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

Ds has done his first sign! (not including waving and clapping) He can sign dog! Now admittedly to the untrained eye this may look a lot like a two handed wave, but I'm his mother and I know better!

Hi foxy and splish haven't seen you for a while!

lol carrie ds2 makes a funny woof type noise when he sees a picture of a dog. Like you, to anyone else it would just sound like a noise but I know it's a woof!

(whispering very quietly so i don't jinx anything)- dh has got a job interview on friday . For a job at the uni we went to in Edinburgh.

hello mama and foxy!

I'm trying to get myself assigned a project for when I return to work in August. Allegedly all work has to be marked as suitable for parttimers unless there's a really pressing reason (Ministers' Private offices, mainly).

Back in the real world, at the sixth attempt, finally found a manager who hasn't refused to look at my details just because of working 3 days. Not got the post yet but it's a start...

splish A loves sitting in the front hall waving at the furniture, and pulling himself up on everything. He likes the hall and landing more than any rooms. Fine by me - they're the most babyproof parts of the house! Starting to work on the concept of NO! as in 'NO climbing on the TV recorder and pulling the cables out of the telly [remove baby for 5th time that hour]'

A slept through twice last week, and woke every couple hours the other 2 nights. For the first time he wasn't hungry a couple times but is waking soggy...most annoying!

Welcome back old faces!

splish jealous of your easy week of going cold turkey on the night feeds with dd1.

I wonder if that's what we're doing wrong. We've basically gone cold turkey on all sleep props apart from cuddling, rocking and humming lullabies. He's still waking loads and spending a good portion of the night crying (in our arms and then for 5 minutes at a time in his cot when we get too knackered to hold him). But he still will not stay asleep when we put him back in the cot. Or if he does he's up and crying within 1/2 an hour.

Gearing for a fifth night of torture tonight. I'm obviously not expecting him to be sleeping through but there really hasn't been any improvement, he's not waking less and he's not going back to sleep any quicker. It just feels like we're all suffering for nothing.

Oh, I tell a lie. Ds is eating lots more solid food since I withheld the night feeds. And is doing lots
more pooey nappies. Great.

DG I feel for you, I really do. I try to be quite zen about T's (still quite rubbish) sleeping, but it's bloody hard at stupid o'clock in the morning! We had a horrendous morning as I took the covers off the pram to wash them (covered in suncream on holiday), so had nowhere to put him at 5:30am. So he screamed. A lot.

Is it tragic that I am sad about missing out on some kenwood chef parts on ebay? And even more tragic that I am excited about a boot fair on saturday in case I can pick up a big saucepan for making jam? Just call me Nigella...

Incidentally, I seem to remember one or two of you being interested in the smallholding/chicken/veg patch/pretending to be self sufficient thing, so I thought you might want to see my blog - www.efficientsufficient.blogspot.com. Sorry for minor self promotion. As you were.

hopefully you are not tragic. I covet a food processor. I really really want one so I can do things like make pastry really quickly, and chop stuff quickly to make burgers/meatballs/koftes. And Nigella's Victoria Sponge is processor batter too.

I miss baking. But I can just about make dinner between balancing DS on my hip and sticking him in the high chair so he doesn't keep trying to climb up my leg. Once our garden is turfed I can tether him to a stake in the ground and let him play in a big circle.

lol digi and tethering ds in the garden. i think that's a great idea. In the time it took dh to walk from living room to kitchen and back (and our house is tiny) ds2 got half way up the stairs earlier!

digi have you tried cranial osteopathy? Maybe there's an underlying reason that he doesn't sleep well.

I don't use my food processor very often- mainly becasue the kitchen's too small to have it out so I forget about it. But I used it to make butternut squash muffins yesterday and it was great- throw everything in, blitz, pour, cook, eat. Easy and really tasty.

