A whole new world... of organisation

Being that this is a new year and as most people see it, a fresh start I am taking this as my opportunity to be more organised again.  Just to be clear, this is not a resolution as I used to be very organised before my son and this will not get broken like resolutions do so there.  I vowed at the end of last year that I would never lose track of everything again like I did 2015.  It flew so out of control that I didn't manage to organise anything, except for my son's birthday.  It still irks me that I almost missed Christmas card giving.  I have also literally just given our last Christmas present (which I had to make in the new year) as I wasn't organised enough to arrange it before December.  Grrrr.

That behind me, I am armed with a list of things I need to do and achieve this year.  I will make sure nothing slips behind like it did last year and if it starts happening I will be asking for help! Especially as my husband has proved he is quite handy with the finishing touches of cake and biscuit decorating! 

This year so far, I have firstly started compiling a list of presents for people.  Whenever I see something in a newsletter or whatever that I think they will love, it gets added to the list.  I used to pride myself on always being able to give people a unique present they have loved but as of late I have been off my game and I need to find said game again.  I'm pretty excited about some of the things I have added to the list and I can't wait for their birthdays/Christmas to finally be able to get them.  This whole present list idea also helps me to budget so as not to overload myself come December payday. 

Secondly, I have already prepared the backdrop to this year's Christmas card... early I know but the card I had to send out last year was less than perfect (not my son's fault although he's not the most patient model in the world) and this year I need time to plan and edit the final image.  No I will not be photoshopping my son per se, but it does require photoshop and yet another costume.  That is another story for another time... like December.  2015 has taught me to be less ambitious but not less creative.  Again, so excited in advance that this is already sorted and I can't wait for October to get it started!

Third and finally, I have started meal planning.  It was something I had suggested to my husband as our shopping bill seems to have increased all of a sudden and our son isn't a big eater so it can't be him.  I have seen many example recipes and plans so I thought I would get in on it.  Our shop for this week has cost us £20, we had some of the ingredients already like herbs and garlic etc but this is a major breakthrough and hopefully will save us some serious money in the long run.  This also helps to make sure that not only are we eating properly but also that I'm not spending hours on the dinner and I have intentionally only put quick food on the list.  A lot of the money saving plans suggest a roast dinner on the Sunday and then using the leftovers to create another meal in the week which I have done with Monday (to coincide with me being out for the evening and my husband liking Mexican food).  All of the meals have hidden or added veg to make sure we're getting our fill and I have to say sweet potato wedges are amazing! I try to save myself some time where I can and also to reduce wastage by buying mostly frozen fish and frozen pre-prepared vegetables.  This week a lot of the vegetables have been fresh but I feel better knowing I have frozen chopped stuff just in case.  Dinner so far has taken me less than an hour each day but my working days will be the true test as I'm usually too tired to want to cook anything. 

My aim is to eventually start incorporating slow cooker meals and I have already been trawling the internet for new but quick recipes so I'm not cooking the same old things.  I have never made cottage pie before so that is my test for this week and the stuffed aubergines comes from here: http://goodfood.uktv.co.uk/recipe/stuffed-aubergines/
I am also trying to incorporate a meat free day for our health and two fish days as per our government's suggestion.  These in turn will make the shop cheaper as frozen fish and vegetables cost so much less than meat (obviously I have failed on the fish part this week - unless we have fish and chips on Saturday). 

Here is this week's board:

Some other things I have managed to do:

• Sort and file photos - also copy and compress a batch to send to our relatives of my son's first birthday (we took 250 photos)! I have also backed them up on a hard drive I asked for for Christmas so they're now in three places... just in case.
• Cut down half of a tree in the garden and pick up the things strewn across our lawn from the many storms we seem to be having at the moment 
• Ironing - three weeks or possibly more old 
• Buy this and next month's birthday and Valentines' Day cards
• Finish and get printed my son's first year album
• Calendars for all of the grandparents and my sister 
• Sort out my personal email inbox which has so many emails I didn't need anymore

And it is only January.  Bring on the rest of the year, I will win 2016!  

