Focussing on Happy #3 “Support”

Posted by Caroline Elliott

My word of the week this week was nearly solo, as Hubs has been in Canada since Monday (lucky devil) and I have been solo parenting for my longest stretch ever. But I haven’t really been solo – because I have so many wonderful friends and family around who have supported me and helped me out that I really haven’t had to do it alone. So my word this week is support.

So here is what made me happy over the last week.

Having a lovely Afternoon Tea with my hubs as a treat at a posh hotel. It was my birthday present from my parents and we thought it was a good plan to use it before he went away. With all that has been going on lately we have been really snappy with each other so it was nice to reconnect and have some fun together people watching and eating yummy food 🙂

Enjoying Father’s Day morning at a local country park with Hubs’ parents, enjoying a rare bit of sunshine and warmth and having a lovely time together before saying goodbye to Hubs the next morning.

Seeing how much LM loved the huge puddles when the rain returned on Monday, though I was less impressed at how many times I had to change both our clothes that day!

Having a lovely sunny playdate with some friends round on Tuesday – chilling with friends in the sunshine is how a summer playdate should be, right?

Having an impromptu walk round our local country park with some good friends and heading back to their house for tea. All the kids get on so so well so it was lovely.

Having Uncle Mark and Aunty Fran round to help with bath and bedtime Tuesday night. The kids are so close to them and have so much fun with them it is wonderful.

Strawberry picking with my Mum on Wednesday, more to come on that tomorrow!

Popping round to see the Grandparents Wednesday afternoon then both my Mum and Uncle Paul popping in to help with the kiddies while I sorted tea and got some jobs done.

Having loads of bathy time fun with my gorgeous kiddies. Bathtime is often Hubs domain as I have been with them all day and he then gets to have fun with them…but it was lovely to enjoy that time (even though I will willingly give it back next week as that is normally a bit of a rest time for me!!)

Visiting our local country park with friends on Thursday as Monkey’s pre-school was closed to be used as a polling station. It was yet another wet and miserable day but we had a lot of fun nonethless.

Skyping with Daddy in our afternoons, which is his morning.

It has been a really really busy week, which has been great as it has flown by and we are looking forward to Daddy being home. I am shattered but as I am sure you can tell from the list above there has been a LOT of happy times here.

How has your week been?

Saturday

I get by, with a little help from my friends

Posted by Caroline Elliott

My word of the week this week, is friends, because I am incredibly grateful for the wonderful friends have in my life and honestly don’t know how I would cope without them!

Last Friday night my closest Mummy friends and I got together for a much needed catch up and meal out. We all worked together pre-children and since having our little munchkins we have gotten so close. We share the ups and the downs and though we really are all quite different, we support each other and are 100% there for each other. As one of my friends put it the other night, we are so lucky we found each other. It had been far too long since our last catch up without children and I hope we don’t leave it so long next time. We got things off our chests, shared the highs and lows of life lately and gave each other a good talking to where needed. Love my girls and I felt so happy and chilled afterwards.

I’ve also had some lovely time with some newer mummy friends this week and play dates with their little ones. Since Monkey started our local preschool I have gotten to know a few of the local mums. I am a bit of an introvert so find the playground mums thing really awkward but there are a couple of mums I really get on with. One in particular introduced me to someone as the first mummy friend she had met who she would have been friends with pre-children, which I was really touched by. She and I really click which is lovely as her eldest will be in Monkey’s class at primary school, so I think we have many years of friendship ahead of us! Some of the other mummies I chat to on the playgroup run are equally lovely and sometimes just those few mins chatting at the beginning and end of the day, sharing trials and tribulations really can make so much difference to how I feel at the end of the day.

I have also felt incredibly grateful for the friendship and support I get online as a result of my blog and social media this week. Parenting can be so hard, and after sharing a particularly low morning on Instagram and Facebook, the support and encouragement I got from cyber friends was incredible. Many are women I have never met but thanks to the internet we are able to reach out and support each other through this motherhood journey, and I am so grateful for that.

My blog has connected me to so many wonderful people, and as I can be a bit introverted as I mentioned above, I don’t always make the most of this. I shy away from blog conferences and meeting fellow bloggers purely out of shyness and a lack of confidence in myself. But this week I have finally arranged to meet up with a blogger I have admired for some time. I am nervous but we get on so well in typing that I hope we will get on as well in person!

My blog has also reconnected me with people I have lost touch with over the years. A lovely lady I met travelling 9 years ago got in touch this week and told me how much my blog helps her through her motherhood journey, and well wow, what an awesome thing. Helping anyone with my ramblings is amazing and reconnecting with a friend from my past is always lovely. There are other lovely blogging mummies that I worked with in a previous life, and I’ve mentioned before how Sarah from Run, Jump, Scrap and I have become much closer through blogging. Our husbands have been friends since childhood so it really is great when we all get together. We have arranged to meet next weekend and I am so looking forward to that! The friendship side was just something I really never expected when I started writing my little blog but it is a fantastic bonus.

The final reason that my word of the week this week is friends, is because Saturday is my birthday, and we are having a bbq in the afternoon (fingers crossed for kind weather!) with lots of family and friends over. Once again I am so grateful for having so many lovely people in my life who are coming to celebrate with me, please cross your fingers for good weather for me, otherwise we may have a slightly crowded house!

