Birthday Party

A few snaps from Alice's birthday party...






















With love and light xo

Dear Alice - 2 Years Old!

Dear Alice,

Happy Birthday my little ducklet - you are now 2 whole years old!

We had a birthday party for you at the weekend, as we were on holiday for your actual birthday and didn't make a fuss. You insisted on dressing like a fairy princess all day, and acted like one all day too! You loved having everyone there, pulling faces, playing with bubbles, and being the centre of attention. You grasped the concept of cards and presents very quickly!

I must admit I got a little tearful when the day was done - you have grown and changed so much in the past few weeks even, let alone in the past few years. You are such a little person now, with opinions and ideas and dreams.

You can now say maybe 200 words, including sentences like "We go to the park first, then lunch". The health visitor came to do your 2 year review today and was very impressed by your vocabulary, particularly "hyena", "centipede" and "magenta"!

You have a sense of where people are and what they are doing - you know daddy is at work in the daytime and you like to call him and talk to him. You have proper phone conversations and understand what kind of things to say / questions that are asked. You also know when to say things like "see you later" and "miss you".

You say "I love you" all the time to get out of trouble. You also get into a lot more trouble and are more difficult to reason with, although you do understand exactly what we're saying!

You lead me by the hand everywhere and insist I come too, which is both adorable and can be a little wearing. You normally only want me to come and look at a raisin on the floor or something.

You make friends everywhere we go - parks / swimming / at the shops. You will literally stop and talk to everyone which makes a 5 minute journey take a lot longer!

It's becoming super difficult to get you to nap, and you haven't slept at all for the past few days. This makes mummy sad as she would quite like a nap sometimes! Has been forever since I had a nap!

You kind of understand you're having a sister, and where they are, and you'll give my tummy a kiss most days and say hello. I don't think you really understand the implications of this unfortunately!

You had your first go on an aeroplane, which you loved. You also expressed a very strange and adorable obsession with a mariachi band, which you've asked for every day several times since we've been back! On holiday you loved swimming, eating sand, and playing on the park.

We've tried big girl bed again. Big girl bed is a no go area.

Someone I work with gave us lots of outdoor type toys and you are loving them! You particularly like the toy castle, and drawing on the ground with chalks.

Today you were measured and were too big for the health visitors chart! You were 98th percentile for height, and 93rd for weight. I looked on the chart and you are the average height for a 3 1/2 year old. Stop growing so much!

Neither of us can believe you're 2, and as always, we love you more than anything in the world.

With love and light xo

Holiday Times!

So a few photos from our lovely holidays! It was a reeeally belated honeymoon, as we decided that last year when we got married she would have just been too small to enjoy anywhere, and we would have had a constant battle keeping her occupied and not burnt etc. 
We used half of the wedding money we received to help us buy and decorate our house last November, and the other half towards a holiday we would never have been able to afford otherwise. I spent months and months last year trying to choose somewhere. We wanted to go somewhere that would be warm but not burning in April, not super far away, and with nice beaches / kids stuff to do e.g. parks etc. 
I'm so used to going on weird city holidays and exploring (e.g. Russia!) that it was a bit difficult for me to find somewhere completely different to that! We also decided to go all inclusive, as it would save the trouble of budgeting; finding somewhere "kid friendly" with high chairs etc; picky toddlers throwing food and ice creams on the floor etc. We eventually settled on Fuerteventura, in April school holidays so it wouldn't be too warm. 

Before we went I was so nervous about everything! What if I forgot everything? What if she screamed the entire time we were on the plane? What if she hated it? What if we all got super burned? What if the place was horrible?

In the end, I shouldn't have worried at all. Alice was an absolute angel for the entire week, including both 4+ hour flights. She had a few mini melt downs, but on the whole was just incredibly well behaved. The iPad was a complete and utter lifesaver for the planes and transfers etc. I think it would have been a completely different story without it!

The place was lush, noone got burned, and we had a lovely time. Not relaxing, but lovely!

Tips for myself in future - lists are your friend! List everything then list it again. Then add to the list again! Also - "packing" for a few weeks beforehand helped. I just had the case out and chucked anything in it as and when I remembered, then when it came to proper packing it was just a case of sorting clothes and rearranging things. New toys for the plane was a brilliant idea and kept her entertained, as did new videos and new apps. Reusable swim nappies are ace.


Alice particularly enjoyed swimming, playing on the park, eating sand, and making friends. In no particular order! 




With love and light xo

19+4 - And it's a...

...girl!


Just so relieved and so glad that everything was all okay. Lovely clear scan with lots to show and lots to see - baby kept putting her hand up to show us all her fingers and it was just so great to see everything going. Holiday tomorrow so lots left to do - will update more when we're back :)

With love and light xo

19+3 - Scan day tomorrow...

Tomorrow is scan day. We will hopefully find out if we are having a boy or a girl, but mainly we will check everything is all okay. I am scared and excited, and happy and terrified. Will post tomorrow.

With love and light xo

19 Weeks - Blergh

Today I am 19 weeks pregnant, or almost half way through. This is absolutely terrifying.

This might be a bit doom and gloom, but I’m trying to write about all aspects of pregnancy, and some aren’t sunshine and flowers. At the moment, I feel absolutely rubbish. I had a sickness bug last week where I had vomiting etc., and I’ve just not quite got better yet. Since then, I’ve been feeling gross – hugely bloated all the time; constantly full despite not being able to eat; constant nausea; random vomiting; and just a really painful, tender stomach.

Then, to top it all off, I woke up at 1am with diarrhoea which carried on all night and most of this morning; with the addition of extremely painful stomach cramps and lower back pain. Happy days!

To be fair, I’m not sure how much of this is bug related and how much of this is pregnancy related, but I’m a little miserable. I’m uncomfortable, not sleeping, and having to force myself to eat because I know I should. I just feel a little down in the dumps about the whole thing, and don’t remember any of this from last time, or certainly not feeling this uncomfortable so early on.

I’m going on holiday next week and we’ve all been so excited, and I’m just worried I won’t be able to enjoy it properly. We’re all inclusive – I’ve never been all inclusive anywhere! If I can’t drink, I certainly want to be able to eat my own bodyweight in cake!

I know how lucky I am, and I know how this is just a tiny blip in the ocean. I also know this is a bit of miserable post but I wanted to write it all down. Hopefully soon I’ll be back to rainbows and unicorns, but for now I’d quite like to crawl back in my cave and feel better.

With love and light xo