Category Archives: Parenting

Being a Mummy

A Wonderful Week of Cheer!

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I have had a lovely week this week and have much to cheer about. So here I am to share it with you and Michelle at Mummy from the Heart who always inspires and encourages so many of us to share our positivity and cheer. Thank you.

Reasons to be Cheerful at Mummy From the Heart

Esther and William have finally met all of their cousins!
On Sunday it was David’s Mum’s birthday and to celebrate her special day she really wanted to have all six of her grandchildren together for the first time. This had not happened before as one is only a couple of weeks old and we have been out of circulation through the winter. But on Sunday we were all together for a few hours and it really was rather special. Seeing Esther and William begin to interact with their extended family was quite emotional. Their almost 5 year old cousin kept stroking them which was very sweet. William in particular was avidly watching the boys playing and seemed keen to get involved and have a go. The Henley family are a very close family so Esther and William will grow up with these cousins around them. They are very lucky and I think their first meeting bodes well for adventures in the future.

I have had a great week out and about with my Mum
I was rather apprehensive about having my Mother here for any length of time but it is the end of the second week and things seem to be going well. We are enjoying each other’s company, she is looking after David and I, and the house, so that David can focus on work and I can focus on Esther and William. She is being great. Mum is also getting to know her grandchildren better and watching their enjoyment of her is a wonderful reason to be cheerful. As she lives in Spain she will not see her grandchildren all the time so periods such as this are extra special. Love you Mum x

Weaning is going well and the babies are enjoying lots of different foods
Esther and William are loving exploring new foods and this week have even been negotiating lumps!! They love mango and papaya and all fruits. Esther sucks slivers of mango from my fingers as she cannot quite grip them herself. They have eaten broccoli, cauliflower, lentils, sweet potato, cucumber. They are having lots of first tastes and seem to welcome them all. Feeding them is such fun and they get so messy as they try to help with the spoon or the pots. What a great stage of babyhood this is. Makes me smile.

To see what is making others smile this week, hop on over to Mummy from the Heart and perhaps share your reasons to be cheerful too x

Sweets for my Sweet

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For this week’s Listography we are creating a selection box of treats. We have been asked to pick and mix and share our favourite retro sweets.

Sweets make me think of England. As a young child I lived with my parents in Cyprus and as an older child in Germany. In these countries sweets were just not the same!! Every time my Grandparents visited us in our homes abroad they would come laden with penny sweets. They did not want us to be deprived of such wonders as flying saucers, sherbert dips, fruit salads and black jacks. I loved it when they came to stay bringing their multi coloured, sugar coated booty with them.

What I looked forward to even more than that though was returning home to England and visiting the corner shop where I could select certain treasures by myself. How wonderful it felt to walk to the shop, gipping my pennies to exhange for such wonders as gobstoppers and bons bons, toffees and chocs. I loved taking the small white paper bag and filling it to bursting with sticky, sugary delights. And such marvellous things sweets were, you could almost make a whole meal from shrimps and mushrooms and eggs. You could even buy sugary false teeth to eat them with, and a sherbert drink to be sipped through a liquorice straw. Pure heaven!

How I have so few fillings I will never know! As a child of the 70s and 80s the penny sweets were a highlight of my younger, so much more innocent days.

Here are my top 5 childhood sugar fixes:

Fizzy cola bottles and Kola Kubes
These would always be my first choice. I loved to suck all the sugar and fizz from them before beginning to chew.

Milk bottles
These I loved! Chewy milky treats!

White chocolate mice
How I used to love these. Little white chocolate rodents. Yum yum!

Liquorice wheels
I used to unravel these before sucking them up like spaghetti.

Candy peanuts and peanut brittle
More of my favourite naughty treats. So full of sugar, so bad bad bad for your teeth but good good good for your soul!

What a wonderful listography this is! I can actually taste each sweet as I write about them. My mouth is watering and I want to be 7 years old again, when making decisions and choices meant what sweet to eat and nothing more sinister or serious than that. Not a care in the world except perhaps tooth decay! Wonderful memories, the sweetest of reminisces!

Very recently when I think of sweets they immediately make me think of Stephen Fry. I have been listening to his autobiography on CD in the car and his voice is such a delight to listen to. He has such a wonderful way with words and a voice I could listen to forever, soothing and just a little naughty, or perhaps that’s just me!

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/news/stephen-frys-sweet-tooth-15034087.html

http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/little_crackers/episodes/1/5/

If you have not yet read Stephen Fry’s The Fry Chronicles I can really recommend it as a great read. Perhaps you could grab a bag of your favourite sweets to suck and chew whilst you peruse the pages. If you need inspiration for which sweet treats to choose then hop on over to Kate Takes 5 and feast your eyes on the lists to be found there.

