Dec 08 mums - from rolling to sitting and everything inbetwean

[waitinggirl]

there i've done it - hope that is ok.

Oh and DS2 has put on a lb in 6 weeks. The HV said that was ok but a few people have said that it's not very much in 6 weeks. Any thoughts?

Morning all (passes a strong coffee a glass of water and a piece of vegemite toast to NJAN) get that in ya guts as we say in Australia, water for dehydration and vegemite has loads of vit B for that seedy feeling.

Well I wrote a big post last night thanking Mom for the NUK dummies and various other things and for some reason MN froze on my itouch so lost it all. I can't remember everything I wrote but one thing I did say was I took DS2 to pilates yesterday, it is this brill one in a village near Derby that is run by 2 lovely ladies, one takes the class and one looks after the babies. Well we could hardly hear the instructor because DS2 was laughing his head off at the lady looking after him and the other 2 babies. She was just making funny noises at him but he was proper belly laughing at her. He has given me the occasional giggle but that's it. At the end of the class he was still laughing at her but when I walked over he just gave me a smile which is beautiful but to me looked at little patronizing, like he was doing it to keep me happy. Cheeky.

WG they are the beakers the 2nd one from the end is what we used. Eventually he got too many teeth and was eating through the teat bit so he graduated up to the any way up cup which has a hard top.

Kayz it def period I've been averaging nearly a Kg each week for the past 2 weeks but this week have lost hardly anything.

Also with your DS2 they are moving around heaps more now I'm not sure what freddie was like but my DS1 slowed down his weight gain around now. You'll be starting solids in the next few months so it will all even out. Shame about the relactation but good on you for trying.

morning.

firstly can I apologize for my intense grumpiness last night? You have all been so very helpful, coming up with encouragement and practical tips...I didn't mean to sound ungrateful and shouldn't have been so selfish. Obviously WG has the bottle issue too and I should think the support has been fantastic and encouraging for her too. I think I'm coming from a 'giving up on the bottle' place so had a bit of a negative reaction to the idea that it can work, if only x,y,z... Today is a new day with a clearer head and a less sore boob and a less grumpy traceface .

V are you lurking? I hope you decide to come back.

Kayz I 'm not sure about the weight gain. P has put on 8oz over 3 weeks so that's almost the same as your ds2. I should think it's fine.

I had a dream last night that I was carrying a baby for my sister. It's something I've been thinking about loads because she's been TTC for well over 2 years, and i would love to give her my eggs or lend her my uterus or do whatever I could to help her have a baby. I figure it's not the kind of thing you can just 'offer' so it's just been a little private thought in my head, which is probably why I dreamed about it!

I got very wet taking Lucy to school today and P seems really unsettled so I've just fed her to sleep - strange because this is the time of day where she consistently goes for a nap with no fussing at all. DH (teacher) always says that the school children are wired and harder to teach when it's very rainy or windy, so maybe there really in something in the air?
Must do my ironing while she sleeps.

Oh and thanks loads Mom your a legend.

x posted with you there veggie - your ds2 is hilarious - giving you a patronizing smile to appease you!

Oh my jeffing goodness. Put dd to bed at 8pm last night, in a new sleeping bag (has outgrown her old ones [where did my little girl go? icon]), went up to sleep ourselves at 10.30. Woke up at 3.30 with a pair of GGs, she had a feed, and was back asleep by 4am. !!! I got 3 times more sleep in a row than I've had since about March. And who cares if she's back to her usual form tonight, today I feel all ping! I'm hoping it was the comfier sleeping bag that did it, and not the trip to London, as otherwise life could get very pricey!

Lovely to see Spot and WG yesterday, and their lovely smiley babies. Will put up a couple of pics if that's ok with you both. Finsbury Park is lurrrvely, so much space and lots of play areas and a bit wooden amphitheatre type of thing. Like WG said, great to have a really good gas about life in a completely honest way. And sorry again for having a girly sob

Right. Catch up time!

NJAN glad you had a lovely anniversary massive congratulations, sorry you're feeling a bit rough this morning [strokes NJAN's hair] but all in a good cause eh? Will try and sort a Cambridge meet up, hopefully before the tourist season really kicks off and you can't get down the road for continental teens with orange rucksacks. The botanic garden is lovely and punting is great fun (well, being punted golly that sounds quite rude if you're in the right frame of mind!)

