December 2011: They're one Jim, and highly illogical!

[LittleMissFantabulous]

I went with Gary's suggestion, as it was quite awesome and indeed factual!

:o

Onwards?

Oh, by the way, if any mothers of girls are interested, Laura Ashley has some lovely winter skirts on sale, and since their waists don't get a lot bigger now, for a few years, £10 to £14 for good quality skirts didn't seem that much. I bought age 2-3 and DD can wear them now.

Mothers of boys, any cotton trousers you buy this spring/summer have the potential to come back as longish shorts in summer 2014!

Well done Kat, particularly on not falling over. You're a braver woman than me. I think it must be true what DH says: I am a southern softie! I can't bear the cold or wet. DH on the other hand isn't bothered. He is from Lancs though, where it's cold and / or wet pretty much every day

Pleased to hear all is well with Honey and Rocco

Xiao your post all sounded so familiar. We went through it with DD's health when she was tiny, and when I went back to work I just didn't care any more. Things that had previously seemed so important just didn't matter to me - priorities completely changed.

Oh and Kat I remember that same panic over how I was going to cope with two when I was pg with DS. I decided to try not to think about it until he arrived, because then you just have to get on with things, and you will cope.

Hope Octoboy and any other poorly ones are doing a bit better today.

I got DS weighed today. He'd lost weight when I last took him early Dec, so I was really hoping he'd have put some on this time. Fortunately he has, and seems to have decided 75th percentile is the line for him. So it looks like cutting his daytime milk has done the trick at least in terms of getting him to eat better quantities. Now to work on his fussiness. HV said the usual advice is to offer up 3 meals a day, which he can either eat or go hungry, no alternatives offered. She recomended not to go so hardcore with DS since we have had weight issues with him, so I'm going to try a halfway house. I know he'll always eat breakfast, so the plan is to make either lunch or tea something I know he will eat, and the other meal something he probably won't. We'll see how it goes!

I'm about to try convincing the boy he likes piriton. He's not in the mood, but needs must. The pox have completely covered the nappy area. Buttocks, all the way up his cleft to his anis, his testes and his penis are crusted with 'em. He is not amused. I'm dousing him with barrier cream regularly and it seems to b offering a little relief. He slept a little better last night, I got a couple of 2 hour stints but am shattered now. Away to he's to see if we can improve on it tonight:)

xiao - wow on taking DS to Kenya, I would love to take the DCs on safari when they are older. So sorry he got so ill though - hope he is fully recovered soon.
LMF - those chicken pox look pretty horrendous too - poor him and poor you.

kat - sorry - didnt mean to send you over the edge! Having two is hard but of course you will cope and it can also be lovely too! Seeing Freya chase DS around and seeing how much he loves her is great. I had a bath and a beer and the day didnt seem so bad after all!

We are perhaps making some limited progress on the crying/sleeping. Tonight I put her down awake and although she cried on and off for 30 minutes ish it was not so hysterical or continuous and last night she did not come into bed with me at all and only woke twice (albeit for an extended 2 hour on and off crying at 1am till 3 am!!)

oi - I would like to send F to a CM rather than her nursery as she is not very settled there and she likes to see the same faces and it is a large nursery so she does not have the consistency I would like but can you believe that there are only 4 CMs in our town (of 12,000 ish people!) and unsurprisingly they are all fully booked up!

Forgive dire typing. Exhaustion + iPhone = giggling Northern >_

OBEM time. Getting broody

Ooh, get you, with the responsibilities, kat!

Weight sounds good, faffin, however it was achieved. BTW, I'd like my MIL to meet that HV and her "no alternatives". She encourages DS to behave as though he's at a cafe!

Here's hoping for a silent night and sweet dreams for all, but especially SpOctobott and jigglebaby!

kat and gary how are you both 10 weeks already? Seriously, how are our pregnancies going so fast?! I've only put on half a pound so far, no idea how though!

LMF I'm not surprised they're really bothering him, it sounds awful poor little chap.

faffin glad DS has put weight on this time. DS has always been on the small side, and terribly fussy. I was never happy for him to go to bed hungry, if he doesn't want something there's always the offer of toast or fruit, I just avoid letting him have any nicer alternatives.

Well the canesten cream has almost cleared up the nappy rash, does that mean it was fungal again?

DH has half cleared the garage, and will get it finished tomorrow. Just annoying that at least 75% of the junk he took to the recycling centre belonged to the people we bought the house from!

Ooh, get you, with the responsibilities, kat!

