We're Home!

921 holiday photos. NINE HUNDRED AND TWENTY ONE!!!! And I made a point to delete the duffers as we went along... Crikey.

So we're home and rested, not in a night time sleepy way obviously (thanks for that Bow) but certainly in a we've had lots of fresh air and sun and nobody's had to do a load of washing or peel a vegetable in 10 days kind of way. What a luxury time, sun and good food is hey?! I know it's been a good holiday when I'm trying to make a viable plan in my head for us all to sell our worldly possessions and go live in a beach commune Leonardo Dicaprio The Beach style... 

Not today... Today I will try to dig myself out from the mountain of washing and guiltlessly allow Euna a whole day of CBeebies and pj wearing! 

Until I can get some of the 921 (!!!!!!!) photos to you... Here's a couple of my favourite little rug-rat... <3

Colchester Zoo!

These are pictures from before we left... Steve had a automobile malfunction that stopped him going to work and so we took advantage of the impromptu annual leave, unexpected sun and our Colchester Zoo Gold Cards and took a couple of hours out the house. 

I find it wonderful that with no encouragement children do just love the "good" stuff in life. They love being outside. They are fascinated by animals. The fresh air makes for good naps, which makes for good moods and better times later on. They're happiest in the sunshine, you can almost see those anti-depressant vitamins seeping in to the skin and slapping a smile of their (and everyone else's) faces! 

Essentially kids just know what's best for everyone. I say... Hunched over my laptop... When did I unlearn that? Just another way having small people around the place keeps me in-check... I'm off to relearn some of that!   

Euna... Lately...

I hope no one reads the total imbalance of images as any favouritism of these children... But seriously... Two year olds are HARD to photograph. Especially on your own. If Steve's around to leap up and down behind me singing Raa Raa The Noisy Lion theme tune it's remotely easier, but too many weekends are slipping by without the opportunity to arising to get a good snap. 

We're on holiday right now and hopefully I'm sticking to my promise to myself to snap more of her and come back with some gems to share... Meanwhile... Here she is, in her most photographic state... Post nap zone out watching the goings on in the Jingly Jangly Jungle... 

Worst Bit About Being a Grown Up? Being a Grown Up.

Euna is regressing at night time... For no apparent reason she is up screaming blue murder at all hours and driving me insane. When Bow is finally starting to do half decent night stretches and she's started doing this I am having conversations with myself at 3:00am that start with "why do my children hate me?" Lots of counting the ten. Lots of gritting of teeth when I just want to shout "JUST GOOOOOO TO BLOOOOOODY SLEEEEEEEP!"

And I'm thinking; do you know what's rubbish about being a parent? The fact that you ALWAYS have to be the grown up. Always. You always have to take the moral high ground. You always have to be the first to set a calm tone when everybody's getting stressed out. You always have to call bedtime. You always have to be the one thinking ahead and planning and putting a practical spin on things. You can't ever say "no you are". You're far too often having to be mature, patient, forward-thinking, reasonable, polite... 

The thing is when my parents had to be all those things I was totally convinced they loved being like that, especially my mum, and that it would be about ten lifetimes before I would have to be like that. It wasn't ten lifetimes, I think it was about ten minutes. And actually I'm not that different a person. Nothing magical happened to transform me in to he imagined mythical version of a grown up I had in my head.

So you just have to act like a grown up all the time. Which is a bit like choosing to be the boring person with a cake allergy at a birthday party. And that birthday party is on for about 12-14 hours a day, every day.

Maybe that's why it's so common to feel like you're a bit of a bore sometimes when you're a parent? I'm not though! I promise! Infact to prove it, because I kind of feel like I need to after reading this post back, we're off on our holidays today and I promise to do at least a few thoroughly irresponsible things! :D Bon voyage! Or asfalés taxídi as Google tells me it is in Greek! 

See you in ten days! 

WEANING!

He's eating! Steve had the day off work on account of a broken down car so we had an impromptu family dinner and Bow just decided to get involved! Yey!

