Why?

Why do I blog?

It's a good question, people have lots of reasons for blogging. Some to make money, some for the free stuff for reviews, there are many reasons. I blog because I enjoy it, I love that I'm going to have something to look back on when the children are older. Now making money would be nice, I enjoy writing reviews but I don't do it for those reasons.

I can't help get excited when a post gets lots of hits, or comments. It's nice to know a few people like to read about what I have to say. It's not the bee all and end all of it though.

Bit of a pointless post, but I just thought I'd share my reasons. So why do you blog??

Breastfeeding Milestone

Six months was always my own little target, but six months came and went and suddenly my baby is seven months old and we’re still breastfeeding. As its national breastfeeding week I thought it was relevant to have a little celebration of my milestone.

We’ve made it through cracked nipples, cluster feeding and hourly night feeds, we’ve come out the other side and still going strong. He has had two bottle of formula since turning six months, these bottles allowed myself and my husband an evening out, and an evening out with my friend.

I don’t know why I set myself a six month target, but it’s makes me happy and proud that we made it this time. I tortured myself when I gave up breastfeeding at 4.5months with J. We stopped for various reason – partly to do with the stupid Health visitor making me feel inadequate, partly to do with my lack of knowledge and confidence and partly to do with lack of sleep.

Breastfeeding is my way, I do think it’s the best way but I’d never judge someone who chose not to breastfeed. The same as I wouldn’t expect someone to judge me for doing it, we mummies have a hard enough time as it is without feeling bad for our feeding choices. I’m completely comfortable breastfeeding and I will d it anywhere and in front of anyone, I don’t like to make other feel uncomfortable but I also don’t understand why they should. I despise being shut in another room on my own, I wouldn’t send you to eat alone and close all the doors on you so why do it to my baby? I’ve fed in all sorts of places, cafes, pubs, park benches, perched on a wall, the beach and probably the most random place, in church.

I hope to carry on Breastfeeding for as long as we are both happy with it, my imminent return to work though could well force the switch to formula. I hate expressing, I barely get 10ml at a time and I just don't have the time or inclination to do it often enough. Which leaves the only other option of offering formula during the day. Doing this three days a week will ultimately mean I have to do it every day as my milk supply will drop and not allow me to give the afternoon feed the other four days. I hope that we will be able to keep up the other feeds and carry on with the morning and bedtime one for as long as we are both happy. This didn’t happen with J though, as I dropped other feeds my supply was majorly affected and we had to make the change completely.

Either way we’ve had a good run at it and saved myself hundreds of pounds in the process.

Happy Birthday Monkey

(A day late I know )

Two....how did that happen? It only feels like yesterday that my waters broke water and I sat down to eat my dinner before heading to hospital.

I can remember the moment I first saw you, you were tiny...so small I was scared I'd break you. Now you’re a little person, with your very own personality and you love nothing more than to be thrown in the air or dangled upside down.


Look how I've grown:

Love you baby!!

Talk, talk, talk

As a parent there always seems to something to worry about, I’ve been worrying for a while about J’s speech or lack of. Everyone keeps reassuring me that he will do it in his own time, and that some kids do talk later. That he is concentrating on other things. I could go with this when he was younger because he was definitely a baby that was more interested in getting mobile than anything else. He’s two next week though – don’t even let me get started on how scary that is. Anyway as I was saying, he’s two next week and he probably only has between 10 – 15 words. Even these he doesn’t always use. I hear all the time of children younger them him saying more words, it makes it hard not to worry.

I haven’t seen a Health visitor since he was 9 months old, other than the home visit I got from one when R was born. I took R to baby group yesterday and I got him weighed, it’s not normally the HV that does it unless you want to talk to her about something else to. I don’t have much time for HV’s generally, as they give such conflicting advice. However as I was there I thought I would mention J’s two years review. Apparently they are running four months behind, which is bloody ridiculous. How they can do a two year review four months late I will never know. Although since he had his nine month review at 10 months nothing surprises me. She asked if I had any worries and I brought up his lack of talking. Apparently at two they should be able to say around 50 words; and string simple sentences together. Such as ‘Daddy gone’ and other such things. I told her he never did that; so she began telling me how I should take him to groups. I do, we go to toddler group most weeks, he goes to soft play, and we see his little friend at least twice a week. How much more can I be expected to do? I read to him every night, we point to things and name them, encouraging him to try and say the words. He won’t though. He can point to his body parts, including random things like eyebrows. He can do lots of animal noises and point out all his animals. He actually surprised me this morning when he showed me an octopus and a turtle. I had no clue that he knew these.

