It dawned on me that I haven’t posted any pics of the newest little guy in a while, or the others for that matter.
Today Jasper and Grover had their immunisations.
Jasper wailed until the nurse opened the tin of jelly snakes. All better. Instantly.
Grover wailed and then kept that bottom lip dropped with the occasional wimper at me as if to say, “why’d you let her do that to me?”.
We weighed him too.
6.6kgs at 8 weeks – that’s 14pd5oz for you lot over the sea who call your taps faucets and the like.
So yes, he really is quite the little puddin’:
Grover, 8 weeks
Just like his brother before him, this week he has (finally) found his fist
After that hideous 24 hours last week and with some rereading of the best book in the world ever, we’ve been cooking with gas since Friday night. He goes into his cot awake (when I see he’s getting tired) and he just goes off to sleep in minutes. I know this won’t last. That there will be another bad day and many more bad nights but I also know to enjoy the good times when they arrive and while they last. At the moment I’m feeling quite the mama.
Interestingly, Jasper has stopped the indifference, annoyance, anger and jealousy and is now all “baby!” and is quite smitten. See:
Jasper at 22months, Grover at 8 weeks(I know, you can’t half tell they’re related…)
Meanwhile, in the other camp, this boy is growing up in so many ways before my very eyes (“I’ll cut my hair in two years mum” which I managed to get down to him getting it trimmed today).
Felix at 7Several days ago:
F: Mum
K: Yes Felix
F: I’m really really happy. Not happy as in when you get a present or something, happy in me and who I am and what I can do. It feels really good.
A few days after that in the midst of a conversation about what he was doing when he was Jasper’s age and a bit older
F: Yeah, I didn’t really like myself then, but I do now. I love me now.
So, apart from making a mental note to myself to check just how much late night Dr Phil and Oprah the kid is getting up and watching, what do you make of that! The last bit floored me because you know what? He wasn’t a happy child at all. He’d growl at people. He only wanted me and would scream so for many many hours over and over. He was a very complex child in that – and so many of you with roll your eyes at this – there was no point with “I said so” or any form of punishment that made him lose face or pride. No lesson would be learnt. All that would ensue were hours, hours of screaming and wailing and gnashing of teeth. The reason he only wanted me was because I ‘got’ him. He was/is so like me. I remember over and over saying if you feel like you’re getting too angry or it’s too noisy or you’re feeling really frustrated with Oscar use your words and just have some quiet time by yourself. So there were times I would find him – while at a birthday party – in the middle of a field off to the side of the play area, or up in his room playing quietly in the middle of his own party and so on, with him simply saying, “I just needed some quiet time on my own”. When he said, “I love me now” it wasn’t some arrogant statement or some pompous puffed up show, it was a really genuine statement that he is happy now, in his own skin. He just floors me every time.
*****
And just incase my mothering calm needed a shake up, we’ve just had two 27C days. In August. People – I have not gone to the issues of body image and the way I feel at the moment as it is self created and I haven’t been doing anything about it except eat more chocolate and drink pineapple cruisers. I also don’t need the ‘but you’ve just had a baby!” excuses thrown at me from others because I’m laying enough of that on myself. But it’s funny isn’t it, I feel like absolute shit and feel like a complete bogan with clothes not fitting, wearing the same pair of pants until they almost stand by themsleves and so on and so forth and then you have an incident like today when a woman at the shops started talking to me because her little guy is 3 months (and WHAT a different a month makes – any of that newborn ‘look’ is gone) and she was all ” but you look fantastic! Seriously, you look amazing” and I thought you know what, take that. Take it and use it and get your arse to the gym and get your entire self to Weight Watchers. Because if a total stranger felt the need to tell me that I looked great and how was I doing it, imagine how I’d look (and how much better I’d feel) if I lost the 20kgs I need to lose and was fit.
Anyway
That was a massive diversion I’d prefer none of you to comment on, except to say, hot weather makes me hot and not because it is, but because it means shorts and swimming and having to shave/wax bits and so on. I HATE summer.
But we live about 200m from the beach. This one infact. This was it yesterday afternoon at about 4.30. Because yes, I took four boys to the beach by myself for an hour.
For this little guy it might well have been the first time ever:
He felt the sand between his toes and I said something like ‘all the sand’ and all he could say over and over was ‘evweewhere, veweewhere’. Bless. But as I said, it might all have been a first particularly as he saw his brother go running into the surf:
He was wailing “waa-waa waa-waa” (what Oscar calls Felix and indeed, the whole family. Jasper started saying everyone’s name a few weeks back – Ogga, Waa Waa, Babbeeeeee, – even the dogs coco and larlie and the cat – mat – which seems appropriate since I think she’d make a great one ever since the crapping in my boots and pissing in my wardrobe episodes.) here until he realised Felix was actually having fun.
Last year when we’d take Jasper to the beach he’d physically shake with fear at the waves. He does the same with the shower. Weird. So he was still very concerned about any form of water touching his body, but he did love the space. and the running evweewhere.
So very very wet and sandy and therefore happy.
Oscar’s a bit like me at the beach. I absolutely love the idea of it but just find it all a bit of an effort and the sand a monumental pain in the arse. It’s also a very massive physical effort for Oscar to walk on sand, so this is often where you’ll find him – quite near to where you walk down onto the beach and quite far from the water, of which he’s having none of thank you very much.
Taking a photo of a baby strapped to your chest is actually quite difficult.
We got home and Felix went straight into the shower. I clippered Oscar’s hair and he got into the shower. I got Grover into the bath, then Jasper, and had started dinner in the afternoon and had some things on low while we were gone.
So by about 5.45pm everyone had been showered/bathed and were in the process of being fed either some homemade spinach and ricotta stuffed shells in tomato sauce I’d made a while back and frozen or a tasty vegetable frittata my dad and stepmother had bought as part of whole range of meals they brought us in those early weeks with a salad of warm roasted vegetables tossed with salad greens, honey mustard dressing and ricotta. Told you I was rockin’ it out as a mum at the mo.
