October 2005 - and then they were 2!

[stinkymalinki]

My darling boy's birthday today

We gave him a Fisher Price Little People garage as his main present, which he loves, as well as loads of Bob the Builder trucks and Thomas the tank engine bits.

He's currently having a nap, then we're having a little birthday tea later.

A good day SM x

The fire blanket has to be at the door so that if a child's clothing catches fire, you can get them outside and wrap them in the blanket. It shouldn't be kept near the cooker because if your pan goes up in flames then you are likely to get serious burns reaching over for it. The Care Commission have recently handed over responsibility for fire safety to the fire brigade, wheras they only used to take advice from them before. I can really see the difference between this and when I set up in the old house just over a year ago. I fully understand why they have these rules, but it's a PITA if I'm honest...

We finally seem to be over this tummy bug. What a nasty one. Twice I thought I was getting better as I went almost 24 hours without any d or v and then as soon as I ate it set it all off again. Yuk yuk yuk.

Johnny is coming along great. He chattered non stop today which is quite something as he is normally the strong silent type . He has got to the repeating everything a thousand times stage - anyone else? As dh and I were ill, we were a bit lax and dh sat Johnny on his knee for over an hour the other day watching video clips of aeroplanes on the net, so today, poor Johnny thought that all he had to do was ask. We were getting ready to go out and he asked for "pains peese" (planes please) about a thousand times. Each time he was told "no planes johnny" and he took it fine until eventually he threw a tantrum . It didn't last very long and wasn't a very big tantrum, but it's not like him. He's had a bit of a bum deal while we've been ill, but there wasn't a lot we could do about it really.
We were at one of the big shopping centres today and Johnny had a great time. We didn't go into one single shop!! There's so much to see and do there and his favourite thing was running up and down on a grill which was blasting out cold air! It was away on the second floor of the shopping centre where there was nobody else about except parents and small kids, so he could run to his heart's content. We also could see into one of the restaurant kitchens which was very exciting for him.

And, believe it or not, my boy who could eat for Scotland is getting fussy and eating less and less at each meal. I am not going to stress about it because he is still eating enough and he won't starve himself, but he is turning his head and saying "no" to things that he previously used to wolf down.

anybody help?

Joey had a bad reaction to his eye drops over the weekend, ending up in him covered in hives and rushed to A&E yesterday

Thankfully he's a bit brighter today, but still on the piriton like clockwork, and the rash still comes up when he gets upset/stressed. Very upsetting to see, and i'm a nurse! God knows what i'd be like if i wasn't!!

Elf - re the ibuprofen. One tablet is unlikely to cause any harm. If they are bog-standard branded nurofen, then they are a standard 200mg dose. A child of 1-3 years can have a total of 300mg in any 24 hours. At worst, she may have an upset stomach as ibuprofen is a known gastric irritant.

Bugger - whilst typing that, i've just burned the sugar that was supposed to be on my toffee apples for this evening! Oops.

Oh dear you two! Elf - no idea about the ibuprofen thing but hopefully you will get lots of advice on the other thread. My house is like Fort Knox with all the childproofing, but I know just how easy it is to forget to put something back, or to fasten the lock or whatever. Try not to beat yourself up about it.

Stinky - that's not so good about the eye drops. When did he start on them? It seems like it's taken a while for the reaction to happen. Is it definitely the drops?

We are starting potty training this afternoon as soon as Johnny wakes from his nap. This morning, he was in the kitchen saying pee and potty, then he walked over, sat on the potty, did a poop in his nappy and stood up again. If that's not showing readiness, then I don't know what is. I know what to do for the first few days, but am not so sure about how to deal with it when we are out and about. Somebody suggested a jam jar which doesn't seem quite as daft as it sounds! Not much use for the girls though.

Stinky - aw, poor Joey I hope he gets better quickly soon

MB - at jam jar! Though I guess not a good go for girls. We just dont go out and about at the moment! Evelyn has a potty at home, my mums and at the childminders. When we go out we just put a pull up on her, not ideal, but okay at the moment.

Pah, there will be no jam jars here as potty training begun and ended this afternoon.

