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Jumping Dog – A Children’s Clothing Collection Like No Other

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Back in 2013 I came across this amazing project by photographer Joost Vandebrug. He was trying to raise money through his CINCILEI photography project for a bunch of homeless boys living in the sewers of Bucharest. I wrote all about it here, you can have a look before you read on.

The project has meanwhile evolved from the initial book to creating an entire centre in Bucharest where street children can feel at home and reintegrate into society.

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The name of new Jumping Dog children’s clothing collection was inspired by the stray dogs street children develop strong bonds with during their years of living rough.

The collection is beautiful and emanates strength. The strength these street children have proven over the years, surviving the unimaginable, transcends into a collection that invites children to play and exploration.

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I love their reversible t-shirts and I am planning to get Emma the adventure one for Easter. Not because my child needs another top but because ALL the money raised from the sale goes towards making the centre in Bucharest a reality. A better reality for  children who haven’t had a childhood but I hope, with all my heart, would have an adulthood that involved loving care, hope and shelter .

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I am not a sales person and I will not try and play with your emotions in order to get your attention.

I am a mum who has lost a precious son to illness and whose heart is sore knowing of so many children  and young adults in my home country who haven’t had the love mine would have been given unconditionally.

Use this appeal as doing one of your good deeds this lent, use it as a chance to pay it forward or use it simply as a way to show these children that someone cares.

Stop by the website, purchase one of their gorgeous items for your little ones and give hope to someone who has none.

Once again, thank you Joost for allowing me to write about your lost boys and getting involved in this amazing project!

Mother’s Day…on Instagram

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I have been using Instagram separately from my personal Facebook for the past six months, in an attempt to separate business and personal life but I have recently realised that most of my friends have missed on our news in this way.

So, inspired by a fellow blogger who has an Instagram post once a week, I will attempt to keep my friends and family updated in this visually pleasing way as well.

This week has been all about the coming celebrations for Mother’s Day as we got loads of bits to enjoy on the occasion, all thanks to this blog.

We kicked off the celebrations (I know, I am the mummy here but I cannot leave those two out, can I?) with lovely, scrummy food from Charlie Bigham’s, for which we had been sent vouchers the week before.

Charlie Bigham is the amazing chef who came up with the brilliant idea of “oven-prepared convenience dishes”, designed for one or two and selling at a very reasonable price, in an attempt to bring harmony back into the home. My two were definitely saved a lot of cooking and the washing up also with the amazing lasagna and individual pies we chose from the range.

We would definitely recommend them, a thousand time tastier and healthier than a takeaway and for a fraction of the price! The good thing is that it is not too late to grab some from your local supermarket (aim for the bigger stores, our Sainsbury’s doesn’t stock them so we had to drive to Lisburn!) and wow mum or wife with them!

Then, on Tuesday, an unexpected and absolutely beautiful parcel from the Cooperative Food brightened my day with amazing looking cake and a bit of fizz :-):

The Cooperative has plenty of afternoon tea and gift ideas for organising the Mother of all Tea Parties this Mothering Sunday so why don’t you pop over if you are still in need of inspiration for the big day. There are even free music playlists via Spotify, to recreate that perfect atmosphere for mum!

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But of course, the best present Alex and Emma can always give me is the gift of time spent together. We had plenty of that last Saturday on the North Coast, taking pictures for World Book Day on the famous stones at Giant’s Causeway and enjoying amazing fish and chips suppers.

There is nothing I want more this Mother’s Day than having them close and making loads of happy memories together. Of course, a little baby boy in Heaven will also be in our thoughts and hearts on the day, as he always is!

Whatever you do this Mother’s Day, hope you have a happy, full of love day. And cake,loads of cake :-)!

A spoonful of strength

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I was going to title this blog post “To the idiot who preached at my husband in the gym yesterday” but decided against it at the last minute.

But my blog post is going to deal with that incident and let you into our lives and our rawness, once again. Not because we need your sympathy but because our pain needs to serve a purpose. And if that purpose is education, so be it.

My husband is a bereaved parent, just like me. Men deal differently with pain and sorrow, as we all know, but that does not mean that they do not feel the anguish of parting with a beloved child.

My husband is a great dad and loves both his children very much. He has very strong bonds of love with Emma and with Georgie, bonds that transcend death and distance.

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My husband’s heart has been left bruised and emotionally, he has been severely traumatised by what he has seen his son go through.

My husband displays signs, just like I do, of post-traumatic stress disorder in the form of IBS, as physical symptoms and a lot of anxiety, as emotional ones.

My husband has been told, just like any other boy, from when he was very young, that men need to be strong and that men need to provide. He has been doing this excellently, allowing me to stay at home and look after Emma and my own bruised heart.

But my husband needs a sympathetic ear and loads of love, just like I do. As a woman and a blogger, I have been at the receiving end of love but I think it is time we made it clear, bereaved fathers needs grace and love and understanding too!

I have recently come across the spoon theory, an extremely helpful concept that people with chronic diseases are advised to apply daily. People who have a long term illness or suffering are encouraged to get to know themselves and their strength and use their energy wisely during the day, to help them manage daily tasks.