ZJ golly at appearing in your dream! Did I also have a big carpet bag that produced umbrella stands and paddling pools and all sorts of other magical stuff?!

modernlove kids jumping on sofas, in your own home I think you're quite within your rights to tell them to stop. Especially if they've got shoes on. Though it can be hard to discipline other people's kids I guess.

SL hope you get some good cycling in. I say baby yoga as well - but have a school friend with a new baby (a week today!!) who has the same first name as you so dh is always saying "is that your real friend or your interweb friend?" E really is a smiley little fella these days, can't wait to see him raspberry

effie hope ds1s foot is better, poor lad. Very noble of you to give him a noisy present as distraction!

Lady sorry about the house, it was being such a stress especially with evil vendor hassle added in, so perhaps a silver lining in that you can stop having to worry about sagging walls and all that, Oxfordshire is sooo beautiful, you'll find a dream house soon I'm sure.

WG re bottles - plenty of good advice here as always and we nattered on about this yesterday too, hope you're feeling more confident. Babies are so adaptable, they're learning new things all the time and I'm sure ZJ we won't be having to feed them when they go to school! I ordered a doidy cup off Amazon to see how that works - she's still a bit fussy with the bottle (even after I thought we'd cracked it...) but did ok with a tiny tiny cup when we were giving her coleif, so maybe she'll remember that?!

sybil that's a great story about your night out and the wonderful sounding Sacha. There are quite a few of us still in the 'terrified to leave my baby' stage, am now racking my brains for someone like Sacha that we could ask to look after dd. As you say, they really won't die and an hour of being cuddled by someone else is probably a good thing really - the more cuddles the better. And NJAN you're also completely right, we are still people as well as mummies.

trace glad the boob is getting better, and hope the eye gunk stops soon

arti what a night does dd like being on her front, or is it the whole lying on a mat thing that upsets her? could you try her in a door bouncer thing to encourage her to jiggle and move herself about?

tilly / JB / Syb well done for surviving your exhausting days. I prescribe these - they're selling for £1 a box in our local co-op and are soooooo delicious. Should I confess that we got through the whole lot in two days?

veggie what a lovely story, can you hire that lady to keep your house full of belly laughs? We get the odd 'heh' noise from dd but never anything more, she mostly just grins and makes a loud exhale noise, as if she sort of knows how to laugh but hasn't worked out engaging her vocal cords yet!

And, miracle of miracles, she's still asleep 40 mins after being fed to nap "It's easy and it works"

Veggie DS1 also slowed down in gaining weight at about 4 months. HV did say that babies tend to put loads on in the first couple of months and then they slow down and put it on at a steady weight.

Trace when I used to cycle to work in London, on normal days the drivers were occasionally annoying but otherwise you just share the road and get on with your journey and all that but on rainy days drivers used to do really mental things like sudden lane changes and just stopping dead in a lane. One of the bus drivers in a school I worked for agreed.

Trace I think it's good to have mixed perspective, if WG tries the bottle again she knows that if it doesn't work it's not something she is doing or has done wrong, it's just not for her baby. I think she felt that she had done the wrong thing by not trying the bottle earlier and had this HV say that there is some sort of expiry date for 'teaching' a child to take the bottle. I think your experience has shown that even trying before this bizarre cut off date that the HV is talking about doesn't garantee a bottle friendly baby.

Kayz I was telling my active birthing teacher (she's the lovely lady who looks after the babies for pilates) about what those ladies said about your homebirth and large babies and she was horrified. We all went on to talk about how women put there own issues and inadequate feeling onto others to somehow make themselves feel better. Isn't it amazing that we have managed to have a group that is completely free of all that. I'm sure we have our different hang ups and wish things in our past had gone differently whether to to with our pregnancies or births but we care about each others feelings more than these event bother us. Does that make sense.

trace x posted - (and everyone else) no need to apologise, that's what the basket is for. She says, having been very grateful indeed for it's support of late

Oh and Trace I after my first pregnancy I wanted to be a surrogate mum but not so sure after second one wasn't so comfortable. But I would still like to donate some eggs but not sure if I'm too old now. If your serious I would def mention it to her, just take her aside one day and say it. I'm sure she will see it for what it is a very generous offer.

