Busy as a Queen Bee

I haven't been around much these last few weeks... I have been busy, getting organised for a few new things, settling into the school routine, crafting it all leads to a very busy schedule and not much time for electronics.



So here, in a few snippets is what we have been up to. The Princess is now eating with gusto, her favourite snacks being watermelon and sweet potato. I have been sewing up a storm of toys for an up coming market, designing my own doll patterns, making clothes for the princess (that jacket is reversible, and made from scratch from my own pattern YAY!) I have been really getting into the swing of making Waldorf Dolls, the Prince got his very first school sticker on his second day of school for his behavior (beaming mumma here!!) and also again on his third and fourth. He was born ready for school this one, and comes home each day full of excitment, yet when asked what he has been up to says with disappointment... 'they still haven't taught me to read yet!'. Last of all, I have been working on my very first Waldorf doll for sale... the pink hair beauty. She still has some work to go, but is coming along nicely... this one is for a friends little girl!

So, hopefully now I am back in the swing of things... I hope you all had a fab weekend!

New Beginnings

My beautiful little Prince started school today for the very first time. Can you believe it? I certainly can't.

He was so excited and was ready to leave as soon as he was dressed at 7.30. 

7.30am : "Can we go now, can we go now, can we go now can we go now?"

7.45am : "what about now, what about now, what about now?"

8.00am "ugh, its taking so long can we go NOW??"

8.20am: ""Can we go now, can we go now, can we go now can we go now?"

We can?? YES!!!

Off to school we went. I stayed in his class for around half an hour and then had a coffee in the staff room with some other parents and staff. He has such a great little school who are very welcoming. I can't wait to pick him up and hear about all his new adventures as a school kid.

I can't believe I now have a child that goes to school!!

Yawn

image from {here}

Sleep. Its over rated right? RIGHT?? Ok, don't answer that.

For four and a half years I have been battling the sleep monster. And I am tired.

I could write a book on the things I have tried. Co-sleeping, new bed, new covers for said bed, diet restriction, books, movies, kiddy meditation, blah blah blah.

Do I just have to face that the prince just doesn't like to sleep? Will I have to battle with this for the rest of his childhood? At least when he was a baby he would settle after a feed in my arms, now that he is a walking, talking big small person his night wakings are painful. Four times last night, two hours of sleep gone. Two wakings is a good night.

I'm going mad, any help out there?

Jumping is Hilarious

I think I'll let the video do the talking!

Love the Simple Things

One of my favourite times of the day is when the prince and princess wake up. No matter in what order they wake up in they are both equally excited when the other wakes up and I LOVE it. Its like a need they have to be close to one another, even if it only lasts a few minutes. I wonder if it will last, as the princess is growing up so fast right now she hangs on every movement and sound that comes via her brother the prince. We will see I guess as time goes on, right now I will enjoy it for what it is, a simple daily pleasure to witness.

Have a nice weekend!

Almost four months...

Been a while again, I know. Its hard work this two children parenting gig. (But defiantly worth it.)!

Can you believe that I almost have a 4 month old? Wow, how fast time flies.

Ava is such a breath of girly-ness I don't think I realised how much I wanted a little girl until she came along.

She is smiling and giggling the days away, especially at Charlie, all he has to do is walk and she is in fits of giggles. She is sleeping from around 7.30 until 4.30 in the morning which is such a slice of heaven compared to the boy with who I still struggle on the sleep side of things.

Charlie is great as well, he has been doing private swimming lessons now for a few weeks and is my little fish. We have his interview for school next year tomorrow (scary!!), I'm tearing up just thinking about it.

I hope you are all well xx

Last Friday, we went to the local show with my very pregnant cousin and her son. We had such a great time and the boys where so well behaved. They even got a ride to 'real space', in a space simulator and have been telling anyone that would listen about landing in space. It was such a beautiful, sunny day, something which we have been lacking a lot of in the last few months, it was really nice to get out and about for the whole day outside. Ava was a gem as well and slept the entire time we were there.

