Pregnancy update

I realised that I haven't really mentioned that much about being pregnant this time around here on the blog so I thought that I would do it now!

As of today, I am 35 weeks and 5 days pregnant, which should mean that I have around 5 weeks left but who knows? My due date is the 17th January, so less than a month now. I think I was around 6 days overdue with Caleb. I kind of think that I might be early this time around, not really based on anything other than the fact that my bump is so low it feels like it's down at my knees right now! I have been keeping fairly well, other than the usual pregnancy tiredness and general aches and pains. I don't think that my SPD has been as bad this time as it was with Caleb although there have been some days when I have practically fallen out of bed in the mornings because of the pain in my pelvis, fun and games! The skin on my stomach is really sensitive and it hurts to even touch it which isn't the most fun in the world but in the grand scheme of things, it could be much worse! I think the most annoying thing for me has been the fact that I have had a cold since the beginning of October and it is still hanging around. It's frustrating that I can't really take anything to get rid of it. Every time I think it's starting to go away it comes back with a vengeance. I'm now fairly certain that I will just have this cold until the baby is born.

I can't remember if I have mentioned it before or not, but we did find out what we are having at the 20 week scan. (Does anyone remember when I blogged about how I would never find out what we are having? Yeah, I went back on that but I had my reasons and I am glad that we found out). We (I) didn't want anyone else to know and I think I have done pretty well in keeping it a secret, I have grown so used to calling the baby "it". People have tried to get me to spill the beans by asking if Caleb is excited to have a brother / sister. The other day at church, someone said to Caleb, "are you going to have a little brother or a sister?" to which he responded, "sister!". I then asked him, "are you going to have a little sister or a brother?" to which he responded, "brother!". He pretty much just says whichever one he hears the last, ha ha! Maybe it would help to prepare him more if we told him what we are having but I don't really feel like it will make that much difference either way for him, plus, I still don't 100% trust scans and so I don't want to tell him one thing only for it to then end up being the other, if that were to happen!

Caleb has been very sweet with regards to the whole pregnancy thing. He knows that Mummy has a baby in her tummy, although I'm not sure if he really grasps what that means. He will come up to me, rub my tummy and then hold his hands up and say, "finished!" (he has helped me moisturise the bump a few times and I think he picked it up from that, ha!). He will also ask to kiss the baby and kiss my bump or just lay his head on it. The other day, I was putting him into his highchair so his head was level with the bump when he sat down. He spoke to my tummy and said, "would you like a kiss? One kiss...two...three....four" and kissed my bump four times, which was so cute. He's going to get the shock of his life when there is an actual baby living in the house! I have tried to get him used to babies as much as possible by always pointing them out to him. He is always very gentle with them and always wants to touch their hands / stroke their hair. My nephew and his wife have recently had a baby boy and it was so lovely to see Caleb with him. Sometimes he would just go up and kneel down next to him. I really hope that Caleb adjusts well to having a baby here full time!

As for any pregnancy concerns that I may have, my main one is just how Caleb will adjust, and also how I will adjust to having two children! I have been so spoilt with Caleb in that he has always been a good sleeper so it will be interesting to see how well this baby sleeps. I am not too worried about the labour because I know I don't really have much control over what happens and I am happy to just go with it and take everything as it comes. Caleb was a back to back baby with a dipping heartrate which required him to be delivered by forceps so I am hoping that doesn't happen again, but if it does, it does, I just want the baby to be safe and well.

As for baby names, we have a couple in the running - I want one and Seth wants another so we will see who wins on that one! While I am really excited for the baby to be here, I'm not wishing the time away. I love our little family of three and I am just enjoying the time I have with Caleb before we become a family of 4.

Here's a little timeline of some of my bump photos - I like to keep track of how I am growing :)

                         19 weeks                             21 weeks                                       24 weeks

                  26 weeks                                          30 weeks                                      31 weeks

                                                32 weeks                                    35 weeks

My favourite bump picture of all has to be the one where Seth decorated it. When I was pregnant with Caleb he decided that it would be a great idea to facepaint my bump and being as though the olympics were coming up, Team GB's logo was the chosen design for the bump:

This time around, being as though it is Christmas time, Seth decided to be all festive and the result it here for you to behold in all its glory!

