I may have mentioned (once or twice ;)) that Monkey has been poorly over the last few weeks. When your little one is poorly and just not themself it is impossible to be as firm about some issues as you would normally be. When they are irrationally upset about everything because they don’t feel well, there are some things that just aren’t worth pushing.
You see their forlorn little face and you would do anything to make them happy and you certainly don’t want them to be more upset, so you relax some of the boundaries a little. You want to eat on the sofa? Ok darling. You want to wear your PJs all day? Ok sweet pea. You want to drink more milk (the 10th cup that day)? Of course my darling. You got loads of toys out but now want to cuddle back on the sofa as you don’t feel well? Don’t worry. You don’t want to have a bath tonight? Ok my love.
It makes sense, obviously there are some things that are never ok, but then there are things that aren’t that important. That aren’t worth causing any more upset. There are some things they are only doing because they are poorly and so little and don’t understand what is wrong with them. Your nurturing instincts kick in and you snuggle and coddle and reassure our little darlings until they feel better…
The problem is though, strengthening those boundaries again when they are well. Or rather when to start again. Where do you draw the line? How do you know they are 100% better? Or, more to the point, how do you know whether they are still poorly, or whether they are trying to pull a fast one? Toddlers are clever little mites and if you give them an inch they will take a mile and once they recognise they can get away with a little more because they are poorly they are bound to take advantage.
We have the same struggle with discipline whenever Monkey has been poorly and we have been a bit softer with him. Because he is a fussy eater and we struggle with food with him at times, food is one area where we do soften the rules when he is poorly. We still try to keep him eating healthily and keep up with his faves such as veggie burgers, but with a reduced appetite you can’t help being pleased that they are eating anything. So there has been many more occasions where he has eaten cheese on toast, or peanut butter on crackerbread (he loves the stuff) instead of something more substantial. Because he needs to keep his strength up and is just not in the right frame of mind to be persuaded to eat things he is less sure of.
But we are all too aware that we can’t let this go on for long, otherwise it undoes all of our hard work to keep mealtimes happy and we end with battlegrounds over food again. Like I say though, the trouble is knowing when to start enforcing the normal rules again. While he has been poorly we haven’t always enforced the rule aboout eating at the table, or the rule about not drinking milk right before dinner time (as he will happily survive on milk in the evening and won’t touch dinner if he has milk) as we know he needs something inside him to avoid meltdowns and keep his strength up. But there comes a time when we have to enforce these rules again.
No use crying over a cup of milk…
We decided to enforce them one day last week, and in hindsight it was a day too early. I won’t go into details but it descended into carnage with our boy wailing and crying so much and both hubs and I eating cold dinners by the time we had calmed him down and done what we never do – we backed down and gave up on the naughty spot (for the first time ever it just didn’t work and was chaos) and gave him what he wanted. A cup of milk. He didn’t eat his dinner and we felt thoroughly dejected and miserable that
a) we had enforced the rules too early and he had overreacted massively which meant that
b) we had to go back on what we said and give in, which feels totally wrong. We felt like terrible parents just getting it so wrong.
I remember watching supernanny before I had kids and scoffing, thinking the mistakes of the parents were so obvious and avoidable. Little did I know how hard the reality actually was! But sometimes I think to myself “what would supernanny say?” because I can see in us the parents I had happily scoffed at back in the day. Sometimes though I don’t know what she would say. Would she say “Well of course it didn’t work, he’s not very well” or would she say “You should have persisted, you can’t give up!”
The less we enforce discipline in general, the worse Monkey’s behaviour gets. We aren’t massively strict or anything but he actually reacts really well to boundaries in general and is for the most part a good boy, but a bit of laxity from us and his behaviour can descend quite rapidly.
The day after the cup of milk incident we saw the evidence of our mistake. Monkey hit me. Not hard, but in our house, hitting is not acceptable, under any circumstances. Not by accident, not in jest, just not acceptable. I told him off, explained that hitting is wrong and threatened the naughty spot if he did it again. We are very much in the “Why” zone with him at the moment and he said “Why not?” and hit me again. I had to be firm on this so put him on the naughty spot and after only a couple of tries he did stay put and it did work. The difference a day makes as he was definitely feeling more himself again and it showed. He cried and kicked off but accepted the naughty spot and apologised afterwards.
