Baby's First Illness

I'm told that we're really lucky that Josh hasn't been poorly at all until now. So I'm proud of my baby boy for reaching the grand old age of 8 and a half months before getting his first illness. 

The little man has little man flu! He needs to teach his dad a thing or too about how to cope as well. Both Josh and his cousin fell quickly down with sniffles, snot streams, chesty coughs and finally (poor boys) were diagnosed with bronchilitus. 

So out comes the trusty Calpol. Last used as a buffer for the injection pain which Josh barely acknowledged. 

I think it's more scary for the Mum's than it is for the baby. I had to force myself not  to keep vigil at his bedside or at the very least to whip out the baby monitor again and tie it to my ear like a crazy headset just to make sure he was still breathing ok. But I resisted. I'm not going to lie I didn't sleep for 48 hours straight. The first night because I lay awake worrying, the second night simply because I couldn't sleep through his 2 minutely coughing cycle. 

Josh didn't wake through the coughing though bless him. He was extremely needy though, very grizzly, refused to eat and just wanted hugs. I'm taking the hugs away as my little bonus from all this. 

He's on the mend though now. Still feeling sorry for himself, clutching his favourite 'Raffee' toy but he's getting there. It took segregating and isolating Josh and his cousin away from each other but it seemed to work. The only thing is *cough* I think I'm coming down with something now. Oh dear...

Halloween - babies in pumpkin trousers, sandwitches and a few token skeletons (well you've got to)

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you all had good ones!

Its been a looooooooong time since I've posted but I'm back for good now to post regularly. Since the last time I posted we've moved house, I've gone back to work, gained a gorgeous little nephew and the little man just continues to get bigger and brighter every day!

All year I'd been looking forward to Halloween (as I do every year) but even more so now I've got a little person to teach the joys of Halloween to. I love to get into the spirit of it.....pumpkins, candy, decorations, fancy dress. Most of all fancy dress to be honest! So poor Josh had 3 separate fancy dress costumes to get him through the day (they actually turned out to be much needed in the end, since he couldn't seem to keep them clean!) He had a white skeleton onesie, a Frankenstein costume and a black skeleton costume - complete with a matching skeleton beanie toy and skeleton lights which decorated his pram during the trick or treating outing with my niece and her friends.

Still though, to me, these weren't quite enough ;) I'd seen people had cut holes in pumpkins and popped their babies inside and taken pictures. I loved this idea. Just to make it a little bit different to the standard babies in pumpkins idea, I decided to carve them into trousers. After finding the biggest pumpkin I could find (not an easy task on the actual day, when most shops just had the pumpkin dregs left) I got carving and persuaded BD to take some pics.

 Josh loved being in there, so for good measure I grabbed my nephew and popped him in too. He didn't take to it so much at first until he decided to nibble the edge, then it took some effort to get him to leave it happily. I think they turned out well...I'm definitely doing this again if we ever add to the brood.

My sister had also agreed to throw my niece a little Halloween party and roped me in to help. I love party planning at the best of times but a Halloween party is always the best. I honestly think the planning is just as fun as the actual event itself! So after a little bit of research on Pinterest and just a bit of improvising we managed to get the boys down for a nap and got to decorating and prepping the food. I hate cooking but it was surprisingly easy when it came to Mummy Dogs, puff pastry cat and pumpkins, eggy brains, sandwitches and wormy jelly. My niece and her friends absolutely loved it!

I literally can't wait until next Halloween to do it all over again. In the meantime I'll try and calm down a bit because its Bonfire Night in 2 days! Don't want to hyperventilate with excitement....