Me and Mine {February 2015}

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February is almost at a close (how did it happen so quickly?) and I seem to have run out of time to get a whole family shot. So that’s my first learning point. So this months ‘Me and Mine’ is going to be made of lots of photos of us as a family.

This month there has been lots going on for such a short month. I’ve never been keen on February. I guess maybe as its seems as far away from Christmas as you can get. January doesn’t count because it still seems part of it and it’s still fresh in our minds.

This month Flixster went to his first birthday party. A little boy that we know from breastfeeding group was turning one and invited a few of us along to a baby sensory circus themed party. It was lots of fun!
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The boys have been growing together and are playing with each other more and more, which is lovely to see.

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Flixster and I had a private consultation with a sling specialist to learn how to use the wrap for back carries. It was money very well spent as I now know how to safely put him up on my back.

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We spent a lovely sunny Sunday in Lytham with my mum and dad which I wrote about in a previous post.
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And I captured this shot of myself with the boys, we weren’t dressed up but we were having lovely cuddles.

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{February 2015)

 

Mummy is currently enjoying:
Watching the new series of ‘House of Cards’
The view from the kitchen window now the front garden is complete
Looking forward to our Center Parcs trip

Daddy is currently enjoying:
Reading ‘Gone Girl’
Trying different teas from around the world
Playing ‘Halo – Master Chief Collection’ on Xbox

The boy is currently enjoying:
Watching ‘Twirlywoos’ on Cbeebies
Reading Biff, Chip and Kipper Books
Playing jigsaws – he did a 35 piece one all by himself

 

Flixster is currently enjoying:
Trying lots more foods
His first swimming lesson
Still trying to crawl – almost there!

 

 

dear beautiful

Night Feeds

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Before I had children people would tell me that the tiredness is hard, the hardest thing of  all. I thought I’d be fine. I thought it would just be similar to normal tiredness but a little worse, nothing a coffee wouldn’t sort out.

Boy was I wrong!

When the boy was a baby I didn’t cope with the tiredness well. I got snappy and short-tempered very easily. I resented having to get up to feed him. I hated it. The boy started sleeping through the night, and just to be clear by that I mean sleeping from 7pm until the morning (anytime after 5am) when he was 7/8 months. I couldn’t have been more thankful when it started to happen. Since then though he’s been a great sleeper. It’s rare for him to wake in the night.

This time around with Flixster I was much better prepared for the tiredness, I knew I’d be doing night feeds for a while. I secretly hoped he’d be a great sleeper from the off. It would have been amazing if he’d have slept through the night from the early weeks, but I know that frequent waking is natural and a protective factor against SIDS. This time though I’ve done things differently, and even though he is still feeding lots of in the night at 10 months I don’t feel as tired.

With Flixster I bed share to try to keep the night feeds simple and easy, something I didn’t do with the boy. I have always followed the safe bed sharing guidelines:

I do breastfeed

I never bed share if I’ve been drinking

I don’t take any drugs or medication so that rule is always followed (Don’t bed share if you do or have)

I don’t smoke

I keep pillows out-of-the-way and avoid blankets (Flixster kicks them off anyway!)

We have a firm mattress with no mattress topper or pillow top

Flixster wasn’t a small baby or pre-term

If I didn’t bedshare I don’t think I’d be the same mummy. We are trying very gently to encourage him to sleep in his cot. Each night sometime between 6pm and 7pm we get him ready for bed with his brother, give him one final feed and then put him down to sleep. It’s taken weeks and weeks of practise to get to the point where he doesn’t cry when we put him in the cot. We’ve been consistent in the approach so that he knows what to expect. We have never let him cry alone in the dark or cry in his cot. If you’d have asked me a fair few weeks ago I wouldn’t have been convinced we’d have even go to this point. However he does at the moment go down well in his cot a bedtime. Just a few months ago he would wake up every 30-45 minutes all evening and we’d forever be going up and down the stairs to try to re-settle him. So I know we’ve moved forward from that. Now he wakes anywhere between 8:30 and 2am for the first night feed. He’s only once gone through to 2am it’s by no means a regular thing (sadly!) So at his first wake up I take him into our bed for the night. I lie on my side to breastfeed him and he usually feeds and goes back to sleep. Sometimes he kicks around for a while not wanting to go back to sleep.I usually drift off too if and when he does.

