The time has come for us to move up a step from the double buggy and so I’ve invested in a buggy board. When the terrors get home from nursery I will try it out ]]> http://www.abcnortheast.co.uk/kneesupmotherbrown/2012/02/01/32366/feed/ 2 http://www.abcnortheast.co.uk/kneesupmotherbrown/2011/12/19/merry-christmas-2/ http://www.abcnortheast.co.uk/kneesupmotherbrown/2011/12/19/merry-christmas-2/#comments Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:30:07 +0000 dawniebrown http://kneesupmotherbrown.me/?p=3279 Well it’s been a busy year and it’s time for Mother Brown to take a blogging break over the Christmas period to spend some precious time with the family. Thank you to all readers, PR’s and advertisers for sticking with me throughout 2011 and I look forward to being back with you all again in 2012

We’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Merry Christmas from Knees Up Mother Brown

What I love about this book, is although it contains all the traditional memory book features, it has a lovely modern feel to it. The bright and funky designs on every page are beautiful to look at and make turning each page a pleasure.

The book covers a much wider range than traditional memory books and lets you keep recording all those precious moments through until around 5 years old! We love the fact that by the end of the book your child will be the one creating the memories in it

There is plenty of room for adding scan pictures, first photographs, family trees, first foods and even pages to detail your childs first travels.

We also love the spare pages at the back to allow your child to doodle away their own memories and the plastic pockets for keeping hold of special items you don’t want to lose such as hospital bracelets and in my case the supermarket receipt from the shop I did an hour before going into labour with Zara (I just can’t bring myself to throw it away!)

The trendy and colourful illustrations make the book suitable for both boys and girls and it would make a lovely gift to expecting or new parents. It has a RRP of £24.50 but it currently on introductory offer at Baby Patisserie for £19 which I think is a great price for a product of this quality.

There is also a sister book to this one called For My Grandchild which makes a lovely present for Grandparents and is a lovely way of getting grandparents to record all their memories so that they can be passed down over the years.

Quite simply if it wasn’t for healthworkers both myself and Oscar would be dead and buried by now. I don’t make a big thing out of our birth story, it’s much easier to focus on the positives but february 14th 2011 could have been the day we both died if it wasn’t for healthworkers.

From the emergency paramedics who arrived within 5 minutes of us phoning 999, the ambulance crew which arrived 5 minutes later, the midwives, nurses, operating team, the surgeon who managed to finally get Oscar breathing after 5 minutes, the theatre team who pumped back 9 units of blood into my body after I lost almost 3.5 litres of it. The neonatal team who cared for Oscar for the 16 days before I could bring him home. Needless to say I am very lucky and extremely thankful that I live in the UK today and have access to so many healthworkers to care for me.

Oscar

Sadly we were one of the lucky ones, doctors, nurses and midwives are vital to saving children’s lives. But there’s a massive shortfall of health workers in the world’s poorest countries. As ever, the poorest and most vulnerable are hardest hit. Half of the 8 million children who die each year are in Africa, yet Africa has only 3% of the world’s doctors, nurses and midwives.

On Tuesday Christine Mosler from Thinly Spread will attend the UN General Assembly in New York. She’s going to pressure David Cameron to play his full part in solving the health worker crisis. She’s done it before and she can do it again. We can help her.

This e-petition from Save The Children aims to have 60,000 signatures by that time. Please sign here.

Michelle from Mummy From The Heart and Gemma from Hello, It’s Gemma have a blog-hop to help raise awareness of the need for healthcare workers. “Write your 100 words about a great health professional you have encountered in your life.”

How can you help?

1) Sign the petition above.
2) Join the blog hop and spread the word!
3) Tweet and get social using #healthworkers

Let’s get those signatures and show how much we care!

Don’t get me wrong here, I love Zara and Oscar completely and I wouldn’t change my situation at all. Everyday I am thankful that I have two beautiful, healthy children. We wanted two children close together in age and we consider ourselves extremely lucky that we got exactly what we wished for

By now some of you are probably thinking “definite PND” right now but you are wrong, I’m not depressed at all, tired yes and incredibly bored yes but not depressed. I’m completely of sane mind, I’m just saying I don’t enjoy the baby stage at all.

