babyblog

Tabitha - 5 months

Dear Tabby

Today you are 5 months old. I was wondering what to write to you this month as I thought surely you can't have changed all that much in the last 4 or 5 weeks, but then I went back and read last months note and realised that you are completely different to the Tabitha of 1 month ago!

I wrote last month that you were on a nap schedule at last. HA HA HA. No such thing :-) Actually you will nap for a reasonable length of time in the morning now, and you will take a couple of cat naps in the afternoon, but it's rather hit & miss. And night time sleeping after you were sick at the weekend with a cold, is rather messed up again. You wake at 4am and find it very hard to go back to sleep. Gas, writhing around, crying out, all contribute to not being able to put you back in bed successfully. Thankfully your daddy will cuddle you to sleep and sleep himself propped up on the sofa while you doze in his arms!

I'm actually starting to wonder if you have an intolerance to dairy in my diet. I've briefly considered this before but I'm now getting to a point where I can't ignore it. That's a subject for another post to the blog though, not your monthly newsletter!

You finally outgrew the bassinet :-(

I was so sad to see it go away for the very last time. I've put it in your room and hope that you will use it for your dollys and teddys to sleep in! It's that or put it away for the grandchildren!

You're now sleeping in a travel crib in our room. Just until you're sleeping through the night, then you will go to your own room! I don't want you to go to your own room! It is downstairs, a million billion miles away from me!

I am still terribly terribly out of control buying girly clothes. You are an incredibly well dressed young lady as a result! This will no doubt bite me on the bum when you are old enough to adopt this clothes buying insanity for yourself thanks to the bad example you've been led :-)

Dylan is your favourite brother this month. You keep chuckling and giggling when you see him and you love to gaze at him and watch whatever he is doing.

In terms of interests, you've begun to really love lying on your back and grabbing your toes. You will hold your toes for hours. Your favourite toy of all! You love lying under your arches too, batting at the dangling toys. You love to clutch and grasp at toys too and examine them intently, plastic rings, little squishy cuddly toys, rattles, anything..... and of course you're also shoving them all in your mouth as you begin to teethe! I know that teething is imminent thanks to the endless drool coming down your chin!

You also now have a 'jumparoo' which is a bouncing toy and you're starting to really enjoy being upright to play and starting to reach out and grab at the toys around you.

Car rides are more enjoyable now, you don't tend to scream unless you've been in there too long! Yesterday infact I had the most lovely day with you. You napped in the morning then played, then napped on the way to school when we took Harry, then we went for lunch with a friend and you sat happily on my knee taking it all in, then we shopped (for clothes!) and you were quite content and amazed by all that went on around you. Finally we fetched Dylan and Harry, then came home and a friend came over and you lay and played really happily on the rug with me until bed time. No tears all day, just gorgeous and smiley and happy!

I can't believe that you're already 5 months old. Next month we'll be starting you on solids and you'll really change into a grown up big girl at that point. It's amazing how quickly you want to move forward to each new step when you have your first baby, but now I am so heartbroken by each passing moment knowing there is no going back. I am enjoying your being so tiny and wish I could stop the world for a while and savour each moment a little longer.

I love you little girl.

Mummy xxxxx

Goodbye UKChat

UKChat, the chat site that I've run for the last 10 years has closed today. I can't help but feel sad, it's 10 years of my life gone.

We closed for many reasons but largely it was to do with my having this busy hectic life 8 hours and 5000 miles away. I haven't had the time nor energy to do anything with UKChat in months if not years and I've relied on other people to run it for me. That's OK to a point but ultimately I still have responsibility for it of course, which is always a nagging concern in the background.

We actually had worked on a redesign of the site, a new snazzy site more content driven and it looked GREAT. We were very close to the point where we'd be able to launch it, having nagged and pesterered at both Neil and Gareth for the last AGES to do that for me.