~AB~

Expectation

Last week my husband and I attended our son's very first parents evening at his nursery.  I'm not sure if it's just me and I know I shouldn't put so much pressure on myself but I want my son to do well at nursery.  To take out of it as much as he can and to develop as much as he can.  The results had been evident as he seems to have skyrocketed and is doing so many new things in such a short space of time.  His walking confidence has been admirable and he has such a gung ho attitude to learning (obviously there is a downside to a toddler wanting to literally throw himself into everything he does as I'm sure you can only imagine). 

I wanted my son's development to be the most important factor when choosing a nursery but obviously through encouragement with care and affection.  It's not that I didn't also look at the food they prepare or the way they care for the babies but I needed to know when it came down to it that they wouldn't molly coddle my son in my absence.  Every opportunity is a chance to show or teach my son something new and I want him to be worldly, culturally aware and open minded.  

We were informed that our nursery follow the Early Years Foundation Stages (EYFS) and that everything they do they assess along the guidelines set out in these stages.  At my son's tender age, the development is encouraged through play but certain aspects of play i.e. learning to share with other children, learning to stack cups/duplo/rings when they are starting to approach one year old.  I won't pretend to know or understand what these guidelines are or even that I have had the time to look and read them, what I do know is that clearly my son is doing well under these guidelines and that his nursery are obviously implementing them very well.  Either that, or my son is a genius.  Unfortunately, judging by his insistence on walking backwards or forwards covering his face for fun I doubt it is the latter.  

We were greeted by our son's main key worker who seems a little too young to be looking after babies but who am I to judge as she seems to be doing a pretty good job at it.  However, being that she is so young, she is super enthusiastic about EVERYTHING and talks at a million miles an hour and keeps on talking and talking and talking and talking and I could barely ask questions let alone read the books she was holding in front of me for all of the talking and talking and talking.  You catch my drift.  The enthusiasm fills me with confidence that she's fun for my son and has patience for him, something which I'm sure I have mentioned more than once is now occasionally what I lack.  Then I actually read some of the content she is putting in front of me and my heart sinks.   A little background - the nursery keep a scrapbook of everything they do week on week with photos and little diary excerpts and dates of little milestones etc.  This is shown to parents every parents evening and then when the babies leave the nursery, the scrapbook is part of their leaving present.  We also have a progress diary where they write in a little book every day he attends what he ate and drank that day, how many naps he's had/length of naps, the nappy changes and how his behaviour was and we had always noticed he seemed to be eating double at nursery but thought it was exaggeration...

So anyway, my son has been attending nursery since September and so much has changed in that short space of time.  To put it into perspective, a couple of days after my son's first official day, he started crawling and pulling himself up, he had barely any hair and was a little waif.  My son is still a little waif but has a full head of thick curly hair and is now running and mischievous.  I would be in denial if I thought the majority of his development was down to me as I have barely known what to do at every stage.  If it wasn't for my BabyCentre newsletter I would have no idea what my son would need for encouragement.  Motherhood has not come naturally to me at all.  

You can imagine my surprise though, when I start flicking through the scrapbook zoning out his key worker and seeing all of these photos of my son that I haven't taken and he's doing things I haven't seen him directly doing.  He's smiling and playing and pulling himself up and developing right in front of my eyes through film.  Then, I read some of the captions and excerpts... my son did this and my son did that and I think, hang on a second... he only started doing that at home last week but... he's been doing it at nursery for two months... Then I see more and more of these little excerpts where he has been doing things long before we got the opportunity to see him do them and my heart ached.  Now I know that had my son not have gone to nursery, he would in no way be this advanced and I'm under no illusion that I would have been able to do the same/a better job alone.  I am also aware of the fact that my husband and I had no choice but to send him to nursery as we couldn't afford for me to stay off of work for much longer if we wanted to continue to pay bills and own our house.  Still, it hurt to see that my son was being a different person to the person we see at home.   As my husband put it into perspective that we're not the same people at work as we are at home, it still struck me hard that my son would knowingly be a toddler at nursery but a baby at home.  We don't treat our son like he is a baby, we definitely don't baby talk him or run to his aid every time he thinks he has hurt himself so I couldn't understand why he was so different.  Then I realised, he is in a room full of his peers.  He has no siblings here to copy and all he has are my husband and I.  One part I do remember his key worker saying was that he prefers to play with the older kids, my son is trying to be older than he is to fit in and as a result is developing much faster than he would at home.  

