Busy Day

Like I said yesterday, today was going to be a busy day.

The first thing I wanted to do was go through the baby clothes I have from when Alice was a baby. I haven't properly looked through them before and it gave me some comfort knowing that I still had a lot of her newborn and 0-3month clothing.

That wasn't all of them, this was just from one box I was sorting out. Alice took a great interest in them as I explained these would be for her baby sister but they were hers when she was younger. She looked at the piles and lay across them saying "I love baby clothes" repeatedly.

And as you can see she got quite comfortable on them!

Once Alice had gone down for a nap I decided I needed to work my magic on the Dining room! I had boxes all over and a Moses basket in there and everything was piled on top of the dining room table. I wore myself out tiding it all and that's when I had to sit down. I must say I didn't do too badly before that point and I haven't got much left to do!

I just need to move the trike, clear the table a bit more and extend it and I am done!

Once Alice woke up from her nap I called  her Nanna to let her know she could come over with her partner, Richard to come and say hello before Christmas. Whilst we waited for them to come over Alice spotted that I found her Megasketcher under a pile of things on the table. She just had to give it some use. She told me that she was drawing a dinosaur. So this is a dinosaur according to my daughter.

Not long after she had had enough of drawing Nanna and Richard turned up. Alice wasn't very keen on seeing Richard, she has met him before but it has been a while since she last saw him. So she did end up standing the opposite side of the room to him and hiding her face. She did eventually get out of her corner and settle once I put Tangled on for her. She then quite happily sat next to her Nanna to watch it :)

They didn't stay for too long and Alice was quite happy that she got to spend some more time with her Nanna.

Tomorrow I shall be baking lots of cakes, I'm sure Alice will love to help me out :)

Claire
xx

A Lot Of Fun At Grandma's

This morning after breakfast we went round to Grandma's house. As per usual Alice was thrilled to go and see Grandma and as always Mummy gets forgotten about quite quickly as soon as Grandma is around. It was sweet when we were getting ready to go, I always ask Alice what she wants to take with her, normally she chooses one of her toys, today she said she wanted to take me! It was sooo sweet, even though I was coming anyway.

Once at Grandma's the games came out and Grandma and Alice were playing puzzles.

They also did lots of cuddling, kissing and tickling!

We also watched Tangled, another one of Alice's favourite Disney movies. She is very chilled out watching it in her beanbag chair....

...but you can tell when things really start to get good!

Grandma decided whilst we were over she would make some of her extremely yummy chocolate brownies! Alice loves to help, but as we've seen many times before, she loves to clean the equipment afterwards ;) I think it tasted extremely good from the big mess around her face, and on her t-shirt!

Later on she was playing with one of the baby dolls she has at Grandma's and decided she wanted to put her down in the pram. The dilemma she had was that there was already a baby in the pram. She couldn't choose between them! So in the end they had to share. Poor babies look awfully squashed in there though! 

At about 3pm we went home as I had had a phone call from Sainsbury's asking if I could move my delivery time forward as they were short staffed. I had agreed and had said they would be over from 4-5. As my Mum was having hers delivered around the same time I thought leaving at 3 would give her a little chill out period before her delivery arrived and Alice and I could chill before ours arrived. Well it got to half 5 and it still hadn't arrived so I phoned them up asking what had happened. Turns out my delivery was changed to 5-6 not 4-5. At 6pm is when I normally get Alice down and by the time our delivery finally arrived at 6:20pm Alice was quite ready for a sleep bless her.

Well, that was our day! The next few days are going to be absolutely jam packed!! I need to clear the dining room so that we can fit everyone in for Christmas lunch, I need to bake cakes for Christmas and Alice's Nanna is coming round tomorrow afternoon with her partner, Richard, to come and see Alice just before Christmas. I think Theresa and her kids are also coming over at some point tomorrow as well. SO please wish me luck, and hopefully whilst this is all going on baby stays put! I am now 39 weeks pregnant so baby could appear at anytime! My due date is the 29th so lets see!

