Jan 2013: Part 5 - Food is for fun - Sleep is for wimps...

[Pascha]

Here we go again

Lora shame about Tumble Tots - DS loves it! Although ours is only £5 per session and they don't leave the ball pit out for more than about 10 minutes. I do agree it's better when they're moving though.

Katolla - we never did a dream feed. I'm not entirely sure what they are or why I should have done it . I still feed a LOT in the night though.

Sorry for all the non-sleeping / poorly babies. I was chatting to another mum at swimming yesterday and she was saying that not one of her children (she has 3) slept through the night when their rooms were at the advised 16-18 degrees. She always kept their rooms at 20-21. SO I upped the thermostat a little last night (to 19.5) and DS only woke twice (compared to his normal 5-6 times). There was also no screaming at all. Perhaps it's just a fluke but who knows? What do others think about room temp? FWIW, he's wearing a vest, sleepsuit, and merino wool sleeping bag (which is supposed to regulate body temperature and prevent over-heating).

DH has nearly finished his stint of working away. Just a couple of days next week and he'll be done. Now I just have to get used to having him around again!

cupcakes i had wondered about temp at night. Had a couple of bad nights with Ivy and i had noticed its chilly at night and thought it might be related. Only noticed as washing gone awry so she was only in romper plus sleeping bag last night. Blankets no use as she won't stay put!

Found her standing up in cot this morning..in fact she seems to be standing up everywhere today!

No dream feeds here, just feed whrn she gets up usually only once around 3-4.

lora yay crawling

we have clapping now. Very cute.

We gave up dream feeds when he went into his own room at 6 months. It seemed we were only doing it because he would wake when we came up to bed and it was the easy way to settle him again. Once he wasn't being disturbed he just kept on sleeping til around 3am, after about 3 weeks I experimented with just picking him up and jiggling him til he resettled again, which he did very quickly - and that was that! No more night feeds by 7.5 months.

I would love to try Tumble Tots. Shame there isn't one within a half-hour drive. Tried Monkey Music and all sorts of others but nothing much around here. He's starting a proper swimming class in January I think, other than that its just soft play and toddler group for now, and family swimming with DH and DS1 at the weekend.

Excellent on the crawling Lora! Very jealous on the clapping, Apple. I keep trying but Dan isn't big on copying much. He is concentrating on pulling up and getting noticeably stronger by the day. He is very very cheeky. No copying of claps or waves though and not loads of babbling yet.

Meringue hope you're a bit warmer now. We are packing the Jumperoo away this weekend, its just a repository for random toys now. Since discovering independent motion Dan has scorned it.

Bunty, Glorious, Tugs and anyone else having shit sleep I hope it improves for you soon. I feel a little bit guilty that we're not suffering at the moment.

i use our jumper for clean washing

Yes, I agree about the temp, I add a woolly cardi if temp is less than 19.

He has just learned to wave this week and now sometimes drops food to practice :) Also I caught him waving at himself in the mirror, very cute.

We do Mum & Active Baby yoga now, Pramercise and sometimes Story Time at the library. Need to find a few other things. He seems to have started napping consistently from 1-3pm which is good in some ways but also a bit limiting socially.

Thanks, pascha :)

Ended up at out of hours tonight as she woke up 29 mins after going down (which was an hour fight to get her to sleep) and started screaming.

Viral infection, apparently. Nothing but calpol and ibuprofen. I'm dead beat.

We have waving and clapping, but I can't get her to kiss the baby in the mirror ??

No more steps since the first couple. She'll walk holding a single finger, but is very much needing to find her confidence. If she finds she's standing by herself, she very carefully squats, then sits. Surely easier to just move??

Hugs to all struggling. Away to bed.

Aw Bunty. So sorry :(

So lovely of DP to take LO for breakfast this morning and let me have a little lie in.

Slightly less impressed now that he's gone back to bed and I've come down to find breakfast all over the floor, the milk, butter etc still on table, dirty dishes on counter etc

meringue waving in the mirror is very cute (I'm off to get a mirror....).

X just started crawling yesterday. And she's clapping and just about waving. She is saying mama now but i dont think its to me. The growling whilst eating is also getting less. Still has one leg longer than the other though!

Anyone else wonder how they manage to get cuter and cuter every day?!

Sorry about all the non-sleepers. It's awful being sleep deprived.

I've now found that the less sleep X gets in the day, the more she sleeps at night, which apparently isn't meant to happen. pascha I'm the same, I feel a bit sheepish now the sleep is good. Expect it'll be our turn again soon though!

Chased DD1's scan results as its been over 3 weeks. But the consultant is away, so still we wait....

I'm still doing a dreamfeed as I daren't stop in case we then go back to the night wakings.

angiel how's the car?!

Dan woke us up this morning calling for Dada for the first time which was lovely.

We had a child-free shopping day in London today. It felt quite odd to be unencumbered by pushchair or sling or gangly toddler but very nice. It only happens once every few months that both boys are elsewhere.

You're probably right Birdies it will be our turn soon I'm sure.

Off for a long hot bath now.

Wow, talking Pascha?! How exciting. I can't wait for that moment.

DP has redeemed himself and been lovely all day, I feel so guilty for moaning now. LO has been great too. Birdies its true, I feel every day he gets even better looking and I love him even more

I haven't put a pic up... I've gone one better...

How's DD bunty ?

We have lots of waving and clapping here but no crawling. She gets so frustrated bless her. I think we have dada (she waves at DH and says it when she sees him but she makes lots of d sounds so who knows) and mama (when very upset!). She also says oh dear but I don't think she knows what that means. I must say it a lot

Aah how lovely Meringue

DS1 aged 3.1 said Bugger very loudly the other day. He was a very late talker so I don't know whether to be and or proud...