Part of me now is still cut up about it and I even shed a couple of tears writing about it but this is what I wanted.  I wanted my son to learn, to advance and to developmentally thrive at nursery.   This is exactly what's happening and the only person I have to blame is myself if I don't like it.  I'm so pleased that he is doing well and maybe were it not for the fact he was developing so well outside of our home I would be ecstatic.  It's just another self-inflicted mummy struggle I will have to come to terms with.  I wouldn't be human if I didn't feel upset that it wasn't me that had done all of this and I shouldn't feel guilty and berate myself for being a bad mum because I had to send my son to nursery.   Sometimes, I should just give myself a break and maybe even pat myself on the back that my son wants to learn and quickly but hey, that's another breakthrough for another day. 

~AB~

Mumspiration

When my husband and I were looking for a new house, I would stare all day long at interior design ideas and sites, hoping and wishing for the perfect furniture for practically nothing and rooms that look like something out of a catalogue for barely any work.  During these home p*rn searches, I came across loads of Ikea hacks and DIYs that seemed like anyone could do them.  I curse myself for having so many DIY ideas but not having the skills to actually formulate them. 

I bookmarked so many projects which fell by the wayside (like the rocket bookshelf, a guestroom headboard, distressing a side table and decoupaging a child's table and chairs that the previous owners left behind).  There were so many amazing women who had DIYed their own homes and crafted some beautiful pieces of furniture and quite frankly I was jealous.  To be completely honest, I can't even say I started or completed even one project!  Anyway, I will get back to the point and berate myself later. 

During one particular search for tufted headboards I could have made for our guestroom, I came across this site:

http://www.running-from-the-law.com/

I viewed the post about the headboard in envy, then I found myself reading through other posts.  I spent hours looking at photos of Sara's life, a person who I have never met before.  Something struck a chord and I  bookmarked her blog.  I needn't have bothered because almost two years later her page still remains open in a tab on our iPad which gets refreshed every week so I can read her latest post. 

This may sound odd and stalkery which I can appreciate and I am not intending to be a creep.  Indeed my husband finds it odd and I imagine so would Sara if she ever read this.  I have never commented on her posts or followed her on social media but I feel a strange affinity with her and her life.  Her candid accounts of everything make me read her posts as though she were one of my friends.  I can only relate to some of what she has blogged about (that's as much as possible with one child and a different lifestyle on a completely different continent) but I still feel like her words resonate with me (see the posts about resolutions and Christmas photos).  

I have always been keen on keeping the internet a place where my son would eventually choose himself whether to have an online presence but someone sharing their life in this way makes me appreciate family life and a parent's love even more.   

I guess what I am trying to say is, in the great wide interweb, there is a lot of scary information out there when you're a new parent and sometimes when you're looking for reassurance a forum just doesn't cut it.  It's refreshing to see a mum out there who isn't all about the good all of the time as parenting at least for me isn't 100% the best all of the time.  Sara is one of my mumspirations and I'm glad there is someone out there who can just keep it real every now and again so I know that I'm not abnormal. 

~AB~

Welcome to 2016

As you may or may not have seen my first post of the new year was about... pushchairs.  There will be no posts about resolutions and how I intend to change just because it's a brand new year I'm afraid.

My whole life has been spent giving career and lifestyle deadlines and demanding changes of myself within unrealistic timescales.  What I have learnt is that sometimes as long as I have a goal, I need to let things happen themselves.  Having my son has changed so many things for me, my body, my lifestyle but most importantly, the way I think.  I was an impatient person, always wanting to be in control and always wanting things my way.   Since my son's birth I have felt the change in me.  I'm not saying that I have had an epiphany but I am definitely more patient, a little more understanding and I have even become more relaxed about the organisation of my social life to the point that friends have commented it's not like me not to know and have planned every element.  It's also not that I have become lazy or bored with life but priorities have meant I need to be more realistic with planning everything.  My son appears to have my impatience and my controlling nature which has too forced me to adapt.  Two of us with those same personality traits would not make any situation a comfortable one.  

