5 months old! Busy busy

Argh! Five days since my last entry! I've just been soooooo soo so busy! Not just with Robert, but also when I've had times during his naps and in the evenings (sooo nice now he's going down for his long sleep at 6.30-7.30ish!! We get the evenings to ourselves!), I've been either making graphics for people (got a looooong list of people who want one making as well!) and also, scanning oooold photos from when my brother and I were babies. My Mum never got a copy of our old baby pictures so I asked dad if I could take the albums back with me, and I'd scan them in.

When I get a bit furthur through them I'll post a picture of me as a baby but I'll tell you this - Robert doesn't get his permanently shocked expression from his dad!!! (Well he might do but the album's full of me looking shocked! Haha!)

Something I do want to show you now though is this photo of Robert. I was getting him changed in his cot, and it suddenly hit me how BIG he's getting!

He is definitely going to be a tall boy!

Anyway, before I head off (I know, a short sweet entry this time), I just wanted to record that Robert is now practising rolling from back to tummy (yes I know he's been doing it for aaages now - but he's now done it the opposite way to normal! He usually rolls to his right, but he's now tried rolling to his left). He's also beginning to try rolling from tummy to his back. And he's also beginning to try lifting his chest free from the ground although most of the time his arms just end up splayed out! ;)

He can sit without support for 30 seconds to a minute, although he is VERY hunched over when he does. He also if I let him grip one of my fingers in each of his hands, and lift them to about his head height, he will pull himself up to standing from there!

I'm sitting here now listening to Robert laughing for his Daddy at last!!! Jonathan sounds so happy, he was getting a bit miffed that he hadn't managed to make Robert laugh!

Last night he managed to resettle himself after a few minutes crying each time twice, meaning he went from about 6.30 til 1.30 without feeding, which is pretty good!

Anyway need to head off now, thanks for the comments on the last entry, I appreciated them! Megan: it sounded like you thought I'd be offended by your suggestion, which I am not! I will look into it and see what it's about.

Anyway see you all later!

Oh the cow in the meadow goes moo

Argh, well last night's sleep was errr... limited. I think it was partly my fault. Well probably mostly my fault, but whether it was justified I don't know. He woke every 4 hours for the first 2 wakes, and then it was 2 hourly. The second time he woke up we tried the controlled crying approach - which well, didn't work. An hour later, despite getting up several times, speaking to him he was still screaming, so I fed him again.

I am not trying to get him to sleep through the night, what I am trying to do is stop him from waking up 4+ times a night. And get it down again to 1-2 times. I know he's still young and I don't mind feeding him in the middle of the night, but it is getting wearing having to get up and feed him 4+ times because he won't settle without the breast (whether he's hungry or not)

Anyway tonight I think I might just feed him whenever he wakes if he doesn't go back to sleep by himself quickly. I need the sleep tonight!

Yesterday we had a great day, we went over to Jonathan's parents, and washed the car (lol), then went for a walk, and had a bit of food there. Their cats are much less afraid of him than Hazel is!

Jonathan's parents live in a little village, there are farms and big fields in the village, and we took a walk through a public footpath through a field where there were some cows - so he got to see some up close!

Back at their house, we took a few more photos of him, one of them being this one - why he's looking so shocked at ME, he looks at me every day!!

One last photo, which I absolutely adore! Soooo cute!

Thanks for the comments on the pictures from Saturday's entry. I love getting comments! :) Leigh: Jonathan's been looking around on the internet for local places to go at the weekends, so we make the time to go out somewhere nice and also lets us find some nice places to go when Robert's older!

Anyway, have a great day all!

Gurning championships!

Ahh thanks for the comments girls. Sarah - I had totally forgotten about that feature of Diaryland! Does anyone know if Blogger has a "tag favourite entries" type feature as I'm in the process of moving there?

Yesterday we went to another country park. This one had nothing really for kiddies unlike the other ones we've been to but there were a couple of walks, and big expanses of grass where I suppose we can play football or fly a kite, or something with him. We accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up going down a very picturesque but EXTREMELY muddy route! With Robert in the carrier! Doh! It was quite tough going but we eventually made our way through.

