June 2013; Toddling into our second year!

[BeanCalledPickle]

New thread ladies:-) I think we filled about ten threads when pregnant and this is only our fourth post natally!

Awww, size 2! DS is size 5!! Isn't it lovely now the understanding and words are coming? We have Ma-MA-MA and da-da and Dizzy (for Ziggy, cat) and shoe and water. He understands loads though and brings things and nods (very seriously and emphatically with a little bow) and shakes his head!

Agree they now know loads of words but she's got a way to go.

Last weekend when I was stupendously hungover though and lying dying on the couch I asked her to bring the remote control over. Silly girl brought the black one not the grey one I wanted. In the end I had to stand up and walk the 2 metres to get it myself. Grrrr

Sunny, it's rare DD will bring a remote. She likes to hold onto them! She is better generally at handing stuff over though.

I love the little head shakes!

She's a size 5 too, Sunbeam.

She 'talks' loads. Mostly Icelandic, I reckon, as it has rise and fall, just no meaning (to us!).

Weeeeee we're back after 2 days in a caravan with the little pickle. Most chuffed to find us all alive and no one has been left behind. Little girl took to camping just great - she loved the bunk bed she got to sleep in. In fact it was the dog who freaked the f* out!

It was a bit of a trial run to see if we might want to take the caravan away for a longer period next summer. DH is now trying to plan a trip to Italy to watch F1 next September. Let's hope the child can drive for more than 3 hours without breaking down in floods of tears otherwise the drive to Italy is going to take a loooong time!

Wowsers. Hats off to anyone camping with a baby/toddler. Well done Mr & Mrs Sunny!

oh dear god. Please someone tell me how you've managed to teach your LO to eat yoghurt or weetabix with a spoon? She's driving me mad. She is so determined to be in charge of the spoon but completely forgets to open her mouth when she lifts the spoon up.

a) I'm doing a serious amount of washing and
b) she keeps whinging because she's hungry because instead of eating food it's being smeared round her face and hair and dog and high chair

Sunny - 2 spoons, one for hair smearing, one for you to sneak in with the food. Or give her toast.

2 spoons here too!

She's doing better with a knife and fork. Thank god!

So cutlery. Are you introducing it because the toddles are showing an interest? I've naively assumed that DS will start reaching for the cutlery when he's ready. As it is, he either uses his hands or sits with an open mouth for things like yoghurt.

she's been spoon waving for months and yes I did the 2 spoons thing for a while but she's wise to me now and uses her spoon to sword fight me off if I try shovelling.

She's moving up a room at nursery next week (bawling mummy emoticon because my little girl is growing up) and they've said they're going to teach her to eat with a spoon and sleep on a matt with a blanket instead of in a cot. I was trying to get the jump on them with the cutlery but maybe I should leave it to the professionals. Honestly these 18 year olds are flipping magic with her!

Has never occurred to me to try knife and fork! Spoon seems to have been broadly mastered though. Nursery does seem to have staff with actual magical powers. They are always telling me things she's done that don't get a look in at home.

Today is my day off with her. I'm plagued by cold and morning sickness so I called and begged them to have her. Guilty but hey ho. She will have way more fun than watching me retch every five mins!

Oh, poor you, Bean. Were you sick with DD? I can't remember anybody else's sickness (probably too busy vomming myself!).

I told DH we had to introduce cutlery, and it's going down well so far. She still also eats with her hands / gets fed a bit, else she'd go hungry, but she's getting to grips with it. And Tommee Tippee first cutlery is on offer at Tesco, so it seemed to be the right time!

Sleeping on a mat with a blanket seems bleak, Sunny. What's the reasoning for it?

Cutlery - we have a houseful of the toddler stuff, so have always laid a place at the table for M since he started solids, pretty much. He can sort of use a spoon and fork - knows what to do but it doesn't always work. Given that DS1 would eat with his fingers given half a chance at 4 1/2 I'm not holding my breath though!

It's not that bad to be fair. Think last time it was weeks 6-10, and I'm right in the middle of that now. I know it will pass but it's yuck at the time. No actual vomming just constant nausea. How SAHM cope with this is beyond me.

