Just an average day (the early edition)

The night before....

JJ ate too many beans (out of nan's rice and peas) and also fell asleep on his bottle, so was full of gas! He cried out in his sleep quite a bit, and at 11.30pm he was clearly not happy. We picked him up so as to not to wake up Sophie, and changed his nappy and gave him some gripe water. Lots of cuddles and pattings and rubbings finally resulted in a burp and he did settle back to sleep eventually without waking his sister up.

5.20am  I hear murmurs and chats over the baby monitor. I look at the time, groan, and choose to ignore them cos it's happy noises.

5.30am I hear the unmistakable noise of Sophia shouting "MUM!" and more "ooohs and dadads" from JJ. I realise that staying in bed is not an option. I get up and discover the crack on my heel is really sore, and walking on it really hurts. So I semi limp to their room, not putting any weight on my right heel. Actually, I go to the bathroom first, and have another few "MUM"s shouted at me, so I yell back "I'm on the loo!"

I go in to their bedroom and pick up Jaiden and change his nappy. Sophia tries to talk and tickle him, but he's not having any of it. He wants mummy, and that is that. Once his nappy is done he sits/stands up and determinedly makes himself as close to me as he possibly can. Sophia is also trying to get in on the cuddle action, so I have one in each arm.

Soph refuses to wee, so we go downstairs (If a camel can drink a lot of water and go for ages without a drink, what animal can go for a long time without weeing?! A Sophia, that's who.) I'm learning not to battle over it every time, only the times where we'll be away from toilet facilities and I want her to go before we go out or whatever.

We come downstairs and I put JJ down on the floor, and he collapses in a sobbing heap. I put the tv on - it's still before 6, so bbc breakfast hasn't even started. I gather up the necessities - phone, tv remote, tissues, feeding cushion, and JJ and I settle in for some mummy milk and snuggles. Soph moans cos she wants snuggles and milk, but I tell her the baby has to have his milk first. (Mummy's priority really - it's been a long time since I fed JJ the night before, and really I want him to feed quickly for my comfort more than his!)

We channel surf a bit and find something called something like 'make do and mend'. It's gentle enough for my brain, and interesting enough to distract Sophie from her moaning. JJ takes his time, looking up to check on the world every once in a while, but finally he's done. Well the milk is done, he's actually still hungry so I go to the kitchen and get him a bottle and some milk in a cup for Soph. He goes on the cushion at my feet and Sophie comes up for a snuggle with me.

Once the milk is all drunk, I get to have a bit of personal space and regroup. Oh actually, there was a dirty nappy changing in there somewhere too. Mid mummy milk I think, cos I remember thinking that I still felt uncomfortable.

I grab my laptop and check in a few places - see if I have any move likes for my blog page on facebook, read back some of the events of the last few hours. I earn a few swagbucks, read a coupleof blogs, try to figure out my blog analytics and fail (it says I've got a ton of page views and traffic from another blog, but having chatted with them on facebook, they say they've never read my blog or reffered people here. Odd!) That's blogger. Google analytics says I've had no traffic at all, which I know is also wrong!

Soph asks for something to eat, and I have something too. Finally manage to get a glass of water too. It's about 7.15am by now.

We have a few meltdowns. Soph cos JJ's taken her cup, JJ cos Soph won't give him her food. JJ comes overs several times saying "mmmm" and chomping his mouth to show me he wants some of my food. He also finds Sophia's discarded plate and we play peekaboo with it. I catch sight of what looks like tooth number 5 having a good try at breaking through the gum.

At some point (after I've got to see the weather forecast) we switched over from bbc breakfast (which we turned to at 6.10am once that other program had finished) to cbeebies.

7.30am I change another dirty stinky nappy and we manage to tip nappies all over the floor. (I opened a new packet, and then they went everywhere) We'll pick them up at some point.-

8am Soph trips over her own feet and cries and comes for a cuddle. She's tired and would have done better with another hour asleep, but once she's woken up, that's that.

JJ comes over and wants to be picked up too. Generally once one is picked up, the other wants in on he action too.

At some point I started writing this blog post, it was before Sophia came over, cos I started typing with two hands, and that was reduced to one, and then none for a short while.

It's almost 8.30am and I can hear Menard's up and getting ready for work (slightly later than normal cos he works closer to home on a Tuesday). I think I smell another nappy, so I'll end this post here.

(I finish by spell checking and find it amusing that the blogger spell checker doesn't recognise the work 'blog')

Edited to add - nappy was a false alarm, so we spend time having snuggles and kisses. JJ's very good at 'mwah-ing'

soothing sisterly love

Jaiden had had over a month of waking up in the night due to teething (4 teeth in 4 weeks, it was a nightmare!)

Once he was done teething he just got in the habit of waking, and we (Menard and I) were so tired that we'd just bring him into bed with us and let him at it with the mummy milk. But I wasn't getting any much sleep, nor was Menard, and I was also getting terribly sore because it wasn't really that he wanted the milk, he just wanted something something to chew on. One night I dreamt that I was a sausage being chewed on!

So, we decided it was time to fight back. We'd try the controlled crying method - checking on him, making him comfortable and safe, but ultimately, if necessary, letting him cry it out rather than sticking him on the boob at the slightest whimper.

We arranged for Sophia to stay at grandparents for a few nights (we had her during the days!) put Jaiden's cot in Sophia's bedroom, and went for it. Wednesday night - he slept through*! Thursday night - he slept through! We concluded that we were waking him, and he was waking us, and that really, it might be best for all concerned if he stayed in that bedroom with Sophia once she was back with us. Menard did a whole heap of work moving things around and making it possible to have Soph's bed on one side and JJ's cot on the other.

On either the Thursday or Friday I was chatting with Sophia, explaining what was happening, and generally trying to big up the idea of the two of them sharing a room. She was all for it, which was a blessing! I was explaining that JJ might wake up in the night* but that it would be ok. She could sing 'Twinkle twinkle' to him (he responds well to that song when she sings it to him, it's very cute). She had a little practice, but then she came out with "STOP CRYING, BE QUIET JAIDEN, I'M SLEEPING". And I thought, yes, that's more likely to be an accurate representation of what will happen!

* When I said that he slept through, what I meant was that although he woke up once or twice, it was only to have a tiny cry or a little chat and then he self-settled back to sleep. When he'd been in our room, he knew we were there, and immediately wanted out.

The parable of banana

There's been sooooo much going on round here, and I desperately want to revive this poor neglected blog. I won't make any promises, cos those always get broken, but I will try to do better.

Last night was the first night that Sophia and Jaiden have shared a room (ok, so they sort of did on Friday, but we ended up bringing Soph's mattress out onto the floor of our bedroom, due to her being poorly... blah blah, big sickness bug, everyone poorly, weekend gone, and that's that!)

We put Jaiden down first and waited for him to go to sleep (we started putting him down awake last week, Wednesday. It took him half an hour to settle the first night, with a couple of checks and cuddles, but now he seems to have got the hang of it and only cries for less than a minute), and then we put Sophia to bed. She's always been a chatter in bed, and we were hoping that she wouldn't wake up her brother. But since on Friday night he slept through tears and puking and much noise and chaos, I was fairly confident he'd be ok.

Menard and I were shattered, so we went to bed too, and listened to Sophie over the baby monitor, attempting not to fall asleep before she did!

And this is one of the things I heard her say. I have no idea what the meaning of this parable is, but I'm sure Sophia could have told you last night!

"...and Jesus said, "here's a banana for you, Sophie, and here's one for you...." "

There you have it, the parable of the bananas.