The Smell of Little Pong

Dancing Queen

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:39:00 +0000

Check out Freyja's smooth moves:

Chuckles

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:43:00 +0000

Cute

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:24:00 +0000

Big Brown Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:21:00 +0000

He's a pretty good husband too

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:11:00 +0000

Every morning, even though my husband has to leave the house at a ridiculous hour, he brings me a cup of tea in bed before he leaves. As I am still feeding Theo in the night I appreciate this more than I can say. It makes hauling myself out of bed each day that little bit easier.

I've not had such a great week this week. I've been back and forth to the hospital with Theo, as he's had to have his cannula refitted a few times, and I can tell you it is not such a pleasant experience watching a load of doctors trying to squeeze a plastic tube into your baby's veins. Oh no. And I'm taking Freyja to have her MMR* this morning - why make life easy?

Today when I came downstairs there was a Hotel Chocolat bag waiting for me:

Yum. Choccies for breakfast!

* Update: The MMR was not bad at all. The nurse who did it was so great that she'd finished before either Freyja or I really knew what was going on. Yes, she did cry but she recovered very quickly and spent some time afterwards congratulating herself on being such a brave girl.

A belated fathers day gift

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:13:00 +0000

Just before Fathers day I found the perfect present, thanks to Mini-et-moi, a book called 'My Dad is Brilliant':

Unfortunately I'd left it too late to order one in time but I bought one anyway and it finally arrived yesterday. A very belated fathers day present for Adrian. Tonight I showed it to Freyja:

Me: 'This book is called My Dad is Brilliant. Is your dad brilliant?'

Freyja:'Um....no. Not really.'

Luckily we established that she didn't actually understand the word. I told her it meant great, wonderful or amazing. And then she agreed - her dad is brilliant.

Crazy Days

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:42:00 +0000

Hello! I'm back! It's all been rather eventful but instead of going into too much boring detail, I'll just summarise:

1. We've had lots of visitors - my parents, my brother and sister-in-law, my nephews and my parents-in-law. Freyja has had a whale of a time.

Connect Four at the Honor Oak Pub:

Vauxhall City Farm with Grandpa:

2. Freyja is out of nappies during the day - including her nap - and has been now for a while. I'm incredibly proud of her for picking it up so quickly. She's doing really well with it.

3. I got ill at the beginning of last week. I had what felt like flu - shivery, high temperature, aching everywhere, bad headache. Then I noticed a red patch on my breast and started to wonder if it was actually mastitis, particularly as Theo had hardly fed all day. I went to the doctor on the Tuesday and he confirmed he thought it probably was mastitis, gave me some antibiotics but said to hold on taking them as it tended to clear up itself. So I spent a horrible day in bed burning up, but sure enough by the next morning my fever had gone. I spent another day in bed, aching all over, with a throbbing head and generally feeling horrible. However, in light of what happened next, I'm wondering if it really was mastitis...

4. Theo got ill. He spent Friday being very sleepy and by that evening I was having trouble feeding him and couldn't get him to wake up properly. I put him to bed, thinking he was just tired, but he didn't really settle. We then had a terrible night where he cried and seemed very distressed for most of the night - very unlike him. By 4am he had a temperature so we gave him some Calpol and then he slept for a few hours. The next day he still wasn't right and he seemed listless, pale, irritable and just not himself at all. We gave him more Calpol, but by the late afternoon he had a temperature again - 38.3 degrees (38.6 by the time we got to hospital) - and we decided, with it being the weekend and not possible to go to the clinic, that we'd take him to hospital. I was quite worried about him but I honestly thought we'd get there and be sent home, told to give him some Calpol and stop over-reacting. Well, I finally got home from hospital Monday evening. From the minute we walked into A&E it felt like being on a roller-coaster ride that I couldn't get off. I cannot fault the staff at Lewisham hospital for taking it seriously and providing a huge amount of care for him. To cut a long story short, he is completely fine but the results of one of the tests suggest he had a very early infection and so he is now on antibiotics as a precaution, which are given intravenously through his hand, and needs to stay on them for 14 days. I hated seeing him in hospital and hated him being subjected to all the tests, especially when at the back of my mind I wondered how necessary it all was. I still don't really know if I made the right decision - maybe it has all been for nothing and he would have recovered by himself. Or maybe taking him in was the best decision we ever made - who knows? I guess it is better to be safe than sorry with one so small.

