A wriggly bump :-)

I just wanted to save this picture somewhere, as I've lost a lot of the ones I took when pregnant with Finn and I don't have any good ones from when I was pregnant with Chloe. So here it is, our littlest one in progress! S/he is growing well (huge, it seems to me!!) and is very wriggly and lovely. Chloe is loving feeling little kicks and it seems to be finally sinking in that quite soon we'll have another little person in our family - Finn thinks we should call it 'babymummytummy' when it's born, but I'm not certain that'll be the final name choice ;-)

Lots more posts in my head, but for now, just a quick one to share! xx

This little girl is NINE!

It amazes me that it's been nine whole years since I gave birth to my tiny baby girl. She's still fairly tiny now, but with an attitude to compensate...! She is the most wonderful, changeable, dynamic, inspired, driven and funny person I've ever met, and I have learned so much from her that I can't begin to explain. When she was three, she was a rock of strength and determination to me and my reason for being strong - well actually just my reason for being! She had a wonderful birthday weekend. Swimming at a (hideous) waterpark, followed by cake and shell-seeking on the beach, a riotous sleepover and then family visiting for a lovely bbq in the garden the next day - oh and a riding lesson to try out her lovely new boots from Grandma and Grandad! Hyperactive, birthday-food induced mania at 10pm, but by 11.30 she was insisting that her friend get off her bed and go to sleep as she was so tired, lol!

Riding a lovely pony called Oak :)

A not very inspired birthday cake - last year I made a dolphin cake and she was very impressed - but this year my energy levels could only stretch to this one, and it tasted just as good - well, better actually as it wasn't blue ;-)

And she's been very happy since her birthday - especially since the trampoline we'd decided to exchange our faulty climbing frame for just 'happened' to arrive this weekend! So perhaps age nine will be calmer than age eight has been... Oh and she also has a very grown-up new haircut which is very stylish and gorgeous! So happy birthday to my little girl, who will always be my baby, even when she's a hundred (we used to say this a lot when she was little and now she says it to Finn!), my little star.

Natural Parenting Group!

Hooray, the first session went really well! A few teething issues, like some of the toys not being as good as others for group play, not remembering to sing songs after snack time so having to cram them in at the end and not having any printed info about the slings... but plenty of people came and it broke even even with the initial tea and coffee outlay! I know it's easy to get people to come once and harder to persuade them to come again, so I'm planning to do more publicity for next week and not let it slide, but I'm relieved and pleased and I hope it'll be sustainable. Oh and everyone helped out at the end with tidying and washing up too, so I hope that wasn't just a one-off first time thing!

I really need to post our GP Meet pics and write about the weekend, but it's Chloe's birthday this weekend so all my efforts are going into planning the perfect sleepover at the moment...