About a year ago one Thursday I decided to document my days activities to give a snap shot into this life I’m living, so I thought I’d do it again to see how things have changed. Here goes this is yesterday, my equivalent of a ‘Monday’…

12:26AM- Seb wakes up and comes in the big bed for cuddles.

2:42- bottle for the boy as he’s still not settling.

5:07- Seb unsettled again. The cat also randomly decided to attack us in bed for food and gets thrown from the room after scratching my arm to pieces.

5:16- Henry gets up to go for a morning cycle ride and he brings Seb bottle to try and settle him, it works for a couple of hours peace.

7:07- Polly awake and in for a cuddle too.

7:24- All awake.

7:30- Fresh bums for the little people. Polly wants to stay in a nappy this morning again.

7:35- We gate crash Henry’s shower for me to have a wee before heading downstairs.

7:45- Feed the calmed down cat, kettle on and start breakfast while the children trash the living room (I’m not really sure how the morning is slipping away already?!)

Put a wash on, put away the dried stuff up from the draining board. Wave daddy off to work. Get sausages out of the freezer to cook later. Listen to a toddlers peanut butter on toast demands!

7:57- Sit down for breakfast.

8:03- Watch Seb chuck 80% of his on the floor and my lap- the new food game.

8:10- DJ Seb has a little dance while Polly picks out who’s coming to the teddy bear party at toddler group this morning.

8:15- washing up and put recycling outside.

8:22- hoover downstairs (again!)

8:35- emergency surgery with the help of the ‘monkey glue’ after Marshall suffers a terrible accident when the toddler plays with him for a grand total of 30 seconds.

8:38- teeth cleaning time plus a cheeky shave legs session in the sink- bloody summer!

8:48- time to get everyone dressed!

9:02- bottle for the boy. Polly picks this moment to somehow split her lip on her flip flops (still not sure how she managed it!) so multi tasking is very much needed here.

9:12- cut both children’s nails as they’ve secretly grown some talons!

9:20- put contact lens in. Execute my first dose of bribery for the day- if I put CBeebies on will you let me plait your hair, let’s see how long they stay in today! I’ve also achieved the first moment of silence this morning with the help of Bing bunny and his accomplices- might just use this cheeky moment to have a quick flick through Facebook!

9:31- Bing let me down as they still ended up having a ‘you got too close to me’ fight which ended in tears.

9:39- drag myself away from the twirlywoos to sort out the towel wash.

9:48- into the pushchair they go!

9:55ish- walk to toddlers.

10:01- arrive at toddlers! Shock horror we are first here!

Auntie Jen brings 3 little ones including the kids’ cousins. They have a blast like usual! We are really lucky with the mum and dad crew in the town as they are all so lovely and welcoming and we all have a good laugh together which is great.

11:40- finish at toddlers.

12- get home after 10 minutes of chatting with Jen while the kids are restrained in pushchairs with snacks!

12:03- Polly has a complete meltdown for no apparent reason.

12:06- tantrum resolved with a cup of milk. I take my contacts out for a couple of hours and crack on with lunch and prepping tea for later, while having a gossip catch up with one of my besties. Oh and the plaits have just come out. Seb takes advantage of the situation to put his favourite on.

12:28- sit down for lunch, you’ll notice a missing child, who sat at the table for approximately 30 seconds, ate a single piece of cheese before declaring she was finished and wanted to build a block tower. So Seb and I shared hers.

12:49- take the boy up for a nap after setting Polly up with stickers and ‘the witch’ (room on a broom).

12:55- seize this golden opportunity for a quick shower.

13:06- back downstairs for a bit of Polly time.

13:19- make a cup of tea, Polly has a banana and we call up G-G (my grandma). It’s a short chat as she’s heading out on a little outing this afternoon.

13:40- play doh is requested. Give me and my freshly hoovered carpet strength. Sneak in the kitchen to wash up.

13:54- back to the play doh table.

