March 2005 part 5 - Can't believe they're almost 1!

[busywizzy]

This time last year, we were all enormous, waiting for them to arrive - now they're almost 1

Drat - missed Freya's birthday. Many belated happy returns. Yesterday was my day with dd1 and Iris and I rarely manage to log on. In fact I even had three kids on my hands at one point as dd1 had a friend over, so it was pretty frenetic!

Anyway, hope Freya had a brilliant day!

And happy birthday Harrison. Got there in time for that one!!!

Leo - that doesn't sound good at all with the nursery. Does Switzerland have an Ofsted equivalent?

Calebsmum - congrats on the job. Sounds brilliant. Had a good chuckle over your wee-ridden trousers. I got my current job with an interview where my skirt hem and skirt itself were held up with about 20 safety pins.

Wow - Jo. What a great run. And a fantastic time. Am being pestered by dd1 to go to the CBeebies site now, but will check out your site when I get a mo!

jambot - those burgers sound fantastic. I make the Annabel Karmel ones with apple in, but the sweet potato idea is excellent. Must try them on Iris!

Hello everyone and thanks for the birthday wishes Harrison and Hannah have had a lovely day and I have to say, she was probably far more excited than he was. He enjoyed all the wrapping paper but other than that, he seemed completely unphased by the whole experience

We had a 'few' friends and family around - including my own two, we had 7 babies all around 1 year, one aged 2, one aged 5, one aged 6, two aged 7 and two aged 8. On top of this were all the assorted parents of said children and all our family which totalled up to be LOTS OF PEOPLE We sang Happy Birthday at almost exactly the time Harrison was born last year (complete coincidence but lovely when I realised) and Hannah and all the other older children tried hard to blow the solitary candle out on behalf of Harrison. As it was one of those candles that keeps relighting (DH's little joke) they only managed to put everyone off eating the cake with all their 'spraying' so good job it was a minimal effort from M&S cake

Exhausted now and DH is asleep on the sofa so I'm off to curl up with a glass of well earned wine and reminise on the wonderful year I've had.

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend Well done Calebsmum on the job (how funny about your trousers), hope your interview went well Cristina and glad Niklas is doing better Leo. Very about your Nursery though.

And Jo, you just amaze me more and more

Oh ladies, if you feel like laughing until tears run down your face have a read of \link{http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=67&threadid=156129&stamp=060317193838\this}

We've got it all to look forward to

Happy birthday Harrison - glad you had a lovely day Busy.

Feeling a bit down tonight as it looks as though Grace's party tomorrow is going to be a bit of a washout. Mum and Dad are both really ill will the same flu-type bug that Grace has had, and three of my friends have rung today to say that their babies are not well. In addition, dh has to go up to Leeds on Monday (Grace's birthday) to attend his brother's funeral, so it's all a bit depressing at the moment. .

Busy so sorry I didn't manage to logon yesterday for to say happy birthday to Harrison!
But....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Harrison :):):):):):)!!!!

Well done Busy! What a mad party! I thought ours was enough with 7 babies! Can't imagine with all the other children as well!

So now its time for you to tell us hwat your best memories of the past year were :)!

Bonym :( for your DH and so sorry that you will be without him tomorrow.
However, I am sure you are still having a great party for Grace today :):)! I hope your parents and some of the friends are well enough to be there :)!

No, Switzerland is really bad at regulating things and there doesn't seem to be anything like OFSTED. There is an organisation which has rules but its not compulsory to be a member and our nursery isn't. Another of the mum's called me and told me that she also finds it unacceptable. We are both going to talk to them but if it happens again then we think that we will probably find somewhere else for Niklas to go. Its such a shame as the nursery is really nice, its very convenient and we really like the people, they are very good with the children, it just seems they have some organisational problems.

Well done Calebsmum for the the new job :):):):)!

Jo - fantastic run, well done!!!!! You know you are there now and can defnitely manage the marathon :)!

Yippe, the sun is shining today, just waiting for Niklas to have his sleep then we are off outside!

Glad Harrison had a good day yesterday Busy. Hope Grace's party goes ok Bony. Lauren's cousins didn't make her party as they were also all sick.
Sadly, I must I think I must announce the demise of the two nap day. :) Lauren is going down later and later in the morning so by the time she's up there's not really enough time in the afternoon for a nap. Of course this means she's getting really tired and I've moved her bedtime from 6:30 to 6:00. She's been sleeping till after 7:00 most mornings so long may that last. I must say I had got quite used to two parts of the day when I was able to do things. Hopefully the midday nap will become a nice long one so that I can still get things done.
Have a new word - 'bye', along with much frantic waving.

Meant that happy face to be a sad one:(

jambot - if it makes you feel any better Iris's standard routine is two half hour naps, where you feel you've barely put her down, and she's up again! And she sleeps 7.15pm to 5.30am. The child is bionic. I've now resigned myself to our fate, and am suddenly coping much better with it than when I was wishing for more sleep. (Not that that stops me cursing her loudly at 5am!).

