The all new and exciting May TODDLERS thread...

[GeorginaA]

... it's May 1st folks...

Cat - can I be the first to tell you not to worry?
Babies have got SO much too learn, they can't do everything at once! DS is walking but says no words at all - just babbles dada mama and they are not at all specific. However he is isn't even mad keen on walking at the moment, he is spending most of his time putting things in and out of boxes, emptying drawers and playing peep-oh. Just have a read of Spots post and ponder the wise, wise words of the HV "slow to walk, quick to talk".
We too went to the HV today. DS gave the "glad eye" (love that phrase, only ever heard it in Guys And Dolls) to the HV and she blew him a kiss. I felt slightly gooseberry-ish and helped DD pick her sultantas up from all over the floor. He is 83cm (oooh 99th centile) and 33lb (way over 99th centile).
Oh boo - when I was a bit giddy on Friday night, I e mailed My Favourite Older Man (DH knows him well, it's no secret) who is now Very High Up In Publishing. Forgot all about it until I received a message back today from him. Very nice chatty message, telling me he wasn't aware that he looky-likied one of Jonathan Ross's House Band (4 pouffs and a piano). Oh lawdy - just hope he doesn't have a secretary to preview emails!

Hello everyone!

Glad you are all doing well and dandy. Congrats Susi xx

Spots, thank you for asking and I want to harrass some poor innocent blokey playing his bagpipes on a rock too (sounds like great fun!).

Cat, your darling STILL sounds like the spit of DS - and very much like Spot's darling. All talk and no walk, does do a rather weird donkey kick on the spot though and will only cruise along the sofa if he sees the remote control at the other end.

You are also ahead of us on the words front - everything, is da or dada. Alhtough he does say mwah when you give him a kiss! so cute. He doesn't care much for waving either, just holds his hand aloft like he expects you to kiss it!

Plus we also got the first signs of temper tantrums, having been told no to fiddling with the aforementioned remote and plonked firmly on the other side of the room he screwed his face up and stamped his feet - could not believe it! my beautiful placid babe is disappearing! Was funny when he stopped to check out the response though, was blanked by both of us and so calmly picked up a playbrick, studied it, sucked it to make sure and then lobbed it at the cat. Charming. I am quite certain I didn't opt for this particular model of 2004 baby . . .

As the for housing situation, nowt happening - I have only 5 points towards my application but I have no idea what this means so am phoning again tomorrow. Ex-p's brother returns from New Zealand the same week ex buggers off to Glastonbury - should be interesting . . .

Cat, forgot to mention as we are baby soulmates that DS is also teething with a vengeance his seventh tooth! Now will you and Spots quit copying me?!?

Thanks in advance

Cat - STOP WORRYING

Ds is cruising well, but I've got 3 weeks on you, and he can't talk at all - he does occasionally say baba or dada, but completely indiscriminately. The only real communication between us is "ug" which tends to mean yes please I would like a banana" or shaking head violently, which can mean "yes please I would like a banana", or "take that banana waway you silly woman can't you see I'm full", or even "Mummy, stop waving that silly banana around and look at how clever I am to be able to shake my head so violently".

He also has a terrible temper - dd never had this so it's quite shocking to watch - he throws things, hits out at me, pushes dd away when she is cuddling too much. Sometimes he just sits and screams (and then checks to see if you are watching). I'm hoping that it is just frustration, and that once he is able to communicate and walk he will go back to being placid baby. We were in the car the other day and he screamed for about 20 minutes because he was overtired, but only likes sleeping in his cot. Dog kept on being thrown out, and he cried so much he was making himslef choke - I had to stop on the hard shoulder because I thought he was about to vomit!

eeek prufrock. dd can get v much like that. has a real hissy-fit if you take something off her which she shouldnt have. holds her arms stretched out in front of her and makes fists whilst snarling and making herself go red in the face with anger. scary to see. she is actually having a baby tantrum. i do it back sometimes which just cracks her up. little monkey.

lol at your late night emailing judd!