5. Theo slept through! Just before he got ill he did 2 nights from around 10pm to 4am and then even in hospital he was sleeping until around 3am. The night we got back home, I fed him at 9pm and the next thing I knew I was waking up at 5.30am, with leaky boobs about to explode. I admit I flew into his room to make sure he was okay. It hasn't lasted though and I now rather suspect it may have had something to do with him getting ill...

My Boy

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:19:00 +0000

Have you seen me dancing?

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:15:00 +0000

This is Freyja dancing to Rhinestone Cowboy:

I think she's almost ready to join us on a girls weekend away...

Potty Practice

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:07:00 +0000

I have started about 3 separate posts now on how I have finally got round to potty training Freyja, but I'm not getting very far with them - in fact, in the time it's taken me to half write 3 posts, Freyja is practically out of nappies.*

We started about a month ago, it's gone much, much better than I expected - not difficult, given that I was convinced my daughter couldn't even tell when she was weeing and would never be toilet trained. Turns out she just hadn't felt the need to share it with me.

Anyway, she's pretty much dry at home. But at home I often leave her either with nothing on - in which case she goes to the potty herself - or with just knickers on and keep reminding her that she might need the toilet. I hadn't yet braved fully dressed and out of easy reach of a loo.

So yesterday we had the first trip out. I chose to go to the toddler group at the Ackroyd community centre, armed with 3 spare pairs of trousers, because it's very child friendly and has little child-size toilets. We left at 9.30am, got home at 11.45am, with Freyja still wearing the same pair of trousers she went out in - hurrah! And today we went to the park and she managed to stay dry again. I do have to keep asking her and reminding her that she doesn't have a nappy on but she is slowly starting to tell me when she needs to go too.

Unfortunately this morning she did wee on the sofa. Not the new sofa though (relax, Adrian!)

* not at night or for naps - we're a long, long way off from even trying that!

Bah

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:18:00 +0000

We did indeed have a terrible night.

I fed Theo at 10pm (he woke for it) and he then woke again at 1am but only settled for half an hour so I fed him again. And that was it, really. The longest stretch of sleep he lasted for was around 20 minutes so I was in and out all night. I fed him again at around 4.30am and he still didn't settle. Adrian then brought him into the bed with me and moved to the back room, as it was nearly time for him to get up anyway (he practically has to get up in the middle of the night to get to work on time).

Freyja did give me until almost 7am though, bless her. She's now eating dry Cheerios in front of the Very Hungry Caterpillar (DVD, not book, I'm afraid), Theo is on his first nap of the day, and I'm drinking tea and contemplating the day ahead...a trip out this morning then hopefully all three of us down for a nap after lunch, I think (hope).

3am - hurrah!

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:18:00 +0000

I will stop boring you all with my sleep - or lack of it - soon enough but just wanted to say that we had the best night so far last night. Theo was a bit unsettled after we put him to bed and we were up and down so I thought it was going to be a tough night. But I fed him at 10pm and the next I heard from him it was 3am. I was so happy I leapt out of bed and fed him without feeling like I was about to drop dead. I didn't even mind that he still woke up at 5.30am...!

I just know I will now have a terrible night...

Childrens Books

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:22:00 +0000

I've been tagged! Marvellous! My friend Rowan has tagged me to come up with my current five favourite children's books. After much deliberation, I have decided to go with:

Peepo
It was really difficult to choose between this one and Each Peach Pear Plum, but Peepo won out for me in the end because I love the detailed pictures, the rhymes and the little hole that you peep through on each page. I think nearly everyone must have been given at least one of these books as a new baby present - we were lucky enough to be given both of them by a good friend when Freyja was born.

Sharing A Shell
I've tried to choose different books to Rowan (with Lullabyhullaballoo being a popular choice here too), but this one just had to be included in my list as well. It is my absolute all time favourite and I'm always trying to persuade Freyja to let me read it to her at bedtime. I love the rhymes, the sweet little sea creatures and the glittery pages.

I Will Not Never Ever Eat a Tomato

I had to include a Charlie & Lola book because Freyja has quite a few of them and I always enjoy reading them to her. I think this is my favourite. It should be totally irresponsible given that it lists off loads of foods that Lola won't eat, but I just love the way Charlie comes us with these fantastic stories about what the food he is giving Lola really is and how it turns out that Lola knows all along what he is up to. Plus you just can't beat Charlie & Lola for great pictures.

There's a House inside my Mummy

This was one of the books that I bought Freyja when I was pregnant with Theo and she still asks for it from time to time, which I'm always pleased about because it's great to read. Again, it's the rhymes that do it and I love the cheeky ending.

