On Friday you turned sixteen months old. This newsletter would have been published then, if you hadn’t decided to wake up and stay awake and HYPER!!! all night on Thursday.
I’m pleased to report that the behaviour I mentioned in the last newsletter has greatly improved. You’re just generally more chilled out, and we’ve found strategies that work for preventing the tantrums before they happen. (Thank you, parenting books!). You do still get frustrated when you’re trying to communicate and we don’t understand you, and you do have tantrums when you’re massively overtired, but it’s much, much better.
Talking of tiredness, Master David, you’ve decided that you don’t need to sleep any more. Thursday night was a case in point. It took half an hour of driving around to soothe you to sleep. We got you home, tucked you in, and went to the pub with Grandma keeping an ear out for you. We arrived back at about 11.15pm. Fifteen minutes later you were very, very awake, and you stayed that way until 2.30am. This will pass, I know, but please could you start sleeping again sooner rather than later?
Your favourite and most frequently used word this month is “again!”. You use it when you’ve run out of grapes or cheese, when Daddy swings you up in the air, when the cats run away from your attempts at affection. Everything is funny and everything must be repeated over and over again until you get bored. This takes a while, but watching you is so hillariously funny that neither Daddy or I mind.
You have a wicked sense of mischief which has really developed over the last month. Last night we left you running around in an undone vest and an Itti Bitti nappy. You disappeared from the living room and reappeared thirty seconds later, minus the nappy, grinning wildly. You can climb onto chairs, and the kitchen table, and the windowsill, and the sofa, and pretty much anywhere else you’re not really supposed to be. It’s wonderful to see your personality developing in this way.
Your eating has improved again. You actually managed to eat a piece of pasta, WITH SAUCE ON, and not die from the horror in the process. And then you ate the whole bowl. You’ve discovered that you like toast again, and eggy bread, and peas, and sausages. We can give you a bowl and a fork and a spoon and let you get on with dinner without everything ending up on the floor- it’s nice to not have to load your fork for you or hold your plate down.
We’ve spent a lot of the last two or three weeks outside, as the weather has been glorious. For some reason (unknown to your father and I, who are both a little geeky and therefore allergic to sunlight) you love it, and would happily spend hours running around the garden in a nappy and a t-shirt. Yesterday was the first day in weeks where it wasn’t nice enough to go out, and you were as miserable as the weather to begin with.
For some reason you seem happier now, more secure. You’re very generous with your hugs for all and sundry, and you’re much calmer: I actually managed to change your nappy without a fight yesterday morning. (Let’s not discuss nappies and what’s landed in your collection this month right now, that’s a whole other blog post, and will probably be written when I’m less sleep-deprived.) You have many more calm moments than you used to: you’ve actually learned to sit still!
I’m going to wind up now, because it’s 10pm, and chances are you’ll be awake soon.
I love you, son, and I can’t wait to see what the next months and years will bring.
Mummy (and Daddy who will cry when he reads this.)
I’m feeling particularly crap and undermined today. We spent this Easter weekend with David’s “other” grandparents: my parents. I’m glad to be home.
My mother has a horrible tendency to take over. This morning, I was up and awake and looking after David, and she came into the bedroom, took him out of my arms, and took him downstairs to play. I hadn’t yet changed him and he hadn’t had his morning feed, but that didn’t matter to her. She played with him for a bit, and then took him for breakfast. Now, he’s perfectly capable of feeding himself with a loaded spoon, and in the last few weeks he’s started to crack loading his own spoon, and feeding himself. I arrived downstairs when he was in the middle of a bowl of Weetabix with added Cheerios (the sugar content!), which he was trying valiantly to feed himself: she, of course, wouldn’t let go of the spoon and was trying to force it into his mouth. After every messy spoonful she wiped him: it would’ve been much less messy if she’d just let him get on with it. When he’d finished his breakfast she remarked that he smelled of wee, and should I perhaps change him? Well, yes, that’s what happens if you leave a child in the same nappy for twelve hours.
There’s another thing. Joe and I aren’t bothered about a little bit of mess: that’s what babies and toddlers and little boys do, surely? Mum, however, disagrees. As soon as his nose starts to run or a little bit of dribble escapes from his mouth, she pounces on him with a tissue, even if he’s wearing a dribble bib. She does it with paper towel, too, so it’s rough against his poor skin.
