December Sponsors EXPOSURE

December Sponsors

I have left it to the very last minute but here we go, here are my sponsors for December. 

Two Red Birthstones

My name is Danielle and I am the blogger behind Two Red Birthstones (http://tworedbirthstones.blogspot.com/).  I blog about my life as a wife and stay-at-home mommy and I share my love of photography and crafting.  I also have an Etsy shop (www.tworedbirthstones.etsy.com) where I sell custom designed as well as premade logos and watermarks.  I also sell organizing printables for household and blogging binders.

http://tworedbirthstones.blogspot.com/

Wildflowers 3

Hi there!

I'm Krystal 20 something stay at home mom to two adorable little girls and fiance to a hardworking beanie wearing guy named Matt. Over at Wildflowers 3 you'll find us having fun on weekend outings, a DIY tutorial every once in a while and thrifty outfit styling's.

Please stop in and give us a visit, we'd love to make some new friends!

http://wildflowers3.blogspot.co.uk/

Oh So Amelia

I'm a twenty something first time mum and blog about my daughter, pregnancy, parenting and everything in between. I also have many baby DIY crafts for you to try out. Come on over and say hi!

www.ohsoamelia.com

Berice Baby

First time mum living  & loving out loud in London

http://www.bericebaby.co.uk

http://www.youtube.com/bericebaby

Mummy and wife Adventures

Mummy to two gorgeous boys, one gorgeous girl and wife to James.

Mummy and wife Adventures

Yummy Mummy Training

My Name is Sarah and I am a 23 year old first time Mummy to a gorgeous little boy Thomas who was born on the 27th May. I am also a wife to David who I married on 24th September 2011.

I created this blog to record my journey from pregnancy to motherhood so that I have something to look back on in years to come.

www.yummymummyintraining.co.uk

A Geek in Glasses

I'm Stephanie! I love all things Vintage and our house shows it. I believe Glasses are like shoes, you can never have too many pairs!!! Follow our adventures in Thrifting, Crafting, Photography and Life.

A Geek in Glasses

Christmas Blues

The decorations need taking down, the family have gone back home and left the house a tip and the front room is full of brand new toys without permanent home yet. I always find this interim period between Christmas and New year difficult and I find myself feeling positively blue. It has not helped this year that the weather has been awful, I have only seen 2 hours of dry weather since Christmas day. We had planned to get out with the boys and get some exercise walking in our favorite places, this has just not happened. That was my defensive to get rid of those Christmas blues but obviously I have not had this opportunity. 

We have taken all our decorations down now and today it has hit me the hardest I feel like something is missing like we have not taken full advantage of the holiday. Of course we have done loads and taken full advantage of family time but I'm still filled with this sense of something is missing. I always feel like this after a big event or holiday I guess it just my personality but it always catches me out after Christmas. 

I hate feeling like this because it make me a really grumpy old man and I snap at the kids and my wife which is not fair. I have found a few things helped for example talking to my wife about it and just counting to ten when i feel snappy. But the best thing to help is to get back in to my routine of work, then I know where I stand and I will feel happier that I'm not just waiting to go back.

True meaning of Christmas

On viewing our pictures of Christmas one stood out, not because it was a perfectly composed picture but for the reaction on Charlies face. It sum's up sadly what Christmas has singularly become for some people in this material world. The reaction was one of pure joy at the sight of so many presents and this is the reaction we look for as parents as we want them to be over joyed. I realised that on the run up to Christmas this was all we had been building him up for.

However seeing his reaction made me think that we have not been able to teach him any values this Christmas and that for him Christmas was purely about presents. When I read this post over at momto8blog It made me realise that I didn't want my Children thinking Christmas was all about gifts for them. The post sum's up perfectly the true meaning of Christmas from both sides and i urge you to read it !

 I'm not about to pledge that next year ill buy no presents, because frankly its a perfect excuse to update and renew their toys. But as they grow up I want to have established that Christmas is a time for kindness and a time to for sharing for everyone. I'm not going to force the story of Christmas on the children yet, school will do that for me, however I will introduce the basic's. Spiritually neither do i believe or not believe but I do acknowledge that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ and stands for a lot more than just presents and spending money. 

