March 2013 - time to wrap them all up in tinsel

[StormyBrid]

Old thread here.

worse we're like Plonky on the timings - we keep mealtimes and milktimes separate. I spotted something in Evil Baby Whisperer that suggested around this age milk should be at the time you'd give a snack. Thinking about it, that's pretty much what we do - milk at the crack of dawn, 11am, 3pm and bedtime, food at 9am, 1pm and 5pm. It seems to work, and Fartypants is definitely in the process of reducing milk herself. Those middle two feeds, she's having about four ounces now.

How is the worselet on mush? Does she show any preferences? If we were sticking with baby led weaning we'd be getting absolutely nowhere. Savoury mushes, she'll try a mouthful then get distracted by the cat. Fruit mushes, she practically inhales. For a reduced stress option, can I suggest getting yourself to Asda? They've a hell of a range of cheap fruity mushes, and then at least you're not having to throw away purees you've spent hours lovingly creating.

Incidentally, six month old Molly may love her porridge, but all that means is that Molly's a total weirdo - porridge is vile. It's weetabix all the way round here, with mashed banana in.

eco hang in there, it does get better. How long until 37 weeks for you?

I am thanking my heathen gods we don't have crawling yet. Nappy changes with rolling are bad enough. Especially when it's a particularly horrific one.

I should probably add, one of the factors that made this seem like the best plan was his lack of financial responsibility and inability to discuss it. If we have serious cashflow issues that he won't even acknowledge then sooner or later I have to put DD and myself first, if that makes sense? If we can figure out an alternative that involves him staying put and taking some responsibility, then that would be grand. The idea of having to move out if he doesn't sort himself out seems to have got him talking a bit more though, which is a bonus!

Oh stormy, I have no words of wisdom other than to echo the 'keep talking' concensus. Separation should be a last resort when there is no other option. There's always a possibility that if your DH is of the lazy variety, once he's out on his own with the feeling of no responsibility, maybe he'll just sit back and do even less? It may be uncomfortable but while you're together you can deal with things together. As long as you're still talking

On the plus side, last night I slept! So the talking is good for something, anyway.

Shall we have a change of subject? Any babies done anything comical this morning?

Mine's pretty funny Stormy....she was standing in her cot holding onto the bars with a blanket in her hands too and we were giggling through the bars, she then did a comedy tip sideways like a window wiper and banged her head but didn't complain until horizontal. That was nice. And, we awoke to singing chatting in cot today rather than crying and it was a fairly Godly hour (0645) so that's pretty smile inducing too.
Sounds like you got some stuff off of your chest Stormy. Good progress! I guess you've used the point that when he decided (with you) to have a child that was the time when he agreed to be a responsible adult and play his role in providing for his family, which includes working and working hard to keep a job/progress/be a role model etc?

But you requested a change of subject so I honour that.

Last night was first night of no milk as part of bedtime routine. She now has it downstairs in fully lit room beforehand. That went fine and we only had one brief wake up and feed at 0415 so we're bouncing off the walls here. By Friday the aim is that we say no to all overnight milk. How messed up is it that despite all the desperation for sleep I'm a little nostalgic already for those nighttime snuggles?
Hope you have a good day everyone. If you need cheering up may I suggest the thread about perfect moments?

Bleugh! Off work as ill again - this is ridiculous! Docs say virus and live through it but yesterday's temp of 40.4 was pretty grim .

On the plus side my dm has taken DS into nusery for a slightly short day, so some rest should be on the cards...

Eco we found that when we moved evening milk to downstairs in front of in the night garden and then had a little 10 minute cuddle where she's not allowed to fall asleep, then put her to bed awake, it made all the difference to her being able to self settle. All about associating milk with calming down but NOT sleeping I guess. Hope your success lasts!

The thing is, he should be deciding himself to be responsible. He shouldn't just be giving responsibility a try to stop me nagging. Still a lot of pondering to do here.

Our baby group was full of five year olds today. Bloody half term. They don't look where they're going and my pfb nearly got squashed, mutter grumble mutter.

Nothing much to report in miniStormy world. She has developed a bottomless appetite for Wibbly Pig lift the flaps books, and her current favourite thing is pretending to bite my toes to make me scream.

DS will actually bite toes given half a chance. And while he ADORES flap books they tend to be erm less flappy after a few reads... I've got quite good with the Sellotape!

Stormy the funniest we have here is the worselet's complete inability to share. If she is hitting the sofa in that inexplicable way that babies do, and I try to join in, she will get hold of my hand and pointedly remove it from the sofa before continuing as before. This is a general theme. DH was quite touched by just how tightly she was holding his hand the other day, until he worked out she wasn't holding it, she was pinning it down as she had his laptop and wasn't giving it back.

I think that is one of those 'you have to be there' stories. V funny in RL. Less so on the page.

On the other subject, I hope you work out a balance that works for you. It sounds like you have your feet firmly on the ground, which is a good thing, but don't lose sight of the intangible benefits of being in a family unit. DH can be a right proper pain at times, but I'd find the whole parenting thing an awful lot harder without his practical and emotional support.