I have been working on myself for quite some time and more so in last 6 or so months and there have been many moments where I have felt that I had changed a little for the better.  Take for example my son snapping my white gold necklace where I could have lost my rag but I knew it wasn't his fault.  He was curious and also holding onto something of mine made me feel closer to him.  Old me would have been furious.  New me was like, oh well just another thing to get fixed!  On the physical side, I wasn't exactly skinny before I fell pregnant and then during pregnancy I fell in love with pizza so as you can imagine, after pregnancy I shouldn't have been surprised at my size but it was a shock and yes I was very down about it for a long time.  I didn't feel myself and I knew I had to shift the weight for the sake of my own health and now here I am, much lighter and although I'm still very very wobbly, I'm much happier in myself.  I will get rid of this sagging belly skin though if it is the last thing I do (through exercise and healthy eating and nothing else).  

Things have changed and I have changed.  It hasn't taken a brand new year,  it has taken the birth of a child and my effect on him and his life.  I expect in 2016, I will change even more and hopefully for the better as I watch my son reach his second birthday and hopefully regain back some of my sanity as this baby brain business is like torture for my inner control freak.  So no, I won't be making any resolutions this year but what I will do is continue to take care of me and those around me, I will strive to make me a better me for the sake of my son and if it takes years then so be it, but if it can happen this year then great.  I won't hold my breath and I won't be setting any deadlines for it anymore. 

Happy and healthy 2016 to you and if you're striving for a better you too, I'm wishing you all the best. 

~AB~

Pushchair wars

When my husband and I realised we were expecting there were already a few of our friends and family who had babies that we could draw advice from.  A lot of mums I know collect pushchairs/buggies and alternate between them all depending on their preference, convenience, outfit choice etc, the market for second hand pushchairs and buggies is ripe with every possible model you could want.  Although we're not massively snobby, my husband and I were not interested in second hand.  This is our first baby we thought, we must spend money so our second baby gets only one level of hand-me-down. 

We set out testing the pushchairs of all of the parents we know and eventually we settled on one, a Mamas & Papas Sola.  At that point an updated version had already been released but we were sold and happily handed them our money for a Sola2.  It was easy to push round, I could push it easily with one hand, the Aton car seat that was compatible with it was the lightest we had felt and was also suitable for ISOFIX and non-ISOFIX cars.   I could imagine pushing my little boy around in it with pride and ease.  On the negative side the pushchair itself is quite heavy and weirdly, is wider at the back making it difficult to squeeze through small bus aisles (see my earlier rant about Transport for London buses). 

I didn't think it could be topped even when my mum mentioned that she intended on buying a new stroller for her to use when she ferries our son around on their days together.   Her reasonings were that our pushchair/travel system was too difficult to use (it's really not), it was too big and should she need to collapse it on the bus, it would be too difficult whilst holding my son.   After doing some serious research and budgeting, we settled on a Maclaren Quest.

Maclarens were the pushchairs of my generation, both my husband and I were pushed around in one and they were universal.  Plus it comes with a lifetime guarantee, that's what I'm talking about.  I was so reluctant to use it but eventually we came round.  The stroller is so light they have a built in handle for it to be carried on its side and a further strap for carrying it over your shoulder should you be so inclined.   They proudly state that it can be collapsed easily with one hand and this is not a lie, it's swift and convenient.  Better still, it takes less time to get my son in it, it fits through our front doors (the other one won't fit through the first door) and it's so narrow, without compromising on comfort, that it easily fits down bus aisles and in our porch where the umbrellas usually are without taking up too much space.  I have also been out and out on public transport easily carrying my son up and down stairs in the Quest something I would never consider in the Sola.  BUT, there are also negatives.  Basket space and accessibility is awful compared to the Sola which carries our changing bag so easily that we don't have to hang it from the handles like the Quest and then once our son is out, wait for it to topple backwards.  Steering also seems to be a little awkward and we have noticed that we have to put in effort for it to drive straight.  There is also no pushing with one hand unless you want to end up going in an anticlockwise circle.  As any parent knows you need to learn to do everything one handed and not being able to push a pushchair with one hand is another annoyance.

Either way, although we don't have something that is the best of both worlds, we're totally happy with our two pushchairs.  We definitely won't become collectors and if we are lucky enough to have another child, they will have to settle with hand-me-downs as this house is not big enough for a third one. 

~AB~