Things That Make Me Smile No. 13: Baby asleep at the breast

I wrote this post about 3 months ago and so this is an old photo but it happened again tonight so I thought it was about time I published it. Actually it happens most nights but it's still lovely. One of the reasons I love breastfeeding is how easily you can get a baby to sleep. Or stop a teething baby from crying. Or comfort a sick baby. Sometimes it can feel like a bind or a chore especially as my lunch hour at work is always spent feeding. But as we don't want any more babies I'm not going to rush this. I'll enjoy it while it lasts because I'm sure I'll miss it when it's gone.

Things That Make Me Smile No. 12: Miss Chief's 3rd Birthday and Favourite Toys

It was Miss Chief's 3rd birthday yesterday. I found many things to smile about throughout the day despite having two children who wouldn't sleep (I didn't even try with the Chief but felt like I spent most of the day in the Bairn's room trying to coerce him into sleep); and despite having been up until midnight the night before (frosting heart-shaped cakes that no one ate, that I'd made in addition to the HUGE main cake because I was so convinced it wasn't going to be big enough to go around; even though we were having a small mid-week morning tea with only about 7 of Miss Chief's friends and their mothers; and in the end we still have half the main cake left and all of the heart-shaped mini cakes, which have been bundled off to daycare with the Chief in the hope that they can make them go around the 17 or so kids they'll have there today).

So here are a few of those things that made me smile:

• I asked Miss Chief, who'd been opening presents all day and had the most amazing birthday cake (if I do say so myself) that she'd helped to choose, what her favourite part of the day was and she answered "playing with my friends". I asked her this question a few times and got a different answer each time but this was my favourite one.



Amazing cake

• The big smile on the Chief's face when we all sang Happy Birthday to her.

• The fact that the Wee Bairn, having only had two 20 minute naps throughout the day, remained happy, smiley and social. What an amazing child he is.
• That the kids are now at an age where they can play together for hours with minimal interruptions to us mums and few tantrums, tears and fights.
• Eddie supposedly filling up the pool but actually watering everything else in sight, including the table where all the mums and babies were sitting. For context, I should mention that Eddie is Miss Chief's peer and is turning 3 next week. We also have an adult friend called Eddie. I'm not sure whether it would be funnier or more annoying had it been grown-up Eddie doing it.
• Chief wearing her new (reversible) Disney Princess dress (Aurora a.k.a Sleeping Beauty on one side, Belle - Chief's favourite - on the other) and Belle tiara. She is such a girl. Funny how that happens. I remember my sister-in-law saying she believes that you're either born a tomboy or a girly girl and that upbringing has little effect - I'm assuming so long as you're a parent that neither encourages nor discourages either behaviour. I'm inclined to believe that she's right about that, although Chief is heavily influenced by her girly big cousins. And she likes trains and cars too and is physical and boisterous like a boy. The theme of this birthday was definitely princesses and fairies though.



Chief in her Belle dress and tiara - taken with her new Princess camera that can add fun borders

• The fact that I totally managed to save a cake with a huge hole in it by filling it with a chocolate sour cream ganache (because we only had sour cream in the house and thank god! Other Half had returned home from shopping with a rare block of chocolate for me). It didn't even look like it wasn't supposed to be like that. Genius.

• Chief fell asleep on our bed last night and as Toby carried her off to her own room I looked at my now big 3 year old and how tiny she looked in his arms and thought "ah! She's still little, really. "What a relief.

And now for my absolute favourite moment of the whole day. Chief had had some wonderful presents which she'd spent the whole day playing with happily. I'd felt bad to have spent so much time with the Bairn trying to get him to sleep but she didn't really seem to mind. She played with her Barbies, looked at her new books, stuck some stickers and cuddled her gorgeous new Mary Poppins doll (thank you Nana Joan and Dekka) but at the end of the day, as I was getting the Bairn ready for bed, which were the two toys she brought into his room to play with? Frazzle and Dorothy, a sock toy I made for her first Christmas, and the giraffe I made for her last year. Priceless!

Dorothy and Frazzle chilling together.

(Update: Just had a funny thought that made me giggle. Chief doesn't have a middle name, making her initials PC, somewhat appropriate for the daughter of two I.T. professionals. I just thought that we could have given her a middle name of Valentina, considering when she was born. It has a really nice ring to it, except her initials would be PVC!)

