Hello and welcome to The Halcyon Years, my new look home on the web where I’d like to share with you my thoughts on life, shopping, travel and the joys of renovating your own home!! If you’re a follower on Instagram, you may have seen that I’ve been talking about changing the name of this blog for a while now. The name ‘Ettie and Me’ was only ever meant to be temporary. I needed something to get me off the ground when I was starting out and ‘Ettie and Me’ seemed to be the obvious choice. Back then around 90% of my posts were about the two of us and so I didn’t loose too much sleep over choosing a title. I published my first blog post back in July 2017. At the time I’d just returned to work and was finding the transition hard. I thought that by creating a blog I’d be able to use it to record my memories of Ettie so she’d have lots of information about her childhood and know just how much I loved her! At the time I didn’t think anything would come of it, it was little more than a hobby and I enjoyed having a creative outlet to share my thoughts and photographs. Now 18 months later I couldn’t imagine a day without this blog. It’s grown into something much more than a hobby and opened doors for me that I never knew existed. I’d like to try and stick around and become a bit more profesh about the whole thing, but If I am here for the long term, then I’d like a title that isn’t so focussed on Ettie. There might come a time when she doesn’t want me to use her name on my blog and so I want…
Early last week an email dropped into my inbox from a company called ‘Datemakers’ asking me I’d like to go out on a date. Aside from having a little chuckle to myself thinking ”ey up Em, someone thinks you’ve still got it.” My first reaction was to do the honourable thing and let them know I was in fact a married lady. (I know Stu can be a little annoying at times but I’m not ready to trade him in for someone else just yet!) But alas I was wrong. Far from me thinking I was still a young spring chicken ready to head out on the dating scene, I was quickly informed that Datemakers is actually a company specialising in dates for couples like me and Stu who, to be blunt about it – don’t get out much! Their mission is to ignite a bit of sparkle back into relationships by sending couples out on fun and interesting dates that they wouldn’t necessarily think of doing themselves!!! – looks like I’d be bringing Stu along! When I heard what Datemakerswas actually about I literally couldn’t wait to talk to Joe (one of the founders) to set up our date. With me living the other end of the country to my Mum we struggle for babysitters and haven’t actually been out just the two of us since Ollie was born (I think I can probably count on one hand the number of times we’ve been on a date post Ettie!) When we have been lucky enough to break the shackles and leave the house for an evening, we’ve always done the standard thing of booking a table for dinner, having a few drinks and realising pretty quickly on that getting drunk was a ridiculous idea because we’d peak way too early.…
H ello gorgeous baby boy There have been so many big changes for you this month. You slept in your own room for the very first time, have tried real food and have two little teeth growing on the bottom of your mouth. It’s been quite an unsettled month because you’ve had a bad cough too, but I think we are coming out of the worst of it now and hopefully you’ll be back to your usual happy self in no time. It was shortly after Christmas when we tried you in your own room for the first time. Ettie was 9 months old when we moved her from the little Snuzpod to her own cot and so we thought we had loads of time, but before we went to Cumbria I noticed that you were getting a bit long for your Sleepyhead. I undone the fastening but you were still frustrated that it was stopping you being able to roll over so we removed it all together and thats when I noticed you were actually a bit long for the Snuzpod itself. You were a little over 5 moths and so we tried you in the cot for the first part of the night and then moved you in with us at bed time. So far things seem to be going ok. I feed you just before sleep time and then pop you down with the white noise playing from your little penguin. You seem to take comfort in the fact its bedtime and tend to roll over and fall asleep! It’s such a big shock to us because we never had that with Ettie. You’ll sleep through until around 11.00 and i’ll give you another feed then at 4ish you come in with us, but because you can…
I ‘m currently sat on one of the stools at our breakfast bar, red wine in view whilst Stu cooks our dinner for the evening (I know living the dream right!!). We’ve literally just finished decorating this room, like literally! The glue is still drying on the command strips we used to add the pictures to our gallery wall and yet the topic of conversation for the evening …. our kitchen extension! Why??! Renovating houses is for the select few. I know it can seem exciting on those Handy Andy style BBC shows. The before and after pictures on Instagram make the whole process seem really straight forward, but in reality living through a renovation project takes someone with a steely nerve. Living with dust for months, never being able to switch off in the evening because you have to think about the colour of the door handles in the next room your about to tackle and not really being able to invite friends over because, well you’re a little bit embarrassed about how you live! That part of renovating takes a certain type of person. They’ll tell you time and time again that ‘this is the last one, we’ll never do it again!!” But for some reason as soon as the paint is dry on one project… kind of like childbirth, the pain is forgotten and work has started on the next project before the brain has really had chance to really figure out why! Stuart and I are those type of people. The insane kind that can’t just sit and enjoy what we’ve created. A think a little of it is down to ambition, a little down to practicality but also a little because we can. We’re very lucky in that Stuart’s a Heating Engineer and very handy…