Speaking of which, he was away last night, so the worselet decided that would be an excellent time to be an absolute monkey about going to bed.... and an even worse one about waking up. Hardly a huge surprise given she is so full of snot she can hardly breathe, but I could have done with a second body to share the pain. On the upside, she will now go to sleep herself with minimal fussing, which is handy as once the biting starts I have limited interest in cuddling her.

Good to see I am way behind the curve on the booster seat thing. As usual. I can now consider myself properly caught up as one arrived today. I love it almost as much as I hate the high chair, which is now on the list of things to give to SIL. She isn't even pregnant yet but emailed me last week to remind me not to give away/sell any baby stuff as she wants it! Handy, as I can legitimately off-load said chair without offending the person who gave it to me.

thank you everyone for sharing milk info, we're within normal boundaries. I wanted to check ahead of seeing health visitors tomorrow, stormy and gerry you reminded me I should get her weighed. I trust you lot more than I trust the health visitors.

Rainbow I like your approach to food on the floor. We have now adopted it, thank you. It did mean most of the Mediterranean bake got wasted but hey, she's her own baby and she'll let me know if she approves of my offerings or not! The fried plaice went down much better which surprised me.

Plonky, glad you got the answer you hoped for from stick. Thanks for nursery info, it sounds fun, do they accept big 38 year old girls?? Dh interested in how they are working with your ds on boundaries and appropriate behaviour. How does the 'time out' thing work?

Yummy, what percentage are you on today? Hope you're over the half way mark.

Gerry thanks for encouragement on the downstairs milk thing. One night does not make a habit but it's promising nevertheless. How's half term?

Worse I liked your 'mummy can't bang sofa' tale Glad to hear you have legit excuse to be rid of the high chair. Maybe dd's earlier food fussiness was because she hated the chair too!

Pud Rubbish! You deserve some seriously major immunity now. Forever! Get better soon.

We are on night two of second phase sleep work. Today I have had a model baby. It's been a delight, and what I guess the wonder weeks book refers to when they chat about sunny periods. She napped for an hour this morning and two this afternoon. She accompanied me to not one but two supermarkets and tolerated a walk in the rain too. As a few people have said it takes three to make a habit to we'll get these next couple of nights out of the way before declaring an improvement. I am hopeful.

I know books are popular with ministormy and madam Betty but what other toys are your babies finding engaging at present. Ecobaby loves the remote control, the magazine rack, the bin, my books and my mobile best of all, but she's now pushing blocks through the wooden things (one is supposed to use a hammer but this is superfluous) and she likes destroying wooden block towers I've made. Not really getting anywhere with those wooden place the shaped jigsaw piece in right hole things and balls are funny when rolled at you but then mystifying after that. It's fascinating watching their skills develop!

Best get out of Bath and down to my own fish and Mediterranean vegetables which I will resist throwing on floor.

I can't bring myself to call her fartypants Stormy. She's too cute!

Even cuter when she let's rip then looks at me and giggles.

Our babies are clever enough to laugh at their own farts? I think ecobaby might have some catching up to do!

Favourite toys here are the Tomy eggs (best £3 I ever spent), demolishing towers and emptying out anything she can. I split lots of things between a few different sizes of box and a handbag and she just loves emptying them and then hiding bits around the room!

We are 100% talking with dh now but I am still miffed with him. Maybe its pmt too.

We dont really have no favorite toys yet. Ds is interested in everything but toys.

We are full on blw now. Ds has decided he is too grown up to be spoonfed now that he will be a toddler in 3 weeks.

Will catch up more tomorrow my phone is playing up.

great call Betty! The eggs are going to get ordered soon and I have lined up three boxes to put some of the stuff in. I have spare hand bags too. Brilliant tips. Thank you.

Yummy, our thus far BLW baby who was picking up pre loaded spoons at six months will now not entertain holding a spoon. How very dare we suggest she has to do it herself. She just sits there mouth open imploring me to pick it up and pop it in her mouth. Babies!

Favourite toy here is this revolting elephant

It was a Christmas present from a well meaning uncle. She loves it, and to be fair I'm quite impressed with how she's getting the hang of "push the on button, catch the ball, put it back in, catch it again"

It's funny, those tomy eggs. Everyone I know loves them apart from one friend who described them as "the gift you give a kid whose mum you hate". Her reasoning was that the different bits end up all over the place and you're constantly trying to find them. Maybe she's just a bit anal about putting toys back together before they're put away. But as I'm similarly pernickety I'm avoiding them for now!

Half term is a bit disappointing at the moment. The tiny one is still not well, and to be honest I'm struggling to stretch my maternal instinct to accommodate a baby who is just shouting all the time. I found myself wishing I was at work so that she could be someone else's problem for a couple of days. What a bitch I am! Fingers crossed she'll be better tomorrow and we can start enjoying ourselves!

Things aren't great between DH and I at the moment. I'm not sure why really, but what's worrying me most is that I don't really care. If we argue, I just feel a bit blank afterwards. A bit shoulder-shruggy. I don't really know how else to explain it, I'm sure it's more complicated but to be honest, half the time I just find myself quietly thinking "just go away and leave me in peace". I've tried talking to him, I'm sure he knows things aren't great as well, but just like mr stormy, he will do a lot of things to avoid communicating.

