Party of Five

I had 3 hours sleep last night when I needed 8, this is the worst I can ever remember even with the other two.
Tiddly used to take about an hour to get to sleep and I had to sit next to his cot til he drfited off and then when he woke in the night I used to go put his dummy back in.
Munch used to wake every 2-3 hours and didn't have a dummy, but he would just snuggle up and go back to sleep ifyou brought him into bed with you.
Pip, from 18 weeks he slept through and I had been luxuriating in this wonderfulness until the end of November last year. Since then I think we've had 2 weeks of sleeping through and varying degrees of waking up that range from once and going back to sleep with a back rub to last night - slept for 3 hours then woke up 10 minutes after I went to bed, then 5 minutes after I put him back after taking him downstairs at 12:30am, 1:30am. I gave up the ghost at 3:30am and just got a blanket and sat in my chair and watched old X-Files on FX. I must have fallen asleep around 4am and woke at 6:30am when Steve was getting up. I am grouchy and miserable and fed up with this.
I know kids sleep problems are the oldest and most boring story in the book but it's spoiling his and my life at the moment and hearing that raspy cry just brings out so many emotions I am not sure where I am :(
I did scrap this weekend though so am feeling good about that, need to do a secret challenge with my UKS team, I am due to post one and had forgotten, so really need to do that today as I have some ideas for once.

One day when I am sane I will post all my recent scrapping work,.

and this is my poorly little Pip, two weeks ill and a viral rash to boot, he is as fed up of snotty noses as I am.

This is where I have spent most of my week with Pip, can you see my shape outlined permanently into the cushions?

At 12:05am little Pip made his suprise appearance into the world, all blue and quiet. So many people cared for him that night, all keeping him safe and warm until he was ready to come home.

A year later and here we are with a little boy full of snotty life, chasing his big brothers, always looking for his Mummy, always playing with the washing machine and the catflap in the corner (and we wonder why he is ill this week?)

Life could not have turned out better even if we had planned it (except perhaps for a little more sleep)

Love you Pip xxx

Poor little Pip is really suffering with his first proper full blown cold. I've had some horrendous nights with him, poor little guy, and now he has developed this awful hacking cough. Basically I've had a 20lb baby stuck to my hip for a week. I'd cry too though if I felt as bad as he does. And yeah he's a bit small for an 11 month & 363 day old bab isn't he?

I have rediscovered fontgarden not that I ever lost it, but I haven't had time to mess about with fonts for a while, but I have a sketch challenge LO to finish for Sunday and was trying to find a font for a title. Well I was trying to find a title and couldn't think of one, I was also trying to think of some journalling and couldn't think of anything either, so I thought 'hmmm fontgarden always had really cool quotes to display its fonts, I should look there', so whilst I didn't find a quote I could use for baby journalling, I did find piles of deeply cool fonts. Like this one...

I also like the name of it, slightly unsavoury but almost edgy too.

Anyway it got me out of a hole title wise and font wise, so I am off to hand cut the skizzed font title for my LO and write a bit of journalling.

I have also done some other craft, I've done 2 'ME' journal pages, I've done about 4 baby Pip journal pages, I've made 10 mini albums using Candice Palmers instructions (you must do this it's so easy you could do it in your sleep if you are lucky enough to get some sleep)

I will try and post pics of all my achievements this week, half term week, this week of nintendo ds and Stars Wars Lego on the PC, this week of 'can i have something to eat yet', this week of going beyond play fighting and 'someones going to get hurt', this week of 'can we watch 'Cars/Spongebob/Thunderbirds/other kid movie we've seen a trillion times already'' this week of seeing the bags CZ has knitted and ordering circular needles from ebay.

they are from October and Sharon took them

my waters broke. I was 31 weeks pregnant with my 3rd child. I was almost hysterical with worry, but did not go into labour. I was admitted to hospital and was put on antibiotics. I was very grateful for friends & family who rallied round helping Hubby & visiting me & bringing such wonderful things like shower gel, magazines & yummy food, the bedside tv and just being able to rest. I had my temp taken and blood pressure checked every 2-3 hours - they were looking forsigns of infection that sometimes follows your waters breaking early.

