8 weeks in

Today marks 8 weeks since Eric squeezed himself out of my bits. But great news, they're all recovered now. And we have a cute smiling little boy. He's not smiled for a photo yet though. He does very cute smiles and then we get out the camera and he's like "no mummy I'm not going to smile just for your twitter followers ,I refuse to be sucked into this superficial online world I've been born into. However I will do a sad face for you."

He bears an uncanny resemblance to his auntie Lydia don't you think?

So what have we been up to? To be honest I spend the majority of the time sitting on the sofa feeding Eric while Percy plays with his duplo. It's not that thrilling. But I'm getting to know all about the duplo characters and what they want from life. Turtle likes to wear a canon.

Polar bear likes to eat his fish fingers upside down, apparently.

And Granny (who is actually meant to be a farmer but Percy has always called Granny) likes to have sleepovers with the digger man. I know, my poor dad, he was gutted when I told him.

So thats the duplo gossip.

What else have I done other than duplo? Oh yeah we've been to a wedding... Remember that cod faced aunty, she scrubs up well. Sorry I breast feed as you were walking down the aisle Lydia, I hope thats not in the photos. I thought it was preferable to the sound of crying though.

We've got a new lodger. My good, potentially best friend, Rachel (she's deffo in the top 5) has been made homeless by all her housemates deciding to leave her house. And then the landlord decided, as everyone had left, it was a good time to do some building work. She is with us off and on till my sister moves in in August. Me and Rachel have been reliving our student days when we were house mates, when I get up at midnight to feed Eric and Rach is still watching tv in the lounge and I go and join her, it feels almost like the student days again. If only the mornings were so easy.

wide games in Delamere forest as students 2007ish

Rachel gate crashes the family holiday in France 2016

10 years ago:
Imagine getting up around 9, getting some breakfast, watching a bit of TV, hanging out with your house mates, having a shower then cycling into uni for about 11:30. Hanging out in the studio (I did fine art) doing a bit of painting, maybe popping in to town, doing a bit more painting and then heading home for around 6, for some pasta with cheese sauce, and then staying up for deep chats and episodes of Americas Next Top model till 1 or 2AM. Worth every penny of that 15 grand loan that I'm never gonna pay back.

Compare that with this week: after a terrible night sleep where you're up to feed to baby about 3 times (which can take up to an hour) your 2 year old wakes up around 6 or 6:30AM in a bad mood for no reason, or a ridiculous reason like, he's just noticed you've painted your nails blue, but he liked them better when they were red. You take him down to breakfast and he asks "what are you doing daddy?" you reply "he's taking the bins out". Cue meltdown because he was asking Daddy not you.

You need to feed the baby so you get into bed with a big pile of toddler books so that you can read to Percy while breastfeeding. But Percy doesn't want any of the books you've chosen, or any of the ones he can reach on his floor. He wants the ones on top of his chest of drawers that he can't reach but will dangerously try to climb to anyway. At this point I texted my friend Jenny who had offered to have Percy some time. I'd told her I'll wait till I'm desperate, and this was the time.

So today, Jenny has taken Percy to the safari park. I went to Morrisons this morning with just one child, it was like having a holiday!

Since we got back he's been sleeping and I've managed to:
unload the dishwasher
book the rabbit into the vets
arrange a man to fix our kitchen floor and pay him the deposit
begin some cooking for tonights tea
sort some clothes
make and eat my lunch
contact our plumber
and
write this blog

It's amazing how productive you can be when a baby could wake up at any minute. If I was this productive as a student I would have got a first! I wondered how I found just having Percy as a newborn so hard. This is easy peasy lemon squeezy. It was hard though, it was really hard, probably harder than having two. I don't know why, it just was.

Big respect to new mums: it is harder the first time, and massive respect to single mums. Yesterday Dan was one hour late back from work and I attempted to peel potatoes while jiggling a baby, and it made me think single mums (and dads) need more appreciation.

Parenting fail

I started writing this on Tuesday, but its taken a while because I've been typing 1 handed while breastfeeding:

Yesterday was my first proper day of being a mum of two doing a normal routine with no extra help and it was a nightmare. Eric is now 4 weeks old, so Dan had his two weeks paternity then he went back for two days (where I stayed in and people visited me), then it was the weekend and then my mum came from Monday to Friday the next week and then it was the bank holiday weekend and then I had to do a real life day as a mum of two boys!