yes cat, you should def stop worrying. dd says sounds only, baba and dada and toh meaning 'hot' to my many cups of tea. she does at least these sounds to some things like pointing at pics of herself and babies and saying baba but that is almost the same as saying rabab to her rabbit. but now drops the r. eeek. she isnt walking yet either, kind of manages with holding on to one hand but much steadier with 2 and does cruise, but seriously, i have 2 friends with babes the same age that arent crawling yet. hv sees no problems.

prufrock - yes to the meet. will email you as for some reason you have dh's email address and he keeps getting confused.....bless

xx to everyone

Thanks everyone for words of calmness

Well i have an absoltly bloody stinker of a cold and wouldn't you know it dp is malta until Friday on a works conference, kiera was up again last night teething (Libb how weierd is it they both are getting their 7th?!) and i am soooo frazzled. I have had to SOS my mother (AKA Satan) for help if she can come because my temp is 39.1 and i am seeing spots in front of my eyes if i move too quickly!!

Prufrock- kiera has stared throwing tantrums if she gets told "no" real crying and screaming fits, and also sometimes if she doesn't like her food.

Libb- Honey keep us posted on housing situation, remeber my offer of a spare room is open if you and ds need it. I badly need a night out as well, do you think your xp could take ds for half a night and we could hit the town?

Righty i'm gonna go and read to my increadily whingy baby, and beg a friend to bring me flu medicine.

BTW can't wait to see you all at the meet up!!

Lots of love xxx

CAT82 Hope your feeling better tomorrow. There is nothing worse than being ill with a baby to look after.
DD got weighed today she is 23lb and 76 cms so 75th centile for both.
Not much happeneing here. I have a presentation to do tommorow for some course ive been on and really cant be a**ed to do it. I just dont have the motivation.
oh well cutting it starts tonight which may give me the diversion I need.

Hello, hello. Sorry I don't think I can come to a meet up now - lots of stuff going on at the moment. Apart from buying the house it's not been a very good year.

I agree with everyone else, Cat. They all do stuff at different times. Dd2 is holding on to furniture but nowhere near walking - I think probably August - but dd1 was nearly 18 months and there's absolutely nothing wrong with her now - apart from a stinking attitude. She (dd2)points a lot, mutters when dd1 goes out of the room and objects loudly and frequently to things she doesn't like but really isn't saying anything meaningful yet apart from "ta". Several weeks ago I thought she'd started saying "daddy", but unless daddy is a pair of curtains, the postman AND an avocado I think I must have been mistaken. Hope your flu gets better soon. Brandy, brandy, brandy.

Hi everone,

I feel better today thank goodness, and kiera slept right through fomr 7.30pm until 8.40 this morning so it really helped to get a good nights sleep.
I'm missing dp soooo much, but he's sent me loads of texts telling me he's missing me loads too Can't wait to see him on Friday.

Helsy- Lol at dd's use of daddy Kiera is exactly the same, daddy is perfect now but she uses it for everything, i think dp is a bit put out
I hope your year gets better for you hun.

Libb- Lovely chatting to you last nightxxx

Prufrock- thanks for offering to come over, hope to see you soon xx

Satan (my mother) arrives at 6.30 this evening and i am dreading it. She offered to get up and look after kiera tomorrow morning, which is fine but she WILL NOT listen to ANYTHING i ask her to do!! I asked her, on the phone, to get her up, feed her etc and put her to bed at around 9.30-10.00ish and she said "no, i'll take her to the park and then you can give her lunch when we get back. The last time she babysat at night i specificaly told her not to go into Kiera's room unless it was an emergency and dp and i got back and she told us she's been in TWICE to check on her! She has a breathing monitor fgs! Argh!!!

Okay deep breaths......In...out....

Love to all
xxx

Oh poor you cat, 2 visits from your mother in rapid succession. So sorry you two don't see eye to eye. . Helsy, also ... I do remember you saying there were bad things going on at work. I hope they are containable and that's the only place things are bad. It would have been lovely to think you'd be there to raise a glass to better times at the meetup. We'll be doing it one your behalf.