I was in hospital for 5 days, I went in on a Thursday and went home on the Tuesday (weekends in hospital are the most dreadful times, each hour lasts a lifetime). I was like a leaky fawcet (sounds better than a dripping tap), every time I moved I leaked a little more, but they gave me a scan and told me I had plenty of fluid around the baby and that it replenishes itself. I can remember my Consultant telling me as I packed my bag to go home not to go into town and buy lots of premmie clothes, that the likelihood would be the baby would not come early!

another 8 days my little Bab

I keep meaning to start things, do things, finish things. All sorts of things, like sort out the boys room - it's sort of been done but not with any 'polish' it looks ok but not 'good enough', I keep meaning to put all my washing away but always find it in my room on the toy box that is so in the way of the wardrobe we can only open one door to get stuff out - but if we moved it elsewhere it would be even more in the way. Luckily it doesn't take a lot of effort to get a pair of joggers and a t-shirt out tof the wardrobe :).
I think my whole world needs a good spring clean, concentrating with one room at a time, but I flit from one thing to another without ever really finishing anything off. I should accept that this is me and this is what I am like, but to me it never feels like it is me, it feels like a bit of me and the rest of me will be along in a minute but she got a bit distracted along the way.
The internet steals time, the time that I should be using to better purpose, the time I could be utilising to clean, sort, create, make etc I end up following one link after another and 2 hours have gone and the baby has woken up.
It's nearly a year since my waters broke at 31 weeks and my world turned upside down as well as those closest to me. It seems like forever and also like yesterday. It must have been a year since I had to phone a friend to pick me up on the way to school because I was in so much pain I could not put one foot infront of the other, Munch was running up the road and I was screaming at him to stop, a year since my laboured efforts at walking up the Moorlands hill to Kindy made everyone feel sorry for me, a year since I was still doing Tuesday night crops, a year since I was complaining that this pregnancy was draining my life force (always being one to overdramatise).. But overall this year has finished so much better than it started and despite the pain, the desperate worrying, the watching scraps of life struggling to make each hour in the NICU, I would still do it all over again.

well, some of it is -
You are more than a big ball of energy - you are a big ball of hyper. ummm not really, I am comfortable with my inner couch potato backside although I always have a lot of things on the go

You are always on the go, but you don't have a type a personality. well I def don't have a type A personality, again I identify too much with my inner couch potato to be ALWAYS on the go but I do get very restless.

Instead of channeling your energy into work, you instead go for fun and adventure. so if they mean I am easily distracted by non-work things then yes, 100%

Witty and verbal, you can have an interesting conversation with anyone. I am occasionally funny and very verbose, but I cannot have a conversation with a stranger easily, I am too old now to want to try hard with people, although I will do small talk.


Your strength: Your larger than life imagination oh yeah that is true


Your weakness: You tend to be pretty scattered 100% alhtough I wish I were cool and controlled

Your power color: Lime spooky but I love that colour


Your power symbol: Lightening bolt hmm yeah whatever


Your power month: March will tell you next month

Sadly for me I also did this for my kids and hubby - my hubby's one was spookily accurate.

Off to scrap now - have 30 mins to finish some stuff off - will photograph tomorrow and post, I am pleased with my little self.

30 minutes away from the end of Day 2 of the 28 days workshop.

Each day we should be taking photos of things around us - Day 1 was our Pantry (or my fridge) and Day 2 is your mailbox (or my front door)

as an added bonus you get to see Pip with is toy of choice - the washing machine door, with his 2nd choice, the tumble dryer door, close by.

deeply deeply cool site photojojo - pretty much anything you can do with a photo and some.

'cos I think I ate the whole world over the weekend.

