Wait, You're HOW Old?

You know you're getting old when....

...you realise your first-born now does all his wees standing up. :o When did THAT happen?


He does, however, seem to have already learnt to wipe up after himself though. Phew! You can thank me later, future wife/husband!

Poppy Lots Of Teeth

I discovered that Pops has a top molar to go with two bottom molars by her putting my finger in her mouth and clamping down. Ouch.

Speaking of teeth, here's this amazing picture of a child's skull before the adult teeth have grown through. No wonder teething hurts!

A 4 Year Old's Logic

I'm unsure whether it's born from greed or is pure logic which will stand him in good stead for a future career as philosopher extraordinaire (wait, what do you mean there aren't any philosophy jobs?!), but Pix has been showing amazing reasoning skills.

Following on from deciding to invite Santa to his birthday party (so he'll get presents, natch), he decided that he'd like to have his very own robot Santa, who could make him toys whenever he wanted. And also make me cups of tea without me having to get up. Genius child.

Given the choice between spending his £1 pocket money at the toy shop or the sweet shop he decided that he would buy a toy that makes sweets. This boy is going to go far. (He actually got a wind-up alien which is almost but not quite, as cool).

Watching Harry Potter yesterday he raised a very good point: how can Harry see through the invisibility cloak? The cloak isn't invisible... I've not thought of that and I've known about invisibility cloaks since 1998.

How One Became Two

I thought I'd posted something similar to this already. I can't find it, if I did. I've just realise the benefit of useful, informative post titles though. I wrote this tonight as a response to a friend's worries about increasing her family. Names have been changed, but nothing else has been.

As you may/may not remember my start with Pix was very similar to how I think yours was with YourBaby. It was a stressful, traumatic labour which I didn't physically recover from the aftermath of for over a month. More like 6 weeks. I was in a LOT of pain from various different things which admittedly weren't all as a result of giving birth. Emotionally I was a bit of a wreck too - I'd have flashbacks and panic attacks about the labour. 
By the time I was physically healed a lot of emotional damage had been done because (and I do admit I'm not very good at being altruistic, not the best trait in a parent) it was 6 weeks of, frankly, wishing Pix wasn't around so I could feel better and not hurt. All the mess surrounding feeding him added to the - I wouldn't say bonding issues, but the feeling as though the love for him was something that had to grow rather than something that was innate and natural and there from the beginning, you know?
By the time Pix was about 9 months I started feeling calm about being a parent. Well, not calm, but calmer! I enjoyed it. I endured the first 9 months, I think. There were good bits, don't get me wrong, but I felt like I was coming out of a shell shocked daze. I put it down to him being mobile then, but who knows? He wasn't a high needs baby but he needed more than I realised (well duh, he was a baby). I definitely didn't want more babies. I genuinely didn't think I'd be able to get through the trauma of it all again, that it would definitely break me. I remember telling people that I wasn't one of 'those' parents who said never, ever again only to go on to having 3 more kids.
Inevitably - and I just checked, it was when Pix was 1 year, 8 months and 2 days old - the seed of doubt sprouted and I started to consider that there may be more babies in our future. I don't know what triggered it, really. Hormones, biological clock, seeing how awe-sam No1 had become? Who knows, But when that little voice started there wasn't really much I could do, you know? There were a hundred reasons why No2 was a Really Bad Idea but an 8lb idea was bigger than those. We talked about ways we could have a baby but not go through all that again, talked about adoption, talked about going straight to an elective section, not breaking my back the week before...
I spoke to my GP about a referral to the [hospital] birth trauma centre which was (at the time) about to open. I started preparing by coming off medication which needed to be out of my system for 6 months and very vaguely thought about how I wouldn't be in the same position during labour/post labour again. This is a massive TMI but I started getting panic attacks again when it came to the, um, conception bit of having another baby because I knew it wasn't recreational but procreational (OMG, I didn't even know that was a real word) but I went with the very mature response of absolutely, definitely not thinking about it at all thankyouverymuch. Then I put my head in the sand for 6 months until I got the BFP.
I spent the next, ooh, 10 months shitting myself. Literally, sometimes. Oh God, that was a joke. I spent a very, very long time feeling sick from anxiety about what I'd got myself in to. Before the month was out I'd written a list called 'Things To Shit Myself About' to raise at my booking in appointment, who referred me to [Head of Midwifery] to have the debriefing session you had. There was a lot more sand/head interfacing; there was a LOT of wailing at people who had BTDT. Knowing that people had come out of similar situations and stayed relatively normal was a help. But, you know, mostly the head/sand.
I know you've not asked for more and I'm sorry if I'm stepping over the line now, but having Pops healed me. I was prepared for the worst to happen but I took control of what I thought might go wrong - booking [my doula], having a home birth, refusing to go to [hospital] in an emergency, refusing anything but an epi, making sure the people who were going to be there knew what state I was likely to be in. Knowing I was likely to be unable to speak but that people who had been primed to intervene gave me the reassurance that I'd be able to let go and let myself do what I needed to do. I think you're probably there, in some ways. You know the birth that you want, you know how it'll happen and you have more support prepared to help you get it. If YourHusband is anything like MyHusband then he knew last time but was so busy crapping himself about it all that he didn't feel as though he could intervene as much as I felt necessary. Also because it was such a brand new experience that he didn't know for sure that I even wanted him to intervene. You know that what happens in labour is unpredictable and no matter how much you plan and prepare your body might do something different but that works both ways. What happened last time may not happen this time. And actually, both of my labours were very similar physiologically - both went back to back during labour, contractions never got established etc. Yet because of my environment they were handled in massively different ways! Also, from getting to know [Supervisor of Midwives] and the MSLC I truly believe that [hospital] has turned around in the care they give. They're very much about supporting women and there wasn't that vibe 4 years ago, and I'm positive if you ended up in hospital and [SoM] was there she'd get involved to help you.
As for your concerns post-labour, well, again, you can't predict what will happen. Pops was a dream baby. Was it a more AP approach I took that did it, or was that just her? I don't know, but the entire thing couldn't have been more different. You might have an easy baby, you might have a challenging baby but you WILL cope. You're strong, and capable, you have support, you know what to expect. I love having 2. They're fascinating together, they're funny, they're massively different in personality. I'm SO glad I didn't let my fear hold me back, and it so, so could have. The fear nearly broke me but Pops healed me 

