Grandma's visit, hot London, poorly toddler

The summer heat must be going to my head, because I really enjoyed Grandma's visit and managed to be a friendly person for the whole weekend. That's twice in a row now. I worry when my irrational dislikes of people start to erode - it means I'm changing into someone who might be described as "nice" (which in my world translates as "one of the most tedious people to walk this planet.")

True to form, Jambeans managed to catch another cold-cum-fever-and-chest-infection to coincide with Grandma's visit and the 31 degree heat outside. It makes it a bit difficult to tell whether she's properly feverish, or just hot'n'sweaty like the rest of us, but she's OK - we've seen worse.

Felix, bless him, is also snuffling. It's his first cold. Aaaaaah. But he's OK too and he ate some veggies for the first time yesterday without a single vomit in sight. The weaning plan is all going smoothly.
Did I mention how hot it is outside? But I'm not going to moan - it sure beats Winter.

Grrr that surly London lady

So I go up to the counter at the pool, smile, and go, like we always do, "2 adults, 1 baby, 1 toddler please" and it's that surly lady again and she goes "that'll be £8.40" without the corners of her mouth so much as twitching upwards, and I go "have the prices risen recently?" and in the style of a reluctant teenager she goes "no-oo", and I go "do I have to pay for the toddler" and the lady goes "well how old is she?" (and do I imagine it or do her eyes roll upwards at the same time?) and I go "just over 2" so the po-faced lady says in the deadest of dead voices "that'll be £7" so I pay and smile, gesture towards Jasmine and go "at what age do I start paying for her" and she goes "when she's 3" and I say thank you and what I'm really thinking is that unhelpful surly cow should have asked how old the toddler was first before just charging me for her and trying to rip me off grrrrrrrrrrrr.

My new perfume

I never wear perfume but recently I've found one to splash all over at least a couple of times a day - Eau de Posset

Feel so dead today - is it hormones?

I was totally wiped out by 9pm last evening and I still feel like a total slug today. I also have one of those monstrous headaches. I've been getting them pretty much every day for the last fortnight and am popping paracetamol with alarming regularity. I guess it's hormones - dropping back on the night feeds and supplementing other daytime feeds with solids is bound to have an effect, which reminds me that the dreaded period is going to reappear one day, I just hope its not soon.

Getting Felix to sleep through - twelfth and thirteenth nights

Night 12 sleep report: Felix slept through 11 hours

Night 13 sleep report: Felix woke up around 4am, eyes wide open, babbling and desperately trying to chew on anything within grabbing distance, but he wasn't crying. A few yelps and wails ensued over the next 20 mins or so then he went back to sleep by himself.

So according to the 5-night rule, he's not "sleeping through" just yet but 3 in a row is good going.

Am I okay?

This week my propensity to swing from totally fed up to perfectly happy has been more acute than normal, which is making me wonder if I'm okay, or really not very okay at all. Like on Monday - woke up and was a total, shouty cow for about an hour, but was serenely happy the minute we arrived at Kew and for the whole of the rest of the day (probably something to do with the fact that Kew is enchanted). Today - woke up just dandy but a mere 2 hours later I was seriously fantasising about walking out the front door and just keeping going, leaving kids, bf, home and the comfort of the burbs behind me forever. And I don't think it's because the bubs are being more bub-like and toddler-like than usual. I think it's because my willingness to tolerate it has just dissipated completely.

Having said that, right now Jasmine is painting the dining room table with yoghurt and I'm actually pretty cool with that. So I think I must be okay after all.

When is enough enough?

As far as I understand being a toddler is all about moaning and whining and throwing endless, unnecessary tantrums. Sorry, I meant to say is all about trying to discover how the world works and gaining some measure of control over it when you are constantly pushed and pulled around by grown ups all the time.

