Chasing Butterflies Daily

On Monday, 6 days ago, I started potty training Elis, by late afternoon he had a fever which turned out to be Roseola. The next morning I seriously considered aborting the mission and restarting in a few weeks again, but he'd done well on his first day so decided to continue. I potty trained my older two at young age, my eldest was 23 months old and the middle child was only 17 months old. In both cases it was greatly driven by the fact that I was pregnant with another child and felt that I'd have enough on my hands with a newborn to tackle potty training easily at a later date. Nor did I fancy the thought of changing nappies on two children at the same time to be perfectly honest. Newborn nappies aren't really that stinky. Toddler nappies, however, are foul. So is wiping their poo off the floor and furniture or emptying their potty: but at least you're on the road to it ending up in the toilet more often than not. I had also been quite keen on an early tr...

Sunday the 22nd September, 2019, I went up Ben Nevis to raise funds for the Scottish region of the Dwarf Sports Association.  This is how my day went (some times, especially later in the day, are estimates) 3:00 - woken up by middle child who wants a drink, she gets a drink from my bottle and is ushered into her own bed. She demands her own bottle so I go downstairs and get one. 3:14 - she reappears with her pillow this time and insists on getting into my bed. I hasten to add she's a fidget in bed, we much prefer having her siblings in bed with us, she just lies and pokes and prods you for hours... 3:15 - the eldest turns up annoyed that her sister has left the room. I tell her to get into bed with us. 3:25 - she decides she'd rather be in her bed and stomps off. 4:30 - middle child finally nods off and starts to snore. 4:31 - the toddler wakes up; I've been trying to feed him later but since I'm heading off early figure I'm better ...

I recently read this quote by Sinéad Burke and it resonated with me so I wanted to share it here: "I was born disabled and I’m very proud to be disabled. My greatest challenge is that I live in a world that wasn’t designed for me." I love Elis' disability and I'll tell you why. It's not just because it's my duty as his mother to lift him up - figuratively more than physically! With all my children I've believed strongly in letting them figure things out independently as babies and toddlers. I may guide and show support so they may learn better but ultimately I want them to succeed on their own. It is greatly spurred on by me wanting him to feel like Sinéad, I want him to be proud of who he is, and what his disability gives him that average height people miss out on. It's perhaps a different way of looking at it, but to me it is the only way. When we got his diagnosis over a year and a half ago all I could do was worry about the health i...

Firstly it took 1,438 attempts to get this photo... I've got one where the youngest looks like he's surely possessed by the devil himself. The rest either someone isn't looking at the camera, or their head is cropped out or they look incredibly miserable with the experience... Don't blame them! Looking at this you've hopefully noticed we're all wearing matching clothes. There's several reasons for this, the main one being my husband. He's enjoyed getting me and my eldest matching clothes for years now, that is mostly because he finds it hilarious that I fit into children's clothes (it's actually very convenient as they are usually a lot cheaper). When we had our second and she turned out to be another girl he started buying them more marching things. Part of me was very against this as there were more than enough clothes for the second born to wear. But having siblings of the same gender and close in age pretty much guarantees e...