After a few beautiful (if very cold) frosty days, we decided we should wrap up on New Year’s Day and go for a chilly walk around our local country park. Then New Year’s Day dawned and it was grey and miserable. No blue sky, no pretty frost. Just really wet and grey! But after some to-ing and fro-ing we decided not to let this stop us, to pop on our wellies and head over anyway.
Life
New Year, Time for Me
Happy New Year Everyone! 2015 I am pleased you are here 🙂
Are you making any resolutions? I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions as I feel that if you want to do something then you should just do it, not wait for an arbitrary date to start. However I do think that New Year comes at a good time for those of us that have over indulged over Christmas and want to make a fresh start so I never begrudge anyone that.
I have definitely over-indulged lately… not just because it has been Christmas but because the last couple of months since Little Miss arrived have been really hard. And I am a comfort eater. I have been sleep deprived, poorly, exhausted and generally unhappy. So when I feel like this I eat. Chocolate yes but actually crisps are my biggest vice. And coleslaw, and pate and cheese and lots of other full fat options! So even though I lost some of my baby weight shortly after LM was born, I have now put it all back on and my clothes are definitely getting tight. I gave away my maternity clothes already and refuse to buy bigger sizes so it is time to do something about it.
Our Christmas 2014
We are back! I hope everyone had a lovely festive break? Got everything they wanted from Father Christmas? Ate lots of ymmy food? Good! We have all had a lovely Christmas. It has of course been LM’s first christmas but also the first Christmas that Monkey has really understood what is happening and really enjoyed the build up and everything involved in Christmas. He has been so cute, shouting “Merry Christmas” to anyone and everyone and you may have seen our little video of him singing Merry Christmas which was just adorable. If anything we are struggling to persuade him that it isn’t Christmas again for another year!
It hasn’t been the easiest Christmas with a demanding baby and over-excited toddler but it has been a lot of fun. We have spent lovely time together as a family and all been very spoilt with lots of lovely presents. I won’t bore you with the details but here are some pics of our lovely Christmas 2014.
Family selfie opening presents on the bed – nearly all of us looking!
Monkey amazed by the tree and presents
Monkey helping LM open her present from Father Christmas
LM in her pretty Christmas Dress
Cuddles with Nanny
Cuddles with Great Auntie Maggie, Uncle Marky & Nanny
Cuddles with Daddy
Our first Christmas Family photo as a four…
With Monkey’s best smiley face 🙂
Reading one of his Christmas present books with Uncle Marky!
Auntie Fran and Nanny
Yummy Cider Braised Ham and all the trimmings
And a slightly crazy Christmas Pudding firework (?)
Linking with #Tinsel Tuesdays
A Christmas Message from Monkey
Pre-Christmas Celebrations
I feel I have been neglecting the blog quite a bit lately but there hs just been a lot going on in the run up to Christmas, as I am sure you can imagine! It is only set to get busier over the next few days so this is my last post for a bit while I enjoy Christmas with my family and will be back again next week at some point.
In the meantime though we have been having a lovely time with friends and family. Hubs has now finished work, although he is still checking in remotely he is not going into the office again until after Christmas, meaning we get to spend some time as a family. I have been really looking forward to this day as the past few weeks have been difficult and it is nice to have some help with the kiddies.
Getting Christmassy!
This week has been one of those weeks. After a lovely time at the wedding on Sunday we both still felt really poorly and hubs spent all of Monday in bed, which just isn’t like him. Then just lots of things have gone wrong, there’s been spilled drinks, the light bulb in the downstairs loo went & its a funny halogen one and of course we don’t have spares. Then when some lovely friends paid me a surprise visit to cheer me up, one of them hung up her coat and the shelf with all the coathooks on fell off the wall on top of her, sending coats, bags, etc. flying across the hall. Just what we needed! As she rightly said thugh, thank goodness I wasn’t underneath it carrying the baby, as I had been seconds before!
LM has been poorly too meaning sleepless nights for hubs and I (though I have tried to take the lion’s share so he can actually get better!) and it has just felt like one thing after another so if I’m honest I have been pretty mopey. One thing I really haven’t felt, is particularly Christmassy.
But things seem to be looking up. Hubs is on the mend. We’ve changed the bulb in the bathroom loo (though yet to tackle repairing the shelf :() and even LM seems to be getting better so this has all improved my mood no end. With less than a week until Christmas I decided today it was time to get Christmassy. We’ve had the tree up for a while but didn’t have any other decorations up so today I got out some tinsel and with Monkey’s help (?) hung it around the house.
