Chasing Butterflies Daily

As most of my readers should've gathered by now I'm a little obsessed with butterflies. My obsession started after we chose our eldest's name, which means butterfly (more about all 3 kids names can be found in my post: Why all the butterflies? ). After that it was a slippery slope, and we now live in a house with butterfly motifs EVERYWHERE. I often have others ask me how I manage to find so many butterfly clothes and things for and the kids. The secret is that I'm that crazy person who'll add "buttery" to most of my Google searches when purchasing something, whether for us or as a gift. HOWEVER I'm still very much a novice when it comes to knowing about actual butterflies. I have however been completely smitten by them, moths and their caterpillars. I've started looking for them anytime I'm out and researching any new ones I don't know about. Most valuable in this, I've found, has been several Facebook groups that are focused...

A lot of my posts about the kids are tongue in cheek, I joke about how annoying they are as a coping mechanism. Luckily they throw me moments to be proud of too, just occasionally they must know I need a reminder it's not all chaos. If you're on the fence about adding another one to the mix then I'll tell you honestly that it's madness when they multiply. And it only gets madder as they get older and fight more and more. But there's also a whole lot more love to go around. This wee event happened today and I'm sharing it partly for myself as a reminder of the nice moments but also for any mother who's recently added to her crazy or is thinking about it. After pick up today I let the kids stay and play in the school playground for a bit. I'd been speaking to another parent when the 5 year old came up to me, tears streaming down her face. It transpires that she was distraught because she'd tried to stop some of the older boys from pushing...

In honour of our son and third baby's first birthday I thought I'd share a wee hack I have come up with with you. With cameras in our pockets most of the time these days mothers are taking thousands of photos of their children (I'm going to hazard a guess that it's a common habit regardless if whether you like to share them on social media or not!). The problem with the endless supply of pictures of our little cherubs is that it becomes so difficult to choose our favourites and create albums of the important early years. If you're anything like me you still like to have a book with the "best of" even in these technological days where everything is backed up online. Somehow I found the time to scrap book an album of our first born's first year but finding the time to make something as special for her younger sister seemed like it would be an impossible task. However I figured out an easy and very effortless way to document her ye...

Today it is one year since my dad died. A few days before he passed I got a message from my two older siblings who live in Stockholm. They'd been out to visit our father at is dementia home to most likely say goodbye. He'd taken a turn for the worse, after many years with Alzheimer's, and had become bedridden. Staff did not think he had long. So the two eldest of his children went to say bye and let him know everyone was well; that his grandchildren were all well. When I got the message about his deteriorating health (at the time we all still thought he might have weeks or months to go) we were snowed in here in Scotland with the "beast from the East". I was 38+ weeks pregnant with our third (who we knew had to be born by C-section for a safe delivery). So I was in a position where I knew there was little I could do other than focus on the life that was about to enter the world. Then the 5th March, 2018, the day before our son's scheduled sec...

I think I need to start by explaining how the Scottish school system works in the early years. Firstly your child becomes eligible for a state funded nursery place at a school nursery the term after their 3rd birthday. Our eldest is born in February so she started nursery after the Easter holidays the year she turned 3 (she did go to a private nursery a few mornings a week for the year before but we had to pay that ourselves, it was hardly cheap, not a luxury we've allowed ourselves since), our middle child is born in May so she isn't eligible for a nursery placement until August 2019, while children born in the autumn get to start nursery in January. School starts when they are somewhere between the age of 4.5 - 5.5 years old, depending on whether they are born before or after the cut off point for every new grade which is the last of February/first of March. Our eldest's birthday is at the end of February which would have made her 4.5 years old when she started and ...

I've not gotten much written on here lately, I've been tired and it feels like life's been busy. Sure that our eldest turning five last week hasn't helped my motivation to write despite having quite a few half written posts to finish. But this is a massive milestone for our wee Elis. If you don't know him he probably looks about the age an average child sits at (our older two were 6 & 5 months old when they first sat unsupported) but he'll be turning one next week! He has had the most common form of dwarfism, achondroplasia, since birth and due to their disproportionate growth, larger than average head and spines that are susceptible to both kyphosis curvature of the spine and stenosis (pinching of the spinal cord). The former can result in not just back pain and bad posture but hunchback as well while the latter is far more dangerous as it means either loss of feeling and function of the lower half of the body and/or immense pain. Because of...

Both the girls have got birthdays on their brains. There's been quite a few parties already this year and we're about to hit birthday season in our family. Our eldest turns 5 next week, and then we've got a family member's birthday every month up until June. Our eldest is of course beside herself with excitement now in the run up to her party. But I'd say it's the toddler who's the most obsessed (she's also having a difficult time understanding why so many friends & both her siblings have their birthdays now - May is a long way away for a 2 year old).  Lately she's been using empty egg cartons and turning them into birthday cakes by sticking pens into them like the picture above. The problem is that the pens usually start falling through the holes whenever she walks around with them so she tends to get angry and abandon the cake (often after ripping it to shreds). Well this morning I was feeling surprisingly pro-active (I can rarely be b...