What to do in a hostage situation

Write a blog post. (It'll make sense later.)

I'm in Happy One's room giving him his bedtime feed and thought why not put this time to good use and do a quick blog post.

Actually the truth is that Happy One is practically asleep but I'm hiding because I can hear ructions coming from the other room, Miss Chief crying and doors slamming, and I'm trying to avoid either getting involved or being dragged into putting her to bed. This I don't mind in and of itself but by the sounds of things it could take a while and be a bit of a mish.

The thing is that this is a bit of a crazy house at the moment. I went back to work a couple of months ago and a few weeks prior to that Map Man started a full- time 6 month coursework-based post-grad course. He's writing a paper about 'las-ers', cluster computing and finding tall trees. Pretty cool stuff but not really an appropriate subject for this blog.

Miss Chief has been having various sleep issues over the same time period and longer. The latest is that she still occasionally loses the plot at bedtime and often finds it incredibly hard to wind down. But more pertinent is that once asleep she then wakes frequently and gets out of bed. This is happening almost every night and is often after we've gone to bed. She'll wander into our room and wake us up. When we bring her back to her own room she says "but I'll be all by myself". (I hope this isn't all my fault for having a "sleepover" in my bed one night whilst Toby was away - he told me this would happen. It may well have contributed but I don't think it's a direct cause.)

At the same time she is continuing to amaze us with her wit, comprehension, vocabulary, creativity and imagination. Her development in these areas, and more, just isn't slowing. I reckon I'd have trouble sleeping if I had all that going on in my head.

Meanwhile Happy One is just a baby, 9 months old and dealing with all the usual stuff that the little critters have to deal with. The odd Wonder Week here and there. (We made it through Week 36 World of Categories (a horse can be an animal in a field or a picture in a book and is not the same as a large dog) and now we've got Week 44 World of Sequences (put spoon in bowl, scoop cereal onto spoon, move spoon to mouth, open mouth ... and so on, you get the drift) starting this week at 41 weeks.) And all the amazing milestones they bring: he's crawling, cruising round the furniture, standing by himself, playing peekaboo, picking up ever smaller morsels and working on his pincer grip, chatting away in his baby talk, sort of signing, he even clapped his hands but it was a bit of a "blink and you miss it" moment. He's incredibly funny, loves to copy Miss Chief, laughs a lot, gets annoyed if he has to wait too long for a breastfeed or if you take something from him, loves his food, and is generally a lot of fun to be around. He is also getting massive. I bought him a little hoodie for when the weather cools down today. It suggested size 0 for a 10kg baby. He is a little bit under that but I picked up the next size up anyway and was surprised that it fit him. It's a little large but not overly so.

When he's not having a major mental leap or a growth spurt, he's teething. He's not a great teether. He goes off his food and wants extra breastfeeds. Yay for me. (I love breastfeeding but not all the time.) He has 6 teeth now and we're in a teething break which is good. He still loves his sleep but sleep training has gone to poo. I still breastfeed him to sleep at night and when he's not teething he wakes once for a feed around 3 or 4am. During the day we have varying degrees of success in getting him to sleep but it pretty much always results in doing the Cot Dance - pacing round his room with him in our arms, rocking and jiggling him slightly then gradually lowering him into the cot and trying to get our arms out from under him without waking him. I'm going to design a new mother and baby exercise class based upon it. Watch this space.

The thing is at the moment it's all about maximising sleep in this house. Let's worry about bad habits later when things are less crazy. To that end my next step with The Chief is to replace her toddler bed with a single bed. I have a base. I just need to paint it (it's black) and buy a mattress. I would just let her sleep in our bed when she wakes up but Map Man can't sleep with her in the bed. I figure if she has a bigger bed one of us can either get in with her or swap.

As for me, because surely someone cares how I'm doing, right? Oh good. Well I'm finding it hard to find time to exercise. I do the occasional Zumba workout if I get up before the kids (ha!) or get them both sleeping at the same time (Chief sleeps about every other day now). Sometimes I get to the pool but that's rare. And I had my bike serviced the other week so I could ride to work. Which I've done once. Basically I'm still establishing a routine.

