Oscars 15 Month Update

Good Morning, Everyone :)

I have literally lost the plot. I wanted to come over to the blogger website to finish my ''10 New Traditions to start this Christmas'' post and typed in homebase.com instead :S :D I honestly spend most of my days there....awkward, but that is what happened :) And then now I realised that I am missing a few pictures for the post, so I'm just going to postpone it for a while...like I do with most of the things in my life :D

But today I will be sharing a little personal post about Oscars update :) Because I love him so much and so much has changed since the last one...(I think it was his 9 month update) so it will be really good to do an update...update...I keep saying that word in my head :D Anyway it will be a 15 Month UPDATE...as you might have already figured out from the title of this post :) So here it is...enjoy :)

 

I shall do sections, just because otherwise I will, I WILL, forget something and then I'll get angry at myself :)

EAT

Oscar is now 15 and a half months old and he is having 2-3 milk feeds a day. We still use formula...because he refuses cows milk :D we keep trying, I keep putting it in his cup during his meals and I've even tried half formula half milk, but he gets it....he is just too clever. I don't think there is anything wrong with giving formula either, it's pretty much the same and honestly I think it's cheaper as well :D SOOOO...

He wakes up around 7-8am and then has his first milk feed. Then after that he has his breakfast around 10 ... 2 hours after milk feed. It use to be just weetabix with a mashed banana and COWS MILK, yes the only time he accepts it :D, but now I mix it up. Sometimes he has a bit of bread and cheese or anything I can think of. I would love for him to have porridge in the morning, because it sets him off for the day, but sometimes he is just not interested in it, so I don't really push him.

He only has one nap now and another milk feed just before it. Once he wakes up he has lunch. This is usually a toastie or anything with egg. If we go out for a meal it's usually for lunch, because he seems most interested in food at that time, so we get to eat our food as well. 

At dinnertime, he has whatever we are having. Sometimes I try sneaking something healthier for him when we are having a cheat day, but he just picks up on it and refuses to eat his food, so he still ends up having whatever we are.

He has snacks in between as well. It's either the organix crisps or cheesestrings or a few slices of sausage and now that it's clementine season he is having those as well. On a completely unhealthy note he is absolutely obsessed with Wotsits :D haha, he sees a pack and he will throw out anything he is holding in his hand or mouth and he will not give up until we have opened the pack for him. The wotsits packs are now being held on the top of out kitchen cupboards, but I don't think it's completely unacceptable for him to have a few every now and then. It's all about the balance just like with grown ups. He also doesn't really like sweet things, other than his juice, so having a few unhealthy crisps really doesn't worry me :)

SLEEP

I don't even want to start :D He has one nap a day, which is usually 2 hours, and then goes to sleep around 7-8pm but most night he still wakes up. And for a really long time he was still having some milk during the night. I think...it's because he is getting loads of teeth. I mean he only has about 7 at the moment so there are still a lot to come. BUT it is EXHAUSTING....I am so lucky to have D to swappies with me, because honestly I don't know what I would do if I'd have to do everything myself every day AND then night....So any tips for teething relief would be awsome :) (we are currently using Teetha camomille granules, because he doesn't like the gels anymore)

PLAY

Our little art session with paints :)

He loves playing with anything or everything. I just find him so clever ( I'm sure all mothers think that about their child, but really he is CLEVER :D)He just figures everything out and then does it and it's amazing. He loves the flap books still, where you lift a flap and voilaa something is under it. And he remembers what is underneath before we even lift it up. He has also recently gotten into Lego. I got him a Lego Duplo number train set for his birthday, but until now he played with it for like a second and then moved on to something else, but recently...he has figured out how to put the parts together himself and is loving it. So I also got him a Lego Duplo farm set, which he loves. So sucess in the lego area :D next up puzzles I think. 

He is also going to at least 2 playgroups a week. I go with him to a toddler group on Fridays and then we have a nanny coming on Tuesdays or Thursdays who takes him to a different playgroup. He also likes soft play centres and he is fearless. He will climb up the slides and come head first from ladders :D I mean it's good exercise for me to keep him safe :D

MILESTONES

Because it's been soooo long since the last monthly update I thought I'll just mention that he started walking just before 11 month mark or just after...I can't even remember...what a great mother I am. but I remember thinking ''does this ever get old'' every time I saw him walk  :D honestly. 