Usually, if David wants a hug, he comes and asks for one, then runs off and plays again. My mother picks him up at every opportunity, and holds onto him until he throws a fit. She won’t pick him up and pass him to me, she has to hold him herself, even when he’s tired and asking for me. This evening, when he needed to be held and snuggled to sleep, he didn’t want to be touched: given that he’s had next to no personal space all weekend I’m not suprised. It took me an hour to soothe him.
The damage that all of this has done should be able to be undone in a day or two’s time. However, she’s also managed to undermine me on something I’ve been struggling with for weeks. In the time we were there, my mother gave David everything he wanted, the minute he wanted it, even when I’d said no. All he had to do was point and say “dat!”, and she’d hand him whatever he was pointing to. This morning he ate far too much chocolate, because she fed it to him without asking me. He ate half a punnet of grapes on Friday morning for the same reason. Every time he wanted something this weekend he went to her and asked her for it, and now he expects everything to be handed to him the second he decides he wants it. We’ve had tantrums this evening over not touching the Aga, over not being allowed to dismantle the decoration on the bathroom door, over not being allowed a fourth Mini Egg. We’d only just got to the point where he wouldn’t throw a complete fit over everything minor, and I can see it taking two or three weeks to get back to where we were before we went down to Kent.
It’s not just these individual things that annoy me, it’s the way she tries to undermine every single parenting decision I’ve ever made. Although she’s not spoiling him when she gives him everything he wants, I’m apparently spoiling him by breastfeeding. Although she clings onto him for dear life, I shouldn’t carry him in a sling as it’ll make him clingy. Although he’s a big boy now (and far too big to be breastfed) he should have his food mushed up and fed to him, and although he “doesn’t need red pepper” (direct quote!) she has to feed him chocolate. She does tell me these things to my face, but she’s also got these sly, subtle ways of doing exactly the opposite of the decisions we’ve made, and I hate it. I wish she’d just support me (and Joe, of course) in the decisions we’ve made, in the way we’ve chosen to bring up this little boy, rather than turning it into a competition all the time.
One thing that’s certain is that David is going to be shocked and horrified at the loss of his chocolate tomorrow:
Photos of me are about as rare as hens’ teeth: there’s a reason I prefer to be behind the camera! But this is me, right here.
I still don’t know exactly who I am. My Facebook page defines me as “a sling-wearing, BLWing, breastfeeding, lactivist mama of a little monster”, and it’s right, I think. I mean, David hasn’t been in the buggy since I got the new sling (and I’m perfectly happy that way!). We do baby-led weaning: at least, we started with purees and moved on to BLWing when he refused the spoon, and now he’s just eating. I’m breastfeeding, yes, and I love it, but I’m not sure exactly why I’m motivated to shout from the rooftops about it. I’m a lactivist, because, well, I want other people to have decent breastfeeding support that I didn’t have, to not think that formula is the norm, for babies to have the best start they could possibly have. (Time to add, maybe, that I don’t think formula is the root of all evil. It’s not. It’s not that formula is inferior, it’s that breastfeeding should be seen as normal by society, and better supported, and then maybe more women will do it. That’s a whole other post…) The little monster part? Well, that’s one of the few things that’s blindingly obvious.
I’ve only just, fifteen months into this game, got up the courage to be the mum I am, to parent the way that feels right. In the first few weeks and months I was blinded by other people’s advice, we muddled through, and the guidelines were king: mostly because David was ahead of all the targets and I felt like a good parent because of it. As soon as my instincts actually kicked in, nothing I was doing felt right any more, and I felt as though I had to do something. I started cuddling David to sleep rather than trying to make him self-settle. I swapped the front-facing buggy for the rear-facing one, and then started wearing him in the sling again. The breastfeeding was at his request, and I’m glad it’s an opportunity I took: I just wish I’d had the confidence and the support to do it fifteen months earlier.
I still don’t know for sure that this is the right way to do things, the mum I am, but I feel that it is. We’ll wait and see how it develops, how much longer he’ll want to breastfeed, how much longer he’ll want to be in the sling before he wants to walk. I hope I have as much time like this as possible. It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever done, and it’s who I am, I think. That’s all I need to know.
Incidentally, here’s David’s contribution to the Gallery. I thought it was pretty good for a fifteen-month-old’s effort!
