Tuesday 28 December 2010

Parenting

Something I have been trying to do as Robert gets older, and more "himself", with his own views and wishes and wants, and the challenges that brings, is to try and parent him in a way that first and foremost keeps the following in mind with everything I do. To teach by example. I will say outright that I do not always manage to do the following, but I do try, and attempt to keep it in mind for the next time. If I want him to learn not to shout indoors, I try and not to shout at him. If I want him to learn not to snatch something from another child (or an adult), and to ask first, I try to ask him if I can have something, and not to take it off him. If I want to teach him to say please and thank you, I say please and thank you appropriately to him.

It is all too easy sometimes to see yourself as a person in authority, who does not need to treat his underlings with the respect he wants to receive himself. And I find myself falling into that trap too sometimes. I perhaps find myself thinking "I am the parent, and you WILL give me that now" and snatch something out of Robert's hands.

Something I am better at, and remember most times, is to say please and thank you to Robert. I remember my parents reminding me all the time "say please!" "say thank you!" And it's something that is hard to refrain from, you want your child to be polite and to be seen to be polite. And perhaps sometimes it's easy to think "if I don't tell my child when to say please and thank you, they will never learn when to say them".

I have rarely asked Robert to say please and thank you, at least not in the kind of way that has the added bit of guilt laden in to the request. I don't force him to repeat a "please" or a "thank you". Instead, whenever I ask for anything from him, I say please, whenever he gives me something, or does something I ask, I say thank you. And if he wants something, and says for example "boat, mummy!" I will say back to him "You would like the boat? Boat please, mummy!" and sometimes he will repeat "boat please mummy", sometimes he won't, but I will give him the boat, and praise him if he did say please.

He is now spontaneously saying please and thank you appropriately some of the time, without us telling him to say it, or modelling to him at the time. And it makes my heart swell every time he says "dee doo Mummy" after I've given him something, or done something for him. He is still little, and when he doesn't say please or thank you, he is not being rude, he's just being a toddler, who is still learning about life.

As the months roll on since Christopher was born, Robert is gradually learning about sharing too. Christopher is of course too young to be annoyed or upset if Robert takes something away from him, but Robert, seeing me hold a rattle in front of Christopher, immediately wants to play with it himself, he comes up and tries to take it off of me. I have been asking him calmly (while holding onto the toy tightly) when he does this, to "please not snatch, why don't you find a toy you want to play with?" and make a suggestion. And he is now beginning to let go with minimum fuss to find a different toy.

As the years go on, I'm sure my parenting issues will be much more difficult ones than snatching and manners, but so far I'm pleased that I have slipped into a way of parenting that seems to meet my ideals and work. Even if I don't always manage to do it right, it's an ongoing battle sometimes to let go of the ways of parenting that are familiar to you (ie, that you were brought up with), and to go with how you feel inside.

My two boys give me so much joy and laughter. Robert, while he is becoming his own little person, and gaining awareness of himself and his wants and needs, and learning to express them, is so cheeky and adorable with it. He comes up with little phrases that are so cute and funny. If Jonathan goes to do something that Robert doesn't want him to do (for example, gets up to go and get something and stop playing with him), Robert will say "oh, NO, Daddy..." with such a reproachful tone of voice!

I love that little guy so much, I find myself missing him when he's in bed asleep in the evening, and thinking how I can't WAIT to see him in the morning!

This is him before his haircut.



And then just before Christmas I gave him a haircut as it was getting rather long! I got the clippers out, boy it took a long time to get through all that hair!



Such a grown up little boy :)

And his baby brother, who is so happy, gives me the biggest smiles and the most gorgeous coos.





My two gorgeous cheeky little boys, how I love them so!

Friday 24 December 2010

Not really about the kids

Today is Christmas Eve. And I spent about 45 minutes of it in the dentists. One of my wisdom teeth has infected the gum, and was in such bad pain I spent several days popping ibuprofen (1 every 4-5 hours or so). Now I have a course of anti-biotics, and hopefully, that will help clear it up. I also got a bottle of Corsodyl recommended by the dentist.

This afternoon is going to be spent printing photos, framing photos, making flapjack, and wrapping, ready for tomorrow. We are seeing Jonathan's parents tomorrow, although we saw them briefly today while we were sorting out the dentist, and taking back a toy to be replaced that was faulty.