Highlights of the year are definitely Iris making her first monkey noise, which was hysterically funny. Plus her and dd1 starting to play together and giving each other the giggles, playing peekaboo behind the sofas. And also for me, the birth was an amazing experience, holding her in the pool and just being blown away by meeting my little baby. What a privilege.

Sorry everyone, didn't catch up properly yesterday because I was feeling . Daft I know, as Grace doesn't have a clue about it being her party! (Btw, thanks for that link to the terrible twos thread Busy, it really cheered me up last night!)

Anyway, it wasn't as bad as anticipated - in the end, only two of the invited 5 babies were well enough to come, but my brother came up from London to be here and dh went round to the some of the neighbours this morning and asked them to pop in for a drink so in the end we had quite a houseful. Unfortunately Grace wasn't her usual smiley self as she'd only managed 1/2hr sleep all day - hopefully she will make up for it tonight!

Congrats on the job Calebsmum - had to smile about your trousers!

Great picture on your sponsorhip page Jo, I am dead impressed with you - there's no way on earth I could manage anything like that.

Leo - sorry to hear about the nursery problems. It's such a worry isn't it? I was chatting to one of my friends today (one of the ones whose baby isn't ill!) and she has several issues with her nursery. It's just an extra stress you don't need.

Jambot - I'm wondering if Grace is also heading for just the one nap as she seems to be able to stay awake longer these days. However, her daytime naps are all over the place since she's been ill so I need to try to get them sorted again now that she is on the mend.

Christina - any news on how the interview went?

BonyM - Glad to hear that Grace had a lovely party in the end. These things often turn out not exactly as you had planned, but are still great nevertheless.

Freya had a lovely birthday on Friday. I took her to her Jo Jingles class as normal in the morning and everyone sung Happy Birthday to her. This obviously tired her out as she came home and had a 2 hour nap! We are actually having family round next weekend, but I felt the need to celebrate in some way on the actual day so we had a rather impromtu birthday tea after school for her (hastily arranged by me the day before). DH came home from work early and my mum came along. Also Ethan had a couple of friends back from school who have got siblings who will be in Freya's year when she starts - the mums came too. Everyone had a lovely time, older ones played nicely and Freya enjoyed her first taste of her homemade birthday cake. Although it wasn't really supposed to be a party for her it kinda turned out that way, and it was a lovely day.

We decided to get Freya a swing for her birthday, I will post photos of her in it when I get a chance. She also got so much other stuff I feel I will soon be squeezed out of my house! She is a very lucky little girl.

I have really enjoyed Freya's 1st year. Sadly that is not something I could have said about Ethan which still makes me a bit upset at times. I am now really looking forward to whatever the next year brings, and to Freya growing into an adorable toddler!

Thankyou very much to BonyM and Pidge for visiting my Just Giving page, I will keep you up to date with my progress . Another long run next Saturday, just hope the weather improves soon as it has been pretty grim this weekend.

BW - Ethan too was more excited about freya's bday than she was. He got up early and then was most put out when she decided to have a lie in. He was very pleased that she needed lots of 'help' to open her presents. Might be tears at Xmas when she wants to do it by herself!

Leo - Hope you have a better time at nursery this week. Are there other nurseries near by that you could consider? I know it is a big decision to move them though, they do get very settled.

Anyway off now - it is getting late.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR GRACE
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU

Have a nice day BonyM

Will post more later

Happy Birthday Little Grace. Have a lovely day.

Happy Birthday Grace :):):):):):):):):):)!

Lots of love from
Laura & Niklas

Happy Birthday Grace

Lots of kisses - Freya xxxx

Sweetest thing. Lauren has started giving any babies she sees in a book a kiss. So cute. If I show her a baby mag, she kisses all the babies in the adverts!

Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes.

Unfortunately, poor Grace is still feeling under the weather so she has not had the best birthday. She's been really grouchy all day and slept a lot more than usual. Keep wondering if I should take her to see the GP, as she's not been well since last Wednesday, but am certain it's nothing serious and would probably just be told "it's a virus". Will see how she is tomorrow, and if no better I will probably take her anyway.

Freya's birthday sounds lovely Jo - glad you all had a good time.

How cute about Lauren kissing the pictures of babies, jambot . Grace also adores other babies and loves to look at pictures of them.

Happy birthday, Grace.

Sorry to hear Grace was poorly.

Belated happy birthday Grace. Hope you're feeling perkier soon.

LOL at Lauren kissing babies.

Iris has a magnetic attraction to my legs at the moment and is constantly crawling over and then standing up hanging on to them. She then looks up and says "Hello" in exactly the same sing-song intonation I use on her. V. sweet and everything, but it's driving me slightly crazy that I can't move without this limpet attaching herself to me. We shuffle around the kitchen, as I try to make breakfast, with Iris hanging on my legs and saying "hello" imploringly!

wow, Pidge - very impressed with Iris saying realy words! We have yet to hear anything that resembles a real word coming from him.

Bonym - I hope Grace is feeling better.

Today I ahve red pen on my collar (a huge scribble which Niklas did when I gave him a goodbye hug at nursery) and toothpaste hand marks on my trousers (I didn't notice he had done that until I was nearly at work)! Great!

