Can someone please slow time down for me???

Today is the end of April, so we're a third of the way through this year already! It hardly seems a week since Christmas and new year - Plus in a month and a half my baby boy is a year old... This time last year it still seemed ages until he was going to arrive, especially as my original due date was the beginning of July!

After the excitement of the Royal Wedding yesterday I was expecting today to be much quieter...But Mikey had other ideas and today his second tooth is through! We now have 1 teeth at the bottom at the front. And bless him, he celebrated by biting my finger when I was checking his teeth with my finger - I really should know better!!

I will admit I had  cry yesterday at the wedding... The bride looked stunning and her husband to be (at that point) told her as she arrived at the alter - perfect timing and exactly the right thing to say. He's already learnt that women can never get too many compliments so I'm hoping this royal marriage will work! I was also really proud to be British, there were 1000's of people in London and very few arrests, even the proposed demonstrations by Islamic groups didn't seem to hit the news or cause any problems. I know that i Now live in a multi cultural society - but I'm also proud of my heritage and history...And if they choose to move here for the freedom they now enjoy, they should make allowances and not interrupt the history and heritage of this country! OK, mini rant over as they didn't manage to achieve their ultimate aim - not that i think the crowds in London would have let them!!

I have to admit I was also thinking about my Grandmother (Nanny) she would have adored yesterday and I remember how excited she was when Charles and Diana got married...luckily she never knew how it all ended as she had died before it all imploded. But I remember rushing to Jarrolds in Norwich the day after the wedding to buy her a book all about it with loads of photos so she could relive the event whenever she wanted to (she never had a video machine - she would never have coped with that!!) And she would have adored how the new Duchess looked, and wouldn't have missed a second of the coverage! And she would have joined Mum and I in discussing the various outfits on show...especially the York Girls and as a Yorkshire woman through and through she would not have been impressed how they looked!

The photo today is Mikey at 6 days old...he has changed so much in the last 10 months, and I feel I'm falling in love with my little boy even more now - I can hardly call him a baby any more...

Need a boost

Not sure what the problem is but I'm just feeling really down/low/fed up, but Mikey did make me laugh this morning when he was trying to master flag waving...Daddy nearly got it up his nose at one point and I thought flying a flag upside down was a sign of distress!

I know it probably isn't considered cool to watch the wedding but we did, I though she looked stunning and I'll admit I cried - I just hope they are allowed to get on with their life together without anyone else trying to live through them or control what they do. It's their life and they need to be left alone to get on with it - I'm sure they are able to decide what they want so do and how they want to do it. But if they have a little girl we have to perfect person for her to marry in around 30 years time! Although I may have mentioned before I'm not happy at the thought of him joining any of the armed services...

Not much has really happened this week - we still don't have any more teeth (I checked yesterday and got bitten) but Daddy has admitted that looking after a small person is exhausting! I could have told him that - and I'm sure I may have mentioned it once or twice in the past before I went back to work! But next week I'm sure Mikey will be very happy to go back to Debbie! At least that way he'll get to go to the park on a regular basis again - I'm sure he's missed doing that this week.

On work news I had a mini success - my first attempt at cash forecasting wasn't too bad! I was aiming for £1,825,000 and yesterday I was £22,000 short - but if the money we've been promised comes in by tomorrow I'm going to be on target! I'm decidedly amazed and I have no idea how it's happened - all I have to do it repeat it again next month! But there is a distinct lack of bank holidays compared to April so that will impact on my figures as well I imagine!

Mid week and the hump has hit...

Another odd day really - and major league bed suction this morning meant getting up was 100 times harder than yesterday…and I have a feeling it will be even worse tomorrow. I have no idea why I am so exhausted all the time, I could sleep for England at the moment! I have no problem getting to sleep and most nights I stay asleep…although last night I will admit I didn't as my bed fellow was in wriggle mode and that kept waking me up! When he finally got up for whatever reason it was so tempting to simply roll over and make sure he couldn't get back in! I would have thought he would know by now that it is MY bed not his!!


Work today has been annoying more than anything else. Most of the companies I've needed to call have let their accounts staff have the 3 days off… NOT ON!! I'm still working so I would prefer to speak to people rather than leave voice mail messages that I know full well won’t ever get returned. When I did get to speak to a human it was a major achievement although I'm sure at least one person I spoke to doesn't have English as their first language and hadn't got a clue what I was talking about! I did resort to e-mailing my question at that point and I don’t hold out much hope of getting the sort of reply I need!

I think Andy is finally realising what trouble our son can cause! He looked almost as shattered as I did when I got home last night… although he did admit that he had a nap during the day whilst Mikey had his…that's something I never mastered - all the books tell you to sleep whenever the baby does but I just couldn't quite manage it and used to end up watching him sleep! Unless I was doing my wonderful impression of a mattress which at one point was the only way I could get him to have a nap! Poor old Andy has the added joy that he is doing hi s best to get mobile now…we may not be crawling quite, but we can get around rather quickly simply by rolling - although I'd imagine that can make him pretty dizzy at times - probably a good thing he's going blond at the moment!

