Month: July 2022

I was browsing an old forum I was a part of while pregnant with Max and the question came up of whether or not you kiss your little ones on the lips, and I thought that would be some great blogging material so here it is!

I kissed my mum and dad on the lips till I was in my late teens, I never thought anything of it, but then I just kind of stopped doing it… no particular reason. I guess now I feel like I have my own little family for those kisses if that makes sense? When it comes to Zack and Max I kiss them any chance I get – practically anywhere I get! I mean who could resist those cheeks? That slobbery mouth and baby breath? And never quite knowing if you’re going to get a kiss or someone trying to bite your nose just makes it even more fun, especially now there are TEETH involved!

So what about the other half? Well, J loves the hugs, and is happy to accept the kisses, but he really prefers the rough and tumble play with Zack compared to snuggling up together. I think that’s just dads and sons in general really though isn’t it? When it comes to Max though, he really loves the quiet cuddles with him. The look on his face when he’s with Max without realizing I’m watching – oh he is SO in love with those boys.

1. To be a famous horse-rider with a stud-farm. I knew EVERYTHING about horses even though I never had a lesson.
2. To be a vet. Same as above for pretty much most animals!
3. I wanted to be a singer. I loved singing in the school choir, unfortunately my lack of any sort of singing in the past 5 years has left my voice to be slightly lacking now to say the least.
4. An artist. I was pretty good in art class at school, top of the class in fact. I decided that I’d rather keep it as a hobby than try to do it for a day job. Alas, just like the singing, I’m out of practice.
5. A movie star – who wouldn’t want to get into cut-scenes with the cute kid from Free Willy (ok I was only like 10 there right? leave me alone!)?
6. I wanted to be an interior designer. I still think I’m pretty good at that sort of thing – I’d so love to be able to design my own house, if money was no object then wow I’d be in heaven!
7. The love of animals led to me wanting to become a marine biologist.
8. Then I realized I’d end up looking at plankton for the rest of my life so I thought biomedical sciences would be more fun – I was always fascinated by the things going on in my body every second just to keep me alive.
9. Then I went off at a tangent and wanted to be a psychologist.
10. After being at Uni for a while I decided that I still wanted to do science rather than psychology, so I switched degrees to Pharmacology and Physiology deciding that I wanted to go into research.
11. Once J had proposed to me I wanted to be a good wife for him, something I still struggle with today. Lets face it, we can’t be perfect ALL the time!
12. Once I had Zack all I wanted was to be a good mum to him, and I actually think I’m doing a pretty good job on that one, yay me!
13. Once I had Max all I wanted was to get some sleep again. We’re still working on that one…

… and that pretty much brings us up to date with things I want to be or do as I grow up, I’m sure there will be more to add to this list as the years go by!

Totally shattered as we’ve been busy rearranging our living room today. We got a gorgeous new sofa yesterday and realized that it didn’t *quite* fit in the initial place we’d been going to put it, cue a complete move around of everything in our living room!

I’ll have pics up at the weekend of our new and improved space, until then… can anyone tell me where do you store your kids’ toys!? We have sooo many and not a clue where to put them all. I’ve thinned them out as much as I can without ending up regretting it when Max is old enough to play with them. I just hate having them all out in our living room as we’ve not really got the place for it and they all get pulled out so blimmin quickly! Any (cheap/free) ideas?

Zack has started saying “What you guys doing?” when he has been left for more than about 2 seconds, cute but wearing after oh, the 50th time? Oooh, and Max has found his feet properly, like without me waving them in front of his face! Sooo cute.

I’m on my soapbox and I have something to say. There is NO WAY a 4 year old should be allowed to roam around ON HIS OWN all day long, and yet some people seem to think it’s completely fine – WTH?!

What’s set me off on this? Last night I had taken Zack along with me to the corner shop which is a good 5 minute walk with a toddler and on our way back I noticed a little boy outside our close (block of flats for those not used to the Scottish term!), shivering away and crying. I popped Zack inside with J and went back out to see what was the matter.

