New words.

My son has been saying a lot of new words lately. Because of his tongue-tie, he can’t pronounce them properly. Or it might just be because he is only just turned 2, but I think the tongue tie does inhibit him to some degree.

His new words this week:

“bow”= bike

“wowa” = flower

“bubba” = butter

These are the words he’s learned previously:

“doh” = dog

“bo-uu” = bottle

“here-aye” = here ya (short for ‘here you are’, that one is my fault, I say ‘here ya are’ a lot)

“bir” = bird

“car” car (he’s been saying this one for a while now)

“aye-ee” = empty. Mostly used when shaking his empty drink bottle

“eeee-eeee” = his whinnie the poo comforter. He can’t say “Whinnie” so eee-eee is the closest thing he can manage.

He is making a lot of interesting sounds as well, that might be words forming but nothing is very clear yet.

I need to book an appointment with the surgeon to start the procedure of getting his tongue-tie corrected. Then I’m sure the words will flow.

I also love the hand gestures he’s learnt to get his needs across to us. Signs like putting his hands on his lips and nodding means that he is hungry. And a few times he’s grabbed his nappy to show us he needed changing! Brushing his teeth he makes a motion with his hands and mouth to mimic using a toothbrush.

Of course we think every small sound he makes and every hand gesture he performs is absolutely adorable. What doting parent wouldn’t?

Time flies…

Busy days lately. Busy days indeed…

I barely have any time to myself these days. My son is such a handful now. A lovable, happy and energetic handful. I adore him.

It’s the other baby that annoys me these days. The one that is capable of doing things for himself, but seems to think I enjoy running around after him? I assure you, I don’t.

One baby is enough to handle, I don’t need a big, grown up baby who is old enough and mature enough to know better.

Lately, as soon as I put my son to sleep, the demands start.

“I’m hungry”

“can you make me a coffee?”

“can you put my clothes in the wash?”

“can you put my clothes in the dryer”

“I need another coffee”

“I want vegetables, I’m breaking out in pimples.” (this is after I’ve already COOKED him a meal..

“can you turn the tv on/off/volume up/down/dvd on/off” WHATEVER

Oh, and the finale..

“I need you to drive me to work.”

Even though he has just spend $10k on a brand new motorcycle, gear and accessories, he still hardly rides the damn thing. Complains that it takes too long to get changed at work, etc.

Excuses.

He doesn’t care when our son has a nap. I have to get him up and take him with us, in the car. He doesn’t care that my life is busy enough as it is, that I am not his slave, that I cannot spend my time running around after him. He is a demanding, selfish, rude, clinging baby. Who knows better. Wtf is wrong with men anyway? Please tell me they don’t all behave like this. It’s like he sees me look after our son, and thinks he can get away with being treated the same way? It’s exhausting me.

He also wants me to stay up to 2 or 3am to help him study for his degree. He’s just started it and wants me to help him on the first subject. So many subjects to do… I can see how this is going to go… somebody get me outta here! I need to be up at 7am for my son. No matter how many times I tell him this, he either gets the shits, or just ignores me. Most of the time I am nodding off at the keyboard and he gets annoyed with me then. Oh, but he can sleep till lunch time if he wants, he does the evening shift. No matter what, I have to get up with my son. Lately I’m surviving on 5 or so hours of sleep. It’s nowhere near enough.

I need some room to breathe. It’s all too much lately.

Mean Kids, Part II

I couldn’t avoid it without upsetting my friend, so we ended up having another play date at her house. Beforehand we did talk about her son’s behaviour, and she revealed to me that she is very aware that he has behavioural issues. That was a huge relief to me,  she knows and is actively working to correct the problem before it grows.

The kids are only toddlers, after all. Mine is almost 2 and hers is only just 2. I know the biting, hitting and screaming is normal for toddlers, it’s just that mine doesn’t do it to other kids. Yet. And I don’t like seeing it happen to him, he doesn’t fight back or defend himself.

So, we had a play date, and it went really well, surprisingly! A few little incidents, nothing big. My son started to learn when her son wants his space, and he also learned not to get on a favourite bike or pick a toy out of the other boy’s hand. Her son learned that he gets in trouble if he is a bully in any way.

I think it needs work, but I’m happy with the way the day turned out. It’s a learning experience for all of us.

The addiction that is WoW

I almost picked up a WoW gamecard yesterday. Almost.

I’ve been itching to play lately. Now that I can’t play, it’s all I want to do. Well, not really. But it would be nice to play sometimes when my son is asleep!

But… *sigh*… I’ve put it off for another 2 weeks. It’s not a high priority and so other things must come first. And then I wonder, what new things are there to do in WoW right now?

Sure, I could do lots of dailies and make a mountain of GOLD, and spend it on random crap in the AH, but there is nothing that I want.

