January 2008 Shiny New Year Toddlers - Happy 2nd birthday to us!!

[LilySwalLoosHerTurkeyBaster]

Where did 2 years go ????

LaT yes she did - got a very happy text to say she had a really good labour - so chuffed for her

another for Lucky!!!

Does LO have a name yet??

hi all sorry not been on but all have been struck with sick and diarrhoea bug except dh of course. me charlie and noah all had it though. Actually poor noah has got it back again and much worse this time. although i know this sounds terrible but i actually feel much more refreshed as because noah got little in his tummy his reflux is sooooo much better so actually getting quite good sleep - tempting fate i know. so just up change sick clothes bed etc then back to sleep for him !!!!!!

charlie been playing up on going to sleep and started screaming about needing a poo poo - she knows we always come for this and cried and made herself sick but i think now turned corner and i tried different approach . nstead of eing cross and saying enough naughty crying etc i kept saying well done for no naughty crying every time she looked like she might start to cry and we have had 3 nights of going to sleep pretty easily.

she is also going througha real i want my daddy phase. argggh.

anyway my mum getting remarried in may and we are having a non hen do for her tomorrow all day at the sanctuary - mmmmm lovely so looking forward to that.

charlie and noah checks went well was funny though as health visitor asked me if charlie points at things and says areoplane or tractor etc, before i got chance to answer charlie piped up I dont see a tractor, you only see those if you are outside mummy. Health visitor looked at me and said oh i think that probably answers that question!!!

not retained much of anything else so big waves to everyone.

Fab news Lucky glad she got her vbac
let us know the name ?

Mixedm my sis little girl is Rubi Sarah

Taking the kids out for lunch today as it my sis 30th , nice sunny day here Just waiting for dp and H and L to come back from church , H doind a reading this morning

Yay, well done Lucky

Lovely name, Lilyloo

Nicky - def not worried about your kids development then!!

Been doing toilet training with Tamara for a couple of weeks, moved from pull-ups to knickers last Monday and she's only had 2 accidents since then [proud mummy emoticon]. She's not great at telling us when she needs the loo but is quite happy to go when told...and as of saturday, I switched her onto a padded peppa pig toilet seat rather than the potty. She absolutely loves sitting on it (I thought it was going to be a real fight!), and its much nicer than having to clean the potty out after each time!! Hopefully we'll be able to keep it up when we go on holiday on Thursday, but she's definitely wearing pullups for the flight !

Hope you're all well and enjoying the sunsine? I'm off for my 28 week midwife check in a bit...beginning to feel 'properly' pregnant now, in a good and bad way, iyswim

Wow filly thats fab. When I take Georges nappy off to change him for bed he has sat on the toilet a couple of times. Mainly because Edward has a wee before he goes to bed. George doesn't do anyhting but then quite enjoys sitting on the toilet which is a good start for when we start training him in the summer
Had to take poor Edward to the gp this morning. He has been complaining of pain when he wees over the weekend. Turns out he has a wee infection he has been given anti biotics. On top of that my tumble dryer has packed up. Luckily I have insurance on it so the engineer is coming to look at it on Wednesday
Apart from that all is well in the gingeme household.

Morning all ladies,

Well, I just got out my whingeing on the ante-antal thread, so I wonder what I have to tell you guys?

S not ready for potty training, mentally rather than physically. I just asked her if she wanted to stop wearing nappies and do wees on the toilet and we established whe would do it when she is older. I'm in no hurry really.

She seems to be finding life a bit overwhelming at the moment. She is perfectly happy during the day, and her language is coming on really well now. 'Sit down mummy!' Is her first attmept at three words in a row, and she applies it liberally. If only the washing up etc, would do itself, I'd happily oblige. But when she goes to bed she often lies chattering for literally hours at a time and often ends up crying. Each time I go in she is really trying to ask me soemthing. I think it's where me and her Papa are, but obviously she has an awful lot going on in her mind.

Gingeme - sorry to hear about E's infection. It can feel very sore.

Filly - that's fab news. What a good little girl. I'll have to look up that toilet seat! What method did you use with her? Do you just ask every 20 minutes, or something?

LaT Nathan has long chatting sessions in the middle of the night or early morning - I think he's trying to make sense of things too! Unlike your little lady though he likes to have a party atmosphere for his chats with lots of screeching and bouncing.

She's really happy until she's not IYSIWM

LaT - I think they go through a lot of development stuff all at once around this age, so Sabela may just be struggling with not being able to express everything as clearly as she would like. I find T still has a lot of crying/tantrum jags that are entirely due to frustration that she can't communicate exactly what she wants/needs, although she is now finally starting to speak more clearly in fuller sentences and is a lot happier as result.