DD has lost what little talent she had for sleeping. All her recent naps have been preceded by sobs, and last night she woke at 4.20 and was unable to get back to sleep. Normally she will wake at 5, and take a bottle of warm (cows') milk which buys us one precious hour more. but last night it was like nothing we've had so far. Completely unable to settle herself, she cried and cried and 2 bottles didn't have any effect. We were sure she couldn't be ready to get up that early... surely she must have needed more sleep? and embarked on some serious and unpleasant cc-type stuff which took us through to about 6.50 before she finally fell back to sleep. well I started to wonder if it was that hard for her to get back to sleep, maybe I should have just got her up? what would you all have done? seeing as how she's an early riser by nature anyway? I used to get up with her (gritting my teeth, but willingly enough) at 5 but 4.20 is still night as far as I'm concerned.

Down in Newcastle this wknd in a b&b. will be doom if that happens.

Do you think it might be seperation anxiety Spots? We had a thing with DD recently where as long as you were in the room she was happy - no patting or shushing or anything. But it was like she was trying to keep awake to check that you didn't leave her. Was a right pain. Also this time of year is bad for early wakings in general I think.

There seem to be more non-walkers than walkers at the moment. DD did 3 steps yesterday morning but has not repeated this feat so still ranks among the non-walkers. She has however gone from being hopeless with a babywalker to trotting around all over the place. And goes marching across the patio pushing a ride-on car as fast as her little legs will go because its totally out of control. I have to follow her and reposition the car when she bumps into a plant pot, the wall etc.

As for paddies we have the laying on the floor kicking her legs variety. However when she is out on the patio these are translated into sitting on the floor kicking her legs. She goes to lay down, realises its going to be uncomfy and sits back up. If I hold my arms out to her she turns her head away.

DS going to school tomorrow for an hour. I have to stay with him this first time. He is very excited. DH in Glasgow (again...). But.... my sister is coming to babysit on Friday so DH and I are going out. Unfortunately I have promised him that we can go see Star Wars so no nice romantic dinner for two. Dsis is staying over and as we don't have a spare bed I was planning on giving her DS's bed and making up a bed on the floor in DD's room for him with his sleeping bag. Is this wise?

Cat, your mother and mine are related. When Dd1 had pneumonia when she was 1, DM told my sister it was because our kitchen bin was always full... she changes our furniture round when she comes over and doesn't even realise she's done it, used to wrap both our babies too tight in too many blankets when they were tiny and would put them to sleep on their FRONTS because she did it with me and I'm fine, blah blah blah.

It is the job that's the problem, yes, can't really say what but it is serious and I feel very insecure right now. DH is being fantastic but I think dd1 knows something is wrong. Our home is tied up with my job - too boring to explain - so bit of a worry. Just have to wait and see.
Dd2 is fab at the moment - I miss every minute I'm not with her. Can't hear much in the way of words - I thought she was coming along at one point but now its back to babbling. She is desperate to walk, though. And she likes melon. Our nursery have just removed all junk food from the menu so I might be able to let her have some of their meals now (no I don't really want mashed up chicken nuggets, thank you).

It's our third wedding anniversary next week - trying to get a babysitter for a night out.

Helsy sorry about the anxiety on the work front. Must be hard with DD1 being of an age to be aware.

Glad they've improved the menu at nursery - think ours might be heading that way at last. I was rather scathing on a questionnaire recently.

Bozza - could you put DS on the floor in your room? That was our preferred option at Christmas (mind you, DS had bronchiolitis so woke us all anyway!). Enjoy the film...you could always inject some romance by hand holding (but only if it doesn't interfere with the eating of ice cream, popcorn, and Westlers hotdogs!)

