Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Jab Day

Elliott got his four month vaccines today.(Yes. A month late. Mommy fail.) Like most, non-sadistic parents, I don't look forward to Elliott getting his jabs. Not one bit. I was pretty stressed about it yesterday and was even finding it hard to sleep last night. So there's me tossing and turning and sighing loudly instead of sleeping. My poor Hub finally asked me what I was thinking about and I told him. Since he wasn't sleeping anyway. Nothing to do with me at all.
He said that instead of feeling that it totally sucked that I was always the one who had to bring Elliott for his jabs (because the Hub is at work), maybe I should focus on how cool it is that I have the chance to care for and comfort him in that unique way.
You see Elliott doesn't really cry that much. He fusses and gets cranky every now and then, but it's been a long time since I've heard him properly cry. And when my husband said that initially I was like, "Pfft, easy for you to say, you don't have to hold him down while the evil Dr stabs him with a huge, sharp, metal instrument!!".  But then today after Elliott got his jabs (and survived, shock!) and feel asleep on my chest while he was in his carrier, I remembered Hub's words and thought there might be a teeney silver lining after all. (For the record, my Dr isn't actually one bit evil, he's really nice!)
This picture is of Elliott and I hanging out and being lazy when he was only a teeney month old baby. I love taking care of my boy x

Monday, June 13, 2011

The Very Worst Yummy Mummy

source

I read a really interesting blog post today on Jamie The Very Worst Missionary. If you don't already read her blog, you should, right now! She was talking about how God had spoken to her about being herself (and not a gay 19th century poet) and being who He made her to be. She put the question to her readers, "Who is He telling you you're not, so that you can be who you are?".

A couple of months ago I was driving along with my mother in law, when she asked me what exactly a 'Yummy Mummy' is. She had heard the phrase but wasn't quite sure what it meant. I went to describe the usually thirty something, pretty, rich women that shop in Brown Thomas and drive SUV's. They frequent Mother and Toddler Groups beautifully dressed and in full make-up. A Yummy Mummy's house is always immaculate and smells of freshly baked goods. I know what you're thinking, these women do not exist. No, they don't, not completely but you probably still know the kind of mother I'm talking about.

I am not a yummy mummy. I'm younger than all the mothers that I know, I can't afford to shop in Brown Thomas and don't even know how to drive. Most days I'm lucky if I brush my teeth and my hair, usually it's seems to be one or the other {grin}. I'm slowly growing to hate house work so my house has been pretty messy for a while now. I don't have it all figured out, I don't even have most of it figured out.

Someone once described  me as a neon brick. I'm not very subtle. Even though I hate confrontation, I die inside when I can't speak my mind, right or wrong. I hate awkward silences so will fill them with chat if no one else will. Any elephants in the room are usually pointed out and if they're not it'll really get to me. However uncomfortable I can be in my own skin sometimes, I know this is how God made me to be. He uses my words to speak into people's lives and sometimes to point out the big, fat, ugly mammal in the room. So many times my messy life has somehow been used to encourage someone else in their mess.


So, as I sit here in my messy house with my dirty dishes piled high and badly in need of a shower, I hope you're challenged by Jamie's question too and maybe even encouraged to go be who you are.

No more yummy mummy aspirations for me!

Growing old with Sophie

Just thought I'd put up all of Elliott's weekly/monthly photos with Sophie La Girafe so far. The first four are every week and after that it's every month. Enjoy!






Sunday, June 12, 2011

5 Months Old

Every month on the twelfth, I take photos of Elliott lying beside his Sophie (his friend toy). At first I took them every week but as I got busier and the weeks started to fly by I reverted to once a month. Now it's amazing to see how much Elliott has grown. As my lovely sister pointed out to me, Sophie looks like a different (much bigger!) toy in the first photos.

Amazing things Elliott has done this month:
Started sleeping for 12 hours at night.
Laughing out load on his own with his friends toys.
Pulling his legs up to his chest and looking at his feet.
Staring at his hands and playing with them.

This is definitely my favourite age so far. Elliott's little personality is really starting to show and being a mommy starting to feel a bit more natural. I have to concentrate less on his routine because I know it well and so I'm getting more done when Elliott is down for a nap.

Yesterday I went for a run, my only real exercise in five months. FIVE MONTHS! I almost died and didn't even run for the whole thing but it felt great to be doing something. I'm already looking forward to getting rid of my last bit of baby weight and fitting into the rest of my clothes. Today I was talking to my amazing best friend about how we both look back at ourselves in certain photos and think, "Wow, I looked great!" but how at the time we didn't appreciate it at all. I'm sure one day when I'm old, grey, fatter, saggy and...old, I'll look back on photos of myself now and think that I looked great. I don't want to spend my whole life unsatisfied with the way I look. Girls thinking they look terrible gets boring and old after a while. Read this yesterday, "...we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do". That word 'workmanship' can be interchanged with the phrase 'work of art'. I am God's work of art. So as well as working on how I look on I'm going to work on how I feel because feeling like a work of art sounds pretty freaking great!

Here are photos from Elliott's five month photo shoot.











And Then, There were Three...


Wow, two post in two months! I'm on a roll. A friend of mine has just started a blog and given me the inspiration to do a post on my amazing son.

Elliott James was born at 00:31 on the 12th of January 2011. He came in his own time and has been doing things his own way ever since. I will write his birth story in another post, but for now I thought I'd write about how life is living with Elliott and put up some photos of our baby boy. Elliott is the sweetest baby boy I have ever met. He loves chewing EVERYTHING he can shove in his mouth. He talks and laughs at his toys and has just discovered his hands this week. He is amazing.

The last two days spent with Elliott have been two of my favourite so far. There have been plenty of days that were hard and frustrating and followed by long, cranky chats with friends. But I want to stop and appreciate how simply nice these couple of days were. Elliott has been sleeping til 8am ish every morning and every morning I've been greeted with a great, big smile. The sort of smile that is utterly contagious and wakes your sleepy self up gently. Nothing amazing happened in these two days, no major milestones were reached. Instead of spectacular I got simple. Simple days filled with lovely, happy moments with my sweet son.

Here's a couple of pretty simple, happy photos. Enjoy!

Our now ginormous five month old...flying


Elliott as a teeney tiny baby