5th November - Playing and Laughing

I love my days being really chilled out. This may sound like a daft thing to say when you are essentially in charge of a small child all day. Chilled out is not exactly something that comes to mind when you put a 12 month old baby in the picture but actually most days with Zachary are actually pretty great these days. Amazing how fast those days of walking the hall ways with a tearful, tired baby who still won't sleep transform into days when they are quite happy to sit and play and tire themselves out so fast moving about when they are exploring that sleep comes naturally and easily to them. When I first had him I kept thinking of that expression 'sleep like a baby' and wondered who had made it up. I thought quite cheerfully if I ever met that person I would love to knock them over the head with a very heavy frying pan sort of Tom & Jerry style. I would leave them dazed and listening to tweety birds for the next hour while I explained exactly why it was a daft expression. Now I realise that they simply were not talking about a newborn but about a toddler. This toddler who will sit and occupy himself while Mummy actually has chance to get dressed in the morning, wash, do her hair and put make-up on. At one stage I thought I would never get to sleep a whole night ever again. When Zachary was 6 months old I was fatter than I was before becoming pregnant and hadn't slept more than 4 hrs straight in the whole 6 months. Now at almost 12 months I can see things changing and am beginning to get more time back to myself. He has at last started sleeping through the night at least 6 out of 7 nights. He also has a small snooze mid morning and a 2 - 3 hour nap every afternoon. I even sneaked an hour in the bath this afternoon! Pure heaven! He hardly ever complains about having to go to sleep when he does go to bed and if he does wake up at night is happy to crawl into bed with me and go back to sleep. This morning Mum came in to find zachary and I fast asleep in my bed at 10am! I can honestly say more sleep is great and chilled out days are just amazing!

6th November - Playing with Grandma

I had quite a bit of paperwork and stuff to do today so Mum offered to look after Zachary for a few hours while I worked. He can sit up really well now so he has no problem sitting playing. Mum sat on the sofa reading the papers and Zachary sat and entertained himself. Who said babysitting was hard work eh? I guess that is the thing about children though one moment they are little angels the next they are testing your patience to the absolute limit. Typically those moments of angelic behavior are just when you are telling someone how difficult they can be or visa versa. One of Zachary's new tricks at meal time is throwing everything he can get his hands on onto the floor. Our two dogs are really keen to hover around the kitchen door eagerly watching for any stray food that hits the floor. If food is on the floor for more than a few seconds it is dog food! Just watch out for flying cups, bowls, spoons or forks. This morning Zachary almost brained our Collie 'magic' with one of those no spill cups.

I can't believe he is almost a year old. Sometimes the last year seems like a lifetime then other times I can't believe it has gone by so fast. I don't actually feel as if I have done very much other than be Mommy but at the same time its been a very exhausting year. I have learnt a lot and no study books in site. This was the college of life! In this case a degree in baby care and development. Hopefully I am on track for a great pass. That's the thing isn't it every baby and every Mom is different. No matter what the books or experts say you have to do what works best and naturally for you, your life and your baby. In which case we are each an expert in our own lives and babies and we can only do our very best. I know not every baby has the life I will give Zachary. Watching babies in orphanages institutionalized in places like Romania breaks my heart. I also know that there are babies here in the UK who probably don;t have the best of lives. I just have to promise my little boy that he will have a fantastic life.

7th November - Dragons live!

There be dragons in Malvern. Well ok actually only one dragon and its a cute cuddly one at that. I found this Tom Arma Dragon suit on ebay and had a moment of complete madness when I hit the place a bid button. That is the the thing with ebay you can get really carried away in the moment. The suit is pristine though and apart from two photo shoot sessions today it will not have any extra wear so next Halloween I will sell it on and hopefully get almost what I paid for it. We had some fun dressing up and roaring around the house. the suit is really well made but warm and since we are having a really warm late autumn Zachary the dragon was soon puffing and panting rather than roaring. We had to strip down a bit and cool off. All dragons need fuel to get their internal fires burning too and getting hungry soon makes dragons roar pretty loudly. After being really good and letting me take all those cute photographs and putting up with that daft head gear he was in no mood for messing about with vegetable stew so we ended up having porridge oats and apple puree. Dragons do get what they want after all!

