The future is beta-carotene

Every time I have spoken to a health visitor it has been suggested to me that the boys should be on vitamin supplements. I have, up till now, ignored this advice. Joseph eats a varied diet and isn't unhealthy, it's actually quite hard to be vitamin deficient in this day and age.
Last time I spoke to a health visitor they got quite insistent. Daniel hadn't gained weight over Christmas due to bronchiolitis and although he had gained since, he hadn't caught back up. I wasn't too worried, but the health visitor expresses polite concern.
Feed him more high fat food - no fromage frais, only full fat yogurt. Mix some cream into his mashed potato.
His diet is too healthy! Also was told rather emphatically that he NEEDS to be on a supplement as he doesn't drink a lot of formula.
I bowed to pressure. Kids vitamins at boots were on a three-for-two offer so I got some chewy ones for Joseph and a bottle of murky liquid for Daniel. Natural orange flavour it said. It smelt like toilet cleaner.
He didn't like them and he didn't like full fat yogurt either. You can't get individual kids yogurts in full fat, only fromage frais which I think is odd as the official advice is full fat only till they're quite old.
I hit on a good wheeze, if I mixed the vitamins in with the yogurt then he'd happily eat both. Win win!

His appetite is pretty good now. He likes jars of baby food and he loves quite a few different finger foods. His favourites are roast parsnip and roast sweet potato. He's quite fond of cheerios and dried fruit too. Cheerios have an annoying habit of getting everywhere.
A few days ago I looked at Daniel and wondered if he might be a touch jaundiced. I was worried, he was too old for baby jaundice and if I was right then... hmmmm.
His eyes were not showing any yellow and he looked like he had a slight suntan. It being February a suntan is not possible.

On closer inspection I realised he wasn't going yellow but orange. Orange? Why would he be orange, what causes that?
It occurred to me that there's a lot of carrot in his diet. All bought baby food had carrot in it and he likes eating sweet potato. He's also had some small amounts of red meat in his diet which is rich in vitamin A, not to mention he's decided that he does want his evening formula after all which is fortified.
Add to that liquid vitamins... the boy is overdosing on vitamin A - and who knows how many others - and the spare beta-carotene is building up in his skin.
No more liquid vitamins. I've taken a picture of him on my phone of him holding my hand and it's pretty clear he's got an odd cast to his skin tone. Next time I'm bothered by someone telling me he needs extra vitamins I will show it too them.

Why I Love my High-Speed Broadband

Fringe, House, Grimm, Dead Like Me, Andromeda, Suits, White Collar, Lie to Me, Continuum....
Some of the many series I have worked my way through on Netflix recently, nearly all over night. Daniel is a somewhat reluctant sleeper and I have needed entertainment. First it was to get me through the night feeds. There were four to begin with, but they did slowly drop down to two then one and then....
Five am. That seems to be his favourite time of day. It might sound strange, but 5am is something of a relief. After months of middle of the night wake ups for feeds and then struggling to get back to sleep again, the chance to sleep through till 5 does indeed feel good.
He got better at sleeping. Then he got worse. Apparently it's quite common for children to hit nine months of age and to have a bit of a wobble when it comes to sleeping through.
I made some mistakes with Daniel. I regularly let him fall asleep after a feed and that left me with a baby who would only sleep after a feed. This was difficult, but not as hard as discovering that even that didn't work any more. During the day he won't sleep in his cot. I can put him down 'drowsy but awake' as all advice says and he will not stay drowsy for long. He will scream. I've even given up getting him to sleep then transferring him to his cot as he'd inevitably wake up straight away. This was especially galling as I now have to spend quite a while jiggling him to get him to sleep. Half an hour is about right.
Overnight is disastrous. He won't feed, even if he does it does no good. He doesn't want a cuddle. He wants to be jiggled and at 3am it takes a long old time to knock him back to sleep again.
Things got bad. We ended up with a night where he woke up at 11pm, got taken downstairs and spent the whole night in his bouncy chair bring regularly jiggled every time he grumbled.
This is untenable. Night after night of this is a one-way ticket to a psych ward due to lack of sleep induced psychosis.
We brought the bouncy chair upstairs. Same problem, but it is a bit less cold in the bedroom.
So what do we do? Jiggling to sleep is getting harder and he's getting to big for the bouncy chair. Netflix has many things to watch but I've been through so many series I'm starting to run our of ideas to entertain myself at night or in the early hours. I'm watching a lot of films now, some good and some bad.

Every one I talk to says the same thing: -

Leave him to scream.

For the last two nights I have got up, given him a quick cuddle and put him straight back. Then I lie there listening to him scream. Experience tells me there's nothing I can do, nothing helps. My emotions tell me I'm being cruel. Whatever I do, I'm sure not getting enough sleep.