We realised eventually that we went wrong, and went around the correct route, which had a nice flat wide path.

Robert was enjoying it immensely, making funny little "hmmm!" noises all the way along! Hehe! I managed to get a lovely photo of him smiling in his baby carrier. :)

Most of the time he was just sucking on the flap of it lol!

By the time we were on our way back from the walk though, he looked like this!

Hehe! He woke up shortly after because we got to the car and had to transfer him back into his car seat.

Anyway, here's some photos I also wanted to show, it's of Robert's new favourite expression! It's soooo funny! I love these photos, because at the same time he was making lovely funny sounds (the "hmmm!" sounds). It almost looks like he's trying to enter the gurning championships!

Hehe! Funny boy :)

4 months 3 weeks ish - broody, weight loss, growing boy!

Boy am I getting broody! Why?? My little boy isn't even 5 months old yet and I'm itching to get pregnant again! At the same time though I am sure that I want to lose weight before getting pregnant again. I reckon I gained at LEAST 50lbs from Robert's pregnancy, possibly more. I have lost 10lb since January (7lb of that in the last 3 weeks), and still have another 20lb to go before I get to my pre-pregnancy weight.

Even though I have such a large weightloss to go ahead of me (10lb down, 60-ish to go) it still seems do-able. If I manage on average 2lb lost a week, it should be around 30 more weeks til I hit my goal weight, so hopefully before Christmas. Which would mean we could start trying again for another baby then? ;) A 2 year age gap seems lovely to me at the moment. Me and my brother were almost 3 years apart, and I'm sure a 2 year age gap for Robert and his brother (I'm fairly sure I'll have another boy haha) seems nice. I don't know why but in my head I just keep thinking "3 babies" would be nice. I'm sure I could eak Jonathan up to 3!

Anyway I've just settled Robert down for a nap. He started fussing as soon as I took him off the breast (he was falling asleep on it), I put him in his cot, put a muslin up by his face, and he wrapped his arms around it, held it to his face himself, and then fell asleep! We've been doing that for a while, so hopefully we can just make sure there's one with him and he'll go off to sleep without needing a boob! And a muslin is washable and easily replacable ;)

I don't know why but I just feel so happy, so content, and the issues I had a few months ago just seem like a million years ago! I haven't been rough at ALL with Robert for several weeks, and when I was, it was ONE small incident, and even then not as rough as I used to be, and that was the first time in weeks also!

I am so loving being a Mummy! On the forums I visit, someone had started a thread where they asked people to post pictures of their babies at birth and now, and I immediately set forth to find some, and it's just amazing seeing the two photos one on top of the other! It's lovely to see that yes, he HAS grown!

Taken when Robert was about 6 days old.

Taken last week, at around 4.5 months old.

I can't believe that that vest he's wearing in the first photo was a newborn vest and it's loose on him! Now his 3-6 month clothes are getting snugger on him, we're almost ready to get him in 6-9 month clothes!!

It's lovely to see him grow, progress, learn new things! And also to see him get cuter as time goes on! He is soooo gorgeous! And I know I'm biassed, but I feel like the luckiest Mummy in the world :) When I get his clothes off for his baths and he's laying there with just a nappy on I just can't help but kiss him all over his chest, arms, legs on his soft soft skin. I love smelling him too! His hair just after a bath! Ahhh I'm going all gooey! Lol!

Yesterday he was grumpy pretty much all day, nothing really seemed to cheer him up completely. But I just plodded on! And today so far he's been lovely! Nice and cheerful! He's peed and pood with his nappy off for Daddy, so he then had a bath, and then he went on his playmat for a while, and then he went in his door bouncer while Mummy had TWO large cups of tea (lol), and then he played on Babysmash for a while, and then he had a story, and then he had some milk, and now he's having a nap!