It was a turning point and he has been a lot better behaved since. Not all the time, obviously, and we have our moments but although we have threatened the naughty spot a few times we haven’t had to use it again. So I guess our relaxing of the rules, and our mistake and failed naughty spot attempt haven’t caused any problems long term. He is back to himself and the boundaries have been restored. Will he test them again? Of course. Will we go through all of this again next time he is poorly? Without a doubt. We will keep learning at this parenting lark and maybe one day we will know what we are doing without everything being a bit trial and error!
Do you relax the boundaries when your little one is ill? Do they ever try and take advantage?
Making Pizzas with Hidden Vegetables
Monkey is a fussy eater. He wasn’t until he was about 13 months old then almost overnight everything changed. I’ve talked at length about it before and we have ups and downs with how fussy he is. We have been going through a very fussy patch lately. As he has been so poorly over the recent weeks he really hasn’t had as much of an appetite so we have been happy when he has eaten anything really. I am planning a seperate post about this but it is so difficult to be strict with them when they are poorly, especially with food as he needed to keep his strength up and things can taste really funny when you are poorly.
I’ve been watching “Junk Food Children who’s to blame?” on TV too recently, and well I think it is pretty obvious the documentary makers are laying the blame squarely on the parents. I think they are probably right, as they are the ones who buy the food for their children, but I can also see how it is a slippery slope and none of these parents do it with intentions of harming their children. Far from it, they are probably too soft on them and that isn’t always good for them.
Anyway it has made me think a lot about Monkey. He has a pretty good diet anyway, hardly ever has crisps, chocolate etc, BUT we could do better. He doesn’t really eat any fresh fruits (we get him eating dried, cooked, frozen pureed but no joy with fresh really) and we struggle with lots of vegetables too, and most things actually. Pasta, sausages, chicken, pretty much everything depends on his mood. Most dinner times are spent with Mummy and Daddy pretending to be the voice of a toy (postman pat, a bus, an owl, any toy really) as he is much more likely to eat something when a toy suggests it! Not ideal but we go with what works.
One great way to get kids interested in food is to get them to help with preparing and cooking food. Monkey does love cooking but after catching himself with the peeler a few months ago he has been more reluctant to get in the kitchen. He has expressed more of an interest though lately, and with poorliness and chicken pox meaning we have spent a lot of time at home, rather than out and about, I have grabbed the opportunity to get him back in the kitchen. We do a lot of baking, which is great, but there is no reason cooking can’t be fun too.
We love Annabel Karmel’s recipes, her veggie burgers are a firm fave and we make them regularly in big batches so there is always some in the freezer. Another regular is her hidden veggie pizza sauce, which again we make in big batches and freeze. I know not everyone is into hidden veggies and I would prefer Monkey ate vegetables without having to hide them, but while we work on that I don’t think there is anything wrong with getting them into him any way that we can.
Hidden Veggie Pizza Sauce
Ingredients
1/2 onion – finely chopped
1/2 leek – thinly sliced
1 small carrot, peeled and grated
1/4 courgette, grated
1 clove crushed garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp tomato pesto (we use sacla sundried tomato pesto)
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 1/2 tsp sugar
We tend to double this and make a big batch (because so many of the ingredients are halved etc.) which gives enough sauce for 20 pizzas, so this would do about 10 pizzas.
Monkey helped me prepare the veggies, washing them and grating which is good as at least he knows there are veggies. He even announces that he loves leeks and courgettes – without tasting them. I love his enthusiasm though even if I don’t believe him for a second!
Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the onion, leek, carrot and courgette and saute for 8-10 mins until soft but not coloured. Add the garlic for one minute than remove from the heat. We have hard anodised pans and a hand blender so I add the remaining ingredients in the pan and blend in there, but if you have non stick pans, or if you prefer, you should move the veg to a blender or bowl at this point.
Add the remaining ingredients and blend until smooth. Return to the pan and simmer for 20-25 minutes. Allow to cool and then it can be frozen in batches. I usually spoon off a couple of ladles full into a tupperware which can then be got out to use with 2 pizza bases as and when. I would love to make our own pizza bases, but don’t have the time or energy at the mo – hopefully we will one day though!
