Just when you think everything's going fine

Why don't children come with an instruction manual? One that tells you whether something is just a thing, or something to worry about?  When does an irregular occurrence become a regular thing? A habit? A cause for concern?  Are sudden changes always a sign of something deeper?

Squeaky has been dry at night for about 2 years now.  She rarely needs to get up in the night to visit the bathroom, but when she does she does so successfully.  Even away from home, she's stayed dry, and the only times she's had a problem are when she's been unwell.  Until this weekend.  We've had 2 accidents in as many nights, both at the start of the night, shortly after she's dropped off to sleep.  I always make sure she goes to the toilet before bed, even when she insists she doesn't need to, just to try.

So why now?  What's the sudden change? Are two consecutive nights enough to be a pattern?  If not, how many are?  I've asked her all the right questions, gone through the whole "no secrets from mummy" thing but she's not giving me anything, except that she tries to stay awake so that she can think about being with a boy in her class that she has a crush on.  She hasn't mentioned any pain, there's nothing obviously different about this pee to normal pee, and I'm stumped.

Over to you, wise and mighty readers.  Any suggestions?  I don't want to drag her to the doctor's just yet, when she's not saying anything, and I know they don't really have anything to offer anyway (and I'm due to be free from health visitors next week, hooray!).  I guess these are the times I should make the most of where I work and ask the advice of the many & varied other health visitors & medical bods in the office, off the record.  My washing machine has gone into overdrive, and it's not the time of year I can dry things outside, if you know what I mean.  Things are complicated.

Can you hear the spin cycle?

Coupled with another phase of nightmares, and a few nosebleeds for good measure, neither Squeaky nor I are getting the sleep we need.  Send matchsticks, coffee and chocolate.  Please?

Who Fights The Monsters Under The Bed?

L-R: Mickey, Big Peppa, Baby, George, Daisy 1, Peppa,
 Daisy 2, Daddy Soup-Dragon, Mummy Soup-Dragon, Nessie

Monsters!  A serious consideration in every home.  Not just Freezer Gremlins (they're the ones who eat the last bit of ice-cream & put the empty tub back in the freezer), or Sock Elves, but UnderBed Monsters.  A plague for right-minded families the world over!

Since we moved house, and Squeaky moved into her Big Girl Bed, we seem to be monster free.  At least this far.  We have had "people" under the bed, who turned out to be Mickey Mouse & one of the Upsy Daisy twins, and apparently Daddy was under there the other day (he wasn't, he was at work), but thus far our new house seems to be Monster Free.

The Soup-Dragon family portrait

Hooray!  But before we get too excited about that, lets consider why.  In our old, creaky house, Squeaky's bedtime companions consisted of Big Bunny, Little Bunny, an Upsy Daisy or three, and occasional visits from Peppa Pig.  Bunnies, Daisies, and Peppa aren't really known for their monster fighting abilities, and as a result, Squeaky's sleep was often disturbed by the monsters moving around beneath her.

In her new, Big Girl Bed, there's a lot more space for company.  Big Bunny & Little Bunny have moved out of the bed to a new home guarding her clothes and books, and in their place we have...
At least one Upsy Daisy (sometimes up to 3)
Mickey Mouse
Baby
Peppa Pig
Georgie Pig
Big Peppa Pig

Nessie Soup-Dragon & family.

Soup-Dragon family on patrol

The latter are the best at monster fighting.  Who better to defend your sleep from underbed monsters than the legendary Loch Ness Monster, Nessie, and her Mummy & Daddy?  Mummy and Daddy are in fact a pair of Soup Dragons, of Clangers fame, but according to Squeaky they are Nessie's Mummy & Daddy.  And who am I to argue?

As far as our bedroom goes, I'm waiting to find out.  There was no space for monsters under the bed in our old house, as the space under the bed was filled with suitcases, shoes, and discarded books.  Now there's a great big empty space.  Actually though, that might be better.  If there's nothing under there, there's nowhere for a monster to hide.  Is there?? Help?  What was that noise?

This post is my entry to the Warren Evans Who Fights The Monsters blog competition.

In the middle of the night...

We've been fairly lucky with Squeaky. With a few, easily fixed exceptions, she's been a pretty good sleeper until now.

She outgrew her 12-18 month sleeping bags about a month ago, and I put a phase of night-waking after this down to her being a little wriggler, and getting cold when she's fidgeted out of her blankets.  But as you'll have seen on last week's Magpie Monday post (or if you're the fab folks at Dream Bag), she's now got a couple of 18-36 month sleeping bags, and so should be plenty warm enough at least until the really cold weather kicks in.

Has that solved it?  The bags under my eyes would suggest no.  She's had a few Night Terrors in the past, but that's not it this time,  none of that absent screaming, but it certainly seems like nightmares.  She's properly awake, but wide eyed and unsettled, and will only calm down with attention, cuddles, and me being awake far more than I'm asleep.  She's 19 months old, should we have got past this by now?  Someone pass the red bull.