He then wakes a few more times in the night and each time I feed him. For us its the easiest option. Mainly so I get the most amount of sleep possible. I never look at the time when he wakes, I never count the feeds. I think if I looked at the time I’d be calculating how much sleep I wasn’t getting and that would upset me. Instead I cope by just doing whats easy and gets us through. I know he won’t feed in the night forever. Of course I would rather get lots of sleep and not be interrupted, but I know for now it’s what he needs.

I have friends who finished night feeds within the first 10 weeks, other friends who still have toddlers of 3/4 years old waking in the night. There is no wrong or right age to ‘sleep through’.

How do you cope with night feeds? I’d love to hear about your experiences.

 

Moving Home

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I’ve mentioned this before but we’d love to move home. We are already very lucky to live in a nice home, but it’s a home we bought when there was just the two of us and now there’s four! We never imagined when we bought our first house together that we’d have our children here. We both thought that this house would be a starter home and that we’d be moving on before children but with the economy the way it has been the chance to move has never presented itself.
However fast forward 9 years and we would love to move soon.
Our current house was a new build property and we have looked after it. We’ve recently been looking around at other new builds and today I think we may have seen the perfect place. Currently the sales office isn’t even open at the houses so we are watching and waiting, hoping to get in early when it does. I just hope that we’ll have enough deposit for a new place, but if we don’t then we’ll look for something else and accept that it wasn’t meant to be on this occasion and where ever we end up will be the path the universe wanted us to take.
If and when we do move I’ll be sad to say goodbye to the house that has given us so much. We got married here (well not married but we left one day as two people and returned the next day as a married couple). I laboured for most of my first birth at home as I wanted a home birth but it wasn’t meant to be. Flixster was born in our living room and that means that the house will always be special, this address is on his birth certificate as his place of birth. He will carry that with him for the rest of his life.
We’ve had many happy memories here, too many to mention but they are just that, memories. Memories to look back on and smile. As we look to the future though, I’m thinking and dreaming of all the memories we are yet to make as a family, and no matter where we live as long as we have each other we’ll be happy.

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Siblings – A photograph project {February 2015}

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Time is flying by and it’s already time for the second siblings pictures. This month my favourite was a photo I took of them both just as they played together. I didn’t intentionally take it with the project in mind but having seen the results I knew it would be the one for this month. They are starting to play so nicely together. It buys me a little time to run in and out of the room if I need to get something done.

I’m trying to teach the boy to hug Flixster around the middle rather than around his neck like he normally does!

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Flixster adores his big brother, his face still lights up when he enters the room, especially if it’s a day when they have been apart from each other. I do hope in the future they will stay close friends.

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At the moment they are loving a new toy that was kindly given to us by a friend. It’s a little playground with a slide, a ferris wheel and some jumping stairs, that large bean shaped objects play on. It’s a toy that they can both enjoy although it is aimed at babies rather than an almost 4-year-old but thankfully it keeps him entertained too, it features in many of my photographs! Although there are a few other toys that they can play together this is their main one. I’m on the look out now though for other things that are suitable. Once Flixster is toddling about though I hope that there will be more things like footballs and playing outside together.

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I adore my boys and am loving watching them grow up together. My absolute favourite capture for this month though I have left until last. I’m looking forward to seeing the end results at the end of this year. What a fab project to be involved with!

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dear beautiful

2015 The year of Change – The Life Changing Magic of Tidying! Marie Kondo

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I know we’re already in February but I do feel like 2015 holds lots of promise for us as a family, I feel excited and happy to be looking forward to the future. We really hope to move house in the next few years too, so that certainly will be a big change. In order to move though we need to do a few odd jobs around the house first as well as a big de clutter. De cluttering is something I love doing but never seem to nail it. Even when I spend ages doing it, a mere few weeks later the house is always a mess again. So this time around I needed a different approach and as if by magic the solution may have presented itself. I was browsing around Amazon as you do and up popped a book suggestion that intrigued me. The title was “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying” by Marie Kondo.

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I was interested immediately, how could tidying up be life changing? I’ve always been a tidy person. I love nothing more than coming home to a tidy house, I love the feeling of looking around and everywhere being clean and tidy with all my things in the places they should be! So I clicked on the book and headed straight to the reviews, somewhere I always looks before I buy things. Four and a half stars from over 200reviews, this looked promising! Without further ado I purchased it (in kindle form obviously as I didn’t need more clutter in my life!) and read it pretty quickly over a weekend. It’s not that long and an easy read. It’s main theme being that all the things you own in life should bring you joy, if they don’t then you don’t need them! It deals with how to get rid of things that you feel guilty about getting rid of. For example presents from loved ones that you don’t actually like! There are a few far out principles in the book, but on the whole I really enjoyed it and couldn’t wait to get started applying the principles. The book suggests that although the the process can happen quickly it would take an average of six months to complete a whole house, this timescale did surprise me but it didn’t put too much pressure on either. Within a few days I had already got rid of two bin bags of clothes (that’s just mine!) and a big box of other items. Things I’d held on to for years but that actually brought me no joy, things that I thought one day I may use but who knows when that day will come.

