Still Alive

But barely =(

We've been an en-lurgied household for nearly three weeks with no end in sight as yet. I started it all off over two weeks ago with some sort of flu like virus that had my sinuses screaming and left me feeling like a wrung out dishrag for over a week.

Then as I was still recovering the Ewok came down with a 'proper man cold'. He's had the sniffles before but this time it's serious. He's been coughing and sneezing for three days straight and his poor little nosey is red raw, so now every time he wipes his nose it hurts so much he cries, but he won't let me put anything on it to help as it stings too much to start with. I've just has to sneak into his room and take his temperature as it was 38.8C (101.8F) when I put him to bed. Fortunately the baby paracetamol seems to have done the trick as it's back to normal now. Fingers crossed that's the worst of it for him and he'll be feeling better tomorrow.

Naturally, because my system was still buggered from whatever virus it was that I had, now I've come down with the blasted cold as well. It arrived yesterday and then invited it's mates along for the party today, so now my nose is red and sore too.

And finally, I've just heard Wookiee downstairs sneezing his head off. He's been sorting through old boxes of stuff from when we moved here nearly 5 years ago, so it could just be dust, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him snuffling with this cold tomorrow.

Bleargh.

Miss Manners is IN

I've just read a post by the excellent Mamacita about the dangers of letting the children rule the parents and home, rather than the parents doing their job properly.

One of the commenters asked, as someone who doesn't spend much time with small children, is it reasonable to expect a 4.5yo to eat/chew with their mouth shut.

So, my opinion on the subject is, that they are never too young to start learning good manners and polite behaviour. Just because they may not understand why that behaviour is necessary or the centuries of social conditioning behind them, doesn't mean that they can't be taught to behave a certain way, understanding can come later.

So my 2.5 yo has learned to say please, thank you and you're welcome. He says pardon me when he experiences a gas escape from either end, for the most part he doesn't talk while he's eating and he keeps his mouth shut when he's chewing. At the moment he's learning that we don't snatch, by me making him give something back and try taking it again nicely if he does snatch the first time, and he has to keep doing it until he gets it right.

No, he doesn't always get it right, he has to be reminded of all these things occasionally, and frankly I don't think that is a problem, the fact is that more often than not, he does get it right, and that makes me proud.

Oh, and for the record, seeing someone smacking away at their food with their mouth hanging open physically disgusts me. Seeing a young child doing it I can cope, as long as their parent is working to correct them, however seeing a grown man doing it (one of OH's friends springs to mind) is utterly disgusting and I have very great difficulty eating around people who do that.

Progress

He's been allowed to wear trousers around the house for the first time today. So far we haven't had any accidents (that's me setting things up for a soggy evening folks), although he has managed to pee over the rim of the toilet seat and all over the floor, his pants and his trousers a couple of times. I keep trying to tell him that if he sits there trying to watch himself pee then he's going to get wet feet, but he's still fascinated with the whole thing. Good job I keep a mop and bucket in the shower in that bathroom.

He's also earned two more cars since last I mentioned it. He's just earned his third and is merrily playing with them all at the moment.

Tomorrow I promise I'll write about something other than toilet training *lol*

P.S. One fun thing I've learned since we started toilet training. Ewok has veeeery ticklish bum cheeks *hee*

The saga continues...

Well he knows what he's doing now, but it's still a bit hit and miss as to whether he makes it to the loo in time or not. Yesterday he only had a couple of accidents, today there were more accidents than successess.

Tomorrow is going to be his first big test as we have Tumble Tots in the morning and Sure Start Stay & Play in the afternoon. His old changing bag is already packed with several changes of pants and trousers, there's more trousers in his travel box in the car and a piece of disposable changing mat in his car seat. Neither event is more than a 10 min drive away, so fingers crossed he will be fine travelling. My main worry is that I haven't managed to get a folding loo seat yet, so he'll have to balance on the big seats, which isn't a problem as long as he only needs to pee...

Nighttimes are what's killing me. He hasn't had a dry night yet, and when he wakes up wet in the middle of the night, it's not being woken up and having to go and clean up that's the problem, it's that he then won't let me leave him again for at least 30 mins, usually not until he's deeply enough asleep that I can creep out of his room without disturbing him. On top of that I'm having to wake up 1.5-2 hrs earlier than I used to, to try and be up before he wakes up, so I can get to hom and get him to the toilet before he wets the bed while he's waking up. Although to be fair, this morning he woke up before my alarm woke me, and he'd managed to get out of bed before losing it, but not onto the loo.

So I haven't had an unbroken nights sleep for the last 6 nights, not more than 5 hours total on any night, and I have to be alert and vigilant all day long. I'm about dead on my feet now.

Quick Update

By george it works!

As of lunchtime today he 'got it'. We had a couple of accidents in the early evening but I think they were down to him being tired. But he also managed to take himself off to the toilet three times during the afternoon and pretty much manage on his own, with me just hovering and reminding him to flush and wash his hands afterwards.