This morning Robert woke up crying, to which our neighbours responded by yelling profanities through the wall at him. I was fuming, and still am annoyed having cooled down (and listened to some advice from much cooler headed people than myself!) that even if it was a "snap" from many mornings being woken, still why didn't they come and talk to us?? Argh! I thought they both worked nightshifts!

Anyway I should really get on and do some tidying/washing up/laundry/whatever while the boys are napping. Jonathan has gone out to buy a new printer because our old one is conking out.. which will probably mean even longer getting photos printed etc. What a stress Christmas is!

Saturday 18 December 2010

Robert's 2nd birthday

Well, it's a tad late... *ahem* almost 4 weeks late! Robert's 2nd birthday came in 2 parts. He saw his grandparents (my dad and step-mum) on the Sunday before his birthday, and also my brother and sister-in-law, and my nephew. He was fairly spoilt, got lots of cards, presents, attention, etc.





My dad and step-mum arrived in the morning, and he enjoyed opening his presents (and was much more adept this time!)

Around lunchtime, my brother,sister-in-law and nephew arrived. They live a fair drive away, but they visited one of my sister-in-law's friends the day before and stayed overnight in a hotel. My nephew Ewan is 1 year older than Robert, and when it comes to birthdays, it seems that this isn't the best of age gaps!! While Ewan this year was calmer than he was last year, Robert didn't want Ewan to play with his toys! Stephen and Nicky bought Robert a train set (compatible with the one we got from tesco before), and both boys wanted to play with the trains.





Robert got very upset though when Ewan wanted to drive a train on the track Robert was playing with! It was a verrrry stressful afternoon with this basically going on all afternoon, and Robert was in tears for most of it :(

The cake (recipe grabbed from Alice - thanks Alice!) was lovely, and Robert was in awe by it (probably the size! lol!) and knew exactly what to do, as he watched his Daddy blowing out his birthday candles only a month before!

The cake ended up with a mushroom top, as it was a LOT of mixture, and I didn't think to trim it!! But so yummy.





Again, I found myself with tears pricking my eyes as I took the cake in to Robert, am I the only one who does this? I expected it with his first birthday but not with his second! He seemed to like his cake, I cut him a slice, it was thin, but still quite big for the boys, but ah well, if he can't eat a big slice of cake for his birthday, when can he? :) The cake did about 20 slices in the end!



He didn't have a nap that day, he was so worked up and excited, we didn't bother as we could just tell it'd all end up in tears. And boy, by the end of the day he was SO tired!

The next day he was much happier, he spent the whole morning (maybe even the whole day, I can't remember!) playing with his new trainset. He loved it!









He really loves his new trains, and thus began his huge obsession with trains! I would have loved to make him a train cake but I just wasn't confident enough in my train-cake-making abilities! lol! He got a few train cards which he loved driving along the floor!

On the morning of his birthday, he came downstairs to this:



He made lots of appropriate "oooh!"s and "wow!"s as he came down the stairs and saw it. The smallest present was a tub of playdough cutters, with some playdough in as well, and a rolling pin. The medium size present was a toy garage for matchbox cars (which I had spent about 20 minutes building on Sunday night, and wrapped Monday night), and the largest one is of course a trampoline. We don't have much room in the living room, so it stayed downstairs for a few days, and then went upstairs in his bedroom (which has a little bit of room, but eventually I think it'll have to go in the garden/garage, depending on the season! Especially when we move Christopher into Robert's room)

Later in the morning, we decided to take Robert out, there was a soft play attached to a restaurant, and we thought we'd go there, and then have lunch. We'd been watching the morning viewings on Cbeebies for the birthday cards, but it hadn't been on. Jonathan set up his computer to record the card viewings incase his was shown while we were out, and it was! I got a text as we sat down to eat lunch from my friend Sarah saying "We saw Robert on TV! He's famous!" lol! He enjoyed the soft play, but it being Tuesday morning during term time, we were the only ones there! Jonathan got to go in with Robert, which was probably just as well, because Robert seemed quite overwhelmed by it all (but did enjoy it, especially their ride-on Thomas the Tank Engine! Which we didn't put money in, we wouldn't have got him off of it otherwise! We let him sit in it as much as he wanted though lol)







The Saturday after we went to see Jonathan's friend, and their daughter, who turned 2 a week and a half after Robert did. They played much nicer together than Robert and Ewan did, although there were a few tears again, but not nearly as many! They enjoyed playing together, especially when they got running around the sofa (this is one of Robert's favourite past times! When I take him to a playgroup on Friday mornings which is in a big hall, he plays well for most of the morning, but usually within the last half an hour, he instigates a game of running around the hall, which usually attracts at least 3 other children to join him!!)





