And my Littlest Girl Turned Six This Week!

Well it's been another week of ups and downs..... when isn't it?! After spending a few days with my parents-in-law in their immaculate home I came home to realise that mine had moved a couple of notches up the clutter scale again after feeling ill the weekend before so spent a couple of hours restoring order! It was remarkably easy since I have established routines and places for everything and wasn't the horrible task it used to be!

I feel like my baby bump is enormous. I am only 23 weeks pregnant, but fighting the urge to waddle and horrified by the looming prospect of needing 'big pants' to feel comfortable as such an early stage!! This baby has a kick like a horse already and has perfected the 'bladder squirm' move, mainly practised by babies on long journeys or remote locations where a bathroom is inaccessible! I am looking forwards to my cleaning urge kicking in..... I have experienced this craving for bubbles and cleaning products in all of my pregnancies and it is most useful!!! I have big plans for it this time around and my husband says it is the best of all my pregnancy obsessions (another one is for the colour green, he dreads me wanting to decorate when pregnant - we get very predictable colour schemes!).

I am well on the way with plans for September's 'curriculum'. I remember very well how wonderfully a newborn baby turns everything upside down for a good while and I embrace the slowing down and enjoy it...... however...... we have a really great momentum going on at the moment and the girls have interests they want to pursue so with the benefit of my experience of what worked when Idris was born, I am planning ahead and creating 'newborn friendly' curriculum plans for next year!! More on that soon!

My 2013 goal of becoming more technologically savvy is still moving along well. You may have noticed that a 'follow me on pinterest' widget has arrived on the right hand side of the blog??!! It took an hour and a half of googling 'how to' tutorials, following the steps, then trouble shooting the steps, and a good bit of careful thinking and problem solving on my part too. That bit surprised me but really, I came up with the answers for myself in the end, which is brilliant as for half an hour my pinterest link went to Kate's board, and I can tell you she's a very different gal with very different interests to mine!!!!! I am also trying out linking one or two of my posts to other blogs. Amy at Raising Arrows wrote a great post this week on menu planning and I linked my post on Feeding a family on a small budget to it, although if I link again I need to write the blog post title rather than just my name! I also have plans for trying out the kindle app on my Samsung tablet, although synchronising calenders on that and my phone is still eluding me!!!!

And the biggest news this week? My littlest girl turned six - now exactly when did THAT happen already??!! She wanted to go ice skating for her birthday so skating we went. I didn't realise that it was set up like a disco so it was really hard to get any pictures of her skating in the darkness! We had a simple picnic and spent some time at a National Trust property running around the parkland climbing dead trees. Oh and I made an inedible cake that we could only eat the decorations off. She said it was the best birthday yet! It always blows me away how little makes my children happy, they rarely ask for anything and even then it is something modest - they never make a birthday list or ask for big parties, and hug me hard even when I make horrible cake for their big day - I am truly blessed!