Brrrrrrrrrrr

March 1st, as well as being St David's Day, marked the 3rd birthday of J-cub's future bride, the daughter of one of our oldest friends. It was her party yesterday, and we happily trekked all the way to Cardiff to celebrate with her. It was a yellow-themed party, with yellow balloons, all-yellow party food, yellow dresses, and yellow decorations. There was also jungle-themed entertainment laid on, with lots of pretending to be animals and game-playing. J-cub has just learned the sign for hippo, and ran around enthusiastically signing 'hippo' and getting upset when no hippo actions/noises/masks were forthcoming. He was about a year younger than most of the children there (although the same size, if not bigger than most of them) and so didn't quite understand most of the games, but enjoyed wearing himself out nonetheless. Most of our pictures show a blur of motion like this, as he ran round and round and round and round...

He also partook in his favourite Tumblies (our gym class) activity of falling dramatically over and the crawling around a bit.

He lapsed into a sugar coma on the way home and awoke with a yell somewhere around Port Talbot, scaring the life out of me and Jamie who were enjoying a peaceful drive and had quite forgotten he was there.

We got home to find the house suspiciously chilly; we'd left the heating on low as we were only going to be gone for a few hours and the house hadn't really warmed up in the morning. After turning the heating back up and waiting a little while, we ascertained that in fact, the radiators weren't hot at all. And there was no hot water. The boiler was on, and firing, and complete with pilot light, but that was it. A few phonecalls later and British Gas confirmed they can't get anyone out until Monday morning.

J-cub chose that moment, for the first time in his life, to stand by the door, saying "Bah, bah" and waving his arms around in a windmill fashion. We had no idea what he was talking about, but having exhausted all the usual options and seen him get more and more frustrated and upset with us, we opened the door so he could show us what he wanted. He scrambled up the stairs and ran into the bathroom. "Bah bah!" he said excitedly. Oh. Bath. For the last I-can't-remember-how-many months, J-cub has hated baths with a passion, has to be dragged screaming upstairs and plonked unceremoniously in the water, where he does actually enjoy himself for all of 3 minutes, before he demands to get out. WHY he chose yesterday to decide he wanted a bath, I have no idea. Poor baby.

Luckily, our shower is electric, so later on today I can fill the bath with water from the shower and he can have a bath. Obviously, he won't want one by then.

We dug an old electric fan heater out of the garage (not used for 10 years, still pristine-looking and perfectly functional), and used it to heat his bedroom and upstairs last night. Lots of hot coffee, hot food and blankets kept us warm last night, and we're off out today to warm up somewhere. I was woken by loud teeth-chattering yells this morning, and J-cub is now wearing about 20 layers and we haven't opened the curtains yet, so we can retain what little heat we have.

We would strongly appreciate some collective vibes for an easily-fixable problem, rather than a replacement boiler ... please ... ARGH!

Can we have some time off, please?

Several PJ-days in a row for us all, as we nicely round off last week's bug with a high-fever-inducing-virus, which has struck us all in turn over the last few days. I hate this time of year.

I do wonder how much quicker we'd get better (and, to be fair, how much less ill we'd be in the first place, without nursery-bugs added into the mix) if we didn't have a super-energetic toddler to wrangle, when all we feel like doing is carting our sweaty brows and achingbones back to bed, to wallow in self-pity and sweat for 24 hours. Not that I'd be without him, you understand. It's just that on days when you haven't slept due to bone-shaking chills wracking your body throughout the night, and your muscles are consequently as seized up as though you'd run a marathon, and your head feels like it's been wrapped in clingfilm, and you can't see straight ... on days like these having a toddler burst into tears because you have the audacity to lie down on the sofa, or repeatedly demand "Mummy delp!" when he wants you to help him build a tower, or just pull and tug at every appendage every time you sit down for FIVE SECONDS ........ it can just all be a bit much.

At least, at this age, he is slightly more independent, capable of getting himself snacks if we let him loose in the kitchen. He likes to stand on his little stool and watch me make toast, demanding "Triangle toast Mummy!" while he plays with the salt and pepper shakers, which are people-shaped and 'nest' in a little cuddle. "Tuddle Daddies!" he says, adorably.

He's also pretty good at entertaining himself some of the time, as long as a Finding Nemo DVD isn't too far off, and Tilly is somewhere closeby for tail-grabbing opportunities. This little moon-buggy vehicle has fold-down steps on one side, and he'll happily spend ages walking all his little people up the steps. (No, I don't know what's going on with his face here...)

