January 2007 Archives

A rare appearance by Warren on here, just for some boring technical stuff...

The photo section is now online!!! No, really!

There's a link on the sidebar and everything. See, not 'coming soon' anymore. Expect more in the coming months.

Note: it's not that obvious, but the different sets of photos can be accessed by the navigation in the top bar (the bits with the hearts beside them). So far, we have 'Harrison Arrives' and 'First Three Months'. Click the picture to see it bigger!

Believe it or not this post is about Emily and not Harrison. It seems (although I don't want to speak too soon) that we have turned a corner with Harrison as it is nearly 2 weeks now that he has been sleeping right through.

However, ironically, the moment he started to sleep through Emily started getting up. She has been getting up every night over this past week and not only is is starting to become very frustrating, it is also slightly worrying. Every night she wants to come into our bed and even says that she doesn't want to be alone, or she wants us to go in her bed with her and snuggle. She has also been having a lot of bad dreams too, so its not just a case of wanting to share her bed, its also a case of her waking up distressed in the night.

At first in the middle of the night when my defences were low I let her in. But this has increasingly become a nightmare for us as one of us has trouble sleeping. The other night I had to climb over Emily and Warren to go and sleep in her bed just to get some room!

So I am not sure what is going on but there is obviously something working on her. I think it is partly to do with Harrison being in our room, but I don't think its just that. I know we are going to have to be strong and not let her in, but its very hard when she is just so adorably snuggly.

Hopefully we will be able to nip it in the bud soon.

After having a pretty hectic day, I have finally got around to sitting down to write something. But now my mind is completely blank! Its not that I don't have anything to tell you I think it is total sensory overload from Harrison crying and Emily talking non-stop! I realised today (I kinda knew it anyway) that if I don't get out of the house for at least 5 minutes every day I end up with little or no patience, feel like I am going insane and end up getting cross at Emily & Harrison (with Harrison I only get cross with him in my head as I know he has done nothing wrong, I am just being honest). For some reason the past two days at tea time Harrison has decided to start screaming, while I am having to battle with Emily being contrary with her dinner, while trying, somehow to eat mine. That very small part of the day is enough to send me over the edge completely.

On a very positive note Harrison has slept through now for the past 5 days! Its amazing! And when I say slept through I am talking about 12 hours sleep! All this without even a drop of formula on his lips. I think he is trying to tell us something! We did try to give him a bottle last night but he wasn't having any of it and I think he just wasn't hungry so he didn't take it - he still managed to sleep through. Now you would think I would be jumping for joy at this but the all nighters are having a bit of a side effect and this is a very VERY hungry boy in the day. He is back to feeding non stop, which is starting to wear me down again. I am almost thinking it would be easier logistically speaking, for me to be woken up for one feed in the night, it would mean he wasn't permanently feeding in the day. It just makes my days with Emily so much harder. It also means that if he isn't napping he is crying and is only lying contentedly for very short periods of time.

I suppose you can't have it all can you? This baby lark is hard, but I am smiling anyway (just about!).

Just had to get a picture up of Emily wearing her lovely new West Ham hat courtesy of the Chown family! Doesn't she look cute?!

Where does the time go? The days and weeks just seem to be slipping by too quickly at the moment. I can hardly keep up with anything, let alone blogging and I feel like I am missing out on recording so much stuff in Emily & Harrisons lives. I am just hoping that it will calm down and there will be at least some time in the day to sit and mull over stuff - right now we are only just sitting down to tea after 8 and before we know it, its time for bed!

Harrison had his first injections last week. It was very hard to see the doctor stick a needle in him, let alone actually wake him up from a contented to sleep to do it! But at least I had experienced it with Emily so it wasn't too distressing. He has his next lot of jabs in a couple of weeks. He is really coming on now and although he is still far away from any kind of routine, we are getting lots of smiles, gurgles and shouting! Its so cute and adorable, I could just sit and talk to him all night when he is gurgling and smiling away at me. We have also started to give him a bottle of formula at night, to top the greedy munchkin up and also in the vain hope of getting a full night sleep. This is hard work let me tell you. It takes at least a half hour of screaming before he finally gives up and takes the bottle and sometimes he screams himself to sleep so he doesn't even get a sip. So its not perfect but hopefully we will get there. I am still breastfeeding the rest of the time and don't intend to stop for a while yet.

Emily is such a little grown up madam and comes out with the funniest things everyday. Sometimes you could just eat her up, especially when she holds your face and either tells you that she loves you very much or that you are her best friend! Don't be fooled into thinking this is all the time though as sometimes she is your best friend and other times not. She is certainly learning how to manipulate through emotions and is very good at it too! One of the funniest things she has said lately is telling Warren to feed Harrison and when Warren said he couldn't feed him it was just mommy, she said that he could feed him though his finger!! So funny! This is because if we are unsure if he wants feeding we give him a test with our finger and so Emily thinks there is food in there! She also told me there is plenty of milk for Harrison in my elbow!! For some reason she calls boobs elbows!!!

Well we made it through into 2007 after an anti-climax of a Christmas. Unfortunately Christmas Eve Emily took sick. She seemed a bit grouchy and clingy while we were having a family get together at Warrens brothers house and before long she was puking (how we managed to contain it I will never know!). So after hyping up Santa for ages and getting her all excited the poor thing got ill. We didn't even get to put out food for Santa and the reindeer. Warren still made Santa footprints going from the front door to the presents and luckily on Christmas morning she got all excited about Santa not wiping his feet!

She managed to open a few presents and even looked chirpy as you can see from the photo. But by lunch time she had run out of steam and was poorly again. So she missed her Christmas dinner and got to open the rest of her presents the next day. But the next day of course it was my turn to get sick and to cut a long story short this was followed very shortly by Warren getting sick too (luckily Harrison was fine). It was awful to say the least and we were sick until just before the New Year. In fact I think I must've sounded so desperate that mom booked a flight and came over on New Years Eve to take care of us and help me get the house a bit sorted! Thank you so much mom & Nige, it was incredibly kind of you to miss your New Year celebrations together and it means a lot to us all.

Thankfully we are much better now, although 2007 will need to be the year we get fitter and healthier!