Chaz the middle child

Since Harriet arrived the entire house has been a pit of sickness. Poor girl is on her second cold, and so in fact has only been without a cold during the first 2 days of her short life. Charlie was very poorly with a terrible head cold and cough when we first arrived home, which made sleeping truly difficult for him (and thus for me!). And then poor Raf developed a cold and cough (usually so resilient to sickness these days) and then proceeded to give it to Harriet and now Charlie. Once again Charlie has an awful cough at night, and last night he was up virtually every 20 minutes, not really awake, but having awful dreams. I think he's really experiencing the pinch of having a new addition.. last week he developed an occasional, though very pronounced stutter, and during the night he needs to be clinging on to me when he's remotely consciously aware (and indeed even when he's sleeping and I AM cuddling him, he's shouting out for a hug from mummy, which is challenging to respond to because I already am hugging him!).

So night parenting Chaz and Hatts is exhausting and long, and I'm loathe to usurp Chaz to Raf's bunk bed because he'll inevitably find everything even harder. Poor little fellow.  He has so far not expressed resentment towards Hattie, though en route to the Drs on Monday he declared proudly, 'I don't hit babies'... surely a standard to be proud of.

He is still my funny, lovely Charlie but I must find some time to spend with just him. He's so loving towards his sister, exclaiming, 'she's so cute'! And then he asked if we had gotten her from Target!

This is me getting the youngest two to sleep.

Charlie wanted a quick snuggle with old Hatts this morning, who was desperately in need of a nap, and after a few seconds he said, 'mummy, she needs you'. 

Charlie is really enjoying his scooter. He only really properly got on it a week or so ago, and he's already really good. I gave him Raf's to practice on and he immediately started doing some 'tricks'! In a fit of guilt yesterday morning, around 5:30am (most of us had been up since 4:30am), I ordered the boys new scooters - upgrading Raf's to the next size up, and buying Charlie a new orange scooter, like Raf's yellow one. Of course Charlie could have inherited Raf's (which  was inherited from cousin Freya) but then there was he guilt..! $200 later.. gah. 

Thankfully Charlie seems mostly to be adjusting very well, though I think the colds do very little to help the situation. Also thankfully, Hatts likes being in the Moby so I've been able to take the boys to the park on most days, and to head outside with them to play on their bikes, scooters, play ground, etc. Looking forward to the day when we're not all poorly!