However, I came to the realisation that if we did launch the new site that I'd actually have to do alot of WORK on it, and I simply do not have that ability at the moment. Knowing I couldn't work on the new look, and knowing it needed a new look, led me to think that the best thing would be to close. It coudln't continue as is, and it couldn't continue as it should. I put this idea to G and Neil and they both (being extremely busy themselves) agreed.

There were other reasons for closing to do with what I felt was the future of sites like UKChat, sites which in todays internet are a bit old fashioned, and I've gone into those a little more on the UKChat homepage for anyone who is interested.

Funnily enough, having given notice with UKChat's ISP a couple of months ago, we received an email this week telling us that costs were going to DOUBLE. Had we not already been closing, we would have had no choice but to do so. I'm so glad we did it on our own terms, if only by the skin of our teeth.

Anyway - the last night was tonight. UKChat closed it's doors at midnight. It was amazing actually, there were hundreds of people online to say goodbye including all of the old faces from the years. I ended up feeling very emotional about it and shed a tear, which I didn't expect. It was 10 years of my life, I'll miss it.

Good Day

We had a lovely Thanksgiving meal yesterday with friends..... relaxing and good company. Today was a really great day too. I think possibly the first that we've been out all day with all 3 kids and not become stressed by at least one of them for some reason!

The Friday following Thanksgiving is known as 'Black Friday' because the stores all have crazy sales and open at 4am for the insane and desperate. People queue up all night to get the great deals when the doors open. Generally speaking it is the perfect day to avoid shops at all costs. So of course, that's exactly what we didn't do.

We did, however, avoid the big sale spots, and we also did manage to have a great time. We went down to Redmond which is a town center not completely unlike the UK and somewhat unusual in the US.... in otherwords it is outside, there are paths, the shops are beside each other and you don't have to drive from one to another, there are cafes and coffee shops, and it's generally quite a nice place for a stroll. The choice of shops is a little lacking but it's still quite nice for a wander and not the sort of place which is under siege from sale-mad types.

We parked up and had lunch, then we walked to stores outside of the town center - probably a mile or two - with Tabitha sleeping peacefully in the stroller and also Harry sitting happily in it. We managed to browse around several places without getting stressed by someone crying or someone running off or someone breaking things. We got back into the town and Gareth took the boys on the 'Santa Train' which is a little train that drives around the town decorated in fairy lights (they enjoyed it!) while I browsed a couple of shops (I enjoyed it!) and Tabitha continued to snooze. Then we headed to the bookstore and sat and had coffee, she woke and fed, the boys ate cookies..... really nice. Nobody screamed, nobody was badly behaved, nobody was stressed out.

We finished off by going to Target and getting a little HD Video Camera and then coming home for tea.... and finally Dylan and I went out to the movies to see 'Enchanted' which was entertaining and fun.

Great day - zero stress, enjoyable family time :-)

Slack on the update front

Not because I have nothing to say, but because I have no time to say it.

Everyone's a bit under the weather this week. Dylan has been off school all week with a cold. Harry threw up last night after complaining that his head hurt, and Tabitha is grotty with a runny nose as of this morning. Great.

I'm still feeling a bit out of sorts. I think since my good friend went home I've felt somewhat lost.... I am getting out there & making lots of effort to see people so that I don't stew about it, but I do feel like nobody's got my back anymore, know what I mean? I guess it's hard to build up really good friendships where you invest lots of time and effort, they don't happen overnight. And when you're a million miles from home, those friendships are your lifeline.

I wouldn't go as far as to say I'm depressed mind you..... but then I'm aware of my 'triggers' for depression at the moment which I haven't been aware of in a long time now. My triggers tend to be people saying or doing negative things about / towards me and when I feel blue I tend to obsess about them and twist them around in my mind over & over again until I drive myself mad 2nd guessing myself and feeling bad about myself. Someone sparked something like this the other day with me and I found I was overly-wound up about it the last few days, which I have identified as being because I am feeling a bit blah anyway...... but I'm hoping that telling myself OK, avoid this trigger situation, if necessary avoid this person, will suffice in pulling me out of it. That and tons of Vitamin B of course.

