20 Months:

Our little Baby G is not so little anymore, and I guess I won’t be able to call him Baby G for much longer. He is growing, yes, but he is also getting independent, and has a strong little will of his own. It looks like the temper tantrums of the terrible two’s are starting to rear its head, fortunately he is not throwing himself on the floor yet, but he loves to let us know he is displeased about something by screaming! So far it’s not too bad, we can manage it, but I remember with my sister’s oldest daughter that DH and I thought we would never be able to cope with temper tantrums 24/7. I’m sure it’s different with your own child, because I’ve noticed that I immediately forgive baby G anything and everything. I just cannot stay mad or frustrated with him.

What I love about this age is that he wants to help us with everything. He wants to sweep the floors with the broom, he wants to use the vacuum cleaner, he wants to rake leaves outside, he wants to give Nitro his food, and feed the chickens and the fish. The frustrating thing is that once he has the broom, or rake or vacuum cleaner then we cannot finish off course. So those jobs all have to be done when Baby G is not at home.

It’s so cute when we ask him something like to fetch a kitchen towel for instance, and he would run and bring it to us. We often ask him things just to see how much he understands and amazingly most of the time he surprises us and does exactly what we ask. He absolutely loves to do little jobs for us.

Another thing we have noticed is that Baby G loves to climb onto things. He can climb onto a chair and then from there he will climb onto higher things. He’s managed to get onto the dining room table for months now, but he recently started to climb onto the kitchen table too. The problem is that it’s most often when we are cooking and then there are breakable things on there or dangerous items like knives. So now it’s just one of us that cooks while the other keeps Baby G busy and out of trouble. DH has decided that he wants to find a jungle gym for baby G to climb on. He is looking at second hand one’s, but it seems they sell very fast once people advertise them. So he is also now thinking of building one for baby G, but since we are renting we would rather build something that we can move with us, if we need to move again. Here is a picture of Baby G in one of our kitchen cupboards, another favourite place to climb into…

Since last week Monday Baby G is going full day to the crèche. DH has suggested that we let him go full day a while ago already, but I was reluctant to do so, because I wanted to feel like I was still spending enough time with him daily. Unfortunately it was getting really difficult with his naptimes, because he would be so tired by 13h00 when I would go and fetch him, but once we got home he would just want to play with the dogs or play outside and then he would fight nap time.

I must admit the clincher was that recently it’s been really tiresome to breastfeed him a couple of times in the afternoon, because I would nurse him every time I would try to get him to nap. It often took 3-4 tries before he would eventually fall asleep around 15h30 or 16h00, if he would fall asleep. When he didn’t nap he would be tired and cranky and fall asleep around 18h00 or if he did nap he would be too awake to go to bed at 19h00 which was his bedtime until recently, and we had a few nights where he was still awake at 21h00. We have now moved his bedtime to 20h00.

So I eventually realized it would be easier to let him go to crèche full day, and let him nap there from 12h30 to about 14h30 at the latest. Now he naps earlier, so it’s easier to get him in bed by 20h00 and he naps every day, and I don’t have to nurse him in the afternoons anymore. Don’t get me wrong I love nursing, but it’s been 20 months now and I really would love to only nurse twice a day – once in the morning and once at night before bed time. Baby G has different ideas about that though – if it was up to him he would still nurse 6-8 times a day, but I want my body back now please! At least on my terms.

Baby G’s night time sleeping has been terrible so last week DH decided that we need to go through sleep training again. We have been waking at least 2-3 times a night for months and I must admit it was getting to me, because I really felt like a zombie. Eventually I realized that it is ok to fall back into bed the moment DH left with Baby G in the morning, so I did that a few times. The problem was that because I am still nursing, I am on night duty every single night and it is just impossible for one person to cope with for such a long time. So we decided that DH needs to put Baby G to bed, to get him used to daddy being there, and I must say it’s working because he now sometimes calls out for daddy when he wakes and not for mommy every time anymore. He has also slept through twice since we started the sleep training again last week Thursday, so it’s a 50% success rate and that is a huge improvement!

