Welcome to the Baby Olympics!

If babies were athletes.......

Event one: the hiccup marathon

Points are scored for each time your baby gets hiccups in one day and extra points are awarded for the duration your baby can go before getting really really frustrated. 

Not to be confused with:

Event two: the sneezing 100 metres

Points are obtained in a similar way to the "hiccup marathon" - previous winners have been known to sneeze more than ten times in a 24 hour period! 

Event three: fill a nappy

Your baby could be a star Olympian if they can: 1) get wee on you when their nappy is being changed  2) get poopy on the wall during a nappy change or 3) soil and stain the inside of their clothing prior to the nappy change. 

Extra marks for traumatising your parent by wriggling poopy everywhere and spreading it up your little, chubby legs. 

Event four: throwing your toys out the pram

This event isn't about having a meltdown in public, it's all about losing things when mummy isn't looking. Socks can be wiggled off for beginner babies whilst the more advanced can unhook a favourite toy from the pram and drop it soundlessly without either parent or passers by noticing. 

Event five: the sleepathon

Not all events in the Baby Olympics involve being naughty! To win the sleepathon a baby must sleep a minimum of eight hours overnight with several naps taken during the day. Extra points for sleeping through your feed time and for not stirring when mummy drops a pan in the kitchen (and swears loudly.)

Event six: the smile, giggle and wriggle

A pro athlete can instantly cheer up a stressed mummy or daddy by pretending to appreciate the fake animal noises, grinning in a insanely cute way after throwing up or performing their "special trick" on cue for bored relatives. 

It's worth starting the training early with your baby to avoid a mummy meltdown on long days.

Special parent events:

Parents can also compete against their other halves by complaining about who has had the least sleep, who changed the dirtiest nappy, who the baby loves more and who picked out the cutest outfit for the baby to poo in. 

Parents can also compete against other parents in the "Smug Olympics" by boasting about long sleep times and super powers such as having an "early starter baby" (one who can sit/stand/crawl before day ten.) 

Could your baby win the Baby Olympics? What would be their "star event?"

Life and recovery after a cesarean birth!

Well, it's all change in my household! Joshua Sebastian Woodling was born on the 20th January 2014 at 9.24am by c-section.

The operation itself was actually quite relaxing and I was surprised how calm I felt during the whole process. Unfortunately, after a c-section you literally can't move for a few days which is super frustrating. You have to rely on other people to take care of your baby and make sure you rest for plenty of days. Not easy with a newborn!

The first two weeks have been challenging. He's been a really good baby but I've struggled with the recovery and then my husband caught a cold, then I caught the cold and now to top it all off we've been told that we have to move out of our rented house before the 31st of March!!!

Terrible timing so there have been a lot of tears. We have come to the difficult decision that we will need to re-home our two cats  - there aren't many properties that will let you have pets and one of our cats is very unpredictable around Joshua.

So, times are changing for us. I've got to go bath him now so I'll leave you with a few pictures.

Our first photo together - my little penguin!

All his clothes are too big as he is so little!

It may look like Grandma is strangling him but actually he was very content!

How to design a perfect nursery!!

Hello. I know I've been gone a while but I'm in the last few days of my pregnancy and I'm pretty uncomfortable. I thought you might like one last post so I can share my favourite room in the house - the baby's nursery!

First of all, I had to pick a colour scheme.

My choices were dictated by the green carpet that was already in the room so I kinda had to work around that! That meant that blue was out of the question so I took inspiration from one of the Mamas and Papas ranges and went for spring green, yellow, red and orange.

The cot mobile was one of the first things we bought (as it was in the sale!!) and then we found the cot bedding (also in the sale ) that seemed to match. I won't put in links to every item as, well, everything was in the sale and probably is no longer available! What can I say? I love a bargain!

Then I upcycled furniture I already had.

We had a pine storage chest which is now being used as a toy box (and happens to be the right height to double up as a changing table) and a pine chest of drawers which I painted to match the colour scheme!