Yep, my husband has skills!

I get by with a little help from... ahem... Pinterest

For ages, I have wanted to make Caleb's room more HIS room. For quite some time it had seemed almost like a spare room that he just slept in as there was so much other stuff in there. When we got his bed, we relocated a lot of the other stuff so it began to look more like a bedroom (the cot is still in there too, no sense in taking that down when we will be needing it again in a few months!). I wanted to get some sort of a canvas or picture for his room that would make it look nice but I didn't overly want to go with any particular theme. And of course, all of the pictures and canvases out there have some kind of a boyish theme to it. So, I actually decided to make my own! Check me out, ha ha! I don't think I've really tried to do anything creative for years so I really had no idea where to start.

Pinterest is a wonderful thing. I had never really used it before but it gave me a lot of ideas. I had already decided that I wanted the canvas to be bright with Caleb's name on it in wooden letters but I couldn't decide on the background for the canvas. I was originally going to paint it in plain yellow and stick the painted letters on it but I thought I would try something different and do multi-directional stripes for the background (yep, a pinterest idea that I saw and loved!) So there was still no theme but made it look a bit more interesting than just a plain background. I used frog tape for the stripes and then just painted the gaps with yellow paint.

I quite liked the look of it with just the frog tape on! I used frog tape instead of masking tape as there is supposed to be less chance of the paint bleeding. That's how it's meant to work for decorating anyway so I thought I would give it a shot anyway!

The paint did bleed a little bit in a couple of places but I don't think it is too noticeable. If I did it again I would try to make sure that I didn't paint too thickly too close to the tape as there are also some slightly chunky edges.

I should have probably primed the letters first.... you live, you learn! This was taken after one coat of paint, I ended up doing three coats to get a decent coverage.

The canvas in place on Caleb's bedroom wall. I put it up in the afternoon without him knowing, then I went into the lounge to get him and told him I had something to show him in his bedroom. He followed me in there and noticed it straight away. He gasped, smiled and said, "beautiful new picture for Caleb! Thank you Mummy!", then proceeded to read out the letters. For any artsy people out there, you may think that my attempt is pretty lame but Caleb's opinion was the one that mattered most to me and so I was thrilled with the fact that he loved it.

And the next morning, he was still loving it! I must say, I am actually quite pleased with my efforts. Thanks, Pinterest!

Recent moments

It's no secret that I think that Caleb is pretty amazing. Yes, he can drive me mad sometimes but I adore him and I love being able to spend my days with him. There have been so many cute things that he has said and done recently that I just have to document them! I do write a journal as well, so this post is mainly for my family who like to be kept up to date with the little things!

Caleb's language has just exploded recently. I can pretty much have a proper conversation with him and he will speak in full sentences. He absolutely loves helping out with any jobs around the house and when I am dusting, I need to give him a duster too so that he can help. One task that I absolutely can't do on my own is put the washing into the washing machine. Caleb will help me sort the lights and darks then helps me carry the basket to the kitchen. He then grabs armfuls or washing and puts it into the machine. And....get this.... he even knows which buttons to press to make it work and to put it on the right setting. I just supervise now just in case he presses the wrong buttons. The other day when we were doing the washing, I gave him his coat to put into the washing machine. He held it in is hands and looked at it, confused, then looked up at me and said, "but I need my coat, Mummy". He just sounded so cute! I explained to him he could just wear another jacket that day and he was satisfied with that answer. Once the washing machine had actually started, he knelt down on the floor, kissed the washing machine door and said, "good boy, washing machine, I'm so proud of you!". He makes me laugh so much, I love the things that come out of his mouth.

Recently, I have been trying to teach Caleb about Remembrance Day. I know he's only two and a lot of people might say that it's too young to teach him about things like that but you never know what sinks in so I try anyway! He was playing with my poppy the other day and I asked him why we wear poppies. He responded, "to remember people who died for our freedom". It's what I had told him before but it was so cute that he could remember it, even if it doesn't really mean much to him at the moment. Something must have gone in though because we had our own little two minute silence at home on 11th November at 11am and he was silent for the whole thing. For anyone who knows Caleb, they will know what a big deal that is for a little boy who talks non-stop!