Telling A Good Tale

Pix has been really funny and clever today.

We had a car conversation about how "burglars are bad" so, curious, I asked him if everybody who steals is a baddie. He said no, but didn't know why some people might not be so we discussed how if someone can't feed their family and they stole food that wouldn't be a bad thing to do. Which led to...
"If they stole all the food what would happen?"
"We could buy different food"
"If they stole all of our food what would happen?"
"We could afford to buy other food"
"If they stole all the bread in the shop what would we do?"
"Buy bread from a different shop"
"If they stole all the bread in all the shops what would we do?"
"Make some more"
"If they stole all the machines to make the bread what would we do?"
"Eat something different."
Which led to...
"If they stole something from the police station what would happen?"
"They couldn't, because there's too many police officers there"
"But if they killed all the police officers?"
"Then there'd be more police officers from somewhere else"
"But if they killed all the police officers everywhere?"
"Then new ones would be made"
"But if they were on fire they'd have to be put out. Would the doctors help the baddies if they were on fire?"

***

[Comes running in, howling with laughter, apropos of nothing]

"Mommy! Girls would look silly with beards!"

I didn't like to mention Grandma's... ;)

***

"Girls can't wear boy clothes, can they?" 

Careful where you go with this one, kiddo. You've just begged for - and been given by a generous friend - a purple velvet number. When questioned about what boy clothes are he points to his (turquoise) Buzz Lightyear tshirt.

"You know, bl-" *looks at my (blue) tshirt* 

"Oh!" *mad giggles*

***

He also made up a story. 

"Mr Tickle was out one day and he met a nasty boy who was called Nasty Boy who killed a person. Then he killed another person and then all the people. Then he ate all the killed people and then he killed himself. And then he went home and decided to be a good boy."

Stream of Consciousness, Pre-School Style

"Sometimes when I'm naughty I think you're not my best friend anymore. Are you my best friend even when I'm naughty? The thing is, I want to be your best friend even when I'm a grown up but I'll get married... I want to marry a girl. Poppet! But when she's grown up she won't be my sister she'll be my brother. Will her hair be the same as mine when she's grown up?"



 *runs away blowing a party streamer*

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Accidents and advertising

"Mommy, if you have an accident and it wasn't your fault and someone else was to blame then you need to call someone about that don't you?"

I think Pix might just watch too many TV channels with commercials on. Back to Cbeebies.

Let's go fly a pirate ship.