Now I’ll just point out now, this is not the first time I’ve seen this child out on his own unsupervised. Last summer I saw him countless times wandering by our flat on his own looking for the boys next door from us to play with. Oh, did I mention he was playing chicken on the road? You know… running in and out between the parked cars… sickening isn’t it?

These are the things I’ve been doing to try to not flop into a heap while I’m on my own with the boys:

1. get up and dressed by 10am at the latest (bearing in mind the boys often don’t wake til after 9am)
2. get out of the house for a walk every day
3. keep on top of the housework so it doesn’t get too much
4. call my mum
5. try to get them both down for a nap at the same time
6. blog my heart out (that can only really be done if/when o 5 happens)
7. try to eat properly and drink plenty of fluids – I get sooo grumpy if I miss out on a meal or get too thirsty
8. listen to music and have a sing and a dance
9. play “tickles on the bed” with Zack – that giggling is infectious
10. make sure both boys are somewhere safe and shut myself in the bedroom listening to a song or two on my iPod full blast.
11. call a friend, or see if someone can come over – if I need help I try to ask for it, otherwise no one knows I need it!
12. give Zack a huuuuuuge hug and tell him I love him – usually follows with “I luff you too mummy”…hearts? melting? yup!
13. and of course the thing that makes everything better, at least for a while… CHOCOLATE!

wow I can’t believe I actually managed to come up with 13! lol

FINALLY! He’s been asking to sit on it for a few weeks now but so far as refused to do anything in it, preferring to wait till he had his pull-up-nappy-thingys on before relieving himself. He got such a lot of cheers and praise from it, I hope this is the start of him actually taking an interest… it’d be nice to only have one set of nappies to deal with.

Oooh and there’s also the major thing of Max turning back into the enjoyable baby instead of the screamingbabywhowontlethisparentssleep that he had turned into. I’ve noticed him doing a few new things today – he’s constantly trying to pull himself forward, or upright, lifting his head forward, and he’s started purposefully reaching for things that catch his eye. So I guess the past 2 weeks of mayhem have been his brain developing enough for him to do these things. Go figure.

My parents were over today and will be tomorrow. Max has been an angel all day, and only up once last night at the usual time of 4amish for a feed, then back to sleep. The difference in my mood as a result of having more sleep is amazing. I started taking the meds yesterday and have noticed I’m fidgeting a lot more this evening… this happened last time too but sorted itself out again within a couple of weeks. I hope it does the same this time around too!

So… I’m going over to my parents house for the weekend for a break, and I realised this afternoon that I have almost no clean underwear to take with me, and just the crappy clothes left to wear. To top it off J is on his last pair of trousers as is Zack and Max is in his last sleepsuit! There’s gonna be a minimum of 3/4 loads to get done tomorrow/today if I don’t want to have to do it all on sunday! I also need to set a post to go up on saturday as I’m not sure how stable the net connection will be over at theirs. My trusty laptop will be coming with me though so I can always write any ideas I have for blogging while I’m there to copy and paste when I get home.

I’m sure I can last 2 days without the internet… it’s not like it’s going to kill me, right? RIGHT? I can manage, really I can. *hyperventilates*

I am so looking forward to the weekend though, and now I know Max seems to be back to normal sleep-wise I won’t worry about it being too much for J, so I can just sit back and relaaaax.

Ahh back in the day, when I was a student, I lived for the weekend. I loved going out to dance the night away. I was never one to drink much, but I was quite a social butterfly back then! I was one of those people who could walk into our student union and see at least 2 or three groups of people who I could happily party away the night with.

I loved going out and being social, meeting new people, having a laugh – all the things that a new student should do (and yes I studied as well!). If my student funds had allowed me I’d have gone out dancing every night of the week, although that would have been a bit detrimental to my studies I think…

Cut to now, and I very rarely get ‘out’ properly, most of my friends have now moved away as they were only here for uni, and the few people I still see semi-regularly either have kids of their own now and don’t get out themselves, or are sick of the partying that we used to love so much.