I'm enjoying being back at work. I don't really know where I'm heading with that but it's good to be contributing and feeling like a normal grown up a couple of days a week. A part time working mother is a bit like a person with multiple personality syndrome. It can be hard to switch between the two roles. I often go to work with rusks and spare undies (size 3) in my handbag. But I work really close to the beach and only 5 minutes drive from home in swanky new offices. I feed Happy One once a
day before his lunchtime sleep while Map Man swims in the ocean. Tomorrow if the weather isn't too bad then we're trying a new routine of meeting at the pool. Map Man will swim whilst I feed Happy One and then I'll do some laps. I haven't really been taking all the breaks I'm entitled to as I've been settling back in but I think I'm starting to find my rhythm now. We're hoping to get Happy One into daycare one day a week soon. That'll be interesting as he won't get his daytime feed (he gets 2 on a non workday). As it is he's all over me as soon as I walk through the door and won't leave me alone until I feed him.

[Update: now I'm in Chief's room massaging her feet while she (hopefully, please soon) falls asleep. How did this happen? It's very hard - and slow - typing with left hand while massaging with right (or vice versa for that matter). A bit like patting your head and rubbing your tummy. I keep getting the two mixed up. Chief's a bit perturbed but my iPhone seems nice and relaxed. At least I had the presence of mind to bring my wine in too.]

Ok where was I? Oh that's right. Me. So yeah. Work good. Two days perfect for now. Breastfeeding and working still not easy but pretty good really. Aside from that I've been baking a lot and getting fat (compared to my wedding photos anyway). And as soon as I get out of here (Chief's room. Currently hostage.) I'm going to sew Alvin's arms on (soft toy I'm making for my nephew's birthday. Which was last week. Yeah. I'm so on the ball and organised.)

Just for fun (and because I'm still captive) I'll close with a summary of Happy One's routine at 9 months. It's very flexible.

3-4am : breastfeed. Takes about 15-20 mins. Unless I fall asleep.
6am : wake
7am : breakfast.
8am : breastfeed
8.30 : sleep for about an hour
11am : breastfeed
12pm : lunch
1pm : sleep for 1.5-2 hours
3pm : breastfeed
5pm : bathtime
5.30 : dinner (usually followed by another quick dunk in the bath)
6.30 : breastfeed
7.00 : sleep

I've no idea whether this is normal. Most 9 month olds are probably down to 3 milk feeds a day but I don't care. If there's one thing I learnt when Chief was a baby it's not to stress about weaning. It'll happen when the time is right. Obviously work days are a bit different. I feed him before I leave. Then around 1130-12ish and again around 5 or 6pm depending on when I get home. He also gets offered morning and afternoon tea if he's awake when Chief has hers. In short he spends about 70% of his waking hours eating or drinking.

Sheesh this is a long post. No one's going to read this far. I could say anything now and no one would ever know.

[And I'm still massaging 3-year old feet. Or feets as Chief would say.]

Sleeping through?

Last night Ash slept through until 4.30am! Oh My God! That may not sound much for a seven month old (almost, that is) but this is the first time it has ever happened. At least I think it's the first time. I'm so sleep deprived that my memory has gone fuzzy and it's quite possible that this has happened before. But it would be a very rare occurrence, the odd night amongst many, many nights of disturbed sleep.

Ash has generally woken two or three times a night his whole life. Sometimes more. He'd wake and feed around 10 or 11pm, then again 3-4 hours later and then again a couple of hours after that around 4 or 5am. Often he'd decide this is a good time to get up for the day.

And then every now and then we'd have nights where he'd wake every couple of hours. Once he did this for a whole week. Just a few days ago he woke up every 1.5-2 hours. This was the night that we got home after our Christmas break. The night before we'd been up for an hour or so with Phoebe who had a horrible croupy cough, poor bairn. Oh, how tired were we after all of that! It's a rhetorical question (hence the lack of question mark) but the answer is Very!

Sometimes I feed him when he wakes to keep the peace or because I'm too tired to question it and go onto autopilot. And other times I point blank refuse and make Toby get up and settle him. This week he has his two top teeth coming in and the right one is poking through. So if Toby can't settle him then I'll feed him. I figure that's better than paracetamol. (Have I mentioned that he got his first two teeth a week apart when he was four months old?)

So anyway, last night... We went out for dinner with friends and Andrei babysat. Around 9.30pm he heard Ash stir, which he'd done the night before. Only this time he didn't actually wake up and cry. The next we heard from him was at 4.30am. Bliss. Except I spent the entire night worrying, firstly about him and then about my engorged breasts. I sent Toby in to check on him at 1am and couldn't believe it when I woke again at 3am and still hadn't heard from him. Then I became obsessed over my full, sore boobs and couldn't get back to sleep. I finally got up and expressed some milk to make myself more comfortable. No sooner had I got back into bed then he woke for a feed. I'm not sure he went back to sleep after that. Toby got up with him around 5.40am. Isn't that always the way? Baby sleeps all night but parents spend the entire night freaking out that baby has stopped breathing and get even less sleep than usual.

