Help Raise Money For Ellie's Brain Tumour Trust

Just collect empty wet wipe packets (any brand) to help raise money for Ellie's Fund Brain Tumor Trust

Here's How it Works:

1. Collect your empty baby wipe packets (any brand) and wrap them in an envelope, thick plastic bag or box. Fewer, bigger parcels are better.


2. When you have a parcel ready e-mail info@elliesfund.com and we will email you a freepost postage label. (Ellie's Fund is a small charity, this will save us postage costs.) Drop the parcel at your local post office.


3. Each postage label can only be use once so if you need more (and we hope that you will!) just e-mail again!

 
If you dont use wipes you can still help by signing the petition at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/17419

Sale...Sale...Sale

Another sale woohoo! Dorothy Perkins have another Sale on with up to 50% off

I love.............

Cobalt tipped crew neck jumper

ONLY £10 was £18

Crew neck 3/4 sleeve contrast tipped jumper with button shoulder detailing

 

Silver pearl and gem bow pumps

ONLY £15 was £25

Silver metallic pumps with pearl and gem embellished bow.

 

Black leaf print dress

ONLY £19 was £32 

Black sleeveless shift dress featuring leaf 

print fabric and ruffle detail. 

See more at Dorothy Perkins and Facebook Page

Boots.... oh Lovely Boots

I've been having obsessions with clothes and shoes at the moment so I can feel better about myself after putting on a bit of weight.

What do you think of my latest purchase?
Tan riding boots from Dorethy Perkins they were £60 reduced to £20 in the sale......BARGAIN. They are a little high for me but I do feel fab in them.

I also have seen a matching bag.

What To Wear

I have about 5 weeks until I go back to work after being off on maternity for a year, I have lost some baby weight but I have also put some back on in the last few weeks which I feel pretty rubbish about but i'm on a diet (kind of) and on the look out for a new outfit for my first day back. I need to feel confident, stylish and just fabulous to make me feel better about going back and leaving my baby with someone else to look after :-( 

I have been browsing on Tesco Clothing and I have found two great dresses that maybe contenders.

Blue box pleat button detail dress which will look great with black tights and heels or flat pumps to dress down a little. It's stylish and bright and looks flattering.

Or 

We have the red A-line dropped waist dress which again would look great with tights and heels as shown or pumps but I think some funky boots would look particulary great.

What do you think, would either be a good going back to work dress? 

These are both half price at the moment so only £7 each so I may just get them both....oh naughty me. I do have a wedding to go to in May and it's my birthday very soon, oh enough with the excuses i'm getting them BOTH hehe!

Why does childcare cost so much?

Great debate on "Why does childcare cost so much?" on the Wright Stuff this morning. This really hits home as we are just about to visit the world of childcare and are wondering how they hell will we pay for it.
If our little man goes to a full time childminder which will be 50 hours a week it will cost us £700 a month which is nearly the same as our monthly mortgage payment.
I am due back to work full time in April but my husband is being made redundant at the end of March, he is looking for jobs and going for interviews but we are wondering if we will be better off him staying at home for a little while with our son. We are also concerned that if we both work full time neither of us will see our son much if I get home by 6pm and a current job my husbsnd is waiting for a reply would mean he would get home 7.30-8pm. Why oh why would we want to spend all that time away from him.

It's just awful, we waited until our thirties to have children but we are definatly not better off and not sure we ever would have been in a better financial state especially after taking on a house with high monthly payments and we don't even like the house anymore. Ideally I would like to continue to be at home but it doesn't seem possible now with my husbands redundancy. My employer refused any sort of flexi-time before we knew anything about the redundancy which is another debate which has been touched on in the Mother's Work Meme!.

Why does life have to be so difficult and expensive? If anyone has the answer please let me know.

I Like:

• Interesting read from Bounty

Little Man Update

My baby is 10 and half months now and it's unbelievable how quickly it has gone. He now walks with a little help from furniture, us and toys but sometimes let's go so I really think he will be walking before he is 1 years old.
Madness as he looks too small to walk but he seems pleased with himself.

He has been babbling away lately I find him talking to his toys ha! He is so funny to watch. He says Dada and Mama perfectly but of course it was Dada first.

He can climb the stairs very fast ( we stand behind him), starting to open cupboard doors and the other week he actually opened the washing machine door when it was closed. He loves to empty the washing machine and have a nose inside. He has also started to point and has a thing about putting his hands in the air.

