Becky's blog

What celebrity do you most often get told you resemble? 
Submitted by Leets.  

I used to be referred to as 'Phoebe from Friends' when I was at university.  More for my ditziness than my long blonde hair.  Thankfully now I am a little less ditzy.

Rohan has officially been one for a day and a bit now.  Finally!  As he is the youngest of our NCT group it seemed like ages to wait.

Yesterday we had a very nice day in the New Forest.  We'd never been there before and it was nice to get away from the rat race of London......oh hang on...I'm no longer part of the rat race.  Anyway the good old fashioned English countryside never fails to live up to expectations.  The air is so much fresher outside London.

When we got back in the late afternoon my parents and brother came over, to see Rohan on his birthday, and stayed for dinner.

All-in-all it was a lovely day, if a little tiring.

Oh - and the pain of a year ago is not entirely forgotten!

It is probably just as well that I am not going back to work for the foreseeable future.  I am so busy I have no time to work.  Keeping tabs on Rohan's various comittments takes up all of my time. 

On Tuesdays we have the library reading session, where we have made ourselves infamous.  Rohan always starts off by climbing up the librarian's trousers and stands there bashing the books on her knees.  I make a good old fool of myself singing along tunelessly to the nursery rhymes, while Rohan pulls the books off the shelves once he tires of the librarian.  I only go for the sticker Baby boy gets at the end.  It is more fun because usually Christina (Katie's nanny) is there with Kamini and the two babies create merry havoc together.

Wednesday is Gymboree, which Rohan loves.

Thursday is Caterpiller Music, which I love.

Friday we go to my parents, which they love.

As all of the activities are in the afternoons one or more of the girls are usually around for a spot of lunch beforehand.  At the moment I have Monday off, but as I say...there is always lunch!

I can't believe it has been so long since I visited Vox!  So much has happened...

Baby boy is now walking - well cruising while holiding on to various bits of furniture.  He had a bout of diarrhea and vomiting in mid-June.  The poor love lost so much wieght.  Horribleness was coming out of one end quickly follwoed by the other end.  It was a very uncomfortable few days for him.

He is now no longer allowed near the computer.  We used to do bits on the comp with Rohan on our knees, and he became very interested in learning to type...a little too interested.  He would bang his hand on the keyboard and we would discover the z key in his hands.  One day he ripped the Shift key off so hard I thought it was busted.  When Neil got home from work it took him nearly an hour to fit it back on - it's still not completely right.

I got a nice big cheque from ex-work at the beginning of July.  Now I am officially a 'Stay at Home Mother'.  ARGH!

A right of passage took place on Wednesday.  We went and bought Rohan his first pair of shoes!  Very exciting and very expensive.  I was delaying this moment for ages as I am a great believer in bare feet, if I could get away with never wearing shoes I would.  Anyway it got to the point where when we are and about Rohan doesn't always want to stay in the highchair and wants to stand for a bit, and I wasn't letting him out of the highchair as there is no telling what he would put his feet in, more than likely it would be the food he himself has thrown on the floor.  So shoes were bought...and socks as he hasn't worn socks for months either and they were all too small.

From son to father - Neil passed his driving test on Monday!  Yay!  He took his theory test a couple of weeks back and the earliest he could get a practical test locally was September, so he looked further afield.  He ended up finding a spare slot in Chertsey, so off we went.  Finally we could get rid of those 'L' plates.  I had forgotten what the car looked like without them.

...contractions started.

It all seems so long ago.

In my last post I promised to put some photos up of Baby boy - so here they are.

These were taken on a trip to Cheltenham in March...

And these were taken on Rohan and Ariadna's first time on the swings in April..

Baby boy is 10 months old today!  It is amazing to think that he has survived nearly a year with me!

He was ill again over the weekend and is now completely off his food, it is turning into a monthly thing now so I'm not too worried.  Just frustrated at feed times.  Hey ho...

But in this post I don't want to talk about that stuff.  I want to talk about just how great Rohan is. 

