South Bank Light Show

Today we headed to the light show exhibition at the South Bank Centre. The pictures and video show how much fun the girls had...Olive enjoyed it too..she had very BIG EYES and stayed awake the whole time

Sleeping in the big bed

We have been trying to encourage Elsie to sleep in the big bed in her room. Until today she has always said that she wanted to go into her cot.  Today she opted for the bed. However, she was really excited and had a bit of trouble staying still.  There was much rampaging.  After about 90 minutes of hi jinx I put her into her cot and she was out like a light in 5 minutes.

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Olive Sleeps Through

Last night I had trouble getting Olive down at 7pm so I ended up feeding her again and finally getting her down for 8pm...and she slept till 6am...result! Perhaps it was the weetbix...? Obviously silly old Mum didn't head to bed until after midnight last night.  The thought that I missed the opportunity to bag myself 8 hours sleep just makes me want to cry!

Until now Olive's sleeping has been:
• Down at 7pm
• Dreamfeed when I head to bed (10pm - midnight)
• Wakes for a feed between 3am-5am (usually 7-8min on the breast then straight back to sleep)

Which isn't too bad! But I haven't had more than 3-4 hours unbroken sleep for a looong time now.

I've experimented with dropping the dream feed and I initially I found that she would wake as normal at around 3am. But that was okay...at least I could grab an early night. Or so I thought.  Very quickly I learned that if I dropped the dream feed then she would then wake me for a feed twice in the night. Anywhere from 11pm-1am and then again 4am-5am which was worse than previous. Unless Joel and I had decided to try and head out for a date when she would wake at 9pm.  Grrr!

I think that's been one of the more difficult thing with Olive's sleep, the unpredictability. Here's hoping we'll all be getting a full nights sleep soon.

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Olive Eating!

Yesterday I gave Olive her first food!

She had some mashed banana and some Greek yoghurt. Just a tiny bit of each. She seemed keen and was going for more.  Or perhaps she was just trying to have a gnaw on the lovely silicone spoon (thank you Aunty Dot!)

Today I gave her more banana and some Weetbix mixed with formula. Then she had a suck on a bread stick.  She pulled some funny faces when she got the thick weetbix paste in her mouth.  Again, I'm not sure if the food is an unnecessary evil in order to play with the lovely chewy spoon.

But there were black squiggles in her nappy today so she obviously ate some banana yesterday and she managed to digest it (unlike Elsie who had the infamous "10 day delay" after her first taste of banana)

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Sheepie goes too

Elsie is becoming very attached to sheepie...a gift from Francine originally intended for Olive. It also used to be white...

Picnic!

King George's Park in spring. Bliss

Peppa Pig Ride

Elsie's Peppa Pig obsession continues. I spied this at our local shopping mall a while ago. Today I had to employ it as a reward for a very boring morning in the pushchair doing errands in the shops. She was SO excited by it. The sun began to shine just after this so we popped into the supermarket, grabbed a few sandwiches and had an impromptu picnic in King George's Park. Elsie loves to picnic. Great day!

Elsie puts the shopping away

Today Elsie helped to put the shopping away. To my surprise we actually knew where most things went. But she didn't know where the garlic went. So she improvised...it's all very ordered..

Indoor picnic

Today we had to have our picnic lunch inside because it was raining and horrible (again!). I turned my back and when I looked back I saw that Elsie had shared her lunch with her friends, George and Sheepie. Very democratic.

Kew Gardens

Today we went on an outing to Kew Gardens with some families from the Smallwood Children's Centre. Elsie and Olive and I have been attending the centre since January. We go to the "Stay and Play" sessions on Wednesday and Friday mornings. The outing was organised and lead by the staff members there; Sally, Hannah and Elsie's favourite, Zara!

We had such an amazing day. It was a big journey so not an outing I would have attempted on my own..and the weather played along. The sun finally came out. We had all packed a picnic (Elsie was very excited about this and sat down on the floor of the train saying "picnic picnic!" before we'd even left the station!) which we ate immediately on arriving at the gardens. It was hand on heart the first full day that I had spent out of the house since Olive was born. It has just been too cold. Elsie loved the space, and the experience, the picnic (!), and the flowers (a bit late unfortunately but there were some brave crocuses and blossoms on show). We did a tree top walk, saw the beautiful conservatory (banana trees!) and headed home.

Great day. When Joel got home from work we were all babbling and happy. He kept saying "I can't believe how happy you all are". Fresh air!

Olive, as always, was an absolute dream. She kicked about on the picnic blanket while we had our picnic enjoying the air and looking at the canopies of the trees. She went into the front of the pushchair for a while so she could sit up and see what was going on. But she slept for a lot of the trip mostly.

Olive finds her feet

Bath time!

I just love the bathpod that we got for Olive. Hands-free baby bathing. And she loves it too - splashing and bouncing around. It will be great when we have a proper bath for Elsie though rather than her pink flexi-tub!

Messing around at home

Pure baby gazing...

Rye Bread

Good recipe! http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2998681/rye-bread