It was pick n mix actually Judd! Well DH enjoyed the film adn I thought it was not bad although not really my kind of thing and I have to confess to some difficulty in staying awake . Got to bed about midnight and DD woke about 5.15. So had to get her in with us (dirty bum and waking DS) so although we could tell she was tired she proceeded to mess about for two hours by which time DS was up and in with us then fell asleep on me. DH took DS downstairs and put Thomas on and then we settled down in bed. Just dropped off and the phone rang (about 20 to 8). So that was me for the night. But DH and DD had another hour's sleep.

So all that bodes well for 12 nights of family rooms, doesn't it?

still dont know how you guys cope with more than one child. must be love.

dd slept through for the 10th time in her life. the last 4 nights she has gone without anything to drink in the night. the first three she was awake from 10ish for a couple of hours then went through until 8. last night was 7-6.30/7. maaaagic.

glad you got a better night's sleep cat.

dd took one step today. she turned from the coffee table and balanced on her own, then took one step towards me, sat on the sofa. it could have been two or more - who knows - if the sofa wasnt so close! we're getting there. she looked so proud of herself. its really cute.

she also ate q a bit today too for a change. mil was here and instead of screaming for me all day, like usual, i kept out of the way most of the time and mil fed her and took her for a walk, even put her to bed and she slept. so that's good. we went to the local indian for afternoon tea! at which dh had a chicken madras and rice, mil had a patia, and me scampi and chips. dd loved the chips, q like the scampi but most of all ate the mint choc at the end. . again, she ate quite a bit, then home for a yogurt and toast , in that order....then bath milk bed. so in all, its been q a good day.

tired......

got mmr appointment through for 23rd. am going to have it. dh has put his trust in me after doing all the reasearch.

Thats Dh's Egypt! Actually I think I have persuaded Dh to take DD for hers - its 5 July and so should be my first day back at work after holiday. I seem to be keeping taking half days here and there.

I have found the first year of having two to be very hard but it does get better and easier, definitely.
Ds's teeth are coming through in a most strange fashion! He now has 2 molars and 2 incisors on his left side....and no matching ones on the right!
Bozza - sleeping issue is a huge pest. We have booked a 3 bedroom cottage in Tenby for end of August so that nobody disturbs anybody else (hollow laugh!) and in Cornwall hotel we are taking the PILs along and DD will sleep with them whilst we get to bunk in with DS. Talking of sleeping, Spots I think of anything before 7am as unreasonable! Why don't you do an archive search on the sleep topic for early morning wakings and see what is suggested? FWIW I do think that you were right to go with CC although it's horrible. Until the age of 2 I think babies are meant to have 13-14 hours sleep a day divided between night time sleep and a nap in the day. If DD has 2 hours in the day, then 12 hours at night seems reasonable.
Egypt, I see your mint chocolate and I raise you a cornetto! DS had most of one in the park this afternoon and also a good go at DD's maltesers ice cream (she is really into sharing at the moment and he took advantage in a big way)

Our MMR is this Tuesday. I know already that I will cry more than DS because I am a huge wuss.

Hmm Judd we have the sharing from DD - unfortunately she doesn't seem to grasp that we would prefer to share things that haven't actually been in her mouth....

So Judd you think I am a little crazy - 12 nights en famille - 1 in a travel inn, 9 in a guest house in France and 2 in a B&B in Poole? Always in the past we have gone self catering - cottage or caravan. Took DS to a B&B in the Lakes when he was 18 months with the plan of putting him in his pjs and into the buggy and walking up and down Windermere until he nodded off and we found ourselves outside a pleasant eating/drinking establishment. Did not work. Went off piste up and down the back streets and ginnels to stop him people watching and ended up laid in bed in the dark at 8pm waiting for hime to go to sleep so we could turn on the bedside lights and read for a couple of hours.

Egypt if your DD is anything like mine, they love eating out and holding court in a public place.