He does all this, so I can’t understand why he doesn’t attempt to use any words. He has started saying juice now though when he wants a drink, before he used to just fetch us the juice and hand it to us. So I guess it is some progress.

Today he shocked us though when all of a sudden he said ‘Hello Daddy.’ It came from nowhere and he said it a few times. Made me so proud.

The HV has taken our details and she will try and get us seen a bit sooner, in the next month or so rather than waiting four months. So that they are able to assess him and see if he needs to have speech therapy. It’s hard not to feel like I have failed him in some way; if we’d done something different then maybe he’d be able to talk more. Perhaps it is our fault; maybe having a dummy has delayed him like this. I don’t know but I just hope we can start to make more progress soon.

Has anyone else been through this? Got any experience or tips for me?

Baking with left overs

I’m not one for cooking or using leftovers, but I decided I am sick of perfectly good food being thrown away. I was looking in my fruit bowl this morning and it was filled with overripe bananas and apples. We’d already taken the pork out of the freezer to use for tonight’s dinner, so it seemed like the perfect time to use up a bunch of the apples. So I peeled and chopped them, threw them into a casserole dish, added some onion, carrot, the pork and some sauce and popped it in the oven for a few hours. Made me feel better about not leaving them sitting in the fruit bowl until they were no good and then throwing them away.

We never used to have banana’s left as J would eat them till they were coming out of his ears, but recently he has decided that actually he doesn’t like them anymore. Along with all the other foods he's decided he couldn't possible eat.  So I had half a dozen over ripe bananas that looked like they were heading for the bin. I contemplated making banana bread but realised I didn’t have a tin so had to scrape that idea. Faithful google came up truimps though with a recipe for ‘banana muffins.’ I don’t overly like bananas, or anything banana flavoured so I wasn’t very optimistic about them being very nice. I’m pleased to say that I was pleasantly surprised and they are actually very yummy.

So not only did I make two very yummy dishes, I managed to use food that would normally be thrown away. Need to do this more often, save those pennies.

If anyone is interested the muffin recipe  is from 'All Recipes'

They are really easy to make and uses ingredients that you are more than likely going to have in your cupboards anyway.


 

Thirty Day Music Challenge – Catch Up

I should have this finished by now, but my holiday happened in the middle of it and it’s been a bit hectic at home since we returned so I’ve not had a chance to do anymore days. At least I have a half decent excuse I’m not sure what someone else’s excuse is :P

Day 17 – A song that you hear often on the radio.

There are two that I instantly think of both of them I like, but I’m going to pick my favourite of the two.

Rihanna – Only Girl (In the world)

Day 18 – A song that you wish you heard on the radio

Easy, anything off Westlife album ‘Gravity’. The album is potential the best album of their career and the single they took from it didn’t showcase how great the album is. There are a few songs on the album that the lads even had a hand in writing, but they never seem to get the chance to show this off. Mark Feehily in particular is very talented and it would be nice if they got the recognition that they deserve for once.

The song I choose is ‘I will reach you,’

Day 19 – A song from your favourite Album 

I don’t have a favourite album; I have albums that are favourites for a certain time. At the moment my favourite album is gravity but as I have already picked a song from there for my last entry I will choose a different album.

Pink – So What

Blogging and real life

Sometimes its hard to find a balance between the two and you can see from my lack of posts that real life has taken over just lately.

I blame the hubby, he's been off work for five weeks now (including our holiday) due to a knee operation so he's been invading my evenings. Resulting in me not even turning the laptop on never mind blogging.

So a quick catch up:

• Hubbys had an operation on his knee
• J has been ill yet again, tomorrow will be our third trip to the doctors in the past two weeks. More times than he went in this first year of his life. 
• R has started to say 'mum,mum'
• R is army crawling/belly shuffling. It's brilliant, although he makes a bee-line for everything he shouldn't have
• Weaning is well under way and he is loving it.

I'll be back with some real posts soon, I’ve got a few ideas that I want to write up. If you want to hear more about anything let me know.