Pizza toppings
The pizza sauce is great, but with the small amount of veg in there I doubt it would count as one of your 5 a day, and we really want to work on getting other veg into Monkey. Homemade pizzas are a great way of doing that, as cheese can help mask the veg, and you obviously get control of the ingredients. We use a half fat cheese, because it happens to be our fave and does help with our diets.
This is the fun bit that kids can really get involved with. We bought Monkey a child safe knife – which has a rounded tip and a fairly blunt serrated edge. It still cuts veg so you still have to be very careful around it, but the thought of Monkey cutting with it terrifies me a heck of a lot less than helping him use our big scary kitchen knives would! It means he can join in with the chopping safely and without giving me heart failure. (Yes he is wearing his PJs in these pics, I indulged him with a PJ day when he was poorly :))
So he helped me chop up the mushrooms and yellow pepper and had great fun doing it. The amounts and size of the bits I guess depends on your kid and their fussiness level. We are going for not too much, and fairly small at the moment as if they are big he will either eat round them or refuse to eat them at all. Even some of these size bits have been a challenge to get him to eat! Monkey is seriously stubborn and often goes to bed without eating any tea when he doesn’t like what is on offer (or at least he has decided he doesn’t like it even when we know it is something he does actually like!).
So anyway, yes our chunks are quite small. We also use some flavoured turkey meat for the most part, though do use other meats too sometimes to shake things up a little :). Monkey helped spread the sauce onto the pizza bases and then sprinkle the meat, veg and of course cheese on top. Yummy pizzas made :). 
Now I won’t say it was plain sailing. We make variations of this quite often and it depends on his mood and like I say at the moment he really is quite fussy. He did eat some though and moaned more about the chunks of meat than the veg and with him it really is all about seeing something he doesn’t like. If a mushroom or pepper is hidden under cheese he eats it no problem. If he can see them he doesn’t want it. So it is a work in progress but for my part, I thought they were blimming lovely and it is a good way to get him involved with cooking and vegetables so got to look at the positives! 
Dr Brown’s Teethers
Monkey was an early teether and got his first tooth at 4 mths. Therefore it is no surprise that LM is also teething early, although no teeth as yet and her symptoms have definitely been up and down! I took to twitter for some advice on remedies people have used and received some really helpful info. Don’t you just love blogging and social media for that?
The lovely people at Dr Brown’s also replied and very kindly offered to send me a couple of teethers to try out with LM. They sent me their “Ridgees” Giraffe shaped teether and one of their “Orthees” which looks almost dummy shaped. Both are designed by Paediatric dentists and are suitable from 3 months up which is perfect for LM.
Dr Brown’s Orthees
Developed by a paediatric dentist
- Massages sore gums and relieves mouth pressure during teething
- Ideal for front and back teething, Orthees® are easy for little hands to hold and help the jaw to develop as baby transitions to biting, chewing and speech
- Freezer safe
Dr Brown’s Ridgees
Developed by a paediatric dentist
- Textured surfaces ease sore gums during all stages of teething
- Reaches all areas of the mouth–including back molars
- Firm edges massage gums while soft surfaces provide pressure relief for erupting teeth
- Freezer safe
Both teethers are lovely and have different areas which are suitable for different parts of their little mouths. Both are also great for little hands to grab. Of the two LM definitely prefers the Ridgees Giraffe. Whenever I try and use the Orthees with her she gives me a very perplexed look and promptly spits it out. She always did the same with dummies and we never managed to get her to take one, she prefers sucking on her fingers. I would imagine that little ones who are used to dummies may take to it better… or it may just be that LM is particularly fussy and most other babies would be happy with it!
She loves the look of the Ridgees Giraffe and spends as much time looking at it as she actually does chewing it and it is a perfect size for her to grab hold of. It is harder plastic than I thought it would be from the pictures but I guess that is what they need for their little gums!
I like the shape of it too as I think it will be easy for her to use as she grows and needs to chew on different parts of her gums. Both teethers are also freezer safe so we could pop them in the freezer to cool and help her little gums that way.
At this age (4 mths) she is a little fickle and doesn’t have preferences for anything or chew or play with any one toy for long so I can’t say that she has a particular preference for these but I hope that as she grows and continues to teeth that they will really help soothe her little gums.
