Life with Three - Five Tips for Surviving the Early Days

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Six weeks in to life as a mum of three and believe it or not I'm still surviving! So far there have been a few little challenges, but it's nowhere near as overwhelming as I expected. I'd like to think that third time around I am a lot more laid back than I have been in the past and so much more willing to go with the flow.

I've put together a little list of things that I have found really helpful. Whether you're expecting your first or third (or even your seventh!) hopefully you'll find these tips useful, even if they just remind you that you're not the only one with an unsettled baby or a hyperactive toddler!

Every Baby is Different - I cannot stress this one enough, every baby is different from the last. Seems obvious right? It wasn't for me. When Lincoln was born I totally expected him to have the same needs, habits and routines as Max had. When he didn't I went into total meltdown mode. Instead of working with what he wanted, I tried and tried to get him to be like Max. And when he wasn't I cried (and screamed) and resented the fact that he wasn't a 'perfect' baby. I don't recommend taking that approach! This time around I expected Elliot to be different from Max and Link, and he definitely is. Almost every thing I'm doing with him is different and that's totally ok.

Go With Whatever Works - I am a huge advocate of doing whatever works, as long as your baby is safe I see no harm in giving them exactly what they want in the early days. Before Max was born I had a whole set of rules outlined for myself. He would always fall asleep in his own cot, I wouldn't give him a dummy, he would breastfeed for 12 months, I wouldn't spoil him by holding him to much (!!), no sugar until he was three etc etc.  How totally naive was I?!! I learnt very quickly that you need to throw the rule book out the window each time you have a baby. Giving your baby what he wants is the kindest thing you can do and it also saves your sanity. Lincoln hated the swing and preferred to be put down to sleep in a dark, quiet room. Max liked to be swaddled up really tightly and loved his dummy. Lincoln refused a dummy, but learnt to self settle as soon as he was old enough to find his thumb. Elliot loves to be held and rocked, during the day he alternates between sleeping on my chest in a sling or in his Fisher Price swing. He loves noise and sleeps with a white noise app at night (which I personally love too, I have never slept better!). Lincoln woke to feed every night until he was 15 months and Max slept through the night from 12 weeks. You get the point... They all want and need different things... Just go with it!



Say YES When People Offer to Help - Any guesses what I said when help was offered with my first baby!! I thought that to be a successful parents Sean and I needed to be able to do every thing on our own. Don't get me wrong, we still had family come to stay, but I micro managed everything. The grandparents had to follow my 'parenting rules', I stressed out when the dishwasher was loaded 'wrong', I felt like a failure when they settled Max for me, I even refolded all the clean towels after my mother in law left because they weren't done 'perfectly'. I laugh about it now, but really I was so tightly strung back then. Elliot was born six weeks ago and so far I have spent a total of four days on my own with the boys. Between my mum and mother-in-law staying with us, Sean taking annual leave and us spending time up the coast with Sean's parents I have had help the entire time. And it has been the best thing ever!! For the first four weeks I didn't have to cook a single meal or even wash my own clothes. The best part was that Max and Link had lots of attention and I didn't have to worry that they were missing out because of their new baby brother. When help is offered accept it graciously!! You won't regret it.

Listen to Your Mum (and Your Mother-in-Law) - I don't quite know where I got the massive chip on my shoulder from, but first time around I was convinced that I knew better than our mums. It didn't matter that they had both successfully raised two kids each, I was sure I knew more about looking after a baby. Turns out though they both had invaluable advice and were actually quite good at looking after babies and kids. Who would have thought!! Provided you had a happy childhood I highly recommend listening to your parents :).

Enjoy Yourself - Last but certainly not least, have fun. Enjoy the little moments! Babies and kids grow up so quickly. In the blink of an eye I've gone from having one tiny little newborn to having a four year old, an almost two year old and another brand new baby. No matter what you do, time will keep on keeping on, so make the most of the little moments. Enjoy your babies, they are little bundles of joy (even when they're screaming as you try to get the perfect photo!).

This post is part of a Nuffnang native advertising series.

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Vintage Style Tea Party

It's no secret that I absolutely love all things girly and pretty. But with a house full of boys I rarely get the chance to embrace all things pink. So when my niece turned 8 earlier in the month I jumped at the chance to throw her a little afternoon tea.

I decided to go with a simple, pretty, vintage style afternoon tea and absolutely love how it turned out!

The other thing that I loved about this little party is that it was completely stress free. Normally when I throw a party (no matter how prepared I am) I end up yelling orders at my poor family members as we rush around getting last minute jobs done on the day of the party, before turning on my party face as the guests arrive. This time I did it all with an absolute minimum of fuss and it was a nice change!