Things That Make Me Smile No. 11

I couldn't get a photo of this but I went to check on Miss Chief tonight after having left her to resettle Wee Bairn (a.k.a Happy One). In my absence she'd fallen asleep - hurrah! She'd also grabbed a long piece of metal belonging to her now unused guard rail, which is stored under her bed, brought into bed with her and was cuddling it. How funny and strange. I have just checked on again and she's now lying on it, which can't be comfortable. She's a little enigma, my girl. Give her all the right sleep inducing ingredients: a warm bath, a story in a dimly lit room, cuddles, kisses and little chats, a dark (but not too dark) and quiet room, relaxing music, a little bit of white noise, a foot massage, a hand stroke. And she struggles like anything to get to sleep. Yet once there she can quite happily sleep on a metal stick.

Things That Make Me Smile No. 10: Playing in the rain

There isn't much about this weather that is making me smile. I'm normally fairly tolerant of rain but the last two and a half days are getting to me and it's forecast to continue all week (it's only Tuesday). Today has been dark, miserable and stuffy with incessantly heavy rain. We've been completely surrounded by water more than a few times today and our unfinished guttering system has been more like a waterfall in a few places. To top things off Miss Chief refused to sleep today. (I made her stay in her room for an hour though.) After a failed attempt to get out to the shops I suggested she put on a rain coat and boots and go play in the garden. She thought this was a great idea and had an absolute ball.

Singing and dancing in the rain. In the sandpit. With water coming over her boots.

Just look at that rain coming down like darts.

Recycling rain water: filling up the watering can with water running off the roof.

Clearly the grass must need to be watered.

Oh my goodness me! Just look at all this rain.

Gonna ride my bike until I get home. In the rain.

Things That Make Me Smile No. 9: Group raspberries

I walked into the bedroom after bathtime tonight to find a nudie Wee Bairn giggling on the bed, with a nudie Miss Chief giggling and blowing raspberries on his tummy and (fully-clothed) Other Half tickling and blowing raspberries on Miss Chief's back. Everyone giggling. It was impossible not to giggle too.

Things That Make Me Smile No. 8: My Children Laughing At Each Other

I love these little moments. The Wee Bairn finds Miss Chief hilarious and she really is. She's the consummate entertainer, especially for the under 1s. He laughs at her, and then she laughs at him laughing at her and he laughs even more. And I most definitely smile. Lovely.

This is what happens when Miss Chief helps me bake...

... she covers her brother in chocolate cookie mix:

 

Perhaps this should fall into the category of Things That Make Me Smile But Probably Shouldn't. Or Things That Make Me Smile When Miss Chief Isn't Looking Because It's Not The Sort Of Behaviour I Should Encourage.

 

Things That Make Me Smile No. 7: Green Tree Frog

We've got so many horrible ugly cane toads hanging around at the moment eating the cats' food, that is was a refreshing change to find a cute little green tree frog hiding in our drain pipe. (Actually, Other Half found him and he'd be most upset if I didn't credit him.)

Things That Make Me Smile No. 6: Playing hairdressers

The other day we had no plans to go out (which is often a relief for me these days as I can't be bothered with the strategic planning required to get out of the door) and no visitors scheduled. I am also trying to limit Miss Chief's naps to between 1 and 1 1/2 hours as most nights she's a horror to get to bed. So this left me with many hours within which to entertain her.

Thankfully I have a secret stash of toys that I pull out every now and then, some of which she's seen, some of which are new plus some new books I'm saving for a rainy (or crazy) day. After a quick play in the pool Miss Chief asked me if I'd do her hair so I suggested we play hairdressers and that I be the hairdresser and she be the client. I then pulled out a brand new toy - a hair salon kit, complete with battery-operated hairdryer. It was an immediate hit. After pretending to shower, shampoo, blowdry and style her hair into lots of pig tails it was her turn to be the hairdresser. She did lots of hair drying and called me "my dam". When she was napping I put the kit away so that it would retain its novelty for another day but when she woke up she went looking for it and asked to play again. It entertained her all afternoon and I even managed to check email and publish a blog post whilst having my hair done. It was such a lovely girly day and it made me so happy to have a daughter.

Things That Make Me Smile No. 5: Hot days in the paddling pool.

We had an absolutely gorgeous day the other day when Lucie and Amelie came around and we all jumped in the paddling pool. The girls weren't that bothered about being in there until Lucie and I got in with them. They jumped and splashed around and had great fun. I would never think of blowing up a paddling pool and sitting in it if I didn't have kids. Gotta love days like this. We almost didn't care about the 36C heat.

Things That Make Me Smile No. 4: Going to the toy zoo.

