First week flying solo

So, because you were all so supportive and sweet when I shared my concerns about leaving The Baby and returning to work, I though I had better share an update of how we got on.

Well not only is my childminder great with the kids, she also appreciates capturing the everyday and has a special Facebook page where she shares what the kids are up to throughout the day. So perfect for a scrapbooker and anxious mother who is sat missing her little boy at work and then up pops a whole album to show what he has been up to. It is beyond amazing. 

So here is what he has been up to in just three days:- 

Lots of playing outside in the garden as the weather has been nice

Some sorting cups and looking at reflections

Some web surfing!

Some role playing

He even ate some banana (which was on the naughty list before)

Lots of giggling

Some falling in love (uh-oh!)

Making birds' nests

Chewing some toys

Munching on some toast

Napping (only the second and third day, clearly on Monday he was too enthralled by it all!) 

Playing with cars - apparently he was really trying to work out how the cars got past the bend. Future engineer?

Exhausted by all of the fun and asleep in the triple buggy

Making bird seed

Whole body painting!

Doesn't it look exhausting, but such fun! When I see these pictures my heart sings and I can see the benefit of it all for him. He loves his little buddies and follows the little one and a half year old boy around like his shadow. After day one he was barely crying and was eating and napping well. I am so proud of how easily he has adapted - especially since last week he wasn't very well and had been very clingy. 

Today (my first official 'day off') he has been clingier than usual and has napped a lot, but its been a hectic and slightly confusing week for him so I can fully understand that response. I now have five days off and plan to make the most of it.

I have enjoyed being back at work and it already feels like I've never been away (in mostly a good way); however I am totally exhausted in the evenings and have napped most afternoons or gone to bed really early. Dinner has been a really lazy convenient frozen pizza or tortellini and housework has been the bare minimum. I will have to find a happy medium, but for now I am proud that I didn't cry on Monday and the we're both enjoying our new ventures. 

What do you all have planned for the bank holiday weekend?

Musings on Motherhood: My baby is Eight Months Old!

Some highlights this month:

• your big cheesy grin
• your giggle like Muttley in the Wacky Races
• your friend Asher trying to give you kisses, but coming away horrified when you tried to lick him
• you have started to make sounds like 'dadada' and 'owdear'
• first ride on a swing. You're a fan just like I was!
• a fun day out to Leeds Museum
• lots of play dates
• your first taste of ice-cream. Again you're a big fan!
• your first two teeth breaking through
• a fun weekend at the grandparents involving a visit to a soft play centre
• a few little solo cruises along the sofa
• you attended a first birthday party 

 

You're still getting into lots of mischief by:

• Pulling yourself up to standing on anything - the high chair, the toilet (especially gross), your pram, your car seat, the table cloth. Clearly many of these things are not secure and so there are plenty of bumps and bruises.
• Pulling all of the books off the bookshelf.
• Pulling magazines, cups and mail off the table.
• Trying to eat cables.
• Getting stuck between the sofa and the wall.
• Pulling the internet cable out of the wall.
• Pulling yourself up onto the bath taps in the bath.
• Diving in and out of your playring.
• Banging your bottle on your cot bars when you want some attention in the morning.
• Trying to scratch out my friends' babies eyes (yikes!)
• Pulling mummy's hair very tightly.
• Pulling daddy's nose and diving on him when asleep (I actively encourage this one.)
• Waking up and wanting hour long cuddles at 2 a.m.

You will notice that most of the above are concerned with pulling yourself  up. You are insanely strong and adept at crawling and balancing and I am always amazed when you master a new trick - like reaching the shoe rack and pulling the bottom two rows of shoes out. You impress a lot of people with your agility and your balance. 

You have also mastered sitting up this month, as you seemed to bypass this and go straight to crawling. You're very cute when you sit up and it means you can play 'more nicely' with your toys instead of just crawling over them all. Also you sit up in the bath and this is very cute too.
 
But with a smile like this I think you're going to get away with murder:

Happy eight months buddy!

Musings on Motherhood: My Baby is Seven Months Old!

 
For some reason seven months seems so old. Closer to one than to newborn. Yikes. 