As much as I love the wintery weather, I can't wait for a few summery days, heaven knows I need a little bit more vitamin sun in my life!

A Quick Update

Ah, life has been so hectic around here the last week or so. I have so much to catch up on with blog posts, I recieved a lovely gift in the mail the other day from a fellow blogger, I will be back for tomorrow to share it all  with you. For now, I will share some pictures I took of my two yesterday, I plan on getting some of them together when the 'no cheese' or 'no pictures' boy decide's that it is ok, the poor child has been photographed to the extreme his entire life I think he is a little over it! I hope you enjoy them :).

I took lots more, but for some reason blogger keeps turning them sideways when I upload them. You can check on the rest on my photobucket album here or on the breif slideshow to your right --->

We are off to the local show tomorrow, I hope you all have a lovely weekend. xx

A Change of Behavior

I've never been much a reward chart kind of mumma, we have a pretty relaxed and easy going household or maybe I should say we 'used' to have that kind of household.

Lately I feel as though I am butting my head against a brick wall with Charlie. People keep telling me its because of the new baby, but me, (being his mumma after all) I feel like he is slowly growing out of his 'little boy' persona and is testing the waters of life as a 'big kid'. 

Charlie has never really been a child to misbehave, and I'm not just saying that because I am his mumma, but seriously with this child I have been blessed with a very well behaved little boy.

Over the past few weeks though, times are a changing. While I wouldn't call it 'naughty behavior', he is certainly testing the limits. Ignoring people, when asked a simple question like 'could you pass me those socks' he launches into a completely different conversation and then laughs at the end of it and tells me that he was playing the 'ignoring game' with me (and still doesn't pass the socks, he just repeats the 'game'). That and his tea time habits (in the past few weeks I've gone from a near perfect eater, to tea time horror stories) are frustrating me the most.

I have tried my normal approach to helping him understand that sometimes his behavior is just not nice, call me soft but I am just not the growling type, I try to focus more on the positive behavior. But its just not working.

So I thought I would give a simple reward chart a go. I've only focused on four things that I feel are completely manageable for him, one being brushing his teeth which is a given anyway, just something included that he knows he can accomplish with limited fuss. Then there is listening, packing toys away and last but not least, eat dinner. I don't except him to be perfect in each area, but just done with a lot less fuss than is currently happening.

We have the local show coming up in two weeks, so I have made that the reward, first week he will get the show tickets, second week I will let him pick a show bag to buy. He doesn't have to fill all the areas up with stickers, he just has to have more stickers than white spaces by the end of the week, do you think that is a reasonable ask of a 4 year old?

A 'time out' area has been suggested by many of my friends, but this is just something that I don't feel will work with my parenting style. Since he was old enough our 'time out' has involved grabbing a book and jumping into bed to have some 'relax' or 'chill out' time (yes, exactly what I call them). Sometimes that involves me reading, sometimes it just involves Charlie by himself, it just depends what he wants. People tell me that I am spoiling him doing this, that he is not learning anything. I feel as though I am teaching him by doing this is that there are others ways than yelling/screaming or doing what ever to calm down, reading is relaxing for him and certainly calms him down and improves behavior. What do you think? What do you do in your own household?

Who knows if this will help us out or not, but at the moment I think its worth giving it a try. 

restful Weekend

Charlie spent the weekend just gone with his dad, and now that Ava is becoming more aware of her surroundings I really think that she missed him being around. As soon as he was home at eight o'clock this morning she only had eyes for him.I have a feeling when she starts moving around, a little boy I know is going to have a little shadow following him everywhere!

Charlie teaching Ava how to play the playstation

I feel so refreshed after the weekend, I don't think that I realised how much running around after a 4 year old and looking after a baby takes it out of me. Ava actually slept fantasically on Saturday night, she slept from 9.30 till 6.30 which gave me a much needed boost in the energy department. It was a once off I think because she had been awake for around five hours before that, but I'm still happy with that effort even if it only happens once in a blue moon. I hope you all had a great weekend. :)

Blog This: About ME

About ME. You'd think that I should know where to start, but I'm not really sure that I fully know who that is yet.