8th November - Trying New tastes

I have this great baby recipe and food book by Annabel Karmel which is full of ideas on what to feed your baby and how to get them trying and eating new foods. That's the thing about reading these baby books though they trick you into believing it will be as easy as the book makes out. real life - babies just like grown ups know exactly what they like and what they want when they want it. Perseverance is great and eventually Zachary seems to be quite happy to try most things and actually likes most food that I give him. Some days though he just does not want to be messed about. His teeth are pushing through at the moment and no amount of encouragement would get him to eat the meal I had lovingly taken all afternoon to prepare. Pasta and vegetables might be really good for me Mommy but I want rusks, oat with milk and fruit and no substitutes will do. Or at least after 10 minutes of moaning, face pulling and throwing stuff at me that is what I interpreted him to be saying. We removed the bib which was covered in vegetable muck, wiped down and this time the restaurant waitress was good enough to deliver exactly what sir ordered! Ok so sometimes Mummy is not always in charge as much as she would like. Quite how you let yourself get bullied by a small infant barely 2ft tall is another matter. Of course having won this small battle he was happy as a lark. Quite happy to sit on the floor and play and laugh at me while I cleaned the vegetables off the kitchen wall. I guess the important thing is that baby does actually eat something. We can always try vegetables tomorrow. At least I know he likes his fruit and oats are good for you so it can't hurt can it?

9th November - Autumn is late this year - November walk in the sun.

You could be forgiven for thinking it was a lovely september autumn day today not November which should be winter. The trees still have their autumn leaves, the air has that lovely crisp but still warm feel to it that you expect in autumn. The only give away is the very low sun that you get in winter. Because it is starting to get a bit colder I hunted ebay for one of those buggy cosy toes / buggy snuggle to keep Zachary's legs warm. I managed to bid for and win this lovely leather sheepskin lined Mamma's & Papa's cosytoe that will be really nice and warm and snuggly inside. The girl who was selling it was really lovely too. I think ebay is such a great web site. It is always worth checking the prices though to make sure you are not fooled into a false economy or over priced so called bargain. Often though you can get some great deals and I am really pleased with this particular purchase. I know this is a daft photograph but it turned out so warm and sunny this morning that I ended up taking a photograph of the leaves in the trees.

12th November - Breakfast pyjamas & IKEA

I always think that Zachary looks so grown up in his pyjamas. When I see him sitting up in bed with a book in his pyjamas he looks so much like a little boy and not a baby at all. He is almost one now and I guess soon will be a toddler rather than a baby. They do grow so fast. Now I know why everyone says to make the most of every moment of their early years because before you know it they are all grown up and at school then the next minute towering over you and bringing washing home from college. This morning he was in a really happy chatty mood this morning and after breakfast was happy to sit and play on the floor while I got myself sorted out and started to move some things. Today is a big day. We are off to IKea to buy furniture so that we can move Zachary and I into our own bedrooms. Zachary will have the middle smaller bedroom and I am moving back into my old bedroom. Kind of weird really after all this time to be living in my old bedroom again. There are moments when I think it is quite sad that I am living back with my parents but then I also realise that in this last year it has been so much nicer for both Zachary and I to be among family than be on our own miles from everyone.

14th November - Dragons in the bedroom

Zachary now has his own bedroom. He seems really happy to have his bed in his own room. Now he doesn't have to listen to my snoring and I don't have to listen to him sleeping. He is such a noisy sleeper. He talks, wiggles, moves, passes wind, kicks and snores. To be fair for the last couple of months or so - since our summer holiday in swansea, I have slept in the spare bedroom so that we do not disturb one another but at least now we will have the bedrooms more sorted out. I will be able to actually unpack some of my things and stack my books on the bookcases. Our best purchase at the weekend was a shelving unit for Zachary's toys. It is a tall upstanding unit which we have on its side so that it is a long shorter unit and Zachary can reach the shelves. On the bottom we have some wicker baskets which we bought to fit into the spaces. It looks great. On the top we have the pirate ship and airplane which we inherited from Zachary's cousin Joshua along with Tiger and the wobble pirate.

