Party of Five

We are back. A little more tanned (or red & freckled in my case), a little more worn out and a little more of a closer family than before. The boys love spending time with their Daddy on holiday, I am usually left to do the cooking, cleaning and bathtimes! It makes me realise how little time he gets to spend with them during the week, so I don't mind too much, it's been a long time since it's been the 'me, me, me' show and I like it that way.

Congratulations to Marja and Kirk on the birth of their very cute little girl, Noemie, on the 11th April, I hope all are doing well. Even though Pip is only 1 (well 14 months in 2 days) I couldn't go back to newborn again, not anymore, not with my advanced years. You forget about how tiny and fragile and needy newborn babies are, how exhausting just exisiting can be but also how thrilling.

We have 381 photos of our trip to Eastbourne, home of the Old Dots, many will be discarded in the dustheap that is the 20,000 photos on my hard drive (that I really need to get an external hard drive for) but I am sure that I have some real peaches.

There is so much washing and stuff to do here I must go do it before the baby gets up and Hubby gets back from wherever he went.

oh the wonder of paper crafting! (Roman soldiers costume made from construction paper and foil) - this is all paper honestly!

Munch went to his first proper birthday party whilst being at big school, he had a blast. He also got to take Mr Dog home for the weekend which was fun, although the responsibility got a bit much at times.

so why am i on here?

I have been goofing off for a whole hour, I am an expert in the field of goofing off or as we Brits like to say 'an expert slacker' - it's a field that I perfected whilst working and have successfully carried it over into my non-working life. I could represent my country in it and I am training my oldest son to be an expert as well (he goofs off on Club Penguin and Neopets, whilst I am a successfull craft website slacker).

I now have these (unused but in-waiting)

and I have some of these babies too as an early mothers day present (plus one is a bday pressie for a friend), they look so pretty I could not resist forcing Hubby into buying them from here.

I went to Stamperama this weekend with my friend Ruth, although it catered very much to the cardmakers & stampers of this world there was more than enough there to keep me interested.

the baby is asleeeeeeeep!

can't post my scraplift LO as that is *secret* and I also need to photograph my oddly sized mini album (7.25 x 7) which I have actually got 5 finished LO's in (and as they are >6x6 they count as 'proper'LO's!! woohoo!!!) Will take photos later and post.

Munch has a temp of 38.8 - here we go again, but at least he'll sleep (he'd win any sleeping contests hands down that kid)

Church accounts to check, so I mustn't dawdle....

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.