We're a bit housebound at the moment because the Wee Bairn sleeps so much and often his and Miss Chief's sleeps overlap. So I've been challenged to come up with different ways to keep Miss Chief amused and prevent me from going insane. Yesterday we built a zoo in the front room and then took a Barbie doll and her cat and dog on a visit. We parked the car under the coffee table and then wandered around taking in rabbits, monkeys, giraffes, tigers, crocodiles, a pond with a frog, a platypus, ducks and a hippo, elephants, a panda, a brown bear (or was it a grizzly?), birds, a kangaroo and a meerkat. It was all fun and games until the crocodiles escaped and started eating people.

Someone left a baby in the tiger enclosure.

Visiting the giraffe enclosure.

Those crazy crocodiles.

Things That Make Me Smile No. 3: Miss Chief Having Fun With Her Big Cousins

We sent Miss Chief offsite today while we dealt with her unwell brother. She spent the day having a great time with her older cousins and even had a 2 hour nap. That's impressive babysitting. Uncle Awesome sent this photo of her enjoying a slushy.

Things That Make Me Smile No. 9: Floating Algae

This is one of those times that I wished
a) that I had a polarising filter on my camera; and
b) that I'd had my camera with me.

But I did have my phone so this will have to do. Although I would like to make it known that I couldn't actually see what I was taking a photo of so it's a bit of a point, click and hope job.

Okay so it doesn't look like much but here's the story. I took Ash for a walk around the lake and noticed these bits of weedy algae, or whatever they are. The way the light was shining on the water, and the clarity of the first few centimetres of water made it look like they were suspended in air. At least that's how it looked through my polarising sunglasses. You'll have to just bear with me here and take my word for it.

Things That Make Me Smile No. 2: The Wee Bairn's smile

This is what I wake up to every morning:

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to smile at that. What a gorgeous way to start the day.

Things That Make Me Smile No. 1: My new bling

I was uncharacteristically watching Dumbrise this morning when a piece came on about a woman who decided to take one photo each day of something she was grateful for. I'd been thinking about this earlier - probably because I'd subliminally registered a headline mentioning that the piece was coming up - and wondering whether this is a project I should take on. Well, if it's anything like my 365 Clouds project (yes, take a photo of a cloud every day) it'll last about 3 days, then get forgotten about for a day or two, then resurrect itself for a few days and then die an early death. I did learn though that overcast skies are incredibly hard to photograph and that clouds move fast so it wasn't an entirely wasted experience.

So, it's not really worth me starting up a new blog but as most of the things that I'm grateful for tend to be to do with my family I figured I'd just stick it into this blog. Who am I kidding? It's because I haven't updated any of my other blogs for so long it just doesn't seem right to start doing it again. This blog is where it's at these days.

So I wondered for a while whether to bother, having read something at some point in my reasonably recent past about gratitude diaries leading people to feel more miserable. I tried to remember what it was that I'd read. Then the piece came on and the woman said that she'd been miserable and having a gratitude diary made her happier. She said other stuff too but I was only half watching. She also posted her photos online but when I googled it ("gratitude 365" if you're wondering) there are a few things out there and I'm not sure if any of them are her so I won't bother linking to it.

Then I remembered (I think - see previous post mentioning that sleep deprivation has destroyed my medium-term memory) that the book that I'd read about gratitude diaries making you miserable was actually referring to a study done on children. I forget where I read this or what the study was but it seems a safe bet it was in a great book called "Nuture Shock" by Po Bronson, which basically challenges everything you ever thought about raising kids.

So I've decided to give it a go, with or without a photo but instead of going with the usual "gratitude" title I'm going with Things That Make Me Smile.

Yesterday this was having a bath with Ash. (I didn't take a photo.) I used to bath with Phoebe frequently in the evening. Sometimes Toby would bath with her and other times we'd all get in the bath together. We've had a family bath once or twice since Ash came along but it's a rare occurrence. Usually it's just the two kids splashing around together. It was lovely to have some time alone with my baby, to just chill out, have a breastfeed and enjoy some skin to skin contact which we hadn't really done since we left hospital. (In hospital Toby and I were enjoying our perfect little newborn so much we didn't dress him for two days. We just wrapped him in blankets.)

Today I started the day thinking that the fact that Ash had woken once in the night at 4am for the second night in a row, and then slept until 7.30am, was the thing that made me smile today. Then my bling arrived.

My Emirates airmiles were expiring and I couldn't afford to travel home in time to use them. So, despite being incredibly skint it meant I had a fair whack of credit to spend on myself. I ordered a beautiful Swarovski necklace and matching earrings (and a wine cooler). They are just so unbelievably gorgeous. The earrings are solid and heavy and make me feel very glamorous. The necklace is so fancy it has a crystal-encrusted Swarovski swan pendant at the clasp and even the clasp has the swan imprinted. It definitely made me smile. And I did take a photo.

Now I just need to sort out my finances so I can afford to go out somewhere and wear them.