Easter...new beginnings???

OK, as links go this one is pretty tenuous! But Mikey has finally got his 1st tooth!! He is now the grand old age of 10 months an the first one has appeared! It probably explains why he was so clingy and grotty last weekend and why we have been getting crying at really odd times for no real reason, but he is perfectly happy now!

We are still not crawling - but to be honest we don't need to! Who needs to crawl when you can roll pretty damn quick and get to wherever you want to that way!??! Yesterday poor Daddy had 2 big problems..1) keeping Mikey's sun hat on Mikey's head and 2) stopping Mikey rolling off the rug into the few plants we actually have in the garden (especially as these include nettles mixed in with one rather large shrub!) I know we need to sort the garden out to be Mikey friendly but neither of us likes/is any good at gardening and paving it isn't really an option unless I can get rubber paving slabs as those won't hurt when he falls over! (But the 'lawn' is so hard/cracked I'd imagine that will feel like falling on concrete as well!)

Lunch time today was a real battle - Mikey is not in an eating mood unless the food happens to be fromage frais! Which his main course his mouth was firmly close and he was not in the mood to eat at all... he is now covering everything in his radius in juice - not sure why to be honest but he seems to be enjoying it! And he is now eating his phone, or at least sucking the strap designed to let Mummy attach it to things so Mikey can't just fling it at the world!

Daddy has been busy this morning fixing a fly/insect screen to Mikey's bedroom window meaning we can try to reduce the temperature in there to something below sauna level which is what it's been for the last few days whatever we've tried! Mikey has spent most of the morning rolling again, and trying to collapse his mat! There are 2 arcs which cross it diagonally an fasten together in the middle - Mikey finds it totally hilarious do make them fall down... well it makes him laugh/chortle etc! Who am I to argue with whatever amuses him!

Monday...at least this is a short week!

Today has been a little odd… Mikey is still not really himself and was not in the right frame of mind to get up when I wanted him too - or is this just a typical boy thing??? Breakfast wasn't too much of a battle until we got to his bottle, this led to the usual waving of the milk, but thankfully he wasn't trying to stand up on me at the same time so he couldn't get too much forge behind any throwing action!


Shortly after I declared a truce with the bottle he was loaded into Daddy's car and set off to Nanny & Grandad's. I got a text mid morning to tell me he was having a nap and when I phoned at lunch time he was apparently much more himself and had even smiled at the window cleaner! Hopefully we will have another good night tonight… preferably without his calpol vapour plug as that just makes me feel decidedly sick… which hasn't been fun at work today as I feel queasy when I arrived and someone is wearing a rather strong aftershave which is also making my stomach do a great impression of a cement mixer! I haven't felt up to eating lunch either so I know my sugar levels are going to be low, although the number of extra strong mints I've been eating may help push them up again!

We didn't make it to Andy's Dad for lunch yesterday. Somehow I think it will take a while before Andy forgives me as he was looking forward to a huge traditional Sunday lunch! But I wasn't happy to take the little one out and Andy would have not been impressed if he'd done his screaming trick all the way there or back! I might be a neurotic mother, but when he's not well I'll do whatever I have to in order to protect him…

He's now home and seems back to normal!! He's had his bottle and I'm wearing quite a lot of it! Unfortunately I'm still feeling really sick and the thought of eating is quite possibly the worst idea in the world... I feel that I need to throw up but the thought of doing that is equally horrific as just eating.

Tough Day

It had been my selfish intention today to take things easy and rest as much as possible as, to be honest, I'm still feeling pretty fragile and crap... But Mikey woke around his normal time so I was up making his breakfast and we then went and woke Daddy up to carry him downstairs! Andy then retire back to be for a while longer and reappeared as I brought his mug of tea through from the kitchen! I then got dressed and dashed over to the pharmacy to collect my prescriptions which they had tried to deliver twice yesterday (whilst I was at work which they were perfectly aware of!)

When I got back we both tried to convince Mikey to have a nap which he eventually did for nearly an hour, waking just in time for lunch which he really didn't want and once I gave in he spent a long time cuddled up on my knee crying before he finally fell asleep and was transferred up to his cot (very odd for him as most days he prefers to stay with people)

Once he woke up he seemed happier and demolished a couple of pots of fromage frais and then had some time in his walker and rolling round on the floor.But by the time we got to about 6.00 he was totally miserable again and whilst having his last bottle we were subjected to some pretty impressive vomiting...poor little thing really didn't know what was going on, so far we've only really had reflux so I think this scared the life out of him. He then settled down again on the familiar Mummy mattress and soon was calm enough to be transferred back to his chair to have a cuddle with Bradley Bunny who seems to be the favourite today for some reason...He is now safe and sound in his cot and fell asleep again in record time. Poor little boy is so tired.

