A letter to my nine month old..

Dear Squidlette,

You're nine months old today, I can hardly believe it. I know everyone says it but in all honestly it feels like just the other week that you rushed into the world. We've laughed and cried together and I've loved every minute of it. Well maybe not all the sleepless nights but I wouldn't change you for the world. Although if you want to celebrate being nine months by sleeping through mummy wouldn't mind at all.

Look how you've grown...

30 minutes old

1 Month old

2 Months old - Happy Chap

3 Months old - Tummy Time

4 Months old - Out for dinner

5 Months old - Enjoying the sun

6 Months old - getting too big

7 Months old - Playing outside

8 Months old - Where did my baby go?

I love you big cheeky grin, and how you have the biggest giggles for your brother.
I love how you rub your ear when you’re tired and how your favourite place to sleep is in mummy’s arms.
I love watching you learn, watching you climb and get into mischief.
I love how you always want to come back to mummy after cuddles with anyone else.
I love watching you play with your big brother, I can see how much you adore him and he adores you.

I love everything that you are and everything that you do.

I miss you when we're not together; coming home after work is my favourite time of the day. Seeing your little face light up when you see me.

Love you forever
Mummy
Xxx

The Perfect Relationship

What is it? I’m not sure they exist, what may look perfect from the outside is seldom perfect from the inside. No relationship is free from struggles, fights or issues, it’s the way you handle it and knowing that you want to stay together and make it out the other side that is important.

All around me it seems people’s relationships are falling apart; either people are having babies or splitting up. It seems to come out of the blue, what I thought was a happy perfect relationship obviously wasn’t as happy or perfect as it seemed. It’s very easy to put on an act for other people, but no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. It’s easy to judge but we shouldn’t, everyone’s relationship is different. It set me thinking, are they empowering each other? One person splits up, shows us all that it can be a good think, a positive thing and it sets everyone else thinking. We actually all sat and had a chat about it today, it seems all of us had something to moan about. Proving that no one has that perfect relationship.

Everyone has an idea of what the perfect relationship is, but the reality rarely lives up to it. We all want a relationship with zero pain, we want to share everything equally, be respected, be adored, have no arguments etc etc. It’s an unrealistic approach; no one is perfect therefore how can a relationship be perfect? If you ask a couple who’s been married 50 years if the perfect relationship exists they will tell you no, however strong successful relationships do. Maybe a successful relationship is a perfect one? I don’t know, I certainly don’t have the answers. I’m not even going to pretend my relationship is anything near perfect… it’s merely a work in progress.  Compromise plays a bigger part in a relationship than I ever thought it could, sometimes small compromises sometimes big ones. It’s not always easy, sometimes it’s incredibly hard but it’s very important.

Are we fooling ourselves with the idea of the perfect relationship? Is this why relationships break down so easily sometimes? Relationships are hard work, sometimes you need to fight for them but I think you should only keep fighting if you are happy. Life’s too short to be unhappy. It’s never going to be easy walking away from a relationship especially a long term one. It’s got to be even harder once there are kids involved, but we only get one life, one chance of happiness and we can’t let that slip away from us. Ultimately only we can make ourselves happy, it’s foolish to place all our happiness in other people’s hands.  It may sound selfish but we have to do what’s right for us, we need to put our happiness first.

So what are your thoughts?

Feel Good Friday

I’ve been slightly rubbish just lately, last week I didn’t even get my blog post up and today I’ve been beaten to it by two people. I’ve having problems with my link up tool though, so I’ve been trying to get that sorted before I post. I hope it works, if you have any problems let me know.

I went back to work this week, after nine months off I was dreading it – however after three days it feels like I have never been away. I guess that’s a good thing though. It’s amazing how quickly everything comes back to you. Going back to work isn’t my feel good moment though. Returning home from work Monday I couldn’t wait to see my boys, I spotted them through the window and got huge grins from both of them. Opening the door I’m greeted by a little voice shouting ‘Hello,’ then I hear him jumping down from the dinner table to run and give me a big cuddle. The reaction almost made being away from them worth it. The hour I get with them before bedtime, which has to include the end of dinner and bath time is sudden very precious. Many times I’ve been wishing for 6:15 to arrive so I can start the bedtime routine, but the three days I was a work the time came round too quickly. I wanted to cuddle them and play for a lot longer.

So my feel good moment is cuddles from my boys.





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Wondering what 'Feel Good Friday' is all about, take a look at the original post

Review: SnoozeShade for Infant Car Seat

I received a Snooze shade for a car seat from @SnoozeShade to test and review. It arrived last Friday but I didn’t have the opportunity to try it until today.

Taken from the Website:

SnoozeShade for Infant Car Seats can help if:
• Your baby needs to switch off from outside distraction
• You would like to encourage good sleeping habits and better napping when baby is out
• You have older children whose schedules conflict with new baby’s naptime
• You prefer other people not to disturb your sleeping baby

It’s the simpler, safer, lightweight and secure alternative to draping blankets, muslins or other items over an infant car seat – and it’s great for holidays, in restaurants or anytime you have to go out during baby’s naptime.