For more information, or to buy any of the Dr Brown’s Teether range, please visit drbrowns.co.uk
We were sent the Dr Brown’s Ridgees and Orthees teethers for the purpose of this review however all thoughts, opinions and photos are my own.
#Maternity Mondays week 10
Welcome to #MaternityMondays week 10! Wow 10 weeks already! Thank you all for your support so far, we love this little linky – celebrating all aspects of pregnancy and parenthood.
I’m feeling a bit soppy this week. After a few weeks of horrible illness, Monkey is looking more like himself again. His chicken pox spots are fading and we had lovely fun in the garden yesterday which brought a bit of colour back to his cheeks. Both of the kiddies have been pretty poorly recently and with them both well and smiley again I think I am just relieved and remembering how lucky I am to have such gorgeous happy kiddies. I love being their Mummy, it’s the hardest thing I have ever done at times but definitely the best and I adore them both.
I’m also a bit under the weather myself now which may be contributing to all this soppiness! But I am feeling much less exhausted than last week and looking forward to hosting again this week. I am hugely grateful to Emma for taking the reins last week and here is what she had to say about your posts.
“My favourite posts from last week were this one from Little Hearts Big Love. It was about natural caesarean births and wow, it sounded so much calmer and, well, more natural from what I experienced.
Run Jump Scrap‘s offering was a lovely ‘count your blessings’ post about how, in our bust lives we can all forget what good things we have. It certainly made me feel all warm and fuzzy.
My other favourite was from Dietician’s Life with advice for parents whose children won’t eat veg. With a four year old, I’ve been through many eating phases and children, toddlers especially, can be strange little creatures who can love carrots one day and the next, regard them like something the dog coughed up. Here are some very exciting ways to sneak veg into your child’s diet. For me, the beetroot-pink pancakes are just amazing.”
Next week is Mother’s Day and there will be a special #MaternityMondays linky which will open on Mother’s Day (Sunday) and run until Wednesday. In addition to your normal bump updates and other Motherhood posts we would love to read any Mother’s Day related posts – be it a homage to your Mum or Wife, some Mother’s Day crafts or how your kids showed their appreciation for you on Mother’s Day.
I also have a little Mother’s Day giveaway running at the moment where you could win a £50 E-Voucher for Custom Canvas, be sure to check it out!
Now it is over to you! Please grab our badge and share the linky love by commenting on a few other blog posts, it would be lovely if we could grow a little community to share the highs and lows of motherhood and parenting.
The linky is open Mondays only from 6.30am to midnight.
Don’t forget to tweet your link using #MaternityMondays, and if you tag us in we will retweet, we are @EmmaLander2 and @BecomingaSAHM
A lovely ordinary Sunday
February was a bit of a month. It was very busy for all of us and sadly, full of germs too! Illness aside there was lots going on including the big build up to the wedding of one of my best friends on the 28th. As a result it has felt very hectic and hubs and I have been a bit shattered and run down as a result. The day after the wedding, the 1st March, the sun was shining and we decided to get our lives in order a bit.
We do love our lists so we sat and worked out what jobs we wanted achieve this spring, and also what nice days out we hoped to have. Monkey loves lists too so of course he helped :). This was also when we decided to take control of LM’s routine so our day very much revolved around that.
In one of her awake times we decided to get out of the house and enjoy the sunshine. With all the poorliness lately we have spent a lot of time indoors and we just wanted to get out and get some fresh air. We are very lucky that we are walking distance to a steam engine railway line, so after checking the timetable we popped LM in the carrier and wandered off there to see a train. We hope to take Monkey on a train ride at some point, but after his fears of seeing the trains at the National Railway Museum, we thought it would be a good idea to get him used to the scale and noise of the train first!
Although it was lovely and sunny it was really windy, which Monkey wasn’t at all keen on and there was a real chill in the air waiting on the station to see the train so he and Daddy had a lovely snuggle.
Soon enough the train arrived and Monkey was so excited to wave to the train and all of the people on board. He cracked me up when the train was leaving by shouting “Follow that train!” over and over again! Bless him I had to explain that it was a little too fast for us to catch!
