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…
M y beautiful Ettie It’s been an exciting month this month as you have met two new baby cousins and been up to Cumbria to visit your northern friends at a Halloween party which you loved! You had your first ever sleep over at Tilda’s house and it was so cute watching you both sitting together getting a bed time story. T & B are a little bit older than you and you thought they were great because they were bigger. T gave you some converse trainers that were too small for her and you were very happy with them. You’ve really started to use your imagination to play this month and are forever making camps with the cushions off the sofa in the living room and pretending to be the train driver at the bottom of the stairs saying ‘You sit there’. We all have to hop on board with our babies and wait for you to tell us our next destination. Playing ‘prams’ has also escalated into playing shops and teachers with ‘the children’… you love to pretend to be the teacher and are so animated with it. You also love bouncing on the sofa and bed, your sparkly shoes, dancing and putting on a show, playing hide and seek, drawing and pretending to go in the lift with your pram which is a game we played one day just after Ollie was born but you must have loved it because we play it all the time now. We play hide and seek approximately 4,323,423 times a day too, which usually means you hiding and coming to find me at the same time although this month you’ve started to say ‘lets hide’ so perhaps you are very slowly beginning to understand the rules. You’re forming proper sentences now…
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…
W hilst I was in a mild panic to get Ollie’s room finished before he was born, we haven’t really touched it since he arrived and at the moment its a bit of a dumping ground for Ettie’s old toys and baby paraphernalia that doesn’t have its own tidy place in the house. Because he’s quite happy in the Snuzpod attached to our bed, its been quite nice to give ourselves a break from renovating, enjoy the progress we’ve made so far and take a step away from DIY. However this morning when I was taking photos of Ollie to mark his three month ‘coming of age,’ I suddenly realised that time is slowly ticking by and its going to be time to move him from the comfort of the cosy Snuzpod and into his own room before we know it! (*stem big rolling tears!). Ettie was in our room until she was 9 months old because we were in the process of moving house and she fit in the Snuzpod most of that time! Ollie on the other hand is massive and it’s clear to see that he’ll be outgrowing his sleeping quarters within the next few months. So although the break was nice, its time get my thinking cap back on and start making plans for his room. At the moment Ollie’s room is light grey and white. We kept it neutral because we weren’t sure whether we were having a girl or a boy and whilst I do love the pale grey, now that he’s here I’m not feeling it for our boy (No surprises there, decisiveness is not my forte!!) A Monochrome Baby Boys Room Because he has a lovely mop of black hair, I’m finding myself leaning towards a monochrome colour scheme with pops of colour to dotted around to…
Earlier in the year I shared my thoughts on a couple of things that had happened to me since I wrote the post describing how I was struggling being back at work full time and leaving Ettie at nursery. There were many things that contributed to me not feeling myself at the time, the main thing being that we were struggling to conceive after losing our second baby to a MMC at 12 weeks. One of the measures I took to help me relieve some stress was acupuncture to improve fertility and so I thought I’d share my experience with you. I’ll start by saying I didn’t go into acupuncture this time as a newby. I had had it in the past on the lead up to our wedding when the stress of wedding planning, working long hours and renovating our first house had resulted in this ugly puffy eye thing. The Dr’s thought it was an allergy and I had all sorts of tests, but the creams they prescribed made it a million times worse. A quick consultation with Dr Google recommended acupuncture and after a few sessions, the puffiness started to clear up and it has never returned so I was already a convert. My treatment this time was with the same lady. We had a quick consultation and I explained what had happened with the MMC and how we’d been struggling to conceive ever since (at that point it had only been 4 months) She checked my tongue and my heart beat and concluded that I was too cold and needed to eat more lamb! (sounds strange but I never eat lamb so perhaps she had a point!) After a quick massage, she stuck some needles in my tummy and behind my ears, then lay me down…
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