Month: December 2012

It’s oh so quiet…..

It’s oh so still.

Elisabeth has spent the last two (yes, two!) nights at my mother and father in law and the house has been much too quiet! I have enjoyed having some time to myself, especially my two lazy mornings with book/ipad and lots of cups of tea, and spending some much needed time with my husband, but I have missed her terribly. Last night I almost jumped in the car to go and pick her up just so I could give her a hug and read her bedtime stories. But I didn’t. Instead I slept snuggling a pair of her pyjamas, I know it’s a bit sad but I wanted to hold her close and she had taken all her teddy bears with her so what was I supposed to do 🙂

On Saturday night we went out for a meal in a local pub, and even though the food was disappointing, the company wasn’t and we had a great time. Yesterday we went shopping for some new clothes for me, after almost two years of wearing practical clothes I felt the need for something pretty. This isn’t as easy as it sounds when you are 6ft tall and you live in a country where the average woman is 8 (yes, 8!) inches shorter than you are. It was a success though, I came away with 3 new tops, which is 3 more than I was expecting. We also picked up some steak for dinner.

In the afternoon I managed to tidy up our office so you can actually get through the door and find the computer, and I sorted out Elisabeth’s wardrobe and packed up all the clothes that don’t fit her anymore. I phoned my sister and my dad whilst my husband cooked our scrummy steak dinner and felt utterly relaxed.

All in all it was a great and much needed weekend of quietness, but I am very restless this morning and can’t wait to go pick her up. It’s much too quiet around here.

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What’s this mummy?

It has started. A bit earlier than I was expecting. I thought I wouldn’t be doing this until Elisabeth was at least two and a half………apparently not. It started today……..

I’m talking about the questions that just keep coming. Elisabeth spent pretty much all day pointing at objects asking: “What’s this mummy?” even though she knows very well what they are. And there’s me all day answering: “Fork, spoon, plate, tv, kitchen table, shoes, christmas tree, boobies (her favourite), apple and so on and so on.

So far it is still a fun game for both of us, it’s great to have actual conversations with her, no matter how small they are, but I’m sure there will come a point when I would like to go back to the baby babble that never expected an answer. Until that time though, I shall enjoy it.

Before I know it she will be asking me why mankind can fly to the moon but can’t find a cure for the common cold? Why is that anyway?

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My four favourite Christmas presents…..

1. The health of (most of) my family – hope my dad and Andy will feel better soon.
2. Spending Christmas day with my little family.
3. Elisabeth letting me sleep until 7.30am!
4. Watching Elisabeth open her stocking fillers in our bed.

Don’t get me wrong, I received some lovely presents which I am very grateful for, but for me Christmas is mainly about spending time with family and enjoying time without work or other chores.

Elisabeth also had a great Christmas, on Christmas Eve she was given a doll’s house by her nanna and grampy, she loved it so much she only opened a few more presents on Christmas day. On Boxing day she opened a few more, another one today and she still has three left. Maybe tomorrow will be the day she opens the final three.

Elisabeth has really grown up in the last couple of weeks. I have mentioned before that at weekends and in holidays we all have a cup of tea in bed together, when she woke upon Christmas day, the first thing she said was: Mummy make Isabeth tup of tea? So funny.

Her talking is improving so quickly it’s almost scary. She can already count to five and my husband is teaching her to spell her name which she know knows ends in h!

Her playing has changed a lot as well, she can play with one toy for a lot longer and she is really using her imagination now, making up stories and constantly “going shopping”, she walks up and down the hallway with her little pushchair and buys me all sorts of stuff 🙂

In summary, we’re having a great time watching our little girl grow up. If only we could slow it down a little……

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Going out.

This evening I am going out for a drink for the first time in absolutely ages! Apart from my school reunion in October, I think this is actually the first time I am going to the pub, in the evening, with all intention of having a beer or two, since I fell pregnant two and a half years ago.

If I am totally honest I have not really felt the need. As many of you know we have not had that much sleep over the last two years, and the thought of being sleep deprived and hungover was enough to put me off.

However, now we are all sleeping again (I’ll wait a little while with my sleep success post as I am not confident enough to risk it yet :-)) and one of my colleagues is having some leaving drinks and my husband has the day off so I knew he would be able to babysit, I thought why not?

My husband went out for some drinks a few weeks ago and like me, he felt the constant need to apologise for going out. Obviously this is silly because neither of us feel that the person going out has anything to apologise for.

So with my husband’s blessing sorted there is only one thing stopping me from going which is the bus that is late. Come on bus, it’s cold and I’m wasting valuable drinking time!

Happy Christmas everybody!

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Good day!

On Tuesday it was debatable whether I had a good or a bad day, but today was without a doubt a good day. Busy, but good. It was the first day of my Christmas holiday and my husband’s second, so our day started with a cup of tea in bed with the three of us (milky red bush for Elisabeth, normal tea for me and coffee so strong stirring it feels like a workout for my husband). Lovely!

My husband had some chores to do and was crazy enough to risk a trip to the supermarket (I don’t go anywhere near the big supermarkets between 15th and 31st December, too busy, too many idiots!) so he would be out all morning.

When Elisabeth had a full nappy I let her decide whether she wanted a nappy or pants, and of course she wanted to pants. So armed with towels (to mop up accidents), wipes (for dirty accidents) and a stack of clean trousers and pants we went into the conservatory (the floor in there is wipe clean!)

Within 15 minutes Elisabeth had done a wee in her trousers, good thing was though that she came to tell me she had done a wee.