Later on Zachary and I went out to feed the ducks with Auntie Liz and Hope. We stopped off in Malvern to have lunch at Cafe Nero. The cafe is quite new to Malvern but always busy so we were lucky to get nice comfy chairs in the window area. They have great highchairs in Cafe Nero and both kids seemed to be enjoying the trip out. I am thinking of doing a review of highchairs. We have had some real disasters with those awful plastic travel jobs that a lot of restaurants have so it is always great when you go somewhere and they have a decent highchair. Something that 18 months ago I can never imagine spending more than a 30 seconds thinking about is now a topic I am about to climb onto my soap box about. My gosh how life changes. How having a baby changes the things you think about. I had a conversation the other day with a girl in the supermarket about which brand of nappies we prefer. How bizarre is that. Not half as bizarre as the fact that I spent £100 on designer clothes for Zachary for Christmas and have not bought myself any new things since I bought maternity clothes. In fact almost 12 months after giving birth I still wear my favourite maternity top - now that is sad!

15th November - Crawling !!!

Today Zachary crawled for the very first time. Dad says that he remind of him a body popper doing one of those belly walks. It is not quite a proper crawl. He can get up on all fours but then drops onto his tummy and does this floor crawl. It looks like something between spider man climbing a building and a commando under a cargo net. We are calling it the commando crawl. He also looks really cute in his No Added Sugar red outfit. He was really good today as we had to go for his hearing test. He passed with flying colours and was really well behaved despite it being close to his lunch time.

20th November - Professional Photo Booth Photographs

Today we had to go out on a few shopping errands and had lunch in Morrisons cafe which was great fun as Zachary somehow managed to launch a whole hand full of food onto the plate of the old man sitting with his wife behind us. Fortunately they laughed and were really nice about it.

That is until Zachary tried to grab a piece of scampi off my plate and screamed the place down with tears because it was hot. This was a shame because we had booked a session with the baby photo booth set up in Boots and had a few photo's taken. Its one of those professional photo studio's that do these cheap initial offer trying to get you to buy the whole package later on for an extortionate amount. I am not interested in spending stupid amounts of money on photos but the £4.99 for the initial pic is fine and in fact I might make a habit of doing it now and then just for fun. Anyway my normally happy cheerful chap was not in the mood for smiling for the camera and we had to resort to all sorts of tricks to get him smiling on the photo's. Typical isn't it just when you are sat there telling people how happy and cheerful your adoring child is they do something to prove you a complete liar and refuse to be adorbale or cute on cue.

This is one of the photograph's taken at the photo booth. You can see that in the end the photographers assistant managed to get some nice pictures.

All that over with we took Grandma's car back home to her, tidied the shopping away and had a lovely tea. Zachary true to form was back to smiling and laughing and playing happily. He sat pushed all the buttons on the kids electric keyboard and dancing to the auto tunes. You would never have believed that earlier on when I actually wanted him to be cute and smiliey it took real effort. Only a few hours later there he is charming as everall sweet and innocent.

23rd November - Average Day for a baby of 12 months old

Zachary's breakfast routine is the same every morning and is probably his favourite meal of the day. He gets up anytime bewteen 8am and 9am. He has a drink of water then a slice of toast. Sometimes he will happily chew on toast soldiers other mornings he wants it broken into bits in a bowl. The bowl always ends up on the floor. After toast we have oatibix with milk and fruit then the rest of the milk. The new formula milk that the doctor prescribed is wonderful. His sickness has really improved. He now only wears a bib at mealtimes most days which is great because you actually get to see some of the lovely tops that he wears. The one he has on today is from Aztec and has this lovely car hand stiched on the front.

30th November - Zachary's Birthday

I can't believe that he is 1 whole year old. We invited Liz, James and Hope over for a birthday tea and just had sandwiches, cake and crisps etc. I bought him a wooden activity cube which has a bead puzzle on the top. His favourite toy of the day was this lovely colourful cube from my friend Helen. We had a lovely day. The adventures of only 12 months ago seem so far away now. Ambulance rides in the middle of the night, incubators and tiny babies, all the worry and stress and now here he is a happy beautiful little boy. It really is true what they say about how women forget all the pain of childbirth, the sleepless nights, the sick and constant baby care of those early months. It has only been 12 months and even I have to look back at my journal to remind myself what things were like just 6 months ago. I have to be honest and say I loved that tiny baby but I have enjoyed the last few months more. Perhaps getting more sleep and time to yourself also plays a part in that. In those early months you are so preoccupied and tired I don't think you have time to think about how you feel. Now I feel so much more myself, more able to appreciate and enjoy my time plus you get more back from a child of 12 months than a baby of 3 months old. Zachary can laugh at my dancing, squeal when I sing, babble at when we play, cuddle me when he feels sleepy, look at me like I am crazy when I talk rubbish and best of all make me laugh just by being himself. I love being his mummy and know I always will.