Bozza, I don't think you're crazy at all! It's so much more convenient and easy the way you're doing it. And I think everybody has similar "horror" stories about unpredictable sleeping. We were halfway through a GORGEOUS meal in Cornwall when DD was 9 months old. She was fast asleep in her pram and we were eating mussels in white wine and swooning. Until a brass band pulled up opposite and did their worst. The pram started rocking violently, we did our best to ignore it, and then a head appeared out of the back of it! We have also done the "drive round and round for an hour and speak in whispers" in the middle of the day to get us through to bedtime, and also the "quick !she's fallen asleep, let's get to a nice eating place and scoff as much as possible in 45 minutes".
Anyway, you used the word ginnel which has made me think of my mum (from Barnsley). Do you also say snicket?

Re: crazy. Luckily I managed to dissuade DH from taking la famille to Greenbelt (Christian music and arts festival, tents, portaloos, falafel etc. etc).
We have compromised on Middlewich Folk And Boat Festival which is only on for the day (phew)

oh, it looks like we might have to move. cant have an extension, and we want 4 bedrooms. dont want to move though. love where we are, the neighbours are the best i've ever known and the location is gorgeous. just want that extra room, and a playroom for dd. ideally a 4 bed house with 2 reception rooms. hmmmmm

took dd swimming today. she absolutely loved it. grinned the whole time. must make an effort to do it more. she has also eaten like a HORSE today. she just scoffed toast and banana all morning. then for lunch a big bowl of pasta with mummy's homemade curry . then a bit later a load of organix goodies cheesy curls (these are great) then another banana then half an hour later her tea - paella type thing with chicken and bacon and lots of veggies. she amazed me. then a half jar of rice pudd. gawd. she never does this. oh and just now about 8oz of milk. lovely.

dh has just scooted off to a golf awards ceremony because he got two 2's. i had no idea what that meant either but when i asked him if it was a fluffy pink ballerina skirt and got tutted at. oh well.

hope you are all well. xx

Hello y'all... we went to my sister's 30th birthday in Newcastle this weekend so we were sharing a room with DD last night. Thought she might let us have a lie in since she wasn't in bed til 11.00 but she woke at 5 for bottle, then 6. Luckily she was surrounded by lovely childfriendly relatives so we got a topup sleep later.

She was lovely at the party. it was a ceilidh; dsis had scoured Newcastle for a proper ceilidh band. DD was entranced by the dancing and the fiddler, and she had black sparkly-saucer eyes the way little children do at late night parties when they really ought to be in bed. I didn't feel like a bad mummy for keeping her up. She was learning about how amazing it is to be a human being and about music and lights and bouncy necklaces.

Bozza well done on your night out. How did ds get on at school btw?

Judd thanks for answering about the early mornings. Archive searches have suggested that there's no surefire cure but luckily the 4.20 one was an anomaly... for me 6 has to be the cutoff point. This morning we were trockling around Tynemouth at 7 with the buggy because breakfast wasn't till 8.30!

DD has been mostly eating bananas. Reading your menu breakdown with Egypt. Why can't you have an extension? Is it planning regs? Your house does sound lovely; can see it would be a wrench to move.

I know I keep doing this picking on people thing. But where is Georgina?

Egypt, great about the sleeping at last! There's no way dd2 gets over 12/13 hrs sleep - she has just dropped off now (normal) holding DH's hair (as usual) and will wake at about 7am for milk. She has about an hour and a half during the day. Seems fine on it though.

She had the MMR last week and wasn't on top form -was having antibiotic cream for infected molluscum (wart thingy) and antibiotic eye drops for gunky eye, but nurse and GP both said she was fine to have it. I agreed because there's LOTS of mumps where we live at the moment - I would normally have waited until everything was clear. Someone said yesterday any reaction would be in 7 - 10 days so I'm panicking now. I thought it would be immediate.

Sounds like your babies are a lot more adventurous in their eating than mine - and it's my timidity that's to blame. I'm getting better, though - particularly since 12 month jars are very expensive! She's just had some Sunday dinner with us and DH has almost convinced me that I did cook the pork properly and she won't get ill.
She was making monkey noises today and pointing at dd2's squirrel monkey (toy, obviously) that she got in Chester zoo. She also growled when DH asked her what a lion does, and puts her fingers and thumbs together when we sing Incy Wincy Spider! I think we're teething again - no.6.