Sept 08: They're under starters orders .... and they're off .... well, some of them!

[ILikeToMoveItMoveIt]

I thought I'd use this title as not all of our delicious babies are on the move yet, including mine

if you didn't know what ITNG was you'd think it was some kind of sleeping drug after reading those posts!

I agree that although it is scary interupting a well established routine for the 1st time that it usually works out ok and even if that night isn't as good they go back into it ok the next night. Same as meglet, if we change the routine it's to do something fun that tires them out and it works out fine.

I have a 2.4 gapand think for us it's perfect. DS1s understanding and speech is very good for his age though and that has helped a lot. He's been able to help and understand why I couldn't give him lots of attention esp when ds2 was tiny. And ds2 adores him and I think that in a couple of years or so when ds2 has more understanding they'll play nicely together. I also think that they'll cause lots of trouble together but all siblings will do that at some point I think.

And having them close means we get them through school quicker and can kick them out look forward to when they've left home and we can go on fancy expensive holidays on our own (or is it just my parents who seemed to do that as soon as they got rid of us?)

debithescot - Yes you are right about the INTG discussion! I just re-read what I wrote. It's In the Night Garden, folks.

Side point of no relevance: I think my DH has an addiction to INTG which is unhealthy for a man of his position in society (i.e. an adult with a job). He adores Makka Pakka and says 'I was just like that when I was little.. always busy and serious. I even collected stones and carried them around in my pockets.' I swear there's a tear in his eye as he reminisces. He admitted to me that he saves the Sky+ episodes which feature Makka Pakka instead of deleting them after DD has watched them. He knows all the words to Makka Pakka's song and corrects me when I get it wrong. Should I be concerned?

Oh by the way, I am hopeless. Obviously we didn't go to cricket tonight, but DD fell asleep on the way home from nursery! So I didn't get to 'do the routine' as planned anyway! I realise this means she'll wake up at some point needing nappy, bottle, and change into pjs. Oh well, with any luck it will be after DH is home from cricket so he can deal with it.

Ah well Ponymum, evening routines are probably over rated! Clearly I am trying to make myself feel better because T had a 7.5 minute afternoon nap, then sat and played with DP for 2 hours while I was on the phone to an old friend (for the whole time ) and is now screeching because he is completely overtired. Whoops!

aaah, ponymum I think I love your dh a little bit for that!!! sooo sweet!

Ponymum nI wouldn't worry about the falling asleep on the way home from nursery - Effy frequently does that. The trick is to wak them when you get home then just do bedtime routine as normal.

DS's appetite is getting better, he actually ate three solid meals today which is so rare! So pleased about that. Mainly because I'm hoping it'll lead to less night feeds. Currently feeding at least twice. Then an early morning one at 5/6. We've also managed to persuade him to go back to sleep after this over the last few days, which has been blissful.

DH has had DS for the last couple of days and is currently catching up with work at the office, so I've been very good and made dinner, put DS to bed, tidied the house and have settled infront of the TV with laptop. It's lovely doing all this after a week of working.

Oh sunshinemummy - I sense your words are wise. It's 9 pm and DD is currently... laughing and playing with her toys in front of me. I should have woken her when we got home. Instead I let her sleep for an hour, then she had a screaming desperate feed, and screamed the house down every time I tried to put her back down. I thought maybe she was still hungry so I put her in her highchair - cue hilarious food flinging all over the place . So here we are. Hmmph.

ponymum on a normal evening I put INTG on after tea so I can tidy up a bit and get the bath / bedtime stuff ready. DS knows he has to tidy all his downstairs toys away before INTG is on and he happily flops on the sofa with his milk. If we've been out late then i just put a recorded one on when we get home so they can have some quiet time while i get everything ready.

I'm feeling really skanky today. My bathroom has been decorated over last 2 days so I haven't had a shower since weds evening . But all the seals / grouting and paint will be dry tomorrow so I can shower first thing. I am on a beauty mission over the next few days. Ex p is off to Benidorm with his mates next week so I have to get my legs waxed and hair cut so I don't feel so crap about it. I've been wallowing a bit today, ex p gets to relax, drink and enjoy the sun (and goodness knows what else) , i get a hysterectomy . I'll be glad once it's all done and im recovering.

ooooh, Outnumbered is on BBC1!!!! yay!!!

Evening all, we're back from holiday!
Well...the wedding was great (I found the straps to hold the dress up!) and we went to a zoo and two farms in the week, the rain only really spoiled one day. I even got to go round a NT property. We drank a lot of coffee. There was a trampoline at the holiday cottage which dd loved so much, and we had a really really nice time. Unfortunately the cottage was a bit rubbish - the washing machine was broken, and the guy who came to fix it (and failed) was with us most of Sunday, the boiler was rubbish, hot water was erratic, only the top grill bit of the oven worked, there were no instructions for anything, and I bashed my head a million times on the 'character' doorways and ceilings! My mum's gonna complain to the people we booked it through - basically the owner isn't maintaining it properly.

Irritatingly both dcs took to waking at 6am on holiday, despite our best efforts to totally exhaust them!

On baby matters, ds still isn't moving in any direction, although he has started to pull forwards onto his tummy from a sitting position sometimes.

I've nearly given up bf...I give him one feed a day but he was biting me in the mornings. I should give up, but can't quite bring myself to...

Age gaps: ours is 17 months and I would totally recommend it. It wasn't too hard at all . In fact I think it won't get hard til ds can move and take dd's toys! Dd has always helped with nappy changes etc, its a brilliant age gap. This week I passed up the opportunity to have 3 under 3s...assuming the contraception worked that is . If it wasn't for the pregnancy, i really would think seriously about ttc now.

