Sept 08: The End of an Amazing year

[Pacita]

Here we are: the thread that will see our LO's first birhtday...

Foxy I'm in this position too. Work f-t and DH is away lots with work right now. Done morning and evening for last 6 nights (and all weekend). It's tough isn't it?

I consider it an enormous success story that T and I are alive and (usually) unscathed at the end of our day alone together, which lasts from 7am-5pm! DP does pretty much all the evening routine, unless he's feeling lazy, when I pitch in a bit.
Although T has turned into the amazing non-sleeping-all-day-but-easily-going-to-bed-at-7pm-a-la-Gina baby, so DP's evening work isn't exactly a taxing, hours long affair!

You're right Foxy, one day at a time. If you think about the days/weeks to come it can become too much, it's easier to just deal with the right now.

M has two more teeth peeking through the gum - at last. He's already got 6 teeth but they appeared about 5 months ago and there hadn't been anymore. I was starting to wonder where they were!

Does anybody else feel like they are starting to have a real battle of wills with their lo?

If M is doing something he knows he shouldn't, I tell him no, he smiles and says 'no no no' back to me Then carries on with the naughtyness he was getting upto!

There's only so many times a day you want to be saying no, but bloody hell it feels constant.

I know he's not really being naughty but he's really curious so gets himself into all sorts of scrapes. For the majority of the time I let him get on with it and have a little fall , but I still find myself saying no A LOT.

distraction is the key. don't say 'no' offer something different and 'exciting'. They have such short attention spans.

We have the same here. The favourites are throwing food on the floor and climbing up onto the sofa (and then the windowsill if he gets that far!). Saying no doesn't work, he just smiles back with the cheekiest grin ever!
I don't remember ds1 being as much of a climber, it's a bit of a nightmare sometimes.

And ILTQITI I do also let him fall sometimes, my thinking is that that way he'll learn not to do it but it doesn't seem to work like that. He has got better at figuring out how to get down/over/round things though without hurting himself though.

Whenever he's coming down off the furniture or down steps he says "datdards" (backwards) and turns himself round so repeating myself over and over when I thought he couldn't understand has paid off.
Get odd looks though when asked if he says anything and I say one of his first words was backwards! (Can I count it as a 1st word even though it doesn't say it properly?)

climbing - grrrrrrr!

Baby Starlight's first word is 'bubbles', and she says it with a very angry voice when you stop blowing.

Of course datdards is a word!

I am repeating the whole backwards and feet first line constantly, but he is hell bent on throwing himself off the sofa head first. He picks other things up quite quickly, so I think he's choosing not to listen

We also have the throwing food as well. ggrrrr.

He's in his highchair, takes a mouthful, spits it out, then throws it over the side of his chair. It drives me BONKERS. No isn't working so I'm going to try and change tact and ignore. Hopefully he'll get bored when there's no reaction.

I've given up saying no for food throwing too. have been picking it up and putting it on my plate but might just totally ignore it and see what happens. Sometimes if you say ta to him and hold out a hand he'll give it to you instead of throwing it.

I'm also convinced that he can walk but is choosing not too. He's done the odd couple of steps but today he walked across the garden pushing ds1s lawnmower which has no weight to it at all and was not holding him up.

I've just had a bizzare conversation with the Tesco man on the phone. I'd ordered something that was meant to be free and I'd been charged for it. He thought that I was making up that it was meant to be free! Why would I make up a story to save myself a whole 98p???

No climbing here, yet. But we have plenty of food throwing and major tantrums. And DD took her first step today, I have been been heavily coaching her . She seems to be saying "mama", if she knows I'm getting food ready she comes into the kitchen saying "mamamamamamama" . No other words yet, I probably need to pay more attention.

We had a dreadful night last night. DD has a snotty cold and woke at 11pm, I got her settled by 11:30. Then DS had an awful 3 hour attention seeking tantrum, yelling for different pyjamas / gro-bag, nappy change, wanted to sit on the toilet and do a poo (which we tried but he just thought it was great fun being up so late) , I was back and forth constantly, he yells so loud it wakes up dd so I couldn't just leave him to holler. I was well and truly at the end of my tether by 2am . It was totally out of character so I hope it was a weird one off. Today was a bit crap as I was so tired.

What a load of hard-working, authority-battling, multi-tasking, baby-raising wonderwomen you all are! I take my hat off to you, I rely so much on help from DH and my mum.

Lovin' the first words.

I've decided to officially recognise DS's first word as Teddy, as he uses it properly when he sees a Teddy (before launching himself into a full on snog with one). Granted he's been calling me 'diddy' and his dad 'daddy' but these words have been interchangable. 'Teddy' has remained consistent for all plush toys and the occasional doll.

He's been a food thrower since BLW days. It's his way of saying "I'm bored of feeding myself, you may attempt to feed me but I reserve the right to randomly purse my lips and climb out of my highchair and onto the table"

No is also featuring heavily in our conversations. But usually when he does things like grabs a big handful of poo while I'm changing his nappy.