Monkey and I also did some simple Christmas crafting  today, he is sooo excited about Christmas bless him and after watching a Christmas episode of Mister Maker he was desperate to get his Christmas Craft on. I first got the idea for the snowman picture from the lovely Tarana at Sand in my Toes. With Monkey’s own twist because of course the snowman has to have hands (?). Monkey is obsessed with Snowmen, we bought the Raymond Briggs duo fo The Snowman and Father Christmas and they have basically been on on repeat for over a week, he loves them! So if anything I have “Another Blooming Christmas” going round in my head, not particularly cheerful for someone who actually loves Christmas!
The Christmas tree is as simple as it looks, I cut out a tree shape and invited Monkey to stick a variety of sparkly shiny bits on! And of course the obligatory glitter, which of course ended up in his hair and all over the place, but he loved it :).
I’ve finished the meal plan and shopping order for Christmas week and even started on wrapping the humungous pile of presents that I have been avoiding. I normally love wrapping presents but have struggled to find the enthusiasm for it this year so far. Time for that to change. Though I have barely touched the surface yet have managed to go through 3 rolls of wrapping paper already… that can’t be good!  Anyway, with less than a week to go now until the big day, I am determined to stop moping and embrace the Christmas Spirit!!
Are you feeling Christmassy yet? What is your word of the week?
Meeting Father Christmas, and some Reindeer
At 2 1/2 this is the first year Monkey has really understood that Christmas is coming, and therefore been really excited about it. Because of that we are very much enjoying sharing Christmas traditions with him as his enthusiasm is really contagious! He has been asking basically every day this month whether Father Christmas is coming, so we thought he would love going to visit him. As an aside, he is very much Father Christmas in our house rather than Santa Claus, it seems everyone is adopting Santa these days but that feels so American to me, am I alone in this?
A Winter Wedding
The last couple of weeks have been pretty rough and this weekend on the whole wasn’t much better. Hubs had seemed like he was getting better, then got hit with a hideous sinus infection which took him out for most of the weekend. We were abandoning various plans, but knew that on Sunday we were due at the wedding of some really good friends. So Sunday morning Hubs was at the walk-in centre getting antibiotics for both sinus and chest infections, and some strong painkillers to get him through the day.
We questioned the wisdom of going to the wedding but really, its a wedding! It’s a one off event for the bride and groom and we would have hated to have missed it. Monkey was already planned to spend the day with Grandparents, so off he went leaving hubs and I a bit more time than normal to get ourselves ready.
So for the first time since LM was born I sat and straightened my hair and put some slap on. I got into a pretty dress and control tights (squeezing into them was a bit of a challenge as I very much still have baby weight on!) and it felt really nice to make a bit of an effort for a change. Lately has felt like survival and even having a shower, let alone washing my hair, has been like a luxury some days so this felt very special!
LM had a new dress for the occasion and I have never put a baby in a dress and tights before so the tights were interesting (they were a bit big too so she looks slightly nora batty ish) but she looked adorable. 🙂
So off we went and had a wonderful time. It was a beautiful day and we were so glad we went. LM was good as gold and slept throughout, meaning that actually hubs and I could sit and relax and just chat, with each other and with friends. At home life seems so busy with the baby and the toddler and there is always so much that needs doing that sitting and relaxing doesn’t happen much at the moment. Being there actually forced us to do just that and it did us both the world of good to just be us for a while.
The bride was beautiful and they were both so happy it was a really lovely, I love a good wedding. It was a really intimate ceremony and we felt so privileged to have been included and would have hated to have not been able to go.
So here is a few snaps of us in our glad rags, enjoying a lovely winter wedding :).
Moments of Happiness
To counter balance yesterday’s post about our awful week, I wanted to share a few of the happy moments we’ve had too. Because even amongst the screaming, hacking coughs, tantrums and general tearing of hair out, there has been the odd moment that has made me happy.
Wednesday, on the whole, was a good day. LM was pretty good, and Monkey spent a big chunk of the day at Nanny’s having cuddles on the sofa, giving him some much needed attention and me some much needed breathing space. While LM slept in the afternoon Monkey and I had a lovely play. We put up his little tent and tunnel in the conservatory and had a great time hiding from each other and generally giggling :).
A difficult week
For the most part I like to keep this blog a pretty positive place, and I don’t want to be a moaner, but honestly this last week has been difficult. I struggled to choose the right word for it actually, contenders were hard, exhausting, poorly, screaming, unhappy. I have settled on ‘difficult.’