All posts filed under: Parenting

Thrifty second pregnancy shopping

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Okay, I am six months pregnant officially but my thrifty shopping started a few weeks back. You see, things are different from when I was first pregnant. Since then, many changes occurred in our lives: – We moved house SEVERAL times and in the process most of the baby things and apparel were donated/lent to friends/damaged/lost. – I was working as a substitute teacher back then and making my own money to buy things for baby. This time we decided it was best for me to stay at home at least until baby is six months so I have to watch the pennies hubby is working extremely hard for. – Most importantly, I was a new mum and had no clue about thrift shopping and wanted everything brand new for baby.  I was reading all the glossy mummy magazines and wanted all the stuff those cute babies were featuring. This time around, I decided to do it totally different, to the delight and relief of my hubby :-). I started by asking friends for apparel …

Romanian soup and tips for your fussy eaters

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The weather has turned bad on us. Hey, it’s October, right,  so it has every right to do so(pun intended)! In our household October equals excitement on various levels. For one thing, daddy bear starts to feel a bit better concerning the weather and starts to enjoy things more. He suffers from what I call seasonal and locational melancholy from May until the end of September: he misses his home country, the sunshine and the warmth and only recovers from mourning for it once the weather turns cooler there as well… Emma starts getting excited come September about a couple of things: the imminent(for her!) birthday celebrations in November and Halloween. Of course, the older she gets, the more she understands and wants to participate in Halloween as a dress-up, have-fun celebration and she gets truly excited at the thought of witch lollipops( yes, Mothercare do them!), chocolate pumpkin treats(Home Bargains, 67p per bag of 20) and not-so-scary lanterns in the house. As for me, it’s comfort food cooking season! This year, the pumpkin craze …

Little girl update

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Last night as I was putting Emma to bed I had this revelation: these girly moments will not be common occurrence from January since the new baby’s arrival is due to disturb our soothing night routines(and not only…). I felt a twinge of regret for my little girl as I know she will experience a wide (and probably wild!) range of emotions with the arrival of her baby brother. I felt empathy as she was lying down, half asleep and content by my side and for a moment saw the world through her little girl’s eyes; I promised myself I will do my very best to prevent her initial feelings of confusion, loneliness and fear. I vowed to myself not to push her aside and tell her what we usually say to older children in these circumstances: “be patient”, “you’re older, just wait for your turn”, “he is younger, just let him have the toy”…etc. And then, I had an idea: yes, I have been posting photos of the bump on my Facebook page and …

The moment of truth

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So it looks like I have been living a lie. Not because I chose to but because I believed the reality was different. When I first became pregnant with Emma I experienced a LOT of mood changes. Normal, right? Weeeell, so everybody told me so I chose to believe my hormones were dictating my behaviour and were responsible for me becoming a witch almost overnight. A big, bad witch, as Emma would have described me if she had met me back then. Then, I had Emma and….baby reflux on my hands. So I went from big, bad witch to a wreck of tears, raw emotions and dysfunctionality. In the sense that I couldn’t cope with being up 24/7, coping with a hysterical baby and all the other household responsibilities and had to call my mum to the rescue. Normal, right? Weeeell, so did all my away-from-home friends told me, over a cosy cup of tea, with their mums/sisters/mothers-in-law semi-permanently installed in their homes. But then, time passed and the symptoms didn’t lift. I blamed it …