Weekend Rewind – September

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Rewind to September 2010


September is a great month for us. It is my birthday, my sister’s birthday and will also be our wedding anniversary after our wedding this September!! It is also the month in which Esther and William finally came home from NICU last year.

The post I have chosen to share for this week’s Rewind was written in September 2010 whilst the babies were still in hospital.

It is a letter to them from me.

Dear Esther and William

Great Big Ants in Your Pants!

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After what can only be described as a horrible morning and early afternoon, our late afternoon was saved by reading books.

Part of my over tired, over emotional state led to me feeling a little jealous of my Mum. Stupid, I know! She is staying with us at the moment to help with the babies. Because she always gets a good night’s sleep she is so full of energy to play with Esther and William while I can barely speak out loud I am so shattered. I pathetically got to thinking that Esther and William might prefer being with her than with me! She is just so loud and so much fun!

Anyway, William was playing with my Mum when I sat down with Esther to read a book. As I started reading aloud William stopped playing and with the saddest face looked over to where we were and listened to the story too. That tiny moment, that one loving look just melted my heart. He continued to listen to the story, never not watching, from the other side of the room. When I finished reading to Esther I read to William too, the same story and one other. It was such a special time, reading with my son and daughter, that it totally made up for the rest of the day. It also made me realise that no matter what, only I will ever be their Mummy, and that counts for a LOT!!

I would like to share with you now, the books that made it all better.

Tell Me What It’s Like To Be Big by Joyce Dunbar
This is a lovely story about a little girl who wants to be bigger. When her brother tells her of all the things she might do when she is grown the little girl realises that perhaps she would rather stay small after all. A lovely tale about growing up with a subtle message of not growing up too fast. This was beautiful to read as a mother snuggled up to a son and daughter who are growing and changing every day.

Ants in Your Pants by Julia Jarman and Guy Parker-Rees
This is a fun book for reading out loud. It is written with great rhythm and rhyme. The characters are very funny and the pictures are bright and colourful. This is one that can be shared over and over again and every time you will notice something new. A great funny book full of knickers to make you giggle!

Jenny Craig – Day 4

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I am really tired today after a second terrible night with the teething twins. William is breastfeeding night and day at the moment because he is off solids because of his teeth. This is leaving me exhausted and I am worried that my allocated 1200 calories is not enough for a Mummy feeding 8 month old twins. I did tell Jenny Craig during my initial consultation that I was breastfeeding and so was sure this had been taken into account but now I feel uncertain.

It could just be that I am having a bad day. Esther and William are demanding and draining every ounce of energy that I can muster.

Must try to keep positive and keep my goal in mind, to lose weight for the wedding. Seems such a silly thing to focus on though when the babies do not seem to be doing so well.

It is taking me, my Mum and David to make things work today.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

Jenny Craig – Day 3

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Oh dear, yesterday I fell off the diet wagon spectacularly, enjoying not only pancakes with sugar and lemon but also fajitas and flapjack! Not because I do not want to continue with the plan, not because I particularly lack motivation but because I wanted to enjoy the last day before Lent. For Lent I have given up fajitas, flapjack and caffeine. I will feast again at the end. To counteract my over eating yesterday I upped my activity and went for a 9 mile cross country walk pushing almost 2 stone of babies in their double buggy. The weather was glorious and we completed the route in 3 hours, quite good going I think!

But back to Jenny Craig’s Plan today. I was naughty yesterday but am back on the diet today. I started the day with porridge and blueberries from my free fruit allowance. It was really a rather nice way to start the day. I am back on the diet and raring to go.

For lunch I am having yesterday’s Winter Vegetable Soup which is easily prepared in the microwave. This is great when parenting twinfants! With the soup I am allowed some bread and cheese and also some salad. I am going to have some cherries though instead of my salad. Tonight I am having mushroom stroganoff and rice supplemented with lots of free veg and a little parmesan cheese.

On Monday I found the Bacon and Mushroom Risotto okay but I had to supplement with a lot of veg to feel satisfied. I am thinking that I might actually like to become a vegetarian. Maybe next Lent I will give up meat and see how I get on!

The soup today was quite nice and definitely filled me up. A filling lunch that will give me plenty of energy for the afternoon, playing with Esther and William.

Looking forward to dinner tonight and seeing how satisfied I feel at the end of a full Jenny Craig day.

I think I should point out that I am getting this 28 day trial for free but receiving no financial reward for the reviews. These are all my own, very honest findings and opinions and I hope that people will find them helpful.

