New Mum Laziness

Well, it's the lack of sleep.
Ha! In my case, not even that, Joseph has been sleeping through for quite a long time now, we've had only one broken night in at least four months, possibly longer.
I think it's just the lack of any break. Even if you get a quieter afternoon and you can spend more time sitting down, your mind is still always on the job constantly thinking about the little one and any possible trouble he might be getting into rolling around on the floor. You just don't get any days off!
Dieting doesn't help, although it has gone pretty well, I'm about 5lbs short of my target weight now, so I'm getting close, it's just slow! When you're trying to eat less than 1500 calories a day it's not exactly an energy rich experience. The main problem is I've been cheating a bit too much recently, probably because I'm so tired. I am lethargic, groggy and my temper is short, little things getting on my nerves far more than I'm used to.
All in all, it means you get lazy.
I'm trying to keep on top of the basics like cleaning and washing, but with a 7 1/2 month old baby it's hard to stay tidy! He's really getting into everything which makes staying tidy even more imperative, but even harder! Still, at least now I have a vacuum cleaner that's light enough for me to be able to lift, the old one was hopeless!
So, today we are clean and the washing is done. Instead I have compromised on my own hygiene - I need to wash my hair, but decided that vegging out on the sofa watching Wallander on the IPlayer was more preferable during Josephs nap time than taking a bath. I should point out that due to bathroom refurbishment a shower is not an option and I actually quite hate taking baths, they leave my skin all itchy and uncomfortable.
The other area of compromise is food. How many times have we had cook-in sauce this week? I really don't know, I have quite lost count. At least we're not having takeaways every other day, but it's nearly as bad. Now when the funny little puppets appear in a TV advert break and ask  : - "When's a your Dolmio day?" I can confidently reply - "Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays!"*

*and sometimes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Sundays we go to my Mums for lunch.

Almost crawling

He's getting into everything at the moment. His current obsessions are shoes and my step exerciser, which I am having to be very careful about now. It's not a problem when I'm not using it, he's not yet strong enough to push the foot paddles up and down, but when I am using it he really likes to get close and I know if I'm not careful he'll get a finger where you really don't want a finger to be and then we'll be in trouble!
It might perhaps be easier if he was actually crawling now. Half the problem is that he gets about by the roly-poly method, something which I would say is a little more miss than hit, except that there's a lot of hitting that happens by accident. Numerous times have I found him wedged up against a piece of furniture unable to work out why he can't roll any further and completely unwilling to go back the way he came. He got trapped under a dining chair yesterday, an impressive feat considering the dimensions involved would actually make it quite hard to roll underneath, but never mind. He managed it and then couldn't work out how to get back out again.
I keep thinking he's on the cusp of crawling. Up on his hands he can turn himself round to face any direction he likes and he sometimes manages to get up on his knees, rocks back and forth for a while and then goes back to what he's used to.
He's still trying to eat everything. Teeth are moving about, we definitely have two lower incisors and two upper bicuspids, giving him a slightly vampire-ish air, I keep joking that his first words will be "I vant to suck your... milk!"
Boom boom.

BOPI

Every parent experiences BOPI at some time in their lives, and it's a difficult issue and must be brought out into the open..... sorry, you know it's hard to put on a sarcastic tone of voice when typing, but please read the previous sentence with such a tone.
BOPI is a term I have coined for Baby-on-Parent Injury. Now, have we all finished laughing?
There's a lot of news stories about the kinds of low-lives who hurt their own kids, but I am suffering the reverse. During a nappy change on Tuesday I was blowing some raspberries on Josephs tum and he got a bit carried away and cracked me on the side of my nose with his heel. It startled me and brought tears to my eyes for a moment, then I thought no more of it and finished the nappy change. The rest of Tuesday passed without issue and Wednesday morning was fine, but in the afternoon I noticed my nose was sore. Not very bad, but enough for me to check in the mirror and I couldn't see anything. I had forgotten about the raspberry incident and my sore snitch was puzzling me.
On Thursday morning there was a small but visible swelling and a small area of redness, it has grown more uncomfortable since and has had to be medicated with the last of the codeine I was given on leaving hospital with Joseph after he was born. It's still sore and is, if anything, more swollen than it was yesterday. I don't think it's bad enough to take to a doctor, but I am rather dreading having to explain it if I do.
Doc - "So, Mrs Card, just who did injure you on the nose?"
Me - "My son."
Doc - "Have you considered reporting him to the police?"
Me - "Yes, but they said at 7 months he was below the legal age of criminal responsibility....."
He kicks a lot, does my little boy. If you're sitting on the floor playing with him you have to make sure you're out of foot range or you can get little bruises on your legs when he really gets going. Doesn't know his strength!
Still, I am hoping it will all be OK without any medical attention or obvious bruising, but the level of pain it is giving me is surprising!
And yes, if it came to be a legal matter he could claim provocation from the raspberry...