The Very Hungry CaterpillarI know it's an obvious one, but it's a classic and it's great. I like how Freyja pretends to eat all the different food on the pages whenever I read it to her. Last time I took her to storytelling they were reading this book and Freyja spent the whole time attached to the storyteller pretending to pick the different food from the pages of the book. The storyteller found it amusing at first but after a while I think she was just annoyed...We also have it on DVD (strike me down!) and it's so lovely and gentle that I never feel guilty letting Freyja watch it. Well, maybe after the 5th time in one day (joke!) I must admit that Freyja does seem to prefer the DVD. Funny, that...

So that's my list. I've gone for my favourite ones rather than Freyja's because she likes pretty much any book and her favourites vary from week to week. Apart from 'Learning with Winnie the Pooh', which isn't a storybook at all but she just loves it (and I always kick myself for not removing it from the bedtime story pile!) Interestingly, she always asks me to read the 'Colours' section and Adrian to read the 'Time' section.

I'm going to tag Adrian, Sylke and Elsie Button.

That's not cricket

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:23:00 +0000

The first home cricket game of the season saw Freyja, Lola and Theo relaxing in the sunshine:

A proud Freyja walking her daddy off the field:

And underhand tactics as she started flashing the opposition (photo unfortunately taken just as she got to the end of the line of players):

So, what's it like then...?

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:26:00 +0000

I was asked this question at a recent party by no fewer than 5 of my friends. I either told them it was easier than the last time or I rolled my eyes and said it was impossible to leave the house...depending on what I thought they wanted to hear. The truth of course lies somewhere in between.

Some of the things I thought would be hard have turned out not to be so bad - like Freyja's reaction to her new baby brother , getting to the child minder on time in the morning and the breastfeeding. Other things have been harder than I expected - generally getting out and about with 2 children when it's just me, juggling bedtimes (still haven't worked that one out) and dealing with the nights again.

The shift from one child family to two child family is far easier to handle emotionally than the shift from couple to one child family. There is less of that shock at how much your life has changed - or maybe it's just that you have absolutely no time any more to think about it! Perhaps it's different if your first born was a complete angel and your second born is a horror, but I've definitely found Theo easier to deal with. I think partly this is because he is a more predictable baby than Freyja (though he definitely has his fussy times, I'm not being let off that easily!) but also because I am a more confident parent.

But there is no denying that the nights are as hard as ever - if not harder because to a certain extent you feel you've already done your time!! I told everyone that my expectations were that I would have a baby who would be like Freyja in terms of sleeping and I thought I would be able to handle it well, having been through the disturbed nights before. But if I'm honest I secretly hoped that this time I would have a baby who would sleep better. I do have a baby who sleeps better during the day but the nights are as disrupted as they ever were with Freyja and I have to admit it has taken me a while to accept it. I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that I don't have a baby who is going to miraculously sleep through the night and it looks like I'm in for the long haul again.

But, all that aside, what has been most wonderful is the realisation that there isn't a big, dirty secret out there about first borns being more loved than subsequent children. I was so sure, despite what everyone told me, that there was no way I could love another child as much as I love Freyja. I felt a real sense of loss about our time together coming to an end and worried that I wasn't ready for another child. Well I'm pleased to report that not only am I utterly besotted with my second born but I don't feel any longing for my previous life. It doesn't feel as though things have changed, just that life has moved on - a natural progression. And not like I have lost something but in fact like I have gained.

A few people told me that the love would be different and that it would take longer to come with my second born but that has not been my experience. I fell for Theo straight away and I can't really differentiate the way I feel about the two of them - I just love them totally, completely and unconditionally and that is it.

Summary of a Bad Night

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:08:00 +0000

Last night none of us got any sleep. I put it down to the heat - I hope it's not a new phase...

6.45pm - Start getting Theo ready for bed. It takes almost an hour and a half to get him to sleep. It always takes a while, but this is the upper limit of how long he takes to settle.

9.00pm - Freyja starts crying. This is unusual - she does still sometimes wake in the night, but not usually this early. She wants another story (no) and then wants to come into 'mummy daddy bed'.

9.30pm - Freyja cries again. I sit with her on her rocking chair for 10 minutes. She's still trying for 'mummy daddy bed'. I explain that we haven't actually gone to bed yet.