I know the kids are young so this is more of a note to self for the future but its worth mentioning. There is far to much want want want in this world.

Do check out monto8blog's post it stood out as the perfect meaning of Christmas.

I really regret that !

I have been somewhat consumed by life this last two weeks. Nothing has prepared me for how busy things have got. We have been hot property over Christmas, the couple with a new born. I have no problem with everyone coming to see us and have no problem with going to see them. It has just been the intensity of it all crammed in to two weeks, it has positively tired me out.

The Christmas period has taken it's toll on our little Harry he has been cutting teeth, big bad ass molars! He has been cutting these back teeth for the past few months now, however the last two weeks have been horrendous for him. He has been a little limpet and he screams his head off if either of us leave the room especially me. I’m not even allowed to play with Charlie without him being involved ,which is normal behaviour but its very particular at the moment.

One thing which has happened whilst he has been teething is he is being kept up at night with the pain. Obviously we try and give him medicine as and where we can, but when he wake giving him a dose does not have an immediate effect. So we then look to other ways which we can soothe him, which leads me nicely to the point I want to make with this post. One of the things we really regret not doing with Harry is giving him a soother. Going back to what I was saying, we turned to ways to soothe him whilst the medicine takes effect. If he had had a soother then we could have use it to soothe him. However because we never pushed it when he was young he now doesn’t like them, he just throws them away! The only thing which he finds soothing is a bottle which works usually, unless you have painful teeth then the cold juice inside it just makes things worst. The bottles I’m referring to are the tommee tippee milk bottles, we still use these for him because we can not use a soother to provide comfort.

Obviously this has been a huge extra strain on our night life’s what with Olivia still wanting feeds in the night. It's not only this event which has made us come to the conclusion that we regret not pushing the soother. About a 5 months ago we were having major problems with getting Harry off to sleep. He would go up to bed with a full bottle of weak juice however he would usually finish this very fast. Then he wouldn’t settle without more, so foolishly we gave him more which he got used to. At the height of the problem we were giving him three weak juice bottles to get him off to sleep. But it was not uncommon for him to wake three times a night and want more to settle him back to sleep. This resulted in wet bed sheets every morning despite changing him in the night and a lot of stress.

Once we had established that things had got out of hand (which we all let happen from time to time) we took action. A strict half bottle was slowly introduced for putting him up to bed with and he was going to have to learn that once it had gone that was that. As you can imagine this was like someone prodding him with a sharp stick all evening.

 It didn’t take us long to get to a point where he was not screaming the house down for more once he was finished. As for waking at night time and he was allowed a juice in a Sippy cup for if he was thirsty but not a bottle. This works very well for us now and we are relieved that we are managing the situation.

However can you see how if we had just pushed the soother in the first place all of this would have never happened.

Weekend at 100mph !

As the title suggests the weekend was a blip, it went so fast, we were so busy and we seemed to only do a few things. Of course just popping out for five minutes can take forever with three under three. 

We managed to get in to town for the last bits of shopping for Christmas. It was heaving, wall to wall people, and I don't do well in crowds. However we did manage to pick these cute All-in-ones up from Next for £16.00 each.

We picked up two, one for Harry as well. The boys wouldn't pose together for a picture so you just have Charlie.  They have also been given those snazzy dinosaur welly boots by Nanny recently and they still love wearing them around the house :-). Harry stomps around saying di-no-door and then rraarrring !

We spent most of Saturday just pottering around we had wanted to go out for a friends wedding in the evening. However we both just felt so run down that we decided a quiet date evening with microwave curry's from Tesco's a better option !

Indian Takeaway

We had a lovely night and the food was lovely, but as usual we ate far to much and felt rotten for the rest of the evening and had a poor nights sleep.

Then, as if that wasn't enough we went to see Santa again. This time Katy's dad wanted to take them, he was paying so we were going ha ha ha. It was a cheaper grotto to visit however I would rate it much higher than the other grotto we visited before. The one before cost £5.99 per child with one toy, this weekend grotto cost £4 per child plus 50p per adult.

