Nocturnal Awakenings!

Just lately I've not been sleeping.... There are 3 reasons for this and all 3 of them live in this house with me!! First things first...

Generally I'm not a night owl, I've always been an up with the larks kind of person - well that was until I had a baby and realised that actually 8am isn't early, 7am is normal and 6am isn't unheard of. So in light of the enforced wake up time i skip off to bed about 10pm every night, whether it's a school night or a weekend, I need my sleep. However other beings have other ideas!

So, I creep up our stairs at the bedtime hour. It's worth saying that it's virtually impossible to creep up our stairs, even our cat sounds like a hippo when he hops up them. I don't think they've been replaced since 1901 when the house was built and my size 8's aren't going to sound dainty. I get to the landing and that's when Isla rouses. "Gummee, gummeee, gummee". So then instead of hopping into bed I'm replacing her dummy and perhaps shushing her back off to sleep. Job done, into bed, bliss.

Well only for about an hour because then the snoring has started. I like to get a head start on the sleeping business because I know sooner or later I will have the husband next to me snoring like a goodun, and I'll have to shove him on his side and hiss at him to STOP SNORING! Ok, so that's him dealt with, back to sleep.....

*BOOOOF!!!* That's Bobcat just jumped on my chest, a little sniff in my face and then settling down for a kip on my legs. Some nights I am so comatose that I don't feel him jump on me but in my dreams I get this weighty sensation that wakes me up to him sitting right on top of me. I love Bobcat to bits and because I feel guilty that he gets a bit less attention in our house since Isla's arrival I let him sleep wherever he likes. However some nights he doesn't just stay asleep. Sometimes he likes to leap all over the bedside tables, run up and down the stairs and Meeeeeoooww as loudly as he can. You see, we don't have a cat flap, so he's reliant on us to let him out and this is how he gets our attention.

So, there's a few good reasons that I'm not sleeping so good at the moment, but none of them are going anywhere and for that I'm glad! :-)

Gorgeous Wall Stickers

I LOVE wall stickers. I think they're great for transforming a room and a few weeks after getting Isla home from hospital I finished off her bedroom with these gorgeous wall stickers from Wee Gallery:

The designs are visually appealing for babies as they are high contrast patterns. I chose the woodland graphics above for Isla's room. She loved just looking at the animals at first and now she's talking she loves to name them and say "night-night" to them all at bedtime. I think they will help with her imagination and they're a break from the usual nursery decor. We love Isla's woodland!

Tea and Crafting

So, I went to my knitting class and it was great! A real nice change to my usual weekday evenings, where I do the harem scarem commute from London to Surrey, making a dash so I don't miss bathtime and bedtime stories. On Tuesday night Daddy took over and gave me a break from The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

The class is run by Jane Gois and I found her site Tea and Crafting when I did a google search for knitting lessons. The site itself looked really inviting and friendly and that turned out to be the case on the night too. I spent 3 hours in the company of Jane and 5 other budding knitters. We were supplied with bamboo needles, a ball of wool, some printed notes and a lovely brew and muffin! Jane was very patient with us and showed us the ropes on casting on and off, plain, purl, moss stitches and chatted about other knitting related things. Once we got started we were all really into it and picked it up quickly. Memories of knitting with my Nan came back to me. She would always cast on for me and make all the first stitches and I'd take it from there. Now I can make all my own stitches, although I might still be calling on her to sort out my mistakes when I go wrong! It takes a lot of concentration at first but Jane told us that she had on occasion gone to the cinema and done her knitting in the dark, showing that you don't need to watch it all the time once you're experienced.

Just to prove the popularity of the Tea and Crafting a couple of the other girls had already done some of the other courses that Jane runs, and now I've completed this session I'd love to try crochet next. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and would recommend it to anyone who's thinking of trying something new or is a bit rusty and wants a refresher. I'm no expert but I think I might start off simple and knit squares to make a blanket, I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Photo above showing my efforts on Tuesday!