To kick things off I made this sweet little invite for Ava. I just threw it together in picmonkey and then wrapped it in a doily and some bakers twine. Ava was so excited when she saw it for the first time!!

The main feature for the table was these tissue paper poms. I used pale pink, peach, cream and white and made them in various sizes, then used bluetac to stick them to the wall.

To complete the table I added an old birdcage that I spray painted white a few years back, a cloche with a sweet white ceramic bunny sitting on a pedestal (which was actually just an upside down egg cup and pretty pink and gold saucer), and some silver teaspoons with pretty bows tied on them.

The food elements I used were a two tier cake (gluten free and iced with fresh whipped cream), milk in vintage style milk bottles with pretty pink paper straws and fresh strawberries on a pink and gold cake plate.

To finish it all off I included chocolate bars wrapped in pink and silver paper and take home bags (brown paper bags topped with white doilies).

{How much do you love their tutus!! My very clever sister made them.}

Ava's face when she saw it all set up was priceless!! She was so excited to be the guest of honor :).

We had one little activity at the afternoon tea party - cupcake decorating, which the three kids absolutely loved. Ava showed elegant restraint when decorating her cupcake, while Max and Emmy went nuts with the sprinkles! I cheated on the cupcakes and made the worlds easiest cakes, I'll share the details on them later in the week. You will be amazed at how simple they were!

After they decorated (and ate) their cupcakes we sat down down with the grandparents for milk (and tea and coffee) and cake.

A sweet afternoon for a very sweet little lady :).

 
xx Tamsyn

Baking with Grandma

This weekend just gone my Mum came up to visit. We had such a great weekend, shopping, cooking, eating and celebrating a late Mother's Day as well as both her and my birthday. The absolute highlight of the weekend was Max and his cousin Emmy helping mum make a cake. It was beyond adorable watching the three of them working together, cracking eggs, blending up the limes, mixing it all together. Emmy and Max both took their jobs very seriously and mum managed the whole process with the patience of a saint!

Mum is an amazing baker and the cake was delicious. Perfect parts tangy and sweet. I will definitely be making this one again.

Here's what you need if you want to make it yourself.

375g of Limes (13 ounces)
6 Large Eggs
225g of White Sugar (8 ounces)
250g of Almond Meal (9 ounces)
1 teaspoon gf baking powder

1. Grease and line a 20cm (8inch) spring form tin. Preheat the oven to 190c (375f).

2. Place the limes in a pot of water and boil for 2 hours. Drain, and when cool cut in half and remove the seeds. Blend up the limes, skin and all, in a food processor.

3. In a separate bowl beat the eggs and then add the sugar, almond meal and baking powder, mixing well. Add in the blended limes and mix again.

4. Pour mix into your tin and bake for one hour (you may need to cover with foil after 40 minutes to stop the top from burning).

5. Allow to cool slightly before removing from the tin, then serve warm with fresh cream.

(Adapted from this Nigella recipe)

 

Nigella says that the cake tastes even better the next day, but ours didn't last that long so I have no idea if it's true or not!!

xx Tamsyn

PS My mum is just about to start her own blog!! I'll let you know when she starts writing posts :)

Lincoln's Half Birthday

My sweet little baby boy isn't a newborn anymore. He's 6 months old, full of beans and into everything!

Lincoln is such a happy little guy now that I almost forget how much of a rough start we got off to.

The first two weeks after he was born were absolutely beautiful. We spent 5 nights in hospital before coming home and whilst he screamed a lot and hated sleeping right from the start I was in that delicious newborn place where everything was perfect. I fell in love with him from the very moment that I laid eyes on him, and in those first two weeks I remember loving when he would wake up to feed in the night because it meant I got to spend time with him.

During those two weeks I was also filling orders for my shop and planing and throwing Max's party and I think I was running on pure adrenalin because the next four weeks were the hardest of my life. Lincoln wouldn't sleep at night, he would feed and then scream for almost two hours, then finally fall asleep only to wake up and hour later and do it all over again. Every single night. On top of that Max started waking up crying each time he heard Link screaming and the only thing he would want was for me to come and lie in his bed with him. So some nights I would leave Sean with a screaming, inconsolable baby and go sleep in Max's bed for half an hour at a time before feeding Lincoln again. It was hard. I took it all out on Sean and would get so angry with him. I think I did just as much screaming and yelling and crying as Lincoln! To his credit Sean took it all on the chin and just keep on trying to help me settle Lincoln, night after night after night.

