18 months of PJ

Today marks a year and a half since a tiny person came out of me. That tiny baby is now a real person who thinks and talks and walks. I'll demonstrate his growth by using a toy dinosaur.

I heard a few different opinions on what 18 months would be like, some people said it was awful because they start having tantrums and some people say it's brilliant because they can do a few things for themselves and they are learning a new thing every day. So far in general I am really enjoying this stage. Percy is now normally sleeping 7 or 7:30pm till 6 or 6:30AM. He's totally off breast feeding and if I need to do something like shower he is capable of watching a 20 minute tv program on the laptop without smashing the keys or diving head first off the sofa.

Here are 18 facts about Percy Jones:

1) He is named after his great great great uncle Percival Drury who died in World War 1.

2) He was filmed for TV twice in his first 2 weeks of life, once for One Born every minute (but they did't use it) and once for northwest tonight.

3) His first 3 words were "quack" "bath" and "Lola" (the rabbit's name)

4) He learnt baby sign language which has helped him learn to speak and also to communicate before he could speak. The first word he signed was "home".

5) The first food we tried him on was broccoli he was not a fan. He loves "babalas" (bananas)

6) He spent his first birthday in hospital with pneumonia.

7) When we go to the park it's all about the slides, swings are for losers.

8) He likes to paint, and if you ask him what colour something is he'll always say "blue" regardless of what colour it is.

9) When you say "jump" he bends his knees up and down but his feet don't leave the floor. Last week he learnt to jump in a swimming pool... well kind of walk off the edge, he will do that whether you're ready to catch him or not.

10) He loves animals, he is very good with Lola and he really likes dogs which is odd because I'm slightly fearful of dogs, once he got licked in the face by a dog and he wasn't that bothered.

11) Two word sentences he has recently said are "bye bye Daddy" "where teddy" "baby sheep" and "silly mummy"

12) He likes to play pretend cooking and make tea for people with his little tea set.

13) The only T.V programme he will watch is Mr tumble, nothing else keeps his attention.

14) He has almost grasped the concept of hide and seek, except sometimes he'll start playing without informing us first and he kind of wants to watch you hide.

15) He loves music and often demands it.

16) When he says "cuddles" it means "pick me up mummy I want to get what you are holding"

17) Yesterday we went to the farm at Croxteth hall with his buddy Mazen.

18) Today he went on the train for the first time. We're gonna make good use of our free train bus and ferry pass: tomorrow we're going on the ferry.

We love you so much PJ. xx

Our Tropical House

We are in the long and annoying process of buying a house... Not helped by Move Residential's least helpful mortgage advisor ever...

January 2016
Me "so I'm a bit worried about the time pressure with the new tax laws coming in in April, we need to get a move on with buying the house." (There are new stricter tax laws for landlords and as we have not been able to sell our current house this makes us landlords.)

Morgage man: "Don't worry about that you are buying a property to live in so those laws won't apply to you, so there is no time pressure"

We decide to re-mortgage our current house first which takes a while.

March 2016
Solicitors: so you'll be eligible for the new Landlord stamp duty, it's an extra 5k.

Me: what?!

mortgage man: yeah you'll have to pay it.

Me: you said it didn't apply to us?

Mortgage man: I don't remember that, of course you'll have to pay.

My parents bail us out -if we sell our current house within 3 years we can claim the money back. The fact that they can give us money is the one good thing about the generation who got on the property ladder aged 21 on minimum wage.  I feel like we're on a property snake. Anyway thanks Mum and Dad.

One day we will get our house and make it into a tropical paradise.  We've been toying with the idea of moving abroad for years and we've gone round in circles a lot. In the winter of 2011/ 2012 we nearly moved to Tunisia on a whim because we were cold. Then we fairly seriously though about moving to Lebanon in 2013. Then after 2 months of cycling from Liverpool to Kuwait we missed our friends and decided to stay here more long term. But then Dan quite recently saw a job in the Cook Islands and we weighed up the pros and cons of that and then my sister and her husband, who are currently in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, are trying to persuade us that New Zealand is the place to be.  Anyway this was all a tangent, what I am trying to say is that we are moving to an area of Liverpool called Speke. People ask us "why have you chosen to move to Speke?" This handy diagram explains:

If your budget is about £150,000 feel free to use our diagram.


Speke is not a tropical paradise, but to compensate we are going to have a tropical themed living area.

I've been making some things:

 Tropical cushions.

What everyone needs: a tropical ping pong bat.... it's going to be a clock, this is the 12, can you see it?

This is half a coconut shell sprayed gold with added glitter. Imagine 20 of these with a fairy light in each one wrapped around something to make a free standing lamp. If anyone wants the insides of the coconuts let me know. I'm making coconut ice cream and stuff but theres only so much coconut one family can eat. I had to borrow a vice off my Dad for coconut chopping coz Dan refuses to hold things I'm sawing. He is so unreasonable!

And imagine some cool wall paper like this.

When we finally get in we'll have a house warming party, there will be lots of coconut ice cream.

