Sometimes you just have to be one of those Mums......

Before I became a Mum, I would see people post pictures of their children all over social media and I thought it was nice and everything, but I wondered if I would be the type of Mum that would do the same. Would I think that every little expression was adorable and therefore need to post a photo of it or would I just be an occasional photo poster? Well, if you know me, you know that I fall into the category of posting photos of my boys. A lot. I guess there are a couple of reasons that I do this. One is that I have family and friends who don't live close by and who don't get to see them a lot so it is a way of me keeping them updated and seeing the boys growing, etc. The other reason is that I am just one of those Mums who thinks that their child is pretty adorable and therefore feels the need to share it with the world! :)

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Mia had arranged to take pictures of a couple of my friends' children. She is an amazing photographer and she wanted the chance to practise her skills. We too were invited along but had prior commitments so we didn't think we would be able to make it. However, when we finished up sooner than we had anticipated, we went to meet with everyone and Mia took some gorgeous pictures of my boys! I can't decide which ones I like the best, so I am going to share more than just a couple with you..... :)

This one is probably my favourite one of Caleb as it is so him, that cheeky, mischievous smile!

Caleb's expressions make me laugh so much! He's at that age where he pretty much just messes around when he sees a camera. The one with his eyebrows raised makes me smile as that is the thing he has been doing of late, my silly boy! His hair was a little bit crazy as he had bed head, I hadn't styled it as I didn't think he would be getting his photo taken that day, plus he had just come from a play date at soft play! Talking of bed head.....

I love this one of Levi as his eyes look amazing! He has the darkest eyes I think I have ever seen, they are almost black. He never had the blue eyes that most babies have when they are born, his have always been really dark. I love that you can just about make out his dimples in this picture too.

This boy's hair just keeps growing and growing! As far as his bed head goes, this isn't actually too bad but it's always a bit of a challenge to tame the beast that is his hair!  (Since having these photos done, he has had it cut and it is so much shorter! It's actually a bit shorter than I would have liked but considering how much he hates getting his hair cut and how much he screams the place down, it makes sense to go to shorter so that it is even longer until the next hair cut!) Sometimes I think that Caleb and Levi really look alike but in these photos, I think they look pretty different. Caleb definitely looks more like Seth and Levi looks more like me, especially in terms of his colouring. 

Mia then wanted to take a picture of me with the boys. I would have worn my hair down and made a bit more of an effort with my make up, had I known, ha ha! But I was really glad I had a picture with them, I never seem to have many with my boys that aren't selfies! 

We were so grateful to Mia for practising her skills on us! When the weather gets better we shall definitely be calling on her to take some nice family photos of us all :). 

The Corrs!!!!

How I have not already blogged about this, I will never know!

In mine and Laura's teenage years, we were hugely into the Corrs. We absolutely loved their music; Laura had all of their albums and piano books, we both had and played tin whistles and the piano, Laura played the guitar and the bodhran, we pretty much thought we were them, ha ha! We would always sing and play their music. Laura watched pretty much every television interview they ever did and we saw them perform a couple of times. When I got married in 2009, Seth and I walked out to Silver Strand, one of the Corrs instrumentals (if you haven't heard it, listen to it, it's so beautiful). We were seriously hardcore fans. You can only imagine how excited we both were when we found out that they were reuniting (well, they are siblings so I guess it's not as much a case of reuniting as performing again?!) and when we found out that they would be touring, Laura immediately bought us tickets for their concert in Liverpool.

So, a few weeks ago, Seth took the day off work so that he could look after the boys and I headed up to Liverpool for some sister time with Laura and to see the Corrs. We spent the day wandering around Liverpool, going out for lunch, then a little while later going to Area 51 in the Baltic Triangle, a really cool area in Liverpool for hot chocolates and an amazing chocolate brownie. Seriously, brownies are my achilles heel and this one was divine!

That evening we went to the Echo arena for the concert. Our seats were amazing, we were five rows from the front and we were sitting next to one of the central aisles so we had an incredible view of the stage. It was so cool to be able to see them so close up and to be able to notice every detail as they were performing. They played a real mix of all of their music, some of their older stuff along with a lot of their new music. I can't believe that the first time we saw them, I was 18 or 19 and yet they don't seem to look any older!

The concert was fantastic, we had such a wonderful time. The next day we were talking about it all and saying just how brilliant it was. It was so lovely being able to not only go to a great concert but to be there with Laura too, I wouldn't have wanted to be there with anyone else!

It's never going to stop.

I don't know about you but I have always been quite a nervous person. In general, I think I am fairly calm but whenever I had exams at school, or at university, I would dread every single one, no matter how well I had prepared. I would always get that knot in my stomach and I hated it. I always thought that once I had finished school and university that that would be the end of feeling nervous because exams were over and done with. And then of course, there's the whole applying for jobs thing and having job interviews, and with each one of those came those nerves again. Once I had stopped working to become a full time Mum I was fairly sure that I would never have that feeling again and I was pretty happy about it. Who likes that feeling anyway?! It's pretty horrible. But then I decided to take my grade 8 piano exam a couple of years ago and with that, the nerves accompanied me. Seth came with me on the journey because I am too much of a wimp to go on my own, plus I needed the distraction! But as I am getting older, I felt pretty comfortable with the thought that that feeling of dread, angst, nerves, etc. would definitely be few and far between as I felt that I had done most of the things that I would need to be nervous about.

And then I went and got myself a husband and children. Not only did I get myself a husband but when Seth and I got married, he had just finished his first year of university. During our time of being married, he has sat through two years of university exams, graduated university, sat through two years of exams for his Masters degree, graduated from that and has sat through professional exams too. Seth is a pretty chilled out person and if he gets nervous, he never really shows it at all. But you can bet that with each of those things, I was counting the minutes until the end of the exams and until I got the text from him to let me know how it had gone.

When Caleb started preschool in September, everyone told me that it is horrible taking your little one there on the first day. I don't even think I managed to eat breakfast that morning, I actually felt physically sick, even more so when all of the children were lining up outside, waiting to go in for the first time. The funniest thing is, he didn't really care at all! In the photo that I took of him waiting outside he looks like he was so nervous and he wasn't at all; he was really excited about the whole thing and took it all in his stride (note: I didn't cry after I dropped him off! I was so proud of myself for that small victory!)

I have now come to the conclusion that I am always going to have something to be nervous about and it's pretty much not going to end! I'm sure that I will feel nervous when Caleb starts school, then when Levi starts preschool, etc. Perhaps I was quite naiive to think that my time for nerves was over and done with but I didn't take into account that because my family are an extension of me, I am always going to feel nervous for them when they have big things happening in their lives, because in a way, they feel like my milestones as well. As much as I hate that feeling, I am also weirdly kind of grateful that I have these two little monkeys to feel nervous for in the coming years!