Peace: a poem

Posting this poem does feel a little like baring a bit of my soul but I’m going to be brave! Now, some days I find being a mother so tough. Sometimes it’s relentless hard work and I feel my patience has worn thin and I am all touched out. BUT I am lucky enough to have moments, every day, of absolute joy. I really do love being a mother and I wrote this poem in the middle of the night when I was in that loved up haze of having a new baby – I think JB was just a few weeks old. I  realised in all my life I had never felt so contented and, simply, happy.

10 truths about baby number 2

It’s been a while, eh?! I wrote this post about three months ago and never got around to popping it on this here blog. Life is pretty hectic with two little ones and while I occasionally write the odd note on my phone, I haven’t quite found the spare time to publish anything. Since I last wrote my eldest turned 2, we’ve had a gorgeous Chrismas together and all of a sudden it’s a new year and we have a two year old and a 6 month old…madness! This is a list of realisations I’ve come to since having our lovely little JB and becoming a family of four. I’m sure other parents of more than one child will understand some of these.

And now there are two: a poem

I’m not *really* blogging at the moment because, you know, I just had a baby. But I wrote this little poem and thought I’d share it here. We are absolutely smitten with our gorgeous new addition and life with 2 under 2 is definitely keeping us on our toes! Despite the exhaustion and non-stop nappy changing, I feel so lucky to be the mother of these two wonderful boys.

Preparing for birth with hypnobirthing

I suppose I should start this post by apologising for the distinct lack of pregnancy updates. Honestly, there hasn’t been all that much to report other than me getting enormous (!) and that we have done a hypnobirthing course – which I felt deserves it’s very own post.

I didn’t really consider hypnobirthing last time. I knew the courses were fairly expensive and I think I had a bit of a ‘birth will just happen, no point obsessing over it’ kind of attitude – which, in hindsight, didn’t do me any favours. I do think you need to have a certain amount of flexibility and open-mindedness but I also felt that this time round I would like to feel more prepared and in control.

Is ‘me time’ necessary for parents?

I have been thinking recently about time away from kids – perhaps because soon we will have another small baby and child free time will be extremely rare and a lot more difficult to coordinate! We are lucky enough to have lovely family members who will look after our little munchkin when B and I have somewhere we want to go without him. Especially as he got older and I didn’t need to breastfeed him so frequently (and then weaned him) it’s been easy enough to leave him with grandparents for a few hours while we have a meal with friends or go out for afternoon tea. He has a good relationship with both sets of grandparents and they are all local to us so it’s great to have that option.

Sibling Kicks

I thought I’d pop a little poetry post up before we go away this week. I am super excited as we are going back to Center Parcs! Obviously I’ll be a bit quieter on social media and won’t be posting anything on the blog so I thought I’d leave you with a poem I have written about the baby always kicking when I hold TM. I mentioned this in my most recent pregnancy update and it just seems so special to me, to have this little one growing inside me who seems to know when I cuddle their big brother; so naturally I’ve written a poem about it!

Pregnancy #2 – 22 week update

Oh dear, I’m sorry this update is a tad later than planned but I’m not the most organised person at the moment! We’ve had a few technical issues with the filming too so it wasn’t solely my disorganisation that’s delayed the process… I actually recorded the vlog at the end of week 20 and I’m now in week 22. This pregnancy just seems to be flying by now. I am attempting to get better at this whole vlogging thing so I tried to look at the camera a little more and to keep my head still…I’ll let you decide if I was any more successful than the last time!

I wonder what he’s thinking…

It seems that at the moment both B and I are constantly watching our little boy and saying ‘I’d love to know what’s going through his head’. I bet 99.9% of parents have thought and said this multiple times when their children are young enough not to be talking properly. TM doesn’t say many words yet, certainly not accurately anyway! He is, however, always making plenty of noise and ‘chatting away’.

The #RockingMotherhood Tag

As parents, I think we are often guilty of focussing on the things we wish we could do better and the things we feel guilty about. When the fabulous Pat from White Camellias came up with the #RockingMotherhood tag, challenging mum bloggers to come up with a list of 10 reasons why they are a brilliant mother, I thought it was a great idea. She kindly nominated me to join in and I have finally got round to doing so! It’s so refreshing to focus on what we are good at and proud of; we’re all doing a great job. Without further ado; here’s 10 reasons why I am rocking motherhood…

Pregnancy #2 – 16 week update

You might be thinking you have missed an announcement post somewhere along the way but you haven’t…announcements just aren’t really our style! Neither of us did an announcement of any kind on Facebook when I was pregnant with TM and we haven’t this time either. We tend to just tell people when we talk to them! I’m due early (ish) July so I’m currently 16 weeks pregnant and we are very excited about becoming a family of four…although living in slight trepidation of having two under two!