Feels like a proper initiation in to the family. The real beginning of life as a family of four. At the table. Feels pretty surreal sometimes... Like... They seriously let ANYONE have kids?! 

Anyway we're taking the same "baby led weaning" approach we chose with Euna... Stock pile the surface spray and dishcloths! This s&%$ can get messy! ;)

Maternity Snaps and Work Avoidance...

I am in full blown work avoidance mode... For once both babies are napping together and yet I'm avoiding editing. Instead I'm Pinterest-ing ideas for up-cycling a sideboard I just found in a charity shop this morning. I took 4 bin liners of old clothes in and came out with a shelving unit for by our front door and I'd reserved a huge art-deco-ish sideboard. Not the most successful attempt to declutter! :D 

Anyway here's a little sample of what I've been up to work wise recently!

Life's a Beach... Simply.

I'm struggling to start this post. At the forefront of my mind is how we're slowing our weekends down. Planning one activity or less for the day and leaving the rest of it to pottering, tea, colouring and sorting through random clutter in the utility room. All good soul-soothing stuff. Like vegetable soup for my stress levels. Also I'm cutting down on multi-tasking as much as possible and what an easy habit that is to break! A skill I've always prided myself in suddenly seems so masochistic and not really that productive. I start eight things at once, do none of them well, get stressed and then generally blame other people that I'm overwhelmed. 

I guess I'm struggling to write this post because I have nothing new to say on the matter... Suffice to say I'm feeling pretty cleansed for the change of pace. It's also making me want to do a mass declutter around the house. Feeling like maybe everything will feel simplified when our stuff is... Maybe.

Anyway... Doesn't get much simpler than sandwiches at the beach! Happy belated May Day Bank Holidays! (Have no idea why these pictures look so dark when upload to Blogger?!)

Happy Half Year Sweet Boy!

HAPPY 6 MONTHS BOW-BOW! 

Thank you for spending your first half a year being just the sweetest little boy we ever could've imagined. You smile, you say "wahwahwah", you roll with intention, you grab the floor in front of you and are making very eager attempts to wriggle forward, you laugh at Euna when she jumps, you tolerate some fairly sub optimal parenting when her two-ness kicks in, you go to sleep so easily and even though you don't stay asleep all that often we bloody love you. Sweet boy <3 

In the spirit of us slowing things down recently here's some snaps of the sprogs around the home... :)

Slow Living, Slow Buying, More Happy...

I have a friend called Jane and she has a small, turquoise, ceramic butterfly hanging off the handle of her mugs cupboard in her kitchen. We had a conversation once about it and she told how she loves to have small but special things around the home and happy that little butterfly makes her. Then the other day I watched an old programme with Kevin McCloud and he was making shed. At the end he says how "proud" he is that it took him 6 months to build his shed. Initially, in my head, I go "6 MONTHS! SO LONG!" Then I think about it, I think about how this special shed is beautiful and unique and a sum of real craftsmanship. It's like Jane's butterfly, it's special.

I've been thinking a lot recently about slower living, slower parenting, allowing some nothing about the place... Just in general taking life a little bit slower.

And I think I'm going to start expanding that... Slower accumulating of stuff and things. If you remember the cot I up-cycled for Bow's nursery? I can honestly say that that cot makes me happy every single time I see it. Every single time I see it I love it and mentally high five myself for not succumbing to the urge to hurl it over the garden wall and ceremonially burn it on the village green when the 382628293947238th fly dive bombed the wet paint and stuck to my flawless gloss finish thus ensuing a clumsy, thumby rescue mission leaving horrible finger print marks.

I think that's why Pinterest makes me happy. Almost every picture looks like something that someone has put some real love in to it. Then I imagine how much happier I'd be if my house was full of things like that. Things that make me feel like Bow's cot does. So I'm slowing down the buying and upping the crafting in effort to surround us by more special things.

Exhibit A... The fruits of our wild flower picking this week... These stayed fresh for a few days and gave me a little bit of happy every time I saw them :D