Magpie Monday - Back on it again

After a break due to, well, all sorts of stuff really, we're back on the Magpie Monday trail today.

We were talking last week in work about charity shopping & the like, and I learned that the big car boot sale on Sundays, that had mysteriously vanished for a while, was back, and as big as ever. So yesterday we took a little ride out over there to see what we could find.

I bought some fake designer make-up, so if Caerphilly's trading standards are reading this, get in touch & I'll find the bloke for you.  I actually don't mind, it seems pretty good quality, but we'll reconsider it after a day's wear.  How do I know it's fake? Aside from the price, there's spelling mistakes on the back of the packs, which is always a giveaway.  No photos of this, because, well, who really wants to see my makeup?

I also bought this lovely cross stitch kit.  I've recently got back into cross stitch after brief, failed excursions into things like knitting & crochet, and the kits are SO expensive.  The lady even threw in some sparkly pipe cleaners, so I'm open to suggestions for what I can do with them? Sparkly Hallowe'en spiders?  I've lost all my crafting ideas.

And finally...  Squeaky's been having sleeping "issues" lately.  She's outgrown her 12-18 month sleeping bags, and is such a little wriggler, she fidgets out from under the covers and then wakes up at about 5 in the morning, freezing cold, and ends up having cuddles with me to go back off to sleep.  18m+ sleeping bags are really hard to come by, at least in normal shops. I've found some online but dear me, they're expensive.  You can imagine how happy I was to find this one on the last row of the boot sale, and how even more excited to find that the lady only wanted 50p for it!  I could have kissed her!  Quick whizz through the machine & it'll be saving my sleep and sanity.

More magpies at

Things that go *BUMP* in the night

One thing I've learned over the past almost-year (oh sweet Pete, she's going to be 1 in a couple of weeks!) is that no matter how many times you say "I'm not going to do X", life's not that simple.  Babies don't read the book.

Last night, Squeaky went to bed beautifully, asleep in 20 minutes, snuffling peacefully to herself.  So I went in the shower.  That was my mistake. She knows when I'm out of circulation for a few minutes, and so she started crying.  No, not crying, screaming & howling, like she was in pain.  SqueakyDaddy went up to her to try and settle her, to no avail.  Calpol, Bonjela, no change.  We brought her downstairs, by which point her diaphragm is in spasm &she's gasping (I won't call it hiccuping, but it's not a million miles removed), and still howling.  I got half a wrap of Teetha into her, the rest went down her front, and the chamomile seemed to settle her a little bit, and she went from howls of pain to "normal" angry & tired crying.  Still with no intention of settling down.

So I gave in.  Bear in mind at this point, I've been in the shower, and so I'm in my pyjamas.  Unzipped the bottom of her growbag (Ikea, I love you right now), stuck her in the car seat, grabbed a cardigan so I didn't look completely weird, and off we go for a drive.  Half a minute after setting off, she's dropped off.  A nice 20 minute ride round the bypass to make sure she was actually asleep & not just pretending, and back home.  Left her a few minutes in the car seat when we got back in the house (yes, she still uses her infant carrier, she's too weeny for the next car seats yet), and then to bed.

Blissfully, she only woke once after that, about half 3, so we got a decent night's sleep once we'd all calmed down.  But I swore I wasn't going to drive round with her to send her to sleep, I'm too worried about it becoming habit, that she won't sleep without a tour of Merthyr & the soothing tones of whoever was on Radio 4 at 10 last night.  But needs must, and if I hadn't, she'd probably still be howling now. 

She's fine this morning, you wouldn't know any difference. And we're not so bad, because she let us sleep most of the night.  But ARGH! I'm so cross with myself for giving in to the driving around til she falls asleep tactic.

A quiet week (or two?)

It's been a while, however long it is.  Bad Blogger, no biscuit.

What's been happening in Squeaky World, then? We went to Grandma & Grandpa Squeaky's house last week, so SqueakyDaddy & I could go to the theatre, and she could menace my parents.  And menace she did.  Even though one tooth has come through, the other bottom tooth is still giving her all sorts of problems, and she squeaked and squawked and squealed and generally refused to go to bed until we got home.  Oh dear.  She's 8 & a bit months now though, I think a lot of it is separation anxiety, though I don't know how to deal with it.  Apparently she would settle and go to sleep on either of my parents, but wouldn't go in the cot, and just created every time they tried, so she kept them up all evening.  Little minx.

And then, she was having a dodgy evening at home on Tuesday, and it took both me & SqueakyDaddy to calm her.  During this time, SqueakyDaddy spotted that the curtains were slightly apart, and gave them a quick tweak.  Which somehow turned into Total Existence Failure and a curtain rail on the floor.  So Squeaky has had to spend the last couple of nights in the travel cot in our bedroom while we get the gear together to put a new rail up and rehang the curtains.  Grrr.

