Wednesday 25 March 2015

Family photo shoot

by Roz

It was my birthday in January and I decided what I would love was some pictures of the three of us. Since Aaron was born time seems to act very strange. Individual days can seem to last forever if we have a cranky baby on our hands and yet I can't believe as I sit and write this that we have had a son for over 10 months!



I have taken thousands of pictures since he was born and have so many wonderful ones of Aaron or of B and Aaron. But what is always missing as I scroll through them are pictures of all three of us that aren't posed at family events. These pictures were taken on 1st February, when Aaron was 8 and a half months old, by the unbelievably lovely and talented Lauren, who Bex also used for her first maternity shoot in Glasgow. We had so much fun with our boy getting these taken and I cannot recommend Lauren highly enough.

All photos by Lauren McGlynn Photography.





Lauren took pictures around the Forever House and I love some of the ones in Aaron's room of just him, he loved performing for the camera!






We also walked round to Kelvingrove Park as it was a beautiful sunny day. Freezing cold and a bit windy but the park was gorgeous in the sunshine.









I'll leave you with one last picture of my boy, just because I can!



I absolutely love the photos so thanks again Lauren!

Roz xx

You can book a family portrait session like we did with Lauren for £200 which includes up to 2 hour photo shoot at a location of your choice and 50+ high resolution images with a personal use license.  This is not a sponsored post, I just love Lauren's work and highly recommend her!  

Monday 23 March 2015

The Forever House - Our Bedroom

by Roz

Our master bedroom is no where near finished but it's been utterly transformed and is definitely taking shape as the luxurious bedroom I was after. There are a lot of pictures of the room in this post from the day we got the keys (in August 2013!!) and in this post where I shared some work in progress pictures!

How the bedroom looked the day we got the keys


I'm hoping you don't recognise the place now! We've created two new doorways in the room - one to our ensuite on that blue wall above and one to another room that we turned in to our walk in wardrobe. There will be a separate post to follow on these rooms as erm, well they are not quite photo worthy (read messy!) yet.




I wanted our bed to go between the windows but B was just too against it.  I'm hoping in the summer he will at least let me move the room around to try it but we are about to buy a tv and hang it on the wall above the fireplace(!) so that might make changing the room around that bit harder. Having a tv in the bedroom could be a whole other post for me. It's going to be weird being able to watch tv in bed.  We've been a one tv family for years and years, I think close to 10yrs, and as a result I've genuinely not watched much tv, preferring movies or boxsets. That was until we got Netflix and I realised how good tv on demand was! And then Aaron was born and Netflix was invaluable for all those feeds! But as B will be recovering from his op, a tv to watch in bed will be great.


I'm so in love with our Bluebellgray bedding! I actually bought it for our guest bedroom, the room with the deep navy wall, but popped it on our bed and it's not made it down to there yet. Their studio is just around the corner from the Forever House and I picked up this set and some cushions in their annual sample sale. I am already looking forward to the next one! I'm not convinced it really works with the gunmetal of the star wallpaper from Rockett St George but it certainly adds some wonderful colour to the room.



I am so happy with our radiators. I think they look fantastic and I love the colour. We never actually saw the radiators in the flesh before buying them and choose the colour based on a postage stamp square of colour chart, eeeek!


Our oak bed and chest of drawers, which you may recognise from this post, we bought from a friend but the range is still for sale in M&S so we might pick up the bedside tables to match :) 

So now you've seen the good bits of the room....


I still need to fix the wall around the fireplace and give it a final coat of paint. I'm so happy with the white fireplace it works so well in the room and it's great having a mantle piece to put things on. We built the hearth out of mdf as the plan is to tile or slate over the base. I'm just not sure what would work best? I think we could add a coloured tile around the cast iron fire (if you look back at the original pictures there were orange tiles!) but I'm not sure if a coloured tile would date or I would get bored of it. To be honest I've not really thought about our room for ages, I need to get looking at some fireplaces and decided how I want to finish it off or it will never get done.


The large blue velvet chesterfield is actually for our L-shaped room - you can see this room called our formal living room in this post - which will finally be finished in April! We have ordered the wood for our herringbone floor and all the painting is finished. I'm actually grinning as I write this! We've ended up with three of these sofas thanks to B's bargain hunting. He found two ex-display ones for sale on eBay and one that someone bought but was too big for their room on Gumtree. Amazing. I think we will put two in the L-shaped room and leave one in the guest bedroom but I guess we will decide soon. I will miss having a big, lush sofa to sit on in our room though.


I really love these shelves in the room. As you can see I haven't actually got around to putting anything nice on display. This was originally a small cupboard with only one shelf at the top, we removed the door as it was going to get in the way of the bed, and added the other shelves. It will be a great place to have some plants, books and photographs on display.



We have no light fitting cause we can't find one we like that doesn't cost a fortune and there are still two sprinkler heads(!) poking through the ceiling that need the white covers put on them. Despite the half finished state, I still love the room. Especially when I look back at the photos and remember how much of the work we did in here ourselves. We removed two walls of the lathe and plaster - so, so messy! And hundreds of bags of rubble for the tip - it certainly added a lot of extra work to the room, but we've ended up with nice smooth walls that we can actually hang pictures on. I also painted the cornice in this room when I was 38 weeks pregnant with A!

I wonder when the fireplace will get finished and I'll get around to painting that last wall??