My bet is February-itis. Roll on spring, I'm in desperate need of some vitamin d and some fresh air.

February-itis is a bitch, Gerry. I think dp is suffering from a hefty dose. Could it be that you're mentally exhausted? Months of cold, going back to work (and your job is known for being stressful), doing everything for dd, and February? Maybe you just have nothing left for dh.

But it'll be spring soon. Maybe the sun will come out and things might get easier. Am I right in thinking your dh works away a lot?

Worse I liked the story :) we have some similar behaviour here.

Our favourite toys are anything that's not a toy, particularly those behind door springy things, and the walker. I quite like the hide n squeak eggs, I try to tidy them away without looking at the shape underneath. It's a memory test!

Eco nursery discipline...hmm well they can't only reward good behaviour and ignore the bad, so they try to remove a child from a situation and distract before things escalate. They have a zero tolerance policy on biting, so then a child is removed and spoken to, regardless of age. However they do try to recognise everything as a phase, so separTe the behaviour from the child. When DS is separated he just goes to another part of the room with his key worker, given opportunities to calm down and then brought back to the other children.

It sounds like the sleep trickery is working! Fantastic. Can she convince my DS that 6am is a bit too early for me?

I went to the office yesterday to do some Proper Work. It was good, felt quite rewarding even if it was just data entry. There's nothing like blazing through mountains of paperwork and watching the pile dwindle. But I got quite a few comments about DS being in nursery. Like 'isn't he with his other grandma?' (No! They live in Wrexham!), 'oh...maybe nursery will be good for him', and my personal fave : 'hard to leave them isn't it?'

Actually no. I'm a shit SAHM. Stop judging. I like to work, it keeps me sane. Grr!

It absolutely is all February's fault! It's February's fault that I have no money. It's February's fault that I've finished series 6 of the Big Bang Theory and the only episodes from series 7 on catch-up are 3, 4, 5 and 9! It's February's fault that DP fell out with me because I bumped into a male friend yesterday which obviously means that I'm cheating on him. With DS in tow. In a busy shopping centre. For 5 minutes. And it's February's fault that I'm at work on a Wednesday morning because the woman I job-share with has to have it off for half term. Grr.

DS's funny story (which will probably only be funny to me) was the other day. He was standing at his toy box, banging away, in his own little world. He's had a bit of a cold recently and sneezed. I thought nothing of it and carried on mumsnetting or facebooking doing my very important business, looked up at him and he'd turned to me, grinning like a loon with two big trails of snot running into his mouth from his nostrils. I burst out laughing before I shot off for some tissue (absolutely not kitchen roll )

We had to go to the doctor's yesterday as he had a very sticky, gunky ear when he woke up. Apparently he had an infection in his middle ear and it's burst, bit like a spot when it pops is how she put it, but it's all the infection seeping out now. And he has a small hole in his ear which will heal by itself. He keeps tugging on it and putting his head ear-down on the floor, pillows, me.

This is the current favourite of the vast amount of plastic tat as well as the standard remote controls, mobile phones, tissues; usually used. It's actually quite a good little toy. The farmer sings. He's totally hammered!

betty absolute golden idea of putting things in various boxes. I'm going to steal that one!

plonk I do the memory test with DS's bath toys. It gets the brain going. I'm ever so smug when I'm right!!

Fucking February.

This morning, as I was getting out of the shower, DP came into our room and put DS on the bed. He was going to work and saying goodbye. I was stark naked and brushing my teeth. 2 minutes later DS crawled off the bed and was on the floor screaming. DP was not yet out of the house and I might have screamed at him. A lot.

Since I started working again I've asked DP a few times to please get up earlier on the days I'm also working so that this situation (which was only a matter of time) could be avoided. Alternatively, please put DS in his cot to play with some toys. It dragged up all of our issues again.

I somehow managed to get DS to nursery, then came home and bawled my eyes out. I've not managed to do any work today, have just been thinking about all of our problems. He's under a lot of pressure at work and is just crapping out at home, not taking enough responsibility or giving me much support. I think DS and I are going to stay at my mums tonight. I'm so upset.

Shot month, isn't it? At least it's a mercifully short one. Have just told the man I need some space to think. His response? Total silence.

Shit month, even, and shittier autocorrect!

Stormy do you want to find a flat together?

Its Februarys fault that some of our men are being twats.

gerry like you I am not too bothered after arguments. I think its because our dc are a priority and are the centre of our world. I should have said in earlier post although i am talking to dh there is no feeling and i am glad he only has 1 day off from work. I blame sleep deprivation.

plonky you are not alone I too am a rubbish sahm. Is ds ok from the fall?

something poor ds. Hope he gets better soon.

eco we had no overnight feeds last night i dont know what happened. I feel so tired even though i got a good nights sleep. 10-6 without a peep. Looking forward to the next phase?

I too confess i play with ds toys well someone has to as he doesnt. I put things in the back of the truck and dump the stuff on the floor and start all over again.

If you want to move to Hull, Plonk, sure. Moving closer to MIL isn't in my plan!