Roley Poleys

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You know how sometimes with kids, you do something once, and then they love it, so you have to do it over and over and it becomes a tradition? Well that is what has happened here lately. Bath and bed time have been a Monkey and Daddy time for a really long time, it has been their special bonding time. But since the arrival of Little Miss and some difficult days we have been taking it in turns a bit more to look after each of them.

On one day when it was my turn with Monkey I decided to change our bedding while the bath was running and so took Monkey to get involved with me. He wasn’t really much help but he thought he was and had fun doing it with me. After we had made the bed I had the spontaneous idea of doing roley poleys on the bed.

Well I have to say it was a hit. Monkey loved taking it in turns with me to roley poley across the bed and then “fall” off the bed where I caught him.

The photos are blurry because the lighting was terrible but you get the idea.

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We then did a few selfies on the bed which Monkey loves doing at the moment.

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It has become a bit of a tradition now and so is a very ordinary moment in our house. Now LM has a bedtime routine, she has a bath first and while one of us gives her a bath, the other is in our bedroom playing roley polys with Monkey 🙂 lovely times 🙂

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Siblings January

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Sometimes, during the difficult days with a small baby it is easy to feel guilty about the effect their arrival has on their older sibling. Monkey doesn’t get as much time and attention anymore, he has been snapped at and had two pretty tired and at times grumpy parents to deal with. It feels mean the way his world has changed. Then you look at the way he looks at his baby sister, and the way she looks at him and you remember why you did it.

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She follows him around the room with her eyes all the time and I wonder if she will always be so in awe of her big brother (I imagine not!).

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He still thinks she is “so cute” and always wants to wake her up (I am less happy about this) even when I try and explain that if she is asleep it means he and I can play together! He likes giving her toys to play with (not that she is old enough to appreciate them) and the other day when she was in the bathy came in and starting “giving” her loads of toys to play with, saying “here you go, here you go” – it was very cute though I was slightly concerned she was going to get bonked on the head. He is happy to include her in his games too, we were having a “picnic” the other night and he gave her a biscuit, though we did have to remind him to be gentle as he shoved it in her face!

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He also likes holding her hand, which is lovely, he keeps naming the four of us and calling us a happy family, making the four of us all old hands around the breakfast table 🙂

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He even came and held her hand while I was feeding her the other day, melted my heart!

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He can be a bit heavy-handed with her as I am sure any toddler can but I have not seen any real jealousy aimed at her. He sometimes get cross if he wants my attention while feeding her but it’s not too terrible and now we are doing better with her naps and sleep we are a bit less tired and grumpy and he is getting some more quality 1 on 1 time with us. Life has changed so much in the last 2 1/2 months since she was born, and their relationship is constantly eveolving. When I think about how much more it will change over the course of the year, well, I am just so excited to witness it :).

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dear beautiful

Escaping the screaming

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Things in our house have improved quite a lot lately. LM is sleeping so much better which means we are sleeping so better. But that doesn’t mean it’s all plain sailing, ooh no. Our little girl still likes to stretch her lungs randomly with mammoth crying sessions. Crying sessions that feel like they are designed to make me feel like a useless parent. Changed, fed, burped, refusing to sleep and basically miserable whatever I do (or don’t do, no matter how hard I try to remain calm, after a while the tendrils of stress just start nibbling away at me. My patience level reaches zero and I get increasingly snappy with Monkey when he really is just being a chatty little toddler, getting himself in a mess but not being naughty.

All I can think of to do is get them both out of the house. And hope it calms her down even temporarily! If not then at least we are all getting some fresh air and a change of scene.

Wednesday we did just that and miraculously the fresh air did pause the crying, if only for half an hour or so. It was a bitterly cold and windy day but it is hard not to smile and be infected by Monkey’s pure glee at just being able to run about. To race to a lamppost – especially when he stops every 5 seconds to shout “Ready, steady, go!” I’m not sure he really gets the idea of racing bless him!

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Ready, Steady, Go!

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Red-Faced Little Girl

It wasn’t the longest of outings as it started to drizzle and I didn’t have a rain cover for LM but it did us all good and by the time we got home LM was ready to feed and then had a lovely long sleep. Getting out of the house can work wonders on a tough day, and so can the smiles of my little boy, when I take a moment to lift my head and really see them!

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Routines

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This week is all about routines in our house. First of all, hubby is back at work after 2 weeks off over the festive break. We had a lovely time and got lots of much needed jobs done while he was off, but it is good to be getting back to a normal day to day routine. This is especially true as we have been sleep training Little Miss ( I talk about this in more detail here) and trying to find a routine that works for her and for us.

Nighttimes are going brilliantly, meaning hubs and I are getting a more normal amount of sleep now and therefore we are getting into a more normal routine, for the first time in months really! this means more jobs are getting done around the house, little things that have only had cursory cleans are now getting proper cleans, as we are not so drop-dead tired at the end of every day! LM is also happier lately and we are being rewarded with lots more lovely smiles and she even mad her first giggly sound yesterday which melted my heart.

hard to catch on camera but here's a little smile :)

hard to catch on camera but here’s a little smile 🙂

Day-times with LM have been trickier and just when we thought she was getting into a routine…. she threw me for a loop again and changed her nap lengths and wake up times. A few days of this and this and then she does it again! I am a big lover of routines but I have to try and not let my control freak planner side take over and get stressed when things don’t go according to the routine. Especially at this young age as she can’t help it. It does make planning things difficult though and arranging to see a mummy friend this week I really wasn’t sure what time to say to meet she was that all over the place. Thankfully though my friend has obviously been through it and was therefore totally understanding about waiting until the day itself to decide a time… then it started raining, well anyway that’s a story for another day!