He hasn't had a dry night yet, but then we've only had two nights of it, and I'm just going to go and check on him now before heading to bed myself. He also hasn't needed to poop since lunchtime, so there may still be a little work to do there, I'll find that out in the morning.

Still, practically potty trained in 2.5 days *phew*

Potty Training

We're following a 3-day potty training system.

It's killing me, but it does appear to be working. In two days we've gone from nappies and no attempts at even trying to PT, to a sucessful pee and poop in the toilet with still-dry pants and him initiating the visit to the toilet.

This was followed by an accident 20 mins later, but still, progress is definitely being made. We'll see where we're at by tomorrow evening.

Let's weird Mummy out...

Two things have happened recently that make me think Ewok is trying to weird me out.

The first was one night, when I went in to his room to check on him before I went to bed, some three hours after he'd gone to bed. I do this every night, and sometimes it will disturb him a little and he'll sit up and mumble something at me, but quietly telling him to lie down, with guidance in the direction of 'dog' always gets him snuggled down again. However, on this occasion, before I'd even got the door fully open, I was startled to see him kneeling up facing the window, completely still and quiet. He didn't move a muscle, even as I made my way into the room and over to the bed. I did my usual quitely telling him to lie down, and still without a word he just sort of folded up on himself, so his head was on the pillow and he was curled up in a ball on his front. What freaked me out the most about this was his total lack of awareness and the silence.

The second incident was the following day. He was amusing himself as he frequently does, and had opened the living room door (there's a gate so he doesn't wander about the house), and I hadn't really registered that he'd done it. Then I clearly heard him say 'Thank you Daddy' and then he shut the door and went back to his toys! Now it was while we were snowed in, so I just assumed that Wookiee had decided to work from home again, although I had thought he'd gone in to work on that day. So I went to the door myself to check, then I searched the house, and discovered that Daddy definitely wasn't home! I did discover one of Ewok's little wooden train engines, carefully balanced on top of the gate, and it was one he'd been asking Wookiee where it was the day before.

*Cue twilight zone music*

I have a teenager!

I didn't think I was supposed to see this sort of pose and expression for at least another 10 years!


(Click for bigger image and the full moody impact)

Snow!

Well as many other British bloggers have posted by now, we've been having some uncharacteristically seasonal weather in the form of heavy (for us) snowfalls that actually settle.

We had some earlier in the week, but when Ewok and I went out to make a snowman we found that the top inch of snow had turned to ice overnight, making it far from suitable for building. Then last night it snowed again, and through into this morning, and it was proper snow, for building biiiig snowmen.

After lunch we got all dressed up for the weather and headed out into the garden to build this:



The 'hat' is courtesy of Ewok's beach bucket, and it does have arms, they're just very spindly twigs that kind of blend into the background of, well, spindly twigs. For scale, Ewok is about 97cms tall.




Hopefully the above is a little video I shot with the camera. Ewok didn't realise I was filming, he thought I was about to take a photo, hence him posing next to the snowman and saying 'cheese' *lol*

Yesterday in photos

S.E.X. in the morning...





Toddler + sharpie marker in the evening *sigh*

Baby's first...

...night in a big bed.

Yes, it's really taken us this long to sort out a proper bed for him, and to make his room safe for him to roam about. No messing about with kiddy size beds here, we've put him straight into a standard single. I got the bed frame ages ago off Freecycle, and we bought a new mattress for it last week in the sales. We got him a standard single 4.5 tog duvet and a small childs pillow, and today I bought him his linen. The duvet cover and pillowcase set has a royal blue background with brightly coloured trucks all over, and he thinks it's great. I could only get white sheets, but they're not going to stay that way for long

Unfortunately it took a lot longer than we thought this evening, to get the room finally sorted, so he's gone to bed 1.5 hrs later than normal. I hoped this would mean that he settled quickly, but there's been a lot more sobbing than usual. On the other hand there's been a lot less sobbing, screaming, getting out of bed, and yelling than I'd feared, and I think he's about asleep now.

The real battle is going to be when the time comes for his nap tomorrow afternoon...


*Post continues after about a 40 min break*

Well as it turns out he wasn't so settled as I thought. I'd gone downstairs to help Wookiee rearrange the furniture in his 'swamp' (it had all had to be shifted to get the single bed out and moved to Ewok's room) when I heard the clarion cry of 'MUMMY!' from upstairs, and waaay too loud for him to be anywhere other than standing at the gate of his room *sigh*

I soon discovered the problem was that I shouldn't have left his big toybox in the room with him. He'd opened it up and pulled almost all the toys out and onto the bed, and I think what he was trying to say was 'Mummy I want to go to sleep now and I can't because my bed is full of toys.'

So I had to put all the toys back in the box and move it out of the room completely. I'll worry about what to do with it tomorrow. After that he settled down without so much as a whimper.

I think he's asleep now...

Growth Spurt

We had to go shopping for new trousers for Ewok on Saturday. As you may have gathered from previous posts he's a tall boy, he's at or above the 98th percentile for everything, but until recently all his height has been in his upper body. This meant that although he was needing 3-4 yo tops, he was still wearing 18-24 mo trousers.