After a horrendous start to the Bank Holiday weekend (horrendous to the point I had to call all of Ed's colleagues to get them to interrupt his client meeting so he could come home RIGHT NOW because I couldn't stop fainting from a stomach bug. Which he then came down with. Yeah.) things picked up and we made the most of the glorious weather. I know, May Bank Holiday, nice weather and the north west of the UK - I don't think that's ever happened before.

On Sunday we headed up to Lyme Park to fly kites up at the Cage, cavort around the adventure playground and roll down hills.

Let's go fly a kite

Crawling up that hill, made a deal with God....

They were filthy by the end of it. So were we! They don't warn you of that when they're extolling the virtues of babywearing, do they? ;)

Today we made good on Pix's belated birthday trip to Gulliver's World which was heaving - better than our last visit when we tried to go when it was still closed for the season. Whoops. Taking the carrier on its second trip of the weekend was inspired really; it was SO much easier to have Pops tucked up on us rather than being pushed and barged by the crowds in the pram.

The park is looking a bit tired and was understaffed which is a shame as it's the perfect size for littlies. There's only 2 rides that Pix can't go on and there's a fair few that Pops is able to ride on too. Although as she seems to have grown 8 foot overnight that's not surprising. Two things they did really well were the number of toilets (hurrah, says the ridiculously tiny sized bladder person!) and the number of climbing frames where the kids can run riot. They both did really well with queueing and walking and I think it's because they got to run off steam at every second corner.

Apparently as Pix got off the Pirate Ship and his dad said thank you to the guy running it, he shouted "Shiver me timbers!" then ran off. He's a comedy genius sometimes.

Scream if you wanna go faster!

Given the amount of sugar, e-numbers and BLUE ICE LOLLIES they had, I'm surprised they're asleep. Thank god they are, I'm bushed.

*tap tap* Is this thing on?

Oh dear. 6 months and no post. You can blame my forum and GOING BACK TO WORK for that. Eurgh.

Allowed to wee yet?

I've just come across this post on a new mother using Gina Ford's methods. Hilarious. You should check out Laura's entire blog, it's very funny.

Does TV stunt children's brains?

Confession time! My children watch TV - a lot of it.

Until two days ago.

I've cut them off cold turkey. No more Peppa (hurrah!), no more Mr Tumble, no Batman, no Dora the Explorer, no Spiderman, Super Hero Squad, Ben & Holly, Mister Maker, Thundercats, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Team Umizoomi, In the Night Garden....whew! Yes, there's a lot. So TV is more of a staple in this house rather than a treat. It also doesn't work as an electronic babysitter because there's no novelty value to it.

Although there was some mega whining about not having the TV on during the first day (and, to be fair, some the second day too), Pix has risen to the challenge admirably. He's spent hours and hours playing clever little games, making little worlds and asking questions. Oh God, the questions! Here's just a taster of what we've covered today: what planets there are, gravity, maths (addition and subtraction), what aliens might eat (salt), why we think about people when we're not with them, why people might die if they don't eat their breakfast (he's going through a death phase at the moment), how to send an email to people, whether jumping counts as exercise, does Woody from Toy Story get old and die (hello death phase!), what are cars made out of, what are tellys made out of, why are there so many red lights on cars, where does rain water come from and why does the swing make his penis tickle. I'm sure he didn't ask this many before, so perhaps turning the TV off has stopped stunting his brain. I might put it back on tomorrow for a rest ;)

We've also noticed that there's been absolutely no shouting matches over the last two days. And there's been quite a few recently, so that's amazing. Where he has started to try it on, he's backed down pretty quickly and it's not escalated to being removed from a situation which has been pretty amazing really.

How much screen time do your little ones get? Do you see a difference in their behaviour when it's off?

We started the indoctrination early with Pixie

Minty....fresh?

It's perhaps indicative of my state of mind why I didn't put two and two together to make the answer to why Pops has had a bad tummy and skin complaints... It was, in fact, only when I stumbled across a post in a forum of mine that I discovered that peppermint tea can sometimes cause diarrhea  and skin irritation in nursing babies. Peppermint tea is what I've started drinking by the bucketload for the past few weeks.

Head, meet desk.

How on earth it didn't enter my head that there may be a connection when her brother has an allergic reaction to mint I don't know, but since I stopped the tea her problems have begin to, er, dry up. I'm sure it wasn't the cause as the timing's wrong but early indicators show that there's a link. Unfortunately, that leaves me without a hot drink of choice!


ETA: I've reintroduced a couple of peppermint teas into my diet and so far so ok. On second thoughts I don't think it was that after all, but I'm not taking chances!