After nap, I told Johnny that we were going to be using the potty today. We have talked about it and he pretends when he has a nappy on, so it's not exactly a surprise to him, but he was not amused when I told him that he wasn't wearing a nappy this afternoon. He wouldn't go near the potty and if I tried to put him on it, he started wailing and thrashing and arching his back. All this from the normally placid child. So, I was plying him with liquids and he held on for almost an hour before he dribbled a bit. Just dribbles though, not more than say a tablespoon at any one go. More crying and thrashing if I mentioned the potty or tried to put him on. After two hours of this, and dribbling all over the floor, I put him back in a nappy. He went "hee hee hee" when I told him he was going back in a nappy, then within a minute, he had done the funny shiver that he does when he's peeing, and his nappy was so heavy it was down at his knees. Seems like he pretty much held on for two hours and then let it all go as soon as he had the nappy on.

So, I'm not wasting any more time on it and will try again in a few weeks. He knows exactly what to do, and it looks like he has pretty good bladder control already, but he just doesn't want to I guess.

excellent bladder control indeed!
We first tried Evelyn a while back, she was doing well, then was poorly and when we re-tried she fought us on it. That was prob 6 weeks ago and she seems to be doing okay, but now she is getting upset at using potties elsewhere, so I think I may need to take her royal throne to the CM daily!!

Can you get another one the same for at the CMs Elf? It would be a disaster if you went away and forgot it!

We didn't mention potties, poos or pees today and went and had fun. We took the bus to town and went to the park. But Johnny wasn't caring about the park, he was more interested in the man with the leaf blower!! Then we watched trains from a bridge right by the station. The drivers are great, they all wave and toot the horn when they see us waving. Then we watched a digger, then we watched some cranes and went back home on the bus. Johnny was in heaven

Not even contemplating Potty training here. Think I'll wait until ds is at least speaking a bit more.

Scan went okay last week. Baby is fine and no chance/danger of placenta previa this time so (hopefully) no repeat of another birth like ds's!.

Didn't find out the sex but dh did so I'll find out how good he is at keeping a secret over the next 20 weeks

Glad to hear everything is going well with your pregnancy DLAMIS. Hope your husband does well keeping his info to himself. It is a really hard thing to do, My SIL didn't want to know what sex my baby was when I was expecting Johnny, so it was very hard to call my baby boy "it" when I was talking to her. Then one day, I said "he" by mistake and the game was up. Don't be too hard on your DH if he genuinely does it by accident.

I've just had a lovely morning with nailpolish and Pruners and their dcs. We were meant to be going to the zoo, but the weather was lousy, so they came here and had lunch instead. Fruit shoots and sausage rolls all round.

Blasted bonfire namechange! Have reverted back to my old self now.

It's been very quiet on here. Hope everybody is just too busy having great fun with the kids.

Johnny is coming out with so many words now. Every day, he probably says a dozen or so new ones, and a few of them are Dutch which I am pleased about because I wasn't sure if he was hearing enough Dutch for it to sink in. We are just heading out for coffee with a Dutch lady that I just met at toddlers, so it will also help Johnny hearing others speaking it for a change.

The weather here is freezing but very nice. Johnny has a choice of a coat with a hood but no sleeves, or a coat with sleeves and no hood. He could of course wear a hat with the one with no hood, but no, it would be meltdown if I insisted on the other one. Earlier in the season, it didn't really matter much, but we might be having to have a tantrum over this one because it's too bloody cold to go out in a bodywarmer!! Even when you are a two year old heat furnace.

I'm having a similar problem with ds protesting about wearing a warm enough coat. Fortunately most of the time we aren't out in the cold long enough for it to matter too much.

Dh keeps alternating between refering to baby as he or she so even if he does slip up by accident I wouldn't notice

Oh that's a good plan re alternating between saying he and she

Johnny was sounding a bit croupy this morning, I hope it comes to nothing. Last time he had croup, we had a 5am trip to the emergency doctor and then steroids which made him go mad all morning!

Sorry to hear about the potty training disaster Mawbroon. I am too lazy to get around to it at the moment, though Alice did manage to wee on her potty after her bath last week - it was only because I saw her leaning over and bracing herself in the way she does when she is about to poo, and made her sit on the potty! She was quite impressed with the amount of cheering and clapping that came from the whole family but I haven't spotted another appropriate oppportunity since then.