Over the past few weeks he has been rather clingy and again started waking up in the night for a cuddle. I think I'm becoming clingy too as I've mentioned several times before I've got to go back to work soon which I can't bare it's all I think about at the moment because I don't want to leave my little man. The only way to describe how I feel is like someone twisting my stomach inside.

A Mother's Work MeMe!

After reading fellow bloggers, Bargain Mummy Buys and Mother.Wife.Me. About the working parent and how society doesn’t value or support mothers / fathers as well as it could and just expected to "get on with it". It struck a cord with me as i'm soon to return to work.


Step one is to start a meme. So here it is:

A Mother’s Work Meme.

Rules:

1. Please post the rules
2. Answer the questions in as much or as little detail as suits you
3. Leave a comment on mother.wife.me so we can keep track of the meme
4. Tag 3 people and link to them on your blog
5. Let them know you tagged them
6. Tweet loudly about taking part (well ok, that isn’t a rule, but how about if we start a hashtag – #amothersworkmeme

Questions:

1. Did you work before becoming a mum?
2. What is your current situation?
3. Freestyle – got your own point you’d like to get across on this issue? Here’s your chance…

And, most importantly…. you’re tagged!!
just another muther, Melksham mum, Grace and Me, Bizzy Mum



My attempt at completing the meme

1. Did you work before becoming a mum?
I have always worked, from a young teenager baby sitting to earn a little money to buy clothes to a fully fledged adult paying for a house and the bills to go with it.
I've not found my ideal career as yet but Internet Marketing seemed to be my thing for a while and before knowing i'd become a mum I was offered a great course to gain a reputable Marketing qualification but as things go after trying for some months I found I was pregnant and had to turn it down. So I have found myself to be a Customer Service Advisor.

2. What is your current situation?
Just 6 weeks left of my maternity to go and I have to go back to my position full time not by choice after asking for flexi-time or cutting my full time hours into 4 days so I don't have to send my little man to full time childcare but it was refused. I'm expected to go back to the way it was before I left for maternity (a year ago) even though everything has changed within the company as have I. So as you can imagine it's not something I am looking forward to especially as I don't feel I have any prospects there and that they aren't particularly child friendly.
To add to the frustration my husband has just been made redundant so even more pressure on me but if he doesn't find something else he may find he's the one looking after our little man, but we will struggle being on one wage.

3. Freestyle
I think employers should be more sympathetic towards mothers/fathers juggling reponsibilities especially as childcare is so expensive, it's hard enough for parents to leave their children but the hugh expense involved is crippling. Flexi-time, providing care onsite or some help towards childcare payments as an incentive to go back to work would be a godsend. It would to me anyway as we only just got by when we both worked full time and now we are expected to cope with the ever increasing costs of utility bills and childcare (which is almost half my take home wage). So how we can carry on as before I really don't know.

Makes Me Smile Every Day

My little bubba makes me smile every day, he was hilarious the other day while being tickled. I'd like to share the video with you it's brilliant little baby laugh he has, View the video here : Brilliant Baby Laugh I took another today as he was finding the washing machine Facinated by the washing machine I'd love to know your thoughts.

Bedtime nightmare

My little man is all over the place with his sleeping for a solid week he slept through from about 9pm to 8am which was amazing as I actually got some sleep and a couple hours of my evening back but the past few days he has started waking up around 2-3am crying I've tried to leave him (neighbours probably aren't happy about that) in hope he'd go back to sleep himself which he has a couple of times but others I've had to go in and comfort him and sleep in his room until he falls asleep again.
Last night he woke up twice crying which is exhausting 2.30am and 5.30am but I gave him a bottle and waited for him to fall asleep. I'm just not sure what to do he just never seems to stay in the same routine and at 10 months surely this shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Has anyone else had similar problems?

Career Choices

I'm starting to wonder what I want to do with my life I spent my twenties searching for an ideal career but never found anything that I was truely happy in. I started my full time working life in retail, first being at an art centre where I loved the products as I love being creative, my co-workers were great but the customers where awful as they often made me feel stupied and I didn't feel like I had achieved anything especially when ex college friends came in telling me about their university stories. I just wasn't going to go anywhere in the company so I took another retail job closer to home and again I loved the product(jewellery)and this time the customers where great but my co-workers were awful they just made me the slave - make tea, wash up clean etc.

