A big girl bed

I wrote this in January and never got around to finishing it, but here it is: to be continued soon....

We had a pretty rough Christmas sleep-wise. About a week before Dave finished work for the holidays, our lovely baby girl stopped sleeping for longer than two hours, EVER. I'm talking day, night, day, night... it just won't end! Some nights she wakes up every hour, feeds for twenty minutes and falls asleep, then wakes up the next hour. So I've been getting maybe five or six 40 minutes blocks a night. AND this has coincided with the fourth-ish week of Benjamin's refusal to nap during the day- joy!

This is how it's gone the past few weeks: I would start to put her up to bed around 7 as usual, leave her asleep at about 7.45, then spend the rest of the evening going up and settling her over and over again, while Dave sat on the computer entertaining himself, unsure whether he would get to see his wife for longer than 10 minutes that day. It's been HORRENDOUS! Apologies for the potentially irritating use of capitals, but they don't even bring it close to how I've been feeling.
I feel lonely, up there all 'alone' scrabbling for the chance at a life. I feel that she is being completely unreasonable. All I want is a couple of hours to call my own. I look after these children all day, and I just want to spend a little time with my husband, is that too much to ask?? Clearly yes!

I have a rule with my kids that once it is bedtime, they stay upstairs. I have never once brought Benjamin downstairs after bedtime; I want him to respect that boundary so I have to too. I need time to be me. This does, of course, lead to the self-imposed torture I describe above. It has also meant several miserable nights spent in the rocking chair! But I believe it has been a huge factor in my Ben's miraculous habit of going to bed at 6.30 every single night and never being seen or heard until morning (I know that seems a little early, but we are early risers and he is up around 5.30/6am anyway, whatever time he goes to bed).

So I'm trying to think outside the box, and one thing we're trying at the moment is... the big girl bed!

It's a toddler bed I bought on eBay for Ben a while ago, although he's not interested in it at all. I raised it high enough to be level with our bed and hey presto! Her own bed that is actually still part of our bed. Incase anyone was wondering why there's a little green sheet on there, I have to double up sheets as she sleeps on her tummy and slobbers all over the bed! Parenthood makes you think laterally lol.

Christmas!

This was our first Christmas at home just us as a family. It was so nice not to have to travel and to be able to eat whenever dinner was ready. We had an hour long Sacrament meeting at church, and it was wonderful to see everyone there! I was impressed with the turn out- pretty much the same as a usual Sunday. It was great to start the day focusing on the Saviour.

It was also my first time making Christmas dinner alone! Although Dave did help a little when I was feeding Amelia. I was super organised and had everything ready to just be shoved in the oven or have water poured onto it at the appropriate moment, and had written a list of what needed putting in when and how many minutes to put on the timer next. I am extremely proud of myself, and especially my gammon.

D suggested it would be nice to have gammon for a change this year, as we would normally have turkey. I thought that was a great idea, but it was Christmas Eve Eve before I realised I had never done one before and had no idea how to dress it! Thanks to Google I found a delicious recipe sans mustard (D doesn't like mustard) and it turned out perfectly.

Ben decided he'd prefer fish fingers for his Christmas dinner, although he had a nibble on a yorkshire pudding too. Strange child. But we were just grateful that he was happy and low maintenance while we ate.

Amelia had a present while we ate, and she sat happily playing with it for most of the meal. She LOVES her Oball!

We decided to take it easy with the presents and just let Ben open them as and when he wanted to. This worked quite well and we actually opened the last few yesterday (27th). He is very obsessive and needs to be able to look at and take in what he's got before he tackles something else. It's kind of nice really because it means he enjoys each thing, rather than just tossing presents aside and going for the next one.

We tried a few times to get a nice family photo by the tree, or even just pictures of the children, but it didn't really work! This photo pretty much summarises the experience: Ben constantly moving outside the frame and making everyone else laugh! He's brilliant.

