Holey Doley, praise nap time!

Both little ones napping at the same time! I've dreamt of this for months!!!!

Now I'm torn, nap or put on a grown-up movie with a warm cuppa?

I've been wanting to watch "Keeping Mum" for ages, too much "Postman Pat" with my toddler can made me crave more adult version of English adventures! Hello, Rowan Atkinson and Maggie Smith, english humour and easy laughs.

Lets see how much I get to watch before my girls stir.

Mamma is sick

Being a mamma is hard! Being a mamma with a toddler and a new born is very hard! Being a mamma with a toddler, new born and a cold is miserable! 

My husband let me sleep as much as I could on the weekend but as he left for work this morning I held him tight wishing he could stay home and care for us. 

Last night, after both girls were in bed, we stacked nappies and wipes, cut up fruit for snacks and savoury bits for lunch, sterilised bottles and filled formula dispensers. Little things to help today, to make being a sick mamma a little easier.

Talk like a pirate day "Arrrr!"

 

 

I am getting excited about "talk like a pirate day". My daughter and I have been watching a little too much ABC4Kids and there has been a lot of promotion for Friday's programming with all the pirate-y shows planned ... this Mamma needs a tad more sleep, but its impossible with a newborn and a toddler. 

So I decided to make us pirate eye patches! Arrrr! 

Here is a visual step by step process:

 

 

 

After drawing/cutting a cardboard template it was easy to cut two matching oval pieces of felt, to make two eye patches.

I used a basic running stitch to join the elastic and folded the oval over the elastic to create an eyepatch shape.

I used the same basic running stitch to join the halves of the felt together and hid the elastic join underneath the felt. I used white crochet cotton, because it was easy to grab, I think the contrasting stitches look pretty awesome.

Tada!

 

"Arrrr" one very pirate-y pillow!

 

All completed!

 

Now make another one! But don't accidentally twist the elastic and sew it all together before you realise what you have done {like I did}.

Tada! All ready for Talk like a Pirate Day!

Note: An older child could easily make something like this while supervised. Have fun with your eye patches activity!


 

Embellishing clothing

Little ones grow so quickly it can get quite expensive buying clothes, so the challenge for every mamma {when you are on a budget} is finding good quality clothing that doesn't cost a fortune.

On a recent trip to the shops I decided my little one needed a few more summery onsies. I found a great bulk buy pack in orange and grey tones with little foxes featuring on several. The foxes were adorable, the plain grey onsie in the pack was very boring. It's always frustrating when you buy in bulk and end up with one or two dodgy choices. 

So, it was time to pull out the crochet cotton and sewing machine and add a little something to make my girls outfit a bit brighter!

I found a online pattern for a small crochet doily and opened a ball of bright yellow crochet cotton. I was so excited when I finished! It was the very first "real" doily I have ever made and the design looked perfect. It was just the right size for my baby girls new onsie.

Note: Here is the link to the "Small Daisy Doily" pattern I used. I followed the pattern using a size 3.00 hook, with slight change to the scalloped edge to get a rounder scalloped pattern (replacing a the treble with a double crochet). 

{http://ignesblog.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/daisy-doily/}

Cardboard box craft: Cameras

After growing up in a big family, one of five children, I am used to having a lot of noise around me. Since having our first daughter we have music or television on in the background while we go about our everyday tasks and activities.

I was always a little unsure about introducing television too early to a little person. I did a bit of research, aka google-ing, and the majority of reputable governing bodies claim that little persons under two years old should not watch television... Hmmmmm. I was a little anxious reading these recommendations as I already had exposed my little one to television, but I felt a little better when I realised she didn't actually watch it very often. Although we have it on in the background, in general the only time she actually watches television is when a song starts on ABC4kids, she dances and then goes back to the activity we were doing. 

Now that she is older, she sits and watches little programs, Play-school, Sesame Street, Peppa pig, Octonauts, Tinga Tinga. We have only just started watching disney movies but they need to be supervised and themes softened {disney villains and dastardly deeds can be very scary for little ones}. After my earlier google-ing I made a decision that watching television would be an interactive activity, it would be a chance for us to learn new words, concepts and social relationships.