One day I had enough and was at the point of tears so I signed up with an agency and I had a lucky streak and ended up with a full time position in an office working in Internet Marketing I couldn't believe my luck I was dreadful on the computer and didn't really use the internet so I was amazed I got the job, it was all new to me with lots to learn - I LOVED IT, but that feeling only lasted the first year and I didnt grow with the company so left after 4 1/2 years (my longest job ever). I think I could do that job better now and sometimes wish i could go back.

I went onto another office job which again was quite different being an Administrator but I tried to develop my Internet Marketing experience into the job in the hope of developing that side of the company. It had it highs and lows and on several occassions I have wanted to leave but then I had the opportunity to go onto a Marketing course courtesy of the company which really excited me (things were looking up)especially as my 30th birthday was getting closer and I felt I wasn't where I wanted to be in life and then after a year and a half of trying to get pregnant I was so I had to say goodbye to the Marketing course and my developments of Internet Marketing were scraped all together from the company. My last couple of months before I went onto Maternity the company had a huge re-jig of my job description and peoples roles - the worst thing ever, a girl I worked with for over 3 years was becoming my Manager she has control over everything I do, a say in my pay and bonuses. It didn't go down well with me at all especially as she used to be a friend and now I find her speaking to me very differently.

It is now coming up to a year since I left for maternity and my first day back is getting closer but it fills me with dread as the manager has developed in her role so will have a field day bossing me about especially as the company has changed almost everything about my job so I'm basically going to start all over again. I would love to work for myself because I hate being told what to do and my freedom taken away by having set hours in a mundane Monday to Friday job.

While being on maternity leave I have developed my own venture Fish 4 Clicks (www.fish4clicks.co.uk) taking my internet marketing experience and going freelance. So far I have one paying client and one family member who I am helping out. I have tried promoting on social networking sites but now i'm unsure where to go with it. I need to get out there networking but I'm a little stuck as i'm looking after my little man and then I will be in full time work. Previously I have made and sold handmade cards and beaded jewellery but my website created one sale in a whole year so that venture has been closed down. I need motivation to carry on.I wish all those years ago I chose what I wanted to do Childcare or Beauty Therapy I decided not to go down those routes because the earning potential wasnt good enough and people used to look down on those subjects as the easy way out but I believe I would have been much happier than I am now and both those proffessions will always be needed. I just feel stuck now in what I am doing.

Emotional

I keep feeling incredibly emotional lately like this morning I woke up in a really negative mood thinking I'm rubbish at everything including being a mum.
I feel so bad that I have to leave my baby in 7 weeks to go to work full time but I have no choice we need the money.
I feel awful because I think my bubba prefers being with his grandma. Shes not with him every day but he clings to her so it goes back to me thinking how the hell will I feel with him being with a childminder for approx 50 hours a week will he become attached to her more than me.

I just can't bare it, but I have no way out.

8 weeks to go

Oh my only eight weeks until I sit back at a desk being told what to do mon-fri for 8 or so hours a day boohoo!
All of a sudden my time off has disappeared it's been nearly a year and I really don't know how I'll get back into work mode again just the thought of getting up extra early to get myself ready and Ollie out the door to a childminder for me to drive 30 minutes to the middle of nowhere all before 8.30 am then to be expected to stay awake and alert all day. I really don't know how mums do it, but I'm soon to find out. I do envy stay at home mums they don't know how lucky they are.

Anyone else out there facing the same at the moment I'd love to hear from you?

Finally Some Sleep

I actually had more than 3 - 4 hours sleep last night a whopping 7 hours straight woohoo!

Sleeping Ollie

After helping Ollie fall asleep from about 9.30pm as i'd been on a first aid course and didn't get back until 9ish (Daddy doesn't even try ha!) he finally fell asleep about 10pm and woke up at 7.30am that's amazing for him. He did wake up several times coughing but fell straight back to sleep.



I'm hoping it's not a one off  as we have had a couple of those before but at 9 1/2 months this should be a regular thing but to be fair he has had a horrible cough, cold and teething problems (still no teeth though).

What does everyone else do to get their bubbas to sleep?

I pretend to go to bed when he does on his floor with the lights out, I give him a bottle as it seems to be a comfort (I know I shouldn't but it works) then he moves about for abit then falls asleep next to me, when I know he is in a deeper sleep I put him in his cot. It has been working so that is good enough for me but he has been normally waking from 2am and he can't always get back to sleep after this time.

I'm trying routine, i've tried the control crying but i'm not keen on that one and don't think it works for Ollie as he gets in a state so how will he ever fall asleep like that, I have heard it works for some so it's always worth a try.

Happy Sleeping