14:15- start getting ready for work.

14:30- make a quick play doh race track then wake the boy up. Give him a bottle before we leave.

14:39- fresh nappies and shoes on, time to go to work.

14:43- out the door.

15:00- The 3 O’clock switch.

17:11- time for a little break, where I can eat some tea and watch a bit of the Chase!

17:30- back to work. I’m running food this evening so lots of running about.

23:54- clock out, after 11,000 steps, plenty of pint pulling, plates carried and cutlery polished.

00:11- home after getting a lift.

00:18- Henry is still up so we have a cup of tea and a catch up while watching Emmerdale!

00:40- Seb stirs so I creep in with a bottle and check Polly too, before collapsing into bed, ready to do it all again!

A milestone just took place in our toy strewn living room as I cleaned up the baby (not sure when I’m supposed to stop referring to him as the ‘baby’?) from the spaghetti bolognese that his sister refused to touch… Polly did her first wee in the potty! Don’t panic there isn’t any photographic evidence (I’m not going that far on here!) although Grandpops and Auntie Pati we’re both on FaceTime to each of us parents when it happened, so Polly of course proudly shew both of them what she’d achieved! This feels like a big step as she’s been so anti potty that I was beginning to wonder whether it would ever happen. I mean she’s not just become ‘potty trained’ in the last 2 hours, we have a long way to go yet, but her little face filled with pride has definitely made our day. So, if you see me in the factory shop tomorrow morning I’ll be buying stickers for a fake it up reward chart that distracts her from her desperation to wear her ‘big girl pants’ immediately as a few more potty achievements feel likely needed before we say bye bye to one set of nappies.

Summer seems to have finally kicked in which is giving lots of opportunities to get out and about in the town, the river seems to be a firm favourite at the moment, we spent a couple of hours down there yesterday afternoon playing with friends. The fearless big girls were in their element and had to be lured away on the promise of a play in the nearby orchard once it became a bit too cold for jumping in. Seb of course tried to eat every stone he could find!

However these children are keen to remind us that Christmas is now less than half a year away!

We snuck in a couple of days away, popping up to Suffolk to spend some time with our grandparents and to just have a bit of a breather before the summer season kicks in at work. We had a fab time with big breakfasts

A couple of lunch dates

A trip to a farm shop

Seb discovering a new mode of transport

And my brother attempting to teach Polly to play chess before Seb decided to eat the pieces instead

All in all a pretty good trip, which is why this was the scene I left behind when I ventured to work early in the morning after a very late trip home…

Just before we went we were treated to a visit from one of my favourite people, who’s recently popped out the most gorgeous little man, Oscar. Nikki is honestly one of the most loveliest people I’ve ever met and I know she’s going to be amazing at this whole parenting thing, so congratulations again my lovely, Polly was also made up at the chance to hold ‘baby’, declaring ‘I love him’.

We also celebrated Father’s Day where the children stole back the Terry’s chocolate orange and ate half of it together while the mugged off and completely unaware Daddy did the washing up! These were the pictures he sent through as an update while I was at work!

We’ve also taken a big step in the world of sleep. We moved (well I moved) Seb’s cot into Polly’s room last week. He’s definitely not sleeping through (in fact Henry is currently upstairs giving him another bottle) and the first couple of days were an actual disaster but we’ve made a bit of progress with him actually going to sleep for that first stretch, I’ll try not to say this too smugly though as I know little people like to trick us into a false sense of security then shatter our dreams just as the promise of sleep seems like an achievable accomplishment!

I feel like this has been a bit of a lazy post, filled with pictures to make up for my lack of writing the last few weeks. And I hate to make excuses but with 2 little people, work, a house to keep sort of clean and the nice weather luring me outside I’m struggling to make regular updates on here, they definitely aren’t the weekly event they used to be! So I think I’ll just carry on like this, posting when I can, but next time I’ll try and remember a few more anecdotes instead of relying on lots of photos!