But is this child ever mobile?  I can't believe it's been only a month since she mastered the art of crawling.  Seemingly that's not enough for her.  Now she's pulling herself up with ever-greater confidence & ability, and starting to try and walk.  Hasn't she read the books?  She's not meant to be doing this yet!  I took her into Clarks' on Monday to get her feet measured, so I could *consider* buying shoes, and her feet are still too small for even the littlest size, so she'll just have to deal with socks or tights.  She takes shoes off as soon as I put them on her, anyway, so it's probably not a bad thing.  We'd only end up losing a shoe somewhere silly.

Moving on

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the big news items in Squeaky's world over the last couple of weeks is that she's moved into her own bedroom at last!  It's taken time, for a fair number of reasons, not least being that I needed to sort out the junk that had accumulated in her room & decorate it, but now she's there.

With teething at the same time, maybe it wasn't the ideal moment, but it was overdue, and it's done.  We've kept a single bed in there for the time being, and so if she has a bad night, I can sleep in there with her to be able to comfort her without waking SqueakyDaddy.  And we have had some difficult nights.  I've spent a couple of full nights in there, and a couple of half nights, but I'm determined to make it stick, and I'm not bringing her back into our room.  Not now.  I guess it's a combination of things - being in the room on her own & not being able to hear us, it's darker than our room, it smells different (new furniture, etc), the light from the baby monitor & smoke/co alarms, and the ever present teeth.

It's done though, and I'm so pleased.  The room's lovely, and almost finished, though I want to add a few more stencils when I get chance (this weekend, maybe?).  The walls are a slightly terrifying shade of peptobismol pink, the carpet's denim blue (chosen long before Squeaky came along, but it's the only new carpet in the house & I'm not changing it), dark red curtains.  I wanted to put some sort of design on the walls, not a frieze, and nothing too complicated because I've painted over the textured wallpaper (the walls in this house are craptastic & I really didn't want the hassle)  So I went looking for some sort of simple stencils I could use, without costing me a fortune.  And I found shaped cookie cutters in the pound shop - hearts, flowers & stars, in varying sizes.  Look! 

There's more that I haven't photographed - bright BRIGHT green stars over the top of the window, and stars in 2 shades of blue around the cot, but this gives you an idea.  The paints I used for the designs were all sample pots from B&Q's kids range. I don't think I could live with any of them for an entire wall, never mind a room, but for details, they're great.

Honestly, I could have spent a fortune in doing this, but 7 test pots at about 75p each = £5.25, plus £3 for the stencils.  If telly hadn't moved on from interior design to antiques & property development, I'd be camped outside the BBC right now demanding a job.  In fact, maybe I will do anyway, can't hurt, can it?

Noms

As I've said before, Squeaky isn't the biggest of babies.  It's strange sometimes putting her down next to her peers, she looks a month or two younger than she is, but she's bang on target (or ahead of) in terms of sitting, crawling etc. It takes other people by surprise more than it does me.

Well anyway.  The last few days her appetite's been a bit upside down, with feeling grotty & full of cold.  But I think today, we can officially say we're back to normal.  Whole bowl of baby porridge.  A couple of organic carrot crispy things.  Half a jar of veg & noodle (smelled lush) stage 2 jar.  A whole dairylea triangle.  A decent sized bowl of homemade turkey cassserole thing.  About 3 sticks of cheddar cheese (fed to herself, too!)  AND a pot of apple & blackcurrant fruit goop.  My my, I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's nappies!

Her eating has really picked up in the last few weeks, pretty closely matching the fact she's getting more & more active, I guess.  And though her weight gain is fairly slow & steady, she looks like she's getting bigger, so I'm more interested in what her clothes say than what the scales say.  She's happy & healthy and growing & doing.  Yeah, things are good today.

And tonight she's gone off to sleep properly without an hour of performing & crying, like we've had the rest of the week.  Whether it's that she's feeling better, or whether it's the Baby Einstein Vivaldi cd I picked up in the pound shop this morning, she's asleep, and I can relax at last.

Milestones

Squeaky keeps on growing, as a good baby should, I guess. And now she's getting almost too big for her moses basket, or at least to be in there safely all night, as she's fidgety. About a week ago, then, I put up her cot. So rather than being flat-packed & blocking the bedroom door a bit, it takes up most of the available floorspace that wasn't already filled with bed & wardrobe.

That's not the point though. The point is, last night, my little girl spent her first night in her big girl bed. Admittedly in her moses basket in the bed, but in her proper big girl bed, on her own.

How did I get such a placid, accepting baby. All the books and the people tell you that "Oh, she'll be all freaked out by the big bed, and not being RIGHT next to you", but she was absolutely fine, calm & sleeping peacefully. The only one who was freaked out by her not being RIGHT next to me was, errr, me! I think that's probably going to be the pattern for the rest of her life - she just gets on and does, and it's me who freaks.

Oh, and right now? She's grabbing Tigger's tail on her play gym, blowing raspberries and growling.