So one of Jasmine's favourite phrases at the moment is "my do it" - meaning "I want to do it", which is OK apart from the fact it also means "my way, in my time, and you don't get a look in". Cause of the current moan is about her wanting to take her shoes off. She successfully removed one but got completely stuck on the second. She managed to pull the velcro strap up OK, but wouldn't let go of it, instead she hung on to it which pulled it tighter, meaning her attempt to loosen the shoe with the other hand and then remove it were totally frustrated. Only Jasmine didn't get this. Instead, when I gently said "Jasmine, let go of the strap..." she took it as me trying to take over and started whining. So then I said "Let mummy help you" which made her cry. Then I tried "Mummy can tell you how to do it and Jasmine can do it" by which time she was in full on protest mode and was thrashing her feet around far too close to my face for my liking, but was still hanging onto the strap for dear life and trying to remove her shoe at the same time. About 10 minutes of me trying to teach her had passed now, and quite frankly, it was getting boring (it was boring to begin with) so I gave in to temptation, made her release her hand from her shoe and pulled it off to a crescendo of moaning, tears, whining and shouting.

I just left her to it. I'm so bored of trying to be a patient parent.

Unfortunately I can't seem to do anything right now. I've had enough.

Jasmine's new duvet

Jambeans has been undergoing a bit of sleep training of her own recently, in preparation for the day we turn her cot into a cot bed.

She's outgrown her sleeping bag so we bought her a new duvet and pillow at the weekend. Jasmine chose the covers (thankfully, the lovely blue train pattern as opposed to gopping pink fairy) and absolutely loves her duvet. We've been breaking her in gently, so for the first few days she would happily lie under it, giggling, on the living room floor, on our bed, in Felix' room, anywhere basically, but she got a bit anxious when at bedtime we bundled it into her cot and bundled her in shortly after. She took a while to settle and when we went to check we found her enjoying the freedom of being released from the sleeping bag for the first time: fast asleep, pyjama bottoms off, forehead down, bum in the air on top of the duvet.

But last night she got the hang of it and managed to stay under the duvet all night, and reassuringly, in one basic position rather than the usual 360 degree travels round her cot she normally does in the night.

She's also shown an increasing tendency to do her own stuff in her cot after we've put her down at bedtime - chatting to the vast menagerie of animals she's amassed, reading the books she also insists on taking into the cot with her. Now I think of it, there is an inordinate amount of stuff in her cot. If ever I've lost something that's going to be the first place I look.

Getting Felix to sleep through - eleventh night

Felix went to bed like a dream at 7 and slept through 11 hours again last night. So I'm now wondering how many consecutive nights before we can start claiming that Felix is actually 'sleeping through'? I reckon about 5.

Getting Felix to sleep through - ninth and tenth night

Sleep report night 9:

After our wibble, we did a proper bedtime routine, on time again. The trick is to get him used to falling asleep by himself, as opposed to being fed or cuddled, then he'll know what to do if he wakes in the middle of the night. Only Felix wouldn't settle, because he was still hungry I think, and when I went to feed him around 8pm he fell asleep at the breast and I couldn't rouse him. What can you do?

So in the middle of the night Felix woke up around 2am and cried for 10 minutes, which woke up Jambeans. Then I went to get Jambeans into our bed and check Felix, which made him cry harder for another 10 minutes. Then he was completely quiet, and it toook about 20 minutes for us to all relax again and start to doze off, when he woke up again and cried for the next 40 minutes. Total ordeal lasted about an hour. It was OK. Jambeans managed to ignore it and fall asleep pretty quickly which made it a lot easier.

Sleep report night 10:

Felix slept through again. Yaaaaaaaaaayyyyy!

The Girlie Gang Summer BBQ

Lovely Jade organised a BBQ for the Girlie Gang, their chaps and all our kiddies and, apart from missing Mary and her lot muchly, a truly fab time was had by all.

Us girls, all grown up and mamas too.

Second generation girlie gang, learning to chill and yak with the best of them, like their mamas.

Jammie going for the windswept look

Felix chatting up Annabel

Getting Felix to sleep through - the wibble in the middle

So after our amazing nights' sleep we sort of wibbled a bit. Felix is still sleeping long stretches - 7 to 9 hours, but not the 10 - 11 I really need. Instead, he's been waking between 9pm and 10pm and I've been feeding him then and he goes through till about 5am. And I've been a bit lax about making sure he doesn't feed himself to sleep during the day too, which doesn't help I'm sure. So we're going to sharpen our act up again and get back on track.