Unconsciously, this is what we have been doing as bereaved parents as well, in order to survive. We have had to relearn to live and spare our energy by avoiding people and activities that leave us completely depleted. This is one of the reasons we decided to stop going to church, as the preaching not only did not help with our pain, it actually drained the meager resources we would have had, by presenting us with a God-theory that for us couldn’t have been further from the truth.

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But yesterday, while at the gym, my husband was submitted to a completely unrequited tirade of arguments in God’s defense from a guy who thinks himself a Christian.

I will never understand the need to preach at someone. But to preach so bluntly and insensitively at someone you know to be in emotional pain and anguish is, to me, inexcusable.

I wish this reached the guy. Not only his ears but his heart.

I wish to tell him that yesterday, his tirade of self-assured religiosity left my husband with zero “spoons”, in the short space of a few minutes.

That probably unlike you, you pompous little prick fervent little Christian, he had to face 12 hours of driving and work in harsh conditions, tormented by an all consuming anger we know too well and you know none of, as you have never felt the pain of losing someone you love, I am pretty sure.

That last night, I left him with my precious surviving child, while I was out at a bereavement seminar (oh, the irony, right?) and although he would NEVER do anything to harm her, he was totally incapable of providing for her needs. His all consuming anger blinded him totally to everything around himself and made him withdraw into his shell, like a wounded animal.

That upon my return, he was almost incoherent with emotional exhaustion and collapsed into bed and a heavy slumber of temporary obliteration.

That all this, ALL this, could have been avoided if you had displayed more empathy and less bigotry yesterday morning.

You, my non-friend, who call yourself a Christian, should have been a helping hand; your words could have been a salve for my husband’s broken heart. Instead, you chose to tear into his heart, uninvited and with great violence.

I do hope this reaches you.

I do hope that if you are to learn one thing from your “Christian” walk is that love can be expressed in so many other ways, words being the least effective.

I hope you learn to be someone’s strength by showing empathy and care and not drain someone of the little strength they have.

Be well, and please, for everybody’s sake, stop preaching!

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Tuck n’ Snug for a Better Night’s Sleep

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Emma is a great sleeper and once asleep, she stays put until the morning. But she is a great bed wriggler too which means that many times, her duvet ends up all crammed in a bed corner and she would sleep without a cover over over for hours!

When I learned about the Tuck n’ Snug covers, I immediately emailed the lovely PR team and asked if we could review, as I wanted to see if these special duvet and pillow covers would make a difference to Emma’s quality of sleep.

The concept is simple yet very efficient: to a normal duvet cover strips of fabric have been attached on the sides and to its bottom bit so they can be tucked under the mattress. The strips secure the duvet in place, making incidents like we have every night with a normal cover impossible. This is not to say that the cover does not allow for plenty of room to wriggle in bed, as there is still plenty of opportunity for that!

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What did we think of it?

I loved the concept, as I can now sleep peacefully at night, knowing I do not have to check on Emma and her covers. I appreciate that the fabric is soft cotton, allowing the body to breathe and absorbing sweat if the child overheats. I am not too bothered by the extra flaps as I can dry the whole lot on the line outside on a dry, sunny day.

All in all, as a mum of a night wriggler, I would recommend it warmly as an efficient and safe way to keep your child warm and tucked in all night.

The sets retail at £39.99, come in two cute models, kitty or doggy, to suit both boys’ and girls’ bedrooms and in two sizes, single bed and toddler bed.

Disclosure: we were sent the set for the purpose of this review. All opinions expressed are entirely our own.

My Slimpod Journey

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In January, I wrote about realistic plans and tools for getting fitter this year and I included two revolutionary (in my view) products: the Polar Loop 2 and the Slimpod Gold.

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I have found both products nothing short of amazing in the past month, as they both continued to motivate my weight loss and promote my self-esteem. If you have been on any weight loss program, as I have been previously so many times, you know that motivation starts to wane around week two, as deprivation of nutrition kicks in.

These two act totally different to a weight loss program as the accent with both is on movement and choices, rather than depriving yourself of food.

My Polar Loop 2 keeps me in check daily. I find myself consciously moving more as I am eager to clock in the 12,000 steps I need to be doing each day. I have felt an incredible sense of pride last night when I checked my activity tracker charts and saw that in the past two weeks I have not only achieved but exceeded the recommended daily exercise dose.

The Slimpod works perfectly alongside the Polar Loop. The 10 minutes of gentle encouraging and empowering listening at the end of each day set me mentally for the following day. I have been really surprised to find out how important it is to me to be told every night, in a gentle and reassuring voice, that I can choose better, that every step I take towards my goal is progress, that the goal is withing reach and achievable. I have also seen that not listening to the pods for an evening or more sets me back and draws me to old habits of inactivity and binge eating, so I now make it a point to take those 10 minutes for myself each night, before going to bed.

This has led me to question so many things in my life and realise that encouragement is needed at any age and makes such a difference. I am very interested now in finding similar programs or CDs which encourage self-esteem and well-being as I have come to see the value of them.

Next month I will have a Slimpod to give away to a lucky reader so if reading my post has found you wanting to change too, do drop by around the 23rd of March to enter the giveaway.

Oh, and I know the point of any such programs is results but I have refused to weigh myself since I started. I know that I have lost weight as both my sisters in law remarked on it when we were in Greece last week so I think I am on the right path with this :-).

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