10.00pm - I go up to bed and feed Theo before I go to sleep. He is sleeping in his moses basket in his cot. I pick him up and he's drenched. He's wearing a short sleeved vest and is in a 2.5 tog sleeping bag, which is really too warm for the weather but I don't have a summer one in his size (Freyja was a winter baby so her newborn stuff, which Theo is now using, is all for the cooler weather). I panic that he is overheating and decide to put him straight into his cot as it will be cooler than being in his basket.

11.30pm - Theo wakes up. I put it down to him realising he is in the cot and not his cosy moses basket. When I go in I discover he has done a massive poo. I change his nappy and vest and do my best to clean it off his sleeping bag. He has to stay in it as the other one in his size is a thick velour one which will most likely finish him off in this heat. See how prepared I am? End up feeding him again to get him back to sleep.

12.30am - Freyja wakes up. I go to her and settle her back to sleep.

1.00am - Freyja wakes up. I go to her and settle her back to sleep.

1.30am - Freyja wakes up. I go to her, take her sleeping bag off and settle her back to sleep.

2.00am - Freyja wakes up. Up to now I have avoided waking Adrian up as he's got a chest infection and hasn't been very well. But by this point I need some back up. Adrian goes to her and brings her into bed with us. She snuggles up but doesn't go to sleep.

2.30am - Theo wakes up. I go and feed him and he settles back to sleep fairly easily after his feed.

3.00am - Get back into bed. Freyja is still awake.

3.30am - I tell Freyja that if she doesn't try and go to sleep she'll have to go back to her cot.

3.45am - Freyja asks to go back to her cot and then goes to sleep.

4.30am - Theo wakes up. I feed him.

5.00am - Get back into bed, but Theo hasn't gone back to sleep. After two more attempts to settle him I bring him into the bed with us.

6.30am - Freyja and Theo wake up. The day begins.

Have I mentioned how tired I am?

Party Animal - Flora's 1st Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:25:00 +0000

Hunting for Worms with Afi

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:22:00 +0000

Siblings

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:18:00 +0000

Night Seven in the Lightly Household...

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:50:00 +0000

...and we're still not getting much sleep.

Previously, it was sort of on and off - some good nights, some bad, exactly the sort of thing you would expect with a newborn, possibly even a little better than you would expect, dare I say it (I dared, and therefore haven't had much sleep recently...) I count a good night as one where Theo feeds and then goes straight back to sleep - I'm not expecting any sleep through the night miracles here.

For a week now we've been having trouble settling him after one or both of his night feeds. On Saturday night I decided to leave him in his own room for the whole night - I think moving him in to ours when he woke for his 1am-ish feed was disturbing him more than necessary. I think it helped as he did sleep after the 1am feed but then he took ages settle after the 4am feed.

On Sunday night I decided to try a 10pm dream feed. This worked really well - he didn't wake up and then slept until 2.30am. Unfortunately I then spent an hour and half settling him back down only for him to wake up again at 5am. And I didn't even get that nice long stretch at the beginning of the night anyway because Freyja woke up at 1.30am and I had to go in to her.

Last night I tried the dream feed again. This time he only lasted until 1.30am - which he has previously managed without the dream feed (and he usually lasts until about 1am now anyway). He then didn't settle and at 3am, on the verge of dropping dead from exhaustion (that's what it felt like at 3am anyway) I banished Adrian to the spare room so I could bring Theo into the bed and get some much needed sleep. Except it didn't work! I fed him again and he still didn't go to sleep. By this point I was crying and it took every ounce of strength and patience to get up and soothe him to sleep - I walked and patted and eventually he went back down in his basket (which I had brought back into my room - we're really making progress here!!) He was up again at 5am and then again at 6am.

I don't know if he's sleeping too much during the day, getting over-tired in the evenings, if I need to give him longer to settle himself once he's fed, if I need to stay longer to settle him after the night feeds. I don't think he relies on me to go to sleep - during the day I never feed him to sleep and he settles quickly with a few pats and his dummy. Who knows?!!

I've been telling myself and everyone else that it really isn't that bad - he goes down at around 8.30pm and he sleeps until around 1am so I am getting some sleep in the early part of the night . It all seems so much better in the daytime when you look back on it and even as I'm writing this I think that I'm probably being rather dramatic and it isn't so bad really. I feel relatively okay once I've managed to get myself out of bed in the morning and he's such a good baby on the whole - predictable, goes down for naps easily and even his fussy times aren't too difficult.

But the thing is, at 3am when you've been up for 2 hours already for yet another night, it is that bad. Thank God for patience, deep breaths, mother love and wide, gummy smiles!

