teething forever but only has 8 teeth my friend from support groups 16 mo has all his teeth bar 2 and they are trying to cut!
chulita I felt awful for him, I kept going out and begging him to come in his mum got here an hour later, he said he had told someone on xbox he wanted to die and said he knoew how to hot wire a bike as his dad shown him and he wanted to ride his dads bike into a wall, but his dad would only care for the bike! they are such a well to do looking family, I felt ill thinking about him last night.
our christmas traditions are get up and open our presents but we watch each other open our gift rather than rip them all open at once, then we go to visit DH's grandma then home to cook the dinner, family arrive, we open those presents then we eat, been wondering how we broach the subject of FC as when I was a kid all the presents my parents got were from FC and we never questioned why he got us loads, all the family got us stuff but not our parents.
cakes what do you put into a stocking for young children? and is the big present from you or FC?

L woke at 1am and had exploded all over the bed, but then slept til 6, brought him into our room and as I got up and got dressed went back in and he was asleep again, I brought him into our room and he lay there fake snoring so sweet!
My friend is coming over today for an hour then im meeting DH to go shopping, hoping to get it all done bar dh!

The tree is up and the lights on

Just have to decide what theme to go for this year - gold and...

My mam always puts her tree up ridiculously late close to Christmas too wss, so I rebel now and put it up the minute I can

I think I've rubbed off on her (finally) as she's asked me to decorate hers on 11th this year Yes folks, in my 30s and moved out 8 years ago and I still have to decorate her tree!

We haven't had any traditions. My family is so small we didn't then either, other than having to have breakfast before the big presents. Can't remember a lot other than that but then I've blocked a lot of my childhood out tbh, and don't talk about it either so am not about to ask.

I have bought us all new pyjamas (all with stars on - excited, much?) for Christmas eve and fully intend attempting to snuggle up on the couch with ma boys watching a Christmas film. No doubt dh will be out, he usually is.

And I am hosting Christmas dinner here this year so can crack open the bubbly for breakfast and not have to worry about who is driving :)

S has his mmr in under an hour and it's stupid but I'm really nervous. He's been the jolliest he's been for months today, bloody typical. He hasn't whinged or cried once this morning whereas normally by now I'm itching to get out of the house so the wailing can disperse into the atmosphere. I'm so tempted to ring and cancel so I can enjoy him being lovely. :( Fingers crossed he doesn't react like L.

We've not got any traditions yet, they're still too little and DH and I never had any Christmases together before children so we've not got around to sorting anything out.