I’m here to write a post and check in on my blog but I find that yet again so much time has passed. I don’t know where the time goes. I know I have two young children, a full time job and quite a lot of other weekly commitments so I suppose thats where the time goes . There’s so many things though I want to fit in. I suppose I find it hard at the moment as Flixster is still getting up everyday at around 5am so by 8pm I’m ready for bed. This leaves very little time in the evenings to get much done. Some evenings I make myself go and do some exercise (running or a class) but even this doesn’t happen as often as I’d like. I almost wish there was an extra day in the week, I am definitely not the first to wish this and won’t be the last. I know things will one day change again and hopefully I’ll be able to stay up later and still have some sleep, but right now time is very precious. So for the time I do have I will be grateful for every minute of it, even if I don’t get enough of it!
Justine Fletcher Anyone? He’s at Geronimo!
Now I know amongst us mummies (from my experience of having two little ones who love cbeebies)that there’s a divide between those that are fans of the spotty bag of Mr Tumble and those of us who are partial to the well tended veggies in Mr Bloom garden. I’m a gardening kind of mummy myself but I do see the appeal of the kind and caring Justin Fletcher. So if you’re a Mr Tumble fan then you’ll want to know that Justin Fletcher has been announced as a headline act for Geronimo festival this year. He’ll be appearing for one day only at each venue so be sure to pick the right day for visiting if you or your little one don’t want to miss seeing him on the main stage. At Harewood house he’ll be there on 1st May and at Tatton Park he’ll be appearing on 29th May.
I admire that he’s obviously a very talented man to be able to turn his hand to so many different skills, on CBeebies he appears on Something Special, Justins House and Gigglebiz. I know Justin’s House is a favourite in our home and the laughter it creates can be infectious so I am looking forward seeing him at Geronimo this year. I have read other posts from bloggers who have met Justin in the past and everyone is unanimous in saying that even in real life he is a really lovely person which to me is important. If my children are a fan of someone then I want them to be a fan of someone who is kind and caring both on screen and off.
Over the last day or two Breastfeeding has come back into the news again. I will make no apologies for offending anyone with this post. I am not here to offend, I just wanted to put some of my thoughts down .
So I haven’t read the Lancet Study that has been published this week, I have read the headlines and listened to the news.
So most of the headlines told this story – Breastfeeding could cut child deaths.
Breastfeeding Saves Lives – Study found
If I told you there was a special food that you could give your children which had amazing effects and was taylor made for them then I’m sure you’d want to try some too, yet of course when you go to the comments sections of these headlines it always brings out both sides of the story.
Wow – the words inadequate and dictatorship were used in this comment.
Ok so who are these “brestapo brigade” that you are commenting about? The person who published the article in the Lancet is a scientist who has carried out a study on the benefits of breastfeeding, I don’t think the scientist set out to try and make people feel bad or bully anyone.
As a breastfeeding supporter myself I have never ever judged anyone for the way they choose to feed their child. If you choose to use formula, thats ok by me. If your don’t want to try that’s ok too. I totally respect a women’s choice to feed their own child however they wish to. But it’s those mums who want to try, who struggle, who don’t know whats normal and whats not that I want to help. It’s those people who need the support form the start of their journey. It’s those mums who through no fault of their own don’t have the gentle help of their own mums guidance as we would have years ago because we’ve lost those skills to pass on. Its the mums that don’t have the support and wanted so much to breastfeed that end up believing this “brestapo brigade” really do exist. I don’t judge people when I see them using formula but often they judge themselves. Mothers are still free to make their own choices but with more support (and more money for support instead of less) perhaps we would have more mums breastfeeding and less mums being internally heart broken at struggling to feed.
I think this comment from Sam Smithi sums up a lot about feeding too
“the amount of advertising for formula milk, it’s in your face, so I tend to go with that.” This tells me two very important things, firstly if breastmilk was advertised than would more mums chose this? We know it never will be because no one has the money to pay for breastmilk adverts – theres no money in it (unless you count the 20million that the NHS may save!)! Secondly more importantly the advertisement of infant formula is banned! No where will you find an advert for formula for 0-6month olds, the formula companies do a very good job of making you think it is but actually all the adverts are for follow on milk, not infant formula. Maybe I should do an advertising campaign for breastfeeding past 6 months (sticking to the advertising code!) and see if this increases the uptake, but in all honestly the only thing that will increase breastfeeding rates its putting more funding into breastfeeding support and perhaps a generation from now mum will be able to help their own daughters and granddaughters once again.
