Christopher's 1st Birthday!

Well this is laaaaate! (3 weeks or so late!) But firstly I want to thank everyone who commented on my previous post, it means SO much that each of you took the time to respond, here or elsewhere, and made me feel a little more normal, a little less horrid-mum-ish, and for helping me think of solutions and ways to control my temper. Since the last post I have been much more restrained!!

Anyway! Christopher's 1st birthday party. We decided to have a party at Jonathan's parents house again like we did for Robert's 1st birthday (aren't they great?!! They cleaned and everything!!) And this time set out a buffet requiring much less preparation. No sandwiches, or cocktail stick foods, more DIY stuff like plates of ham, plates of cheese, bowl of salad, platter of bread, etc.

I digress! We got up early (as is the norm in this household!), and after the birthday boy and his brother had some milk (Can't believe I've been tandem feeding for over ONE YEAR now!!), we went downstairs, and got Christopher's presents out! The presents from us were a modest amount, Robert chose a happy days (I think that's what it's called??!) school toy to give Christopher, and we got him a walk-along lion clacker toy, a wooden clown ring stacker (a firm favourite already!!!) and a lovely little soft doll which has since been called Lewis.



The birthday boy enjoyed opening them, although he got a lot of help from his big brother and did surprisingly seem keener on the toys than the paper - I was expecting him to be focused on the paper!!

















Robert was very keen to help open the presents, and also to help play with them! We did have to impose a rule that Christopher got to play with a toy first and then Robert could play with them afterwards. I did feel quite bad for him as the day wore on!

I had made Christopher's cake the day before. Unfortunately, the travel over and the many MANY times I had to roll out the icing before it would stop sticking to the work surface, or looking too white from the excess icing sugar, helped make a long crack in the icing, and the icing did seem to settle somewhat, and pool down by the bottom of the cake by the time it was ready to serve!





But I was impressed for my first attempt at a shaped birthday cake!! And it was delicious - I made a special effort to find a vegan cake recipe for family members, and having had it, it is now my FAVOURITE sponge recipe!! I've made it several times since, and it is especially delicious made into cupcakes with buttercream frosting on. Yum! The cake went down very well with the family and friends who made it over :)





Christopher got such a lot of presents, he was a very lucky boy! And Robert has enjoyed playing with them too, although now they are getting a bit bored with them, so might have to put the majority of them away and swap them out for some of Robert's cars again haha!

He got a peg puzzle, clothes, art things (which Robert has used, Christopher hasn't yet.. I'm not brave enough!!), a ride on toy, a wooden noah's ark (another favourite!!), books, a few nice chunky car/truck toys, a dog puppet, and other bits and pieces, as well as what we got him.







By the end of the day, we were exhausted! Then we had to help tidy up the house, pack up the leftover food (we ate leftover party food for about 3 days afterwards!!!), get the kids bathed and dressed for bed, and then leave as it was already past the boys' bedtime! He had such a good day though, with plenty of kids to play with, and plenty of adults too! But at the same time, it's made me realise why we didn't do a 2nd birthday party for Robert, and why he won't be getting an official 3rd birthday party as well! Sooo stressful but it was lovely to see everyone!

My baby is ONE!!!

Oh my goodness, I can't believe this time last year I was in hospital with my baby boy still in SCBU! My baby boy turned one year old on Monday (23rd November), and I can't believe how quick it's gone, and also how much he's grown and developed into his own little person!

My baby boy has gone from this...



to this!



He is a cheeky, gorgeous, and wonderful little boy I can't believe I get to call mine! And I can't imagine him not being mine now, either. I'm so glad he's in my life. I don't know what I would do if I had to go to work and leave my baby most of the day even a few days a week!

We had his birthday party on Sunday, and he had so much fun! I'm so pleased that so many people could come, and it was wonderful for me to see just how much he is loved and how much people care about him!

Here were some of the decorations :)







He enjoyed playing with Bethany as usual. At one point I saw him walking after her, she was crawling, sucking on her dummy, he spotted it and kept bending down to get it out of her mouth, only to have her crawling along again! So he kept stooping down, then having to get up and chase her again! Bethany's parents, Paul and Vikki, gave Robert some balloons with little lights in so they glowed, which Robert loved, and still does! He spent ages at the party grasping both balloons by the knot, and walking around with them! He seems to like the knots on balloons, sometimes sucking on them, I guess they must remind him of something... ;) In fact we had to take the balloons off him so we could get started on his presents! He seemed intent on clutching hold of them the whole time!





He had so many cards and presents, he is such a lucky boy :) He did get a bit fidgetty for his card and present opening, it took quite a while and in the end I did have to rush through them a bit!















The emotional bit for me was of course the cake, I sat with Robert on my lap and Jonathan brought in the cake, and I was unable to sing happy birthday to him, because I was on the verge of tears! The cake itself turned out better than I thought it might in the end! It was quite painstaking to get the icing on the 1 as it was runny icing that hardened in the fridge, and I didn't want the blue of the 1 to mix with the white on the base.











I got lots of lovely comments about the cake, and I think a few people wanted the recipe :) It was delicious, and it's the sort of cake where you just wanna make another one to scoff by yourself, it's so moreish! Robert enjoyed the cake too, infact, he ate all of Barbara's cake (I thought Barbara was helping him eat his own cake, but no, it was hers!!!)













Hehehe!

He had such a good time, walking around, stealing food off of people's plates!

On Monday, his actual birthday, we went down to the embankment and fed the swans and ducks (and seagulls) with the leftover sandwiches, as they had gone a bit crusty and hard having been out all day!