DH is filling in forms on line to arrange getting our house valued

Having an interesting discussion on ethical living board about becoming self sufficient. There's so many things I hadn't thought of in my vague quest to do it. Really wish DP would join me in committing to being as self sufficient as we can be in, say, five years time. He keeps banging on about 'when we can afford it', when as far as I'm concerned the sooner the better, as we'll start saving money once we've got some of the systems in place.

Carrieon interesting that you love the small age gap - my cousin has 16 months between her GF babies and said it was hideous, as their routines were too similar (if I remember correctly), so she kept finding she was trying to deal with two needing the same attention at the same time, rather than one being able to occupy themself while she got on with the other. Think we will end up with an age gap on the small side rather than large, but that does rather depend on me earning some money...

Meglet when is your hysterectomy?

lol at your wakeful baby Ponymum

hopefully 21st july. I'm just on-line ordering a couple of soft toys for the dc's as a little present each for when I'm away, ds has a monkey with a baby monkey and dd has the bunny version (from the Jojo catalogue). We have already been reading Miffy in hospital . I have been sorting my will out just in case.

how bizarre hopefully, having both of them in bed for 2+ hours at the same time each lunch time more than made up for any clashes in routine!!!

meglet someone told me we should sort our will because apparently if you die your kids get taken into care, even if there's family willing to take them in. I haven't yet had that verrified by anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. I'm hoping the solicitors will do us a deal on conveyancing and will writing at the same time

Carriebo the younger one had horrendous reflux, so couldn't lay down for naps, so probably they had the downsides of the clashing routines without the upside of a proper break...

Meglet a little while to go then. Impressed with the toy organisation!

Had a really nice day at the beach with old uni friends today. One of them's heavily pregnant so she's trying to pick up tips (I am avoiding telling her we have no idea what we are doing and are therefore perhaps not the best people to pick up tips from )

So much for optimism that day at the beach would knacker T out. He has been down an hour, and has so far needed resettling... 6 times.

Reflux sounds horrid poor thing.

Hope T settles soon

It was horrendous - I think they actually ended up with something like this which was hilarious, but effective.

Just popping by to say that I am not letting myself on MN this week as I have too much to do.

Hope you all have a lovely sunny week. I am hoping to pop to ikea later, depending on whether my sister will come along to help. She went out last night so might be the worse for wear . Nothing that ikea and 2 kids can't sort out .

Ikea with a hangover - ouch

Glad you had a good holiday Carriebo, although a shame about the accomadation. As it was we weren't on holiday last week, but I forgot you were in sunny Suffolk.

We seem to constantly change our minds about having another baby. We have decided (at the moment!) that we'll ttc next spring. We want to be able to enjoy (and thoroughly spoil!) M on his own for a while longer. But I'll be 35 at the end of next year, so tick tock tick tock keeps flashing in my head.

Hope Ikea was fun Meglet! Although obviously you won't be here to tell us about it as you'll be very busy achieving stuff

T has taken to leaning forward and banging his hands on the floor in front of him if there's something he wants that's out of reach. Rather than progressing onto crawling though, he mostly just falls on his face.

T keeps waking himself up coughing in the night, and then won't settle without a (small) bottle. He had a feed at 2am and then another at 6am, before snoozing in the pram till 8am. I quite like it in a way, as I stay up when he wakes at 6, or whenever, and achieve loads before he gets up for the second time!

Hello again everyone!! Am thrilled to have found you all again...haven't been MN'ing for months and months, I've just had too much on...anyway, interesting to read how you're all getting on. No change here from last time I posted in March or whenever it was! No sign of anything like crawling (phew!) or walking, he's definitely got strong opinions on things now though...lots of laughing at this new head shaking for "no" I'm still doing one BF in the morning too...a bit out of laziness as it means a few more minutes in bed, but knowing I won't have any more LO's, theres a selfish aspect to it as well...

T might bum shuffle instead of crawling hopefully, that was what ds1 did.

DS2 last night spent from 2.45am- 4.15am chatting and blowing raspberries! We have no idea why, he wasn't upset at all which was good obviously but he kept us awake the whole time. Then just as he stopped a bird starting singing just outside. At that point if I'd had a weapon I'd've been tempted to use it.

Had a nice afternoon in the garden and then a bbq. We all ate far too much and so ds2 only had 2oz of milk at bedtime.

DH away tomorrow till Thurs night, argghhh

welcome back jenpet. How's France? Have you got glorious hot weather?

Hi there Jenpet

I just looked on your post to make sure you were who I thought you were (and you are!!) and I noticed you are something to do with gites in Brittany. Are you still?

Wow - that was fast. You're all mn'ing tonight! I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed these threads ...yes ILTMIMI I am me! I do have a gite in Brittany, and it is very hot - too hot to be doing a major changeover yesterday as well as looking after both DS's as DH is in the UK yet again.

hopefully DS did that leaning forward thing for ages. This progressed to lying on his tummy and using his hands to pivot himself round in a circle. Which he did for ages. At the same time we had about 4 weeks of downward dog, before eventually he learnt to bend his legs and crawl forward on his hands and knees.

jenpet welcome back!

carriebo welcome back to you too! glad to hear someone has enjoyed having a small gap between their DCs...by the stories on MN I thought it would be a guaranteed nightmare. Although, DS is very much a non-GF baby. I don't think I couldn impose a routine on him if I tried (although I'm probably not trying hard enough). Has anyone got two non-GF DC with a close age gap and loving it??!!

DS has had a brilliant weekend. We've been out and about, using the wilkinet. I'm still really really missing the buggy though. It seems everywhere is out of the 2009 Maclaren XT. If it's going to take much longer I might have to look at another buggy altogether. Does anyone have any recommendations for a good equivalent to the XT?