I’m so excited that we’ve been invited to be an ambassador for Geronimo Festival 2016. If you haven’t heard of Geronimo and you’ve got children aged 12 years old or under then you need to keep reading! Geronimo Festival is back this year bigger and better than before and the best news is that it’s now has two different venues. Geronimo Festival 2016 is a family event focused on quality family time, something I’m always trying to create more of, so our boys can have some wonderful childhood memories to carry with them for the rest of their lives.
First Time at Geronimo Festival
This year will be our first time at Geronimo and after hearing and reading so much about last years event I honestly can’t wait to attend and take the boys for some family fun. The two venues this year are Harewood House, just outside Leeds on May 1st and 2nd, and Tatton Park in Cheshire on May 29th and 30th. Both venues are home to two of England’s fantastic visitor attractions and have wonderful woodland areas which will be the backdrop to Geronimo Festival. The festival itself will be an exciting array of acts, amazing experiences and wonderful adventures. Our boys will be 2 and 4 years old when we attend Geronimo and from the line up I think my 4-year-old may just explode with excitement! I’m not telling him until nearer the time that we’re going as I can’t face weeks and weeks of ‘Is it Geronimo yet? Is it Geronimo yet?’ (repeat!)
I think one of the things he’ll be most excited about is Cook and Line from Swashbuckle. He absolutely loves watching Swashbuckle on Cbeebies and is always asking me if he can go on the show (I can’t break his heart and tell him no so I usually just say ‘maybe one day’) His other favourites will be at Geronimo too, Mr Bloom is going to be appearing at the Geronostage Zone so that ‘tiddlers’ can pop along and listen to some veggie stories or play gardening games. Andy Day (from Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures) will be performing his Dino Rap show and Alex Winters (from CBeebies) will be hosting the main stage each day.
When I looked at the information on the Geronimo website I did wonder how they could possibly make the Library Zone exciting but it might not be as dull as I thought, it’s actually going to have dance classes with Bollywood, Zumba as well as a gigantic drumming session. I know a certain 2-year-old who loves dancing! We’ll defiantly be joining in there.
There’s just so much to look forward to at Geronimo this year that I’m going to be writing a series of posts in the build up to the festival as more and more of the exciting line up is announced.
Tickets for Geronimo
Tickets for the festival start at just £18.50 and can be bought on the Geronimo website, it seems like a fantastic price for a full days entertainment and fun and if you’re taking under 2’s along they get in free! I was gutted after last years to have missed it, so I’m really looking forward to it this year and can’t wait to blog about it in the build up to the Geronimo Festival!
Breastfeeding Bleb – Ouch!
Breastfeeding Bleb -What is it you might ask? Well thats what I would have said too a few months ago! Although I volunteer at a local breastfeeding group and thought I knew a fair bit about breastfeeding problems this was a new one on me.
How it started
For a couple of weeks I’d started to get a few pains inside my breast, sometimes it was after a feed, sometimes just at a random time in the day. Often these pains would be a shooting type of electric shock pain. Flixster is 20 months so I knew it wasn’t his position or attachment as I checked and double checked he was on correctly. The pains would track back inside the breast, and sometimes really really hurt. The sort of pain that would wake me in the night. A few weeks before the pain I’d noticed a white part on my nipple, it was tiny, really small. (Sorry I don’t have any photos!) It looked to me like a part of the nipple that didn’t have any blood flow. It didn’t look like a blister as I thought it might after I looked up blebs. I wish I’d taken a photo now to show though. It was not what I thought a bleb would look like. It was almost like a small section of the nipple that had just gone white.
How I found out it was a breastfeeding bleb
After describing the pain to a lactation consultant she instantly said to me I was describing a bleb. A bleb! I’d not come across it before. I asked advice on how to get rid of it and she gave me a few options but the one that she said usually works the best is to get a needle and either try to pop it or try to scrape it all off…… yes thats right a needle…..yes I ran a mile too. She explained to me that a bleb is a blockage at the end of the duct and the pain I was experiencing was the breastmilk tracking back behind the blockage. The pain was not something I’d experienced before, a pain that woke me at night was not a pain I could ignore!