This month has seen Ellis hit many big milestones. It has been a great month for him, but one of the hardest months for us as parents as months and months of sleep deprivation catches up on us and teething troubles means that he can be crying for hours at night. We're not used to this as he was never much a crier as a baby.

So a few days after his six month milestone he was off. I mentioned in the previous post that he has assumed crawling position so I guess it was only ever a matter of time. Sunday 2nd of February (this will help me remember at a later date!) I was putting my 'face on' for church and he was suddenly beside me. It took The Belgian to explain to me that he just crawled across the room. He looked incredibly pleased with himself and has spent the rest of the month perfecting his technique from a shuffle to full on bottom-in-the-air making serious speeds crawl. Now he is into EVERYTHING and makes a dash for cables, the remote control, my mobile phone, paper, boxes and it all goes straight into his mouth. Friends have said this is called the eyes-in-the-back-of your-head phase. 

However, always the overachiever, Ellis was not satisfied with just crawling and a week later I was sat checking emails on my laptop on the sofa when first two hands appeared clutching the edge and then a little face looking incredibly smug. He now pulls himself up to standing on any available surface or object - the toy box, chairs, his high chair, his baby walker, the pram, his car seat and the most dangerous of all the drawer on the television cabinet. If you leave the lounge door open he enjoys making a dash for freedom and if I pop into the kitchen and leave him for a minute he often crawls through to join me. I know that he is really advanced and strong for his age and this makes me the envy of a lot of the mums at baby groups, but its also very tiring and often ends in tears and bumps on the head. It has also led to sleep regression where he is wanting to practice his new skills at like two in the morning and we can hear his head hitting the headboard as he attempts to crawl round his cot!

He has become more vocal this month and loves babbling away to himself in the morning. Sometimes it sounds like he says words and so we try to chat back to him to encourage it. He had a week of shrieking too, which was a bit embarrassing in public, but he was just experimenting and seemed pretty impressed with the noises he could make.

He continues to be a real charmer and whilst we have been house hunting he has been charming all of the home owners and they always offer to look after him whilst we view their house. He has a million watt smile - my mom says he smiles and then some - and it just melts everyone and you can't fail to smile. Unless you are the grumpy man on the train to Glasgow, in which case you clearly can ignore it. Grump! He has a really sunny disposition and this makes the broken nights sleep and frustrating crying episodes easier to deal with. I think he will be a really cofident young man as he loves meeting new people and at baby sensory crawls around as though he owns the place.

As mentioned above we took our first solo train ride to Glasgow. Four hours on the train was LONG with a wriggly baby who just wants to crawl and lets just say the baby changing facilities were non-existent so that was fun. He is very adaptable thought and everyone commented how good he was on the journey. Of course he was charming them all with his big grin. 



The reason for our train journey? To visit his cute, little cousin Ella. So he also gained a cousin this month - his first one - very exciting. She is so tiny and I really cannot remember Ellis being that small - even though she was only a few ounces lighter than him. Plus she sleeps all the time and I cannot remember this phase with my little reluctant napper! Ellis was quite sweet with her and wanted to stroke her hair and test out all of her toys for her. They proved quite durable so this is good news!

Another first this month has been solids. At first he loved his purees but since we started baby led weaning its been more about chewing on and exploring the feel and texture of his food than actually digesting it. His current favourites are pear, petit filous, toast, Ella's Kitchen purees (especially the red one), sweet potatoe and omlette. We have enjoyed seeing his reactions to certain foods - he is a bit like me his face gives it all away in just one 'look.'  

  Life gets so busy and it feels now like he has always been with us. I have felt stretched at times this month as we had car problems, we've been house hunting and sorting out a mortgage which has meant lots of forms and getting hold of lots of elusive documents, we were trying to sleep train Ellis and that turned into one big nightmare and as maternity pay dwindles trying to cope on a much smaller budget than before (lots of bargain bin diving at Asda!) 

I don't want to forget these precious moments though and know how blessed we are to have such a lively and charasmatic young boy. We can always sleep later...

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Linking up with lovely Jane out at Ethan's Escapades for the milestones linky

International Women's Day: Maya Angelou

 

I have always loved Maya Angelou's poetry and found her inspirational in her strength and ability to endure a trials. I like her confidence and sass too.