A couple of weeks ago it looked to me as if he'd grown, and if I noticed (who spends all day every day with him) then chances were that he'd grown a lot. So it was backs against the wall and out came the trusty yardstick.

First off I had to find a new place to measure him, as he's now taller then the cupboard I was making marks on before. Then it was make the mark and measure it with the stick. Now, he had a developmental check-up at 2 years old, and his height then was 93cms (or 3ft 0.5in in old money). His new height, just three months later mind you, was 96.5cms (or 3ft 2in). Even allowing for measuring errors that's still a hell of a growth spurt!

All this growth meant that his old trousers were starting to look obviously too short on him, and he only had one pair of 2-3yo jeans that I'd bought a while ago when they were in a sale.

So Saturday afternoon saw us heading to Asda for the weekly shop, and up to their clothing department for some new trousers for Ewok. However, when it came to measuring up the 2-3yo trousers against Ewok, they didn't look as though they'd last him very long before he'd be growing out of them too. A quick look at the label showed that Asda 2-3 yos are 92-98cms tall. This occasioned Ewok's very first visit to the changing rooms. He insisted on having Daddy take him in (Daddy wasn't too impressed with this *heh*) and off they went with two pairs of trousers, one 2-3yo and one 3-4yo. After a few mins of scuffling Ewok came back out for the Mummy inspection wearing the 3-4yo trousers, and they only looked a little bit too long on him, probably one small turn-up too long. We didn't bother with the 2-3yo trousers after that.

So my baby Ewok has pretty much passed over the 2-3yo trousers and gone straight to 3-4yo stuff. Oh, and if you don't know already, he was 2 last September, and no, I haven't been standing him in compost!


On the stitching front, I've had another finish, and will be having another one very soon, but I can't share them yet as they're gifts for friends who might just read this. As soon as I can, I'll post them for you all to see.

Don't play with your food

That's Mummy's job *lol*



I think it's called 'Bored SAHM Syndrome'

GTNR - Round III

I won't insult your collective intelligence with 'Baa baa sheep' but have a go at this one...

Round, back, pull, cha cha cha.

I want to be....

...a Yorkshireman?!?!?



I have tried to explain to him that it really should go down his trousers, not up his jumper, but he's young and full of newfangled ideas *lol*

So young, so cynical

Yesterday was such a lovely day that I decided a walk in the forest was in order. We're lucky enough to live only a 15 min drive from Sherwood Forest and there's a nice 1 mile trail that's suitable for all, so off we went.

I actually remembered to take the camera with me to try and get some autumnal photos and of course more Ewok photos, I got a few good ones and you'll find some at the end of the post.

Towards the end of the walk I spotted a lovely spot, carpeted with fallen leaves and with a fallen branch between two trees, all lit by the late afternoon sun, so I sat Ewok down on the branch and tried (without much sucess) to get him to sit still long enough for some photos. After I'd given up he was rooting around in the leaves and came up with an acorn cup, still with a bit of twig attached. I told him it was a cup, which he accepted and then waved it at me saying 'cup' a few times. Then I told him it was an elf cup, from which the elves drink. His response to this was to put his head on one side for a few seconds and then screw his face up into his best 'you're having me on' expression and say 'naaaaahh!'

So, first a couple of 'me trying to be all arty' photos..





And now some Ewok photos...




(that's the Major Oak behind him, big isn't it!)

GTNR - Round 2

This is the only other one where he's saying more than the name so far, but here goes...

Rou, rou, garda, bear, 1 dep, 2 dep, chickatickatickatickaticka!

Bonkers I tell you!

Guess the Nursery Rhyme - Round 1

Ewok is just starting to string words together to form vaguely coherent (to us anyway) sentences. Most often these take the form of requests for something (mostly food), but he's also started trying to do nursery rhymes for himself. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what he's jabbering on about so I thought I'd share the experience and see how you lot do...

This is what I had to endure in the car for 30 mins this afternoon, can you guess what it's supposed to be:

One, aana pan, aana pop, aaana BANG! *loud clap*

Poo Yuck!

Not the words you want to hear when your little one is in the bath and you're in the shower covered in soap.

I suppose it was inevitable really, and I should be glad we've got to 26 months before it happened.

On the plus side he ended up in the shower with me, which he's always hated in the past, but if the giggling and laughter were anything to go by, he seemed to enjoy it this time.

I don't think we'll be scrapping the baths completely though, he loves his toys and the bubbles too much to be happy being deprived of them completely.

NO! BAD!

Ah, he makes me so proud at times.

Got you wondering now, haven't I.

Normally having your toddler shout no and bad at the top of his voice would be cause for concern, but not when he's doing it at the sight of those appalling creations the Teletubbies.

Wookiee and I both loathe the Teletubbies, with the result that, in the past if they ever came on the tv while Ewok was watching we'd go 'No, no, no, no...' while running for the remote to change channels or turn it off. Over time he seems to have picked this up from us, and now it's more often him shouting NO! at the tv that alerts me to the fact that they're on.

You see, you can teach them something *smirk*