Wall colour - Incandescent by Valspar at B&Q
Carpet - Cromar Sensations Arctic Grey we love this carpet, it's so cosy underfoot and is bleachable & scrubbable!
Chesterfield - Debenhams
10 drawer unit - Oak Sonoma range by M&S
Cast iron radiators - painted Pewter from Trade Radiators

Roz xx

Tuesday 10 March 2015

OD Twins - Week 16-17

by Bex

Weight
Kalyan = 13 lbs - exactly double his birth weight :)  Priya hit her doubled birth weight a while back as it was obviously lower.
Priya = 12 lbs 10 oz, she's definitely catching up but surprisingly still smaller despite appearances in photos.  Due to her round face and big tum, she often looks bigger than him.  She is still longer though!


Length
Kalyan = 60cm
Priya = 62cm

Sleeping
Sleeping has been a bit rubbish this week.  I've had trouble getting them to nap together meaning little to no rest for me during the day.  It's been particularly hard to cope as night time sleeps have been shorter too.  I used to be very lucky and get 3-4 hours at the start and then 2-3 hours and maybe another hour or two in the morning.  Lately it's been 1-2 hours each time.  I know it could be worse as I've still managed about 5 hours total each night but with no naps it's been pretty knackering!  I am so envious of those mums who can actually sleep when the baby sleeps as I definitely would if the other one wasn't up!!  I was hoping they'd start sleeping a bit longer by now, not shorter.  Fingers crossed it'll change again soon.  I quickly learned nothing is predictable with babies!



Kalyan is still sleeping better when in bed beside me and Priya seems to like having more space in the co-sleeper as they're getting so big now they fill it when in there together.  I love waking up and turning to Priya as I'm often rewarded with a huge smile which quickly turns all shy as she looks away grinning.  She often seems to wake happy after the early morning feed (after about 15 minutes!) and is happy there for a bit cooing away to herself before getting louder and waking me from the short snooze I sometimes manage.  I feel like her smile is her saying oh good you're up!  Kal often sleeps much longer at this time so Priya and I get some one on one time which is always nice as I'm often chasing my tail when they're both up.  She's definitely getting more smiley now and makes eye contact much more often than before.  Kal has always been more sociable that way.





Firsts
Kalyan is still rolling from front to back (which he did for the first time on the 18th Feb) and has now gone in the other direction, he usually always went right.  Priya looks like she might roll soon too but struggles to hold her head up quite as high and as long as Kal, probably because her head is bigger in comparison.  Still no rolling from back to front but he looked close the other night when trying to twist to see me.

Kal sort of laughed - not a proper, obvious giggle but a definite response to me being silly with big grins and noises.  It was lovely and I can't wait for more!  :)

First go in the Jumperoo!







I was writing this during my baby free time after the tough week, Nik took the babies out for the afternoon and when they returned after an initially difficult evening (lots of poo and puke!) they both slept for the longest time they've ever managed!  Priya slept 8 hours and Kal for 7 hours.  It did take 2 hours to get him to sleep once she was down so I got 6 hours sleep but then a couple more so when I woke I felt amazing!  Having that time to myself to chill in the bath and paint my toenails was great too and just what I needed to refresh after a difficult week of minimal sleep and fractious babies!










Classes
We started swimming on Sunday (1st March) with great success.  No crying from either baby and they seemed to enjoy it, they do love bathtime and the pool is kept very warm at the private residence the classes are held at.  They didn't kick quite as much as I thought they would when in a big space of water but they coped very well with the big splashes in their face preparing them for dunking.  We've just booked in to the underwater photo shoot at the end of May and then hope to have a go at photos ourselves with my underwater set up as the pool is available to hire for just £12 per adult.

We didn't make it to any baby groups this week as Mummy was far too tired!  We did visit Justine in Eastbourne and had a lovely time kicking away on her boy's old baby gym.  Priya managed a massive poosplosion because of course it was the one time Mummy forgot to put new outfits in the change bag!  We had to borrow one out of the attic from Justine (her boy is 2) and she could only find size 9-12m which looked very cute and funny on Priya who is still in 0-3 despite being 4 months now.



(On Monday we did make it to our local baby group and walked there as it's so lovely getting the babies out in the countryside.  I love watching them look around, mesmerised by the trees above them.  I took my comfy new trainers for a spin - they were just £10 from Sainsburys and super comfy but after our walk I realised they need a bit of a stretch as my feet are so wide.)




Other
Priya loves clasping her hands together and chewing on her fists.  Both of them love the jumperoo despite Priya crying the first time she went in it.  We're having to put big books underneath as they both only just reach the floor on tiptoes otherwise.

They both seem to be unsettled at the start of feeds and I find it easier to feed them individually when they then settle and feed well.  They're still putting on weight and following good curves so we're still sticking to breast milk only which I'm really pleased with.

Kal is still a big social butterfly and will smile at anyone who speaks to him.  It's lovely to see his cheeky wee grin and he usually follows with his tongue sticking out too.  I LOVE his dimples :)

Priya is very chatty now, particularly in the mornings - she always sounds so happy and chirpy - definitely a morning person!

They both love to sit up supported on the sofa and their balance is improving quickly.  We tried them in the bumbo seats and Kal has cried each time.  I thought they'd love them so I'm hoping he'll like it when he's a bit better at sitting up.  His head control is amazing now (he's been able to hold his head up since the early days as soon as we were home!) and he is often very happy having tummy time.

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