half way there

21 weeks tomorrow Im halfway through cooking this baby now,  it has gone by so quickly even though at times each day has dragged and been a fight to get through.
Im finding some energy and motivation to do stuff now, today I got the windows in the living room washed, It might not seem like much to some of you but battling PGP again has had me seriously unmotivated to do anything, I also got dinner cooked and ready early and made brownies for Homegroup today.

One day at a time doesnt seem enough sometimes its more like one Hour at a time just getting one job done at a time and slowing working at getting the bigger picture sorted out. There is more than enough stuff to keep me busy till this baby is here I just have to motivate myself to get it done.
I discoverd this website. www.stumbleupon.com and its rather addictive but basicly it churns through the web searching for sites sugested by other users on a subject/interests list that you compile It has come back with some helpful and amazing results for things and I now have some great affordable ideas for Christmas presents for friends this year as well as some simply " to die for " amazing recipes that I just have to try out, I tried out one of the many Chocolate brownie recipes today and they taste really yummy quite similar to what Mum used to make but with a twist, ive had to contain myself from not eating the whole batch since they were made with a purpose for homegroup tonight.

Scan is tomorrow and we will find out the gender, Im warning people however if we are expecting another boy then any " dont u wish it was a girl, will you try for another " comments will not be welcome as i find them rather intrusive and rude. My head is thinking boy anyway so it wont be an issue for me either way although if its a girl then its a good reason to declutter all the little boy clothes we have lying around.

My mission in the next week or so is to be practical and make things easier to live around here so decluttering the clothes for everyone, sorting out stuff to be put aside out of sight till we have time to file it etc... make it a nicely enviroment to live in and easier to keep clean lol

First born son turns 3

Well this day 3 years ago I was just waking up after having had a baby at 2:45am and not  getting to sleep till nearly 6am i got 5 hours sleep missed breakfast and woke to a sleeping baby with a big old purple bruise on his head from the ventouse. Was the best morning waking up to my son sleeping peacefully next to me.

anyway today we have a 3 yr olds birthday and he is obviously very overwhelemed by the excitement and getting a bit cranky im debating him having a short nap before the party so hes in a good mood. i'll add more to this later for now i have lamingtons to finish making

Week 14 + 1 day

Pregnancy, what an amazing, magical, wonderful time in a womans life, what a hormonal, crazy, emotional time in a womans life.

Single or as part of a couple there are lots of daily challenges faced as a pregnant woman and to a degree more when you are already a mother and have children to care for.

It is true when they say every pregnancy is different. My pregnancys with the boys were markedly similar with the exception of developing SPD /PGP with EJ which made the simple things like getting out of bed and putting clothes on a monumental challenge let alone doing my shoe laces up! But with the exception of this horrible condition then my Morning Sickness was the same with both boys and my bump developed the same at about the same rate it was almost like I was reliving my previous pregnancy.

But this Pregnancy has been a world apart my all day rushing to throw up was replaced by all day nausea and lack of appetite with only the occasional days where I had to make several trips up to the bathroom to hurl and they were mainly mercifully spaced apart, I have been alot more tired this time and having more trouble sleeping than I remember with the boys, So far my Anemia has stayed under control my base Ferritin Levels remain at a good level which bodes well although I will of course have them checked a few extra times to make sure.

The first 3 months were a bit rough though with unexplained bleeding that lasted quite a few weeks and resulted in an early scan but it all seems to have gotten itself sorted out now which is a relief for me.

Mike seems to think this baby is going to be a girl and I'm not holding my breath as much as I would love a girl im going to wait out patiently till my 20wk scan to find out and be happy with what I find out.

You who are reading this should know we wont be telling anyone what name we pick for our Baby till we annouce the arrival to everyone so there is no point asking me lol you wont get a response , We are undecided if we will disclose the gender of  our baby before its birth also and that decision will have to be made sooner as my scan is in the latter part of July.

