And Mary is Growing Up! (by sarah)

Mary sat up all by her self from laying completely flat and then proceeded to tip the crib over - off course I had things set up so that the only place for her to fall was straight out onto the bed. But this ment Saturday saw an exhorsted Daddy, Mummy and Ferfer trying to put the cot up after a day at Cattle Country with the School!

Also due to floods and evacuating Jean and what have you we had basically nothing other than a bumper for the cot and when I checked on her Saturday night she had wriggled down and pushed her leg out of the slats at the end onto Jeany's bed. So today saw fun and games in Mother Care but more on that adventure later!

The Inmate looks very happy and we now have a lovely set of bed lining for the cot including another bumper and it is all textured aplique and Mary loves fabrics and feeling different textures so it is perfect.

Jean got her a musical flower garden for the side of the cot - something she can press buttons on and the flowers move and lights flash and it plays tunes Mary already knows so she does her little bobbing dance to them 🙂

It was however a strange thing - Jean moved out of our room at 6 months, Mary is moving at 8 and it's somehow didn't have the urgency it did when we had Jean - maybe it was just I wasn't used to sharing the bedroom with a child where as Jean still regually comes and climbs into the bed with us in the mornings.

Jean is happy as she cried when me and Mary moved out of her room and was grumpy we had her sister and she wasn't sharing a room with her like I promised!

First Tooth! (by sarah)

As of last night Mary has a tooth 🙂

One Year of Guitar Playing… (by sarah)

So it is a year since I decided to actually learn the guitar properlly and to practice each day rather than having a guitar sitting there gathering dust with like three strings on it - on which I could pluck (when it had all the strings obviously) the intro to Nothing Else Matters and play one Tori Amos song very slowly and very badly.

I was going to upload several videos but then Alaric pointed out that I might as well just up load the only one of my songs I have guitar stuff worked out for - it is the one I played at the open mike earlier this year.

I'm afraid the singing (and indeed in many places the guitar playing) is a little iffy, and no doubt the song will have song writers rolling their eyes. But I'm proud of having written this song and having guitar music for it 🙂

I also happen to have a small seven month old person trying to rip my boot off whilst I am playing!

Hormonal Strops (by sarah)

I realise that I never did blog about what happened at the Drs after the whole abulence thing - well I had to go to the hospital where they took a biopsy and examined me and their conclusion was that it was actually my hormone levels and the mega bleeds had coincided with mammoth all night breast feeds by Mary. This sometimes happens with women.

Anyway I was already on the hormone to help stop the bleeding and it dwindled and disappeared for about 4 days and then I was out of hormone and had three days before my next Drs appointment - I started bleeding again which got heavy mainly due to the fact that I thought I'd stopped bleeding and that it would be ok to breast feed Mary again :/

I saw the Dr and she wants to get the biopsy results before doing anything like giving me the coil but she gave me a lower dose hormone which is the pill basically. I'm ok on this one - the higher does one though it slowed the bleeding a lot quicker made me so tempramental - Al say's he's never been shouted at so much in his life. The first three days I was a monster - there was even a thrown plate :/

I was going form shouting about the minutest thing that had 'gone wronge' to then bursting into tears because I was shouting at people for no reason and was a bad person. I was having hot flushes and I was hungry ALL THE TIME. This had settles down abit around the time I ran out of tablets. The smaller tablets had me a little bit grouchy the first day and a half but I've been fine since.

I am still bleeding though which is rediculous - it's over four months now since I had the baby and I didn't realise how drained I was feeling. On the plus side it is getting sorted now - I'm not too worried even though I have gained 1/2 a stone as I am being able to do more things as have more energy with less bleeding which means more exercise and hopefully more weight loss in the long term.

I did almost cry at the Drs about the breast feeding thing - basically I've stopped which makes me so sad and makes me feel like I am letting Mary down and I thought I could get it right with her - I already feel I stuff the breast feeding up with Jean. She said it was ok - that I'd given the baby a good start.

I still feel I am letting my babies down with this aspect of things and I don't think there is anything that anyone can really say to alter that :/

Anyway I am feeling a lot better.

3 Months and Counting (by sarah)

Mary is coming up to 4 months but was three when the picture was taken - she is belly laughing, attempting to sing along with me and Jean and looking round at the world in interest. She will remain sitting up if you put her in that position and if place on her front she makes slow progression towards what ever it is she wants!

She loves fabric and cloth and has unfortunatly sampled the delights of cat tail :/

Her favourite toys are the Minni Mouse Jean bought her and Gaia (the planet earth soft baby toy with mirror in it etc..

She will stop crying at the sight of her sister or me with the glittery guitar. She loves me singing the alphabet but only if I sign the letters at her whilst singing. She moves her hands in a sort of poo sign whilst going red and still appears to do the milk sign though this is probably parental wishfulness.

She loves sucking her hands and is the drooliest baby I have ever met! She even acts excited when Alaric comes home from London!

Health wise she has had the vaccinations, she appears to have an issue with cow milk (formula) and right from word go has had more skin issues than Jean.

Her sister is far too huggy with her and still gets annoyed if people try to 'take her sister away' ie hug the baby. She also tells us off if we say Mary is daft!