A Little Lyrical

03May 2018

Motherhood is Hard – It just ain’t that easy

Motherhood is hard. Nobody, absolutely nobody can prepare you for how hard it is. Anyone who tells you it is easy is lying. I’m sure there are many many fantastic blog posts about how hard it is but this is mine. Today I feel I need to write it to remind me how far I’ve come.

When your little one is screaming with tears and has been for over an hour, you feel useless. All the tools in your parenting toolbox have been used. You’re out of ideas. It’s hard. It’s even harder if it’s the middle of the night. You feel like you are the only person in the whole world who is up when you should be sleeping.

When you’re at the shops and all you want to do is a food shop but your baby is screaming and everyone is looking at you. It’s hard. Hard to keep your compose. Hard to keep your cool. Hard to think straight.

When you’re toddler won’t let you get anything done in the house because they need you. It’s hard.

When you can’t do story time at bedtime because the baby needs you to feed them to sleep. It’s hard.

When one of the children is ill but you can’t be there for them. It’s hard.

When you’re trying to cook the dinner and the baby needs holding and another child is screaming for you. It’s hard

When you can’t spend time of your eldest homework and see all the other parents on the playground bringing in wonderful project that you haven’t had time to complete. It’s hard.

Today I’ve had a hard day in my motherhood journey. Walking around the living room staring at the same four walls. Listening to the screaming in my ear. Just looking at all the things that need to be done. The washing, the laundry folding. The kitchen needs cleaning. The bathroom needs cleaning. The floors need hoovering but my children need me. Today I have to try and step back just a little and ignore the mess. But it’s hard.

Focus on Gratitude

When I feel like this i try to practice gratitude. List the things I’m grateful for. Grateful I have three beautiful boys who call me mum. So grateful that despite me feeling trapped in the living room I do call that living room ‘home’. Grateful I have a home that I love. Grateful that I have a husband who loves me and who works very hard to keep us in our home. Grateful that I have a job to go back to when my maternity leave is over. Grateful we have food in the cupboards to feed ourselves. Reframing my focus to gratitude does help, but it doesn’t make it any less hard some days.

To all the mummies (and wonderful daddies) out there you are doing a fantastic job and with a smile and a big hug the hard melts away into the distance.

Would I change a thing?

No I wouldn’t. The hard is sent to make me stronger.

The hard times make me appreciate the easier times even more. I know I am blessed to have such a fantastic life and as such I will try to enjoy every single minute.

Even the hard times.

30Apr 2018

School Day Organisation Tip – School Uniform Hack

by Lyric ⋅ Leave a Comment

With three boys school uniform is a plenty in this house. Obviously baby Roo is far too little for a uniform yet. But when he gets to that stage his school uniform will easily fit into the system I use.

So my first tip is the key to this working well. Have 5 sets of the same uniform (if you can afford it) as it makes this system easy! It helps keep mornings smooth with no running around wondering where jumpers or trousers are. No frantic last minute dash for a missing shirt. The only thing I don’t have 5 of is the school tie. I do have spare ties but they tend to wear the same one throughout the week.

Getting Started with School Uniform

The second part of the system I use involves having somewhere to store the 5 sets of school uniform. Somewhere the children will know where to find it. A place they can reach. Somewhere they can access easily. For us these ‘Really Useful‘ drawers are ideal. There are 5 drawers. One for each day of the week. No refilling midweek.

So to get the system working, on a Sunday evening I get out all the drawers and line them up on the sofa.

I then gather all the relevant clothes. I do mean all, socks, underwear the lot! Five of everything for each person. I then count out each one as I go for each boy.

For some reason I always like to start with the socks and undies!

Next I’ll fold in the trousers, shirts and finally jumpers for each child. Once each drawer has a full set for each I’ll then put them back into the stack.

The Final Outcome

Each morning after breakfast I either retrieve the relevant drawer or ask the boys to get it out themselves. They can then easily get dressed and ready. It’s not without its flaws. Sometimes jumpers that are put on are too big or too small because they haven’t read the labels properly! The pjs they take off go straight into the drawer the uniform came out of to either be worn again or washed depending on its state! So it also stops random pj parts being flung around the room!

Hopefully it’s given you an idea for how to hack school uniform mornings and make things run a little smoother!

The link I used to the drawers is an associate link so if you go through to purchase them I will get a tiny percentage of the cost, this is at no extra cost to you whatsoever. Really Useful or amazon haven’t had anything to do with this post, its the system I use myself.

29Apr 2018

My Sunday Photo – True Love

by Lyric ⋅ 2 Comments

My middle baby always tells me how much he loves me. While I was cutting the front lawn on Saturday he picked some flowers for me and put them in the car door. I had to take a picture to keep the memory. He’s such a sweet little guy (when he’s not fighting with his brother!).

