Unisex Baby Clothes

Wow.

That is about all I can say!

On Saturday, Thomas, Noah and I decided we would avoid the rain and head to some shops to get the new baby (known quite firmly as 'Flapjack' in this house) some clothes. I kept all of Noah's clothes from when he was a baby, I tried to keep things as unisex as possible. Turns out they aren't at all, looking at them now and imagining a girl in them just doesn't work. It's also very clear Noah was born in June, there are nowhere near enough warm things for a February baby! So we went to get some nice warm little outfits.

We got.......nothing.

White anyone?

EVERYTHING for new babies is pink, blue or white. We have never wanted to find out the sex of our baby before it was born, but it seems like that makes you the most boring parents who would only want to dress their child in white! Only on coming home did I find a few items on the Mothercare website that were red, and these were definitely not in store. So we have decided to just grab a few white sleep suits, which I think I might tie-dye, to get us through the first few days and then we shall be going out on a shop for sex specific winter clothes!

This is sold out! Why could they not also have this in orange, bright yellow, green......?!

It puts me in mind to start up a unisex baby clothing company, if only I had an inch of designer/crafter in my body! Some one want to pair up with me? I could do the business side of things? Alternatively if someone could point me towards some affordable unisex clothing that would be fab!

Bx

The 2014 To Do List

You may remember that at the beginning of last year Thomas and I made a list of family goals. You can view the original post here.
We didn't complete all of them, but they are just goals, not something to beat ourselves up about if we don't quite get there. So here are the things to cheer about.......

-We made that baby!!!!
-We are getting better at keeping things tidy  
-We almost always eat at the table, tv dinners are a special treat (which is of course what we are doing    right now!)
-We are much better with our budget
-I got my tattoo done
-I was a much healthier weight before I got pregnant!

And so this year! Some are the goals we didn't achieve last year some are new goals!

-Potty train Noah
-Read 25 books/get to 80 on my book list
-Finish distance learning
-Pay off debts
-Get involved in baby wearing
-Teach Noah the pop beat on the drums
-Have watched 100 movies in total from 1001 Movies book
-Bake macaroons
-Travel to some new places

A smaller list than last year's, which is probably sensible what with a new baby arriving and all! What are your goals for the new year?

Bx

The 52 Project 1/52

In an effort to rekindle my love affair with my blog and to get better at using my camera, I have decided to embark upon The 52 Project. Lots of people in the blogosphere did it last year and I loved seeing the pictures. My camera skills leave a lot to be desired! Maybe I will look for a photography evening class this year!

So, the project aim is to take a photo of your child once a week, every week, for a year. As some of you know we will have another little one arriving soon, so I felt this year would be a particularly interesting year to do it! Babies change so much in the first year that it will be great to document that. I find it harder to notice Noah changing now, just all of a sudden he seems different, so I am looking forward to being able to see his changes documented.

So here is week one's effort!

This kid is really determined to stick to his new year resolution

The bump at almost 33 weeks. I feel huge, I never feel like I look nice so having this picture is a huge challenge for me!

Toddler Sleep Problems

Getting a toddler to sleep. Such fun! This picture is the from the first night of when we began to resolve our problems!

Here's what happened tonight. We had a bath, mostly stress free, although he loves to splash me at the moment so the bathroom ends up SOAKED! He did not want to get in his jammies (the sign he wasn't going down easy). Then it was story time, he was not listening at all just pottered around the room whilst I read. After the first story he brought me a different one, sat on my lap and listened really nicely cuddled up to me and rubbed his eyes trying not to fall asleep. Here I'm like, 'wahoo he's going to sleep easy tonight'. So wrong!

I then put him in bed and he sort of stayed put. Now normally I will sit and read my book whilst he falls off to sleep but I had forgotten to bring it in. I could see he wasn't going off quickly so I asked him to stay put whilst I went and got it. Stay put he did not! He got out of bed shut the door behind me and got back in bed. That seemed like quite clear message so I left him to it. About five minutes later I could hear a lot of crashing around. I went up to tell him to get into bed but he refused to stay put so I left him again. Within five minutes he was crying my name. I went up again and stayed outside the room, I told him I would come and sit with him if he got in bed and refused to come in until he got into bed. Once he was in, I sat down and read my book, he was asleep very quickly and I stayed reading for ages because it was a good bit!

Now it may not sound like it but that felt like a success! I didn't need to stress, I could tell when things were going to work and what he would listen to.

Why is bedtime such a chore?!

It started when we got back from Antigua. Before that it was story, in the cot, leave the room, never go back! Whilst we were away we were either in the room or he fell asleep in the buggy. There was no routine at all. When we got back bedtime became hell!

After 10 days of fighting he told us quite clearly that the cot was the problem. So right there and then we took the sides off and turned it into his big boy bed! The first few nights were fine but after that it became a fight again. We couldn't get him to stay in bed and it was just more fight than we could handle. After much reading online we decided to put a stair gate across his door so we could just leave him to sort himself out.

Now it's a juggle each night figuring what kind of mood he is in. He does go to sleep easier if we sit in with him whilst he drifts off, but some nights we can just tell it will be easier to leave him to it. I actually love sitting in with him. Watching that kid fall asleep is one of my all time favourite things to do, but also how can I complain about getting to read every night! In the last week whilst Thomas has been studying hard I've been on bedtime duty and read half a book!

Does anyone else have any bed time nightmares? Fears of moving from a cot to a bed? Would love to hear your stories.

Bx

And I'm back!