The sniffles...

One thing I had forgotten about working in an office...everyone is so sharing! I now have a wonderful cold and to borrow a phrase from my brother-in-law I am officially a snot monster (maybe a new character for Avenue Q!?!?!?) Thankfully Mikey isn't around today so I'm happily miserable at home, wrapped in my blanket whilst cuddling my tissues with a waste bin close at hand so I don't cover the floor in horrid used tissues! All I need is a slave to keep up my supply of drinks and I'd be in heaven! And my throat may continue to work instead of feeling as though it's being sandpapered!

The other downside to this truly wonderful cold is that my appetite has got up and wandered off somewhere - and as everyone keeps telling me that won't help me lose weight. I did cook for Andy last night but nothing appealed to me in the slightest. Instead I went out to get some change for the carpark for today (well it will do for tomorrow now!) and that was fun! Most of the roads seemed to close just as I got the them! I ended up at Sainsbury's filling the car up with petrol and had to come home via the middle of town! There is possibly a shorter route home but I don't know it...and my phone was safe and sound at home so I couldn't call home for advice/directions! Not that I would ever phone and drive at the same time... I do have a bluetooth headset but my phone won't admit that it actually exists so I would have had to pull over and tried to explain where I was - never easy for me to be honest!

Work....who's bright idea was this???

Interesting sort of day really… My first day on my own as the credit control department!!! And miracles do happen - the Monday report went according to plan and all the vlookup stuff I needed to do to bring comments etc through from last weeks report actually worked without me smashing my head on a desk or wall (or any other hard, injury causing surface!) I also stayed calm with Ireland and got my cash forecast to balance… last week I was only £2,400 out on my amount - and I got more in than I was expecting so surely they can't moan about that! And so far this week the amount that I'm expecting to come in and has arrived is exceeding the amount I wasn't expecting… All good and guaranteed to make Heather feel happy for once on a Monday!!


I still feel weekends are far too short though, this weekend could have done with loads more sleeping time. It didn't help that both Mikey & Andy fell asleep yesterday morning and I was wide awake and trying to stay quiet so I didn't wake them. Andy is grumpy enough without me waking him by accident . In the afternoon Mikey was helping me put his latest batch of photos onto his album, the way I'm going it will be Album 3 soon and I know that I have now used all the empty/spare ones that I had… Maybe the Easter Bunny might provide a couple! I know it's not exactly technological but I like having the album to flick through and I can honestly say that I can hardly remember him being as tiny as he was when he was born!! Not that he felt tiny at the time… and having seen one of the other NCT babies yesterday he really is growing like a weed! She looked really tiny compared to our wriggle monster! But she does have 2 teeth and can crawl (OK, only backwards) whilst all we do is roll across the floor! Actually pretty quickly so we're off to collect stair gates on Sunday! I have a feeling from the movements he is trying to make that crawling will happen fairly soon and then all hell will be unleashed as the monster gets mobile!!

Today's photo is one of my favourites and I think it really needs some kind of caption - I really hope and pray Mikey isn't thinking what I think he's thinking as he's far to young to use language like that!!

One step forward at long last!

Finally had some good news!!! The moron's Insurance company have accepted full liability for the accident.To be honest there was no way they could try to wriggle out of it as 1) the was trying to make a totally stupid (and possibly illegal manoeuvre) 2) he admitted he was on the hone at the time and 3) he didn't hand over any detail to me and legged it from the scene as soon as he could. But knowing that is a huge leap to Aviva admitting their driver is totally in the wrong and they will pay up fully - there is a big part of my past where I was one of those 'Thieves and Vagabonds' (to quote my father) trying to get out of paying any claim in any way if I could find any loophole etc. I just have to wait for the payout to come through now,(I think they have a time limit under the FSA now...) but at least my poor little car is back looking normal (for it!) now even though I am very nervous driving down Brookfield road now (I will drive any different way I can just to avoid it really) or whenever I see a silver transit van.

I also had the joy of talking to the Tax office this morning. I tried to tell them about my new job last month when I signed off, but they didn't want to know as I didn't have my PAYE reference - even the Job Centre apologised for the Tax offices lack of help and rudeness! This morning I found one even ruder! But when I called back and spoke to Craig he was far more helpful and thinks they may get it all sorted fairly soon  (certainly before the end of July!!) I think this many be a new government money saving policy - talk very fast in a thick/broad Scottish accent and totally baffle people so they leave you alone and go away! But of course if they've got it wrong it is all your fault and they get stern and tell you off! I wasn't having any of that this morning and reminded them that according to their records I had tried to tell them on 10 March and when I phoned last week they couldn't/wouldn't talk to me as they were running a system update prior to the end of the tax year...(not my fault I needed to go back to work and it happened in March/April! They also got a little shirty that I'd dared to change employers as well rather than returning to my previous employer.... I'm so looking forward to completing my tax credits renewal pack as In the last year I've had  employers, maternity pay plus job seekers allowance... and baby brain on top of all that!! No wonder they get stroppy!