Hope you all try and take it easy for the next few days! Christmas is only 3 days away! I'm sooo excited haha :D

Claire
xx

Pickles and Tea Parties

This morning Alice had quite the lie in, not waking up until 8:30. This has become quite a trend she's starting to wake up around 7 - 8 whereas she used to be waking up at anytime from about 6am. Trust me I am not complaining, I'm enjoying these lie ins whilst they last!

I decided that we needed to get out today so I text my cousin Theresa to see if she was free at all today. She was so we went to Pickles, a local soft play area, at about 10am. Theresa has 2 kids, Tyler, who is 5 and Alyssa, who is 3. Tyler was at school so Alice got to play with Alyssa at Pickles. They had such a fun time, some of the time with each other and who knows who when they weren't together. I'm not technically supposed to take pictures but I managed to get one of Alice, eating a double chocolate chip muffin, just to show that we had been! Unfortunately didn't manage any of Theresa or Alyssa.

We ended up staying there for an hour and a half. By the time Alice came out of the play area she was all hot and sweaty! She really did have so much fun, at one point I realised I hadn't seen her for about half an hour. By the time we got home she was quite ready for a nap!

In the afternoon my friends Sam and Abbi popped over to say hi. Alice has only met Abbi once before so she wasn't too sure of her at first but was very quick to drag Sam all over the house! Soon enough she had us all sitting down for a tea party.

And what would a tea party be like if we didn't get Bunny to join in too! Sam was quite pleased he managed to get Bunny to hold her own tea cup.

I love how she can make any adult do as she pleases. You really can't say no to such a cute little face!

That was our day, extremely fun-filled if I do say so myself!

Claire
xx

A Visit From Nanna

This morning we were trying to pass the time whilst we waited for Nanna, Craig's Mum, to turn up. So we played a bit of hide and seek. As you can see my daughter is a brilliant hider ;)

And she did a bit of rolling around, I apologise that these pictures are blurry as you may realise 2 year olds aren't very good at keeping still!

She got a bit tired after all of it, I was exhausted watching!! Her hair was bothering her as well so we tied it up. Basically she just looked too cute not to take a picture!!

When Nanna came over, she didn't come empty handed. Alice got a cute little bag, which had a couple of pieces of chocolate and a couple of hair ties in, as well as some very Christmassy clips, Alice likes to call them clippers. I did try and take a picture of her wearing the hair clips, but yet again she wouldn't stay still.

She insisted her Nanna put the hair ties on her wrist.

And her visit would not be complete without reading some stories out of her Disney Princess magazine.

We'd never seen Nanna with her glasses on and Alice could not resist trying them on!

Alice very much enjoyed her visit from Nanna and it was nice to see her after everything that has happened this week. She completely understands and she still wants to see her granddaughter, soon to be granddaughters, and there is no way I am going to stop her.

This week on CBeebies they have been showing Christmas episodes of different programs they show at 4:30 every afternoon. We have mostly been looking forward to today's one as it was a new Peter Rabbit one. As you can see, Alice was quite glued to the TV when it came on. She loves rabbits! The bit I managed to capture has Jemima Puddleduck but Peter made an appearance shortly after :)

Looking forward to tomorrow, where I know I'll be surviving yet another Apocalyptic day. I don't really believe in all of that nonsense. It's already Friday in Australia and so far I think it's just another day there! Enjoy yourselves tomorrow, I know I will :)

Claire
xx

Oops

This morning Alice and I had a calm morning, other than my manic cleaning as Craig's Mum was supposed to come over. She had to cancel last minute as she unexpectedly got handy men turn up to fix a hole in her roof. So we have rescheduled for her to come over tomorrow.

So Alice and I just ended up watching Dora the Explorer on the couch for the majority of the morning. It was lovely just to relax and cuddle up and not do much at all.

Whilst Alice was down for her nap I decided to play around with my December Daily and I think I've finally got an idea of how I'd like it all to look. I've only managed the first 3 days though so I think my December Daily album may only appear in the blog in the New Year I'm afraid!

After Alice's nap my Mum came over and we went over to hers after a few house stops so that she could post some Christmas cards to her friends. We were incredibly impressed that when we pulled up outside Mary's, our hairdresser, Alice could tell us that we were at Mary's house.