Getting Felix to sleep through - sixth night

Apologies, in advance, for the indiscriminate use of punctuation marks, but...

FELIX SLEPT THROUGH LAST NIGHT!!!!

HURRAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!

And although it's a bit premature, I am already planning weeks of sleep-laden nights ahead.

Getting Felix to sleep through - fifth night

Night 5 sleep report:

Felix settled himself to sleep around 19.00, then woke at 03.45, did about 10 minutes halfhearted whimpering that was barely audible, then went back to sleep by himself.

Hurrah! Elation! Joy!

Babymomma was very excited that he had actually slept through for the first time.

But then 20 minutes later and mid-celebration Felix woke up again and started whimpering himself fully awake. This time I went into check him, my cunning plan being to wear bf's enormous dressing gown to disguise the smell of milk and make Felix think I am daddy. Needless to say, I wasn't expecting too much.

So Felix is whimpering, then goes all silent and hopeful when he hears my footsteps, looks at me imploringly as I reposition him, then as I turn to go he starts screaming in a way that translates as "Nooooo! Don't Go! Come back! Mummy come back! Mummy come back now! Pleeease come back! I want a cuuuuuuuddle!!!!!!!!!!!"

But it only lasted half an hour this time, and the gaps between his fits of crying are growing longer, so we're definitely on the right path.

Jasmine potty training

We've started potty training Jasmine again. We first tried a couple of months ago but either it was too early and she just wasn't ready, or it was too close to Felix' arriving and it was too much change in one go. We stopped after many ridiculous attempts by mummy and daddy to teach by demonstration - we found ourselves on many an occasion with pants and trousers down in the bathroom hunched over the potty hoping Jambeans would copy us. Rightly, she either looked bemused, embarrassed or downright upset, but resisted sitting on the potty herself, whereas this time she's much more compliant. I was tempted to post a photo of her squatting with bare botty but fear her later wrath in teenage years. I'm obviously not as cruel as I aspire to be...

Getting Felix to sleep through - fourth night

Night 4 sleep report as follows:

Felix' last feed was at 18.10, he went to sleep on his own at 20.00, woke at 04.00, bf went to check on him but no cuddle, Felix then cried for 42 mins only and slept till 7am...

Am feeling hopeful.

And I've also decided to ditch getting Felix onto a bottle for at least the foreseeable future and wean Felix straight onto the cup, as we did with Jasmine. It's going well so far - he's lapping up about 60ml at a time in a messy but eager way, and I'm sure could take more. And he seems quite comfortable with formula, even if it's neat. And including the fact he's eating rice porridge quite nicely maybe, just maybe, that means I can start having the occasional morning off when bf is at home?

It's scary just writing it down because it seems like too much to hope for. Also, at the back of my mind, is the knowledge that Jasmine made exactly the same progress and then rejected the cup a few days before she was due to start nursery...

Getting Felix to sleep through - third night

Night 3 sleep report:

Felix cried for 1 hour 20 mins - insistent, pleading, loud, angry, hungry cries - and it goddamn nearly broke my heart to listen to him. I had to go downstairs and watch the end of "50 Sexiest Supermodels" on E! Entertainment. (Heidi Klum? Number 2?? Surely a mistake?) But he did sleep eventually, and then slept till 7am.

I don't know why, but I got it into my head that it only takes about 3 days for the whole thing to work, so even though it's not going badly I feel a bit sad today that we're putting the poor wee bub through the whole ordeal.

Getting Felix to sleep through - second night

Night 2 sleep report:

Felix woke at 2.34am, cried for 1 hour and 3 minutes, had 2 cuddles from the bf but no food. It started off a slow tired moan, got more frantic then he conked out. I woke him at 7am to feed him because my boobs were exploding.

It's going quite well. But I'm nervous about when the bf is at work.

Getting Felix to sleep through - first night

Felix is a pretty good sleeper, and was making fab progress till he rejected the bottle at the beginning of June. Since then, either because of, or simply by coincidence, his night waking patterns have been a lot more unpredictable, so I decided that as soon as we get back from holiday we should aim to get him to sleep through. He's just shy of 5 months' old - it feels like the right time.