Dermatographic urticaria, or, why my child is weird

Poppet is in week four of a bout of diarrhoea (woo, spelled right the first time, get me!). Tests show she doesn't have a bug, so it's probably some sort of viral thing. It's not pleasant, but she's fine. What's interesting to note is that the last few days she's been really reactive to touch. If you pick her up, or hold her, or she knocks herself, or anything really she gets bright red marks. It rather looks as though she has dermatographic urticaria - a small scratch to her arm flared up in a big welt. The font of knowledge wikipedia says it can occur post virally. Am I meant to notify the doctor of this?

Good grief, but can none of my children be normal in the health stakes?

Play Assessment

I'm on a roll tonight ;) Actually, I've just been reminded that Pixie has got a bit further down the line with his SALT (speech and language therapy) assessment. He had his play assessment (which is literally someone assessing him while playing!) and we now have a professional opinion of what we're facing.

He does have a stammer and he does have dysfluency and lack of coherence in his speech. The therapist is unsure whether the lack of coherence is down to the massive amount of tongue action he does (seriously, it's all over the place, hanging out like a dog, flapping around his mouth.... It reminds me that I remember thinking that my tongue used to feel like it was too big for my mouth a lot. I don't now, so it could actually be that he needs to grow into his tongue and all of that will be fine, but otoh it could be something else). She wants us to concentrate on dealing with the stammer first as that will give his head to grow around his tongue if that's what's needed.

In all honesty we've not been great at putting into practice all the strategies we've been taught. In fact, I'd go as far as saying we're reacting worse to the stammer than we ever have done. At least, I certainly am. I've found myself finishing his sentence or quickly getting my side of the conversation in before he has a chance to speak as I can't face listening to him trying to get his words out. Not good. At least writing it down here makes me accountable to making changes. That, and we've got another appointment series starting this week.

Start of the Road

I'm meant to be editing some photos of our recent holiday but a slight technical issue (flat camera battery, whoops!) means I can't get them on to the computer so I thought as I'm here I'd update about the salicylic acid intolerance testing we're doing with Pixie. (I also want to stay online to stat check as I've just taken the decision to de-anonymise this blog with real life people and have put a link on my facebook page. Eek! So hi, those of you who are looking ;) )

We'd made the decision to cut out salicylic acid from Pixie's diet without discussing it with a medical professional first. Firstly, because we didn't think it would do any harm, and secondly because it can take two to three weeks to get a non-urgent appointment with my surgery and frankly I'm not that patient. We thought we saw some success and I think my last post on this subject saw a link between eating a 'moderate' food and a worsening of his symptoms. Since then we got to a stage where his symptoms were still there in varying degrees even when we were very strictly sticking to 'low' and 'negligible' level foods (for the list we've been working off, see here) but if we gave him something he wasn't used to he'd have terrible urticaria (hives, to you and me) around his face and terribly itchy, dark eyes. Every time we thought about giving up the low salicylic acid diet (Christ, I'm not keep typing that out, LSA diet from now on I think!) because we couldn't see any reason why his symptoms were flaring, we'd accidentally let our guard down and have a horrendous reaction to tend to. This isn't the best picture as it was taken on my phone (and please excuse the dinner down his top, which I've just noticed!), but the redness is lots and lots of hives:

While this was going on, we were referred to a paediatrician regarding chicken pox vaccines, so we took the opportunity to discuss this with the doctor. Unfortunately he confirmed that there are no tests we can do for this particular allergy but we can test for individual foods. We're working on a list of things we're pretty sure cause a reaction in Pixie; we know that mangos, flavoured crisps, anything tinned and mint cause a problem. Because the  list of potentials is so big I think we may have to do staggered testing as we want to get moving on it and we can't overload his poor body with things that may cause a reaction. His body needs time to get over the responses he has (or doesn't) but I don't want to wait indefinitely for testing.

To be honest I'm not sure where we go from here. Even if it's not the salicylic acid, there's definitely a pretty major list of allergies/intolerances he's got. I don't know how he can avoid even the ones we know cause a problem for the rest of his life - cleaning teeth is a problem, eating anything but home made food is a problem, having a varied diet is a problem.... Unfortunately, I think getting a solid answer is going to be a problem too :( Having said that, one thing that isn't a problem is Pixie's response to it all. He has been totally amazing at picking up that he must ask if he's allowed to eat any food offered to him by anyone other than me or his dad. He knows quite a few things that he's not allowed and will stop someone giving him it if necessary. He also saves me any of the sweeties he's given but can't eat - excellent!