Took ds1 to doctor this aft as his temp was still up. He thinks he has tonsillitis and not swine flu but said you just don't know. So got antibiotics and if they don't work we can assume it is swine flu!

Sunshine Poor effy hope the meds sort her out and she feels better soon.

Am counting down the days until the summer holidays. DD has until next thurs and DS on the fri then it is 7 long weeks of torture fun in the sun I don't think so. We find out next week how many playdays DS gets so we can have some respite. Dp is doing on and off agency work so we can't rely on him to tire ds out everyday so will probably be lots of blues clues again.

Robyn can now clap, she flaps her arms about and then they get closer together until she claps. Very clever. Still waking in the night but getting easier to get to sleep and can now mover her without her screaming herself awake.
Think its time for bed she is wailing a bit

Having another shit night. I think we can say that DS has successfully broken my spirit. I hate being a mum. I'm no good at it. Can't think why I thought having another was a good idea.

Oh, DG, you poor thing. Hope you're feeling a bit less terrible this morning. Does he want to feed when he wakes? Can you start going for some kind of minimum standard? e.g. you feed him 4 hourly, but not shorter than that. The other thing that worked for me and DP when T was absolutely horrendous was doing 1 hour shifts, and then 2 hours when he got a bit better. Eventually we had the night split into 2 (I did the first half, he did the second). It meant that no matter how awful it was, we could count down the minutes till we were back in bed and resting again. Even though our house is so tiny that you can hear everything - a loud ipod was a godsend!

The more I speak to (and read about) other babies, the more convinced I am that how you parent has very little to do with how your baby sleeps. I think if you have a good sleeper, all the co-sleeping/feeding to sleep in the world isn't going to give it bad sleep associations - I have a friend who has the perfect sleeping baby and she does all of this, but if she isn't there, the baby will close his eyes and nod off on the playmat, highchair, anywhere. Conversely, you can obsessively do all the right things - put them down awake, not feed to sleep, not co-sleep, blackout blinds - and still have a crap sleeper. We were obsessive about doing all of that, and T slept no better (worse, if anything) than he does now, taking all his naps in the pram and quite often having his cot jiggled to get him to sleep.

God my outlook at 3am was rather bleak wasn't it! Ds has now just fallen asleep in my lap after a feed. DH is asleep on a mattress on the floor in ds's room. We're all over the place. I think I need GF to come and slap me round the chops, tell me to pull myself together and make myself some toast - it's nearly 7:30 fgs.

So are we forever doomed to nights of screaming tantrums now that dh has co-slept with ds?

I nearly started a thread in sleep, but to be honest I'm so bored of this problem I can't be bothered to type out the background.

DG really you're not a bad parent. Well if you are I am as dd1 was a dreadful sleeper and dd2 is soooooooo much better.

will write more later

Xposted hopefully. Thanks, we sort of do shifts except DH does more than his fair share as I can't carry ds for as long as he can. I wish we could just jiggle his cot.

You're right about good sleeper vs crap sleeper. Doesn't matter what we do, ds wakes up regardless.

Oh digital. You're really having a rough time aren't you . I'm so crap I don't know what to suggest. Although if your ds is eating more in the day that's a good sign.

I love all the talk about food processors. I'm trying to be ruthless and clear all the clutter out of my kitchen this week, if I do really well then I might get a food processor. Mind you, I'll only get one that is dishwashable, my rule in this house is that if it ain't dishwashable its not coming in . We now have the whole set of the kids plastic coloured Ikea plates, tumblers, bowls and cutlery, whenever I open the cupboard door I have to hold back an avalanche of plastic .

DD is doing some seriously cute baby talk now, all day long I can hear "hawawa babababa, eeee.....".

DS is awake, better go. Can't wait to see what he's going to get up to today. Yesterday he climbed onto the toilet and I found him standing in the sink playing with the toothbrushes on the window sill. I'm going to get a lock on the outside of the bathroom door so he can't mess about in there unsupervised, I don't want the sink coming off the wall or him trying to get out the window.