We got to my Mum's house and would you believe that I completely forgot my camera!! This is the first day where I haven't taken any photos with my camera so I took them on my iPod with the Instagram app. I only have 3 photos from the whole of today and unfortunately my iPod takes quite poor quality pictures, but at the end of the day as long as I have pictures it doesn't matter too much. But I shall apologise for the poor quality of them right now!

My Mum bought me some stamps and we got to writing addresses and finally getting all of our Christmas cards posted! Thank goodness, as tomorrow is the last day to post cards 1st class for Christmas!

As you can clearly see this girl is so up on her technology, she doesn't need anyone around to be able to work out Grandma's iPad! She just sits and either plays games or, as she is, watches kids programs on Netflix. This was after she finally settled down as she constantly wants her Grandma's attention whilst we go over and just bursts into tears, as she knows Grandma will feel bad and do anything to make sure she is happy.

She also had a lot of fun taking off all the ornaments on Grandma's tree. She just seems fascinated by them all! I really think in the January sales I'm going to buy some more ornaments so that our Christmas tree doesn't look as bare as it has done the last two years!

 

We did some colouring whilst Grandma and Auntie Em went out to get some bits from the shop for a Secret Santa present.

And after dinner Alice wanted Grandma to read lots of different book. This one was her particular favourite Everyone Hide From Wibbly Pig by Mick Inkpen. She loves getting to look under the flaps to see who is hiding.

6 days until Christmas now! Everyone excited? I know I am :)

Claire
xx

Christmas Food Shop

Today was the day we did our Christmas food shop! Now, I have never properly been on a Christmas food shop but as we are having everyone round here for Christmas my Mum and I have been organising what we are going to have and need to get etc.

We spoke first thing this morning, and she really wasn't keen on going. We both knew that we wanted to go either today or tomorrow as we felt that Sainsbury's would have been a bit hectic if we decided to put it off any later! Eventually we decided it would be a good idea to go today and get it all over and done with.

First thing we did when we got to Sainsbury's, to prepare ourselves of course, also Alice and I hadn't had breakfast, was go to our favourite place! Starbucks of course. I'm going to tell you now I had my camera with me but didn't take any photos, I don't think anyone really wants to relive a Christmas shop through photos if I'm honest haha!

We managed just under an hour in Starbucks before we decided that we should go and tackle it! The thought of it had filled me with dread as we both knew it wasn't going to be easy whilst we had a 2 year old with us as well!

In total we spent a good hour going around the shop picking up everything we needed, including a Disney Princess magazine and some Smarties Cookies to keep Alice happy!

I cannot tell you just how exhausted I felt after all of that! I was extremely out of breath, I do forget just how heavily pregnant I am! I'm a lot smaller than I was when I was carrying Alice so for me to stop and go "take it easy you are 38 weeks pregnant" doesn't really happen a lot!

Once we got back to our house, my Mum helped us unload the bags from the car and then she was off again on her many errands. I swear she is like Super Woman some days. I really just don't know how she does it all!

I wasn't going to allow myself to rest as we had plenty of things that needed to go in the freezer so my first port of call was to unpack all of the shopping so that I didn't have to worry about it at a later point. I managed it a lot quicker than I expected! It felt good to have it all out of the way. I honestly don't think I have ever had a freezer as jam packed as I do right now!

I also now have my baking things all sorted now. I am cheating I must admit! I'm using cake mixes rather than making it all by scratch but I really don't think I want to be making cakes from scratch on Christmas Eve with everything else that will be going on!

Once I had everything put away it was time to relax, well as much as I can with a 2 year old about the house! We were putting on her jewellery from her Disney Princess magazine and looking at bits from a Cinderella gift bag that we got. It was going to be saved for Christmas but unfortunately Mummy wasn't too bright whilst hiding it in the trolley and she ended up sticking out and being quite noticeable!!

But once she started to get tired she relaxed a little.

Whilst Alice was having her nap my friend Sam came over and we just sat and chatted for ages about all sorts. The time went past and the next thing I knew it was 4:15pm and little miss was still sleeping! I feel horrible when I have to wake her up from her nap but it was getting close to dinner time and I really didn't fancy having an extremely late night after last night!

As soon as she came downstairs and saw Sam, well she calls him Uncle Sam, that was it! He was dragged off to play and all sorts. I came into the kitchen at one point to find there were stickers on the kitchen counter!