This is a J-cub patented Look, with a capital L. He cuts his eyes at you from under his fringe, with his lips tight and almost-but-not-quite-smiling. It usually means he's up to some variety of No Good. Here, it's because he knows his Daddy wants to be left alone, but Daddy's legs are crossed in such a way that his foot makes a perfect bouncy-seat, and J-cub wants a ride. And he's getting one, whether his Daddy likes it or not...

...see?

He managed to get a double-bouncy foot ride here (the holy grail), as my legs were similarly crossed, but in mirror fashion, so he could get on both our feet at once, and the bounce was much more secure (am I explaining this at all well? It makes perfect sense here...)

And finally, when all else fails, the arrival of the postman (at 2pm this week - what is the world coming to?) always brings some delight - here an Amazon packet made a perfect hat, and it also was kind enough to be printed with the number 2 on BOTH SIDES, so J-cub could turn it over and over, each time announcing "Doo!" and carefully forcing 2 non-compliant fingers to stand up together to illustrate his point.

Busy weekend ahead - hopefully we can battle through the illness long enough to get through it all. Why can't I be ill on days when I only have work to contend with? I could just leave him in nursery and spend a restful day in bed then...

Di-dor DAT!

With a dinosaur-printed vest to cajole J-cub into believing he was a dinosaur, I managed to get the damn hat on his head today. He'd been happily running around shouting 'Di-dor DAT!' (dinosaur hat, to those not familiar with J-cub parlance), but as soon as I got the camera pointed at him his hat-based objections returned with a vengeance. And, to add insult to injury, the blasted thing is just a wee bit too small. That'll teach me just to blithely follow a 2-3 year old pattern without measuring his evidently massive head. Still, it's cute, no?

Tonight is also our first night in a fleece soaker, as we've been having increasing problems with failing to find a combination of nappy/nappies/inserts/wraps which will contain his overnight wee. The mornings often involve a full wash of PJs, vest, sleeping bag, fleece sheet, regular sheet and mattress cover. The fleece covers are supposed to be great though, so we'll see what the morning brings. And once again, cute, no*?

*If anyone dares answer 'no', I will cry.

Quiet weekend

The end of this half-term break has come about all too soon, as always. And, as always, I steadily came down with some sort of exhausting virus which left me in bed all day Thursday and Friday, with Jamie following me over the weekend and J-cub spiking a temperature all day today. Fingers crossed it'll pass for them as quickly as it did for me (although actually, in retrospect I've been ill pretty much all week, and only today am I feeling better). Meanwhile, we've done lots of nothing this weekend, apart from watching Finding Nemo sixty-three million times (I swear, J-cub wakes up chanting 'Meemo, meema, meemo, meema' every day) and spending an awful lot of time cuddling.

J-cub's cries of 'Tuddle Tilly!' every time she curls up to sleep are now grumpily tolerated, although not so much when he tries to sit on her.

We've had the return of Buckethead very much in evidence this last week...

And inexplicable signings of 'crocodile' in the bath, even though there are no crocodiles to be seen and he doesn't seem particularly perturbed by whatever dangers he's imagining...

I spent today's naptime dusting off my shiny new sewing machine and whipping up a fleece lined Dinosaur hat, which I was super-proud of (especially after I'd unstitched the first attempt, which had the stegosaur spikes going up the back and then down one side) but which J-cub flat out refused to wear. 'Dorodee dat!' he shouted angrily, banging it down on her head. And, to be fair, Dorothy is a dinosaur after all...

So long half-term, back to work tomorrow ... :(

Jan/Feb Photo Update

By no means a comprehensive photo update, because I don't want to bore you. Here's some gems though...

Oooh look, Christmas tree in the background! See, it did happen. Here, J-cub has taken a bunch of annoyingly-breakable plastic mini-things, and sorted them on top of a load of numbered blocks. Because he is a genius (and not at all obsessed with sorting, stacking, lining things up etc). This is his 'Yeah!' stance.

Ooop North, visiting the Pili Palas - due to the cold there was a distinct lack of pili but this Royal Python called Samantha captured J-cub's heart instead. He was far braver than the rest of us.

There were also a lot of lovely birds, which flapped and flew around all over the place, just out of reach and often just out of sight, leading to J-cub's complete bemusement and bafflement. He could hear them, he could *almost* see them, but they were just too fast to catch.

The in-laws beautiful living room proved the perfect velodrome for JC's trike (which we sensibly crammed into the car at the last minute).

Back home, being utterly gorgeous.

Oooh, see, this is why I shouldn't stop writing for so long. J-cub's affections are no longer solely reserved for Jemaine. In fact, Jemaine is very much playing second fiddle now to bunny, who has slept in J-cub's cot since birth but he's barely paid attention to. Now though, bunny (seen here being signed for) is synonymous with nanny (dummy), and we barely get through 10 minutes without one or the other being begged for. (Also note the Gruffalo t-shirt, and Gruffalo DVD on in the background. The Gruffalo is very popular right now).