This afternoon has been quite amusing - we were watching the National an the small person decided to bounce along with it! He got rather excited/over excited towards the end and added a few screams for good measure - I doubt he'll make a jockey as the prediction is he'll be around 6' when he reached his full height and neither parent has EVER been skinny and based on his current showing he is far too fond of his foo to try starving himself to make a jockey's weight! But his other career option this afternoon has been a singer as I'm watching a programme about the nations favourite Abba songs and he's been joining in... all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order bless him!!! He's now rolling around on the floor perfectly happily, this morning we did proper roly polys and ended up on his back again - a bit of a chock the first time so he kept doing it as it meant he could move quite quickly and grab whatever he wanted! He's just found the squeaker on his mat now and is stomping on it!! He has also een eating fromage frais again...this afternoon we've discovered we rather like apricot...and if he gets close to a naked flame he may end up in orbit with the gases he is producing!!

A first...

For me at least! Today was my first Mother's Day as a Mum!! If I'm honest it is a day I thought would never, ever happen and first thing this morning I was rather emotional and had to escape to the kitchen at one point for a little cry... Thankfully it was sunny hits morning so I could hide behind sunglasses when the tears threatened again! I know I was being very stupid, but  having waited so long for Mikey and had so many emotions in past years when I thought I'd never have a baby I decided I was allowed to be a little silly on my first Mother's Day!

We started with a trip to Nanny in Ashford, she seemed to like her Mikey Mug and he was exceptionally happy to play with the box it was delivered it! Maybe Jose was right on Friday when he suggested a drum kit is needed for a birthday in June, the box got well thumped/battered this morning! Next it was over to Medway to see Nanny and Grandad for lunch, Mikey needed his as soon as we got there an it seems he is quite partial to Fish Pie a la Cow & Gate! Followed by custard of course and then an post lunch nap, as he'd only had a 30 minute nap as we drove over there! After his nap and recital on his baby walker it was time for juice and a biscuit, some of which is still stuck to Nanny's trouser leg after Mikey had sucked it an then thrown it on the floor... Luckily Barley pretty much ignored it so eventually he did manage to eat most of it (well the bits that didn't end up stuck to Nanny!) We finished off with some bread and butter soldiers and some apple & cookie crumble before finally having another nap as we drove home! Nanny thinks we may be having another growth spurt as naps seem to be becoming more and more important to him! I sort of hope not as it means yet more clothes shopping will be needed and he still has a few bits from Christmas he hasn't worn yet!

The photo is the one we had put onto mugs for both Nannies... I'm sure a photo of Mikey was much preferred to one of Andy or I!! (Although I have just noticed he seems to be going cross eyed on it for some reason!)These internet photo companies are great - they also produced calenders for grand parents at Christmas... it is nice to get something more personal at times!

A Quiet week...

Which was a good thing so far as I'm concerned! My main excitement was watching Mikey roll over for the first time, and then this morning he said/yelled 'Daddy' and waved at Andy so we're both happy parents!

I now have my little car back, woohooo!!!! I had got used to the Focus and when I took my little C2 out for a drive it felt tiny and the brakes are far better than the Ford - I nearly stood it on it's nose whilst throwing me through the windscreen! But the seat is far more comfortable than the Ford and I've pretty much got used to it again now! Mikey is loving the car seat we're borrowing, he can see out of the windows now, but getting him into the back is not an easy manoeuvre! But I'll get used to it, the main thing is that he is safe and happy.

The photo is Mikey 'fixing' his laptop. It wasn't broken when he started and  I think his method of slamming it upside down on the tray of his babywalker may well catch on! He seemed to find it satisfying at least!

This week is our wedding anniversary... 9 years... I wish I could remember more of it but it was fairly well wiped from my memory nearly 3 years ago, the photos have helped a little and I will get round to watching the video at some point. But I think we both look married so I guess it really did happen! It is also my very first Mother's day tomorrow. Last year I was still with bump as he didn't appear until Father's day, now he has really made his presence felt and it does feel as though he's been around forever. I did admit earlier that I can hardly remember the pain of having him... I must really be insane!! I have to confess that I've dropped subtle hints regarding breakfast in bed... I'll have to wait and see if it actually happens as I know the smallest family member will want his first and won't accept anything else happening before he gets fed!