After about 3 to 4 hours of broken sleep the day began. I need 5 hours in order to not randomly cry at people who ask me how I am.  Dan leaves the house for the early shift at 7.30. I had decided to go to this group which is on in half terms, they have a hall with a bouncy castle and a load of toys and they have a storyteller lady and it free, which is a bonus. Eric was due a feed at around 10am (he feeds about every two hours). The group was starting at 10, so I planned to leave about 9:40 get to the group, sit down to breastfeed while Percy played. It was all going according to plan until I told Percy to put his shoes on. "I want daddy to put my shoes on" he said. "Well daddy can't because daddy's at work," I said. "But I want daddy to put my shoes on." "I know but he's not here." 2 year olds are not the best negotiators but they never tire of saying the same sentence.

Don't you want to go out and play on the bouncy castle? "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
We can't go if you don't have shoes on. "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
Come on its time to go. "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
Well we won’t be able to go then. "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
I KNOW BUT HE'S NOT HERE!
"If you don't let me put your shoes on you'll have to go on time out. "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
Right time out....

....3 minutes later, "why did mummy put you on time out? "I want daddy to put my shoes on."
The conversation continued for many more minutes. And I had no clue what to do. I didn't want to actually not go out because I wanted to go out and see other mum friends. Should I offer more stick or more carrot? I wondered about live streaming this argument on Facebook live and getting people to suggest stuff I could try. I wanted to make time out a bit more of a punishment so I put him in the toilet, (the room that houses the toilet, not the actual toilet obvs). That was a bit crazy with hindsight, but I couldn't really think straight with all the crying. Then Eric woke up for a feed so I resigned myself to the fact that we wouldn't be leaving for at least another half an hour. So I sat in bed to feed him while Percy whinged and cried in the next door toilet. I kept trying to talk to Percy but all he would say is "I want daddy to put my shoes on." I texted Dan to ask for advice and he ended up phoning me, and he ended up speaking to Percy. Dan promised he would read Percy lots of stories when he got home, if Percy was good and let me put his shoes on. I don't really like that I couldn't fix this problem without Dan's intervention but hurrah he finally had shoes on, we could leave the house! (After the massive faff that is getting two kids into two car seats with a massive bag full of nappies and stuff and a pram.)

We had a nice time at the group, a couple of other mum's consoled me, and a Dad reminded me that "this isn't the hardest phase" (cheers Ben). Yes I am fully aware that when Eric becomes a wiggly 4 month old this will all be harder, but one day it will be easier right? When I retire.

In the afternoon Eric was sleeping, so I really wanted to do something nice with Percy as he misses having my full attention now he has a brother. I gave him a list of things we could do together and he chose baking. We started making ginger bread before I had fully checked that we had all the ingredients. We didn't have enough butter or the right kind of sugar but we made do. I was a bit distracted pouring in the sugar and put way too much in. Then Eric woke up and I had to try and spoon some sugar back into the packet without letting it mix with the flour while holding a baby and holding back a toddler who was desperate to mix suff.

The gingerbread men turned out like this:

It's not how you want your ginger bread men to look but at least there's some diversity, a black one and a fat couple.

I did think about becoming one of those parents who blogs specifically about the failures they are having with their children. I could do that. I do wonder with those kind of people who have loads of followers, whether they are just waiting for things to go wrong? and when their kids are kicking off they are just documenting it, and they're a bit disappointed when they behave.

The house was a tip and I'd not made tea, but luckily someone came round and brought me tea! In my church we do a meal rota when people have babies, so that everyone cooks you a meal and brings it round. I felt a bit guilty on Saturday when the lovely Liz came to bring me a meal. First of all I wasn't at my house so she delivered it to where I was (at friend's house), and secondly the friends (The Evans family) had us over for a lovely BBQ and we were just sitting around in the sun being waited on. I feel like when someone delivers you a meal after you've had a baby, they want to arrive and see you just on the edge of coping so they get a nice sense of achievement that they've helped you out. And Liz has just adopted a baby herself, so to then go out and get us food and not be able to deliver it because were out being fed by another family felt a bit awkward.

But anyway back to Tuesday. Roisin arrived with dinner and I was just on the edge of coping and very grateful for the meal. She'd cooked potatoes, salmon and vegetables and brought pudding. It was warm when she delivered it and not knowing how to reheat salmon we ate it straight away. Percy is normally fussy about food that is new to him and we don't really tend to eat salmon. So I was preparing for another tantrum, but to my surprise he actually said "the fish tastes perfect!" it made my day.

This blog is dedicated to all the people who signed up to my meal rota. Thank you. xx