A bit later she did a wee but told me as she was doing it. Again a bit later she looked like she was dong a poo so I quickly took off her pants and trousers and put her on the potty where she did a poo for the first time! By now we had gone through 3 pairs of trousers in about an hour and a half.

Half an hour later my husband came home with the shopping, we were too distracted with trying to fit enough food to feed an orphanage to notice that Elisabeth needed a wee. When we came into the conservatory she had done a wee in her trousers again, but she was sitting on the potty! A tiny bit of progress but not bad for the first day. However we had almost run out of clean trousers so went back to nappies for the rest of the day, try again tomorrow.

Elisabeth had a lovely long nap in the afternoon and I decided against doing chores and instead spent the time on the sofa, with a cup of tea, reading Harry Potter, lovely!

Have you had a good day?

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Bad day or good day?

Last night our new neighbour – or the idiot next door as I now like to call him, no, don’t worry it’s totally fair to call him that, keep reading and I’ll prove it to you – decided to have a little Monday night party…..until 3.30am! The (please insert any swear word you like) idiot and his friends were clearly very drunk, which made any attempt to get him to turn his music down a complete waste of time. At about 4am I was finally asleep, only to be woken by our alarm clock less than two hours later!

Luckily Elisabeth slept through it all, bless her, but I was so angry I spent most of the morning thinking about the perfect revenge. I know I won’t act on any of them as I think it is important to at least try to have a good relationship with your neighbours, but I was going to at least knock on his door and tell him he kept us up all night (but even that didn’t work as he wasn’t there when I got home!)

Not the best start of the day. Unfortunately work did not make things better, I was given an urgent job at 9.30 and spent all day to try and get it sorted only to be told at 16.15 that it wasn’t needed in the first place, so I had wasted over 6 hours!

However, even though my day was proper rubbish, the positives still outweighed the rubbishness (good word rubbishness):
1) My husband’s christmas holiday has started.
2) I only have one day left to work this year!
3) It’s Christmas next week.
And to top it off:
4) One of my best friends had such good news to tell me that she was all out of breath and couldn’t get her words out – so awesome to see someone you care about so incredibly happy!

4

We’re going potty!

Elisabeth is now nearly 22 months old, I know doesn’t time fly, and for the last 3 or 4 months she has really taken to doing the odd wee on the potty or on the toilet even. So even though we know she is still a bit young, we thought we would give potty training a go over the Christmas period. Me and my husband both have a bit of time off and we thought: what’s the worst that can happen? We have already had poo and wee on the carpet so surely a bit more won’t hurt 🙂

There will be a potty on every floor of the house and I have today got her some extra trousers, I’m sure we’ll need them, and lots of pretty pants 🙂

I haven’t made my mind up yet whether we should start wit the nappy pants, or go straight for no nappy at all.

I’m sure it won’t be an easy process, but if we can make her sleep, this will be a breeze. Ha ha, I don’t really think that, I’m sure it will be a challenge but we’re ready for it. I’ll keep you up to date 🙂

Please share any tips you have on potty training, we’ll need them!

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Pwetty Ights!

This year will be Elisabeth’s second Christmas and so far she is loving every minute of it. Last year she helped my husband decorate the tree, and mainly enjoyed the wrapping paper. She was happiest when she got a present with really thick wrapping paper that could be scrunged (is that even a word?) a big ball 🙂

This year she is extremely excited, not by presents, turkey or chocolate (only because she doesn’t know what it is yet) but by all the pretty lights, or pwetty ights as she says it.

Every day at 4pm the coloured lights come on in our garden and as soon as they do we hear a loud series of WOW’s from our toddler, she loves them. We have just got back from an hour long walk looking for the prettiest lights, luckily there were lots of them.

I wonder what her Christmas highlight will be next year…..

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Someone swapped our baby!

Nederlands: Sinterklaas tijdens het Het Feest ...
Nederlands: Sinterklaas tijdens het Het Feest van Sinterklaas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They haven’t really, although it did feel like it last weekend. We have been to Holland for a few days to celebrate my aunty and uncle’s 45th wedding anmiversary (45! Wow! That is awesome isn’t it?). It was an absolutely amazing weekend. We started off on the ferry for 7 hours, Elisabeth had great fun in the play area where she was playing Captain Elisabeth at a big steering wheel and generally running around and telling us where to sit and stand. It wasn’t hard to entertain her as we let her have unlimited ipad time, which she loved! All in all she was really well behaved and even had a little nap on my shoulder for half an hour. When we got to my sister’s she was a bit tired and scared of Valentijn (her 3 and a half year old cousin), but she settled in really quickly and before we knew it she was happily playing. Valentijn was kind enough to give up his room so Elisabeth could sleep there. He would sleep in my sister’s room, he was obviously excited about sleeping in mummy and daddy’s room. We were both quite worried about the sleeping arrangements because the last time we went away sleeping was an absolute nightmare, we were awake for nights on end and we really weren’t looking forward to doing that again. But to our shock she slept through! And not just the first night, but all three of them! It was just wonderful, we have been a bit reluctant to go anywhere with her because of the sleep problems, but now I feel like we can finally start seeing my family more regularly, which is great news. The party on Saturday was brilliant, not only did I get to see lots of my lovely family who I hadn’t seen in years, but my husband and Elisabeth also had their first proper Sinterklaas experience. For those of you who don’t know about Sinterklaas I will post some pictures when I get a chance. Elisabeth was really well behaved and it was awesome to finally be able to introduce her to her Dutch family 🙂 All in all a great weekend and lots of hope for restful nights on trips to come (we’re already planning one to Germany next year to see my dad.) Happy days!

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