I could level up my first horde toon (she’s 30 now) and see what it’s like on horde side for battlegrounds, etc. Maybe I can finally understand why horde wins most of the time… but, at the moment it seems like too much work.

I could spend my time grinding for materials to sell or make stuff, but… bleh… boring… = /

Hurry up WoTLK, I need something new to do!

Does anyone miss the old WoW, when blues were hard to get and epics meant you were in a 40 man raid, and seeing posts in LFG channel for “LF2M dps 10man STRAT, have healers”…  and trying to find someone that actually had their key for UBRS was difficult at the best of times?

Sometimes I do.

Mean kids

I think I am very lucky with my son. He is nearly two and so far hasn’t shown any of the typical toddler issues, such as biting, pushing, etc. other kids. He is very social and loves playing with other kids, but with one kid in particular I am concerned about having them play together anymore.

Oh boy, that sentence was terrible. = /

Anyway. We went on an outing. Me, my son, my friend and her son. Her son is not much older than mine. On several occasions I saw her son try to bite my son. He also pushed him over and hit him, and raged at him for going near a swing… All this got very little discipline from his mother. I know this behaviour is supposed to be normal for toddlers but I think it is also meant to be discouraged. I can understand if it is to do with playing with toys that belong to the other kid. But in this case, it was on a neutral playground. The other kid got extremely territorial about, well, basically the entire area and any time my son went near him, he went feral. He also pushed another little boy over and made him cry. Again, my friend didn’t do anything.

It’s a touchy subject to bring up with anyone. “Oh hey, your kid is acting feral towards my kid, are you going to let him know that it’s not acceptable behaviour?” I honestly think she knows but doesn’t know what to do about it.

For the meantime, I think our play dates will be limited or suspended until they are a bit older. I sometimes think that her kid just doesn’t like mine. Or any other kids his age…

At times like this, I realise how lucky I am to have not had these problems yet with my boy. But then again, he is still very young so I suppose they could still manifest themselves over the next year.

We’ll see what happens.

Argh!

Toddlers can sometimes be very frustrating. They are so strong willed and naughty!

Today I took my little one grocery shopping. He is usually very good when I take him out, he loves seeing all the different people and tries to strike up babble conversations with randoms wherever we go. But today, he was a nightmare.

He wouldn’t stop grabbing for every thing he could see! Glass jars of jam, boxes, shiny packets… it never ended. I’d tell him No and move his hand away (before he knocked whatever it was to smash on the ground, that would be the last thing I’d need) and instantly he was reaching for something else. Here I am, browsing the shelves and I suddenly realise that my little angel is trying to undo his trolley belt and literally throw himself sideways out of the trolley to reach the shelf.

Stress levels rising…

To make it worse, somehow he kicked off his shoe. As we were shopping, at one point I looked down and saw one shoe was missing. I’d only walked up 3 isles, so I went back trying to find the missing shoe, but no… it was gone. Hopefully just fallen under a shelf, but I couldn’t see it. I asked at the counter and nobody had handed it up. Who would want one shoe? I don’t get why anyone would take it. I got told to come back in a few days as it may yet turn up, but I’m not holding my breath…

It is so hard to find good shoes that fit him, too. His foot is very broad and most shoes his size in length don’t fit him in width. Sigh…

It’s not the first time he’s done this kind of thing when are out shopping, either. I think he must get very bored sometimes because he just throws whatever he is holding at random moments. I usually see him doing it when he is in the pram, but if he is in the trolley seat I may not notice. A few weeks ago he brought his Whinnie the Pooh comforter with him into the store with me. I know he had it when we reached the 7th aisle, but by the 11th aisle it was gone. I went back to try to find it but somebody had picked it up. Nobody handed it up to the front desk though. I thought it was really slack that someone would steal a child’s comforter toy but I guess you can’t trust anyone to do the right thing these days Luckily I have 3 other comforters exactly the same. He sleeps with them so we need to have one available for him or he won’t settle down. So that incident was a bit annoying, but losing a shoe has got me well and truly frustrated.

I guess I’ll just chalk this one down to experience and hope that it doesn’t happen again. Laces and velcro straps are what I’ll be looking for in a shoe for him in the future. Something he can’t kick off his foot!

Some random World of Warcraft thoughts.

Haha, reading my second post on this blog, I have to admit…

I have stopped playing WoW.

For the time being, anyway. Actually, I miss it!

Silly to miss a game. I should say, I miss talking to the people on it. The people I’ve chatted with over the last 3 years.

I’m thinking of picking up a game card today. Or I may wait 2 more weeks, we’ll see…

WoW just takes up too much time. It takes forever to get a character to 70, and once you are there you have to get epics for it… blues won’t do, not anymore…

It’s too hard to keep multiple 70’s, unless you have no life, that is.