They brought him a tub of Potato Heads. He was absolutely fascinated by them!







And he also got a farm with some animals, from Jonathan's parents. He LOVES his farm animals, and says to me at LEAST twice a day "Mama, ay arm!" ("Mummy, play farm!"), and brings me his day-dee oop (baby sheep!) and will sit and make all the noises. He likes to let his sheep eat his breakfast (if we let him bring them up to the table!), and the sheep will often get its nose covered in marmite! :)



So yes, my biggest boy was thoroughly spoilt for his birthday! But he loves his new toys and it's so lovely seeing him enjoy them all!

Another quick photo of Christopher, he is now 12 weeks old, but here he is at 9 weeks old, shortly after I dropped the shower head on his face :( Quick call to the NHS Direct made me feel better, and it cleared up completely about 2 weeks after I did it.



He's so lovely and scrummy, I can sometimes hardly stop myself from kissing him!

Saturday 11 December 2010

Comparisons

I remember, when Robert was tiny, probably around the age Christopher is now, maybe even older, getting frustrated with him. He would be laying screaming on my lap, and I remember saying to him, while unclipping my bra "it's coming! Don't you know that when Mummy undoes her bra it means you're going to get fed soon??!!"

I've not had this with Christopher. It does make me wonder... was Robert a more needy baby? Or did I just miss his cues, or did I put off feeding him until he was screaming, because in the evening he latched lazily? I remember also thinking, how occasionally it was easier to get him latched on when he was screaming, because he then had a nice wide open mouth. Was Robert a more difficult baby? Or was I just less experienced? Or was my post-natal depression making him more needy, as I was less in tuned with him, and he was picking up on my frustrations/disinterest?

Christopher is such a settled baby. He is so smiley, and has even perfected smiling while ON the boob as well! Everything just seems so different this time round. Christopher is happy, and I am happy. I've had a few frustrated moments, which were always sleep-related. I think back to what I did with Robert in my frustration, and it seems so far away from where I am now. I could not even *imagine* being so frustrated with Christopher that I drop him onto the bed. I feel so incredibly guilty when I think about how I was with Robert when he was a tiny baby. Especially when I think about how close we came to losing him.

Now, I strive to be a loving parent to both my sons, but paying special care to do so with Robert, almost as if I am trying to make it up to him. To be the mother I should have been in his first few months. I do still make mistakes, and yell when I shouldn't. But these times are quite few and far between. If there is anything that returns me to base, to make me look at Robert in a fresh way when he has been difficult, it's saying yes when he asks for "Gah-gee eeeze" I look down at him, and he is (sometimes!) still, and calm. His head resting on my lap, his legs curled up towards his body laying on the sofa. He is getting to be such a big boy now, in terms of size, but inside he is still a little boy, and needs comfort and reassurance sometimes. I had to wake him up from his nap a couple of weeks ago. He was still desperately tired, but we had an appointment we needed to make. I woke him half an hour before this appointment, and he was hysterical. My in-laws were around, and nothing would comfort him, and then he came up to me, and between sobs, asked for milk. I knew my in-laws would find watching him nurse uncomfortable, but right then and there, my son's needs were infinitely more important. My in-laws would understand, but if I refused Robert, he would not. He was still nursing 10 minutes before the appointment, and it would take 5 minutes to get down there, and then also he needed to get ready. I told Robert, as he was still nursing, that soon, Mummy and Grandad were going to go out in the snow, and would Robert like to come out in the snow too? Robert looked up at me, already a lot calmer, and said "yeah" So I said to him that when he was ready to finish nursing, he could go and get his shoes so we could go out in the snow, and immediately he got down and went and got his shoes. I knew that if I had "told" him that he "needed" to get down right away and get his shoes, we would have had more hysterics. We ended up being 5 minutes late for the appointment in the end, but it would have been even later had I handled it all differently.