I shared this poem with a boy heavy GCSE group and they were unmoved, if not downright hostile, towards the sentiment of it. Most of their attitudes were, "yeah, so? Mums have to do a lot. Get over it." I sincerely hope this was just male bravado and that they do appreciate all of the work their mother's do.

I hope to raise Ellis to have a great respect for women, but also to be able to fend for himself. He already loves to feed himself and so we are off to a good start. I am also lucky that The Belgian can hold his own in the kitchen and is not allergic to hoovering. I must admit we have fallen into gender stereotypes in that he always takes out the bin and I tend to do the laundry. However, I do refuse to iron his shirts as I don't iron my own clothes even!

I like the simple structure of this poem and how the first stanza is organised to mirror the monotony of her life by listing all of her daily chores. Now I am a mother myself and a temporary housewife I do agree with the sentiment that a woman's work is never done. Plus the 'moon glow' being all that 'I can call my own' as those evenings when the little man is in bed are so precious. Woman Work I've got the children to tend The clothes to mend The floor to mop The food to shop Then the chicken to fry The baby to dry I got company to feed The garden to weed I've got shirts to press The tots to dress The can to be cut I gotta clean up this hut Then see about the sick And the cotton to pick. Shine on me, sunshine Rain on me, rain Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again. Storm, blow me from here With your fiercest wind Let me float across the sky 'Til I can rest again. Fall gently, snowflakes Cover me with white Cold icy kisses and Let me rest tonight. Sun, rain, curving sky Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone Star shine, moon glow You're all that I can call my own. Maya Angelou

Project Life: Kirkstall Deli Market

So as I mentioned before I am going back in time and scrapping a month by month approach from July 2013 when my little man was born. I already had the envelopes of prints just waiting and so its been an easy and fun process.

I blogged about our little family renuion in September for The Baby's blessing. We were so lucky that is coincided with the Kirkstall Deli market as we love that place. Kirkstall Abbey has great significance to us as a family as we had our wedding pictures shot here and so when we were here my lovely brother-in-law staged a little photo shoot of our family of three. I also got some bump shots and so I plan to make a layout of the three stages of our married life there. 

Since this was autumn I chose an autumnal colour scheme of rusts, bronze, yellow and blue. I used some Becky Higgins 'Midnight' cards, the gorgeous Studio Calico woodgrain card from Copper Mountain and embellished with mini saffrass letter stickers, sequins, wood veneers from Studio Calico and the gorgeous puffy asterix' from the Copper Mountain kit that I would love like one hundred packs of.

We all joke about how The Baby's strong eyebrows look like slugs in this picture. I cut the heart from a midnight card and like to use some of the cards for this instead of the whole card - just like you would with a 12 by 12 sheet of cardstock. 

The colours on this layout are very pleasing to my eye and I feel that I captured the event well - even though it is several months later. More September layouts to come soon and The Baby's seven month photo shoot. Eek how time flies!

Project Life: Scrapbooking the newborn pictures

So I am going back in time with my Project Life. I probably didn't have the time when he was a new born to 'Project Life' it and I was still a die hard scrapper then - albeit I had downsized from 12 by 12 to 8.5 by 11. These photos would have each had their own page with journalling and embellishments.
But early January I decided to switch and when I started loving the little pocket scrapbooking I realised I have so much of The Baby's first six months to catch up on.
Plus a huge wallet (or rather wallets) of photos needing a home.
My lovely instagram friend, Ashley, sent me some cards to start me off. She sent me a mix of Dear Lizzie 'Fifth and Frolic' and Maggie Holmes 'Flea Market' cards and these are mainly what I have used on these newborn layouts. 

Some techniques that I enjoyed trying on this layout:

• Mixing up the gold sparkly and gold metallic thickers for the 'proud' caption. It really wasn't because I had run out of some of the letters.
• The heart border and the star were created using the negatives from stickers with washi tape underneath. Love this technique.

