me time

A busy old week and bringing the fun back to bathtime.

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Phewwww it has been a busy old time the last week or so, hence the lack of posts! Things will hopefully be calming down a bit again now thankfully!

So, what have we been up to? Well, last weekend I went to visit some friends in London fro a proper girls night out! I love my Monkey and Hubby and I love being a stay at home mum, but sometimes it’s nice to get back to being me again, do you know what I mean? Anyway was just lovely to have a good girly catch up with them.

The downside to last weekend (aside from the hangover) was that Monkey came down with a bug or something. We realised he had a temperature just as I was about to leave, and although of course it made me hesitate, I knew he was fine in Daddy’s capable hands. He did get really poorly though bless him, and while I was on the train home the next day I was getting updates of sobbing and sweating and couldn’t wait to get home and help out.

So he was poorly for a few days, and hate to say we don’t really know what was wrong, just high temperatures and really unhappy and not at all his usual self. Could be his last big teeth starting to come through? Isn’t that what all parents think when there is an unexplained illness, oh it must be teething! He he anyway no idea but he’s been up and down all week and threw up all over me Thursday, seems better over the weekend though, fingers crossed anyway!

We’ve also had the delivery of one of our new sofas this week, which is very exciting! Though it also meant a lot of work as we needed to shift furniture around (and therefore empty out a unit, thoroughly clean everywhere) to get the old sofa into the conservatory etc. etc. To complicate things even more I had invited my friends and the kiddies round on Thursday, and obviously wanted the house to be nice and clean and tidy for that!

The sofa came and looks fab but Thursday with a house full was a bit chaotic. A few of the little ones had been under the weather recently and weren’t quite themselves, so there was quite a bit of crying and whining and fighting with the toddlers, and crying babies! Phew! Was lovely to see my friends as always and nice to catch up but it was pretty mental for a while! I don’t know how nursery staff cope with all of that going on! I love being a stay at home mum but I couldn’t do it as a full time job with lots of other people’s kiddies, I would go insane!!

What else has been going on…. oh yes, bath time! Monkey has always loved bath time. He has always had so much fun in there. We have video after video of him chuckling in the bath and having a whale of a time. But lately, he hates it. No idea why, he will stand next to the bath and play with the water happily, but put him in and he screams! Play at his usual favourites, distract him, even get a smile, but stop and he remembers where he is and he starts wailing again. So weird!! I am sure it is just a phase and maybe he would get over it naturally but we thought we should try and make it a bit more fun for him again.

I vaguely remembered seeing a whole bath toy display at a local garden centre and thought I had seen some sort of bath crayons or something. Monkey loves drawing so I hoped that would work. We got the crayons but also got some little boats, just to make a change. Anyway Day 1 of the bath crayons and he did so well! As soon as he saw the crayons he was straight in there and had a really long and happy bathy with his Daddy. So, yay!

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The only slight problem is that it has stained the grout a bit, it does warn you on the packet so it’s a decision you have to make, and well, we can live it. I will maybe try and bleach it off or something but it’s not coming off with regular bathroom cleaner. Ah well!!

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Lovely spring walks and more cute crochet owls

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I have found that one of the keys to becoming a stay at home mum is getting out of the house. I like to get out of the house at least once a day with little monkey so try and fill up his awake hours with visits to friends and relatives. This week some of the people we see regularly are busy, how dare they?! 🙂 hehe So for the sake of my sanity monkey and I have been going for some lovely spring walks. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t anything new, we have also been for lots of lovely autumn walks and winter walks! Thankfully he does enjoy a good walk in his buggy, I think he likes to look around and feel a breeze on his face, although there is a time limit, 40 mins to an hour is the most I will get out of him sitting still!

We are very lucky and live very close to a country park, which is really lovely, but well at a very quick march it takes about 15 mins to walk there on the most direct route, which with there and back considered, doesn’t leave much time to actually do or see anything when we are there! I have tried different routes back but that seems to push the monkey a bit far and he gets very cross by the last leg of the journey. So most of the time we content ourselves with a walk around the local area, which is very nice too and there’s usually lots of dog walkers and other pram pushers about which gives him plenty to look at.