Mats on the floor is pretty standard at nurseries. They have cots when they first start but then they like them to move up to mattresses on the floor which are pulled out at nap time and then stacked otherwise.

Right, sounds like I should be encouraging fork etc. The upside of BLW is that she eats very well with her hands. The downside is she eats very well with her hands so isn't hugely keen on any other approach!

what Bean said about the matt thing. The baby room has a separate dark room with cots for them to nap. The Tweenies room they all nap at the same time on a matt. I think next week could bbe interesting. of course it will happily coincide with a manic week at work. Lovely

oh and sorry you're feeling crook Bean. I found I was nauseous when I was hungry. so long as I ate regularly it was manageable. Unfortunately I now work in an open plan office so it will be blindingly obvious when I start fishing out the gingernuts next time.

I was similar to Sunny re sickness - forcing myself to constantly graze on things like dry cereal made things a bit more manageable. It's horrid though. Lots of sympathy Bean.

Right. Sounds like we should be trying to introduce cutlery to ds. I'll ask nursery how they do it so we can have a consistent approach.

It does make sense with the mats, especially space-wise. But I can't imagine DD voluntarily lying down and going to sleep when she can wander off! I clearly need some tips from nursery. And I imagine it helps to train them for when the cot sides come off their bed.

I had to graze constantly with the MS I had with DD. I also outed myself at work, Sunny, due to that. I went from never snacking to eating almost constantly. Bit of a giveaway!

With DS I was at home on mat leave anyway, but I only had about 2 weeks of (utterly hideous) sickness, so it wasn't as bad as the 11 weeks I had with DD.

I think being at home and not having to force myself up and out to work helped, as I found that MS was worse when I was tired.

It's very cute watching little people use cutlery, I must say. We will be on potty training before we know it! Booooo!

Sorry you're feeling sick, Bean.

I didn't get morning sickness with DD but I forced myself to have regular protein snacks at work as I'm vegetarian and had read that I should be. I never snacked at work before getting pregnant - I didn't even eat a proper lunch - so I had to try and do it sneakily in our open plan office. I managed to do it without people seeing!

There's no way DD would stay on a mat. She appears to move in her sleep; she often ends up sleeping across the cotbed, right at the top. She gets into all sorts of strange positions too. I hope she grows out of it otherwise she'll regularly fall out of bed.

Cup, DD is like that...keeps getting herself wedged sideways across the cotbed. :-/ She also pushes herself up the bed til her head is pushing against the headboard. God knows why, it can't be comfy.

somehow my child generally ends up 180 degrees round from where I left her. last week in the caravan she was in the bottom bunk rather than a cot. I had to lie next to her rubbing her back until she fell asleep or she'd do a commando roll in her sleeping bag out the bed.

All I can say is good luck nursery !

What's weird about nursery is that they do seem to manage to manipulate them into action they would never take at home. They have actual magical powers. Randomly they actually spoke to me about this this morning. They want to move her up but are concerned she won't sleep as she struggles in a cot. Let alone on the floor!

Sickness is definitely manageable by constant grazing but that's not unusual for me. Colleagues are suspicious on the grounds that a roughly two year gap is pretty standard, and I'm totally off diet coke. Normally could drop six cans a day. Would merrily continue this as drink no other caffeine and this still keeps me around the 200mg a day mark. But I just can't. I am totally off it. This has literally never happened to me before. I have a major caffeine withdrawal head!

yup turns out nursery are miracle workers. She spent the day in the Tweenies room and apparently slept for an hour and a half on the matt. In a room full of other babies. With no curtains.

No. Problem. At. All.

Yet when she sleeps at home it's fight fight fight

Ok. Turns out I'm not far behind you, Bean! We weren't going to be actively trying till after christmas, but we haven't been not trying iykwim. We're both thrilled, though it's very early days.

DD is fast asleep, yet I'm wide awake. Have had problems sleeping for the past week, plus various other symptoms which make it look obvious written down.

EDD around the beginning of June (same as DD!), however if I have a planned section (which I'll be asking for) I guess it'll be around the end of May.