Go Diego Go!

We took the kids to see the 'Go Diego Go!' live stage show in Seattle on Sunday. We had taken Dylan to see it's cousin Dora live in Buffalo when he was 4 and he loved it and we thought Harry in particular would appreciate the Diego one. I managed to get seats 3 rows from the front so we had an amazing view.

Harry viewed the show with utmost concentration, doing exactly what was asked of him at any one time (jump up and down, wave your jaguar mask in the air!) and didn't crack a single smile because he was so completely engrossed in it. Dylan meanwhile sat beside me pretending he was too old to enjoy it but was singing along and laughing and having a fabulous time. And Tabitha who we'd been fully prepared to have to remove from the situation at any moment, actually sat quietly and watched the entire thing with a fascinated look on her face. She had a nap during the interval!

Harry has talked about the show non stop since we got home. It was fun to see the intense concentration that he applies to things - something his teacher had commented on at school.

Dylan is now bugging me to take him to the High School Musical tour when it comes here. I will, I think. He's really starting to discover music is Dylan, and it's wonderful to watch. I vividly remember starting to listen to my mum and dads tapes (Blondie, Abba) at about his age and discovering this huge, fabulous world of music. In Dylans case we have the High School Musical soundtrack (not too shabby) and he's had me put all the songs onto his iPod and can be found asleep with it blasting in his ears every night, lol. He does have a bit of a scary tendency towards musical theatre though, much like his father and grandmother. Might have to beat that out of him with a large stick. Although, I did actually try to convince him that joining the school musical after school club would be great fun, but he wouldn't!

Tabitha's 4 month checkup

She's weighing in at a dinky 13lb and 13oz, still bang on the 50th percentile for weight. She's measuring at 26 inches long which is really tall ! 97th percentile for height - where on earth does this tall gene come from in my kids?!

Had a bit of a fuffle with the DR over solids, she tried to give me outdated stupid information about starting early and using jarred food.

Tab had her shots - 4 of them :-( - and I convinced them to let me nurse her during them. Of course she screamed anyway but not for nearly as long as she had done the first time when I wasn't allowed to, she went fairly quickly back to eating.

Otherwise she is fine and healthy and sooo cute. Today she discovered her feet and they are constantly in the air and being clutched at and smiled at. It's adorable. She's also interested in grasping things and holding them and starting to play with them, little fabric books in particular and also the plastic link rings which she loves :-)

Alot Better!

I just wrote an email back to someone who had asked me about Probiotics and I'll copy what I wrote on here for anyone stumbling upon the blog ....

****

We've had an enormous improvement in Tabitha over the last few days. As is often the case though, having thrown everything at the problem we've now seen this huge difference and I'm not sure which individual thing helped.....

Certainly her bowel movements are much improved. They are far more 'normal' than they have ever been. She is breastfed and we're seeing the typical exploding bottoms that come from BF babies rather than small frequent amounts of dubious colour and texture than we'd previously been seeing.

She does suffer from reflux though, and I have also upped her medication for that because I think that was contributing enormously to her fussiness.... I think she was in pain, crying, causing excess gasses by inhaling lots of air, and we had a vicious circle. The higher dose seems to be needed as she gets bigger.

I also started using 'Hylands Colic Tablets' at night which are nothing short of miraculous. Instead of waking up at 3am and crying out in pain from gas, she has started to go back to sleep after her feed. This change was instantaneous the day we started using them.

If I had to guess I'd say that all 3 of the remedies are contributing to the improvement. The Zantac is stopping her pain and spitting up and stopping her inhaling so much gas. I have read a couple of studies which suggest that colic can often be a form of undiagnosed reflux? I think I might buy into that theory. I don't think reflux has to be every symptom on the list to be present and benefit from treatment. I think that the colic tablets are, as I said above, helping with the dispersal of any gas in the tummy and the chamomile in them is calming and helping her to rest more easily, and I think the probiotics are resetting her intestines and insides with healthy flaura and fauna which have been completely upset by all of the problems she's had.