Changes are coming thick and fast here....as well as knickers (and we have now completely ditched the potty, 2 weeks after starting, as she really prefers the padded loo seat and calls it the 'big girl toilet'), T moved into her big girl bed on Sunday evening

Dh built A's new bed on Sunday (its basically the top part of a bunk, with play space and shelves underneath), rushed out to Ikea on Sunday afternoon and bought T a load of pink bedding, then moved the cot out of the nursery into ds' room and moved ds' old childrens bed into the nursery and made it up for T.

She knew nothing about it until after dinner on Sunday eve (he hadn't expected to have time to do all of that!), and when she saw the bed sitting in 'her' room (hah...not for much longer, she's moving in with ds when we come back from holiday in a few weeks...!!! ), she was screeching with excitement.

Then she burst into tears because she couldn't go to bed straight away !!! In the end we gave her a really quick bath and put her straight to bed because she didn't want a story or anything...all she wanted to do was to go to sleep in her real bed.

Next morning it was all she could talk about, and today, after only 2 nights in the bed and 3 on the proper toilet, she was pointing at the cot and saying "baby sleep there in cot" and at the potty saying "baby do poo there on baby potty"....hurrah!!

Obviously I expect some reversal when the baby comes, but I'm so relieved she's decided she actually wants to be a big girl before the baby comes and removes the choice anyway....!

Wow, that's great Filly. I had a simialr thing withthe tears when we moved Sabela into her own room. She was so excited that it all got a bit much. She absolutely loves it. She moves around so much in the night, though, that we'll not be attemtping a big bed yet.

S will quite often try tears or sreeching when she wants something. Now I just say, 'No need to cry, just say 'book, please.' She seems to be taking it in. She'a actually got the idea of please and thankyou really quickly, and often doesn't need to be reminded .

She did say this morning that she really wants the baby to come and live here but she doesn't think that I should look after it. We'll see how that one goes. One of her little pal girls has just had a baby brother (the one I told you about - she actually hadn't had him yet. She phoned on her way home from the hospital!). I thikn we'll be up ther eplaying with my friend's little girl quite a lot in the next few months, so she should get a much clearer idea of what's involved. Very obliging of my friend to have a baby brother for a toddler sister, three months in advance of me, don't you think?

Have bitten the bullet and bought loads of cheap pink knickers for DD and am going to attempt to potty train her Easter wk

She understands it in principal but don't know whether it will be a success or not....

Filly - where did you get A's bed (Ikea?) as I want to get a cabin style bunk bed for J so M can have his cot bed.

But J wants a desk underneath his...

They've got them in Argos, Simpson.

So much news - so little brain power

Simps - there are normally a few on eBay, have you looked on there?

H a long way off toilet stuff but not too worried, want to get T firmly there first. still the odd accident with him.

T still spotty (can't remember, did i say he has chicken pox?) and not very energetic but otherwise nothing wrong with him, his first spot appeared last Thurs, do you think he could go back to pre-sch this Fri?

H excited about learning to back down stairs himself, plus about having a party at 2am this morning .

Not too much else happening, orchestra later though i'm always so tired on a tuesday it's silly.
Booked carpet cleaner for tomorrow (finally) and an oven cleaner for a few weeks - only lived here nearly 6 years and never done it

Simpson - A's bed had the option of coming with a desk, a chest of drawers and a book case underneath....we decided not to get them as didn't think he 'needed' a desk yet (he does his homework at the kitchen table and will do for a while to come, I think!), and the drawers were really shallow and poor quality. Also, there was no-where to store a desk chair under the bed, and the room isn't big enough for a chair to randomly stay out. So in the end we bought the bed without the storage (it was £100 cheaper ) and have bought some fab ikea storage units for underneath...

will try to find a link...

Has anyone had any experience of this? S is having real problems with her Dad going to work. She knows it's part of her routine but is getting increasingly upset when he leaves, asks for him a lot, (likes to read only books with mamas and papas in for example. She doesn't like ones with only mummies and babies), but then is very badly behaved with im shen he gets home. He does need to work on consistency and firmness with her but he's not too bad really. She just gets really upset with him, demanding playing and then hitting him. Tonight he was late (through no fault of his own). He usually gets her ready for bed but tonight screamed whenever he touched her but then gave him kisses.

Advice?

LaT your dh travels occassionally doesn't he - do you think she may feel unsure when he's coming or going? No advice how to get around that though...

