Blog about being Mum and everything that comes with it.
Months of planing, weeks of preparation, lots of stress, excitement and happiness … And now Chloe is one year old !
I have spent a lot of time making all birthday decorations, birthday cakes and food. This are the results of Chloe’s two birthday parties.
Chloe will be 1 in 4 days. I have been so busy organising everything for her parties that I have forgotten about her outfit ! My party outfit shopping finds for girls and for boys are below :
1. MONSOON
2. MAMAS AND PAPAS
3. MOTHER CARE
4. H&M
5. JOHN LEWIS
6. MANDCO
One of the best toys that Chloe has is VTech crawl and learn ball! Chloe got this toy when she was 3 months old, and from the very beginning she loved it.
This ball has everything going for it:
– music and lots of different noises which baby of any age loves.
– lights which entertain baby from a very young age .
– buttons to press, little ribbons to pull etc
– teaches your baby about basic numbers, colours and animals.
– rolls on its own encouraging crawling.
– lots of different melodies and sayings.
This ball helped us with tummy time when Chloe was little. You know how hard it is to keep your little one lying on the belly for longer than a minute or if you are lucky few minutes. This ball was keeping Chloe entertained during her tummy time for up to 15 minutes. There is lots of lights and pictures on it and with the movement it was mesmerising for Chloe
Then came the crawling time. I must say this is where the ball really came in to action. Because by that time Chloe loved to play with it whenever the ball would roll away from her she would try to get to it …. And she would try very hard…. Once crawling started, she would be chasing the ball all the time…
I would recommend buying it. You will see how much fun your baby will have with it.
Chloe was abroad now 4 times and in 2 days time she will be traveling again.I am Polish and I live in the UK so we go to visit my family in Poland, we also went on our first family holidays to Greece and we are going on our final holidays before I go back to work (we don’t talk or think about that and hope that if we ignore it, it won’t happen).
I know that a lot of people get scared or overwhelmed when it comes to traveling with little babies… No reason to!
As far as you are organised and prepared it is not scary or hard, it’s lots of fun! Especially once you get to your holiday destination. Being away with Chloe was the most special time and most fun we have had.
I decided to write some things which in my opinion you need or should consider based on the advice that I have been given and my own experience.
1. DONT CARE !!!!!
This will be the best advice I can give you : stop caring about what other people think !! If your baby screams on the plane (hopefully that will never happen) don’t care about what other people might think! If your baby is loud in the restaurant and you get some looks from other people, just ignore them !!! If your baby cries at night in the hotel do not worry if someone can hear it!!!! Concentrate on you and your baby! Other people don’t matter and remember that your little baby has every right to make noise, cry, scream or laught out laud … That’s the Baby Human Rights Act 😂
2. FLIGHT TIMES
Flights are always much cheaper when you fly early in the morning or late in the evening… And you are used to doing it … Don’t! We have had our lesson when we went on holidays and had no choice in flight time. We had to leave the house at 3am !!! So had to get up at 1am to get out in time, and because I was so stressed that we won’t wake up in time I ended up not sleeping at all!!!! Flying back to London at 11at night and getting home at 1:30am isn’t ideal when your baby is up at 5am or 6am.
Babies are adaptable so they will make sure that they sleep if they are tired but if you mess too much with their routine they will let you know and you want to make sure that they are happy when you are on the plane.
You have a baby now so you can’t catch up on your sleep on the plane or when you get home so it’s important that you travel at a normal time :-).
3.TAKE OFF AND DESCENDING
As you already probably know your baby needs to suck something on the take off and when descending so the air pressure doesn’t hurt their ears.
Take off is easy you just give them a dummy or bottle for the first few minutes and it’s done. What I have discovered when traveling is that a lot of babies really cry when the plane is landing. That’s because the plane starts descending quite quickly (it takes around 20 min) if you don’t give your baby something at the beginning of the descent then it’s too late, your baby’s ears started hurting so it doesn’t matter if it has something to suck or not. Make sure you give your baby a dummy as soon as your ears pop for the first time.
Another trick is to put your baby on your legs, face down (so on their belly) and massage their back.
If your baby doesn’t take the dummy make sure that he/she is hungry! There is no point of giving your baby bottle of milk to suck if she/he isn’t hungry.