So to start simply, I'm Keshia. Known to my close family and friends as Keesh, known to my singing tutor as 'Quiche Lorraine', known by two little people as Mama.

I'm 24, but it seems so young actually writing that down. I've always felt like an older soul, even when I was a child so mostly I try and stay 'ageless'.

I'm the eldest of 'eight' children... and before you go whoaaa, no, I don't come from a family of parents that don't believe in contraception. My mum and dad broke up when I was a baby. Then they both went on to marry again, Mum having two children, Amy (19) & Daniel (17), Dad having the same, Mia (19, almost 20), Freya (almost 18). My step-dad left my mum and went on to have three more children, Kade (16), Holly (14) and Tayla (8). So, I'm the only one of 'me'. I don't think of any of my siblings as half or step siblings, to me, they are just my brothers and sisters. (did you get all of that, its a bit of a mouth full!!)

A strange fact about me, I'm one of those people that have never gotten over being scarred of the dark. I go all Ku-Foo Ninja like if I hear a bump in the night.

I've known my best friend for the same amount of years that I have been alive (minus a few hours). She has her butt planted over in Coventry in the United Kingdom at the moment and has been abroad with her mother since we were 14. I miss her terribly each and every day, so much that my body aches. The last time I seen her was July last year... and we ran a muck in our capital city. Ah sob, even good memories hurt sometimes.

I am a peoples person, I love finding out about people and what their stories are. Thats why in essence I started reading blogs. My blog, well its just a brain dump. I don't try to make it anything, just what ever comes out of my brain and through my fingers at that particular moment in time.

If I could defy one thing that has shaped me into the person that I am today, it would be the day I found out I was pregnant with my son. I was 19, and had been with my partner for two and a half months (we had been friends for much longer), initially, we thought that I would of been about 4-8 weeks pregnant and had both decided that we were going to terminate the pregnancy. We were both totally not ready to be parents. I had been sick for months on end leading up to the fateful day, and had actually had a pregnancy test done some months or so before hand 'just in-case'. It was a shock as well because I had been taking the contraceptive needle since I was 17.

My best friend took me up to the emergency ward one day, as I became really ill. The nurse there took one look at me and said I think your pregnant. I laughed.

I was.

Jase and I scheduled an ultra-sound for the following day. He picked me up from Uni, we went and sat in this gloomy waiting room. When my name was called I froze, once the ultra-sound was underway, I can remember starring at the screen thinking, why does this baby have fingers, it shouldn't have fingers. Then the words that the technician mouthed will for ever stay in my mind.

"From the measurements, it looks like your about 28 weeks, would you like to know what it is?"

I had one word circling my head, and it wasn't a nice one.

Turns out that that doctor had given me the wrong test results all those months earlier.

So from then I entered robot mode. I had 12 weeks to get ready for a baby. Heck, I didn't even have a stomach let alone trying to come to terms that there was a baby in there. That it was my baby was in there.

So it happened, I had a baby 14 weeks later. He became my baby and I his mother three days after that. (but that's a story for another time.) A baby that I now love with every ounce of my body and every inch of my soul.

So in essence, thats me. And a few things that have made and continue to make me, me.

Small Things

Small things make up the bigger picture. It’s the small things that we all take for granted that could lead our lives to feel a lot more fulfilled. For me, it’s the small things I encounter every day that make my life tick by, the sweet sweaty smell of my three year old when I wake up of a morning, the sound of his constant chatter to remind me that I am never alone, the sight of his big brown eyes when he learns something new, the taste of the pretend food that he cooks up during the day that I ‘eat’ for him, the touch of his hand as it interlocks through my own, they all make everyday wondrous no matter what else decides to come my way.