After I’d thought about it (and I’m not a needle phobic) and experienced the pain again, I decided to give it a go. I had a sterile hypodermic needle and gritted my teeth and tried to pop the bleb. I thought that would be it, I thought it would be gone. It wasn’t. I was however pleased to find out that trying to pop it hadn’t hurt. I thought it would be painful but thankfully it wasn’t so I got a new needle and tried again a few days later. This time I gave it a good scrape, it did bleed but most importantly it didn’t hurt. After I had dug it out (yak) I feed Flixster to try and get him to clear the blockage. I was still in pain but I knew that hopefully this was just the backed up milk leaving the breast. The following day the area had scabbed over and it took a few days before it was completely healed. The bleb had to be the most painful breastfeeding experience I’ve had. I am thankful that most of my breastfeeding journeys have been relatively smooth. Both boys had tongue tied but never caused me as much pain as the bleb did! Thank goodness by scraping it all off I solved the problem. If you’ve had experience of a bleb then feel free to contact me.
Dear Boys… A memory of Christmas 2015
Dear Boys,
Another fabulous Christmas has been and gone and now we are looking straight in the eye of a new year, which is already filled with so much promise, excitement and gratitude. I just wanted to take the time though boys to write about our Christmas so that as it starts to fade from your memories you will be able to look back at this letter and remember.
The Build Up to Christmas
The build up to Christmas for us was hectic, we had just moved into our fabulous new home but everything was in chaos, the house was still half full of boxes and we seemed to be constantly trying to unpack and sort (just as we are now still). We’d had a few awful bugs which went through us all (literally) However we did manage to fit in some lovely Christmas activities though which included a trip to Winter Wonderland (an indoor theme park) and also breakfast with Father Christmas at a forest school.
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve started early (as it always does with you two, one day I hope you will sleep later than 5am!) and we went downstairs to find that the elf had gone back to the North Pole but had left a Christmas eve box for you both.
The box had new pj’s (which is a tradition now in our house) for you both, a couple of books which I get out every year as I think they are lovely Christmas books. There was also the Muppets Christmas Carol dvd as that’s the one I always hold back to watch on Christmas eve as a family. It’s something I always did with my mummy when I was living at home so I like to carry that on. I’d also put in some hot chocolate, that we could have with the film and some minion popcorn which I know the boy would love. Lastly there was a Christmas jigsaw which I thought would be fun to do, as it turned out I ended up doing it on my own and some reindeer slippers for the boy. I didn’t get any for Flixster as he just doesn’t keep them on long enough. Then at the back I slipped in the usual Father Christmas plate and some reindeer food.
During the day on Christmas eve we just spent time together as a family, daddy had to spend most of the day in the garage building your play kitchen as we hadn’t had time to do it before. I took Flixster out for a walk for his nap to a local mill shop where I went to look for some Christmas place mats as I realised we didn’t have enough for the next day.
As it started to get dark I could feel the excitement building, the boy wanted to get the reindeer food out on the lawn, so we had made you both some tea, put the new pj’s on and stood at the front window scattering the food from the window onto the grass, which was followed by drinking hot chocolate and watching the muppets Christmas Carol.
After hot chocolate it was bed time so that we could wait for Father Christmas to come (we put out the obligatory mince-pie, carrot, milk and magic key of course!) and mummy and daddy could have some dinner and settle down to wrap the final bits!
I love that Father Christmas always leaves snowy footprints on the carpet!
The morning came very quickly and of course you were both up early. The stocking on your doors kept you busy whilst we all got ready and dressed. When I was a child we couldn’t go down until we were dressed and altogether as a family (well at least my mum was there!) A quick photo on the bottom of the stairs to capture the moment and then into the lounge to see if he’d been..
After a few presents had been opened we moved to the kitchen to start preparing our first treat for the day a fabulous daddy special breakfast. We took the play-doh toy sweet shop with us. The boy had wanted this for so long, I’m really not super keen on play-doh and even less so on mixing the colours (shock horror) but it was worth it to see your face and the fun you’ve had with it. It was the first time I’ve seen you playing quite nicely together and it made my heart feel warm and fuzzy.
The breakfast (which was more brunch) was so lovely and I was thankful throughout the day for having my family around me, food on the table and presents under the tree. I am so lucky to have so much to be thankful for.
Soon after breakfast my mum and dad arrived as we had invited them to come to ours for Christmas day, it’s the first time in 9 years we’ve been able to do it as we now have a bit more space to host people, rather than having to drag the table to the middle of the living room.
The boys played with Grandma and Grandad whilst hubby and I sorted out a starter. We put Flixster down for an early nap so that he’d be awake in time for the main dinner in a couple of hours time.
