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?

Broncho-thing

Daniel saw the doctor yesterday. We'd got to the point of desperation, his temperature was at 38°c and calpol seemed to be having no effect - a rare failure for the magic pink - and the effluvia of sick had become a grim constant. He was ashen faced, had grey circles under his eyes like big smudges of soot and had become quite lethargic.
The appointment was twenty past twelve and of course at about eleven Daniel decides that he will have a bit of a breast feed after all and actually he's feeling quite hungry so a good long feed.... which he kept down so by the time we got to the doctors he'd perked up and wasn't looking anything like so ill. Typical.
The doctor did take a good long look at my snot encrusted and slightly nasty smelling pink happy baby and decided that - gross alert - the vomiting was being caused by him swallowing mucus rather than letting it stream out the usual way. He also had a viral chest infection called broncholitis or bronchiolitis or broncho-something thing anyway. It's another childhood illness that we should be immune to by the time we're two. Joseph probably had it at some point too, but he never seemed to ever get properly ill.

Auto-correct is having a field day today. Bronx geometry is what it replaced broncho-something the first time. It then tried 'so etching'. It also tried 'author correct'. Yeah....

Daniel has a cough like a 40 a day smoker at the moment. It's horrible, it wakes him up in the night - and me for that matter. Few things are sadder sounding than a little baby hacking away. His face turns red and his little tongue pokes out and his eyes water. There are no medicines I can give that can help the cough although calpol and calprofen given alternately seem to have brought his temperature down at last.
I hope he sleeps tonight. I took the morning off today, just relaxing in bed with Netflix and cups of tea. Still had to feed Daniel a lot but he did sleep for a while and he spent some time with Andy so I almost got some sleep too. I'm still coughing away myself and the congestion in my ears is set like concrete. I'm sick of hearing everything like I'm underwater or like one fateful morning when I took my earplugs out and thought I'd gone deaf in one ear as half of the foam plug had remained behind. Thank goodness for needle nosed pliers!
I can't hear very clearly and if there's background noise I can't hear at all. I had a fright one night when I went to sleep on my right hand side leaving my worst affected ear upwards. I woke up and could not hear Daniel breathing so cue the panic. Daniel even when he's well is something of a noisy breather. As he's ill the noise has got quite striking. I thought it was something akin to someone trying to finish the last of a thick milkshake through too thin a straw. Andy thinks it's more like someone trying repeatedly to start a petrol motor chainsaw.

That's So Sick.

Whoever it was who went on about the innocence of babes clearly didn't have experience of what comes flowing out of them with depressing regularity.
Daniel is teething. Not a boy to do things by halves he is having two bottom teeth and four top teeth coming through all at the same time - at Christmas. Lovely.
Ah Joseph, my somewhat neglected older child whose delightful innocence and naivety reawakened my joy of Christmas from its coma of cynicism and who breezed through teething like it wasn't happening. He had a day or so of being a little out of sorts and lo and behold - two teeth! After that they popped up regularly and sometimes I'd look in his mouth and notice more had appeared as if by magic! No teething gel needed in our house!
Daniels started a week ago and he's still not done. The bottom tooth pierced the gum but is still no more than a few millimetres of stub and one of the top teeth has broken through too - but again, still pretty stubby.
He's always been quite an emotional chap. Where Joseph was happy to be put down or cuddled or left to bounce in his chair while I got on with stuff, Daniel is not and has never been so. Daniel has left me with whole days one after the other where I've accomplished literally nothing because whenever I've put him down he's screamed like he's being tortured. It all came down to whether I felt more guilty about the screaming or the neglected household chores.
Add the misery of teething to a baby already permanently on the edge then you might begin to realise how things have been for us.
Did I mention we've also been quite ill? Ever since Joseph started Pre school we've been inundated with colds and bugs and nasties. I'm suffering with what I believe to be my fifth cold in a row, but I'm not sure, they've rather run together so it's hard to tell. There may have been more.
Daniel is snotty too, the poor chap hasn't escaped the germ onslaught. He's tired as he's not been sleeping well, he's got a perma cold and lots of teeth on the way and the poor little mite is so overwhelmed  by it all he keeps being sick.
There seems no rhyme or reason to it, sometimes it's breakfast, sometimes lunch. Sometimes he'll keep his dinner down and sometimes not. Often his bottle of milk will want to revisit. Today I wondered if he might be weaning himself off me as he didn't seem to want to feed, so I gave him a bottle instead. As it turned out he was refusing to feed as he knew his tummy was upset and the bottle contents landed on the floor and all down my leg. Daniel escaped the flow, with the exception of his feet. This lead to an emergency rinse of his sock-ons as the other pair were still in a plastic bag having suffered a similar fate the previous day.
I have spent quite some time cleaning sick out of a v-tech crawl and learn ball with the aid of a cocktail stick. My rug has stains on it that probably won't shift and I had been hoping to avoid doing laundry over Christmas, but here we are. All the calpol and teething gel in the world aren't stopping the flow and every time he coughs or hiccups I get very nervous. Also, baby food looks identical coming back as it does going in. Odd.

All I wanted for Christmas was his his two front teeth

When Joseph teethed we hardly noticed. Well - we did notice, where before there were just pink gums, there were pearly whites and a little boy who quickly learned not to chew his fingers.
Daniel is really not the same baby. Well I obviously he's not the same baby as that would mean some sort of space time anomaly, but as they're closely related I had rather assumed they'd be rather similar. Physically they are, but personality? No, they're not remotely alike.
Joseph was a sanguine baby, Daniel is not. Joseph was happy to play on his play mat while I got on with household jobs. Daniel, even at nine months really isn't keen on being put down. He's clingy, but is also really rather cuddly and Joseph wasn't so much.
Daniel is having a rough ride with his teeth. He's nine months old and still gummy, but the gums got lumps in them a little while ago. Naively I assumed they'd pop through as fast as Joseph's did, but so far no. One of the bottom teeth has broken through, but it is still just a stubborn little stub poking out rather than a proper tooth.
When cuddling him yesterday he tipped his head back and I noticed clear lines in his upper gums showing his top front teeth are on the way. Poor chap, all four in the way at once, no wonder he's uncomfortable and he's still fighting off the tail end of a cold.
I sound calm. This is because after several nights of wrecked sleep Andy made me take a couple of nights on the sofa bed so I could catch up. Daniel behaved well on the first night for him, but not so well on the second.
As for last night? We all slept in the same room for once! Well, when I say slept I mean Daniel slept and Andy slept and I just plain didn't. I lay uncomfortably awake for nearly two hours, managed to doze for about four and then lay awake again. Aware that Daniel was doing well for once I decided it wasn't fair on Andy to be bothered by a sleepless person again I have decamped downstairs. Fringe is on Netflix, the sofa is comfy, the cat is asleep and I have a cuppa. Could be worse!