15Apr 2018

Easter Holidays 2017 – Reflections of the family and Christening

by Lyric ⋅ Leave a Comment

Well I can’t quite believe the Easter holidays are already over! Part of me was dreading them to begin with. Three boys on my own for two weeks was always a daunting prospect. As it turned out we had the most fantastic time with friends and family. We made plans for each day and thankfully hubby managed to have some time off too.

Christening Time

It started on a high with Roo’s Christening which was on Easter Sunday at our family church. It was a beautiful day spent with family and friends. After the service we came back to our house for some food and drinks. By 6pm everyone was gone again and the house seemed early quiet after such a fantastic build up to a wonderful day. In some ways sad for me as it’s most likely my last baby and so in turn is the last Christening celebration we will hold.

Roo behaved beautifully and when the time came to have him Christened he didn’t cry and was lovely.

During the later part of the service I was grateful to his wonderful God mummy for taking him outside to settle him to sleep as he was getting tired and moany.

The main man himself wore a lovely outfit I bought 7 years ago for the boys Christening. The outfit has been worn by all of the boys for their special days and I’m not sure now the best way to display it. I need to do some research and see what inspiration I can get (all ideas welcome) as I don’t just want to put it in a box and leave it for years to come.

I wore a dress my mummy bought for for me from Monsoon and although I haven’t got back to my happy weight yet I felt good. My shoes I wa thankful to find in the recent Next sale and they went so well with the dress.

The dress wasn’t breast feeding friendly so in order to be abel to feed Roo before and after the service I wore a vest top under the outfit so that I could unzip the dress and lift the top to feed whilst keeping myself covered (for my own dignity as I don’t like to show my tummy etc)

The other two boys wore matching shirts form Next which I bought last year for a photo shoot with some dark jeans.

Back at the house I got to sip some wonderful champagne (keeping the cork for my collection) and was a bit tipsy by bedtime! I had even made his Christening cake, and for a complete novice like me I was quite proud of my work!

When bank holiday monday came I was a bit hung over so thankful for our house to hang around in and not get up to too much!

The Rest of the Holidays

Since the christening the rest of the holiday s have been a bit of a blur. I didn’t want to do a day by day list so will do some highlights.

During the first week hubby had to go away for work and so my mum came to stay with us. This worked out well as it was a day we’d been planning for a while anyway. We went out to a local country park with a great adventure play area. It did rain for a while which cleared the playground off but it didn’t dampen our spirits!

The following day mum took middle boy out with her early and I got to enjoy some time with the original boy (and Roo of course). I needed to pick up a package from a shop so we went together to the Trafford Centre. It was nice to just enjoy some time together. I treated him to a coffee (well not a coffee for him but you know what I mean!)

Easter eggs were abundant in out house despite us not buying many ourselves we are lucky to have such lovely family and friends who gave the boys eggs, my favourite was this chocolate chicken, sat on chocolate eggs with an edible basket! I’m pretty such it’s from Lidl.

There was time spent at St Annes pier and beach on a sunny day, and another afternoon at Blackpool Zoo.

Towards the end of the holiday my middle baby turned 4, how have 4 wonderful years passed so quickly?

He got what he’d asked for, a batman car and a Spiderman outfit! My little superhero loving dude. We spent the day at Cheshire Ice Cream Farm. Another wonderful day out if you’re ever in the area. Free to get in and you just pay for what you do.

And so we are at the end now, the last day. Back to normality tomorrow. Back to school and nursery. There are some exciting things coming up in the next few weeks. Thins to look forward to. I’m trying to enjoy every single day of maternity leave that I have left. Knowing it’s my last time. Here’s to the future and many more happy memories made. I am as always grateful for all that has passed, it has been amazing.

Thank you universe.

18Mar 2018

My Sunday Photo – Thanks to my Mum!

by Lyric ⋅ 7 Comments

All the credit to my mum for this one, she took it on her phone and sent it to me before she went to work on Saturday morning. Lovely view along the estuary front in Lytham.

12Mar 2018

Don’t Rock the Boat – University Games

by Lyric ⋅ Leave a Comment

Don’t Rock the Boat – Or you’re out!

We love family games in our house so Don’t Rock the Boat was a welcome addition this week. Games that have a quick setup. Easy to understand. Most importantly fun to play with our age children!

University Games kindly sent us ‘Don’t Rock the Boat’ to play. It’s suitable for age 3 and over. You will need a minimum of two players (although to be honest my 6 year old enjoyed playing alone in what he called solo mode!) up to a maximum of 4 players.

The concept is simple its a balancing game.

There’s a boat which is set up to balance. A whole load of pirate penguins. Players take turns to balance a penguin on the boat anyway they like. If a penguin falls off when it’s your turn you lose and the player last to place a penguin wins.