Photo taken on holiday in Antigua last month

What's that? Can you hear it? Yup, that's the cheers and applause for my return. Possibly. Yes I have finally got over myself and come back to you my beloved (or something like that) readers. I do apologise for my absence, and I have had a lot of people saying how much they missed reading it, so here I am!

You see, at first I thought I had a little writers block, that I was doing anything interesting worth writing about. Then I just decided I just didn't want to write down what I had to say. The last thing I wanted was for this blog to become some kind of pathetic 'dear diary....' situation where I air all my troubles and constantly whinge and moan! I hate whinging and moaning. So I steered clear of writing anything.

Then I was just being lazy!

I am, however, back and back to stay. A little recap of what was going on though and why I just needed to (wo)man up!

We still hadn't managed to make a baby and I was feeling pretty fed up about it. Then a very wise and wonderful family friend told me; "I firmly believe that your body wont get pregnant again until it is ready to". That pretty much kicked me right where it needed to! I just said you know what yeah! I wasn't in a great place emotionally and surgery and whatnot is pretty traumatic on the body. So even if the doctors say it's fine, your body may have other ideas. That helped me calm my thoughts a lot, although I still dedicated myself more to charting my cycles so I could take a more logical rather than emotional view on what was going on.

The other reason that not being pregnant was getting me down was that I had never intended to go back to work for so long. I was quite happy to take a step down in responsibility when it was only temporary, but as the time went on I began to feel that I was wasting my time. Topping it off with work being a pretty unhappy place at the moment, with staff who are not good enough, lots of bitching and moaning and general frustrations, I just never ever wanted to go in. In my decision to let baby stuff happen when it happens, I also decided to focus on what job I would rather be doing instead. I have told work that I would like to be a manager again, but that will just happen if a store comes up and I am suitable so it could be a long time. I've started a manager workbook to get my mind working again anyway. I am also looking elsewhere, I know Nero isn't in my forever, everyone needs a change sometimes! I just have no idea what. So I have been looking else where for interesting sounding vacancies (although this isn't really a thing for someone with no qualifications) and there is the prospect of an interesting joint business venture with a friend!

Other things that were bothering me were an awful lodger who was tearing at Thomas and my relationship, he is now gone and we are very happy again. Also we were going on a big family holiday/wedding which I was dreading. The idea of taking Noah away was completely stressing me out, but it was brilliant, hard but nowhere near as bad as I had prepared myself for! As you can see from the picture above there were lots of smiles.

So now things are on the up. I recently attended/helped with my best friend's wedding which was amazing and I loved being involved in the preparations (event planner....!?). Nothing like the happiest day of someone else's life to perk you right up!

Now if only we could sort Noah's sleep issues.......but that's another post!

Approaching 1000

Hello there everyone.
I am very soon to go over the 1000 page views boundary! I really can't believe so many of you want to read my random chatterings, but thank you very much!

I apologies that I haven't been very active of late. Writers block I suppose. I don't feel very positive about things going on in my life, there are people and situations making things very stressful and I don't want to write whole posts full of misery! So I have been choosing silence.

On a positive note, Noah has become the biggest mimic and a right little chatterbox. He comes home from nursery singing and doing the actions of a new rhyme every day, he recites the swimming teachers instructions in the car on the way home, every time we teach him a new word he uses it the next time in perfect context, he is beginning to use possessive words (without the actual s though) - 'Mummy tea', 'Noah boots', 'Daddy tootah (computer)', even the occasional two words strung together - this morning at breakfast he was quite concerned that we haven't seen his best pal in a couple of weeks and kept saying 'Where Lois?'. It really is adorable, and a little scary how much he notices!

I'm going to have to get some video of him singing the nursery rhymes, the wheels on the bus is just the best!

Because what's a blog post without a photo - Noah insists on wearing these shorts whenever
he can despite the rather chilly temperatures!

On having a poorly child

Snuggled up in the sofa bed - now to be called the sick den -  watching a disney movie

Noah has been really poorly for the last few days. Right now he is upstairs having a nice long nap which is the first time since Thursday. If only he had decided to sleep a bit later and I would have been able to sleep as well, none of us have been able to sleep whilst he's been ill!

It started on Thursday, I had no idea what was wrong with him, he just whined. All day. I took his temp in the afternoon because I couldn't figure out what else it could be and didn't want to take him to his swimming lesson if he was sick! The temp was fine though, so we went ahead with swimming. That evening though his temp went right up and has been floating around 38.5 - 39 degrees ever since. It did shoot up above 40 at one point which totally freaked me out (read about febrile seizures over on Melissa's blog), but he had fallen asleep under a duvet! He's had a rash on and off on his chest but this morning it came up all over his face and his eyes were all puffy. I decided it was time to visit the doctors, I knew that there wouldn't really be anything they could do but some reassurance is nice! Sure enough it is just a virus, a nasty one though, so no antibiotics unless the rash becomes pustules that start weeping (please no!). We did get some cream for his rash which will hopefully keep him more comfortable. I also got the reassurance I needed that we are doing everything right, keeping him in just a nappy, alternating between calpol and nurofen to keep his temperature in check (it hasn't actually brought it down much but at least it doesn't get any higher) and making sure he drinks lots.

The biggest shock to me has been I CAN'T DEAL WITH IT! I have become an overprotective worry mum! I'm usually so calm in a crisis, if anything happens to me I just get on with it and stay fairly level headed. Not when it's my baby apparently! I just want to take it away from him and feel sick myself! I need to hold him all the time when he's at his worst. Even if Thomas is holding him instead of me my hands are itching to take him and clutch him to me! I would give anything to make him better now.

Bx