I bought some cheap tester pots in the right colours and had some white paint left over from doing the walls.Then I simply painted each drawer in a different colour. The wall stickers were a bargain buy from Kiddicare in one of their many sales and will give the baby something to look at whilst I change him!

Wall stickers and free printable wall art really brightened up the room and are a good option if you rent a home like we do. Luckily, my landlord is super nice and doesn't have an issue with us decorating so 2 of the walls in the room are "pedal pusher" yellow!

We got the cot from Ikea and managed to get £10 off by timing it right and having an 'Ikea family card.' The mattress was from a website called Precious Little Ones who often have good prices on bedding and will give 5% off if you sign up for their emails.

Calming lighting is a must in a nursery as you don't want to turn on super bright lights in the middle of the night! The yellow, cloud pendant was from Ikea.

(The floating shelf in the background was another good buy from Ikea.)

I'm a big fan of anything retro so the other light in the room is an orange globe that I bought years ago when our local Habitat closed down. It sits on 2 vintage G Plan tables that I got for free from outside our local charity shop!

I wanted his room to be cosy so he has a big pile of blankets at the ready - some of which have been handmade by me, my mum and my friend.Handmade is just better!

I got his moses basket from Ebay - it's originally from Mothercare. He has 2 sleeping bags with beautiful, embroidered designs from Sainsburys - only £12 each which is a lot cheaper than the branded Grobags ones. A top tip is to wait for Sainsburys to do one of their '20% off' TU clothing weeks. Bargain!

The final purchase was a pair of blackout curtains which I bought online from Woolworths. I then bought some pom pom trim (about 4 metres) from Hobby Craft which I used as tie backs! It's all in the details.....

And finally, we bought some funky toys in matching colours.

The rattles were bought in the Kiddicare sale, Ewan the sheep is a best selling, musical and light up toy, and the dinosaur and teddy bear were hand crocheted by me! They were definitely a labour of love, I can tell you!

Well, I hope you like it! As I said, it's my favourite room in the house and I can't wait for my little baby to come out so he can give his seal of approval!

If you want any links to anything you see (from furniture to printable art to crochet patterns) then just leave me a comment and I'll do my best to reply.

Wish me luck!!!

Dream nursery interiors

Evening! I've been off sick today....pregnancy does not agree with me.

I know I'm supposed to be enjoying it but ugh....I just feel ill all the time! Sick, headachy, tired....and no one will give me any sympathy. "Just wait 'til it gets worse" they say. Thanks for that.

Anyway, the only thing I have been enjoying is planning how to turn the second bedroom into a nursery. I have an awkward, green carpet to work with, so I was thinking greys and yellows and greens as a theme. Mamas and Papas do a range called Timbuktales which pretty much sums up what I want!

I made a little collage to give you an idea of the products I'm lusting after:

And here is the room it all needs to fit in:

It's bigger than it looks! This is only half of it really.

The walls are all white but I'm planning to paper that wall behind the bed and maybe get new curtains.

What do you think? Will it work?!

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius...

Hi there! So there is a bit more of a reason as to why I've been so quiet recently.....

I've been busy growing a baby. I didn't want to say anything until I knew there was actually a baby in there this time around.

I've been feeling pretty tired so most evenings after work have been spent napping on the sofa, and this sudden heat wave has not helped at all! I'm out of the horrible nausea stage (felt like that would never end...) so now I'm just suffering with back ache and indigestion.

My clothes are getting quite tight so I've picked up a couple of cheap maxi dresses from Primark so far. In another couple of weeks I will have to invest in some maternity jeans etc but I'm putting it off until I'm a bit bigger. Maternity clothing is pretty horrible!!

I'll try and blog a bit more from now on as I've got plenty to talk about....although I will be heading to my mum's in north Wales on Monday for a much needed holiday!

Speak to you soon x