I know a baby whose first words were "oh dear"... I hope LO's first words aren't "fucksake"...

That's amazing, pascha!

Ds has started saying Jesus Christ. Didn't know who he got it from until some twat cut me up. Better than my previous frustrated utterance fuck sake! but still not what I want a 2 year old to be saying at random moments!

She's being a toad, glorious, but thanks for asking ;) has been in bed for an hour and we've been up to her twice already, and she's currently sleeping/headbutting my arm. Sigh.

Am so tired. Feel like I have no life because all I do is sleep, work and eat. I have no leisure time at all because I need to try and catch up on sleep when she's sleeping during the day, or attempt to stay on top of my washing/the house.

Just back from our first ever trip to out of hours 3 hours of uncharacteristic inconsolable crying then extremely rapid breathing on top of the cold, vomiting, not feeding properly had us all worried. She's ok it seems thank goodness. I'm quite blasé normally but the GP on the phone saying 'if she gets any worse go straight to a&e' was quite scary.

So we're not having the best of times. Still, new washing machine arriving at 8am

Bless you, glorious, how scary. I'm glad dd is ok, what a shame for you all.

C has been up most of the night. Her daddy is back on the formula wagon "tomorrow I want a normal bottle and formula and I'll put her into a milk coma"

Except she's waking up upset, not hungry. With what she eats, this child is not hungry.

Yesterday:

Breastfeed
Big bowl of porridge
Breastfeed
Homemade soup and bread, half a rice pudding
Breastfeed
Pain au chocolat (wouldn't eat her dinner)
Breastfeed x a million ...

For meals, she generally eats the same portion size as the toddler

I am getting worn down by this constant battle.

Ds has croup. Again.

Tell me dh is being a twat and that formula will do fuck all. I need to hear that. I don't know I don't want to give her it, other than I'm so proud/happy to have made it to now without supplementing. I have nothing against other people giving their babies formula. I just so want her to just be fed milk by me until she's that year and can have cows milk.

Thanks bunty . She's much better now.

Sorry you've had a bad one and that your DH is being a twat. It must be very irritating. People were always telling me E would sleep better on solids, but I knew she wouldn't because she wasn't waking hungry either. She just doesn't like sleeping! You know your baby and what she needs.

Bunty from what i have read formula does not automatically mean sleep. Could try more protein in eve meal? X

Haha be proud pascha! When did he start talking? Just curious as DD1 has speech therapy and doesn't say loads of words (for reasons we know about but still nice to hear of others who are late talkers!).

merignue that is so cute, love it!

How scary glorious glad she's ok.

bunty you hang in there with the bf. I really don't know about formula as I've read some things that say it does keep them fuller for longer and some that it doesn't. But she's eating alot by the looks of things!

Thanks for asking birdies but the car is the least of my worries...

Molly is MISERABLE. One of the two teeth in between her top fangs has now poked thorugh the gum but the other is still coming and she has turned into a total velcro baby. My happy smiley child is now a moany, clingy misery who has trouble sleeping isn't interested in playing with anything. She spends all day stuffing her fingers into her mouth or sucking her thumb and she's had quite a high temp for a little over 24h now so I suspect there may be a virus joining in the fun. Off to the docs tomorrow I guess. to add insult to injury I looked at the wonder weeks chart and we're bang in the middle of a 'sunny' period. HA

Lovely video meringue I have a youtube channel with stuff right back to when DD1 was born. It's nice to look back

Glorious sorry about your scare. When DD1 was 3 months old we took her to the doc's and were sent straight to a&e because she couldn't figure out what was wrong and we also had the fast breathing with a high temp. We were there overnight but they never found out what was wrong - she just got better! Babies are terrifying and wonderful all at once!

Bunty you know best. Tell DH he is being a twat and formula will not solve it. Your boobs, your milk, your choice. Shove some scientific facts down his throat

Bunty my DH is like that. I think he thinks it will help because it's something he can do.

I woke up this morning, rather than being woken up. It was lovely! Had about 20 minutes just lying in bed before DS woke up at 7.40am. Only 3 wake ups in the night too so all in all I'm feeling rather good today. He has a miserable cold but we bought one of those calpol plug in thingies and that's cleared him out beautifully.

We are getting rid of the bed from DS' room today. I'm looking forward to making it properly "his" room at last, rather than a guest room / nursery, but feeling very wobbly about what to do if we have a really bad night. Normally I would bed down in there with him but obviously won't be able to do that now. Can't keep the bed in there for ever though, and he's got so much stuff now we need the space. What do others do? Can't bring him into bed with DH as DH is a really restless sleeper and flails about like anything.

How lovely to hear of talking babies already! DS is babbling but still a long way off actual words I think.

At what age will our babies start to understand when something is not allowed?
"No, don't open the kitchen bin." Remove baby to toy area.
"No. The kitchen bin is not a toy. Leave it alone. " remove baby again.
"Do not chomp on the kitchen bin. It's dirty." Return baby to pile of naice wooden toys and shut kitchen door. Then next time the door is left ajar...
"Stop opening the kitchen bin and pulling out the rubbish and nappy bags." Remove baby - hit my head against brick wall.

Can it be that she already understands that it is forbidden and therefore is already mischievous? Why her obsession with the bin?

So proud of him :)

Sorry about the poorly babies. This one just lamped his head, again!! How many times can you phone 111 in a week before you get put on a list? He is constantly pulling up on things then slipping off.

Bunty the best sleeper in our NCT group is ff but so is the worst! There is no apparent pattern. Keep feeding as long as you want to. We are mix feeding and I think my milk is drying up now so doubt I'll make it to the year, shame!