We're not 100% sure what the best way to go about it is. We keep debating whether to try and link it to getting him used to the bottle again. Weaning is the next major hurdle, and will take longer (and, because of the nightmare I had last time, and because history is repeating itself, is the thing I dread more than torture, more than death, more than global chocolate-drought). So we've been pratting about trying to give him a 10pm bottle feed (maybe he wasn't hungry or he was and just rejected it - either way it was a FAIL and I was plunged into despair just before bedtime) and then trying to bottle feed him in the middle of the night when he did wake (same result, same potential reasons, same middle of night despair). We've now decided to ditch that particular problem till later, bench the despair, and focus on getting him to sleep through for now.

With Jambeans we didn't try till she was 7 months corrected, and when we finally did get round to doing it, we did it in a gentle, slow way - first weaning her off the breast, then weaning her off the cuddles - but the thing that really worked worked was ultimately letting her cry it out, so we're going to cut out all the Good Cop tactics and try the same with Felix. Luckily for me, bf gets to be Bad Cop.

Soooo, first night's report:

Felix cried for 1 hour and 8 minutes. It started of a gentle, bearable, whiny-wimpering. Then got more persistent so Bf administered cuddles after half an hour. Then turned into full on shrieking which woke Jambeans up. Then, all of a sudden - total quiet. And sleep till 7am.

The first night is supposed to be the worst, so by my calculations that was a good start.

Return to the poo theory

Felix was grumpy and scrumbly again this morning but as I was a bit fed up of the constant yelping I let bf look after him for most of the morning. And we're on our way to the swimming pool today when Felix does the most enormous poo. And I mean HUGE, as in you-could -scrape-it-off-with-a-ladle-and-fill-a-whole-bucket-HUGE. So it's obvious he's still paying off his 6-day poo debt, which could totally explain the mad grumps he's been having.

And after a swim and a really long sleep and a feed he was all serene and smiles again.

Then a wee bit later he did a bit more straining and did another really wet poo that slid right out of his nappy and all over his clothes.

And after a bath and a feed he's an absolute angel.

Which reminds me of that thing someone once told me, that your first answer to a problem is very often the right one.

Covered in sick and out of explanations

After the teething revelation I calmly administered Bonjela, to soothe the pain enough to then give 2.5ml of Calpol, which Felix kept down, then I waited 20 minutes and fed him. And he seemed calmer at first, but it's only been an hour and he's back to intermittent moaning and crying, and he just vomited over top number 3 today - on the inside - which is nasty, but I can't be bothered to change right now, so I'm back to feeling like I haven't got a clue what's going down and am resigned to holding him and trying to ignore the noise and smell of baby sick.

Abort! Abort!

My hair has been falling out in clumps recently, doubtless due to some hormonal change (please please please don't let it be a sign that my period is due to start again soon - that would be tooooo depressing) but I thought it a good excuse to tidy myself up a bit and indulge in some Looking After Number One, so on a whim this morning I booked myself in for a wash, cut and blow dry at a local salon.

Unfortunately, no one explained the rules of etiquette to Felix and he started bawling shortly after I arrived... and didn't stop.

So despite the attempts of the Lovely Salon Girls to walk, cuddle, amuse and generally distract him I had to abort the mission, leave the salon with half a haircut and abandon Looking After Number One entirely.

But thanks to one of the Lovely Salon Girls I did finally work out what the problem is - teething. Ok, so I know that teething is mainly a convenient catch-all explanation for all kinds of scrumbly behaviour but since the only thing that calmed Felix was letting him gnaw furiously at my knuckle I am now confident that this actually is down to teething proper, and probably nothing to do with poo at all.

I'm amazed I didn't think of it before.

What's up with the effly beans?

Either I'm poo obsessed, or it really is to do with poo (or both) but the efflybeans has been seriously scrumbly this last week. I'm pretty sure it's to do with the change in his poo habits - he went from pooing 6 times a day at birth, to pooing every 2-3 days for a couple of months or so, then to every 3-4 days for the next month or so, and recently he's changed down a gear again and will poo once a day for a couple of days, then will let it build up for 3 or 4 days. For the last couple of weeks he's had gaps of 5-6 days between poos and is noticeably grumpier the longer he leaves it and has been doing the most poisonous farts known to man.
Understandable.

