Where has the time gone?!

Happy new year! I can’t quite believe it’s mid-January already and baby boy has been here 3 1/2 weeks already. Although saying that I already can’t imagine life without him!

This has been our first week with daddy back at work, and we’re doing pretty well finding our feet. Big brother has been so good with baby and every day he makes me proud. I’m just hoping that the harmony (and lack of jealousy) continues, and they’ll be running around as little amigos before I know it. And no, I’m not kidding myself that it’ll always be perfect but I hope there will more harmony than chaos!

So, what have we been up to? Not a whole lot really, we’ve spent a lot of time cuddling, playing, reading stories, housework, basically just carrying on as normal. Play dates, a zoo trip and visits have taken up the rest of our time, so no time for any crafting for me. Which is a little sad because my lovely parents gave me an overlocker for Christmas which I’m very much looking forward to using! But it’s not going anywhere, and the wonderful, squishy, newborn stage is over so quickly I’m going to get as many cuddles as I possibly can

Speaking of which Christmas was a bit different this year with a 5 day old baby! For the very first time we spent the whole day in our house, just us. Present opening was lots of fun, and again young sir slightly shocked us, but also made us very proud, when he firstly put down his chocolate reindeer to eat the apple from his stocking, and then stopped opening his presents because “that’s too many presents for me, mummy”! They did eventually get opened, but he took his time and had a good play with everything before moving on.

Clever baby even had a present for big brother! Which was much appreciated but did cause him to stop in his tracks and question how baby had bought him a present? “Erm… Baby told mummy what he wanted to give you, and mummy bought it for him” seemed to do the trick! Haha

Baby has been so good, he’s very contented, loves being wrapped and cuddled, feeds well and even sleeps pretty well (touch wood!) only waking once or twice a night for a quick feed then back to sleep. Wrapping him has been wonderful, he goes straight to sleep and it leaves me with 2 hands free to play with big brother, cook, do housework, whatever! And just l look how gorgeous and snuggly he looks in there:

OK, that’s enough for now, otherwise I’ll be tempted to just totally over fill this post with yummy baby pics!

Saturday: time for an update!

Hello lovelies!

This isn’t a proper post, just a little update about all I’ve been working on and a sneaky preview of some of the things to come!

First of all my poncho pattern is coming along nicely, and I’m going to start writing the instructions for it this afternoon. Hopefully it will only be a few more weeks before I’ll be looking for some pattern testers, so if you think you’d be interested in applying then be sure to follow my blog so you don’t miss the announcement! Pattern testers will recieve a tester copy of the pattern, complete with instructions, and a questionnaire which you’ll need to fill in to give me feedback on the fit, clarity of instructions, etc. I’ll need a couple of testers for each size from newborn to age 4-5, so if you know of anyone else who might be interested too then please pass it on! Here’s a sneak preview of one of the completed sections:

I’m also nearly finished converting a denim skirt into a maternity skirt, and I’ll be sharing the tutorial on how to do it in the next few days. It had a trial run this morning and I want to make a few adjustments to it, so once that’s done and I’m happy with the result I’ll share it with you!

I bought another wrap this week and young sir and I have been practicing with it. It’s been fun learning how to tie it up properly and it really is amazing how supported and well distributed his weight is. We’ve so far had an outing to playgroup and an outing to the park and we both felt comfortable (he fell asleep so he must have been!). I’m really looking forward to getting my lovely Pollora wrap now, and also having a lovely new baby to wrap up in it of course!

And finally I’m going to be having some fun this evening dying my hair! It’s not something I do very often so I still get quite excited about it. I decided that I want a change, and as I’ve got lovely pregnancy hair just now I don’t want it cut, so instead I’m going red! It’s the same colour I’ve used before so I know it suits me (even if it is quite a change!) and I’ll let you see the finished result. Assuming of course I don’t make a mess of doing it and have to chop it all off 😉 Here’s the before (excuse the terrible photo, I’m not very good at selfies apparently!):

I think that’s it for this little update. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend 🙂

My first* purchase for the new baby

*OK technically this wasn’t my very first purchase for this baby, as I’ve bought a pack of 2 sleep suits and a little toy giraffe, but I don’t think they really count! This has been my first exciting purchase.

Like many people these days I’m very keen on baby wearing. Now, if you aren’t familiar with the term, it simply means carrying your baby as opposed to only using a pram, for example. There are lots of benefits to carrying babies, and let’s face it, little babies are so darn cute who wouldn’t want to get more cuddles whilst also not being confined to the couch?

I found it invaluable for getting anything done as young sir was not keen to be laid down as a little baby. It also meant that public transport and shops were not the nightmare they can be with a pram.

Last time I made a ring sling using 2 metres of fairly sturdy cotton fabric and two sling rings, the total cost of which was less than £10. Not bad for the freedom it gave me! Of course you don’t have to make a sling, there are lots of different styles, fabrics and patterns to suit any taste and budget, for example I’ve seen one for sale for €5000! But that was just a little out of my price range, and was a very special edition.

This time around I’ve decided to try a wrap as well as my trusty red sling. A wrap is basically a very long rectangle of fabric which you wrap around yourself in any number of different ways depending on how you want to carry your child. And it was whilst watching instructional videos by the very talented creator of Wrap You In Love  (how cool is she? Although I would never ever be brave enough to do the same, I love her tattoos and rainbow Mohawk!) that I saw The One.
You know, the thing you didn’t know was missing from your life, but now that you know, you must own it? Yeah, that One. It was love at first sight, and I immediately set about finding where I could buy myself the gorgeous Pollora Iceflower.

That was where the fun began, as even though Pollora is a German company, I couldn’t find anywhere in Europe that had them in stock. I even tried a preloved sling site to see if perchance there was one for sale, but no such luck. Eventually I found a company in the US that had them in stock, and, even better, on sale! Woo! But they don’t ship internationally. Boo 😦

Luckily for me though my nephew is working in the US just now, and he has kindly agreed to let me ship it to him, then bring it over for me when he comes back at Christmas time. Yay!

So I really hope that when I finally get it, I still love it as much as I do just now!