Mad hatters.

This week we’ll be mostly drinking tea.

My littlesis presented crazypixie with a beautiful wooden tea set at the weekend. I love it, it’s carved from sustainable wood, there are little cups and saucers, a teapot, sugar bowl and jug. There are also wooden sugar cubes, tea bags and spoons, all of which I’ve put away for now as I have had enough of medical emergencies for a while.

So we spent the morning tea partying. Well mummy got all nostalgic and enthusiastic (a scary combination)and starting pouring imaginary cups of tea for lambkin and bear, while crazypixie tried to figure out how the pieces of this new puzzle fit together. Eventually the pixie gave in and quickly got the hang of imaginary tea.

We soon discovered that the tea party game is even more fun when wearing silly hats. Yes, the beloved bag of hats was called into service and we all looked fabulously ridiculous (no photo, too busy playing). Oh I so need to get out more!

Then the postman arrived…..

…….with a huge box of tea!

What excellent timing.

A few weeks ago my favouritest tea company in the world (too much Pooh, I know) was offering free tea on Facebook. So, of course ,I signed up!!

And today the box arrived. In it were 9 types of teas and infusions.

I think I’ll have my big girl friends around for a tea party all of our own.

And maybe I’ll make them wear hats.

Owee!

This week my running, dancing, climbing crazypixie was stopped in her tracks. Three days ago she tripped, an occupational hazard for a wired 17 month old, and she must have landed awkwardly because there was much hysterics.

After the initial cuddle I thought she was just being a little melodramatic with her ‘owees.’ Closer inspection showed that her foot had swelled a lot and she couldn’t bear for me to touch it nor could she put any weight on it.

Feck!

The thought of tending to my wounded pixie and my elfin boobie monster in an over packed waiting room (presumably rife with swine flu) as each of my smallies in turn became hungry and overtired during a 5 hour wait was more than I could bear. So I threw some nappies, emergency snacks, toys and drinks in a bag, phoned himself to let him know what was going on, lifted the two into their car seats and headed for the nearest take-out-a-mortgage-to-pay-for-this Swift Clinic. At the car park I bunged (that should read ‘lovingly placed’) crazypixie into her buggy and threw (ditto) the tiny one into a sling.
Up in the lift and to reception. Wow! No queue – no one else in front of us at all, comfy chairs and loads of toys. We were called in a few minutes. Crazypixie attached herself firmly to me as the nurse and doctor came to check her out. She was such a brave girl and when each professional was finished and leaving, through her tears crazypixie would smile, say ‘Bye’ and blow them a kiss. They were charmed and weren’t to know that ‘Bye’ is pixie speak for ‘go away’.
Going for an x-ray proved complicated, as tinyelf was strapped to me getting fretty and crazypixie was snuggled up to me. We couldn’t bring tinyelf into the x ray room and I wasn’t keen on extricating myself from either of them. Enter himself on his white steed (well, shanks mare anyway).

An hour and a small fortune later we were home. Nothing broken, thankfully.

So she’s been on painkillers and confined to the couch. We’ve been colouring, reading, playing with her animals, picnicking, dressing and undressing her sister and doing anything to keep her amused while keeping her owee elevated.

Cue DVD’s.

We looked at a few David Attenborough’s first (nerdy parents, the poor child) until I discovered a Pooh DVD I had bought to amuse mrman when he was younger.

She loves it.

I love it.

My mum and I cried at it!

We’ve watched it 5 times in 2 days.

Anyhoo, she seems to be on the mend. She can hobble about a little and has rediscovered crawling. Soon she’ll be back having her own adventures and we can mothball Pooh, Tigger and the rest of the Hundred Acre Wood until the next period of confinement.

Under House Arrest

It should come as no surprise to us really that our girls are strong willed. With parents like us what did we expect?

This week tinyelf has decided that she would rather not travel by car. She voices her opinion by turning red and screaming at the top of her lungs to such an extent that mummy has to throw on the hazards lights, stop in traffic and haul her out before she makes herself sick or has a seizure. This has happened 9 times (and on three separate trips) in the last two days and no amount of soothing, feeding, winding, changing or dangling of toys seems to make a blind bit of difference. She starts the journey quite happily but obviously runs out of patience about 5 minutes in. When she’s taken out of her seat she’s all smiles and cooing, as if to say, ‘that’s better……now don’t put me back in there.’
So our nine week old has us under house arrest!

And house arrest wouldn’t be all that bad if we were allowed to go around fully dressed, but no. Crazypixie has decided that ‘nuwees’ (nude in pixie speak) is the way to go. Any clothing with poppers is useless as she can get it off, ditto her grobag and pyjamas. And she can also remove her own nappy! Short of stitching the clothes onto her I’m not sure what I’ll do.
And she isn’t satisfied with being ‘nuwees’ alone. Oh no. This morning tinyelf was undressed as she fed and crazypixie insists on viewing mummy’s tummy and boobies at regular intervals.
The only clothes she seems to be happy wearing are scarves or bits of fabric that she drapes around herself and calls her ‘bwas’ (yes, you’ll remember, pixie speak for bra).

If my girls had their way we’d spend all day at home, nude. Ah well, maybe it’s not that bad………

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Rescue me

There have been times, mostly when crazypixie was just born, that himself has dropped everything to come home and help me cope with our crying baby.
There have been days when I’ve rung him at 9 in the morning sobbing down the phone, ‘When are you coming home?’ Then we’ve chatted and all was well in the world again
There have been mornings, following rough nights, when he’s quietly taken crazypixie downstairs, fed her and amused her while I’ve snored away upstairs with tinyelf.
Today it was my turn to rescue him.