I was also having a really hard time feeding Link, I had so much milk and it was coming out so fast. He was gulping down so much air with each feed and seemed to have really bad tummy pains. I hadn't been able to feed Max past the four week mark and really wanting things to be different this time, so Sean and I set the goal of making it through to 6 weeks of breastfeeding and then seeing how things were then.

At the six week mark everything seemed to change. My milk started to settle down and Link was finding feeding so much easier. He started to go straight back to sleep after each feed and started to have one four hour stretch of sleep each night. I made the decision to talk to my Dr about how depressed I was feeling and noticed that my outlook changed right from the minute I decided to talk about it. I started to fall in love with Lincoln again and was finally enjoying being a Mum of two.

Since then things have just been beautiful! Link teased us by sleeping through the night a couple of times when he was around ten weeks, but it didn't stick. He generally wakes up to feed 3 or 4 times each night, but he goes straight back to sleep afterwards so it really isn't too bad.

At about four and a half months he started trying to crawl, which was crazy!! It took him about 5 weeks to work it out and now he crawls around everywhere and gets into everything! He's also worked out how to sit up and he loves it. He will often just sit in the middle of the floor smiling his adorable gummy smile at everyone and everything. He's just started to pull up on furniture this week so I don't think he's got any plans to lie around and be a little baby.

He loves Max and Sean, but I am by far his favourite person in the world and that makes me so happy. We have this beautiful bond and I am so glad that those early stressful days are behind us.

xx Tamsyn

Max and Emmy Being way too Adorable

Last week I mentioned that I spent the weekend on the Gold Coast for my Dad's wedding, and showed a couple of photos of Max and Emmy being adorable. And now I'm excited to say that I have something ever cuter to share... a video of them walking down the aisle holding hands :)

Probably completely boring if you're not family and I thought about not sharing it, but it really is so gorgeous!!

Feel free to skip to 2minutes 15seconds to see the real stars of the show (sorry Dad and Cathy!).




I'm so excited to see the professional photos and video now :)


xx Tamsyn 

ps the baby screaming in the background is Lincoln, he must have been feeling left out

pps I've gone from having one gorgeous and thin sister to having three of them, too bad they're all too nice to hate ;)

5/52 + Our Weekend Away

Last week I misplaced my camera battery charger so I really didn't get any great snaps of my boys during the week. I did of course get plenty of them on my iPhone. Better than nothing right!?

Max - This weekend a friend of mine and I took our kids down to my Dad's place for the weekend. Max loved playing with his little friend Chloe, they had their moments, but were generally very sweet to each other.

Lincoln - Not a great photo, but I love his little smush-face sleeping on Dad's shoulder. He slept right through the night while we were on the Gold Coast, and I couldn't be prouder!

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A weekend on the Coast was just what I needed, I actually felt like I'd had a holiday! We swam, had a barbeque, relaxed out by the water and had some quality family time. Bliss :)

Dad, his Fiance Cathy and my beautiful, chubby little baby

Dad and Cathy's new place on the Gold Coast

Max's first ride on a Jetski. I made Dad keep his speed to 6 knots, but I still found it completely terrifying

 

The view from the deck

Max and Chloe once they ran out of patience at Church on Sunday morning

 I hope you all had a gorgeous weekend too!

2012 Highlights

Two Thousand and Twelve. It was a big year!

My beautiful Max went from being a baby to a little boy seemingly in the blink of an eye.

He is such a sweet, amazing little kid. He's clever and cheeky and has the funniest sense of humour. I am so blessed to be his mumma!

In 2012 I also fell pregnant and gave birth to my other gorgeous boy, Lincoln. He certainly is a handful, but we all love him enormously and are so happy that we get to have him as part of our family too.

Another huge highlight this year has been having my sister and her girls move to Brisbane. They lived with us for the first 6 months and now live just around the corner. Max loves spending time with his cousins and I absolutely adore being able to see my sister every couple of days.

A big achievement for me this year was opening my online store - Max and Me Homewares. It's been something I've wanted to do for years and I am so glad that I finally took the plunge and did it. Things have gotten off to a great start with some of my products featured in The Everygirl, LilSugar, an Etsy advertising special in Shop Til You Drop Magazine and an upcoming feature on The Doctor's Closet.  I have so much fun making things for my customers and it has the ultimate bonus of meaning that I can stay at home with my boys for now :).

Here on the blog it was a great year too. I got a lot done early on the year (and a little less as my tummy got bigger and bigger towards the end of the year). Later on today I'll share my top ten posts from 2012.

I hope you all had a great year too, thanks so much for dropping by and being part of this amazing online community that is the blogging world. I look forward to spending 2013 being inspired by you all!!