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Tuesday 30 April 2013

How Being Smug Will Come Back To Haunt You

It was only going to be a matter of time before I wrote a blog about sleep. I am obsessed with it. How much i've had, how much I should be having, how I can use what little i've had to make Husband do stuff for me like bring me tea, make me dinner, agree with me at all times, that sort of thing. I was lucky enough to be blessed with a sleepy baby first time round. J slept through at three months old, and at two and a bit still has three hour naps in the afternoon as well as twelve solid hours at night. Except I didn't think I was lucky. I just thought was doing it right, and everyone else was doing it wrong.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who has watched parenting/sleep programmes where families bring in an 'expert' to sort out their children's sleep issues.
"I just don't know what we're doing wrong!" they cry. Cut to a video of their night time routine, and their kids are doing shots of lemonade through their eyeballs as a night time drink, having a couple of games of an 18 rated computer game as a wind down, then wandering upstairs for a family viewing of a horror film at 11:30. Good grief these people were idiots. I sat, smug in the knowledge that my beautiful boy was upstairs conked out because I am such a wonderful mother.
And then M was born.
My oh my, my second born son was angry. He had colic for four months. He screamed, non stop, unless he was asleep. For four months. I loved him to pieces, but basically spent every hour of every day walking up and down with him with tears streaming down my face, with a very perplexed toddler roaming after me. It was horrible. I actually at one point googled 'signs that your baby is going to grow up to be a serial killer' he was that horrid. Needless to say I didn't click on any of the actual links.
Now, at seven months old, he is one of the happiest babies I know. He has a constant smile on his face. He laughs at everything. I have forgiven him every single minute of those first four months. He's delightful. But he won't sleep. 
I've tried everything. He sleeps on an expensive sheepskin. He has a calming bedtime routine without a horror film in sight. And yet, he wakes up every two hours for a feed or a cuddle. All night, every night. For every time I rolled my eyes at the TV, for every time I inwardly congratulated myself on my brilliance when J was a baby and my friends bemoaned their child's terrible sleeping habits, M is having another week of not sleeping. So he should start sleeping around......never.
Mummies. I beg you. Don't be smug. Your children will make you pay. And if you're already smug - watch your back.

Sunday 28 April 2013

The Many Uses of Bath Toys

I recently bought J some foam letters for the bath - not from any ideas of getting him to start phonics early ("look mummy - I can spell pushy!") but because they were cheap, and he is bored of his current selection of plastic bath tat. For J, boredom in the bath ends in one of three ways - drinking the bath water, standing up and screaming "JUMP!" and giving mummy a heart attack, or trying to drown his brother by giving him "huggles" that are fooling no one. So they have been introduced, and with them Husband and I have discovered a revolutionary way of arguing in front of the children without them knowing - by spelling out profanities in foam letters. The best part of which is that Husband can't spell, so regardless of the argument, I win. 

Saturday 27 April 2013

Memories

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Yesterday was our first family outing to the zoo. I felt quite emotional as we rammed endless bags of stuff we didn't need in the car - at just over two, I was hoping J would be blown away by the animals - the size of the elephants, the noise of the monkeys. Up to this point he may have been taking everything in, but days like this, from this point on, surely are the ones that will form his earliest memories? Magic. 
So we went, we saw, we had the obligatory picnic in the hail. Yes hail. J loved it, M was entranced by the penguins - I wasn't sure at 7 months old if he would take note of his surroundings or not, but he did. Lovely.
Sitting in the lounge today, I thought I would test my magic memories theory, and ask J to recount his favourite part of his zoo visit.....
"I sat on the grass mummy, with a sandwich. Ham sandwich. And then I chased a pigeon. I went shoo! and it flew away, and I ran, and it flew, and I chased it, and it flew away!"
Magic.

In Which I Work Out What On Earth I Am Doing

For a while now I have considered writing a blog about my journey through motherhood. This is for three reasons;

1: I think I'm hilarious.
2: Several people have told me I should
3: I use my Facebook page like a blog and people get bored of reading my long rambling status updates.

I have two beautiful boys, who are of course superior to all other babies, past and present, and this is a great excuse to talk about them. Endlessly. I tell people anecdotes of my children's exploits, and afterwards wish I was writing them down. I could of course write it all down in a private journal, but see point 1 above.  Hence the blog.

If nothing else, I will enjoy writing it, and shamelessly make myself laugh.