So, a bit of a result but I'm completely knackered. Fingers crossed for a repeat performance tonight that I can actually take advantage of.

Phoebe, Destroyer of Furniture

And Books, In Particular.

Phoebe is teething again and this time is chewing everything within reach with a vengeance.

When I go into her room after a nap her face is covered in flecks of white paint, evidence of her feeding frenzy on the cot. And following many such gruesome naps, the cot itself is in a sorry state. I took some photographs today:

The view from the inside of the cot

The head of the cot, where I find her standing covered in paint after every sleep.

We popped out to get some bread this afternoon. Phoebe likes to look at books in the pram and in the car so I handed her a book on shapes. She ate that too. Completely chewed the corner of it. The last time she did that was when my mam bought her a buggy book (a book that straps to the pram) when we were in England. Phoebe was about 5 months old and was teething with her first two teeth, which came through very soon afterwards. She annihilated the book so badly we had to confiscate it and throw it away. I confiscated the shape book today. She can have it back when she stops trying to consume the cot.

So, any advice as to what I can do to save the cot? I'm a bit concerned that Phoebe is going to start swallowing bits of wood as it has started to flake. Current thoughts are to dash in as soon as I think she's awake but that's not always practical; to place a rusk and/or teething ring in the cot when she goes to sleep but I'm not sure she'll even notice it's there; to cover the damaged section with parcel tape or something but she'll probably just eat the tape and/or move to another section of the cot and start destroying that.

The Tooth Fairy

And just because I forgot to mention it in my last post, but then read back over my previous posts and realised I hadn't updated you since Tooth Number Three, I feel I should mention that Teeth Four and Five have also joined us. These are the front two and they're about halfway through now, which is very cute. Number Six is on its way but is taking its time, much to Phoebe's intermittent frustration.

See, silly parental pride. I mean, they're only teeth, and it's not like she had to do much to grow them. But I suppose its a sign that she's growing up.

Which reminds me, it looks like I might be back in The Land of The Fertile, yet another sign that my little baby is growing up. And did you know that there are 32 muscles in a cat's ear? This amazing fact was brought to you courtesy of Libra.

If I had to do it again... No. 1

This is the first in a series not because I have similar posts in mind but because I have no doubt that similar thoughts will occur in the future.

1. The cot

If I had to buy a cot again I would choose one with the maximum safe distance between the bars. This is something I didn't even think about when choosing our cot. I just picked one that was a good price, could be easily raised and lowered with one hand (some of them have buttons on either end that have to be pushed simultaneously to lower the side; try doing that whilst holding a sleeping baby; not that I ever raise the cot side anyway) and looked good. But now that I have spent many an hour sitting by the side of the cot, hunched over the rail, cutting off the circulation in my arms as I pat my baby to sleep, I would choose a cot with bars that I could easily get my hands and arms through. And I'd set up a really comfy mattress by the side of the cot so I could have a lie down myself. I nearly send myself to sleep on some nights and it amazes me that Phoebe can stay awake for so long.

2. The pram

Before I go on I should say that I love our Steelcraft Strider DLX in Kingfisher blue and have no regrets over choosing either that or the cot. But these are things that I didn't realise I might want out of a cot or a pram. That's not to say that had I known I would have made a different choice as we all know you can't have everything (unless you have oodles of cash and can afford a Bugaboo; but you can't easily swap between bassinet and stroller seat like you can with ours so you see, even the posh pram has it's bad points). What I wish our gorgeous babymobile did differently (other than having such wide-set wheels which make it impossible for Lucie, who has the same pram in sophisticated Toffee, and I to walk side-by-side on most pavements) is the recline levels. There are three of these, which is probably enough, but the upright never seems to be quite upright enough and the fully reclined position never seems to be quite reclined enough. A good stroller seat should go from almost flat to practically standing. But this is a very minor issue.

Another thing I'd do differently, and in fact might do if we have another baby, is I'd fork out the extra money for a car seat that goes onto the pram base. At around $300 it's hardly cheap and I turned my nose up at this when I was pregnant and choosing a pram, especially as it only suits babies weighing up to 9kg which Phoebe is now close to.