Hi there, Happy New Year! So I’m going to have to be a bit careful about how I word this because I don’t want to sound like I’ve been finding the last five months difficult. I haven’t, it’s been lovely, the newborn bubble, snuggles with my baby boy, time off with Ettie. I’ve loved every second and have been using the time productively to grow this blog and my Instagram account which I’ve really enjoyed. But somewhere towards the end of October winter set in, Ollie started his four month sleep regression and Ettie became really hard work so getting out of the house was a bit of a nightmare and I retreated into staying indoors because it was easier. I didn’t really realise it was happening and if you’d have asked me at the time I would have said all was ok, but actually now looking back I was probably a little overwhelmed! When things like that happen, I tend to retreat back into work mode as I find it easier pouring all of my attention into things I can control instead of things I can’t… like over-tired children! So somewhere towards the end of 2019 I stopped being ‘fun mum’ and turned into ‘worky Mum’ eager to make instagram a success, earn money and learn new skills – (in this case it was Lightroom). Towards the end of 2019 I was back in full on work mode, thinking of my to do list as soon as I woke up in the morning and willing the children to have a nap so I could get on and tackle it. I paid too much attention to likes and numbers and even when I was spending time playing, a little portion of my brain would be thinking of ways to sneak off and…
I magine if you will that it’s a grey, wet Friday afternoon. Your youngest has been up four times in the night working through the latest sleep regression (which isn’t due to hit for another two weeks!) and your oldest has just poured cornflakes all over the floor for the third time that afternoon and is now having a tantrum on the floor because her apple isn’t juicy enough. It’s been a long week, you’re tired, dishevelled and wondering how feasible it would be to bring ‘bed and bath’ forward to 3pm just so you can get some shut eye!! But wait.. you hear a knock at the door? You go to open it, thinking ‘What now? surely nothing else could go wrong today, but it’s the post lady! She hands you an enticing square box wrapped in plastic. Intrigued you give it a shake! Hang on one cotton picking minute, ‘that sounds like bottles?’…… The penny drops!!! It’s your monthly Gin Subscription box!! Halleluia! Suddenly the evening doesn’t seem so grim… you know as soon as you get the little rapscallions to bed a delicious ice-cold G&T will be yours.. and you only have to make it through the next 4 hours!! I Love Gin is a monthly Gin Club subscription box delivering two miniature Gins and accompanying tonics direct to your letter box. The idea is that they send miniatures of many different Gins to you, so you get to try them without having to buy full-sized bottles. They also guarantee that a new Gin and Tonic will be featured every month so you won’t be drinking the same mix of G&T all the time. It’s a really great idea for anyone who likes their Gin. Whats in the Box? My first box was ‘The Natural Waters’ box. This included…
D ear Ollie Hugo, my beautiful baby boy You’re almost four months old now and your little personality is really starting to shine through. You’re such a smiley, happy baby and ever so handsome. I fall deeper and deeper in love with you every single day. I’ve said from the day that you were born than you were calmer and more chilled out than your big sister and it’s absolutely true. You’ll quite happily lay playing on your activity mat or bouncing in your chair, taking everything in until your little tummy starts to rumble and then you begin to shout. It’s not a cry, more an angry little grunt that repeats like a beacon until you are fed. You love your milk so much. When you feed you thrash your arms and legs around trying to get the milk out faster, then guzzle it down until you get wind. I can feel all the little bubbles gathering in your belly. Then as soon as your tummy is full, you look up at me with your big blue eyes and give me big cheeky coo and a grin. It’s lovely seeing how having a full belly makes you so happy and content When you’re not feeding you’re generally sucking your thumb or dribbling! You are such a big dribbler, forever blowing raspberries. At first Ettie was mortified saying you’d spat at her, but now she just laughs and wipes it away. When you suck your thumb it’s the sweetest thing. You found it all by yourself when I think you were trying to find a bit of comfort between feeds. Sometimes it used to fall out of your mouth as you fell asleep and you would thrash about in a right paddy until you found it again. Now you can…
I ‘ve got a lovely small brand to share with you today. We’re very lucky and get sent lots of lovely things to trial, but it’s not often that one of these brands actually ‘revolutionizes’ my life (for want of a better word without sounding too dramatic). The Joyku sling has made such a difference to our day-to-day lives that I really wanted to share why I think it’s so good in a review. We were under no obligation to write this, but when I think something is good I always like to share the love. A few weeks ago I was contacted by Irina from Joyku asking if I would like to trial one of her baby slings. Initially I was hesitant because I’d tried Ollie in Ettie’s old baby sling and he didn’t really enjoy it but I think that may be because he was just too heavy. I had one of those long fabric slings with Ettie and was a huge ‘baby wearer’. She would never really settle when I put her down, but always fell fast asleep in the sling. Whether it was the rocking motion being similar to the sensation of being in the womb, or simply the fact that she was held close whenever I popped her in the sling, she instantly fall asleep giving me two free hands to get on with tasks around the house. Because of that I was really hoping I could ‘wear’ Ollie too, but whenever I tried him in her sling he would just wriggle around trying to ‘break free’. I think he found it uncomfortable because I could never get his position right, at 13.5km when he was only 2 months old (91st centile) he was MUCH bigger than Ettie and no matter how tight I tied the…
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