Contained

I bought a baby prison cell today.
Sorry, I mean play pen.
I've got to take it back tomorrow. It's a multi functional thing, it can be a hexagon or a square or can be unfolded and fixed to the wall as a safety partition or stair gate. Except that the wall fixings are missing. I phoned up and they said to bring the old one back and they'd give me a new one.
Can't I just have the fixings out of the new one?
No.
But it's really heavy! I've got two children to manage!
Messing about aside, we'll be all set up tomorrow. Daniel is getting mobile and he's causing all sorts of trouble. He has a funny sort of crawl, he paddles away with his hands, trying to get some traction on the hard floor. Meanwhile his left leg, and only his left, wiggles about and pushes him forward a bit. He's already trying to pull everything down that he can so I need a safe place to put him when I'm having to get on with things and can't hold him.
Those who have read some blog posts will know Daniel is a calm, sanguine fellow who is happy to play and be happy where he's put.... No, wait I must be thinking of another baby. If he's not where he wants to be he's a purple faced, drool and snot covered screaming maniac.
Does he like the play pen?
No.
Have I grown a little hard hearted mostly due to him waking us up a lot recently?
Yes.
Is he going to be made to jolly well get used to being in there?
Yes.
Well, we'll see. I may well end up rejigging so he's just kept away from things he shouldn't get near like the stairs or the book case. It depends on just how loud the screaming gets.

Ooo Nasty

A group of mums of which I am a part have a little evening get together every now and again. We leave the men in charge of the kiddies and meet up with grand ideas of spiritual discussion and intelligent debate.
Ha ha! Of course we spend most of the time eating snacks and talking about the funny and disgusting things our lovely little ones have been up to.
As I prepared to leave the last time Andy pointed out that it was a good thing I was going to a mummies get together as they'd totally understand the crusted dribble on my shoulder. Ah the delights of small children! The things we put up with from babies and little ones - just because they are babies and little ones.
How many times has Daniel scored a direct hit during a nappy change? Rather a lot, although he's usually managed to get himself as well, not to mention the rug which will never be the same again. Luckily it was a cheap one from IKEA and we'll probably replace it soon. Perhaps. If we get round to it. On second thoughts, perhaps we'd better wait till he's reliably potty trained.
By the end of the day Daniel is usually quite well crusted in snot, dribble, left over food and whatever else he happens to have got near during the day. When Joseph was a baby I used to wonder why some women bathed their babies so often as he didn't seem to get that dirty. Daniel has educated me. Joseph wasn't one for being sick, Daniel wasn't one for keeping it down. It was the look of pride on his face as the cheesy white geyser poured out of him.
Before weaning Daniel used to get a sticky grey coating over him by the end of the day. If we didn't bathe him, and I confess I wasn't always energetic to manage it, he would get a strange dark grey slime accumulating in the folds of his chins.
If he's sick now then it's instant bath time. Baby food looks much the same coming back as it does going down. It's the carrot.
Daniel is starting to get to grips with feeding himself a few things now. This leads to a variety of odd things. Food finds itself wedged and stuck in all sorts of places, but I found cheerios in our bed yesterday and that was disappointing as they'd been long enough to go soft. We found cheerios on the floor this morning too, which wasn't too odd except we weren't at home at the time.
Daniel likes dried fruit a lot too. It sticks to him just like the cheerios do and falls off in a similar manner. However, if you tread on a cheerio all you get is a bit of dust and perhaps a small start from the crunch. If you step on a sultana you get a sticky mess on the floor and your foot. There's nothing like small children for producing sticky messes.

Melba Toast

Ah weaning and all its many delights!
I've sniffed around the idea of baby lead weaning and come to the conclusion that it's all very well if your baby is a well coordinated and compliant little person. If they're a scamp of the highest order with an inbuilt ability to know if something is food or not and then reject it out of hand - then you're in for trouble.
Joseph didn't want to lead the weaning. He would describe himself as 'energy efficient' - that's lazy to the rest of us. He always preferred to have puree shoveled in to his mouth by someone else and would still now if we gave him the chance. Daniel likes pureed food, fruity flavours especially. He is not remotely interested in feeding himself unless it's a biscuit and I'm not planning on giving him many of those as even the ones specifically for babies seem to have a lot of sugar.
I had a look on a baby lead weaning website a while ago and it suggested egg noodles were a good thing to try as they're soft to chew and easy to get hold of. Joseph decorated himself in them but wouldn't eat them and Daniel cried. I tried soft bread with a little butter - Joseph ate a little and squished the rest, Daniel cried. Cheese - Joseph doesn't like eating cheese even now and Daniel cried. If he has the merest suggestion I might be expecting him to feed himself he cries and then will often try and get rid of the food. Some things he will eat happily off the spoon, but will never have a go himself unless he knows it's very sweet.
Well, there is one exception. At Christmas dinner I like to push the boat and pull all of the stops very much out. I make an effort with food that I would not have the time or inclination for the rest of the year. We had a starter, smoked mackerel pâté served on Melba toast. It went down pretty well, even the children ate some of the pâté which impressed me. Daniel got given a bit of Melba toast to play with as he'd had his lunch of mixed mush and needed to be kept entertained as we ate.
He ate the Melba toast. None of his teeth had broken properly, but he still ate it. He then managed to hoover up all of the broken bits of toast we hadn't thought fit to serve. One filled up baby! He wasn't too keen the following day, but that's when the bronchiolitis was kicking in and what little he was eating ended up coming back.
After another week of failed self feeding attempts I opened up an unused pack of Melba toast from Christmas and gave him a bit to stop him crying while I sorted the dishwasher out and made his tea. When I say 'made his tea' I mean getting the half eaten jar of food from his lunch box.
He ate the Melba toast with some gusto, I only found a few dropped pieces adhering to his clothes later. It was when I was returning the lack to the cupboard that I noticed the nutritional traffic lights on the side, specifically the salt warning, resplendent in red, telling you nicely that you'd better not eat this product unless you really fancy a touch of high blood pressure.
Oh that's soooo brilliant! Put in a deep sarcastic tone here, oh yes. The only savoury food he's been prepared to feed himself I can't give him. Babies shouldn't eat much at all in the way of salt as it can damage their kidneys. That's just great. More sarcasm there.
Back to purees then. Sigh.