It was then time to head home and have some lovely lunch. Just a short outing, and hubs was shattered from pushing Monkey on his trike (it is so heavy and unwieldy but with Monkey just getting over being ill we didn’t want to push him too hard or make him walk – good job as little did we know he was actually coming down with Chicken Pox too!) and I was shattered as it is probably the longest I have had LM in the carrier for some time and she is getting heavy!
Hubs and I had soup for lunch but Monkey wanted bread and cheese. As we sat down to eat he exclaimed “This cheese is significant!” lol not sure what that meant, he has obviously heard the word and decided to try it out! As toddlers do! He did the same later, sometimes hubs and I call the kids darling, often when they are being grumpy. After lunch when I was changing LM’s nappy, Monkey came over and said to me “Darling… what you doing?” hehe hearing “darling” come out of his little mouth was so cute. He then wandered off saying darling to himself over and over. So adorable, he has called both hubs and I babe before too as we occasionally say that to each other. Thankfully Mummy & Daddy always return to favour though.
After lunch Monkey helped Daddy sweep out the car port (one of the jobs on our list) then both kids had lovely long naps in the afternoon which meant hubs and I got to have a bit of a rest as we were shattered. It wasn’t a massively exciting day or anything to write home about but just one of those lovely, ordinary days having fun with a toddler (and a baby of course) and sorting a few jobs out. After a busy month with a mix of socialising and illness it was lovely to just have one of these ordinary days, and I hope we get to have a few more of them this Spring.
Taking back control..
My word this week is control, because we are taking back control of our lives. With all of the illness last week it was all too easy to wallow and feel like the helpless victim of a rubbish situation. I decided to focus on the positives first of all (I do wallow sometimes, I am only human, but it actually really bugs me) and then I decided to take control of the situation. Ok so I can’t stop the kids or hubs getting ill with bugs, I wish I could, particularly when they happen at unfortunate times. But there are things I can do, and hubs can do, to make our lives a little easier.
February, in the run up to the wedding, was a really busy month and bugs didn’t make things any easier. but it is now March, we have a lot less planned so it is time for a bit of a fresh start. I just hope we can all be well for it! (Monkey has come down with Chicken Pox since I started writing this post, so we may have to wait a little longer for us all to be well.)
First of all, we moved LM from Lactose Free to normal formula. Thankfully she has been absolutely fine on it, no more lactose issues, yay, and it is helping her poo etc. so no more worries on that front either, phew! Then the biggest thing for us is that we have decided to take control and get her routine sorted. We have always taken a pretty relaxed baby led approach, and I remember doing this with Monkey and it eventually all just slotting in to place. With LM though it has not remotely slotted into place and she is just all over the show and I don’t think it is helping her, and it is certainly not helping me!
So I got out our trusty friend, Dr Ferber‘s book and read what he had to say. As always he is pretty common sense and says that it is hard for babies to get into a rhythm if they have naps at completely different times every single day. So although we have been hoping to tap in to her natural rhythm and go with that, I think we have gone too far the other way and have potentially lost any natural rhythm she had. So this week we have made a decision for what we think are sensible wake up times and nap times and are enforcing them.
That is actually a really harsh way of saying it, we haven’t just picked times off the top of our head but picked what seem to be fairly regular times for her and by consistently putting her down and waking her up at those times (or near enough, we aren’t being 100% rigid to the clock, but we put her down even if she doesn’t seem tired or hasn’t woken up herself) we are encouraging and reinforcing those patterns. I am loathe to say too much and jinx us but so far it is going ok. There has been difficult moments and deciding to do it when both Monkey and I are poorly may not be the best time but when it works it makes life so much easier so I am clinging on to that really!
The hope is that if her routine can be a bit more regular, then everything can calm down a bit. I will know when I have time to plan activities with Monkey, when is sensible to arrange to meet other friends with kids so I can stop being a hermit. It should also mean I can get a bit more organised with the housework too, in theory! Too much that I plan to do just doesn’t happen with things the way they have been and so much revolved around what she was up to and that will still be the case, though if it can be a tiny bit more predictable it would make things so much easier!