My "baby" EJ is growing up hes now finally taken solo steps { even if it was sideways like a crab }and gets closer to full on walking each day now which is of course exciting but sad too because it means hes growing up and needing me less in some ways. Hes recently learned the "No" word and how to apply it when he doesnt want something or doesnt like the sound of my idea lol but with the instalation of "time outs" for both the boys then hes learning quickly that you dont say that word to Mummy.

siggie

Annoucement to Make

We have news... lol as you can probably guess by the picture above our family of 4 will become a family of 5 in December of this year.

We were not expecting this little one to be joining us but welcome the surprise with Joy and look forward to the preparation for His/Her pending arrival.

NJ and EJ dont really understand whats going on with Mummy at the moment they are starting to wonder why I am not letting them sit on my tummy or play rough with me, and I'm sure its got them puzzled why I routinely dash off to the bathroom to throw up as soon as I have finished changing one of their dirty nappies.

so 12 wks 4 days in just 192 days to go till I can start telling this one to vacate its current rooming's, At my scan on Thursday they bumped my dates forward by 3 days which was nice , less time to wait now lol although from my own experience my babies will come when they are ready and nothing I can do will change that lol. So im really not expecting this one out till the 20th of December even though I am technically due on the 6th. They have booked me with a consultant to discuss growth scans for this baby ( however inaccurate they actually are it will be a good chance to see baby again ) since EJ arrived at such an impressive weight. 

I would really like a smaller baby this time but not getting my fingers crossed, Big babies have their own benefits with tending to be more settled with eating and sleeping than smaller babies and there is new research out to show that children with a larger birth weight show less signs of adult obesity, at age 7 have a higher IQ on average, Better temperaments and more alert as babies as well as less risk of heart disease in adult life.

also from my own research the labor process tends to be shorter and easier but that might be linked to the fact that women tend to have bigger and bigger babies the more babies they have lol.

Anyway a small part of me feels like I never really had a "newborn" with either of the boys as they were such healthy weights and grew so quickly they were never ittybitty babies and always looked big in my arms the only time they really looked like Newborn babies was when Mike was holding them and thats just because he is so big in comparison to even a 10lb newborn.

Anyway the doctors are right to fear that this baby could easily be over the 11lb mark and according to research. With EJ I showed 5 of the 6 signs exclusive of Gestational diabetes that predispose me to having another Larger baby those signs being

1) not my first child

2)already having had a large (macrosomic ) baby

 { NJ was 25grms below the weight limit guide and EJ was well over}

3)Long pregnancy, ie.. over 40wks average

 { both boys were born after 41wks}

4)Carrying a male child 

{ we dont know yet but odds arent in my favor for a girl }

5) Parental Stature

{ well neither Mike or I have lost any height }

6) Excessive weight gain in Pregnancy

{ I hope to avoid this again }.

So It would seem my chances of having a smaller baby are slim as I cant re-have my first child again,

 I cant put EJ back in there, It seems women in my family are a big genetically predisposed to having longer pregnancy's although no science has yet proved that this is cause for longer pregnancy's the fact that I have myself made it to 42wks ( if you use my original due date with NJ ) in a prior pregnancy and gone post 41wks with another (EJ was induced so I dont know how long the pregnancy would have otherwise lasted ) then I am more likely to carry past 40 weeks again, 

I would have to be carrying a Girl right now ( possible again but it would seem that 51% of the babies born are male not female as once thought, just girls tend to survive better meaning in a population sample of mixed ages then there is a trend towards more females.)and as yet Mike or his Father have yet to produce a Daughter.

Neither Mike or I can loose Height without surgery lol 

I can however avoid added weight gain. I didn't gain excess weight In either of my last pregnancy's and with both ended up lighter 2 days post partum than I had been when I learnt I was pregnant which is positive, 

It sadly is the weeks after that which see me gain weight lol.

Anyway from what I have researched there Is little to Nothing I can do differently in this pregnancy than in any of the others ( besides making sure the doctors keep an eye on my base iron levels ) so as always I will be trying to eat healthy ( currently on a 40 day fast of all Takeaway/fast food ) and try to fit some gentle exersize in there somewhere with running around after 2 toddlers.