Go On, Treat Yourself

Joseph got a treat today. The pack said 'no artificial colours or preservatives'. Makes it sound almost healthy!

He was lucky to get it, I wanted to see some truly good behaviour before he could have a treat after what happened yesterday.
I was anticipating that Monday would be a hard day. Andy was back at work having had nearly two weeks off for Christmas and New Year. Joseph rather likes having his Daddy around and his happiness sometimes results in over exuberant bad behaviour. It's not as bad as his sulky and unhappy behaviour so I was preparing for the worst.
I was wrong - or so I thought. He was quiet-ish and well behaved and didn't really protest when I asked him to play upstairs quietly for a bit so I could settle Daniel off for a nap.
He was lulling me into a false sense of security of course. Keep Mummy happy, don't let her get suspicious that I'm planning the Great Sweet Heist.....

We keep a bag of skittles in his room on a high shelf for reward or bribery purposes. Mostly bribery. Joseph, having got a little bit better at eating his dinner, has had a bit of a growth spurt. He's also been using that little noggin for good effect.
I don't quite know how he managed to reach them as it happened during his quiet play time, I also don't know how he managed to get them down without making any noise as I wasn't aware of anything and Daniel slept well. I was unaware of his sweet gorging actions until Andy played with him in his room that evening and discovered the empty packet evidence.
So, no sweets. Nothing to bribe him with. He got dressed as usual this morning and then was rather sad when he didn't get his usual reward. I reminded him why and he was still sad.
But, having said that he was quite a good boy this morning. He chose what to have in his sandwich for preschool - cucumber. Usually he has cheese, but he wanted something different today. I was advised to let him make his own lunch as he'd be more likely to eat it that way. I experimented with this one lunch time at my Mums house. The net result was that all he had on his plate was a bun with nothing on it. Nothing at all, not even butter.

I was expecting him to come back with most of the lunch untouched as per usual and probably a warning about him not behaving well again.
I was wrong on both counts. No bad behaviour comments, and the only thing left in his lunch box was the small chocolate bar. Surprised, perhaps even a little shocked and very pleased we went to a café and he had a little treat.
No artificial colours or preservatives. Nothing to worry about except the massive amounts of sugar and fat you find in Milky Way Magic Stars.

A Never Ending Cycle

It drags on. We thought he was getting better but he's not. We saw the doctor, we treated with calpol AND calprofen and he got better, or so it seemed. His temperature dropped and he kept his food down so after nearly two days we decided to lower the medications.
Taking too much ibuprofen over too long a period is quite bad for you so we decided to drop the calprofen and see how he went.
It went wrong. We thought he was well so we went out for a bit, we thought we'd see the Christmas decorations at Basildon Park before they were packed up for the season. The problem was that the volunteers had packed up too, if not for the season at least for the day, so the house was shut. I can only assume that this was some sort of last minute problem as the website was seemed quite sure it was still open. It was bitterly cold, too cold for exploring the grounds and I wanted a cream tea. After a longish and slightly convoluted phone call we discovered that The Vyne was mostly open - including the café - so we headed there instead. They had cream teas and quite a few pretty Christmas trees so the disappointment that stung worse than the cold weather was mollified.
We made a mistake though. We left the calpol at home. It seemed not to matter, Daniel seemed well, he had eaten his breakfast and lunch without barfing up. Neither had been a big meal, but he was recovering.
After we got home Andy wondered if Daniel felt a little warm. I thought that as he'd been bundled up in a big coat he'd probably be a bit warm so I didn't worry. I kept not worrying until all of his dinner came flying back up at me like an orange tsunami.
Great. And he was quite warm, warm enough to be feverish. We gave him some calprofen and a bath and then a breastfeed. He was quite grumpy.
In the end Andy took him upstairs to bed and he has settled off for an early night quite quickly. He'd been crying and crying at me, squirming and wriggling and getting quite cross. If I only had a baby translator then it would have stated: -
Mother I am feeling a trifle out of sorts. I don't want anything else to eat or drink but I am quite tired so would you mind dreadfully shoving off and letting me sleep?