this little house

HEY JANUARY, LET'S TALK CHRISTMAS ;)

A belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!!

Oh Christmas 2014, you were wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

I hosted.

Everyone survived ;)

Seriously though, I adored hosting. I thought it would be quite stressful, but it really wasn't. I'd made a conscious decision just before Christmas to stop the pursuit of perfection.

Perfection = Killjoy

I chose instead of running around like a headless chicken, or turkey ;), trying to make everything 'perfect', I would instead enjoy our very own imperfect Christmas.

You see there is one thing I'm learning about myself with age, and that is, the more I faff the more I stress, the more I stress the more I mess things up. Perfect moments become missed moments, 'cause well I was too bloody concerned about making them perfect that I forgot to enjoy them.

I started my biggest 2015 resolution early, and I'm so glad I did.

Simplifying and embracing imperfection.

So instead of focusing on fancy gifts and fancy food, I lapped up every second of the boys big smiles. Archie's first Christmas and for Caleb the first Christmas where the excitement well and truly swept him up. I honestly think two years old is the most beautiful age for Christmas. They really see it for what it is, family and love, and although they are excited about the gifts it's by no means their main focus. Once again those toddlers have a way of schooling us in a thing or two ;)

Oh and guess what, turns out when you let go of wanting everything perfect, and embrace imperfection, it turns out to be your very own type of perfect. Who. Knew? ;)

Here are some shots of our imperfect, perfect Christmas...

Caleb and Archie had their own tree in their room this year. This was a little tradition my mum did with me when I was younger and I have the fondest memories of it. Caleb was in heaven, it was such a joy to watch him garishly dress his tree. I think each branch averaged about three baubles! The boy's having their own tree also meant Caleb kept his paws off the main tree in our living room. Yes, Grandma Liverpool, your cunning plan from yesteryear all makes sense now ;)

and then the main event happened....

Christmas Eve bubbles :)

Christmas morning, so many smiles, which sadly I missed, but then not so sad as I was too busy enjoying them to capture them on camera.

Tuesday, 13 January 2015 Comments: 2

Gahh can you believe it's less than two weeks to Christmas?! I'd love to tell you I'm all ready for it but that would be a downright lie, and moi is hosting Christmas this year (eek!), for the first time ever (double eek!). I wonder if my family are as nervous as I am?! ;)

Sooooo, if like me you've still to buy half your presents and wrap them, I thought I'd share with you a little easy, peasy DIY. Do it yourself, you gasp. Like you haven't got enough already to do, right?! But I promise it is so super easy, cheap and a nice little personal touch to your presents.

All you need is a paper roll (mine is from Ikea, a huge roll at just £3), washi tape (also Ikea), bakers twine, and a good ole Sharpie pen.

Oh and on a side note, can I just say how amazing washi tape is when wrapping gifts, GAME CHANGER! None of the endlessly searching for the end of the sellotape and then ending up taping yourself more than the gift itself. A quick tear of washi tape and your present is wrapped before you know it. Oh washi tape, how I love thee.

Anyhoo, I'll stop rambling, if I go on it really will be Christmas.

What makes this an even easier DIY is that you can do it as you wrap your presents, so you kill two birds with one stone. Simply cut the paper to the size you'll need for your gift.

With your sharpie pen you could create any design you wanted. I personally went for a repeat design of Christmas words and phrases.

noel / joy / ho ho ho / santa baby

There you have it, a simple DIY, with a personal touch. I wish I could claim the tags were my own, but that would be another downright lie, jeez who's got time to make their own gift tag?! ;) They are from Marks and Spencer :)

Sunday, 14 December 2014 Comments: 3

Hi, my name is, Tired.

Or you can call me, Broken Record.

I'll let you decide, I'm too tired to ;)

Apologies if this post doesn't make much sense, and please ignore my grammar and spelling mistakes. As I clearly do :p

So yep, back to tiredness...

Hardly surprising you might think with a toddler and a baby, although they are a big part of my tiredness I'm actually to blame as well. You see, I've been running on empty recently, like literally. In my rush to make sure the boys are fed, watered and happy, I've been forgetting about myself.

Mama needs to eat too!!!

And I ain't talking about your kid's mushy, slobbery leftovers. I'm talking proper meals!!! It's only been in the last few weeks I've really let this slip, ironically as Archie has started weaning it seems I've put myself on the crappiest diet of all. It's all rushed snacks and cups of coffee. I'm on caffeine, sugar highs and then, you know it, low, low lows. Throw in cracking headaches and I knew I needed to sort myself out.

I used to always meal plan, and that is something I have definitely let go as our busy lives have got busier. So I'm going back to basics. Meal planning done, A cook off in our kitchen like the good old days happened this week. Casseroles, soups, and lots of lovely purees for Archie boy, are all currently taking up our fridge and freezer.

Food for thought. Lots and lots of food!

As a result I've had so much more energy this week and zero headaches. I'm still tired, of course I am, my big cook off does not magically make a toddler and baby sleep through the night, I wish! I do however no longer feel sick tired. My energy levels are so much better, and I don't get to midday anymore and feel completely exhausted, only mildly so ;)

This week has been about remembering that I'm important too. Yes, the boys are my top priority but that doesn't mean forgetting about my own needs also. Balance is key, and I'm on the road to figuring out this new routine of ours.

Thursday, 4 December 2014 Comments: 4

Milestones.

As parents we expect them. We wait for them. We talk about them. We obsess about them, and then without even realising we compare them too.

Oh my child is crawling.

My child is walking.

My child is talking.

My child........and the list goes on.

We're all guilty of it. That chance to brag about our child's achievements. Who can blame us, that pride has got to burst out of somewhere, right?!