Baby G is also getting better and better at communicating with us. He still talks a lot and mostly in short sentences, but not everybody understands what he says like we do, because the pronunciation is not perfect. We’ve noticed that he now uses sounds when he doesn’t know the words and he is also mimicking certain actions to try and tell us what he wants to do. For instance he recently noticed that Nitro and KT love to drink the water that comes out of the outside tap when we fill their water bowl by licking the stream of water that comes out the tap, and Baby G has also tried it and loves it! Yesterday he pointed to the tap and acted like he was licking the water like the dogs do, to ask DH to open the tap, because he wanted to do exactly that. It was so cute and how can one refuse that!

Eating is a lot better since he doesn’t nurse in the afternoons anymore, but I believe Baby G is still not a great eater compared to other toddlers. We often have to offer him two, three or even more options before he will decide he will eat something. It looks to me like he is a picky eater and that he will rather drink breast milk than eat something he doesn’t feel like eating. So I try to distract him if he just wants to nurse and I keep offering different foods. Most nights he will eventually eat something. They tell me that he eats well at the crèche, so it looks like it’s only a problem at home.

Baby G cut the two canines at the top recently, there are tiny sharp points visible, and it looks like the last incisor at the bottom is going to cut soon. I can see a white line in the gums, but I cannot feel the sharp tooth yet. For a little while I was a bit concerned that he might not get one as my sister’s oldest daughter is missing one canine and both my sister and I both only had 3 wisdom teeth. So it seems that not developing certain teeth might run in the family! 🙂

I was so surprised by baby G last week – he told me one morning that he made a poo in his nappy, but when I checked he didn’t. A few days later he told me the same thing and I didn’t really take much notice, until about 15 minutes later when I smelled something… I checked and this time he did tell the truth. DH and I were actually discussing when we will start potty training, and we think we might start off by putting him on a potty before bath time soon. Initially we thought we will wait until Spring, but it’s almost Spring anyway… The one problem we have is that I just keep forgetting to do it – every time when baby G is in the bath already I suddenly remember that is what I wanted to do. We’ll see how it goes, there is no pressure to do it, but it seems Baby G might not like dirty nappies anymore…

Then lastly my favourite thing about baby G nowadays is that he loves to give us lots of hugs and kisses especially at night a little before bed time. We never got kisses or hugs until only very recently and I must say we both take every hug and kiss that he will give us! He also tries to blow kisses when he goes to school in the morning, but at this stage he is still kissing the hand and waving the hand at me, no blowing yet. Very cute though.

With this last picture mommy and daddy had a little fun by dressing Baby G up as a superhero with whatever we had at hand and that was his pajamas, a nappy and a towel!

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O, How Fast They Grow!

I got a puppy for my 42nd birthday, but even though Nitro is now 7 months old, he does not look like a puppy anymore. He is just as tall as KT, and his head is just as big, but he is still quite a bit leaner than her. I cannot imagine how big he will get when he is fully grown, but I think he is going to be big for a boxer.

He is a really sweet dog though, and it was not nearly as hard raising him as I thought it would be with a toddler in the house, because we have KT and Nandi to help us, and they did a splendid job! I have to admit that our input has been less with Nitro than with all our other dogs, solely because we have baby G now and he will always be our number 1 priority above the dogs.

KT is madly in love with her new mate, she is so impressed, because Nandi is old and she just did not want to play with her as much as KT wants. KT and Nitro play with each other for hours every day, and it’s so much fun to watch. I’ve attached some video’s of Nitro playing for you.