We spoke to the nursery today, the leader was very apologetic about the day last week when one of the women was there on her own, she said they have back up people to call but for some reason she didn't do it. Hopefully it won't happen again!

Leo - I usually arrive at work with porridge splodges on my trousers and snot on my shoulder. Oh the glamour.

Sounds good with the nursery - at least they recognise there's a problem. I guess you'll just have to keep a beady eye on them.

I'm quite surprised at Iris's language too. Dd1 was always regarded as unnervingly chatty amongst her contemporaries - she was onto 2 word utterances well before she was 18 months, and by the age of two could easily deliver lengthy monologues consisting of a series of 7-word utterances. (Spot the former linguistics phd with her child language analysis here ). Anyway, various friends with chatty first children have had pretty silent second children. We used to joke that the second child decided they couldn't get a word in edgewise, and so might as well not bother until they could really hold their own, at which point there was no stopping them. So far Iris doesn't seem to be silent at all! She has her 4 animal noises, and about 5 'words': again, gone, enough, hello and daddy (well the latter is "dadden", and is used a bit erratically, but she definitely knows it applies to dp.

This morning, as soon as I put my cycle helmet on, Iris interrupted her porridge eating to make LOUD "mwaaah" kissing noises at me. Aaaaaah.

Oh Pidge, Iris is just tooo scrummy for words and I too am seriously impressed by her words (as much as I'm impressed by Jo's running and that's A LOT)

Harrison has no words either Leo but can grrrr like a lion, ssss like a snake and can now click his tongue like horses hooves (hope that makes sense) He's also big into kissing but only when asked, at which point he opens his mouth wide and bestows his wet slobbery mouth on you

Life here is very, very busy as I try and fit a full time job into as few days as I possibly can. I know it was my choice to come back part-time and on my days off, it's worth every penny but on the days I work, I feel very cheated that I've got as much work as anyone else and yet get paid 20% less. The difficulty is that I manage a large department of people so it's not like work can be taken off me, I just have to do what has to be done.

Anyway, I've been thinking back over our first year with Harrison and favourite memories are - Hannah meeting him for the first time and asking 'is he really ours', seeing the two of them fall completely in love with each other - I thought it would wear off but it hasn't yet, hearing his screams of delight when she chases him around the floor, getting a kiss from him the very first time and in a funny way all those middle of the night times when I've had him snuggled in close to me, smelling him and feeling his soft skin next to mine.

Most of all, I'm overcome by just how much I love him. When Hannah was born, I was completely overwhelmed by the responsibility of having a baby for the first time and it took me a while to relax into being her mummy. This time though, I was completely hooked from the second I set eyes on him and have loved every fibre of his being ever since. I can't really put into words how strongly I feel but I don't suppose I have to as I'm sure you all feel exactly the same

Knew I'd get all sentimental

Ahh busy - you have brought a tear to my eye. It's true though, having babies makes one incredibly sentimental - dh is even worse than I am - he can barely think about Grace without getting all teary .

Glad to hear that the nursery seem to be getting their act together Leo - hopefully there won't be any re-occurances.

Am dead impressed with Iris, Pidge - Grace has no words other than mama and dada but her use of them can sometimes seem a little random so I'm not entirely convinced... Her only animal noise is that of a lion, which she does with great relish. Like Cleo, Phoebe was a very early talker (and there's not shutting her up these days ) - having said that she was quite early with everything - sitting, crawling, walking etc. and I have noticed that Grace is slower. She does seem to have an incredibly enquiring mind though, so I am in no way concerned!

One of the funniest things she does at the moment is to "play" the piano. She will sit on the piano stool and bash away on the keys, whilst flinging her head back and fore, just like a great maestro! All the time with a very serious look on ther face - it's so comical .

Anyway, she seems much better the last couple of days, although still has a nasty cough which is disturbing her at night. Took her to the GP this morning just to check it hadn't gone to her chest, but all is fine, so just a case of waiting it out.

Busy - it's interesting seeing what you've written about bonding with your baby second time round. For me it's been rather the reverse - I was blown away by dd1 right from the go. Whereas with Iris, I felt an intial surge of love for her, but really it's been from about 8 months on that I've got to be as smitten with her as I am with dd1. I think I missed her "not being a person" when she was a baby. And in many ways she just felt like a clone of dd1 at that stage (well, a clone that slept a lot less ). I don't mean it in a bad way, though I did feel a certain amount of guilt at not being quite so crazy about the baby bit. But now that's given way as she emerges as a funny little character all of her own, who I'm amazed by and adore more and more every day.

It's so fascinating to hear how different an experience it is for everyone.

BoneyM - PHoebe sounds great. I must say Cleo was only advanced on the talking front. She's a lady of leisure in all other respects (e.g. sitting, crawling, walking). Even now she's not that interested in physical activities - would much rather curl up with a book. Iris on the other hand, is like a bull in a china shop and I think has her eyes on London 2012 for the speed crawling and cruising medal!

no time to catch up but wanted to let you know he is properly walking!

will ctch up late rin the week - hope you are llok :)

Wow - clever Harry! . How's he sleeping these days popsy?