PS The probiotics that I’m using are BioGaia ones which are liquid and live and must be refrigerated at all times (they arrive in cold packaging) and their website has some very interesting information on regarding studies that they've commissioned into proB's.

A bit better..

I have upped Tabitha's reflux medication to 3x per day and as a result today she was ALOT happier. Didn't throw up once. No random crying or screaming for no reason either. A smiley and happy girl :-)

Last night I also gave her some homeopathic colic remedy before bed, and at 3.30am after her feed she went BACK TO HER BED for another 3 hours. For the first time in a couple of weeks. Thank goodness!!!!!! Oh and I started her back on the probiotics too.....

Cross your fingers that last night / today weren't anomalies and that we'll see a marked improvement.

Ugh, what a week

After posting that Tabitha has improved and become alot easier lately, she determind to prove me wrong this week. She's been very miserable, crying alot, refusing to nap, and then when finally going off to sleep being woke at the slightest tiniest noise and then having half an hour of hysterics. I don't know what's up with her - I'm wondering if she's teething. She has a constant stream of drool coming from her mouth and she will gnaw at her fists. The boys were a breeze with teething so this is fairly new territory for me if she is indeed one of those babies who have a long drawn out period of discomfort. Poor lamb!

On top of that, I've felt somewhat blah after my best friend buggered off back to England to live. We were in touch constantly each day and saw each other very regularly. Mostly though, we shared the exact same dislike of pretty much everyone and everything, were equally bad tempered most of the time, and wanted to kill our husbands on a daily basis together. You don't often find a friendship like that ;-) We always shared similar viewpoints on things and she was my partner in crime and always saw things the same way I did, so now I feel a bit lost without her. To compound the problem one of my other really good friends has her inlaws staying so is not around for 2 weeks. I feel a bit Billy No Mates, esp as half the Brit group refuse to drive further than 10 feet from their doorstep to make any effort to see people.

I've not had alot of sleep this week either, what with Tabitha waking at 4am and refusing to go back down.

Oh and yesterday I crashed my car. Driving along to Harry's school someone pulled out suddenly infront of the person infront of me. She slammed her brakes on. I slammed mine on. A little bit too late. The front of my car got ripped into by her towbar. There was no damage to her.... just me. I was really shaken up though, esp as I had the 2 smalls in the back.

Here's the damage...

On the plus side this week, I am going to see the Spice Girls in Vancouver after buying tickets at a vastly inflated rate on Ebay! I'm not, nor ever was, a huge Spice Girls fan but they are doing this big last tour and it's a bit of BritPop history so we thought we'd go for a laugh. Bit of a trek to Vancouver and back in one night but should be a fun road trip!

A new Brit arrives today from California where she's been living. She's really nice... and will move in practically next door to where my friend who left lived. Hopefully she'll become a good friend :)

Finally, I had Harry's first parent teacher conference last night which was so nice that if that didn't cheer me up nothing would. After a slightly shaky start with the teacher (I wasn't sure if she was warm enough with Harry) she positively gushed about him. She's obviously completely fallen for him.... she told me that Harry had settled into the class beautifully. That he approached every activity with enthusiasm and delight and was focused on everything he did. He is working on lots of different activities in the class and approaches each with equal enthusiasm. He loves the math stuff, books, animals, water play, and happily cleans up after himself which is apparently no small thing with young boys!

She said that he had the sunniest disposition and the most beautiful smile and that all the other children gravitate towards him. She said that many parents tonight had commented that their children talked all the time about Harry. She then said that having him in her class reminded her why she started teaching in Montessori - seeing how much he enjoyed it and how much enthusiasm he had for all the challenges set to him. Then she said she loved bringing him out to the car every day because she absolutely loved seeing how much love he was greeted with by me and the big beaming smile he got on his face and she loved to see how adored he was from such a loving family and especially such a great mum, and that it warmed her heart!