Nitro is also so good with Baby G, it amazes me! Baby G loves to throw a ball for him and he will bring it right back and drop it on the floor so that Baby G can throw it again. They also both love to play with water and often they will get wet together. We cannot water the garden with those two nearby, because they will both be wet within minutes no matter how cold the water or the weather. There are times when Nitro is outside and baby G inside the house, and baby G will open a window and they will play together through the window. One of these games is to both lick the window on either side of the glass and sometimes there is no glass between them (yeah, I know gross!) Baby G will also throw things outside for Nitro to play with, and he pets him a lot through the window. Some days I think that Nitro is not my dog, but baby G’s dog, and that is okay with me, because our little boy sure does love dogs! It is so precious to see the bond between these two.

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What have you been saying?

I want to share this daily devotional from Jo.seph Prin.ce, of the day before yesterday:

Proverbs 18:21 21Death and life are in the power of the tongue…

Many things in life can cause us to fear—losing our jobs, deadly diseases, terrorist attacks and so on. When these things confront us, we tend to give in to worry and fear, and start talking about our fears. Job was no different. He constantly feared that God would punish him and his family because he kept thinking that his sons had sinned against God. He would get up early in the morning to offer burnt sacrifices, saying, “It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” And the Bible tells us that he did this “regularly”. (Job 1:5) So Job kept confessing the sins of his sons and fearing that something terrible would happen to him and his family. In fact, his sin-consciousness didn’t just produce fear, the Bible tells us that he “greatly feared”. (Job 3:25) It is important that we understand that it was Job’s sin-consciousness that opened the door to Satan. His preoccupation with sins that his family may have committed gave Satan the opportunity to bring death and destruction into his life. God had a hedge of protection around Job. But when he started being sin-conscious and having a fearful expectation of judgment, the hedge was removed and Satan could attack him. (Job 1:9–12) My friend, today, if you have sinned, don’t say, “I have failed again. I deserve to be punished by God.” Know that you already have forgiveness of sins because Jesus was punished and condemned in your place! (Ephesians 1:7) So say, “I am the righteousness of God in Christ. Jesus, You are my holiness and perfection.” (1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:21) We must be mindful of what we believe and say regularly because “death and life are in the power of the tongue”. So when you hear of a deadly virus taking many lives, don’t say, “I’m next because I have not been a good Christian!” Instead, say, “Jesus, You are my righteousness and protection. Surely You shall deliver me from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence!” (Psalm 91:3) Beloved, such believing and confessing not only please God, but they also shut the door on Satan so that he cannot make any inroad into your life!”

Now I want to share my own testimony, and this time its not a good testimony:

Some time before I started this blog the infertility was really weighing heavy upon me.  Often, I would look at our dog Shumi and I would think and say out loud, “thank goodness I have him, he is such a sweet dog and I love him so much.  He is my baby and I don’t know what I’ll do without him.”  Or I said, ” I don’t know what I’ll do if he should die.”  I also said a couple of times, “I’m so glad I’ve never been in a position where I had to decide whether I should euthanize one of our dogs, because I know I wouldn’t be able to make such a decision.”  I not only said those words, I really feared that something would happen to Shumi and that he would die, and I thought I would not be able to deal with his death.  I really substituted him for a baby and almost treated him like he was my baby.

When I learned so much about God’s will, supernatural healing and just generally who God is after Shumi’s diagnosis and after our miscarriage, I learnt that life and death is in the power of the tongue, and that we shall eat the fruit of it, whether we spoke life or death…  I realized that Shumi’s cancer was all my fault, because I spoke death over him, but not only that –  I really feared that he would die.  Gosh, I felt so guilty, because I knew I was responsible.  Thank the Lord that I’ve learnt so much about His Grace, that I do not feel condemned or guilty anymore, but let me tell you I’ve learnt my lesson!  I cannot stand it if someone speaks about sickness or disease, especially over Baby G, or one of us.  I will immediately counter it with something positive, and I think I’ve also come across as rude a couple of times, because I really get mad when people do that!

I’m just so grateful that I never feared or spoke death over my DH, and that I now know better with baby G!  It is such a relief to know that we are not supposed to get sick, and that God heals us if we do get sick.  Praise the Lord!

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