This afternoon he has Rhyme Time at the library, and then we'll see :)

I can't believe my little man will be FIVE months old in less than a week! Where has time flown? I hope you're all okay, I'd better go and prepare myself some lunch before Robert wakes up - unless I just grab another bowl of cereal!

4.5 months - Easter Weekend

Robert is having a mid-morning nap, still in his car seat, so I can finally update about my weekend! I've been dying to since we got back around 7pm last night, but first the photos needed uploading (I wanted to wait til I could post photos til I updated!), and then it was too late to stay up and do it, and then this morning was stay and play at Surestart, so finally we're back, and he's asleep!

My weekend down in Kent was FAB. Fab fab fab. I had such a good time! We went down on Saturday morning - left around 8.30am, but we had to double back because we forgot the travel cot, and then Robert woke and was grizzly for a while so we had to stop and feed him, then change him in the car. We were off to a restaurant with my Mum, Dave (her partner), my Nan, my brother Stephen, Nicky his wife, and my nephew Ewan. We ended up getting to Kent a lot later than we thought so we went straight to the restaurant. They put two highchairs out, but it turned out that even padded out, Robert was too little for the highchair, so he had to be cuddled by someone the whole time! I had some ribs and chips, already separated so it turned out to be good one-handed finger food! ;)

He was sooo much more interested in Ewan this time compared to last time they saw each other (when Robert was about 10 weeks old - he slept during most of their visit!) and stared at him with interest quite often!

Ewan held Robert's hand very sweetly, he's since learned what "gentle" is which is good!! What was quite funny though was Robert trying to get Ewan's hand in his mouth! Hehehe!

After the meal, we held Robert up near Ewan, and Ewan was asked to give Robert a little hug, which he did!

It was sooo cute, but unfortunately it proved a little too traumatic for Robert who instantly burst into tears!

I brought a bottle and some frozen milk to the restaurant with us so if he needed feeding we could do it easily there, and we let my Mum give it to him when he got hungry, which she quite enjoyed!

We got the waitress to do a full group shot in the restaurant.

From left to right it's Nicky, Stephen and Ewan, Mum, Nan, Jonathan and Robert, Me, and Dave.

After the meal we went back to my Mum's - she still hasn't moved house yet but she's hoping to soon. Ewan had great fun running through the house, and in particular, going up to the bin, banging the lid repeatedly saying "Bi! Bi!" Here he is doing some drawing (apparently they never taught him how to hold pens and pencils, but he's got a pretty good hold!)

Oh and here's a new idea to keep Robert out of mischief!

Hehehe. :)

We headed over to my Dad's that evening after dinner because Stephen and Nicky were staying at Mum's. The next day they joined us over at Dad's, and Robert got his second Easter present.

He seemed to enjoy it!

Here's Robert looking a little happier about contact with Ewan! Next year I'm sure they'll be partners in crime!

He had lots of cuddles with various people: Tim and Jenny, two of Caroline's brother's 3 kids (the third being Jenny's twin Samantha), Pat (Caroline's Mum), Caroline (my step mum), and my friend Rachel from school who came over for lunch yesterday with her boyfriend Chris.

Of all the three kids, Tim was most into Robert which I was surprised at, although Jenny did seem to like him too. Sam wasn't very interested at all - but then he didn't really do much and I think she much preferred Ewan who could run around and play easier than Robert could!

Tim had great fun pushing Robert around in an old Safeway crate that was lying around. It was perfect baby size!

Yesterday was pretty much a lazy morning and afternoon. The morning was spent (by Robert) eating, sleeping, wrestling bunnies, and scoffing banana.

Monday afternoon was spent eating a nice lunch that I mainly prepared, and catching up with Rachel who I hadn't seen since 1999!

It was a lovely lovely weekend! The best bit was that we got to spend more or less two whole days with Stephen Nicky and Ewan so the boys got used to each other a bit more!

I hope you all had as good an easter as I did!