Yesterday was the worst so far - he was seriously upset and crying so insistently I thought I might have to take him to the doctor's. But if I picked him up he seemed to calm down, only to kick off again when armache kicked in, or Jambeans need some attensh and I put him down. Then I'd get a bit unsure and go through the drill - is he hungry? does he need burping? is he full? does he want a new nappy? is he tired? etc. etc. and the answer always seemed to be yes to all of the above so I spent the whole day alternating between carrying him, feeding him, jiggling him, changing him, mopping up his sick (changing many t-shirts, and i've already been through two so far today), getting him to sleep and yet he kept crying. Unrewarding and tiring work, especially as Jambeans started to feel left out and would start whining at just the wrong time.
But then at 5pm he had a huge squealing/ screaming session (totally confusing as squealing is his happy noise and screaming means the opposite) finally did a 6-day poo followed by another big squealing sesh - no screaming thankfully; a little bit of milk, then the world's biggest burp right in my ear before conking out for a nap. (Typical boy, I thought.)

After that, aaaaah, all calm and coos and smiles and giggles. So I thought that was that. But then today - same again. Total moaning and crying fits interspersed with vomiting, fussing at the breast and then sleep. It's frustrating because I genuinely have NO idea what is going on but I suppose I'm not too worried. At least I'm not too worried when he's asleep.

But in between it all the darlings managed to pose for this gorgeous photo. I look at it and melt and it makes it all worthwhile.

One day on, one day off

OMG do I need another holiday? Post holiday blues descended on Tuesday when reality dawned and I realised how much stuff I wanted to get done in the next 6 weeks. Unfortunately I felt totally demotivated to do anything. I found myself instead feeling a bit lonely and bored and calling or texting everyone I knew who might be home... and leaving messages :-( Luckily I was saved by my mum in the early afternoon and had a good chat with her.

Felix is still moaning - it's been a 2-day long moanathon so far, making it hard to do anything at all. Much to write - more later...

Vindicated

So the rascally window cleaner came round again today saying it was "a few days short of 3 months" since his last visit, and this time I had actually written down the date of his last visit so I was able to send him packing.

Sounds like all hell has broken loose here - Jambeans is moaning and Felix is screaming blue murder as I write.

Onto solids

After a tentative start, Felix has been readily eating small spoonfuls of rice porridge for the last couple of nights. Jasmine, curiously, has been asking to have porridge too, and this evening insisted I also spoon feed it to her.

At last - some silly bubnames

Whilst on holiday we managed to flex our word muscles and come up with some appropriately silly nicknames for the bub: Squealix, Double Felix (bf's favourite) and Squeali-copter (my preferred option). What a relief - I was beginning to worry we had exhausted all the silly name generation with Jambeans.

Hol-i-day. Good.

I set off on holiday a total zombie. I returned a happy human being again.

Our first stop was a budget hotel on route to the lakes. Jambeans spiked a fever that night and her respiratory rate went up again. It was horrible - the next morning we debated at length whether we should turn around and go home, but decided in the end to risk it and press on. Best decision we ever made. We made it to the lakes (via a fantastic safari park, where baboons climb all over your car) to some fabulous accommodation on the edge of Grasmere, some great company in the form of 3 other families, stunning scenery, good weather and plenty of fresh air and exercise. Jasmine was well the whole time (but sadly awoke most nights shouting for either mummy, daddy or a cuddle before settling down in our bed) and Felix was an angel as ever. Jasmine learned loads of new phrases, like 'mountain,' 'boat trip' and 'lake' but her favourite was to repeat 'Hol-i-day. Good.' over and over.

I couldn't put it better myself.

Jasmine knows her animals

Given her parents' predilection for zoos it comes as no surprise that Jasmine already knows 'okapi', 'lemur', 'tapir', 'toucan' and 'seahorse' along with the usual other animal fayre that accompanies toddlerdom. And she has just completed her first animal collage, of which we are very proud.