And when the expansion pack comes out, I will have to level those 70’s to 80. Not my idea of fun. New zones are great, but I’d rather the level cap stay 70. All my time and effort put in with raids, pvp and the rest, just to have everything replaced by level 80.

People seem to be leaving this game in droves, for Age of Conan and Warhammer when it comes out. My computer is too crappy to play AoC but I am still curious to try out these new MMO’s. Don’t get me wrong, I still like WoW. I’m just a little tired of it right now.

Toddler tantrums

Today was my friend’s sons 2nd birthday. She’d organised a party for him with family and friends. I took Josh along, planning to only go for a couple of hours so that he wouldn’t miss his afternoon nap. Josh can be a bit of a handful at times so I thought this would be a good opportunity to run around and work off some energy.

Just wow… He did not stop moving the entire time we were there! Down the stairs, up the stairs. Into the back yard, into the house. On the patio, off the patio… I had to keep a close eye on him as he is still a baby and was the youngest kid there. He was very social and outgoing and tried to have conversations with everyone he saw in that little babble language of his, complete with hand gestures. My kid is definitely an extrovert. I think he stole the show with that personality of his.

On the other hand, the birthday boy (I’ll call him Dan in this blog) was very quiet and kept throwing tantrums. He kept hiding from everyone and didn’t want anybody to touch his toys. I think he was very overwhelmed by the attention and his mum said he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. I took lots of photos and managed to get a couple of nice ones of him playing with a new toy and not crying, which was nice.

It got me thinking on how different these two children are. I know that we (the mothers) were hoping they will be friends as they get older. So far I’m not sure, their personalities are very different. Josh is very outgoing, talkative, and shares his toys freely. Dan seems to be very territorial of his toys and he is also very shy. He doesn’t seem to like playing with Josh much. Maybe Josh is just a tad overwhelming for him. Dan also seems to have a little bit of a mean streak. Once he slammed Josh’s fingers hard in the screen door. Josh burst into tears, Dan thought it was very funny and tried to do it again. His mum didn’t really discipline him, either. I suppose that doesn’t help too much.

Josh’s birthday is coming up in August. I’m not sure if I’ll throw him a party, I don’t know many other people with babies around his age to stop the party becoming just a house full of adults. I think I need to join a play group or something, to meet more mums with bubs.

But, party or no party, I’ll make sure Josh still has a great day

So much for blogging…

I wanted to keep a regular blog here, but so far I’ve written hardly a thing!

That is life, I suppose. Too busy these days, but I love it.

I never thought I’d be able to handle being up at 7am each day, but here I am. No days off to sleep in, my son won’t let me. I used to love sleeping in. But now, I like being up early, I get the most out of each day this way. Besides, I’m getting hooked on kid’s TV shows. In the Night Garden, specifically.

I think I am more interested in this show than my toddler! I especially love the introduction. The stars become flowers opening and they fill the screen, then part to show the night garden. It’s lovely.

A short Introduction

I thought I should write a short introduction on myself here. I know all of this info is over on my old diary, where I started writing in 2002, but I’m making a bit of a fresh start here in order to find some inspiration to blog again. So, here goes…

I am a 32 year old female living in Australia. I was doing web design before getting sick in 2005. At first it was my gall bladder, then my liver. For a long time I did not feel well at all. At this point in time my liver is still sick but I actually feel fine, suprisingly.

I have a 20 month old son. He is my world. He is a gorgeous, happy and outgoing little boy and he is adored by everyone around him. His star sign is Leo and already I see that when he grows up he won’t have any social problems. At least, I hope he won’t. He doesn’t seem to be at all introverted like his mum!

I have been with my partner for around 6 years now. We are not married. At this point in time, we have no plans to get married. Why, you may ask? In truth, I don’t know. I’ve never been too interested in the idea. I’m not saying marriage will never happen, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.

Some random facts:

• I grew up on rural acreage and had animals all of my life. Horses, donkeys, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats, birds, rats… Now I have not one single pet. It’s strange not having any pets to care for now but since all of my time is taken up with my baby boy, it’s probably for the best!
• I am addicted to online gaming. Or, rather, I am addicted to World of Warcraft. I’ve been playing since launch. I don’t play nearly as much as I used to, these days I log on to play only when my son is asleep and all of the household chores are done. People don’t realise that games like these aren’t just games. They become a kind of social utility. I log on and chat to people I’ve known in-game for 3 years. These are people I hope that once the game dies (and it will, eventually. All games do) that we will still be able to remain internet friends.
• My favourite colour is purple.
• My favourite movies are the scary horror type, but I can watch almost anything aside from war or musicals.
• My music tastes vary greatly, from classical to heavy metal.
• I love the Wii!
• Erm, what else can I put here… mind has gone blank. I’ll finish this later!