Jeggings

I have finally found someone who actually looks good in jeggings! Check it out:

You're gorgeous Amelia!

Washer woman

You know, you wouldn't think it would be so difficult to keep clean clothes in the cupboards. We have a washing machine which is also a dryer, and I am home all day every day. How could it be such a big deal??

Okay, so it's not really. Keeping on top of the laundry is one of the few things that I can handle, even with a brand new baby in the house. But it is hard work!

Now that there are 4 of us, and two of us tend to need more than one set of clothes some days (most days for the smallest!), I need to do a load pretty much every day, certainly every day I am home. Our washing machine is only 4kg so it's not a very big load, and with it also being the dryer that means I can't have clothes washing and drying at the same time.

I like to delude myself that someone is actually interested in this! But I feel like we have washing around the house all the time in one form or another. The laundry basket brought down to the kitchen waiting to load the machine, wet clothes in the machine waiting to be dried, dry clothes in the machine waiting to be taken out, clean clothes in the living room waiting to be folded, folded clothes in the bedroom waiting to be put away, and of course the delicates that can't go in the dryer and get hung on hangers in the bedroom for a couple of days. It just goes on and on! Occasionally I'll have a couple of days off and then I'm confronted with a mountain, which is even less appealing.

I think that's enough complaining.

Can you imagine having to do all of this by hand? Having to wash it all with your hands and wring it all out then have it hanging around to dry? (I hang mine when it's dry, but I can't stand it hanging round the house. There's literally nowhere we can put the airer that it's not blocking a used doorway, and we don't have an airing cupboard.) I can't even imagine what it must have been like before washing machines were a necessity.

I like to remind myself how lucky I am :) Now stop blabbering on woman and get some ironing out!

Fat bottomed girls

I am so impressed with myself, I went for a bike ride yesterday. There is literally only one time in the day I can get out on my bike. When both kids are in bed, if we haven't eaten yet I can go for a quick ride while dinner is cooking. This is the only time when I don't have children around AND I'm not too full AND it's not too close to bedtime.

I have been thinking about it for a while, but it just seemed so much to get organised, but even though I was only out for 15 minutes it was definitely worth it.

Here are some things I pondered during my cycle:

1) If you haven't ridden your bike in about a year, you need to pump up your tyres before you go, especially if there are speed bumps near your home. Before I was heavily pregnant with Ben I used to cycle to work every day, so I bought a pretty good bike for that, but it is no good at all if your tyres aren't plump. The brakes seem to have stayed very sharp though.

2) If it's November, wear a jacket and especially GLOVES!

3) If there is something you love doing, make time for it. After a rubbish day I was so happy because I was doing something for ME at last.

4) Everyone has 15 minutes to exercise. I have been deluding myself for the past 2 months that I don't have time, but I actually do. Of course it helps if you have an amazing husband who is willing to cook dinner for you. And exercising makes me feel better. I miss the feeling of knowing my muscles and being in tune with my body: it's important to me.

5) I absolutely cannot WAIT to be able to go out with Amelia in the bike seat! I used to cycle around a lot with Ben, but obviously when I was pregnant and now that I have two children at home I am not able to do that. When Ben is in school I hope to get into it again.

This was a while ago, Ben was about 10 months I think.

A big boy bed

Look at this gorgeous little man:

He's had a haircut since then and I miss his lovely curls. It is still quite long though.

Anyhow, Ben is 2 and a quarter today and growing so quickly! He is brilliant: so funny, charming, kind, loving, strong, clever and independent. How such a small person can have so much personality is beyond me. To me it is absolute evidence that we were people before we were born.

He has worked out in the past week that he can climb out of his cot: arghhhhhhhhh!

See, I have been using his cot as a playpen of sorts when I go for a shower in the morning. He is usually very happy to choose a couple of toys to take upstairs after breakfast and play with in his cot, and I get a few minutes to shower, get dressed, stick some washing on etc. It's usually about 20 mins before he starts asking to come out, which is great. Since Amelia arrived it has been trickier, since Benjamin's thinking is that whenever the baby falls asleep it is 'Mummy and Ben time', whereas I'm thinking the first time the baby falls asleep is 'Quick! Must get clean from the dried on milk/spit/yogurt/baby wee/general smelliness of the previous day and night' time. Not hugely compatible.