He is extremely good and plays anything she wants. She can so easily wrap people around her finger it's quite funny!

Anyway I think it's time I headed off to bed. Hope you all have/ had a good day :)

Claire
xx

It's Happened Again

Dear Blog Friends,

It has happened again where I did not make a post. But last night was a very interesting night, unfortunately not in the good sense. It has broken my heart a little but I shall move on and forget about it. I won't go into too much detail as things and circumstances may change but Alice's father, Craig, has taken the choice to not be involved in his daughters lives. This has deeply upset me but I shall not dwell on it. I have a beautiful daughter that still needs me and I have another on the way in just a matter of weeks, or days depending on when she decides to make her appearance. We have plenty of love and support and we will manage I know we will. I am focusing on Christmas and looking after my gorgeous girl, soon to be girls.

Anyway, now that I have gotten that out of the way, I shall move onto what happened yesterday during the day :)

Alice decided to pick out her own outfit yesterday, a flowery jumpsuit, that we haven't tried on before. She was utterly fascinated with the jumpsuit and loved pulling the legs up, I was forever pulling them down! It is far too cold at the moment to not wear trousers!

When Alice went down for a nap I took it upon myself to get my Christmas wrapping done. And I am very happy to say that I did get it all finished just as Alice woke up. I had to tidy up as quickly as possible before going to get Alice as there were presents and scissors and wrapping paper all over the way!

At lunch Alice normally sits at her table and chairs to eat but she decided that she wanted to sit in her chair and eat it today. I can't really complain as I eat on the couch. We have far too much piled on the dining room table that we can't really sit down to eat at it yet. It's on my list of things to do! But she was very chilled whilst eating her yogurt and watching CBeebies!

After we had lunch I decided we deserved a bit of a treat so I got out the Roses tin and got us 4 pieces of chocolate each. Alice obviously didn't complain ;)

Alice had a bath after dinner and it didn't go very well! She slipped in the bath and banged her chin and also managed to cut her finger. I only realised this morning that she also has a cut under her chin my poor little girl.

Hope you all are starting to get into the festive spirit this week! Not long now :)

 Claire
xx

A Day Late

Well, for the first time in 15 days I didn't make a post. I had every intention of doing so but I started to feel incredibly ill so I gave it a miss and decided I would be better off just getting an early night instead. I have woken up this morning feeling sooo much better so I thought I'd update now whilst Alice is watching Finding Nemo.

We both weren't feeling particularly wonderful yesterday morning so we had a rather relaxed morning. My Mum text me whilst Alice was down for a nap and asked me whether we'd like to go round to hers in the afternoon. I said yes straight away as I know Alice would love to see her Grandma and since we've been ill we haven't really gone out of the house so it would be a chance to just get out!

Once Alice woke up from her nap I phoned my Mum quickly just to let her know and then I went to go and get her. I told her that Grandma was going to come over and take us to her house, as soon as she got out of her cot she danced around saying "Yipee!" [if you hadn't noticed Alice is very much a Grandma's girl!]

My Mum got to ours not much longer after Alice had woken up, she was already out in Waitrose getting food so she was just going to come and pick us up after she'd finished in there. When we got there my Mum remembered that she had bought Alice a princess advent calendar a while back so that she could have one at her house. Every time we've been over we keep forgetting to open it and we finally remembered and opened it up for her. The film around it took some getting off. We normally got told to get some scissors if we resorted to using our teeth to open things as we were growing up so this is just a picture reminder to my Mum ;)

Alice had 16 days to catch up on and she did it quite happily, just a side note, the chocolates inside were extremely tiny!

Later on Alice had noticed the angel at the top of my Mum's Christmas tree and insisted that she wanted to have a look at her. My Mum told me that I had actually picked out that angel for our tree years ago. Alice thought she was very pretty and gave her cuddles and danced around with her. It was incredibly cute to watch :)

We ended up staying at my Mum's for a roast dinner before coming home again. I didn't really take too many pictures but I do have one of Mac. So I shall leave you with a picture of Mac sleeping before I update again. Hope you are feeling healthier than myself!

Claire
xx