New year, new carrier. This is our beautiful SSC, bought second hand to try out and instantly fallen in love with. It's a Babyhawk Oh Snap! and it is so comfortable, and so easy to use. Everywhere we go now, as soon as I open the door J-cub begs 'Mummy back? Deee [please] Mummy back!'.

Bear hat, Gruffalo coat. J-cub is now officially the coolest kid at school. When I went to pick him up from nursery the other day, his little posse all gathered around his coat and raaaaar'd it at each other. Yesterday, I tried to put on his blue hat with a bug on the front. 'No Mummy, no bat [hat].' (J-cub ran off, and returned a second later with his bear hat) 'Bat!'.

And just cos he's awesome...

J-cub's bucket o' bapples and those who like to eat from it - giraffe, zebra, reindeer and Mummy-with-a-bag.

Nonsense

I think there are just too many things to write about, which I feel deserve their own blog post, but I can't sort through my thoughts to get anything cohesive down before my mind flits off elsewhere. I haven't even written about Christmas. What sort of a record of my life is this, when my child's first (well, second, but the horrendous GE bug we had in 2009 cancels that one out) Christmas isn't fully documented. Let's think of a list, shall we? And then, maybe, if I have time I can come back and write more about them, and if not, I can just tell my stupid brain to shut up about it and get on with wittering about Spring or something.

1. Christmas. Was awesome, and we weren't ill. J-cub liked his Christmas presents, although the most popular were, predictably, the cheapest and most throwaway packs of crayons etc. And the Megabloks pirate ship and the Happyland rocket - lovely plastic tat which has lead to an explosion of imaginative play skills. Woop!

2. Imaginative play. My little toddler is walking toys around, and having them eat out of 'buckets of bapples Mummy!', and putting them to bed, and attacking them with sharks, and putting them on the toilet, etc. Awwww.

3. Talking. Now in (mini) sentences - two words strung together is now a constant, and he can very easily say-and-sign his way through entire conversations. I've given up recording his vocab, but it must be huge by now.

4. First trip to the North Wales side of the family (it's a 6 hour drive, I just haven't been able to face it before now). We did it, J-cub loved it, we went to a butterfly farm and J-cub stroked a snake. It was cool.

5. Potty training. We haven't started yet, but I have Thoughts.

6. Moving to a bed. Ditto.

7. Gym class. We now go to a weekly gym class, the 'free play' aspect of which J-cub fully embraces, and the 'structured activity' bit he deems as an assault on his human rights and either shouts 'NO!' repeatedly while perched atop a piece of apparatus or runs around screaming bloody murder.

8. Birthdays. J-cub is going to be TWO in 15 days. HOW is that possible?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Okay that's all I can think of. There's more, and I'll add to them, but now I've got that out of my system I can get on with talking about other things, and not feeling this cloud of 'Update properly or your blog will be incomplete' hanging over my shoulder. Because really, who cares*?

I'm going to find some pretty pictures now and put them up instead of doing anything more worthwhile with my time (plus, there's some sort of football match on the television and my feet are too cold to sit in the kitchen and sew). TTFN fact fans.

*I do, and I hate it when people say 'who cares?' about things that are important to me, but I recognize that I'm an idiotic Virgo and not everything has to be perfect. Let It Go.

Sleepless in Swansea

So back when I updated after my post-Summer absence, I mentioned that we were having sleep issues. The last time I posted was December 16th, which was around the time when our sleep problems went from bad to worse. J-cub started getting up for the day at around 3am. Often after having had a period of wakiness from midnight to 1am. We don't generally go to bed before midnight, which meant that one, if not both of us, were having around 2 hours sleep a night.

When J-cub woke on these occasions, he was either screaming or wide-awake, bouncing and asking to go downstairs. If he was screaming, picking him up and rocking him would lead to him falling asleep on our shoulders, and waking again the second he was lowered into the cot. Or we would sit on the tiny stool beside his cot, and every time he drifted off, we'd creep out, only to have him start screaming again the second we'd made our way out of the room. He won't sleep in our bed, it's like a giant trampoline to him and nothing we've tried has persuaded him that it's a nice place to sleep. So our only option was to bring him down and let him wear himself out again. Sometimes he fell asleep on Dorothy (his rocking dinosaur), but would start screaming again if we carried him upstairs. Sometimes we rocked him for hours on our shoulders, resulting in burning pains across our backs for several days afterwards.