My second layout is all about my parents being first time grandparents. These are the first pictures of each of them holding Ellis; after they had busted their way through the strict visitors hours by claiming to have travelled from 'very far away' and having to return shortly.
The harassed midwife came though and said she had a very distraught grandmother on her hands who was demanding to see me. The 'Australians' visiting from far away. This made me smile as my dad is from Belfast and has a strong Ulster accent and my mom is South African and still has a hint of this in her accent. I wondered what kind of stories they were telling to get to see me!
I understood why my mom was so keen to see me as the last she had heard at 10 p.m the night before was that things were not going well. I wouldn't let The Belgian out of my sight and so she only received the call at about 5 a.m reassuring her that both mother and baby were fine. She'd had an awful night pacing the floor and arrived at 9 a.m wanting to give her 'traumatised' daughter a big hug and they wanted her to wait till 2 p.m. This is a bit unreasonable on the very day her grandson was born.
It turned out they weren't telling fibs to see me. They had travelled from Shropshire (although they were staying in a hotel up the road) and the midwife must have confused the South African accent for Australian. 
However, they did return at two for another cuddle and she came in to change my dressing and really gave them a look. Lets just say there was no love lost between her and my mother.

Techniques I used on the cards:-

• washi tape and a punched star stapled on for that rustic look
• a line of stamped camera
• some patterned cards used as is with no extra embellishment as the other cards were quite busy
• twine tied around one of the photos 

So are you Team Midwife or Team Grandma?

Haha! 

The Big Sleep...

I remember reading a blog post in the hazy days of life with a newborn where the blogger said she was composing a post all about sleep. Her husband looked over her shoulder and rolling his eyes said, "oh please! Who would anyone want to read about getting babies to sleep? You're obsessed." 
I'm pretty sure newly married-out dating my husband- busy as a full time teacher-me in my other life- would have had a similar response. But sleep and napping does become an obsession when you have a baby.
You see when they don't sleep, you don't sleep. When they don't sleep they become difficult and grouchy, when you don't sleep you become difficult and grouchy and dealing with them becomes ten times harder. 
So getting a good routine and getting your sleep becomes very important.
Important enough to write a blog post about.
Men, they just don't get it! 

Now in the early days The Baby used to sleep anywhere...

In his moses basket

On our chests...

On the sofa...on a chair...yes newborn babies sleep anywhere!

Now this post in not one spouting helpful advice on how to get your baby to sleep through the night. 
As somewhere around four to five months my baby became a reluctant napper and as we tried to introduce a new bedtime routine he also became a very reluctant sleeper.
In the early days he would have a dummy and this seemed to help him get off to sleep...

Then he started rejecting his dummy and wanted to feed to sleep and to continue sucking on his bottle to help him get to sleep.
So, in desperation (for a bit of us time) and to get him off, we started wedging his bottle in with a blanket or toy and then he would happily drift off to sleep and we would sneak back in and remove the bottle when he was deeply asleep.
I believe this is what experts would describe as making a rod for our own backs. 

What would happen when he wasn't hungry?
The window for getting him to sleep became very narrow and we had a difficult Christmas and New Years with him only settling down about ten 'o' clock.
But yet he was still waking at his normal time of eight a.m and so he wasn't getting enough sleep.
We certainly weren't.
He was still waking 2/3 times in the night as well.

So it was time to re-introduce the dummy as a sleeping aid.
So now our routine was this:

• 6.40 bath time with daddy to splash around and use up his energy
• 6:50 baby massage and put into his pj's with mummy
• 7:00 go the nursery with mummy, get fed on the rocking chair and as he drifts off swap bottle for dummy
• When he wakes in the night try to offer him a dummy instead of always giving him a bottle

But do any of you find that dummies are like socks? They seem to disappear into the ether with no trace. Especially the favourite dummy. The cherry teat dummy.

So when Wauwaa (a baby and parenting advice website and baby retailer) sent me a Snoozebaby I knew that it would be the perfect solution to our problem.
The Baby has always loved clutching soft textures and especially tags and this toy has a coiled tail to capture and hold onto the dummy.
So now when he cries at 4 a.m and I am groping around in his cot for his dummy it is a lot easier to locate and often he is still clutching onto it.
The brand Snoozebaby was invented by a mother who had a premature baby who would cry and cry for hours on end. She found that he was soothed by soft textures and so designed a whole range of baby toys and accessories made from soft textures. 
My baby certainly loves things with tags and labels and soft textures. If you want to read more go to the link above.

What techniques do you use to soothe your baby and aid their sleep? Any tips to get them sleeping through?

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Disclaimer: I was sent this product to review by Wauwaa but all opinions included are my own.