We did a trio of mini starters which consisted of tomato and basil soup with a slice of baguette bread, pate with crisp bread and prawn cocktail on a lettuce leaf. I’m sure I could have come up with fancy names for it but I like to keep things simple.
I’d looked forward to setting the table for so long, all the time we knew we were moving I was planning the Christmas table in the back of my head. I wanted it to be amazing to look at visually, I love Christmas so much. After a break of an hour or so it was time to serve the main event.
I have to say it was delicious, hubby did most of the cooking as its his thing. I helped with a few bits and the presentation of course!
Even Flixster ate way more than he normally does which was endorsement indeed! We all throughly enjoyed sharing the meal together around the Christmas table.
After dinner we were all very full and the boys were ready for a play again with a ll the wonderful things they had received as presents. They were very lucky, we tried not to buy too much as we are grateful for them having both sets of grandparents who also like to buy a gift or two. It was time for another tradition from my childhood, tree present’s. These were the very last present’s of the day hidden inside the tree, there are always a low value gift that’s usually a novelty, maybe a magazine, a tiny toy, bubble bath etc. I wanted to carry this on with the boys so I have done tree presents every year. We passed them around and everyone enjoyed the last of the presents.
The rest of the afternoon was spent drinking coffee and just being us. Grandma and Grandad left after the sun had gone down to go back home and we wound down for bedtime. Exhausted and happy the boys were put to bed and we had time together to reflect on the day (and eat the traditional Christmas day eve cheese and crackers!)
Another fabulous year together and another fabulous Christmas day, exhausted, happy and grateful we tucked ourselves up in bed to start again the next day.
So boys more family festive memories were made.
Please always remember I love you both unconditionally….forever.
Mummy
2015 Gratitude List – Grateful for so many things
2015 Gratitude List……So today is the last day of 2015 and I have so much to be grateful for. As a family we’ve had an amazing year, so many highs and thankfully not too many lows.
I want to make a list not to boast but to remind us as a family how far we’ve come and all we have to be grateful for. By focussing on what we are grateful for I can see things in a positive light and continue to move forward and grow as a family together in happiness.
House Move – This was the biggest thing to happen to us this year, we put our much loved house up for sale, had an offer the next day, went to see our now home the day after and made an offer ourselves and for four months after that, things dragged on with many highs and low. But we made it, we finally made it, in late November we moved house and we are in love with our new home. It already feels like our forever home and I am so grateful to live here.
Working with Good Morning Britain – Early on in the year I was involved with a project that Good Morning Britain were doing about the way people voted for the general election. I was an undecided voter and so they followed me throughout the election campaign to see how I made my mind up. For me the experience was amazing and the boy still has fond memories of our trip to London. I loved every minute of the experience and am very grateful that I was able to take part.
Work – I have an almost full time day job which I don’t really talk about on my blog, I work for the NHS and this year has brought so many fabulous opportunities to get involved with projects and new opportunities. I started the year telling myself that I would throw myself back into work after maternity leave ended and take every opportunity I can to say yes and get involved and its been a fabulous year. I am also very grateful to work with such a fabulous team, my line manager and manager are wonderful people who I really enjoy working with and under.
Family – I am and will forever be grateful for family. This year although our family hasn’t expanded like it did the year before! But we have grown in other ways. We have grown in love for each other. We have grown closer as a unit. We have grown stronger and learnt so much about each other.
Husband – I am grateful for such a loving caring man who is my other half, the milk to my coffee, the reason to my daft ideas, the calming influence when I’m on the ceiling. He is my best friend and makes me whole. He is always there for me and I cherish everyday we have together
Children- I am so grateful for the boys, the bring sunshine everyday, even when it’s raining outside. The teach me so much about myself. They bring me so much joy and happiness, I love them so much, I just want to spend so much time hugging them. This year they have both grown so much, the boy started school ( how did that happen so quickly?) and Flixster started nursery when I went back to work. I can’t express how grateful I am for them both in my life.
I have so much to be grateful for I could go on for quite a long time but I’m keeping it short with the main things in my life to be grateful for. I truly am thankful for so much, I feel blessed to be so happy in life. Thank you universe, thank you.
I hope 2016 brings us and everyone we know many more things to be grateful for, if you look hard enough even the greyest days have some sunshine, you just need to look hard enough to find it.
May 2016 bring health and happiness.
Jane
