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

16+3 - An Update...

So I realised I've literally written nothing at all about this pregnancy, and wanted to do a bit of an update. The main reason I've written nothing - nothing to report!

Baby is fine so far - I heard the heartbeat last week at the midwife. I'm 16 weeks now, and all went well at 12 week scan. Booked in for 20 week scan in a few weeks time to hopefully check all is okay and find out gender (if baby cooperates!)

I've not felt any movements for sure yet, although I might have felt a few - it's difficult to tell with running about. Would be nice to feel a few little kicks but I remember that the novelty wears off when you have bruised ribs!

To be honest - I've not had a lot of time to think about this baby and the time has just flown by so far. I often feel a little guilty, as I spent so much time thinking about baby things when pregnant with Alice, and I've hardly acknowledged that I'm pregnant this time! But I guess that's what happens with a second baby.

I've been really lucky so far, only had a little bit of sickness and no aches or pains yet - just been quite tired but even that seems to have lifted somewhat. I've definitely got a little bump now, but only put on about 4lb so far - I really want to try and limit my weight gain but we will see how that goes.

We literally haven't bought a thing for the baby, but I guess that will change if we find out gender etc. I've always tried to be a bit gender neutral with clothes, and all our big items (pushchairs etc.) are all neutral so nothing big to buy. All the cloth nappies are pink (mistake on my part!) but the baby will have to deal with that!

Name-wise we have picked a few girls names, and not even one boys name. We have never ever been able to decide on a boys name, so here's hoping it's a girl ;)

Bit of a boring post - but I like boring pregnancy! Hoping for another boring 5 months really!

With love and light xo

Dear Alice - 22/23 Months

Dear Alice,

In a few days you will be 23 months old. That is nearly 2 years old and that is terrifying!

You seem to have grown up all of a sudden in these past few weeks - you look taller and bigger and just less baby like. You've started wearing your hair in a bobble and I catch sight of you and just melt with how huge my little girl is!

You've started counting to 15 - sometimes 20. You count all the time; stairs, shoes, fingers, toes, animals, books. I tried counting backwards today and you counted 5-1 and added blast off at the end! You are adorable.

You can also sing all the alphabet, and the way you say "double-oo" is the cutest thing in the world.

You sing millions of songs - incy wincy, little miss muffet, grand old duke, humpty dumpty (or umpy tumpy as you call him), and about ten thousand more. You want to sing ALL THE TIME and hate being asked to be quiet. You also want me to join in - fine at home; less fine in the Tesco queue!

Along with singing you also love dancing and spinning - you are basically a huge drama queen who wants all the attention all the time. I have no idea where you get that from ;).

We went on holiday a few weeks ago and you had a brilliant time. We went with 15 adults and 3 kidlets, and you looooved the attention! You played nicely with Amelia for the first time, and loved stroking baby Abi's face (sometimes a little too much). You had lots of tasty firsts - first doughnut, first fish and chips at the seaside. Not surprisingly, you loved them all!


Since we went on holiday you now love hiding after playing a giant game of hide and seek. On more than one occasion I have completely lost you!

Since spending time with Amelia on holiday I've noticed your sentences have been a lot clearer too, and you've started stringing together whole sentences / questions / answers etc. It's made it a ton easier to understand what you want and avoid frustration on both parts.

You saw your baby brother or sister a few weeks ago on the scan - you gave them a little wave and then threw all your raisins on the floor in boredom. I'm trying to get you used to the idea of a new baby but currently you are mostly uninterested in the whole notion.

As always, we love you more than anything in the world.

With love and light xo

Dear Alice - 21 Months

Dear Alice,

You are 21 months old today, which feels like it's rapidly approaching your second birthday! I know I say this every month but I sometimes wish we could just hit a pause button or something?

Your words and mini sentences are coming on all the time now, and you're putting phrases together which can be easily understood - "upstairs mummy cat", or "snacks raisins more". You're picking up new words every day and sometimes I have to try and figure out what they mean first! You also say thank you to everything which is adorbz. You may have accidentally picked up a little Mansfield - this week you've been saying "slippy mummy int it?" and "a-up" to people we pass - you will fit right in!



Your colours are developing loads, along with your shapes. Mama drew some things for you and you quite happily told us it was a "blue triangle" and a "yellow star". Alice - you are badass.

You can also count to 15 when you can be bothered, but tend to get distracted around 4 and just skip straight to repeating the number 8 a few times.


You are also obsessed with singing, particularly the grand old duke of york. You kind of wander over demanding a cuddle, then when that person is trapped, you chant "duke" at them till you get your way. Very sneaky! Orrrr you stand in the middle of the room and start with "ohhhh the....." until someone carries on with the song. Sounds adorable - not quite so much after the first 30 times.

You are also a huge fan of dancing lately, which would be fine if it didn't involve me swinging you round the kitchen at any given point! One happy dancing baby = one tired mummy!

The past few weeks you've had your first play in the snow which you loved. We made a tiny baby snowman for you which you promptly demolished. We also took you out for a walk on the sledge which you either loved or were terrified by - it's quite difficult to tell.


In my no. 1 parenting of the week, you are utterly transfixed by the iPad, and can easily locate it; unlock it; navigate to your folder; open Youtube; open the history; browse all your favourite cartoons and select one. It's quite odd seeing a 1 year old search for Peppa, only to settle for the Mandarin version because it was closer. You've also took a shining to Barney - who likes the weird purple dinosaur?!

Finally, we are also having another baby! You keep pointing to my belly and saying "sister", however when I asked you if you wanted a brother or sister, you replied "horsey". Then thought about it for a minute, and added "or buttons". Easy done.

Alice - you are beautiful. You will always be my baby.

With love and light xo

Exciting News...

I'm pregnant! I just want to shout it from the rooftops - how exciting is that?

And also completely terrifying at the same time. How on earth did I think I would ever be able to cope with two when I can sometimes barely cope with one?!

How am I ever going to love anyone the same as I love Alice? Is there a finite amount of love?

Will Alice miss out? Will I be a worse mother? Will I ever shower again??

But mostly we are ridiculously excited. We are so lucky to have such a brilliant little girl, who will make the best big sister.

From what I can work out, I'm due late August / Early September. So far I've been feeling sick, tired, and a little achy - but I think that's mostly from running round a lot over Christmas. The sickness hasn't hit properly yet, so hoping that will keep away until after Amsterdam.

We've told all grandparents, and decided not to keep it a secret until 12 weeks this time, so just tell people when we see them. However I'm not going to put anything online for a few weeks, I'll write stuff then post it all later. Sorry blog!

Mitch is calling the baby Odin. Not. A. Chance.

The best Christmas present ever! :)

With love and light xo