Weekending

It's been a mix of a weekend - highs and lows. L's done a great summary of how Zachary's getting on here, and this summarises the lows of the weekend neatly (along with lots of really great stuff Z's been doing). As he says, we've had a bit of a nightmare with Z over the past week and had real problems getting him to sleep in his cot. Last night was absolutely awful until we finally managed to get him to sleep (with another feed) and his cries were real screams. I tried to give him some skin to skin time but that just seemed to make things worse. So we bought a dummy today and it seems to have worked.

It's really strange - I know plenty of mums who've probably had no qualms at all about using a dummy but I really felt we'd be able to managed without one especially as Z had started to suck his hand to self-comfort. It felt like we'd given in when we bought them today but he had trouble dropping off again tonight and the extra comfort seems to have worked. We had thought it might be his tummy (eczema) causing the problem, but you could quite often get him settled on a shoulder (tummy therefore rubbing against you) but he'd complain as soon as he was put in the cot. And in fact I think we've talked through every possible reason for this sudden dislike/discomfort in his cot and it seems as though it may just be him growing and changing in his needs. So we'll see how we get on.

Otherwise Z's been a real joy recently and the daytimes are lovely with him - full of smiles and so alert and wanting to interact. He's also got a new noise now which he's been trying out today - an almost raspberry! It's producing more bubbles and saliva than rasp at the moment but he sounds lovely trying it out.

The other question that's been bugging us is whether it would be mean for us to teach him the wrong pronunciation of words...yes I know it would! But it might be funny for a while...see I knew there was a reason we shouldn't be parents!

Apart from the nights, the weekend's been great and my sister and brother-in-law stayed last night and played board games by the bucket load with us. Ralph won the most games of all of us - bah! My Ticket to Ride performances was abysmal (because I was left piddling about in Europe - sorry Western Europe as my playmates were quick to point out!) to say the least, but we did have fun being mad scientists for It's Alive. Like Beetle but building a Frankenstein's monster. Despite L's claim that he would out-mad-scientist us all, Ralph won both of those games.

So now it's off to the Geek to record some game playing!