PS - hello to the FIFTY EIGHT people who have just checked this blog in the last hour!

New Beginnings

Oh my, I didn't realise it had been so long since I posted. What's been happening? We've had a pre-school starter, salicylate acid intolerance updates, we've had sleeping, we've had no sleeping....

So yes, Pixie has started at his pre-school and boy does he love it. Every day we hear "is it a pre-school day today?" and he's been very excited about doing his 'homework' - he gets to pick a book from their own library whenever he wants. This is him on his first day:

It's a difficult task to get him out of his uniform at the end of the day! As good as I find his school so far, I wish it came with an instruction book. I think it's assumed that parents know what they're doing but I don't have a clue! As evidenced by my complete failure to pay his snack fee most weeks and reply to his first birthday party invite until it it was too late and the spaces had been filled. Whoops!

Of course, taking photos is a laborious job with many unusable results....

Sleep Training: Stage Four

I've just put Pops down for her nap, which is the commencement of stage four of our sleep training. Because....the cot is in Pixie's room! A day of naps in his room followed by them rooming in tonight. Yikes.

Stage three went really well. She now has her last milk during the story, we all say goodnight and as Daddy and Pixie leave the room she goes into her cot wide awake. There's sometimes a bit of grousing but  it's rarely all out crying and not for more than a few minutes. That might change tonight when she knows someone else is in the room with her (especially as Pixie has a tendency to chant 'shh' at her if she cries), but, well, we'll sort it.

Best of all we get to go back into our ACTUAL bed. Amazeballs. Although I'll miss watching films in bed ;)

Third Stage of Sleep Training

Last night was night 7 of the sleep training regime. We've been taking a slowly, slowly, catchy monkey approach and made minor changes for 3 nights before introducing the next stage.

Night 1-3 - Introduced the '10 minute' rule of not going in to her, and even then only for a cuddle.
Night 4-6 - Began putting her to bed awake after her last feed instead of waiting for her to feed to sleep
Night 7-10 - Bring last feed forward slightly it's during story time, then putting her into the cot awake and all leave the room together (usually the boys leave and I stay to give a last feed in the dark and quiet)

I really expected this change to cause problems as she NEVER gets put to bed at night like that, it's always been just me and her for a final feed. But I turned the light off, gave her a cuddle, sang the going to bed song, and popped her in. There was maybe a minute of babbling, no crying at all, and that was that until SIX AM! Not a single peep from her.

Amazeballs.

I mean, 7am would be better, but... ;)

Hopefully the next two nights will go as well as last night, and then we'll move the cot into Pixie's room (again!). I'm undecided whether to go straight to leave them both in the room together as she falls asleep, or have 3 nights of him leaving the room for another story and then coming in while she's asleep.

I think because we're habit breaking, the very slowly routine changing is working really well for us. Sure, it takes longer, but it's not so much of a change in one go.

How's your sleep been?

Sleep Training An 8 Month Old: Continued

We're on night 4 of sleep training and we're still camped out on the airbed!

Night 2 we had exactly the same plan. It was favourable when she didn't wake at the recently expected 10pm-ish, so that was nice. She didn't stir til 2am-ish when I think she'd have gone back to sleep except it turns out the not unsubstantial amount of noise an airbed makes when you roll over, could be heard in her (our!) room. I think our noise woke her up just a bit too much so I went to give her a cuddle and after a couple of minutes more crying she went back to sleep. There were a few more stirs but nothing of any consequence, although they increased in quantity from 6am til getting up time (6.50am, still a vast improvement on 5am!).

Night 3 brought a disagreement between me and the hubby. He thought there was no stirring until early morning, I beg to differ*! Regardless of who was right (me, obvs), nobody went up to her so it mustn't have been anything of any note. Slightly earlier wake up this morning of 6am, although when you've had nearly a full night's sleep that'll do, donkey.

Tonight (night 4!) I ended up putting her into her cot while she was still awake (normally we feed to sleep) and I expected a long, long screaming fit. BUT, 3 minutes later she was asleep. Hurrah! I suspect there might be an unsettled night ahead of us but she needs to be able to go into her cot awake so that she can share a bedroom with Pixie. We'll work on that - she goes in her cot awake for naps so there's no reason why she can't.





*In the interest of transparency it's only fair I point out that I just asked him if he had thought there hadn't been any awakenings and he said no, he wasn't sure which is why he'd asked me. So I was definitely right ;)