4. MAGAZINES AND CUP OF COFFEE
Don’t bother, you won’t be able to have it 😂. If you are flying with a partner /friend and your baby is tiny then you might be lucky as the baby will usually just sleep so you can give it to the dad and enjoy your magazine. If your baby is 6 months or over don’t waste your money. Chloe was climbing over both of us for the whole 3 hours on the plane 😀.
5. ENTERTAINMENT
I am not talking about your holiday entertainment, but your baby’s 😀.
Make sure that you have things with you which will keep your baby entertained and distracted. There are some good baby apps which will entertain even very small babies, bring theirs toys, a book. I find that snacks work perfectly! Chloe loves her food and snacking can keep her very happy for quite a while.
6. PACKING !
The harsh truth is that you won’t be able to take your usual 20 pairs of shoes 😀 the good news is that baby clothes are small so there will be some space left for your clothes😀
Pack anything that you think you will need, it is always better to take more than not enough.
My main advice will be to pack your baby clothes (or half of them) in to a hand luggage. I say that in case your luggage goes missing (it doesn’t happen often but is better to be safe than sorry) at least you have your baby stuff and your make-up (that always needs to be in the hand luggage) with you.
Keep your hand luggage to a minimum. I would advise to take 2 big suitcases and only one hand luggage. Recently we took one big suitcase and then had : 1 small suitcase, 1 bag, a pram, a changing bag, my handbag and Chloe (my husband hated every minute of it)…. It was a nightmare. This time we will have my very big handbag which will double as a changing bag, and one small suitcase.
7. FOOD
Nowadays this isn’t a problem. You can either take your milk (if you are bottle feeding) or your baby food (if your baby is weaning but not big enough to eat normal food) with you! Or just buy while on holidays (make sure that your holiday destination has a shop which sells baby food) You can take it on the plane with you without any problems (the 100ml rule doesn’t apply to baby milk/food).
I have previously bought meals for the whole holidays with us (lunch and dinner main course & dessert) my advice is just make sure that it’s the pouches not jars that you buy (if you get jars it will weigh a ton 😀) . I have also bought food while on holidays, it does depend on where you are going and if you know the country/trust the food brands.
8. ROUTINE
If your baby is very small (couple of months old) they don’t really have a routine yet and they sleep a lot which means that you don’t have to worry about it. Good thing about them being very small is that they will happily sleep everywhere; you can enjoy your dinner at any time with your baby sleeping in the pram next to you.
If your baby is over 3/4 months old she/he probably has a routine (meal time, nap times, bed time routine). In my opinion you should stick to your routine , maybe bend it a little bit when it comes to bed time but try and follow it. The reason to try and stick to your routine is simple : it took you a long time to get your baby in to a good routine, if you won’t stick to it for a few days/week+ you will have to start setting up your routine again. Also remember that if your baby is out of its routine it will change the way she/he behaves and that can affect your holidays.
If you go anywhere with a time difference of an hour, two or three ahead, that works perfectly for you. That means that you can stick to your bed routine and still have nice long evenings. When we went to Greece which is 2 hours ahead of UK time we had a great time and didn’t have to do anything about Chloe’s routine. We stick to our UK time routine so our usual 6pm dinner became 8pm , bed time went from 19:30 to 21:30 which was great. When we went to Poland which is only an hour ahead we had stick to the day routine but pushed the bed time by an hour (which luckily didn’t affect Chloe in any way).
I am not saying that you cannot go out in the evening or enjoy your holidays, you can, just make sure that you consider your baby’s needs. If your baby is a good sleeper and would sleep while you are out in the restaurant then that’s perfect just let them sleep in the restaurant and then quietly move to the cot when you are back at the hotel.
Tomorrow we are going to Portugal, there is no time difference so our plan is the every second night we will get Chloe to go to sleep in the pram so we can be out a little bit later than 7:30 pm 😀. That would mean that every other night she will go to sleep in the cot and that should keep her routine of going to sleep.
9. HOTEL
Bring your baby’s sleeping comfort item (if they have any) and toys with you. Chloe loves hotels as its a new environment to explore. In my opinion you only need to make sure that they feel secure when going to bed. I don’t carry a travel cot with us instead I have a portable mattress which I put over the cot base and use our fitted sheets. I bring Chloe’s sleeping bag and her comfort blanket which smell of her home/bed and she never has any problems sleeping.
10. THINGS TO HAVE WITH YOU
I won’t be going over the usual stuff, as you all know all of it already. I will go through some which might not be that obvious and I found that its good to have them with you.
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MEAL ….