Tinyelf and I were in bed as she was having her morning feed. My phone rang. Bizarrely it was himself, who was presumably just downstairs. I answered, hopeful that it was an offer of a cup of tea. But no.
A sheepish voice asked me to come down stairs and let him in.
Confused, I threw on a big t-shirt, and bounded down the stairs only to be greeted by crazypixie.
‘Where’s dada?’ I asked.
‘Outside,’ she grinned and pointed. There he was peering in the glass looking all lost puppyish.
I opened the door and we both just collapsed laughing. Apparently he had just popped out to get something from the car, he’d put the top lock on the latch and pulled the door after him. Then when he tried to get back in all he could hear was the key turning in the lock.
Clever crazypixie!

Double the love.

Friends, who are parents of one and either contemplating or incubating a second, keep asking me, ‘Is it hard, having two?’
The short answer is ‘YES.’
But it is also wonderful, rewarding and fun.

Double the love, double the smiles, double the cuddling.
Double the nappies, double the mess and half the sleep.

So here are my tips for those of you contemplating or expecting your second (says she with a whole eight weeks experience):

Routine. Let me just say that again. ROUTINE. Help the older sibling to get into a regular nap and bedtime schedule before the new baby arrives. This makes things so much more manageable.
Go easy on yourself. You can’t be and do all (I know, I’ve tried). If you have to leave one cry for a minute or two while the other needs immediate attention, it’s ok. They’ll get over it, you’ll get over it. Do your best.
Train a helper. Crazypixie loves to get me things while I’m feeding or changing tinyelf. They may not be exactly (or even remotely) what I was looking for but it does keep her amused and interested in her sister.
Let your toddler play mummy. Baba, crazypixie’s dolly, is changed, rocked to sleep, burped and breastfed. Hours of fun!
Stagger getting up times, naptimes and bedtimes. In the morning I give crazypixie her cuddles, get her changed, dressed and have the porridge on before bringing the sleeping tinyelf downstairs. I always ensure tinyelf is napping or happily playing before bringing crazypixie up for her nap.
Be a grownup. Have a least one adult conversation a day. Give yourself little snatches of grown up time, be it phone conversations, blogging, online shopping or snuggling with himself – whatever cranks your tractor.
Get out. After the first few times it’s not that difficult to get out and about. Go visit friends and family; give everyone a change of scene from your own four walls.
Remember the priorities. Leave the mess sometimes and just hang out with your kids and your partner.
Enjoy. Do what you can to make sure you all enjoy some of this special time and not just survive it.

Did I mention routine?

Boobs, boobs,,,,

It’s been mostly about boobs this week.

Tinyelf has her first cold and so is a total boobie monster. The trick to sleeping which we discovered when crazypixie got her first cold is working a treat again. She lies on her side snuggled into me with her head on my arm to elevate it. When she gets congested I offer her the boob and this helps her to swallow the snot (gross, but effective). She gets sleep and isn’t distressed and I get a little bit of sleep too!!

Crazypixie has moved from saying ‘beeboo’ to ‘boobie’ and now directs me whenever tinyelf cries, ‘Baba boobie.’ Bizarrely she is better at telling when tinyelf is hungry than I am.

Later in the week I had the following conversation with my 6 ¾ year old neighbour who was ‘helping’ me by ‘babysitting’ crazypixie.

Me: I’m just going to feed tinyelf
Mr man: Again! She sure feeds a lot.
Me: Well, I just feed her when she’s hungry.
Mr man: Bottles are very handy.
Me: But I don’t have to worry about measuring, sterilising or anything.
Mr man: The thing about bottles is, if she doesn’t finish a bottle you can keep it til later.
Me: Well, I can even feed tinyelf when I’m asleep.
Mr man: That is handy. So she could start feeding and then you could fall asleep.
Me: Exactly.
Mr man: Wow, that’s very handy!!!

How sad am I?

No More Stuff!

In an inspired moment of madness I've set myself a 'No more Stuff' challenge. Details on my other blog.

Tandem Feeding

Yesterday I tandem breastfed for the first time. It wasn’t planned and was quite a surprising development.

Crazypixie had weaned three months ago and had shown no interest in what lay beneath mummies bra (‘bwa’ in pixie speak) until tinyelf began spending her days attached to the ‘beeboos’.
When tinyelf feeds, crazypixie wants to be involved to, ‘beeboo’ she points excitedly and I nod, yes, ‘boobie.’ ‘Bwa’ she exclaims as she pulls down the cup on my elf free boob. Then begins a weird kind of peekaboo game with beeboo and bwa. Thankfully this game has been confined to our own home and hasn’t happened in front of visitors yet!
Peekaboo is usually followed by the pretending to breastfeed game. Much like sipping a cup of pretend tea at a kids tea party crazypixie ‘feeds’ without ever actually making contact. I humour her as it means tinyelf can guzzle away in peace without having her ears pulled/fingers inserted up her nose/her hair ’brushed’ with a plastic pig.

Two weeks ago when dealing with the joys of blocked ducts, I had to express quite a bit into bottles I hadn’t had time to sterilise. Instead of wasting my milk I chucked it into crazypixies sippycup and she was delighted. My friends warned me I was living dangerously, but I didn’t see the harm.

Then yesterday…….

I was feeding the elvin boobie monster when little pixie hands pulled down my bwa, pointed to beeboo and handed me her dolly.

Well, what could I do only humour her?

So I now tandem feed one baby and one doll.