Hope you all had a very merry Christmas. Happy New Year!

Gok Wan and the perfect boots

As some of you may know, I have a bit of a thing for Gok Wan.

There he is. Lovely man. I don't fancy him or anything... or maybe I do... I don't know... but anyway, I like him a lot and I want him to be my best friend. I used to love watching Gok's Fashion Fix when we had a TV licence, much to D's disgust!

So imagine my delight when Gok popped up in my dream the other night.

In the dream, D had got tickets to see a Gok fashion show for my birthday. I had a cunning plan that I would dress shockingly badly, then Gok would see that I needed his help, kit me out like a model in free clothes, and we'd be friends forever. And being a dream, it all went according to my plan! I wore these hideous boots that I would never be seen dead in except in an attempt to lure Gok into eternal friendship, and when he saw me in the car park he came and took me by the hand to help me. We went into the studio and I got all my beautiful new clothes and was feeling like Cinderella, then... THE PERFECT BOOTS!

Haha, I have been saving up for beautiful boots for months, so my subconscious obviously knew how much I needed them! In the dream they were these gorgeous jazzberry suede stilettos, about knee high, oh my.

Something like this, but without the platform and, obviously, a boot. I would never buy something this impractical in real life, as it'd be a good 3 years before I could safely wear them without falling over a small child and possibly taking someone's eye out, but what are dreams for, hey?

Gok decided I looked so good he'd put me in the show, so I got to walk down the catwalk in my amazing, free, designer outfit, then the real models brought me flowers and a 3D jigsaw puzzle of London attractions! It was one of the best nights of my life!

I did buy my boots about a week ago, but they ended up being flats and chocolate brown. I do love them though :) And they were half outlet price (about a quarter normal price), so bonus!

Being the favourite

There is a quotation I've heard before that I just love. I don't even know who it's by, but it goes:

To the world, you may be just one person.

To to one person, you may be the world.

I just love that! I've always loved the quotation, but since having children it's meant so much more to me.

Because these little people, they come into our lives so helpless and dependent. And we love them so much and so instantly. We give to them until we feel we cannot possibly give another second or another thing, and then we somehow give a lot more!

And the most wonderful thing about that is that they love us absolutely!

When Benjamin was tiny and I was battling with post-natal depression, my Mum said to me, "You are the most important person in his life." and at the time it wasn't what I wanted to hear. I felt like I wanted to escape my responsibilities and be free. But gradually I realised that I wanted to be that person, I wanted to be his mummy, I wanted to be the most important person in his world. That's one of the reasons I decided not to go back to work, but to be a stay at home mum.

Wanting to take care of them; with Ben, it happened the first time he put his arms up to ask me to pick him up. With Amelia it was the first time I laid eyes on her.

I don't want someone else to be the most important person in their lives, I want them to come to me when they fall over and hurt themselves, and I want to be the one they look over to when they do something very clever. How could I possibly give that to someone else? Obviously some people have to, and some people choose to, but not me!

I have come to realise, even more now that I have two children and my attention is always split, that I don't have to be perfect. Neither of my kids are sitting there with a scorecard, rating my performance and loving me in proportion to that. They love me completely whatever I do: no matter what. As long as I am enough, that's enough.

D said once that I was 3 people's favourite- it was just an incidental comment but it meant a lot to me. Because I am! And because I know it won't always be that way, and that's okay, but for now it is glorious. Even in the middle of the night when it has to be me, and even when both kids are sad at the same time and for both of them it has to be me! It's exhausting, but it's wonderful.

Bath time!

My boy loves the bath!

Bath time is Benjamin's special time with Daddy. I got them these letters last year to play with in the bath. They stick to the walls and the tub, absolutely brilliant.

He loves having his toothbrush to chew, ahem, I mean brush and splashing like a loon. No matter how many times he has splashed, there is always a new and exciting way he can get water on the floor! It just cracks me up!

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!