But what about when they don't hit a particular milestone? What then?

For us with Caleb that has been speech. From the youngest age Caleb has talked in his own language, wonderful big stories, facial expressions and hand gestures galore. Everyone told us, he'll be an early talker.

Quite the opposite in fact.

His own personal language remains with just a handful of actual words thrown in. What has grown and developed (thankfully) is his understanding of language. That eased our initial worry massively, but as we passed the two and half year old stage I knew we wanted to seek outside help. Thanks to our lovely Health Visitor we were referred to a Speech Therapist. We were told we should expect to wait up to two months for an appointment but received an appointment pretty much straight away.

I was intrigued and nervous about the appointment. I was eager to hear if there was anything we could be doing to help Caleb, but I also had that niggling feeling of guilt. Is it down to us that Caleb's speech is delayed? Could we have been doing more?

At the appointment I was met with zero judgement, our Speech Therapist listened as I brought her up to speed, and then she sent us away with a rather simple method. She recommended that we allow Caleb to choose an activity every day and for us to play with him for about 10 minutes (anymore and they may tire of it), and whilst we do so we are to narrate the play.

At first I thought, well we do that already.

What we do, however, is make a very common mistake that most parents make that have a child with delayed speech, and that is overloading Caleb with language as we play. Instead we should only narrate the play at the level at which Caleb is speaking. So for us that is only one to two words. This is something we absolutely have not been doing, we did in the early days when Caleb was much younger, but as his understanding of language has grown, and his speech didn't in our panic we've thought we should talking more. All this is doing is overwhelming Caleb, and not giving him the chance to pick up on new words for himself.

So here we are, at the start of our journey. One that may be long and equally may not. Only time will tell, but I'm so pleased we are heading in the right direction.

Anyone else who finds themselves in our shoes, don't beat yourself up, and absolutely don't be afraid to ask for help. Every child is different and will hit their own personal milestones when they are ready, and with some of those milestones they may just need a little help.

You can totally remind me about this post when I complain that Caleb never shuts up ;)

Thursday, 27 November 2014 Comments: 6

So, that is us over five months in now. They hand medals out at this stage right?!

Oh, what an incredible journey it has been for the most part, but my goodness also one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life.

You see, Mr Archie boy decided a couple of months ago that he no longer would take a bottle (with expressed milk, might I add :/ ). The timing could not have been worse. I was starting to hit a brick wall with the feeding and felt if Mikey was able to give him just a few bottles it would alleviate some of the pressure off me and help me continue breastfeeding for the foreseeable future, rather than me being forced to throw in the towel due to exhaustion. But Archie took the bottle card off the table and with no extra boobs about, the job was solely on my shoulders, hmmm or boobs rather ;)

It was the four month feeding stage that threw me through a loop, like seriously it even made the early feeding weeks seem like a walk in the park. At four months old Archie was big and looking for a feed every two hours!! Day AND night.

I managed to last three weeks in that routine, medaless (totally a word ;). I knew it was unsustainable though and if it continued like that something was going to have to give. As when it comes to feeding Archie, it's not just him I have to think about it's our family as a whole, and we all know an exhausted mama is good for nobody. NOBODY.

Here's the thing though, as much as I was exhausted, I wasn't ready to stop breastfeeding. Yes, the nights were gruelling, but the daytime feeds made our life quite easy and flexible. I'm a walking, talking food source. No need to plan ahead and certainly no more extra baggage on our day's out. Lord knows, I don't need to be packing and carrying anymore stuff than I already do now for a toddler and a baby. I swear my back. Soooo not friends with me as it is already. Also did I mention in the midst of my moaning that I love breastfeeding?! More than I ever thought I would. That said though I knew for the sake of us as an entire family something did need to change.

We needed a new plan.

That still involved boobs!

Plan B

The Eviction.

That's right at 5 months old poor Archie got turfed out of our room. The decision that although felt harsh (and a little devastating, as that means he's not a baby baby anymore) I knew was needed. I had a sneaking suspicion his multiple wake ups at night were becoming habit rather than necessity. Plus little Mr was starting to cut down on his feeds in the day (turns out daytime is far more interesting than night time) and save the bulk of his feeds for the night. Alone with mama, snuggled up in the dark, with a fully stocked milk bar, of course he was going wake up every two hours, who wouldn't!

Eviction notice it was then, with guaranteed VIP access to the milk bar when needed, obvs ;), and surprise, surprise we had a sleeping baby. Now I want to give Archie a medal for that!

Another element that has helped with the relentless feeding has been baby rice, and boy was Archie happy about the introduction of that, which makes me look forward to introducing other foods in the not so distant future.

In the thick fog of the four month feeding frenzy, I really couldn't understand how women continued to feed past this stage, some for years to come, but now that I'm in the light at the end of the tunnel I realise how much easier it becomes. Archie's feeds are now much more spread out and completely manageable with our busy lifestyle. Soon he'll be eating food and only looking for a morning and evening feed from me. It's a day I don't want to come around too quickly. As although I've said it's one of the hardest thing I've ever done, the good outweighs the bad a million times over, and I know as many mothers have told me, I will miss it badly one day. Those moments in the dead of night, when it feels like it's just him and me in the whole wide world, snuggled warmly against each other. I know I'll go on to treasure these moments forever, and I'll even miss the moments when I was so tired I thought I would cry. Who am I kidding, the moments I actually did cry.

I love this journey we're on together, Archie.

Thursday, 13 November 2014 Comments: 3

this little house

HEY JANUARY, LET'S TALK CHRISTMAS ;)

EASY PEASY CHRISTMAS WRAPPING DIY

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

MILESTONES - TALKING THE TALK

MY BREASTFEEDING JOURNEY

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