Caleb is obsessed with photos and especially selfies. He knows how to work the camera on my phone and he uses it a lot. I often find these random photos of him on there that he has taken. Whenever he does something that he knows is cute or funny, he tells me to "take a smile". I always oblige because usually he is right, it is pretty cute or funny and such moments definitely need to be documented!

Caleb is incredible with letters and numbers. People who have heard him count to 20 are always really impressed and comment on how well I have taught him. As much as I would like to take the credit, I haven't actually done anything, he just seems to have an amazing memory and he remembers these things! His love of letters is more recent. For his Birthday in July, my Mum bought him a little leap pad laptop which says the names of the letters, pronounces them phonetically and then says a word to go along with it. Caleb loves playing with it (he especially loves the V for vulture for some reason!) and now he points out letters everywhere we go! There's a game he plays on my phone where there is a picture of something, a choice of letters and he has to drag the right letter to the right word. Caleb used to get so frustrated playing that game but now that he is better with letters, he will say to me, "Mummy help you" and show me the picture. I will tell him what the word is and sound it out and then he will spell it with the letters in the right order. He will sometimes do it wrong on purpose and laugh like it's the funniest thing in the world.

Caleb loves babies! Which is just as well as he's getting one in a couple of months! My friend Emma has recently had a baby and whenever I hold her, Caleb makes a beeline for her. He loves stroking her hair and fingers and he is so gentle. He looks at her in awe, like she is the most amazing thing he has ever seen. I'm hoping that it bodes well for when his little sibling comes along although I'm not sure how he will take to its constant presence in our home!

One of the things he has started to do recently is so adorable and I love it when he does it. When he is walking along beside me, if my hand is on his shoulder, he will put his arm around my leg and walk like that. It makes my heart melt every time.

This is a ridiculously long post on Caleb but be grateful, it could have been longer! He does so many new things each day that I am starting to struggle to remember them all and I have to write them down somewhere straight away so that I don't forget about them. I am so grateful that he is ours.

(Gushing Mum post over)

My Birthday surprise!

It was my Birthday a couple of weeks ago. I didn't have anything planned for it all and thought that maybe that evening when Seth got home from work, we wold get a takeaway and watch a DVD or something. On the Saturday before my Birthday (which was on the Wednesday), Seth said that he felt bad that he hadn't planned to do anything for my Birthday so he would take the day off and we could spend the day together. I was really excited about this as there is nothing I love more than spending the day with my boys.

On the morning of my Birthday, I woke up to Caleb and Seth walking into the bedroom singing Happy Birthday to me and presenting me with cards and with a large Costa hot chocolate with a shot of hazelnut in it (I'm a bit of a hot chocolate addict and ever since we have been married, we have lived no more than 10 minutes away from the nearest Starbucks, Costa or Caffe Nero. Every Birthday since we have been married, Seth has gone out to buy me a hot chocolate with a shot of almond or hazelnut. He is such a good husband!). I opened cards from family and saved the one from him and Caleb until last. He then presented me with my present - two tickets to go and see Riverdance in Blackpool. That night! I was so excited and I may have cried a little (blame the pregnancy hormones!). Seth told me that as soon as we were ready, we were driving up to Buxton to drop Caleb off at Seth's sister's where he would be spending the night, then we would be driving to Blackpool for the show and staying there overnight. I was beyond excited. It's the 20th anniversary tour for Riverdance and I have wanted to see it for about 18 years - that's no exaggeration! Laura and I had Riverdance on DVD and we loved watching it, we pretty much knew every performance back to front. When I heard that they were touring, I mentioned to Seth that I would love to go and see it and he should get us tickets for my Birthday (I'm not a demanding wife at all, ha ha!) but that was way back in April and I didn't think anything more of it! After I finished my hot chocolate, we got ourselves ready and packed and headed off on our journey.