Photos, controlled crying, easter weekend

Jonathan and I are trying a sleeping strategy with Robert as he's been waking several times during the night and wanting milk to settle again. This is partly our fault because we've got him into this habit! Anyway we're trying the controlled crying method. Which is a little difficult for in the middle of the night as he's in the same room as us, but we just leave him to cry for a while before getting up.

Anyway we had a go last night, we put him down to bed awake (usually he falls asleep at the breast), read him a story, and then said goodnight and left the room. He was alright for a while but then started to cry, so after a few minutes went back in, settled him without lifting him from his cot, and left the room again. And he fell asleep!

He woke several times in the night as usual, we settled him back using the controlled crying method for the 1st, 3rd and any subsequent wakings! The 2nd time he woke I fed him briefly and then put him back to bed while he was awake but sleepy.

In the morning Robert was in his cot, and we were in bed a little tired but otherwise I think it was a very successful first night's attempt! The only thing is that I really missed having him wake up snuggled up next to me! I guess I can't have everything but sometimes it would be nice to have my cake and eat it too!

Yesterday, of the several hundred photos I took, Jonathan narrowed it down to 19 (a lot of them were duplicates I took to make sure I got some sharp ones and good expressions)

I dressed him up in an outfit his Nanna (my mum) got him, which he doesn't wear very often as it's a very padded one and he can get quite hot, but as it was fairly cool yesterday he was alright. And he did look rather cute, so got lots of photos!

My little boy is SUCH a poser! Lol! He now grins at the camera as it's clicking away rather than just grinning at something we're doing and getting it on camera!

Here's some great expressions I managed to get from him - I think they're too cute!

That last one is absolutely priceless! I love the look on his face there!

Little hand and little foot:

And finally here's some of him and his teddy.

Tomorrow Jonathan, Robert and I will be heading to Kent again to spend Easter with my family. Saturday will be spent with my Mum, and she's planning on getting 7 of us (her and Dave, me and Jonathan, Stephen and Nicky, and my Nan) plus Robert and Ewan out to lunch somewhere - this will be Robert's first time in a restaurant so I hope he behaves himself! I will probably bring some expressed milk with us for the restaurant so it's easier to feed him if he gets hungry while we're there. I'm sure where-ever we eat they won't mind warming it up a little for him.

Sunday will be spent at my Dad's as he has an Easter party thing going on then. Then on Monday we will be going to see one of my old school friends who's still in Kent! It was hopefully going to be 2 of my old school friends, one of whom has 2 little girls, one Ewan's age, and one a bit older. But she's busy this bank holiday weekend, unfortunately! The one who I will be seeing though is engaged I think - or perhaps just in a serious relationship with someone she met several years ago. But I'm looking forward to it, I've not really seen her since 1999!

Anyway I might not be updating again until Monday, so I hope you all have a fab Easter weekend!

Oh and here's a little video...

19.5 weeks old - a real personality developing!

As Robert gets older, it's lovely to see not only his developments (milestones, new abilities) but also to see his personality emerging more and more. When he was smaller, I felt like a bit of a bad mother, truth be known, not because of my PND, but because I felt like I didn't really know my baby. I couldn't really say what he liked or disliked. Now he's older, and able to do more things, he is able to show his likes and dislikes more, which I love, because it means it's easier to get to know this little person who's now a part of our family!

He has favourite toys, favourite things to do, and so on! Something that will sometimes calm him if he's beginning to get a bit grumpy is singing to him. He loves to listen to us sing to him! He will often stop dead in his tracks (of stepping if he's in his door bouncer, or crying if he's getting grumpy) and just stare at us and listen. He loves "Down in the Jungle", "5 little monkeys jumping on the bed", "row row row your boat" complete with actions, and just generally any other nursery rhymes!

He loves being tickled, and when he's in a giggly mood he will just chuckle and chuckle at being tickled, and sometimes funny voices and sounds. He also LOVES "walking". Something I do with him quite a lot is lay down on my back, and lift him above me, and he'll "walk" up my body with a HUGE smile on his face :) He also loves his door bouncer and is becoming more and more energetic in there! It's also good because I can put him there, and it'll entertain him for quite a long time leaving me to write diary entries, or have a cuppa, or something! (He's in the door bouncer now hehe, I just sang "If you're happy and you know it stamp your feet", he stopped, turned his head round to look at me and gave me a little grin)

Baths and hair washes he tolerates - he doesn't really enjoy them per-se, but he's always content enough to just lay there and put up with it!