Extreme "Where's Wally?"

Today was my first attempt at looking after two toddlers on my own all day. I have a good friend Steph and we had babies one day apart.

Steph has had both children (now 16 months) a few times and has managed amazingly, today was my turn for the challenge. What could be so hard, it's just Percy x2? As long as I don't attempt to do the weekly shop or cook a roast at the same time it should be fine. I'd planned to take them to "sticky fingers" a group run in my church building where there are loads of toys, some soft play stuff, a singing time and a craft time. I planned to spend the morning there, they would sleep in the double buggy I borrowed from Steph on the way back then a bit of lunch, a bit of play and then home time for little Elodie. 

So I drove home from Steph's with 2 toddlers and a buggy and thought "there's definitely a right and wrong order to unload my cargo." Buggy first, while the babies are still strapped in, then Elodie as she was in the car seat on the road side, then grab Percy. Sorted, well done me. No toddlers left wandering in the road while I carry a very heavy buggy. Maybe today will be easy. 

Right, get some toys out to amuse them and then work out how to use the buggy. Ok one of the wheels isn't going round, bums. Stupid buggy. Oh and it won't quite fit through my doorway. Right abandon that go and get my pram that I'd put upstairs out of the way and a sling. I am not a massive baby sling wearer, I like the idea of them but the problem is if you're carrying your baby in a sling then you have to carry all the crap that you need to look after a baby too. Whereas, with a pram you can shove all that stuff in the pram. So, the sling I have is just like a big sash. For a baby Percy's size the way to do it is to put them on your back but I could't work it out so I had to carry him like this:

Except it wasn't like that at all, this woman makes it look too easy.

Anyway we got there even if my spine is now deformed by Percy's weight. Percy ran off straight away and I had to go and put the pram in the pram bit and unstrap Elodie. We quickly found him and then I realised maybe this isn't the best thing to bring two kids to. A really massive hall (it can seat 600 people) full of toys with over 100 toddlers. It's hard enough keeping track of one, but two is impossible. 16 months is a difficult age, they are very mobile and very quick, but they also fall over a lot and grab things off other children and get frustrated when they can't get in the big toy cars, etc.

Imagine playing "Where's Wally?" but instead of finding an imaginary man on a picture for fun, you're trying to find two real people who are moving in a sea of other moving people because you're responsible for them. And it's not just like "Wahoo! you've found them" you have to continually keep your eye on both of them for two hours, while also seeing to their needs, such as for food and nappy changes etc. it's exhausting. So I stood kind of in the middle of the big hall looking at one for a few seconds and then the other who was the other end of the hall and then back like one of those CCTV cameras. But then I realised Elodie needed her nose wiping which meant having to go to my bag by the pram thus taking my eyes off both of them for a bit which is long enough for them to have moved to a totally different area of the hall. Then I noticed Percy's shoe had come off so I had to go and sort that out which made me lose Elodie. 

They were meant to take their shoes off for the soft play slide but I wasn't going to stick too much to that rule, I do normally with just Percy, but too much risk of loosing a shoe with two.

They are briefly contained and contented with toast.

Then came nappy change time. Luckily I didn't have to deal with a poo whilst I had both of them. Percy quickly put that right though with two poos in quick succession after Elodie returned home. (Spoiler alert: she did make it home in one piece.) Anyway I did both of their nappies at sticky fingers while I was doing Elodie's I couldn't see PJ but I trusted he was ok. Until a woman I know a tiny bit shouted "Is this your child? He was climbing up something and he fell off." She was holding Percy's hand and he was crying. Sorry Percy. I have to confess I've been before and a kid has pushed Percy over or something and I was always thinking "where is the mum?" now I realise "maybe they have two kids!"

Anyway it was time to leave and at this point they were meant to both fall asleep in the double buggy, hmm. After another back breaking journey we arrive home and Elodie is nicely asleep in the pram, phew one down, one to go. Now for some reason Percy always has his lunch time nap in his pram even if we're in and it's raining I still have to take him for a walk to get him to sleep. Yes he goes down in the cot at night but for some reason it is a totally different thing at nap time. I tried to trick him into thinking it was night time: dark room, milk and a bed time story. 

"night night percy" 

"bye bye" he said happily, as I put him down in the cot next to his favourite bear. Then I left the room and he cryed. I ended up rocking him to sleep and putting him down in our bed.

So after half an hour both were asleep. Whoop whoop. The rest of the day went well. Elodie woke first and had lunch before Percy woke which worked well as we only have one high chair. Then Percy ate while Elodie mainly played with a ballon, and then well all went to see Lola the rabbit.

I often give Percy old carrot ends to give to the rabbit. I forgot that Elodie doesn't know this custom and therefore tried to eat it herself.

Look a rabbit!