Books and Babies

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This is a fabulous listography from Kate Takes 5 this week, an opportunity to share books for babies. One of my favourite topics! As a mother and a teacher books are one of my best loves and I have been reading to Esther and William since before they were born. I read to them in the womb, beside their incubators and their cots, I read to them now on my knee and they have started to turn the pages themselves. They love to look at pictures and they enjoy watching my face as I read. I am certain that they recognise the pattern and intonation when I read certain books. Their favourites. Our favourites.

I have already blogged about some of these books and will link to them rather than write about the same books again.

The first books that we bought Esther and William are written by Oliver Jeffers and you can read about them here.

Our most read book, by far, is Eric Carle’s Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? which you can read about here. This one has an audio link too!

Our best bedtime book is I Love You, Sleepyhead and that can be read about here.

We also love Hairy Maclary and share our thoughts about these fab books here.

And here are 5 other books for babies, books I have already chosen as perfect for babies of my own.

The Gruffalo
This is a magical story that rhymes and encourages children to really use their imaginations as they try to picture in their minds the monstrous Gruffalo. It lends itself to being read aloud or acted out with a range of voices. It is a great story to animate too. I love this book and so do Esther and William. We read this a lot and sometimes watch the animated version on You Tube whilst waiting for our tea.

The Rainbow Fish This is a lovely book with beautiful illustrations. It tells a story with an important message about friendship and sharing. Again it lends itself to being read aloud and provides real inspiration for arts and crafts activities. (Always the teacher!)

Click Clack Moo Cows That Type
Children’s books have to be enjoyed by the adults that read them too and I find this book hilarious. It is a comedy sketch, well written and simply illustrated. Though Esther and William are still too young to understand the humour of the book they love the differnet voices and sound effects of literate cows and ducks taking over a farm. A great, fun read.

A Cultivated Wolf
A book about the importance of books and reading. A story of friendship that appeals to all the family. Great moral too, that anyone can change their ways if they want to.

Tanka Tanka Skunk
Two animals who together sound like drums! This book is great fun to read and shout out loud over and over again. I do it with increasing vloume and speed til me and the babies collapse in fits of giggles. It is great fun! Great in the classroom for teaching about rhythm and breaking words up into syllables. A book that encourages you to really play with words and have fun.

And books for another time … The Silver Sword, I Am David, The Machine Gunners, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Children on the Oregon Trail, The Secret Garden, Private Peaceful … I could go on and on.

I hope that we have another book listography soon, in the meantime, come and join in this one. I have read everyone’s posts with my Amazon account open and we will have a lovely large box of books on the way come Friday. Thank you everyone!

Jenny Craig – Day 1: Part 1

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Today is the first day of my 28 day Jenny Craig Weight Management Plan trial. I am feeling quite apprehensive about it actually, almost like I am on trial. The children must have sensed my heightened mood as they have been awak and raring to go since 5.30am. It is now 7.45am and they are already back in bed having had a breakfast of fresh, warm apple puree and a good play. Bless.

Now I am about to start my day. Today’s breakfast is a 40 gram serving of muesli with half a cup of milk. I can also have as much fruit as I like and as much tea, though without sugar. I usually have just one.

Before that though I need to weigh myself and make a note of my measurements too. These details are recorded on my Jenny Craig Lifestyle Graph. I have to measure my bust, waist, abdomen and hips.

Here goes

Bust = 93cm / 36.6 inches
Waist = 79cm / 31.1 inches (Oh my God!! I used to be 26/28 inches!)
Abdomen = 92cm / 36.2 inches
Hips = 92cm / 36.2 inches

And I weigh (in the morning, after a large mug of tea!) 9 stone and 11 pounds. So ideally, I have 11lbs to lose.

Crikey I am larger than I thought, and must look kind of barrel shaped as bust, hips and stomach are all about the same. If I needed some extra motivation I think that I have just found it!

Time to make my muesli!

Along with my Jenny Craig meals and snacks I can have as much free food as I like. My free foods include: diet drinks; tea and herbal tea; fresh chilli; garlic; herbs; spices; Worcestershire sauce; Balsamic vinegar; asparagus; bean sprouts; broccoli; celery; mushrooms; onions; peppers; sugra snap peas; tomatoes. I can eat as much of these as I like. Can almost make vegetarian fajitas out of that little lot! No wraps though!

I can also eat up to 3 servings per day of any of: melon; strawberries; honey; jam; jelly and low cal hot chocolate.

The Jenny Craig menu plan states that it is important to eat all the foods on your plan and aim for weight loss of 1 to 2lbs a week. The free foods are designed to increase your satisfaction without significantly increasing your caloric intake.

I have never been on a diet before and have always thought I would be terrible at sticking to one as I am such a fussy eater but I really do think this plan could work for me as I can fill up on veg should I not like one of the specified meals. I am looking forward to getting started now.

Will let you know how I have got on at the end of the day.