Proud mummy bit: As well as learning how to open and shut a drawer without trapping his fingers in it, just today he learnt how to turn himself around and crawl down the stairs backwards before reaching the steps with banisters where he stood upright and continued his descent stepping down sideways.

'I'm bored of feeding myself, you may attempt to feed me but I reserve the right to randomly purse my lips and climb out of my highchair and onto the table'

Love this!

First word here was probably cat or Dasder (Jasper the cat - I can see a theme). We also have night Night (actually that's joint first), Cuddle and no no no,

I tried to give dd2 a ginger snap after giving her big sis the last 2 dark choc digestives and she looked at both sides of the biscuit, shook her head 'no' and looked in the direction of where the digestives came from. The clever minx. Thankfully, dd1 was in a sharing mood.

I hope you all had a better night last night Meglet.

I'm so glad other people are getting the no no no response. We can all bitch vent together!

The biscuit story made me laugh out loud Foxy. ha ha ha, the clever little thing. You can't blame them though can you?!

Yes foxy we get the same with juice. You can fool her a bit by putting water in a sports top bottle or a coloured cup - but not for long

ILTMIMI It was better night last night, DS only woke at 3am hollering for a nappy change. I stumbled in half asleep and changed him in the dark then straight back to bed.

Todays muffin news is that I made carrot and sultana ones

We've just accepted an offer on our house
From a couple who viewed it for the 1st time yesterday and then made an offer today. Got them up to what we were happy to accept so now just need to hope it all goes through nicely and we find something to buy.

Robyn tries to say 'Billy' 'Jade' and 'Andi' There is a distinct difference between each name but she doesn't get it quite right.
Can just about manage Mam and Dad and Granma taught her 'ta' but she thinks that means she can tease you.
She also tries to say 'cat' and gets overexcited at the dog.
She just smiles when we tell her no. She likes to steal other peoples food as well, and thinks drinking from empty coffee cups is a great laugh.

Good luck with the offer Debi have you got another house lined uop I can't remember?

Forgot to say we finally got our new car yesterday. It is a Kia Sedona and it is like driving a tank it is so huge. I am keeping robyn in her 1st stage seat for a bit longer as she still doesn't weigh 20lbs but we are going to start checking out the next stage seats soon.

Glad to hear you got a better night's sleep Meglet.

DS still wakes 2-3 times a night for a drink of water, then nappy change, then a feed. Then occasionally confuses me by sleeping through (about once every 10 days).

Can someone post me a muffin - we are seriously out of baked goodies in this house. My leftover chocolate beetroot cake is way past its sell-by date, which I think means it wasn't a complete success. I shan't be posting that recipe up.

Today was my first day alone with DS for nearly 2 months. Was lovely and I surprised myself by coping adequately. He only had an hours nap just before lunch and managed to keep going till 7:30 when he conked out in the car. Poor thing has been put to bed without a bath for the second night running, slacker-mummy.

Aw leonie! A is just managing to stand for a couple seconds and cruising a few steps, and might have said his first word - "du'" pointing at a duck, which he may have done purposefully before but he says du' all the time so hard to tell!

He seems to have got better at not poking eyes since being at nursery.

Friends have got swine flu. It's dawned on us that maybe our lurgy that MrNC and then A and now I have was in fact swine flu, but I didn't have a temp today so bit late to do anything about it...

Very quick hello! Celebrated C's birthday in France last week (v jealous of Hopefully's proposal - can you send romantic vibes to DP please? ) and now back to work, DP in Glasgow and I'm snowed under! So much to update you all on, so many questions - I know there'll be one of you with an answer. C is still in her baby car seat, not walking but crawls very fast. Adores eating peas and blueberries one at a time, when she's had enough food will just throw the rest on the floor. She growls like a dog and makes all kinds of other random noises.
Knackered, up at 6.15am so off to bed. one day i will catch up!!!

Oh, and DG watchin x factor avidly, working FT makes me feel like i never see C until the w/end AND why oh why are the French so rude?!!

Can't believe all these talking babies - T has lots of noises, a reasonable amount of babbling, but not the least attempt to connect any particular noise to a particular thing.

Really hope T's new car seat arrives today or tomorrow - we're going to friends on the weekend and I'm convinced he shouldn't be in his little carseat any more. I think it's up to 13kg, but he's probably practically there, and he's pretrty tall too. If anyone's still deciding whether to go rear facing or not, if you search BMJ and rear facing, there's lots of info from their study released in June this year regarding the issue.

Effy is in her big girl car seat now and she loves it. Just loves being able to see us and look out of the window.

As for words she has a few but no where near as many as DS had at this age. Nana means all food or drink (she tends to do it with a hand forward sign which means give it to me ), tickle, poo, bye bye, high five (with appropriate hand gestures) and ta seem to be her only other words.

Since she started walking she's been off. On Sat she was climbing to the top of our (admittedly small) slide and sliding down on her belly!