We took him in his new trike, although he seems to enjoy pushing it than being pushed in it ;)















I was absolutely knackered from all the preparation, and then the party itself!

My period was in full swing by the time we were sorting everything out the day before, and while I was shopping for the party with my father-in-law, it was at that horrid icky stage where it just ACHED so painfully down below, I would have normally been curled up in bed with a book and a hot water bottle instead of trudging around tesco!!!

I am a little sad that I was not pregnant by the time Robert was 1, although I guess whatever age Robert will be when he does finally get a little brother or sister will be a good one, I shall just have to wait and see what happens! I hope it's soon though, I'd rather keep their birthdays apart by at least a few weeks, so I hope I get pregnant this cycle or next! Jonathan and I were a little lazy last month, I guess we could have tried harder, so maybe this month if we're not so lazy we will be lucky. Or maybe that weirdness with my spotting etc was due to an early miscarriage?? No way to know of course, I never got a positive result back!

I hope you're all well anyway! Robert's had a chest infection, and other colds etc. He's had a runny nose for about a month now, to varying degrees, then his chest infection in the middle of it!

Thanks for reading! :)

1st birthday preparations!

I can't believe that NEXT MONTH my baby will be ONE! I can't wait! Jonathan and I have started making preparations for it, and it's so exciting! We never bother with birthday parties for us, but I'm so excited to do Robert's :) We have come up with an invitation list. We initially did 3 separate lists, a definites list (close family and friends) followed by a secondary list (some furthur out family, like Robert's great-aunts and uncles, and some of my step family who we are close to), followed by a tertiary list (a few internet friends), but in the end we decided to just go for the definites list. Including Jonathan, Robert and I, there will be 24 people, 4 of which will be children. If we had invited the secondary and tertiary lists too there would have been 50 people had all accepted! (but the percentage of children would have been higher! As the tertiary list had 7 children in it alone out of 3 families!)

We have decided to host his party at Jonathan's parents house, as they have a very large bungalow, with 4 rooms people can go in, including a large lounge, a large kitchen, a dining room and a garden room. We have asked Jonathan's parents and they seem really chuffed :) I was expecting a more reserved "ok" but no, they seem excited about it! Hehe! They also have plenty of parking space. The only possible problem will be people locating it ;) So maps and directions are a must I think, as well as balloons at the end of the drive, and possibly the end of the roads leading up to it! They live in a small village just south of Northampton, and their house is at the top of a long drive off the road which they are part of, if that makes sense!!

Last night I made some invitation cards, the card parts anyhow, with a nice graphic I made on the front, what needs to be done now is the inside, which I'll print on ordinary paper and stick inside the card (It'll look more posh that way, and it'll make sure that the cards don't get mucked up in the printer if I put them the wrong way in or whatever! :) I'm so pleased with them already, the image I made looks great (if I do say so myself! LOL!), and I can't wait to send them out.

I can't wait to get baking a cake for Robert's party, although I will have to do a test run as I'm not too great at cakes I don't think! And then think how to decorate it, and then think about house decorations!

We are going to have it the day before Robert's birthday, on Sunday 22nd November. It's my nephew's birthday on Saturday 28th November so they're having a party for him then, so we're having Robert's the weekend before. We will go over to Jonathan's parents on the Saturday so we can spend the day doing party preparations, and then sleep over, and put it all together in the morning while they're at chapel.

This weekend we went to my parents in Kent, and we also found the time to pop in on my grandparents, as they have never met Robert before, and as they are quite old, it was very high priority as they might not live much longer (my Grandad is 93 this year I think, and my nan is 90 in a couple of weeks). They are both very frail physically, my grandad has cataracts and is very thin and frail, and my nan has muscle wastage. But seeing them with Robert was lovely! My nan was so animated and energetic (!), holding his hands and "dancing" with him. It really was lovely to see them like that. They did their usual trick of trying to force biscuits, cakes and money on us (!). They absolutely loved him :) We got lots of photos of them with him, although my nan insisted on having her headscarf on for photos of the three of them as she thought her hair looked dreadful (lol, I thought it looked great considering she's 90 years old!). I can't wait for Jonathan to sort them out.

We also have some good photos of Robert at Mum's house. She's really doing well at getting it all sorted, the lounge and kitchen look great, and they told us all about their plans for the back garden, which sounds lovely! A big decked area, a pond in one corner of the lawned area with a rockery opposite and lovely flower beds.

Robert was SO funny with the dogs! He absolutely LOVES animals, although the feeling isn't always mutual! The dogs are very warey of him, and would growl whenever he came too close, but luckily Dave had a brainwave and got one of the dogs' balls for Robert to hold, and although he's a bit young to get the concept of throwing it for them it did make them less warey of him! Robert was so funny with them though! At one point he was standing up in the gap between two chairs, and one of the dogs wanted to get past, so they nudged their way past him, and Robert just giggled away as it was like they were tickling his tummy! And another time, he was sitting playing with a ball of wool poking out of a bag, and Lady heard it rustle, and came along, sniffed his hand, and then went away again! Robert found this hilarious too and giggled away. It was so cute! He laughed so much at the dogs yesterday!

The other week, Jonathan spilt half a glass of juice all over his keyboard, so he unplugged it and swapped it for another one. The sticky keyboard he has decided to donate to Robert to play with, as Robert LOVES bashing away on keyboards!




As you can see he was highly excited about getting to play on a keyboard! Lol! Bless my little cheeky chappy! I love him so much!