Weight sounds good, faffin, however it was achieved. BTW, I'd like my MIL to meet that HV and her "no alternatives". She encourages DS to behave as though he's at a cafe!

Here's hoping for a silent night and sweet dreams for all, but especially SpOctobott and jigglebaby!

BOi was abed by 18:30. DH is out boozing and watching footie. I finally got around to watching the Xmas edition of Downton --which my mum completely ruined the other day by saying "oh he dies, doesn't he?" I had no idea who was going to die, but my usual stupid grin whilst I watch it did not surface.
7 your pg has gone so quickly!
Cheung - enjoy work, as Xiao said, when you go back it does feel different. At first, you work hard but you don't really care - there's something much more important at home. The nursery sounds nice. My future cm is Ofsted outstanding too. Only the best, eh?
Oh Gary, I forgot about spending the last 10 weeks of my pg with the world's fattest feet. Good luck !
Kat it is only natural to miss the delights of Manchester and its Oi-sted outstanding shopping. (And it never rains inside the Trafford Centre, faffin! )
And lo, I am the beholder of joyous news - the hen night will no longer take place in Blackpool! We are going to Leeds instead. I've never been for a night out in Leeds, but I hear good things.
I am saved.
(It's a shame we're not staying over, as shopping is supposed to be good there too.)
I really must sort out wedding outfits and fancy dress attire!
Right, be off with you lot, and lets hope the babies stay asleep nicely as we settle down to OBEM - I've paused it to write this. Goodnight! Good luck lmf!

Hurray for Leeds!

Good luck with the clearing out, seven. I've been trying to persuade DH that we could live in a static caravan on the building site of our new house (to save renting somwhere else, which wld be min 6 months and up to £9K), and it occurred to me that NorthernChinchilla needs it now, you soon, we from mid-March (do you need fitting in, aethel?) and maybe Honey longer term, to relocate. It could be a quite literal "December 2011 bus"

Oh thank the heavens and praise the Lord Oi, truly you have been saved from a fate worse than death! Leeds is great actually, v attractive, and the shopping is amazing as well- knowing the two I actually slightly prefer Leeds to Manchester.

By the way, that made me smile about your DH faffin; I'm N.Lancs/Manchester, and all of my colleagues down here in Kent comment on my amazing array of hats and coats... As a user of public transport it's even more necessary, but they just don't seem to get the 'you need one for cold, one for very cold, one which goes with brown things, one which can be worn in Spring, one that can be worn with chunky sweaters, one smart one...'

Pleased to hear about the nappy rash seven, and hope it stays away. And sending kisses and sleep vibes to Octoboy, poor thing. Oh, and I will take a look at the Discussions of the Day thread about you LMF, saw that and grinned- have you posted?! And hope you get some kip tonight.

It's v true Xiao; I had a dose of that when my Mum was ill- there's really only us as family, and she collapsed and spent six weeks in intensive care, doing a very good impression of a bloated corpse. Had to discuss getting ready to action her living will- ie letting her die- and had the flippin' doctors crying as it was all so horrible. Won't go into the whole thing, as it was beyond horrendous - and would take up 45 squillion posts- but now everything I face, whether work or anything else, I know that it's not really that bad, because no-one I love is dying in pain.
On a slightly more cheerful note, she did a Lazarus and is now OK, albeit rather disabled.

Thank you for all the good luck/cleaning vibes for the ceiling horror (let's hope it is bloody insulating Plu, we need it!), Operation Stuff-all-of-DS's-stuff-into-other-rooms has commenced, but Bob this is going to be a hideous week. The ceilings are cracked seven - it's just an old house and they need replacing- wouldn't be too worried but the cracks are round where the chimney breast used to be, which is co-incidentally just where DS's cot is... !

Will watch the weather now and hunker down...

Hah! Love the bus idea plu, genius

bored of the whole house thing now... On the up side, I'm Taking DD2 to see her new school tomorrow, really hope she likes it as I'm too evol to try to get another place at this stage. We were v impressed when we looked around last year so should be OK.

Be careful in the snow ladies

xiao that sounds just terrifying. I understand the fear when they font know what is wrong. When DS1 was born and spent four months in the nicu we and them just didn't know what was up. We had drs suggesting all sorts of life limiting illnesses off the cuff which was terrifying. It does realign your priorities; I've found I just don't really care about work. I mean its just work. If the deadline is missed so what - not a good attitude and makes it hard to be motivated. Having a wobble about what to do with my life, can you tell?!

Obv I'm not negligent and do meet my deadlines etc but I just don't get why people get so worked up about it.

