A matter of choice

The thing I miss the most I didn't even use in the UK. For years I had planned and pictured life with a baby and a big part of that picture was Mother and baby groups and various activities. Don't get me wrong I am not the "pushy mother" type - I'm just the organised mother type who likes a but of structure to my week!

When Leo was born I looked up all that was available, most things at the time he was too young for, and then at 6 months we moved. I could have gone to "Baby bounce and Rhyme time", Music groups, baby sing and sign, Mother and baby meets, baby sensory....the list is endless.

After hours of trawling the internet I eventually found one, yep just one baby group here.Jingle Jangles - a music group for 6months to 3 years. I joined in March and loved it, problem is at 35 euro a month for an hour a week now we have more month than money (more musing about that later!) it's an activity I cannot justify doing. It is a great group and I met sev…

Happy father's day Dadad! (in case you are wondering that's how Leo says it, I haven't got a typing problem!)
This year is AJ's second father's day, last year Leo was only a few weeks old. My present to him was a "Daddy Cool" t-shirt and a phot keyring with this picture in it. 
This year I was brave (well, I was talked into it by a friend) and let Leo loose with some paints and we created a card and a desk sign for him.
It was very successful actually, no paint was eaten, and we ended up not that covered in it, well apart from a couple of purple highlights in Leo's hair. 
Here is the finished result....

Today would have been my brother Scott's 34th birthday, I never met him as he was born on 18th June 1976 too early and only lived for 3 hours.

As a young child I moaned at my mother for the fact I was an only child and was the only one of my friends not to have a brother or sister, I can't imagine that must have been easy for her to hear. I was still young when she told me about Scott and some years later she had his birth certificate framed and displayed alongside our family photos so he is still a part of our family.

I told my Mum that everything happens for a reason (very philosophical of me at a young age!) and that had he survived I wouldn't be here. There would only be 16 months between us and as she didn't fall pregnant easily with me I think that she would have left a longer gap before really trying for number 2 (especially having one myself now!) I don't doubt that given the choice she would have had more than one child but the second child would have been…

This week's prompt from The Gallery is Motherhood. It's taken me a couple of days to think about this one and even still I don't feel there are the right words to describe what motherhood means to me, I could come up with many different words but I don't feel I would have done it justice.

Looking through my pictures, (and that takes a couple of days!) I was having a hard time deciding, until that is I came across this one.


During my pregnancy I had planned to breastfeed, I had a couple of bottles which I planned to use after a while with expressed milk, and had NO formula (hence the midnight dash to buy formula) but breast feeding didn't happen. I decided before Leo's birth that I wouldn't beat myself up about it if it wasn't working for us and apart from a slight hormonal wobble I didn't.

Obviously breast milk is the "ideal" as it's designed for the purpose but I have a healthy happy little boy who doesn't seem to be disadvantaged…

Ok, I'm going public... I have a love of really bad music, not just a bit rubbish but really bad. I even know the songs are bad and in the rare event someone agrees with me and says it's good I have to disagree with them an point out that it is actually terrible but for some reason I  still like it. AJ says I have a bad music gene in me!

So imagine my delight on seeing this post by Emily O over at Babyrambles I like three of her five, and I'd never heard of one! (to see her five click here Five songs I shouldn't like but do) So I thought I'd share with the world some of the songs I hate to love, what's quite depressing is the fact that I've been thinking about this for a couple of days - there's a lot of terrible music to choose from don'tcha know.

In no particular order

Buck Fizz, Making your Mind Up





I remember dancing around my front room to this at the time, I was only four though so it was cute rather than worrying, whenever I hear it it makes me…

Some weeks ago Tara at Sticky Fingers started a weekly photo showcase and with my love of pictures I though it would suit me down to the ground. 


Here in her words is what it's all about.....
The Gallery If you're new to The Gallery, here's the brief: I will give you a prompt, an idea, a notion and you go out and take a photograph using that prompt. Or just use a photo you already have. The prompt could be one word, an object, an idea, a phrase, anything, and you have to post a picture which you feel represents that prompt. Post it on your blog and write about it. That's it.

This week's theme is Still life and I thought with my weather obsession this would be perfect.


This was taken this afternoon, it's been about this temperature for a while and I love it! It's great to know that it's summer, and it will be summer for months. I know in England we all moan about the weather but I hated it, really hated it. I'd be so confused on a hot sunny day going to wo…

It's been a long week this week, one which started off by my discovery that there was more month than money left in the bank, not great two days before a party! Fortunately we were saved by a good friend of ours and cake ingredients, jelly and beer (well, if you're going to be outnumbered by toddlers you may as well have a drink or three!) were purchased and all was well.


The party went very well, the birthday boy seemed to enjoy himself and in fact all the kids seemed to play very nicely.

He ate loads of food, and ended up wearing lots too! Then happily crawled around playing with his friends and lots of new toys.

It was Sunday that it all went downhill, after a nice family afternoon round the pool Leo woke from a nap feeling very hot and was not  a happy bunny. I ended up being up most of Sunday night with him. He woke about every 10 - 20 minutes, despite being "calpol'ed up to his eyeballs and with a combination of air con and fan near his cot. Monday morning I took…