One of the shows recently introduced on ABC4kids "Big Teds Adventures" is great for this! It is a short offshoot program from Play-school, where Big Ted goes to the zoo, basically the program introduces an animal, explains  a few interesting things about a animal, the actors and Big Ted take pictures and have a bit of a song at the end. My daughter loves pretending to take pictures with the actors and we always sit together, talking about and exploring what's happening and right at the end we go "click click click".

After seeing how much my little one enjoyed taking pretend photos I wanted to be able to give her a little pretend camera to play with. Trying to keep costs down on purchasing toys that may never get much play, I decided I would make one. It cant be too hard to construct a box out of felt/fabric, sew on buttons, stuff it and such. A few weeks went by and I never had the chance to craft something.

Eventually I came up with a brilliant idea that we would make cameras together out of recycled soap boxes, paper, glue and pens. It meant we had a fun craft activity and we would have a purpose for the item when it was completed! My daughter loved it, she never wanted the activity to end, had to use up all the spare pieces of paper and glue as much as she could manage. 

I didn't think the cameras would last very long, but after five weeks, we still have two cardboard cameras floating around the lounge room and every time Big Teds Adventures come on my little one runs for her camera and gets ready to "click click click"! She has also taken lots of photos of mummy feeding her new little sister, a few pictures of her dollys and some pictures of Daddy. 

Crochet Toddler Slippers

Another crochet project, toddler slippers! I found a pattern on pinterest with a chart for the soles of a pair of slippers and managed to get a matching pair of soles completed. I was a little nervous about getting them to match. I taught myself to crochet nearly two years ago via YouTube and google, so my skill level in replicating the same thing accurately is not 100%. 

I was so happy once I pulled off the soles I jumped back on pinterest and opened up the link to the blog with the chart for further instructions on making the slippers. Then in dismay realised it was Russian or Czech or some other foreign language I could not recognise and was never going to be able to read or get google to translate. My keyboard does not make all of the letters/symbols I was reading! 

I decided it took too much time to get two matching soles to give up, I tried to find a free patten to adapt to the soles but could not find anything, so I made it up! Yep, I managed to make a decent looking pair of toddler slippers! I'm not completely convinced every single stitch was identically placed in the pair but after scrutinising over them for a few minutes I could not actually find any stitches that were missing/added incorrectly. 

I had to bribe my toddler with stickers to get her to try them on three times while I was making them for sizing and to make the strap. Now that they are completed she loves them! Unfortunately our house is completely tiled, so crochet slippers are incredibly slippery! {he he he he, pun intended!} I will have to find some way to add grips to the base.

Bottle feeding: Dribbling Dramas!

After struggling with breast feeding our second daughter, we needed to bottle feed. Unfortunately the difficulties getting her to latch was not so easy to overcome. Our little newborn drowned, dribbled and cried until she managed to down enough milk from the bottle to quench her thirst. She gained weight, was happy and content with a full belly, yet throughout every feed she bathed in milk. 

It was so difficult bottle feeding, when I think about it, it was just as difficult as breast feeding {except for the pain and physical damage caused}. We spent so much time watching her feed, spotting where the milk was escaping, repositioning and coaxing her to suckle. We noticed that she clamped down on the teat and had wide gaps in the corners of her mouth, milk escaped and air was sucked in. She burped like a pro but all that air caused her difficulties settling. 

Before having our second daughter, I purchased new teats {all stages/ages} for my old bottles, so that I could express and Daddy could share in the experience of feeding. Our second daughter struggled so badly with latching to the bottle and all those bottles/teats were useless. We ended up buying a bottle of every type, with every different shaped teat, from our local the store. Anything to help feeding become easier! 

Eventually we found the most squashed looking teat we could and feeding became a little easier. MAM have a flattened teat with grooves for the babies lips to sit on each side of the silicone. The shape was narrow enough for our daughter to seal her small mouth around and now she dribbles significantly less and is not taking so much air. 

We purchased the longest bottles, so that as she grows we do not have to keep buying bigger bottles. There were two types, basic bottles and anti-colic bottles. The anti-colic bottles have a plastic screw on base {with holes in it} and a silicone seal that pushes into the base which is designed to reduce the air taken in while feeding. Unfortunately this sleep deprived Mamma often struggles to position the silicone seal tight enough and often leaks milk everywhere ... we prefer the basic bottle.