mama needs a camera!

hello my lovelies! i’m sorry it’s been awhile…we’ve been away for the last few days visiting family and are planning one more small trip for the weekend. after we’re back and settled into real life, i’ll update you all on life, i promise! also look out for a 10 month post for s. seriously, my baby is going to be 10 months old in a few days. where has the time gone?

in the meantime, i thought i’d plead with you all to help a girl out. i entered a competition the other week at UK retailer john lewis to win a Canon digital SLR camera with 4GB memory card and case by posting our adorable picture of s kissing the old year goodbye on new year’s eve. i miraculously made it into the top 10 photos for the competition! now all i have to do to win the competition is garner the most likes and repins of john lewis’ pin on Pinterest. now, you all know how obsessed i am with that website, and you all know how much i love john lewis. so i HAVE TO WIN. there’s some woman who has 239852735 likes and repins so it’s kind of unlikely, but if any of you can use your internet charms and wiles to get some likes and repins, now is the time to show me your stuff! here’s the link to the JL pinterest page:

Source: Uploaded by user via John Lewis on Pinterest

 

please please please help me out if you can! the competition only goes until 5pm (UK time) tomorrow, so get pinning! love you all lots and talk soon!

christmas baby swag

after a week of coughs, stuffy noses, a trip to the doctor for (ugh) an inhaler, and lots of rest, s is feeling pretty good right now. she’s moving all over the shop and leaving me with zero time to do anything other than wince at her less than graceful falls to the floor from her permanent position of standing. so, since the presents are FINALLY wrapped (thank you to amazon for allowing me to send most of my gifts and forego the relative present wrapping fiasco that normally ensues but NOT to my mother who has decided s needs not one but 12 days of presents, all of which i have to wrap myself!!! ;)) and the pepperkaker dough is chilling in the fridge, it’s time to let you know what our spoiled little angel is getting for christmas. and no, it’s not ruining anything because a. she’s too young to read this and b. she’ll probably be more excited by the wrapping paper than anything else.

the best of the best:

usborne touchy feely nativity book

this book was actually a pre-christmas gift (ie. spur of the moment purchase) by us for s, mostly because it was half price and i can’t resist a good deal. but seriously, she is absolutely obsessed with this book. there are tons of different fabrics to feel inside the book and she spends tons of time every night before bed flipping back and forth between the pages and kissing the baby jesus. p is beside himself with pride at his little catholic baby (he wishes!). i love that it’s so interactive and tells the real story of christmas.

elc sensory discovery balls

this is officially a santa gift, and his elves whispered to me that s was getting these awesome discovery balls in her stocking this year. she doesn’t really play with balls yet and i’m all about her having toys that are appropriate to her developmental stage, whatever that is right now.

wheelybug bee

this is the BIG gift from s’s gram and poppa. personally, i want one for myself. i know she’s not really ready to ride on anything yet, but a lot of her christmas wishlist included 1+ toys so that they can grow with her. i can see the dents in the walls already. LOVE it.

hape eco my second book

during one of my many walks around the floors of john lewis i saw this adorable wooden book. s likes a good book and she will be able to happily chew away at this while learning numbers (i know, a little early!) and hopefully turning the pages a little more easily.

run dmc top

this is my favorite personal purchase. i seriously can’t wait for her to wear it. every day. that’s all.

bickiepegs doidy cup

we’ve been working on drinking out of a cup lately, and have just stopped giving a bottle at night, since apparently it’s bad for babies’ teeth to suck on bottles after one year, although i can’t really see much difference between bottles and sippy cups. s loves to ‘drink’ out of my cup but usually spills water all over herself in the process. this cup is designed for tiny hands (seriously, the handles are so small and cute) and is tilted so babies can see exactly what is in the cup without having their heads straight over the top of the cup, which usually leads to spillage. we’ll see how it goes.

little jellycat pet’s tails

this gift is from aunt kelsey (sorry, the amazon package came the other day and i just had to see what it was! don’t worry, it’s all re wrapped now) and is pretty much the cutest thing ever. s can also meow like a cat, so she will love it.

manhattan toy lanky cats: ziggie

continuing the cat theme, this toy is another of gram and poppa’s twelve days of christmas gifts. it looks exactly like our cat jet. the eyes are a little creepy, though!

this is only a very small percentage of s’s gifts for her first christmas. luckily we were very restrained with our purchases this year, since friends and family (and santa) didn’t hold back. we know that this time of year isn’t about the things we have or give to each other and try to spend most of our time celebrating the real holiday and giving to people who don’t have as much as we do, too. but who doesn’t love a bit of swag? 😉

if i don’t get the time to post again, merry christmas! holiday pictures and updates to follow soon.

the return of the mullet.

i’m going to admit to something pretty controversial here…

we trimmed our baby’s hair.

now i know some of you will be thinking, that’s no big deal, i did it with my baby, it’s totally normal. but the reason i say it’s controversial is because about half of the people i told nearly bit my head off. they said, you never ever ever ever touch a baby’s hair! it’s gorgeous and perfect and why should you need to cut it?!

this is why.

exhibit a

this picture doesn’t really do our baby’s mullet justice. let’s just say it was a true and proper throwback, business in the front party in the back kind of hairdo. so we trimmed the back ever so slightly a month or so ago, just to give our poor little baby a less redneck look. and i thought that would be the end of it; that s would grow luscious toddler locks so i could start putting pretty barrettes and braids in her hair.

but no.

the mullet returned. (see the bottom right photo for proof).

exhibit b

and now the question set before us is this: to trim or not to trim?!

i’d be inclined to say no, since a. i don’t want to be attacked for a second time by the baby hairstyle purists (ahem MOM) and b. i really want s’s hair to start growing out. HOWEVER we have a professional photo shoot scheduled for this saturday (with the fabulous francesca of francesca db photography) and i don’t want her to look unkempt.

so it’s time for a vote: yes or no to (another) tiiiiiiiiny haircut?