He is a happy, smiley, sweet, confident baby boy.  He learnt to clap a few weeks ago and has been clapping at the most annoying things, like when he decides he doesn't want any more to eat...usually after about two mouthfuls!  And he has such a lovely mischievious smile when he claps.

He might not want to eat his food, but he does chew on other things.  His favourite is cables.  Especially the S Video cable Neil has sticking out of the telly, and one of the network cables.  For some reason he prefers the orange one to the yellow one.  Another activity is using the sofa to stand and then chewing on the sofa.

After a couple of months of crawling commando style - like a soldier crawling under the nets type thing, today he crawled on all fours.  After weeks of attempting it he finally managed it!

He can now use almost anything to support himself to a standing position. Chairs, sofas, magazine racks, my knees, my mother's knees, you name it.  He is also good a various yoga position

His vocabulary is quite extensive too.  He has moved on from da...da to adadada, idldidldidl, glouchhhh, gligligligla and whole sentences made up of such sounds.  Although he hasn't once said goo goo ga ga.

It's been about a week now that I have dispensed with the baby bath.  I know that he is 10 months and he has been ready for the big bath for about a month or so, but moving on to the big bath is one more step away from being my baby.  But after three days of trying to climb out of the baby bath convinced me that it is time to get rid of it.

Over the weekend we finally made some purchases we should have done months ago - most importantly we have bought a highchair!  It arrived this morning and now we need to put it together.  Knowing us it might be a couple of months for us to get around to it!  We also bought a booster seat and used that today - he looks so grown up sitting on a 'proper' chair.

I must put more photos on here.  That's next I think.

Up until last week we slept with a night light on in our room.  It started off after Rohan was born because he was waking up so often during the night for a feed it helped me to see what I was doing.

About a week ago now I forgot to switch the night light on before his 7pm feed and decided to keep it switched off.  As it is light till quite late there was enough light to see by.  I did think that Baby boy might as first be a little scared waking up in the dark, but it doesn't seem to have affecrted him.  Most importantly he can still find his milk in the dark when he needs it!

I had been thinking of keeping the night light off for a while now, but just never got around to carrying it through.  It is one of the best things I've done because I am sleeping so well.  The few hours of sleep I do get between feeds are really deep and I don't feel as tired as before. 

For the first few days Rohan slept really well too, he has been waking up a little more the last two nights.  I think that is mainly because he isn't eating too much during the day though (still an issue) rather than the night light being off.

Sunday could have been a sad day in the Chakraborty household......well, I would have been the only one to feel sad.

About three weeks ago after nine months of b-feeding Rohan I decided that I would start to cut down.  Out I popped and bought the requisite formula all set to drop one feed for formula.  I didn't though, and then baby Ro got ill so I thought it best not to change anything.  Finally on Sunday I bit the bullet and gave him the formula.

It is the first time he has had any formula for several months.  And even before when he did have formula it was either to top up a b-feed or because I was out and it was more convenient.  Now I am planning to replace the feed with formula it is a different prospect altogether.

Formula was poured into a beaker and with a tear in my eye offered to Baby.  He took a few sips and then pushed it away, tried again, another push.  Maybe he wants it warmed up?  So after warming it up it was offered again, once more after a few sips it was pushed away to the point he arched his back to get as far away from the beaker as possible. 

Feeling quite smug I made myself comfortable on the sofa with the baby, the formula remained un-drunk.

Que that sketch from Little Britain...

What is it with diamonds at the moment?  Now don't get me wrong - I love a sparkler and a bit of bling.

Though I am convinced there must have been a job lot of diamonds that fell of the back of a truck recently.  Why do I think this?  Because they seem to be given away at the drop of a hat.

There are ads on tv at the moment for two products which are giving customers a chance to win a diamond - Smirnoff vodka and Fairy washing up liquid.  Smirnoff are using the 'our vodka is as pure as a diamond' line and Fairy is using 'your dishes can sparkle just like a diamond'.

It's very suspicious that these campaigns are running at the same time...even more suspicious that the diamonds being given away by both companies are 0.4ct......told you there was a job lot that fell off the back of a truck.