And that means that my little superstar is no longer particularly impressed about going into his cot. So he makes a loud fuss and usually wakes Amelia up which means that no one gets what they want. Sigh.

When it does work (i.e. when I've sneaked upstairs with Amelia and Ben hasn't followed me making a loud noise AND she's gone into her moses basket without waking up AND he's chosen to go up to his cot without making so much noise she is disturbed before I get his door shut AND she miraculously sleeps more than 5 minutes), he plays for about 3 minutes then climbs out! The first time I was stunned to see him walking nonchalantly into the bathroom and saying 'Hey'. The second time I laughed. The third time I was like, 'Ben, how on earth are you doing that??' so he showed me! I couldn't believe how easy it was for him!

And now, after 4 days of it and one falling-out (falling out of the cot, not falling out with each other), I'm feeling that there's not much point putting him in there any more.

Sooooooo...

... the big boy bed!

This has been set up in his room for months. Ebay bargain! I kept telling him about it before we set it up, I said he'd have a special blanket and a pillow like mummy and daddy, and that he'd be able to get in and out himself and he'd be a big boy like daddy. And I was all excited about getting special Toy Story bedding for him. Then he saw it, and he was like Nuh-uh. He went over to it once and patted Buzz, and he's not voluntarily been near it since. I think Amelia has been on it more than he has!

The first night I said he was going in his big boy bed, he sobbed until I asked if he wanted his cot, to which he shouted 'YEAH!', so I put him in his cot. For a while I would ask him each night where he was going to sleep, cot or bed, and he's always cried and pointed at his cot. I've tried to help him get the idea by sitting on it together to read stories, or having a cuddle on there together but he always cries and points at the rocking chair. I don't get it!!!

Obviously I get that he's always slept in his cot and that's comforting to him. I often see him putting his feet up on the bars when he's falling asleep, or touching the sides with his hands. He has always been a creature of habit and loves his routines, so maybe it's just too much of a change for him. I don't think it's down to Amelia's arrival because I started trying to put him in the bed before she was born, and I've never said to him that we want the cot for her.

I just thought he'd be really excited to sleep in his Woody and Buzz bed, and be able to get out and play in the mornings. Maybe that just hasn't clicked yet.

We'll have Amelia in our room for another 4 months at least, so we're okay as long as she'll fit in the moses basket. I have a lovely stand for the moses basket (another eBay bargain), and it fits beside our bed easily so I can just scoop her out without even leaving the realms of the duvet, so it's a good arrangement. I just know that as soon as we acquire another cot for her to move into, Ben's going to suddenly be ready to move to the bed!

The Prince of Egypt

This is possibly going to be a weird post lol.

One of Benjamin's new favourite films is The Prince of Egypt, which I got him for his birthday. It's taken him a little while to get into it, but he loves it now, especially the part at the beginning with the baby. It's funny actually, because the part he likes most is where Pharaoh's wife ignores her little toddler boy who is asking her to pick him up because she's so in love with the new baby she found floating in the river... interesting. I wonder how much he understands- I remember learning at uni that fairy tales are therapeutic because they help children, who cannot easily express or even understand their environment, subconsciously interpret their world.

Interesting, but not the point of this post!

The film is based on the book of Exodus: the story of Moses. Some of the plot is fictional, but I think it is very cleverly done and since we've been watching it every couple of days for a couple of weeks now, I've been over-analysing, like I do. Nothing like a cartoon to get you thinking about the scriptures in real terms :)

Just one of the things I've been thinking about....

