December 2007 "The one where babies walk the walk... and talk the talk"

[Arcadie]

I'm sorry - I couldn't last out. Welcome to the new thread.

Sorry ds was bashing the keyboard with his cup!

yes he's 3 this month and has 1.5hrs at 1pm and then is in bed by 7pm - chats till 7.30pm and sleeps till 6.30am I only know he needs the sleep cause he has nap at nursery too and he still sleeps thro, as soon as he starts waking up earlier than 6am he'll have to drop the nap, my cousins lo was the same and didn't drop his nap till school.

Clairey - we're off for a trip to househunt and see the schools (we've got a place in the school we wanted, which is a Montesorri school - hurrah! Not that I know anything about Montesorri apart from it has a good rep and teaches them to tie their shoe laces, but it comes with a good recommendation from the bloke who will be my dh's only uk-based colleague) (deep breath) in June, then moving full-time in mid-August.

Funnily enough, my stress physcial symptoms are all coming back - racing heart etc. I hope this is all in reaction to the move and I don't actually have heart problems....

Spiralqueen - my dd often whispers words too, it's usually when she's trying them out and she's not sure about them.

Naps - I was going to ask whether everyone's LO's generally have one long nap a day after llunch. I have a theory that all the baby "experts" like Gina Ford, Baby Whisperer etc are making money from teaching us to put our children into a routine that they naturally go into anyway. I might be wrong but it seems that whatever you do you end up with children napping in the morning and after lunch, then dropping the morning nap and having that one one long day time nap.

'I have a theory that all the baby "experts" like Gina Ford, Baby Whisperer etc are making money from teaching us to put our children into a routine that they naturally go into anyway. I might be wrong but it seems that whatever you do you end up with children napping in the morning and after lunch, then dropping the morning nap and having that one one long day time nap.'

I think you are absolutely right, I didn't really try to put DS into a routine because I want to be a lazy relaxed mum, and I myself don't do routines. Yet Ds has pretty much got a routine now. Part it is from going to nursery, but both nurseries he have followed his lead at my request.

Hey Beckle!!

FWIW on the routine front. I had to shoe-horn DS into a Gina routine. I'm not sure if that's because naturally, like me, he doesn't find it easy to fall asleep on his own. 3 years on and he sleeps 7 - 7 and a couple of hours in the day about 4 days a week. But it was a BATTLE to get him to learn to fall asleep on his own in the prescribed times.

Mummy was much more chilled with DD DD however was much more chilled and like you say, naturally slotted herself into an almost textbooks GF routine ( apart from the night sleeps) Still don't know if it was personality, second childitis or the fact that I didn't make her go to sleep when she clrealy wasn't ready, or keep her up when she was clearly tired. And I just let her snooze for about her first 2 weeks rather than over stimulating her like i did with DS ( in the hope he'd be some mensa genius)

Hi Everyone.

DS tends to have a good two hour nap in the daytimes, but it can start anytime from 10am to 1pm. We don't really follow routines here, but just let DS go down when he'd tired. It means he's quite flexible if we need to go out or do something at a certain time.

Having said that, he's still all over the shop at the moment, keeps waking up at 5am. He's still poorly with D&V and lost lots of weight. It breaks my heart when he's ill I hate it.

DD put herself into a routine really early on. Ds er, didn't. Well unless you call screaming for a couple of hours then conking out for 10 minutes then screaming again a routine . He was consistent I suppose!

Then again all my attempts to get him to sleep longer/self settle failed spectacularly until I'd given up completely and then he suddenly did it all by himself so I do think they all get there in the end no matter what you do, it just takes some longer than others.

Wizz sorry ds is so poorly I get really upset when mine are ill and seeing them losing weight is horrible.

Clara am sure it's just the stress-we can do breathing exercises together if it helps . Have you tried Kalms tablets? They are quite good I think

Hi Clairey - I haven't tried Kalms, where do you get them from? I am half-heartedly planning a trip to Boots this morning (half hearted because I know it will be stressful as dd1 will insist on pushing one of those mini-trollies around, dd2 will tantrum if she can't have one too, then will proceed to walk around the shopping, nicking all sorts of unsuitable things that we really don't need off all the shelves and putting them in dd1's mini-trolley), will have a look and see. At the moment it just seems to be getting worse, but I do find concentrating on breathing can help.

You asked ages ago if I knew I was stressed at the time. Funnily enough, I didn't. I had previously been in what most people would consider a very high-stress job as a press officer at the Foreign Office, dealing with really difficult issues and constant calls from rude journalists and working directly with senior civil servants, ministers and even the Foreign Secretary. However, it wasn't that that stressed me - it was moving to a new country on my own. So now at least I am more aware of what causes me to be stressed and I am fairly sure this move will be it!

Clara I got them in the supermarket but Boots will probably have them. Seem to have more effect than rescue remedy for me but it may just be that the act of taking the tablets gives me space to calm down. Sometimes when ds was younger I could tell that his screaming was winding me up so I'd go and take a couple of tablets and feel more able to deal with things iyswim.

Well co-incidentally I decided to try Bachs rescue remedy instead of Kalms, wasn't sure whether any of them would stop the physical symptoms or not. I tried some out and did feel quite nice and calm for a while but I'm not sure that I was in a particularly "stressed place" at the time so no idea if it worked or not! It's probably all in the mind but I'll try anything!

Lol I used rescue remedy when I was pregnant and couldn't sleep. Used to squirt it in merrily then one day read the bottle and saw it had alcohol in

Hey BT! Wizz, its terrible when they are so poorly, hope DS is feeling better soon .

Clara, rescue remedy is fab stuff, my Mum always swore by it, we even used to give it to our goldfish when we would find it half-dead and floating on the top of the bowl, it used to revive it every time! (we used to think maybe she was an alcoholic goldfish).