Oh on a seperate subject, EJ is doing very well with his Standing up he will get himself up on his feet in the middle of the room now and stand for some time , he runs with the aid of his walker and climbs on everything just like his big brother so I do expect him to be walking solo in a few days/week or so.

Thats all for now

Bank Holiday after Bank Holiday

I think Summer is here, 

This month we have had the London Marathon, Easter weekend ( which has 2 bank holidays )and the Royal Wedding ( again 2 bank holidays ) this all 3 wks in a row. It is a bit tiresome having the public transport running Saturday service for an additional 4 days this month. 

we have had proper Summer weather too, clear blue skies and sunshine my lawn is turning very brown very quickly so gonna have to find a way to sort that out.

So Friday is the big day, where the future King of England marries his Queen, its a big deal apparently but it seems like over half the country dont care. 

Coming from outside the UK then i can very much see what the Royals bring to the culture and atmostphere as a tourist visiting London and the rest of the UK. Yes everything they "DO" can be done by others but who would want to? would someone really commit to attending opening after opening for no pay? There seems to be enough problems with getting the policticans we do pay to do their jobs properly so if we were to load them up with other duties as well that were unpaid then we would get nothing done at all for the country.

Even for comedy value alone at what the Prince of Edinburgh comes out with then surely its worth it. I bet the goverment couldnt keep the places and the grounds of them in as good a condition as the royals on the same budget. I think this country would loose an awful lot if the Royals were to go. Whos gonna come see Buckingham palace if the queen didnt live there? the place would be grafettied in under a week

My Little Poppets

Little Men

My little men

It hit me with a bang yesterday that I am the Mother to 2 little boys, not that i was under any illusions before then as to their gender but yesterday they started really behaving like little boys.

Putting it simply they went outside to play in the garden ( empty of toys, so if you have childrens toys filling up your garden that you want rid of let me know ) and found some toys to play with, well I say toys but they were really the pots full of planting mix that the previous tenants left behind

anyway shortly after finding them they had emptied the dirt onto my patio and were playing with it, pushing mounds of dirt around with their hands after the obligatory taste test of course..

This ended up with them covered head to toe in dirt, Anyway naptime arrived for Elliott so i picked him up and dusted him down and tucked him up in bed to come back down to find that Nate had collected a variety of toys from the living room plus my brush and shovel and taken them to play in the dirt with him. oh how fun.

anyway I kinda left him to it knowing i could clean up come late afternoon when i  needed to have him inside and that i would put them both through the bath before bed. Shortly later I hear the crash of a pot hitting the patio tiles and breaking, uhoh but oh well pots are replaceable and im trying not to sweat the small stuff in an effort to be a calmer parent.

anyway to cut to the chase I now have a broken planter pot and a pile of potting mix on my patio as i no longer have a pot to refill, and the boys loved playing in the dirt. Im so proud that they get along so well together most of the time

Potty Training

The time has arrived....

Nathaniel has made the choice he doesn't want to wear a nappy anymore, he made it very clear on Saturday when he took off his nappy after doing a poo and ran to the toilet , he did the same thing yesterday except as he was in his room for naptime he couldnt make it to the toilet so we had a mess to clean up thankfully not too much.

He pee'ed on the Potty or Toilet when asked for the last 2 days and took himself to go a few times even trying to empty the potty himself too ( gotta watch out for that one ) He held it till we got home after a trip to the shops on Saturday and pee'ed on the potty

At home we have been letting him run around with a naked bum with the potty out so he can use it when he needs and im trying to keep track of how often etc... to catch what hes doing before needing to go so it makes it easier when we are out and about if I know what I am looking for in the way of cues.