SnoozeShade for Infant Car Seats:
• is made from a double layer of soft dark breathable fabric which blocks 94% of light
• in full sleep mode, cuts out visual stimuli to help babies get the sleep they need
• makes transporting baby from car to pram or pram to indoors easy
• can be used to provide extra shade when in hood-extender mode
• provides a shady and well-ventilated sleep environment
• has elasticated top and sides with easy-to-attach Velcro straps to ensure SnoozeShade fits easily to most popular infant carriers with upright rigid handles
• enables you to check quietly and easily on baby via SnoozeShade’s 'sneak-a-peek' front access
• is compact enough to keep with you at all times; it folds into a small drawstring bag to pop into your change bag, handbag, hang off travel system’s handles or store in your travel system’s basket
• protects babies from the sun with the highest sun protection – UPF50+



I was taking my oldest to soft play this morning to meet a friend and we were due to arrive right about the time I would normally be trying to put baby down for his nap. So I popped the shade in my bag and off we went. By the time we arrived he was fast asleep as I expected, so I slipped the snooze shade onto our Graco car seat. I was impressed at how quick and easy it was to do, literally just slips over the frame of the seat and then Velcros to the handles. I got into the building, placed him down on the floor to pay and ‘bang’ he was awake. So nap time failed, I didn’t for one second put that down to the product, more to a fault with my baby. (He doesn’t do sleep – his naps are rarely longer than 20 minutes).

I was talking to my friend about it, and we both agreed it’d work brilliantly for a smaller baby. She is due her second in October and I have said I will pass it over to her, as it won’t be much longer before we have to switch to the next stage car seat.

Baby was shattered by the time we left and fell asleep on the two minute drive home, so I figured I had nothing to lose in trying again. So on the shade went and we made it in to the house, set him down on the floor (the point he normally wakes) and by some miracle he stayed asleep. I felt like rejoicing, but I was anticipating him waking up quite quickly. So when half an hour later he woke I felt like dancing for joy around the house.
This product gets a big thumbs up from me, it definitely works. Even as a small baby we struggled to move from car to house without waking him. He was a winter baby so the drastic change in temperature woke him. I wish I’d discovered the snoozeshade a long time ago; it would have made my life a whole lot easier and prevented baby from being disturbed.

Baby sleeping in his car seat

The snoozeshade comes in a small mess bag, and it’s the perfect size to pop in your changing bag/handbag and take out with you. There is a small peep hole on the front, so you can open and take a look at baby to check they are still okay, I didn’t actually dare to open the zip as I feared the noise might wake the baby and knowing mine it probably would have.

If I ever have another it’s definitely something I will be using often.

What’s new Pussy cat…

Well I’ve been officially rubbish at blogging this last week, I got caught up in something else and found myself unable to drag myself away from it. So I didn’t even get to write my Feel Good Friday. If I had written it, I would have celebrated the fact that I bought a pair of size 10 trousers and a size 10 top. I honestly cannot remember the last time I was in a size 10. I think I was a 12 when I started seeing Ant nearly seven years ago…so it has been a long time. I am so incredibly happy; I just hope that I can maintain it.

In other exciting news R learnt to clap today, he was sat on my lap and J was playing with a singing cow and R suddenly started laughing and clapping along. It was so cute. He has been hitting objects together for a week or so, so he has been doing the clapping motion – today was the first time he did proper clapping though. Daddy was pleased to report that he’s been sat clapping and chanting ‘dada dada dada,’ all day. I absolutely love watching him learn new things, but with each new thing there is a pang of sadness that my baby is growing up.

In the past week we’ve had two teeth cut through, first the top one because he likes to do things different, then one at the bottom. I think the other two will come through relatively quickly, maybe then we’ll get a little more sleep. Or perhaps that is just wishful thinking.
J is coming along brilliantly with his speech now, after all my worrying and fretting he seems to be learning a word a day at the moment. It’s as though something has just clicked and he realises talking is good, we are getting less tantrums and I think this is because he is able to communicate better what he wants. If he wants food, or juice, or up etc then he can now tell us. It’s amazing seeing him learning so much.

He had his first hair cut on Sunday *cries* he still has his curls though, my big sister just gave his fringe a little trim (albeit slightly wonky) because it was getting in his eyes and annoying him. At some point he is going to have to get a proper haircut, but I can’t bear to do it. He’ll lose his curls and the last little bit of babyness; although he’s long stopped being a baby. It’ll change the way he looks so much and I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. Twenty five months and no haircut, that’s impressive isn’t it?

I went back to work today, I’m not sure how I feel. It felt strange and it’s definitely the longest I have sat in one place for a very long time. I don’t even get six hours still in bed, never mind sitting down at home. Does this mean I’m going to get fat? Will I have to work extra hard to keep the weight off? I am walking to work and back, it takes me about 12 minutes to walk and that’s a brisk walk. Pretty much as fast as I can walk, and I use the stairs at work so that should help right?

I think that’s all the updates I have.