I love car journeys with Seth as it's always such a great opportunity to talk and I always find us talking about things we just wouldn't chat about in general at home so it's always lovely. Caleb is a very content passenger too, as long as there's a radio station playing that he likes and he likes the songs, then he is well away! When we were about an hour away from Laura's house (Seth's sister Laura, not my sister Laura. Surprisingly, it never ends up getting too confusing - Caleb calls Seth's sister Auntie Laura and mine just Laura so he can differentiate between the two of them when we're talking about them!), Caleb started to get a bit whiney. I turned around to see what was wrong and he promptly threw up EVERYWHERE! It freaked him out completely and we pulled over to clean him up and to sort everything out. It took a while because both he and the carseat were completely covered! I was worried that Caleb had picked up a bug and was unwell but once we had changed him, he sat in the front with me, supposedly to cuddle and take it easy while Seth cleaned up. But Caleb was then full of energy, laughing away and pretending to drive the car!

So we thought he probably just got a bit car sick from driving around windy roads (a couple of days later we realised that no, in fact it was a bug. Lots more sickness to deal with but that's another story!).

We dropped Caleb off at Laura's about an hour later than intended and then made our way to Blackpool. We ended up getting caught in crazy traffic because there had been an accident. Both Seth and my heart sank because we thought there was no way in the world that we would make it to Blackpool in time and that we would miss the show. I was pretty disappointed as I was so excited about seeing it, but I was so disappointed for Seth as well, as he had put so much effort into planning it all for me. By some miracle, once we were through the worst of the traffic, we had a clear run to Blackpool, managed to check into our Bed and Breakfast and made it to the opera house and to our seats just as the announcement was being made about turning off mobile phones! We were both pretty relieved as we thought there was no way in the world that we would make it.

The show was incredible! Seth seemed to enjoy it (yep - Irish dancing is definitely more my thing than his!) but I was just blown away by it, the dancers were just amazing and so talented. Seeing it live was even more amazing than I thought and hoped it would be, when it finished, I just wanted to see it all over again!

The next day on the way back to Laura's, we stopped off in Manchester and did a bit of shopping at the Trafford Centre. As much as I love having Caleb with us, it was so lovely to just have some time with Seth as we don't really get that much time together, just the two of us! It was such an incredible Birthday and I have such an amazing husband for planning it all for me.

In denial

Seth and I had been talking for a while about getting Caleb into a bed. Caleb is a really good sleeper and has been from when he was 8 weeks old. He tends to go down at night at around 7.15ish and will wake up the following morning at around 7.30am. He still fits in his cot so I was quite tempted to leave him in there for even longer! However, now did pretty much seem like the right time to start introducing him to a bed. We didn't know how long it would take him to get used to it and we wanted to make sure that he would be more or less settled in there before the baby comes along in 3 months.

Last Saturday we headed to Ikea to get Caleb's bed. Caleb loves Ikea and he was running around like a crazy thing the whole time. Nothing is more appealing to him than running "really fast!" and climbing all over furniture so he was in his element!

I don't think it really hit me that we were actually getting him the bed until we went down to the collection hall to get it. Seth picked up the mattress and Caleb went running over to Seth. He looked so tiny standing next to this mattress (note that we were only getting him a junior bed so it's still not as big as a single bed or anything!) and I started to well up there and then! Thank goodness no one other than Seth saw me, I would have been so mortified! Stupid hormones!

Seth put the bed together when we got home that night and we told Caleb to come into his bedroom as we had a surprise for him in there. He looked a little unsure at first but he followed us in there. When he saw the bed, he said, "new bed for Caleb!" excitedly and climbed in to try it out. As he snuggled under the duvet, he said, "comfy!". We were pretty happy with that reaction. When we put him to bed that night, he had the biggest grin on his face and kept saying, "new bed for Caleb!", it was the cutest thing! Seth and I go in and check on Caleb every night before we go to bed but we were so excited to go in that night to see how he would find him and he looked so adorable. And then I cried again! I'm in denial that Caleb is getting any older, I just want to freeze time. He's still my little baby and these milestones are just a reminder that he's growing up! Which is cool but not cool at the same time!