 The cue for the grotto was huge, however when you got in to the undercover bit everything was beautifully decorated. There was so much to look at the kids hardly noticed how long the cue was taking to go down.  The Santa was 100% better than the one from last time, he engaged with the kids and talked about presents and made it magical. Charlie was in awe of this seasonal Idol, unlike the one from the other week. The Santa from the other week spent most of the time talking to us about the other people he had seen which would have ruined it if the kids were older.

See, it seems like not a lot for one weekend but once you add in ever little trip here and just got to visit there. It really makes for a very busy weekend. 

I'm trying to keep my posts regular and really wanted to do a few over the weekend but obviously there just was no time. For this I apologise and will try to plan and fit them in. 

Friday Chaos Blog Hop #17

Hi everyone! Woohoo, it's Friday again! 

which means we're one step closer to the weekend!

that means it's time for... the "Friday Chaos Blog Hop!"

This is a link up for bloggers who want to increase traffic to their blogs and meet new friends! 

RULES:

1. Follow both hosts (The first two links below on each link up) 

2. Follow all of the co-hosts (the next 5 link ups)

3. Grab the button and put it on your blog somewhere to be seen.

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.ohsoamelia.com" title="ohsoamelia"><img src="http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/jj578/BericeBaby/Untitled7.jpg" alt="Ohsoamelia" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

4. Don't just add your blog hoping to get followers, join in the fun and visit a few blogs.

4. Tweet about this hop Tweet

If you would like to co-host one of the weeks let us know.

Okay, Lets get this chaos started!

Your Hosts:

Kerry @ Ohsoamelia

Lotte @ Bericebaby

What's new in Olivia's life?

Well Olivia is three weeks old tomorrow and my goodness hasn't it gone fast. I was amazed with the boys and I am amazed with Olivia at just how fast they develop. Nearly everyday when I come home from work she seems to have developed further. I love it when I do come home because when I say her name and get on to my hands and knees and lean in to the bouncer she seems to recognise me. It's only her slightly moving her head or arms but it seems like she gets excited, this is really nice after a long day.

I feel like I miss so much of her development having to work. In an ideal world I'd like it to be that me and Katy were stay at home parents. I know that this will never happen unless our lottery numbers come in so for now I cherish every moment.

We as a family are beginning to get in to the swing of things, but with Christmas looming I'm sure this will shake it all up again. At present we are liking our set routine of an evening it goes something like this.

4.45pm Get in from work

5.00pm Tea Time

5.30pm Bath time for all three kids

6.00pm Quiet time down stairs and bottle for Olivia (Ill do dishes in this time)

7.00pm Boys to bed (This is my blog time)

7-10 R & R for Mummy and Daddy (In this time Olivia tends to be very relaxed and sleepy. This wasn't the case last week, but we found bath time has helped to relax her)

I'm planning another video and we shall see if little miss shows you her eyes, last time she just slept. Hopefully Charlie will refrain from giving you a close up of his nostrils.  

Funky Giraffe Bibs

Something we have gone mad for and brought lots of, with Olivia, are dribble bibs. I cant explain why it's not like she dribbles, to be honest with you I don't think I have seen her dribble at all. However she is only a few weeks old. Whats with us buying so many so soon? It must be the abundance of designs you can choose from! 

We seem to be hooked on the dribble bibs from Funky Giraffe.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to show off the start of our collection. In the interest of fairness one of the bibs is from Tesco's, the florescent pink one with white lines through.

We have found them really useful for catching milk and any little sick up's at the moment, they have saved countless cute outfits. Obviously when she gets older they will become handy for dribble :-) 

If you get a chance check out the Funky Giraffe's website and see how many designs there are. We tend to buy ours from this super cute baby boutique 'it's all about me' 

December Sponsors Giveaway

Well here we are, only one day after my first giveaway and hey presto a massive group giveaway !


I hope you're all having a WONDERFUL December so far.

 I can't believe it's Christmas in 14 days!

It's time for the Sponsors Group Giveaway! YAY!

My DECEMBER Sponsors have all come together to host this FABULOUS GIVEAWAY!

13 prize packages = 1 WINNER!!!

If you'd like to see yourself here next month then click here!

There you go!