The weather has turned in London to a rainy and chilly so we had to wear more layers. Chloe is wearing:
Jumpsuit from Primark,
Pink top and pink jacket with stars from H&M,
White lace trainers and pink headband from Mother Care
ANOTHER DAY, ANITHER MEAL…
SWEET POTATO FRIES
Great as part of a meal or just as a finger food. It’s healthy and so testy !
Ingredients:
– sweet potato (quantity depends on the amount that you want to make)
– thyme
– maple syrup (optional)
Cooking method:
Just cut your sweet potatoes in to a chips size. You don’t need to peal the skin I did it only because in my head my 10 months old could struggle with eating it.
Put a tiny bit of olive oil in to you baking tray, put your potatoes and cover with a little bit of thyme (you don’t have to use it)
Bake for around 15 min on 180C. You can add 1 tsp of maple syrup and sprinkle it on the top, put back in to the oven for 3 min.
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MEAL …
Vegetables with rice
Ingrediants:
– 1 broccoli (I used frozen)
– 1 small sweet potatoe
– handful of young broad beans (I used frozen)
– 60g of peas
– vegetable stock (around 100ml but it depends what consistency you want)
– 100g of rice
Cooking:
Steam sweet potato an broccoli for 8min.
Then add peas and beans for another 5 minutes.
While steaming vegetables cook your rice and prepare the vegetable stock.
Because my princess is still at the stage 2 of weaning I blend all of the ingediance (except the rice). Add vegetable stock while doing so, if you want it more runny add more, if you want it to be quite thick add less.
Once blended add rice, and it’s ready to serve. You can ado add cooked chicken in to it.
DESSERT : Yogurt and blueberries pancakes
Ingrediants:
– yogurt 200ml
– flower
– 1 tsp baking powder
– 150g blueberries
Cooking:
Comine all of the ingrediants together except blueberries. Mix until smooth then add blueberries.
Fry for a minute or two (until golden) on each side. Great as a snack or when introducing finger food.
I have been debating long and hard over the walker. I definitely didn’t want the big walker. Not that there is anything wrong with them but: 1. I don’t like how they look, 2. I reed articles suggesting that they aren’t good for kids 3. I don’t have a space for it.
I knew that I wanted a push along walker, for it to support Chloes learning on how to walk. The choice is huge (as with everything when it comes to babies) wooden/plastic, prams/cars, big/small, with activities/without, expensive/cheap.
For once I think that I took sensible decision and chosen something not too expensive, small, wooden which means that quality is better, and something that she can play with once she walks by herself, but we are not stuck with it for ages. I have chosen to buy the wooden pram walker. It wasn’t too expensive with a price tag of £35. Chloe can play with it after she learns how to walk but if she does not want to, it doesn’t matter as it wasn’t expensive and we can just get rid of it.
What is important is that it supports her in learning (which a standard walker doesn’t do as it has too much support) . She learns how to balance, how to push, and makes her so much more confident in her walking.
She loves it ! She keeps walking up and down, and she could do it all day long. The only problem is she doesn’t know how to turn around 😂😂😂.
Keep in touch day at work … We all need to do it in a build up to the maternity leave finishing (can’t even think about it!!!!!!!). So today is the day that I need to leave my baby and go for few hours to work !!!! Leaving the house and saying my goodbye was one of the hardest things in my life ! I have left Chloe with her dad and grandfather which is making it much easier …. Right? So why was I in tears leaving the house ?????? It’s so so so hard … I can’t even think about how will I be able to go back to work full time ???? Leave Chloe in the nursery or only with grandparents without my husband checking that Chloe is ok ???
On one hand I just want to shout : I QUIT, I DONT WANT TO WORK ! I want to be at home withy baby …. On the other hand I know that it’s good for her to be surrounded by other people, and that I go back to work so she can have everything that she needs and wants… There is also this small part of me thinking that I nee to think about my future and my carrier ….
BEING A MUM JUST GOT WHOLE LOT MORE DIFFICULT
How cute and cool it this outfit? All pieces are form ZARA’s new collection. I love those trousers !!!! 
We are 9 months old today !!! That means that she is older than the time she spent in my belly! For some reason 9 months feels as important as 6 months. Quite emotional! Where did this time go? Didn’t I just gave birth to her ????
What did I get as a present from her ? 3 sleepless nights in the row while 2nd tooth is coming through !
NEW YUMMY MUMMY 