Tilly I am definitely a weirdo!!! Glad you sorted things with DH a little. I was interviewed for women's hour after havng DS1. The segment was on sex after pregnancy. I talked about how I found it difficult to be anywhere near intimate even just touching or cuddling with DH when I had had this other human being so close to me even attached to my boob all day, personal space and all that. My sagely advice for all the women's hour listeners was to be open with the menfolk and communicate how your feeling. Otherwise they think you don't find them attractive anymore, and they get a bit funny about that.

Morning all! Veggie, do you seriously prefer Vegemite to Marmite? I am a big Marmite fan but couldn't get on with Vegemite. It must be different stuff as Marmite is glossier. Agree that that on toast is a great hangover helper. Plus coffee, juice for the Vitamin C, Nurofen or a sachet of Resolve made with ice cold sparkling water. Can I just say the last time I needed a sachet of Resolve was...in 2007. Hope you feel better soon, NJAN.

Glad you are a bit more chipper, Trace. That's a amazing thing to consider doing for your sister. And Tilly! Glad you had a bath, they are good medicine. And YAY for your better night, Jump! Glad the meet up was nice. I wish I'd been there. I like Finsbury Park, I think it gets unfairly overlooked. I used to live quite near there in another life and walk through it every morning. Anyway, I wonder if it WAS the new grobag wot did it? I hear you about tourists in the summer - Oxford is dreadful and Bayswater, where i used to live, was almost worse as that's where everyone used to seem to stay!

Well, I saw 4.30am this morning and I was none too chuffed. I didn't go to bed until 1 as it was, as I was keeping DP company who was up late working. He came to bed at 2 and most unusually, Madam started chirruping away at half four. She didn't want any food. She was just grinning and singing loudly. Every time I put her dummy back in she spat it out, laughing, after a couple of mins as if it was a fun game DP had to get up at 6 (poor lad) and I have only just got her back to sleep. She is like the Duracell Bunny. Her saving grace has always been that she sleeps at night but if that's coming to an end...

Kayz, DD put on a similar amount of weight in a similar amount of time and she is fine. I wouldn't worry. Ooh, Betty's is nice - I've been there!

I only have one friend (my very best friend in all the world and also my ex-boyfriend) who really knows about MN and he thinks it's brilliant. I wouldn't have been sensitive about saying I had friends from what is essentially an internet forum had it not been for DP not really getting it. Mind you, he doesn't really understand why people keep in touch via email (which I also use a lot, I love communicating with friends this way) as he is not much of a writer. I think if I came across someone in RL with someone from MN I would vaguely say we met 'at a baby group'. Not untrue. Most people won't want to delve further!

I had a bit of a rant last night. I did an absolute load of housework yesterday then cooked and prepared supper and by quite late at night I was STILL hanging up washing, unstacking the dishwasher etc. Now, DP has had the week from hell and has been working every night when he's got home but I just felt like a drudge, had been on my feet for hours and was thinking about my old life when I just used to trip off for dinner to the likes of Sardo (I think that is what set it off) with friends. DP is very good with DD and doing things for her, but when it comes to any sort of housework, I have to ask him time and time again and I just get so cheesed off. But it was a bad week to complain as he hasn't had a minute, whereas he will often have a couple of days off in the week usually, and just be loafing around. I love DD but I don't like being a housewife. Oh well. Someone give me a kick up the bum, please! Sorry to waffle on about myself as usual. TIme to do some work. Happy Friday everyone!

I'm trying to work out how to decorate DS2's christening cake. I'm thinking of doing it in pale blue icing with this or this. Not sure which on though. Then I'm doing some cupcakes with blue icing and these on the icing.

What do you think?

Kayz, they look amazing, am v impressed! Think I like the sling one more

Kayz that sling baby is so cute! I was going to say just bung on some of those edible sparkly sprinkles for the cupcakes (I'm very impressed by edible sparkly sprinkles) but the little booties and face in the bonnet are pretty cute.

Lady I actually prefer Promite but I actually quite like vegemite and marmite, I eat them quite generously spread than most people so find marmite a little harder to use because big scoops of it kind of hang from the knife but otherwise I'm not fussy about my yeast based spreads. Mmmmm think I might have vege with butter on toast for lunch bugger the calories!