His favourite toy is this singing teddy. It reckons 6 months to 2 years, but he loves listening to the songs when you press the stars on its nose, paws, and tummy. And it's very cuddly too! I took some photos of him with it today, I really am going to have to get Jonathan to show me how to get them off his camera and uploaded to his website so I can do it instead of having to bug him to!

I have acted a little bit like crazy paparazzi mummy today - taken several hundred photos! Jonathan's camera has a quick shot setting, where it takes a photo every half second or so while you're holding down the button, which makes getting at least one sharp image and good expression easy!

I took a few nice ones yesterday as well, my little boy is so photogenic!

I'm trying to dry his hair flat these days so that it doesn't get in his eyes as much! Noooo cutting my baby's hair... He's tooooo young! It feels like I'll be cutting off a bit of his baby-ness if I cut his hair already! Chopping off some of the hair he was born with... I can't dooo it!

A fall :(

Well, call me a bandwagon jumper, but I am in the process of copying all my entries here onto blogger, I don't know what the state of diaryland is, but if it goes down I really don't want to lose everything! There's a good few entries here, and I think I'm about half way through, I even hit the daily limit before you have to start typing a word you see in a box for each additional one, which was probably quite a lot. It won't be for a while yet so you don't need to change bookmarks just yet.

Anyhow, onto other news, as some of you may know, I managed to trip up on the cat on the stairs, while carrying Robert, and ended up falling down! Luckily I managed to throw myself backwards so that I didn't go head down the stairs, and Robert wasn't hurt, but I've ended up with a grazed knee and a painful ankle with a bruised lump on it but to be honest I wouldn't have minded a broken leg if it meant Robert wasn't hurt!

He is still teething like crazy - he's got such a hard set of gums! And his clothes are constantly wet from drool. This is definitely a tough stage no doubt about it!

Anyway he's now 16lb 4oz, keeping his place just above 50th centile on the growth charts. Not much else to report for now! So I'll head off and try and keep the litle fella entertained until it's time for his bedtime bath. Tata!

19 weeks old - broodiness (!) and sleep

Hmmm. Call me crazy but yesterday I was in the car coming home from a local country park (yes another one lol!) and I suddenly became overwhelmed with broody thoughts! I didn't mention anything to Jonathan, because for one I don't know exactly how I feel and two, I know what he'd say anyway!

It's silly because I know I want to wait a while, to enjoy Robert's babyhood without having to worry about pregnancy, being tired, etc. Plus I want to lose the weight so it's not as taxing on my body. But I was just thinking of a new little baby to snuggle, and Robert is getting so big every day! Plus, him being 10lbs when he was born means that I never have had a "little" baby! He's just such a heffalump! Hehe! I was thinking if I miraculously was pregnant (Virgin Mary style haha!) then I would welcome it with open arms!

I've always been of the mindset that there would be at least 2 years between our children, but suddenly I was thinking what if it was a shorter gap? It's going to be a play-by-ear matter either way, and however broody I am I really don't want to get pregnant just yet - I know I've just contradicted myself there, because I just said I would welcome it with open arms - and I would, but the ideal timing wouldn't be now. If that makes sense! Jonathan thinks this is completely stupid, but I have a feeling my next child will be a boy as well. I don't know for sure either way of course, but time will tell! I am finding myself wondering about names!!! Even now! Crazy woman!

Anyway, onto more mundane news, Robert has picked up some bad night-time habits, due to us being lazy. I can't remember the last time he did his usual 2-long sleep stints overnight. Instead he seems to wake up at least 4 times nightly, moreso now we're putting him down to bed between 6.30 and 8pm rather than the usual 10-12! But last night, we attempted to correct it. Lately, he's just been coming into bed with us whenever he starts whinging, and comfort feeding. As much as I love snuggling with him, several hours with his head on my upper arm makes it go numb and uncomfortable! He has been waking several times wanting to comfort suck a night, and we have been letting him.

