Sensory Play Kit on a Budget

Our favourite class is Baby Sensory. We both really enjoy the sessions and it's also given us loads of ideas to use at home. Our sensory play box is full of ideas we have borrowed and bargains we have found in the pound shop! It's lovely watching Baby B develop different skills as he grows and it's a relief to have a go-to box of stuff for when the afternoon is dragging on and we need some entertainment.

10 Really Lovely Things and 10 Really Sucky Things About Having a Baby

Having an appreciative, adoring audience for all those off-key renditions of musicals.

Having an audience when going to the loo.

Feeling proud and in awe of all the little developments they make.

Feeling like a failure when other mums announce that their little munchkin is sleeping through the night / crawling / solving equations / whatever.

Our Breastfeeding Journey

It's easy, right? Just stick your nipple in their hungry little mouth and away you go.

HA! Don't be fooled by the paintings of the Madonna serenely feeding the baby Jesus. Or that bloody Aptamil advert with the perfect bloody mother feeding her perfect bloody baby. That is not what it's like my friends, not at all.

In reality there is wriggling, clamping, spraying, sicking up and frustrated tears - from mum and baby. Baby B was very early nicknamed the truffle pig because of all the grunting and snuffling. It really can be like feeding a wild animal. Even now that we've got it sorted at six months he likes to feed with his fingers up my nose. They never show you that in the media!

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Sleep - or lack of it, for all of us - is by far the hardest thing about parenting.

I just don't get it. Baby B is tired. He's fed, dry, warm, lying in a soft cot with gentle lullabies playing. We prepared with calming books and a consistent routine. But will he have a nap? Will he hell.

He just gets more tired, more annoyed, more overtired, which then makes him wild. I hate seeing him like that but I just don't know how to help him. I've tried everything the books suggest but he clearly hasn't read these books and doesn't play along. I want to parent in a gentle, responsive manner and cry it out seems so cruel to me, but while the nap battles are going on I fantasise about getting in my car, driving far away and leaving him to it.

The First Art Project

At 5 and a half months Baby B did his first art project - super cute, super easy Valentines cards. We made cards for daddy and B's best friends, and we're going to use the same idea to make Easter cards for the grandparents. They look really effective and didn't make too much mess - win!

First you need to set up. Use a large, flat plastic box. Place a piece of paper in the box so it covers the bottom and folds up the sides. Use a few blobs of Blu-tac to keep it in place. Then put a few dollops of different colour paint rounds the edges. Choose your colours depending on the theme of card you want to make. Then chuck in 3 golf balls. (I used practice balls because they were cheaper but they weren't really heavy enough and don't wipe clean so I'd use proper ones next time.)

The First Post

Six months in to motherhood I am finally starting this blog. If you have kids you'll understand why it's taken six months. If you haven't and you don't, it's best you don't ask.

They have been the most amazing, exhausting, challenging and rewarding six months of my life. I have grown so much, literally as well as metaphorically thanks to all the cake, and really discovered where my strengths and weaknesses lie. Parenthood has left me so exposed, so vulnerable, but I have discovered strength I didn't even know I had.