Something had to give, and the comments of "Well of course you must parent however you want, but you're going to have to leave him to cry himself to sleep at some point" from my dad and other well-meaning (well, maybe not) advisers. Instead, I did what I always do and turned to the Internet for advice. I'd seen talk of the No-Cry Sleep Solution on the various parenting forums which I frequent, but had dismissed it along with most other parenting manuals as being a gimmick and unlikely to work. In desperation though, I ordered the toddler version along with a batch of Christmas presents from Amazon, and devoured it in a couple of days. We started to implement the changes pretty much straight away, and Oh My God what a difference it made. We learnt that J-cub was having, on average, 7 too few hours of sleep a night. Seven. Over the following days, we made the following changes, which I'm going to list here in the hope it might help some other desperate parents, but I do strongly recommend you buy the book. It's very well-written, doesn't prompt you to make any changes which you don't want to make (but which peer-pressure might be fooling you into thinking you should make), and most importantly, doesn't even contemplate the thought of leaving your child to cry. Our changes then, were as follows:

Nightlight. J-cub had a nightlight, as he does not like it when it's completely dark, but the nightlight was green. The book explains that lights in the yellow spectrum emulate daylight, and can trigger the body to think it's time to wake up. Lights in the blue spectrum emulate night, and accordingly the body thinks it's time to sleep. We changed this the first night, and we had a couple more hours sleep during the night.

Bedtime routine. We had a bedtime routine of sorts, comprising dinner, play, milk, teeth-brushing, bed. The book made us keep a log of these times, looking at activity level (we should be aiming for calm), and light level (should be dim). We had been keeping the lights on full, and the activity level often involved lots of running around and giggling, in an attempt to 'wear him out'. We started dimming the lounge lights, making a snuggly nest of blankets and cushions on the floor, and having quiet stories. Instead of then having a battle to get him up the stairs, he started to go quite willingly, having had the opportunity to wind down first.

Calm bedroom. His bedroom is pretty calm already, but it was also very messy. I cleared it out, tidied it up, and removed from sight some of the things which made him shriek with joy when he saw them. We instigated a rule of no-lights on during the night (i.e. to tend to him, check his nappy etc). We also took a pile of books upstairs, books which we've held onto from our childhoods, and which are more appropriate for older children, but which are long and lulling and can be read to him, rather than with him. We started reading him to sleep, rather than rocking him to sleep. The first night we did this, he fell asleep in around 20 minutes. And did not wake when I got up and walked out. Result! This also dramatically affected his daytime naps...

Daytime nap. We had always gone along with the 'he'll sleep when he's ready' attitude to daytime sleep. But this often meant that we got so caught up in the fun of daily play, that he didn't nap at all. As a result, he was overtired at bedtime, and completely unable to fall asleep. We stopped letting him decide when it was naptime, and started putting him down straight after lunch. Having the lure of stories upstairs was enough of a motivator to get him upstairs without a fight, and we let him choose a book from his bookcase to read with us, followed by a longer book to read to him when he lay down. Again, this worked immediately and he went back to having a good 2 hour nap every day (the relief of this was incredible, I was so not ready for him to drop his nap).

Wake-up times. This was the very hardest thing to get working. The book explains why having a regular wake-up time in the morning is as important as a regular bed-time (again, I'm going to suggest you read it, it makes so much sense). At J-cub's age, he should be sleeping roughly 12 hours a night, which would mean a 7am wakeup after a 7pm bedtime. After implementing all the above changes, we were getting a regular bedtime most nights, and he was finally sleeping through, but he was still waking around 4.30-5.30am, wide awake and ready to start the day. We had no idea how to instigate a regular wakeup time, when he point blank refused to go back to sleep at that hour. In the end, it was the knock-on effect of all the other changes that got him to that point - he just suddenly started sleeping later in the morning.

It only took a couple of weeks in the end, and it's still not perfect now, but we're not looking for perfect, just for something that works for all of us and makes him happier during the day. He had 13 out of the 14 signs of sleep-deprivation listed in the book, including regular tantrums and a general demeanour of grumpiness all day every day. A month on and he is so so happy, and content, and we're not tearing our hair out and questioning why we'd had a child in the first place.

It can still take upwards of an hour to read him to sleep, especially when he's teethy or poorly (he's stuffed up with cold at the moment and it's taken an hour so far tonight...), but at least we're sitting down and reading lovely stories rather than breaking our backs rocking a massively-heavy toddler in our arms.

All the sleep-deprivation meant that I momentarily forgot I had a blog (again) but here I am again, and maybe one day I'll get back to keeping things up to date.

It's my turn to go back upstairs now and take over reading duties. Night night x

ETA: Further update here.