"Who would spend that much on a seat that will only do for 6-9 months?" I scoffed. "What an extravagant waste of money! No! I shall just hire a capsule from Queensland Ambulance for $70."

We certainly saved ourselves a fair bit of money but I got bloody sick of hauling that thing in and out of shops when running errands. There were a number of occasions when I didn't do quite so many things on my way home from somewhere because it was too much hassle getting her in and out of the car or because she was asleep and I didn't want to wake her. And how many times did Toby try to persuade me to place the car capsule inside the bassinet so we could push it along? Well, it was more than once. And I refused each time because it didn't feel safe. Hopefully by the time we have another baby they'll be cheaper or available second-hand because it still seems a bit damn expensive to me.

The aliens brought my baby back and they've done a reasonable job of fixing her. Here is a photo of her taken today looking gorgeous. She's getting over her cold and is just trying to catch up on some sleep. And she has at least one, possibly three more teeth coming through. I can feel her top right tooth one along from the front and I thought I could see the whites of her two front teeth just under the gums.

Sitting Pretty

Soon after publishing my last post my Little Miss sat unaided for the first time and is now doing it regularly. Occasionally she still topples over, like this morning when I was showing off her new trick to her Auntie Karen and this afternoon at Gymbaroo when she face-planted into her hard plastic treasure bag toy whilst I was temporarily distracted. Isn't that always the way? Baby does something new and clever and consistently shows off new trick to parents for days but then as soon as parents proudly display new trick to someone else baby temporarily forgets how to do it.

Well, here's evidence:

And more:

Yes, I'm ridiculously proud, especially as all the books say she'll sit around 6 months old and she isn't even 4 ½ months. She's very advanced.

We have now set up the little booster seat that Andrei and Karen leant us, which just straps to a dining chair and so she has an alternative sitting option for when I'm doing boring stuff like the laundry or the dinner. I will soon be purchasing various equipment in preparation for her weaning (by which I mean starting her on solids as opposed to getting her off breast milk), including some nice soft weaning spoons and a sippy cup (I figured there isn't much point in persisting with the bottle; we may as well go straight to a cup now) and eventually some freezer pots and a hand blender. Oh, how quickly they grow.

Unfortunately, the poor love, as well as dealing with her millions of injections and learning her impressive new skill, is really suffering with her teeth. Her bottom two teeth are almost through; the bumps are more prominent and when she does manage to let me see her gums (a rare occurrence on account of her love of sticking out her tongue) I am sure I can see bits of white so I'm hoping that they will break through very soon and give her some relief. She's started to bite my boob and even though I don't have particularly sensitive nipples it's a less than pleasant experience.

Just for the hell of it before I go, here's a short movie of her learning to sit:

Where did the time go?

One month since my last update, four months since Phoebe was born (18 weeks tomorrow)... where did the time go?

Little Miss P has changed so much over the last 4 weeks. Just in the last few days she has taken to sucking her bottom lip (teething, perhaps?) and it totally changes the look of her face. She looks really funny. She cries less and is more vocal, shouting when she's a bit annoyed about something. About two weeks ago at Gymbaroo she rolled by herself down the soft play wedge and has since rolled quite a few times, including onto her back during mat time at Gymbaroo when she got fed up with being on her tummy.

She has also started to commando crawl although doesn't go very far and gets tired easily. Last night Toby put her down on her tummy in the middle of a large floor cushion then went to run her bath. When I next looked at her she was on the edge of the cushion and then she rolled off it.

As well as continuing with her standing fetish, she is now learning to sit and is getting pretty good at doing it on her own although I suspect her cloth nappies may help a bit by giving her a stable base. She definitely has the strength to sit up on her own but needs to work on her balance a bit. She can stay still for a few seconds but then she topples over, which she seems to think is great fun. If she's holding onto something, such as my finger or a toy then she can balance for much longer.

She seems to be over her fear of going to bed. I think we really only get the tears when she's overtired. She is now so long (about 62cm) that when she's in her baby bath she can rest her head at one end and touch the other end with her feet. She can lie there without us having to hold onto her and it seems to really relax her. We follow this up with a massage and a feed and most nights she's asleep or dozing before she even gets to her cot. Other nights she talks or whinges herself to sleep for a while and then we have the odd night where she's really hard work and needs jiggling, suckling and lots of patience before she'll drop off.