And so commences a 4 day weekend in honour of my 32nd bday today (if there was a hysterical crying face emoticon I would use it). Cm having DS an extra afternoon do dh and I can go see les mis at cinema this afternoon am a lifelong les mis obsessive so very excited!! She's having him for free too as a bday treat bless her might take him to sift play this morning knacker him out a bit!! Can't decide whether it's take away or meal out tonight (early meal out to one of the local pubs with boy in tow obviously).

Hope good sleep was had last night!!

Happy birthday figgy!!! 32 is a good age. 31 is too odd for my liking, but 32 is nicely rounded and secure. I too am a Les Mis freak, and am dying to see it at the cinema. Enjoy!!
3rd night in a row ladies! I hope it is now officially routine/the norm. He needed settling once, at 20:15, but that was all, and I had to wake him at 6:30 this morning to go to work. Its amazing how he's gone from having to be in our bed, waking constantly, mucho crying, to just sleep and self-settle. We didn't do anything - no cc or anything. It just happened. I hope that all those with non-sleeping babies soon experience the same phenomena!
Of course, I couldn't sleep. But I'll settle into this new routine soon enough. (he probably won't sleep again tonight now I've said all this!)
I arrived at work at 7:40am (25 miles from home, across two busy motorways in and around Manchester, and the A road from hell) to find that my 'puter bag wasn't in the car after all. It must be at home. I thought about turning around and heading back, facing the real rush hour, but I needed my coffee, and I knew, in thoery, that our software/puter set up means that I should be able to log onto any spare thingy and I would be able to get to my files. So here I am, in my office, with a spare pc hooked up to my screen. T'wonders of t'technology. :)
Still, when the snow hits tonight, no amount of technology will allow me to work if I have BOi with me! Hanker down, ladies! ...Oh I'll go to waitrose near work in my lunchhour and get the necessary vittals for a few days house-arrest. And ladies with bumps - feet up by the fire, please. No slip-sliding if you please. Have a nice day y'all.

Happy birthday figgy! I'd go for a takeaway, a bottle of wine and a good film.

Hope octoboy had a good night lmf.

Terrible night here, shattered today. Really hope we're not still getting nights like this when the next one arrives.

Happy birthday figster - hope the film makes hope high and life worth living (and then when the tigers come at night...with their voices soft as thun-DER...didn't know there were any tigers in 19th century France but hey ho...I spread some cream on times gone byyyy....dum tiddly pom pom)

Sad fact: my brother got cast as Gavroche in the Asia Pacific tour of Les Mis and then couldn't do it because they had pre-made all the costumes and he was too tall

Happy Birthday Figgy, enjoy Les Mis

Happy Birthday Figgy xx

Poor little giant, xiao! How gutting.

I'm v jealous of the sleeping OiBoi (and sounds like I'm not the only one... ).

Glad to hear you sounding so philosophical, aethel. It's hell living in stress and deadline anxiety, whether it's house- or work-related (as everyone keeps saying, sad as it is that we know that!). I'm also feeling relatively calm about moving, even though of course DS will flip out. However, I'm hoping the caravan solution will be an adventure for him, and the next move, onward into the house, will be low stress, as it will have been introduced at such length. Maybe I'm in denial!

Happy birthday, figgygirl!

Now to do my taxes... a confession to earn me a haddocking from NorthernChinchilla, our Sparkly/DSM of personal paperwork...

Happy birthday figgy - I am eyeing up going to Les mis too - love it. Might have to just leave DH with the kids and go.

oi well done to Boi - it is giving me hope. We had another terrible night here, 4 wake ups and one which lasted an hour and a half! She just cannot self settle as she stands up crying. I think I might have to continually go in and lie her down rather than leave her so she can settle from lying at least. I did this on one of the wake ups last night and she settled after 3 attempts of this.

This lack of sleep is ageing me. I looked in the mirror the other day and thought who is this pale faced, blotchy women with grey hairs showing through who looks about 45! I have booked the hair dressers for Saturday. I also dont have the energy to do exercise either.

jiggle, I think what you're describing is called Pick Up, Put Down, although for older children (like ours), it's just Put Down. Hope that helps, in searching for more support, and if you came up with the technique on your own, well done. I had to read about it.

Gosh it's slippery out there, nearly slid over on my way to the shop with DD in the buggy. DH said there was an accident where a car drove into the back of a lorry on his way back from the recycling centre, main A road in the area hadn't even been gritted. We were going to get DDs first shoes this afternoon but decided its not worth the journey in this weather. Anyway, the garage is almost empty, we've had bacon butties for lunch and soon to light the fire :)

Have fun with your taxes plu!