PS On first publication of this, a little advert popped up asking "Suffered a bone fracture?" Creepy!

Teeth

Whilst on holiday two little teeth broke in his bottom gum and announced themselves into the world. The previous couple of days Joseph had been a bit grumpier than average, but not enough to make me think that he was definitely teething. I've heard of some parents being up all night with a screaming baby who's teething, but Joseph didn't seem too bothered. Still, incisors and bicuspids are the easier teeth, canines and molars can be more uncomfortable. Gina Ford said in her book that having a strict routine can make teething less difficult and I wasn't convinced, but perhaps there's something in it after all.
On my next grocery shop I will be buying a little soft baby toothbrush and some milk teeth toothpaste. I'm not sure exactly how cleaning his teeth is going to go, but I bet it will be fun! We'll start as soon as there's more than the current 3mm of tooth at the bottom, seems a bit pointless just yet.
Still, one thing I am very glad of is that the routine we a roughly following now means that his last bottle is 4.30pm (ish!) and dinner at 6.30 followed by bed at 7. We're not giving him a last bottle before bedtime, something most parents seem to do. The kids love it, but you've got to clean their teeth afterwards (which they hate) and it makes toilet training overnight harder. If he starts wanting a drink before bed I hope we can stick to water, but he hardly drinks any at all at the moment. Whenever I offer him a non-milk drink he has a few sips and gives up.
Right now he's lying on the floor, flapping him arms and giggling every time I smile at him. Sooo cute!

Josephs First Holiday

We had a lovely week on the south coast, staying in my aunt and uncles chalet. We were right next to a pebble beach, the sun was out and there was a delightful tang of salt in the air!
Well, the sun was out when it counted, we did get some rain but we weren't too bothered. It was just nice to sit and relax and not do anything! On the mornings that it rained we felt we had a valid excuse to do precisely nothing and the rest was very much appreciated!
We did get out and about, Joseph had a small piece of scone from my cream tea and didn't like it. He especially didn't like a tiny taste of cream, it made him a little sick! He's an odd child, doesn't seem to have much of a sweet tooth, but then this is probably a good thing.
Talking of teeth, on the third day we were there we noticed that Josephs two bottom incisors had broken through! In my naivety I thought that they'd soon be all the way up, but almost a week later they're still pretty low in the gum, but most definitely visible! Today we noticed two more breaking through in his top gum, but we're not sure if they're canines or bicuspids. Two two front incisors are pretty close to rupture as well, so my little baby boy will soon have a toothy smile! I am already starting to think that he'll not be a baby much longer, we've had a couple of almost crawling moments when he's finally lifted his bum off the ground without planting his face straight into the floor! This will have to become Esther's Toddler Diary, sigh!
We did take the opportunity to dip Josephs toes in the sea, he wasn't convinced. He found the breakers quite scary and got a bit cold, ended up clinging on to Andy really tightly! It was a very sweet moment, but I think Joseph was glad to be wrapped up snug in a warm towel!
All in all, a lovely week.

And meanwhile at the clinic....

Well, fist of all I could not find Chairman Josephs little red book. You need it to keep all the weight information in, and it has a neat little graph to show you how much weight the baby ought to be gaining at the right age. Joseph is a little chunk, having now shot above the 75th percentile at his last weigh in. I'm not too worried, he's got some chub on him, but he's not one of those babies that look like they're made of linked sausages.
Well, as is the way with these things it turned out to be in the place I had looked the most. I blame The Cat, she was being annoyingly meeow-y at the time, probably to distract me so she could hide it.
And so, we went. It was quite busy, being a little bit later in the morning than I usually manage, but we got to a set of scales without any problems. Joseph had left me a little present in his nappy, but it wasn't too bad. Joseph was very interested in the babies around him, perhaps it was because there was a girl on either side, the little flirt!!!
The girl on the left was clearly a little older than Joseph and she was moving and trying to crawl. The poor Mum could only weigh her face down as she point blank refused to lie on her back, instead she was posing as if auditioning for a Pampers advert! Very cute.
The Mum on my right was clearly on her first visit to the clinic and couldn't work out how the scales worked. She didn't realise that the scales had to be on before the baby went on (I did that the first time) and somehow had managed to change the scales from metric to imperial! I had to help her out, not that I minded! She looked really worried, as if she might get into trouble for being flustered by the scales, especially as her baby had done a wee on them. I told her not to worry, Joseph had done that every time the first few months! Joseph wasn't helping much either, kept trying to pat the little girl on the head! Not the best way to get a date, but we'll show him when he's old enough. You start with chocolates......