Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Life Gets Out of Control

Lately I have been feeling as though life is getting completely out of control in our house. Harry is up until about 9.30/10pm each night which means there is next to no time where we're just having 'adult time'. Hang on let me backtrack a little. After the nightmarish exorcisms of the last post, we came to a decision. In the evenings, Harry has dinner, a little play for a while and then goes in to what we call 'Child Time'. This means she goes in to her room, has a low watt lamp on, an audio book on her stereo and very chilled out, relaxed play in anticipation of switching her body clock towards sleep a little more calmly.

Ok that's the theory. She does spend a lot of time just being very quiet, but she constantly asks for food (she is genuinely hungry ALL the time at the moment - growth spurt here we come) and then just crashes wherever she drops. Last night she fell asleep with her feet still on the ground and her body slumped back on the bed. Any attempt to coax her into trying to relax earlier or getting her to lie in darkness is met with the exorcist shrieks and Catholic-inspired possessions.

So...yeah. At the moment we're riding it out and hoping she just drops (literally) to bed earlier, but there doesn't seem to be much hope of that. I think all we can do now is pray we win Lotto sometime soon and get a bigger house so that our computer space and living space isn't right. next. door. to this crazy child and we can spend a little more time doing things that are a little noisier. Seriously, she is insane about sleep. We were travelling along so well until Perth. *sigh*

We had Ted's Naming Day on the 27th of February. It was a glorious day! Friends galore, beautiful weather, gluten free biscuits and a massive fruit cake (as in watermelon, pineapple, etc. not a Christmas-style fruit cake) which was demolished by the children in about ten minutes of being allowed access to the fruit sticks sticking out of the top.

We had so many gorgeous blessings from everyone, Ted *is* truly blessed to be amongst such a loving circle of people. He is such a beautiful soul. Lisa gave him a gorgeous silver egg cup and spoon engraved with his name and ...of course...with a teddy on it! Perfect! At the moment he uses it like a goblet and feels very proud to pick up his 'glass' and drink a few drops of water from it just like everyone else.

At one, Ted is still quite happy to go to sleep. One BIG difference between the two children is that Ted cries (well his cry is more like a whinging, moaning sound; very unlike the screeching howl Harriet used to project at the same age) when he wants to go to sleep in order to let me know. Harry, on the other hand, used to cry in angry resistance to me putting her down to sleep. Teddy doesn't really feed that much during the day and has only just started being interested enough in solids for it to have had a *ahem* noticeable bodily reaction (which happened at 3.47am the other week mind you - I could have thought of better timing for something like that).

He still walks around with support but is getting much more confident with solo walking and using objects around him to move. Unfortunately we have very little furniture for him to grab on to - he needs a coffee table in the playroom or something I think! He is quite determined and will persist at trying to grab at something until he gets it. He loves to play peek-a-boo himself, by holding up a blanket in front of his face and peeking cheekily over the top to see if we're playing with him. He giggles and belly laughs with gusto as he gets thrown into the air or receives raspberries on his belly or thinks I am being silly (he laughs when I tell him the cow on a poster we have is an elephant - apparently that is hilarious!).

He has started saying "Mama" with intent and will call me from the playroom, or the back seat of the car. He loves to thunder over to Harriet, plonk his bottom down and try to play with whatever she's playing with (often not very welcomed by Harriet). He loves it when the planes and the bats fly overhead at our house - so pretty much every moment of every day we are driven to the back door swiftly to observe with amazement the flight of a plane in the distance or large groups of bats flying overhead.

He is much happier to spend time with Papa Jimbo than Harriet ever was at this age. In fact Harriet didn't really warm to the idea of solo Papa time until she was over 2yrs. Ted is already very happy to spend anything up to 2hrs with James on his own (tested by my shoot a month or so ago) which seems almost incredible to me after Harry. Of course I stress about him therefore not being attached to me enough as a result of the NICU nightmare, but I have been assured that perhaps Harriet was a little more fixated than usual!

He is incredibly social. He saves his biggest, widest, most heartmelting smiles for when we're out. He relishes pounding around large groups of people (like parties or the play area at the shopping centre, or today when we were at the kindergarten information morning at Harry's school) and flashes huge smiles at everyone. Seriously, this is one social babe.

In fact he is so rarely a 'problem' (I hate that term, but I just mean not doing everything smoothly) that when he isn't just going with the flow and turning on the charm I don't get that stressed and instead marvel at how little work he is at every other moment. Teddy how we love you.

And next installment is going to be Harry-heavy I promise. But for Teddy's birthday I had to do a special post.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ted's birthday sounded glorious! Oh Cass, I have a minin-Harriet here. Alanna seriously hates sleep, and is rarley in bed before 9.30 at the moment. She's never slept through either, so I'm sure all the old ladies think I'm a complete failure (not that I actually care about that!). Reading about Harriet's exorcist- style anti-sleep antics is like a window into our future...
xo Mellissa

Anonymous said...

I have been waiting for my update ! Teddy's day was so lovely (and Harriets 1/2 day of cause ;-) I'm glad he is using his egg cup, he is such a gorgeous, edible, happy little man !!!! The photo's of all four of you together in one shot, are great ! Can't wait to see the rest. Look forward to "heavy Harriet content" soon ;-)
xx Lis