The book also describes how to fold you clothes in your draws, I had to read the description a couple of times to try and get the hang of it. I also went to youtube to try and find some info videos. There are a couple but I thought perhaps that I may also be able to do one now that I’ve got eh hang of folding. I didn’t take a picture of the draws before (something I should have done!) But heres a picture of how mine and hubbies draws look now that I’ve finished folding them.

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I’ve also made a start in the boys room too, it already brings me pleasure to look inside and see exactly what we can choose from.

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Back to the book, is it life changing? I’ve yet to be able to comment on that as I haven’t finished the process. The author describes the exact way you should go about tackling your house starting with your clothes as they are the easiest thing to part with. Followed by books. I can’t remember the exact order of the rest but I’ll refer back to it when I need to. I know that sentimental things such as photographs were last on the list. I’m still working my way through clothes. I’m due to tackle the underwear any day now and I know there will be lots of bras to get rid of. Whats the point in keeping the ones that are too big or too small? I do feel that the progress I have made though has been great and I get great pleasure from going into the bedroom and it felling a whole lot less cluttered already.

If you’d have asked me if I thought I’d be reading books in my 30’s about tidying up I’d have laughed a lot but here I am doing it and acting on its principles!

I will be going back to amazon to review the book as I think it’s always good to put your own review on if you rely yourself on reviews and I’d be giving it 5 stars and would recommend it if you seem to never be able to part with things or your life feels cluttered. I do want to mention also that I have no association with the author and I haven’t been paid to write about the book. I paid for my own copy after just coming across it, but I’m glad it found me and hopefully it really will be life changing!

Counting down to Center Parcs!

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As a family we are currently counting down the days to our much anticipated trip to Center Parcs. I can’t wait to spend precious time with my family and especially my husband as we rarely seem to get quality time together. The time we do have is spent tidying up or passing each other on the way to the gym or work. I’m really hoping that this trip will give us the break we need and time to reconnect.
We’ve had this trip booked for quite a long time, it was first booked for last April before we knew that Flixster was growing inside me so having realised the trip would coincide with his due date we had to rearrange. For a small admin fee thankfully it was no trouble so that put my mind at rest. So fast forward another year and we are now just weeks away from going.
Travelling with a young family is daunting, just the sheer amount of things I will need to take for only a few days seems like a mammoth effort! I’m thinking of doing a blog post just listing the things I need to take as a helpful guide to other families who may be travelling with small people for the first time. Now that Flixster is on complimentary food as well as breastmilk the list just gets longer!
I have been to Center Parcs before and so know roughly what to expect from our break, but of course having to small people in tow changes the focus of the holiday. Before my first visit to Center Parcs about 7 years ago I wasn’t sure if it would be for me but having been a few times now I can say that it most defiantly is. It’s a place for everyone. No matter what kind of group you are travelling in, all adults or adults and children you will be able to find something to do.
This trip we are taking my mum and dad too which will be nice. I am desperately hoping that I will be able to have some time away from my beautiful babies with my mum. I hope that we will be able to visit the spa and perhaps have a treatment there. Something which at the moment seems impossible! I’d love to spend some time with my mum as although I see her on an almost weekly basis she lives about an hour from me so going out in the evening together is pretty impossible even if I didn’t have the Flixster permanently stuck to me! Plus when I do see her we always have both the boy and Flixster so holding any kind of adult conversation is tricky as anyone who has a chatty preschooler will know all too well! I’m also hoping that perhaps one night the hubster and I can get out together to perhaps have a meal or just go for a swim. I’d love to get him in the spa but I’m not too sure if he’ll be up for that?!
I hope to that I can write a few blog post about our experience at Center Parcs so that anyone who has not been will be able to see why so many people rave about the place, and why when you have a young family it can be a great short break destination.
For this trip we are visiting the Whinfell situated in the Lake district, it’s about 90 minutes to 2 hours drive from us with no stops so I’m going to allow at least half a day for travel with frequent toilet and food stops!
So let the endless list making begin and the countdown start, Center Parcs here we come!