My boys were finding inventive ways to hang or place the penguins. It clearly states in the rules that it doesn’t count as a lose if a penguin falls over. The penguin has to fall off the boat to count as game over. This point was taken to the extreme in our house as penguins were hung all over the boat!

Conclusion

Another great game from University Games. Quick and easy to set up. Simple for little ones to understand and most importantly easy to play!

My favourite point has to be worth mentioning too……

This guy on the back of the box made me chuckle for quite a while!

11Mar 2018

My Sunday Photo – Pizza Season

by Lyric ⋅ 8 Comments

We are no strangers to cooking outside in our house. My husband is out in all weather with the BBQ or pizza oven. Friday round our way was such a lovely day, sunny and beginning to feel warmer. So with the warmth of the air we decided to make it the first pizza oven night of the year. We bought this pizza oven by Uuni a couple of years ago and it’s had a lot of use since then. It’s unbelievable quick to cook, just 60-90 seconds per pizza so you have to be prepared to get them in and out no hanging about. It has a stone base and is fired by wood pellets. One Friday we prepped 5 smallish pizzas to share between the 4 of us with various toppings. Once again it didn’t disappoint! Yummy yummy!

10Mar 2018

Slimline Wine Review

by Lyric ⋅ Leave a Comment

Slimline Wine –

Remember the ronseal adverts – does what it says on the tin. Well this week I’ve been sent some Slimline wine. Does what it says on the bottle!

Quite often as a blogger I will kindly get offered things or sent things to review and/or write about. However I don’t want my blog audience to just keep seeing reviews. Thats not what I’m about. I will only ever write about things that I’d actually buy and use.

Since I’m on slimming world at the moment and also love a bottle of red wine, when this arrived I thought perfect!

It’s a simple designed bottle and is new on the market. It claims to be a zero sugar, zero carb wine.

It’s available in white, red,rose and also very recently sparkling too.

Now I’m no wine expert. My credentials are only that I have been drinking wine since around 21 years of age (thats about 15 years….cough cough!) I only started really liking red at around age 25 so roughly 10 years. I know what I like wine wise. I’m not a red meat eater so tend to just drink red on its own rather than with a meal as many people do. I couldn’t tell you the ‘underlying flavours’ or what vintage is what. I just no if a wine tastes nice to me and is easy to drink.

So with a little trepidation I thought I’d give the Slimline Wine a whirl as my weekend drink.

The website has this description “A proper Red, with all the depth and flavour you expect although a little lighter on the tongue. Made from Barbera grapes.” For those counting calories there are 55 per 100ml in the white wine. So much less than normal wine.

Did I like it?

Yes – I was really surprised! I was expecting it to be a different taste to regular red wine. It absolutely does not have any taste in it that would give it away as a low cal wine. I honestly didn’t expect it to be as nice as it is. I thought that perhaps it would be a little like no alcohol wine in that it’s an ok substitute. How wrong I was. In a blind taste test I’d never be able to tell that there is a difference at all. To me it was easy to drink….a little too easy. I was soon on a lovely second glass! It needs to be pointed out that its 10% vol alcohol wine so similar to usual wines. Again a fact I was surprised by.

Where can I buy it?

Currently its available to order on the website.

You can also find out more about the wine on the website too.

04Mar 2018

My Sunday Photo – Birthday Party Invites

by Lyric ⋅ 6 Comments

I haven’t taken part in Sunday Photo for a while, in fact I haven’t put a post out for a while either. Life has just got in the way. I have a baby on me 24 hours a day. He eats on me. Naps on me. Sleeps on me. You get the picture. It’s hard to type when I don’t have free hands! So yesterday I got the chance to take my eldest to a birthday party. He doesn’t get invited to a lot of parties as he hasn’t got a particular friendship group. He just mixes well with everyone. The party was at the local climbing walls and he loved it! I was so proud of how hard he tried and how much fun he had in doing so!

02Feb 2018

53 Activities for Children on an Flight

by Lyric ⋅ Leave a Comment

Travelling with children can be daunting for parents, especially for those embarking on a flight with kids for the first time. The average flight time if you’re flying with Flybe is just 53 minutes. But these minutes still need filling!

Little hands and heads get bored very quickly!

To keep little ones occupied during the flight, Flybe have created a list of 53 activities, ranging from some timeless classics like ‘I Spy’ and the alphabet game, to drawing games such as hangman and colouring in, to downloading their favourite programmes on electronic devices – don’t forget to pack headphones as this will avoid the whole cabin having to listen to Peppa Pig.

Snacks are also a great way to fill the time, pre-prepare a fun picnic with a selection of healthy snacks and don’t forget to pick up a bottle of water in the departure lounge or order one during the flight

Being organised in advance will help any journey run smoothly, so for little ones don’t forget to pack their favourite teddy in the cabin bag as they may even have a nap.