He has been a bit slow on the talking side of things. He tries soooo hard :D but no words have come out until very recently. He still said ''emme'' (mommy in Estonian) ''dada'' and ''mommi'' (bear in Estonian) but other words were slow coming. He is now very good with words that start with a ''C'' like CUP and CAT and CAR and also DUCK and just short words. but he is getting better everyday and he tries to repeat whatever we say to him :)

SIZES

He is using pull up diapers and normal ones for night time. The pull up ones have been a size 5 for a while and we will be switching to nr 5 on the normal Pampers Dry night ones as well, as his belly is getting too big for the 4 :D 

He is in either 9-12 month old or 12-18 month old clothes now, depending on the make really. Tesco, which is where I get most of his clothes has smaller clothes for the sizes, so 12-18 month old clothes fit him perfectly. As H&M 12-18 is way too big for him. But he will grow into the clothes, so I'm not worried. And also it depends how many times I've washed something :D 

He is about 10.7 kg heavy, which is normal for his height, which was 78 ?? I think at his 1 year check up :) 

And I think I have pretty much covered everything :) If you have any questions, please, feel free to ask me anything. I am no expert in child care, but I can speak from my experience :)

Hope you enjoyed the post

And as always

Stay Tuned

xoxo

Meril

No Time

This is not going to be an excuse post if that's what you thought looking at the title. It's just going to be a post about the weekend and a little update of what has been happening :)

First things first. It was my birthday on Friday, but it didn't really feel like a birthday, because we were going out on Saturday. On Friday though we went for dinner with D and birdie to a local italian restaurant then came home and watched some tv. I went to bed at 10 :D I did get some beautiful flowers though from D and from my friends so that was nice :)

On Saturday I got up really early to go meet my friend, who was coming down from London :) I took birdie with me as well, but he was so well behaved I hardly noticed he was there :D
We had a glass of champagne and then did a bit of shopping. (I'll do another post on the things I got :))

And in the evening we headed out for a few drinks.
It felt really weird leaving O at home (D's sister and her boyfriend were babysitting for us). Again he was really well behaved though, fell asleep 10 minutes after we left and actually didn't get up again until 2am (we got home at around 12). It was probably because he was so tired from the day. We did have a few people coming round to ours as well before we left, so O was passed down from person to person for a good hour...he really likes people though, so it's all good :) I did get a cake as well :) D's brother keeps calling me Merilin, so if you think they have made a spelling mistake, then no, its his idea of a joke :D

The place were we were meant to start out(Marco Pierre White)was packed when we got there, and they were actually not even letting people in, so we went to the good old Pennyblacks downstairs and had a really good time. I managed to have my margarita as well :) Then went to another bar, where I only had a coke and headed back home.
We didn't want to leave Oscar for too long the first time. It's good to know that we can though, and it was pretty nice to get out and be a grown up :)

My friend from London didn't leave until Sunday evening, which we spent in town doing a bit more shopping. We also met up with a few more friends for dinner. After dinner y friend Jo got her train and D went to the gym  while me and my other 3 friends ventured to Carluccios for a coffee and dessert (I just had coffee). I got home about 8pm and me and O were completely and utterly tired from the whole weekend. I think he just needed some quiet mommy time, which is probably why he fed for a whole hour and a half. Then again he slept pretty much through the night only waking up once for a quick feed around 4-5am.

And now it feels like he is not sleeping at all. He has been so fussy for 2 days I think he is actually missing the action. Hopefully he will be better tomorrow, so I can finish another post and upload it :)
In the meantime, why not read my older posts :)

Have a good evening, everyone and stay tuned
xo

Weekend

Good evening, everyone :)
I've already been shit at this trying to post every day this week thing :D I will get better though...I'm sure...maybe. The weekend just went by so fast I completely forgot. 
The main thing that happened during those 2 days that I didn't manage to blog, was that we went to the botanical gardens :) And I've also started to breastfeed a lot more rather than pump, because I just hate it. It takes so long and it just feels that feeding is taking twice as much time as it should since I used to pump after every feed, sometimes even more often. I am using the nipple shield every time. Mostly because my nipples are still sore and not gotten use to all the activity and secondly O doesn't even know what a nipple is anymore :D 
I tried to breastfeed him without the guard once and he kind of just gave me this look of ''what are you thinking woman putting this weird thing in my mouth'' :D So I'm going to stick with the guard. I don't think there is any medical reason why I shouldn't be using it, so I'm going to continue. 
I don't actually remember what we did on Saturday :/ I don't think we did anything to be honest. I kind of remember feeling a bit ill. That feeling when you've got a sore neck and your skin hurts. And I was really scared that I was going to become ill and unable to take good care of O, but on Sunday I felt fine, so I guess it was just tiredness.

Anyway, here is a little picture update of the last few days :)

 This is how I start my day now. Warm water with lemon, it's meant to help with digestion and balance out all the acids in your body :)

 D and O stuck in gravel by the butterfly house in the botanical gardens

 My new favourite toy

Calm before the storm :D A second later he blew out his paci and started screaming :D 

btw the sheep is a godsend. It has a soundbox in it for ocean and whale sounds :D and it really calms him down. I don't use it at night but I do use it now for his day time naps.