Nathan went for a settling in session at his new nursery yesterday and did so well - he was a scared clingie monkey for 3 minutes first with me standing up with him then with me crouching and him on my knee. Then he started pointing at things and was off. He has been very busy in that one hour and they would have happily kept him longer straight away but I wanted to make sure his first session was 100%
happy. He's going for 2 and a bit hours today including lunch, then another session tomorrow and then they would be happy for him to start Monday

He's spending the afternoon with a good friend while I attend interviews for two different jobs in the space of 3 hours - luckily they are close together

I had a full blown panic attack last night when I found two spots on Nathan's back and convinced myself he had chickenpox and wouldn't be able to settle in at nursery and start on Monday and I would be left with no childcare etc. Still not very stressproof. But I'm finding the closure of our office hard so i need ot be patient with myself and accept life is stressful. And breathe...sorry for ramble.

BTW for those not on fb Lucky's lo is called Abigail Rose

LaT - can S speak to your DH on the phone throughout the day?

WST - so pleased nursery went well

Just going off to try a new music class with M in a bit.

More c**P from H (cheers for chat on FB WST )

Have only had 4hrs sleep due to H stuff and M waking up at 3.30am and being awake for ages

Sorry for rubbish night Simpson. So hard when there's a whole day to get through!

WST - That's lovely to hear. I hope the longer session goes well today.

YEs, DH is away today until Sunday again . She is just really devoted to us being a family unit at the moment and loves it when we're together more than anyhting. I think it might be the new baby coming that has made her feel the need to be insecure. She always lays our places at the table and counts who sits where, even if he's not there. She asks for him alot and often we do phone him. And I'm not joking about the books. I have to turn at least one of the mama cows into a papa etc.

I find it really upsetting when she hits DH and he says it's ok, she's just tried, angry etc but finds it difficult to manage appropriate chastisement. As he's not with her all the time, he doesn't have the same kind of knowledge of her that I do, or the confidence. She sees that, of course and will sometimes hit him when I'm in the other room and then look round the corner to see if I saw it or not. Much to my surprise, I am the figure of authority! She knows she is not suppoed to hit, and has sometimes taken to hitting or biting herself too so she doesn't do it to DH.

This is probably blowing it out of all proportion in your minds. It's not a massive part of our lives and when we're all together it's great. It's just when he doesn't come home exactly when she expects it or when she is tired.

Good luck with the interviews, WST...hope they go well

(((Simpson))) - which probably won't make up for a lack of sleep but is the best I can do from here! Is your mum able to give you a break sometime soon for a night?

LaT - both ds and dd have gone through massively daddy-clingy phases (actually, no point in calling it a phase with Tamara, as she's never been anything other than a total daddy's girl ) and we've had some similar behaviour, esp from ds. What we find is that ds is so excited (esp on a friday evening, when he knows its the weekend) that he really plays up and ends up getting into trouble . And Tamara went through a phase of inconsolable crying when daddy left every morning...(dh also doesn't always get home for bedtime). I tend ignore the heartbroken missing daddy stuff and dont it too much attention (although we do phone daddy during the day when once of the dcs has been really good and they get to tell him about it) and dh is super-firm about bad attention-seeking behaviour when he is home, so the dcs get the message it just doesn't work.

Off on holiday tomorrow....so much to do, so much to pack, so little time....!

I wouldn't describe her as a Daddy's girl but I think part of the problem is that Daddy is so much fun! Especially when I'm pregnant I can't do alot of the physical play that she loves, so Daddy was doing lots. He's cut right back on it now, but hasn't got into the rhythm of e.g. taking away the blocks if she throws them, ignoring her if she pleads etc. He's getting there. Over time, he came to recognise it was a problem and is trying to take steps to makeit better.

Enjoy your holiday, Filly !

What I mean is, she is not 100% happy if he's not here, much less so if I'm not here but adores it when we are all together. She sits counting out our names and then chortling.

Well nursery session two today: Nathan recognises favourite nursery worker (the lovely Claire who come to our church)on arrival - reaches out, climbs over into her arms, points at toys, waves at mummy... - looked gratifyingly crestfallen when I did indeed walk away but I know that will only last a minute.

There was another little boy there for the first time who was moving from another nursery and all he did was sob for his mummy on the lap of one of the carers - much rather my boy is happy

Aww LaT that is so sweet really - that she wants you all together

Nathan is a real daddy's boy but he has a home based daddy who pops in and out all day so he's never away from him long. It will change now he goes to nursery but he even so daddy in church when the child minder would take him to toddler group and children's church.