Enter the Rafflecopter below.
Mandatory entry is to follow all 13 blogs via GFC to unlock more ways to enter to increase your chance of winning!
Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway and 2 Week Update

Well I'm a few day's late but here is Olivia's two week update. I have a good reason as I wanted to wait until she saw the Midwife today. 

Well I'll start with the visit to see our midwife, the visit went well and Olivia has now been officially discharged. The previous visit was supposed to be her last but a weepy belly button and gunky eye put pay to that. However, she is now completely clear of all her aliments and the midwife was happy with her progress. 

She now weighs in at an impressive 9lb 2oz.

Her progress generally has also been great, she really opens her eye wide now  and has begun noticing things. We have been putting her down on her play mat for the last few days. She has really responded well to the stimulation of the lights and music and has even made some noises whilst on the mat.

She is starting to cope better with feeding and winding although I'm of the opinion that a change of formula will help. This train of thought has been born out of the fact that Charlie fed using the same formula. I don't think it will solve the wind problem changing the formula. However Harry was an absolute dream for bringing wind up, he used a completely different formula. Charlie and Olivia were and are fed on Cow and Gate stage One and Harry was fed on SMA Gold stage One.

It is the last thing I want to do messing around changing formula and upsetting what Olivia is used too. However there is a underlying urge to experiment and see if changing to SMA Gold makes the difference. 

If I'm honest I do not think I will change her formula now as she is used to it. I just think it would be nice to know.

Here are a few bath time photos with the cheeky chappy's and little miss Olivia.

Give away time!

It's only a small giveaway it is my first.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you don't laugh to hard when you see my little giveaway but it's a start.

Santa's Grotto 2012

So this years trip to see Santa has gone down a storm and without any tears. We returned to the same place we went with the kids last year, a large Garden center on the outskirts of Plymouth. We paid £5.99 this gets you in, a badge and a toy worth £4 we thought this was not bad value. The decorations around the waiting path were fantastic, well they would be as everything could be brought. We were a little bit disappointed that this year they had not built the slide which kept the kids entertained last year. We also found the Santa we visited liked to chat to us about some of the other people he had seen that day. Had the kids been older, and understood a little bit more about Christmas, it could have ruined the experience a bit.

The boy's loved wearing their Christmas jumpers to see Santa, however Harry managed to spill beans down it five minutes after seeing Santa.

Olivia Just didn't care about the whole Christmas thing, we got her a badge which say's I've seen Santa for her keep sake box.

Today has been the final day of Christmas shopping or should I actually say today should have been. We managed to get the majority of the boys things today but there are a few things outstanding from my list posted on Friday. We are mega excited so we decided to get everything down from the loft and we took pictures of everything we have got.

As always we didn't managed to get all the things on the list. One reason for this was because some of the things were just too expensive for the quality of product. Another reason was we just couldn't find it, however we did find an amazing little independent toy shop called Whoopee ! We found some of the wooden train sets for a very reasonable price. These guys have a Facebook page I think they are well worth a like just for having great customer service and very friendly staff. 

Christmas Shopping !

We have a small window of opportunity to complete the boys Christmas shopping ! My mum has agreed to look after the boys for us so we can blitz the shops and spend every last penny we have. Would we have it any other way ? So, an intense shopping spree has to be structured and focused or else we will end up not getting the things we want and spending loads more than we should.

I feel a list coming on :-) This is what we want to get to complete the boys Christmas shopping. 

1. Mini Skateboard (Charlie) 

2. Dinosaurs (not living ones) (Harry)

3. Brio toy trains (Both)

4. New stick to the bath bath toys (Both)

5. Elefun ball popper (Harry)

6. Bananas in pj's toy (Charlie)

7. Books (Harry)

8. Toy Ambulance with opening back doors (Both)

9. Stocking fillers (Both)

10.  Thomas blue mountain motorized play-set (Charlie)

Mum has agreed to have the boys for us on Saturday, so we will be packing them off at 8.00am ready for doors opening at the shops at 9.00am.

Hopefully we will get everything we want !

Tommee Tippee Milk Powder Dispenser Review

Milk Powder Dispensers Review 

This is my first review of a product for my blog, I have not been asked to do this by a company. I have recently begun to realise the full potential of my blog and that having an audience means you have opportunity's. This can be as simple as being involved in sponsoring a fellow blogger. Or it could be as exciting as receiving products, related to your blog, to review.

