On some very old robot paper

I dug out some old Cosmo Cricket papers earlier this month, trying to use up some old stash before buying some new!

Documenting Andy's Lego creations - I'm pretty sure the toys are supposed to be for Isaac but Andy has great fun building things with and for him.  Mostly Isaac asks for fire stations, hence the slides and the big doors.  The best one yet was a mobile fire station on the back of a fire engine.  Andy clearly has too much free time!!

Isaac loves a soft-boiled egg!  I've always called them dippy eggs but since he has to bang the tops with his spoon, they've become bang-bang eggs in our house.  This 4 squares style of page comes together really quickly, especially if you use an interesting patterned paper in the blank squares.  And you can embellish it as much or as little as you like.

This is what happens when a boy who loves clips and straps meets a girl who loves sitting pn things.  I will admit that I secured the booster seat to the stairgate, but mostly because Isaac was already trying to strap Anna into it and I was worried she'd fall off the stairs with it on top of her.  I love her expression in these photos!

These photos were taken in 2010 at a friend's house.  Isaac was really interested in the bouncer, which moved when he pressed on it, and the toys decorating the tray.  I have another shot with both boys looking straight at the camera - so cute!  This page used up lots of odds and ends of paper, in some strange shapes.  I just arranged them so that any gaps were covered up and you'd never know that the blue microchip paper doesn't go all the way under the photos!

On a little bit of mummy-guilt

Last November, we were getting in the car to come home from our Thursday morning toddler group when I shut Isaac's hand in the car door.  There was a split second of silence and stillness as we both realised what I'd just done before I wrenched it open again and he began to wail.  He'd put his hand between the front and rear doors as I was putting Anna in her seat and as I'd slammed the rear door shut, it had trapped his fingers in the small gap.

I've never heard him cry so much or so long.  We sat for a second on the pavement beside the car, just having a cuddle.  But his hand was dirty, the wound was bleeding and starting to swell and I couldn't see how badly he was injured.  I ended up popping him into his seat and driving the 200m down the road to go back into toddler group.  I left Anna in the car (she's so amiable!) and dashed in to wash his hand up with cool, clean water.  He was still crying at this point.

He'd cut one finger quite badly and the two around it were also swollen and bruised.  I couldn't make a decision about how bad it was or whether he'd broken anything.  I just couldn't do it.  I worried that I was over-reacting but we had a 40 minute drive ahead of us before I could give him any pain relief and the children's A&E department was a 2 minute walk away.  But on the other hand, he was moving his fingers, albeit reluctantly.  I chatted it over with another parent (who happens to be a GP) and decided it was better to get it checked out now than get all the way home and have to come back again.

So I bundled them both into the buggy and walked down to the hospital.  The receptionist took our details and asked how it had happened.  When I explained, she smiled sympathetically and asked if I was ok.  We were called into see the triage nurse almost immediately.  She gave Isaac a good dose of paracetamol and ibuprofen and had a quick look at his hand.  Then we went back into the waiting room to wait for the doctor.  It was obviously a busy day, with lots of families coming into the department while we were there and frequent calls over the tannoy for people to go here or there.  There wasn't much movement out of the waiting area though, most people came in and were just sitting waiting to be called.  Over the time that we were there, Isaac perked up a bit and started using his hand more and more.  He also found a little playmate to build towers with.  By the end, he was playing almost normally and only seemed to remember his hand was hurt from time to time.

We waited a couple of hours in total; it was a drag to be there after toddler group, when we should have been at home eating lunch and napping.  There were plenty of toys for the children to play with and clean, accessible toilets with baby-changing facilities.  The only real problem was that I hadn't brought much food - I had a couple of oaty bars that the children shared.  When they started getting twitchy, I went to the reception desk to ask if I had time to get some food from the cafe before we saw the doctor.  A nurse overheard me asking and went to check their computer system to see how long we had to wait.  She said that we were next in the queue and apologised for the delay.  Shortly afterwards, a doctor came out and called three children at once.  We went into the examination area and she popped Isaac up on a trolley to examine him.  She was friendly and kind and quickly told us that he was fine, he hadn't broken anything and to leave the cut uncovered.  Truth be told, I felt like a bit of an idiot by then - it was the pain relief that made the big difference.  And time for the swelling to subside.

I had an appointment for Anna's one year check-up with our health visitor that afternoon.  I had to ring her from A&E to move it back a bit.  Thankfully, she's great and completely understood when the children turned up with chicken nugget Happy Meals.  So it was a busy old day!  Isaac thought the whole experience was great fun, after his hand started to feel better, obviously!  He had regular paracetamol for a couple of days and it's healed nicely.  Of course for the next month, he told anyone who'd listen that he had a poorly hand and that Mummy did it!

On the Mumstop blog

I'm guesting over at the Mumstop blog today, hop on over and check out all they do!

On the third day of Christmas

Some people love Christmas movies.  Some people love Christmas food.  I love Christmas music.  It really gets me in the mood for the season.  This year, I heard a bit of Carols from King's and it was so beautiful!  I have a few Christmas-y albums; A Very Ally (McBeal) Christmas, The Number 1 Christmas Party Album, Love Actually (the soundtrack), Amy Grant's Spirit of Christmas.  And this year, I bought Carols from King's and Michael Buble to the list.  Andy bought the Crash Test Dummies Christmas album, it includes the creepiest version of Jingle Bells you've ever heard!  And a really cool Good King Wenceslas too.

My favourites are O Holy Night (Night Divine) and I Don't Want A Lot For Christmas (Mariah Carey, or the kid from Love Actually, I'm easy).  But to be honest, it doesn't really matter if it's classical, pop, swing or rock, I'm a fan of the songs that make me feel like Christmas.  And if the downside is playing Jingle Bells on repeat for a month, and listening to Isaac sing along, well that's a small price to pay!

On cultivating a good life and recording it

So if you don't know what that title is about then the first thing you need to do is head over to Becky Higgins' Project Life website, cos she can explain it so much better than I can!  There's a great introductory video here giving you the basics behind the system and the goodies can be found here.  And that, as Becky would say, is all you need to document the little, the lovely and the life-changing things that happen in your life.  But were you to google project life or search Pinterest for some more ideas, you'd be overwhelmed by the beautiful albums people are making.

You might remember back in April 2012, I decided to jump on the Project Life bandwagon, creating a side a week about our lives and their little details.  I'm amazed to say that I completed my 2012 album just this side of the New Year!  It's a great book to look back through and see how things have changed over the last 12 months.

I had a bit of a think about what I want to include, how I want it to work for me and what was holding me back from achieving those things.  I love doing a side a week and adding inserts for bigger events.  Printing at home works perfectly, no waiting for anything!  Having a preselected bunch of stash to use makes the process much quicker and simpler.

I don't want to print eight 4x6 photos every week.  In fact, I want to use more paper and smaller prints when I can; printing at home is great but it's reasonably expensive.

I think I want to combine my regular pages and my project life spreads in the same albums this year.  Using my bigger pages to focus on beautiful photos, special moments or bigger themes that aren't highlighted enough in project life.

So my Christmas present from Andy was a Seafoam core kit with monthly dividers and some smaller divided page protectors.  They arrived toward the end of January and I've been using them to catch-up on our New Year happenings.  I think there'll be a few more inserts this year - I love the inspiration I'm finding on instagram looking at all the things my friends get up to.

P.S. I can't believe I've been away so long.  I know it's only just over a week for you but I'll let you into a secret, I scheduled those last three posts, so it's been longer for me.  I love getting my thoughts down on "paper" and I hadn't realised how much I missed it.

Oh and I haven't forgotten about those Christmas posts - there's one coming up next!