I’m sure most people love the helpless little cute baby stage and really won’t understand me here but I didn’t have babies to HAVE babies, I had them to have children! A bit like when buying a house, a mortgage is something that comes with it even though you don’t really enjoy it. Luckily with babies the baby stage only lasts a year and not 25 though

Babies to me are too needy, they cry a lot, they never sleep, they don’t give you much back and let’s face it they are pretty boring! It’s probably why I don’t go to baby groups or hang around with other mums with babies, I’m just not interested in what their little darlings have done, I don’t want to cuddle their babies. I have enough looking after my own thank you very much!

Of course I always do the fawning over new baby thing etc because that’s what’s expected right? I can’t really say no thanks when someone shoves their newborn baby in my arms, I can’t really tell them that their darling child is actually a bit freaky looking can I? And before anyone says anything Oscar has sticky out ears, his heads a funny shape and his hair grows into a Mohican (but he is mine so I can say that at least )

I feel guilty for wishing away the first year of Oscar’s life but I can’t help feeling that way. With Zara the first year had a certain novelty value to it but now I know just how much fun it becomes when they are a little older, I just want to press the fast forward button and be there now!

I have loved the last six months with Zara, now this age I really, really love. I could spend all day playing with Zara, she is so much fun and learning so much. Her communication skills are amazing and it is so nice to be able to have a conversation with her. I can’t wait until Oscar is a little older and can give something back in the same way.

Do I feel guilty that I’d much rather spend my time with Zara at the moment than with Oscar? Of course I do! I know Oscar will never remember this period in his life though and I felt the same about Zara too at this age. It doesn’t alter the fact that we have a wonderful bond and that she has turned into a beautiful, intelligent little girl though I’m sure once Oscar gets a little older the same will happen with him and the fun part of being a family of four will really start

So there we have it I don’t like babies! I’m not depressed, not a freak, not unkind, not a bad mother, not cold, not heartless…I just don’t LIKE babies!

PS Photos in this post were taken by my lovely sister Sonia Thorpe Photography

First stop was the beach, now Zara has never actually been on a beach before or been close to the sea so I was intrigued to see what she would make of it. My brave little girl didn’t bat an eyelid and just barged straight in. It really wasn’t as windy and cold as it sounds on the video by the way, it was lovely and warm!

We got some beautiful photos of her aswell – sometimes I could spend all day just taking photos of her lol

Am I brave enough to go in?

It got me!

After the beach we had chip butties in the park. Zara at this stage was dressed in just a nappy as we hadn’t planned on a beach trip and so had no change of clothes or a towel so it was a case of clean nappy and wait for her to dry before brushing off the sand. Luckily I always have suncream in my bag! When Z started looking a bit cold I finally remembered her coat was under the pram so she wore that!

Lunch in the park

Tired and starting to feel the cold

After lunch we decided to investigate the funfair, another new experience for Zara and her eyes were out on stalks (despite the fact that she hadn’t had a nap and was completely exhausted by now). Anyway we managed a ride on the teacups with daddy, a spinny thing ride with daddy, a ride on the gee gees with mummy and then we decided it was time to go home before exhaustion kicked in completely.

On the teacups with Daddy

and the gee gees with Mummy

A truely wonderful and unplanned day! I’m sat here smiling just thinking about it. Hopefully after all that sea air I’ll get a good nights sleep from both of them tonight.

Do you like my lovely new header? It was made for me by Charis at Name Art

Hopefully things will settle down soon once I stop moving everything around but in the meantime if there is anything you particularly like / don’t like then please let me know

PS If anyone has chance could you please test the social media buttons for me on the right as not sure whether they work or not (well they work for me as I’m logged into them all but not sure whether they work for guests?)

Zara aged 4 months

2 days after this photo was taken Zara rolled over for the first time, I think we’ve a while to go before Oscar is doing that but as each week goes by I see them becoming more and more similar.

Oscar aged 4 months

What do you think? Are they starting to look alike?

PS dont panic when you see the start of the video – its clean I promise

I’m linking this up for Tracks of My Years over at The Mad House Blog