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Today though, with the sun shining I decided to go for it and go to the country park. We took the most direct route and I got some good exercise in marching over there. We had just about enough time for a push on the swings and a go on some of the other toys (that are probs a bit old for him really) and then it was time to head home again. All in all a nice walk though and very mild so did us both good. It may feel like spring but it certainly doesn’t look like spring yet!

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Although we do have a few lovely crocuses popping up in our garden and what looks like the beginnings of daffodils. We only moved here last April and the garden is looking like our next project as we have done a lot of demolition with it but not really made it very pretty yet! Nice to see what is popping up this spring though as it really was just a mess when we moved in!

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Another key to sanity as a stay at home mum is keeping busy and having little projects for myself as well as keeping monkey entertained, and my current project is crochet. After my first crochet owl, which turned out very cute, albeit full of mistakes, I decided to perfect it and at the same time make a little family of owls 🙂 So we have a mummy and daddy (not sure which is which but maybe the pinker one is mummy? Even though that one is bigger than the other… oh how stereotypical of me, it doesn’t really matter does it!?) and then I decided to try and make a baby owl! As  complete novice at crochet this was potentially a bit ambitious of me but I decided to wing it and I did it! One cute baby crochet owl to go with mummy and daddy owl 🙂

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Hubby has raised concerns that we may start to look like crazy owl people soon as we have already have a few other owl shaped things in the house so I have agreed not leave the owls there 🙂 I am starting a crochet granny square patchwork blanket next – more on that coming soon! Oh, I managed to get a picture of lovely mother in laws owl too, and here it is 🙂

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Cute Crochet Owl

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I’ve really been enjoying doing the crochet, I like being able to sit and work away at it in the evenings after Monkey has gone to sleep, while hubby and I watch some trash telly. I also do the odd bit during the day while he naps so housework has definitely been suffering! Oh well! 🙂

But, well, I am an impatient soul and doing the rows backwards and forwards, while very therapeutic, wasn’t really cutting it for me. I mentioned in my last crochet blog that I had found the fabulous site of Bunny Mummy. Now she really is very good at crochet and makes some gorgeous things, one of which being this adorable cute owl, and I couldn’t wait to give it a try! As I am a complete beginner I was very confused by some of the stitches and sought help from my lovely mother in law, but after a bit of explanation from her I was off!

It didn’t start out brilliantly as somehow the first circle I made was completely wonky. I started again and this time it wasn’t wonky but by the time I got to the third round, somewhere along the way I had miscounted and it was a bit skew-wiff and the wrong size.

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Not to be put off I duly started again and woohoo this time I had a correct circle! I carried on, fluffed my way through the new stitches and somehow managed to make something that resembled the pattern I was following. I continued the next night and managed to finish the bodies and eyes, but realised I didn’t have a needle nearly large enough for yarn so had to put it aside. Lovely mother in law is also making an owl and as she is much better at crochet than me she managed to finish hers already! Anyway she lent me a needle(bodkin?) and some wadding for me to put it all together.

The next day we had a lovely visitor in the form of my friend Monika all the way from Switzerland so instead of crocheting the evening was spent eating good food, drinking lovely wine and generally catching up. Although then we had a rough night as Monkey is really not sleeping well at the moment and hubby got a poorly tummy in the middle of the night – end result a very tired little family. Luckily Monika managed to sleep through much of it and wasn’t too disturbed, or I would have felt truly awful!

Monika headed home the next morning, via London to do some shopping, and we had a lovely visit to monkey’s grandparents and I got to see the lovely finished owl! Sadly I didn’t take a picture but will try to snap one over the weekend. After seeing Granny’s lovely owl I was chomping at the bit to finish mine so during Monkey’s afternoon nap the housework was once again cast aside so I could finish my little owly, and here’s the end result! Such a cutey!

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Not perfect by any means, in fact full of mistakes, but well, you can see what it is supposed to be and that’s good enough for me on my first try! Going to make a couple more I think, see if I can perfect it 🙂