Ladywell Park

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:08:00 +0000

Sleep and Routine

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:59:00 +0000

No blog about motherhood would be complete without mentioning sleep deprivation, and as the mother of a newborn once again, it's time I had a moan about how tired I am...

Well I am tired and the sleep deprivation is starting to take it's toll - a few hours sleep here and there, even with a nap during the day, which I'm being quite good about, just isn't enough. I've gone beyond the stage where I fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow and am now finding it difficult to switch off when I do get a chance to sleep.

Last night was particularly bad - I put Theo down at 8pm, he was asleep by 8.30pm and went until 1.30am - hurrah! If it wasn't for the fact that The Apprentice was on last night I'd have gone to bed at my normal 9.30pm and got almost 4 hours sleep!! A missed opportunity (and at this stage of the game that is enough to reduce me to tears!) Still, I was very pleased - that is until 2 and half hours later when I still hadn't managed to get him back to sleep. He was just wide awake - I tried bringing him in the bed, feeding him again, rocking him, patting him, ignoring him....he was all big eyes every time I sneaked a look at him with the light of mobile phone (which has doubled up as a torch since Freyja was born). In the end I moved him into his room and left him to it - no, he wasn't crying, I'm not into that, he was just awake and I didn't really see why I needed to be too. I think he fell back to sleep soon after 4am and was awake again by 6am. Thank goodness my mum is coming to visit today.

On the whole though, we do have more good nights than bad nights - he's generally sleeping his longest stretch from around 8.30pm to about 12/1am and then feeds again at around 3/4am and again at 6/7am. That doesn't leave much time for sleep in between, particularly as he takes up to an hour to feed and settle each time but at least I am getting some. I'm desperate for him to drop the 12/1am feed and I keep thinking about introducing a 10/10.30pm feed in the hope that he'll shift his longer stretch, but I can't quite bring myself to feed him when I could just go straight to bed...

During the day he's a good napper (a million times better than Freyja was at this age. She just didn't really nap - little catnaps here and there and the only way I got a good 2 hours from her was to put her in the sling) - in fact, keeping him awake during the day is more of a battle than getting him to sleep. I've got a vague daytime routine going where I feed him, try and keep him awake for anything up to an hour and a half, then put him down to bed, which works well during the day. But by the late afternoon/evening it all goes a little bit awry and I'm still trying to find out what works best for him in the evening with feeding and sleeping.

What I also have to keep reminding myself is that he is still so young - not even quite 6 weeks yet. He looks more like a 3 month old and already I can barely remember life without him!!

Smile!

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:50:00 +0000

Just to show me that it really is all worth it, as I was putting him down to bed last night Theo gave me a massive, gummy smile - no doubts about this one!

And he's been treating us to them all day.

Check ups

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:41:00 +0000

Since moving house I am in a different zone for health visitors - I still go to the Jenner for all my check-ups but my actual health visitors are from Rushey Green in Catford. I have to say they've been really good. I had two visits from them - the first to see Theo and then another follow up one yesterday to see how things were going and to give Freyja her two year check up.

I don't have any worries about her so wasn't too concerned about whether or not she would demonstrate her language and understanding skills, but even so it was very nice that she obliged beautifully by voluntarily telling the health visitor - 'I had my hair cut' and 'I've got a buggy board' and also responding appropriately to the questions she was asked.

Theo was then weighed and he is now, at 5 weeks old, 11lbs 6 oz - exactly the same weight that Freyja was when she was 12 weeks. What a monster.

Haircut

noreply@blogger.com (solveig) — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:27:00 +0000

I have finally got round to getting Freyja's haircut. I was not really expecting it to actually happen , to be honest. Freyja does not take well to anything new or unexpected and she also doesn't like her personal space being invaded - and that often includes by her parents, never mind by someone she's never met before. I told Adrian the night before that I would be amazed if she let her hair be cut. He replied that she does have the capacity to amaze - which is a really lovely way of saying she's totally unpredictable and we'd just have to see.

As it turned out, she did amaze me - after a reluctant start (when she wouldn't actually even go in the shop) and a little bit of reassurance (I luckily had taken both Rabbi and her dummy with me) she sat on my knee and had her first ever hair cut. And then spent the rest of the day telling everyone about it.

The hairdresser was brilliant and didn't even charge because it was such a small amount she needed cut - so I can highly recommend Unique in Honor Oak Park. Might even try it myself, if I ever get round to having a haircut again.