He does seem hesitant to poo on the potty or toilet hes only done it once although he shows a huge aversion to being in a dirty nappy and wants it off right away. I think I have some convincing to do to get him to poop on the potty.

anyway i'll be back with more potty training tales later Im sure as this will take us a few days to get the hang of

Mothers Day 2011

Mothers Day 2011

March 3rd 2011 and I have been a Mother of 2 for 1 year 1week and 1 day, and Mother to my eldest son Nathaniel for 2 years 9 months 1 week and 2 days. and to be completely honest it seems like yesterday that I was telling Michael that it was simply not possible for me to be pregnant and he was wasting his money buying a pregnancy test for me, and yet I was expecting our darling firstborn son and we were extremely excited about it too. Then to find out only a week following Nathaniel's First birthday that we were expecting again this time with Elliott our darling second born who has just a week and a day ago celebrated his First birthday then our joy cannot at the moment be more complete. Im a very proud Mummy to my darling Sons and extremely grateful to have been blessed with them as they are such sweet children even in their more challenging moments they find a way to make me smile.

This morning I woke to Elliott alerting me to the fact he was hungry and wanted nursing and when Mike went to get him from his cot and free'ed Nathaniel then my darling Firstborn came and climbed into our bed and said a very nice "Good morning Mummy" in his happy cheerful way that starts every day off with a smile, Mike had vanished downstairs and reappeared with a box of chocolates and a lovely card that contained Vouchers for different things from the dishes and drying up being done ( obviously to be redeemed using Michaels services not the boys since they cant reach the sink yet) to promises of a period of peace and quiet from the boys and ones for Hugs,Kisses and the like...
Of course on sight of the Chocolates then I had 2 boys trying to convince me to share so I split one between the 2 of them and then played hide and seek in the duvet with Elliott while Nathaniel enlisted Mike's help in his morning routine before Mike taking the boys down to make them breakfast.
I got a chance to check my emails and spend some time at the table with the boys while they waited for their breakfast with Nathaniel periodically getting up on the table to point out the balloons still hanging over the window from Elliott's birthday party last weekend. 


Michael cleaned up the downstairs whilst the boys and I ate all the while monitoring the boys behaviour and helping Nate with his newfound potty skills and the boys have been happily playing both inside and out in the garden for the remainder of the morning so far.


Mothers Day 2011 has been lovely so far and I look forward to see what the rest of the day holds, If the weather continues like it is then a trip to the playground might be in order later this afternoon. For the moment I am going to log off and spend Mothers day with the people who love me most.

cutie bootie baby

Ok I Promised a blog on cloth nappys and here it is 

Cloth Bums, the why,how and wherefore's of it.

Ok to start at the very begining, 

My first introduction to Cloth nappies was through my Mother she choose to use Terry Cloth Flat Nappies as pictured below and PINS 

Thankfully these are no longer in regular use today due to the invention of MCN/MCD's Modern Cloth Nappies/Diapers.

Above is a selection of my "Stash" as we term it in the mysterious world of cloth Mama's who make, buy and sell, New and used nappies through internet forums and online shops.

This isnt a complete picture of my stash by any means its not even a very current picture of what I own as to get a complete stash picture they all have to be clean which means the baby needs to be wearing a "sposie" or disposible nappy otherwise you are missing at least the one the baby is wearing unless you include him/her in the picture too lol.

Cloth Nappies are a world away from what our Mothers ( if your over 25 like me you probably wore cloth nappies at some point ) and Grandmothers used on us, Gone are the days of soaking the nappies in big buckets or tubs and scrubbing to get stains out, stabbing yourself with the pins you fasten them with etc... its really very different, im going to chart how a normal day goes for me with EJ in Cloth Nappies so you can see what I mean.

Get up and change nappy putting clean nappy on, If night nappy is dirty ( poo ) rinse dirty part either using shower head into bucket or toilet ( we have a shower head you can take off the wall on a hose ) or hold in toilet and flush ( the flush does remove most of it ) wring out most of the water ( if clean skip to here ) and put in the lidded nappy pail under the sink,

Go about the day breakfast etc... playtime

3-4 hrs on and its Naptime so we head upstairs collecting a clean nappy from the storage box in the hallway where i keep the clean ones and Change Ej's bum again, repeating the steps from the first nappy change to deal with nappy after ive tucked him into bed.

after Naptime its Lunchtime then post lunch we get another nappy change following the same routine as before. 

another change 3-4hrs later post dinner into a night time nappy and we are done for the day.