Knit One, Purl One

As mentioned in my previous post Seize the days – live life to the full! I’m off to a knitting class and I just remembered this morning that it’s TONIGHT!! Even though I write everything down in my diary I still can’t keep a handle on what I’m doing from one day to the next (bit scary considering I’m a project manager by profession....).
Anyway, the knitting class. I’m not sure what I’m expecting but my intentions when I signed up for it were to learn a new skill. I got obsessed with learning new skills after watching the BBC programme Survivors whereby a virus hits Earth and most of the population are wiped out, apart from a few social misfits who were immune. Obviously it’s a rather morbid thing to happen but it got me thinking if we had to survive it would be good to have skills that you could use to trade with other people until the world got back on its feet. My version of the TV programme would obviously be a bit more idealistic than what happened in the show, people seemed to prefer going round with guns and making threats to get all the things they needed to survive!! In my world it would work something like this: I would knit someone a jumper in exchange for 3 months supply of eggs, or a haircut – sound like quite fair trades to me!
I’ve done a bit of knitting before - well sort of! My Nan would teach me every now and then when I was younger as I would insist I wanted to learn. I would start the obligatory scarf (because this is all you can think of knitting when you’re about 8 years old!), get about 20 rows into it and see all the holes where I’d dropped stitches, get frustrated and give up. So tonight I’m hoping that with age on my side I won’t give up after a few hours, and perhaps if I set my sights on something a bit more exciting than a scarf I might find it an inspiring past time that I can in turn pass on to my little girl. I'm not sure I'll be skilled enough to dress the survivors of a Pandemic head to toe in knitted fashions but I'll do my best! More tomorrow.....

photo by Flickr user The Loopweaver

Words

I love how Isla has become a sponge for words now. She seems to soak them up and it doesn't take her long to remember and use them. Although we are very fixated on 'eyes' and 'nose' (and of course 'gummee'!) at the moment. She doesn't just say them though, she likes to demonstrate that she knows exactly where they are and she does this by poking my eye out, or scratching the end of my nose! In the lucky event that I have my glasses on instead she says 'glatches' which I find funny and sweet everytime.

I'm loving that we're starting to be able to communicate. I can say things to her and I'm pretty sure that she understands about 50% of the time. However the other 50% of the time she communicates back by whining or saying 'No'. She rarely says yes. I say, "are you going to have a nice day today?" and the answer is "No". She usually says it followed by a little smirk as if she knows that she's being funny!

My current favourite Isla expression is "Owwww Nooooo" used when she drops something or falls over and sounding rather like Big Mo from Eastenders! The other one which I'm not quite sure about is when she's had a poo (sorry!) she says "bum". This is my cue to change her nappy and I'm very pleased that she is able to tell me this (although the smell is generally a give away!), but I've not been out and about with her yet when she's shouted "BUM" so not sure how I'll feel about it till then.

I'm enjoying this stage of her development immensely although I'm sure that with the growing vocab there will be some embarrassment on my part when she says words that I might not be quite so happy to hear in public!!

p/hop 2nd Birthday

Seize the Days - live life to the full!

I'm always very conscious of the limited time we spend on this earth and I like to make the best use of my time whenever I can. That's why the Lonely Planet book 132 Seize the Days really appealed to me. We're always complaining in this country about the lack of bank holidays we get in the UK, but I bet most of us don't make the best of the time off that we do have every year anyway. This book outlines that in fact there are 132 days in the year that we can please ourselves (comprised of 52 weekends, 8 bank holidays and minimum of 20 days statutory annual paid leave).

This book gives excellent ideas on how best to use your time. It makes you realise that there are small amounts of time that you may waste, like your work lunch hour - most people spend it eating lunch at their desks, when there could be interesting things going on nearby or nice walks to take.

I also subscribe to the email flyer (Seize the Days) that compliments the book and arrives in my inbox every week. It gives information about various fun and inspiring things to do that week up and down the country, including festivals (food - yum!, music) and exhibitions (art, historical) and all sorts of other strange things like cheese rolling in Gloucestershire!

Obviously I realise that us mums are time poor and most of us have to cram a lot into our busy lives but it's worth thinking every now and again that life is too short to spend it doing housework and boring stuff, getting out with your family creates wonderful memories! I'm going to make an effort to seize my days by taking a walk out in Kensington Gardens in my lunch hour, it's, beautiful, 5 minutes away and really there is no excuse not to! I'm also taking a knitting lesson (how old am I!?) in a couple of weeks, so I hope to fill some of my spare time clacking my needles on the train to work - more on the knitting lesson in a future post.

Photo by Flickr user Xavier Donat