Awards Season AGAIN!!!

Ooooooh!!!! Yay! My humble blog has been the recipient of TWO more awards this week!!! Thank you so much to Nicole at the young mama blog for my second Lovely blog award (It's down in my awards section). Now for some cut and pasting...

The rules of the "One Lovely Blog Award" are:

Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Here are my choices:

Okay, So I'm slightly altering this one and using this as an opportunity to highlight some of my favourite blogs, new AND old:

1. ArtyFeminist : I love her. She is one fab mama with a GINORMOUS brain and loads of creativity and passion to boot! Not to mention some scrummy recipes...

Right, from now on, may have to cut and paste some descriptions as girsls are making those horrible "We are waking up soon..." noises.

2. Feminist Childbirth Studies reflections of a literary scholar, mother, and aspiring birthworker on pregnancy/birth/parenting, our culture's (often-disturbing) stories and assumptions about reproduction and women's bodies, and birth's astounding potential for power, passion, beauty, humor, subversion, romance, healing, and joy

3. Freelance Mam

Okay, the hyperlink went mad so I'll write about freelance mam here. She describes her blog as "My efforts to establish myself further as a writer, amidst the chaos of two small boys and a day job"

I describe it as lovely! Full of useful information as well as great stories.

4. PositivelyNeuroticMe

FUNNY FUNNY FUNNY FUNNY!!!!!!!! And occasionally so heartbreaking I cry... Amazing woman, amazing blog. Need I say more?

5. Jen's Rantings

She reminds me of me. I love her. Does that make me vain?

6. WannabeDad

Okay, So I think I gave this to you before but I really think more people need to find you:)

Numbers 7 and 8 already have followings in the ridiculously high numbers, but on the off chance you haven't found them already...

7. Xboxfornappyrash

It is not fair for one man to write so well. I am very, very, verrrrrry jealous of his talent :)

8. Let's have a Cocktail

Verrrry witty woman...

9. HotCrossMum
'I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways'. (Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1861)

10. A little Messed up
Congrats on the Pregnancy and the fab blog!

Right. I'm going to break the rules and stop there as I still have another award to get to and one of the babies is waking up...

Thank you Hot Cross Mum for the "I love your Blog" award. Hee Hee! I love yours too! I also love tinygreenmama, madmammy, mommybrain, and sunshineandbubblegum.

Now for seven things about me!

Actually, I'll have to do that later. Baby number two is up and wanting some mama love!

Tiny Dancer

My baby is a dancer.

This is something we've always known. Put on anything with even the vaguest semblance of a beat and she's off. Rock, country, showtunes, whatever.... if it has a beat, she's got the moves to match.

It doesn't even have to be music. Mid way through the rinse cycle, our washing machine has a tendency to rock out of it's own accord and everytime, without fail, the snot queen will stop what she's doing and rock out with it.

So imagine her delight when we took her to her first wedding this weekend.

"Ecstatic Bliss" does not begin to describe the joy that emanated from her tiny body as the band began to play and hundreds of people took to the floor to dance.

How, in all her 20 months of life on this earth, had such an extraordinary phenomenon as this existed without her knowledge? How long had people been meeting up to shimmy and shake and make such a joyous sound? And WHY oh WHY had we, her parents, kept her from them?

Well, she more then made up for lost time on Saturday night. From the moment her miniature mary janes hit the floor, she was off. She boogied with the best of them and screamed in protest if we so much as hinted at taking a break.

There was no end of suitors willing to partner her. Family, friends and complete strangers, she was anyone's for a song.

She even seemed to have an inborn knowledge of dancehall etiquette, turning to applaud the band at the end of each number. The seeds of a true groupie were sown as she lay prostrate on the floor in front of the stage making eyes at the lead singer.

At eleven o'clock, long past the hour she should have been in bed, we finally bundled up the little diva and took her home where she spent the next 12 hours in a dance induced coma.

And if there was any worry about her taste of the bright lights spoiling her for the simple pleasures of home, it was wiped away this morning as the rinse cycle started and her hips began to sway...

The Power of Objects

There is nothing quite like the sense of foreboding one gets from ordinary household items once one becomes a parent.

Today's example? The lid from the jar of nappy cream resting on the arm of the couch sans rest of jar.

Pre children, this item would actually not be found in my house, however, had it's lid somehow been discovered there, the worst case scenario would have involved a jar of nappy cream with a dusty top layer. No biggie.

Add a few kids to the mix and that lid will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand nice and tall as the end result usually involves you, following a sticky, white, hand - printed trail around the house until you discover the culprit sitting on the kitchen floor, happily consuming whatever cream has not been used to coat their entire body.

Well, at least she's getting her zinc.

Aaaaagh!

If you could open up my head right now, you would be blown back by the force and sheer volume of thoughts and emotions that would hit you like a truck and leave you lying dazed and confused wondering, "What the hell just happened?"

I'm having one of "those" days. The days where nothing makes sense and everything seems to either irritate or frustrate me or else seems hell bent on getting in my way. It's the kind of day where everyone needs something and there isn't enough of me to go around and god help you if you dare to even THINK or BREATHE the wrong way because I WILL notice and I WON'T be amused.

It's the kind of day where I have arguments in my head over things that not only have not happened, but which I have no real reason to believe ever will aside from the fact that I'm completely out of sorts and have lost all control over the thoughts that are spinning and shooting forth, completely unchecked, from my mind.

I feel like an overtired child.

I am an over tired Adult.

I want someone to come along and pick me up and with no expectations whatsoever to rock me in their arms until the sobs become sniffles and the sniffles, soft snores and all the thoughts that are racing will stop and fade away to be replaced by dreams as I feel my body relax and my mind let go and I fall so gently, asleep.

To print, or not to print...

My Printer hates me. I have a small window known as “naptime” in which to print off and edit several hundred pages of musings on various “birth and baby” related topics (Today we do the third trimester and all the joys that go with it, hello perineal massage!) this would be fine were it not for the small matter of my printer refusing to do the job for which it was named, i.e print the damn lot! Sigh... Oh well, think I'll take advantage of the quiet and have a cuppa.

Technology hates me.

FEED ME MAMMY!!!

Oh God! I feel like I've been hit by a truck... What is WRONG with me? My head hurts, my body hurts, my eyeballs feel like they weigh about two stone each and everything around me is just a bit too fast and a bit too loud.

Am I dying? Is it the plague? Is it Swine Flu?

Oh...

Wait a minute.

I'm the mother of a baby going through a growth spurt.

A Growth spurt which involves her feeding all. Night. Long.

Yeah, yeah, I know... Night time is when the milk is at it's most nutritious. Hence her hoover like latch which does not let up until the morning light streams through the curtains and big sis is ready to get up for the day while the tiny terror falls into a milk induced coma.

I know, I know, I know.

That doesn't mean I have to like it.

Night feeds suck.

Happy Saturday!

Shanty Town Part Two: The Reno's

The Artist at Work... Putting on the finishing touches.

Et Voila!!!

Home Sweet Home

Yup, we wallpapered the interior with pages from the Argos catalogue...