I have let go of the diet at the moment. Just while we are all poorly, I can’t cope. I know eating for comfort isn’t necessarily sensible but I am exhausted and eating good food makes me happy. I am not going crazy and if anything am trying to make sure we all eat more vegetables and healthy food, but I am pausing my diet for a few weeks, to pick up again when we are all well. It may seem as though I am giving up, but I actually feel that I am taking control of that situation too as I won’t be constantly berating myself for indulging in a treat when I am feeling low. I will get down to the size I want to be, but I need to be in the right frame of mind to do it. I need to be sleeping well and feeling rested.
I have taken back control of my blog after letting things slip last week. I have finally replied to all of the emails and have a couple of cool things going on – one being my fab Mother’s Day Giveaway for a £50 E Voucher with Custom Canvas – please make sure you check that out! I am way behind on replying to everyone’s lovely comments so thank you to everyone that has commented recently and i am going to try and reply to as many as I can!
So things aren’t perfect. I have a horrible sore throat, Monkey now has chicken pox so we are going to be stuck at home a bit more (thank goodness for our garden as at least we can get out there to burn off some energy as he starts to get better) but I feel like we are getting on top of things. We are taking control of the situation.
Mother’s Day Giveaway from Custom Canvas
Motherhood is hard work. It is amazing and wonderful and rewarding, but oh can it be hard work! It is a rollercoaster ride and a steep learning curve that doesn’t end, but continually changes as your children grow. Becoming a Mum myself has made me appreciate my own Mum all the more.
Mother’s Day is just around the corner and if, like me, you are thinking about what to get your Mum, then have a look at this amazing giveaway in association with Custom Canvas. Custom Canvas are specialists in creating beautiful customised canvas, acrylic and jigsaw prints using simple methods so you can upload photos via Facebook, Flickr, Instagram or using pictures saved to your computer.
As a special Mother’s Day treat they are offering one lucky winner a £50 E voucher for the Custom Canvas website to upload their own image or photograph to receive a beautiful customised canvas.
You could give the voucher to your Mum to use, or pick a special photo to have printed onto canvas for her. The choice is yours but whichever way you go I am sure she will love it.
Best of luck!
Terms and conditions. This competition is open to UK residents only. The winner will be randomly selected and contacted directly by Custom Canvas. The prize will be an E voucher up to the value £50 to be used on the Custom Canvas website and has no cash value.
A Mystery Illness & A Winter Wedding
This weekend was the wedding of one of my closest friends. I had been looking forward to it for so long and been pretty involved in the planning (and stress) of it as one of the bridesmaids. Suffice to say what we did not need the week before the wedding was the illness and sleepless nights we had last week! I was shattered, spotty with huge bags under my eyes (not an ideal look for wedding photos) and had to pull out of a couple of sessions where I was supposed to help make wedding favours etc 🙁 . Luckily the bride was very understanding and I think she just wanted me to try and rest when I could to eliminate the bags under my eyes!
Monkey slowly started to get better as the week progressed but then LM got a bit more grumpy than usual. Then she developed a weird spot on one hand, followed by one on the opposite hand the following day. Around this time I found out that a friend’s little girl, who we had seen the previous week, had come down with chicken pox. I googled what this looked like and immediately thought this may be it. Not exactly good timing with a wedding to attend at the weekend and Monkey just starting to feel better!
But then nothing happened. She didn’t get any poorlier and no more spots appeared. She had a funny spot on one ear but other than that it was just one on each knuckle. Which is an odd place to get chicken pox as they usually start on your face and torso. With the wedding looming I took her to the Dr on Friday afternoon, mainly so we could know one way or another really. But that didn’t happen as the Dr wasn’t sure what it was either! It could be chicken pox, or it could be hand foot & mouth, or it could be nothing, We would have to wait a few days and see but it was probably a viral infection of some sort.
She had been so grumpy lately and with the bride being 6 mths pregnant we decided not to risk taking a potentially contagious baby with us to the wedding. Meaning I had to go solo :(. Friday night I made it to the venue with the other bridesmaid and we spent the evening decorating tables and cupcakes and generally getting things ready.
Saturday morning I had my hair done at 8am and then once Monkey had been collected by Nanny & Aunty Maggie (as had always been the plan for the day) I left a grumpy hubs with LM and headed to the venue to meet the bride and other bridesmaid, to get the last few bits ready in the reception room, then get ourselves ready for a beautiful wedding.