But last night, much to Jonathan's annoyance I think (!) since although he picks Robert up and puts him on my chest, he can then go straight back to sleep and therefore gets a good night's sleep: last night when Robert stirred and started whinging (because he'd rolled onto his front), I didn't bring him into bed, but instead gave him a dummy and got him calm with him still being in his cot. He did spit it out a few times and started screaming, but eventually he calmed down, but kept making whimpering noises, I got up, and he had put himself on his tummy, and managed to wriggle 90 degrees clockwise so his head and feet were both rammed up against the cot bars! I turned him over, and back round into a proper direction, and he fell asleep almost instantly!

He had a fairly good sleep after that and so when he next woke up I fed him again, and then after that's a blur but I do remember keeping him in bed with me at some stage again. But hopefully we can wean him onto his two long sleeps again! Watch this space! ;)

4 months 2 weeks (ish) old - trips out to see swans!

Wow, 4 days since my last entry - a new record for me? Even while I was in hospital I managed to update more often! ;)

Did I say in the last entry that Robert is now grabbing, holding, and putting things in his mouth? Taking some tips from the Baby Stay and Play down the surestart centre, I've been trying to find some interesting things (every day items) for him to hold, and discover new textures. I've given him a wooden spoon, an yoghurt pot, and a bath scrubbing thing as well as a few other things to play with.

He does love to grab things now and his "touchy feely" books are getting more appropriate to him now!

Something else that is becoming apparent is that he's forming a strong attachment to me. Last week when I went out to tesco with my father-in-law, leaving Robert with his grandma, we came back to find him screaming his head off (being held by his grandma) and nothing would quieten him, it was the sort of screaming that really makes you wonder what's wrong, not normal screaming but the completely distressed sort. Apparently it started as soon as he was taken out of his cot from his nap, and usually walking around with him helps. But he still carried on screaming after I came home. I swear I saw a look as if to say "How could you leave me??" on his face as he turned to see me. :(

Then a couple of days later, I took Robert out in the baby carrier, and held him facing outwards for the first time, and he seemed to enjoy being able to see everything, but then I think he realised he couldn't see me, and started to cry on our way into town.

Even though it's quite sad, especially the way he was when he woke to his grandma instead of his mummy, it's quite nice in a way that he obviously relies on me and loves me enough to realise when I'm not there!

Yesterday, we went out for another walk - nearby there are some lakes with a circular walk around them. As the weather was so nice we decided to take advantage of it and packed a lunch and took him in the carrier (we thought the pram might not be up to the terrain, and we were right!). Luckily we went on such a hot day (and where it hadn't rained for a while) because the ground was quite muddy in places, and if the ground had been wet it would have been very erm... interesting. We came across a couple of swans on our walk, sitting up on the path we had to go through, and the one on land was the hugest swan I've seen!

After we'd finished the walk, we then drove to an embankment by a river, where there's some water-play things for kiddies open in summer, and a refreshment van, and a long walk down by the river where there are probably a hundred swans and a few ducks, so it's nice to go and feed them there, although Robert's a bit young still! But we went on a nice walk along the river anyway. :) I carried Robert for the walk along the river as Jonathan had carried him for the circular walk.

Something Robert loves and almost always cheers him up is being flown around in the air, high above our heads, where he can look down on us (and dribble on us). Here he is flying above Daddy ;)

And see the long dribble on his chin! He's a major drooler these days, those poor toothies are bothering him!

See how long his hair is getting! There's absolutely no point trying to tame it because undoubtedly he'll be sick in it before long and it'll need another wash!

The amount of time between Jonathan's suggestions that we should get his hair cut are getting shorter and shorter. I can't believe he's only 4 and a half months old and already we're having to think of cutting off his hair :(