I have learnt a lot in just 2 years of motherhood. I am more patient, and I have learnt that sometimes, the quickest way to get something done is to go about it the slower way. That sometimes, you need to prioritise one thing over another, and that your child is always number 1. I thought that I would remain too selfish to become a good mother. But very quickly, all you care about, no matter how selfish you once were, is the health and happiness of your child. Even if it means you go without. You do it in a heartbeat.

I have a lot of guilt in my heart about Robert's early months (and indeed just a few days ago, when early weaning came to the forefront of my mind, what with friends and their babies, etc, I looked back and discovered to my horror that I gave Robert banana at not 16/17 weeks like I thought, and was already horrified at *that* thought, but 13 weeks! Again, something I have learnt, that as the parent, YOU know best, and not to bow to pressure to start feeding your child things you don't want them to have. Christopher will not have any other food apart from my milk until 6 months of age). But the only way is forward, and I can't undo the past but I can do things better for my children in the future. I am so much more confident in my abilities as a mother, and it is all so much more like second nature this time around.



Tuesday 7 December 2010

2 and a half months

Part of me can't believe that Christopher is already two and a half months old. He is, most of the time, a very happy and responsive baby! I say most of the time, because the last couple of days he has become a little fussy at the breast, straight away rather than after a while which would otherwise indicate wind as the problem. What the problem is this time I don't know. I will keep plugging on, hopefully it will resolve itself soon.

When he is not being fussy at the breast, he is either asleep, or sitting in his bouncy chair, or on someone, looking around at the world with interest, his eyes practically boggling at everything! He LOVES getting undivided attention of course, and rewards whoever is giving him their attention with huge smiles and coos, often he will do this for as long as 10-15 minutes! He hasn't yet done a true laugh, although sometimes it looks and sounds like he is trying, he will be smiling, and make a rather breathy sounding coo, usually when we stick our tongues out at him, or make an "ooooh" face!

His neck control seems quite good compared to Robert at his age. I suspect this is because he gets a lot more practise, as we lay Christopher on his tummy to sleep, and when he wakes up, he will lift his head to look around.

He also sleeps very well in his cot. We try to make the effort sometimes to put him down while still awake, but we try not to let him get distressed. If he gets distressed we will go and get him, but we are for now simply trying to get him used to falling asleep on his own in the gentlest of ways, at an early age. So hopefully we can do the "hard" work now and hopefully avoid doing any sort of CIO. He has lately been finding his own thumb while laying in his cot, which means he often soothes himself back to sleep again during his naps!

Robert is, as ever, a lovely big brother. If Christopher is in his bouncy chair, and starts to cry, Robert will say "ohhhh..." in a sad tone, go over to him and stroke his tummy. He is so gentle! He loves "Brooo-ah" and will often go and sit near him and just watch him for a while!

Three word sentences are now commonplace to hear from Robert, including "Mama, dand up!" (Mummy, stand up!) and "Dada, ay cars!" (Daddy, play cars - often this is called out several times first thing in the morning when Robert is playing in his bedroom with his cars and wants Daddy to get up and play too! Daddy is not usually impressed! lol!)

His most adorable phrases though have got to be when he comes and gives us a hug, he will say "Gig ugg", and then he will usually give us a kiss, and say "Gig isss" (Big hug, big kiss).

Tonight, he ran into his bedroom after Jonathan had read him a story, and came out saying "eeed kie-l-yah gook!" a few times, and came up to me with his new finger puppet "hungry caterpillar" book. ("read caterpillar book")

When he is in the bath, he likes to help rub the shampoo into his hair. He'll then look at his soapy hands and say "ooop!" Then put them in the water to wash the soap off, he then looks again and says "no ooop!" And then, rubbing his hands on his hair again, he says "more ooop!" My little boy is so adorable!

I wish I had photos to add to this entry, but Jonathan's running a bit behind on getting them uploaded, the last ones I think were when Christopher was 7 weeks old. But there are lots more videos being caught up on, and in fact here's one! I made a card to be shown on Cbeebies, and it was the first one shown on the lunchtime read-out! :)



My little boys are growing up so fast, but ohhh it's lovely to have a tiny baby again! Although not really so tiny anymore, he weighed in at 12lb this morning, in his vest and nappy. Only 3 more and he will have doubled his birth weight! He is just so precious, I am so enjoying being his mummy and finding out all about him! I can't wait to see how his relationship with his big brother develops!