Day 16 - Interaction

Sometimes it's nice just to have a lazy day at home. No rushing out to various toddler groups, just sitting with my little girls and enjoying watching them interact with each other. Jessica really is such a loving big sister, if a bit too enthusiastic at times, wanting to hold Sophie's hands and give her kisses and pile toys on her. Sophie seems to save her biggest smiles for Jessica, coos away to her and is remarkably tolerant of how much she gets pulled about. They are just lovely to watch together and it makes me feel so very blessed.

Day 15 - Four months

Four months.  Time really has flown – can it really be so long since I first saw Sophie’s face and first held her in my arms?  And yet, it seems as though she has always been here, that I have always known and loved her.  Four months.  That not-so-tiny baby, scrunched up and sleeping against my breast is now cooing and smiling and rolling over.  Grabbing at toys with her little hands and staring intently at them.  Giving her sister big grins (and then grabbing her hair!).  Getting bigger every day, growing fast, too fast.  Can we slow down time please?

Day 14 - Milk sharing

Despite many attempts to give Sophie expressed milk via a bottle, she has been determined that she will only take her milk directly from mummy and as I have been expressing fairly regularly since her arrival, I have built up a bit of a freezer stash.  When Jessica was unable to have my milk due to a chylothorax, I donated it to a milk bank.  It is good to know that even if my babies are unable (or unwilling!) to use my expressed milk, there are other babies out there who will benefit from it rather than it being wasted.

Day 13 - Hub Cafe

Tuesday mornings are one of my favourite times of the week, particularly during term-time as one of the churches in the village runs the Hub Café – a coffee morning for local mums and small children.  There is a play area for the children, often with a slide or a sandpit and a craft table set up and the mums can sit and drink tea or coffee, eat cake and have a catch up whilst the children play in a safe environment.  Everyone is so friendly and it really helped me make friends with other local mums when I started going.

Day 12 - Lunch with Grandma

With all the carrying and lifting involved with having two small children, my back gets a bit of a hard time but my lovely chiropractor soon sorts things out when my back starts complaining.  Grandma always comes along whenever I visit the chiropractor and watches the girls for me.  My appointments always seem to be just before lunchtime so we nearly always then go off somewhere and have lunch.  Today we had lunch in M&S Café which Jessica thoroughly enjoyed – she got to have sweet treats that she wouldn’t normally get to have and spend some time with her grandma.

Day 11 - Sophie's christening

 

Sophie was christened at our church today in her mummy’s christening gown and her daddy’s christening shawl (which his great-grandmother made).  It was such a special day and so lovely to celebrate with family and friends.  The service included two hymns that we had chosen – “Great is thy faithfulness” which is a particularly special hymn for us as a family and “O Lord My God (How Great Thou Art)” which I love because it is so full of praise for all the wonderful things that God does and we have so many things to thank Him for as a family.

Day 10 - Creating a card

 

Jessica loves stickers and drawing and as it was Grandma's birthday today I thought it would be lovely to give her a blank card, some coloured pencils and various stickers so that she could make Grandma a birthday card. She had a fun time doing it and Grandma was very chuffed with her first ever piece of artwork from Jessica. I did feel the need to point out though that there were no extra surprise presents this year as last year and two years before that we surprised her by announcing on her birthday that we were expecting a baby.

Day 9 - Christening cake figures

I love being creative and with Sophie's christening coming up, I knew that I wanted to make the cake myself (although a friend of ours is doing the rest of the food for the party afterwards).  I had an idea of what I wanted to do and some packs of coloured icing and various different colours of writing icing, including sparkly ones.  I'm quite pleased with how my little icing figures turned out - they look a bit like Playmobil figures of a vicar holding a baby by a font which is pretty much what I was trying to achieve.