Bump watch - 18 weeks

Long vest tops rock.

Cousins

Tuesday, June 5th

With my sister Cate's due date being yesterday, and me just getting over my usual half-term fluey thing, I had planned to drive down to Devon with Jacob today, so I could spend a few days with her, going to see What to Expect When You're Expecting and doing other such pregnant-sister delights.

All of that was scuppered, when my alarm went off at 6am this morning and I saw a text from my sister at 2am, saying "Off to the hospital, will keep you posted...".  At 6.30am, the landline rang and it showed my sister's mobile number - I answered, expecting her to say it was another false alarm and they were back home.  Instead, her lovely voice said "I had a baby!".

She had arrived at the hospital to find herself already at 9.5cm dilated (really, I thought that kind of thing only happened in sitcoms), jumped in the birthing pool, and squeezed out a baby a few short hours later (I'm sure it was more difficult that I'm explaining; it's just that in comparison with my 32.5 hour labour, episiotomy and 2nd degree tear, I'm just slightly jealous).  

So before 6 hours had passed, I'd driven 200 miles (Jacob stayed dry for the whole journey!), settled in to my parents' house, and dashed off to the hospital for some newborn cuddles.  And ahhh, cuddle we did ;)

Anouk Amelie, my precious niece, born 5th June 2012.

 3 generations of females :D

Wednesday, June 6th

On day 2, Jacob got to meet his cousin (he wasn't allowed into the hospital as he wasn't a sibling) and was very taken with her.  When he woke up that morning, I told him "I've got some very exciting news.  Auntie Catey's baby came out of her tummy!" Jacob was very excited and said "I've got some exciting news too Mummy.  I love you!".  Bless him ;)

Jacob meeting his cousin, a little apprehensively, but unfortunately not allowed more time to get to know her due to my Dad refusing to let him settle and get used to her :/

Thursday, June 7th
On Day 3, I spent a few hours reassuring my sister about breastfeeding, having lots of chats, and getting her out of the house for a walk.  And being SO excited about getting to have a newborn of my own before the year is out!

Anouk, mistaking me for her Mama ;) 

She looked so happy when her frantic flailing resulted in the right two fingers getting in there. 

Catey doing the International sign for babywearing - jazz hands.  I helped her get set up using her Close sling, and here Anouk is latched on and feeding, where she stayed during our shopping trip/walk.

Friday, June 8th
We stayed for 4 days then sadly had to make our way home.  Jacob coped admirably with all the change, and carried on using the potty/toilet perfectly, with only one accident when my Dad took him away without seeing if he needed the potty first (and then not telling me that he'd had an accident until all opportunity for changing him had passed), enough said.  We slept in the same bedroom (Jamie couldn't get time off work so wasn't with us), with Jacob on a mattress on the floor and me in the big bed.  He kept waking in the night and saying "Mummy, are you there?" which was the loveliest thing in the world.  He doesn't half make a lot of noise in the night, though!  Lots of sleepless nights resulted for me, especially as I began to feel proper kicks inside, which were properly keeping me awake ;)

I took this photo in the pitch-black middle-of-the-night, you can't quite tell but he was lying completely sideways on his bed, with his head hanging off.

Bump watch - 17 weeks

Standing on Jacob's bed at Nanna and Grandad's house.

Octonauts and the Great Ice Capade

(I was undecided as to whether 'Ice Capade' should be one word or two.  I feel it should be one, but The Ice Capades, are two, as I found when googling.  I also found this video from 1988, showing an unfeasibly-young Jason Bateman and Alyssa Milano presenting Super Mario Bros at the Ice Capades.  It's worth it, even if just for Jason Bateman's awesome hair-and-jumper combination.)

Before Jacob was even a twinkle in anyone's eye, we stumbled across an original Octonauts book in Borders and as the style appealed to our kawaii-sensibilities, we bought it.  We subsequently had a child, and when he became old enough to enjoy use CBeebies as a babysitter, we were very excited to find that they were in the process of making it into an animated series.

Of course, because Jacob is a sensible child, he loves the Octonauts with a passion second to none, and we are overjoyed that we can indulge our whims with him, rather than having to put up with interminable games of things we don't care tuppence about (like ... I'm struggling to think of another CBeebies show with a comparible amount of merchandise that we actually dislike.  We do like our children's TV shows.  We used to record Charlie and Lola to watch before bed ... again, pre-Jacob).

Anyway, today marked our fourth consecutive nappy-free day, so we decided to get Jacob something to say well done.  By chance, Tesco had the Peso playset which is usually impossible to find (and which is why we have several Barnacles and Kwaziis from various playsets, but no Peso), so we snapped it up.  Jacob was practically shaking with excitement when we told him what it was for :D

And by pure coincidence, I spent much of yesterday evening progressively freezing layers of Octonauts toys into a tupperware container, ready for a Science experiment on liquids and solids today.  When we got home, I presented Jacob with his very own Octonauts iceberg (Peso even came with an iceberg, we really could not have planned this better) to investigate.

He also had a bowl of warm water, a sponge, a pipette, a blunt knife and a salt-shaker.  Peso oversaw all the ice-breaking action.

Jacob had a whale (ha) of a time, scrubbing the iceblock, sprinkling it with salt and hearing it crack, and biting it with the shark-like teeth of the Gup-B.