Caleb has been in his bed for almost a week now and he is still loving it. He gets excited every night when he goes to bed and still says, "new bed for Caleb!" each time and either "comfy" or "cosy" as he snuggles into position. He stays in bed and doesn't mess around (so far!) and when I go in to get him in the mornings, he is still on the bed, waiting for me to get him up. I don't think he's figured out that he can get out himself yet, although he has no trouble climbing up and down in the day time when he is playing on it! I must say that the novelty of the bed hasn't worn off for me and Seth either just yet..... I just love going in to check on him at night and can't wait to see what random position we will find him in! Seth has this theory that we have a DVD of our lives which records all of the best moments that we want to remember and for me, seeing Caleb asleep in his bed would definitely make it on to mine.

Sometimes I ACTUALLY make things.....

I meant to blog about this last winter but never got around to it and then it just wasn't relevant to blog about in the summer. Being as though the weather is changing and feeling more autumnal by the day I figured that now is as good a time as any to blog about it!

Last September, my friend Paige ran a women's activity one evening at church - arm knitting. I had never heard of it before and went along to support her more than actually intending to make anything. You see, I can't knit. Or sew. Or anything of the sort. When I was at school, I used to bribe a boy in my textiles class to do all of my sewing for me because I just couldn't sew properly at all. I was actually so rubbish at it that quite often my teacher wouldn't even let me near the sewing machines. Nice (Incidentally, this was the same teacher that wouldn't let me use the ovens in Home Ecomonics after I set off the smoke alarms trying to heat oil in a pan. I'm really not the most domesticated of people - good job I didn't let Seth know this until after we were married ;)).  However when I got to the activity, I was kind of fascinated by the idea and the scarves that Paige had already made looked pretty cool so thought I might as well at least give arm knitting a try. After all, how hard could it be?

Very hard. At least, it was for me that night - poor Paige had to come to my rescue on more than one occasion but I came away from that activity having made a scarf! I was actually pretty proud of myself. I quite liked the whole arm knitting thing so I have tried it on a couple of occasions since then and it's actually pretty easy ( there are a couple of really good youtube tutorials on it as well which helped!). I taught my Mum how to arm knit and sent one of the scarves to my niece on her mission in Salt Lake City.

If you like the look of them and fancy giving them a try, do it! They are so easy to make and they only take about an hour maximum (it's probably a lot quicker for someone who is used to making them!) and this is coming from me - trust me, if I am saying it is easy, you really can't go wrong.

The Fudge of Death

I quite like Sunday afternoons. Often Caleb will take a nap which means that I can do the same (by the way, apparently me mentioning my love of Sunday afternoon naps was what made many people think that I was pregnant - while they were right and I am indeed pregnant, I have always been a fan of Sunday afternoon naps! I guess being anemic and going to church in the mornings must really take it out of me ;)), or we will all play together. Quite often, Seth will decide that he is going to make fudge. He doesn't overly have that much of a sweet tooth but he loves fudge and anyone who knows me knows that I love all things sweet so I never complain.

On Sunday, he decided that he wold try his hand at making pineapple fudge. You see, we had pineapple juice in the fridge that needed to be used up and so Seth thought he would boil it down and add it to the fudge. I sat in the kitchen with him and kept him company while he was hard at work. It smelt pretty evil I have to say, but Seth just said to wait and see what the finished result would be like.

A couple of hours later, it had set and so we decided to try it. It was rock solid, more like toffee. We were both quite curious to see how it would taste, but being the lovely person I am, I let Seth have the first taste and then I tried some. When I asked him what he thought of it, his comment? "it tastes like feet!". I was so glad he was the first one to make a negative comment because seriously, it tasted so evil. EVIL! You know how London trains smell during rush hour on a hot summer's day? If you were to put that smell into a taste, then that's what it tasted like. We laughed so hard that I was actually crying. I really enjoyed making it with Seth (or rather, just chatting to him as he made it - I take no responsibility!) and I just love the fun we have together, even when our cooking results are disastrous! (does anyone remember the brownie incident?)