(and happy halloween from my little kitty to you and yours!)

it’s the most wonderful time of the year…for coughs and colds. also, i want to become a crafty(ier) mom.

so apparently colds last FOREVER. at least it feels that way right now. s has been nursing a very light case of the sniffles for the last few weeks and hasn’t really been that bothered about it. until this week. this week the floodgates opened and s’s whole face has been a ball of snot. poor thing. she’s still lovely and happy (most of the time…apparently colds make babies more liable to scream bloody murder when put down for a nap) but sounds like a chainsaw when she sleeps and can’t quite work out how to cough up the rattles in her chest.

she still manages to squeeze in her studies with a cold.

all of this lovely mucus in my life = tired mommy. for all of you lovely mommies out there currently thinking to yourselves, i have this parenting thing licked, easy peasy…you’re WRONG. you’re so massively wrong. i’ve finally decided to listen to all the wizened old mamas in my life who have always told me that as soon as you utter those silly words, your baby will find something else to completely mess up your sleep. i’m resigned to the fact that i will never regularly sleep through the night until my children are teenagers (if i’m not up waiting for them to come home past curfew…there might have been one or two members of my family responsible for doing that to my own mom a few times!) and so four hours in a row should be more than sufficient.

in other news, i’ve decided i need to get a hobby. preferably one that could make me money. now i’m not aspiring to be the next martha stewart, but a few wifey trades would serve me well. so i want to start sewing and doing other crafty things. the good news here is that this trade requires more shopping!!! so i officially want this for christmas (p are you listening?!) so that i can make adorable clothes, accessories, and decorations for s and our home. how freaking adorable are the baby accessories in this article?!?!? (not my baby, obviously.)

Source: blogs.babble.com via Kaitlin on Pinterest

but don’t worry, i will still frequent the likes of fantastic shops like iviebaby (beware: once you click that link, you will want to buy everything in the whole entire etsy shop. also: look before you have your baby; there are some awesome ideas for kitting out baby’s room!).

blw week in review: week two

this week saw relatively little dining on s’s part…i felt bad, but most days her naps tended to coincide with meal times and, frankly, i wasn’t physically ready to get up and do breakfast at the table every day. but these things happen and we tried to give s the opportunity to eat as much as possible, so the practice is still there.

my lovely baby sister visited for a few days this week, since she’ll be studying ooop north this semester, so we went out lots. we let s try a pub chip (big fat french fry…don’t judge me, you know you’ve done it) and a wedge of lemon (which she LOVED! i thought she would make funny faces but begged for more as soon as we gave it to her) at the pub the other day. i think she felt genuinely excited to be considered a part of the group, rather than being stuck in her pushchair the whole time. that’s one of the main reasons we decided to try this whole blw thing!

other new foods:

lasagna: so yummy, and s loves it! the few times we’ve tried it with her the lasagna has been store bought so it’s fairly high on the sodium scale…i’m not too comfortable continually giving high salt content food, so we’ll plan to make it from scratch in the future.

yogurt: we tried it at the very end of last week, but since then have realized that s loves the mango fromage frais and hates the banana. takes after her mother, i think.

asparagus: adorable to watch her eat it, and she seems to really enjoy it!

nectarine: really difficult for s to keep hold of (which i find with a lot of fruit…it’s so hard to cut into big enough pieces for her) but seemed to like it, more or less.

at the top of the favorites list is still toast with houmous and cucumber. i’m happy to let her continue practicing with these few foods until she gets the hang of chewing and swallowing. also we are loving gill rapley’s baby led weaning book…it follows on pretty much exactly with how s is progressing and offers lots of advice. i’ve heard the cookbook is really good too, so we plan to use that on occasion after s starts properly consuming food.

on the poop front (WARNING for those of you not interested in hearing about poop…continue on to the next paragraph), it’s evident that some food is being consumed. girlfriend STINKS. also, the digestive system is apparently not as efficient in infants, so lots of what comes out looks just like what went in. ok, i didn’t get too graphic there. let’s just say i am NOT looking forward to the day that s’s poop looks like grown up poop. not ready to cross that bridge just yet.

CHANGING THE SUBJECT…TO SHOPPING!

since i feel the need to get out of the house pretty much every day, this whole blw lark has been great for my john lewis addiction. i bought s this splash mat and these forks and spoons…adorable! next week: rubber gloves. i have never washed dishes so often in my life.

i leave you with an adorable (almost) completely unrelated pin i found this week…and yes, i’m planning s’s first birthday party six months in advance. you can never be too prepared.

Source: amyrobertsonphotography.com via Kaitlin on Pinterest

retail therapy

remember those few weeks were i was all, yeahhh my baby sleeps through the night and it’s awesome and being a mom is so easy? yeah, they’re over. s has returned to getting up at 10, and 2, and 6 most nights. yay for never sleeping through multiple sleep cycles! anyway, today i got up and was feeling generally pretty crap about things and not looking forward to a day of eat, play, sleep, repeat all by ourselves.

so we went shopping.

and this is what we bought! (i know that sometimes window shopping is *almost* as good as the real thing, so i’ll let you peek at my purchases…also, when did retail therapy become all about my baby and not about me at all? the only thing i bought myself was an iced tea.)

my first taggies book – who do you see?

frill swimsuit – john lewis baby

spot sleeping bag – john lewis baby

tunic and legging set – next

chevron dress – next

yellow fishermans hat – next

i seriously need to find a money tree.