I have not received the Tommee Tippee closer to nature milk dispensers I have brought them myself. 

The dispensers come in a pack of six and have lids which are in two halves. One half creates a seal around the main dispenser chamber and the other half slides on top of the first half sealing the contents in.

We have found that the dispensers fit together with the bottles effortlessly and we have never had problems with the lids not screwing down. We really like that the whole system sits inside the bottles, this has been a god send when going out as it cuts down on the amount of space taken up in the change bag, as we have a small one this has been amazing. Also this product has helped masses for the night time feeds. It means you do not have to fumble about with formula, making 'x' amount of level scoops in the dead of night, all you have to do is pour.

The main thing we really liked about this product was that it made meal delivery quick. All you need to do is unscrew pour and shake, no messing around with getting formula out and counting out scoops. This has made a happier baby in our opinion (see pictures below).

We have found it takes along time to air dry the insides of the dispensers, we usually just wipe it with some kitchen roll. When we do this it seems to makes us feel the sterilisation process is less effective. However this is only a minor point on an otherwise fantastic product.

Pro's

Allows you to prepare feeds in advance.

Neatly fitting for going out and about.

Makes night time feeds easier.

Quicker meal delivery for baby.

Con's

Takes time to air dry.

Over all, we have found this product very beneficial and would recommend it to anyone who is using formula.

Latest Vlog

I'm venturing in to the world of vlogging. My videos are of  a beginner vlogger standard, so don't expect fancy editing and text yet. To be honest with this first video I'm posting its not even in focus so I hope you will forgive my newbie mistakes.

Here is the video, I'd love to start following some vlogs so if you have one be sure to subscribe so I can subscribe back.

Hope you enjoy my video please let me know what you thought and if you have any advice for me :-)

Been busy busy busy

I find my self with hundreds of blog post Ideas flying through my head at the moment however I just do not have the time to put pen to paper. I'm writing things down and i'll try to write the posts here for you guys as soon as life settles down a bit. Since my last post we have been very busy I can't believe its been 5 days since my last post, however it feels like only yesterday I hit publish on my last post.

Our life's have been totally consumed by a little Missy and obviously this is coming across in my blog. I have been trying to refrain from becoming totally focused on Olivia. I'm very aware that my two boys are competing for my attention at every opportunity they get. It's been very difficult to split my attention both ways and it was so nice to take the boys to a park for a little bit of 100% daddy attention.

My little Harry, he has found it hard to accept Olivia taking daddy's attention however over the last few days he has been accepting her more and more. He has been mega grumpy on top of trying to accept Olivia, we originally thought that he was just mega grumpy because of Olivia. Because we were so busy we hadn't noticed, until the other day, he was cutting teeth. This made me feel awful for him that he hadn't been getting the normal attention he is used to from me.

One new thing he likes to do, is walk up to Olivia saying baba and then crouching down ever so gently and kissing her forehead, its the cutest.  

When Charlie heard there was a fireman's pole at the park, he just had to wear his outfit.

Back to Olivia, we had what was supposed to be our final midwife appointment yesterday. However due to a weepy belly button the midwife would like to see her again. Everything else with the appointment went very well and she has put lots of weight on .

When she was born she was;

 8lb 2 1/2 oz

Then on her first visit at 2 days old she was 

8lb 1 1/2

Now after her last appointment at 10 days old she weighed

8lb 10 oz

She has just had her first proper bath this evening and she seemed to be really relaxed in it, one thing we did was keep her wrapped in a towel whilst putting her in. We had heard that it was supposed to keep baby calm which it seemed to do.

Another thing which has been keeping us busy over the last few days is the annual decorating of the house I have assembled a few pics of our favourite. 

We love this little train, it has little led lights but we do not bother to turn them on because each carriage requires battery's.

This is so cute we have had it for a few years.

This is our Family tradition to set up the winter scene,
its three years old .

  Guess what made the most mess to set up with Charlie helping ?

Well that brings you up to date with whats happening with us and i'll be sure to keep things more regular from now on.