I am quite keen to get her out of nappies soon though as I found out last week that I am pregnant again. I would like a break from nappies for a few months at least (have had 2 months off in the last 4.5 years!). I'm only 6 weeks pregnant so it's early days yet. Just getting my head around the thought of going through pregnancy with 2 little ones to look after, followed by having to deal with 3 children next July. V excited though. I feel a little nervous posting this here as I know some of you have been ttc for some time and I don't want to upset anyone. So I hope there will be plenty of other happy announcements soon.

Hey Ponto congratulations I am one of the ones who has been ttc for ages, but you won't be upsetting me, so post away with your pregnancy moans and groans! I have concluded that the breastfeeding has shortened my luteal phase to around 7 days which is too short for implantation, so I am not worried that nothing is happening ttc wise because I know that it should right itself when Johnny weans. It does leave me with the "wean or wait" dilemma, but I have pretty much just decided to wait.

We had a lovely time at the zoo this morning. We were there at 9am and pretty much got the whole place to ourselves. I saw lots of the animals which are usually hiding, but Johnny was disappointed that his favourite, the tortoise, was nowhere to be seen.

Ponto - congrats!!

Congrats Ponto

MB - I found I had a short LP when I first starting charting for this one. It slowly got longer over a few months so you never know

How much were you feeding when you conceived DLAMIS? And how short was your LP? I have a 26 day cycle and have been ovulating around day 15 or 16, but my thermal shift takes 3 days to reach the upper level which is when you start counting the LP, so it is 9 days, and then I start spotting for 3 days before my period, so that leaves 6 days really which is no use for implantation.

Johnny is a complete addict and his morning, night and nap feeds involve him having about 8 sides!! I am guessing that he probably also has half a dozen quick feeds through the day as well. He gets in a tizzy if I tell him no milk and I really feel that he still has a need for it and would feel rotten about cutting it back.

CONGRATULATIONS PONTO!!!! FANTASTIC NEWS XXX

All ok here, Thomas has calmed down some what from last time I posted thank god! Still sulky at times but not as angry as before. I am sure that he is just frustrated and I hope his speech improves soon. We seem to have gone backwards with it rather then improving. I don't think he is even up to 10 proper words yet I don't really know what else to do with him to be honest, we do the flash cards, nursery rhymes, stories etc which should all help x

YF, did you investigate the signing any further? We found the signing really helpful and I think it did help a lot that we were able to have "converstaions" long before he had any words.

If it were me, I would possibly ask to have his hearing checked and then if all is well there, then I would just let him get on with it at his own pace. It is not a race as I found out with the walking! Johnny was last by a long way on the thread and in RL to walk but now he's just as good as any of his peers. I wasn't bothered about it (other than having to lug 28lbs of baby around!!) as I'd had him checked out and was told there was nothing to worry about.

We were out down the town this morning and it was freezing!! I am still waiting on my baby wearing coat coming - it's been weeks since I ordered it - so I put Johnny on my back all wrapped up, but have to make do with a back to front anorack for myself! I am sure I look a right twit, but I am past caring! Right, I'm phoning them now to chase it up!

Any clingy toddlers just now? I can see that Johnny has made some huge developmental leaps in the last week or so in terms of speaking and physically as well, so I'm not surprised he's clingy, but it is quite tiring really! He is wanting to breastfeed non stop and I am starting to say no to him which he doesn't like. Also, he is waking several times through the night shouting milk milk milk, so daddy gets sent through and he calms down immediately. I wouldn't mind co sleeping and feeding with him if he cuddled in and went back to sleep, but no, he goes mountaineering over me from one side to the other every few minutes to get the other breast.

Went to the nursery school today to get his name down for his nursery place in Jan 2009 Hard to get my head round it really!

mb We talked ourselves out of the signing as we didn't want to possibly stop the speech all together iyswim If we have another child I will definatley do the signing from early on though. His hearing is fine too as he can hear a pin drop!
Re the nursery school placement we are going to the local welsh medium school on Monday morning to have a look there and maybe get his name down if we like what we see.
Thomas isn't really clingy at the moment thankfully maybe its just a growth sprut again MB.