She's so funny

Big up to parents of two or more. x

Rachel Greatsall

This is the longest time I have not blogged for. Not because nothing's happened, because loads of thing have happened and I haven't had time to write about them. Since my last blog in December we had Christmas and New Year, I became 30, we had an offer accepted on a new house. My sister moved to the southern hemisphere after I threw underwear at her at a comedy gig (unrelated I hope) and most significantly of all I achieved a life long dream of seeing what happened when you laminate ham. (This is what happened.)

Today I went to the zoo with Dan, Percy and Rachel, and last Wednesday I celebrated the 30th birthday of Rachel and I thought "it is a travesty that I haven't yet dedicated a blog to Rachel Goodsall my bridesmaid, godmother to my child and the ham laminating facilitator who I am renaming "Rachel Greatsall." We have been friends for over a 3rd of our lives now ,since we met in halls when we were 19. So I thought I'd share some of my favourite Rachel moments.

Our student days were the best, particularly the two years in Oakbank road. Playing pranks on each other, having crazy themed parties, doing circus tricks, watching America's Next Top Model, breaking up and getting together with boys. Scanning our faces in my scanner, staying up chatting till 3am and getting up at 11. BBQs in the park, poker, fancy dress, cheese sauce making competitions, hiding most of the plates because no one would wash up if they could find a clean plate somewhere else. Those were the days.

Pirate party

I know what we should do, lets draw on our faces with chalk!

Organised Rachel looked after the bills and admin for our house of 5 that was made up of 3 messy unorganised dyslexics. (I'm sure Suze did her fair share of this too). In return we tried to encourage her to quit smoking with this helpful and informative campaign:

Rachel saved us from missing the plane back from a holiday together in Norway by telling us the time the plane was leaving was about half an hour before it actually left. If she hadn't done that we would have missed it. (On the way there I had the flight booked for the wrong month and had to buy a new ticket at the airport.)

Rachel's super power is her colour coordination skills. When she goes on holiday she picks a colour theme because she can't take all her clothes so she takes everything in one colour with matching accessories. She always dresses to impress even in the countryside where no one cares.

Rachel was one of my bridesmaids when I got married. She also looked after our house when we were on honeymoon and filled it with lovely treats. To do this it meant she had to ask me for the key the day before my wedding in front of all of Dan's family, claiming she would keep an eye on it if an alarm went off or whatever. I told her she didn't live near enough for that and there was no need for her to have a key so she had to embarrass herself and have an argument with me in front of everyone until I gave in and let her have the key.

Rachel is a brilliant God Mother to Percy, she's always spoiling him with little gifts. His favourite teddy that he sleeps with is from her. She even knitted him a caterpillar outfit when he was newborn.

Thanks for being amazing Rachel, here's to another decade of friendship. xx

Percy's New Tricks

I've not blogged in over a month, a lot's been happening, I've been mosaicing...

....and then re-mosaicing because I made a spelling mistake :(

so I thought I'd try my hand at a little sewing project, at least I can spell the name of my own child.

but then that gold ribbon for hanging really confused me. Obviously you sew it inside out so you can't see what it will be like till you make it the right way out, but you should be able to work it out really. Except I can't work things like that out, my brain doesn't work like that, so first the ribbon came out on the wrong side facing inwards and then on the right side facing outwards but angled downwards before I finally got it right.

That's enough about my craft failings time to talk about my favourite tiny person. He's 14 months tomorrow and he has changed a lot recently. Here's how...

Words
By his first birthday in October he could say 3 words. His first word was "quack" followed by "bath" followed by "lola" (the name of our rabbit). He calls all rabbits Lola and when we went to the museum and saw a polar bear he also called that Lola.

Anyway now he attempts many words his favourite is "more" which he says all the time but doesn't fully understand it's meaning. Like we'll just be playing and he'll say "more" and I'll carry him round the room until he points at something, usually the ipod dock, and then he will demand music by just saying "more" he loves to dance all the time.



Cooking
He loves to play cooking with pots and pans. Sometimes I give him uncooked pasta or coloured rice to play with. (I can't take the credit for that idea though my friend Hannah thought of that.)

Teeth
For some reason he loves to brush his teeth (or chew his tooth brush to be precise) he can say "eeth" and every time we go to the bathroom he wants to do it.

Bananas

A couple of weeks ago he became addicted to bananas, which he calls "lalas". He was demanding them in the middle of the night. We had to limit him to 2 a day max, but then suddenly he became not bothered about them again.

Cuddles

He's just started giving cuddly toys a hug and he sleeps with a bear now even if he does sleep a weird way round.

Climbing and Hiding
He still can't really walk but he can climb up the stairs super fast and he has discovered that you can get inside cupboards which he loves.

Walking
He walks very well if he is holding onto something and he can almost run with a walker and just this week he has taken a few unaided steps. So today we went into town to get his first pair of real shoes. I quite resented giving money to Clarks - the company that ruined my teenage years with their reliable but not cool shoes. Luckily I got him these in the half price sale, but the woman suggested I come back in 3 weeks to get his feet measured again. Jog on love.

After getting the shoes I met Dan who had just finished his early shift and we saw a few christmassy things. Getting really excited now. Can't wait to see all our family xx