How has your week been?

Birthday Celebrations

Posted by Caroline Elliott

My word this week is a great one, it is Celebrations, because we have had a week full of birthday celebrations!

Last week my little big boy Monkey turned 3! Sadly the poor thing was terribly poorly (believe me, poorly could easily have been this week’s word too as we have all been suffering) with a stonking cold and conjunctivitis, so it was a very chilled out birthday at home with a visit from his grandparents for lunch and an uncle & aunt in the early evening.

Saturday was the big celebration though with lots of family round for his party. He was so excited bless him and even though he was nowhere near 100% he was feeling a lot better, though by then poor hubs was really suffering. I made a Lightning McQueen cake, which didn’t work out quite as I hoped it would, but you could tell what it was meant to look like and Monkey loved it (and everyone said it tasted nice) so that’s all that matters.

It was a lovely family day with yummy food and lots of fun 🙂 Monkey was a lucky boy with lots of very lovely pressies and lots of attention from all his favourite people. We spent most of the time inside until Monkey commanded that we all went outside. “Let’s go outside, with Mummy and Daddy and Lots of Family!” When people weren’t forthcoming he stood in the doorway shouting “come on everybody!” lol love him.

Sunday was a fairly chilled day at home then Monday saw more birthday celebrations for my Father-in-law’s birthday. Another lovely happy family day at Grangranny and Granddaddy’s house.

Before we left we had got out a bag of hand-me-down clothes for LM who is growing all the time and found this gorgeous little tutu. I just couldn’t resist dressing her in it and she looked so cute in it! Granny loved her little pink princess and LM was so good even though she was really coming down with the cold by then and had conjunctivitis too. Granddaddy's birthday

Thursday saw the celebrations continue with one of Monkey’s friends turning 4 and a birthday party at a soft play centre. It got off to a very bad start with Monkey throwing the mother of all tantrums as he didn’t want to go. He screamed continuously in the car and made himself sick. I was so stressed and so angry…. but thankfully he perked up a little when he saw some friends and a piece of cake later he was much better and had great fun on the soft play. All that stress and hassle for absolutely no reason, toddlers eh?

Thankfully two of my best Mummy friends were there (we missed our very heavily pregnant friend that makes up our foursome but at nearly 40wks pregnant she understandably couldn’t make it!) and they helped remind me that they have had days like it with their kids recently too and as always it’s just nice to support each other. LM was cute again in her tutu and it was fun, though obviously ever so slightly chaotic with a bunch of kids at soft play! I was shattered by the end of it but Monkey was happy and we did have a lovely time so I am very glad we went.

This marks the end of a couple of months full of birthdays of family members and friends. In April we have 6 and in May there are 8! (there may be a 9th depending on when my friend’s baby arrives) So it is full of fun but also is a lot of birthdays in a short space of time. There are only 2 in June and none in July so I have to admit it will be nice to have less birthdays to think about for a while.

Do you have a time of year where there are more birthdays than any other?

Having some fun

Posted by Caroline Elliott

My word of the week this week is a great one. One that I am really happy to talk about. It has been a lovely week, full of fun, so that is my word, fun!

After the past however many months of struggling, first with the difficult newborn days, with colic and reflux thrown into the mix, to just the endless parade of germs, colds and flus keeping us down, it is great to say we have had a fun week for a change!

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Fun with Friends

Posted by Caroline Elliott

Last weekend we had a visit from some very lovely friends of ours who live in South London. We last saw them way back in July last year when their newest little one was just 6-7 weeks old so it was lovely to see them now, to catch up with how everything is and see how much both of their girls have grown. Plus of course we have a new arrival of our own that they were keen to meet.

Their little E is still as lovely and chilled as she was when she was younger and she is so cute and diddy. Her and LM are almost the same size – though of course being 5 months older little E is way ahead developmentally. She’s such a happy girl constantly smiling and so content sitting playing with toys and it was lovely to see.

Monkey loved seeing their oldest, S, again too. He had been a bit poorly and grumpy over the weekend so we weren’t entirely sure how it would go but they arrived and he was so so happy at having a little friend to play with that he seemed to completely forget his grumpiness! S is such a cutie, just a little bit older than Monkey and they are so similar in so many ways. She was great following him around to see what he was up to and he did really well with sharing his toys and playing with her as well as alongside her.

What was really nice was that they were able to stay for a while, often when we see them it is a bit of a flying visit so it was nice to be able to spend some time together to chat about life with another baby and all the challenges and happiness that brings! There was a really great moment while us Mums were with the babies and having a natter. One Daddy was dozing in the garden and we thought the other was playing play-doh with the older kiddies. In reality this was happening.

The kids were playing together so well that Hubs had decided to have a rest too hehe. Who can blame him eh? Late in the afternoon we went for a walk so that the youngest 2 could get a nice nap while we all had some fun. It was just lovely and Monkey and S were running around having so much fun together, it really was adorable.

They even got an ice cream on the way home, lucky kiddies :). They stayed for tea then it was time for them to head home. I’ve said before how much I value their friendship and I really, really look forward to seeing the kids grow and play together over the years to come :).

Becoming a Stay at Home Mum

Can I really do this?

mummy friends

Focussing on Happy #3 “Support”

I get by, with a little help from my friends

Birthday Celebrations

Having some fun

Fun with Friends