Cake!!!

I am holding a Cake Break in aid of the MS Society tomorrow - have just had a marathon afternoon baking and making dinner (homemade pizza). So there is a cherry bakewell sponge surprise (the surprise being that I bought damson jam by mistake instead of cherry...), date and coconut bars, mini carrot and courgette muffins (which Zachary mixed and broke the egg for) and apple streusel muffins. Yum!

It is mainly an excuse to make cakes (hee hee), although I have known people at work with MS so there is a vague connection and it's good to be able to support charities when you can. Hopefully photos will follow shortly.

I've made the apple muffins before and can't remember if I had the same issue with the recipe. It's an American book, but I assume that their tablespoon measure is the same size as ours? Anyway the recipe says to put 2 tablespoons of the batter in each case, then the cinnamon sugar layer, then a further 2 tablespoons to top up. I may be being over generous with my tablespoons, but I've got 3 muffins that didn't get a top layer of batter! Am going to try one of those soon to see how it is.

Also took Zachary for his second nursery settling in this morning. Oh man it was hard. He was happy to go in with us but as soon as we made moves to leave him he howled. Leigh had gone with Leo to the Parents Room, and I found I just had to leave Zachary otherwise it was just going to get worse - or at least no better. The staff there are happy to give him a cuddle if he needs it and apparently he quickly settled after we were gone. I felt awful though - it might sound ridiculous, but it felt almost as though I'd betrayed him! He gets so used to going off to play but still being able to see me at the other end of the room, I felt I'd broken his trust or something.

We stayed at the nursery for the rest of the hour (in a separate room) and later on saw his group going out into the garden - Zachary leading the charge! And he was absolutely fine when we went to collect him. So hopefully it will get easier as he starts to know the staff more and he certainly had a good time. It will be a test on Tuesday.

Brain is dead

It's quarter to 10 and I'm really tired. Trying to decide whether to stay up a bit longer to sort something out for His indoors' birthday or just give in and go to bed. On the plus side, Leo hasn't stirred yet tonight which is great. Last night he woke at half 7 and 10, but not then again til 4, and we have had recently a night where he fed at 7 as usual and then went til 2 without another feed. It's totally bizarre and inconsistent! It seems as though he's starting to get to the stage where he can go much longer, but then we seem to have a night where it's back to every 3 hours on the dot. Hey ho.

On the plus side we'll be starting to wean him in the next few weeks so hopefully that'll affect his sleep patterns for the better...although at some point we'll also be putting him to bed in the nursery with Zachary rather than in our room. We have 'officially' got space for them to have a room each, but I think it'll be good for them to share at least for a while. Am I setting this up for disaster? Hopefully they'll settle into it - my main fear is that I don't want to disrupt Zachary too much. He's a great sleeper at the moment and makes no fuss about going to bed. I just hope Leo isn't too much of a disturbance. Added to which we still haven't cracked the whole 'getting Leo to go to sleep without being fed to sleep!' If we try it, it usually ends up with about 5 minutes of happy Leo in cot playing, then instantly switching to hysterical screaming! Zachary's sleeping at his grandparents this weekend, it's time to have a controlled crying attempt. Not looking forward to it, but it's got to be done - hopefully Leo will surprise us both and settle himself. Yeah, right!

I think I might stay up a bit longer - busy day tomorrow. Zachary has his second settling in session at nursery (the one on Tuesday went really well, but I've been warned that children seem to be able to spot the difference when they first start 'for real' and we leave the building totally. That's next Tuesday), then I need to go to Home Bargains, do the supermarket shop, have a massive bake-a-thon for my Cake Break on Friday and then clean the bits of the house which are likely to see visitors on Friday. Hurrah.

Buggy Boarding

As Leo is up at 5 this morning I thought I would try to use my time wisely - and hope frantically that he'll get tired and drop off again in about an hour so I can go back to bed too!

Had a trial with the buggy board yesterday and pleasingly it was really successful. It remains to be seen if that can be repeated now the initial excitement over something new has gone, but Zachary seemed to get on really well with it. Basically a buggy board is a stand on wheels that clips to the back of another pushchair which one child stands on. We have borrowed one from a relative to trial with the boys and she was very enthusiastic about them.

We talked about them before Leo was born but decided that Zachary was probably still a little too young then to manage standing for a while on the board (and behaving!) so bought a double buggy anyway, which has been great. But he is now starting to want to walk more and can give a bit of trouble getting into the pushchair so I thought now might be the time to try something different.

And he seemed to like it. We got all the way into town and back again using the board which surprised me but is very good. It's a bit more awkward to push as Zachary stands between me and the pushchair so I lean a bit more, but it will certainly be great for little trips and hopefully the shopping centre. Rock on.

Ooo eck!

Okay, I think that it's time to start this up again - not least since one of my children has decided that getting up at 6am is an appropriate use of his time! The bad thing is I think my body has started to adjust to it, and I'm starting to plan the evening before what jobs I'll get done in that hour and a bit before the rest of the house is up (really exciting stuff like emptying the dishwasher!).

So, since June I have now had my second baby - wahey! What I thought was indigestion after a heavy Chinese takeaway turned out to be contractions and Leo James followed pretty quickly afterwards (well, in comparison to the marathon labour I had with Zachary). Leo is now nearly 6 months old so we're turning our attention to weaning again, which is pretty scary how quickly that has come around. Zachary is now 2 and is due to start nursery a couple of mornings a week from the beginning of May. It's going to leave us a bit strapped income-wise, but will hopefully be great for him, and give me more time with Leo and to get stuff done around the house...finally I should be able to make our 'new' bedroom curtains!

Oh and we need a new roof. A few tiles slipped over the winter and the chap who came to sort those out told us we had nail fatigue and basically the whole thing needs replacing. Great. Work due to start end of May.

Lots of other stuff has been going on - Z still swimming, and he's started a Rhythm Time class with my friend Vanessa, he's moved into a big bed, and we've been making the most of getting people over for dinner and board gaming. Also my sister and 2 of our friends up here have had babies as well and it's been great having more people to talk baby with.

Need to update all my profile details now - it's about half 8. Leo's been in bed since 7 and we haven't got past half 9 without a wakeup...let's see how long he goes tonight!