After 2 weeks of being 'into' a new way of eating, the first week I was brilliant, the second I began to slip a little, this weekend at my friends birthday party I ate pretty much everything with unashamed abandon including a great big slab of choc cake (lovely btw Sharon - did you make it yourself asks SR?)

Baby Pip is not conforming to required sleep pattern so I am currently letting him cry for a bit to tire him out. Once he starts making retching sounds I'll go in! We go to Kings College Hospital tomorrow with him for an untrasound and check up. Hopefully he'll be given the all clear.

ok, pathetic retching sounds are emanating from his bedroom, time to do the ironing whilst rocking a baby in his chair- an acquired skill but very useful.

I wonder how much I can type or how many photos I can include with Pip (all 11 wriggly months of him) on my lap?
well one sentence at least, he's currently trying to decimate a postcard which he is enjoying to the full despite just having had his lunch.
I went back to the gym today (hang on post card has been lost - it's ok postcard & kids scissors retrieved- should have longer). I was very disappointed, I thought I would have retained the minimal fitness I was nearly at 2 months ago without having to expend any energy at all. Sadly this is not the case am I am going to have to haul ass for some considerable time before any benefit is revealed (to me or anyone else).
I did download the army fit programme and it seems I am not fit enought to even do the conditioning pre-programme. God how sad is that?
Here's a programme called Couch to 5k Running plan - it looks doable. I need firm goals otherwise I cave in and give up. I don't have a backbone of steel and a will of iron, well not yet anyway.
The baby is now stocktaking the paper w have stored underneath the desk, I'd better deal with that before it's all dribbled on and screwed up.

This is the second day of my no sweeties,no cake,no choc,no biscuit,no bread and obviously I've lost 25 stone (read Kirsty W's blog - she is so funny with her gym/weight thing). I'm finding it tough, but got so incredibly depressed on Wednesday about my willpower, weight, fitness, thought of dying young that I felt I had to buck up my ideas and stop fannying about.
I've started a food diary where I am writing down everything I eat. It is so easy to forget the odd biscuit here, the odd packet of crisps there. It's so easy to lie to yourself about what in reality you do eat. My double standards are breathtaking, I deny my children certain treats and snacks as I don't want them to grow up to be chubby like I did, yet this is what happened to me as a child and it turned me into a secretive eater. If you spent the day with me you'd say I ate ok, but what you don't see is the secretive eating. It's dreadful, not excessive but the denial and hiding feeds the habit.
I had such a complicated relationship with my parents, built on control, lack of praise, secrets, lies, selfishness - all on both sides, no wonder they don't want anything to do with me and no wonder I don't want anything to do with them. My mother hated food, she would have been happy with a food pill 3 times a day. My father loved food, loved snacking and always seemed to busy himself by making something to eat. I take after my father in most respects and that drove my mother crazy and she tried her hardest to limit what I ate, but given my psyche it just drove me to eat in secret. Go figure!
I plan to use the playing card journal thing that Emily F is doing to track how I am doing.I was even toying with the idea of getting up at 6am and going for a walk/jog. Naturally I didn't actually do it but I have thought about it for a long time and maybe I should try it? am going to download the armyfit thing and see if that would fit in with my lifestyle of sitting on the sofa all day.
And what started this off? Cathy Z of course and this post here.
I am going to sort out my embellishments now - plan to chuck the rubbish and colour code the rest - if it works for Stacy Julian then it'll work for me.
Am also knitting - major RSI but oh Marja that Debbie Bliss wool you sent is divine to knit with (although a bit of a bugger to cast on cable wise). Am dropping stitches but don't care - chaos knitting, it could be the new black.

I am going to publish this but will take some pics and load them later of a finished bunny, a part way through hat and a little baby boy who is cute but is challenged sleepwise at the moment.

http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/videos/index.ihtml?idx=82
I made a ton of these when Munch was christened, did it slightly differently, but this was is actually better. Excellent way of using up old patterned paper that you are not going to scrap with.

it was very wet and muddy on saturday.