It was a hectic morning but was such a beautiful wedding and I love a good wedding, always so nice to see people marry the one they love and even more special when they are good friends of yours. I really missed hubs and would’ve been lovely to spend the day together but it was the right decision not to take the baby. If she had been there it would have been stressful constantly wondering if she was ok and what hubs was doing with her, when what I really needed to do was concentrate on the bride. Luckily I had a lot of friends there too so I never felt alone or anything. The biggest downside was with photos though, I only managed a few snaps throughout the day (mainly just of me and my friends mucking about) and they aren’t exactly brilliant but here they are.
I am looking forward to seeing the professional shots of the day as I am sure they will be better than these! I had a good time with my friends though and it was lovely after such a rough week to really forget about the kiddies for a while (knowing they were being looked after) and just be me for the day. LM seemed to perk up during the day too so Hubs didn’t have a terrible day with her and she has been a bit perkier since. Another couple of spots have appeared on one of her fingers but we still aren’t really sure what is up with her. We may never know 100% whether it is chicken pox…. unless she gets it again I suppose!
#MaternityMondays week 9
Welcome to #MaternityMondays week 9!
The last week has not been an easy one for us with a lot of illness going on and as such blogging has taken a bit of a back seat for me over the last week or so. Fingers crossed things are improving slightly and I will be able to get back in the saddle a bit more this week. The lovely Emma hosted last week and here is what she had to say about your lovely posts last week.
The Determined Housewife was talking about her blog being her therapy and I can totally relate to that. Maybe the divorce rate would drop if everyone blogged. Well, maybe not but it certainly helps me and The Determined Housewife, it seems.
We had a few pregnancy updates last week and I picked this one from Red Rose Mummy who is on week 24 and yes, it is still making me have bump envy and Huster is still saying no. Oops.
I also really enjoyed reading Loving Life with Little One‘s post on whether her children were too old for comforters. I am firmly in the no camp on this one. I still sleep with my teddy bear now. Yes really.
She is also very kindly hosting for me this week while I get my groove back and recover from a shocking week last week. I am exhausted at the moment so hugely grateful to her,
Now it is over to you! Please grab our badge and share the linky love by commenting on a few other blog posts, it would be lovely if we could grow a little community to share the highs and lows of motherhood and parenting.
The linky is open Mondays only from 6.30am to midnight.
Don’t forget to tweet your link using #MaternityMondays, and if you tag us in we will retweet, we are @EmmaLander2 and @BecomingaSAHM
This too shall pass..
My word of the week this week is fortunate. Now for most of the week I actually would not have chosen this word as it has been a bit of a week, but bear with me!
Friday Hubs came down with a flu type bug. It started as a cough and got worse, bringing a nasty fever with it. By Saturday he was extremely poorly, spending a lot of time in bed with a fever and he was a bit delirious. He was a bit of a zombie so he was in bed while I looked after the kiddies.
This will sound selfish but this was rubbish for me, as I rely on his help at the weekends to actually get the house in some semblance of tidiness and stay a bit sane. Worst of all that it was this particular Saturday though as I was due to visit one of my best friends in London for her birthday and I had been looking forward to it for such a long time and it was now in jeopardy. With my pregnancy being a bit rough last year I cancelled plans a few times to go and visit and this was the time that I should have no reason to cancel. Until all of a sudden I did. A really poorly husband. I spent a lot of the day really very unhappy as I felt like an awful person for even considering leaving, or wanting to leave, but I did want to. So so badly. It was a bit of a vicious cycle.
Thankfully hubs’ fever broke in the afternoon and along with reinforcements in the form of his parents he felt able to take care of the kiddies. So it was a very late call but I made it to London and had a really lovely chilled evening with the girls and restored my sanity a little.
I got home at around 1am to find hubs awake and that Monkey was now not well either. He had had a little cough too but had otherwise been fine in himself all day. The trouble with coughs is always the night time isn’t it? They interrupt his sleep and he gets himself so worked up that he ends up being sick and I hate it. So he was up a couple of times and hubs and I were both on edge all night that the coughing would wake him. LM then woke up at 530am. Hubs got up to feed her and 10 mins later Monkey woke up crying so that was the start of our Sunday.