 Tummy time. He's not a big fan, but it's good for him, because it helps get the gas out :)

I almost forgot. The biggest thing that happened during the weekend is that we switched to size 2 diapers :D how cool. He is getting bigger by the day.

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend as well
stay tuned
xo

Living Room Update

I finally found some accessories to spruce up the living room, and D swapped the tv table for the massive coffee table, so we are all good :D

So I went to TKmax again (this place will bankropt me :D) And got a few nice things to liven up the blandness.

I got this nice cream colored throw, it's so soft. And then the cushion with the flowers on. It has accents of blue and lime green. Really pretty

This is how the cushion looks like from the other side. I actually ended up leaving it on this way, because it gives more of an effect. 

This is the second settee. The stripy cushion on the left of the picture is the same as the one on the first picture, except it's in all cream/brown/beige colours. The other reason I keep them stripy side up is that the flowery bit is done with a thread that's a bit shiny, and I'm not a big fan of shiny :D 

And this is my coffee table arrangement. I got both of the trays, so one is for candles and flowers (picked these from the garden :D and they are in douwe egberts cleaned coffee jars...we have about 6 of them, so I keep trying to find what to do with tem. They are great for storing dry goods because the lids are really great, but they are just too small for pasta and flour and stuff like that :D) The other tray I figured I can use for fruit. But I only have bananas at the moment, and they were looking a bit rough, so I left them out of the picture :D 

I did do an order from Riverford Organic farm. So I should be getting a box of vegetables and fruit on Tuesday. I also ordered eggs :D figured why not. I only buy free range anyway so to have them delivered to your door for the same price....perfect.

It really is worth researching your local farms and markets to find the best quality ingredients. And like I've mentioned before, I'm trying to be as good as possible lately, with all the additives and GMO's. But sometimes stores don't stock the things you've gone for in the organic variety, so you have to make compromises. 

Anyway...hope you like the look of the lving room. I forgot to take the before photo :D but to be honest it wasn't that much different :D apartt from the fact it was missing the things I bought today :)

Home shop

Another rainy day. The only colour outside seems to be grey :( D is away because of work and I've got a day off, so what better thing to do than shop :D

Just to make myself feel better about spending money again I did clean the flat a bit while I waited for the mailman to come and collect Ds parcel. I also made a serious effort at trying to fix the toilet. The flush button broke off the other day, so D tried to glue it back on, but ended up pouring glue all over the instrument :D So it got stuck and I tried to dissolve the glue with acetone today...It didn't work :D And because our handyman is on vacation for 2 weeks we now have to wait for him to fix it.
I have to mention that we CAN still flush the toilet, by lifting some thing in there :D so it's not as bad as it may sound :D

So today ( I realise I use the word ''So'' to start sentences a lot :D) I woke up around 10 when D left. Had my usual morning coffee, put some washing on and for an hour just cruised on the Internet trying to look for inspiration for my date night this Friday :)
I've been trying to mix up my breakfasts lately, so I had a salmon and cream cheese bagel today :)
I then got ready (outfit post on the blog already) and once the parcel man had come I met up with my friend Marta in town for a bit of shopping :)

And here is what I found :)

These frames will go in the bedroom, once I've found some pictures to put in there :D Me and D have about 2 of us, and it would be weird to just put pictures of ourselves separately in there.
The white one was 4.99 and blue ones both 5.99. I love TkMax :D

This might not interest any of you, but we really needed some new pans, so I got a nice small one, since it is just the 2 of at the moment and a smaller wok pan as well, for all the stir fry meals :D
I also got these baskets, which I now use on the shelf in the kitchen. The smaller one holds all the vegetables and the bigger one has all the tuna cans in it now :D  It just looks nicer I think :)

Didn't get anything for myself for the date night :( but i can always go back on Friday, since I have the whole day off...

Or maybe not...I do have a lot of clothes already :D
But I'm off to cook some chicken now...being a good girlfriend today :)

Bedroom

Finally we got all the new furniture assembled and put into place. All my things are nicely organised and I just feel relieved to have it over and done with now. I still need to get a few things though, and we haven't bought the co-sleeper, which will change the room up a bit :D But here it is...our bedroom.

The Bed - Most of our covers are in either white, brown or blue tones, so this look changes a bit, but not considerably, when I change the bedsheets. The little bedside lamps are from Argos and were only 13.99 for a pair. They are touch base and have 3 different light settings...so cute :D
The picture came with the flat, and I have had it on pretty much every wall in every room. It goes really well now though I think. My side is the left, and the co-sleeper will be on that side as well....obviously.