Because he was afraid that the Israelites were getting too numerous and might rise against him, Pharaoh ordered that all male babies that were born to Israelite women should be thrown into the river. Oh. My. Goodness! I had read that so many times and thought, 'Well that's not very nice', but when I was sitting there with a baby in my arms and I saw them taking the boys and the women crying, it came to life to me. They actually took newborn sons from their mother, never to be seen again. And those poor women knew that their children would be killed, and there was nothing they could do about it. That is horrific! Just imagine someone walking into my home and picking up Benjamin and saying, 'Oh, you had a boy, sorry', and taking him. I cannot believe that someone would do that.

Also, imagine the guards that had to do it: listening to the women screaming, hearing the babies cry for their mothers, then watching them sink down into the river spluttering for life. Sorry to be so graphic, but it is horrendous! This actually happened.

I've thought before about how hard it would have been for the Israelites to leave their home and follow Moses, who they barely knew except as the son of a tyrant. But then add to that the fact that his adopted father committed such a atrocity and it becomes even more of a matter of faith.

Like I said, nothing like a cartoon to bring the scriptures to life!

Jumping ship (or not) and money money money.

This is the view from our living room window at the moment:

Which drives me crazy for two reasons:

1) For sale signs are hideous and attention grabbing, not a good combination and not conducive to relaxing when you are sitting near the window.

2) Neither of them are ours!

I am stunned every time I drive through our tiny estate and see how many of the properties are for sale. Serious, there are like 60 houses and there are at least 8 for sale or to let. And again, none of them are ours!

Now don't get me wrong here, I love my house. My house is, however, a two-bed starter home designed for a couple. We fit, but it's snug.

In some ways it is a brilliant house for kids: we have a nicely sized, simple garden; we have a good sized second bedroom for the kids; we are literally 30 seconds walk from a good park; and we have a parking space right beside our house; we have a bath and we have a downstairs loo for potty training.

In other ways it is a very inconvenient house for kids: there is no where in the house we can put a high chair where it isn't on carpet; the front door opens right onto the road (literally- not even onto the pavement and then the road- there is no pavement); the parking space is not wide enough to get a child out of each side! I have to get Amelia out and put her in the house, then park, then get Ben out. Not great when they are both very young; the kitchen is teeny and wherever I put Ben to help me cook he can reach the hob and pull the rings off lol; the schools nearby aren't great.

Anyway, I could go on, but I don't want to give a false impression of how lucky I am. We are very blessed to even own a house in this country, especially since I'm not working anymore. If I hadn't got a job straight out of uni we wouldn't even have been able to afford to buy a flat, let alone a brand new house in a cul-de-sac in Cheltenham Spa! And I do love this house.

It's just... oh... it would be so nice to have a kitchen/diner, to have a garage, to have our car parked somewhere where Ben could stand safely while I get Amelia out, to have an airing cupboard....

With the way things are in our economy and housing market it's going to be a few years before we can afford to move. We bought our house right at the peak of housing prices, so even though we have made a lot of extra payments on our mortgage we think we are still in negative equity. Sigh. I know that being on the housing ladder is good and it's all relative, but there is something so miserable about having to curb your expectations of how much you can spend on a house. We are also quite fortunate in that we bought the house on a shared ownership scheme, meaning that we only bought half of the house and rent the other half from the housing association. It's all worked out as 50% of the house rather than the specific figure of money that we paid, so really we have only lost half as much money on the house as we would have done if we'd bought the whole thing. When we come to sell, the housing association will get back 50% of the price, not the £65,000 that they paid (and likewise for us).

We've decided that we're not going to move until we can afford the house that we will stay in, raise the children to adulthood and grow old in. Ah, so romantic! We don't want to have to move again as we both feel it's such a waste of money. If we were to move now we'd probably have to move again when the kids are older and need their own space, so it does make perfect sense to wait.

So where am I going with this? I don't know really. It sometimes drives me crazy that we are trapped in a house that was never intended as a place we'd raise two children. I'd always, in the back of my mind, thought that we'd move when I was pregnant with our second child, before Ben went to school. It's ok. It puts us in a good position financially living here, and we have more than enough money even without me working at all. I think I just need to count my blessings more!