Sunday wasn’t terrible but it was very chilled and entirely focussed on Monkey and keeping him happy. He was the poorliest he has been in a long time and spent a lot of the day asleep actually and hubs and I tried to chill out as he was still poorly too and I was knackered after the trip to London and lack of sleep.
Monday Monkey rallied and seemed so much better so he went to Rhyme Time with Nanny & Pops as usual and Playgroup in the afternoon. He was fine until early evening when he suddenly dipped and Monday night was awful again with coughing and getting himself worked up and being a little sick. Tuesday he was not himself and we tried to chill out – though he doesn’t like relaxing our boy and wants to be on the go. His eyes were drooped and he couldn’t stop yawning but no “I ok, I not tired” hmm really.
We watched Winnie the Pooh and managed to get a healthy lunch in him then he went for a rest. LM meanwhile was refusing to sleep for no more than 30 mins at a time for goodness knows what reason. With both of them finally asleep I sat down for 5 mins and then Monkey’s coughing started, and continued. He got upset so I went up and he vomited all over me, himself, his bed, cuddly toys, floor, well everywhere. I tried desperately to keep him calm so that he didn’t wake LM and got him in clean clothes, downstairs and calm in front of the TV while I got myself changed and did the clean up operation upstairs and got the first load of washing ready to go on when LM woke up. I am not joking I washed my hands 4 times and they still smelt of vomit. I was so not happy.
Then LM woke up, less than half an hour after being put down and I was hugely hugely miserable. Luckily hubs was able to come home a bit early that day and help as Monkey was miserable too (understandably bless him) and I was failing to see the sunny side of life after a good few nights of only a few hours kip.
That night, when we had got the kids down and we were listening to Monkey coughing and wondering what the night would hold, I described the situation as being Hell. Then I checked myself.
I looked at hubs and said you know in comparison to cancer or war. What was I talking about? Yes it was a crappy few days, but hell? I mean come on.
Tuesday night was possibly the worst as he was sick a few times but we did manage to keep him a bit calmer with some singing. LM had a feed before midnight and then was up again at 530am. I was still not hugely happy but Monkey was off to Nanny’s for the day and I was determined to get some jobs done and stop wallowing. All week I had been feeling tired, miserable and at mercy of the situation. Feeling really hard done by when the reality is that we are so lucky really.
We have two gorgeous kiddies and Monkey really is very rarely poorly and is such a good boy. He tries so hard even when he is tired and poorly to put a brave face on. I went in to see him when he woke up this morning and when I asked how he was he said “I fine, thank you” I mean what a cutie.
We have a beautiful home. You know when you can’t see the wood for the trees? Well sometimes I feel like I can’t see the house for the mess. A huge thank you to the lovely comments about our home on the post “So, Daddy” as when I look at those photos (aside from Monkey & Daddy sharing a lovely moment) I see the horrible stained tablecloth, the manky changing station off in the corner with bottles of hand sanitiser and piles of nappy bags. The toys and detritus strewn across the table. But what other people saw was the lovely things we have, the dresser, the chairs, and it made me look again and remember how much I love our home.
I have a lovely hubby. Of course he drives me potty sometimes but I am sure I do the same to him, I do think having children can be tough on even the strongest relationships sometimes. But you know what, even though he was poorly, he still wanted me to go to London on Saturday. He totally appreciates how hard I try all week to manage the house and kids and he knew how much getting a little break meant to me.
We have wonderful supportive families who are close by and who love to help. We don’t ever want to be a burden on them but know that when we need them that they will be there.
I have some wonderful friends who understand when I back out on them or delay seeing them that it’s not because I am lazy or I don’t care. They know I would be there if I could and that family has to come first. But they also support me and encourage me to make sure I take some time for myself too.
I said to hubs the other day “This too shall pass” and yeah life is hard at the moment with a 4 mth old and a very poorly toddler and hubs…. but nothing lasts forever and hard days make way for easier ones. We are so so lucky and there are many who are not as fortunate as we are and it is worth remembering that. I think ” this too shall pass” should be our mantra as it is far too easy to get bogged down in negatives and forget how lucky we are.
Blogging has taken a bit of a back seat this week as there has been more than enough other stuff going on, so I apologise for the lack of blogging, sharing, commenting, and replying to comments. My word for this week is fortunate. How has your week been?