Ha! I leave my computer for a few hours and suddenly that last paragraph doesn't ring quite so true anymore. Phoebe had her jabs on Tuesday. That night we went out for curry with my colleagues as Linda was visiting from U.S. and consequently Pheebs had a late night (although she did nap for about an hour whilst we were eating - she's such a considerate baby). Since then she seems to want to fall asleep at the breast in the evenings, only it takes her a while. I have a new rule: three sucks without a swallow and she gets pulled off. Do that three times and tea-time is over. She doesn't seem to like this rule much. On Wednesday night I gave her my finger to suck, which she did and when she was almost asleep I took this away from her too. She happily sucked her tongue until she fell asleep. I smugly put her in her cot thinking the following night she could suck her tongue and fall asleep after I put her in her cot. Only she didn't fall for the finger trick that night, nor tonight. She just cried and tried to find my boobie. It took me almost an hour to get her to bed both nights.

We have now elevated one end of her mattress in case she has reflux. I did this a few weeks ago and it seemed to work but I've no idea whether that was what worked tonight as I tried lots of other things too: "divine drops" to stop her screaming (a "baby yoga" move which consists of me squatting down really quickly to give her the feeling that she's falling; for some reason babies love this and even when she's really upset she can't help but smile); a dummy, which she spat out but which distracted her from her whinging; the jiggle, which consists of me walking around the bedroom in a jiggly manner whilst cuddling her; and the chest pat. Something worked and I don't really care which it was.

She was frantically sucking on her hands whilst winding down tonight and when I put my finger in her mouth she bit down quite hard. With that and the bottom lip sucking I wonder if she has teeth that are bothering her. Perhaps that, rather than her injections, is what is upsetting her.

She was fine after her jabs (other than wanting to suckle all night) but has a hard bruise on her left leg below the point where the needle went in. In Australia the poor wee things get so many vaccinations. Firstly, they get an oral dose of a vaccination against Rotavirus, which causes nasty gastroenteritis. Then, they simultaneously get two jabs, one in each thigh. One includes DPT (diptheria-pertussis (i.e. whooping cough)-tetanus) plus Polio, Hepatitus B and HiB (Haemophilus influenza type b), a throat infection that can lead to meningitis. That's six vaccinations in one injection! In the other leg they get a vaccination against Pneumococcal, which can cause all sorts of nasties, including meningitis and pneumonia. They get these when they're two, four and six months old.

Phoebe still sometimes wakes up in the night. She usually wakes when I go to bed or around midnight and then again at about 5.30am but this varies. Last night she went to bed around 7.30 then woke at 10.30pm when I went to bed and again at 3.30am and then 6.30am when we all got up. I'm not at all used to all this night-time activity so I'm a bit tired and I'm off to bed in a minute. I've given up trying to make her nap in the middle of the day. I just let her sleep when she's tired and hope that it fits in with what I'm doing. She seems so much happier when we're out and about but she doesn't feed or sleep particularly well in public these days. If I can reduce her stimulation by placing her in the pram and walking around with the insect cover over her then she can get a good sleep but she'll generally feed for long enough to stop feeling hungry and then find something to distract her again. I think this is partly why she's waking up at night. Even if we're home in the morning she's already had two really good feeds at night or early in the morning so she isn't that hungry later on.

Phoebe's rainforest play gym arrived and she loves it. We hang all sorts of other toys from it too and change these around so she doesn't get bored. In the mornings she quite likes to watch the lights and listen to the music and when she gets tired she just chills out on it. But in the afternoon she can't bear the lights and music and we often do more physical games on the floor or a cushion, such as "Wash the dishes", a Gymbaroo game which involves Phoebe being turned upside down, the Sitty-Uppy and Standy-Uppy games (which she now does at Gymbaroo too), tummy time, which she's now excellent at and uses the opportunity to do some commando crawling, which I sometimes assist with by holding her feet so she can push away from my hands (another exercise we learned at Gymbaroo) and lying on her back and rolling.

Another exciting new arrival is our passports. Yes, Phoebe and I now have Australian passports and our trip is only 4 weeks away. Phoebe will be trying solids soon too, perhaps when we're away or maybe just before we go so that Toby can be involved. I haven't got any of the stuff yet though and I'm trying to decide what I absolutely need to get beforehand and what I can make do with until we get back.

Right then... I'm off to see if I can sneak into bed without waking the Hungry Hippo.