Trying to spot patterns in LM's behaviour!

Trying to spot patterns in LM’s behaviour!

We also have a bit of excitement this week as on Friday Monkey has his first ever session at playgroup. He will be going 2 afternoons a week from now on. So far he is very much looking forward to it and we hope he enjoys it. I definitely think he is ready for it and am sure when he settles in he will really enjoy it. That being said it will be strange at first. Apart from grandparents, I am used to being the one who looks after him and so have to loosen the reins slightly. I know it is the right thing but it will be strange to think of him being in that situation without me. He may be ready but I’m not sure I am! I am sure I will manage though and it will give me more 1 on 1 time with LM as she gets older which is a good thing.

Anyway this will all change our routine as for the first time since Monkey was born we will now have to be somewhere at a set time twice a week. It starts at 12.30 so lunch will either have to be a tiny bit early or quite a quick affair on those days. I can’t help but wonder how I will balance LM’s routine with this either… But again refusing to worry about it, what will be wil be and she will have to go along with it all I guess! I shall let you know how Monkey gets on at playgroup, eek!

Finally I have also been getting into a bit of a routine with my diet and weight loss. I will do a specific post about it but so far it is definitely working, though I am so tempted to comfort eat when LM is throwing me through a loop, it has really been testing my willpower! I know it is worth it though and comfort eating doesn’t actually solve anything! ( I wrote that earlier but am actually sat drinking a glass of wine and eating chocolate at the mo, hopefully not destroying all of my progress so far!)

So that was my week, how has your week been?

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How Ferber’s “Progressive Wait” approach helped our children sleep better

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Before Monkey was born, whenever any friends were having troubles getting their little ones to sleep and they mentioned leaving them to cry themselves to sleep, I thought it seemed like a pretty sensible idea. Then when Monkey was born, I realised it wasn’t that simple, and the thought of doing it felt really really cruel. With him spending hours each day screaming in pain with his colic, neither hubs or I could bear the thought of leaving him to cry himself to sleep.

Monkey fast asleep - on his daddy not in bed!

Monkey fast asleep – on his daddy not in bed!

So we did what many parents do and helped him to sleep. We rocked and shushed and patted, drove him round in the car, took him out in the buggy and let him suck our fingers. We tried to use a dummy though could never get him to take one! We did anything that worked and our lives and sleep revolved around getting him to sleep and keeping him that way. Honestly? It was exhausting, and miserable. I spent a lot of time crying and feared for my mental health. So after a few months of this we started looking for other ways. We tried “The Baby Whisperer” but didn’t manage with her techniques at all. If anything her pick up/put down technique just seemed to mean that Monkey screamed louder and for longer. Every child is different but at the time we blamed ourselves.

I remember people saying to me “maybe he just isn’t tired” or “maybe he doesn’t need the sleep” if I complained I couldn’t get him to sleep. But to me the answer to that was then why is he miserable? He was clearly tired. I had no problem with a child who was awake and happy to be, my frustration came from comforting a child who was miserable and clearly tired, but who refused to stay asleep!

Although we had initially discounted the possibility of “cry it out” techniques, we eventually got desperate and came across Dr Ferber’s progressive wait method. It seemed a little kinder than what I had thought of as “cry it out”so we decided to look into it more. I wanted to make sure we did it properly, if we were going to do it at all, so I bought his book “Solve your Child’s Sleep Problems“* from amazon and had a read. This book covers children of all ages with problems sleeping, with advice on anything from night terrors to sleep walking. The section we were interested in though is about younger children and helping them sleep better without being rocked, etc. There is far more information than I could hope to convey so if you are having problems, I strongly recommend that you have a read.
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#MaternityMondays Week 1

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Welcome to #MaternityMondays! The new weekly linky, hosted by myself and Emma over at Farmers Wife & Mummy, where you can link up any posts about your pregnancy, babies, being on maternity leave or about weaving your way through the minefield that is parenting.

First a little bit about us.

Emma is Mummy to the nearly four year old Boo and has a second baby due sometime in January. She blogs about their life on the farm with a pre-schooler and being pregnant with a much longed for second child.

I am Mummy to 2 1/2 year old Monkey and a two month old Little Miss. Blogging about life muddling through trying to be a SAHM and juggling the needs of a toddler and a baby.

We are really excited about hosting this linky together and reading all of your posts about pregnancy, babies and beyond.

Each week the plan is that we will both have the linky code so you can link up on either of our blogs. though we are taking it in turns comment on your posts and promote them on Twitter. This week, as #MaternityMondays was her idea, Emma is hosting and will be commenting on all of your fab posts and will promote them on twitter. I will be popping round too as I am really excited about our first linky.

This week I am linking up my recent update post about Little Miss at 10 weeks, she is growing so fast and I can’t believe in some ways how quickly the time has gone since she was born…. though I also feel like a black hole has swallowed a huge chunk of time. If it wasn’t for the obvious reminder of Christmas, I would swear blind it was still October!

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.

Don’t forget to tweet your link using #MaternityMondays, and if you tag us in we will retweet, we are @BecomingaSAHM and @EmmaLander2

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A muddy New Year’s Day walk!

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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.

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New Year, Time for Me

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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.

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