In a recent Relief Society meeting someone quoted, "Happiness is having £100 and spending £99; misery is having £100 and spending £101". I don't know who that was by, but I really liked it. I am so grateful that D is excellent with money and very wise in the way he deals with our finances. I am so lazy about this, but I know that I can trust him to keep us safe financially. We've fallen naturally into different roles: he is fab at dealing with the money that we HAVE to spend, and my strength lies in not spending any money that we DON'T have to spend!

But one day we will move, and it will be amazing! I'm sure we'll look back at this house with fondness. The place to which we welcomed our children, the four walls in which we learned to be parents and where Amelia was born. And I'm sure we'll smile about the steamy bathroom with no window and the cosy kitchen, just like we do about the tiny flat we lived in when we first got married, which was so small we couldn't even fit a wardrobe or a chest of drawers!

Birthday!

It was my 29th birthday this week! I've been feeling a little sorry for myself since D couldn't get the day off work and we couldn't even go out in the evening with Amelia being so tiny. Plus D wasn't feeling very well. I won't lie, it was a rough day, but I really appreciated everything that D did to make it special for me.

I go out to a breastfeeding peer support group (BAPS! Breastfeeding advice and peer support) on a Tuesday, so Ben, Amelia and I went there as usual. Amelia had screamed literally all morning from the moment D left to the moment we went out, so I decided to take Ben in the little pushchair and Amelia in the mei tei. She doesn't usually like being in any sling or carrier for long, but she was so exhausted from crying for 3 hours that she just fell asleep. Poor kid. It worked though, and I felt better carrying her than chucking her in the double buggy when she was upset.

As I've only been going for 4 weeks or so, there aren't many people at BAPS that I know well yet, so it was a bit weird being all 'it's my birthday!!!' inside but no one knowing. Two of the ladies from church were there, and I couldn't resist telling one of them! Then I immediately regretted it because it obviously sounded like I was trying to get attention (which I was). Oh well, she loves me, she won't judge :)

BAPS is brilliant because they have so many toys and lots of space for Ben to run around, which he doesn't get at home unless it's dry enough for the garden. They have a soft play area too, and indoor slides, a giant doll's house, beautiful wooden kitchen equipment, an indoor sandpit.... Basically we walk in the door and I don't see Ben until the end of the two hours. It makes him happy and I get to enjoy Amelia and also chat to some grown ups for couple of hours a week: everybody wins. I had a good experience this week too, I was chatting to a lady who's having trouble breastfeeding her week-old baby and I think I helped her. She gave up breastfeeding after a couple of days with her first child but really wants to try to overcome the difficulties and succeed this time. They have proper breastfeeding counsellors present, so I was just chatting to her while she got settled and waited for someone to be available. I'd really like to be a breastfeeding counsellor when Amelia gets older- I had such a hard experience with Ben that I know I could be very understanding of the emotional mess you can get into when breastfeeding isn't going well. I would love to be able to help other mums and babies.

Afterwards we came home and had lunch, then nap time. Now I'm not going to lie- this is often a horrendous part of the day. It is so hard to get enough time without my attention on Amelia to get Ben settled enough to go to sleep. Eventually we managed it and after a while Amelia had a sleep too, so I got about 20 mins overlap to rest myself. Then when Ben got up we had some time alone together, which is always a lovely part of the day. D got home and we put the kids to bed, also a good part of the day.

Then hooray! It actually started to feel like my birthday! We had a lovely Indian takeaway, then I opened my presents! D got me some really beautiful jewellery with Swarovski crystals and mother of pearl, I'll have to get some pictures. I've started reading the Skulduggery Pleasant books and D got me the second one of those, and an exciting new board game. I got Lindor from Ben and some Hotel Chocolat from Amelia too. I'm so spoiled!

Next D turned down the lights and came through with my sneaky surprise birthday cake: a key lime pie! My favourite :) He put candles in it, very craftily using ones we had already and putting '30-1' lol. As if I need reminding!

It was a weird birthday and hard work, but thanks D for being so lovely! The little touches meant so much. However, I still demand that you take a day off in lieu of my birthday and wait on me hand and foot ALL day :D