As he rescued each Octonaut/Creature from the ice, they were lined up and attended to by medic Peso, who wrapped them warmly in the towel so they could recover from their iceventure.

We ended up with a bowl of freezing cold water, a soaking wet carpet, and a very happy child who understands the properties of ice, the differences between liquid and solid, and why things float or sink.  Perhaps an activity better suited to the garden on a hot day, but a winner nonetheless.


Disclaimer: post not sponsored by Mattel.  But if they would like to send me a shed-load of free Octonauts toys as a thank you, they would be most welcome :D

Potty Success

Quite suddenly, Things seem to have clicked with using the potty.  After our last aborted attempt, we decided to hang fire until the summer holidays, when we could have naked days spent in the garden with a potty to hand and no pressures from nursery or anyone else.

However, the recent nice weather meant that we had our naked days in the garden a little earlier than expected, and we had some limited* success with using the potty.

*Limited because as I may have previously mentioned, Jacob still had no prior warning of a poo being imminent, and these special moments happened twice in the paddling pool.  Ugh.

After a last week in nursery before the half-term holidays, we broke the pants out again on Thursday, and despite me coming down with my regular-as-clockwork school holiday illness, had lots of success all day Thursday and Friday, including Jacob's first ever declaration of "I need a poo!", followed by actually getting on the potty on time and doing ALL his business there.  I also realised that he was staying dry through his naps, and while out-and-about, and he started asking to use the toilet while we were in supermarkets, and being very happy to sit on grown-up toilets (previously, he's been terrified of falling in and has refused to entertain sitting anywhere near one).

This weekend, we've not had a single mishap; he's asked to use the toilet or potty at 3 or 4 hourly intervals (which I suppose is a bonus of late potty-training - no 15-minutely trips for us!) and we've managed to bribe him into wearing pullups (up there with Water and Vegetables on Jacob's scale of Unacceptable Things) so that we don't have to run quite so fast to find public toilets if we're not at home.

Due to the two extra bank holidays, nursery is shut this week, and if I get better soon I'm taking Jacob down to Devon with me to poke my sister's ready-to-burst belly some more.  So we have a further 7 days to crack this, before letting him loose on nursery again.  Due to the amount of exciting activities they do there, I think he's far less likely to remember that he needs the toilet/ask to go, so I really want him to be comfortable in pants before he goes back.

Fingers crossed!

Sunny Days

(Yes, I'm backdating this post.  I forgot to write it when it was sunny and now Summer is apparently over again, so I'm trying to recreate that summery feeling without being all depressed about the current constant drizzle.  As you can see, I'm failing.)

Summer came in with a bang this week, and we capitalised on it with 4 glorious days spent trying not to burn  and trying to encourage Jacob that water is not the work of the devil, and is actually quite fun to play in (on the plus side, we found a suncream that Jacob is not allergic too!  Nivea Kids, factor 30, for those keeping track).

On Thursday, we went with my dear friend Rhian and her daughter Poppy to a park close to her home.  And blimey, do they keep this one secret.  From the road, it just looks like a nice bit of grass and an old house.  Once you get in, tucked away out of sight of the road there are shady walks, a duckpond, tennis courts and a fantastic playground complete with sandpit (I'm always jealous of there being sandpits in parks in America, I've never come across one here before).

When we got home, I spent bloody ages blowing up a paddling pool (I couldn't get the pump to work), only to find a small rip in the base.  So I found another paddling pool, spent bloody ages blowing that one up, then just as I finished I found the repair kit for the first one.  Still, Jacob had a whale of a time filling it, and now we have a spare ready blown up in the garage, in case of a paddling emergency.

(There are no more photos of Jacob actually playing in the paddling pool, because as Jamie delightfully put it, Jacob put the 'poo' into 'paddling pool')

 On Friday, we went with my friend Hannah and 18-month-old Finn to the beach.  Jacob entertained us in the car by translating Finn's squeaks and screeches all the way: "Finn says he saw a little bird!"/"Finn says he loves the beach", which was just too lovely for words.  As we approached the beach, we could see that the sea was swathed in mist, and the temperature was about 5 degrees lower than on the top of Gower.  A welcome relief, although it didn't last long and we had to retire not long after lunch, before the littlies spontaneously combusted (not me though, I swam in the sea.  Yes I did.  And came face-to-face with a fucking huge fish.  Never again).

See little Jacob's front tooth?  He knocked that bit out at nursery.  They neglected to tell me.  I was not impressed. 

Jacob and I, perfecting our ANTM poses. 

On Saturday, we went to the beach (a different one) with Jamie.  We became proper grown-ups by buying a windbreak and throwing passive-aggressive dirty looks at the group of teenagers who set up camp 6 inches away from us and began swearing and playing their iPods through tinpot speakers.  Have they never heard of headphones?

We spent hours climbing over these rocks, looking for crabs in the rockpools.  We found lots.  I discovered that the dye on the bottom of my flipflops has a tendency to leach into the skin when they become wet, but once transferred, it sets up camp and refuses to move.  Yes, I now look like I never wash my feet.

We spent Sunday at home, playing in the garden and clearing up the deck to make it a nice play area for Jacob.  I took before photos but forgot the after ones, so you'll have to wait until another day for those.

It was a freaking awesome four days, dirty-feet and pooey-paddling pools aside ;)

Bump watch - 16 weeks

Sticking it out slightly, but getting quite bumpalicious, nonetheless :D