Have decided to try and get Evie's MMR done ASAP to get it out of the way, a good friend of mine, who knows lots of medical stuff, seems to think that the worst of the flu will come in the Autumn/Winter so better to get her protected against as many other nasties as possible beforehand.

PMSL at alcoholic goldfish!

Sorry not much time to post just so busy with training!

Claraq your job sounds very interesting!

Hey ladies. Momentous day. DD can say car and points to her nose when asked what noise a pig makes. Any of you got MENSA application forms?

arcade - bless.

Evie has leant to say her name and her sister's (well on them) and is very cute...she says ET and then Dace. And then spends the entire time on the journey back from nursery saying either 'ello, oh dear dear dear or ET.

Mind you she is not in my good books today - she opening the cupboard (We don't have cupboard locks because we have very expensive new cupboards) and dropped a jar of new jam on the floor...grhhhh

and to top it off Waitrose have messed up my order and I am missing loads of stuff (which they are going to re-deliver tomorrow) but I am sure I am not going to get it all because I kept having to ring them back with more things missing (a learning moment in checking all things first)

sigh still tomorrow is dd1's party and I still have an awake Evie and cake to ice

Arcadie - for some reason, a car for dd2 is car car - no idea why twice.

BT - was in an interesting job - now am slowly stagnating as full-time stay at home mum. Keep telling myself I am doing the most important job in the world etc. But I do miss being an adult (sigh).

Clairey - yes I saw that about alcohol but as it says it's suitable for the whole family I wasn't sure if it was real alcohol!!

Beckle - hee hee at goldfish, I will have to remember that trick as dd1 pestering us to get a fish.

Arcadie wonder if it'll just be you and me again here this weekend!

Clara, wow that does sound like a full-on, yet highly rewarding job. I know what you mean about diff types of stress though. There's a huge diff between being super-busy but sound in the knowledge that you've done it all before, and taking the plunge into a whole new world with limited support systems. Sounds like the trick is to find support as soon as you can - even if its just a babysitter you know you can trust.

Hi BT sounds like you're really busy! How are you enjoying working from home?

I just had brunch with a friend who has son aged 18 months. She told me he has 700 odd words (her estimation based on the fact he came name almost everything in their house etc) and 12 sentence structures. When I told her DD2 (16 months) has about 25 words she was shocked. Please tell me her DS is a genius and my DD is not really backwards!?

Hi all!
Another weekend poster here too, I will catch up later on properly when I have a wee while to read through all the threads.
Hope everyone is well, esp pregnant ladies!

buzzy I have to say I am very at that..

there is a thread somewhere else on here called "how many words can your 15mth old say" or similar - no-ones LO was saying anything like that!

Hmm me thinks someone has been exaggerating.
Somebody I know has a nephew who barely talked at all when he was 2. He is 4 now and doesn't stop talking He also knows some impressively long words!! My frienf has a son who is 15 weeks older than ds, and his vocal skills aren't that much than his.

Buzzy whaaaaat? 700!? Blimey. Guess all our kids are a bit dumb. My good chum has a little girl who had somewhere in the region of 60 words/ baby signs at 14 months. But a lot of those were a vague hand gesture that mostly her mum understood. But she was very advanced for her age and still is. I guess we all get there eventually. I'd be chuffed at 25 recognisable words.

Buzzy - lying, I would say! Or a genius! Don't worry though, he's probably rubbish at other things. I think my dd has something around 30 words now but they all sound the same - basically some variation on "ba"(eg ball, bird etc) or "car" or similar. Are you sure your friend's son isn't just making general noises and she's claiming they are all different and mean something???? I'm sure my dd thinks she's got about 700 words

Yes I'd say lying too but I don't think my friend would do that! I do seem to remember that there's a bit of a language burst around this age though so perhaps he's gone from 60 to 600 in 2 months?

Buzzy I'm amazed that she has even been able to put a number to it if it is that many I think I'd lose count around 20 if I tried counting how many words someone knew.

FWIW DD could name most objects in the house, knew colours & animals and could count to ten by 19 months-that was also when she started speaking in sentences. No idea how many words that would amount to though! Also a lot of them weren't especially clear to other people, she used to say the same word for finger, pingu, penguin, igloo and machine for example.

DS has a lot of random sounds that we understand but I'm not sure how clear they are to anyone else! Though he did say "there you are" to someone we'd only just met yesterday and they understood him so he must be semi-comprehensible!

I am getting worried though because he is starting to be VERY violent towards other children. Yesterday he was hitting, pushing and squeezing other toddlers and I dread being the mother of the child noone wants to let their dc play with . Anyone got any tips for dealing with it?

Another vote for your friend fibbing stretching the truth a bit here Buzzy, besides, they all catch up with each other eventually - at 18mo DS1 was behind and DS2 very ahead, by 3 you couldn't have told the difference. I have no idea how many words DD has, quite a lot I think although haven't counted, she copies everything we say plus loves animal noises too. She'll say a new word all the time for a few days and then she'll pick a new favourite, "mine" and "no" are her favourites at the moment (courtesy of her brothers). She did go through a phase of saying "bye bye dear" and can shout say "shut up" (again from her brothers). Was quite impressed with her yesterday though, she was in the buggy and I had some chips on the hood (we went for chip supper by the river, I don't just randomly keep chips on the pushchair!) - she put her hand up and said "me!" while pointing at them! Bless!

No tips about DS though Clairey, could it be a phase he is going through? They can get frustrated and tempersome (is that a word?) when they are about to master a new skill. Perhaps give him a week off of toddler group and then try again? He could be bored perhaps?