I love marmite!!! Plus it is 0 points on WW. So 2 slices of toat with marmite is only 1.5 points. Perfect for lunch!!

i love marmite too, and madam's nappies smell of it. am strangely attracted to it. tmi?

yes, we had a lovely meet up and YAY FOR JUMP'S SLEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!

at my dad's house - internet connection weird. will lurk. lovely weekends all.

tonight's tea-time conversation...
Lucy : "mummy when you were in hospital what happened?"

Me : "What do you mean?"

Lucy : "how did the baby come out? Did she come out of a hole in your tummy?"

Me : "Er, no. She came out of a hole in my bottom."

Lucy : "where?"

Me: " well you know you have your back bottom hole for poo, and your front bottom hole for wee...well ladies have a middle bottom hole for babies to come out of"

Lucy : "Oh yes. I know that. I found it in my bed and I put my finger in it"

trace pmsl - how funny!!

Lady sorry to hear about the house.

kayz I stayed the same this week at WW, was gutted as i felt I had done okay this week. Still we have a whole new week to go at!

jump Woohoo!!!!!!!! Sleep!

Re:bottles. DS has been hit and miss with his T/Tippee Closer to Nature ones. But the past 3 days he has had it during the day. Although you can almost hear the sigh of relief when he gets boob at his next feed So WG your LO will defintely prefer you to a cup.

Have decided that DS is the incredible non-sleeping baby during the day. On a good day we have 3 30 min naps. Today we had one 30 min nap and then 20 mins. It doesn't matter what I seem to do he just won't sleep during the day. So he has been in bed all week by 6.30pm and generally has slept till 1ish, which is a record 7 hours nearly. I just wish he would do it from say midnight

hello hello hello - haver just managed to read about 2 pages and that's it. All been crazy managing the three mad children of this house and off to bed now. But L is well and lovely and I have missed you all. Thank you for your text LadyT!!! (ps I also lurrrrve Kirstie A in a girl-crush way). You are to blame for me not MNing - any spare two mins I have I am reading about the Cazalets. I love the books so much. Thank you for sending me the first one - am nearly finished no.2 (The Cazalet Chronicles, a set of books by Elizabeth Howard that LadyT recommended - first one called The Light Years, if anyone interested).

Hope you all and your lovely babies well. Sorry I missed Finsbury Pk meet ups.

Only sadness is that our b'fing is coming to an end due to intro of formula (one feed, but had a knock on effect etc) about a month ago due to L's weight loss problems. Sad, but coming to terms and she is happy, chirpy and sleep very well. Morning feed is about to bite the bullet as its just not lasting her very long.

Right, off to bed.

oh and Trace pmsl at your DD's "investigation", bless her!

Morning,

Trace, LOL at Lu's 'investigation'

Absolutely awful night here. Feeling bloody horrible, sore throat, blocked nose, headache and i've lost my voice. Only got to sleep at half 4 and then was woken up at 7.

Dad is coming up for the day today and then we're out for a meal for sil's birthday so won't be back untl tomorrow.

Hope you all have good weekends.

oh dear...it's my turn to ring the bell and shout "unclean! unclean!"...no we don't have the pox...we have head lice
Well, dd1 does - I found them this morning while shampooing her hair in the bath - eek! Have been and bought some louse-killer and am going to attack her in the morning with it! Can't see any in my hair but I might ask a friend to check for me! We've never had head lice before but I guess it was bound to happen once she started school...
Kayz hope you're feeling better and that you've had a good time with your family.
Turnip - hurray you're back!!!!Lovely to hear from you again - sorry about your BF-related sadness - I guess all good things must come to an end...how are L's weight issues?
WG hope you're enjoying being at your dad's and getting some rest
DH is out and the girls are asleep - I'm trying to decide whether to switch on Eurovision and mourn the lack of Wogan, or remain in blessed silence and read my book. TBH neither is very appealing due to the absence of chocolate in the house. Well actually Lucy went to a party today and has brought home a bag of Buttons, which I'm very tempted to scoff but must resist!
Hope you're all having a lovely Saturday - it's been quiet on here today...

Quiet on here today! Hope everyone's had a good day.

Kayz sorry about your night, are you feeling better?

turnip nice to see you here again [waves]

trace pmsl at dd's investigation! Dh & I have had the conversation about what we do if we catch the boys, ahem, doing something

So fess up, who's watching Eurovision?!

trace xposted!! Turn on Eurovision, its great really

You've reminded me I've got some Ben & Jerry's frozen yogurt in the freezer, must resist!