If its wash day then i would then bring the nappy pail down from the bathroom and put the nappies into the machine, set a rinse cycle and leave it to do its thing, after the rinse i add 1/4 the normal amount of powder to the drawer and wash at 40degrees on the standard cycle and then as it finishes i stick it on another rinse cycle to make sure all the detergant is out of the nappies then they get hung up to dry overnight. 

All my pocket nappies will dry overnight as will the cotton prefolds that I use to boost them , Night time nappies and any bamboo or hemp inserts take a day and a night normally to dry hung on my airer in the living room an on a nice morning i'll put anything not quite dry outside on the patio for a nice bit of sun bleaching.

To make things easier on myself i use fleece liners in all my nappies so when EJ does poo then i only normally have to rinse the liner , overall I get 65% less leaks from cloth than i do from disposables and about 85% less instances of bum rash ( which EJ is prone to get when teething ) I vary rarely get stains on the nappies and when i do the sun is normally enough to bleach the stains out , even in cloudy old England. and it saves us about £30 a month on disposable nappies for EJ which is well worth it for us.

Not convinced, just google image search cloth nappies and have a look at the bright colors and cute prints, find out the facts about cloth nappies like they are 1 degree cooler for a baby than a disposable, and if ive still not convinced you then try wearing plastic or paper pants for the day and see how much you enjoy it then go back to your normal pants and see how much more you enjoy wearing something soft and breathable.

Ladies theres more to come im going to review CSP's and diva/mooncups soon so keep tuned

in the meantime I must go and put my wee EJ into another one of his funky Cute soft cloth nappies

Go on try it..... Use the coment box and contact me for more info 

mothering boys

Sometimes it can be hard work mothering 2 active cheeky boys but the payoffs are huge when they come around.

Today for example started with tears and tantrums as soon as Mike left for work but soon turned into fits of giggles on the floor as the boys tickled each other till they were nearly in tears.

Then as we spoke to my parents via skype they rubbed their honey toast into their hair and the carpet and played with all the nosiest of toys and banged on the piano before asking endlessly to watch Chuggington on BBC-Iplayer.

After EJ went to bed for his nap then Nate decided to keep making huge amounts of noise to see if he could wake his brother back up and pulled both trainsets out and spread them all over the living room so i couldnt so much as stand up without standing on something, only for him to tackle me and try to tickle me and make me laugh.

its never long till things change and the mood swings good or bad in this house it sure is very very entertaining and i wouldnt miss a moment of it no matter if that be stressful or calm.

Birthday Party time

This time last year I had just received a call from the MW telling me to be at the hospital for 9pm to be induced and i was having semi regular early labor contractions anyway so was busy packing my bag and organizing and texting Mike to let him know the news.

Its Elliott Jason Odendaal's First Birthday tomorrow, Im so excited for him that hes 1 year old lol much more excited than he is thats for sure. I should be really wrapping his presents i guess but blogging is so much more fun esp when the boys arent even asleep upstairs yet and probably wont sleep for their entire naptime lol typical that I would have the kids who cant both go to bed awake at the same time hehe. Theres tons of stuff I still need to do before tomorrow including icing the cake but ive not got alot of motivation right now after already re-arranging my living room. it will happen just got to wait till Mike is home lol

Countdown begins

Time really does fly... My baby is going to be one in 8 days time Im struggling to grasp how that can be as it doesnt seem like a year ago that i was at the MW's office begging her to induce me as i was already overdue. So much has happend in the last year but so little has changed in my head.
anyway im not going to ramble on i have a house to clean and party to prepare for

Home at last

Our holiday has come to an end, It was fantastic getting to see my family again and to get to meet my nephew and welcome a new brother into the family, it was also great to see my bestie friend again ,meet her husband and her darling son and get to spend time with them, also got to meet another natural mumma who i know via a website and we got to go visit and meet in person which is awesome.
Lots happend during our holiday and it is nice to be home with usable running water and my own bed , so here are some photos of the trip

Rakaia River Gorge

Mike and Mum

Monkey at Willowbank

Francinne and Karl

Phil and Ruth

Dad, Elliott, Lydia, Joel and Ruth