Digi, ds's sleep is no reflection on how you are as a mum.

If you can summon the energy to start a thread I'm sure you will get lots of help, plus you'll find you're not the only one who has to go through/has gone through this.

Digi agree with the others. It's no reflection on you at all but it is horrendous when you're so tired and you're awake with no immediate hope of going back to bed.

Effy was going through a bit of a patch while she was ill but going back to nursery has sorted her out. Because she's a nosey little thing, and the nursery cots are in the same room, she won't sleep there for very long during the day, so she's been having a max of about 45m. We're still giving her the banana at 18:30 and offering her 9oz of milk at bedtime but she's then sleeping right through and we're having to wake her up in the morning. She's naturally dropped the dream feed.

Her favourite game at the moment is the 'ta' game, which she especially likes to play in the bath. She picks up a bath toy and drops it over the side. She then stands there and looks at it until I pick it up. She then says 'ta' and holds her hand out to take it from me. Then drops it over the side again ad nauseum

Hi all - been so busy preparing to go back to work FT (this time next week - arrgghhh!!! Someone reassure me she won't just sit crying for me all day as I have in my head!), plus prepare for christening on Sunday, so not read posts yet (aiming too though).

Hope all OK and weather is meaning better sleeps for babies.

My question today is, we are still in our newborn car seat as C has not yet reached the top but probably will do by September. Those with cars, what are you all doing about forward facing car seats and the new advice to put them rear facing until 4? I just can't picture it myself - won't she end up with squashed legs? And I can't find rear facing ones for 4 year olds anywhere.

Just skim read - DG if you haven't, please try cranial osteopathy. Worst case, it'll be a lovely soothing 30mins for you and DS but it may work and help him sleep - it certainly helped us with C's colic when she was tiny.

imo we're going to move DD into a forward facing one.

Imo we're keeping T rear facing in our car, but he goes out for the odd (round town, so slow) trip with the CM, and will forward face in her car in a few weeks when he is too big for her newborn seat. I wouldn't be especially worried about him forward facing, but he's not very strong in the neck for his age, and his head is still massive for his size, so i figure he's a perfect candidate for neck injuries if I crashed at any speed.

imo I don't think you can really get rear facing seats here for toddlers. I don't know but I suspect that advice is american- they're cars are often a lot bigger than ours and so can fit a rear facing toddler seat in.

DS2 is very very close to the top of his rear facing seat and has to have his legs curled up. We're hopefully going to keep him in it until we get back from holiday in mid Aug- basically because we're taking car seats with us and I'm a bit wary of what might happen to them on the plane so I don't want to take new ones (DS1 is also going to go up to next stage when ds2 does) and also wary of Portugese drivers so may as well take the safest seats for them if they can be squeezed into them still.

If it was winter he'd be forward facing as the straps are almost at full length and wouldn't go round him with a coat on.

DD will go forward facing in a few weeks time, she's just squeezing into the baby car seat for now. My friend has a rear facing toddler seat and I'm seeing her next week so I might check it out. But TBH I can't see myself trying to track down a supplier, think there's one in milton keynes. If they stocked them in the local mothercare / halfords I'd see I could get one. Here they are www.incarsafetycentre.co.uk/shop/special_br_04.html. They look huge!! I drive with my seat quite far back too, I'd be interested to see how one would fit.

ok, just read up on the rear facing car seat info and I can't fit one in my car anyway as it has underfloor storage (citroen picasso) and most of the seats have a leg that needs to rest on the floor, but its not safe to have the leg on a hollow floor space. That solves that then!

We're also moving DS up when we move DD into his seat. We're waiting until she reaches the weight and size but then she's going into his Maxicosi Priorifix and he's going into the Maxicosi Rhodi booster seat.

She's travelled in the Priori in friends car a couple of times and is nice and tight in there and she does love the fact that she can see us.