The new chest of drawers - these are from the Koppang range in Ikea and they were actually at a really good price (£60 pounds each). They are longer and higher than the ones we had before, but the less wide, which is good because it gives more space between them and the bed. The machine on the left is a humidifier...It's Ds and I really hate it :D but I read that it's really good for the baby...so it can stay for now...even though I don't see why we need more humidity in England.

I am aware that there is 2 mirrors on the top. I only usually have the round one...we can't put it on the wall, because the walls are made out of paper :D so we're scared it might fall and break. I usually have the smaller one on my bedside table behind the lamp, but it looked better on the picture to not have it there, because Ds bedside table is pretty much empty.

On my chest of drawers I have a 2 boxes, the bottom round one has my clip-in hair extensions in it and a few random things like extra chargers and some documents. I keep all my extra make-up in the top box. The things I don't use daily, or hardly use, so most of my eye shadow palettes and out of tone foundations and a few cremes...all that. And then that big pile of jewellery is just a big pile of things I tend to use more often...small earrings, bracelets and bangles and a few necklaces.
And then there is a picture of my brother and me almost 8 years ago with my dog (he got ran over by a car 2 months after I moved to England :(  The picture is actually taken on the day when I left. 16th of September 2007 :D how strange)

This rattan chest of drawers also came with the flat and I use it to store all my extra jewellery, scarves and sunglasses and also my work shirts and gloves and things like that. I also have my hair dryer and straighteners in there when I'm not using them. I do tend to just chuck things in there once I've used them and it gets really messy....ALL THE TIME :D

This is the only closet in the bedroom. It's so tiny... so most of my clothes are stacked on top of each other on the hangers. Only organising I've done with it is I've tried to color co-ordinate even though all the long skirts and maxi dresses and longer sweaters and jackets are on the edges and don't go with the colors. D keeps his shirts and suits in the other bedroom, where there is the same size closet. They are both built in though, which really helps with the room lay out. The one thing I do think is great is the shoe shelf D got me. It comes in like a 100 different pieces and you can assemble it the size and height you need and want. So I keep my flats on top of it and heels in the compartments....I have to admit though, that there is about 15 pairs of boots and more shoes behind the shelf, because they just didn't fit. And I keep my daily shoes in the hallway.

On the top shelf I kee all my sweaters and cardigans and a few bags (most of my bags are under the side table in the living room....I have no idea why :D ) The shelf is quite high up though, so I usually just pull something out when I need it, and just throw it back in there once I'm done with it :D

This is not in the bedroom. I do my make up in the bathroom, so I keep all my daily make up and cremes in the Estee Lauder bags and I'm using  just a cleaned coffee jar for my brushes. I would keep them in the bedroom, but I usually wake up before D so It's just easier like this, plus the sun shines on this side of the house in the morning so I've got great light.

Hope you enjoyed the post. And I hope I get the strength together to sort out the living room next. Even though the massive coffee table is starting to grow on me :D

Back in England

I am back and have already been at work, done laundry, ordered furniture, cleaned the flat...BUT I haven't had time to update the blog...very bad.
I know I am also late on the 27 week update, I'm going to do it on Saturday and do a joint 27/28 week one...or more like just a 28 week update.

As I have said before, our flat is in serious need of more storage, so yesterday when it came to ordering chest of drawers for the spare room/Ds office I actually reconsidered and figured this is a great chance to replace the cheap looking ones in the bedroom with some fresh new ones.

I have gone for all white in the bedroom, and will go for blues as well as yellows and dark browns.Tthe fleece blanket I use on top of the covers is also blue (you might have seen it, I've taken some pictures of clothes/make-up on top of the bed before) Nautical/sea side theme I think.

So I got 2 3 drawer chest of drawers and 2 side tables (I had to get different ones, because D didn't like the ones I picked out and I didn't like his choice, so we decided that since his side is the far corner, it won't make a difference which table there is (he needs drawers on his side)

The pine colored chest of drawers will go in the spare room now, where I can keep the linens and clothes I don't use daily. Also I'm going to get either plastic storage boxes or some baskets to go underneath the cot (still don't have it) to keep the baby's clothes in them. And I did order a bigger coffee table as well for the living room. Funnily enough none of the furniture is from the same line (IKEA) but since it's all white I din't think it makes a difference...our living room furniture is white as well (couches are brown)

So a bit of Pinterest Inspiration for the living room and bedroom :)

I love just a simple arrangement of a bunch of flowers and candles. We use candles a lot :)

These are exactly the right colors. so simple and earthy...or should I say seasidy :D

I like the idea of a shelf above the bed with decorations on it, and also need a good picture collage as well. And you can never have enough candles.

I'm so hoping that with the new furniture the flat will finally start looking like a home rather than a rental place. I have only lived here since February and I'm quite glad I've waited a bot with the decorating, because I have had some crazy ideas :D But this now seems to have stuck for a while, so we'll give it a go

Here's to homes :)